The Sun Place

by Ray Connolly

  Cassandra was flattered. At school she had played well, and during the past couple of days she had found all her old confidence quickly returning to her. That was the really seductive thing about Club Village. Everything about it made her feel youthful and confident. Despite her earlier reservations, she knew she was having a great time. She hoped she wasn’t going to feel compelled to write a condemnatory article about it.

  Thirty-Eight

  In keeping with general Club Village policy as decreed from Paris, the CV quarters were scattered throughout the village. When Quatre Bras had first devised the Club Village system he had had special quarters built for the employees, but over the years he had become firmly in favor of a more integrated system. By splitting up the CVs into units of two throughout the whole village the possibility of a CV ghetto was avoided, and the danger of a CV elite was mitigated. That CVs had exactly the same accommodations and food as guests also meant that the chief of the village was likely to hear complaints from the CVs should things not be running well.

  Like the guests, the CVs were required to double up, with the exception of the chief of the village, who, because this was the American zone, had a small three-room bungalow set in the pine glade between the beach and the restaurant. Even Sarojine, the doctor, was expected to share. She roomed with Sharon Kennedy. Florinda from the boutique and Chloe from reservations made a dazzlingly beautiful couple in one room, while Hillman and Brummer lived together in dour mutual spitefulness. Homer Wolford, the head of sports, roomed with Paul Chow, a pint-sized deep-sea-diving expert from Hong Kong, while the beautiful Sacha shared with Henry, an English boy from Gloucestershire.

  Although the formation of a CV elite was strictly frowned upon, there was nothing to prevent the employees of Club Village getting together after the nightly revue, when most of their work was done. Since the bar and disco were always packed with vacationing guests, the covered seats in between courts one and two, outside the tennis pavilion, had become their unofficial meeting place.

  Tuesday night was sharp and chilly, and there were fewer off-duty CVs relaxing in one another’s company than usual. The revue that night had been a fifties pastiche, with Homer Wolford miming to Fats Domino records, and Chloe and Florinda and a blond, bottom-heavy girl from California called Esme miming to “Short Shorts,” accompanied by half a dozen male CVs, their hair slicked back, cigarette packs stuck in the short sleeves of their T-shirts. It was probably one of the worst revues Elixir had ever seen, and Hardin’s bleak stare had not gone unnoticed, especially by David Le Parmentier, who was in charge of entertainments.

  “He’s an asshole, David. Forget him,” said Hector, the picnic lecher, who had done a particularly unsuccessful impersonation of John Travolta impersonating Elvis Presley.

  There was a murmur of agreement from the twenty or so other CVs. At the far end of the tennis courts, three couples were spread out, necking heavily. Everyone ignored them. Every night a little quiet screwing went on down here. The tennis courts were the places couples got to know each other. At Club Village it was almost a rule that sex came before affection.

  Miguel, the chief assistant on picnics, a Mexican whose pleasures in life were totally carnal, sucked on his teeth noisily and thoughtfully. He and Hector had both been given strict warnings that unless their conduct improved there would be no home for them in Club Village next season. “He’s a eunuch,” Miguel said contemptuously. Miguel considered that anyone who did not wish to take part in the beach party sex games he and Hector had devised was of doubtful potency.

  “He’ll turn Elixir into the most boring island in the Bahamas,” someone else suggested. “What do you say, Henry?”

  The English boy didn’t want to say anything. He had had more than his share of coconut punch at that night’s cocktail party and had staggered his way through the revue, helped along by the ever-solicitous and smiling Sacha. “I think he’s probably a good sort in his way,” Henry volunteered vaguely. “Bit of the old school sort, though. Pity really … bloody shame.”

  Someone passed him a bottle of rum and he took it. Since he was already drunk, he might as well get plastered. That was another of the dangers of Club Village. Since CVs were paid partly in bar shells, they quickly developed a taste for alcohol. Every year at least half a dozen slipped quietly out of villages around the world when their local chief had decided that their drinking habits were more important to them than their work. Even so, Club Village continued to pay in shells.

