The Tropical Issue Page 22

  I followed her into the place and bought a bag for myself. It had a Bird of Paradise printed on it, and made me think of Ferdy. It was when we were back in the car, and about to zoom down into Castries – that we got this great view of the town, and the big bay in front, and all the shipping.

  Including this big, clean ship like a liner, flying a blue flag with a yellow C on it.

  ‘Coombe Caroline,’ said Johnson, in an interested voice, from under his binoculars. ‘Nice boat next to it, too.’

  He handed me the binoculars.

  It was Coombe Caroline, all right. Sister ship, naturally, of Coombe Regina, out of Madeira.

  St Lucia, the banana Independent Commonwealth State. Part of the bloody empire of Roger van Diemen.

  I handed the binoculars back.

  ‘You didn’t look at the big twin-screw diesel,’ said Johnson. ‘You’d have been interested.’

  I looked. It was a long white private cruiser, flying the American flag. There were a lot of awnings up, and I could see the blue of a swimming pool. Without the binoculars, I couldn’t read the name. I couldn’t read the name anyway.

  It had caught Natalie’s attention as well. As it vanished from view, she turned to Johnson. ‘Do you know that ship?’

  The bifocals were trained on our driver. ‘I bet our friend here does,’ Johnson said. ‘Sir, would that be the Paramount Princess?’

  The driver’s teeth flashed.

  ‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘Yes sir, that would be the Paramount Princess. All the Windwards, they know the Princess. Old Joe Curtis’s boat, bought from the studios. One real boat, she is, sir.’

  ‘Rita?’ said Johnson. ‘I thought you were never sick?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘But I think we should stop. That was Ferdy Braithwaite at the side of the road. And Clive Curtis and Dr Thomassen with him.’

  You could tell Natalie was restored by the edge in her voice. ‘Then certainly,’ said Natalie, ‘let us stop. Do you suppose that Ferdy’s prolonged absence is now accounted for? Could he possibly, for example, have been sailing on the Paramount Princess from Tobago?’

  Johnson, I noticed, was tactfully silent. Ferdy, on the other hand, accepting a few sharp enquiries through the open car window a moment later, was not in the least cowed.

  He and his good friend Dr Carl Thomassen had turned the flowers of Tobago inside out, one way or another, and had photographed the Buckoo Reef, the scarlet ibis and everything except, he said, Man Friday. They had gone from Speyside to Scarborough, and there, what had they seen?

  ‘Robin Hood?’ ventured Johnson.

  Ferdy’s capped teeth appeared between his whiskers like a footprint. Carl Thomassen, his botanist friend, a small pale guy with poached-egg eyes and a face somewhere between Herbert Lorn and Andy Hardy, never stopped smiling anyway. Clive Curtis, Kim-Jim’s brother, didn’t smile at all.

  He just inclined towards the car, with his suntan and his black hair and his red moustache, and remarked, ‘Dad was in Scarborough with the Princess, Mrs Sheridan. He was real glad to give a lift to Mr Braithwaite and the Doctor, although, of course, he was a little disappointed that the Curtis family couldn’t help with your film, my brother Kim-Jim having been with you so long.’

  He gave me a small, pearly smile. ‘But I guess that’s the way it is, with the young generation coming up. Young Porter tells us competition is competition, and if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen . . .

  ‘Mrs Sheridan, my Dad, Old Joseph, would be real privileged if you would come aboard and take lunch, or visit with him, seeing you’re here.’

  ‘Why, that’s very nice of your father,’ said Natalie. ‘But I see I’m late at Government Buildings already. You know what these arrangements are like . . .

  ‘Ferdy, Rita has one or two jobs to do for me, but she can fill you in on my plans. Then perhaps we can get together this evening. Really, there is quite a lot to arrange.’

  The vibes would have knocked out an elephant, but seemed to pass over Clive. Clive said, ‘Then if Miss Rita isn’t going with you, why don’t we take her aboard after she’s done her shopping, and Mr Johnson as well, if he’s available? Then she and Ferdy can do their business in comfort. It’s quite a nice little ship my father has there, as Ferdy will tell you . . .

  ‘You haven’t met my father, Kim-Jim’s father, Miss Rita? Or my sister, Porter’s mother? They sure would enjoy meeting you.’

