The Tropical Issue: Dolly and the Bird of Paradise

by Dorothy Dunnett

  It was so weird I almost forgot the shrieks of my wrist bones. ‘He doesn’t want to marry her!’ I said.

  The jerk on my collar made me gag again. ‘You know his plans, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re a fine pair. You’re a fine pair of blackguards.’

  I wheezed, but he didn’t shift his grip that time. I made a big effort, and tried to explain it.

  I said, ‘Of course Kim-Jim suggested me. He knew she’d like my work, and I’d like a holiday. As for the bloody woman’s money, what’s that to you? I don’t want it.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said. He sat, holding me two-handed like Andy Pandy and I could feel the sneer from where I was sitting.

  He said, ‘You don’t want the money? Then prove it. Prove it by going right back to London.’

  I gagged again, but he paid no attention.

  ‘Why should I?’ I said. ‘Give up a good paid job and a holiday because you’re Perry Como? And,’ said I rashly, because I was sore and angry and getting, by now, extremely annoyed with Abroad, ‘who are you anyway? One of Mrs Sheridan’s discards?’

  I had planned, as the next move in the war, to crack my head in his face. He didn’t give me the chance.

  I no sooner got those words out than he socked me.

  He used the hand from my collar, which half freed me. I rocked with the blow, as he had done. I did one better and half twisting round, fetched my hands, still in his grip, gouging into his face as he lunged over.

  I wear a lot of rings when I travel. Big ones. A lump of grey quartz from Fior dragged across his stockinged cheek like a hay fork.

  He exclaimed, and smashed my wrists down. The blow, as every bang does, untucked the wide band of my executive watch. It slid down, taking his fingers with it. I ripped my hand away and aimed with finger and thumb for his nose. My other hand was still free. I nipped the hatpin from my lapel and speared his fist with it.

  He couldn’t yell while I was twisting his nose, but he still had two limbs left, and a lot of superior weight, and he used it all. As the blows fell on my poor fatigued cotton top and what was under it, I hurled myself yet again at the bloody door handle.

  It worked, in a way.

  The door handle gave, and I tumbled head first on the ground, followed by my English fruitcake.

  That guy was trained. He took my legs in hard scissors hold, and got my hands in the same one-handed grip as before, except that we were both lying on the ground to one side of the car instead of inside it.

  I yelled, and went on yelling, but not for long. The bastard took off his peaked cap and slammed it over my face, holding it with the flat of his hand so that I could hardly breathe, never mind yell.

  I thrashed my head from one side to the other as best I could, but he only leaned harder. He said, ‘This way, you get hurt. If you don’t leave Madeira, you get hurt a lot more. When are you leaving Madeira?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. Naturally. I put on an agreeing face under the hat and hoped like anything.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You leave Madeira tomorrow, and you don’t ever come back. You understand?’ He lifted the hat a bit, and I breathed.

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Or I get socked.’

  Unwise. ‘Or you have an accident,’ my chauffeur said. ‘A fatal accident. As Kim-Jim Curtis will have, if he ever comes back. Tell him, will you?’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ I said.

  We lay, breathing at one another. I was waiting for something funny, but nothing happened. It occurred to me that, if I hadn’t resisted, we might just have had an exchange of snash in the back seat instead of a struggle.

  Or maybe not.

  He said, ‘Tell Curtis that if he comes back, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him. Nothing surer.’

  I thought of explaining that Kim-Jim might be fading out of Mrs Sheridan’s life, although Mrs Sheridan didn’t know it; and then thought why bother. I thought of explaining that Kim-Jim didn’t need anyone’s money and neither, come to that, did I, much. He could phone my stockbrokers.

  I thought that anyone who had done what this guy had just done wasn’t worth wasting words on. All I had to do was keep agreeing, and then ring up his keepers.

  Except that I didn’t know who he was.

  He was lifting the cap on my face, slowly, as if he hoped to read my expression in the darkness. As he lifted it, I saw it wasn’t entirely dark. The car door still hung ajar where I’d left it, and a ray of light from inside was shining on him.

