The Tropical Issue Page 19

  Kim-Jim.

  I’d never find the truth about Kim-Jim in London. Whether I believed Johnson or not, it had nothing to do with my real problem.

  Either I gave up and stayed; or I tried to find Roger van Diemen.

  And Johnson would help me, if he thought I believed all he’d told me.

  I stared at the varnish on my toes.

  Johnson said, ‘There’s another thing. This will only work if van Diemen thinks you’ve lost interest in him. So it wouldn’t be wise to pass on what I’ve told you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. I wondered if Porter was lunching with Natalie, and when exactly he would be free. Of The Hag, he had said.

  ‘So just in case,’ Johnson said, ‘I’ve got a thing for you to sign.’

  He had got up and was rooting on Lady Emerson’s desk among the papers.

  After a moment he drew something out and brought it over.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. And spread it before me.

  It was a three-page document, printed closely in black on stiff white paper, very smooth, with heavy black words at the head of it.

  Johnson laid a pen beside it and walked to the drinks table.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘The top bit is what matters. I’ll read the rest of it to you, or Lady Emerson will do it, if you’d rather. Would you like more sherry, or would you like to get legless with vodka?’

  He took a long time to find and pour out the vodka, which was just as well, for it took me a long time to work out what I was looking at.

  It said OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT. And underneath were three pages of promises that I was expected to make, and to keep, or I’d go to prison.

  I had pals who’d passed the exams for the Foreign Office. I knew what they signed.

  The vodka came back, in Johnson’s hand, and I took it. He stood, holding a glass of his own. ‘I suppose I could have faked that,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t.’

  I believed him. I looked up at him. I said, ‘What if I sign, but don’t come with Natalie?’

  There was a pause. Then he said, ‘No problem. It’s entirely your choice.’

  ‘I’ll sign it,’ I said.

  He stood, holding his glass as if he’d forgotten it.

  ‘And come to the West Indies?’ he said.

  I made him wait for the answer to that. He did wait, without speaking or drinking.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  There was a pause. Then he touched me lightly on the shoulder with his free hand and kept it there for a moment. ‘Good girl. Wait there,’ he said. ‘You’ll need witnesses. I’ll get Frances.’

  I waited for them to come back.

  I sat, while Lady Emerson came in and read the document through aloud, clearly and quietly, and I tried to follow the words on the page.

  I signed it, and nobody cheered, or slapped me on the back.

  Lady Emerson took the drink Johnson poured her and sat, her eyes fixed on him. Then she said to me, ‘It was his idea to ask you. He said you would do it. But don’t let him push you beyond where you want to go.’

  Johnson said, ‘Frances. She and I are after the same thing.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But she doesn’t know what a bastard you can be.’

  I was surprised.

  ‘She does,’ said Johnson. ‘Can’t stand women singing on water skis.’

  He didn’t smile when he said things like that. I was getting the hang of him.

  He had told me a lot, maybe some of it true. But I knew for sure he hadn’t come clean with everything.

  Neither had I.

  It wasn’t deuce. We were sort of on the same side.

  But we were even.

  Ask me something about Martinique.

  Ask me something about Madeira, and about Martinique, and about Paris.

  Paris, because that’s where I went with Natalie after she’d finished her business in London. She had a political article to do, and she dictated it to her French secretary after making a thousand phone calls, and meeting people over lunch and coffee and drinks, and skimming through piles of cuttings already waiting for her on her desk.

  She had a flat near the Etoile, and I stayed with her, taping phone calls, fixing her hair, arranging her dress appointments and re-kitting my make-up to match with the gathering pile of outfits Dodo was packing, on hangers and in tissue, for the Caribbean.

  The Great Natalie had taken perfectly calmly the news that I was accepting her offers. The permanent offer of Kim-Jim’s job. And the chance to work for her team on the Josephine film.

  If she preferred what Porter was doing for her, she didn’t say so. If her backers had hinted that Clive Curtis would be an even bigger catch for the film, she ignored it and stuck to her word.

  I was impressed.

