Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (20 page)

I tried very hard not to go and meet Kim-Jim’s family.

I came out of Barclay’s Bank with my bag full of Bee-Wees and every intention of going straight back to Hurricane Hole.

Instead, I walked into Johnson, newly out of both Johnson’s and Rain, where he’d had two Reverend’s Downfalls, he said, and if I didn’t need guiding to the
Paramount Princess
, he did.

I said, ‘You go, then. And if you find time between parties, tell me when you’re going to do anything about Roger van Diemen.’

He stood, rocking on his heels, not upset in the least, with his hands in his pockets behind his binoculars and his floppy hat pushed to the back of his head. The sun had gone in.

‘Raymond’s on
Dolly
,’ he said. ‘Standing by the R.T. I’ve just phoned him. You’re scared of the Curtises?’

I thought of the photographs beside my yellow cat in Kim-Jim’s room in Madeira. The glowering old man. The over-sexed middle-aged Clive by the pool. The classy Sharon, with her streaked hair, and her good-looking brat Porter, with the curled ginger hair and flashing teeth.

The Curtises were big shots, each with his or her own tidy fortune; known all over the world. The only one out of active life now was Old Joseph, and you could see he was on the bread line. The
Paramount Princess
, with a crew of twenty-five, Johnson said, and a swimming pool.

If the Curtises took against anyone, they were powerful enough to be nasty.

I imagined they would fairly take against Roger van Diemen, once it was known what he had done.

Johnson had promised me the killer of Kim-Jim. If Johnson wanted me to go on board the
Paramount Princess
, it was for a reason.

It started to rain. Between the rows of parked cars and the glass and concrete stores, people moved into shelter. The rain hazed the woolly green hill at the top of the street. It bounced off an ice-cream handcart and a Chinese-food van. Women sitting by barrows of cottons flung coloured prints over them, and crouched next to each other, talking in twisted French under big dripping umbrellas.

Like parrots.

Rain ran down my face, and splodged Johnson’s glasses. He hadn’t moved, and I hadn’t answered him.

I said, ‘Yes, I’m scared of the Curtises.’

He said, ‘It’s quite a good reason for facing them.’

I said, ‘I don’t know about that. But if I’m going to get bloody soaked, it might as well be on the Curtises’ boat, and not on your crummy canoe.’

‘Good girl,’ he said, as he had once in London.

That was all. We turned and walked round into Jeremie, and the rain stopped, and the sun came out again.

I thought, as everything steamed, Next time, I’ll be nicer to Raymond.

By the time Johnson and I boarded the Curtises’ ship, men in white coats had put the awnings back and dried off the drips, and two of the loungers by the pool were already occupied, one by a blonde and the other by a brunette, who both had the same idea as Maggie about not getting bikini marks. The only untanned bit on them was round their wedding-ring fingers.

Johnson looked at them with great interest but neither looked back. I wondered which of the Curtises had exhausted them. Or, of course, there was always Ferdy and his botanist pal, straight from the flower beds.

We didn’t get to stay in the sun. The sort of chief steward who had met us at the companionway took us down a flight of stairs and along a carpeted corridor to a door that had ‘
den
’ written above it.

Johnson went in while I was reading it, and I nearly lost him, following, the cigar smoke was so thick.

The Den, which was twice the size of
Dolly
’s saloon, was done out in Old English, all buttoned leather and oak and pewter tankards. Three sides of the room seemed to be bar, and the other had a T.V. screen fixed to it, showing a video of the Empire State Building with Fay Wray on it.

Shades of blue light from the telly flickered on the faces of the three people watching it, glasses in hand, sitting in deep leather armchairs chained to the floor, with a table in front of them.

One was Clive, all done up in cashmere trousers and matching pullover, which was dead sensible as the air conditioning was freezing.

Another was Sharon, Porter’s mother.

The photographs hadn’t shown her thick creamy skin, or how angular her nose and jaw and cheekbones were, in her broad face that photographed so well. But the black hair was still nicely streaked, and she sat like an actress, in a trouser suit with patterned silk facings, and a matching scarf at the neck.

Their father, Old Joseph, sat in the middle.

Unlike his son and daughter, he didn’t drag his eyes away from the screen when we entered, and King Kong flickered all over his face while Clive got up and began making introductions.

Old Joseph, you would say, had fought old age the way he fought the Warners and Sam Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer and all the rest of the men from Europe who needed to get to the top in the movies. He’d forced make-up, and special effects, and all the know-how of illusion to grow up alongside the cameras, and sometimes outstrip them.

The fight itself had kept him young. He was more than eighty, and he could pass for twenty years younger.

If you looked at the thick, cropped grey hair and not the bent spine. If you looked at the pouched eyes without glasses, and not the loose, spotted skin that disappeared down inside his open-necked shirt.

Sharon Proost said, ‘Pa. Your guests are here.’

