The Sun Place

by Ray Connolly

  “I was sent out here to take over from Dick Pagett,” explained Hardin. “But I’m not much like Dick. I don’t know what he expected from CVs, but I certainly don’t expect them to behave as though it is they who are on vacation. You and I are here for one reason only, and that is to work. Okay, so we also get to have a good time, but that is only by the way. So far I’ve seen a lot of CVs having a great time, and a lot of guests being ignored.

  “Of course, there are exceptions to this. The tennis coaching looked excellent and I’ve every reason to believe most of the sporting activities are carried out with a lot of enthusiasm. But there are areas that need tightening up.”

  Hardin’s eyes passed around the CVs. Willem Brummer and Matt Hillman were watching him silently. Over in a far corner, leaning against a pillar, stood Hamlet Yablans, playing casually with a Yo-Yo, almost as though willing Hardin to reprimand him. Hardin did not rise to the bait.

  “Let’s start by reminding you of some of the basic rules about being a CV, shall we?” said Hardin, feeling increasingly like a schoolmaster. “First, it isn’t your vacation. You all have to be available at all times for whatever is required of you.

  “Tomorrow we have virtually a complete change of guest list. I don’t want a single one of those people to go home complaining that the CVs spent all their time around the bar and they had to look after themselves. Understood? Also, while I was in Paris I heard some weird stories about CVs encouraging sex parties during the picnics. Well, I didn’t believe those stories, but since I’ve been here today I’ve discovered that I heard only about a fraction of what went on. Now, I’m not blaming anyone in particular for this. I’m saying that from today we start discouraging those games at picnics. I know a lot of people come down here in order to do a little wife-swapping, but as of now we don’t help them. If they want to do that, let them do it in their own cabins. Okay?”

  Hector, the chief picnic organizer, smiled sardonically to himself as heads turned to look at him.

  “Now, I want to talk about drugs. The Bahamian government does not approve of buying, selling, or taking drugs, including marijuana. They have very stiff sentences down here for that. But I hadn’t been in this village for more than an hour before I realized that this is a pusher’s paradise. So let’s get this clear. I don’t want the Bahamian police raiding this place while I’m chief of the village. To be honest, I don’t have any opinions either way on grass or coke, but I’ve got lots of opinions on keeping the law. So if you have your own little cache stowed away somewhere, I suggest you flush it down the toilet, because if I ever come across it you’ll be out of this village instantly. Okay?”

  He looked around for responses. Nearly one hundred blank faces met his. That was apparently the most unwelcome news for the staff. At the back of the crowd, Matt Hillman looked anxiously toward Willem Brummer, but Willem stared straight ahead, his face expressionless.

  “Well, that’s all I want to say to you tonight,” went on Hardin. “If you don’t think any of the criticisms apply to you, then I hope you won’t mind me making them to the others. But for those who can see a trace of truth in what I’ve just said, may I suggest you pay attention to my suggestions. I shall be getting to know all of you in the next few days, and I hope things are going to improve immediately, and that we’re all going to be very happy here for the rest of the season.”

  With that Hardin stepped down from the low stage and walked quickly toward the door. No one spoke. It was as though he were a spoilsport parent who had just announced it was time for homework.

  Once outside, Hardin breathed freely for the first time since he had been on Elixir.

  Twenty-Two

  Cassandra would have preferred an early night, but no attractive woman is ever allowed to disappear by herself at ten o’clock at Club Village, and it was midnight before she was able to draw herself away from the agreeable banter of late-night talk taking place around the wide and open bar.

  Dinner had been a culinary masterpiece. Because she was alone, a hostess placed her with a group of Canadians and Americans. They were all in their late twenties and early thirties and had come down to the Bahamas strictly for the scuba diving, and Cassandra listened with awe as a skinny little woman from Bronxville described nonchalantly her meeting with a couple of sharks out near one of the Exuma cays.