  And I must say when, after talking to Johnson, I met Kim-Jim’s nephew Porter later for drinks, and supper, and more drinks, and coffee, and what could have been a lot more if I hadn’t had some practice in dealing with Porters, he wasn’t put out in the least to hear I was staying in Natalie’s employment.

  If the job had come his way or Clive’s, that was fine, he said, so long as I didn’t want it. They picked up jobs if they looked like some sort of fun. But Christ, I must be out of my mind if I thought they could stay with the British climate.

  Clive and Old Joe lived where the sunshine and the studios were. L.A., San Francisco. Clive had already offered Natalie the loan of Grampa Joe’s beach pad in Barbados. Next to Claudette Colbert. But Porter guessed Natalie was hardly pushed for places to rent or to borrow. What it was to be famous.

  Porter wore sandals as well, of the kind that drop off if you want to play serious footsie under the table. Ferdy does it until he’s kicked, and all his pals at other tables jeer and throw bread rolls at him.

  With Porter, you had to stay with it or quit. It was like eating with a tiger that’s just had its dinner and wants to beat Concorde from a standing start at the next traffic lights. Stunning looks, muscle and energy, all pointing in the direction of bed.

  But he didn’t get there. Not that night, into my bed, he didn’t.

  Then we left for Paris, and came back to London after a week, and stayed there for another spell while Natalie taped three interviews, dictated some articles, and spent a fortune on trunk calls to everywhere.

  I began to think that, whatever was going on in the West Indies, if anything, it would be over before I got there.

  I remembered that Johnson had thought the opposite. What Mr Damned Van and his pal were setting up was going to take time.

  I remembered another piece of advice, and took time myself to phone one or two pals, and also to take a taxi to Tavistock Street and add a few things to my account there. Following a few other telephone calls, my make-up hamper had come down from Troon, with my travelling mirror in its big four-foot box.

  Not that I expected to need it all yet. Now I was just tagging along while Natalie and her producer were looking at possible locations. Adding local material and local views to the historical facts. Looking for colourful places, and colourful personalities. Sweet-talking the authorities: the administration, the police, the tourist boards into laying on services, side-stepping regulations, putting up money, if she was lucky.

  I’d seen it all happen on home jobs, like the island film I’d done with Kim-Jim. You could get set-ups in parts of the British Isles which were as bloody, for local Hitlers, for hardships, as you could get anywhere overseas.

  Not just mental challenge. Physical challenge as well.

  Film buffs and circus artists.

  All part of the entertainments industry, brother.

  Chapter 13

  The island of Martinique lies in the French West Indies between Florida and Venezuela, and is only fifty miles long.

  It is volcanic, like Madeira.

  The guide books say its real name, Madinina, means Island of Flowers, which also makes you think of Madeira, and goes to show that flowers have been on to a good thing fo
r a very long time, including not only beds but Jacuzzi baths.

  In Martinique, the only physical challenge comes from the female talent, which has done more for Europe than Rose’s Lime Juice.

  Owners of Martinique ladies include the French King who picked Madame de Maintenance, and, of course, Napoleon, who married Marie-Joseph de la something, whose middle name was really Rose, but who got labelled as Not Tonight Josephine.

  At the airport the bookstore was full of Le Monde and Paris Match and everyone spoke French, including Natalie, which was lucky as there was no Ferdy to meet us as expected, and she had to get her own car to the hotel.

  The Bakoua Beach Hotel is twenty minutes across the bay from the capital, and the view would have cheered up anyone except a person demanding a message from Ferdy and finding there wasn’t any, although we had been in the thoughts of the United States Consul, the Prefet de la Region Martinique and the President of the Martinique Tourist Office, according to the envelopes the desk clerk handed to Natalie.

  We went to our rooms, which had telly sets, and I expected a bit of peace while Natalie made a hundred telephone calls, but I was mistaken. I had just torn out the telly programme, which included Hulk, which I translated without any trouble, and Une Rue Sesame, which I could guess, and Incroyable Mais Vrai, which I was working on when Natalie tapped on the door and said we were off to the Tourist Office.

