‘What happened?’
‘The instructor hit him over the head with a glass paperweight and laid him out cold for nearly an hour.’
‘I hope that was the reaction he was looking for.’
‘Oh, better. He was delighted. Any lecture or anything the guy gives now, Irving’s there in the front row.’
‘I’ll have to make a frightfully special point of not doing what I wanted to do to him when I found out who’d pinched my stuff or I’ll have his undying devotion.’
‘I think you’re safe from that.’
Roger looked carefully round the barge, which was patchily illuminated with half a dozen bare electric bulbs, then carefully at Suzanne. ‘Have some more,’ he said, proffering his current bottle.
‘I’m fine.’
‘I will, though, if I may . . . This boat’s taking a long time to get to where it’s going.’
‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘No.’ He looked carefully at her again. She had good strong shoulders which she now moved to and fro slightly. ‘Where is it going?’
‘There’s an island in the river where we’ll picnic.’
‘What, in this? It’s as black as your hat already.’
‘But not at all cold for the time of year. And there’ll be the lights from the boat and a couple of those stand-up flashlights.’
‘How big is this island?’
‘I don’t know, but someone said it had houses on it.’
‘Sounds quite sizeable. Those lights won’t reach far.’
‘Are you afraid of the dark, Mr Micheldene?’
‘It’s my natural element, Miss Klein.’
‘That sounds rather fascinating.’
For the next twenty minutes or so Roger gave some hint of just how fascinating it was, or could be. Then he saw that the river was dividing and the tall silent Negro in a yachting-cap who was doing all the work – not every American tradition was suspect – started manipulating the engine and tiller. A short wooden jetty, half overgrown with weed, came into the lights. People started collecting their belongings together. Roger had his together already in a stout paper carrier: the two bottles of whisky, about a pound of sliced Virginia ham, some cold bacon, a hunk of Swiss cheese, two sorts of bread and a handful of apples. This was as much food as he had been able to find in the Bangs’ larder. He had the problem of retaining contact with Suzanne without giving her anything to eat. There were other factors too. As the two of them stood up he put his free arm round her waist and said:
‘We’ll have to give things time to settle down. You see those two trees on their own with a light showing between them? No, over there.’
‘Oh yes, just.’
‘I’ll see you somewhere round that spot in about twenty minutes.’
‘All right. Here.’
She nudged him into a shadow and moved her face towards the side of his neck. Then she bit him sharply. The band had stopped and the engine was throttled right down, so that his hoot of pain and surprise, although he did his best to turn it into a laugh, rang out with some clarity. A lumber-jacketed man who might quite well have been Fraschini turned and stared at him for an instant before being taken by a great hiccough that snapped his head back as if he had been uppercut.
‘There’s more where that came from,’ Suzanne said.
‘Half as much as that will easily see me through, thank you.’
The disembarkation was carried out efficiently and with the sense of common purpose characteristic of a task force which, though so far unopposed, expects to make first contact shortly. Once ashore, Roger attached himself unintimately to a group of people of whom he thought he recognized some, did some powerful eating and glanced about for Helene. There she was, her head and shoulders covered in yellowish light, with Macher and a couple of his friends. She nodded emphatically and laughed as Macher, forefinger jabbing, put some point.
At some later stage, Roger was aware, he was going to have to pass the time of night with Helene, perhaps a little more. Since fetching Arthur from his bear-hunt – Roger had been quite surprised to see him safe and sound after day-dreaming in such detail about an unusually active grizzly secured by a corroded chain – her behaviour had been definitely cold, cold enough to suggest the prudence of keeping out of her way for a few hours. He wondered what he was supposed to have done, apart, no doubt, from having failed to kiss her good-bye before she left for the zoo. He had honestly thought he had done enough fussing earlier. Really, they needed, or wanted, continuous propping up. The arrival of the fatal packet, true, had been unfortunately timed, but not by him. The basic trouble, obviously, was that events had given her a blunt reminder that the world was not all hers, that life must go on. None of them had ever learnt to face that simple fact.
