The Great and the Good

by Michel Déon

  ‘A desert island with all mod cons, isn’t that just what you wanted?’

  ‘Do you intend to hold me captive here for fourteen days?’

  ‘And fourteen nights.’

  Mandy quickly shows them how everything works: refrigerator, cooker, where the bedlinen is kept, napkins, breakfast tray if they want to have it at the bungalow.

  ‘That’s lucky,’ Augusta says, ‘Arthur’s a wonderful cook, like all French people.’

  Cliff ’s face lights up. Despite his piratical appearance, week-old beard, cheerful paunch and docker’s arms (swinging idly at his sides now that he has put the cases down), there is a touching vulnerability about him, something that makes you wonder whether, of the two, it’s not the female who wears the trousers. His face brightens because he is the club’s cook as well as factotum.

  ‘Cliff ’s made you dinner.’

  ‘Marseille fish soup and duck breasts à la Monclar.’

  He says ‘Ma-ar-zeille’ and ‘Moon-klarr.’

  ‘Miss Murphy phoned and said you’ll choose the wine. There’s champagne in the cooler.’

  Mandy and Cliff have gone. Augusta inspects the bedroom, pressing her fist into the mattress.

  ‘What about you? Where will you sleep?’

  ‘I spotted a chaise longue on the veranda.’

  ‘You can’t sleep outside! You’ll be eaten by snakes, alligators and mosquitoes.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘I don’t want to wake up a widow tomorrow morning. What would I do?’

  They have the clubroom to themselves, with its varnished wood panels, mahogany tables and chairs, a full-length photo of the founder, Patrick Murphy, Elizabeth’s father, the inevitable ship’s wheel transformed into a chandelier, the storm lamps that shed no light whatever, model half-hulls under glass, photos of the Bermuda Race and the reconvened America’s Cup of 1920, with Resolute overtaking Shamrock IV to win. Mandy has changed into black trousers and a white blouse with a bow. Behind the counter she is filling an ice bucket, fetching champagne and flutes, and switching on a record player. The voice of Sinatra. Later, from the kitchen’s swing doors, Cliff appears, shaved, in a white tunic and chef ’s hat, with a red handkerchief around his neck. Augusta and Arthur are sitting at a table next to a big bay window. Outside, in the blackness, the green and red lights wink at the end of the dock. There are no ship’s lights visible in the strait between the keys and the Florida coast. It is a strange atmosphere, like waiting at the theatre for a late curtain to go up. Without Sinatra’s voice they could be on board a ghost ship. Staring into the thick darkness, they begin to make out the tall palm trees, their crowns moving in the freshening wind.

  Mandy brings the bowls of bouillabaisse.

  ‘It looks like the cyclone’s heading for Cuba now.’

  Cyclone? They had no idea a cyclone threatened.

  ‘It’s been on the wireless for the last three days,’ Mandy says.

  Augusta turns pale.

  ‘What if the wind blows the bungalow’s roof off?’

  ‘There are plenty of blankets in the cupboard in our bedroom.’

  ‘Our bedroom? We can’t do that to Elizabeth!’

  ‘I love your sense of humour.’

  They invite Cliff and Mandy to sit down with them. Another bottle of champagne is opened. Mandy smokes a cigarillo, then another.

  ‘Havanas … The launches come at night. We barter petrol for cigarillos. Don’t worry if you hear any noise. Stay indoors.’

  Cliff has taken off his chef ’s hat. He is sweating from the kitchen and mops his forehead with his not particularly clean apron.

  ‘I know France. Twice after the war, I stopped over at Le Havre on a Liberty ship. There was nothing left standing.’

  Arthur tries to deflect the conversation away from the ex-sailor’s memories, but Augusta leans forward, feigning lively interest in his visits to Le Havre as a Liberty ship’s engineer.

  ‘We were plumb out of luck,’ Cliff says. ‘The first time, the cathouse had been flattened by an English bomb. The second time they’d passed some new law banning cathouses.’

