The Tropical Issue

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Ferdy’s eyes glistened with sorrow from not having his camera. Then they stopped glistening as I noticed who was sitting next to the bed and dug him in the ribs.

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is Eduardo.’

  It was, too, although he didn’t have his hat on. He got up, wearing the same grin that went from ear to ear under this huge Pancho Villa moustache and said, ‘But Senhora! So generous, so kind over the hat! And this is the Senhora’s husband?’

  I believe in attack.

  ‘Eduardo,’ I said. ‘Where is Mr van Diemen?’

  The smile met round the back of his neck. ‘The Senhora knows Senhor van Diemen! But naturally, the Senhora and her husband know all of importance on Madeira. Eduardo is glad to have served her.’

  ‘Where?’ I said. ‘We want to speak to Mr van Diemen. Urgently. Is he here? Was he here yesterday?’ I waited, and then said, ‘Eduardo, it would be worth a lot to me to know just what Mr van Diemen has been doing. An awful lot.’

  Eduardo exchanged dimpling smiles with his mother-in-law and turned back, all attention.

  ‘Mr van Diemen? This visit, alas, I have not seen him. Since we met, the Senhora and I, have I not been here, to look after my wife’s family? They will tell you. Not a step have I stirred from the house these three days, except to go for the priest and the doctor.

  ‘Mr van Diemen? No. But why come to me? There is an office in town, a big office. There you will get your answer.’

  He produced this great smile, and held it. I gazed at him, and so did Ferdy, and so did everyone else in the room except the baby, who suddenly got filled to the brim and fell off the slopes.

  A jet of milk hit the ceiling and fell like a tennis-court marker along and down Ferdy’s tanned head and fawn whiskers.

  Ferdy said, ‘Rita?’

  I knew it was awful and they were all lying and everything, and I was heartsick myself underneath it all, but I’d never seen anything so brilliant as the horror of Ferdy’s face at that moment. Even though I shut my eyes and dug my teeth in my lip, I could feel the tears of laughter hanging on to all my lashes.

  By the time I opened my eyes, Ferdy was laughing too, politely, along with everyone else, and wiping his head with his hankie.

  We thanked Eduardo, drank our wine, and got out, leaving another pittance on the bed for the baby. In the car, I said I was sorry.

  ‘It is the first time,’ said Ferdy, ‘I have been zonked in the eye by a Portuguese baby. You realise we can’t prove anything?’

  ‘I know. But we haven’t proved they couldn’t have done it,’ I said. ‘Van Diemen could have got Eduardo to do things for him. He must have, or Eduardo would have shopped him. They could have planned the sledge bit between them. They could even have planned—’

  ‘Rita,’ said Ferdy. The mist had cleared. He was driving quite carefully down back to the coast again, honking at bad corners and thinking. He said, ‘Even if van Diemen and Eduardo were both seen outside the villa the night Kim-Jim died, how could they possibly have killed him? That’s the real facer.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  After a bit, he said, ‘Then what next? Say the word. I’ll do anything you want. You could try to get Eduardo alone, if you want to see what a really big bribe could do. If you think it’s worth it.’

  I said, ‘I don’t think he’d take it, even if the family weren’t there. He’s sort of a family man. I don’t think he’d think twice about fixing that sledge trip. Or any other kind of stupid, dangerous trick. The thing is . . .’

  ‘You liked him,’ said Ferdy. ‘And you don’t think he would deliberately set out to murder.’

  I thought that was very decent, considering how, one way or another, they had soaked him. I said, ‘I did like him.’

  ‘I could tell,’ said Ferdy. ‘He’s got your sense of humour. Well, what? What do we do next?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I really didn’t. And it wasn’t fair to keep Ferdy dangling. He had his own work to do. I said, ‘Natalie wants to get back to London.’

  She had some meetings to set up for the film. Since Kim-Jim died, she hadn’t asked me again if I wanted the contract, and I hadn’t told her.

  Ferdy said, ‘Will you stay with her? With that money, I suppose you can do anything you like.’

  ‘It’s too soon. I don’t know that either,’ I said. ‘But if she wants me, at least I’ll go back to England with her. By the time she’s ready for the next trip, I’ll know what I want to do.’

