Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (23 page)

The man in the cockerel mask, who had arrived first.

Then he stopped, and turned back, and said something to the others.

The guard looked at him, and said a few words, and the cockerel mask replied with a snap.

No one blew whistles, or raised the alarm, or summoned help. The guard made no effort, after the first moment, to touch his revolver. Instead, he began to walk towards us, waving his arms and telling us to clear out to the beach, with his eyes straining, trying to pick me out again after that one flying glimpse.

With Johnson and myself unseen in the middle, the mob retreated good-humouredly to the shore. In the middle of the noise I could hear Johnson’s voice, still happily scolding.

‘Yuh goin’ get one load of licks, girl. Yuh a fret on yuh folks. You lose out bad, you muchin’ dat man. Lukie, you ever hear anyt’ing so yet as dat guard an’ dis li’l girl? No, soul. I so dam fed up. I don’ tek um easy. This girl like um so bad, I has to get she a husband. You, girl. You, Cordelia…’

The guard stood on the beach steps, looking at us. The light from the chalet porch abruptly went out, as the party on the threshold went back inside and closed the door. The twenty or thirty blacks round about us continued to move along the beach, as the shore wall of the Brighton gave way to the shore wall of the hotel next door, talking, singing and dancing on the smooth sand among the crabs.

The one turning cartwheels in a bowler hat, sleeveless T-shirt and tasselled garters was Raymond, I was pleased to see, with his wax nose and all-over No. 11 Mulatto still intact.

On the other side, in a swirl of laughter and cross-talk, I saw Johnson coming towards me, his round black glasses glittering under the brim of his stiff knitted hat.

His nose was his own, but covered like the rest of him with Egyptian No. 2. His eyebrows were pasted down with mortuary wax, and a scrub of crêpe hair thoroughly altered the shape of his jaw and his lips. I was as proud of him as I had been of Natalie.

My own make-up was everyday Bajan, with a wig of short black fuzz to cover my hair, and a prosthetic mask I’d brought from England.

I had had the mask made because he had asked me. I had also brought a box of wigs. Among them was the one I wore every day, of orange spikes.

He hadn’t asked me to do that. He had only said, speaking in Lady Emerson’s comfortable room, that I had already proved a splendid target because of my hair, and it might be quite a nice idea if there were two of me.

Wigs on top of spiked hair are not easy. I had the wig made, and thought about it. Then before I left England, I went and had my hair bleached and cropped, and put the wig on it.

Johnson had admired it earlier this very evening in the Bridgetown headquarters of the Hackney Carifesta delegation. I’d no idea then that I’d ruin everything.

I stood on the beach and said, ‘I blew it. I’m sorry. I didn’t know the watch would do that. And they kept wearing their masks. It was a bloody disaster. Now they’ll change their plans.’

‘So they might,’ Johnson said. ‘I shouldn’t worry. Worse things happen at sea.’

He didn’t sound wild, or fed-up or anything. He sounded breathless, and a bit high.

Raymond came up, all over sand and out of breath, and said, ‘Sir, may I shake by the hand the greatest living Bajan-speaking Englishman? You’re a genius.’

‘I know,’ said Johnson.

‘You had me sweating blood when that thing went off ’

‘I know,’ said Johnson.

‘They could have caught her,’ said Raymond.

I stood there like a shrimp plant, with them talking over my head.

‘Not before so many witnesses,’ Johnson said. ‘But once the top brass are safe, they’ll come after us.’

‘Well, you’d better look after Rita,’ said Raymond. ‘There’s a truck out front for this lot. They’ve a concert to go to. I’ll go in that; I wasn’t spotted. And there’s someone round front, on the off chance they can follow the masks as they leave.’

I said, ‘Then you might see who they are after all?’

Johnson said, ‘A faint hope. They’ll be jumpy, and we mustn’t push it too far. We need proof, remember. We want them to go ahead with their plans. Don’t worry. Next time is the biggy, and no one will blow it…

‘Right,’ said Johnson. ‘Rita. They’re going to search that truck in a moment. And this beach. Let’s get on with it.’

Under his knitted hat was this fearful Rasta wig. Under his fringed satin shift was an even more awful red frilly shirt, and a locket.

‘Meet,’ said Johnson, ‘a member of the Trinidad Collapso Band, playing this evening in the hotel beach patio right there next door. Who’s got a turban?’

