The Sun Place

by Ray Connolly

  It was the first time he had played Shakespeare, and though he had played the part as seriously as he was able, the audiences began to chuckle the moment he took the stage. And by the time the curtain fell at the end of the fifth act they were in hysterics. It was unfathomable. All that week he tried to get the proper reaction. But the more serious he became, the more audiences laughed. By the end of the run he had discovered a new performing identity and a new name. Unfortunately, not many directors were looking for Hamlet as farce, and the Tampa supper theater attended by Dick Pagett had been Hamlet’s first gig in months.

  Like a shadow, Hamlet moved stealthily around the edge of the pool and bar area. He was instantly the focus of all attention. Near the bar, Hardin was being briefed on beverage affairs by Lieberson, the head of wines and beverages. “I don’t believe you’ve met Hamlet yet, have you, James?” he asked.

  Hardin turned to see Hamlet make his way slowly up a ladder, which was propped at the side of the stage and which led to a trapeze. “I understand he’s funny,” he said.

  “Weird,” said Lieberson, “but the guests like him. It’s like having your own resident lunatic hunchback.”

  Hardin turned his attention to Hamlet, who was now unfastening the trapeze from the theater roof. Very nimbly, Hamlet pulled himself onto the bar and, pushing himself out, began to swing gently backward and forward, making long swooping runs across the bar just above the heads of the drinkers.

  Hardin watched in amazement. Slowly he heard the clown begin to speak. “How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge!” said Hamlet. “What is a man, if his chief good and marker of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.”

  Around the bar people began to giggle. Hamlet was swinging on his trapeze, cuddling the skull of Yorick and intoning Shakespeare in a voice as theatrically melancholy as doom, but spiced with the intonation of a New York cabbie, all gravel and adenoids.

  Hardin looked around the bar. “Is this all he does?” he asked Lieberson.

  “Sometimes he climbs to the top of a pole and does speeches, other times he hangs from the ceiling and speaks.…”

  “And that’s funny?”

  “The guests like it.”

  Hardin shook his head. He couldn’t see anything funny in this. He looked back at Hamlet. With his long, skinny legs and enormous codpiece, he looked like a broken spider.

  Suddenly Hamlet caught Hardin’s eye and winked slowly, deliberately, and lasciviously.

  Hardin looked quickly away. Instinctively, he didn’t like the man. Hamlet was more than weird. He was sick.

  Twenty

  Cassandra began making notes the moment she got back to her room. She was, she imagined, in some kind of shock. She had never seen another couple making love before, and certainly never expected to witness a pageant of group sex. Before the details blurred in her mind she wanted to record them. She was not sure how she felt. She was certainly shocked, alarmed maybe, and astonished. But also she knew that a part of her had been thoroughly turned on. She had not been a participant, only a bewildered voyeur, but all the way back in the boat, as couples regrouped and more rum was dispatched, she found herself wondering what might have happened if she had been drunk, if she had been relaxed, and if she were just a little less prudish.

  Lost in thought, she dressed for dinner. Wishing not in any way to be provocative, bearing in mind the events of the day, she chose a very pale green silk suit that she had bought at Ralph Lauren during one of her editorial briefing trips to New York. Already her skin was glowing from the first sun of her vacation, and, with her hair newly washed, she felt as though she had expelled the cobwebs of a European winter from her entire system.

  Making her way down to the bar before dinner, she suddenly began to feel a lightness she had not experienced in years. The fragrance of hibiscus and jacaranda lay heavily on the air, and the lights around the pool and bar threw a Technicolor glamor onto the waiting diners, who were grouped at tables talking and laughing. Every man looked tanned and handsome, while all the women were competing in displays of glamor.

  Cassandra made straight for the large pink plastic shell where a pretty Eurasian girl was dealing in the Club Village currency of multicolored plastic bar shells.

  “Five, ten, or twenty dollars?” asked the girl as Cassandra approached.