For a moment, it looked as if he would ignore us. Then, pulling in his lip-corner, he laid his drink on the table, put the cigar in his mouth, leaned forward and pressed the T.V. control pad and, as the screen became blank, said, ‘I see them,’ and looked up at me.

He took the cigar out of his mouth. ‘You brought the punk girl,’ he said.

‘Pa,’ said Clive. ‘This is Rita Geddes. You remember.’ And he mentioned the titles of a couple of films I’d worked on. Early, and not very good ones.

His father picked up his drink without taking his pouched eyes off me. ‘Nope. I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘What part did she play?’ The drink was in his right hand, and he made no effort to shift it.

Sharon said, ‘She’s in make-up, Pa,’ and stirred to the extent of patting the leather seat beside her. ‘I’m Sharon Proost. We’re real worried about my son, Porter, and Porter’s uncle and I plan to have you give us all the advice that you can. We know how you two hit it off in Madeira and London.’

I sat down carefully. ‘Porter isn’t here?’ I said. Johnson was still standing beside Clive. I daren’t look at him.

Pa Curtis laid down his empty glass and snarled. ‘Porter’s laid all the flesh here: what’s to keep him? Gone off with the titled riffraff to the Mediterranean, most likely. I tell you, Sharon, that boy’s friends are never going to come on board this ship again.’

He looked up at Johnson, as smart as a young man. ‘You snort, fella? Or mainline? Keep the ship full of grass? You’re the painter fella with the ketch, ain’t you? Johnson?’

‘That’s right,’ said Johnson. He smiled at Sharon and sat down, with style, on what had been Clive’s chair. He said, ‘No, I’m only into cheating the income tax. But I enjoy one of these occasionally, if Mrs Proost doesn’t mind.’

He waved his pipe at her, and I saw her pricing it, and his clothes, and his accent.

She said, ‘Of course. Clive, Mr Johnson hasn’t anything to drink.’

Johnson smiled at her and at Clive. I’d never seen so much of his teeth before. He said, ‘Johnson. Silly first name: same as my last. I think Rita and I would both like a Tom Collins. Actually, I’m sure you’ve no need to worry about Porter. A charming boy. Perfectly behaved on Madeira. What about London, Rita?’

It’s stupid to lie when you don’t need to. ‘I don’t think he’s on coke at all,’ I said. ‘Bennies, in London, but that sort of crowd always do. He never took anything while I was there.’

I could see them all looking into my eyes, and I looked back, with my proper-sized pupils. Pa Curtis said, ‘Oh.’

He sounded disappointed. He sounded actually bored. He added, ‘Well, do we eat today?’

Two Tom Collinses on a tray stood at my shoulder, ready for serving. I saw Clive look at them, and then at his father. He said, ‘Whenever you want, Pa.’

Pa Joseph got up and went out of the door. The Tom Collinses hovered, untouched, then the barman caught Clive’s eye and melted away, still carrying them. I hoped they wouldn’t be wasted.

Johnson, having indicated that he wished to wash his hands, which I felt was an outright lie, departed in one direction with Clive, leaving me free to say the same to Sharon. But in my case, it was no lie, I tell you.

She left me in the doorway of a toilet like Glasgow City Chambers, with a sharpish piece of advice about where to put anything I wanted got rid of.

I lost my way, coming out, and had to be found and guided past a lot of cabins. I heard Ferdy’s voice quite distinctly coming from one of them. He was using some quite botanical words, with short spaces between.

I thought he might have been talking to Dr Thomassen, but when I got to the Little Dining-room, the other half of the Sexual Strategy in Flowers Book was there, between the blonde and the brunette, who had put caftans on.

Another girl in a towelling robe came in halfway through the first course, followed after an interval by Ferdy, looking as if he needed to be plunged into water with his stem crushed.

No one said grace.

The food was high-class French, and none of your West Indian rubbish, with two cold courses to start, to give the chef time to catch up with Pa Joe’s inner clockwork.

Joe and the girls ate without talking. Clive asked Johnson about portrait-painting and Johnson shamelessly told him, dropping names that made even Sharon lay her fork down.

Dr Thomassen, whose hair had got very bleached in Tobago, so that he looked more like Andy Hardy than Herbert Lorn, gave a long account of the Cocoa Damselfish, and what the liver fluke would do to our insides if we swam in fresh water on St Lucia.

The captain of the
Paramount Princess
, who looked as if nothing more could happen to his liver, sat at the end of the table in snowy white uniform, with his cap on the carpet, and had two helpings of everything while trying hard to catch the eye of the blonde.

After a bit, Johnson and the skipper started a long, technical talk about reefs and shoals and currents and the mess the Pitons made of the wind situation west of St Lucia.

Sharon stopped trying to hold a conversation with Ferdy and said to me, ‘I should have thought you would have had a good living in England. What’s the attraction? This rich wimp with the glasses? Natalie Sheridan? I thought she was hetero.’

‘She is,’ I said. ‘And Mr Johnson got spoiled in a plane crash. I’m just here for the money.’

I added, ‘Don’t you get enough work over here? I could speak to Mrs Sheridan.’

