The Night Manager (63 page)

"Won't say. Asked him to, but he won't. What he's done, who for, who with, why, starting when. Who's paying him. Nothing. Could save himself a hell of a lot of aggro if he did. Gallant chap. Good choice you made. Congratulations."

"Why should he have done anything? What are you doing to him? Let him go."

He turned and walked toward her, looking at her directly at last, with his pale, washed eyes, and this time she was certain he would hit her, because his smile was so unnaturally at ease, his manner of such studied unconcern, that there had to be a different version of him inside. He was still wearing his reading glasses, so he had to lower his head to look at her over the top of them. His smile was sporting, and very close to her.

"Simon-pure, is he, your lover boy? Lily-white, is he? Mister Clean? Utter balls, dear. Only reason I took him in was because some hired lout held a pistol at my boy's head. You telling me he wasn't part of the caper? Horseshit, sweetheart, frankly. You find me a saint, I'll pay the candle. Till then, I'll keep my money in my pocket." The chair she had chosen was dangerously low. His knees as he bowed over her were at the level of her jaw. "Been having my thoughts about you, Jeds. Wondering whether you're quite as dumb as I supposed. Whether you and Pine aren't in it together. Who picked who up at the horse sale, eh? Eh?" He was tweaking her ear, making a mischievous joke of it. "Bloody clever chaps, women. Clever, clever chaps. Even when they're pretending they haven't got anything between their ears. Make you think you chose them, fact is they chose you. Are you a plant, Jeds? You don't look a plant. Look a bloody pretty woman. Sandy thinks you're a plant. Wishes he'd had a tumble with you himself. Corks wouldn't be surprised if you were a plant"--he gave an effeminate simper--"and your fancy boy ain't saying nuttin'." He was tweaking her ear to the rhythm of each accented word.

Not painful tweaks. Playful ones. "Level with us, Jeds, will you, darling? Share the joke. Be a sport. You're a plant, aren't you, sweetheart. A plant with a lovely arse, aren't you?"

He moved his hand to her chin. Taking it between his thumb and forefinger, he raised her head to look at her. She saw the merriment in his eyes that she had so often mistaken for kindness, and she supposed that once again the man she had been loving was somebody she had put together out of the bits of him she wanted to believe in, while she ignored the bits that didn't fit.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "I let you pick me up. I was scared. You were an angel. You never me wrong. Not till now. And I gave you my best shot. You I did. Where is he?" she said, straight into his eyes.

He released her chin and walked away down the room, swinging his champagne glass wide.

"Good idea, girl," he said approvingly. "Well done. Spring him. Spring your lover boy. Put a file in his French loaf. Shove it through the bars on visiting day. Pity you haven't brought Sarah along with you. Two of you could ride away on her into the sunset." No change of tone. "You don't know a fellow called Burr at all, do you, Jeds, by any chance? First name Leonard? North Country oaf? Smelly armpits? Gospel trained? Come your way at all? Ever have a tumble with him? Probably called himself Smith. Pity. Thought you might have."

"I don't know anyone like that."

"Funny thing. Nor does Pine."

They dressed for dinner, back-to-back, choosing their clothes with care. The formal madness of their days and nights aboard the Pasha had begun.

The menus. Discussion with the steward and the cooks. Mrs. Sandown is French, and her opinion on everything is therefore regarded by the kitchen as gospel, never mind she eats only salads and swears she knows nothing about food.

Laundry. When guests are not eating they are changing, bathing and copulating, which means that every day they must have clean sheets, towels, clothes and table linen. A yacht sails on its food and its laundry. A whole section of the service deck is got up with banks of washing machines, dryers and steam irons, which two stewardesses tend from dawn till dusk.

Hair. The sea air does terrible things to people's hair. At five every evening the guest deck is humming to the sound of hair dryers, and it is their peculiarity to fail when guests are halfway through their toilet. Therefore at ten to six exactly, Jed may count on the sight of a belligerent, half-dressed lady guest lurking in the gangway with her hair stuck up like a lavatory brush, brandishing a defunct hair dryer and saying, "Jed, darling, could you possibly?"--because the housekeeper is by now supervising the final touches to the dinner table.

Flowers. Every day, the seaplane visits the nearest island to fetch flowers, fresh fish, seafood, eggs and newspapers, and to post letters. But the flowers are what Roper cares about most, the Pasha is famous for its flowers and the sight of dead flowers, or flowers not adequately arranged, is likely to cause serious tremors below decks.