  ‘That must have been so sad!’ Augusta says, in such a desperate tone of voice that Mandy starts laughing.

  ‘Well now, that’s funny, because last year I was telling Miss Murphy about my stopovers at Le Havre and she said the exact same thing as you!’

  ‘Does she come often?’ Arthur asks.

  ‘Didn’t see her for a year. I get the feeling Key Largo doesn’t interest her too much. You know better than I do, she’s more of an intellectual type.’

  Mandy, torch in hand, sees them back to their bungalow.

  ‘Tomorrow you’ll know the way by heart.’

  Augusta closes the mosquito panels, draws the curtains and locks the French windows to the veranda.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘What if they came to murder us? Them or their smuggler friends—’

  ‘Do Cliff and Mandy look like murderers?’

  ‘Well, of course it’s only after the crime that a murderer looks like a murderer.’

  He sees in her face that she is genuinely afraid and puts his arms around her. She pushes him away gently.

  ‘Let’s wait … Do you mind? I’d like … I’d like you to sleep on the couch with a knife next to you … I saw some big carving knives in the kitchen. Leave the door open. If anyone attacks me you’ll hear them.’

  Arthur takes too long to answer, hesitating between playing along with her and teasing her. She opens her suitcase and wails that she has left her nightdresses behind. Arthur gives her one of his shirts. When she comes out of the bathroom she is buttoned up to the neck and the shirt tail just covers her bottom.

  ‘I look hideous … You won’t love me any more.’

  ‘I’m afraid you may be absolutely wrong about that.’

  She offers him her lips and lies down, pulling the sheet up to her chin.

  ‘Is it true that the cyclone’s heading for the Caribbean? You don’t think they said that to make us feel better?’

  In the middle of the night she calls to him.

  ‘Arturo meu, Arturo …’

  ‘Here I am!’

  ‘Were you asleep?’

  ‘Yes, and I was dreaming that you were calling me for help.’

  ‘I don’t even know where we are.’

  ‘At Key Largo.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In Florida.’

  ‘Let’s go back to New York tomorrow.’

  ‘What if Mandy doesn’t want to take us?’

  ‘We’ll steal the boat.’

  ‘I don’t know how to operate it. But you ask her. I get the impression she wouldn’t refuse you anything.’

  ‘Do you mean that you’d stay here on your own, without me?’

  ‘I’m not blasé. It’s paradise here: champagne every day, the club to ourselves, a doll’s house in the jungle, and last but not least of this island’s enchantments, you wearing my shirt.’

  ‘I would never have thought you were so cynical.’

  A few minutes’ silence. Augusta’s voice is heard again.

  ‘If I ask you to come over here, will you swear to me that you won’t take advantage of the situation?’

  ‘Don’t demand the impossible.’

  ‘I thought you were a gentleman.’

  ‘A profound error.’

  Several more minutes pass, and she emits a plaintive cry.

  ‘I can hear someone moving around the house. I’m sure it’s Cliff.’

  ‘There’s no one there.’

  ‘How do you know? Peep through the shutter without opening it.’

  Arthur gets up and tilts the shutter, ignoring Augusta’s instructions. Grey and blue clouds are marching across a sky lightened by the moon.

  ‘Can you see him?’

  ‘I can only see a fabulous night.’

  ‘Since you don’t want to come to me, I have to come to you.�
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  She is standing in the doorway. He can only make out a white shirt, without head or legs. She runs to the couch and wraps herself in the blanket.

  ‘What about me?’ he says, stretching out next to her.

  She turns her back to him on the narrow couch. At dawn he pulls a corner of the blanket off her and curls up against her, slipping an arm over the top of her bare bottom. He doesn’t know what he is expecting, bliss perhaps, or for a wave to sweep him away to a new life that will begin at sunrise. Augusta is, or is pretending to be, deeply asleep, ignoring or pretending to ignore Arthur’s desire for her. She makes no movement when he draws away, feeling more bruised than if they had made love all night. It is daylight. He makes tea and fruit juice and goes into the garden to look for a red rose. A few steps from the bungalow, the shore curves away in a slender half-moon of tan sand. The sea laps onto the sand, and from the water there emerges a head, hair plastered flat, a shining face, and the naked breasts, stomach and legs of Mandy. Standing still, she offers her body up to the trembling light filtering through the palms and wild pines.

