The Green Flash

by Winston Graham

  The next morning I woke in my own bed with a thick head and couldn’t believe I’d said so much – got into a state of resenting it like hell. In vino Veritas, drunken inspiration, yak-yak my tongue had gone, spilling it all like a broken flour bag. But I recalled – or thought I recalled – that her little promptings, her sympathetic questions in the darkened room, had come at discreet intervals, inviting me to go on. Maybe she hadn’t been as drunk as I was – that hard Russian head – and had baited the trail for me to follow. In future when the proper occasion turned up she’d be able to fling it back at me. Nothing I did out of step now – or what she considered out of step – would fail to be related to what I had told her last night. Like a second-rate shrink she’d have the answer for everything.

  All Sunday I was in a filthy mood and her teasing good temper made it worse.

  Why, she asked, did all the West Indian birds have such big feet? They all looked as if they were wearing skis. And were these little yellow birds that stole our sugar the same as those in the old song ‘Yellow bird, way up in banana tree’? And how did she address the Governor Generals wife tomorrow – what was her title? And thank the merciful God for a small breakfast, for one ate altogether too much here. And if we were using our Moke today we must be careful to tip the overnight rain off the hood before we started: otherwise we’d be engulfed in a cataract. And did I mind not going to the caves? She’d always fought shy of them since she once went deep into the caves of Majorca and the lights failed.

  Shona wasn’t noted for her angelic temper and at the least she would normally soon have barked back at me, wanting to know what grisly bear she was living with or if over-drinking had produced too many spots on my liver. The fact that she didn’t showed she cottoned on to my feelings about the talk of the night, and was ‘making allowances’. Making allowances, for Christ’s sake! Even minking the words set my teeth grating and put me in a lousier mood than ever. We went water-skiing that morning and then after lunch had a stand-up row, raking up every subject except the one that mattered.

  When it was spent we were spent, and separated, and lay and slept and smoked and fumed in our separate cottages. We met again in time not to see the green flash, and by dinner we were on speaking terms. But we ate little and drank less, and after the meal went to our cottages with isolation the only need.

  Isolation was certainly my need. My tongue tasted like a sewer and I felt as if, because I’d given her some part of my mind, I would never want her body again.

  When it came time to change for the luncheon, I went out into the garden and picked myself a bougainvillea flower for my buttonhole. When Shona saw it she made no comment and we walked to the taxi, which she insisted we take, otherwise by the time we got to Bridgetown her hair would, she said, be standing out like a punk-rock star.

  She was in cool grey silk, with grey tights and black patent pumps. Her only ring, a ruby, glowed on her hard thin finger.

  Government House was a handsome eighteenth-century shack, guarded by Barbadian soldiery, and we had to pull in and wait at the guardhouse while they telephoned to ask permission for us to proceed. An adjutant greeted us at the door and led us upstairs to meet Sir Anthony and Lady Millerton and half a dozen guests. We drank rum punches and made chat until lunch was dished up.

  They were a fairly usual mix: the lieutenant commander of a British naval frigate that had just put in to Bridgetown; a female choreographer on holiday from Paris; two well-known television stars, the girl a sexy piece who was seated next to me; the editor of the local paper and his dame.

  We ate at the smaller table, while a pianist dealt out Liszt in the adjoining salon. Conversation was fairly boring. Shona, on Sir Anthony’s right, was as usual the object of special attention. I tried to be objective and compare her particular looks with those of the intelligent young critter sitting next to me. Felicity had all the puppy charm of a very pretty young woman. Shona looked hard, clear cut, spare, refined by the years, intellectual, yet never quite unattractive, always just feminine enough.

  The meal was modest; afterwards, over coffee and brandy, Sir Anthony Millerton came over to me. We’d had little to say to each other so far. Now he said: ‘I believe we have to commiserate with you – and also congratulate you. Did you know about it before you left England?’

  ‘About what?’ I said.

  ‘About … But I suppose you expected it, didn’t you? It was only a question of when.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I said. ‘I’m not with you.’

