Operation Nassau Read online

  ‘Why so grave, Beltanno?’ the Begum suddenly said. ‘Sir Bartholomew is better; we are eating pleasant food in good company, and the whole day and night lie before you: the hospital doesn’t expect you, does it, until tomorrow? Then you are on holiday. What is your favourite pursuit?’

  ‘Golf,’ I said. I felt over-relaxed. Indeed, I had to exert myself to say it quite clearly. Lady Edgecombe showed, for some reason, slight apprehension. I added, ‘But surely. Begum, Mr Brady has told you of our game on Paradise Island?’

  ‘He told me, yes,’ said the Begum. She hesitated, as if reflecting how to phrase her next comment. ‘He feared you considered the whole encounter as a means to force an introduction to your father. I hope he was wrong,’ said the Begum calmly. ‘He is an extremely talented young man, with no need to solicit his orders. Furthermore, I gather it is not at all likely that James Ulric will see Castle Rannoch again.’

  I was angry, but I took time to make myself clear. ‘It’s not impossible,’ I said. ‘If his condition should stabilize. If he avoids exerting himself with large-scale entertainments, for example.’

  ‘But how dull he would find it.’ the Begum said, smiling. ‘Shall I quote Rene Sand? “The place of medicine is in the stream of life, not on its banks.” And that applies not only to The MacRannoch but to his daughter. I embarrass you, Beltanno. But I wish you to be friends with my Mr Brady. Did you know he was building a bridge for me?’

  ‘How is it?’ said Johnson.

  The Begum said, ‘He thinks he can solve this last problem. But the currents are quite impossible, you know. Everyone has tried it. But I think he will succeed.’

  Krishtof Bey’s almond eyes were still watching me. He said, without moving them, ‘A bridge? But how exciting, Thelma! Where does it run from?’

  ‘Lady Edgecombe will have seen it,’ the Begum said, smiling at us all with that regal tilt of her head. ‘Indeed, it will be quite spectacular when it is finished. It runs from my scrap of land to the nearest large island. It joins Crab Island to Great Harbour Cay.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said slowly, ‘that you lived so close to Great Harbour Cay?’

  ‘Didn’t you? But then, James Ulric hates Crab Island because it has no proper harbour,’ the Begum said. ‘I couldn’t build him a landing-strip, but at least I could give him a bridge. Do you think he will visit me now? Will you, Beltanno?’

  I looked at her. ‘I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘that working hours don’t make such trips very easy. But it was kind of you to suggest it.’

  ‘But you get week-ends?’ Lady Edgecombe said unexpectedly. ‘Bart was saying you must get week-ends. He wanted you to fly back with us to Great Harbour Cay and stay a while. We owe a great deal to the doctor,’ she added, apologetically, to the Begum.

  ‘But of course. And then she can come visit us,’ said the Begum with satisfaction. ‘It is arranged.’ She signed the bill with a flourish: it went into three figures. ‘Now, shall we go? Johnson, you have to go back to your egocentric display?’

  ‘I’m a working man,’ said Johnson. ‘If I weren’t, you wouldn’t have that historic painting to show for it. Like Dr MacRannoch, I have to clear my desk before I come and loll on Crab Island.’

  ‘You’re going to stay with the Begum?’ I said. I was suspicious. Suddenly the centre of equilibrium had shifted quite away from Nassau and the United Commonwealth Hospital. Victim, suspects . . . all the protagonists in this threatening disaster seemed to be slipping away, to Crab Island. To Great Harbour Cay. Or nearly all. I thought of Sergeant Trotter.

  Johnson said, ‘Krishtof Bey has asked me to paint him, and I’m tempted, but you know what a sartorial drop-out I am. Do you all dress at Gina Fratini?’

  ‘We don’t dress at all,’ the Begum said in her calm way.

  ‘Or just a little rose sometimes,’ said Krishtof Bey, slanting his faun’s eyes at me.

  And I made a discovery. I knew why my enunciation was giving me trouble: why my limbs were ataxic: my responses badly impaired. Like poor Sir Bartholomew. I had been forced to ingest foreign material.

  My tomato juice had been doctored with vodka. My tomato juice from Krishtof Bey.

