The Tropical Issue: Dolly and the Bird of Paradise

by Dorothy Dunnett

  I wasn’t going to tell him he looked tired. He did look tired. I said, ‘Well, I didn’t know you expected me to hang around a Yukon gambling bolero. What are you having to hock?’

  ‘Bordello. They settled for my address book,’ said Johnson. ‘Actually, everybody’s retired for a siesta except Ferdy, who collapsed somewhere from metal fatigue. Someone’ll come in a minute to show you to your cabin.’

  ‘My cabin!’ I said. ‘I’m going back to the Hurricane Hole. To wait for Natalie.’

  ‘Well, no. That’s what I came to tell you,’ Johnson said. He was frowning. ‘We’ve got this series of poker games started, and Joe isn’t keen to break off, even though, as you know, I really have got to get on to Barbados.’

  ‘You have?’ I said. When Johnson frowns, you have to be careful.

  ‘Of course,’ said Johnson. ‘But that’s all right, because Joe was going to Barbados anyway. A ball at Government House. The Curtises have a genuine invitation from the Governor. They showed it to me. So instead of a nasty rough beat on Dolly, you and I are staying on the Paramount Princess, and Joe is taking us all to Barbados. With Natalie. Clive has been ashore and invited Natalie. She’ll be on board as soon as she’s finished Josephining.’

  I said, ‘Lenny? Raymond? Dolly? Our clothes are at Hurricane Hole. And I didn’t get the food for the . . .’

  ‘Everything,’ said Johnson, ‘is taken care of. I’ve been ashore. A car has gone off to Marigot, to settle up at the hotel and bring back your gear and mine. Raymond and Lenny have been told, and will sail Dolly to Barbados with a pal or two. Amy has called at the boat, and solved that other small problem.’

  ‘And Maggie?’ I said.

  ‘Well, that was the outcome of the poker game,’ Johnson said. ‘Ferdy got Maggie back. She’s coming on board as well. Seven radiant women and six magnificent men, counting Joe and the skipper.

  ‘It’s going to be a busy night. Ferdy’s promised to run us a demo tape on the home life of the bottle-brush tree. I’m going to bed.’

  ‘You’re gassed,’ I said.

  ‘No. Tired but happy. You’ll like Barbados,’ Johnson said. ‘Have fun. Do anything you feel like doing. Leave everything to Christian and His Stamp-Collecting Friend, who, you will recall, have the concession.’

  ‘All the same . . .’ I began.

  ‘No. All quite, quite different. Keep your fingers crossed. Right hand ring over left,’ Johnson said, and went away.

  So the call to Raymond had told him something. The time and place, I had to suppose, of the meeting of the top hamper in Roger van Diemen’s great drug and banana scheme. The meeting which, it was now pretty clear, must be going to be held in Barbados.

  And that was me being warned off.

  What a pity.

  We all met, seven women and six men, on board the Princess after the siesta and prepared, in our various ways, to spend an evening and a night together.

  I thought afterwards that even Natalie was slightly surprised by the peculiar lifestyle of the Curtis family.

  It wasn’t just the figured walnut and lace tablecloth and napkins and silver of the Large Dining-room. Or the spotlit paintings of the Grand Salon, with its piano and its feather-stuffed armchairs chained to the carpet. Or even the amazing plumbing in her bathroom and mine.

  It was the sort of grim determination behind it all.

  Whatever Clive had said to Natalie when she agreed to come on board, it had changed the coolness between them.

  To Sharon she was smooth as baby oil. They greeted one another, chatted, and parted; and from then on, Sharon’s share of hostessing was neatly passed over to Clive, who was intelligent, amusing, flattering and never left Natalie’s side.

  To the swinging chicks, who were never introduced, but just referred to by sort of tacky pet names, Natalie paid no more attention than anyone else, talking across them at dinner as if their seats were empty.

  In fact, it was quite hard to overlook them, as they each wore a dress at least as nude as Maggie’s had ever been, with jewellery filling the spaces. Their make-up, as might be expected, was faultless.

  They didn’t look any better than Natalie. I had taken a lot of trouble to make sure of that. I knew every tint on her face would be analysed, and the sort of brushes I’d used, and the make of everything. I’d even locked up my sables when I finished. It may have been stupid, but they have been pinched before now.