  Hector put an arm around Florinda’s waist. She stepped to one side and made a face at Chloe. Chloe shrugged. Sacha watched them.

  “We never had any trouble with Pagett,” said Paul Chow, the Chinese scuba chief.

  “Pagett understood this village,” replied David Le Parmentier. Pagett had never criticized his revues.

  “Pagett’s dead,” said Sacha bleakly.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Any more from the police about poor old Dick?” Lucien asked, looking toward Homer Wolford, who was the most senior CV present.

  Homer was lying on his back, drinking from a can of Lowenbrau. He shook his head, finished the can, and then, crumpling it up in his giant hand, tossed it into a litter bin. “Nothing. No sign of the boat. Nothing.”

  “It’s pretty easy to disappear down here,” said Hector. “The police can’t keep check on thousands of square miles of ocean. It’s the easiest thing in the world to make a man disappear.”

  For a few moments the CVs were busy with their thoughts. Then suddenly the sound of a low moaning filled the night. The group froze. Hector put his hand to his lips. Silently they all turned to gaze down to the far end of the courts, but it was too dark to see the couples lying there. The moaning increased. “Yes … yes … yes … yes,” came the low muffled cry of a female voice, followed by a sudden deep intake of breath and a scratchy, high-pitched whinny of excitement.

  A ribald guffaw and then applause arose from the rest of the CVs.

  “Someone just scored,” said Le Parmentier, peering through the gloom. “I think it was Joe.”

  “The earth moved,” said Esme. “Seven point five on the Richter scale, or else she was faking it.”

  “Who would want to fake it with Joe?” said someone else.

  “I had to,” said Helen, a girl whose favors had generally been shared among most of the male CVs. “It was the only way I could get him to come. He’s like a goddamn piston engine when he gets going.”

  “How would you like to try a jet-propelled superdrive, Helen?” purred Hector, reaching out and grabbing her thigh.

  Helen allowed him to molest her. “You know your trouble, Hector? You’re all talk.”

  The group laughed again, and then fell silent. Every night someone got drunk, and the rest of them talked and watched. Isolation, even in a paradise like Elixir, could get boring.

  “He’s a eunuch,” repeated Miguel after a moment. But he didn’t mean it. That was what he always said about everyone.

  A hundred feet away, far enough in shadow that nobody spotted him, stood Alex the bartender, spending his midevening break watching the CVs, as he did nearly every evening. The giggling, the sounds of sex from the far end of the courts, the popping of beer-can tops confirmed for Alex that these people were no good. He hated being here, but he forced himself to come and listen. It reminded him of what he had been like. It reminded him of the taste of sin.

  Thirty-Nine

  Hardin began his interrogation of Piebald Jane straight after breakfast the next morning. Under the stern and vigilant eye of Cassandra, Jane had slept soundly, and she awoke at seven with little more than a hazy memory of the events of the previous day.

  Quickly, while the two women dressed, Cassandra filled in the gaps in Jane’s memory.

  “His wife came in and caught us …?” Jane echoed, aghast. “Oh, Jesus. I’m almost certain it was his first time.”

  Cassandra had nodded balefully. “If there’s one thing certain in this world
it’s that every time a nice, decent married man strays off the straight and narrow, his wife is bound to find out. When the good guys are just a little bit bad, they always get caught.”

  Hardin was waiting for Jane in his office at nine o’clock. She tapped on the door, rather like a schoolgirl going to see the principal, and stepped inside.

  “Sit down,” said Hardin as Jane appeared meekly around his door.

  She did as he suggested. On his desk in between them were the pharmaceutical contents of her beach bag. She looked at them with mild embarrassment. Spread out like that they looked like such a lot. She had no idea she had been carrying so much around with her. She wondered whether he had had a sly toot from the little silver snuffbox in which she had stowed Michel’s gift.

