The Tropical Issue: Dolly and the Bird of Paradise

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘You taught us all,’ I said.

  ‘They know my work over in England?’ he said.

  I didn’t say I came from Scotland. I said, ‘The film libraries are full of it. They teach it in film school and make-up classes. Why do you never come over?’

  He puffed at his cigar for a long time. Then he took it out.

  ‘Europe?’ he said. ‘Europe’s for losers. They know me here. America’s been good to me. This is where I belong. Do you know, on this island we’re going to . . .’

  And he’d told me about 20th Century Fox, and the film, while I shut down the lid of the piano.

  To hell, oh to hell with growing old.

  Ferdy said, ‘Rita? Short of sleep, darling?’ And I was back, being driven down past Farley Hill and down to worn mushroom-shaped coral rocks and mounds of sea-grapes and the big waves of the Atlantic coast, and the park that Barclay’s Bank had laid out free for the islanders, out of their spare Bee-Wees and, no doubt, Natalie’s.

  The hotel Ferdy took us to was serving fried dolphin and pickled banana and egg-plant slices and soused bread-fruit and pumpkin fritters and breaded flying-fish and coconut bread.

  I was quite sorry when Ferdy, suddenly remembering why we were there, came bounding back with the driver to drag us off to this tropical garden.

  But actually, that was great, too. It had humming-birds and monkeys and doctor birds in it, and birds like sparrows with yellow stomachs, and flowers like lobsters and snails and shrimps and candles with red wax curled round them.

  Dr Thomassen stood quite still with his forehead bulging, making suggestions, while Ferdy skipped and twirled and leaped and climbed like Neurosis. Narcotics. Nureyev.

  We had the most trouble with a powder-puff tree. Then Ferdy had to pack it in to get back for his Coral Reef meeting, but said O.K., if I insisted, he’d take me through Bridgetown.

  Bridgetown is the capital of Barbados. Bridgetown is very like Troon, except filled with black people in the shades you get in a natural Icelandic sweater, and the policemen have pith helmets on. The Barbadian national colours, I was sorry to see, are blue and yellow.

  Bridgetown is so busy anyway, that driving through during Carifesta you hardly noticed the visiting nationals from all the other Caribbean countries at first.

  The ordinary Bajans didn’t seem to mind the Carifesta jamming the halls and the streets, but just stood about talking, and going in and out of bars and department stores.

  I was interested, of course, but that wasn’t why I wanted to go through Bridgetown. I wanted to go through Bridgetown to see what was in Carlisle Bay since we left it.

  Being in the grip of his post-photographer’s tension, Ferdy had given up being a guide in favour of asking me for the third time whether I’d seen him change the exposure for the hibiscus, which I had.

  It was Dr Thomassen who noticed and pointed out our late floating hotel, the Paramount Princess, still at anchor and hardly swaying in spite of all the athletics going on in the cabins.

  And there was the Dolly, also in from St Lucia, which made Ferdy stop knotting his whiskers and sit up, his mind switched from exposures to Maggie, the perfect photographer’s cure, to be taken as often as necessary.

  I was glad for them both. I wasn’t sure whether or not I was glad for myself.

  Because beside them, large and solid and powerful, and flying her blue and yellow beastly house-flag, was the Coombe Caroline, in for bananas and bunkers and mayday.

  Mayhem, Johnson says.

  We were both right.

  Because the first person I saw, when Ferdy dropped me off at his own house, was Roger van Diemen.

  Thank God, before I went in, I went round the back of the house and looked through the window, because I thought Natalie might be with her lawyer, or even horsing about still with Fred Moneybags. It wasn’t four yet, and she wasn’t expecting me.

  Instead, the shutters to the back sitting-room were half open, and inside was Natalie, changed for her meeting into a pastel dress and jacket with a puritan collar, walking about twirling her rings, which was much the same as Rome burning down.

  The person she was angry with I couldn’t quite see at first, then he shifted edgily into view.

  Roger the Damned One. Wearing a well-pressed cotton safari suit, instead of the trousers I’d spilled drink all over at the airport, but with the same hot, light eyes and brick skin and hair crinkling up over his ears with the heat.