  I do not refuse alcohol because I cannot drink alcohol. I refuse because it is a frivolity I cannot afford. While therefore I will not pretend that the look I cast the dancer was friendly, I rose to my feet at the end of that meal with perfect success to say good-bye to Johnson and Krishtof Bey, who were returning to the exhibition. I then accepted the Begum’s invitation to attend to routine comfort in her suite. Lady Edgecombe came with us.

  Since routine comfort with Lady Edgecombe appeared to entail stripping off the entire supra-coating of creams from her hairline to her jaw-bone and replacing it with a similar one, the Begum and I were left a long time alone in her sitting-room. Mr Frost appeared on the television. She switched him off. ‘Well, Beltanno,’ she said, sitting down in expensive folds of azure and silver. ‘So you don’t drink and you don’t smoke and you aren’t interested in people. No wonder The MacRannoch is behaving like a mad broker in a sweat-box stock-exchange. Why won’t you let him spend his money on you? Pride?’

  I put my bag neatly between my feet and sat back. ‘For reasons that seem good and sufficient,’ I said.

  ‘And isn’t it normal in extreme cases to take a second opinion?’ the Begum said.

  ‘It is,’ I said. ‘But only from qualified persons.’

  She smiled. I had expected her to get up and leave me. But instead she murmured, ‘But James Ulric has asked me to marry him. Didn’t you know? Repeatedly.’

  That was all I needed. A bloody mother as well. I beg your pardon. The vodka. I said, ‘And you’ve refused him?’

  ‘I have refused to consider it,’ said the Begum, ‘until I met you first.

  I sat and stared at her. Because the implications of that struck me for the very first time. My father could have no further children. The Begum, in any case, was well past the reproductive years and had no children from her previous marriage.

  And that meant that the combined fortunes of the Begum and my father would descend eventually to me.

  No wonder she wanted to meet me. To influence me. To present me. To marry me off to some effing man.

  I beg your pardon.

  I said, ‘It may help you to make up your mind if I say I have no intention of marrying.’

  ‘I know.” said the Begum thoughtfully. ‘You’re scared of not being top dog.’

  ‘I am unwilling,’ I said calmly, ‘to spend the rest of my life tied to inferior company.’

  ‘Does it follow?’ said the Begum reflectively. ‘I wouldn’t say that the company of poor dear James is all that superior. And what about Johnson?’

  One of the anterolateral muscles of my abdomen, whose name I could not quite place at that moment, produced a soft thud. I said, ‘I am talking of viable probabilities.’

  ‘I’m talking of liking people,’ said the Begum. ‘Ah, here is Lady Edgecombe. How charming. Beltanno, all this elegance must not be wasted. Come. Get ready quickly, and leave that ridiculous bag on the floor. Lady Edgecombe and I are going to show you Miami.’

  The first language in Miami is of course Spanish: the shop girls discuss you in it, the cinemas advertise their programmes Hoy and the drug stores sell Perros Calientes as well as the Jumbo Dog Sauerkrauts of everyday life.

  The admonitions of the freeway from the airport are, however, wholly American: Keep off the Median. Walk. Don’t Walk. Have a Nice Day.

  To be wished a nice day by a bored distributive trades employee is an American compulsion which never fails to incense me, as do the personal good wishes of junior disc-jockeys relayed over the radio at home. The ultimate end of mankind is not necessarily to have itself a good day. I was not having a good day.

  I was being dragged by the Begum Akbar and Lady Edgecombe through the nerve-centre of the Sunshine State. The impossibility of guessing from one moment to the next what would catch the Begum
’s fancy both heightened my blood pressure and confused my recollection of the hours which were to follow.

  The infinity of possible entertainment was frightening. So were the placards. Roller Games. Florida Jets versus New York Bombers. The Boom Boom Room. Sammy Davis Junior. Mini Adult Show for the Liberal Minded. Georgie Porgie and the Cry Babies. Deauville, Hotel of the Stars. Miami International Boat Show, Sunday through Wed. (Was that where Johnson had gone?) Adult Village of Garden Apartments (what adults, for goodness’ sake?).