  It came as a shock to Cassandra to realize that her fellow vacationers were so little upset by Dick Pagett’s death. Without newspapers or television, a day in a Club Village seemed an eternity. But still, there was something odd about it. The fact that life in the village carried on without mourning was unreal, as though the guests had been anesthetized. Elixir, she thought, was so removed from reality that normal emotions were suspended.

  At midnight, after dancing a couple of times with a scuba freak from Toronto, Cassandra excused herself. She was very tired. Crossing the pool area, she headed toward her room. Although there were lights attached to trees, it suddenly seemed much darker than she had expected and she found herself hurrying across the open lawn toward the bedrooms. The dance music had stopped and been replaced by a steady bass thump from the basement discotheque.

  She hurried up the steps back toward her room, and began to walk along the long balcony. For some reason she had the overwhelming sensation that she was being followed. She looked over her shoulder. There was no one.

  At last she reached her door. Since Club Village did not issue keys, it was open. Very quickly she stepped inside and turned on the lights. All was as she had left it. She slipped the lock across the door. There were locks on the inside, but not on the outside. She didn’t like that, but there was not much to steal, anyway, since all of her credit cards and valuables had been lodged with the bank earlier. Telling herself that her imagination was playing tricks with her, she undressed quickly, slipped into her nightdress, and climbed into bed.

  Suddenly she felt cold sweat sweep through her body. Again she had the sensation of being watched. In the far distance she could hear music, but there was also something much closer, a slight rapping, a rustling noise. Timidly, she pulled herself up and looked around the room. Everything was still. Had she locked the door properly? She crossed the room. The door was secure. Now she had the feeling that there was someone on the outside, someone who wanted to come in. Half laughing at herself for her silly imaginings, she suddenly pulled open the venetian blinds that covered the window to the balcony.

  The blinds were open for only five seconds before Cassandra screamed and dropped them. But those five seconds were long enough to terrify her. There, facing her on the far side of the glass, was a ghoulishly painted, grinning witch with long black hair and a reptile face, in green and black and yellow, a face that was distorted by madness. As she screamed, the face turned and fled into the night.

  Part III

  Twenty-Three

  John Arrowsmith lay cozily under the blue patchwork of the quilt listening to the exertions of his wife, Ruth, as she went through her early-morning routine. Physical torture was, she believed, the only way to the prolongation of youth. He could not see her except during the sit-ups, since she had selected the foot of their bed as her training territory, but he knew that she would be naked except for a tiny pair of white cotton pants. Fifteen years ago such a performance would have had him high on arousal, and would undoubtedly have ended prematurely when he would have hauled her back under the sheets. But in those days there would have been no reason for Ruth to worry about her figure. Ironically, fifteen years earlier Ruth would have worn a bra for any kind of workout.

  Ruth’s dark, pretty head popped up from the foot of the bed. “Twenty,” she gasped, and immediately flopped over onto her stomach to begin her series of twelve pushups.

  Arrowsmith didn’t even look at her. Unconsciously, his hand gripped the layer of flab which was spreading comfortably just below his ribs. He really ought to do something about that, he thought, and then just as quickly dismissed the idea. At forty a little bit o
f flesh was acceptable, even attractive on a man, he thought. Quite honestly, he wouldn’t have objected to it on Ruth, either.

  Pulling himself out of bed, he went into the bathroom, locked the door, and turned on the shower.

  Forty years old, he told himself. If this was the beginning of middle age then old age had to be unthinkable. He gasped as the water ran over his hair. When he had first married he had had masses of thick, black hair. Now he had thinning gray hair, and a skin which seemed just that bit less polished than he remembered it.

  The door handle was turned from the outside.

  “John … how long are you going to be?” Ruth’s voice was already impatient, and these were her first words of the day.

  “For Christ’s sake … I only just got in here,” he retorted, and regretted his abruptness instantly.

  “Only asking,” came an airy response. “I’ll use the children’s.”

  Fifteen years married and conversation was so often needlessly barbed and laced with irritation. “Stalemate,” someone had said to him recently. “Marriage is a couple of stale mates.” He frowned. He didn’t like to think like that.

