Treasure Up in Smoke

by David Williams

  ‘Oh Pewegwine, honey, are you in there?’ It was Mrs Dogwall and she must have been right outside the bathroom door.

  He switched off the radio. ‘Er, yes . . . I’m, er . . . I’m in the bath . . . is there . . .’

  ‘Well, don’t get out on my account.’ Was she too intending to volunteer as an ablutionary aide? If this was so much the custom on King Charles he would be happy to draw up a roster.

  ‘Say, that’s some bed you’ve got in here.’ Peregrine was beginning to take a definite proprietorial pride in this temporary but noteworthy possession. There was a pause in the utterances from the other side of the door. Perhaps Mrs Dogwall was testing the springs. ‘We’re wight out of ice. Can we bowwow some fwom your fwidge? That girl’s disappeared.’ There was another pause. ‘What’s that wacket in there? – Sounds like you have a hundwed horse power faucets.’

  ‘It’s the air-conditioner,’ he roared in response, heaving himself up with the intention of switching off the unfamiliar contraption. He grasped the centre control lever which declined to move up or down; he pulled it towards him. The already labouring motor made a valiant effort to rise to the extra call which was thus inadvertently placed upon its ten-year-old, unserviced mechanism. There was the sound of violent acceleration. The whole unit vibrated with such force and clamour as to convert it from an airprocessing box into a self-propelled heavy moving object. Plaster was scattered in all directions as the pulsating box inched towards the balded Peregrine, while issuing a gale of arctic air that pierced his unprotected flesh.

  Close to panic, and unable to stay the progress of the mechanical ogre by frenzied manipulation of the various controls along its face, Peregrine at last located the electric plug above the machine that provided the source of its bounding energy. Standing astride the bath, he wrenched the plug from its socket – thus depriving the whole contrivance of its sole remaining contact with the wall. With a final judder, the oblong metal box tumbled squarely into Peregrine’s waiting if unwelcome embrace. With an armful of air-conditioner, he balanced perilously over the water below.

  ‘My, but that must be a twicky exercise. Is it good for the biceps or something?’ Mrs Dogwall was standing in the open doorway. She was wearing her appraising look again, this time tinged with admiration, and what might have been frank speculation; Peregrine was in no position to gauge such niceties.

  The victim twisted his trunk and with it the large emcumbrance towards his visitor. In this way decorum was partially preserved but on a strictly temporary basis. It was not so much a problem to support the machine, but every next move was impossible without assistance.

  ‘Could you fetch Mr Dogwall? I mean I’m . . .’

  ‘Why, he’s in the tub, honey. Here, let me give you a hand with that thing.’ Mrs Dogwall advanced firmly towards the bath, discarding en route a short diaphanous beach jacket to reveal a white bikini of even more meagre cut than the one she had been wearing earlier – though this time she was at least clad in both pieces. Delicately she stepped into the bath between the beleagured Peregrine and the wall. ‘I’ll take some of the weight while you get a foot down.’ She smiled up at him encouragingly.

  What happened next was to be for ever etched in Peregrine’s memory. It compared in quality of horror to the occasion when he had trodden on the skirt of the Field Marshal’s mistress. Too quickly he dropped one foot into the bath and stepped on the soap. The next moment he was falling backwards into the water. Mrs Dogwall screamed but heroically held on to her side of the air-conditioner. Inevitably she collapsed under its weight, falling forward towards the totally submerged Peregrine. The air-conditioner, wires and plug trailing, bounced on the edge of the bath and because of a protective thrust by Mrs Dogwall toppled on to the floor with a tremendous clatter.

  Glen Dogwall the Third came bounding into the bathroom, hand gun at the ready; Sarah brought up the rear.

  ‘What the hell’s going on . . .’ The beefy American glanced around him in stark incomprehension. Peregrine surfaced and immediately assumed he was about to get himself shot.

  Mrs Dogwall collapsed with uncontrollable laughter. ‘Come on in, honey, the water’s fine. Say, do we have any use for a wet air-conditioner?’

