Rum Affair Page 4

  It was Hennessy. He kissed my hand, all neat, corrugated head and dimple and European suave gallantry: why did I feel like Ginger Rogers? Ogden said: “I don’t have three paid seamen to do the bloody work for me. Maybe that’s why I don’t win races and stick my bloody neck out where it’s not wanted.”

  He put down his glass. “Thanks for the drink, Johnson. I’ll have to go. Since I do my own sailing, I’ve one or two things to look after.”

  He nodded briefly to Johnson, remembering at the last moment to include me, and strode off, slightly wide at the knees. Watching him go: “Where’s the girl?” enquired Hennessy.

  “Laying in stores at Helensburgh, and conning the nearest affluent young man into driving her here with them,” said Johnson, ordering Hennessy a drink. Ogden, it appeared, was subsidised by his sorrowing family to live up there on the Clyde, building and rebuilding his yacht with the help of the pittance which was all they dared allow him, and all the help he could scrounge.

  “Including a girl? How domestic!”

  Hennessy smiled back at me, but Rupert said: “Oh, there’s always been a girl. He’s the helpless type who attracts them. But he’s damned lucky this time. He’s got Victoria.”

  “A plum,” said Johnson, his bifocals stationary. “Rupert is a friend of the family.”

  “Don’t be an ass.” Rupert, predictably, was carmine again. “She did the season, and I saw her now and then after. It’s a bit of too much, actually, Cecil commandeering her. There’s a limit to what you should ask anyone to do; and Victoria never thinks of herself.”

  He stopped. I said: “Is she the only hand on Seawolf?” It seemed very Bohemian for these Calvinist parts.

  “Oh, they’ll manage.” Rupert was confident. “She’s Bermudan, and pretty easy to run.”

  “Well, good luck to them,” Hennessy remarked. “I don’t expect her miseries will endure very long. On past form, the boat’ll begin coming to bits when the starting gun fires.”

  “Yes. But you heard what he said.” It was Johnson who chided. “They have plenty of string.”

  Dinner at the Royal Highland Cruising Club is a civilised meal, and Johnson and Rupert provided agreeable company. I found I was recognised after all; and at intervals between the soup and the coffee I signed a great many menus.

  The last menu was Johnson’s. I received it, surprised, and opened it ready for autograph. Above the smoked salmon was a quick ballpoint portrait of myself in the Galitzine suit, with the nose shortened just that fraction I have always promised myself. It was ravishing. A perfect likeness. I remarked on it.

  “Yours – if you like that sort of thing,” said Johnson. I thanked him warmly, and we both gazed after the drawing which, lifted by a passing acquaintance, had begun to travel from table to table. It reached Hennessy who, rising, called: “Nice bit of work, Johnson. Care to auction it for my committee on Oxfam?”

  There was a stir of interest, and I concealed my annoyance. It was my drawing. On the other hand, I must think of my public.

  It was auctioned for two hundred guineas, the closing bid being Hennessy’s. His hand, while I signed it for him, rested adhesively on my silk-covered shoulder and he smelled discretely like the Nice branch of Hermès. He invited me to visit the Symphonetta at our first shore-going checkpoint to see the drawing framed in his cabin. The thought of being framed in Mr Hennessy’s cabin lingered with me through the rest of my dinner.

  Johnson himself seemed quite unaffected by the incident, although he remarked, with some innocent pleasure, that it was the first time he had delineated a lady with her head in the smoked haddock and her bosoms in the cheese. I remembered that he could command two hundred guineas at a time for one thumbnail sketch, and that a finished painting, if as good as that, could be used for publicity for years instead of having my nose shortened. Over the liqueurs, when Rupert had excused himself to complete his work for next day, I said to Johnson: “Now, let’s talk about Johnson.”

  “Let’s,” he said immediately. I have never met anyone with such a nondescript face: except for the hair and the eyebrows it seemed positively manufactured of glass. I tidied my hair, fleetingly, in his bifocals. “I like Bach, whisky, striped underpants, Montego Bay, shooting and Peruvian brandy,” said Johnson. “Also beautiful ladies of character. Hasn’t it occurred to you that they will try to kill you as well, now? Assuming your friend Holmes isn’t the murderer?”