  He lifted his eyebrows and smiled. ‘You haven’t seen Saturday’s Times, then? No, I suppose not. Let me see, where did I put it?’ He raised a finger at a servant and sent him hurrying into the next room. I was rather more keen to chat up the television star, and waited blankly and not too politely for the servant.

  When he came, Sir Anthony opened up the paper and peered through a couple of pages before he found the item he wanted. Then he handed the paper to me. The paragraph he pointed out read:

  The death is announced of Sir Charles St Clair Abden, 12th Baronet, at his home at Lochfiern House, near Ullapool, at the age of 69. Charles Abden was educated at Ampleforth College and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in Law. At the outbreak of war he was commissioned in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and served in France, North Africa and Sicily, where he was awarded the Military Cross. After the war he returned to Scotland and spent much of his life managing his estate and working on behalf of his fellow Catholics both at home and abroad, particularly in Poland, which he visited twice. Sir Charles leaves a widow and two daughters, but his only son, Dr Malcolm Abden, the one-time Conservative MP for East Strathclyde and well-known broadcaster, was killed in a motor accident in 1972. The baronetcy passes to his nephew, Mr David Abden, who lives in London.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I

  We flew home on the Wednesday.

  ‘Absolute rubbish,’ I said. ‘Rubbish and hogwash.’ This or variations on it for about the tenth time as we boarded the plane. I had put it a thought more mildly at Government House, but Sir Anthony Millerton had looked surprised at my peevishness.

  ‘It’s just a crashing bloomer,’ I said. ‘Malcolm had at least four children; four or five. One of them will obviously inherit.’

  ‘Unless they are all girls,’ Lady Millerton put in.

  That thought hadn’t got through to me. ‘It’s some crackpot confusion of identity. Probably Malcolm’s eldest son is called David.’

  ‘But then he would not be living in London, would he,’ said Shona. ‘He could hardly be old enough.’

  ‘Would you like to telephone?’ Sir Anthony asked. ‘It would settle the matter quickly.’

  I shook my head. ‘I wouldn’t know who to phone.’

  ‘Do you not have a family solicitor?’

  ‘They may have one; I don’t know his name. My father was not on terms with his brother.’

  Sir Anthony said: ‘Would that explain … It did seem to me unusual that if you were heir to the baronetcy no one had informed you at the time of your cousin’s death.’

  ‘It’s obviously just a massive boner on the part of The Times,’ I said. ‘Malcolm’s eldest son is called David, and they’ve confused him with me. After all, take away the sentence ‘‘who lives in London’’ and the situation explains itself.’

  ‘And the word ‘‘nephew’’,’ said Lady Millerton.

  ‘As you remark.’ I showed my teeth at her grimly.

  If it should be true …’ I said to Shona on the plane.

  ‘Yes? What is so bad about it?’

  ‘I suppose it would be possible to throw up the title.’

  ‘Why should you?’

  ‘I can’t take anything from them!’

  ‘You are not taking anything from them. You are simply accepting your ancestry.’

  ‘I don’t think much of that either!’

  ‘Ever since last Saturday,’ she said, ‘you have been in a black mood. I think you
have felt so grumpy that you have not even been on speaking terms with yourself!’

  ‘If I was cross-grained it was for other reasons.’

  ‘Because you think you spoke too freely to me – talked too much in the night?’

  ‘You hyped it out of me.’

  ‘Is that how you saw it? I did not see it that way. Sometimes when something is very wrong and deeply felt, speaking of it to a close friend can be a form of therapy.’

  ‘Back to Dr Meiss, eh?’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I told you, I went to a shrink shortly after my father’s death.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I am not in his position at all! I am someone you care for a little and who cares for you. Talking in that way, confidentially, lovingly, cannot that help to heal, to alleviate? –’

  ‘Who said I wanted any healing?’

  She kept her mouth tight while the stewardess brought us drinks. Then she said: ‘All right, you don’t. Forget that it ever happened, forget that we ever talked at all.’

  ‘If we can.’

  ‘Very well, then.’

  Her skin looked overstretched in the reading light from above.