  Cassandra shrugged. She didn’t know the cost of drinks. How could she know how much she would need?

  “If it’s your first day I’ll give you twenty. You can always come back for more when you’ve spent it,” the girl said.

  Cassandra nodded.

  “Name and room number?”

  Cassandra gave the required information, signed a piece of paper that told her she would be charged the required amount at the end of her stay, and was handed a string of interlocking pink, gold, and navy blue shells.

  “The pinks are one dollar, the golds two dollars, and the blues are five,” said the girl.

  Cassandra thanked her and shouldering her way to the bar ordered herself a Campari and soda.

  “That’ll be two golds or four pinks,” said Alex, the bartender, as he pushed the drink, a tiny Campari with a very large slice of lemon, an avalanche of ice, and a flood of soda, across the bar.

  Cassandra handed him the chain of shells so that he might take what he needed.

  Two golds or four pinks, she repeated to herself. Was that four dollars? She couldn’t remember what the girl in the shell had told her. Could one minute Campari really cost four dollars? She felt she ought to make a note for her story and her expenses. The shell system of money had to be the simplest and most open con trick ever worked. There was no sensation of spending when you were dealing in colored toy shells. She had already forgotten the exchange rate. She remembered reading in the brochures the shells encouraged people to forget their money problems and had a leveling social effect. But that was nonsense. It may be a moneyless society so far as the vacationers were concerned, she decided, but it was a maximum-profit place for Club Village. And taking her Campari to a nearby empty table she resolved to make a special effort to remember in the future what she paid.

  Through the crowd of people Alex, the bartender, watched Cassandra sullenly. Although Alex did not know her, he did not like her. He did not like anyone in Club Village. No decent girl would ever be found in a place like this. No clean girl. Scrupulously he wiped the top of the bar, his eyes taking in the guests who assembled there every evening. They disgusted him. The mating rituals of two hundred people on the make almost made him shudder with nausea. Sometimes he imagined he could smell the semen as they leaned across his bar to buy the drinks that would stoke their desires. One day God would punish them, he told himself a hundred times a day.

  At twenty-eight Alex, with the dull, brooding eyes, and lank, brown hair, was a born-again. God had shown him the way and led him out of the depths of the depravity he had known since he was fourteen. Now he was repaying God by spitting in the face of daily temptation which was flaunted before him. Jesus loves me, he repeated to himself, as his eyes found again the figure of Cassandra. Jesus loves me.… Jesus loves me.… Jesus loves me.…

  “May I sit with you?” A very fair, extremely handsome boy in washed-out jeans, sandals, and white sweat shirt was smiling at Cassandra through pale blue eyes. He looked no more than twenty.

  Cassandra gestured to an empty table near by.

  “You arrived today, didn’t you?” the boy said after they were seated. He was sipping a Coke through a long straw. “I was at the airport. Sorry about the welcome. My name is Sacha.”

  Cassandra offered her name.

  “I expect you’re still feeling a little like a stranger,” said Sacha, still smiling. He was, thought Cassandra, one of the most beautiful and charming young men she had ever met, and she was embarrassed to be so overcome by a man so much her junior.

  “I’m picking things up,” she said, and then laughed.

  Sacha laughed easily, bu
t did not, as another man might have done, make an obvious joke.

  “Tell me, Sacha, do you work here?”

  “I’m a CV,” Sacha explained. “I’m in charge of things like set designs for entertainments, and some of the games. I generally help out wherever they need me.”

  “I didn’t see you at the picnic today.”

  Sacha looked surprised. “You went on the picnic?”

  “Well … yes. I heard it was an experience not to be missed,” Cassandra explained lamely, hoping for a response.

  “I guess it depends on the kind of experience you’re looking for,” said Sacha. “You don’t strike me as a picnic type. Did you enjoy it?”

  Cassandra found herself blushing for the first time all day. This beautiful boy had a way of staring straight at her, demanding that she answer truthfully.