  I could feel my hair lying down, and my insides. It was Johnson who took my arm in a grip like a Kirby and said, ‘How very kind of you. Rita and I would both like to come, very much.’

  Chapter 15

  I tried very hard not to go and meet Kim-Jim’s family.

  I came out of Barclay’s Bank with my bag full of Bee-Wees and every intention of going straight back to Hurricane Hole.

  Instead, I walked into Johnson, newly out of both Johnson’s and Rain, where he’d had two Reverend’s Downfalls, he said, and if I didn’t need guiding to the Paramount Princess, he did.

  I said, ‘You go, then. And if you find time between parties, tell me when you’re going to do anything about Roger van Diemen.’

  He stood, rocking on his heels, not upset in the least, with his hands in his pockets behind his binoculars and his floppy hat pushed to the back of his head. The sun had gone in.

  ‘Raymond’s on Dolly,’ he said. ‘Standing by the R.T. I’ve just phoned him. You’re scared of the Curtises?’

  I thought of the photographs beside my yellow cat in Kim-Jim’s room in Madeira. The glowering old man. The over-sexed middle-aged Clive by the pool. The classy Sharon, with her streaked hair, and her good-looking brat Porter, with the curled ginger hair and flashing teeth.

  The Curtises were big shots, each with his or her own tidy fortune; known all over the world. The only one out of active life now was Old Joseph, and you could see he was on the bread line. The Paramount Princess, with a crew of twenty-five, Johnson said, and a swimming pool.

  If the Curtises took against anyone, they were powerful enough to be nasty.

  I imagined they would fairly take against Roger van Diemen, once it was known what he had done.

  Johnson had promised me the killer of Kim-Jim. If Johnson wanted me to go on board the Paramount Princess, it was for a reason.

  It started to rain. Between the rows of parked cars and the glass and concrete stores, people moved into shelter. The rain hazed the woolly green hill at the top of the street. It bounced off an ice-cream handcart and a Chinese-food van. Women sitting by barrows of cottons flung coloured prints over them, and crouched next to each other, talking in twisted French under big dripping umbrellas.

  Like parrots.

  Rain ran down my face, and splodged Johnson’s glasses. He hadn’t moved, and I hadn’t answered him.

  I said, ‘Yes, I’m scared of the Curtises.’

  He said, ‘It’s quite a good reason for facing them.’

  I said, ‘I don’t know about that. But if I’m going to get bloody soaked, it might as well be on the Curtises’ boat, and not on your crummy canoe.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, as he had once in London.

  That was all. We turned and walked round into Jeremie, and the rain stopped, and the sun came out again.

  I thought, as everything steamed, Next time, I’ll be nicer to Raymond.

  By the time Johnson and I boarded the Curtises’ ship, men in white coats had put the awnings back and dried off the drips, and two of the loungers by the pool were already occupied, one by a blonde and the other by a brunette, who both had the same idea as Maggie about not getting bikini marks. The only untanned bit on them was round their wedding-ring fingers.

  Johnson looked at them with great interest but neither looked back. I wondered which of the Curtises had exhausted them. Or, of course, there was always Ferdy and his botanist pal, straight from the flowerbeds.

  We didn’t get to stay in the sun. The sort of chief steward who had met us at the companionwa
y took us down a flight of stairs and along a carpeted corridor to a door that had ‘den’ written above it.

  Johnson went in while I was reading it, and I nearly lost him, following, the cigar smoke was so thick.

  The Den, which was twice the size of Dolly’s saloon, was done out in Old English, all buttoned leather and oak and pewter tankards. Three sides of the room seemed to be bar, and the other had a T.V. screen fixed to it, showing a video of the Empire State Building with Fay Wray on it.

  Shades of blue light from the telly flickered on the faces of the three people watching it, glasses in hand, sitting in deep leather armchairs chained to the floor, with a table in front of them.

  One was Clive, all done up in cashmere trousers and matching pullover, which was dead sensible as the air conditioning was freezing.

  Another was Sharon, Porter’s mother.

  The photographs hadn’t shown her thick creamy skin, or how angular her nose and jaw and cheekbones were, in her broad face that photographed so well. But the black hair was still nicely streaked, and she sat like an actress, in a trouser suit with patterned silk facings, and a matching scarf at the neck.