Someone, giggling, came up and reversing Johnson’s satin, slipped it over my blouse and skirt. It came to my ankles.

Someone else, delving into a pocket, dragged out a matching pink turban and tied it over my Afro.

‘Now. It’s a silly question,’ said Johnson, ‘but tell de troot, doh. If put to it, can you play a steel drum, my gel Rita-Cordelia?’

Johnson didn’t fool me that time.

He wasn’t frowning. He meant it.

The Trinidad Collapso Band all wore red frilly shirts and seemed to be expecting him.

He went straight to an oil drum at the back, picked up the sticks, and when I refused politely, took a grip and threw himself into the next number. And whatever else, he’d done
that
before.

I watched him ripple his way cheerfully through three bits of reggae, including a rendition of
House on Fire
with solo bits in it, and then found a pair of congos looking lonely, and had a bash on my own.

I didn’t do so badly at that. With all those rows and rows of oil drums murmuring musically away you could hardly hear me, but I heard myself, and it was great. It was like having six daisies. Or three Bajan monkeys. Or drinking your way, like Ferdy, down the whole daiquiri list.

After a while, they got Johnson out to the front of the stand and he sang a whole long collapso in the same accent he’d used at the Brighton Beach, getting screams and applause between verses; and at the end, a fat black woman climbed up and kissed him.

Soon after that the band took a break, and he came over with two plates of barbecued chicken legs and these drinks made of rum and canejuice and lime, and said, ‘Big Lou says if you play mainstream clarinet as well, you’re on any time. Enjoy it?’

‘You’re bananas,’ I said. Joke. I took the plate. I was starving.

‘Had to put off a little time. Let’s talk,’ said Johnson. He returned the wave of the bandleader, took a swig of his drink and walked me round the back, through the dark part of the patio.

‘Raymond’s got a car waiting outside. You’ll change in it, and he’ll drop you near Natalie’s, and slip your case to you later. Ferdy says you wanted to see a plantation?’

I’d wanted to track down Roger van Diemen. I’d now seen Roger van Diemen, and much good it had done me. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, with my mouth full.

‘Right. Because as a banana expert, Dr Thomassen is visiting one in the morning, and will take anyone who wants to go. Such as Maggie or Ferdy or Natalie plus or minus lawyer, plus or minus Fred Gluttermacher Moneybags.’

‘And Roger van Diemen?’ I said. ‘Without the monkey head? What did Raymond overhear in that chalet? Or doesn’t it matter now?’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Johnson said. ‘But it was useful. Don’t worry. Raymond picked up your watch, because it and you may be worthy of many pale blossoms yet. It told us what not to expect.’

‘Such as?’ I said. I had nearly finished the drink. It was great.

On the beach, the sea was still whispering in long ghostly rollers, and overhead the stars looked like large-grain sugar in a black bowl, and all round us in the shadows, big fancy flowers were puffing out different scents like the ground floor in Harrods.

Where Johnson and I were standing, you could just smell sweat and spirit gum and rum and barbecued chicken.

He put his empty glass down, and his plate, and straightened slowly.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Prediction. A general move out of Barbados. The
Paramount Princess
is going on to Miami anyway. Natalie’s backer, accountant and lawyer all leave tomorrow afternoon, and Natalie will have fixed her Josephine details with Ferdy and be keen to get away, and let Roger stew in his own banana purée.

‘Ferdy and Thomassen expect to finish by latish tomorrow, and are talking about taking their stuff back to London, via St Lucia. If they do, Maggie threatens to stay on with me.’

‘And you? And
Dolly
?’ I said.

Johnson took his dark glasses off and clenched one of their legs thoughtfully in his teeth.

‘I rather felt,’ he said, ‘that
Dolly
ought to hang about, and go wherever Roger van Diemen was going.’

I said, ‘I want to come with you. But what do I do if Natalie leaves?’

‘Well,’ Johnson said, ‘that’s the last item, as you might say, on the birthday chart. Would it ruin your life if Natalie were to sack you tomorrow?’

I gazed at him. ‘Because I won’t cut my hair?’

‘Partly,’ he said.

‘Because she’s converted Fred Moneybags to the idea of handing the film to the Curtises?’

‘Partly,’ he agreed. ‘And maybe one or two other things you haven’t heard about. All in a good cause. You don’t need the money. And Natalie really occupies the only prime slot in Natalie’s life. And that way, no questions asked, you can come on
Dolly
with Lenny and Raymond and me.’

