The Tropical Issue

by Dorothy Dunnett

  He looked up and said, ‘Of course, I’m deeply obliged. If you have to go, would you be very kind and take Bessie down to the doorman? He doesn’t mind walking her.’

  ‘I’ll walk her last thing,’ I said. ‘And post your letters. I’ve got Ferdy’s key. Would you like some tantalised fruit from the box?’

  You could see him think about it, but not for long.

  ‘Not very much. You have them,’ he said.

  He hadn’t complained about the Scott Joplin, so I went and played some more, and fed Bessie and watered her, and then switched on the T.V. I’d noticed in the wee sitting-room. I remembered at the same time that, though I’d fed the Owner, I’d forgotten the liquids.

  I rooted out a nice selection of bottles, and ice, and some big and small glasses, and carried it all to the bedroom.

  The door was ajar, and behind it, Bessie lay on the rug, snoring heavily.

  Above her on the bed, the Owner was sleeping too, on his face, with his bifocals thrown on the sheets anyhow. I put them where I left the whisky, and took a vodka for myself back to the sitting-room.

  I used to be good at cartoons at college. After I finished my drink, I filled in time drawing Ferdy ogling Mrs Sheridan, and Mrs Sheridan dropping towels in front of the bug-eyed agency man.

  The block and crayon came from the studio, where I’d found where Johnson kept all his painting things. They hadn’t been used for an age. The palette had lost all its stickiness and the rags were all hard.

  There were two more calls. One was from Ferdy, roaring tight from a nightclub, and bellowing housekeeper’s instructions about food, pills and Bessie. I put the phone down on him.

  Later, I took Bessie out on the pavement and the security man held the door for me. Back in the flat, I left her to push her own way into the Owner’s room, having no mind to get mixed up with bedtime ablutions.

  I found a box of chocolates and some grapes, and took them to the big bedroom.

  There were no satin nighties or black lace undies in any of the fitted drawers, which was a pity. It made you wonder what Ferdy and Pal Johnson actually had in common, apart from short tempers. However, the beds were made up. They were new, too. The sheets had sticky corners where the price labels had been.

  I was tired. I wakened four times: twice with burglar alarms going off in the Persian carpets and once because of some drunks. The last time, I couldn’t make out what it was, and then realised that it was Bessie not snoring. There was a light on under my door, and the sound of somebody chatting.

  I could just make out that it was the Owner, moving about if not racing, and talking to Bessie. I took it that he had wakened up and was going to bed officially, without bothering to find out if the flat was crowded or not.

  I had the feeling that, so far as he was concerned, we were all invisible anyway, with the possible exception of Bessie.

  I was just dropping off to sleep again when the funny thing happened.

  It began with a ring at the doorbell.

  For a moment, I thought it was yet another bloody phone call. Then I came properly awake, and remembered it was two in the morning, and I was in a strange block of flats with a moody bastard, and if the doorbell rang, he wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I’d have to.

  I got up, draped myself in the quilt, and marching out, put the hall light on. There was, I saw, a light under the Owner’s door. The doorbell rang again.

  I walked through the hall, and stopping just short of the door, yelled through it, ‘What is it?’

  A cockney voice said, ‘Mr Johnson? Security.’

  After all the jokes down below, you’d think Security would damn well know Johnson couldn’t come to the door. I said, ‘What is it?’

  Pause. No quick thinker, this voice. Then it said, ‘Are you alone, Miss?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Mr Johnson’s here, but he can’t come to the door. What is it?’

  It was great news for two in the morning. He wanted to come in, because a man had been seen hanging about. A big fair man in black, lurking outside. By the fire escape leading to 17b’s back balcony.

  Damn Ferdy.

  I wasn’t going to open the door at this time of night, whoever this guy said he was.

  I would have to go and search through the flat myself. There was an umbrella stand under my nose with various sticks in it, and some pretty sharp knives in the kitchen.

  I rather wished I was wearing something handier than a quilt, but if all else failed, I could smother the guy if I caught him.

  I explained this through the door. It didn’t go down well. There followed a fairly noisy argument, with the security man standing outside demanding to get in.