  Shaking with mirth, she stepped out of the tub. Peregrine stayed where he was; there was not even a face flannel within reach.

  Dogwall put the gun into the big pocket of his bathrobe. He smiled as though to signify that finding his wife in bathtubs with comparative strangers was an everyday occurrence. Shaking his head, he walked over to examine the ragged hole in the wall. ‘D’you get mad with it or somethin’, Perry?’ He lifted the machine from where it was resting at a drunken angle with disarming ease, and closely examined the interior of the fifty-pound contrivance before placing it to one side on the floor.

  ‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry . . .’

  ‘Forget it, Pewegwine.’ Mrs Dogwall had recovered her composure. ‘Next time I dwop by for ice cubes I’ll wemember not to dwess.’

  The couple left, passing the giggling Sarah in the doorway. ‘You wan’ me to scrub yo’ back now?’

  Sister Helena made the last entry for the day in the ledger, closed the book, and placed it in the desk drawer which she then double locked. Tomorrow was a Holy day and since the cigar factory did not function on Saturdays and Sundays it would be unattended for the next three days. It was for this reason that she would be especially careful about making her final rounds.

  The little convent – a group of unpretentious, whitewashed buildings – stands in its own two-hundred-acre, fenced plantation three miles north-west of Rupertstown and just below the northern foothills. Ill served by a rutted, dirt road, the convent must be one of the few religious communities that relies on a railway for efficient surface communication.

  To the east the convent grounds extend nearly to the river that flows down the centre of the island before curling to its estuary in the town’s harbour. A mile to the west the single-track railway line that follows the coast up from Rupertstown here begins its inland curve towards the hills and the base of Mount Manitou. It is at a point level with the convent that a spur of the narrow-gauge track branches off, exclusively to serve the little community – just beyond the other and now hardly used branch line to Gull Rock.

  The track runs through the convent gate, and over the short distance to the long building in which Sister Helena was engaged. This is the factory where the nuns and novices of the Order of Blessed Elizabeth the Apothecary produce more than half a million King Charles Cigars every year. That the gate, set between high wire fencing, is normally locked is more a tribute to the self-sufficiency of the Sisters than a mark of their disinclination to encourage visitors – though it is that also.

  The Order is small but industrious. Limited to the one community on Kang Charles, its pious members are drawn mainly from within the island. When not engaged in prayer, some of those Sisters not domestically involved are busily employed in agricultural pursuits around the estate while others are permanently responsible for making the cigars and for instructing novices in the same art.

  Some might well consider it self-indulgent and unworldly of the Order to exist in splendid isolation when its members might more charitably be giving of their talents to the community at large – in nursing, teaching and the more customary employments of socially aware, educated and avowed Christians. Such a view would, however, be singularly inapposite, not to say unjust. The Sisters of King Charles are not, as it happens, particularly well-educated nor suited for training in the professions, yet it has been through their conscientious and materially unrewarded labours that the economy of the whole island is so well balanced: for many years cigars have been to KCI what whisky is to Scotland – if not more so.

  In the context of world trade in cigars, of course, the output of the nuns of KCI is minuscule. Even so, a discerning and strictly limited clientele is more than ready to purchase the output of the factory and to pay the very high price ch
arged for the product.

  King Charles Cigars – known as Elegantes – are four and a half inches in length, and torpedo-shaped; that is to say, they are pointed and closed at both ends – a style popular at the turn of the present century but now rarely produced anywhere else in the world. But it is not the rarity of shape alone that accounts for the popularity of King Charles Elegantes with the five hundred American customers who every quarter received their ten boxes of twenty-five cigars, delivered direct to each personally by one of a small fleet of plain vans operating from the small Miami depot. All of these fortunate and wealthy few, mostly domiciled in the more exclusive parts of Florida, will attest the infinite superiority of the product over all other makes. Some ascribe this to the subtle difference of the King Charles leaf, others to the way the tobacco is cured, yet more to the special skill and devotion of the good Sisters. It should be added that the spirit of Christian charity is hardly reflected in the habits of the customers who scarcely ever share their good fortune with any but the most intimate of friends.