  My Rigoletto of last year had brought me a ruby along with the silk from Bangkok, and I had had it made up in the Burlington Arcade: it made an unusual ring. I twisted it. “No, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said slowly; and it was the truth.

  “You’re the only one who could identify him,” said Johnson. “If he was the murderer.”

  I let go the ring. “He must have been.” It was too ridiculous. “Look, some tatty little sneak-thief caught raiding a flat and letting fire with a gun isn’t going to have the nerve or the money to hunt down and kill someone who may or may not have seen him. He’s going to be far too damned busy getting out of the country.”

  “Granted. But are we dealing with some tatty little sneak-thief?” said Johnson. “You saw the bugged table. Your friend Holmes had gone, and he wasn’t the juvenile lead in ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’. So you say. How do you know he hasn’t been kidnapped?”

  “Because I’ve checked, and he hasn’t,” I snapped back, with a smile. If there was a lip reader among the admirals, we were sunk.

  The beetle brows rose over the enormous bifocals. “So it did occur to you,” said Johnson. “Then what did your friend say about the late Mr Chigwell?”

  I got up. “I’ll tell you when he comes to the phone.”

  He stood too. “So you haven’t spoken to him?”

  I could feel my teeth clench. Then, my back to the room, I spoke quickly and softly. “Listen. You’re partly right. Kenneth is a scientist, and his work is important. That’s why the table was bugged. But it’s nothing to do with the murder. It’s because of me. They don’t like international attachments. He’s not supposed to be seeing me, even.”

  “They must be frightfully pleased then, that you’re on board Dolly with me . . . Shall we go out?” enquired Johnson.

  I led the way, rather thoughtfully. For the fact was, after all that publicity, it must be all too clear to Kenneth’s bosses as well as to Kenneth that I was making for Rum . . . if they knew that I was the person he was expecting in Rose Street that night. And if they knew that, and the late Mr Chigwell came to light any time in the next three or four days, they had the perfect excuse for detaining me. On the other hand . . .

  “On the other hand,” said Johnson, exactly as if I had spoken aloud. “Our first theory may be right. Chigwell might have been killed by someone who thought he was Dr Holmes. And having found out his mistake, our little friend with the warts may be at the other end of the country just now, trailing the good Kenneth Holmes.” The bifocals flashed at me. “But you say you can warn him. So that must be all right.”

  All right, hell. If somebody was trailing Kenneth Holmes with intent to murder, that somebody was here, on the west coast of Scotland, going the way I was going, to Rum.

  I said goodnight to Johnson soon after, at the door of my room where he found considerable interest, it seemed, in gazing over my shoulder at my night attire, laid out on the bed, with my big, gold-fitted toilet case beside it. The trunk and the four travelling cases were standing still locked.

  “Uh, tell me,” said Johnson. “Have you ever gone sailing before? On anything less than three thousand tons, for example?”

  “Is there anything less than three thousand tons?” I replied. I was irritated. I added, remembering the portrait: “I’m sorry; but are you trying to say that the Dolly is too small for my luggage?”

  “No, no. She isn’t too small.” He thought. “But she’ll sink like a lift.”

  Ten minutes later, all my cases were open and had been cannibalised into a small heap of unappetising woollies,
some mine and some Johnson’s. I was to put these in the smallest of my cases and leave it outside my door at eight o’clock sharp. Breakfast would be at 8:15, after which Rupert would row me to Dolly. At 9:30 we should set sail down the Clyde estuary for Gourock, and after an early lunch, the race would begin.

  I listened; I answered; I bade him goodnight; I saw him into the corridor; I returned and took, in due course, to my bed, having made my sole (as yet) gesture of explicit contempt.

  I did not give myself the trouble of locking the door.

  Next morning the sun was shining, but I had seen the sun shining in Scotland before. I dressed to my satisfaction, and had three calls to my bedroom before I was quite ready, at eight forty-five, to saunter downstairs.

  The hall of the Yacht Club was full of pixie caps, turtle necks, stained denims and an inorganic culture of toggles. I was wearing my thin kid trouser suit in almond pink, with matching boots and knitted silk jersey. My hair was in a French pleat, and my dark cat glasses were bought in Miami. I wore a little scent by Patou, and on my right hand was a large uncut emerald.