  Hardin spread his arms across his desk and surveyed her closely before speaking. At last he started. “When you arrived here in the village on Saturday, Jane, you broke two laws. You broke the laws of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas by bringing dope into the country, and you broke the rules of Club Village. In the rules and regulations, a copy of which you were given when you became a guest member of the club, there is a section about drugs. It specifically mentions grass, cocaine, hallucinogens, and heroin. We don’t want dope in Club Village, Jane, and the government of the Bahamas doesn’t want it in this country, either.

  “Yesterday you caused a lot of people a great deal of trouble, and you behaved very badly. Now I could, and I probably should, turn you straight over to the local police and let them deal with you. But it might be possible for you and me to come to some arrangement.”

  Jane listened in open-mouthed amazement. Was this going to be some kind of sexual proposition?

  “If you’ll point a finger at the source of the stuff, I’ll give you your plane tickets back to New York, refund you the cost of your vacation, and forget all about it.”

  “Come on,” said Jane, almost wanting to laugh at him for believing her to be so naïve. “I brought the stuff in myself.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Hardin. He didn’t actually disbelieve her either, but even if she had brought it in by herself she almost certainly had a good idea of which other village residents had their own caches. He was baiting her because she might just know something.

  “Honest to God, I don’t know anything. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You’re acting like some kind of Gestapo blackmailer in a B movie. What do you think I am?”

  “How old are you?” ashed Hardin quietly.

  “I’m twenty-two going on forty,” said Jane.

  “Twenty-two,” repeated Hardin. She looked older. “Listen, I know you think I’m some kind of schmuck, don’t you? Old-fashioned? Isn’t that right?”

  Piebald Jane didn’t say anything. She was noticing, not for the first time, just what a handsome man he was. What was wrong with Cassandra that she hadn’t grabbed him instantly?

  “Well, I might be,” continued Hardin. “But I’ve got an education in dope as well. You know I was a pro tennis player for a while, and moving in those circles you get to meet a lot of rich and sophisticated people … people who can afford more or less whatever they want. Tennis is a fast life, and a relatively short one, unless you happen to Bjorn Borg.”

  Jane didn’t answer. She had no idea why he was telling her all these things, but his style was beginning to take on some of the aspects of a cautionary tale. She had heard dozens before, so she knew she was immune to them.

  “Well, for every Bjorn Borg there are five hundred other players. Right? And some of them care more about having a good time than playing tennis. It’s a good life. Lots of girls, travel, parties, money. I was one of those players, and I had a great time. I screwed around a bit, went to a lot of parties. And then one day when I was in Rome I met this girl. She was twenty-one. She wasn’t a player, but she was going through a time in her life when I suppose you could call her a tennis groupie. So we began an affair, and because I needed some time away from the circuit I stayed on for a month or so after the tournament, and got to know the kind of life she was into. She was French and had been living with a rich Roman socialite and his wife for a couple of years. It was what you’d call an open marriage, I suppose. The guy was some kind of papal prince and he had a big villa … maybe it was a small palace, I don’t know … just outside Rome.”

  Hardin stopped speaking. His voice trailed away and he swiveled around in his chair and gazed at the sea. Piebald Jane waited. She had no idea why he should be telling her this story. Cassandra would have been much more interested in hearing about his past love life than she was.

  “Anyway,” said Hardin at last, “I’d been used to dope on the circuit but never in the quantities that these people used it. The guy and his wife seemed to have a built-in resistance to it. Nothing hurt them. No matter how much they took they always seemed to breeze through it. But the girl was different. She slept a lot, and then she would get up in the evening and go looking for the nearest party and the best dope. She never used a needle, but she liked to try new things. So she got through a lot of stuff, a lot of speed, opium …

  “After a time I got bored and went off to earn my living playing tennis. I last saw her at the Rome airport. She was beautiful, and yet somehow tawdry. She had grown up to be a rich kid in Paris society, and then for some reason she became mixed up with these older people. They could handle themselves, but she couldn’t. They kicked her out a few months later.

