Later, when the incident had become a joke, Deschampsneufs claimed that he knew what the device was and had deliberately misled Eden. I don’t believe he knew, though. I believe he was genuinely using or misusing a word he had just acquired; and I believe his shock, at his error and the abuse that followed it, was as great as ours. But this became their relationship: Deschampsneufs the comic, Eden his willing straight man.
We were talking one day about marriage and the absurdity of the institution that would turn all the foolish boys we knew into husbands, lords and masters to girls who, poor things, could not at that moment guess their maturing fate. We went on to talk about selective breeding. Deschampsneufs laid down the restrictions he would apply. On this subject he was allowed a certain authority. It was known that in the slave days the Deschampsneufs had kept a slave stud-farm on one of the islets off Isabella; the Negroes there were said to be a super-race still. Eden, attempting to clown and perhaps also looking for a tribute to his own superb physique, said, ‘Champ, you would let me breed?’ Deschampsneufs considered him. ‘It would be a pity to let the strain die out,’ he said. ‘Yes, Spite. I think we will let you breed. But we will have to cross you with a damn intelligent woman.’
Much was forgiven Deschampsneufs because from the security of his aristocracy he mixed easily with the poorest and crudest boys; in this he was unlike the son of the English clergyman who, possessing only piety, didn’t acknowledge black boys in the street, and thereby made himself ridiculous. A lot more was forgiven Deschampsneufs because he was witty and inventive. He loved, for instance, to put a price on a boy; but only he could have got away with it. Only he would have been allowed to say, of a boy he didn’t like, ‘He wouldn’t fetch five dollars.’ Outrageousness of this sort was required of him.
‘All you had to do,’ he now said to Eden, ‘was to send in your photo. In Technicolor.’
But he didn’t get his laugh. The moment was wrong. His tone was wrong; it was touched with a genuine bitterness. Browne didn’t like it. Eden, taking his cue from Browne, didn’t like it either. If they were younger they might have come to blows. Eden would have dumbly done what the new mood required of him. But not even angry words passed between them then. The teacher arrived; everyone went to his desk. The declaration of war was left unmade. In this new stage of the old war between master and slave it was left to me to have the fight with Deschampsneufs, a fight I never looked for. I had my own fantasies. I had made my decision to leave. It was horrible to me to be identified with those who struggled outside the gates of the Cercle Sportif.
My father’s movement faded. Even in our house he faded. He had become a remote public personality, the possession of everyone; he was, occasionally, a name in the newspapers. I found I no longer tried to visualize his day concretely. Such private concern seemed unreal. At school there was no more talk of Gurudeva or riots or burnings; we all preferred, for various reasons, to forget that frustration. The injustices of the slogan competition had also been forgotten. We had a new excitement: the Christmas meeting of the Isabella Turf Club. The Inquirer told us every day that racing was the sport of kings; and just as there were depressed boys who were prepared to talk endlessly with Cecil about models of motorcars they could never hope to drive, so now there were boys, in the Isabellan scale no higher than grooms, who talked endlessly about the sport of kings. They knew the names of horses, jockeys and trainers; they knew about pedigrees, past performances and handicaps. I couldn’t believe in their interest myself. I hated racing; I hated the gambling that went with it. But even I was forced to learn a little.
The main race of the Christmas meeting was the Malay Cup. The Inquirer annually told the story of this cup. It had been given to the Turf Club at the turn of the century by the governor, Sir Hugh Clifford. Though it was on Isabella that Sir Hugh exercised his first colonial governorship, he regarded all his service in the Caribbean, in Isabella and elsewhere, as exile from Malaya, to which he was devoted; and he spent much of his time in Government House writing a book of Malayan memories called Coast and Kampong which, after an unfavourable review by Joseph Conrad, committed him to the further literary exercise of a lengthy correspondence, ripening to friendship, with the as yet little known novelist. The Malay Cup was Sir Hugh’s parting gift to the island he had liked less than literature.
The favourite for the Malay Cup that year was a horse called Tamango. It belonged to the Deschampsneufs stables. Tamango was popular at school as well, for special reasons. Many boys claimed Deschampsneufs as a friend and therefore claimed a special interest in his horse. Then the name was African; and though the significance of the name was known to be ambiguous, the Negro boys were pleased. At Isabella Imperial we all knew where the name came from. Some people outside didn’t know — so much we could gather from the sports pages, already notorious to us from the howlers Major Grant regularly culled from them; and this private knowledge made us more proprietorial. Tamango, in a simplified and abbreviated edition, was one of the French texts we used in the lower forms; we all knew that Mérimée story of the African chief, seller of slaves, himself treacherously enslaved, and finally a leader of revolt. It was typical of the coolness and ambiguity of the Deschampsneufs family to give such a name to a horse: they seemed constantly anxious to call attention to a past which they agreed had been disreputable.
The interest in his family’s horse made Deschampsneufs insufferable at school. He came in in the morning smelling of horse, with his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers wet and dirty and stuck with bits of grass. He looked harassed, as though he had been up all night, a man with worries which the frivolous sporting world, mere watchers and gamblers, taking pleasure for granted, could never know or appreciate. He permitted himself no levity throughout the day, and as soon as the last lesson was over he was off again. His manner invited anxious questioning. But all inquiry or interest made him impatient and rude. He was especially brutal with those boys who, partly to please him, pretended to know more about horses than they did.
Then the horse called Tamango disappeared.
The reaction at school was strange. The correct thing to say was of course that it was a pity or, if you wished to use a newspaper word, an outrage. But there were undercurrents. It was at once assumed that the horse would not be found; and it was also assumed that Deschampsneufs had in some way become vulnerable to further loss. His loss was tragic, but it made him ridiculous; and within two days the loss itself became something that could be justified. Boys who had put up with Deschampsneufs’s brutality became retrospectively irritated; the merit of the horse was questioned; and the very name Tamango, to so many a cause for pride, was now seen as a provocation and an insult.