Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 (16 page)

“The foreign ship. The steamer from sa canal, the anchorage for the salt mines,” said Derek. “I thought of it too.”

They had just met, I gathered, and formed an anti-Johnson alliance, and good luck to them. We parked Derek’s bicycle. Clem and I got back into the Maserati and Mummy and Derek and Mr. Lloyd into the Buick, and we set off down the road to the airport. Just past San Jorge, we took the left turn for the salt flats.

It was the watery sort of plain we had seen from the airport, Austin and I: a shallow lake marked into squares and stretching for miles. You could see the control tower sticking up, and every now and then a big passenger plane would come droning in. Then we turned our backs on the airport, and the road dived in between a set of low, scrubby hills and turning to the right, became a sort of causeway across the flat water. On the same side, not very close, was the long sort of table of salt that we’d seen that first day, with railway tracks running from it, and beside us was a road sign showing a dear little steamy black train.

“
Train
?” I said.

Clem had his arm round my shoulders and it was sort of wandering: I hoped Dilling hadn’t noticed. I must say, Clem had improved, but it might just have been the hot climate. I wondered when he was coming back to London. He said, “They used to run the salt in trucks to the anchorage along here, but they use lorries now. I think the rails are under repair. How much do you really like Gilmore Lloyd?”

“He’s fun,” I said. “We had a ride the other day. And a swim. I wish I could look at the salt. What does it taste like?”

“Salt,” said Clem. Beyond the railway lines on our left, the water stretched into the distance, broken by patches of trees and small buildings. On the right, the ground rose abruptly in a long, low escarpment, covered with small, cushiony pine trees, and juniper, and masses of purple and yellow and white Spanish flowers. It was baking hot, and the smell of the pines and the thyme and the flowers came off the hill like an ounce bottle of Floris and stirred me up too. Clem said, “Wait. There’s some salt. Dilling, could you draw in just there?”

“Never mind the salt,” I said, getting out. I could see it, where it had dropped from the lorry, in a drift of dirty-white chips at the roadside. “What’s the heavenly smell?”

“Lavender,” said Clem. “Come and see.”

I looked along the road. The Buick’s dust was just visible at the end. “To hell,” said Clem quickly. “They’ll wait.”

I saw the lavender, I suppose, out of the corner of my eye. The stalks looked about six feet tall, with a spike like a delphinium at the end, all open and reeking of perfume, and stuck full of bees. It grew in big, pillowy mounds all over the hillside, and I was going over them like Mary Rand, at the rate Clem was hauling me up that damned hill. We struck a level space, where a new road was half under construction, and then plunged into the fir trees beyond. Then Clem grabbed me and got going.

He got going so fast that my zip was half down before I grabbed hold of his wrist. He let go at once and, instead, got me in a half nelson and proceeded to kiss.

There are kisses and kisses. That one had about thirteen stone behind it and a lot of big silver cups. It gradually became apparent what Clem had been training for. It never crossed my mind in a long and varied experience that one could ever be kissed actually unconscious, but we nearly made it right then. I remember making a hollow, booming noise, inside my head, since I’d been deprived of all the usual agencies for communication, and Clem lowered me onto the grass and drew off, looking as if he were going to cry. “Cassells,” he said. “Now I’ve done it. You’ll hate me.”

“No,” I said, panting. My zip had lost the top three inches of teeth. “I’m just surprised. Clem, I thought you didn’t like girls?”

“I thought so too,” he said. He looked even more worried. “I haven’t any income to speak of. I don’t know what I’ll do. You won’t want me, anyway.”

He sat there on a stone, big and brawny and simple, and rubbed his face with one trembling hand. It left a red smear.

I went, quite unexpectedly, off my rocker. I took his hand in both of mine, and said, “What makes you think that?”

“Oh, Cassells,” he said, in a kind of whisper, and sort of tumbled across to me, taking little short breaths, on his knees. Then he put his head on the undone zip, and I held him, my heart going like a roadmaking machine. I wasn’t even thinking of his worn-out jeans and his overdraft, but I knew I should have to. I think that apart from knowing very well what was going to happen next, I was chiefly thinking: Flo’s mother would be my aunt as well. Then we heard Dilling’s voice, calling.

Something always happens when I’m out with a boy. By the time Dilling reached us, I’d wiped the smear off Clem’s face and he’d lent me a safety pin. I even had grabbed a big bunch of lavender. We got back down into the car and set off and didn’t say anything at all.