  The President had offered her a car and a guide to go north right away to St Pierre, where Josephine’s Dad was a big shot, and back south to La Pagerie, the sugar plantation once run by Josephine’s family: just what she wanted.

  She intended to go, she said, without waiting for Ferdy, who could make his own arrangements when he came, if he came. Tick.

  I was sorry for Ferdy.

  The Tourist Office was in the capital, Fort de France, which you could see on the hill over the bay behind the cruise ships. We got there by ferry.

  Close to, the town turned out to be dead busy, with Peugeots and Renaults and Toyotas and people steaming round a grid of boutiques and stores and banks and offices, with palm trees everywhere, and more purple creeper. There was a cathedral, and a park with a statue of Josephine in it.

  The sky was blue, the sea was blue, and it was boiling. Natalie had a big hat on over her permanent champagne-colour suntan. Not wishing to be flash-fried, I was covered in cheese-cloth.

  French things had no tariff on them. I followed Natalie into the Tourist Office with my dark glasses pointing longingly towards a streetful of shops that beat Josephine for appeal, in my vote.

  However, Natalie was paying my salary and I was carrying her cameras, so in I went.

  And crashed into Natalie, who was standing stock-still in the threshold, having her hand half-kissed by the President of the Tourist Office, who had stopped to see what Natalie was staring at.

  I peered round her elbow myself.

  After the dazzle outside, it was hard to make anything out in the President’s Room, except some classy French chairs and a rubber plant. And behind the rubber plant, hanging like headlights, a pair of baleful bifocal glasses.

  A pranky bastard, the Owner. I won’t say I was learning what to expect of him, except that I now knew it was apt to be unexpected.

  Natalie exclaimed in English, ‘But what a surprise! What are you doing here?’

  The President finished her hand off, straightened and murmured in English, ‘Ah, you know one another?’

  The rubber plant said proudly, ‘I am speaking. At the Rotary Club of St Lucia. It meets at the Green Parrot on Fridays.’

  Then everyone moved together inside the room, which let me see properly.

  It was Johnson all right, though he had changed again. Since London, his skin had turned to Bronze Tone or even Light Egyptian, and his hair was quite glossy. Mrs Margate or somebody had turned him out in fairly well-pressed Navy-type whites, with white drill shoes and stockings.

  He had got up in quite an ordinary way, and was adding, ‘Mrs Sheridan? Miss Geddes? Are you here for the film? How splendid to see you.’

  ‘Of course, my dear man,’ said Natalie. ‘You were going to bring Dolly over. Is she here?’

  The Tourist President bowed us into seats, his eyes passing quickly over my hair, but his smile getting no smaller. ‘Mr Johnson,’ he said, ‘has sailed from Tobago especially to bring me something, before his so-welcome speech to be made in St Lucia. You know, I have no doubt, Mr Johnson’s great skill as a painter?’

  Tobago?

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Natalie, also smiling. She crossed her legs, causing a slight pause in the conversation.

  ‘Then,’ said the President, taking his eyes away and getting up, ‘I shall, with his permission, show you the so-beautiful example of his work which he has been so kind to give me. To hang in the office of our Prefecture. In return, as he has been so kind as to say, for the many happy days he has enjoyed with his yacht in our waters. See.’

  And from behind his desk he lifted an oil painting, done from the sea, of the bay with its shuttered white houses, and the green tropical hills rising behind.

  It was good. It was bloody good. It had also been done from real life. Which, since the paint was dry, meant that it was the work of a previous visit.

  ‘Conte crayon, worked up in the studio,’ Johnson said, obviously deafened again by my thoughts. ‘Not my line really, as you know. But it’s a change from portraits now and then.’

  Natalie said, ‘It is beautiful. M. le President, you are fortunate. You don’t know, Johnson, how much we’ve all been hoping you’d feel like painting again. Perhaps you managed something on Tobago?’

  I sat back from the painting, keeping my face straight, and wondering how he would take his promotion to Christian-name status.

  He didn’t seem to notice it. He said, ‘I’ve got a sketch block on board, but Ferdy’s a hard task-master. I didn’t get a lot done.’

