The Tropical Issue: Dolly and the Bird of Paradise Read online

  The sugar came back and I poured myself more coffee and added three spoonfuls before Ferdy drew the bowl slowly away.

  He said, ‘I told you, my small plain and pearl, my tuppence coloured. My studio’s being rewired, and Johnson’s lent us this one to photograph the great Mrs Natalie Sheridan, who arrives at any moment. Ask me, What about Natalie, then?’

  ‘You told me,’ I said. ‘She likes you to do her publicity stills. She flies in this morning, gets made up for the photographs, goes off to the Award Lunch and then flies back to wherever she came from, or maybe somewhere else. And I’ve told you before. I don’t like creating one make-up for two different scenes.’

  A row of capped teeth appeared between Ferdy’s sideburns.

  He gave a howl. ‘You’re spooked!’ he said. ‘You’re nervous of Natalie! You’re an ignorant dwarf with a stupid conk and hockey legs and pink hair, who’s frightened of Natalie Sheridan! I apologise for taking the bowl away. Have some more energising, comforting sugar.’

  It was true that I have a stupid conk and hockey legs and pink hair. It was even true that I was unstriped because of this engagement. It was not true that I was nervous.

  Who is Natalie Sheridan? A syndicated political journalist. A divorcee. An economist. A maker of sharp documentaries with powerful pals in five continents. A rich woman. A woman.

  Nothing there, as I see it, to worry Rita Geddes.

  ‘Are you joking?’ I said. ‘She asked for me; I didn’t ask for her. If she isn’t nice to me, I’ll do her up like Elephant Man, and then where will your bleeding photographs be?’

  Ferdy and I stared at one another, a thing he sometimes does, until one of us blinks. It tells you not to take his insults for real. Sometimes it goes on for so long you need eye drops.

  The housekeeper broke it by coming to tell us that Mrs Sheridan’s maid had arrived, and her secretary, and a fitter with the clothes she was going to wear, and that they were all waiting, installed in the guest suite.

  And that Mr Braithwaite’s assistant had sent to say he couldn’t manage.

  The housekeeper, in a quiet way, looked a bit worn. I guessed that the appointment had been for Mrs Sheridan, dressed, not for Mrs Sheridan undressed with her groupies.

  Ferdy wasn’t upset. He said, ‘Poor dear Johnson,’ sadly to me, and turning, walked out the studio door, pouring charm all over the housekeeper.

  I didn’t mean to be charming to Ferdy. As soon as he came back, I put in my tuppenceworth, coloured or not.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said.

  I’ve doubled as Ferdy’s assistant before, and the insults get to be real. Ferdy’s assistants are always away at the dentist’s, or the police station.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘You will,’ said Ferdy. ‘There’s Natalie.’

  There are times when I get fed up, living among giants. Everyone knows what Natalie Sheridan looks like: five foot ten, waving (natural) blonde hair, hollow cheeks and a 36–26–36 figure with no silicone in it, below the neck anyway.

  Today she was wearing Halston, and had just had her hair put up in a blonde chignon plait round the corner, as we had cause to know, because her usual hairdressing lady had had a call to Kensington Palace and couldn’t fit in a personal visit.

  She was also wearing a diamond brooch, a fancy ring, and a scent specially brewed for her.

  She gave Ferdy a prim kiss on each cheek while she drew her gloves off; shook hands with me without a flicker of shock; and observed that it had been very good of me to come up specially from Scotland, and she hoped I had had a good journey. Which was more than Ferdy’s silicone had thought to produce.

  Then she turned away, saying, ‘Well: there isn’t much time, is there? Miss Geddes and I will be as quick as we can,’ and walked out towards the guest bedroom.

  I waited until she was out of earshot.

  I said, ‘Ferdy! You’re scared of her! You’re a famous photographer with a house in Barbados and a prostate problem and two accountants under the doctor, and you’re scared of that plastic think-tank!’

  At that moment the plastic think-tank came back to the doorway and said, ‘Are you coming, my dear?’ Musically.

  I found my legwarmers beginning to move towards her quite fast, and I let them.

  A lady used to high command, was Natalie Sheridan.

