Operation Nassau

by Dorothy Dunnett

  I shut the door, and taking off the wig, felt the wound on my scalp with exploring fingers. It was doing all right. So was I, I decided. I scrubbed up, re-dressed, and checked the revolver was still in my bag. Then I went out to join Denise and Bart Edgecombe.

  The sunset was of course quite spectacular: it dropped slowly into its own copper reflection, as we drove south-west to the clubhouse called Tamboo. I realized then what a lot of the island I still had to visit. The west side was greener and lusher than the east, and along the fairways of the golf-course and beyond and behind were a great many villas, discreetly shielded by palm trees, with lights from veiled windows beginning to glow in the dusk.

  ‘The yachting marina’s over there,’ said Sir Bartholomew. ‘And the new waterfront houses, where you can park your boat on your doorstep. But just the prototype so far, of course. They’re still pile-driving the quayside. We’ll show you all that tomorrow.’

  The Tamboo golf clubhouse had a deep, grotto-like entrance in a façade of natural stone. Above one could see a terrace, and a pair of architectural rooftops like twin wedges of Gruyere cheese. Inside it was cool and airy, with a haze of greenery encased in rope baskets, and a pink unpolished brick floor. Yellow and red hibiscus blossoms lay on a glass table surrounded by tall wicker chairs.

  Edgecombe had gone to sign me in at the long counter. It had a register and a radio-telephone set lying on it. A thought struck me, and I strolled along after him.

  A tall figure uncoiled from behind one of the high-backed Italian chairs and trod softly over beside me. ‘If you’re looking for Mr T. K. MacRannoch,’ said Wallace Brady blandly, ‘I’ve located him for you. And he’s right here.’

  And from the edge of the neighbouring armchair, peeping and smiling, I saw the Japanese golfer. The man I had last seen in that foursome behind me, on Paradise Island. ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘He likes to be called Mr Tiko. The other name is a bit of a mouthful,’ Brady said. ‘You know the last time I met you, we were in the middle of a conflagration in the Bamboo Conch Club? Then you all rushed out the door like you were crazy, and I never even knew what had happened until Sir Bart here turned up today and told me. Your friends sure carry a lot of money around.’ His eyes, which had been struggling to keep off my hair, now candidly roved around and examined it. ‘Say,’ he said. ‘Am I allowed to say I think it’s great?’

  So Edgecombe hadn’t told him about the incident in Miami. I was thankful for his discretion, if irritated with Wallace Brady’s lack of it. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And how is the Crab Island bridge coming along?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh, so the Begum told you about that? It’s my spare-time baby, you know. The big job’s over here, or will be till it’s finished, but I couldn’t resist having a crack at that little problem. I think she’ll do.’

  ‘Is it finished?’ I said.

  He was surprised. ‘Hell fire, it takes a couple of weeks to fling these things together,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you see it as you flew over?”

  I made a mental resolution to eschew Bossa Novas and try something else. ‘Then how did my father travel to Crab Island?’ I asked. I assumed without question that the whole island had taken part, willy-nilly, in the transmission of James Ulric from Great Harbour Cay to Crab Island. He would make certain they did.

  ‘By boat,’ said Wallace Brady. He hesitated. ‘Your father is certainly nervous of water.’

  ‘He isn’t nervous of water,’ I said sharply. ‘He’s just sick.’

  ‘He was,’ said Brady. ‘In fact, we got the nurse to go over with him.’

  I knew the company nurse, an admirable person who flew her own four-seater Cherokee aircraft and administered to the health of the island from a spotless wheeled clinic down by the airport. She was pretty. ‘That would stop the trouble,’ I said.

  ‘It did. Come and meet Mr Tiko,’ Brady said.

  The Edgecombes were waiting for me, so we all got introduced together.

  My prospective fiancé was slightly under my height, clean, neat and possessed of perfect American-English. He no longer worked in Tokyo, but with an investment company in New York. From the gold fountain-pen, the gold watch and the gold tie-pin, I gathered he was not in any real want. Brady, clearly, had told him nothing about me, beyond my name, which was not all that uncommon, particularly as MacRannochs were presumably already preparing to gather on Crab Island like flies.

  I was prepared to say nothing even about that, but as we gathered to walk up the flight of thick green carpeted stairs, Mr Tiko moved over and said, ‘We are similar of name, are we not, Dr MacRannoch? But I do not use all of mine. I am also doctor by university degree, but not of medicine: I am doctor of law. Tell me, it is not correct to wear formal dark suit in the evenings?’

