The Tropical Issue (21 page)

He was six feet two, and red-headed, with the sort of clinging half-curly hair that stays neat no matter what, like heat-treated nylon.

He had brown eyes like cufflinks, and a straight nose with a blunt end, and a small mouth that let you see two bright front teeth when he smiled.

He was wearing a shirt and tie too, but his shoulders bulged with muscle still growing. I supposed he’d be nineteen. Maggie’s age.

I looked at Maggie.

I was surprised. Instead of eyeing Porter and Clive, or at the very least, staging a show for them, she was still firing the big guns at Johnson. I could hear her drawling voice, hopefully needling him, and see the intent look inside the eyeshadow. Her finishing school had been pathetic about make-up, although what she usually wasn’t wearing from the neck down more than made up for it.

Johnson himself just wore that bloody polite look I remembered over his pyjamas. Above Maggie’s Vidal, I could see the twin lenses trained on me, with a pair of black eyebrows sitting higher than usual above them.

A real Owner bally sick stare.

To hell with Johnson. I stared back, and gave a hullo look to Mr Kalimazoo and brought my eyes right back to Porter Proost, who was saying, ‘Wow! I tell you, ma’am, there were some things Kim-Jim didn’t mention . . . Natalie, I’m sitting next to her.’

Mourning sort of slid out of Natalie’s voice. She said, ‘You’re my guests. You must sit anywhere you like.’ And I could see Aurelio put the drinks tray down and slip off to change the place cards without being told.

I bet I’d been put between Kalimazoo and the wall.

It was like having Kim-Jim back, almost. I sat between Clive and Porter, and they knew all the films I’d done, and about the comedy series, and my work for Ferdy and everything.

They wanted to borrow my video tapes. They fixed to send me tapes of their own, with work Clive had done for Gothics and M.G.M. Biblicals, and their father, old Joseph, for cops and classics.

They didn’t talk about Kim-Jim very much, except to say he’d always been the quiet one of the family, and they hadn’t been surprised when he decided he wanted to get out of the industry. They said to Natalie how very happy they were that he’d had such a wonderful time sharing her home.

Halfway through, Clive, realising he’d been neglecting Natalie, began to talk to her about her filming, and Porter concentrated on me, with his teeth and his brown, teasing eyes.

He was a great talker. That time, I didn’t think of Kim-Jim at all.

It was just about evening when they left, and I’d shown Clive and Porter Kim-Jim’s workroom, and Porter had said he was going to be in London when Natalie was, and he’d like to see something of me, and Clive said that he knew the guys who were turning that American book into a film, and if I liked, he’d introduce me.

Natalie said, ‘I hope you’ll tell me if you’re going to persuade Rita to do something else.’

And Clive’s backache laugh lines all vanished and he said, ‘Mrs Sheridan, I’m so sorry. We thought Rita might need some work. But if she’s staying with you . . . That’s great. That’s marvellous. It couldn’t be better.’

There was a sort of silence, while they all looked at me.

We were all standing in the hall, waiting for the cars to drive Johnson and the two Curtises back to Reid’s, and Maggie and Kalimazoo back to the Sheraton. Behind us, Maggie was still firing at Johnson, and he was returning 17b replies, briefly, at intervals.

At this moment, she was saying, ‘Doesn’t the hotel or someone fix you with girls? Is this Lent? Or what’s wrong with you?’

I would have thought more than twice before saying that, even tiddly as she was. But when the Swiss have finished with you, you don’t care.

She got a one-word reply from Johnson. ‘Satiety?’

Maggie said, ‘I don’t think you bloody can. What hit the ground when you crashed?’

‘I’m all right,’ Johnson said. ‘Implant surgery. They gave me this irrigation system for growbags. Nine pounds of tomatoes, last year. That’s your car. Do you think you can walk to it?’

She was crazy about him. I watched her lurch to the car, and wondered if I should tell her or not about Raymond.

Then Clive said, ‘Then you’re staying in private work, Rita?’ and I remembered what we’d been talking about.

I said, ‘I don’t quite know yet. But I’ll be in London. If Porter’s to be there, we could meet sometime.’

Natalie, I suppose, was less than pleased, but she didn’t show it. Only after they were all away, and I was alone with her in the dressing-room, making her up for a big party that evening, did she say, ‘You liked the Curtises?’