  ‘Plenty of work in London just now,’ Ferdy said. ‘The Princess’s wedding. And they’re doing a telly film drama series of that American book. Nice work there, if you want it.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  We were nearly back at the villa. Ferdy drew in, and stopped the car, and turned and looked at me.

  ‘Poor Rita. You bloody miss him, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to pry, but you know the questions everyone is asking. Sugar daddy? Future husband? Real daddy, even?’

  The idea of Kim-Jim as my father made me snort, which I suppose was the idea.

  All the same, in a way Ferdy deserved an answer. And Kim-Jim deserved that folk thought of him decently, as he had been.

  I said, ‘Of course he wasn’t my father. And I didn’t go to bed with him either. Ferdy, we’d only met once before.’

  Ferdy’s round eyes were gazing at me quite seriously between the earrings, and I tried to explain.

  ‘He was just a nice, lonely man who needed to talk shop with a pal. I don’t know why he picked me to leave his money to, except that he didn’t have anyone else. I was sort of his cats’ home.’

  Ferdy didn’t speak. I went on sitting, and he went on looking at me. Then he took a spike of my hair on either side and turned my face round, and grinned at me.

  ‘What’s this cats’ home?’ he said. ‘Who named you the Scotch Bird of Paradise? King Ferdy, the world’s best photographer. Who’s going to take London by storm, and to hell with Madeira and the rest of the world’s sweaty islands? Rita Geddes, the world’s best make-up artist. Check?’

  Ferdy can get very sentimental. Singing ‘The Song of the Flea’ really suits him much better. But he means well.

  He started the car again then, and we topped this little rise, and we saw this long, good-looking ship, big as a liner, moving slowly out of Funchal harbour.

  Flying above it, nastily, brazenly, jauntily, was the blue and yellow flag of the Coombe Banana Company.

  We had had a fruitful morning. We had been very clever. I had got to like Eduardo even, once I’d seen him again.

  But if Roger van Diemen had been on the island when Kim-Jim died, he was surely off it now.

  Chapter 11

  Next day, the Curtises arrived at Reid’s, nursed their jet lag, and then turned up for lunch at Natalie’s for a sort of doom party, with everyone who had coped with Kim-Jim’s death.

  Ferdy said he wasn’t going. Carl Thomassen, his Sexy Flower Book botanist, had flown in with the text, and he and a young friend planned to work on the diagrams. Underneath, Ferdy was being quite serious. The book was important, and he liked what he did to be perfect. As his assistants all knew.

  Maggie said she wasn’t going either, and then changed her mind as soon as she heard Johnson had accepted.

  I didn’t want to lunch, but Natalie said it was only fair to Kim-Jim’s own flesh and blood. They might be, as she and I knew, among the wealthiest in the American entertainment industry, but still must feel a natural interest (she said) in anyone who had meant so much to Kim-Jim.

  That was the nearest she had ever come to a jab over that will. Even then, there was nothing personal about it.

  Kim-Jim’s death had upset her. But she’d have shown the same kind of shock, I now saw, if Dodo had died. The services Kim-Jim supplied were, in her eyes, all part of the job.

  And he in his turn had been the perfect servant-companion. He admired her. Instead of fighting his way to the top in the real world, he did it all
at second hand, by smoothing the way for Natalie. And later, out of sheer kindness, for me.

  I should have expected that will, if I’d understood their relationship better. He didn’t want to remember his family. And he knew that to bequeath his worldly goods to the great Natalie was out of the question. Image-building, after all, was his business.

  I didn’t want to be stuck with his family either, but I went down to join the lunch-party in the end. On my own terms. Image-building is my business as well.

  It didn’t go as I’d planned.

  They were having drinks when I came downstairs to the sitting-room and everyone looked up: the shining Mr Kazimierz and Maggie on a footstool beside Johnson and Natalie and two new guys accepting double martinis in basins from Aurelio.

  Natalie looked at the stripes on my face for a moment, and then simply introduced me, smiling a little, in the quiet voice she was using to the newly bereaved.