The road came to an end at the anchorage, and by the time we got there, the Buick was already standing empty. It was quite a big settlement, dumped in the midst of the hills and the sea, with a long, marble-tiled office and its own generating plant on the landward side, together with a number of decent white houses with gardens and washing and children running around. On the other side, on a low cliff overlooking the shore, were the working installations: rollers for crushing the salt, warehouses for equipment and so on, and a deep well like a bullring, half full of salt, with long yellow wheeled chutes, standing ready for loading. Next to it was the jetty, reached by iron stairs from our level. A notice barring it said:
salinera españolas, zona de trabajo prohibido el paso
. I took a handful of salt, which looked like white coffee sugar but tasted, as Clem had predicted, of salt, and wandered along past the buildings. Up on the wall was a rusty green bell and two colored lamps: below them, two labels said
menos sal
by the red lamp and
mas sal
by the green. I giggled and then stopped. Reaction, Sarah. Then I turned and walked past the thumping powerhouse and under the trees to the houses. Among them was a bar.

It was cool inside. Mr. Lloyd and Mummy were drinking Cointreau which, at 125 pesetas a bottle, I noticed everyone was putting down like milk shakes. Derek had a bottle of cold pasteurized drinking chocolate. Clem, who still hadn’t spoken a word, let them fill the glass right up with brandy.

I had fizzy stone ginger. It was a day I felt I might need to be quick off the mark.

Mummy’s eyes, of course, went straight to the safety pin, but Mr. Lloyd saw nothing wrong. They’d been to the office. A Swedish boat had left at first light with a cargo of salt, but no one knew whether she had taken two extra passengers or not. A car had arrived at some point through the night, and people had been heard to get out. The car had then driven off. There was an inlet next to the jetty with any number of small rowboats in the water or on the slipway. No one knew if there was one missing or not, but there were some footprints on the grit there this morning which had definitely not been made by salt workers’ boots. It was pretty conclusive.

“Where does the Swedish ship make her first landfall?” asked Clem. He had, clearly, pulled himself together. “Couldn’t we call at the Salinera head office in town and find out?”

“If they’re on board, they may well have landed already,” said Mr. Lloyd thoughtfully. “Of course, we could always ask the company to contact the captain. Let’s do that. Let’s get back to Ibiza.”

It then appeared Mummy was dying of hunger. She lifted her hedge-clipping lashes to Mr. Lloyd, and he agreed it was maybe too hot. There was between them already, a certain air of
rapport
. Clearly all the stuff about Coco had already been covered, on Mummy’s terms, in the car. Mr. Lloyd was not only softened up: he was melted. Mummy is nothing, if not expert.

Everyone began to move back to the cars. I hoped he wouldn’t ask her to lunch, or I’d have to cut some more melon balls, but he did, without even glancing at me.

Derek came to luncheon as well, and he got melon squares, because I was damned if I was going to sweat all day in the kitchen for him.

I didn’t sit with them: there were too damned many, and although Mummy never stopped looking at Mr. Lloyd, I knew perfectly well she was enjoying herself. At least I got Austin to myself. Between courses I ran in and out with some white wine and an egg soufflé in brandy; he was looking tons better, with his ribs done up in crepe, and talking of getting up later. I discouraged it. I needed time to think about Clem. I had already told Austin about Jorge and Gregorio, and he said good riddance. On the whole, I think he was glad not to take it up further. Then, after I’d shoved the petits fours on the plates, Clem came into the kitchen and said, “For God’s sake get out there and relax,” and hurried me into the dining room while he helped Helmuth with coffee. It was Anne-Marie’s afternoon off.

There was an empty chair next to Gilmore. It wasn’t fair to Clem, but I couldn’t resist it. Gil had been swimming: his hair was still damp and curling a bit at the edges, and he had a new coat of suntan. I was a little alarmed by his smile. He said, “When are you fitting in Johnson?”

I knew perfectly well what he meant. “This afternoon, maybe,” I answered. “He’s painting my portrait.”

“Before Monday?” said Gil. “Or are you taking up residence on
Dolly
?”

I’d forgotten I was going home on Monday.

“He’ll need a cook,” Gilmore suggested. “Someone to sew on his buttons. He could even teach you to sail. And there’s Clem, for variety. Two in the hand, She-she. After all, you can’t count Austin now.”

I raised my eyebrows. Steam always makes my hair come down like a broken umbrella, and my nose had peeled, but you have to have dignity. “Austin is a sweet boy,” I said. “So is Clem. I don’t know why you should be so stroppy about them. You’ve got Louie and Petra.”