  It was cut short by the well-known crack of the Owner’s voice.

  Propping up his bedroom doorpost behind me, Pal Johnson said, ‘Must we wake the whole building? Ask him his name. If it’s Ritchie Tiller, and he had a new grandchild last Tuesday, let him in.’

  It was, he had, and I did. I waited, wrapped in my quilt, while Grandfather Tiller came in, properly uniformed, searched the apartment, and found nothing and nobody.

  He refused a drink, apologised to the Owner and me for disturbing us, and went away.

  Pal Johnson, getting up from the hall chair, was kind enough to thank me as well, before tapping his way to his room and shutting his door with a snap.

  I watched him go. I didn’t get back into bed, although I put out the hall lights and my own. I sat in my doorway and waited. I was interested.

  Johnson’s room was the only one the security man hadn’t searched. Naturally. Johnson had been awake ever since the intruder had been glimpsed, and in any case, had checked the curtains and cupboards himself.

  So he said.

  And since the security man believed him, the security man couldn’t know, as I did, that Johnson didn’t smoke cigarettes.

  And wouldn’t therefore have wondered, as I did, about the smell of good cigarettes that had floated very faintly from the open door of Johnson’s room.

  I waited a long five minutes before I heard the voices from behind the same door.

  One was Johnson’s. The other man had a lighter voice, and seemed, keeping it low, to be trying to speak at some length, while Johnson kept cutting him off. They were quarrelling.

  There was no doubt they knew one another. There was no doubt either that they were good at keeping their voices down. I crouched in my quilt at the door, and I still couldn’t make out the words properly. It was maddening.

  I tumbled back to my room when the voices stopped. But instead of Johnson’s door opening, there was a rattle of curtain rings. His guest was using the window, the balcony and the fire escape.

  There was a view of the fire escape from the studio. I didn’t switch on any lights. I just stood in my quilt, and watched this broad-shouldered menace in black come out of the Owner’s room and whizz silently down.

  I saw his face in the mews light, and it was battered and tough, like those guys who get sent to the Sitwells. His hair was curly and yellow.

  I slipped back to the hall. In the room of the Owner and host, a window closed and I heard curtains shutting again. No wonder he hadn’t wanted the building roused.

  Whatever the quarrel had been, no one had slugged him, it seemed, at the end of it.

  Pity.

  I didn’t know what he was up to, but in his state it couldn’t be much. You meet all sorts in show business and nothing in the sex line surprises me, which is not to say all of it appeals to me.

  I had no doubt, really, that Ferdy’s pal hadn’t been murdered, but it was a shame to go to bed without checking it.

  I tapped on Johnson’s door, neatly wrapped in my quilt, and asked him if he would like a wee cup of tea to send him over.

  I was ready for most things except absolute silence.

  I gave him time to be in the bathroom, get his glasses on, find his stick, put on his dressing-gown, get the other three guys out from under the bed.

>   I gave him time to die, and then stopped tapping and turned the door handle.

  This time the door was locked. No punk with pink and blue hair was going to turn over his bedroom again.

  I nearly went to phone for help. He must have realised, then, that if he didn’t answer, that’s what would happen.

  He spoke.

  He said, ‘Miss Geddes. Will you get the hell back to your room and leave me alone?’

  That looks almost polite. You didn’t hear the voice that he said it in.

  I picked up my quilt and got out of it.

  Chapter 3

  The next time I woke in 17b it was daylight, and the streets were full of window-cleaning vans and bankers and shop girls, which meant that eight-thirty had not yet clanged everywhere. As I got up, one of the Persian carpets shut off its alarm, and soon the other did.

  My hair was a mess. Leaving my lashes lying, I went to the kitchen, and found the Enemy already there with his stick, boiling a kettle.

  His hair was combed, and he had his glasses and his dressing-gown on and an unsurprised expression, which meant that he had heard me moving about although I hadn’t heard him.

  I wasn’t sure what he would say, but he’d brought back his manner to neuter. ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  No skin off my nose. (More’s the pity, as my Geddes aunt in Troon was happy to say.)