  It has long been a source of solace to cigar manufacturers in a bigger way of business that the KCI production was strictly prescribed some years ago through an import agreement with the US Customs Authority. This set out the maximum number for annual importation at half a million cigars, at a time when demand was far below that total. Over the years, however, the delivery list has built up – always on personal recommendation – so that for some time demand has far exceeded permitted supply. Thus, the cigar traders at large in the USA breathe more easily, for, like the Customs officials at Miami, they can afford to regard the King Charles import with condescension and indulgence: it offers no real commercial threat and its contribution to US Government Revenue is insignificant.

  Convenient as it is to have a King Charles cigar invested with the aura of a holy smoke, the part played by the nuns in the whole production process, while critical, has always been in a sense incidental. It is the King Charles Tobacco Company that has controlled the business and reaped the profits. In mitigation, the growing and curing of tobacco in large quantities, the purchase of packaging materials, the arrangements for shipment and distribution, the keeping of books, and the making of tax and excise returns is none of it suitable work for a small community of pious nuns. Naturally, the Order is modestly rewarded for its contribution, but the sum involved has been only a small proportion of the annual five-million-dollar revenue. Joe O’Hara, who owns the Tobacco Company, has always seen to it that the large income had been equitably distributed both directly as wages to his estate workers and indirectly to the benefit of the islanders in general.

  The only piece of the Tobacco Company income not ploughed back into the KCI economy is the part paid over to Paul O’Hara – Joe’s younger brother – who, living in Miami, looks after the delivery of the product. This last has been an uncomplicated operation not even involving accountancy, except for the settling of Excise duty. Customers are invoiced from the island and make their payments direct to Rupertstown. It should be added, nevertheless, that the younger O’Hara had for some time considered himself inadequately compensated for the part he had played – and that this had been only one of a number of contentious issues that had, over the years, led to the virtual estrangement of the two men. Their relationship, far from fraternal, had long since degenerated into a strictly commercial one, conducted at arm’s length.

  That so substantial a sum as five million should be generated by such a relatively small business is again a tribute to the excellence of the product, the loyalty of its customers, and their willingness to pay many times the price of ordinary cigars. Indeed, it is for this reason that the factory production has been strictly for US dollar-earning export. King Charles Elegantes are not available for purchase on the island – a source of some surprise and irritation to the few tourists who ever visit the place.

  All hand-made cigars consist of a thick core of compressed tobacco leaf, a binder to hold this core together, and finally a wrapper leaf. In the case of King Charles Elegantes it is only the tobacco for the core that is grown on the island. The binder is made from imported, impermeable paper, and the dark Maduro wrapper leaf also comes from abroad.

  The factory, a single-storied building with a low-pitched corrugated roof, is a hundred feet long and forty wide. The workroom runs the whole length of the building and occupies two-thirds of its width. The rest of the space consists of a series of unconnected storerooms solidly partitioned to a height of ten feet and thereafter steel-grated up to the open rafters – a feature that ensures the proper circulation of air and moisture throughout the whole humidified structure. There are no windows on the storeroom side of the building and those on the opposite side are barred as well as fixed and glazed. There are only two doors leading outside. One, at the corner nearest the gate, serves as an unloading bay for the railway trucks that bring dried leaf from the O’Hara Estates; the second, at the other end of the building, leads on to a little covered walk connecting with the main part of the convent. The loading door is secured from the inside when not in use not only by two padlocks but also by a steel gate. The door to the convent is also made of steel and secured by two deadlocks. It would not be an overstatement to say that the tobacco factory is the most impregnable building on King Charles Island. This might be considered yet another witness to the scarcity value of the product.