‘And Maggie,’ I said. Absently. I was thinking of what he’d just been saying.

And maybe one or two things you haven’t heard about.

He had put his glasses back on, but I had seen the gleam. I said, ‘
Wait a minute
.’

‘You said I could,’ Johnson said defensively. ‘Borrow your orange wig. Divert attention from the target.’

I began to raise my voice, and dropped it again. ‘I
was
the bloody target,’ I hissed. ‘In a bloody black Afro wig. Who was wearing mine and what was she doing?’

‘He,’ said Johnson. ‘Lead trumpet-player with the Brixton West Indian Band. Four-feet-eleven, and smashing legs. We borrowed that feathered thing you’ve got, with the bloomers.’

It was new. I’d never even worn it yet. I was keeping it for a good thing.

My feathers. My bloomers. My wig.

‘And what did he
do
?’ I said. In spite of myself, my voice went up at the end.

‘Nothing much,’ said Johnson soothingly. ‘You were jet-skiing in somebody’s swimming pool. No one got close enough to see anything but the hair.’

‘And the clothes,’ I said. ‘That bloody outfit cost…’

‘Put it down to expenses,’ said Johnson. ‘You’ll find the outfit and the wig in the car. If you’re asked which swimming pool, say you don’t remember. They’ll assume you were sloshed.’

‘Nobody wore
your
hair?’ I said. ‘Didn’t you need an alibi? Nobody took your bifocals and your best cashmere jersey and painted the statue of Nelson? So you can come back to this bloody town and I can’t?’

‘Thought you didn’t want to,’ said Johnson. ‘Curtis country.’

‘Curtis country for
one film
,’ I said. ‘That’s all. O.K. – she chucks me out of the Josephine film. There’ll be others.’

‘That’s my girl,’ said Johnson. ‘And I promise you, you’ll live your wig down. There’s the car. Tell Ferdy what happens tomorrow. And I’d better warn you. Young Porter flew in.’

Porter. I wondered if they’d be pleased to see him on their floating old-fashioned gin palace or not. I wondered if I should be pleased to see him or not. It was hard to ignore him. For someone, he’d be a real capture.

Maggie, for instance. If Ferdy moved out, and Johnson wasn’t moving in.

The car was waiting and Johnson, supporting the patio wall, looked like a Rasta running out of collapsos, or maybe even into them.

There was nothing I could do about that. I said goodnight, and got into the car, and changed, and went back to Natalie’s.

My orange wig had a black hair in it, which might or might not have come from Brixton. My feathered outfit, when I dragged it on, was still soaking wet. I looked like Mother Goose.

Dodo, who was the only person in the house, gave me a long stare while the curtains slowly drew back over her choppers.

‘My!’ she said. ‘You been raped, or laid an egg out there?’ And watched, grinning like a frog, as I marched upstairs to bed.

I was sacked on the banana plantation, which is where Natalie came across me next day.

Ferdy and Carl Thomassen came for me in a taxi next morning before she was up, and there didn’t seem much point in hanging about to ask her permission.

I told Dodo I’d be back before lunchtime, and nipped out to the taxi with a copy of the
Advocate-News
over my spikes, because it was raining, and my bowler would have got spoiled.

Johnson, unexpectedly, was inside the taxi as well, looking perfectly blank behind his bifocals, and I caught sight of Maggie sitting next to the driver.

Ferdy and Carl, who had been at the Governor-General’s ball like everyone else except me, were still suffering from a surplus of chat, and contented themselves with reading the
Advocate-News
while it was still on top of my head.

Ferdy was interested in the case against Isaac Harbansingh, better known as John Bull, but Johnson had spotted this headline saying
Aussies Make Light Work of Worcestershire
, and that was it, the whole of Barbados being cricket-crazy including the taxi-driver.

After a serious exchange of views, the driver remembered that the Voice of Barbados was relaying the fourth day of the English-Australian Test, and turned on his radio for us.

His driving got so peculiar, in between Johnson trying to demonstrate spins and Ferdy shouting him down and the driver contradicting them both, that we had to draw in by a cane-field to hear it.

All the West Indies are mad about cricket, of course. The English teams used to be brought out here for free. On banana boats.