  We had got to the top of the stairs, where it appeared all the lights had gone out. I then saw it was merely part of the great American myth that everything after 6 p.m. including eating is more romantic if it is performed in the dark. I have known a fellow doctor actually walk out of a restaurant in New York because I insisted on dissecting my steak with a small pocket torch jammed into a candlestick. Here, I merely groped after the Edgecombes, who were each wearing a trouser-suit, but not of the kind Dr Tiko meant; and Wallace Brady, who was wearing a long coral shirt over sharp kidskin trousers. ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ I said.

  We progressed through a doorway into an area of still greater darkness and voluminous noise of both the stereo and Bossa Nova variety. It appeared to be a large parquet-floored room crowded with dancing, sitting or leaning figures against a dim background of rose-geranium drapes. At one end, a large circular bar seating perhaps twenty on tall bamboo stools was gently lit from above by a cluster of some fifty vermilion lights in lobster-pot cases. The wall behind the bar was tiled in natural bark. A girl with very long blonde hair and a transparent white jumper reaching to the adductor brevis floated between us, talking French to a diaphanously clad boy. Lady Edgecombe stepped back and held me by the arm. ‘Did you see who that is?’

  Before all else, a candidate, I should have said, for bronchopneumonia. But I allowed her to tell me.

  ‘I think,’ murmured Mr Tiko at my side, ‘I should perhaps go and remove my jacket and tie. More, with the best intentions, I am unable to do. Dr MacRannoch.’ He gave me a small bow and squirmed off.

  I liked him. I should have to. Sir Bartholomew said, ‘Over here,’ and we crossed to the noisiest corner of the room where a great many irrationally dressed people were sitting drinking in black bamboo lattice chairs and beige sofas, in a welter of pot-plants. The names meant very little to me, but appeared to illuminate Lady Edgecombe, who became more graciously animated than I had ever known her: the ambience appeared to be stage, screen. TV, with a sprinkling of New York and Philadelphia society. There was even an English drawl here and there. It was difficult to ask them what they did when they all obviously assumed that one knew what they did, so I contented myself with ordering a Yellowberry and listening to a long item of scandal closely connected with a patient I had once operated upon. I had no idea what a Yellowberry was, but my companion, a lusty athlete with golden sideburns and a diamond locket over his suntan, had just ordered one and I hoped he was used to it, and even that it might be responsible for his present splendid condition.

  It came, and was indeed yellow, and smelt of rum, banana liqueur and fresh orange-juice. Sir Bartholomew, straining out of the gloom, called, smiling, ‘I thought sensible doctors only tippled tomato juice.’

  I called back, ‘I’ve gone off tomato juice,’ and felt a little contrition. It might, after all, be quite expensive. There was a cloud of Brut and the diamond locket suddenly swam into my field of vision. ‘I didn’t catch your name. You’re English?’

  ‘Scottish. Beltanno MacRannoch,’ I said, and counted. I can’t help it if it sounds like a warrant. At five he said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and I said, ‘Never mind. Miss MacRannoch. It’s a Scots name.’

  ‘
Ah.’ He looked nonplussed, I wasn’t sure why. Doubts, perhaps, about speaking my language? He said, ‘I thought from what your friend said that you were maybe a doctor?’

  I sat there, quiet as an over-stuffed washing-machine, and ticked over the optional programmes. Say No. Get up and move off. Say Yes, but I prefer not to talk business. Say, What free advice are you after, brother? I pressed the button and slid the disc on the line.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’

  ‘Say!’ His smile really was breathtaking. He looked me up and down. ‘I’ll say you don’t look it.’

  This, note, was a compliment. ‘You don’t either,’ I said.

  The brilliant smile gathered hazed overtones. ‘I’m not,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t be,’ I replied.

  Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, who had not become an Ambassador somewhere for nothing, leaned over smiling again and said. ‘Beltanno is one of the senior medical officers of the United Commonwealth Hospital at Nassau, Paul. Don’t let her faze you.’

  ‘You are?’ Three other faces joined the diamond locket and two other conversations began to break up. A girl in a white satin Tom Mix outfit said, ‘You mean you’re fully qualified and everything, the same as a man nearly? Isn’t that marvellous?’