Anyway, back to the present for the present. Roger crammed the last of the bread into his mouth and dunked it with so much whisky and water that a thin jet of it played from between his lips as he munched, but he craned his head forward and most of it missed his clothes. He got up and moved towards the two trees he had picked out. The air was soft and clear, with a faint breeze just perceptible as cool. Strong moonlight and irregular lamplight produced between them many tones and values of green and a medley of shadows. An occasional pale streak appeared on the river. Roger looked straight in front of him as he threaded his way between clumps of anonymous men and women towards his objective.
Just beyond the party area somebody approached him from the flank. He turned his head and stopped.
‘Isn’t this just great?’ Mollie Atkins asked him. ‘I’m sure there must be nicer places to be but I just don’t seem to be able to think of any right now. Did you ever know a lovelier night than this?’
‘It is very pleasant, certainly.’
She came up to him and peered into his face. ‘You seem at a loss, friend. With my extensive knowledge of your habits and talents I find this totally uncharacteristic. And odd. However. This boat and picnic idea is kind of fun, isn’t it? Very loosely organized, though. Do you realize it may take all of a half-hour to get all these folk rounded up and back in that boat, even if they start now? And they’re not starting now. Do you realize that?’
Fifty yards away someone who might have been Suzanne Klein began moving in their general direction. Roger’s mind jammed solid. ‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ he said.
‘Well, get started on thinking about it, old boy. Another point. Do you know this island at all?’
‘Never been here before.’
‘I know it like the back of my hand. Not that I know the back of my hand too well but I probably know it better than you do. Care to view some of its lesser-known beauties?’
The someone who might have been Suzanne had turned out to be Suzanne and she was now moving in their precise direction, purposefully. ‘That would be fine,’ Roger said, ‘but hadn’t we better leave it for a bit?’
Mollie turned at his nod. ‘Oh. But what of it? Let’s just get moving.’
‘Well, I don’t really think we can, do you? She’s seen us.’
‘What of it, for Christ’s sake? Can’t we go for a walk?’
‘I wouldn’t feel happy about it.’
‘You British certainly care about what other people think, don’t you? Or something. You must have made out on the boat like crazy. Hi, Suzanne.’
‘Hi, Mollie.’ Suzanne came up to them and stood smiling and looking from one to the other. She was shorter than Roger had realized. ‘Well,’ she said to him finally, ‘here I am reporting for duty, captain, just like you said.’
Before she had finished speaking, Mollie began: ‘You know, it’s a very curious thing but I’ve suddenly been attacked by the most parching thirst anybody ever nearly died of. I just can’t turn my mind to anything but that little old bottle down there at the camp-fire. So if you two children will excuse me I’ll be on my way. Don’t stay out too late. Bye for now.’
‘That was a little obvious of me, I’m afraid,’ Suz
anne said.
‘It had to be, you did it very well. Once we’d started to talk we could have gone on nattering here for an hour. Well, shall we go for that brief stroll we were talking about?’
‘In a little while. How about something on account first?’
As he got hold of her Roger saw, over her shoulder, an abrupt shift in the pattern of illumination as somebody moved, or fell against, one of the standing lights. He could not tell whether or not this caused himself and Suzanne to become more visible, but he was able to make out a group of three or four people twenty yards off who might have been watching them. One of the group seemed to be wearing a white or mainly white dress, the sort of dress Helene had. Roger strained his eyes, trying to hold steady the unit temporarily formed by Suzanne’s head and his own head, his pupils wheeling and plunging in time with its movements. Then the lights moved again, a shadow swung across and reduced the white dress to a floating blur, and in any case Roger found his attention urgently directed to matters nearer at hand. Suzanne’s mouth had moved to somewhere near the base of his neck and now he felt it open suddenly. This gave him perhaps half a second’s warning, not enough to avoid what was coming but enough to allow him to substitute a sort of hoarse falsetto moo for a full-dress scream when her sharp teeth dug deep through his shirt into one of the many ample folds of flesh at his shoulder.
