The Tropical Issue

by Dorothy Dunnett

  And since he was in his mid-fifties at least, the chances were, I thought, that his hair, his moustache and his chest were all cleverly tinted. Like his sister Sharon, who at thirty-seven made a feature of early greying, with platinum streaks in her dark, well-cut hair.

  Well-cut since she could surely afford it, with her T.V. make-up and her teaching, and her wealthy ex-husband, Paddy Proost.

  Nothing wrong with Kim-Jim’s family by themselves, maybe: but together, too much for Kim-Jim, who was quiet, and liked to deal with one person at a time.

  As now, sitting by the fire talking about his work and mine. About tricky jobs we had handled, and techniques we had seen and admired.

  About the sort of work I should be doing with Mrs Sheridan, and the kind of jobs I could hope to take when she was away. For Natalie had a private life, according to Kim-Jim, and liked to fix her engagements so that she could disappear – sometimes for only a week, sometimes for a month. And then I should be free, to take what work I wanted until she came back again.

  Free to experiment, said Kim-Jim, in the make-up room here, or in her other houses. He had ideas for me: writers I ought to meet; directors who ought to see my work. When he bought his house in the sun, he would arrange it all. He would make me tapes of their names, and arrange meetings for me.

  He had talked of his house in the sun before, but I had never asked him about it, in the tapes we exchanged, or our telephone calls. Where the house would be, and what it would be like, did not depend on him, but on his eye doctors.

  Make-up is one thing you can’t do with failing eyesight. You can, perhaps, read large-print books. You can see something at least on the telly. There’s nothing to stop you from listening: to people, to music.

  There is a lot you can do, with your friends, in the sun. But make up Natalie Sheridan isn’t one of them.

  I didn’t want to ask him what the eye doctors in Lisbon had said. Maybe they hadn’t said anything. He had to go back: he was still under treatment. But one day, as he had said, he would have to tell her that in so many months, his sight would be too poor for work. And that – if I was willing to stay – she should keep me.

  And, other things being equal, I thought I would stay. I wasn’t Kim-Jim. If I didn’t like someone, I showed it. I admired Natalie, as he called her, as a professional, and I can always keep a professional relationship.

  A personal one is another matter. Kim-Jim was worth two of Natalie. He should have acted like it. I certainly should.

  Late in the evening, I remembered the video cassettes I had brought, and fetched them down from my room.

  I didn’t know Maggie had seen me until the first cassette was loaded and running, and Kim-Jim and I had settled down, in the firelight, to watch it.

  Then the study door opened, and stayed open, and that high English voice sang out (but not to us), ‘Darlings! Do come! The help are watching blue films on the video.’

  I’d several times made her up for a ball. From Ferdy, she would know perfectly well why I was there. She also knew, I was dead sure, who Kim-Jim was, which turned that help into a dig against Natalie.

  She wasn’t worried about Natalie, or anybody. She leaned on the doorpost, with her eyes flickering with light from the telly, and was joined almost at once by the man Gluttenmacher, who laid a hand on some well-chosen coins. At a slower pace, Natalie’s lawyer came also.

  Then Natalie arrived, took a look and said, ‘It’s a free world. Kim-Jim loves horror films, don’t you, darling?’

  She turned. ‘Where shall we have coffee? On the terrace?’

  Kim-Jim had jumped to his feet with American politeness, but I wasn’t going to have my viewing loused up. I went on watching.

  Gluttenmacher took off his dark glasses. He said, ‘What an extraordinary film!’

  A royal command, under the circumstances.

  Natalie pushed the door further open. Her voice was husky and smooth. ‘Would you like to see it? Then we’ll all have coffee here. Kim-Jim, Rita . . . You don’t mind, do you? Is it near the start? Could we just wind it back?’

  Hell.

  Kim-Jim said, ‘Of course. Come in,’ and knelt forward to switch off and rewind. The two men and Maggie came into the room, followed by Aurelio, who began pushing about chairs. Natalie’s voice, in the distance, could be heard giving orders to a number of people including Ferdy, who seemed to have dozed off somewhere not very convenient.

  Natalie came back in, followed by trayfuls of coffee and brandy meant for the four easy chairs now with the best view of the telly.

