Rum Affair
Rum Affair
First published in 1968
© Estate of Dorothy Dunnett; House of Stratus 1968-2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Dorothy Dunnett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 0755131584 EAN 9780755131587
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This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
The Dorothy Dunnett Society can be contacted via
http://dorothydunnett.org
Dorothy, Lady Dunnett, was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1923, the only daughter of an engineer, Alexander Halliday, and his wife Dorothy. Whilst gifted academically and musically, she was not encouraged to further her talents by attending university, and instead joined the civil service in Scotland as an assistant press officer. In 1946, she married Alastair Dunnett, who was at the time the chief press officer to the Secretary of State for Scotland. He went on to become editor of
The Scotsman
newspaper, whilst she later worked on a statistics handbook for the Board of Trade.
After a brief spell in Glasgow, the couple settled in Edinburgh where their home became a centre for hospitality and entertaining, mostly in support of Scottish art and culture. Dunnett had also taken evening classes at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Glasgow School of Art, and from 1950 onwards she established a prominent career as a portrait painter, being exhibited at both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy. She was also an accomplished sculptress.
Her interest in writing developed during the 1950’s. Her own tastes took her to historical novels and it was her husband who eventually suggested she write one of her own, after she had complained of running out of reading material. The result was
The Game of Kings
, an account of political and military turmoil in sixteenth-century Scotland. Whilst turned down for publication in the UK, it was eventually published in the USA where it became an instant best seller. Other titles, such as the
Lymond Chronicles
and
House of Niccolo
series followed and which established her international reputation.
She also successfully turned her hand to crime, with the
Johnson Johnson
series. He is an eccentric artist, famous for bifocals, and of course amateur detective. All of the titles in the series somehow also feature the yacht ‘Dolly’, despite ranging widely in location from Scotland, to Ibiza, Rome, Marrakesh, Canada, Yugoslavia, Madeira and The Bahamas. There is plenty of sailing lore for the enthusiast, but not so much it detracts from the stories genre; crime. Each of them is told by a woman whose profession explains her role in the mystery and we learn very little about
Johnson
himself, save for the fact he is somewhat dishevelled in appearance.
Dorothy Dunnett somehow fitted in her many careers and voluntary work, along with supporting her husband’s endeavours, yet still found the time to correspond widely with her readers from all over the world, and was often delighted to meet with them personally. She held the rare distinction of having a Dorothy Dunnett Readers' Association formed during her lifetime and collaborated with it as much as possible. A writer who has been described as one of great wit, charm, and humanity, yet whose work displayed toughness, precision, and humour, she was appointed to an OBE in 1992 for services to literature and became Lady Dunnett in 1995 when her husband was knighted. She died in 2001, being survived by her two sons; Ninian and Mungo.
Men with bifocal glasses: I spit.
I have surprised you, no doubt. I have a name for hard work and magnificent singing; and very little for temperament. But now, all that is changed – since Johnson came into my life.
That August, I had two concerts to give at the Edinburgh Festival – you may have heard me. I had been singing in Holland and Germany and was four pounds overweight; therefore I travelled incognito: my manager Michael’s idea.
So in London I had no welcome at the airport, no bouquet, no private lounge, no free champagne and coffee and no small English change for the telephone. Also Michael’s idea: I found I was travelling under his name: Mrs Twiss.
While he is a brilliant manager and répétiteur, sometimes Michael can bounce back disturbing echoes of the Tottenham Court Road. I mentioned on the plane that I felt certain reservations towards the name Twiss as a chic incognito. I removed my dark glasses. The air hostess went pink and hung up my Balenciaga. Five people asked for my autograph. Michael would have gone pink also, except that he was airsick, as ever. We arrived in Edinburgh, not a second too soon.
There, to begin with, all was perfectly normal. I was met by the director of the Festival with wired roses and heather; there were more flowers at my hotel and eighteen invitations, as well as my maid, my secretary and my solicitor with some papers concerning a lawsuit for me to read over and sign. I rehearsed, I rested, I had my hair set with my platinum hairpiece and was interviewed by the press.
Michael had told them what to ask. They asked some other irrelevant questions. They asked if I intended never to marry. They asked if it was true that I could sing G sharp in alt.
I replied that should the right man come along, I should certainly give up my singing for love. I said that if someone would recite the whole of “Tam o’ Shanter”, I should sing G sharp in alt.
Someone did, and so did I, fortunately right in the centre: the press conference ended with tremendous rapport and the publicity footage in the evening paper pleased even Michael my manager. Also the pictures were quite delightful. I am, after all, the only really photogenic coloratura soprano alive. My only problem, just about then, was in staying alive.
The first concert went well. Thalberg, who had come from Munich to conduct for me, was sober both at rehearsal and performance, and was so far disturbed by my following that he took his teeth out before coming on stage and required to be helped from the podium. But there was still no doubt who received the larger ovation. Wearing the Bonwit Teller dress I cannot sit down in, I was recalled eleven times to the platform, while the good folk of Edinburgh drummed their Hush Puppies on the concert hall floor.
I find Edinburgh braces the throat. I had never sung Donna Elvira better, with the registers perfectly blended since that week’s work with Michael at Düsseldorf. In the artists’ dressing room Thalberg kissed my hand, first replacing his teeth. He then chaffingly used an insulting expression and I made a fitting reply. It is a cut-throat business, like any other. He then left to join his friend in the North British station hotel; and I left, to keep an assignation with a clean-living lover called Kenneth.
I am not, of course, promiscuous. With the work I have to do, this would be impossible. Occasionally, between touring and filming and recording, one meets a partner of like mind, but only occasionally. It is hard to pick out from the proposals and the mere propositions the men who like Tina Rossi for what she is, and not for what she can earn.
Kenneth Holmes and I had met the previous year in Nevada, where Michael and I had flown for a rest during a long and strenuous American tour. Kenneth was the hearty, ball-playing kind, with style, good looks and brashness ridiculous in a highly trained engineer. He was working in the States under an exchange scheme, and had been given an expensive laboratory, which he had to himself.
I was resting. I wished peace, relaxation, security; and he gave me all these. Afterwards, he continued to send me notes and small gifts. Then he left for London, and later for a place called Rum in Scotland, I heard.
From Talloires, which is our official base, Michael makes up my diary months and years in advance. But it was Christmas this year when he negotiated, at my request, two appearances for me at Edinburgh, to be followed by ten days of rest. And in my handbag now, as I changed in my hotel and shook off Michael Twiss and my maid and slipped out of a side door in the darkness, was a note saying simply, 22B Rose Street tonight love love love Kenneth.
Rose Street is a small lane of pubs and warehouses and boutiques and minor mews openings which lies behind the main street of Edinburgh. It took me five minutes to reach it, slipping head down past the knots of lingering revellers and the suggestive voices in doorways. In dark glasses, headscarf and raincoat, I was surely unrecognisable.
Silly, of course. You would expect this of a fifteen-year-old, stealing out of the dormitory; not of Tina Rossi, the Polish-Italian nightingale. But I could not do, airily, what Thalberg does. I would not subject my career to the risk.
I was hurrying, the last little bit. I remembered so well the set of his shoulders and collarbone, his fingernails, and the rough brown hair his Bronx barber reduced to a plush. I found the entrance to No. 22 and ran upstairs, and across a small wooden bridge to a conversion with a bay tree on either of its steps and a door painted yellow – 22B. The flat of a school friend, Kenneth once said. The only place for a rendezvous if you want peace and privacy . . .