  The scars of our little tussle in the Mercedes had gone, but otherwise he looked just as beastly.

  He didn’t like what Natalie was saying, either. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t accept that.’

  ‘My dear man,’ said Natalie. They were both speaking quite softly, and it was a strain, actually, to hear, although I was inside the croton hedge right under the window.

  ‘My dear man, I’m not trying to make a living out of you. You can have your jewellery back. If you can’t bring yourself to remain friendly to me without climbing into my bed, then I’m sorry. But for your sake as well as mine, it really has got to stop.’

  He said, ‘You didn’t say that before.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Natalie. ‘But that was on Madeira, where you were very silly indeed. You were lucky not to find yourself in prison on a murder charge. But for me, you would have been. I really don’t feel I owe you anything, Roger.’

  She stood still and faced him. He had never moved, since he walked where I could see him.

  He said, ‘You don’t, do you? If it hadn’t exposed you, you would have seen me go to prison quite happily. You might even have put me there. How long do you think you can get away with it, Natalie? How long before someone turns the tables and sells you out? One of these days, that girl with the orange hair will make a killing out of you.’

  Natalie abruptly crossed her arms and, hugging her elbows, paced to the other side of the room and back. The lines I took such good care to fix for her had broken through all over her face. She said, ‘She doesn’t know anything. My God, look at her. I feel like St Lazarus.’

  ‘Do you think the Curtises are to be any more trusted?’ said Roger. ‘Or that photographer? Or this Gluttenmacher you’re so friendly with all of a sudden? What do you think I could do, if I wanted revenge? I’ve never told anyone. Anyone. I’m the only person who won’t let you down.’

  He looked as if he really meant what he was saying. He was a nutter all right, but Natalie wasn’t afraid of him.

  She laughed, and unfurling her hands, smoothly picked up one of his arms and pushed the tailored sleeve back.

  I could see the needle tracks from the window.

  She let his arm fall. She said, ‘Roger, I wouldn’t trust you to do my laundry.’

  He had gone absolutely white under his tan. She was a bitch. If I didn’t know what a bastard he was, I would have felt a pang for him.

  He said, ‘And if I talk? I could, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you could,’ Natalie said. ‘Your word against mine. I’ll come and visit you in the home they put you into.’

  They stared at one another, then her eyes went past him to the clock.

  She said, ‘So shall we leave it at that? Rita will be back, and I have to get to my meeting. I’m sorry, Roger. It’s been a ridiculous conversation, but you forced it on me. We had a nice time, but it’s over. Go and take a cure somewhere, and make another start. In another job, away from the tropics.’

  She picked up her bag and a document case and walked to the door. ‘Dodo!’

  In a moment, Mr van Damned would be out. And when he got into his car, the girl with the orange hair was bloody well going to be behind in a taxi. And wherever he was going, so was I.

  I bent low, and scrambled out of the crotons.

  Then I stayed bent low, because someone’s hand was on the back of my neck, holding it down like a fork, with someone’s knee on my ankles, so that I couldn’t move.

  ‘Bloody hold it,’ said Johnson’s voice. ‘He’s fo
llowed.’

  I held it. I heard van Diemen’s voice again, and then Natalie’s, telling Dodo something, and then a slammed door and footsteps in the front, and the sound of a car starting up. A pair of shutters opened up in Natalie’s bedroom overhead.

  Johnson released me.

  The nerves in my neck shrieked, and so did my ankles. He hadn’t used force, just pressure.

  He said, ‘Sorry. This way, quietly,’ and disappeared into the depths of Ferdy’s garden. Out of earshot of the house, I fell over him, sitting on the grass among a clump of red ginger-flowers. I recognised them.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Overmanning in the machine room. Dangerous thing, private enterprise. What brought that on? Did you come into my cabin last night?’

  The blanket. As Amy Faflick said, he was too damned quick. I sat down, and saw that my face had already answered him. The open book.