  ‘It’s the best time,’ she says. ‘You should do the same.’

  She picks up a towel from the sand and wraps it around her.

  ‘Where were you?’ Augusta’s groggy voice asks.

  ‘In the garden. A goddess, as naked as Eve, rose out of the water to meet me.’

  ‘Mandy?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think it was Cliff.’

  ‘She did it deliberately.’

  ‘That would be too flattering.’

  He puts the tray down on the veranda’s low table between two armchairs. Augusta sits, crosses her legs. A flash. As he stands there, shocked, she says, ‘Voyeur.’

  ‘Prick-teaser.’

  ‘Your shirts are too short! Don’t you have enough money to buy shirts with proper tails? What’s she like, this Mandy?’

  ‘Blonde.’

  ‘I always had a feeling you preferred blondes. What am I doing here? You knew I don’t like the sea …’

  She does not like the sea, that much is true, and she will never swim. She sits on the beach in a sari, hugging her knees, following Arthur with her eyes, calling him back if he goes too far, and is on her feet waiting for him with a bathrobe when he comes out.

  ‘You’re frozen!’

  ‘Let’s not exaggerate. It’s cooler on the beach. The water’s twenty-seven degrees.’

  He likes the way she dries him, rubbing him through the towelling bathrobe, his chest, right down his back, his stomach and the tops of his legs. She becomes bolder, and he springs shamelessly to life under the bathrobe.

  ‘You’re so disgusting! It takes nothing at all to get you started.’

  ‘Nothing? Well, I know someone looking for that nothing …’

  The saris she bought in Key Biscayne protect her from neck to ankles. When they go for a walk Augusta wears a wide panama hat Mandy has lent her. One afternoon, during their siesta, she lowers her last defence. Their pleasure is immense, and they consume it like famished teenagers, everything else retreating into the background, even the sight of Mandy emerging naked from the water every morning, her body gleaming with oil, wrapping a towel around her before she walks lightly back to the club.

  Yachts arrive from Miami and Flamingo for the weekend. The club wakes up. Two Asian waiters serve them. Where did they come from? In the kitchen a young woman, ebony-skinned and verging on overweight, helps Cliff. ‘He keeps her locked up during the week,’ Mandy says. On Saturday night there is dancing. A group goes for a late-night swim in front of the bungalow. The women’s shrieks and the men’s coarse laughter wake the sleeping egrets in the nearby creek. On Monday life returns to normal and the club and Key Largo belong to them once again. Cliff ’s helper and the two Asians have vanished. Mandy walks past the bungalow after her swim. Augusta is right, Arthur is a voyeur, although it is not because he finds Mandy attractive but because the enigma she represents has taken root in his brain. Rising from the water, she is like one of those bronze boy-statues discovered after lying submerged in the Mediterranean for three thousand years: the narrow pelvis, square shoulders, face helmeted in wet curls. Rarely does a smile cross her lips. Her voice, with its hoarse rasp, betrays a certain timidity. She says very little, and it seems likely that she uses a rough vocabulary because she doesn’t know any other.

  With the impressive insight that women possess about their rivals, Augusta says, ‘I never saw someone love themselves so much and look after themselves so well.’

  Arthur feels Augusta doesn’t love herself enough, at least not as much as he loves her.

  ‘Lucky you’re here then,’ she says, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder. ‘You need to love me for two, otherwise I’m going to go under. Do you think you can?’

  In the afternoons the full heat of the sun hits the bungalow. The coast of the Everglades is smudged and hardly visible in the mist rising from its swamps. Augusta is stretched out on the bed. He unties her sari and looks at her without touching her.

  ‘Are you comparing me to Mandy? I’m not as beautiful as her. I know I’m not. I shan’t age well.’

