In Part 33 of this series on May 1, I described Mabel Wagner’s account of events between a plane landing on the nearly completed Beef Island airfield on Sept. 1, 1957 (to test its safety for ferrying filmmakers who would soon arrive) and her husband Wladek Wagner’s official resignation from the airport project on Nov. 18, 1957. Her account, I noted, poses a conundrum: Mr. Wagner appears to have worked on two full-time projects at the same time.
Ms. Wagner recalled that Charles Brudenell-Bruce had been the only Virgin Islands legislator to praise the cottage her husband had built for the airport’s security officer. Mr. Wagner, she noted, was puzzled to hear that somebody in the Public Works Department had complained about him in the legislature (as recounted in Part 30 of this series on Feb. 27).
They later discovered that a taxi driver he had recommended to operate between the airport and Road Town was also a new member of the Legislative Council, and it was rumoured that one of his friends had grumbled about the price government had paid for his land for the airfield and that Ms. Wagner had not employed a girlfriend of his.
According to H.R. Penn’ s Memoirs (1991), the VI gained its first modern constitution after the Great March of 1949. Its second general election, in 1954, was contested under the second constitution, giving the vote to all British subjects 21 years old and over (including women for the first time) — without property, literacy or income qualifications. They elected six members of the legislature: four in one-man districts and two to represent the central district, including Road Town.
Edwin Leonard won in the Third (northern) district, including Cane Garden Bay, but later resigned, and Mr. Brudenell-Bruce was elected in his place. Sometime after that, a nominated member of the legislature returning from a conference planning the formation of the West Indies Federation announced that the VI would become a member — but, because its population was under 10,000, it would be represented by a senator from Antigua or St. Kitts.
Messrs. Penn and Brudenell-Bruce objected to that arrangement as the VI had only recently regained representative government and its family and economic ties were with the United States VI. The majority of the Legislative Council agreed and persuaded the president, Colonel Howard, and governor, Sir Kenneth Blackburne, to support their call for the VI to remain a British colony.
Mr. Penn relates that Ivan Dawson was elected in the Third District in the VI’s third election, in 1957, but does not say whether anything Mr. Brudenell-Bruce had done had caused him to lose support.
Busy schedule
Ms. Wagner comments that Mr. Wagner stayed with the filming crew and later regaled her with stories of his day’s events, while Ms. Wagner felt that Countryman Films’ needs dominated her days, leaving her drained and exhausted. Her actual word was “consumed,” suggesting she felt her life was being sacrificed to the film project, as she had to get up earlier and earlier each morning just to stay ahead of her routine responsibilities.
One morning, Ms. Wagner went to kiss her son Michael as usual, but his bed was empty. Her daughter Suzanna was already up, so she went to ask Mr. Wagner to help find him. Ms. Wagner says she decided to leave Mr. Wagner and Suzanna to look for Michael, as she had to get things started on the cay for the guests. So she ran down to the dock and jumped into the boat, praying the outboard motor would start at first pull.
When Ms. Wagner looked up from the motor, she spotted Michael curled up in the bow, fast asleep. Michael woke up and whispered, very seriously, “I’m going with you, Mummy.” They secured the dinghy and walked up to Tamarind House hand in hand. Mr. Wagner and Suzanna were relieved to see them, but the full impact her work overload was having on her family hit her hard.
Ms. Wagner’s account of this incident seems to conceal more than it reveals, perhaps because she was reliving her own painful memories rather than reconstructing Mr. Wagner’s achievements from his documents. For example, had the children sensed an unaccustomed strain in their parents’ relationship? Or was meeting her guests’ needs at the clubhouse really dependant on an iffy outboard motor?
Tight spaces
Mr. Wagner had built a comfortable home for his family, but it was unlikely to have had more than three or four bedrooms: one for each child and one or two for themselves.
Ms. Wagner does not mention my future sister-in-law, Myrtle Penn, their housekeeper and children’s nanny, for whom her husband had built a tiny cottage next to Tamarind House. Were there enough beds on the cay to accommodate her and all the other staff?
Ms. Wagner had welcomed serving filmmakers as a change from the boatyard and constructing the airfield, but she noticed an unwelcome change in Mr. Wagner’s behaviour that she attributed to a jealousy of her contacts with the younger filmmakers.
She liked to hear how he had spent his day, but she didn’t think Mr. Wagner had even considered how little time she had to develop her own interests (as recounted in part 31 on March 20).