  She said, ‘We never know what to expect when Rita comes in. She’s the most exotic thing in Madeira. Rita Geddes, Kim-Jim’s great friend . . . Rita, this is Kim-Jim’s brother, Clive, and Porter, his nephew.’

  It didn’t go as I’d planned, because they were fantastic.

  Clive was tall, like in his picture in Kim-Jim’s room, and carried himself well; but not like a guy who’d gone to ballet classes. From the set of his shoulders and his handshake, I guessed that he spent a lot of time in pools as well as posing beside them, and probably played a hell of a lot of tennis as well. His Californian tan was quite something.

  It was possible that, as I’d wondered, the black hair was tinted, and the red moustache was certainly touched up.

  It didn’t matter. What looks tarted-up on a middle-aged piece of flab looked fine on a fit, active man who seemed ten years younger than he must be. His eyes crinkled, sending lines to his ears like a protractor, and he had a small mouth, like Kim-Jim’s, with the teeth dentally weeded out to make a nice smile.

  He said, ‘I guess you and I have a lot to say to one another, about Kim-Jim and everything. Back there in L.A., we know your work, Rita. We know the kind of artist you are. I’m real sad at what brings us together but I wanted you to know that we have a lot in common, and the Curtis family respect you.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said the nephew. ‘Natalie, you didn’t tell us.’

  I didn’t even stop to see if Natalie winced when Porter used her first name, I was so bowled over.

  As I’ve said, Sharon Proost, nay Curtis, was a smart woman, as her videos show. Her son, Porter, wasn’t just smart, he was gorgeous.

  He was six feet two, and red-headed, with the sort of clinging half-curly hair that stays neat no matter what, like heat-treated nylon.

  He had brown eyes like cufflinks, and a straight nose with a blunt end, and a small mouth that let you see two bright front teeth when he smiled.

  He was wearing a shirt and tie too, but his shoulders bulged with muscle still growing. I supposed he’d be nineteen. Maggie’s age.

  I looked at Maggie.

  I was surprised. Instead of eyeing Porter and Clive, or at the very least, staging a show for them, she was still firing the big guns at Johnson. I could hear her drawling voice, hopefully needling him, and see the intent look inside the eyeshadow. Her finishing school had been pathetic about make-up, although what she usually wasn’t wearing from the neck down more than made up for it.

  Johnson himself just wore that bloody polite look I remembered over his pyjamas. Above Maggie’s Vidal, I could see the twin lenses trained on me, with a pair of black eyebrows sitting higher than usual above them.

  A real Owner bally sick stare.

  To hell with Johnson. I stared back, and gave a hullo look to Mr Kalimazoo and brought my eyes right back to Porter Proost, who was saying, ‘Wow! I tell you, ma’am, there were some things Kim-Jim didn’t mention . . . Natalie, I’m sitting next to her.’

  Mourning sort of slid out of Natalie’s voice. She said, ‘You’re my guests. You must sit anywhere you like.’ And I could see Aurelio put the drinks tray down and slip off to change the place cards without being told.

  I bet I’d been put between Kalimazoo and the wall.

  It was like having Kim-Jim back, almost. I sat between Clive and Porter, and they knew all the films I’d done, and about the comedy series, and my work for Ferdy and everything.

  They wanted to borrow my video tapes. They fixed to send me tapes of their own, with work Clive had done for Gothics and M.G.M. Biblicals, and their father, old Joseph, for cops and classics.

  They didn’t talk about Kim-Jim very much, except to say he’d always been the quiet one of the family, and they hadn’t been surprised when he decided he wanted to get out of the industry. They said to Natalie how very happy they were that he’d had such a wonderful time sharing her home.

  Halfway through, Clive, realising he’d been neglecting Natalie, began to talk to her about her filming, and Porter concentrated on me, with his teeth and his brown, teasing eyes.

  He was a great talker. That time, I didn’t think of Kim-Jim at all.

  It was just about evening when they left, and I’d shown Clive and Porter Kim-Jim’s workroom, and Porter had said he was going to be in London when Natalie was, and he’d like to see something of me, and Clive said that he knew the guys who were turning that American book into a film, and if I liked, he’d introduce me.