The names I had had, in confidence, from Janey. But there comes a moment in everyone’s life when they’ve got to use every weapon they have.

“That’s true,” said Gilmore. “And they’re very sweet girls. I’m water-skiing with Louie after lunch. What a pity you’re going to see Johnson.”

I could have screamed.

I went down to
Dolly
after the siesta, leaving Janey talking to Austin in two lounging chairs by the pool. I couldn’t get her away. Mr. Lloyd and Mummy had disappeared, I suspected to look at Mr. Lloyd’s paintings and/or listen to his new classical records, and Clem, bodyguarding, was lying full length in the lounge, a thing I suppose he finds hard to do, if not impossible, on
Dolly
. Gil had gone off in the Cooper, with his towel, surf pants, and skis, and also with Derek, who was going back to Ibiza. I took the Maserati, without asking.

There was no one on
Dolly
. I have never in the whole of my life had such a stroke of good luck. What was more, I knew where Louie’s beach was: her uncle had a house party in a villa near Portinaitx. I turned the Maserati and set off north, singing—Janey’s water skis snug in the boot.

Last summer, I spent two whole months cooking for a family with an estate on the banks of a very cold loch in Scotland. It rained. Except for me, everyone came down with flu, and no one wanted to eat. There is absolutely nothing like a very cold loch in Scotland for teaching you to stay upright on water skis. I stopped at the edge of an orange grove and brushed out my hair, remade my eyes and put on my dark glasses, which is not at all the waste of effort it may seem, and starting the car, did a bomb round the bend and screeched to a smoking dead halt on the road above Louie’s beach. Then I played all the chimes on the horn.

Gilmore got to the car first, with two others whose vaccinations I recognized. I said, “He wasn’t in.”

“But you’ve brought your water skis,” said Gilmore Lloyd.

“Why should she waste her time water-skiing?” said the shorter of the two others. I gave him a polite smile. With me, it is either the wrong kind or the right kind trying to make their established girl friend jealous. This was the wrong kind.

Gilmore said, “It’s Louie’s party really, but come down and have a drink anyway.”

A nice girl would have said, “No, thank you,” and punted off on her scooter. People always call me a nice girl, and truly, I can never see why a nice girl isn’t supposed to want to get married. I want to get married, terribly. It’s the only thing I do want. I mean, I want a great many things, and there’s no other way to get them. I said, “Thank you: I’d love to,” and Gil squired me just long enough to get me introduced to Louie and one or two well-mannered men, and then took off on his skis. I waited until he came back, having shown off until he was exhausted, and asked, very sweetly, if I could possibly try.

I hadn’t got a Pucci swimsuit or a Tobago sun-tan or a rich father… or a father. But I had long yellow hair, natural, and a bloody good figure, natural, and a Jantzen swimsuit that a cousin had grown out of, and a strong sense of discipline. I did my nut on those skis, and if there wasn’t a soul looking except Gilmore, it was worth it.

On the next trip he came with me, zooming backward and forward. I was meant to be scared. I felt scared all right, but I was too busy to show it. He shouted, “You say you can cook?”

“And dance,” I shouted back. When he whizzed back again, I said, “Does Louie ski?”

He swooped away, the spray flying. When he came back, he said, “Not till June. She had a crash at Zermatt in her whirly-bird.”

“Hard luck,” I said, and capsized. You can’t win all the time. But you can try.

We had a sort of snack on the beach of French loaves and whole stems of lettuce, with anchovies and tomato and chicken and salami and red peppers and olives and rounds of small hard-boiled eggs.

It was a marvelous party. The crowd were nearly all English: I’d met some with Janey. There was also a party of Spaniards who roared up a bit later in a Mercedes and a lot of gray-green Lambrettas. I’d seen one or two of the girls in Ibiza. They wore cloaks, long brown boots and little white kilts with bright, high-necked silk jerseys, and wore their hair tied severely back in pearl rings. They were wearing a lot less, I noticed now: in fact their suntans seemed to be all over. The new way to wear dark glasses, I noted, was not goggle-like on the forehead any more but with one leg hooked into your bosom. Louie’s specs were like Catherine wheels. There was also a boy who stood around, hands on hips, with two-inch sideboards, a gold locket, and a beach towel hung straight down from one shoulder. He stood just like that for ten minutes, and you could hear all the Englishmen hissing with hate. Then a couple of cruising yachts put in with some boys from Minorea.