As they sprang apart he lashed out at her with his fist, but she was alert and agile. From six feet away she said: ‘Don’t try it. I can move a lot faster than you. And you’re outnumbered tonight.’
Roger relatively seldom hit a woman unless he was really angry or at least very drunk, and already his anger had begun to fade into puzzlement, even slight disquiet. ‘What the hell are you up to?’ he asked, rubbing his shoulder and wincing.
‘Hey, I didn’t bite you too hard, did I? I didn’t mean to really hurt you. I’m sorry, it was the only thing I could think of to stop you quickly.’
‘But why? I mean if you were going to stop me anyway why did you start me, back on that floating bloody madhouse? Eh?’
‘I’m afraid I was just having fun in my own way. But Roger, it’s really no worse than your way. My way causes fewer complications and it’s over much quicker. And do you honestly think what you had in mind for me would have done anybody any good?’
‘I suppose this is one of dear Irving’s bright ideas?’
‘Oh, only partly. You know, I don’t think he’s right about you never acting on impulse. We were arguing about this last night. You’re certainly not big on forethought, are you? I saw the note Irving wrote you. Don’t you ever listen when people warn you? I warned you.’
This friendly concern after a thoroughgoing act of physical and sexual hostility reminded Roger of Macher’s polite readiness to explain and to debate. ‘Kindly get out of here. Go away. Try somebody else. A woman for preference, eh? That’s more your line, isn’t it? Girly girl.’
‘I really didn’t want to hurt you. How awful. Let me take a look at it.’
Roger retreated. ‘Take yourself off at once.’
‘All right. I’m sorry.’
When she had gone, Roger took a pinch of Macouba from his teak snuff-box and then a lot more pinches until his nostrils were choked and burning. He would give it up now until he got back to England. He walked about slowly under the trees for ten minutes, blowing his nose into his yellow bandanna and trying to think. Could it be that he was never going to be able to revenge himself adequately on Macher? In the past, Roger had always found insults backed up by violence adequate to all his needs, but at the moment he could picture his enemy in a vat of boiling oil explaining the significance of the motive that had got him thrown into it. Roger realized too late that Suzanne might have been able and willing to help him with the problem. Curious girl, that.
He wandered back to his bottles, emptied one and started on the other. The party had split into a go-home faction and a stay-here faction. The latter was winning easily at the moment. Among it, sitting on the grass with their arms loosely round each other’s shoulders, were Mollie Atkins and Joe Derlanger. Roger went over to them.
‘This is a really nice atmosphere, isn’t it?’ Joe said, glaring up at Roger from under the peak of a baseball cap. ‘Everybody friendly and no damn nonsense about who with. Well, let’s say a bit of damn nonsense but not too much. Why don’t you find yourself a girl, Rog?’
‘He did,’ Mollie said. ‘At least I thought he did. Didn’t you?’
‘I thought I had,’ Roger said.
‘Too bad.’
‘Do you have a cigarette, Joe?’ Mollie asked.
‘Sure, doll.’ His arm still round Mollie, Joe leant with her some way over laterally while he felt vainly in a side pocket with his free hand. Then, with narrowed lips, he bore her in the opposite direction and reached across his body to the other side pocket. ‘I don’t seem to . . . Wait a minute.’ He wrenched an unopened packet of cigarettes from his top pocket and, again without freeing his arm, set about tearing furiously at the wrapping with both sets of fingernails. Mollie, her neck caught in the narrowing crook of his elbow, began showing signs of distress. Joe got to work with his teeth. ‘This goddam packaging!’ he said in a muffled roar.
‘Honey, if you’d just—’
‘Jesus, you’d think they were trying to stop you getting at the stuff.’ He stabbed at the foot of the packet with his forefinger and a couple of misshapen cigarettes climbed a little way into view. ‘Here.’
‘I’m sorry, Joe, you don’t have any with filters, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. Do you mind if I smoke one of these?’