  I hadn’t expected to see him. My feet were bare, and I hadn’t yet pulled on my gauchos, but I wasn’t bothered. I had a long shirt on.

  I said, ‘Oh, hullo. I came through for some eggs. Don’t you do something, all of you, about those shop alarms?’

  His kettle was singing. Using his stick, he moved about, collecting tea and a teapot and stuff with one hand. ‘The eggs are over there,’ he said. ‘Did the alarms keep you awake as well? I’m sorry about the excursions.’

  Excursions wasn’t what I would have called them. I took four eggs, cracked and separated them, and put the whites into the mixer. ‘It didn’t worry me,’ I said. ‘You’ll scald yourself with that kettle.’ Ferdy wouldn’t like it, and I didn’t know where the lint was. I lifted the kettle for him, filled his teapot, and went back to scoop my eggs into a bowl ready to take out.

  He didn’t ask why I wasn’t cooking them. He just said, ‘I suppose everyone asks you this. What do you do with the yolks?’

  ‘That’s for your diet,’ I said. ‘If I have to go, I’ll leave you some lunch. Just general invalid mush?’

  It was pretty rude, the way it came out. Instead of pouring his tea, he put his back against Poggenpohl’s best, and apparently settled for entering the contest. In a sort of a way.

  He said, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

  None of Ferdy’s queer friends are anything to do with me, but I like to know where I am. Now I knew where I was. I said, ‘It doesn’t bother me, what people do. Don’t drag me into it.’

  He gave some thought to that. Then he said, ‘Last night. . . I didn’t mean to be short. It was awkward.’

  ‘Pass him to me when you’ve finished with him,’ I said. Stupidly.

  I saw him field that. He knew I’d heard something, but not that I’d seen anything. He said, taking it in, ‘You were watching.’

  It was time to get out of the subject. He was well known, and loaded, with a reputation to protect. I didn’t want him to see me as a danger. An annoyance, O.K., but not a danger. I wanted friends in high places, not enemies.

  I said, ‘I’ve got a very short memory. You’ll have noticed.’ I tried the whipped whites with my finger.

  The bifocals remained trained on my face. Then, whatever he saw, his lips almost appeared. He said, ‘Yes, I’ve noticed. Who rang last night?’

  ‘Mr Braithwaite,’ I said. ‘Just to say he couldn’t come back.’

  He waited, and I let him. He didn’t prompt me. After a bit, I said, ‘Well, there were others, but I don’t remember them. Just get-well calls. I hadn’t a pencil.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. That was all. Not the world’s greatest talker. He turned round, propped himself up and began pouring tea. I went back to my room and rubbed the eggs into my hair to fix the spikes again.

  The doorbell rang twice while I was doing it: once with milk and the papers, and once for the post. The kitchen was empty again, so I put the milk in it, and left the papers and mail on the hall table.

  Bessie appeared in the hall, and stood at the door hopefully in a cloud of old dog. I’d forgotten her.

  I went to look for my gloves, but couldn’t find them. I put on my gauchos and stockings and boots, and lifting my shawl, went to ask Bessie’s boss where the leash was.

  He was making his bed, I was glad to see. He told me what I wanted to know, thanked me on Bessie’s behalf, and asked me to wait while he looked for something.

  It was a fresh, sharpened pencil. I didn’t give him the papers or the letters. If he was feeling that full of beans, he could get them himself.

  This time Bessie didn’t make it out to the pavement. It was Ned and Josser on duty and, for a moment, the smiles disappeared, but Ferdy, whatever his faults, must have done them proud before leaving. The doorkeeper took a deep breath, and the last I saw, he’d got a pail out of the cleaning cupboard, and had gone to look for hot water.

  I walked beside Bessie past the most interesting shops and then lost my bloody way. I got back, with some trouble, through the Rolls parade.

  I had meant to be earlier. Mrs Sheridan, for example, might be trying to phone me.

  Outside 17b an elegant, youngish woman in a tweed suit and scarf was raising her hand to the doorbell. She turned at the sound of the lift, clucked to Bessie, and then gave me a doubtful smile. ‘Is Mrs Margate still away?’ she said. ‘I’m an old friend of Mr Johnson’s. I just wondered how he was this morning.’