  The bathroom had a good chair and make-up lights round the mirror. I took off a couple of things and put on my overall, and then began to lay out my stuff on the vanitory, with the door open a bit so that I could see when my client was ready.

  The maid, a hefty American pensioner referred to as Dodo, was in the bedroom stripping Mrs Sheridan down to the waist like a paint job.

  The lady from the designer’s, who was used to it, sat bolt upright in a corner doing a visual check of Mrs Sheridan’s latest known measurements.

  Murmuring into the telephone was a smart young secretary-man from an agency, perched on one of the beds among all the laid-out clothes and tissue paper. My shawl and quilted jacket, I noticed, had been shoved in a heap on a pillow.

  As well as smart, the secretary was red in the neck due to an eyeful of Mrs Sheridan’s two suntanned boobs, plump as onions and alert, each of them, as a breeding budgie.

  She was in the middle of dictating cablegrams, which the secretary did his best to receive through the back of his head until she draped a towel round her shoulders.

  After that he watched her nervously. There were still six inches of tanned skin to be seen between her skirtband and the edge of the towel, which was white, Turkish and monogrammed JJ in one corner.

  Still talking, she lifted and looked at the corner, revealing a budgie.

  The man from the agency jack-knifed quickly over the phone. Natalie said, ‘Miss Geddes – may I call you Rita? Perhaps, before we begin, I should just go and see Mr Johnson. Across the hall, I suppose?’

  I stood in the bathroom doorway, a tube in my hand. Having invaded pal Johnson’s flat, she was about to walk into his sickroom. I said, ‘Mr Johnson’s asleep.’

  ‘Oh, you know his room then,’ said Mrs Sheridan. ‘This way?’

  She was already out in the hall, and would soon hear the musical effects, so I didn’t stop her. It did cross my mind that Ferdy would never get the use of this studio ever again. I was annoyed that time was going, and I couldn’t get started. I wanted to make a good job of Natalie Sheridan.

  In fact, she was back in a trice, with the towel neatly tucked in her waistband. One minute I smelt her scent, and the next she was there at my elbow.

  ‘Well, we really must get on, mustn’t we?’

  We must. It meant she hadn’t seen Johnson. And as the sort of drumroll went on from the bedroom, that either the housekeeper or Ferdy had stopped her.

  And my money, I can tell you, was on the housekeeper.

  It had been a struggle. But here at last was the great Mrs Sheridan, sitting in front of the mirror and saying, ‘All right. Now Rita, just do what you can.’ And we were off.

  When I am working with make-up, I’m happy.

  Cosmetics are only paint, and paint is only a way of creating an illusion. You can learn all that stuff at art college. I did. Beauty colleges teach it too, and there are company courses of all sorts.

  But it’s not like painting a jug. In private practice, you have to sort out for yourself what your customer really wants, and get as near to it as you’re able.

  With Natalie Sheridan, I had an easy job and a hard one.

  Her face was good, for pushing forty. She had had her face lifted once, so the chin was firm. Her skin was clear, with a light year-round tan that showed off all that blonde hair.

  She didn’t need line fillers. Her eyes had large, smooth lids; her lips were thinnish but workable, and her cheekbones were a gift. You could see why the cameras loved her.

  I had the kind of false eyelashes she was used to. The permanent work on her eyebrows and her hairline had been done by her own man, Kim-Jim Curtis.<
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  And that, if you like, was the snag.

  I had to do this make-up to a standard set by Kim-Jim Curtis, who had been with her for years. And who for years had been her gofer, her make-up artist and her hairdresser in her New York apartment, her Paris nook, and her Madeira hideaway.

  What’s more, I had to do it if possible better, because Kim-Jim had suggested me for this London job. And if Mrs Sheridan was impressed, more would follow.

  I knew about Kim-Jim. I’d met him.

  A few make-up specialists develop private clients all over the world and live the rich life, flying from party to party to paint on the faces. Some make a success with one client, and get themselves on to their personal payroll for life.

  Not many employers can afford a service like that. Natalie Sheridan was one of them.

  The best T.V. make-up man she ever came across was this big red-headed Californian, twelve years older than she was; and she bought him as soon as she met him.

  Kim-Jim was perfect for her. He had social sense and camera-sense. He could make her look right for any setting she wanted to queen it in.