  Kim-Jim and I sat on our desk chairs behind. The parrot, which had fallen asleep on its perch, woke and did a quick fail-safe check on its transport, stretch-pointing each wing with a creak, like pulling down eyelids.

  It lifted its feet once or twice, ducked its neck, ruffled its feathers, and in a cloud of dandruff made a short, clear statement in Portuguese.

  Aurelio spilled the coffee.

  Kim-Jim jumped up, got a handful of tissues, mopped up the damage and tried to take out the parrot, which bit his finger and, fluttering sideways, began to walk up the curtain, looking at us. The door shut behind Aurelio, and Maggie burst into Swiss-finished laughter. ‘What did it say?’

  ‘Roughly, “What’s she got that I haven’t got?’” said Natalie calmly. ‘Aurelio, as you might gather, is much sought after. Shall we look at the film?’

  We switched the lights out, and Kim-Jim pressed the button and sent my cassette for the second time on its way.

  It wasn’t a blue film, but it was badly made, and so had never been released. One or two of the players were pretty well known, and bits of their performances were worth looking at. And the horror sequences too had one or two things in them that were novel enough to have an effect on your stomach.

  It was the kind of film I watched a lot of, and Kim-Jim did as well, while other people were looking at clean healthy things like football and racing.

  Quite early on, it got home to Ferdy’s girlfriend. The Hon. Maggie said, ‘Oh my God, I shall vomit. My dear darling Natalie, what are your little brood thinking of? It’s an orgy of nastiness.’

  Kim-Jim and I said nothing, nor did the two men. Even Gluttenmacher seemed to have forgotten Maggie’s top half. Natalie said, ‘Ferdy’s outside.’

  ‘I couldn’t move,’ Maggie said. ‘My insides aren’t that colour. I deny it absolutely.’

  ‘Christ!’ said one of the men.

  The story unfolded. There was a lot of interesting detail. If only Kim-Jim and I had been alone, it would have been great.

  In fact, after a while, it wasn’t too bad, because it really did seem to turn Maggie’s stomach and she stopped saying anything, until Natalie noticed her swallowing and took her out to the powder-room.

  The film came to an end, with the credits.

  Kim-Jim put the light on.

  Fred Gluttenmacher wiped his face, found and drank off his brandy, put on his dark glasses and then turned round. ‘Natalie called you Rita,’ he said. ‘Rita Geddes?’

  Film buffs not only watch unusual films, they watch the credits. Such as, Special Effects, Rita Geddes.

  ‘I did it three years ago,’ I said. ‘Rotten film.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. The lawyer had turned round as well.

  Fred Moneybags added, ‘You did the Hadley comedy series make-up. Didn’t you? The impersonation sketches?’

  ‘She still does it,’ said Kim-Jim. ‘You don’t hear of her as you should, because up to now she wouldn’t work overseas.’

  They both looked at me.

  ‘Why?’ said the lawyer. He had a soft voice that went with the silvery hair and rimless glasses.

  ‘You get mugged,’ I said.

  They laughed. ‘And you come from Glasgow?’

  ‘Troon,’ I said. ‘Next to Kilmarnock.’

  It was a man from Kilmarnock who founded Reid’s Palace Hotel, Funchal, Madeira, but they didn’t seem to know that. They were dead ignorant.r />
  But quite decent to talk to. We chatted to them, Kim-Jim and I, for quite a long time, until wherever she was, Natalie realised that the film must be over, and came in with Maggie.

  The Hon. appeared quite restored. The Vidal hair shone like boot polish and she was carrying a shoe in each hand. She was also followed by Ferdy, definitely wakened, and bearing nightcaps.

  ‘The Honourable Maggie!’ said Ferdy, doing the courtly, as he handed his girlfriend her chaser.

  ‘And bugger the bitch,’ said the parrot.

  In Ferdy’s voice. You couldn’t fault it.

  Next morning, I sized up Ferdy’s hangover and offered to be his Sexy Flower Assistant, provided he brought his Portuguese dictionary and helped me, as the crime series say, with a few enquiries.

  I didn’t trust anyone else not to suck up to Natalie and cover up Roger the Damned Van’s tracks for him.