  As I descended the stairs, the noise abated; and Johnson, stepping forward, escorted me into breakfast in a silence almost complete. The bifocals shone with the most profound admiration. “The soft kill. Delicious,” he said, “and you’re not to worry. There’s some Thawpit on board.”

  I was not worried, although a little surprised to find after breakfast that instead of Rupert, the girl Victoria had been detailed to row me to Dolly. She was, of course, the sole shipmate and crew of Cecil Ogden, the lugubrious remittance man of yesterday’s encounter at the bar.

  We were introduced, Victoria and I, on the jetty. I looked for a hockey player and I found one: a centre forward, small, bony, and agile. The central zone of the face, revealed by the inner selvedges of long, hanging, mud-coloured hair, displayed large cow-like eyes under thick eyebrows, and a mouth much too big. She wore denims and a faded striped sweater and talked in a high, clear cordon bleu voice about the last thing I did for Stokowski. But she did not, at least, ask for my autograph.

  Seawolf’s dinghy I did not altogether appreciate. It was a light wooden, flat-bowed shell, known as a pram; and I, for one, was no baby. Victoria all too clearly knew I was about to get wet: she tucked oilskins, still talking, over my trouser suit as soon as I was seated, cast off, and took up the oars. Her arms were bare, and so were her feet. A little water at the bottom of the pram slopped over one of my kid boots. Between tugs: “Thank God there’ll be someone on Dolly with the glands to stand up to Johnson,” she said vaguely. “He’s done you an epic scene already, I bet, about the right clothes to take.”

  “He has. I had a selected caseful of warm waterproof things fixed to go on board first thing this morning.” I paused. The strip of face between the almost united curtains of hair was mildly expectant. “However, to be on the safe side, I bribed the Club porter to row out three more cases before Mr Johnson was up.”

  I was rewarded by a large toothy smile. “I knew you’d be super,” said Victoria. “I adore Johnson: he’s so slow and so frightfully switched on; he gets his own way with everything, and of course Rupert worships him and now Lenny the Crew: if you visit Dolly it’s like coping with the Memphis Jug Band . . . The épater la bourgeoisie thing is marvellous, if you can bear to go on with it. But anyway you’ll love every second. They all do. The racing bit doesn’t matter much, although some of them make rather a thing of it. But the islands are absolute heaven. Do you know the Hebrides?”

  I did not. I was prepared to suffer the Hebrides until I came to the one that was called Rum. The others might sink, plop, as of that moment I shook my head.

  “Oh, but how super! You’ll adore them. I like them when it’s very, very wet. It is, often. I walk about in my bare feet and the mud goes squidge. Do you know we’re going to pass Staffa?”

  I knew. Staffa, which has an underground sea cavern and a rock formation superior to the Giant’s Causeway: I knew. I was sick of Staffa. It was beside Iona, the third call; that was all I was interested in. Then Barra and Rodel in the Outer Hebrides. Then the island of Skye; and then Rum. After Rum, Dolly could sink; assuming my portrait was finished. As Victoria prattled on about Staffa, I looked round.

  The sea sparkled. On either side of the Gare Loch the hills were green, and above, the sky was a filmy, spacious pale blue. Just ahead of us, as Victoria, twisting round, picked her way towards the lanes between moorings, were the first of the yachts. Some were quiet, with bare poles, but most were bustling with people. There was chat, and the noise of generators and engines turning over, and the grating sound of ropes in pulley blocks as sails were hoisted; all made thin and harmless by the unconfined water and air. As we began to pass them, Victoria did a very passable if libellous commentary about each.

  Only twenty, I gathered, of the Club’s eighty odd members had entered for this particular race: in any case for reasons of safety (safety?) the smallest were barred. For the rest, there was handicapping of a fairly cursory sort over the two halves of the circuit: before the day’s sail to the Crinan Canal which would give us access to the west coast proper, and again on Thursday, when we restarted from the far end of the canal. Everyone was forced to clock in at a checkpoint on each place to be visited, and only the actual sailing time between islands would count in the end. If the weather was bad, there was no reason, explained Victoria comfortingly, why one shouldn’t lie up in harbour until it improved: in fact everyone usually did. But if there was a good wind, for example, you might find yourself sailing night and day to make use of it. It depended.