  And that’s a great art, and it only happens when the artist really hits it off with his client.

  Kim-Jim Curtis, I suppose, fell for Natalie Sheridan from the beginning.

  She slept around, according to Ferdy; but with partners so well protected, usually at government cost, that the public never got wind of them. If Kim-Jim knew, and he must have known, he didn’t split on her.

  When she didn’t have anyone else, he maybe went to bed with her; but I don’t suppose he tore the sheets getting there. There was a sort of motherly side to him. He can’t have had much drive, to stay with her all that time as he did, just working on the odd film if she let him.

  It was on one of those that he’d seen me in action. That was why Ferdy had been told to get me for Mrs Sheridan’s make-up in London. Bossy Natalie might be, but she wasn’t silly. If Kim-Jim said someone was good, she would listen to him.

  Ferdy thought I’d wiped off my face-stripes because I wanted Kim-Jim Curtis’s job, and not just some chance work in London.

  He was wrong, but not all that wrong. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.

  All the same, I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I hadn’t made such a success of her face. If I hadn’t changed her colouring very slightly. If I hadn’t spent all the time I could spare fixing her weaker profile, so that, keeping his word, Ferdy could give her some photographs of her left side, instead of all the rights she was used to.

  But then, if I’d been bad at my job, I’d be dead by now.

  Twice, before I had finished, Mrs Sheridan excused herself and, sitting up, called out a few more commands to the secretary.

  Both times, I noticed, she had a good look in the mirror. The second time, she said, ‘That’s coming along very nicely. I like the eyeshadow.’

  The eyeshadow was different from Kim-Jim’s, and so was what I had done to her nose. She hadn’t noticed that yet.

  I finished exactly within the time I had set myself, and just before her deadline for dressing.

  She took a long, sharp look then, when I’d removed the towels and the headband. She said, ‘A very nice job, Rita. I’m sorry there wasn’t more time.’

  Which you could take either way and would stop me from getting swell-headed.

  Her dress was silk, with tapestry flowers on it, and there was a velvet jacket to match, and a lot of Italian suede.

  She looked smashing.

  In the studio, Ferdy treated her like a duchess, and behind her back, put both his thumbs up.

  He had the cameras waiting. He got the lights right, and I bovvered about, holding things and switching things, and standing on chairs, which I am very used to. Mrs Sheridan stood, sat, leaned and smiled, and Ferdy shot film. Rolls and rolls of it.

  Then it was over, and she was stretching and smiling, while he told her how great she had been. The fitter had gone, and so had the agency man. There was only the maid Dodo left, packing things in a case in the bedroom.

  Mrs Sheridan said, ‘I do have some time in hand. Ferdy, I really can’t go without seeing your Johnson.’ You couldn’t call her a quitter.

  I waited for Ferdy to talk her out of it. He just smiled at her. Like all session people, he’d gone into photographer’s menopause. I don’t think he even heard what she said. I could see him wondering if he had put any film in the camera and wanting to throw back a whisky and lay someone.

  Mrs Sheridan waited, turned and just left. Since the housekeeper wasn’t there either, I followed my afternoon’s work out of the studio. Then, in the interests of Ferdy’s business arrangements, I hung about while she walked to the invalid’s door and rapped on it.

  The snoring stopped.

  ‘Mr Johnson!’ she said. She looked marvellous. ‘It’s Natalie Sheridan. Mrs Sheridan. An old friend of Roger van Diemen. May I come in for a moment?’

  I didn’t hear an answer, but she put her hand on the doorknob, and opened it.

  She stopped on her way through. I didn’t blame her. I could see the bed myself, and it was empty.

  I couldn’t see much of anything else, because of this very large, very old sheepdog just rousing from sleep. It got up and shook itself blearily. It peered round and saw Mrs Sheridan and liked her right away. It came to her knee, gently slavering on the silk tapestry.

  Natalie took three quick steps back and it followed. Then it sat down and thumped its tail carefully.

  She looked at it thoughtfully; then, stretching her hand, rubbed its head under the matting.

  ‘Goodness gracious,’ she said. ‘You’re an old gentleman, aren’t you, to be going about on your own?’

  A new and jaundiced bass voice answered. It wasn’t the dog.