The thought can’t have reached Maggie, but she did turn round a hung-over face at that point and say, ‘J.J.? Bananas?’ And Dr Thomassen looked at his watch and jumped and said we’d better go, the manager would be worried.

It turned out that he was going to read a paper to the Windward Islands Banana Growers’ Association on cheaper ways of keeping bananas from ripening before they get to the shops.

Unless it meant dipping them in cocaine, it didn’t seem to have much bearing on what I was there for, and I stopped listening. Then we finally passed all the board houses on stilts, and the half-cut forests of cane with the rain drumming on it, and came to this neat double gate, with the bloody Coombe flag flying above it.

It was a model plantation newly started, which meant that the green-banana trial was in full swing, and hadn’t been messed about by hurricanes, or eruptions, or Test Cricket, which was why Dr Thomassen was keen on it.

The rain stopped, and we got out and tramped through it.

Ask me about bananas.

Banana plants look like little palms, with shiny green leaves like paper, cut at the edges by the wind. Wee bananas grow pointing down, till they’re made to curl up by the sun. Every plant has a single stem with a shower of up to a dozen banana hands on it, growing one on top of each other inside a blue plastic bag.

The bags keep insects off, and prevent the bananas from rubbing against one another.

When they’re still green, but ready for harvesting, the stem is cut off every plant with a coyote, and the banana bags slung on a cable which takes them to the packing station for washing, cutting and packing in cartons and transferring by conveyor belt into the hold of, for example, the
Coombe Caroline
.

I supposed Johnson knew it all already, but he asked questions as though he didn’t, and the manager, or Dr Thomassen, answered.

The manager said that it was a pity we’d just missed the firm’s Financial Director, Mr van Diemen, but he’d had to fly off to St Lucia.

He showed us how the irrigation ditches were being trenched, and told us about pruning, fertilising, soil pests and leaf blight, but I hardly heard.

As soon as I could, I said to Johnson, ‘What happened about the Rotary Club of St Lucia?’

A woman went by with a single coyote on her turban, and another with a basket of washing. Ferdy and Maggie had found a railway line and were flagging down a little train carrying cartons.

Johnson said, ‘There’s one on Barbados as well. Meets at the Hilton on Thursdays. Also the Freemasons, the Foresters, the Mechanics, the Elks, the Gardeners, the Oddfellows and the Shepherds. Raymond and I thought of joining the Oddfellows. Let’s go over to Ferdy.’

‘But what about –’ I said. He was already strolling away from me, his pipe in his mouth.

He turned and took it out. He said, ‘I know what you mean, but the weather forecast for tomorrow is lousy. Look, isn’t that Sharon’s son, Porter?’

It was Porter, coming towards us in a yellow Italian blouson with white virile trousers, his watch-band flashing gold chain mail in the watery sun, and his hair red as a Flamboyant Tree.

He was looking mainly at Maggie’s legs, swinging on to the carton truck, but wrenched his attention back to me as he got near. ‘Hullo there, gorgeous!’ he said. ‘And Ferdy, and Mr Johnson, sir. I hear you two were the sensation of the Governor-General’s ball, while Rita was off doing her water display.’

I thought he’d made a mistake. But Ferdy grinned and answered and I realised that Johnson
had
been at the ball: whether before or after the little adventure at the Brighton Beach wasn’t clear.

I wondered how, under the circumstances, he’d got the energy, and supposed I should have been grateful that someone else had fixed my alibi for me.

On the other hand, here was Porter, sliding his hand from my neck to fold me in a comforting arm and saying, ‘… over there, the old cow. Darling, she really is furious, and we thought the best thing we could do is take her off your hands to Miami.’

‘Who? What?’ I said. You allow Porter’s arm to do things, and his hand takes unfair advantage. Ferdy, who is in the same league, was watching with admiration.

‘Natalie,’ said Porter. ‘I don’t know who she had a row with last night, but she seems to have decided that Barbados is a waste of time, and now she’s finished, she wants to get out of it. Gramps offered her a berth to Miami. And that Boy Scout with the hairpiece.’

‘Fred Gluttenmacher,’ said Ferdy. He jumped off the truck, frowning. ‘Natalie’s going back to the States? What about Rita?’

Before Porter could answer, someone called in the distance.

We all turned round, including Porter, who let his arm fall, a bit to my relief. In the distance, where the cable was trundling into the packing station, stood a tall, slender blonde in dark glasses and embroidered linen and pale hand-made pumps. She called again. It was Natalie.