  I remember big shopping-blocks like New York. I remember a freeway built over the sea, with pelicans flying like dirty washing in the blue sky, and expensive homes set among palm trees. I remember endless shops selling thin fancy clothing set among The House of Pancakes and Big Daddy’s and hum’s Famous Lumburgers, and small packed hotels with sweating guests sitting out in the porch. I remember avenues of hotels and apartments which were the living prototype of every agency illustration from London to Australia: soaring foreshortened up to the sky behind their floodlit strip of bushes and palms, their banded balconies, their ribbed walls, their double-lit pierced concrete facades, their rows of twenty-foot bronze male caryatids, their buttressed porches underlit by a hundred cut lamps, with the Chevrolets, the Cadillacs, the Chryslers, the bronze soft-top Buicks nosing like ants up the drive to the steps, and groups of sparkling people in evening dress being handed in. The apartments had names: lvanhoe, Kenilworth. The Starlight Room floated by: a galaxy pinned by a roof to the top of a skyscraper building. On the left, gleams of water with white motor-cruisers lined up.

  Then as the night darkened and we drove north through the red and green and blue neon lighting, Hollywood Art School design took the tourist trade over. The buildings on either side were lower and had dramatic elbow room. Vagabonds. Hawaii. Sahara, with two groups of life-sized figures with camels. Flood-lit fountains and jets.

  A stagecoach with six horses. A series of thatched buildings with green-lit jungly pools and cascades. Two swimming-pools. Air-conditioned. French motifs. Old English motifs. Burlesk. More burlesk. Darkness.

  ‘Beltanno?’ the Begum said at one point. ‘Have you fallen into a stupor?’

  I forget what I said.

  They took me to a night-club. Johnson joined us there: I stared at him in his suede tie with the threads still hanging out where he had cut off the nude, and he grinned and said, ‘Krishtof Bey has gone to bed with a hot-water bottle. I think.’ And ordered us supper.

  We didn’t talk during supper. You can’t, through two electric guitars, drums, three trumpets and one saxophone. We were blighted with polyhedral whirling chromium balls and more ultraviolet. The nudes were dressed as sixteen Jean Harlows: in the next scene they rode motorbikes in crash-helmets and boots. One of them had quite the most beautiful abdominal scar I think I have seen. I had a tomato juice. ‘What have you done to her?’ said Johnson to the Begum.

  The Begum looked at me and smiled. I paid no attention. ‘Given her a little concentrated experience,’ she said. ‘I think she is tired.’

  ‘All right. But I insist on one more thing,” said Johnson. ‘Beltanno. how would you like to make yourself some money?’

  My view of him was not very clear, but I got the words out all right. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Dog-racing,’ said Johnson.

  I think I protested. I am not in principle against gambling: I simply cannot afford it. But my protests seemed to be over-ridden: it was in any case hard to keep track of what they were all saying in the cross-lunge of American voices. It’s going to be lousy. So we should go somewhere else. . This real dumb blonde . . . Right? Righty. . So I wouldn’t even go there no more . . Like I used to like candy . . I tell you, I’m going to lose control of myself.

  That rang a bell. I thought hazily, dammit . . More vodka in the tomato juice? But Krishtof Bey wasn’t with us. I like a tight little ass,’ someone said. ‘She’s got an ass like a tight little brick.’

  ‘Come on, Beltanno,’ said Johnson.

  The Hollywood Dog Track is a large, brightly lit family stadium between West Palm Beach and Miami. It is clean, cheerful and well serviced, and full of merry neighbourhood groups in fresh dresses and sweaters drinking cola and buying chilli dogs, as a change from perros calientes, at the well-stocked snack-stalls. Johnson got us seats in the upper tier, which looks down on the round floodlit track with a tidy green plot in the centre, and got us some programmes.

  Lady Edgecombe disappeared to restore the natural bloom on her face. The Begum also retired, but returned with her bag full of betting-slips. She and Johnson had a discussion. I focused on the programme, which contained a great deal of valuable information such as Win: your dog must finish first; and less obvious things such as Quiniela: your dog must finish first and second.

  I said aloud, ‘I haven’t a dog.’

  Johnson put an arm behind my shoulder-blades and said, ‘Beltanno, you are my utterly favourite suppressed doctor, but we mustn’t overdo things. Choose a dog and let me place a bet for you, and then Thelma will take you down and give you some air.’

  I felt the Begum look at me critically. ‘She seems perfectly happy.’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not,’ said Johnson. ‘In fact, we are due a little talk, you and I. in a moment. Beltanno, choose a dog.’