  Their father, Old Joseph, sat in the middle.

  Unlike his son and daughter, he didn’t drag his eyes away from the screen when we entered, and King Kong flickered all over his face while Clive got up and began making introductions.

  Old Joseph, you would say, had fought old age the way he fought the Warners and Sam Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer and all the rest of the men from Europe who needed to get to the top in the movies. He’d forced make-up, and special effects, and all the know-how of illusion to grow up alongside the cameras, and sometimes outstrip them.

  The fight itself had kept him young. He was more than eighty, and he could pass for twenty years younger.

  If you looked at the thick, cropped grey hair and not the bent spine. If you looked at the pouched eyes without glasses, and not the loose, spotted skin that disappeared down inside his open-necked shirt.

  Sharon Proost said, ‘Pa. Your guests are here.’

  For a moment, it looked as if he would ignore us. Then, pulling in his lip-corner, he laid his drink on the table, put the cigar in his mouth, leaned forward and pressed the T.V. control pad and, as the screen became blank, said, ‘I see them,’ and looked up at me.

  He took the cigar out of his mouth. ‘You brought the punk girl,’ he said.

  ‘Pa,’ said Clive. ‘This is Rita Geddes. You remember.’ And he mentioned the titles of a couple of films I’d worked on. Early, and not very good ones.

  His father picked up his drink without taking his pouched eyes off me. ‘Nope. I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘What part did she play?’ The drink was in his right hand, and he made no effort to shift it.

  Sharon said, ‘She’s in make-up, Pa,’ and stirred to the extent of patting the leather seat beside her. ‘I’m Sharon Proost. We’re real worried about my son, Porter, and Porter’s uncle and I plan to have you give us all the advice that you can. We know how you two hit it off in Madeira and London.’

  I sat down carefully. ‘Porter isn’t here?’ I said. Johnson was still standing beside Clive. I daren’t look at him.

  Pa Curtis laid down his empty glass and snarled. ‘Porter’s laid all the flesh here: what’s to keep him? Gone off with the titled riffraff to the Mediterranean, most likely. I tell you, Sharon, that boy’s friends are never going to come on board this ship again.’

  He looked up at Johnson, as smart as a young man. ‘You snort, fella? Or mainline? Keep the ship full of grass? You’re the painter fella with the ketch, ain’t you? Johnson?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Johnson. He smiled at Sharon and sat down, with style, on what had been Clive’s chair. He said, ‘No, I’m only into cheating the income tax. But I enjoy one of these occasionally, if Mrs Proost doesn’t mind.’

  He waved his pipe at her, and I saw her pricing it, and his clothes, and his accent.

  She said, ‘Of course. Clive, Mr Johnson hasn’t anything to drink.’

  Johnson smiled at her and at Clive. I’d never seen so much of his teeth before. He said, ‘Johnson. Silly first name: same as my last. I think Rita and I would both like a Tom Collins. Actually, I’m sure you’ve no need to worry about Porter. A charming boy. Perfectly behaved on Madeira. What about London, Rita?’

  It’s stupid to lie when you don’t need to. ‘I don’t think he’s on coke at all,’ I said. ‘Bennies, in London, but that sort of crowd always do. He never took anything while I was there.’

  I could see them all looking into my eyes, and I looked back, with my proper-sized pupils. Pa Curtis said, ‘Oh.’

  He sounded disappointed. He sounded actually bored. He added, ‘Well, do we eat today?’

  Two Tom Collinses on a tray stood at my shoulder, ready for serving. I saw Clive look at them, and then at his father. He said, ‘Whenever you want, Pa.’

  Pa Joseph got up and went out of the door. The Tom Collinses hovered, untouched, then the barman caught Clive’s eye and melted away, still carrying them. I hoped they wouldn’t be wasted.

  Johnson, having indicated that he wished to wash his hands, which I felt was an outright lie, departed in one direction with Clive, leaving me free to say the same to Sharon. But in my case, it was no lie, I tell you.

  She left me in the doorway of a toilet like Glasgow City Chambers, with a sharpish piece of advice about where to put anything I wanted got rid of.

  I lost my way, coming out, and had to be found and guided past a lot of cabins. I heard Ferdy’s voice quite distinctly coming from one of them. He was using some quite botanical words, with short spaces between.