  “It seems an odd way of spending a holiday,” I remarked as we rowed past all these frantic small boats occupied, according to Victoria, by vacationing judges, doctors and chartered accountants, accompanied by their wives, friends and occasionally nieces. “But you and Mr Ogden are awfully keen?”

  “Cecil is. Cecil’s marvellous,” said Victoria. Her head screwed permanently over her shoulder, she was digging alternately with this oar and that, avoiding boats big and little. “That’s Weevli. That’s Ballyrow: they’ve got a super new record player; you’ll hear it at Crinan; and there’s Blue Kitten; I’m afraid he practises piping. But Nina’s absolutely dreamy: he plays the Hawaiian guitar: he has a cousin in a group. Crinan’s mad: they all get together and get sloshed. You’ll love it.” She turned round, her way being momentarily clear, and added, referring, I soon realised, to Ogden: “He built Seawolf practically himself. How many men could do that? With his own hands. On nothing, just about: his people are creeps and he’s got a thing about asking for help. You know. But people know the boat is his life, and they appreciate that, around here. He knows all the locals and the anchorages, and people are jolly good and help when they can. They know he’s genuine.” Suddenly, she tossed her hair back and before it was blown straight back over her face by the wind I saw a thin, bony, rather sad face, like a medical missionary who once addressed us at the Home. Victoria said: “He feels a bit spare at times: who wouldn’t, with the hard work and the loneliness. But he’s a rather epic type, really . . . This one’s Binkie.” She indicated the boat we were just about to pass, of a rather disgusting shade of dark red.

  “What does Binkie do?” I asked gloomily. Johnson. And Ogden. And Hennessy. My God. This particular racehorse of the seas was smaller than most of the others, and was engaged in washing up its breakfast dishes on three inches of deck. As I spoke, a small round person in a knitted cap lifted and emptied the washing-up bowl, to a screaming of seagulls and a man’s voice crying: “Nan! Nan! Did ye feel for the teaspoon?”

  It was the man and wife seen last night in the bar, their arms full of bottles of tonic. “Bob and Nancy Buchanan. He runs a garage in Falkirk,” said Victoria, rapidly, and hailed them. “Hallo! This is Madame Rossi: I’m taking her out to the Dolly. Well, are you cosy, Bob? How’s the Wee Stinker?”

  The face of the man Buchanan split into an affectionate grin. “Fine. Grand, abso
lutely. You can hang your socks on her and they’re dry in ten minutes.”

  “They’ve got a new stove,” explained Victoria. “Binkie’s got everything, haven’t you Bob? Wee Stinker’s their stove, and their engine’s called Buttercup: an absolutely stunning great object by Kelvin. And they both eat out of dog dishes: a perfectly super idea because they can’t tip even when you go about, and keep hot and everything. You’ve no idea the wrinkles they have.”

  The woman had joined the man. Both their faces were mahogany with weather and flattery. The man Bob said: “Well, you know. A tidy ship is an efficient ship. And an efficient ship is a happy ship. We keep the Good Book handy and do what we can.”

  The woman Nancy hit him on the arm. “Bob, Madame Rossi will be wondering. That’s just the name we give the C.C.C. Sailing Directions; don’t heed him.” She suddenly knelt. During all this, Victoria was attaching the entire dinghy to Binkie with one calloused hand on their gangway. We bobbed up and down but she showed no signs of discomfort. The woman Buchanan addressed me at close quarters.

  “I’m not meaning to be cheeky, but Bob and me and the others at the Clubhouse think your coming with us is great. And in a good working boat: Dolly’s been up here a few times before, and she’s a good boat with good people in her. We get the carriage trade slumming up here from Formentor and Alghero with their wigs and their fancy men and their beagles doing the bathroom at every lock gate west of Cairnbaan, but it takes a real lady to try her luck in the Minch. Not that I’ve anything against dumb animals: I’m a vegetarian and a member of the RSPCA and I’ve never worn an animal’s fur in my life, but it’s the principle . . . Are you a good sailor, Madame Rossi?”

  “I don’t know yet. I hope so,” I said. I was fascinated.

  She clicked her small, blackened teeth. “Tell Johnson to give you a pill. And remember, we’re vegetarian but we’re not a dry ship. If yon debutante’s dream Rupert’s forgotten the booze, there’s enough here lying snug in the bilges to see us both right.”