  ‘It brings its own sense of wonder,’ I said after a moment. I was, after all, Edgecombe’s guest. There was a strangled laugh somewhere behind me which I thought, but was not sure, belonged to Wallace Brady.

  ‘Dedicated,’ said the diamond locket called Paul with some reverence. ‘That’s it, isn’t it, Doctor? Dedicated to suffering mankind? In Britain anyway,’ he added, his tone darkening slightly. ‘In Los Angeles, my God, they’re a heap of loot-grabbing horse-shit.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘In Britain as well. We’re allowed to charge a pretty stiff price for consultations in private. You’d be surprised.’

  There was a brief silence, cut short by three voices speaking, and someone asked someone else to dance. The girl with the fringes got up and struggled off into the gloom, bearing her starvation-induced anaemia, I judged, with her. Diamond locket, who had eased off slightly, leaned back and said casually, ‘You know, it’s a funny thing about feet.’

  It is a funny thing. Nine times out of ten, you can count upon it, the trouble is feet. Sir Bartholomew said, ‘Dance, Beltanno?’

  I don’t dance, and he knew I didn’t dance, but I got up and worked my way through to him, and then into the centre of the large room where the crowd was so thick that we merely stood face to face with our hands clasped, rocking gently. ‘Can you forgive me?’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t been such a damned idiot, they’d never have known.’

  ‘Oh, well. It gets around. They would have found out by tomorrow anyway,’ I said. ‘It’s odd. I wouldn’t go up to a stationer and ask him for a free fountain-pen.’

  ‘But that is a material possession, and sacred,’ said Edgecombe. ‘Intelligence is fortuitous, and to be distributed as the air.’

  ‘Please?’ said someone cutting in. ‘Is it permitted?’

  It was Mr Tiko. ‘Of course. If Sir Bartholomew doesn’t mind,’ I said.

  He was only half a head smaller, and looked less than that with his stiff white collar open. We clasped hands and rocked. ‘I forgot to say something,’ he said.

  You forgot to say, I thought sadly, that you are the next Chief of the MacRannochs after James Ulric, my father:

  But he hadn’t found out. ‘I forgot to say,’ said Mr Tiko, ‘that it is as well you do not use your name Doctor in the clubhouse. I never do this, even I with my law degree. There are some who will not cease to pursue you for free advice.’

  I looked warmly upon him. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Tiko, although too late, I’m afraid: they’ve found out. Tell me, what sort of free advice do they ask of a lawyer?’

  ‘Ah, wills,’ he said sadly. ‘Always wills. Is it not funny?’

  The rest of the evening is slightly blurred in my recollection, although not sufficiently at the time to make me forswear Yellow-berries, to which I was becoming quite partial. But I did recall with absolute clarity that I had promised to play a round of golf with my fiance the following morning. Not that he knew he was my fiancé yet, of course.

  EIGHT

  Next morning the housemaid, trained by Denise, brought me in early morning tea and drew the curtains; and Denise herself knocked and came in while I was still drinking it, and before I had put on my wig.

  ‘Oh, your poor head,’ she said; but without conviction: she was thinking of something else. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  I had. The bed had fine American cotton percale sheets like silk, and all the furniture was white bamboo with blue and green and white floral upholstery and a positive tattoo of drumlamps. Denise sat on the empty twin bed and said, ‘I hear you’re playing golf with Mr Tiko this morning, and I wondered if Wallace Brady and I could join you.’

  Poor Bartholomew Edgecombe. I hadn’t thought of her as a golfer. But looking at those calf-muscles again, and those sinewy arms, and that brittle, determined jaw, I realized suddenly that of course she was; and most likely a good one. I cannot say I was overjoyed at the prospect of watching Lady Edgecombe and Wallace Brady get to know each other better over eighteen holes in my company, but I could hardly refuse.

  At the door she stopped and said, ‘Oh, by the way: Bart had word from the airport about your case, dear. I’m afraid there’s no sign of it at all. Shall I see if something of mine will fit you this morning?’

  I have already spoken of the size difference between us. I need only say that at this, moment Lady Edgecombe was wearing a boudoir cap of white frilled lace scattered with rosebuds, and a frilled negligee of white spotted net, and it will be clear why I declined.

