‘And the clothes,’ I said. ‘That bloody outfit cost . . .’
‘Put it down to expenses,’ said Johnson. ‘You’ll find the outfit and the wig in the car. If you’re asked which swimming pool, say you don’t remember. They’ll assume you were sloshed.’
‘Nobody wore your hair?’ I said. ‘Didn’t you need an alibi? Nobody took your bifocals and your best cashmere jersey and painted the statue of Nelson? So you can come back to this bloody town and I can’t?’
‘Thought you didn’t want to,’ said Johnson. ‘Curtis country.’
‘Curtis country for one film,’ I said. ‘That’s all. O.K. – she chucks me out of the Josephine film. There’ll be others.’
‘That’s my girl,’ said Johnson. ‘And I promise you, you’ll live your wig down. There’s the car. Tell Ferdy what happens tomorrow. And I’d better warn you. Young Porter flew in.’
Porter. I wondered if they’d be pleased to see him on their floating old-fashioned gin palace or not. I wondered if I should be pleased to see him or not. It was hard to ignore him. For someone, he’d be a real capture.
Maggie, for instance. If Ferdy moved out, and Johnson wasn’t moving in.
The car was waiting and Johnson, supporting the patio wall, looked like a Rasta running out of collapsos, or maybe even into them.
There was nothing I could do about that. I said goodnight, and got into the car, and changed, and went back to Natalie’s.
My orange wig had a black hair in it, which might or might not have come from Brixton. My feathered outfit, when I dragged it on, was still soaking wet. I looked like Mother Goose.
Dodo, who was the only person in the house, gave me a long stare while the curtains slowly drew back over her choppers.
‘My!’ she said. ‘You been raped, or laid an egg out there?’ And watched, grinning like a frog, as I marched upstairs to bed.
I was sacked on the banana plantation, which is where Natalie came across me next day.
Ferdy and Carl Thomassen came for me in a taxi next morning before she was up, and there didn’t seem much point in hanging about to ask her permission.
I told Dodo I’d be back before lunchtime, and nipped out to the taxi with a copy of the Advocate-News over my spikes, because it was raining, and my bowler would have got spoiled.
Johnson, unexpectedly, was inside the taxi as well, looking perfectly blank behind his bifocals, and I caught sight of Maggie sitting next to the driver.
Ferdy and Carl, who had been at the Governor-General’s ball like everyone else except me, were still suffering from a surplus of chat, and contented themselves with reading the Advocate-News while it was still on top of my head.
Ferdy was interested in the case against Isaac Harbansingh, better known as John Bull, but Johnson had spotted this headline saying Aussies Make Light Work of Worcestershire, and that was it, the whole of Barbados being cricket-crazy including the taxi driver.
After a serious exchange of views, the driver remembered that the Voice of Barbados was relaying the fourth day of the English–Australian Test, and turned on his radio for us.
His driving got so peculiar, in between Johnson trying to demonstrate spins and Ferdy shouting him down and the driver contradicting them both, that we had to draw in by a cane field to hear it.
All the West Indies are mad about cricket, of course. The English teams used to be brought out here for free. On banana boats.
The thought can’t have reached Maggie, but she did turn round a hung-over face at that point and say, ‘J.J.? Bananas?’ And Dr Thomassen looked at his watch and jumped and said we’d better go, the manager would be worried.
It turned out that he was going to read a paper to the Windward Islands Banana Growers’ Association on cheaper ways of keeping bananas from ripening before they get to the shops.
Unless it meant dipping them in cocaine, it didn’t seem to have much bearing on what I was there for, and I stopped listening. Then we finally passed all the board houses on stilts, and the half-cut forests of cane with the rain drumming on it, and came to this neat double gate, with the bloody Coombe flag flying above it.
It was a model plantation newly started, which meant that the green-banana trial was in full swing, and hadn’t been messed about by hurricanes, or eruptions, or Test Cricket, which was why Dr Thomassen was keen on it.
The rain stopped, and we got out and tramped through it.
Ask me about bananas.
Banana plants look like little palms, with shiny green leaves like paper, cut at the edges by the wind. Wee bananas grow pointing down, till they’re made to curl up by the sun. Every plant has a single stem with a shower of up to a dozen banana hands on it, growing one on top of each other inside a blue plastic bag.