  Shining on his arm with the shirt riding up, because the cufflink had snapped in the struggle. Shining on the skin of the arm, and on a couple of long purple scars that explained, in a way, all this rubbish.

  Panic in Needle Park. The tracks of a drugtaker. And the smell of a drug, now I remembered it.

  Heroin. You don’t live where I live without coming across it some time. Or without knowing what it does to people.

  I did a silly thing and started to struggle properly. I flung my weight about as best I could, but he was a strong man.

  When his grip on my hands suddenly vanished, I hardly noticed, I was so short of air, and the pain in my wrists was so hellish.

  I don’t remember anything more, because that time, I didn’t see my gent draw back his fist. I didn’t see anything. I just felt the thud on my jaw, and on the back of my head. And from then on, I had no more problems.

  I woke in bed later that evening in Mrs Sheridan’s house, with Natalie Sheridan herself leaning over me. I was aching all over.

  I knew it was Villa Sheridan, because the bed was in a smart single room, equipped from a powerful income. Also, my things had been unpacked and stood about everywhere. Including my special cat with the smile, my video tapes and my recorder. Bloody Dodo.

  I knew it was evening, because Mrs Sheridan wore crimson silk, jet earrings and Arpege, for a change, and had a small drink in her hand, which she put down as my eyes came to rest.

  She said, ‘What a welcome to Madeira. Poor Rita. What on earth did they do to you?’

  Her natural voice, I guessed, was clear and metallic. Ten years of hard work had brought it down to clear, warm and husky. Now it was sympathetic but bracing: buck up, Rita.

  I lay still while I sorted her manner out. She had her hair done in a softer style than before, buckled at the nape of her neck and falling in a yellow silk tail. Her make-up was light as well, and kind of rosy. Motherly.

  Her eyes were the eyes of a horse trainer who has just bought a horse.

  I said, ‘Nothing permanent. I got bumped about by someone who thought Kim-Jim and I were after your money. I had to promise to leave Madeira tomorrow. And that Kim-Jim would never come back. Can I have a drink, please?’

  She patted my hand, her rings flashing. ‘When you’ve seen my doctor. He’s waiting to look at you. Then you can drink all you want.’

  The hand on mine became still. ‘But I can hardly believe this. Tell me more. Who attacked you? Who could possibly make such a mistake? Kim-Jim and you!’

  She drew back her hand, picked up her glass and smiled at me. ‘If it didn’t sound melodramatic, I’d say that I’d trust Kim-Jim with my life. And of course, anyone Kim-Jim trusts, I trust absolutely. So who were they, these idiots?’

  I told her the story and she listened, sipping and sometimes looking into her glass. By the end, the glass was empty and she put it down and got up, walking slowly up and down the plush carpet.

  She said, ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this happened. It does, sometimes, you know. Public figures attract cranks. People form crazy attachments . . . people I’ve never even met.’

  She came and sat down, very gently, beside me. ‘Rita. You’ve been scared and you’ve been hurt, and you deserve some sort of restitution. You think that if I call in the police and the consul, they’ll track this lunatic down, and then we’ll all be safe.’

  I could see where she was leading, and it wasn’t where I was going. ‘I want the police and the consul on the trail of this gu
y,’ I said. ‘Or thank you, but goodbye.’

  ‘And Kim-Jim?’ said Mrs Sheridan. ‘I thought he was a friend of yours? But for the sake of an unknown man whom no one can possibly find, Kim-Jim is going to have a reputation he never had before. A plotter. A gold-digger. Things that no more apply to him than they apply to you, but you’ll both be branded. And so will I.’

  She looked down, and I noticed that the black of her eyeliner was shaky. She said, ‘Kim-Jim and I aren’t married, but we don’t live together like brother and sister. You must know that perfectly well.’

  Garbage. I didn’t say it. I just said, ‘But if you don’t go to the police, Kim-Jim will come back and be killed. Like I don’t leave tomorrow and ditto.’

  Mrs Sheridan smiled. She had very large eyes, and despite the duff job, they were compelling.

  She said, ‘The police don’t handle everything. If you have money, you can see justice done, and without any publicity. Do you want to stay with me, Rita? If I show you how sorry I am that this has happened? If I promise that nothing like it will be allowed to happen again?’