  I focused. ‘Pally Loo-loo?’ I said. It was the first dog on the list, and I was simply trying to discover if it was true, but Johnson took me up. ‘Pally Loo-loo it shall be. It doesn’t need to be much. Ten dollars?’

  I frowned. Ten dollars is ten dollars. On the other hand, I had two free meals to take into account. I hauled my handbag up and got out two five-dollar bills. ‘Right,’ said Johnson. ‘Thelma, you are a dangerous Begum.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the Begum serenely. ‘I shall take her downstairs.’

  Which was how we came to be near the turnstile when the Negro rushed in from the car-park, calling for help.

  He wanted a doctor. My head had cleared enough by then to register that. I felt the Begum’s hand on my arm, but I couldn’t have stopped. It is a conditioned reflex, and nothing whatever, I believe, to do with one’s personal ethos. One hears a call for medical aid, and one runs.

  So I called back and raced out of the Dog Track entrance after the Negro. He ran ahead through the parked cars, gesticulating and shouting hoarsely over his shoulder. Someone had been run over, I gathered. I hoped the Begum would have the sense to summon an ambulance. I regretted, for the first time, that I had left my medical bag at the Columbus.

  The man disappeared round the corner of the vast, packed car-lot. I followed. For a moment I lost sight of him: then I glimpsed him far ahead, struggling through the dark mass of cars.

  I had started to follow when something heavy struck me a violent blow on the base of my skull.

  I became quite insensible.

  SIX

  My first reaction, on waking some time later in Johnson’s grip, was to say, ‘Where’s the patient?’

  My second was to realize that I was lying there in the dog-racing car-park, clad in nothing at all but my underwear. A pain radiated from the base of the cranium through my entire nervous system. I felt weak, and surprisingly poorly.

  ’The patient is you,’ said Johnson. ‘The whole thing was a trick to get you out here. It took us hours to locate you. Beltanno, we’re going to lift you into the back of the car and take you up to the Jackson. I don’t think anything disturbing has happened, but I’d like them to check.’

  ‘What do you mean, disturbing?’ I said. My voice was hoarse.

  ‘I mean disturbing above the neck, B. Douglas MacRannoch,’ said Johnson’s deep voice with amusement. ‘My God, with all that underwear, the man would need pliers.’

  It was, I felt, a remark in bad taste. I was still brooding over it when Johnson, with a number of helpers, carried me into the back of his car. The Begum’s face, distinctly anxious, was visible in the background, and Lady Edgecombe’s, bearing an
appearance of anxiety which seemed to cover something quite different. If I hadn’t thought it unlikely, even for Lady Edgecombe, I would have believed her amused.

  Then I caught sight of myself in the car mirror, and all was explained. She was amused. She was having trouble in fact not to scream out with laughter. For I had not only been divested of clothing by my attacker. My hair had been cut off in irregular bristles all over my scalp.

  Vanity is not one of my sins. But I prefer, like the next person, to be brushed, well-washed and tidy. The near-bald rag doll I saw in that mirror was the sharpest blow I suppose I had ever suffered to a pride I knew very well how to protect. My face grew hot, and I dug the nails of both hands into my palms. It is possible to control every normal physical manifestation, given enough will power. Coughs, sneezes, hiccoughs. And tears.

  Johnson said, ‘Do you mind?’ and in one smooth movement passed over a bill and slid the bandana from the neck of one of his helpers. He bound it loosely, kerchief-style, round my head and said, ‘You’ve got a bad cut, Beltanno, but there’s nothing science and art together won’t cure . . Thelma. I think you and Lady Edgecombe should go back to the Columbus. I’ll ring you when they’ve had a look at Dr MacRannoch. And no United Commonwealth for you tomorrow, my girl,’ to me.

  But he was wrong. I shared the services of the Jackson Memorial Hospital that night with Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, and had four stitches in the back of my head, with no serious concussive complications. By morning I was able to discuss my return to Nassau with Johnson, and also, unimpeded by all but a headache, the reasons behind the attack.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. I must have looked an odd sight, in a hospital bedgown, with a white bandage encircling a black near- bald scalp, but he paid no attention. ‘The don’t do it again brigade, one would think. But why? Do they think you’re going to follow Edgecombe to Great Harbour Cay?’