  Natalie chose to wear a rose taffeta dress with a low waist and crystal pleating that she had bought in Paris. She looked terrific.

  I love my work. I love people who are made like Natalie: who let me mould them and paint them into something beautiful.

  I was proud of her.

  I have to say that Maggie didn’t look bad either, because she had strolled across to Natalie during drinks, tapped her on the arm and said, ‘You don’t mind if I borrow the girl, do you? I can’t do anything with my face after that bloody crossing.’

  It wasn’t a shock. She’d hardly thrown me a sentence on Dolly, mainly because she was working so hard to get Johnson. I guessed the present act was because I’d seen her not get him. I wondered how he’d told her she was back in with Ferdy, and hoped he’d told Ferdy.

  He apparently had, because when Natalie, after a pause, agreed to loan out my services, Maggie walked straight across to Ferdy, knocked the glass out of his hand and said coldly, ‘Hello, stranger. And whose herpes have you been collecting since I saw you last?’

  I was interested to see that hardly anyone paid any attention, they were all so busy working on their own angles. The only man with tact to match Natalie’s was Dr Thomassen, who started up a gentle conversation about card-sharping that kept Joe awake until it was time to change for dinner.

  I had a thing I’d bought in Paris myself: a sort of baggy black satin suit that unzipped to the navel, with a collar under it. I didn’t have a lot of time after doing the others, but I spray-spiked my hair and put quite a lot of stripes on my skin, sort of tiger-style.

  Nobody said a thing except Johnson, who came out of his cabin looking normal and said placidly, ‘My God, I’ll tell your Probation Officer. May I lead you to the Large Dining-room?’

  We entered together, which is why no one said a thing.

  I was annoyed with him. I had expected him to arrange an assortment. Discretion is all very well, but I was dying to know what he’d found out about the banana meeting. He might have the concession but I was, after all, a bloody partner.

  At dinner, we got French wine and brandy, and Old Joe asked Natalie who she knew, and checked off the answers.

  After dinner, the poker school, including Johnson, departed for regions unseen, while the rest of us watched films and went on drinking. After a bit Natalie went out to see, she said, what on earth the gambling was like, and came back an hour later smiling, with Clive, and a rich-looking bulge in her bag that hadn’t been there before.

  She went to bed when the engines started, but although various people drifted in and out, went up on deck for a smoke, or tapped the never-ceasing flow of booze in the Grand Salon, the game still hadn’t finished in the small hours, and I went to bed too.

  To hell with Johnson.

  I have never been anywhere where so many doors opened and closed between three and five a.m., perhaps because I had never been anywhere where there were absolutely no locks on the doors.

  I was sent the chief engineer about 2 a.m. without even having booked him, and by the time he’d got past my chair under the handle and into the light of my torch, I was getting more worried about his engines than anything else.

  After making sure I wasn’t just shy he did however accept a refusal and leave quite cheerfully, which was more than could be said for Dr Thomassen, who was shocked to find me there at all and had thought, it appeared, that this was the chief engineer’s room.

  In that I thought I could see Ferdy’s touch.

  An hour later, sure enough, along came Ferdy’s touch.

&nb
sp; As ever, we had a fair struggle, and then as ever he took No for an answer and sat for another ten minutes drinking my bedside whisky and howling with laughter and telling me all about Carl Thomassen, on flowers and off them, and trying to get me to tell him who Natalie had been sleeping with since he left us.

  I asked how the poker game was going.

  Ferdy said that he thought that Johnson now owned half the Paramount Princess, and he, Ferdy, hoped it wasn’t the half with the girls in it.

  I asked him if he’d got over his spat with Natalie and he nodded, wiping his whiskers. Ferdy has very large features, and there is always a lot to wipe.

  ‘Boring, bloody Josephine. Let Natalie do all the dirty work, my little Toucan. Supportive independence, it’s called, if you can get away with it.’

  Ferdy’s gypsophila. He always got away with it. His house in Barbados was already rented to Natalie, and he had persuaded the Curtises to lend him theirs, next to Claudette Colbert, where he proposed to set up house, he said, with Tulip Thomassen and the Hon. Maggie.

  Shades of 17b. Ferdy always fell on his feet, on someone else’s expensive carpet.