‘They were O.K.,’ I said.

‘Part of cinema history,’ she said. And after a pause, ‘So I gather you don’t mean to retire?’

With the Curtises about, I was taking extra care with Natalie’s face that evening. I said, ‘I like my job and everything. You need to know about the Josephine film?’

She said, ‘I would like to have it settled, of course. And I have offered you Kim-Jim’s job. If you don’t want it, I shall need to see about someone else.’

I didn’t know. I said, ‘Can I tell you in London?’

The way she looked, when I’d finished with her, she couldn’t not agree.

Two days later, she was back in Claridge’s, and Maggie was back in the London flat she shared with a girl friend, and Kalimazoo was back in New York, and the Curtises were back in L.A. with the coffin, and inside it all I’d been hoping Madeira would give me.

Where Johnson was, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. He said goodbye to Natalie, but he didn’t say goodbye to me. He was the one who told me to go home to Troon, because nothing would happen. Before we all flew out,
Dolly
had sailed from the island.

To find where Ferdy was, you only had to ask a Virginian Poke. With his botanical doctor in tow, he was completing his survey of flowers on Madeira.

There is no such word as brothanical.

Before I left the island, I phoned my stockbroker, and when we landed, I booked myself into the Hilton. Then I fixed myself two days of absence from Natalie, and flew north to Glasgow.

Senility’s not a nice thing. Sometimes it hits quite young people, and sometimes it never gets to you at all.

Robina, my mother, was still quite decent-looking, except for this big conk we all have. But this time she wasn’t just muddled: she didn’t know me at all.

The nurses hustled me out after a bit, mainly because they hadn’t seen my face stripe-painted before.

My aunt had, and left me in no doubt, again, how she felt about it.

I listened to all the moans about the nursing-home fees and what needed done to the house, and how the lower classes were boors nowadays. I paid all the bills she hadn’t already paid, and arranged for the bank to pay more every month into her housekeeping. I went back to London.

Natalie was still having talks and didn’t need me. I rang a few people to say I was around, and a lot of calls began to come in from old clients booking special occasion make-ups, mostly for the same days.

I rang one or two of the T.V. companies, and a man I knew who knew a man who was scripting the big melodrama they were going to do on this American book.

He said that he’d pass along the news I might be interested, but he’d heard that the Curtis family were going to work on it.

One of the T.V. companies said the same thing about their new thriller series.

I rang off feeling thoughtful. The Curtises weren’t to blame. They’d just about offered to help, and Natalie had butted in with her bit about Owner’s Rights.

All the same. The Curtis family had never worked in Britain before. It would be a bit silly if I moved out with Natalie to the West Indies, and came back to find they’d moved in.

I began to wonder if I ought not to stay in Britain after all. And let the Curtises have the Josephine film if they wanted it.

No hassle. It just meant that now, Rita, you have to make up your mind.

I looked at my two yellow cats in the Hilton, and thought I would help myself make up my mind by an afternoon in the country.

PETS INC was the name on the smart green and black board by the driveway, but you didn’t need to read it, because you could hear them.

Kennels for pets and some breeding were all that Lee and Amy Faflick went in for when they started their farms in the ‘fifties. Later, they got to be something else.

So I wasn’t surprised at the tall security fence, or the double gateway at the entrance where you had to phone to be let in.

I’d rung for an appointment. Lee and Amy were in America, but I knew the guy, Jim Brook, who ran the English end of the business, and he came to let me in himself.

A plain-spoken guy with basin-cut brown hair, and an old jersey and leggings, he looked like one of your good local vets, which is what he used to be. Except that vets don’t usually have big sewn-up scars on their forearms, unless they have to do with circuses, which gives you a clue.

The Faflicks didn’t service circuses: they provided trained beasts for film companies.

Any time you’ve seen a Rin-Tin-Tin flick, or a series about pirates or cowboys or Mounties or otters, or an ad . for beer, or choc bars, or petrol, or toilet paper, you can bet that the animals came from a farm like the Faflicks’.

Like make-up, it’s big business now, compared with the old days. The first Brooke Bond chimps just came from a zoo. The Lloyd’s black horse had been a circus high school act
and
a Black Beauty before he got led into banks and died in his thirties, leaving a helluva rich mare, I should think.

