The Tropical Issue: Dolly and the Bird of Paradise

by Dorothy Dunnett

  A couple of pills and some brandy having cleaned Ferdy out of his few emotional blocks, he gave Dodo a thump on the back and a smacking kiss in passing, which more than threw her. She recovered in time to jerk her head at Johnson and say to me, ‘And what’s the matter with him?’

  I’d had a brandy as well.

  ‘Drink,’ I said. ‘You should see what he’s done to his ship.’

  I knew I shouldn’t go to sleep because of the hurricane. I knew I ought to see that Ferdy and Johnson were all right. I knew I ought to get rid of Porter, or I was in for a strenuous night.

  In the blessed carpeted dryness below decks, I looked at the armchairs creaking about on their chains and didn’t want to do any of these things.

  It was Maggie who did them.

  She went out and came back several times, and the last time got hold of me and said, ‘O.K. The wrecks are going to be fine; the chief steward’s looking after them, and they’ve radioed the hospital at St Lucia.

  ‘I’ve told Porter he can have us both together tomorrow on the waterbed, and he’s gone back to tearing up telephone directories. Lenny and Raymond propose to take turns in the wheelhouse and sleep in here between times, which I should think the insurers of Princess as well as Dolly ought to be happy about. You and I are going to bed.’

  On board somewhere were the rest of the Curtises: Clive and Sharon and Old Joe himself. I hoped he was strapped into his bed. I wasn’t so much bothered about Natalie. I was finding it hard to bother about anything.

  Maggie and I shared a cabin. Finally. We had a sort of lurching shower each, and as I got into bed, ignoring the night-gear provided, I remembered what I wanted to find out. How the Princess had known to come after us.

  ‘She didn’t,’ said Maggie. ‘Dramatic irony. She was on her course for Miami when she got the same distress signal that we did. She’s here because she answered the hoax call from our hoods.’

  I was too sleepy to say so, but I thought it would have been funny if the Princess had got to the hoods first, and what Natalie’s reaction would have been, to find twelve guys with guns in her room, demanding recreational sex and her diamonds.

  I thought I was still thinking about it, when Maggie shook me awake.

  It was daylight. Full daylight. Late morning daylight.

  Maggie said, ‘St Lucia. We’re coming into Marigot, just ahead of the hurricane. The skipper’s so-so, and Raymond wants to get him out before Chloe hits. The Victoria Hospital at Castries are sending an ambulance. Do you want to go into Castries with Raymond and Lenny?’

  I held on to the sides of the bunk. Everything was swinging. Two of the drawers were out of the dressing-table. I said, ‘What about Ferdy?’

  Silly question. Ferdy was Maggie’s business. She was taking him to be patched up, and then to meet up with Carl Thomassen. If Ferdy and Thomassen wanted to fly their stuff home when the storm was over, she might just go with them. Raymond didn’t mind. And Johnson, said Maggie, didn’t exactly need a crew any more. She was brisk again. Like my aunt.

  I lay thinking.

  Natalie was on board, but I wasn’t her employee any more. I was here because Roger van Diemen had flown to St Lucia yesterday, and Johnson was following him.

  But Johnson had been knocked out of the game. Which left me, and maybe Raymond and Lenny. Or maybe not Raymond and Lenny. I doubted if they gave a damn at the moment for Roger van Diemen.

  Unlike Maggie, I quite cared what happened to Johnson. In turn, he had his job to do, and if he couldn’t do it, someone would step in, surely, after the storm.

  And if nobody stayed with it, I would.

  I said, when Maggie asked me, that I wouldn’t mind going into Castries in the ambulance. I borrowed someone’s shirt-tails and pants, and was on deck when the anchor went down. The ambulance hadn’t yet come. But, the R.T. informed us, a car was leaving the hotel for Castries, with room for two passengers.

  Maggie and Ferdy decided to take it, and leave the proper ambulance to take care of Johnson. Considering all the bends in that bloody road, it was probably sensible.

  I got a goodbye kiss from Ferdy that did us both a lot of good, and delivered a tongueful of brandy where it was rather nice. Then Maggie helped him, still talking, down to the launch.

  I watched them chug to the jetty. I watched them pass a yacht I thought I knew, and I stood, clutching the rail, and gazed at her.