Recreation. Where shall we put in, swim, snorkel, whom shall we visit, shall we dine out for a change, send the helicopter or the seaplane for the Somebodys, take the Somebody Elses ashore? For the guests on the Pasha are not a static population. They change from island to island according to their negotiated length of stay, bringing new blood, new banalities, a new approach to Christmas: how terribly behind one is with one's preparations, darling, I haven't even thought about my presies, and isn't it time you and Dicky got married, you look so absolutely yummy together?

And Jed in the madness goes along with this mad routine, waiting for a chink. Roper's references to putting files into bread loaves is not inaccurate. She would fuck all five guards and Langbourne and even Corkoran, if he were so disposed, in order to get alongside Jonathan.

Meanwhile, as she waits, all the rituals of her strict childhood and convent school--the rules of grit your teeth and smile--entwine her in their humiliating embrace. While she obeys them, nothing is real, but also nothing comes adrift. For both these blessings she is grateful, and the possibility of a chink remains. When Caroline Langbourne treats her to a discourse on the pleasures of marriage to Sandy now that the slut of a nanny is safely back in London, Jed smiles dreamily and says, "Oh, Caro, darling, I'm so awfully pleased for you both. And for the children, naturally." When Caroline adds that she probably said some absolutely barmy things about the business deals Dicky and Sandy were getting up to, but she'd talked it all through with Sandy and she really had to admit she'd seen things rather blacker than they were--and honestly, how can one make one's pennies these days without getting one's fingers the weeniest bit grubby?--Jed is pleased about that too and assures Caro that she can't remember a thing that Caro said about all that anyway, with Jed and business it's just in one ear and out the other and thank God for it....

And at night she sleeps with Roper, waiting for the chink.

In his bed.

Having dressed and undressed in his presence, worn his jewellery and charmed his guests.

The encounter most often comes at dawn, when her will, like the will of the dying, is at its weakest. He reaches for her, and Jed in some dreadful eagerness at once returns his call, telling herself that in doing so she is drawing the teeth of Jonathan's opressor, taming him, bribing him, making peace with him for Jonathan's salvation. And waiting for the chink.

Because that is what she is trying to buy from Roper all the time, in this mad silence they are sharing, following their first exchange of gunfire: a chance to get past his guard. They can laugh together about something as crucial as a bad olive. Yet, even in their sexual frenzies, they no longer mention the one subject that still joins them: Jonathan.

Is Roper too waiting for something? Waiting herself, Jed believes he is. Why else does Corkoran tap on the stateroom door at all odd hours, poke his head round, shake it and withdraw?

In her nightmares, Corkoran doubles as Jonathan's executioner.

She knows where he is now. Roper hasn't told her, but it has been an amusing game for him, looking on while Jed spots the clues and pieces them together. And now she knows.

First she notices the unnatural grouping at the forward end of the boat, on the lower deck beyond the guest cabins: a clogging of people, an air of accident. It is nothing she can put her finger on, and anyway that section of the boat has always been hazy to her. In the days of her innocence, she heard it referred to as the security area. Another time as the hospital. It is the one part of the boat that belongs to neither guests nor crew.

And since Jonathan himself is also neither, Jed sees the hospital as the fitting place to put him. Hovering with intent around the kitchen, Jed observes trays of invalid food, not ordered by herself. They are laden when they go forward. They are empty when they return.

"Is someone ill?" she demands of Frisky, stopping him in his path.

Frisky's manner is no longer deferential, if it ever was. "Why should there be?" he says pertly. The tray aloft. One-handed.

"Then who's eating slops? Yoghurt, chicken broth--who's that for?"

Frisky affects to notice for the first time what is on his tray. "Oh, that's Tabby, that is, miss." He has never in his life called her "miss" before. "Got a bit of the toothache, Tabby has. Had a wisdom tooth out in Antigua. Lot of bleeding. He's on the painkillers. Yeah."

