“All the way round Miss Mabel’s Island. I didn’t touch the rudder once.”
“Well done. Cooking another carrot cake soon?”
“Whenever you say.”
As they climb the steps to the gardens, the close observer notices Sandy Langbourne entering the guesthouse and, a moment after him, the Langbourne nanny. She is a demure little creature, about nineteen, but at that instant she has the casual larceny of a girl about to rob a bank.
There are the days when Roper is in residence, and there are the days when Roper is away selling farms.
Roper does not announce his departures, but Jonathan has only to approach the front entrance to know which kind of day it is. Is Isaac hovering in the great domed hall in his white gloves? Are the MacDanbies milling in the marble anteroom, smoothing their Brideshead hairstyles and checking their zips and ties? They are. Is the protection manning the porter’s chair beside the tall bronze doors? It is. Slipping past the open windows on his way to the back of the house, Jonathan hears the great man at his dictating: “No, damn it, Kate! Scratch that last paragraph and tell him he’s got a deal. Jackie, do a letter to Pedro. ‘Dear Pedro, we spoke a couple of weeks ago,’ blah-blah. Then drop him down a hole. Too little, too late, too many bees round the honeypot—that one, okay? Tell you what, Kate—add this.”
But instead of adding this, Roper interrupts himself to telephone the Iron Pasha’s skipper in Fort Lauderdale about the new paintwork on the hull. Or Claud the stablemaster about his fodder bills. Or Talbot the boatmaster about the bloody awful state of the jetty on Carnation Bay. Or his antiques dealer in London to discuss that decent-looking pair of Chinese dogs that are coming up at Bonham’s next week, could be just right for the two seaward corners of the new conservatory, provided they’re not too bilious green.
“Oh, Thomas, super! How are you—no headaches or anything ghastly? Oh, good.” Jed is in the butler’s pantry, seated at a pretty Sheraton desk, talking menus with Miss Sue the housekeeper and Esmeralda the cook while she poses for the imaginary photographer from House & Garden. She has only to see Jonathan enter to make him indispensable: “Now, Thomas. Honestly, what do you think? Listen. Langoustines, salad, lamb—or salad, langoustines, lamb? . . . Oh, I’m so glad. Well, that’s exactly what we thought, isn’t it, Esmeralda? . . . Oh, Thomas, can we possibly pick your brains about foie gras with Sauternes? The Chief adores it, I loathe it and Esmeralda is saying, very sensibly, why not just let them carry on with champagne? . . . Oh, Thomas”—dropping her voice so she can pretend to herself that the servants can’t hear—“Caro Langbourne is so upset. Sandy’s being an absolute pig again. I wondered whether a sail might cheer her up, if you’ve really got the energy. If she goes on at you, don’t worry, just sort of close your ears, do you mind? . . . And, Thomas, while you’re about it, could you bear to ask Isaac where the hell he’s hidden the trestle tables? . . . And, Thomas, Daniel is absolutely determined to give Miss Molloy a surprise birthday party, if you can believe it, on the eighteenth. If you’ve got any ideas about that at all, I’ll love you for absolutely ever. . . .”
But when Roper is not in residence, menus are forgotten, workmen sing and laugh—and so in his soul does Jonathan—and happy conversations break out everywhere. The buzz of bandsaws vies with the thunder of the landscapers’ bulldozers, the whine of drills with the chime of builders’ hammers, as everyone tries to get everything done in time for the Chief’s return. And Jed, walking pensively with Caroline Langbourne in the Italian gardens, or sitting with her for hours on end in her bedroom in the guesthouse, keeps herself at a careful distance and does not promise to love Jonathan even for an afternoon, let alone for absolutely ever.
For ugly things are stirring in the Langbourne nest.
This Ibis, a sleek young sailing dinghy available for the pleasure of Crystal guests, is becalmed. Caroline Langbourne sits in the prow, staring back to land as if never to return. Jonathan, not bothering with the tiller, is lounging in the stem with his eyes closed.
“Well, we can row, or we can whistle,” he informs her languidly. “Or we can swim. I vote we whistle.”
He whistles. She does not. Fish plop, but no wind comes. Caroline Langbourne’s soliloquy is addressed to the shimmering horizon.