  And what, he now added, about helping him carry his cameras round with Tulip tomorrow, twenty quid a sexy flower?

  I said, ‘But what about Natalie? She was on the R.T. before dinner calling a board meeting of the Josephine buffs for tomorrow. Fred Glitterbocker’s flying over.’

  ‘Gluttenmacher. My darling Rita,’ said Ferdy. ‘Not letting Natalie think that she’s won is as important as actually winning. Leave Natalie to me.’

  I said, ‘Ferdy, if she sacks us both, can I get a permanent job on your Sexy Flower Book?’

  Which was a mistake, because it reminded him of his usual routine, and I had to quite hurt him before I got him out.

  I gave up waiting for Johnson. I pulled the chest of drawers in front of the doorway that time, and forgot to set my watch alarm, so that I had some trouble letting the steward in with my breakfast in the morning. I felt great. I felt sad. I felt hungry.

  There were flowers and cold orange juice on the tray. The sun poured hot through the porthole on to deep-pile carpet and silver and armchairs. I showered and put on a loose cotton top and pants and went up on deck in my bare feet.

  It was eight o’clock and I had the ship, swabbed and scoured, to myself, apart from quiet gents in white coats asking in a murmur if I would like an iced something on deck.

  The Paramount Princess was like a Model T Ford. It was like an old Las Vegas pleasure palace. It was old-fashioned.

  I thought of the captain, doing his duty, and hoped that someone would wake him and the chief engineer, in time to walk about with their uniforms on when we came to Barbados.

  Barbados, where Roger van Diemen was.

  I knew which was Johnson’s cabin. Like mine, it wasn’t locked.

  It didn’t have a chair under the door knob, either. With the uncanny instinct of the plastered, he had got himself stripped and on to the bed, with a towel round his waist. He was in his favourite position, on his face. His hair was all over the pillow, and his glasses had dropped from his dangling hand on to the floor.

  I went forward, heaven help me, to pick them up.

  I was curious, anyway, to see what sort of shape the plane crash had left him in.

  In spite of all that stuff with the sticks and the wheelchair, there was nothing wrong with his legs. They were American-colour, as if they’d been on the sea or in the snow getting tanned for years and years, but not this winter.

  So I looked above the towel.

  The forensic people always gave me a cup of coffee when I’d been studying something, and joked with me because I never really got much upset.

  It’s not that I’m funny. But to imitate wounds, you’ve got to know what you’re doing, and when you’re thinking and drawing, the reality of it all doesn’t get to you.

  I’m not a doctor. I couldn’t diagnose what all the operation scars were, or what the bumps and hollows meant. Except that this wasn’t a matter of a few broken bones from a seatbelt, or a cracked rib or shoulder blade.

  These injuries were internal. I thought of the wheelchair, bumping down the cobbles on Madeira, then didn’t think of it.

  Sole survivor of a plane crash.

  Sole survivor, perhaps.

  Plane crash, my arse.

  I covered him with the blanket, to spare the breakfast steward, and got myself out of the room.

  An open book and a cripple.

  Rita, you’re on your own, girl.

  Chapter 16

  The captain woke in time to get us into Carlisle Bay, Barbados, later that morning, and I drove with Natalie to the St James district, the classy bit of the west coast where she had rented this beach house from Ferdy.

  We drove on the left. Barbados is the Oldest Democracy in the Western World. Barbados is half Martinique’s size, and so British it isn’t even volcanic. I felt deprived.

  I had left without seeing Johnson. Natalie had been waved off by a small bunch of Curtises, whom she was meeting anyway later at the Governor-General’s gig, to which, no surprise, she was also now going.

  I had done the civil bit too, because I probably wouldn’t see them again. After the party, said Clive, they might take themselves north to Florida. Old Joseph didn’t care much for the West Indies in mixed weather.

  My brochure said that the temperature stayed at a steady eighty all the year round in Barbados, and the way the sun was shining didn’t look very mixed to me. But maybe the dice or the girls needed changing.

  Ferdy’s villa was casual, like Ferdy, and you could tell by the way Dodo stood waiting to greet us, like a Total Pole, that the daily help had been a shambles, but she’d licked them into shape all right.