  Natalie said, ‘I hope you’ll tell me if you’re going to persuade Rita to do something else.’

  And Clive’s backache laugh lines all vanished and he said, ‘Mrs Sheridan, I’m so sorry. We thought Rita might need some work. But if she’s staying with you . . . That’s great. That’s marvellous. It couldn’t be better.’

  There was a sort of silence, while they all looked at me.

  We were all standing in the hall, waiting for the cars to drive Johnson and the two Curtises back to Reid’s, and Maggie and Kalimazoo back to the Sheraton. Behind us, Maggie was still firing at Johnson, and he was returning 17b replies, briefly, at intervals.

  At this moment, she was saying, ‘Doesn’t the hotel or someone fix you with girls? Is this Lent? Or what’s wrong with you?’

  I would have thought more than twice before saying that, even tiddly as she was. But when the Swiss have finished with you, you don’t care.

  She got a one-word reply from Johnson. ‘Satiety?’

  Maggie said, ‘I don’t think you bloody can. What hit the ground when you crashed?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Johnson said. ‘Implant surgery. They gave me this irrigation system for growbags. Nine pounds of tomatoes, last year. That’s your car. Do you think you can walk to it?’

  She was crazy about him. I watched her lurch to the car, and wondered if I should tell her or not about Raymond.

  Then Clive said, ‘Then you’re staying in private work, Rita?’ and I remembered what we’d been talking about.

  I said, ‘I don’t quite know yet. But I’ll be in London. If Porter’s to be there, we could meet sometime.’

  Natalie, I suppose, was less than pleased, but she didn’t show it. Only after they were all away, and I was alone with her in the dressing-room, making her up for a big party that evening, did she say, ‘You liked the Curtises?’

  ‘They were O.K.,’ I said.

  ‘Part of cinema history,’ she said. And after a pause, ‘So I gather you don’t mean to retire?’

  With the Curtises about, I was taking extra care with Natalie’s face that evening. I said, ‘I like my job and everything. You need to know about the Josephine film?’

  She said, ‘I would like to have it settled, of course. And I have offered you Kim-Jim’s job. If you don’t want it, I shall need to see about someone else.’

  I didn’t know. I said, ‘Can I tell you in London?’

  The way she looked, when I’d finished with her, she couldn’t not agree.

  Two days later, she was back in Claridge’s, and Maggie was back in the London flat she shared with a girl
friend, and Kalimazoo was back in New York, and the Curtises were back in L.A. with the coffin, and inside it all I’d been hoping Madeira would give me.

  Where Johnson was, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. He said goodbye to Natalie, but he didn’t say goodbye to me. He was the one who told me to go home to Troon, because nothing would happen. Before we all flew out, Dolly had sailed from the island.

  To find where Ferdy was, you only had to ask a Virginian Poke. With his botanical doctor in tow, he was completing his survey of flowers on Madeira.

  There is no such word as brothanical.

  Before I left the island, I phoned my stockbroker, and when we landed, I booked myself into the Hilton. Then I fixed myself two days of absence from Natalie, and flew north to Glasgow.

  Senility’s not a nice thing. Sometimes it hits quite young people, and sometimes it never gets to you at all.

  Robina, my mother, was still quite decent-looking, except for this big conk we all have. But this time she wasn’t just muddled: she didn’t know me at all.

  The nurses hustled me out after a bit, mainly because they hadn’t seen my face stripe-painted before.

  My aunt had, and left me in no doubt, again, how she felt about it.

  I listened to all the moans about the nursing-home fees and what needed done to the house, and how the lower classes were boors nowadays. I paid all the bills she hadn’t already paid, and arranged for the bank to pay more every month into her housekeeping. I went back to London.

  Natalie was still having talks and didn’t need me. I rang a few people to say I was around, and a lot of calls began to come in from old clients booking special occasion make-ups, mostly for the same days.

  I rang one or two of the T.V. companies, and a man I knew who knew a man who was scripting the big melodrama they were going to do on this American book.

  He said that he’d pass along the news I might be interested, but he’d heard that the Curtis family were going to work on it.

  One of the T.V. companies said the same thing about their new thriller series.