“It’s a very odd thing to wake up one morning and realize,” she says—Lady Langbourne like Lady Thatcher, has a way of singling out the unlikeliest words for punishment—“that one has been living and sleeping and virtually wasting one’s years, let alone one’s private money, on somebody who not only doesn’t give a damn about you but behind all his legal flimflam and hypocrisy is actually the most complete and utter crook. If I told anybody what I knew—and I’ve only told Jed a bit because she’s extremely young—well, they wouldn’t believe the half of it. Not a tenth. They couldn’t. Not if they’re decent people.”
The close observer keeps his eyes tight shut—and his ears wide open as Caroline Langbourne charges on. And sometimes, Burr had said, just when you’re thinking God’s handed in His notice, He’ll turn round and slip you a bonus so big you’ll not believe your luck.
Back in Woody’s house, Jonathan sleeps lightly and is wide awake the moment he hears the shuffle of footsteps at his front door. Tying a sarong round his waist, he creeps downstairs, all prepared to commit murder. Langbourne and the nanny are peering through the glass.
“Mind if we pinch a bed off you for the night?” Langbourne drawls. “Palace is in a bit of an uproar. Caro’s blown her top, and now Jed’s having a go at the Chief.”
Jonathan sleeps fitfully on the sofa while Langbourne and his paramour noisily do the best they can upstairs.
Jonathan and Daniel lie face down, side by side, on the bank of a stream high on Miss Mabel Mountain. Jonathan is teaching Daniel to catch a trout with his bare hands.
“Why’s Roper in a bait with Jed?” Daniel whispers, so as not to alarm the trout.
“Keep your eyes upriver,” Jonathan murmurs in return.
“He says she should stop listening to a lot of junk from a woman scorned,” says Daniel. “What’s a woman scorned?”
“Are we going to catch this fish or not?”
“Everybody knows Sandy screws the whole world and his sister, so what’s the fuss?” Daniel asks, in near-perfect imitation of Roper’s voice.
Relief arrives in the form of a fat blue trout nosing its way dreamily along the bank. Jonathan and Daniel return to earth, bearing their trophy like heroes. But a pregnant silence hangs over Crystalside: too many secret lives, too much unease. Roper and Langbourne have flown to Nassau, taking the nanny with them.
“Thomas, that’s totally unfair!” Jed protests too brightly, having been summoned with huge shouts to admire Daniel’s catch. The strain is telling in her face: pinches of tension pucker her brow. It has not occurred to him till now that she is capable of serious distress.
“Bare hands? However did you do it? Daniel won’t sit still even to have his hair cut, will you, Dans darling? Plus he absolutely loathes creepy crawlies. Dans, that’s super. Bravo. Terrif.”
But her forced good humor does not satisfy Daniel. He sadly replaces the trout on its plate. “Trouts aren’t crawlies,” he says. “Where’s Roper?”
“Selling farms, darling. He told you.”
“I’m sick of him selling farms. Why can’t he buy them? What will he do when he hasn’t got any left?” He opens his book on monsters. “I like it best when it’s Thomas and us. It’s more normal.”
“Dans, that’s very disloyal,” says Jed, and studiously avoiding Jonathan’s eye, she hastens away to offer more comfort to Caroline, who strides alone on the beach, contemplating the vileness of man.
“Jeds! Party! Thomas! Let’s cheer this bloody place up!”
Roper has been back since dawn. The Chief always flies at first light. All day long the kitchen staff has been toiling, planes have been arriving, the guesthouse has been filling up with MacDanbies, Frequent Fliers and Necessary Evils. The
illuminated swimming pool and the gravel sweep are freshly groomed. Torches have been lit in the grounds and the sound system on the patio belts out nostalgic melodies from Roper’s celebrated collection of 78s. Girls in their flimsy nothings, Corkoran in his Panama hat, Langbourne in his white dinner jacket and jeans, form eightsomes, pass partners, drawl and squeal. The barbecue crackles, the Dom is flowing, servants scurry and smile, the Crystal spirit is restored, even Caroline joins in the fun. Jed alone seems unable to kiss her sorrows goodbye.
“Look at it this way,” says Roper—never drunk but the better for his own hospitality—to a blue-rinse English heiress who gambled away everything one had at Vegas, darling, such fun but thank God one’s houses were in trust, and thank God too for darling Dicky. “If the world’s a dungheap, and you build yourself a spot of Paradise and put a girl like this in it”—Roper flings an arm round Jed’s shoulders—in my book you’ve done the place a favor.”