  ‘O.K.’ he said. ‘Crippled centre, but lots of tough cookies round about to make up for it. Don’t follow him, don’t talk to him or you’ll gum up the works. What did you think of what you heard?’

  ‘That you could start a murder case with it,’ I said. ‘If you’d taped it.’

  ‘But we didn’t. And Natalie?’ Johnson said.

  He seemed to have heard it all. I was full of ideas.

  I said, ‘She could be the person you’re looking for. She could have begun the affair with van Diemen; even started him somehow on drugs, and then got a third person to blackmail van Diemen into bringing Coombe’s into their network. This meeting at Coral Reef could be the meeting you’re waiting for.’

  St Lazarus. I could hear the bite in my voice.

  Johnson showed no special surprise. ‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘Because Roger van Diemen isn’t going to it. Because she’s thrown him out, Natalie’s actually cleared herself. Remember, no van Diemen, no dope and banana network.’

  He paused. ‘Do you want to stay with her? She may change. Ask you to alter your hair, for example.’

  I said, ‘She won’t get rid of me. Neither will you. When is the meeting?’

  ‘I’m waiting to hear. Tonight, perhaps.’

  I looked at him. He said, ‘I can’t trust you, can I, not to try and find it?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. With feeling.

  I watched him. After that little game in the crotons, my opinion of his chances had gone up a bit, but as far as I was concerned, it was a split concession now. He wasn’t going to fall down on this job if I could prevent it.

  He was twirling a bit of feathery ginger. He chucked it aside, and looked back at me. ‘Well, you can do something. I expect you’ll be tarting them up for the Carnival Ball. Are you free after that?’

  I was.

  ‘Well, suppose,’ Johnson said, ‘that Raymond calls with a car to take you out on the town, and you just happen to have your fishing-tackle outfit with you? All of it?’

  I could feel my smile stretching. I said, ‘No problem. Where d’you want me to do it? On Dolly?’

  ‘No,’ Johnson said. He made to get up, swore, and succeeded.

  ‘No, it’s life in the fast lane for you. The Hackney Carifesta team’s quarters in Bridgetown.’

  ‘You’re not joking,’ I said.

  ‘I never joke,’ said Johnson. ‘Now shut up, and listen.’

  For some things, it helps a lot to be wee, and have hockey legs.

  I was always the one who got sent up the tree or under the shed for the ball. I had one teacher who used to complain that, but for a few Victorian commies, I would be up there cleaning his chimneys instead of wasting his time at a school desk.

  The Brighton Beach is a chalet hotel built on the shore at Oistins, just south of Government House and along the coast from Bridgetown.

  The central block faces the road, and has the reception desk in it.

  Through that, or by a service passage further along, you get to the chalets themselves, which are one-storey concrete apartments, each with its own kitchen and bathroom and bedroom, and a sitting-room opening on to a porch.

  The chalets are joined by dimly-lit paths, and are set among flower beds, and lawns with slatted sunchairs on them.

  By day and by night, quite a few of the chalets are taken by people who haven’t come for the swimming or the sunbathing, but to spend a weekend with the girlfriend, or a few days off with some drinking pals, or to do some serious gambling, or pull off an even more serious business deal with no questions asked.

  Briefing, by Johnson.

  He was with me somewhere in the dark that night, but I couldn’t see him. It was Raymond’s hand that led me to the chalet whose garden was next to the beach, and whose lit windows were already covered with curtains behind the glass screens.

  A very small bush can cover me. Raymond found one, near the beach steps with a good view of the porch, and settled me into it. Then he found a place for himself.

  People came by, on their way to the central dining-room, and came back.

  Two couples went down to the beach, and only one came back.

  A security man with a torch came, shining it in a bored way all round the garden, and putting it off, hitched himself on the corner of the chalet porch rail.

  Two lots of footsteps came down the passage, and turned out to belong to a clerk, showing a drunk the way into the chalet.

  The drunk, a man in a flowered shirt over dark trousers, took his time fishing out a couple of notes for the boy, leaned confidingly on the security man’s shoulder and staggered into the porch, holding the key to the chalet.