  “I was surprised,” she confessed. “I hadn’t any idea what would happen. I didn’t want to become involved in the games. I won’t be going again, I can tell you that.”

  Sacha laughed softly. “Don’t worry. That’s the way a lot of people feel. Some of those guys running the picnic, and most of the people who play the games … they’re freaks, real lunatic freaks. Most of the CVs won’t take part.”

  “I can’t believe it’s Club Village policy. Is it?” asked Cassandra. “Do they have the same games at all the other villages?”

  Sacha shook his head. “Not from what I hear. For some reason Elixir seems to be the capital of group sex. I don’t know why. Maybe Dick … he was the last chief of the village … should have discouraged it. But I think perhaps he believed in giving the customers what they wanted, and there are always some who want that. He was a nice guy. A really nice man.”

  “He was the man who was drowned, wasn’t he?” asked Cassandra.

  Sacha nodded, but didn’t answer.

  Aware that she might have intruded into private grief, and careful not to behave like a reporter, Cassandra changed the subject. “Where are you from, Sacha?”

  “The Midwest … I’m a Midwest farmer’s son. Place called Summitville, Indiana, about seventy-five miles north of Indianapolis.”

  Cassandra considered the flowing golden hair, the delicate features, and clear, bronzed skin. “You don’t look much like a farmer to me,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too admiring.

  “When I got out of high school I was off that farm faster than a Le Mans start. I went to school in California … theater arts, design.”

  Cassandra nodded. This boy had a way of talking that was instantly intimate. Somehow all the people around her having drinks before dinner faded completely. He was so pretty, so sympathetic. He could recount the most banal details and make them fascinating. It was, Cassandra thought, a most uncanny gift. And while she scorned herself for being taken in by it, she could not help admiring him.

  At that moment they were joined by a couple of girls—Chloe, the beautiful short-haired French girl from reception, and a vivacious green-eyed beauty from the boutique whom Sacha introduced as Florinda. This boy certainly attracted the best that Club Village has to offer, conceded Cassandra, as Sacha went off to buy all of them drinks from the bar. She was grateful to meet some of the more normal members of the village after her traumatic afternoon.

  Beyond the ridge of bush that ran like a spine down the curve of the island, the sun was setting, but not in a blaze of red. Instead it appeared to have already been lost in a deep sea of aquamarine. It was quite the most unusual sunset Cassandra had ever seen, leaving the palm trees standing sturdy and back-lit, like black paper cutouts.

  “Hello, everything okay?” Hardin asked as he joined them. Sacha and the two girl CVs moved deferentially to one side to allow him in. He acknowledged this with a curt smile. “Did you play tennis?” he asked Cassandra.

  “I went on the picnic.”

  His face fell. “Yes? What did you think?” he asked cagily.

  “I didn’t know what to think.”

  Hardin glared down at his hands. “Well, I do,” he said. “And so will some of those CVs when I’ve finished talking to them.”

  The three CVs present exchanged glances.

  “Were any of you there?” he asked.

  They all shook their heads.

  “Wise.”

  There was a silence. Then Sacha and the girls slipped quietly away.

  “How did you know about the picnic?” asked Cassandra.

  Hardin groaned. “I learned about it because some people came and complained. I was told before I left Paris that some of the picnics got out of hand, but the stories I heard today took some believing.”

  “They were true,” said Cassandra. “I thought Club Village had invented a new kind of vacation sport. I wouldn’t have believed so much copulating could go on in the whole of the Bahamas.”

  Hardin shook his head. “I’m sorry. It can’t have been a very pleasant first day for you.”

  “Don’t apologize. I’m not antisex. To each his own.”

  “By the time I’ve finished, this place will be cleaner than Disneyland.”

  “I didn’t take you for a prude,” said Cassandra.

  Hardin shook his head. “I’m no prude. Anything anyone wants to do privately is okay with me. In fact, the more they do the happier I’ll be, because I’ll know they’re having a good time. But public performances are out. If the Bahamian police ever came around during one of those exhibitions they’d be able to close us down.”