  She and I exchanged naked glares and I went off to my room to sort myself out and unpack. I’d locked all my boxes this time, before I left for Martinique. I took my cat out and put it beside the air-conditioning unit, and it grinned back.

  Then Natalie made fifteen telephone calls and went off to the Coral Reef Club with a hard hat and her hair tied back, to pick up her backer Fred Glitterbags who had actually flown in that morning. They were going riding together.

  Her lawyer, I found out from Dodo, was arriving on the next plane, with her accountant. In the early days of a film, this is a good sign. Number-crunching was about to begin.

  I told Ferdy when he called an hour later, needing some help with a few Bachelors’ Buttons, twenty quid all in. Dr Thomassen was there, with a sheepish expression and a car and a driver.

  According to Ferdy, Natalie could hang about and wait for her meeting until he was good and ready.

  In fact, as I found out pretty quickly, he knew all about it, and didn’t have to parade until Kazimierz did, which was in a room at the Coral Reef Club at four.

  I was free anyway until that meeting ended. Then I had to make over Natalie for carnival time at Government House, leaving some time in hand to do the same for one or two of her friends in the neighbourhood.

  So she had ordained, tick. It was fair enough. A few extra faces, since I wasn’t, in any way, being her secretary. It would do her relationships a world of good, and it didn’t harm me. Rita, Interfacial.

  I considered Ferdy’s offer. I was free. Until Dolly arrived, Johnson was stuck on the Princess anyway. And meanwhile, as Ferdy’s camera-loader, I could get to see the island. The flowers. The banana plantations.

  I slammed on my French pom-pom berry and climbed into the car. Then I took it off again, because Ferdy had brought me a Nelson straw boater to wear instead.

  The place they were taking most of the photographs was just off the east coast, near the Atlantic shore. But Barbados is only fourteen miles across, and that was no problem.

  To please me, Ferdy told the driver to go from Speightstown by way of the Scotland district, but I didn’t meet anyone I knew, and it looked tropical, like everything else. There were some little hills in the middle.r />
  I asked Ferdy where the banana plantations were, but he said we weren’t passing them, and Barbados was mostly sugar cane anyway: where did I think all the Bajan monkeys came from?

  It turned out that Bajan meant Barbadian, and Bajan monkeys were drinks made from rum, and that if I was dead keen to see bananas, there was a new plantation somewhere I could get shown over tomorrow.

  I was dead keen. Dr Thomassen, his eyes like oysters in his pink suntan, said he’d arrange it.

  Ferdy, remembering his duty as a resident, pointed out as we passed it, the ruined half-plaster plantation house built by 20th Century Fox for Island in the Sun. He’d found stills from the film in the Curtis home. Harry Belafonte. James Mason. Dorothy Dandridge.

  Lovely make-up job, he said.

  I didn’t listen to what he went on to say. I’d heard about it already that morning.

  From Old Joe Curtis.

  It was the only conversation I’d had with Kim-Jim’s father, from the moment when he’d looked up and said, ‘You’ve brought the punk girl.’

  There was no special reason, I suppose, why we hadn’t talked. We never sat together at table , and he was off playing cards the rest of the time. Or if he wasn’t, Sharon and Clive were on either side of him, like a bath with grab handles.

  But after that visit to Johnson’s cabin on Paramount Princess, I’d felt a bit dim with no company, and padding through the Grand Salon tumble-twist carpet, had found and sat down at the piano.

  Halfway through Bop Till You Drop, Old Joe had come in.

  I didn’t know I had an audience until my toes slipped off the loud pedal and I spun round on the stool, massaging them.

  He was there, sunk in one of the stuffed brocade chairs, with his weedy ankles crossed under his bathrobe, and his cigar sending up smoke past his crew-cut grey hair. ‘Ry Cooder. You sure are no great piano player,’ he said. ‘You see my Dorian Grey?’

  I hadn’t thought he would remember who I was, but he had.

  ‘We didn’t have what you’ve got,’ he added. ‘Your foam latex and Old Age Stipple and Scar-Em and contact lenses. Lon Chaney used chicken membrane for his blind eye. If an actor couldn’t cry, he sniffed ammonia. If we wanted to make an old man, we used Pan-Stik and pencils and acting. If we wanted to make a monster, we used imagination. You know what that is?’