  Maybe Ruth was right. Maybe a vacation would do him good. The vacation had been her idea, or at least an idea dreamed up by her and her racquetball friend Joanna Roeg. Normally when the Arrowsmiths took midwinter vacations they trekked out to Colorado or to upstate New York for the skiing. But this year, because of Joanna, four places had been booked at the Club Village, Elixir, for the Roegs and the Arrowsmiths.

  The whole thing seemed to suit Ruth admirably. She was already well into the vacation spirit, and had surprised him the previous evening by in one breath admitting exhaustion from all the packing and then in the next suggesting almost girlishly they should celebrate the start of their vacation with a little lovemaking, a sort of hors d’oeuvres for Elixir, she had said. It had been successful, as it nearly always was, in that they both declared themselves satisfied. But afterward, as Ruth lay snoring quietly, Arrowsmith lay awake and gazed at the pattern of lights shining on the curtains, wondering why he was not the happiest man in the world.

  He should have been happy, he told himself. Everything he could possibly once have wished for had become his. He had married the only girl he had ever loved. He had been successful in his profession, which was law, and which therefore carried a certain degree of blighted respectability. He was reasonably well off, and his three children, aged twelve, ten, and six, were happy, well adjusted, and healthy. He still loved his wife. At least he thought he did. Certainly, he did not love anyone else. But over and over his mind said to him, “So what?” So what if he was now a senior partner? So what if he owned the best house in the neighborhood? So what if they could afford to run three cars and had a gardener? So what?

  Once upon a time, he had had a two-room apartment on East Eleventh Street, a wonderful, vibrant place of Puerto Rican colors and Phil Spector records. Sometimes he had been too broke to eat. But he had been happy there. He had been happy when he had married, and he was overjoyed with his children. But somewhere along the line, all the fun had gone out of life.

  Ruth tried to sympathize with his predicament, but she could do no more than try. She really didn’t understand, and he could see that. For her these were the best years of her life. The early years of sacrifice and make-do had been hard on her, but she had borne them silently and valiantly, and now that she was thirty-six, she was suddenly free to do all the things she had always wanted and felt were important to her.

  As he watched his wife move happily through classes, sports, and societies, ever bent on pursuing every moment of life as usefully as possible, Arrowsmith had begun to feel an indefinable alienation creeping over him, a distancing of himself from what he was, what he had become, and what he really wanted out of life. He was not sure what the mystery of self-fulfillment was for him, only that he knew that work, a degree of affluence, and a stable home life had not provided it. Once when he had tried stumblingly to articulate this mild panic into which he found himself slipping Ruth had listened, at first consolingly, but then she had made a flip comment about the onset of the male menopause.

  He had not confided in her after that. She had locked herself into the orderliness of suburban society and he had withdrawn to an imaginary world where such gibes did not hurt him; a world that allowed him to go through the motions of fatherhood and good neighborliness, but which left him alone in his mental desert, watching everything as though seeing it on television, a state of mind that he sometimes thought must be madness.

  And as he watched the rest of the world, he found himself looking at himself, and hating what he saw. He had been a particularly faithful husband, much to the amazement of many of his friends and colleagues, but now he suddenly found himself drawn to other women. He did not wish to be unfaithful, but neither did he wish to stay faithful. Sometimes in bleak moments he would look back over the fifteen years of his married life and wonder why he had not strayed, what the mystical secret had been that had kept him locked in the same bed every night. He felt pretty sure that Ruth had also been faithful, but where, he wondered, was the virtue in that? Surely she desired other men. He certainly desired other women. He didn’t even feel jealous when he imagined her having an affair. It somehow didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, only the fact that he was now forty, and unless things changed soon his life would have been a boring stroll through affluence toward death—always completely devoid of the poetry of excitement.

  “Kaopectate … I forgot the Kaopectate,” said Ruth as he entered the kitchen. She was already looking like midsummer’s day in her jeans and matelot shirt, with a navy blue silk scarf tied rakishly just below her Adam’s apple. Fifteen years ago she wouldn’t even have mentioned the possibility of diarrhea. Proximity bred indifference. Could romance and Kaopectate flourish in the same suitcase? he asked himself.