She has begun to work out who visits him and when. It is an advantage of the rituals that control her that the smallest irregular movement on the ship is her concern; she knows by instinct whether the pretty Filipino stewardess has slept with the captain or the bosun or--as happened briefly one afternoon while Caroline was sunbathing on the afterdeck--with Sandy Langbourne. She has observed that it is Roper's three trusties--Frisky, Tabby and Gus--who sleep in the cabin above the private stairway to what she now believes is Jonathan's cell. And that the German-Argentineans across the gangway may suspect but do not share the secret. And that Corkoran--the new, puffed up, officious Corkoran--makes the journey twice a day at least, setting out with an air of circumstance and returning churlish.

"Corky," she beseeches him, trading on past friendship. "Corks, darling, please--for God's sake--how is he? Is he ill? Does he know I'm here?"

But Corkoran's face is shaded by the darkness he has visited.

"I warned you, Jed. I gave you every chance," he retorts huffily. "You wouldn't hear me. You were wilful." And goes his way like an offended beadle.

Sandy Langbourne is also an occasional visitor. His chosen hour is after dinner during his evening prowl of the decks in search of more diverting company than his wife.

"You bastard, Sandy," she whispers at him as he saunters past her. "You utter spoilt bloody shit."

Langbourne remains unaffected by this onslaught. He is too beautiful and bored to care.

And she knows that Jonathan's other visitor is Roper, because Roper is unusually pensive when he returns from the forward area. Even if she has not seen him go there, she can tell by his manner when he reappears. Like Langbourne, he favours evenings. First stroll on deck, chat to the skipper or call one of the many stockbrokers, currency dealers and bankers round the globe: how about taking a flier on Deutschies, Bill? Swissies, Jack? the yen, the pound, the escudo, Malaysian rubber, Rus-diamonds, Canadian gold? Then gradually, by these and staging posts, he is drawn as if by magnetic attraction the forward part of the boat. And vanishes. When he reappears, his expression is overcast.

Jed knows better than to beg or weep or scream or make a scene. If there is one thing that makes Roper dangerous it is a scene. It is the unwarranted invasion of his self-esteem.

It is bloody women snivelling at his feet. And she knows, or thinks she knows, that Jonathan is doing what he tried to do in Ireland. He is killing himself with his own courage.

It was better than Herr Meister's cellar, but it was also far, far worse. There was no going round and round the black walls.

But that was because he was chained to them. He was not neglected; his presence was known to a succession of attentive people. But these same people had stuffed his mouth with chamois leather and taped it with adhesive, and although there was an understanding that they would remove these inconveniences whenever he gave the signal that he wished to talk, they had already demonstrated to him that if he gave the signal frivolously there would be consequences. Since then, he had developed a firm policy not to talk at all, not even a "good morning" or "hullo," because his terror was that--since he was somebody who tended on occasion to confide, if only in his character as hotelier--this tendency would become his undoing, and "hullo" would turn into "I sent Rooke the numbers of the containers and the name of the boat," or whatever other stray confession sprang to mind in the agony of the moment.

Yet what confession did they want from him? What more did they need to know that they didn't know already? They knew he was a plant and that most of the stories about him were invention. If they did not know how much he had betrayed, they knew enough to change or abort their plans before it was too late. So why the urgency? Why the frustration?

Then gradually, as the sessions grew more ferocious, Jonathan came to recognise that his confession was something they felt that they were owed by right. He was their spy. They had unmasked him. Their pride demanded a contrite statement from the gallows.

But they were reckoning without Sophie. They didn't know about his Secret Sharer. Sophie who had been there ahead of him. And was there now, smiling at him over her coffee, please, Egyptian. Forgiving him. Amusing him: seducing him a little, urging him to live by daylight. When they beat his face--a prolonged and careful beating, but a devastating one--he wryly compared faces with her, and for a distraction he told her all about the Irish boy and the Heckler. But nothing maudlin; she was utterly against it; they never went in for self-pity or lost their sense of humour. You killer this woman? she teased him, lifting her plucked dark eyebrows and laughing her mannish laugh. No, he hadn't killered her. They had put that discussion behind them long ago. She had listened to his account of his dealings with Ogilvey, she had heard him out, now smiling, now frowning in distaste. "I think you did your duty, Mr. Pine," she declared when he had finished. "Unfortunately there are many kinds of loyalty, and we cannot serve them all at once. Like my husband, you believed you were a patriot. Next time you will make a better choice. Perhaps we shall make it together." When Tabby and Frisky worked on his body--mostly by chaining him in attitudes that produced prolonged and excruciating pain--Sophie reminded him how her body had been broken too: in her case, clubbed until it was destroyed.