“Oh, but Dicky, darling, you’ve done us all a favor. You’ve put sparkle into our lives. Hasn’t he, Jed, darling? Your man’s a perfect marvel, and you’re a very lucky little girl and never you forget it.”
“Dans! Come here!”
Roper’s voice has a way of producing silence. Even the American bond salesmen stop talking. Daniel trots obediently to his father’s side and Roper releases Jed and places a hand on each of his son’s shoulders and offers him to the audience for their inspection. He is speaking on impulse. He is speaking, Jonathan immediately realizes, to Jed. He is clinching some running dispute between them that cannot be resolved without the backing of a sympathetic audience.
“Tribes of Bonga-Bonga Land starving to death?” Roper demands of the smiling faces. “Crops failing, rivers dried up, no medicines? Grain mountains all over Europe and America? Milk lakes we don’t use, nobody gives a toss? Who are the killers, then? It’s not the chaps who make the guns! It’s the chaps who don’t open the larder doors!” Applause. Then louder applause when they see that it matters to him. “Bleeding hearts up in arms? Color supplements wingeing about the uncaring world? Tough titty! Because if your tribe hasn’t got the guts to help itself, the sooner it’s culled the better!” He gives Daniel a friendly shake. “Look at this chap. Good human material. Know why? Keep still, Dans. Comes from a long line of survivors. Hundreds of years, strongest kids survived, weaklings went under. Families of twelve? Survivors bred with the survivors and made him. Ask the Jews—right, Kitty? Kitty’s nodding. Survivors, that’s what we’re about. Best of the pack, every time.” He turns Daniel round and points him at the house. “Off to bed, old boy. Thomas’ll come and read to you in a minute.”
For a moment Jed is as uplifted as the rest of them. She may not join in the applause, but it is clear from her smile and the way she squeezes Roper’s hand that, however briefly, his diatribe has granted her a lightening of the guilt, or doubt, or perplexity, or whatever it is these days that clouds her customary pleasure in a perfect world.
But after a few minutes, she slips silently upstairs. And does not come down again.
Corkoran and Jonathan sat in the garden of Woody’s House, drinking cold beer. A red halo of dusk was forming over Miss Mabel’s Island. The cloud rose in a last ferment, remaking the day before it died.
“Lad called Sammy,” Corkoran said dreamily. “That was his name. Sammy.”
“What about him?”
“Boat before the Pasha. The Paula, God help us. Sammy was one of the crew.”
Jonathan wondered whether he was about to receive Corkoran’s confession of lost love.
“Sammy from Kentucky. Matelot. Always shinning up and down the mast like someone out of Treasure Island. Why’s he do that? I thought. Showing off? Impress the girls? The boys? Me? Rum. Chief was into commodities in those days. Zinc, cocoa, rubber goods, tea, uranium, any bloody thing. Sit up all night sometimes, selling forwards, buying backwards, sideways, buying long, selling short, bulling, bearing. Insider stuff, of course, no point in taking risks. And this little bugger Sammy, nipping up and down the mast. Then I twigged. Hullo, I thought. I know what you’re up to, Sammivel, my son. You’re doing what I’d do. You’re spying. Waited till we were anchored for the evening, as usual, sent the crew ashore, as usual. Then I fished out a ladder and pottered up the mast myself. Nearly killed me, but I found it straightaway, tucked into an angle beside the aerial. Couldn’t see it from the ground floor. Bug. Sammy’d been bugging the Chief’s satcom, shadowing him on the markets. Him and his buddies on shore. They’d pooled their savings. By the time we nabbed him, they’d turned seven hundred bucks into twenty grand.”
“What did you do to him?”
Corkoran shook his head. “My problem is, old love,” he confessed, as if it were something Jonathan might solve for him, “every time I look into your Pan eyes, all my chimes and whistles tell me it’s young Sammy with his pretty arse shinning up the whatnot.”
It is nine o’clock the next morning. Frisky has driven across to Townside and is sitting in the Toyota, trumpeting the horn for extra drama.
“Hands off cocks and pull on socks, Tommy boy, you’re on parade! Chief wants a quiet tit-ah-tit. Forthwith, immediately, and get your finger out!”