  Sister Helena’s desk commanded a view of the whole workroom from near the rear door. It was in her nature to move quickly – a habit that Reverend Mother had long regarded as inconsistent with the contemplative life. Sister Helena had thus developed a technique for making rapid progress without giving the appearance of doing so. By stooping and taking short paces she managed to maintain both speed and an air of sanctity. The trick was to keep her shoulders on a level plane. None of this fooled Reverend Mother, but it helped to placate her. In fact Sister Helena progressed from one place to another resembling nothing so much as an industrious ant. Although there was no one else now present in the factory to care if she picked up her long skirts and sprinted down its entire length, she did not alter her habitual staccato and outwardly decorous style of progress.

  She tried the lock on the finished goods storeroom, then hurried over to the long wooden packaging tables. Here the cigars are individually encased in aluminium tubes to keep the aroma fresh before they are boxed, and the boxes sealed and labelled. Everything was in order. She then passed down between the two rows of tables where the actual manufacture of the cigars takes place.

  All raw materials had been locked away as was the custom. She glided from one side of the room to the other checking humidity scales, rattling the handles of all the remaining storerooms save one. Having satisfied herself that the loading bay door was secure, she then moved back quickly to the door of the storeroom she had ignored on her outward progress, bending – but not stopping – to smell the tops of the tables outside and, with equal dexterity and economy of effort, finding the right key in her hand when she reached her objective. The tables had smelled of freshly applied carbolic soap.

  Inside the room there was a perceptible odour but well within the accepted tolerance. Here was stored the extra ingredient that, laced down the centre of each cigar, provided King Charles Elegantes with their irresistible appeal. Stacked on one side of the room was a neat, high pile of plastic sacks sealed – not tied – at both ends: these were the ‘crocus bags’. On the other side two hundred or so plastic trays with air-tight transparent covers were racked along the wall. The material in these was in a sense raw, but more often it is referred to as manicured: it looks like tea leaves, yellowish in colour.

  Sister Helena jerked her head from side to side as she counted bags and trays. This duty finished, she moved to an extraction fan set half-way up the outside wall. It was drawing air from the room into a tall, wide metal flue, the outlet of which stood higher than the building, topped by an elbowed funnel so that its exudation joined the prevailing westerly wind �
� wafting towards the sea. The nun debated with herself for a split second before turning the fan control up a notch – electricity was expensive.

  After a final glance about her, Sister Helena retreated to set the burglar alarm, to lock the outside door, and to repair to vespers, but not before she had secured the lock on the little room containing a considerable quantity – in weight and value – of high quality marijuana.

  CHAPTER VI

  ‘How do you do, Mr Gore.’ The Governor was receiving his guests informally on the lower verandah. He had broken away from a small group of early arrivals to greet Peregrine. ‘I hope you’re quite comfortable – no problems?’

  This hardly seemed an appropriate time to report a gaping great hole in the bathroom wall, the destruction of a whole air-conditioner, and the fact that he had twice compromised himself with his neighbour’s wife. ‘Oh, absolutely, sir . . . I mean, everything’s going according to plan.’ With luck he might yet avoid getting himself shot by Mr Dogwall.

  ‘Daddy, you’re not to monopolize Peregrine.’ Debby Rees looked cool and wholesome in a cotton two-piece with a long skirt. Her midriff was bare below a knotted bodice. She took Peregrine’s arm. ‘C’mon, say I’m a sexy lady in this outfit.’ She twirled herself around.

  Peregrine checked that the ensemble was properly secured. ‘Excuse us, sir,’ he offered unnecessarily to the already retreating figure of the Governor. He looked at Debby. ‘Oh yes, absolutely ripping . . .’

  ‘Well, don’t rip it yet. I’m not Mrs Dogwall.’

  ‘Oh Lord, has that got out already?’

  ‘That and your preference for mixed bathing. The worthy Sarah tells all – well, all she sees. Is there more?’

  ‘No, there isn’t – and I didn’t ask Sarah to wash my back.’ He could at least protest innocence in one other possibly advertised connection.