Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird (11 page)

Cape Cod is a peninsula shaped like the foot of a jester. It lies on the eastern seaboard of the United States just below Boston, and sticks its thin curling toe seventy miles into the Atlantic ocean. On its instep is the gulf called Wabash Bay, on one headland of which lies the Eisenkopps’ summer residence. On the day before Good Friday, Ben and I flew there accompanied by Bunty Cole and the whole of the Eisenkopp family with the exception of Gramps, who was to spend the week-end, I understood, at the Playboy Club.

I thought we should fly Eastern Shuttle to Logan. We didn’t. We flew in Comer Eisenkopp’s personal seaplane, made a perfect landing in Wabash Bay and chugged to the jetty, where the garden buggy was waiting to save us the long, difficult walk up to the house. The two principal cars had arrived the night before, bringing the houseboy and the Italian couple. Benedict’s pram was waiting on the garden patio and his cot and luggage were already in the night nursery when I got there. He was to share it with Sukey.

I had the other twin bed in Bunty’s room. I set Ben to kick in his cot and then walking through, opened Bunty’s french windows and stepped out on to the balcony.

The Eisenkopp house was architect-built in the Hollywood hacienda tradition, all white marble and wrought iron and potted geraniums. Below me was a paved terrace edged with creeper-hung rail and equipped with lights and with flower-tubs, and white and red tables and chairs for breakfast, or Sundowners. Sunk below the terrace was a walled garden, and beyond that, lawns which appeared to stretch to the beach. You could just see the tops of upturned dinghies and what looked like a speedboat. On either side, beyond the walled garden, were glimpses of stables and tennis courts. I wondered if there were horses, and thought it a pity Donovan wasn’t here to break his other arm.

Beyond the beach was the flat April blue of Wabash Bay, with a number of small boats already out sailing. And beyond that, the curving line of the Cape Cod jester’s sole, disappearing round to the north. The air smelt mild and salty and fresh, with the slightest touch of roast duck and orange. An Italian voice said, ‘You no need to unpack, miss. We do this. Miss Bunty to say to tell you lunch is in one half-hour, and there is brandy and vodka in the refrigerator.’

Here, also. I was standing holding the vodka and wondering, in a mild haze of wellbeing, where Hugo Panadek was when the door opened a second time and a brown, bald, ear-ringed figure strolled through and paused, clicking its tongue.

‘Well, darling,’ said Hugo Panadek. He walked forward, removed the vodka, kissed me warmly, replaced the vodka and stretched himself full length on Bunty’s bed. After a moment he extended a hand and, removing Bunty’s Ho Hang from the dressing table, sprayed his naked chest liberally and lay back again, breathing deeply. His eyes shut, ‘Really, darling,’ he said, ‘I am not intending to abduct your poor Warr Beckenstaff infant. Was it not I, Hugo, who shot all your bears for you?’

‘So what?’ I said, sitting down on the windowsill. He had short Central European legs in flared velvet trousers and a striped silk Charvet shirt, open to the waist, and an assortment of chains and medallions. The bald head, of course was ridiculous, but the skin, though sallow, was smooth, and he had a torso the same size and shape as a rodeo barrel. I added, ‘That doesn’t prove anything, does it? You might be deeply in debt and suffering a total toy-invention block which threatens to throw you into the hands of your creditors. I haven’t noticed you invent anything recently.’

‘Heartless! ’ said Hugo Panadek comfortably. ‘But I have, darling. Ask Comer.’ He lifted one finger, with his eyes closed, and pressed a white button on the bed head. There was a cautious creak, a groan, a buzz, and the mattress beneath him began to vibrate. His medals ringingly started to clatter on one another. ‘They’re called massage-boys,’ I said. ‘They have them all over France. Try again.’

‘Darling,’ said Hugo Panadek. ‘I had no need to invent the massage-boy. Of that I assure you. I am merely throwing off the weight of your disapproval. I am also postponing the time when I have to go downstairs to lunch and witness the appetite-destroying spectacle of Comer swimming thirty-two lengths of the pool before every mealtime. You know there is a swimming pool in the sitting-room?’

‘I wondered where it was,’ I said.

‘One part water to three thousand parts disinfectant. The only known mix that kills both the germs and the antibodies,’ Hugo said. ‘Then there is the Health Room, with the Rowing Machine, the Electronic Bucking Horse, the Electric Camel and the Traxatou Massage Couch with Vacumatic Suction. You must admire Comer. He persists.’

‘What at? His weight?’ I said. It was fascinating.

