Operation Nassau (12 page)

The infinity of possible entertainment was frightening. So were the placards.
Roller Games. Florida Jets versus New York Bombers. The Boom Boom Room. Sammy Davis Junior. Mini Adult Show for the Liberal Minded. Georgie Porgie and the Cry Babies. Deauville, Hotel of the Stars. Miami International Boat Show, Sunday through Wed.
(Was that where Johnson had gone?)
Adult Village of Garden Apartments
(what adults, for goodness’ sake?).

I remember big shopping-blocks like New York. I remember a freeway built over the sea, with pelicans flying like dirty washing in the blue sky, and expensive homes set among palm trees. I remember endless shops selling thin fancy clothing set among The House of Pancakes and Big Daddy’s and hum’s Famous Lumburgers, and small packed hotels with sweating guests sitting out in the porch. I remember avenues of hotels and apartments which were the living prototype of every agency illustration from London to Australia: soaring foreshortened up to the sky behind their floodlit strip of bushes and palms, their banded balconies, their ribbed walls, their double-lit pierced concrete facades, their rows of twenty-foot bronze male caryatids, their buttressed porches underlit by a hundred cut lamps, with the Chevrolets, the Cadillacs, the Chryslers, the bronze soft-top Buicks nosing like ants up the drive to the steps, and groups of sparkling people in evening dress being handed in. The apartments had names: lvanhoe, Kenilworth. The Starlight Room floated by: a galaxy pinned by a roof to the top of a skyscraper building. On the left, gleams of water with white motor-cruisers lined up.

Then as the night darkened and we drove north through the red and green and blue neon lighting, Hollywood Art School design took the tourist trade over. The buildings on either side were lower and had dramatic elbow room. Vagabonds. Hawaii. Sahara, with two groups of life-sized figures with camels. Flood-lit fountains and jets.

A stagecoach with six horses. A series of thatched buildings with green-lit jungly pools and cascades. Two swimming-pools. Air-conditioned. French motifs. Old English motifs. Burlesk. More burlesk. Darkness.

‘Beltanno?’ the Begum said at one point. ‘Have you fallen into a stupor?’

I forget what I said.

They took me to a night-club. Johnson joined us there: I stared at him in his suede tie with the threads still hanging out where he had cut off the nude, and he grinned and said, ‘Krishtof Bey has gone to bed with a hot-water bottle. I think.’ And ordered us supper.

We didn’t talk during supper. You can’t, through two electric guitars, drums, three trumpets and one saxophone. We were blighted with polyhedral whirling chromium balls and more ultraviolet. The nudes were dressed as sixteen Jean Harlows: in the next scene they rode motorbikes in crash-helmets and boots. One of them had quite the most beautiful abdominal scar I think I have seen. I had a tomato juice. ‘What have you done to her?’ said Johnson to the Begum.

The Begum looked at me and smiled. I paid no attention. ‘Given her a little concentrated experience,’ she said. ‘I think she is tired.’

‘All right. But I insist on one more thing,” said Johnson. ‘Beltanno. how would you like to make yourself some money?’

My view of him was not very clear, but I got the words out all right. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Dog-racing,’ said Johnson.

I think I protested. I am not in principle against gambling: I simply cannot afford it. But my protests seemed to be over-ridden: it was in any case hard to keep track of what they were all saying in the cross-lunge of American voices. It’s going to be lousy. So we should go somewhere else. . This real dumb blonde . . . Right? Righty. . So I wouldn’t even go there no more . . Like I used to like candy . . I tell you, I’m going to lose control of myself.

That rang a bell. I thought hazily, dammit . . More vodka in the tomato juice? But Krishtof Bey wasn’t with us. I like a tight little ass,’ someone said. ‘She’s got an ass like a tight little brick.’

‘Come on, Beltanno,’ said Johnson.

The Hollywood Dog Track is a large, brightly lit family stadium between West Palm Beach and Miami. It is clean, cheerful and well serviced, and full of merry neighbourhood groups in fresh dresses and sweaters drinking cola and buying chilli dogs, as a change from perros calientes, at the well-stocked snack-stalls. Johnson got us seats in the upper tier, which looks down on the round floodlit track with a tidy green plot in the centre, and got us some programmes.

Lady Edgecombe disappeared to restore the natural bloom on her face. The Begum also retired, but returned with her bag full of betting-slips. She and Johnson had a discussion. I focused on the programme, which contained a great deal of valuable information such as Win: your dog must finish first; and less obvious things such as Quiniela: your dog must finish first and second.