  He turned obligingly to the President. ‘Mr Braithwaite, the photographer, is compiling a book of flower portraits. I can imagine how much he will find to enjoy on your beautiful island.’

  Sexual strategy, I noticed, wasn’t mentioned. He didn’t look at Natalie, either.

  If you knew Natalie, you could see her working on her self-control. But her voice, when it came out, was quite normal.

  ‘I was expecting Ferdy here to meet me,’ she remarked. ‘To visit St Pierre and La Pagerie. He didn’t mention his plans?’

  If you believed Johnson, neither Ferdy nor his botanist pal Dr Thomassen had mentioned their plans. Johnson had left them on Tobago, he said, still extremely busy.

  ‘What a pity,’ Natalie said. ‘In that case, I see I shall have to deal with Martinique on my own. I suppose it is best to get to these places by car?’

  ‘One may go by sea,’ the President said. ‘Although, as you know, I have a car and a guide for Madame, whenever she cares to leave.’

  ‘I’d take the car,’ Johnson said. ‘You’ll enjoy the drive to St Pierre. Do that first, and catch the rainforest on your way back to La Pagerie. Which is really worth seeing. Museum. Church where Josephine was christened, 1765. Her cradle. Famous love letter to her from Napoleon. Sugar mill, ruins of. Come back and have dinner on board. Miss Geddes going with you?’

  The President clasped his hands. ‘Miss Geddes? Ah!’

  Natalie raised her eyebrows.

  The President said, ‘This car I have, it will take yourself and the guide, who is a driver. A third is not so comfortable.’

  The hair. I could see Natalie working out why I’d been censored, and agreeing.

  ‘But that is quite all right,’ she said. ‘I have no need of Miss Geddes on this trip. Rita, the cameras?’

  Johnson and I left her there, putting the President through his paces over the film while the little car, and the guide, waited patiently.

  They must have had quite a job to find a car so small it wouldn’t take three. As I walked out into the sun with the Owner, I remembered
the President’s glance at my hair. He hadn’t been surprised.

  I said, ‘Well, what else did you bloody tell the Tourist Department? That I was on coke and laid beach boys for money?’

  ‘Roughly,’ said Johnson. ‘I wanted a chat. If I can find Lenny, we can go out to Dolly.’

  I pulled myself together and got my brain working.

  Of course, Lenny would be here. Lenny and pals had sailed Dolly across the Atlantic from Madeira. Lenny and pals, including Raymond.

  I said, ‘Is Raymond here?’

  ‘Mary-had-a-little-lamb country. Raymond is always here,’ Johnson said. ‘At least, at the moment he’s stocking up for Lenny’s rum cocktails. How’s your vodka addiction?’

  I was answering him when I found he had disappeared. I looked about and found I was in the middle of a shopping street. You wouldn’t have thought it possible to lose interest in duty-free French scent, but I had. On the other hand, if Johnson had been wearing any, I should have known where to go.

  Then he reappeared in a doorway and said, ‘Then what about sours?’ and I followed him, still talking, into a dark, empty space with low music playing somewhere, and planters’ fans twirling miles up in the ceiling, and what seemed to be paintings all over the walls as far up as the eye could see.

  A gallery. Naturally. Where a painter sells paintings if he needs a new set of cups for his yacht. I don’t suppose the Nemesis Department throws its money about.

  Narcotics.

  A dark man sitting behind a desk said something cheerful in French, and Johnson said something cheerful back and made for the stairs talking, apparently to me, about daisies.

  As well as paintings, there were sort of rugs hung on the wall, and long bits of net and whiskery rope, all done up in patterns.

  He stopped on the stair. ‘Macrame. Knotted sisal. A folk art, now highly fashionable. Wear it, drape it, fish with it, or use it in your chip pan. Raymond, two daisies.’

  I should have known. At the top of the stairs was more gallery, and a door leading to a wee office, and inside the office, three people in various attitudes of slump, sitting at a table littered with half-empty glasses and jugs of melting ice and newspapers.