The Tropical Issue Read online

After ten minutes at the poolside, she took her bikini off, which hardly made any difference, except to Aurelio, who came into the garden eight times.

  I stayed in the water and swam, and then went to Natalie’s nets and practised serving.

  I swim well and I play tennis well and Maggie looks great with no clothes on. Deuce.

  Natalie joined us for lunch on the terrace. Maggie was covered by then, and no one fell out with anyone. After lunch it was more of the same, after a siesta.

  In the late afternoon, I shaped and shampooed Natalie’s hair, and piled it in folds, with wisps in front of her ears, for Johnson’s party.

  I didn’t tell her, as I went on to make up her face, that I didn’t mean to go to the party. I didn’t tell anyone, and especially not Kim-Jim, whose passion about the whole thing was more than I could understand.

  I got some white of egg from the kitchen, whipped like a tornado by Dolores, and fixed my hair as if I was going. I got into the painted tunic and trousers Kim-Jim had approved earlier, and put on scent and earrings and anklets and everything, and showed them to him in the study.

  He was pleased. I felt a heel. I might have confessed, but Ferdy came in to say that Natalie was waiting, and I belted out to join her.

  Kim-Jim called out, ‘Goodnight! Have yourself a good time!’ as I got to the car.

  I thought he was talking to me, and only realised when I saw Ferdy outside the study door, grinning, that he’d stayed to say something to Kim-Jim.

  Kim-Jim added, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ and Ferdy posed in his ruffled St Laurent shirt with the telly flickering all over his face and said, ‘I have news for you. Tonight, old boy, you are enlarging your scope. See you tomorrow.’

  The parrot clucked. As Ferdy shut the door and came bounding out, I could hear it saying, ‘I guess there’s just you and me left.’

  Natalie didn’t think it was funny. Natalie was cool about having been made to wait.

  I was pretty cool too, when I found out what Ferdy had been up to.

  Ferdy sat in one of the let-down seats and grinned at me as Aurelio put the car into gear. ‘Last-minute orders. No sugar for Rita,’ he said.

  ‘No party for Rita,’ I said. ‘Mrs Sheridan, I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t want to upset Kim-Jim. But Mr Johnson and I don’t get on. If you’ll drop me, I’d rather spend the evening at the Sheraton.’

  Natalie looked at me, with the street lights catching her lid-frosting and her face-frosting as well.

  She said, ‘It’s a little late for that, surely? You owe quite a lot, I should have said, to Mr Johnson’s quick wits. It doesn’t cost much to be courteous.’

  I said I had thanked him. I also added, unwisely, that after all, I had looked after him in London. He would understand I didn’t like parties.

  Ferdy, who unfortunately had seen me at all too many parties, was grinning at me over his frillies.

  He said, ‘Do you know what, darling? Kim-Jim said you’d try to flunk it. And do you know another what? I gave him my solemn word you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Try to stop me,’ I said.

  He did. What’s more, he succeeded.

  Natalie, I will admit, told him once or twice not to be silly. She complained sharply when he manhandled me into the lobby of Reid’s Palace Hotel in full view of a row of surprised bellboys.

  When Ferdy picked me up in his arms and I bit him she stopped complaining and simply swept into the arms of the management, firmly ignoring us.

  We were the last of Johnson’s guests to arrive. The management were indulgent. Everyone knows Ferdy. Ferdy slung me over his shoulder and pressed buttons until the lift came down again. Inside it, he put me on my feet.

  He said, ‘I thought you liked Kim-Jim, young Rita. What were you going to tell him tomorrow?’

  I said, ‘That I’m more honest than you. That I think your pal Johnson is a poof and a bastard, and I don’t see why I should spend a rotten evening with him.’

  The lift had stopped, but Ferdy kept his finger on the close button.

  He said, ‘It’s an argument. Carry a good deal more weight if he knew just how rotten an evening it was. Otherwise he might think you’re just scared.’

  ‘Twenty-five dreary bores, and Johnson and Natalie?’ I said. ‘Be my witness. You can tell him all about it tomorrow. I don’t need to suffer.’

  Ferdy gazed at me, with his mouth pouting out from the whiskers.