I said aloud, ‘I haven’t a dog.’

Johnson put an arm behind my shoulder-blades and said, ‘Beltanno, you are my utterly favourite suppressed doctor, but we mustn’t overdo things. Choose a dog and let me place a bet for you, and then Thelma will take you down and give you some air.’

I felt the Begum look at me critically. ‘She seems perfectly happy.’ she said.

‘Yes, but I’m not,’ said Johnson. ‘In fact, we are due a little talk, you and I. in a moment. Beltanno, choose a dog.’

I focused. ‘Pally Loo-loo?’ I said. It was the first dog on the list, and I was simply trying to discover if it was true, but Johnson took me up. ‘Pally Loo-loo it shall be. It doesn’t need to be much. Ten dollars?’

I frowned. Ten dollars is ten dollars. On the other hand, I had two free meals to take into account. I hauled my handbag up and got out two five-dollar bills. ‘Right,’ said Johnson. ‘Thelma, you are a dangerous Begum.’

‘Not at all,’ said the Begum serenely. ‘I shall take her downstairs.’

Which was how we came to be near the turnstile when the Negro rushed in from the car-park, calling for help.

He wanted a doctor. My head had cleared enough by then to register that. I felt the Begum’s hand on my arm, but I couldn’t have stopped. It is a conditioned reflex, and nothing whatever, I believe, to do with one’s personal ethos. One hears a call for medical aid, and one runs.

So I called back and raced out of the Dog Track entrance after the Negro. He ran ahead through the parked cars, gesticulating and shouting hoarsely over his shoulder. Someone had been run over, I gathered. I hoped the Begum would have the sense to summon an ambulance. I regretted, for the first time, that I had left my medical bag at the Columbus.

The man disappeared round the corner of the vast, packed car-lot. I followed. For a moment I lost sight of him: then I glimpsed him far ahead, struggling through the dark mass of cars.

I had started to follow when something heavy struck me a violent blow on the base of my skull.

I became quite insensible.

My first reaction, on waking some time later in Johnson’s grip, was to say, ‘Where’s the patient?’

My second was to realize that I was lying there in the dog-racing car-park, clad in nothing at all but my underwear. A pain radiated from the base of the cranium through my entire nervous system. I felt weak, and surprisingly poorly.

’The patient is you,’ said Johnson. ‘The whole thing was a trick to get you out here. It took us hours to locate you. Beltanno, we’re going to lift you into the back of the car and take you up to the Jackson. I don’t think anything disturbing has happened, but I’d like them to check.’

‘What do you mean, disturbing?’ I said. My voice was hoarse.

‘I mean disturbing above the neck, B. Douglas MacRannoch,’ said Johnson’s deep voice with amusement. ‘My God, with all that underwear, the man would need pliers.’

It was, I felt, a remark in bad taste. I was still brooding over it when Johnson, with a number of helpers, carried me into the back of his car. The Begum’s face, distinctly anxious, was visible in the background, and Lady Edgecombe’s, bearing an appearance of anxiety which seemed to cover something quite different. If I hadn’t thought it unlikely, even for Lady Edgecombe, I would have believed her amused.

Then I caught sight of myself in the car mirror, and all was explained. She was amused. She was having trouble in fact not to scream out with laughter. For I had not only been divested of clothing by my attacker. My hair had been cut off in irregular bristles all over my scalp.

Vanity is not one of my sins. But I prefer, like the next person, to be brushed, well-washed and tidy. The near-bald rag doll I saw in that mirror was the sharpest blow I suppose I had ever suffered to a pride I knew very well how to protect. My face grew hot, and I dug the nails of both hands into my palms. It is possible to control every normal physical manifestation, given enough will power. Coughs, sneezes, hiccoughs. And tears.

Johnson said, ‘Do you mind?’ and in one smooth movement passed over a bill and slid the bandana from the neck of one of his helpers. He bound it loosely, kerchief-style, round my head and said, ‘You’ve got a bad cut, Beltanno, but there’s nothing science and art together won’t cure . . Thelma. I think you and Lady Edgecombe should go back to the Columbus. I’ll ring you when they’ve had a look at Dr MacRannoch. And no United Commonwealth for you tomorrow, my girl,’ to me.