  ‘Then perhaps you should look in at the pro’s shop when we go over for breakfast,’ Lady Edgecombe suggested. It was not, obviously, of passionate moment to her: she only wanted to make sure that I should not be prevented from playing golf by the exigencies of my attire. I said I would.

  Indeed, after she had gone, I got up and padded over the carpet to examine myself in the vanity mirror, which was surrounded by fourteen ormolu make-up lamps with a total burning-power of what felt like two thousand watts. My feet sank three inches into the blue and green fitted carpet, of the variety known as deep shag, which wouldn’t show if your dog buried his bone in it, and for all I know he frequently does.

  My headache had vanished. My face was brown and clean and healthy, and, once I had my wig on, looked better than Denise’s.

  Outside the veiled window a crane lowered its jib, from which dangled a palm tree. I went over to look.

  The incline of waste was no longer an incline of waste ground but a garden of flowering bushes, interspersed tastefully with groups of live coconut palms. A gang of men were unrolling a carpet of grass. And a boy in a floral shirt and a fancy straw hat had got down from a tanker and was watering it.

  The Edgecombes had a garden.

  It wouldn’t happen in Scotland.

  I went in to shower, singing cautiously, dressed, had a word with the Edgecombes, and, borrowing their windowless Fiat, drove off to the Tamboo golf clubhouse.

  The pro’s shop was upstairs, near the bar-lounge of last night’s exotic encounters. I walked past the glass doors and some satin steel furniture and a selection of metal-reeded chairs like diabolos to the double timber doors of the shop, and I stood for a long time and looked in the windows.

  For that time in the morning, it was fairly dazzling. Stacks of cellophaned cashmeres and floodlit rows of hide golf-bags in green and yellow and cream. A carousel of slacks in cream and coral and primrose; drawers of suntan oil: shelves of white balls like nest eggs. Round the corner, I knew, were tunics and swimsuits and sunsuits, bikinis, pants suits, divided skirts, sandals . .

  I walked past the cashmeres and stopped in front of the slacks. Then I opened my bag, pushed the revolver out of the way, and took out all Pally Loo-loo’s
remarkable dividend.

  I have no trouble making decisions. Half an hour later I was back at the club and able to join my host and hostess for breakfast. I had on a culotte dress in green linen with a see-through matching jacket and square-toed green canvas shoes. Lady Edgecombe had sprigged pants and a pink cotton shirt pinned with an Indian brooch at the navel; Sir Bartholomew merely his old Bermudas and a fresh shirt. He grinned, stood up and gave me a full bow as I came to the table. ‘Beltanno, I can tell you one thing,’ he said. ‘By this evening, they’ll have stopped bringing over their feet.’

  ‘And started bringing over their wills, perhaps,’ I said. I felt remarkably skittish. ‘I say, that would be something.’

  I had fresh orange-juice, coffee, a small hot fluffy roll like a bread cake, and an individual packet of cornflakes, served ready perforated across the abdomens like a prepared case of peritonitis. Afterwards, Sir Bartholomew took me out on the high apron sun-deck at the back of the clubhouse and we leaned on the railing and looked at the prognosis for the dream called Tamboo.

  Below us stretched the club’s own private patio, edged with tropical flowers and trees and scattered with yellow beach chairs around a swimming-pool lined with baby blue tiles, and filled with baby blue water.

  Built on the same ridge, but divided from us by the steeply undercut road to the marina, were the clustered roundettes belonging to the guests of the golf-club: smaller timber-clad roundels like Edgecombe’s, still with their feet in scrub and piping and rubble.

  But they were complete too and occupied, most of them. Coming to breakfast that morning I had seen diamond locket and the French screen stair among others crossing the flyover bridge which stretched from the roundettes to the clubhouse and golf-course. Below the bridge rumbled the trucks carrying the plant and work-gangs and tools to the marina. You could see it there, blue in the distance, marked by the white of the shining new jetty; the squat red and grey shape of the pile-driver; the huddle of cranes. Beyond on one side, the walls of the first waterfront townhouse condominium had got up to two storeys high in front of the rough green slope of the hill. On the opposite side, I could distinguish the red pantiles of the first house in a Portuguese-style fishing-village. Round the corner in the Bay of the Five Pirates, a yacht-club was scheduled to rise. Elsewhere unborn was Tamboo Village with international shops, roof gardens and patios. The discotheque in the Lighthouse Pavilion. The tennis-courts. The Beach Club and swimming-pool.