  I thought he might have been talking to Dr Thomassen, but when I got to the Little Dining-room, the other half of the Sexual Strategy in Flowers Book was there, between the blonde and the brunette, who had put caftans on.

  Another girl in a towelling robe came in halfway through the first course, followed after an interval by Ferdy, looking as if he needed to be plunged into water with his stem crushed.

  No one said grace.

  The food was high-class French, and none of your West Indian rubbish, with two cold courses to start, to give the chef time to catch up with Pa Joe’s inner clockwork.

  Joe and the girls ate without talking. Clive asked Johnson about portrait painting and Johnson shamelessly told him, dropping names that made even Sharon lay her fork down.

  Dr Thomassen, whose hair had got very bleached in Tobago, so that he looked more like Andy Hardy than Herbert Lom, gave a long account of the Cocoa Damselfish, and what the liver fluke would do to our insides if we swam in fresh water on St Lucia.

  The captain of the Paramount Princess, who looked as if nothing more could happen to his liver, sat at the end of the table in snowy white uniform, with his cap on the carpet, and had two helpings of everything while trying hard to catch the eye of the blonde.

  After a bit, Johnson and the skipper started a long, technical talk about reefs and shoals and currents and the mess the Pitons made of the wind situation west of St Lucia.

  Sharon stopped trying to hold a conversation with Ferdy and said to me, ‘I should have thought you would have had a good living in England. What’s the attraction? This rich wimp with the glasses? Natalie Sheridan? I thought she was hetero.’

  ‘She is,’ I said. ‘And Mr Johnson got spoiled in a plane crash. I’m just here for the money.’

  I added, ‘Don’t you get enough work over here? I could speak to Mrs Sheridan.’

  I saw her cheeks flatten. Before she could answer, Clive said, ‘Go on, Rita. Give us the dirt on Mrs Sheridan. Who’s the favoured cat now? What’s with that conductor?’

  ‘No buses on Dolly,’ said Johnson, sliding into my dialogue. ‘I wish I could pinch your cook, though. We’re eating agricultural lupins on my boat. I won’t say my table was the talk of Cowes, but one acquires a certain reputation. Poor Lenny,’ said Johnson regretfully. ‘He won’t like it, b
ut I’m going to have to ask him to go back to plain estate work.’

  All I got in the way of warning was a blinding flash of bifocals. I hadn’t been going to say anything anyway. I hoped Lenny wouldn’t sue him. I waited to hear what he was on about.

  Unaffected by anything going on around him, Old Joseph Curtis opened his mouth and made a statement.

  ‘He plays blackjack,’ he said.

  Clive looked at Ferdy, who looked at the skipper, who looked at Dr Thomassen.

  The gem of information, it seemed, referred to Johnson.

  Johnson’s glasses looked embarrassed. He said, ‘As I said to Clive. Only now and then.’

  ‘Then why don’t we have a game? You have time for one, I guess?’ Clive said warmly. ‘If the ladies don’t mind. We can take our drinks and coffee along with us.’

  I couldn’t believe it, but it happened.

  Suddenly the table was empty. All the men filed out, talking, plus Sharon to complete the seven. Back to the Den, to make up a game of blackjack for Old Man Joseph Curtis.

  Of the three girls left in the room with me, no one seemed surprised. Two of them got up, talking to each other in American voices, glanced at me, and went off in the direction of the cabins. I followed the third girl on deck, where the steward brought coffee and sweets and magazines and as much sugar as we wanted.

  I lay under a beach umbrella, eating and thinking, with my dark glasses on.

  I wondered if Johnson had ever played blackjack in his life before, and what he could afford to lose.

  I fell asleep.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Johnson.

  I opened my eyes. He was sitting on the edge of a lounger with his hands dangling between his knees, looking at me.

  He still had all his clothes on, including his shirt. The rest of the deck was empty. The sun was blazing down. I said, ‘Where’s everybody?’

  ‘Waiting for the loss-adjusters. You don’t waste your batteries, do you?’ said Johnson.

  I wasn’t going to tell him he looked tired. He did look tired. I said, ‘Well, I didn’t know you expected me to hang around a Yukon gambling bolero. What are you having to hock?’