But he was wrong. I shared the services of the Jackson Memorial Hospital that night with Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, and had four stitches in the back of my head, with no serious concussive complications. By morning I was able to discuss my return to Nassau with Johnson, and also, unimpeded by all but a headache, the reasons behind the attack.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. I must have looked an odd sight, in a hospital bedgown, with a white bandage encircling a black near- bald scalp, but he paid no attention. ‘The don’t do it again brigade, one would think. But why? Do they think you’re going to follow Edgecombe to Great Harbour Cay?’

‘Lady Edgecombe invited me,’ I said.

‘All the same, it seems to lay a great deal of stress on your undoubtedly efficient role as guardian angel. Or are they worried not because you might save him from another attack, but because you might spot something a layman might miss? You’ll note that in everything they do they are very careful not to come into the open. No overt murder attempts have ever been made. Everything has been carefully designed to look like an accident.’

‘I couldn’t go to Great Harbour Cay,’ I said briefly. ‘I understand you think I might be of some use, but I really cannot risk leaving my post any longer. I do depend on it, as you know, for my living.’

‘Oh,’ said Johnson, but not at all with the inflection I expected. The bifocal glasses flashed, and he got up and began in a leisurely manner patting the pockets of his now severely creased suit. ‘That reminds me. Do you remember Pally Loo-loo?’

I stared at him with a great deal of misgiving.

‘You don’t remember,’ said Johnson.

‘No, I don’t,’ I said sharply. ‘And by the way, who was it who kept putting vodka into my—.’ Johnson stopped, with his hand on his pocket-book. ‘That’s another mysterious thing,’ he said. ‘I assumed it was the Begum, but she says it wasn’t. And Beltanno, how do you know it was vodka?’

I stared at him. ‘I don’t, for sure,’ I said at length. ‘But it’s the only tasteless strong drink I could think of. Wasn’t it?’

‘It may well have been,’ Johnson said. ‘I just wondered. Because, you know, tomato juice with sauce in it can disguise almost anything. But let’s get back to Pally Loo-loo.’

‘What is Pally Loo-loo?’ I said. I was becoming annoyed.

‘She’s a bitch,’ Johnson said. ‘Owner Marty Stootzer. Kennel, Marty Stootzer. Trainer, Willy Emmet. Whelped June 1964, Pally-itzy out of Pot-pot. Post weight sixty-five pounds. Record in last six races:
Collide 1st turn; Steady fade; Tiring; Brief Lead; Weakened; Gamely.
She’s won you three thousand four hundred dollars.’

‘What?’ I said. My stitches cracked.

Johnson finished counting green dollar bills on to the bedcover. ‘Three thousand four hundred. With a record like that, what do you think the odds were?’

I sat with my mouth open. I was still sitting like that when he waved, grinning and began to go out of the room. I collected myself just in time to pack them away before the Begum arrived. I dare say my headache was still there, but I can’t say I felt it.

The sari was green, embroidered with peacocks today, and the Begum’s brown-shadowed eyes were, I think, quite genuinely solicitous. She sat down with not quite her usual grace and said, ‘Beltanno. My dear child. If only I had stopped you.’

‘Well. It might have been a genuine call,’ I said.

‘The sister tells me there will be no lasting effects. But you don’t mean to go back to Nassau today?’ She actually looked worried.

I said, ‘Really, there’s nothing to keep me. Sir Bartholomew and Lady Edgecombe and Mr Johnson are going, and I ought to accompany my patient back. I have to make my report.’

The Begum said sharply, ‘Beltanno, this is not economy, is it? The hospital are not so short of funds that they would force you to pay your own fare if you don’t take a free trip with Johnson?’

‘I’m not worrying,’ I said, and smiled cautiously. ‘Didn’t you hear of my windfall?’

The Begum regarded me. ‘From Lady . . . ?’

She didn’t finish. It seemed too unlikely, I suppose. ‘No. From a bitch,’ I said, ‘called Pally Loo-loo.’

I suppose I was slightly light-headed. But I must say it gave me great pleasure to say it.

Before she left, the Begum gave me two parcels. As I drew breath to refuse them civilly she sat down again on the edge of my bed and spoke first. ‘Beltanno. I gave you an unpleasant day yesterday. Some of it wasn’t my doing, but I did take you right out of your depth and keep you there for longer than I had any right to. It was like watching a good car trying to run with the petrol choke out. This is my way of saying I’m sorry. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. Throw them away. You’ve got money now to buy something else. But it would please me very much if you took them.’ She stopped, and smiled, that sidelong, regal smile. ‘And Beltanno. There are no strings attached.’