  I knew her. I knew every line of her. I was looking at the broken struts and stripped booms and battered sides of the white and beautiful Dolly, her two tall masts arching backwards and forwards against the dark sky.

  Her temporary crew had departed. Once the queen of the harbour, she now rocked to her own anchor in shallower water, tipsily threadbare, like someone’s old mistress.

  She had made it. I was glad.

  The wind in the anchorage was wild and freakish. The deck of the Paramount Princess was dirty, with no sunchairs in sight, and the pool itself dry except for the swaying puddle left by the rainfall.

  No white-coated attendants asked if I’d like an iced drink. No topless girls lay about, dreamily reading. I could hear the captain on the radio-telephone, his voice ragged and snappish, and see Raymond’s blond head beside him.

  Clive Curtis said, ‘Well, Rita. You’ve had quite an adventure. You’re going to Castries with your skipper?’

  We owed our lives to the Paramount Princess. Coals of fire, after our behaviour to Natalie, the Curtis family’s principal guest. Or a gesture I needn’t feel too grateful for, since they’d pinched my job from me. On the other hand, but for them, Johnson might have been done for.

  I said, ‘You took a real risk for us. I’m glad you got here before Chloe.’

  Clive gave a small smile; then the red moustache snapped back again. ‘Win some, lose some,’ he said. ‘I doubt if Pa would have agreed to it, till he heard the guy was too sick to play cards. That’s one Limey sharper you’ve got there.’

  A woman’s voice said, ‘You think he had to cheat to get the better of you?’

  Clive’s sister Sharon, walking to his other side, didn’t spare me a glance. She added, ‘When the hell do we get off this hulk?’

  Clive said, ‘There’s the hotel, over there. We’re waiting for this painter guy’s ambulance.’

  I said, ‘I think I’ll see if Mr Johnson is ready.’

  Before I’d gone a step, a voice below me called, ‘Ahoy Paramount Princess!’

  I saw the captain peer over his side deck. I looked over the deck rail as well.

  Bobbing on the water below was the Customs launch from the jetty, with four men and Amy Faflick standing in it.

  Because of the wind, she had taken the cigar out of her mouth, which looked less like Humphrey Bogart’s and more like George Raft’s. Her white hair whipped like new standing rigging.

  Instead of the baggy shorts, she had on trousers like fireman’s canvas, taut with draughts. And on the planks beside her was a square box with a towel over it.

  She spotted me.

  ‘Rita Geddes? Where’s your effing fair-weather sailor?’

  I wondered which one she meant. ‘Johnson?’ I said. ‘He’s waiting for the Victoria ambulance. We got boarded.’

  ‘Horses’ asses. I know all that,’ said Amy. ‘Heard you on the ham radio. I’m your ambulance.’

  Raymond came to the rail. ‘Amy?’

  Bears obeyed Amy Faflick. She turned the same sort of stare on Johnson’s boyfriend. ‘There’s an effing hurricane on the way,’ she said. ‘All hospital services on stand-by. No ambulances. I volunteered to drive your stupid party to Castries. What’s wrong with the silly sod?’

  ‘Wait. I’ll get him,’ said Raymond. I watched him two-step off below, not sure whether to follow him.

  Clive came up, and seamen opened the rail and fixed the companionway. Even when made fast, the Customs boat jarred up and down. Three men moved forward and, balancing, prepared to board the Princess.

  I’d thought, if I th
ought at all, that they’d have made some sort of stretcher. Instead, Lenny suddenly appeared on deck, one hand grasping the rail and the other supporting Dolly’s owner under the shoulder. Raymond, lurching forwards, took a grip of his arm on the other side. Johnson winced.

  He wasn’t quite Blithe Spirit, but he was a weird colour, with the sort of lines you put in with a maroon pencil.

  Someone had shaved him, and some staff work had produced a spare pair of bifocals, which made his face look less a disaster area and more like a stockbroker’s.

  He was concentrating so much on the effort to walk that I didn’t think he would see me, but he did. He pulled a face, and then forged on to the head of the companionway.

  There, he said, ‘Amy? Made a mistake with my body language.’

  ‘Made a mistake with your effing crew,’ Amy said. ‘Can’t you move quicker than that? There’s an effing hurricane due.’

  She watched him down the steps with pure anxiety, and let off a string of obscenities as soon as he was safely in the boat with Lenny and Raymond.

