“What are you going to do about them now, Louis?”
“I been to get conch pearls,” he said.
They had stopped in the shade of a palm while he had been talking and he brought out a quite clean cloth from his pocket and unfolded it to show a half dozen of the shiny, nacreous pink, unpearllike pearls that are sometimes found in conches by the natives when they clean them and that no woman Thomas Hudson had ever known except Queen Mary of England has ever cared for as a gift. Of course Thomas Hudson could not think that he knew Queen Mary except through the papers and in pictures and a profile of her in The New Yorker but the fact that she liked conch pearls made him feel that he knew her better than he knew many other people he had known for a long time. Queen Mary liked conch pearls and the island was celebrating her birthday tonight, he thought, but he was afraid conch pearls would not make the gentleman’s lady feel very much better. Then, too, it Was always possible that Queen Mary said she liked them to please her subjects in the Bahamas.
They had walked down to the Ponce de León and Louis was saying, “His lady was crying, Mr. Tom. She was crying very bitterly. So I suggested I might go up to Roy’s and get some conch pearls for her to inspect.”
“They ought to make her very happy,” Thomas Hudson said. “If she likes conch pearls.”
“I hope they will. I’m taking them up now.”
Thomas Hudson went into the bar where it was cool and almost dark after the glare of the coral road and had a gin and tonic water with a piece of lime peel in the glass and a few drops of Angostura in the drink. Mr. Bobby was behind the bar looking terrible. Four Negro boys were playing billiards, occasionally lifting the table when necessary to bring off a difficult carom. The singing had stopped upstairs and it was very quiet in the room except for the click of the balls. Two of the crew of the yacht that was tied up in the slip were at the bar and as Thomas Hudson’s eyes adjusted to the light it was dim and cool and pleasant. Louis came downstairs.
“Gentleman’s asleep,” he said. “I left the pearls with his lady. She’s looking at them and crying.”
He saw the two sailors from the yacht look at each other but they didn’t say anything. He stood there, holding the long, pleasantly bitter drink, tasting the first swallow of it, and it reminded him of Tanga, Mombasa, and Lamu and all that coast and he had a sudden nostalgia for Africa. Here he was, settled on the island, when he could as well be in Africa. Hell, he thought, I can always go there. You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are. You are doing all right at that here.
“Tom, do you really like the taste of that stuff?” Bobby asked him.
“Sure. Or I wouldn’t drink it.”
“I opened a bottle by mistake once and it tasted like quinine.”
“It’s got quinine in it.”
“People surely are crazy,” Bobby said. “Man can drink anything he wants. He has money to pay for it He’s supposed to be taking his pleasure and he spoils good gin by putting it into some kind of a Hindu drink with quinine in it.”
“It tastes good to me. I like the quinine taste with the lime peel. I think it sort of opens up the pores of the stomach or something. I get more of a kick out of it than any other gin drink. It makes me feel good.”
“I know. Drinking always makes you feel good. Drinking makes me feel terrible. Where’s Roger?”
Roger was a friend of Thomas Hudson’s, who had a fishing shack down the island.
“He ought to be over soon. We’re going to eat with Johnny Goodner.”
“What men like you and Roger Davis and Johnny Goodner that been around stay around this island for I don’t know.”
“It’s a good island. You stay here, don’t you?”