  “She’s dead now. She went back to Paris and into a hospital. She was really straightening her life out again, and then one night she slipped back into her old ways. Whatever resistance she might once have had was gone. She was found dead in a bathroom at her parents’ home …”

  Hardin stopped speaking. Piebald Jane stared at him. She had heard similar stories from her parents, her teachers, even the personnel officer who had eventually fired her from her job as an airline stewardess. What they didn’t seem to understand, any of them, was that she was different. She could handle what she took. There was no way she was ever going to move into heroin. Only idiots did that.

  Hardin guessed what was going through her mind. “I suppose you’re saying to yourself, ‘What has all this to do with me? I don’t have that kind of problem,’ Am I right?”

  “Yes,” said Piebald Jane, “that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  Hardin picked up the snuffbox containing the coke and opened it. Then very carefully he spooned some onto the end of a silver paper knife, and, raising it to his nostrils, he snorted. “Not bad, not bad at all,” he said, sniffing. “You get this in New York?”

  Jane nodded. “I told you I did,” she said.

  “Oh, yes, that’s right.” Hardin stared at her.

  Now it was Jane’s chance to talk. “Listen, you might be the chief of the village around here, and that may mean quite a lot in Club Village, but you’re behaving like a fucking dictator. I mean, for Christ’s sake, you’re like the Narcotics Squad, Juvenile Hall, and King of the Island all rolled into one. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you to your reminiscences about your friend.”

  “And I’ll call the police,” said Hardin.

  “But I’ve already told you I brought everything with me.”

  “And I’ve already told you that I don’t believe you. Just point the finger for me. I know there’s a lot of stuff in the village, but I don’t know where.”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Self-preservation. If you don’t, I’ll pick up the telephone and you’ll probably spend the next month trying to explain to the local police just how you came to be in possession of so much junk. Believe me, it won’t be a fun ride. This isn’t New York. They take these things seriously down here. They’re very straight people, very religious, these Bahamians.”

  “You wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t risk the bad name of the club,” said Jane, beginning to believe for the first time that he might just do it.

  “I would …” The reply was flat an
d genuinely menacing.

  “You know, you’re crazy,” she said, beginning to feel the ground slide beneath her. God knew how long she might have to rot in some stinking Nassau prison before they even worked out what to charge her with, she thought. “You’re like some crusader, trying to put the world right. You can’t do it, you know.”

  “I know that. But at least I can do my best to make sure that this village isn’t a bolt hole for every druggie kid out of New York.”

  Piebald Jane tried to change the subject. “Did you know that my roommate Cassandra is hot for you?”

  Hardin simply stared at her, his eyes totally impassive.

  “Just give me a name,” he said, “one name, or the police can take care of you.”

  Jane caved in. For God’s sake, she told herself, it wasn’t as though she were snitching on a friend. What did it matter? If this lunatic wanted to run his island like some dictator, let him. She would be better off out of it. “There’s a guy called Michel,” she said. “French-Canadian. He wears a belt with special pockets. He says there’s a main supplier here. One of the staff. That’s all I know. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Hardin. “Guy on the travel desk will give you your airline tickets and refund you the cost of your vacation, less the five days you’ve been here. You’ll find you’re booked on the noon plane to Nassau, and then on to New York. I’m sorry your vacation ended this way, Jane.”

  “How do you know I’m telling the truth?” asked Jane, surprised at the speed with which the whole thing had been terminated.

  “I can’t be certain, can I?” replied Hardin. “But I’m prepared to take the risk. And, Jane … remember my story. It’s true.”

  With that, he jumped to his feet and, walking to the door, opened it for her.

  Forty

  Hardin found Michel telling the story of his life to a couple of lady bank clerks in the tropical gardens which ran between the tennis courts and the pool. He was sitting in a bamboo rocking chair and was dressed in white cotton trousers and shirt. A large straw hat protected his eyes from the sun. His guitar was spread lazily across his thighs and chest. The women sat on the grass. They were both plain and in their midtwenties, and were employed by the Bank of America in Paso Robles, California. Hardin had a memory for this kind of detail. They knelt at Michel’s feet like disciples, their arms, pink from too much sun, propping them up like sticks, flowered sun dresses spreading out from their bodies.