  Ferdy had sucked up to Natalie too, at the beginning. He hadn’t told me Natalie knew my attacker. But since then, he had joined the bleeding band of the attacked. He had a grudge to pay off.

  He had also had, it seemed, a flaming row with the Honourable Maggie after he drove her back to her suite at the Sheraton.

  In my opinion, the flaming row was probably caused by disappointment as much as by the parrot’s slip of the tongue. I don’t know how he drove there and back, never mind being expected to manage his buttons.

  As a result, Ferdy and I had a sort of silent breakfast, helping ourselves in the morning-room.

  I was silent because I was thinking. Natalie had already phoned me, through three walls, and I had reported to her in the study.

  The study looked normal again, with the chairs in their usual places and the video covered. The cans on the parrot-perch had been refilled but Cone itself had been whipped out, I noticed.

  At first, I thought Ferdy had broken its neck and stuck it in his breast pocket. I came across it later on in a big fancy cage on the terrace, copying the noise patterns of the pool pump, and the sound of Dolores being nice to the goldfish, and the sound of Aurelio being nice to Dolores. Cone couldn’t tell them apart any more than the rest of us.

  Natalie sat behind the big desk, shining, fresh and expensive in candy-striped linen, ticking things off on a pad as she told me about them.

  There was an American magazine arriving that afternoon. Interview in the house; photographs in the house and the garden. She required me at one sharp for make-up. After that, I was free until five. Tick.

  At six she was going to a drinks party. At eight, she and Mr Braithwaite and her lawyer were to dine at the Sheraton with her guest of last night. Fresh make-up, of course, and an evening coiffure. Had I got it? Excellent. Tick.

  She would also like to say, while she remembered, that Mr Curtis had always been discreet when watching adult films, and she would prefer me to do this, if I must, when staff and visitors would not be involved. Tick and double tick.

  I agreed. She was entitled. And her voice was still five pegs down, with no edge to it.

  In fact, when she spoke again, it was almost social. She said, ‘Which leads me to two further points. Mr Gluttenmacher was interested, it seems, in what he saw. He has asked me about you, and about Mr Curtis. Following that I had a talk late last night with Mr Curtis in which he told me what perhaps you already know. That his health may force him to give up his job with me permanently.’

  She had her dark glasses on, with her eyes fixed on me from behind them. I didn’t know Kim-Jim had had to tell her so soon. I did know the answer we’d agreed on.

  I said, ‘No, I didn’t know. I thought he was just on vacation. What’s wrong, then?’

  She went on looking at me while she made up her mind. Then she hauled in a back-straightening breath, balanced it, and used it like celery.

  ‘I think I should leave him to tell you himself. The point is, he believes you capable of taking over.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s make-up I’m keen on. Not desk work.’

  ‘I can hire help for desk work,’ said Mrs Sheridan. She took off her glasses and fixed me again with her showy blue eyes. ‘That is the other point. I have always done a certain amount of filmmaking. You may know. Documentaries, of course.’

  I did. I gazed at her. It didn’t put her off.

  She said, ‘I shall be doing more. I shall need help. It will involve travel. And immediately, I have a large scheme in prospect. A four-part television serial on the life of the Empress Josephine. I shall write and present it. Some, but not all, of the scenes will use actors. Mr Braithwaite will be responsible for the art direction, and he and I will travel together, very soon, to look at possible sites, and take photographs.’

  She paused, but I knew what was coming. I said, ‘Who’ll direct and co-produce? Is it fixed yet?’

  It was, provisionally. And the two names she mentioned were good ones.

  She said, ‘I have asked you to think about a long-term arrangement, Rita, because Mr Gluttenmacher thinks, and so of course do I, that your work would be an asset to such a series.

  ‘It would mean that, once filming starts, you would split your time between that and my personal service. Since Mr Gluttenmacher would be taking the financial risk, I have told him I should be agreeable. I am offering you therefore a permanent job, with the prospect of some very lucrative film work.’

  Had he twisted her arm? Had she really wanted me? I couldn’t tell. I wanted to say yes, fast, and get her to sign something. Instead I said, ‘The film sounds great. But Mr Curtis should do it.’