The bags keep insects off, and prevent the bananas from rubbing against one another.
When they’re still green, but ready for harvesting, the stem is cut off every plant with a coyote, and the banana bags slung on a cable which takes them to the packing station for washing, cutting and packing in cartons and transferring by conveyor belt into the hold of, for example, the Coombe Caroline.
I supposed Johnson knew it all already, but he asked questions as though he didn’t, and the manager, or Dr Thomassen, answered.
The manager said that it was a pity we’d just missed the firm’s Financial Director, Mr van Diemen, but he’d had to fly off to St Lucia.
He showed us how the irrigation ditches were being trenched, and told us about pruning, fertilising, soil pests and leaf blight, but I hardly heard.
As soon as I could, I said to Johnson, ‘What happened about the Rotary Club of St Lucia?’
A woman went by with a single coyote on her turban, and another with a basket of washing. Ferdy and Maggie had found a railway line and were flagging down a little train carrying cartons.
Johnson said, ‘There’s one on Barbados as well. Meets at the Hilton on Thursdays. Also the Freemasons, the Foresters, the Mechanics, the Elks, the Gardeners, the Oddfellows and the Shepherds. Raymond and I thought of joining the Oddfellows. Let’s go over to Ferdy.’
‘But what about—’ I said. He was already strolling away from me, his pipe in his mouth.
He turned and took it out. He said, ‘I know what you mean, but the weather forecast for tomorrow is lousy. Look, isn’t that Sharon’s son, Porter?’
It was Porter, coming towards us in a yellow Italian blouson with white virile trousers, his watch-band flashing gold chain mail in the watery sun, and his hair red as a Flamboyant Tree.
He was looking mainly at Maggie’s legs, swinging on to the carton truck, but wrenched his attention back to me as he got near. ‘Hullo there, gorgeous!’ he said. ‘And Ferdy, and Mr Johnson, sir. I hear you two were the sensation of the Governor-General’s ball, while Rita was off doing her water display.’
I thought he’d made a mistake. But Ferdy grinned and answered and I realised that Johnson had been at the ball: whether before or after the little adventure at the Brighton Beach wasn’t clear.
I wondered how, under the circumstances, he’d got the energy, and supposed I should have been grateful that someone else had fixed my alibi for me.
On the other hand, here was Porter, sliding his hand from my neck to fold me in a comforting arm and saying, ‘. . . over there, the old cow. Darling, she really is furious, and we thought the best thing we could do is take her off your hands to Miami.’
‘Who? What?’ I said. You allow Porter’s arm to do things, and his hand takes unfair advantage. Ferdy, who is in the same league, was watching with admiration.
‘Natalie,’ said Porter. ‘I don’t know who she had a row with last night, but she seems to have decided that Barbados is a waste of time, and now she’s finished, she wants to get out of it. Gramps offered her a berth to Miami. And that Boy Scout with the hairpiece.’
‘Fred Gluttenmacher,’ said Ferdy. He jumped off the truck, frowning. ‘Natalie’s going back to the States? What about Rita?’
Before Porter could answer, someone called in the distance.
We all turned round, including Porter, who let his arm fall, a bit to my relief. In the distance, where the cable was trundling into the packing station, stood a tall, slender blonde in dark glasses and embroidered linen and pale hand-made pumps. She called again. It was Natalie.
Porter said, ‘We’d better go over. That’s why she’s here. It’s a goddamned shame, the old cow; but that’s show business.’
We had all started slowly to move, but at that, Ferdy stopped.
He said, ‘Are you telling me that, after giving Rita Kim-Jim’s job, and getting her to take on the Josephine film, Natalie is booting her out?’
Ferdy was and is a great name in photography. Patience wasn’t much in Porter’s line, but he made an effort. He said, ‘I guess I shouldn’t have jumped the gun. Maybe Natalie’s cooled down at that. She just got all up-tight, and there was nothing any of us could do. She wanted Rita out, and Uncle Clive in.’
‘She’s offered Clive the film?’ Ferdy said.