  I closed my eyes. My head ached, and I thought.

  I wanted to stay. I didn’t believe in Mrs Sheridan’s “anonymous crank “. Anyone who felt that strongly about her was already, surely, on her Christmas card list.

  I had a feeling that I could trust Natalie Sheridan to root out my attacker.

  And in case she didn’t, I was prepared to do a bit of footwork myself. I wanted my own back, very badly.

  I opened my eyes. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see what you mean. I want to stay, if it won’t happen again.’

  I hoped there wasn’t chrome all over the pillows to spoil the finale. But she gave me a warm smile, and told me she thought I’d been perfectly dauntless, and that once the doctor had seen me, I was to order anything I wanted to eat or to drink, and not to think about anything else till tomorrow.

  The doctor was bland, English and told me nothing except what I knew already about my own cuts and bruises. I had no concussion. A good night’s sleep would cure all the rest. I waited until he was leaving to ask the question I’d forgotten to ask of my employer.

  ‘How was I found?’

  He finished packing his bag, closed it, and picked it up, smiling. ‘What a shock for poor Miss Dodo. Mrs Sheridan’s maid. She had just left for a walk when she saw the car. She thought you had driven straight for the gates somehow and killed yourself.’

  I was slow. ‘What gates?’ I said.

  He looked surprised. ‘These gates. The gates of the villa. The car had stopped with its wheels at the wall, and you were lying in the front seat. No one could tell if you had been driving or not. The thieves must have had some good in them at least. They brought you where you could get attention. Pity about your camera, though. Tell Mrs Sheridan to get you another.’

  I don’t have a camera. He smiled, opening the door, and I smiled back, thanking him. The official story of the assault, put about before I’d even agreed not to report it.

  How Natalie Sheridan got to be where she is.

  I fell asleep. I was wakened by the click of the door and the appearance, looming over me, of Mrs Sheridan’s all-American maid, a tray in her hands.

  On the tray was a small cup of cocoa and an envelope, both of which she put on my bedside table. Then she stood holding the tray and just looking at me.

  Her lips held apart a set of teeth like a weir. Whoever called her Dodo had a sense of humour.

  At the same time, in the pecking order below stairs she was the tops. And below stairs was where I might hear some gossip.

  The envelope was thick and expensive-looking, and I left it alone. The cocoa seemed worth talking about. I said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with something stronger. Wasn’t it a shock, when you found me?’

  She lifted her eyebrows, which seemed to weigh a lot. ‘Shock?’ she said. ‘I was a nurse for ten years, on Emergency. Drunks and layabouts, junkies and beaten-up deadbeats . . . I’ve handled more meat than the Army has. If you want any liquor, Aurelio will have to go to Mrs Sheridan, and she’s busy.’

  In a house like this, there would be a butler. I didn’t say that Mrs Sheridan had offered me anything. I just said, ‘There’s a bottle of Haig over there, and I’m fed up lying in bed. What about splitting it in the kitchen?’

  Since she’d unpacked it, she knew it was there. And when she said, ‘Well, there’s no law against it,’ and stood back, I smelt the whisky again on her breath as I stood up and aimed for my dressing-gown. The room went up and down quite a bit before I got it on, and I was quite glad when Dodo offered to carry the bottle.

  Then I thought of the guy who had hit me, and ploughed on after her into the service wing, which proved to have a sitting-room in it for the resident staff, which consisted of cook, butler/chauffeur and Dodo. I got an armchair, a glass, a large whisky and a lot of horrified interest, but of information only a snippet.

  I thought Natalie would have told them the camera story, but she had told them the truth, which meant she knew she could count on their loyalty. Later, I realised why she had had to tell them the truth, when I asked what had become of the car, and Aurelio said he had driven it back to where they had hired it from, and given the original driver a present to keep quiet about how it was pinched from him.

  Aurelio was the Portuguese butler, recently acquired, and trained by brutal experience on the Algarve. He had dark brown skin and a black moustache and black hair that looked as if it wanted to run down in front of his ears, only Natalie wouldn’t allow it.