  ‘Good health,’ I said, touching her glass with my own.

  ‘Thank you. If you wish it for me.’

  ‘Dear hell! What d’you take me for?’

  ‘Sometimes these last few days …’

  ‘I’ve told you to forget. You’ve promised to forget. Let’s just remember our first ten days here. Eh?’

  She sipped her drink. ‘And the green flash?’

  ‘Which you never saw.’

  She looked at me. ‘Alas, no. Which I – which we – never saw.’

  II

  There was a letter waiting for me from a firm of Edinburgh law merchants. It was addressed to Sir David Abden, Bt. That made the bottom fall out of the lift. The letter said that on the decease of my uncle … I rang up and spoke to a Mr Macardle and told him it was not on for me to come to Edinburgh; would he send me what information he could on this unfortunate affair. He replied that he would be in London in ten days’ time and we could meet at the offices of Messrs Taylor, Taylor and Wellington, at New Square, who were their corresponding solicitors in London. The Glasgow Herald telephoned me and, a day later, the Dundee Courier and the Aberdeen Press. To all of them I said no comment. Which was true. I was speechless. The only one of my friends to ring was Derek Jones, who seemed chuffed with the whole thing. I told him he could have it for himself any time he wanted, together with a pound of tea.

  Mr Andrew Macardle, WS, was a thick-set elderly type in a black suit and flyaway collar. He looked just like a stage solicitor, except that one eyelid was lowered over a shrewd blue eye, giving him a squint of confidential slyness. All his clients, it seemed, must be deaf; or he was too used to speaking in court.

  ‘The situation,’ he shouted, ‘is quite a simple one. Dr Malcolm Abden had four daughters by his first wife, Lady Fiona, and one by his second. Sir Charles’ other brother, Duncan, was killed at Arnhem and died unmarried. When Dr Malcolm Abden met his death in that tragic road crash you became the heir presumptive.’

  ‘No one told me,’ I observed, remembering Millerton’s comment.

  ‘No, well, I questioned this with Sir Charles, but he thought it unnecessary. After all, he said, you were still only presumptive.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Mrs Abden, Mrs Alison Abden, Malcolm Abden’s second wife, was four months pregnant when her husband was killed.’

  I looked out of the window at the scowling sky – rather a change from the ultramarine of Barbados.

  ‘How they must have prayed for a son.’

  ‘No doubt. No doubt.’ Mr Macardle raised his voice so that I could hear better. ‘It’s human nature, isn’t it,’ he shouted. ‘ Sir Charles would clearly have been happier to have had a grandson to carry on the name.’

  ‘And with only me at deep extra cover. Enough to poison any man’s last hours.’

  ‘Sir Charles had a long-standing lung complaint,’ said Macardle severely, ‘resulting from a war wound.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘point taken. All the same it was a pretty, come-off losing his son in that way … I should think the whole family is sick, isn’t it, seeing the title go to a black sheep who’s never had anything to do with them and never wants to.’

  Macardle picked up some papers from the desk and winked at them with his collusive eye.

  ‘I think, Sir David, this is something you must discover for yourself. I believe they will fully accept the situation and help you in any way they can.’

  It was the first time anyone had called me that. Christ, I thought.

  ‘Would it be possible to throw up the title?’

  He drew in his breath as if the bath water were too hot for his big toe. ‘Nothing is impossible these days, Sir David. Peerages are renounced, so there should be no insuperable obstacle to your doing the same. But if I may say so, I think it would be a very misguided move.’

  ‘Presumably if I renounced it the baronetcy wouldn’t become extinct. There’d be someone else.’

  ‘The last time I saw Sir Charles, which was about six months ago, we went into the family history.’ Macardle raised his voice. ‘The tree, you understand,’ he shouted. ‘The tree. If you were to die without issue – or indeed I were to renounce the title – it would pass to a Mr Alexander Abden, your uncle’s cousin’s son – or his grandson – who are farmers in British Columbia. They have been lost sight of, but of course they could be traced. Could be traced if necessary. Though I trust it will not be necessary.’