  It was the voice of Joanna’s mother, from yesterday’s overheard phone call. Come, no doubt, to see what was small, tough and Scottish.

  I said, opening the door, ‘He was sweeping the floor when I left him. What name shall I say?’

  She followed me in, gazing at everything. ‘Emerson. Lady Emerson,’ she said. There was a new pile of letters, stamped and ready for posting on the table, and I saw her glance at them, while she petted Bessie. She was good-looking.

  I left her there while I looked for the Owner, who had moved, I found, to the sitting-room. He heard, without comment, that he had a female visitor. His face kept itself to itself, as well, when he heard who it was. He just asked me to show her in.

  I heard her say, ‘Jay, you look awful. I have an ultimatum.’

  I didn’t hear his reply, but I heard the tone of it, before the door shut firmly behind her.

  I now knew how he felt about female visitors. If he’d been bleak with her on the phone, now he was freezing.

  There were three phone calls. Two were from friends of the Owner. One was for me. Mrs Sheridan required the services of Miss Rita Geddes, that afternoon at her hotel.

  Miss Rita Geddes said she’d be there, thank you.

  The Emerson woman stayed for ten minutes, and then came into the hall to ask if she could make coffee for Mr Johnson. Her expression, before she changed it, could be called grim.

  I had switched a pot on for myself, and found some jazz on a portable radio, which I hoped no one wanted back in the sitting-room. While I got cups, she went to fetch milk from the cupboard.

  She said, ‘He gets a lot of letters, doesn’t he? Are they still coming?’ She had to shout a bit, so I turned the jazz down.

  The second post had just come. I went out and scooped the mail up and showed it her. She put down the milk, and sorting through it, took out all the stuff that was handwritten.

  ‘Do you suppose,’ she said, ‘that all the private ones, the ones like that, could get themselves lost for a day or two?’

  ‘He’d notice,’ I said.

  ‘Give him a few at a time, then,’ she said. ‘But not all of them. In a week or two, it’ll be different.’
r />   I said, ‘It’s up to Mrs Margate, not me. I’ll give him his lunch, though.’

  The devoted correspondence took on a new meaning. I was safe as houses if the Owner was the bedridden organiser of a Gay Club.

  The coffee was perking, and I poured it. She said, ‘You’ve been very good. You work for Mr Braithwaite, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m a freelance,’ I said. ‘I’m with Natalie Sheridan this afternoon. So Mr Johnson will have to manage, I’m afraid, if his housekeeper doesn’t come back before evening.’

  ‘Of course, I understand that,’ said Lady Emerson. ‘I phoned the agency this morning to get a capable woman along. Someone with nursing training, who could take telephone messages and exercise Bessie.’

  She hesitated, and then went to her handbag and lifted it. ‘It occurs to me that, cut off from his bank, Mr Johnson maybe hasn’t been able to thank you properly?’

  She opened her bag.

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. He can always write me a cheque anyhow, can’t he? The coffee’s getting stone cold.’

  I put the two cups on the tray with the spoons and sugar and milk, and she picked it up and went off to the sitting-room. I switched to the news and enjoyed a cup on my own, with some biscuits I’d discovered. I’d already found a place for the unwanted letters.

  There didn’t seem much sense to me in answering letters and not answering phone calls. But you never know what the boss class is playing at. Anyway, it wasn’t my funeral.

  The Emerson woman left fairly soon, and then someone called Ballantyne phoned, and I remembered just in time to tell him so that he could take the call himself, after I had plugged in the phone under his bed.

  When I heard him ring off, I went in to unplug it, carrying the Oscar Peterson programme I was listening to while I was cooking. I didn’t realise he was speaking until he asked me the same thing twice over.

  It was something about the other calls. When I told him my pencil had broken he was distinctly not amused. He seemed, however, too fed up to go on about it. Or thought it wiser not to.

  I hoped the capable woman didn’t mind queer invalids who fussed about telephone calls.