  I asked how the car had been pinched, and Aurelio said that the driver had been struck from behind and shoved in a Gents, and when he staggered out, the Mercedes was driving away.

  It seemed to me that Mrs Sheridan must have paid quite a lot to keep that particular bruise from being reported, and I let myself wonder, for a minute, about the unopened envelope back in my bedroom. Then I asked if the driver had got a look at the guy who had bopped him, and nobody knew.

  I got them to pour themselves another stiff double and steered them on to Mrs Sheridan’s habits, if any.

  Mrs Sheridan didn’t have any habits. I’d put down Aurelio as true-blue loyal but I had hopes of Dolores the cook, born in Brazil and trained by all the consuls in Rio, to listen to her.

  Dolores was hopper-active. That is, she moved like T.V. ping-pong at the fast rate, and had a squeak to go with it. I got all the scandal of Funchal and beyond, but nothing on Mrs Sheridan’s love life, even when the bottle was empty.

  Dodo didn’t open her mouth: just sat with her arms folded, watching us. I left after an hour, weaving my way stone-cold sober back to my bedroom.

  Between my aching skull and my swollen jaw-bone, praise of Natalie Sheridan rang in my ears. A fine lady, a kind and generous employer, Senhora.

  Please the Senhora, they said, and always, she will show she is grateful.

  It was true. Back in my bedroom, I opened her envelope, and found she had been grateful to the tune of one thousand pounds. Which was about the right rate for the market, considering.

  Dodo hadn’t found the brandy I keep in my cat.

  I got into bed, and drank it, and went out like a light.

  Chapter 5

  The first thing that happened next morning was a phone call from Natalie, ringing I suppose through three walls, to ask how I felt. The thousand pounds, for which I thanked her, prevented me from being too truthful.

  She said I was to have a pampered breakfast in bed, and she wouldn’t need me till evening. I thanked her again, with the mirror this time in my hand. I had a black eye.

  She rang off, and I wished I had asked her the time, and where my executive watch could have got.

  Then I remembered.

  Dolores hopped in with a breakfast-tray, and paused on the second bounce out to listen to what I was saying. She said that Aurelio’s next trip to Funchal would be later that morning, and she was sure he wouldn’t mind compan
y. The time, it appeared, was nine o’clock. The weather, from the window, was warm but cloudy. Across the tops of a lot of palm trees and flowering bushes, as in the Glasgow Patanics, I could see the roofs of one or two other large villas.

  Beyond was the sea. Grey-blue, as off Rothesay on a Glasgow Fair day.

  I felt not too bad. I got into bed and dragged the breakfast-tray over my knees. My door suddenly behaved like a drum stand in the first set at Tiffany’s, and I said, ‘Come in,’ cautiously, without moving my jaws.

  The door opened, and in came King Ferdy, the photographer with the most subjects everywhere, including Madeira.

  I don’t know why I was so amazed to see him, except that when I spoke to him last, he was in London. I wondered if he had an interest in Mrs Sheridan’s film. And of course, Madeira was the place for Sexual Strategy in Flowers, so long as creepers came into it.

  This time, he was togged up in Brideshead Revved-Up; all cream flannel and open-necked silk; and his arms were full of orange flowers, which he dropped into my water jug.

  I didn’t see he had a camera under his beard until it was already in action, photographing me in bed with the flowers beside me. They were funny flowers as well. Each had a great poking beak and a crown of bright orange spikes with a wee blue one sprouting in front of it.

  By the time I saw what he was after, it was too late. I flung the teapot at him, but he was already shutting the lens cap and grinning.

  ‘Strelitzia parvifolia. Birds of paradise, darling,’ he said. ‘Vulgar, vigorous, and their spelling is utterly ghastly. You’ve got tea all over Natalie’s lovely carpet.’

  ‘What a pity,’ I said. ‘I hope she doesn’t send you a bill that’s too big for you.’

  ‘My Scotch Bird of Paradise. I always thought he meant fancy birds with big tail-feathers.

  ‘She won’t mind. She thinks I’m the only photographer in the world who can make her look good on her wrong side, you unfairly gifted genetic mutation.