‘I’m afraid she has, sir,’ said Porter. ‘But of course—’
‘Never mind,’ said King Ferdy, and pulling ahead of us, stalked through the banana groves and up to Natalie.
To do her justice, she tried not to have a scene on the spot.
The manager had gone, sent politely on his way by Johnson and Dr Thomassen, who were the only ones to have kept their heads, so far as I could see.
Maggie, eating a banana, was looking from Ferdy to Johnson and no doubt wondering where she was going to sleep if the Curtises withdrew their villa.
Natalie said, ‘Certainly, I have something to say to Rita, but it will keep until we are in the car.’
‘It won’t,’ said Ferdy. ‘Are you sacking her?’
‘Really, Ferdy,’ said Natalie. She had done her own face that morning, but it looked very nice, with the lines under her eyes painted out. She said, ‘I know you and Rita are friends, but this really isn’t your business. Rita? I haven’t much time.’
‘Well, if you haven’t much time, maybe you should tell me why?’ Ferdy said. ‘I thought we were doing a film together?’
‘Are we?’ said Natalie. ‘I don’t remember your joining me on St Lucia or Martinique. We have managed one meeting here, it is true. But now I find you with Dr Thomassen again. I think you, too, will really have to make up your mind whether your book or my film is the more important.
‘Meanwhile, I have done all I want to do in the West Indies. I have other business awaiting me. If you are still at all interested in this film, I hope to be in London shortly.’
‘But as of this moment, you’re sailing away with the Curtises,’ Ferdy snapped. ‘What’s wrong with Rita?’
I pulled myself together. It was great having Ferdy fight my battles for me, but enough was enough.
I said, ‘Come on, Ferdy. It’s up to Mrs Sheridan and me. No need to get your film involved. Tell you all about it later.’
I tried to get round him, but he stood in my way. He said, ‘If she goes, I go.’
Johnson said, ‘That’s bloody silly.’
Ferdy’s bald bit got very red, and all the skin you could see round his sideburns.
He said, ‘I got Rita into this. I’m not having her thrown out by one ambitious patronising bitch and doing nothing about it. Get a piccaninny off the banana farm to follow you, Natalie. Only thing he won’t be able to do is fix your nose for you. Nor will Clive Curtis. I’m glad for Rita’s sake, I can tell you. You don’t deserve her.’
It was like the night of Kim-Jim’s death. Natalie had gone perfectly white, so that all her make-up stood out like a diagram.
She said, ‘I had expected to deal with this in a normal, civilised way, but you make it . . .
‘ . . . Oh, my God.’
It was funny that I should have thought of Kim-Jim.
Not that it was any one of us she was looking at, or someone she knew, or anything.
She was just looking over our shoulders, at the clear blue plastic bags, swaying and bulging, creaking their way to the packing shed.
Each bag full of up to two hundred bananas, weighing up to seventy pounds altogether. You could see them, hand upon hand, greenly clutching one another.
You could see them in all the bags swinging past us, except one.
I’ve seen first-rate severed heads made of wax. You can also make them of styrophor moulded with ceramic plaster, sealed with liquid plastic and coated with greasepaint. You paint veins on the eyes, and get the teeth from a dental mechanic. You can buy a greeny-grey base called ‘Blithe Spirit’. It’s meant for the comedy, but it does for dead heads just as well.
In the studio, it’s really absorbing.
On a banana plantation it’s not quite so good.
When the severed head in the blue bag is real. And when it belongs on the shoulders of a Brighton Beach Hotel security guard.
We all stared, but no one spoke but the Owner.
‘Salami,’ said Johnson.
I still got the sack, after that; but it was in a subdued sort of way, and by mutual consent.
The murder having nothing to do with us, we weren’t held up while the manager was sent for, and the police.
It had happened before, someone said. A drunken brawl in a rum-house, or over a woman. It might not be anyone on the plantation at all.
From the constant view of the back of Johnson’s head, I was reminded that this was supposed to be a face I’d never seen before, and I knew nothing about it.
The act of parting from Natalie passed like a kind of dream, I had so much else to think about.
It actually was a parting, too. Dodo had already packed and taken her things on board the Paramount Princess. Natalie had merely dropped in to tell me I was dismissed, and should remove myself from Ferdy’s house as soon as convenient to Ferdy.