  Then I joined them, having added my thanks to the speeches Johnson and Raymond had already made to the captain and Clive and his sister. Old Joseph wasn’t about.

  The three Customs men were still on the Princess, but their boatman didn’t mind giving an emergency lift to the hospital party. Engine roaring, we smacked our way over the lagoon.

  Weightless and deserted, Dolly bounced on her cable. Johnson looked at her.

  Behind the bifocals, anything might have been happening. But when he spoke, making an effort against the wind, Johnson’s voice had very little expression in it. ‘You saw her, Amy?’

  ‘Stepped aboard with the Customs on the way across. And off again,’ Amy shouted. ‘Cross between a breaker’s yard and a cat box. What were your boarders searching for? Cufflinks?’

  Raymond called, ‘Mrs Sheridan had worn her jewels in Martinique. They maybe thought she was aboard. Amy ...’

  ‘Amy, shut up,’ roared Amy. ‘He’s bugged-out. I see it. What if his effing guts pack it in before he gets treatment?’

  ‘Let’s just try,’ snapped Raymond. The launch jarred and jolted. His eyes were bloodshot, and so were Lenny’s. I was the only one who’d had a decent night’s sleep.

  Day’s sleep. It must be lunchtime. I drew a breath, and yelled, ‘When is Chloe due?’

  You had to bellow, because of the drone of the launch, and the creaking and banging of boats, and the noise, like steam under pressure, of thousands of jostling palm trees. And this other roar, like crowds at a football match, which filled the sky and had come quite suddenly, along with an extra darkness that took what light there was out of the air.

  I looked up. So did everyone else. You could see the pale faces on every boat, and on shore, and on the jetty.

  Birds. Birds of all sizes and shapes streaming over our heads from the east, screeching, wailing and croaking their warning.

  Amy glanced up. ‘There’s your answer,’ she said. ‘Front edge of the cloud in just over an hour . . .

  ‘Birds. Elfing quitters,’ she added.

  The boat slid alongside the jetty and Amy planked her basket on top and clattered up with the rope and made it fast. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Wee fella at the top; Raymond at the bottom, and ease our dumb sailor friend up. This’ll effing teach him not to answer distress calls in future.’

  Amy drove the big Toyota herself, with an unforthcoming Johnson packed with cushions in the back seat, and the other two sitting beside him. I sat beside her, and watched the coconuts ripping off the palm trees.

  It was seven miles to Castries, once you got to the top of the road; and half an hour to do it in. Easy.

  Amy turned on her crackling radio, and we listened to all the advisories, in English and then in French patois. Among the rest were flash-flood warnings: keep away from beaches and rivers.

  And finally, an announcement. In ten minutes’ time, all electricity would be cut off on the island.

  Johnson said, ‘I think that’s far enough, Amy.’

  I didn’t know he was awake. No one showed any surprise. The Toyota’s wheel spun under Amy’s ferocious brown claws, and the car hurtled straight for the palm trees, turned on its axis, and exploding through several gears, set off like one of her tigers in the exact direction we’d come from. Her cigar waggled.

  I said, ‘Why?’

  Raymond and Lenny both looked at Johnson, who looked straight back. Amy said, ‘Road blocked by effing trees. That’s right, isn’t it? Can you stand this, buster? There’s an hour of it.’

  She was addressing the Owner. Johnson said, ‘It’s genius, Amy. Keep going. I’m full of Henry’s depth-charges.’

  ‘You look it, buster,’ said Amy. ‘You look as if you’re running on deaf-aid batteries.’

  The car rocketed on, leaving me none the wiser. They knew something I didn’t. We weren’t going to the Victoria Hospital. We were actually approaching the end of the road that led back and down to the yacht harbour.

  We were approaching it, and going to pass it.

  We weren’t going to pass it. In the middle of the road, among a tangle of palm leaves and some bouncing coconuts, a short figure was planted, waving its bare knobbled arms. Amy braked.

  Grampa Joe Curtis thrust his mottled face in the window and yelled, ‘Are you goin’ to . . .’

  He broke off. ‘Hell: you’re the painter fella who bust up his ketch?’

  ‘Johnson. Yes, Mr Curtis. The road to Castries is blocked. Mrs Faflick’s kindly offered to take us to her home near Soufriere. What’s your trouble?’

