Operation Nassau (25 page)

My feeling was that if Johnson’s elaborate protection had begun without my permission, it could proceed without my cooperation. It was up to Johnson to keep me out of danger. So when Wallace Brady asked me to play tennis with him, I played tennis. I swam. I allowed myself to be taught several card-games. Flexibility could go no further.

Krishtof Bey was also a professional. He had made money early but he was also intelligent and of varied interests, possible subversion apart. His advances continued, but were in the nature of flattery and not alarming to handle. I was a little careful when Krishtof Bey sought my society, but not because I was afraid he would kill me.

By the same token, if Rodney Trotter was a murderer, I have never yet met a better masseur, nor a man who with greater clarity could teach me to water-ski. He even got aqualung equipment and wanted me to go scuba diving, but Johnson whose launch we were using, regretfully vetoed it. I saw the point, even if Trotter did not. But I made a reasonable success, for a beginner, at skiing.

The Begum’s other guests astonished me also. The first rich young socialite I met was an international skier and also a banker; the second had launched a chain of dress shops and just held her own one-woman painting exhibition. Among the self-made was an actor now equally known as a novelist; and a folk singer who has also made some excellent short films.

There were almost no mustard and cress; no juvenile millionaires; no elderly playboys. All were engaged in some form of creative work with several others usually running it close. All could talk. Among the older men and women were dramatists and businessmen and art-collectors, farmers and landed proprietors actively and experimentally involved with their property: an American medical specialist I had long wanted to meet. Members of the administration from Nassau and the other islands came out to visit the Begum, and she blended them all into a comfortable melangé in the warm sunshine so that they talked and swam and relaxed, comparing notes and exchanging ideas, and, at the end of it, leaving the island themselves in some way enhanced.

Conversation, to my surprise, was not arduous. None displayed any but a literary interest in my given name of Beltanno. By evening each day, instead of being footsore and exhausted, I was physically relaxed and mentally fresher than ever. My skin became brown round the new shapes of my swim- and sun-suits, and between my tie-on tops and my hipsters. In the evenings we had drinks: daiquiris, Tom Collinses, rum punches, and long slow dinners by candlelight out on the terrace with French wines instead of iced water; and music; and paper games; and dancing. Krishtof Bey and Johnson between them taught me how to dance in time with the music and then how to dance out of time with it. No one mentioned their feet.

I remarked on that once to Krishtof Bey as we walked along the white beach after dinner, having sent on its way another launch- fill of the Begum’s departing house guests. He said, ‘Perhaps the Begum’s friends do not need free advice.’

It was warm. In the dimness, the thin waves breathed in and dwindled on the smooth sand. I said, ‘No. That isn’t the difference. People who want free advice almost always earn far more than I do.’

‘But you frighten them,’ said Krishtof. He stopped, his voile body-shirt glistening in the dark. ‘People who are not articulate, how are they to know what to say to a woman doctor? Especially a woman doctor with a stern face, who plays golf and does not wish to be kissed?’

I realized I should not have let him walk me away from the others. But one cannot really remember to be cautious all the time. I said. ‘Of course, I always tell them that as soon as I meet them.’

‘They sense it,’ said Krishtof. He ran the back of his hand down my arm and my reflexes bounded. ‘So they think, what will interest this so austere woman? Only her own business, medicine. What can I say that will interest her, and will also be of some interest and benefit to myself? Ah. This remarkable and unusual symptom, they say, that I have observed in my feet...’

I said, ‘You flatter them.’ The drifting fingers were caressing my neck.

‘No,’ said Krishtof. I wished he didn’t use quite so much Monsieur Balmain: it was making me dizzy. ‘No. You despise and therefore underrate them. I do not agree, this rich diet the Begum is giving you. How will you have patience, when you go back? Not everyone is witty and fluent. Some are just nice, inarticulate people.’

‘Like you,’ I said. I tried to move away slightly but his other arm had gone round my waist.

‘You wish to be sarcastic. But I am nice,’ said Krishtof Bey cheerfully. ‘I do not rape you when we first meet. I wait.’

I said, ‘I appreciate that. I think we should go back to the house.’

He had stopped walking, but the hand round my waist had not relinquished its grip. ‘There are people at the house.’

‘I know.’

‘But I do not wish to rape you before people,’ explained Krishtof Bey.