  “Could they afford to? Don’t they need you as much as you need them?”

  Hardin stared hard at Cassandra. “What kind of books do you edit?” he asked suddenly.

  Cassandra thought quickly, realizing she had been too inquisitive. “Art and religious.”

  Hardin nodded. “Which publisher?”

  Her mind went blank until she thought of the last two men to buy her lunch. “Sissons …” she said. “Sissons and Jones. Why?”

  Hardin grinned. “I was just thinking what nice ears you have,” he said playfully, changing the subject. Then before she could respond he stood up. “I’m afraid I have to have dinner with the senior staff tonight, but perhaps you’d care to join me some other time?”

  “That would be very nice,” said Cassandra. “I’ll look forward to it.” And, getting up, she joined the line of people making their way into the dining hall.

  Twenty-One

  By ten o’clock Hardin was well prepared for his meeting with the staff. He had spent the entire first day examining the workings of the Elixir village, and he was a thorough man.

  It had become clear that this village was not being run as Quatre Bras would expect. There was a casual attitude in most of the staff that would never have been tolerated in the European villages. While it did not bother him much that the reputation of the organization was at risk, it infuriated him to realize that so many guests were not getting full value for their money.

  He also suspected that the prevailing sloppiness could be dangerous in all kinds of ways, because it encouraged people to take risks and cut corners. Hardin did not know what had happened to Pagett, but it was possible that he might not have met with his accident had he run a tighter ship. And Hardin was determined not to meet with an accident himself.

  He had called the meeting purposely for ten o’clock, since it was the time of evening when virtually all the staff would be off duty, when guests were generally sitting around the bar drinking, or dancing.

  The meeting place was in a wing of the dining hall, which had purposely been cleared early. At exactly one minute to ten Hardin left the small bungalow he had inherited from Pagett and walked across the lawn, now damp with dew. From the dance floor he could hear the sounds of a local reggae band. A canopy of stars was slung across the sky, their different colors as bright as lights on a Christmas tree.

  As he entered the dining hall a hush fell over the assembled staff. His behavior at the airport that morning had been thoroughly reported.

  He made his way through
the crowd to a low stage which was there for occasional dinner-hour entertainments. He looked at his audience. Counting tennis coaches, diving team, men to look after the boats, transportation staff, and the non-Bahamian kitchen workers, there were almost one hundred employees.

  Stepping up onto the stage, he smiled at his staff, but it was a smile without warmth. He took a deep breath and began. “I think most of you will have seen me around the village at some time today,” he said, aware that the palms of his hands were damp, “but for those who didn’t meet me—my name is James Hardin, and I have come here as replacement for Dick Pagett. I would like to say a formal ‘hello’ to all of you. I hope we’re all going to get along well.”

  A murmur of agreement ran around the staff. Someone shouted an ironic “Hear, hear.” Hardin turned his eyes in the direction of the caller. The way to handle sarcasm was to top it.

  “I’m glad you all agree, then,” he said, “because that is one of the few things we are going to agree on this evening. Let me make one thing very clear right from the start. I don’t like a great many things I’ve heard about this village, and I like even less some of the things I’ve seen today. So if any of you want to leave, you can pack your bags. First thing tomorrow, we’ll put you on a flight to Nassau.”

  No one moved. Hardin’s eyes flicked around the CVs. They were, he had to admit, a particularly attractive lot. Quickly his eyes picked up Florinda, the pretty girl from the boutique, who was sitting with Chloe and Sacha. Farther toward the back sat Lieberson, the head of wines and beverages, with Eugene Waterman, the chief accountant. Waterman did not deserve the verbal roasting, since the village was extremely profitable, and that was rare for a new village. Homer Wolford, the head of sports, was standing alongside Sharon Kennedy. Both had been very close to Pagett, and Hardin could see the resentment in their eyes as he began his tirade.