  It was the longest speech he’d made yet. At least it told me where we were going. Once I would have asked why.

  Old Joseph’s sharp, elderly eyes passed over Raymond, registered me and ended with Amy.

  ‘You got room for one more?’ he said. ‘Hotel’s full. Bedrooms full. Folk sittin’ in each other’s laps all over the bar an’ the restaurant. Time for the Happy Hour, they’ll need to hold a mass marriage. The only one of us with a bedroom is that bloody dame Sheridan.’

  Johnson said, ‘Amy? It was Mr Curtis’s boat that rescued us. We do rather owe him.’

  ‘Sure, there’s plenty of house-room,’ Amy said. She leaned back and opened the door. ‘Any more of you? Take one or two.’

  Old Joseph held up his arms, and we pulled him in. Under his smart, tailored rainsuit in stone-colour, his bones were like pencils.

  He said, ‘Get goin’. That storm’s on its way. Clive an’ Sharon an’ Porter want to live in a refugee camp, don’t let’s spoil their fun. You drive on, ma’am.’

  She started up, shuttled through the gears again as if weaving concrete, and drove on, and south.

  There are said to be 385 bends in the road between Castries and Soufriere. By now, the gale seemed all set to straighten them. Amy drove the twenty-nine miles from Marigot as if it had.

  By the time we got to the fishing village south of Marigot, we had seen the first of the cabbage palms crashing. Green creeper, unfurled from the stays of telegraph poles, looped and flew in front of us, like adverts from low-flying aircraft.

  The sea was white and grey and roaring, and the sky was going black.

  Between that and the next village my main job was to keep the windscreen clear of the torn fronds and branches that kept hitting and packing it. Leaf-pulp and crushed fruit on the road made the wheels whine.

  Smells streaked into the car, and dashed out of it. The warm vanilla smell of a copra factory, and the sweetness of cane, and the schoolroom smell of sulphur from the Pitons, like green sugar cones through the cloud ahead.

  At the next village, the river was already flooding yellow-white over the bridge, wrapping the uprights in ragged sheets and bits of bleached cotton.

  We crossed between walls of spray, and ran into a torrent of rain. It hit the road with the sound of tearing cloth and covered the windscreen like glycerine.

  ‘Jesus ,’ said Grampa Joe. The ra
in, whirling in through my open window, thudded on top of everybody, and every time the trees thinned on our left, the heavy car rocked and shuddered.

  The radio crackled on, almost drowned out by the row from outside, and now and then produced a row of its own of quite a different sort.

  Grampa Joe sat with a cigar shaking in one hand and his lighter trembling in the other and said, ‘What in the name of sweet Jesus are those dumb clucks doin’? Singin’?’

  Johnson roused himself to the extent of opening one eye. ‘National song of St Lucia,’ he said. ‘Ferdy Braithwaite would sing it to you.’

  I wondered where Ferdy was, and if Maggie had got his shoulder fixed up, and if I would hear him sing Prince Eager again. I didn’t much want to hear him sing Prince Eager again, but I missed Ferdy.

  Amy said, pleating the wheel, her eyes half shut against cigar smoke, ‘England’s greatest gift to St Lucia. I’ll effing sing it to you.’

  I saw what she meant as she bucketed along, her voice raised in chorus with the radio voices, her lipless mouth keyholed round her cigar and her words smashed by explosions of coughing.

  ‘Sons and daughters of St Lucia Love the Land that gave you birth Land of beaches, hills and valleys Fairest Isle of all the earth Wheresoever you may roam Love, oh Love your island home.’

  There were two more verses.

  I can’t sing, but I joined in; and so did Raymond, once we got the hang of the tune.

  I sang; and thought, What the hell have I got to sing about?

  The last time I sang was on my water skis in Madeira, when I was made to board Dolly. The rich, superior yacht with the rich, superior Owner.

  I knew Dolly now, as I didn’t then. I knew every stick of wrecked, filthy Dolly. After one night, she was part of my life.

  I had left Madeira; I had left London with only one purpose. To pay out the man who killed Kim-Jim. Rita’s one-man crusade.

  Now I was what I had always resisted being in private life: part of a team. For a moment, on board the Princess, I had thought the team had gone, and I might be on my own. And instead of feeling free, I’d felt the opposite.

  I suppose it was a landmark.