Pavarotti was in full lament. Roper stood before the great fireplace, reading a legal document through his half-lenses. Langbourne was sprawled on the sofa, one hand draped over his knee. The bronze doors closed. The music stopped.
“Present for you,” said Roper, still reading.
A brown envelope addressed to Mr. Derek S. Thomas lay on the tortoiseshell desk. Feeling its weight, Jonathan had a disconcerting memory of Yvonne, pale-faced in her Pontiac beside the highway.
“You’ll need this,” Roper said, interrupting himself to shove a silver paper knife toward him. “Don’t hack it about. Too damned expensive.”
But Roper did not resume his reading. He went on watching Jonathan over his half-lenses. Langbourne was watching him too. Under their double gaze, Jonathan cut the flap and extracted a New Zealand passport with his own photograph inside it, the particulars in the name of Derek Stephen Thomas, company executive, born Marlborough, South Island, expiry three years off.
At the sight and touch of it he was for a moment ridiculously affected. His eyes blurred, a lump formed in his throat. Roper protects me. Roper is my friend.
“Told ’em to put some visas in it,” Roper was saying proudly, “make it scruffy.” He tossed aside the document he had been reading. “Never trust a new passport, my view. Go for the old ’uns. Same as Third World taxi drivers. Must be some reason why they’ve survived.”
“Thanks,” Jonathan said. “Really thanks, it’s beautiful.”
“You’re in the system,” Roper said, thoroughly gratified by his own generosity “Visas are real. So’s the passport. Don’t push your luck. Want to renew, use one of their consulates abroad.”
Langbourne’s drawl was in deliberate counterpoint to Roper’s pleasure. “Better sign the fucking thing,” he said. “Try out some signatures first.”
Watched by both men, Jonathan wrote Derek S. Thomas, Derek S. Thomas, on a sheet of paper until they were satisfied. He signed the passport, Langbourne took it, closed it and handed it back to Roper.
“Something wrong?” said Langbourne.
“I thought it was mine. To keep,” said Jonathan.
“Who the hell gave you that idea?” said Langbourne.
Roper’s tone was more affectionate. “Got a job for you, remember? Do the job, then off you go.”
“What sort of job? You never told me.”
Langbourne was opening an attaché case. We’ll need a witness,” he told Roper. “Somebody who can’t read.”
Roper picked up the phone and touched a couple of numbers. “Miss Molloy? Chief here. Mind stepping down to the study for a moment?”
“What am I signing?” Jonathan said.
“Jesus, fuck, Pine,” said Langbourne in a pent-up murmur. “For a murderer on the run, you’re pretty b
loody picky, I must say.”
“Giving you your own company to manage,” said Roper. “Bit of travel. Bit of excitement. Lot of keeping your mouth shut. Big piece of change at the end of the day. All debts paid in full, with interest.”
The bronze doors opened. Miss Molloy was tall and powdery and forty. She had brought her own pen of marbled plastic, and it hung round her neck on a brass chain.
The first document appeared to be a waiver in which Jonathan renounced his rights to the income, profits, revenue or assets of a Curaçao-registered company called Tradepaths Limited. He signed it.
The second was a contract of employment with the same company, whereby Jonathan accepted all burdens, debts, obligations and responsibilities accruing to him in his capacity as managing director. He signed it.
The third bore the signature of Major Lance Montague Corkoran, Jonathan’s predecessor in the post. There were paragraphs for Jonathan to initial and a place for him to sign.
“Yes, darling?” said Roper.
Jed had stepped into the room. She must have talked her way past Gus.
“I’ve got the Del Oros on the line,” she said. “Dine and stay and mah-jongg in Abaco. I tried to get through to you but the switchboard says you’re not taking calls.”
“Darling, you know I’m not.”
Jed’s cool glance took in the group and stopped at Miss Molloy. “Anthea,” she said. “Whatever are they doing to you? They’re not signing you up to marry Thomas, are they?”
Miss Molloy turned scarlet. Roper gave an uncertain frown. Jonathan had never seen him at a loss before.
“Thomas is coming aboard, Jeds. Told you. Setting him up with a bit of capital. Giving him a break. Felt we owed him one. All he did for Dans and so on. We talked about it, remember? Hell’s going on, Jeds? This is business.”
The Night Manager Page 31