  ‘She won’t age at all. She’s made of marble. Marble is like ice. But you’re a flower. You need to be picked quickly …’

  And as he breathes all of her in, she slips into unconsciousness, eyes closed, fists clenched, not a word passing her lips, then, coming back to herself, pulls him towards her, kisses his forehead, strokes the back of his neck. Their separate pleasures spill over with dreams.

  The days pass. They don’t count them, so delicious is it to live only for each other. Key Largo is a well of forgetting. One evening Elizabeth phones. They are in the clubroom and Augusta picks up the receiver on the bar counter. Arthur only hears her brief, it seems to him embarrassed, side of the conversation.

  ‘Do you want to talk to him? … No! … He’s sending you a kiss … What’s the matter, Ellie? Everything’s absolutely wonderful, thanks to you … We’re coming back in four days’ time … No, we can’t stay here for the rest of our life. Getulio will be free on the 15th, he’ll need me to be there … No, no, please, don’t say anything … Don’t do anything … We love you …’

  She returns to their table, her head lowered, avoiding Arthur’s gaze.

  ‘Elizabeth sends you a kiss—’

  ‘– and won’t talk to me.’

  ‘We’re asking too much of her, I told you already.’

  He does not want to think about it, nor does he want to be asked to. He feels that this is a moment in his life when he needs to ignore all obstacles, even though, from Augusta’s embarrassment, he guesses she is concealing an important piece of the truth. At this instant he would scale mountains to reach her, if only she would stop refusing to look at him, staring down as stubbornly as she can, in a last-ditch effort to protect herself against too harsh an interrogation.

  ‘Augusta, we’re big enough to be able to say everything to each other.’

  ‘You’re big enough. Not me. Tell me: were you Elizabeth’s lover?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He does not hesitate for a second. But how he should have done! He knows it, knows that his ‘yes’ has travelled like an arrow, impossible to summon back unless he counter-attacks, not now but later, when they are alone in the bungalow and Augusta is undressing in front of him with the same delicious shamelessness as Elizabeth at her apartment or at Rector Street. At that moment she is exquisite, shaking free her night-blue hair, unknotting her copper-brown sari that reveals her body’s every contour, a body of such femininity in comparison with Mandy’s, although it is not Mandy who Augusta is comparing herself to now but Elizabeth, and the idea that Arthur has enjoyed with Elizabeth the same pleasures as with her has cast a sudden cloud over the innocence in which they have spent these happy days.

  ‘I suppose,’ she says, ‘she does it much better than I do.’

  ‘No. Differently.’

  Brushing her h
air, sitting naked on a pouf in front of the dressing table in the bedroom: this is how he would like to remember her, her lower back proudly arched, the shoulders of an adolescent, reflected down to her belly button in the glass that frames her face and her lovely, mature breasts that quiver with each stroke of her hairbrush.

  ‘I don’t know enough “things”,’ she says.

  ‘I didn’t expect to hear you of all people say that. And anyhow, let me tell you there’s no such thing as “things”, as you call them.’

  He is on dangerous ground, he knows, but he too has a burning question. The need to ask it has become irresistible, and the only reason he hasn’t already isn’t because he fears the answer but because the picture he has of Augusta is so flimsy. The slightest thing can tarnish its poetry. Who can say what instinct leads her to anticipate him? Unless it’s the feeling, shared by both of them, of standing on the edge of a precipice since Arthur’s open admission about the nights he spent with Elizabeth.

  ‘You never asked me if I had another man before you.’

  ‘I don’t need to.’

  ‘I knew he wouldn’t have the strength of character to keep it to himself.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles. Do I know him?’

  ‘You did know him.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes. Almost in your arms.’

  The brush has stopped at Augusta’s neck. Her gaze turns to him and waits, unflinching, perhaps seeking an answer, any answer, so long as it can chase away the cloud that is growing, magnifying, concealing them from one another. Concannon himself had murmured words to Arthur that had made him think, but was it really likely?

  ‘Getulio didn’t know anything. He would have killed him. Don’t go thinking—’