  ‘I admit,’ he said, ‘that Maggie desnuda was pretty spectacular. But you don’t need to admit it. The film finance boys will be there. And a couple of artists.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘And the B.B.C. team planning that film on the Story of Malmsey, bless their wooden butts.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Help you look for Eduardo tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But if I don’t like it, I’ll leave after the coffee.’

  ‘You’ll like it,’ he said.

  I left after the coffee.

  It wasn’t actually rotten.

  The food was good. I sat between a B.B.C. man and a guy whose paintings I’d seen in this gallery, and we ended up drawing all over the tablecloth.

  Johnson wasn’t particularly near me at the table, and only came up once during the drinks bit. The film finance guy I was with started to introduce me, but Johnson said it was all right, I used to walk his dog when I was younger.

  I suppose it was meant as a joke.

  The film man laughed and asked what my fee was, and I said Mr Johnson paid me in pencils.

  Before the coffee, everyone drank the Queen’s health and someone, who seemed to be the British Consul, stood up and made a dreary speech about how glad everyone was to see Mr Johnson restored to them, and how they were looking forward to the beautiful Dolly gracing their harbours for long years to come.

  Then Mr Johnson stood up in the Owner’s place at the head of the table and made a short, mildly funny speech which got a lot of clapping at intervals, and a round of applause at the end.

  That’s what happens, if you have money.

  It was the time when they let you go to the toilet if you have to, and people were bobbing up and down.

  I bobbed up, but not down.

  I caught Ferdy’s eye, but not Johnson’s or Natalie’s, and got the hell out of it.

  It was a warm evening, and the flowers were giving out, free, a lot of scents that usually come in bottles.

  I got back to the villa by taxi and let myself in, waving through the service wing window at Dolores, Aurelio and Dodo in front of the telly, watching T.V.E. Canarias.

  The programme was Elizabeth R: Horrivel Conspiracao, the same that Kim-Jim was taping, which explained the presence of Dodo slumming. Anything royal, I guessed, would trap Dodo.

  Running upstairs, I could hear the same thing quacking away in the study, mixed with Cone working hard on the Tarzan cry. Which, if they’d heard it, would fairly have baffled the Spanish Marauder.

  I changed into this nice little wrap and came downstairs in my bare feet to wait for Kim-Jim at the end of the programme.

  I went out to the terrace.

  The sounds of Queen Elizabeth and Tarzan followed me distantly.

  I thought of Kim-Jim’s sight, and wondered how long it would hold out, and what he would do if he could only listen. When I heard his phone ring, I was enraged, because his time was so precious, and even when recording, he hated so to be interrupted.

  He must have snatched up the receiver, for it only rang a couple of times. Queen Elizabeth got switched down or off, and stayed off. I wondered who could be ringing at this hour, and remembered that it wasn’t late in New York, and Natalie got calls at all times.

  If I’d stuck to my guns and stayed with him, I could have saved him the fag of that phone call.

  I’d gone to the party, but left it.

  A dithering berk. Neither a blue-arsed fly, nor a contented, consenting subordinate.

  Rita girl, it’
s your life. Don’t let other folk run it.

  I went further down into the garden. There was this seat with a view. I could see the palms and the sea in the moonlight. The sea that went from here to Scotland.

  I sat on it. I got thinking. I fell asleep.

  I was wakened by lights on the terrace. Someone had switched the floodlighting on. And when I sat up, I heard a lot of well-dined voices twittering at one another and laughter rolling out from the sitting-room.

  Maggie’s, for one. And, I thought, Harvey Kazimierz, Natalie’s lawyer. And Natalie. And Ferdy. And someone I could swear was Johnson.

  I had nothing on under my wrap, and my feet were cold. I hopped through the grass to where I could see the French windows and Natalie’s visitors standing about just inside or on the terrace.

  It was Johnson. The party was over, and she had bloody brought him back for a nightcap.

  Maggie was sloshed. You could see her, because she had on a dress made of sequins, with two well-placed straps instead of a top, which certainly explained the need to get brown all over.

  Ferdy was singing the end of ‘The Song of the Flea’, with Maggie’s scarf tied round his brow, and his frills unbuttoned down to his navel. The lawyer was talking to Johnson, who had unbuttoned his white tuxedo to show a woolly pullover, I swear, underneath.