Porter said, ‘We’d better go over. That’s why she’s here. It’s a goddammed shame, the old cow; but that’s show business.’

We had all started slowly to move, but at that, Ferdy stopped.

He said, ‘Are you telling me that, after giving Rita Kim-Jim’s job, and getting her to take on the Josephine film, Natalie is booting her out?’

Ferdy was and is a great name in photography. Patience wasn’t much in Porter’s line, but he made an effort. He said, ‘I guess I shouldn’t have jumped the gun. Maybe Natalie’s cooled down at that. She just got all up-tight, and there was nothing any of us could do. She wanted Rita out, and Uncle Clive in.’

‘She’s offered Clive the film?’ Ferdy said.

‘I’m afraid she has, sir,’ said Porter. ‘But of course –’

‘Never mind,’ said King Ferdy, and pulling ahead of us, stalked through the banana groves and up to Natalie.

To do her justice, she tried not to have a scene on the spot.

The manager had gone, sent politely on his way by Johnson and Dr Thomassen, who were the only ones to have kept their heads, so far as I could see.

Maggie, eating a banana, was looking from Ferdy to Johnson and no doubt wondering where she was going to sleep if the Curtises withdrew their villa.

Natalie said, ‘Certainly, I have something to say to Rita, but it will keep until we are in the car.’

‘It won’t,’ said Ferdy. ‘Are you sacking her?’

‘Really, Ferdy,’ said Natalie. She had done her own face that morning, but it looked very nice, with the lines under her eyes painted out. She said, ‘I know you and Rita are friends, but this really isn’t your business. Rita? I haven’t much time.’

‘Well, if you haven’t much time, maybe you should tell me why?’ Ferdy said. ‘I thought we were doing a film together?’

‘Are we?’ said Natalie. ‘I don’t remember your joining me on St Lucia or Martinique. We have managed one meeting here, it is true. But now I find you with Dr Thomassen again. I think you, too, will really have to make up your mind whether your book or my film is the more important.

‘Meanwhile, I have done all I want to do in the West Indies. I have other business awaiting me. If you are still at all interested in this film, I hope to be in London shortly.’

‘But as of this moment, you’re sailing away with the Curtises,’ Ferdy snapped. ‘What’s wrong with Rita?’

I pulled myself together. It was great having Ferdy fight my battles for me, but enough was enough.

I said, ‘Come on, Ferdy. It’s up to Mrs Sheridan and me. No need to get your film involved. Tell you all about it later.’

I tried to get round him, but he stood in my way. He said, ‘If she goes, I go.’

Johnson said, ‘That’s bloody silly.’

Ferdy’s bald bit got very red, and all the skin you could see round his sideburns.

He said, ‘I got Rita into this. I’m not having her thrown out by one ambitious patronising bitch and doing nothing about it. Get a piccaninny off the banana farm to follow you, Natalie. Only thing he won’t be able to do is fix your nose for you. Nor will Clive Curtis. I’m glad for Rita’s sake, I can tell you. You don’t deserve her.’

It was like the night of Kim-Jim’s death. Natalie had gone perfectly white, so that all her make-up stood out like a diagram.

She said, ‘I had expected to deal with this in a normal, civilised way, but you make it…

‘… Oh, my God.’

It was funny that I should have thought of Kim-Jim.

Not that it was any one of us she was looking at, or someone she knew, or anything.

She was just looking over our shoulders, at the clear blue plastic bags, swaying and bulging, creaking their way to the packing shed.

Each bag full of up to two hundred bananas, weighing up to seventy pounds altogether. You could see them, hand upon hand, greenly clutching one another.

You could see them in all the bags swinging past us, except one.

I’ve seen first-rate severed heads made of wax. You can also make them of styrophor moulded with ceramic plaster, sealed with liquid plastic and coated with greasepaint. You paint veins on the eyes, and get the teeth from a dental mechanic. You can buy a greeny-grey base called ‘Blithe Spirit’. It’s meant for the comedy, but it does for dead heads just as well.

In the studio, it’s really absorbing.

On a banana plantation it’s not quite so good.

When the severed head in the blue bag is real. And when it belongs on the shoulders of a Brighton Beach Hotel security guard.

We all stared, but no one spoke but the Owner.

‘Salami,’ said Johnson.