I saw her cheeks flatten. Before she could answer, Clive said, ‘Go on, Rita. Give us the dirt on Mrs Sheridan. Who’s the favoured cat now? What’s with that conductor?’

‘No buses on
Dolly
,’ said Johnson, sliding into my dialogue. ‘I wish I could pinch your cook, though. We’re eating agricultural lupins on my boat. I won’t say my table was the talk of Cowes, but one acquires a certain reputation. Poor Lenny,’ said Johnson regretfully. ‘He won’t like it, but I’m going to have to ask him to go back to plain estate work.’

All I got in the way of warning was a blinding flash of bifocals. I hadn’t been going to say anything anyway. I hoped Lenny wouldn’t sue him. I waited to hear what he was on about.

Unaffected by anything going on around him, Old Joseph Curtis opened his mouth and made a statement.

‘He plays blackjack,’ he said.

Clive looked at Ferdy, who looked at the skipper, who looked at Dr Thomassen.

The gem of information, it seemed, referred to Johnson.

Johnson’s glasses looked embarrassed. He said, ‘As I said to Clive. Only now and then.’

‘Then why don’t we have a game? You have time for one, I guess?’ Clive said warmly. ‘If the ladies don’t mind. We can take our drinks and coffee along with us.’

I couldn’t believe it, but it happened.

Suddenly the table was empty. All the men filed out, talking, plus Sharon to complete the seven. Back to the Den, to make up a game of blackjack for Old Man Joseph Curtis.

Of the three girls left in the room with me, no one seemed surprised. Two of them got up, talking to each other in American voices, glanced at me, and went off in the direction of the cabins. I followed the third girl on deck, where the steward brought coffee and sweets and magazines and as much sugar as we wanted.

I lay under a beach umbrella, eating and thinking, with my dark glasses on.

I wondered if Johnson had ever played blackjack in his life before, and what he could afford to lose.

I fell asleep.

‘Hullo,’ said Johnson.

I opened my eyes. He was sitting on the edge of a lounger with his hands dangling between his knees, looking at me.

He still had all his clothes on, including his shirt. The rest of the deck was empty. The sun was blazing down. I said, ‘Where’s everybody?’

‘Waiting for the loss-adjusters. You don’t waste your batteries, do you?’ said Johnson.

I wasn’t going to tell him he looked tired. He did look tired. I said, ‘Well, I didn’t know you expected me to hang around a Yukon gambling bolero. What are you having to hock?’

‘Bordello. They settled for my address-book,’ said Johnson. ‘Actually, everybody’s retired for a siesta except Ferdy, who collapsed somewhere from metal fatigue. Someone’ll come in a minute to show you to your cabin.’

‘My
cabin
? I said. ’I’m going back to the Hurricane Hole. To wait for Natalie.’

‘Well, no. That’s what I came to tell you,’ Johnson said. He was frowning. ‘We’ve got this series of poker games started, and Joe isn’t keen to break off, even though, as you know, I really have got to get on to Barbados.’

‘You have?’ I said. When Johnson frowns, you have to be careful.

‘Of course,’ said Johnson. ‘But that’s all right, because Joe was going to Barbados anyway. A ball at Government House. The Curtises have a genuine invitation from the Governor. They showed it to me. So instead of a nasty rough beat on
Dolly
, you and I are staying on the
Paramount Princess
, and Joe is taking us all to Barbados. With Natalie. Clive has been ashore and invited Natalie. She’ll be on board as soon as she’s finished Josephining.’

I said, ‘Lenny? Raymond?
Dolly
? Our clothes are at Hurricane Hole. And I didn’t get the food for the…’

‘Everything,’ said Johnson, ’is taken care of. I’ve been ashore. A car has gone off to Marigot, to settle up at the hotel and bring back your gear and mine. Raymond and Lenny have been told, and will sail
Dolly
to Barbados with a pal or two. Amy has called at the boat, and solved that other small problem.’

‘And Maggie?’ I said.

‘Well, that was the outcome of the poker game,’ Johnson said. ‘Ferdy got Maggie back. She’s coming on board as well. Seven radiant women and six magnificent men, counting Joe and the skipper.

‘It’s going to be a busy night. Ferdy’s promised to run us a demo tape on the home life of the bottle-brush tree. I’m going to bed.’

‘You’re gassed,’ I said.

‘No. Tired but happy. You’ll like Barbados,’ Johnson said. ‘Have fun. Do anything you feel like doing. Leave everything to Christian and His Stamp-Collecting Friend, who, you will recall, have the concession.’

‘All the same…’ I began.

‘No. All quite, quite different. Keep your fingers crossed. Right hand ring over left,’ Johnson said, and went away.

So the call to Raymond had told him something. The time and place, I had to suppose, of the meeting of the top hamper in Roger van Diemen’s great drug and banana scheme. The meeting which, it was now pretty clear, must be going to be held in Barbados.

And that was me being warned off .

What a pity.