  Natalie’s voice said, ‘She’ll have gone to bed,’ in the voice she kept for guests who got stotious.

  ‘Not without paying her bloody debts,’ Ferdy’s voice answered. And cupping his mouth, my famous photographer friend produced a full-throated opera bellow.

  ‘RITA!’ he screamed.

  I swore. I tied a double knot in my wrap, and marched up the path to the light, skipping a bit because of the pine cones.

  ‘And about time,’ said Ferdy. He gazed at the wrap, with his capped teeth dividing his sideburns and gave a howl nearly as loud as the first one.

  ‘Return match, Maggie! Last into the pool is a sissy!’

  Natalie said, ‘Have a drink, Ferdy. Do you really want Kim-Jim as well? Mr Johnson won’t mind in the slightest if your silly debt waits till tomorrow.’

  I noticed that the Mr was still sticking around, which was interesting. Aurelio was passing round drinks. Johnson sat down with his, politely remarking that of course tomorrow would do.

  I don’t suppose he needed the cash for the milkman. But there was a distinct impression that if someone paid him off now, he needn’t see any of us again, which would suit him fine.

  Natalie went off to fetch Kim-Jim, and I had time to look at the clock and be pleased that the Horrivel Conspiracao was officially over, anyway.

  I went into the sitting-room and stood, because I wasn’t decent when I sat, and took a drink from Aurelio’s tray.

  Out on the terrace, Ferdy and Maggie were throwing pebbles at something and cackling. Natalie came out of the study, shut the door and said, ‘Aurelio, put the tray down. We shan’t need you for a bit.’

  The lawyer was still talking to Johnson, who wasn’t paying much attention, his eyes following Natalie. Aurelio left, and Natalie said, ‘Harvey. Would you come here for a moment?’

  I had made her up. I knew better than any of the three of us that it wasn’t paint that was making her colour all wrong: too red on the cheeks, and too white everywhere else.

  Johnson said, ‘Can I help?’ and got up.

  The lawyer’s voice died away, and he began to get up too.

  He was still slower than Johnson, who walked unevenly to Natalie’s shoulder and touching the study door, said ‘May I?’

  He went in, followed by Kazimierz, and Natalie stood by the half-open door, staring at something. Outside, Ferdy and the Hon. Maggie had pushed each other into the pool.

  I got my feet out of the carpet and walked to the study door too.

  Natalie put her arm across it. ‘Don’t go in,’ she said.

  Inside, the parrot popped corks and had a cross fit of squawking. His chain rattled.

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  Natalie put her hand up and smoothed my robe lapel with her thumb, as if trying its quality. She went on holding it, and I stood inside it and waited.

  She said, ‘It’s Kim-Jim. I’m sorry, Rita. He’s killed himself.’

  ‘Just the facts, ma’am,’ said the parrot. ‘Just the facts.’

  Chapter 10

  I’ve seen shot people before, for real and in photographs. The forensic people at Glasgow are used to the likes of me ringing up for advice about a burn or a bit of hatchet work or a drowning. I did a decomposition once with mortician’s wax and fuse wire and Kleenex. Drownings are worst.

  He was dead.

  Seen from the front, a bullet wound in the temple is no trouble. For a fresh one, corn syrup and colouring will give a nice sheen, and of course you don’t see the back of the head, which won’t be there anyway.

  He was dead.

  For older wounds, you use browner colouring, and you can get the powder marks for a suicide by striking matches and working the black round the wound.

  There was black all round the entry hole in Kim-Jim’s temple, but it wasn’t made by matches.

  I got into the study because Natalie couldn’t hold me any longer and there he was. Neat, in his bespoke open-necked shirt and granny glasses, leaning a little sideways in the wing of his usual deep-buttoned chair by the fireplace. Swung round to face the telly.

  Beside his chair was a table with an empty glass on it, and the control pad for the telly. And on the carpet beside one of his nice clean American sneakers was the small gun he always packed, American-style. He’d told me about it, long ago, and not been narked when I thought it was funny. He never got narked.

  He was dead.

  The leather arm of his chair was warm. I hung on to it, kneeling. Someone – the lawyer – said, ‘Better not touch him.’ Natalie spoke from the door, and he went out.