Companies like the Faflicks’ don’t keep all the animals themselves, since the Esso tiger and suchlike could be a worry to the cats and dogs, but they take fees for training and grooming them, and they’ll act as importing agents when a
Raiders of the Lost Ark
wants more snakes and tarantula spiders than you get round the house.

Go to any television or film studio, and at one time or another you’ll see the Faflick green and black trailer parked in the yard, with a box of rats or a camel being eased out of it.

I’d first met Jim Brook and Celia, the girl who headed the training team, on emergency call outside the B.B.C. when their kangaroo needed a quick cosmetic job done on a bitten nose.

The bite wasn’t their fault, but the programme couldn’t go ahead without disguising it. I’d been making up the rest of the cast, and had something in my fishing-tackle case that would do.

Since then, there had been a couple of other things, and I’d given them some free tips. Getting animals to look good on the telly is a bit like getting food to look good for a magazine: colour and varnish.

We talked about it, Jim and I, as we walked up the drive to the converted farmhouse they use. They do grow some of their feeding stuffs, and they have hay, but most of the fields round about were used for livestock, mixed where they would mix without doing any harm, but not too many of any one kind. One or two horses, one or two pigs, one or two cows, one or two sheep fabulously clipped, with no barbed wire in sight to ruffle their gorgeous Woolmark.

Two fields away, making a clanking sound, a man in armour was riding heavily round and round on a horse with tassels all over it.

There was no sign of Celia in the house, so we walked round, still talking, to the back.

The old laundry was the grooming shop, with rows of shears and scissors and curry-combs hanging from nails on the wall above the dog and cat benches, and a sunk bath in the middle where Celia, in a rubber apron and wellies, was just finishing shampooing an Old English sheepdog in a cloud of green bubbles.

At first, I thought it was Bessie.

Then I remembered the Owner’s stupid crack, and saw that this was a young dog, anyway. It liked Celia and kept trying to lick her with a tongue like a Tongue. She said, ‘Hi, Rita. Give her coffee, Jim. Be with you in minutes.’

As we turned away she called after me, ‘What’s with the suntan? Costa del Clyde in April?’ and screeched, as she deserved to, as the dog got out and shook itself.

By the time we were on our second coffee indoors she came in, in her stocking soles with the apron off. The dog came in after her, already half dry and smelling of Liquid Fairy.

Celia said, ‘Did you show Rita the elephant wash?’

He had. It was the same as a car wash only adapted. The elephants could work it themselves.

Somewhere a whistle blew, and the door noiselessly opened on a scrap of a dog who scampered to Celia’s chair and, rising, pawed her knee anxiously.

‘Oh, what a good boy!’ said Celia. She picked the dog up and rose, making a fuss of him. To me she said, ‘That’s the kettle boiling. Any more Instant?’

She disappeared, carrying orders for two more cups and a refill of the sugar bowl, the dog’s tail flapping under her arm like a duster.

‘Tibetan terrier, name of Tiki,’ said Jim. ‘Owner lives with a deaf relative. Celia’s trained him to tell when the kettle boils. And when the doorbell or the telephone rings. Clever tyke.’

‘Clever Celia,’ I said. Celia began her professional life as Consultant in Animal Behaviour to a pet food research centre, but Amy had brought her a long way since then. So had technology. I had heard the tapes they used, added to all the patient teaching, over and over.

You can teach anything nearly to anything. The Harvard Shrink Department say they can teach a pigeon to walk a figure-of-eight in fifteen minutes flat.

Celia came back with the coffee tray and the knight in armour, who took off his head, showing a lot of tight-curled yellow hair and a bashed and suntanned face I unfortunately knew.

‘Raymond,’ I said.

‘You know each other?’ said Celia, handing out refills. ‘Can you sit down in that stuff?’

‘No,’ said Raymond. ‘Miss Geddes and I met on Mr Johnson’s yacht in Madeira.’

He stopped, with a buckle half undone, and looked at me, apparently struck by something. ‘You’re not here to choose his new dog as well?’

‘No, I’m not,’ I snapped through the noise of unknighting. It was like someone unloading a dishwasher. When he got down to the cutlery racks he sat and took Celia’s coffee.