‘That,’ I said firmly, ‘makes two of us. Back to the house.’

There was something magnificent about that man’s psycho- sexual development. He didn’t trouble to answer. He merely tightened his grip and shifted his system of leverage so that I fell slowly backwards on the white sifted sand, my bare shoulders cool in the surf. Then he kissed me.

‘Hullo.” said Johnson.

I did not at first hear him. As before, rapid chemical and psychological changes appeared to be happening. Certainly I was beyond responding to quite painful stimuli, and uncoordinated eye movements were threatening. Krishtof Bey’s open mouth continued to adhere to mine, although I could hear he was growling. A minor wave washed over both of us sideways and splashed Johnson’s moccasins. He said admiringly, ‘Steam.’

I could feel Krishtof preparing to get up and hit him. Johnson said mildly, ‘Don’t stop unless you’re inclined. The tide turns in an hour and a half. Actually, the Begum and James Ulric are coming along just behind me.”

Krishtof Bey got up and gave me a hand to rise to my feet, but all the time the slanting black eyes were on Johnson, and he was smiling. I distrusted that smile. So apparently did Johnson. I can give no precise account of what actually happened, but one smooth movement followed another smooth movement and Johnson entered the ocean in a dim shower of spray, followed immediately and without premeditation by Krishtof Bey.

The Begum and James Ulric walked by as they were picking themselves up. ‘Beltanno!’ said James Ulric sharply.

‘Yes, Father?” I said from the shadows.

‘Are those two layabouts falling out over you?’

Krishtof Bey and Johnson, rising with uniform dignity, could be seen making their way out of the sea. All at once it seemed purposeless to withhold the truth. ‘Yes.’ I said.

Moving up, my father peered closer. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘No.’ I said.

‘What happened to that fellow Broody I offered seventy-five thousand to marry you?’

‘That was Wallace Brady,” I said. ‘I told you. He’s somewhere about.’

‘You’re drunk,” said my father grimly. ‘You’re high. You’re out of your mind. You think you’ve got so many dangling you can afford to let two of them drown?’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I’ve got Mr Tiko.’

‘I’ll believe that,’ said my father, ‘when I find myself inside the Silver Bells Wedding Chapel, Reno, toasting you both in Gold Nikka. I warn you again. You marry that bloody Nip, and I’ll cut you off with a yen.”

‘He’s a MacRannoch.’ I said. The moon had moved round a trifle, but I didn’t care. I was drying off a bit, anyhow. I didn’t know where Johnson and Krishtof were. The Begum stood smiling, but offered no comment. She didn’t need to with James Ulric batting.

‘In bloody name only,’ said my father, between his straggling teeth. ‘They eat raw fish. They speak Japanese. They all bath together, with geisha girls scrubbing their wee yellow backs. They have bad eyes and lead unhealthy lives.’

‘Mr Tiko plays better golf than you do.’ I said.

There was a silence. ‘That’s a lie.’ said James Ulric.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Wallace Brady will tell you.’

Wallace Brady, the builder of bridges, like all builders of bridges, was sacrosanct. There was another long silence, and then my father started to wheeze. I had to go into the house for hislsoprenaline, and his F.E.V. had gone up by a quarter already. It was the first attack that he’d had since the winter, and I thought it a pity. Because I couldn’t hypersensitize him against Mr T. K. MacRannoch.

Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe arrived the next day, which was Friday: and, although excessively quiet, was at pains to merge in with the household, and to make no demands on the Begum. He spent a good part of the evening ruminating over the jigsaw, in which the Queen of Sheba was now seen to be stepping out of an Alfa Romeo. Afterwards he went off to bed rather early, although I noticed he called on the way at Johnson’s door, and was there a long time. I wondered what they were hatching. Whatever it was, Edgecombe looked tired when he came out. He had lost a lot of colour and weight in the last week, and had had his hair cut. I suppose it was Denise who had thought it dashing, hanging over his collar.

I make no apology for taking a close invisible interest in Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe. I had no doubt by this time that whatever was going to happen to him was going to happen to me. And with his arrival, my available protection was halved.

But what everybody appeared to have forgotten was that I was due back in Nassau on Tuesday. After three more days no one could use me as bait or anything else. I should be away from the scene. I should be Dr B. Douglas MacRannoch, Scotland’s contribution to Unisex.