‘That, too. A major counter-offensive in the general battle against varicose veins, thrombosis, diabetes, dental caries, arteriosclerosis, peptic ulcers and appendicitis,’ Hugo said. ‘Obesity enters somewhere but that is more Beverley’s field. She would so dislike you to know that she is thirty-five years of age. Myself,’ said Hugo, ‘I prefer European women. Every civilised person should spend at least one third of the year in Europe. Even in England. I have had some commissions of great interest in England.’

I made the sort of reply he was asking for, but I was really thinking of Beverley. That made her two years older than Comer, when I had put her down as an easy twenty-five. Not that I’d had the chance to make a study in depth on the two occasions I’d met her: once when falling flat over Sukey, and today sitting with Comer on the lounge seats of the seaplane, well away from the regurgitating kids and their staff in the rear. A mink jacket, what else, over a russet suede pants suit and striped yellow shirt; bouncing blonde hair like satin and a Barbarella profile with eight different shades of under-cream, and the nostrils oiled. And that, I can tell you, is a trick, that only one nose in ten thousand can use and end up looking like Dewi Sukarno and not Bella the Cook. ‘She doesn’t have to worry,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said Hugo. ‘But she is a perfectionist. Do you imagine she would have had her two children if Comer had not finally insisted?’

Something caught his eyes and infuriatingly, he broke off. Rolling on to one elbow, he examined the row of aerosol cans on Bunty’s dressing-table. ‘You know, you could kill a woman, making her dress in the dark. Foot refresher spray, makeup spray, toilet water spray, fly spray, hair spray, deodorant spray, all insulting the ozone layer and for what?’

‘Putting money into inventors’ pockets, when they wear any,’ I said. A thought struck me. ‘She’s had a nose job?’

‘Beverley? ’ said Hugo lazily. He lay down again. ‘Beverley, darling, has had everything lifted. Chins, chest, eyelids, haunches, everything. She hasn’t tried Bucharest to date, but you can be sure that as soon as the Warr Beckenstaff gala is over, she will be in the pits for an overhaul at the Radoslav. Bunty tells me she booked in a month ago.’

Everyone who has worked in a rich woman’s household has heard of the Radoslav Clinic in Dubrovnik. Cosmetic surgery in Yugoslavia has been in the news since the first nose-bob doctor thought of advertising a combined ten-day holiday offer and was knocked down in the rush of misshapen tourists. ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘It’s Missy’s Radoslav Clinic?’

‘Is every science to be laid at my door? I had nothing to do with it,’ said Hugo Panadek. ‘Merely, the first time Beverley answered an advertisement and went by herself. Perhaps to escape from her father-in-law, who deserved a stroke but had not yet had it. A lady friend of mine introduced us. That is how I got to know Comer. I owe my fortune to the Yugoslav National Health Service. Now you tell me something. Why is the daughter of Professor Sir Bernard Emerson performing menial services for punks like Simon and Rosamund?’

I knew now why the Eisenkopps called me Nurse Joanna. Indeed, it was surprising that, unlike Hugo, they hadn’t tried pumping me earlier. I said, ‘Charlotte’s father is actually better off than mine. But, you know, we’re big expensive girls with big, expensive tastes. We have to earn a living.’

‘But in this fashion?’ said Hugo. ‘With jumping beans in your pockets and the mouth full of nappy pins? You swim. You shoot. The Tiffany Bridges’ Register is not, I suspect, your immediate goal. Did no other career commend itself? You are meticulous: precise as in an engineer, a scientist. Did you never wish to pursue such a calling?’

Shrewd Mr Panadek. I grinned and said, ‘Are you making a cross-cultural sociological study or offering me a job? I don’t need to change my work. I’m a social engineer as it is. And I do try hard. I promise you, not to neglect my potential.’

‘According to Mr Donovan,’ Hugo said, ‘not hard enough. What is the appeal of other people’s children?’

‘Very little,’ I said. ‘But it grows on you. Some people can’t even stand their own children. Hence the market. You might say that punks give their kids a punk childhood which leads to the next generation of punks.’

‘And every Margaret Beaseford nurse is dedicated to breaking this chain?’

He had impudent eyebrows. ‘Wouldn’t do much good if we were,’ I said. ‘You can’t fight heredity. Keep ’em healthy, teach ’em manners, and give the kids and their parents a break from one another. Bearing in mind that a bad parent is better than a bad nurse any day. Do you suppose that’s a summons for lunch?’