  She gave no sign of recognising nobility when she saw it.

  ‘Naturally,’ she said, ‘I have asked him. His health, he says, makes it impossible. You are interested, then?’

  Chief make-up artist even on a prestigious documentary series was no peak in anyone’s career. My name would come a foot and a half after the actors’ credits, and wouldn’ t appear in the papers at all. But it would get me known in the trade outside Britain. If I wanted to work outside Britain. And some real plums might come my way next time.

  On top of that, I should be working with Ferdy, who was good news, even when hung over. And who might tell me what the film was about.

  I knew one thing about the Empress Josephine. She married Napoleon, and blew it. To people like me, Napoleon’s career might be a blank. But his one-liner ‘Not tonight, Josephine’ is the sort of thing that stays in your software forever.

  I didn’t know where Napoleon lived, but it wasn’t Madeira. I said to Mrs Sheridan, ‘I’d have to go away with you? Now?’

  I must have sounded unwilling. She used her smile. ‘Not quite as quickly as that. We leave in two or three weeks. I want to start work where Josephine started. I want to look at Martinique.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  Her eyelids shut slowly, stretching like Cone, but she was still smiling when she opened them. From a shelf at her side she lifted an atlas like Atlas, heaved it open, and turned it round to show me.

  ‘Martinique. That island there, in the West Indies. That’s where Josephine lived.’

  ‘Across the Atlantic,’ I said.

  She was following my thoughts. She was good at it.

  ‘A long way from Scotland,’ she agreed. ‘Beautiful, though. A lot warmer than here. Flowers. Coconut palms. Excellent beaches. And a chance I think you’re ready for, if you’re not afraid to take it. And worth, Rita, a very good fee.’

  She told me the fee. It was great. Again, I nearly said yes, but I didn’t. I said I’d like to, but I had to think about it. I had a mother in hospital. I didn’t know if I could get out of other things. I told a lot of lies, and she accepted them, and said that she quite understood.

  She didn’t really.

  It was true about Robina, but I was thinking of other things too. About the nutter. About Kim-Jim in the months ahead when even a voice at the end of a phone might be nice for him. I didn’t want to leave Madeira just yet.

  But she had made it pr
etty plain. No film, no job with her. You don’t offend the Fred Gluttenmachers.

  I said it sounded great, and I should give her my answer as soon as I could, and I thanked her for her really nice offer.

  She wasn’t worried. She assumed I was mostly working to screw up my salary. She said, ‘That’s fine then,’ and threw me a smile. She had already made her tick on the notepad.

  I was at the door before she added something.

  ‘Oh, by the way. I phoned the airport this morning. Our friend Mr Roger van Diemen has flown out. On the 7.15 for Frankfurt via Lisbon. I hope you’re as pleased about that as I am.’

  I was pretty pleased.

  I was pretty pleased about everything, but it wasn’t going to stop me. It wasn’t going to stop me nosing about until, somehow, I got my own back on the absent Van Damn, and made sure that Kim-Jim was safe from him.

  Safe from him, and from any bastards who worked for him.

  I spent the morning nosing with Ferdy. It put me off flowers for life.

  We borrowed Aurelio’s station-wagon, and filled it with Ferdy’s camera case and satchels and the text of Dr Carl Thomassen, the botanist, sexy or otherwise, who was writing the book Ferdy was illustrating.

  We also put in a pair of steps and some bluetack and drawing-pins and a lot of green cord, for photographing flowers growing naturally in the wild but not in the right attitudes.

  Then we added some gardening gloves, a lot of polythene bags and some wet cotton wool in big baskets, plus two sharp pairs of tacky-sewers for cutting wild flowers and photographing them growing wild in Natalie’s workroom.

  I asked Ferdy, during this, what he thought of Natalie’s offer and he said, Grab it. Natalie Sheridan was not, I would notice, Mrs Tiggywinkle, but she was a clever, professional lady used to getting the best as well as giving it. Anyone who worked with her was bound to be noticed.

  About Kim-Jim, he was helluva sorry, but there were compensations. I could help him, Ferdy, load his cameras. And at last he would get all the dirt about Natalie, without having to extract it by water cannon.