  It said, ‘She’s fourteen. Die for Mrs Sheridan, Bessie.’

  The dog rolled over, looking like an old hobnailed hearthrug. Across it, Natalie and I both gazed at Ferdy’s pal Johnson, in dressing-gown and pyjamas, standing like you or me outside a sort of small sitting-room.

  I know polite rage when I see it.

  Mrs Sheridan didn’t.

  I looked at her being beautiful. Then I raised my voice and roared, ‘Ferdy!’

  Chapter 2

  When in doubt, attack, is my motto. But I didn’t like those few words of Ferdy’s pal Johnson, and I didn’t think Pal Johnson liked us.

  He was years and years younger than Ferdy, and about three inches shorter. He had the sort of nose that looked as if it might have been broken a long time ago, and expensively set. He had the sort of mouth that didn’t go in much for lips.

  The top half of his face was filled in by a lot of dead-looking black hair, a pair of strong-minded black eyebrows, and his glasses. What was left looked definitely unhealthy.

  Behind me, Ferdy came out of the studio, looking vague but willing, and the bifocals, shifting, trained on him.

  Ferdy didn’t fall to the floor or anything. Hejust gazed back and said, ‘My God. Candles In Shapes You Never Thought Of. Should you be up?’

  Nobody rushed to answer him. I kept my mouth shut. Disappointed noises were coming from the dog.

  Americans are good in a social crisis.

  In a trail of high-class fabric, Mrs Sheridan lowered herself and massaged the sheepdog’s billowing stomach. ‘We’ve offended man and dog: how horrible of us,’ she said; and rose just as nicely. The dog got up like a dog.

  Mrs Sheridan moved forward to the owner of the flat and stood before him, tilting her gorgeous French-pleated head and looking rueful and sympathetic and friendly at the same time. The eyelashes, the lid colour, the highlighter, the eyeliner and the work on her eyebrows all did a great job.

  She said, ‘It’s Mr Johnson, isn’t it? You’ve been so kind, letting Ferdy use your wonderful home. I wouldn’t have disturbed you for worlds, but I just had to say hello and thank you to Roger’s friend. He wanted to know how you were, and I swore I wouldn’t go back wit
hout seeing you. And now I can tell him. You’re walking about. That’s so splendid. He’ll be so pleased and happy to hear that.’

  Almost any answer might have come from under the bifocals, you felt, or none at all. The owner of the flat had both hands behind him, and he didn’t bring one of them forward. Mrs Sheridan, no fool, hadn’t risked holding hers out.

  There was another brief silence. Then Ferdy’s pal said, ‘Of course, you know Roger. Give him my regards. Let me give you a sherry. Ferdy?’

  ‘Do the honours,’ said Ferdy. ‘Come along in.’ And taking big swerves round the dog, he walked Mrs Sheridan quickly through to what seemed to be, right enough, a small sitting-room.

  The guy in the dressing-gown didn’t shift. I saw he had a stick sunk behind him like a third leg, and that both his hands were actually on it.

  The housekeeper showed in a doorway, looked at him, and then went away again. The phone rang, and I could hear her answering it.

  Looking at me, the guy in the dressing-gown made an announcement. ‘You’re Ferdy’s assistant. You didn’t meet a somewhat blood-boltered couple of porters on your way to the lift?’

  Which explained the stony welcome, now I thought of it. Not all the telephone calls had been about potted plants.

  I said, ‘Maybe you don’t mind having your guests body-searched, but there’s nothing soft about me. If you don’t report them, I will.’

  A fight wouldn’t have worried me; but he backed down. ‘Whatever you say,’ Pal Johnson remarked.

  I waited, but that was all he said. ‘You’ll report it?’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ He still stood like a road surveyor. He added, ‘I can’t really go in until you do.’

  I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t even trying to needle me, which annoyed me a lot. However, there was no point in flogging it.

  I walked past him into the sitting-room and took a seat not too near Mrs Sheridan, who looked sort of enquiring. Ferdy poured me a vodka martini which brimmed over as he watched his pal Johnson come in after me and sit down. Questions about the little delay hung like balloons all round his sideburns.

  Johnson said, ‘We decided to enter in order of zip codes, Mrs Sheridan.’