Hugo swung his neat feet to the floor. ‘It is. And I am lunching over the Bay with the Princess. I expect, since she is our local celebrity, to find our Brownbelly colleague Mr Johnson staying with her. Comer tells me he is coming to visit here next, and moreover has been invited on Wednesday week to the Warr Beckenstaff gala. What it is to be simple, and shortsighted, and popular.’

He slid off after I made a sufficiently flippant rejoinder. Conversation with Hugo Panadek had some aspects in common with hang gliding. Afterwards, I allowed myself to dwell on Johnson’s shortcomings. His interest in Mike Widdess, it seemed to me, was as erratic as his interest in Benedict. And now he was going to Venice.

It wasn’t that I had come to depend on him. But it was hard to look around, and find neither the board nor the player.

He came to stay two days later, and was immediately sucked into the vortex of the Eisenkopp routine, which began with a swim, a ride or some tennis or squash before breakfast and proceeded with several rounds of competitive sport culminating in Comer’s thirty-two lengths of the pool. Some of his guests got in and swam with him. The rest sat about drinking martinis. The pool was cleaned by a pool bug called Percy, who ran about at the end of a cable and ate all the dead leaves and popcorn. Sometimes it tried to eat Comer.

After lunch, everyone slept, and there would be a sail, a race or a fishing expedition before the evening drinking began, either at home or in one of the neigbouring mansions.

After dinner, there were games. Both Comer and Beverley were taking backgammon lessons.

Bunty and I had our meals in our room with the children. While the others were out, Bunty showed me the rest of the house. Beverley’s suite was done in shell-pink taffeta and had a mirrored ceiling and frilled zip-linked beds:
Separate in a Jiff for a Sniff or a Tiff
. Automatic switches opened the curtains and put on the lights and the TV and radio and controlled the record player. Bunty pressed a button and a rich voice started intoning behind the heaped pillows. ‘
Relax. You are going to lose weight. You will not be able to overeat. Sometimes you will not be able to finish a meal
…’

I listened fascinated for a bit, and then Bunty switched it off and led the way out, scooping up a boxful of Bissinger’s Nut Balls from under the bed before, she said, the dogs got it.

There were two dogs and they each got three Panteric and four Vitamin E tablets a day and their own beef-flavoured Doggy Dent toothpaste. Grover liked the taste too, and ate it until Bunty found it all squashed up in the pocket of his Fairy Tooth Pillow and threw it away.

I made him some dough and he wrung out a dirty grey flower and a fish, and the Mafia let us put them in the oven. We had them quickly for tea, the plague in every mouthful, before Comer could see us. Then I boiled coloured eggs and we rolled them down the chute, what else, which at least took Grover’s mind (and Bunty’s) off the chocolate kind which arrived by every post from the expensive accounts of Comer’s business colleagues.

Not that there was any shortage of means by which the Wabash community could get shot of their Special Little Princes and Princesses as and when it seemed desirable. There were films for children and play groups and puppets and Punch and Judy and musicals. You could have your Little People taught to swim, play tennis, speak French, ride, play an instrument, dance, fish and play simple card games. Left to Bunty, Grover would have spent in a play group all the waking moments he wasn’t already spending in his high chair, his cot or his playpen.

I begged him off after a day and whipped him out when I’d finished with Ben to the shore or the swings or the chute. We had a bucket with starfish in it, and a wheelbarrow for pebbles. I taught him eight more nursery songs and started a big Easter mural of cotton wool rabbits and crêpe paper trees.

Johnson arrived to stay while I was working on it and escaped a whole afternoon’s riding by devoting himself to equipping the bunnies with large-eyed, smiling and flattering likenesses of all Grover’s immediate circle, including Sukey and Benedict. Grover watched, building bricks in an absent-minded way, quite entranced, and unaware that with exceptional sleight of hand, Johnson was sketching him at the same time.

The sketch was quite brilliant, as well. After Grover had returned to his sand-pit I said, ‘The guest for whom every door is open. Did you draw the Princess as well?
¹

He looked no trendier, but a little less like a lush from a quilting bee. He was also unmoved by sarcasm. ‘That’s how I do it,’ he said. ‘Swiss quality at Hong Kong prices. Have you seen Comer’s computerised bar? It served three Virgin Marys into my pocket, and a pack of Sun Giant Almonds the Adult Nut zing into the automatic shoe cleaner. It was like Bad Day at Black Rock.’ He stuck some black cotton wool on his upper lip, looked at himself in the nursery mirror and then peeled it off ‘… But I will say they’ve got the War on Want licked. No further bloodcurdling incidents?’