I said I was sorry it was ending like this, and she said the same, and she’d left a cheque in the sitting-room. She wished me well for the future.
Behind her back, Porter pulled a face and blew me a kiss and mouthed some sort of promise. I nodded and grinned. I could still feel his fingermarks.
Johnson had got the cricket-mad taxi to wait for us, and we dragged Maggie from the crowd round the severed head and got into it.
I hadn’t looked at it again. I said, ‘It probably was someone on the plantation. You could cut a head off with a coyote.’
It was a squeeze in the back, and Johnson’s arm had to go round my shoulders.
He said, ‘It’s either cutlass or machete. But on the whole, I rather go for coyote.’
His fingers played on my far shoulder. ‘Rita, you’re free. Maggie, you’re going to be sick. Ferdy, I’ve got an empty boat, and you’ve got an empty house somewhere. Let’s go to one of them, and get drunk.’
Considering everything, he did have good ideas.
At Ferdy’s suggestion, we went to Ferdy’s house, which smelt of Natalie’s personalised scent, and quite a bit of my scent from Dolly.
The help had gone, which was just as well. Using Ferdy’s recipe books, we worked our way down four more items in his daiquiri list. After that, instead of having lunch, we all went to bed. I went to my own room, and Ferdy and Maggie, I suspect, to Natalie’s.
Wherever Johnson went, he was up first. I was second, and wandering into the kitchen in my bare feet and shirt tails, found Johnson cooking himself scrambled eggs with his bifocals looking solemn under his hair. He was wearing a kimono I recognised as belonging to Ferdy in his John Weitz Japanese mood, and his feet were bare, too.
It was a bit like 17b all over again.
He must have thought so as well, for he said, ‘I’ve saved you the whites. Shut the door while I award you a prize for not having a fit of the vapours. You weren’t to blame for that killing.’
An open book. I said, ‘They must have thought I was his girlfriend. They must have thought he let me in close to the building.’
The eggs curdled. Johnson spooned them on two bits of buttered toast, put a plate under each, and shoved one along the breakfast bar to me.
‘Cap the seeps from the daiquiris. Knives and forks beside you. He wasn’t a hotel security man, he was one of theirs, anyway. My guess is that they planned to get rid of him in any case after the meeting. Making a hand of his head was just a warning and a deterrent to others. Nasty people.’
He had got himself a glass of milk, and he looked at me over it.
‘I asked you if you’d mind getting the push from Natalie. How would you feel about getting it from me?’
I went to the fridge and got myself milk as well. There was silence from the rest of the house. If he thought it was safe to discuss this with Ferdy and Maggie around, then I supposed it was safe.
I said, ‘You mean, now we’re coming to the dangerous bit?’
‘Never crossed my mind,’ Johnson said. ‘Thought you might trust me to go in for the kill without you, though. I’m taking Dolly to St Lucia, and Roger van Diemen was flying there this morning. Also, incidentally, Carl Thomassen, I am told.’
‘I haven’t retired yet,’ I said. ‘Who else is sailing with you?’
He had got his pipe out, and was hunting for matches. ‘Raymond and Lenny, of course,’ he said. ‘Ferdy wants to take some photographs, and I don’t mind taking him. Which probably means Maggie as well.’
I sat looking at him, and he set the flame to the stuff in his pipe. I said, ‘And if it’s dangerous, why is it all right for them to go?’
Johnson flicked the burnt match into the sink, and leaning both elbows on the table, looked at me with the pipe in his mouth. Then he took it out.
‘Because they’re not dangerous to me, and you are. Trapping a faceless gang of drug merchants is one thing. It’s quite another not to give the game away when they turn out to be people you know. As now seems very likely.’
‘Who?’ I said. I didn’t want any more scrambled eggs.
‘You saw as much as we did. Three men and a woman,’ said Johnson. ‘You didn’t hear, as we did, what they talked about. The Coombe plan, of course. But their immediate worry is that they’ve got a load of cocaine to get rid of. And van Diemen’s network isn’t ready.’
The Tropical Issue: Dolly and the Bird of Paradise Page 26