  I thought round this for a minute or two. ‘Apart from the baronetcy, do I get anything else?’

  ‘Well …’ Macardle flipped at the papers in his hand. ‘Certain heirlooms. A house. Some land …’

  ‘You don’t mean the house where they live? Loch Something?’

  ‘Lochfiern House. No. That was built in the eighteenth century and is willed in the normal way. Wester Craig, about twenty miles north, is entailed with the baronetcy, and with it about five hundred acres, chiefly moorland, a stream, two crofters’ cottages, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Who’s there now?’

  ‘No one except a caretaker. The tendency of the – er – family has been to concentrate their attention on Lochfiern House. Wester Craig has simply been kept.’

  ‘As a ruin?’

  ‘Oh no. Oh dear no. It needs the money spending on it if one were to live there permanently; but it is perfectly habitable.’ Macardle could see I was stone deaf so he shouted: ‘Perfectly habitable.’

  I crossed my legs and thought about it again. ‘These papers you have; they’re simply the bare bones, I suppose; the legalistic bones of the inheritance. I shall have to consider for a few days … Until then …’

  ‘Clearly the first thing you must do, Sir David, is go up and look for yourself. I’m sure old Lady Abden will want to meet you at the earliest possible moment – and your other cousins. When can you go?’ I said: ‘I still have to make up my mind whether to take it.’

  III

  I worked round the clock during the next month. Against my long-held principles, but the best counter-irritant to hand. I also had a convenient bee in my bonnet over this new perfume Charisma, and I nagged at Shona. Seeing how it had originated, from TBM Ltd, and Mr Schmidt and his experimental monkeys, I felt that not enough attention was being paid to the 44 per cent of the human race which so far had resisted ideas of sex-related perfumes. Scent on a man was effeminate. Of course. A talc had to be given some masculine name like Old Leather or Woodbine or Big Spice. But these were really nothing more than spinoffs, just a part of the service. Even the best aftershaves were 96 per cent spirit and 4 per cent perfume, and if they stung like hell – as they all did – this was supposed to do your skin good.

  I persuaded myself that here was an opportunity for a new approach. No man of course wanted to stink of perfume. But if the monkeys were to be b
elieved, scent – smell – had a sex pull like a magnet on iron filings; this fact must be put to greater use. All women were sold their perfumes with that in mind; no advertiser ever made any bones about that. So why not in reverse?

  Shona and Leo Longford – who was coming much more to the top since Marks was sacked and John had retired – were both doubtful.

  ‘I like the name Semaphore,’ Shona said, ‘but previous attempts in this field have not been successful. At least two of the big companies have tried something similar in the recent past and they have fallen flat, with huge advertising bills and pyramids of unsold stock.’

  ‘It’s bound to come,’ I said. ‘Sooner or later. We’d need a few subtle changes from the formula of Charisma, but Schmidt and his chemists can fix that’.

  Leo had been tapping his teeth.

  ‘Would you use it, David?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘What, a perfume? No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Then why expect other men to be different?’

  ‘Because other men are different Some other men. I don’t mean the gays. There are ordinary men – an awful lot of ’ em – who don’t do well with women. They’re ugly – or clumsy – or just plain shy. And often the women do damn all to help. Men of this sort – if they could feel confident – would be on a new level. Just to have that confidence. They’d pay a lot.’

  ‘I think you are right, David,’ Shona said, ‘but timing is everything. We shall have to see.’

  In the end I decided to go back to TBM and tell them what we wanted. From then on for a bit it would be up to them.

  We returned to our fencing, and Erica was the next, to congratulate me on my inheritance, her eyes more than usually animated as she looked me over, as if expecting that a baronetcy might have altered my physique – which anyway she ought to know reasonably well already.

  That night Shona said: ‘When are you going to Scotland?’

  ‘I haven’t decided to accept the thing yet.’

  ‘Well, it’s a fait accompli, is it not? There is nothing more to do. If you wish to renounce it it will lead you into a lot of tedious legal complications. Anyway, I do not see what objection you have. For my part …’