Three weeks ago, I wouldn’t have known what that meant, far less bringing myself to apply it.

I wish it were three weeks ago.

No, I don’t.

Next morning a small extra briskness in the calm air of the house was the only sign that the Begum was expecting seventy-five people for an afternoon beach party and barbecue. My father, who had quarrelled with her over the guest list, locked himself after breakfast in the study, from which sounds of industry emerged from time to time. The original box file marked
The MacRannoch Gathering
had now bred a stack of fat folders, with titles like
Caber, Steel Band, Highland Dancing, Cherokee Indians, Piping, Commando Raid, Columbus, Community Singing
and
Fire Dancers on Motorbikes.
The date, I had noticed, was now only five weeks distant, and the guest list ran to three thousand names, with mine at the top.
Beltanno.

He must have been stoned out of his crust.

Krishtof Bey never came down for breakfast. I had mine. I asked the Begum, who was lying in a lounge chair, if I could help with the barbecue, but of course with a staff like the control centre at Cape Kennedy she said no and meant it. Rodney Trotter suggested fishing, and I got my swimming things while he collected some live bait for amberjack.

By the time I got back, I discovered two other people wanted to go, and Johnson had volunteered to take us in
Dolly
. Spry ferried us out in the launch: myself, Trotter, a picturesque investment broker from Nassau whose first name was Harry, and a middle-aged beautician in a wide floppy hat who was referred to simply as Violet of New York.

Climbing
Dolly
’s companionway behind her broad, Paris-dressed pelvis, I wondered privately who was supposed to be standing guard over Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe while Johnson, Spry and myself slaughtered amberjack. Johnson himself responded to my hints and raised eyebrows with an expanse of impossibly vacant bifocals. I held my own embittered counsel and was rewarded ten minutes later when the launch departed and returned to
Dolly
once more bearing Edgecombe.

With him, in zebra-striped surf shorts and towel, was my friend Wallace Brady: up one ladder and down two possible snakes. Edgecombe was with us, but also with two of our suspects, Trotter and Brady. In which case he might have been better off alone with Krishtof on Crab Island. I wondered which of them had persuaded Sir Bartholomew to come. Johnson, or Brady.

The anchor came up. Johnson put the big six-cylinder engine into gear and we began gently to motor out of the anchorage. Then he turned her into the wind and the sails ran up as Spry broke them out, helped by Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe and Trotter.

But for my father’s paranoia, we should have had a family yacht at Loch Rannoch. It seems odd to spend all one’s childhood on a rock in the sea and know as little as I did about sailing. But at least I knew how to fish. And to shoot.

The seventy thousand square miles of Bahamian waters are full of extraordinary fish, from Striped Grunts to Queen Triggerfish. Or take the Wahoo, if you can catch it. It can manage forty m.p.h. on a good day, and the world record is 149 lb. ‘I once caught a wahoo.’ said Sergeant Trotter dreamily, as
Dolly
lay on her side. ‘But I’d rather have bone-fish. A nice quiet afternoon in the shallows, lying flat in a skiff with the sun on me plumbago. . .’

The silence, after the pounding of the Mercedes-Benz engine, was like the bliss of a warm water bath to a cripple. The sea lay clear as shellac underneath us, jade and turquoise: cerulean and peacock, sheared white by the blade of our bow. The island skeined past, low and green and feathered with palms. A seabird flew by. The light from
Dolly
’s mainsail, spilled straight from the sun, ached into my eyes, and I put on my dark glasses. We had all moved, redisposing ourselves in the sun and the air and the silence, our voices sounding small and lonely and clear. Harry the broker was already oiled and stripped to his trunks, lying prone on the foredeck: and I saw that Wallace Brady had settled beside Johnson and was untangling a fishing-line in long, muscular hands, without speaking. In his tanned face, his strange light eyes remained pale as a fish’s.

We had passed his bridge, its white caissons glittering in the sunshine: the thump of the generators travelling over the water, and the distant voices of men from the pile-driver and supply-boats on the far side. Brady had stood up and waved, and someone waved back. Where he sat now, I saw he still had a bruise on his chin where Johnson had hit him. On the other hand, I noticed Johnson had a cut lip where Krishtof Bey had followed through first.