  “For someone going on vacation you don’t look very happy,” said Ruth as she poured the coffee.

  Arrowsmith didn’t reply.

  “You’ll enjoy it when you get there,” said Ruth without looking at him. “You always do.”

  That was the killer line. Arrowsmith felt his being shrink a little inside himself. She was treating him like a mother, and he, because of all his uncertainties, was allowing it to happen.

  Ruth hurried on “Besides, you’ll be able to ogle Joanna in a bikini for a full two weeks, and there won’t be a thing I’ll be able to do about it.”

  Arrowsmith changed the subject. “Did you remember to give Mark enough hydrocortisone? he asked. Their eldest child suffered from an unpredictable form of eczema.

  “I remembered to do everything,” said Ruth, amused by his refusal to discuss Joanna.

  She was right, of course. The only bright spot on his horizon was the expectation of seeing Joanna without most of her clothes. Fifteen years earlier Ruth and Joanna had been roommates at Wellesley, but had lost sight of each other until a chance meeting at a tennis court a few months earlier. Now they were emotionally joined at the hip, and he often wondered whether Joanna had ever told Ruth about the night in 1965 when a mix-up in arrangements had led him to take Joanna to a movie while Ruth had been at home celebrating her grandparents’ diamond anniversary. It had, in retrospect, been one of the most deliciously naughty nights of his life, although the guilt when an unsuspecting Ruth had returned had been vicious. Consequently he had not been dismayed when, shortly afterward, Joanna flunked her exams and left Wellesley to take a job in Washington, and the two girls had lost contact.

  Like most girls attached to the political world, Joanna’s career had gone at the foxtrot rate of slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. A number of affairs had been followed by an unhappy marriage to an economics professor, and then she had moved back to New York, where a rich realtor had offered her a country-club, color-magazine life in return for unlimited boredom, although obviously he hadn’t quite phrased it in that way. Six months after their marriage, five months after Joan
na had realized just what she had let herself in for, she and Ruth had met at the tennis tournament.

  At that moment the front door bell rang. “That’ll be the cab. He’s early,” said Ruth and got up to answer the door, while her husband began to clear away the breakfast things.

  Two weeks in the sun with Ruth and Joanna, thought Arrowsmith, wondering why an awful feeling of trepidation hung over him.

  Twenty-Four

  They met the Roegs in the departure lounge at Kennedy International Airport. As always when Ruth and Joanna met, they rushed to each other like a couple of kids, giggling and kissing and chattering, while the two husbands approached each other with the weary gloom of opposites.

  “So they finally got this thing sorted out,” said Michael Roeg, as he handed the porter a five-dollar bill.

  Arrowsmith gazed at him. He was a short, bulk-chested man with fine brown hair, which looked as though it was regularly back-combed and blow-dried in an attempt to give him the appearance of being taller than he was. He was wearing a pair of mustard-colored plaid slacks, which folded around his bulging paunch like a tent, and a navy blue blazer complete with polished chrome buttons. Around his neck was a yellow cravat. He looked ridiculous. What Joanna could have been thinking of when she married this creature Arrowsmith could not possibly imagine.

  “How are you, Michael?” he asked, wondering if he would care if the little man said he had a terminal disease.

  “Raring to go,” said Roeg, rubbing his hands together with anticipation.

  Jesus God, thought Arrowsmith. He said, “Joanna looks very attractive.”

  That was true. Joanna looked wonderful, to be honest. Arrowsmith would not know it, but she was wearing a pair of Giorgio Armani dogstooth trousers and a collarless Italian jacket. Her hair, which had been long and wayward when he shared his night of delight with her all those years ago, was now short, combed back at the sides, and left swooping down across her forehead at the front. Alongside her, Ruth looked like the good, wholesome, all-American, unsophisticated mother she was. Ruth was pretty, all right, but since being kicked out of college Joanna had acquired a sophistication which Ruth had missed.