  Natalie’s voice went on talking, in short bursts, very much higher than usual, but inside the study it was quiet. The quartz clock ticked. From the corner where the perch was, you could hear Cone’s chain as he picked his way sideways and back, stopping to frill out his feathers.

  From the wall where the telly stood came a very faint whine, and when you looked, you could see the red light was still on, though the set was off.

  ‘He switched it off from the control pad,’ someone said.

  Johnson, standing still by the big desk, so quietly I hadn’t seen he was still in the room.

  Kim-Jim’s mouth was open, just a little. Sometimes, in make-up, you gave them just a trickle of blood from the corner, as if they’d bitten their tongue.

  As for colour, there is a nice greyed base I have used. But it depends.

  In heat like this, of course, the skin keeps its colour. Looks quite natural, really.

  A voice – Johnson’s – now at the door was saying, ‘Give her a moment.’ And then, after a pause, ‘Should somebody break the news to the service people, and make some phone calls from the kitchen?’

  There was some talk, then Natalie’s voice and the lawyer’s faded away. There was a breath of air as the door opened a little wider and someone came in again. Johnson said, ‘Rita. We’ll have to leave him.’

  For a big man, Kim-Jim had a childish, soft sort of nose. His eyes were quite shut, with the short sandy lashes making shadows over his cheeks. His hair had a lot of grey in it, when you looked close, and was dull.

  American hair is usually bouncy, and has lots of gloss. Maybe when you were dead, your hair got dull.

  A hand took me under one arm and drew me up on my feet. Johnson said, ‘You don’t want to be here when the police and the doctor and everyone come.’

  I didn’t.

  I walked with him to the door, and waited while he took the key from the inside and locked it on the outside, using his handkerchief.

  Kim-Jim always carried two clean handkerchiefs as well.

  The bastard. The bastard said that he’d kill him.
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br />   A thick whooping voice and a giggling voice, from the terrace. Ferdy, with his St Laurent frills and cummerbund wet as a dishrag staggering in from the pool and standing on the sitting-room rug saying, ‘What’s up? What’s up, my British hearties?’

  Maggie, also soaked, with her necklace glittering and her straps hanging down from her brown skin, was on all fours on the carpet. From the door, the lawyer said, ‘I think you should dry yourselves. The guardia will be here soon. Mr Curtis has shot himself.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Ferdy, not loudly at all. He took hold of the back of a chair.

  The lawyer said, ‘Mrs Sheridan is sending for help. Aurelio will bring us some coffee. I suggest you take your friend upstairs and dry yourselves. There are bathrobes, Mrs Sheridan says.’

  The Hon. Maggie had stopped giggling. Her eyes, as she looked up, were streaked with eyeliner dissolved by the pool, but her Vidal haircut looked great. If she had been aiming at Cabaret, she had hit it.

  She said, ‘Ferdy? It’s a gas?’

  Natalie’s voice said, ‘It isn’t a joke. He’s lying there with a gun. He’s dead. There’s no note, but he killed himself.’

  She came in from the service wing and crossed to take cigarettes out of the silver box on one of the sitting-room tables. Her hair was perfect, just as I’d put it up that afternoon, and there was hardly a crease in the Ricci green organza that I’d matched her eyeshadow to.

  I remembered watching Kim-Jim study her, and then smile at me on his way down to the study. Smile approvingly.

  I said, ‘He didn’t kill himself.’

  Natalie’s cigarette wouldn’t light. Her lawyer took the lighter out of her hand and held the flame for her. Even his hand was shaking a little.

  Natalie let out a lot of smoke and said, ‘Suppose we sit down. Rita, I know it’s hard, but you must listen. He died by his own hand.’

  Someone’s hand eased me down into a chair, and Johnson sat on the arm of it. The lawyer offered him a cigarette from Natalie’s box, and when he refused, took one himself and sat down by Natalie.

  Ferdy stood where he was, and you could see the drink draining out of him. The Hon. Maggie looked up at him, gasping, and when he jerked his head at the stairs, she collected her straps and ran across the carpet and up them. The service door banged and Dodo tramped out, looked across at Natalie and then followed Maggie up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms. I could hear her thudding about, collecting towels and coping with the start of wisteria.