  The light from the sitting-room shone on his face, as he opened the door and went in. He had a rum bottle in each of his pockets, and his face was covered with a Carifesta plaster mask in the shape of a cockerel, behind which he seemed to be crowing.

  The door shut, and the security man shook his head and switching on his torch, wandered off.

  In the chalet, a side light suddenly came on from the bathroom, followed by one from the kitchen, to one side of the door. Both windows were protected by louvres, and the light only showed in thin lines between slats, and from this wee grating covered with bug wire in the kitchen.

  There was a sound of distant chinking; then the rectangle went dark, and half-bright, and dark again.

  ‘Swinging door into the sitting-room,’ Raymond said. ‘Van Diemen, we know, has a monkey mask.’

  Two people came round the passage, went into the porch and knocked on the door of the chalet, which opened almost at once. Both wore carnival masks and both seemed to be sober. I got a glimpse, as they went in, of their clothes. One wore the same as the first man: a flowered shirt and dark trousers.

  The other had on a ground-length shift and high heels. From the way she managed them, there was no doubt she was a woman.

  The door closed behind them.

  Silence, or sort of. The chickadees buzzed and the frogs whistled. The sea sighed on the beach. Beyond the darkness of the living quarters, the sky gave off a glow from lit gardens and dance-floors and restaurants, and the far-off murmur of music and talking sounded just like another sort of sea.

  Someone brushed by my shoulder and spoke to Raymond.

  ‘You should go round the back,’ said Johnson’s low voice. ‘The bedroom curtains are open. The plant, I have to report, has been equipped with scrubbers.’

  Raymond, in the lowest of voices, said, ‘Wow!’

  ‘Three wows,’ said Johnson placidly. ‘Call girls, coloured, expensive. I took a photograph. I’ll give you a peek in the dorm.’

  ‘Three?’ said Raymond.

  ‘Quite,’ said Johnson. ‘And Roger still has to come.’

  I thought he was being thick. Roger van Diemen wouldn’t be interested in coloured call girls, whatever the other two fancied.

  I remembered he wasn’t thick, and put my mind to it again. What he meant was, Roger still had to come. And another man.

  The other man came first, walking quickly with no
one to guide him. He stepped through the porch, rapped, and was admitted. The light shone on him for a second only, and showed nothing but the same uniform: the loose shirt which could have covered anything, the dark trousers and a mask.

  ‘I’d like to . . .’ said Raymond, and half rose.

  ‘No. Wait,’ said Johnson.

  I hadn’t heard anything, but a moment later, footsteps echoed in the passage. Crisp footfalls belonging to a tall man in a floral shirt and a monkey mask who knocked at the same door, and waited, and then went in, rather slowly.

  ‘Roger van Diemen. The entire Board, I would guess,’ Johnson said. ‘Go and look now, if you’re quick. The security man will be back in a moment.’

  The security man came back before Raymond did. He stood swinging his torch outside the porch, and looking idly about him. Like Johnson, Raymond made no sound coming back, but I saw his shadow lingering in the passage.

  Then the security man moved away, on his patrol, and Raymond slipped over the lawn and arrived beside us. ‘They’ve drawn the curtains,’ he said. ‘If they exist. I think you were having a wet bloody dream. What about getting up close?’

  ‘They’re bugged,’ said Johnson.

  ‘And if they spot it?’ said Raymond. ‘You brought her. Why not use her?’

  Men.

  I was over the lawn before he had finished the sentence, and into the porch among the breakfast chairs and the bougainvillea. I crouched down in the shadows and listened.

  It wasn’t as good as Ferdy’s villa, because the glass and curtains were closed. A lot of the time, I couldn’t hear what they were saying at all, and then the woman or one of the men would speak sharply, and I caught a few phrases.

  The voices were blurred and none of them was familiar. I couldn’t even pick out which was Roger van Diemen. The woman could have been anybody.

  It was the fault of the masks, of course. We have the same trouble with make-up. You can get a great likeness, stuffing the cheeks and adding shaped teeth and false jowls and everything, but it’s no good if the actor can’t speak through it.