‘Not at all, if you think you can get it lit. – Roger, old pal, do you think you can find me a filter cigarette? Then I’ll have absolutely everything I want, thank you kindly.’
Not very long afterwards people began to move back on to the barge. Roger concentrated on getting a seat as far away from the band as was consistent with avoiding Helene and Suzanne and Mollie and Joe and Macher and Castlemaine and a few others. With a pull, or rather a violent heave, of his drink inside him and a squat Havana in his mouth, Roger settled himself like a good Christian to endure with patience and fortitude.
A mild commotion at the far end of the boat made him look up. There were shouts of jocose encouragement and a man called sharply: ‘Hold it, Sam – one more to come.’ The Negro at the controls immediately responded with engine and tiller. Roger, who had his back to the anchorage, saw a tall slim figure waving a bottle come at a fast run to the edge of the water and jump. It was Ernst. The gap was no more than four feet, but he slipped on taking off, missed the hands outstretched to him and landed awkwardly with one foot underneath him. The bottle flew out of his hand in a shallow parabola, to be caught almost at deck level by a white-haired man in a wine-and-tomato cubist shirt who hurled himself forward full length. This feat drew cheers.
‘Pass completed.’
‘Go, lion, go.’
‘Always was a great little tackle.’
‘Mow down that line of brown.’
‘Wait a minute, fellows,’ someone said. ‘Seems Dr Bang was shaken up on the play. Over here, Ernst.’
‘That mad Viking.’
‘Hey, Ernst, you all right?’
‘What became of that bottle? Wouldn’t want anything to happen to it after going back all that way.’
‘I got it right here, Ernst, safe as the mail.’
‘Well, come on, pour the guy some, he did a public service, didn’t he?’
‘Darling, are you sure you haven’t hurt yourself?’ Helene asked.
‘I think perhaps I twisted something, but I’m all right.’
‘He is now, anyway – right, Ernst?’
‘Hell, who wouldn’t be?’
Thirteen
A couple of hours later Roger found himself in a house that seemed to have no internal walls at all above waist-level. Rubber plants, cactuses, creepers, books, unexplained lumps of veined stone, Ivy League
tobacco-jars, hedgehog clusters of black-painted iron spikes, paintings in two shades of black on miniature easels, bits of driftwood that might be held to resemble some creature or man-made object, purple or brown glass bottles evidently specially made but not for the storage of fluids lay on jagged slate shelves, between vertical dividers of cherry and stripped pine, next to fluted white pillars dashed with pink mottling. Good place for a gun-fight, Roger decided as he helped himself to a drink out of a stone barrel bracketed to the wall in one corner. Or any sort of fight, really.
Carloads of people arrived at longish intervals. Some had stopped to buy pizza on the way; others said the house was hard to find or said nothing at all. Roger was standing at the top of a few marble steps near a Moorish doorway outlined in fluorescent lighting when Strode Atkins came in. He was soaking wet from crown to toe and was smoking a cigarette. He nodded amiably to Roger. ‘Seem to have been in the river,’ he said.
‘So I see. Was it cold?’
‘I think so. Couldn’t tell you for sure . . . You’re British, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am. My name’s Micheldene.’
‘I’m pretty sure we’ve . . . some place . . .’
‘Yes, we have. At the Derlangers’ last Sunday night. And just to put your mind at rest we’ve been into Tommy Atkins and oat and about and why do we hate you. And you being a horrible Anglophile.’
Atkins’s face lit up slowly. ‘So we did,’ he said in wonder. ‘Hey, so we did at that. I remember now. Well, what do you know? You’re my old friend Mitch Dean. How you making out, Mitch old man? How do you like this country?’
‘As well as I ever did.’
‘Great. Hey . . .’ Atkins stood and dripped for a time while his face darkened as slowly and thoroughly as it had brightened. ‘Hey, there was something else that evening, wasn’t there?’
‘Strode? Strode, come along up and get some dry clothes on.’
One Fat Englishman Page 14
