Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird (12 page)

‘Not so far,’ I said. ‘But Bunty wants danger money.’ She was in the next room, not quite within earshot, trying to persuade half a pound of tuppeny rice out of Grover.

‘Nonsense,’ said Johnson abstractedly. ‘The house is wired, and the garden is full of Alsatians. You’ll be better off here than you would in New York, with Donovan changing you into a bottle garden. It was the nearest thing to the rats and the pumpkins that I ever saw outside Cinderella.’

‘But in ten days’ time, you’re going to Venice?’ I made it pointed. I daren’t embark on anything less than ambiguous. ‘A free suite at the Gritti and you’re painting the manager?’

His glasses flashed. ‘You forget,’ said Johnson. ‘I’ve worked my passage already, commissioned by Benedict’s grandmother Ingmar. My costume’s all fixed: too exciting. Then after the bash, I may drift on to Malta.’

‘To paint Mabel?’ I said. I was not amused. I didn’t know, either, that it was a fancy dress party.

‘To pick up
Dolly
. She’s wintered at Sliema,’ said Johnson.

His yacht. I had forgotten. The one he brought over the Atlantic, sometimes; and painted on, and lived aboard, and used from time to time as a means of exit. I said, ‘And what about Benedict’s portrait? He’s going to look a bit odd in collar and tie and a christening robe.’

The riding party was back. The dulcimer chimed. It was time for the plunge pool with the hydrojet massage. Johnson said, ‘You let me worry about that and everything else. Just put your mind to being polite to itinerant painters and doing everything that everyone tells you to. That way you won’t get the sack.’

But I did.

Easter Monday was the Eisenkopp’s ninth wedding anniversary, and the house was full of florists, electricians and caterers and six-foot vats full of crushed ice. Dr Gibbings arrived in the morning to check Benedict’s vaccination and to give one to Sukey and Grover. This represented a triumph of Maggie Bee diplomacy over an army of Eisenkopp prejudices. I didn’t know until later that – anything for a quiet life – Bunty had agreed to have her charges vaccinated, but hadn’t actually mentioned it to her employers.

While Dr Gibbings was there, I got him to look at Grover’s throat also. He advised a waiting game over his tonsils and was prevailed upon, without difficulty, to remain for the party.

The party was attended by two hundred guests and had as its main feature a surprise neon sign from Mrs Eisenkopp to Mr Eisenkopp which said,
comer i love you
. The Wabash Bay Musical Society rendered a selection of Great American Love Songs in harmony after the buffet.

The only conversation which came within our range of hearing as we sat, Bunty and I, out of sight at the top of the stairs, was about the lethal properties of maraschino cherries. An argument broke out, as I remember, to do with fruit salad, in the purest of senses, during which Bunty broke into weeping.

Next morning, Grover had a field day throwing building bricks, tiddley-winks and bits of paper from his mother’s bedroom into the pool, finishing up with the entire contents of his bottle of Giant Little Folks’ Bubble Bath. When Comer came in for his thirty-two lengths the water looked like the effluent stream of a soda pop factory with the pool bug lurching wheezing about like a hand whisk.

The scene that followed is only relevant insofar as it ended with Comer, swollen with rage, gouging Percy out on to the wall-to-wall carpet and prising open its glutted mouth-trap from which emerged a stream of small toys, cigarette butts, Adult Nuts, dirty tissues, crumpled paper and rejected maraschino cherries. It was what I might have expected to find in Bunty’s loo, for example, if the party had been held there.

There were other parallels. One of the pieces of paper, uncurling itself in Johnson’s careless hand, proved to be a fragment of writing, much chewed and washed out by bubble bath, which said nevertheless quite distinctly, ‘Look out for me then, darling, on Tuesday.’

‘Why, he’s torn Gwenny’s letter,’ said Beverley quickly. ‘You bad, bad boy, Grover.’

I saw Comer Eisenkopp’s hand rise quivering to waist height and then, disappointingly, drop again. He knelt. ‘Son. What you’ve done today has made your Momma and Dad very unhappy. Are you glad you made your Momma unhappy, Grover?’

‘Yes,’ said Grover.

Bunty smoothed out her coffee striped nylon, and kneeling also, laid her hand on Grover’s forehead. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. We’ve got a little temperature, haven’t we? Mr Eisenkopp, you’ll have to let me take him away to lie down. It’s all come as a shock, poor little baby. Mrs Eisenkopp, you know you have a very sensitive son.’

She looked reproachfully at Beverley who had already switched expressions and was saying, her hand on Comer’s naked shoulder, ‘He didn’t mean it, I know. Easter always upsets him, darling. Why don’t we just go and have a sauna instead?’

They retired. Grover got the flat of Bunty’s hand three times, cried, was given half an Italian Easter egg and was sick in the sandpit. His parents, clean, pink and restored to calm, knelt on either side of his bed and promised to take him sailing on Dadda’s yacht in the morning.

Or Comer did. Beverley never boarded the thing, it was common knowledge, since she got sick to her stomach, in the colourful phrase, if she walked on wet grass. And by arrangement, it was Bunty’s day off.

I remember saying, in an attempt to stem the flood of reconciliation, ‘Mr Eisenkopp… He’ll have to have someone with him in case he falls in. And I’m looking after Ben and Sukey.’

Grover burst into tears. Beverley looked up. Her nose in profile was high-bred and slender as a humming-bird feeder, and if there were any tucks, I couldn’t see them. Her skin was flawless. She said, ‘He is so sensitive. Nurse Joanna, you go with Grover. No problem. I’ll stay at home and look after the babies.’

Even bearing in mind Bunty’s serial horror story of precisely how Mrs Eisenkopp looked after the babies on her week-ends off, I was tempted. Then commonsense took over and I said, ‘It would be simply splendid, but I did promise I’d stick with Ben. His parents are so upset about these rotten kidnappings.’

It was the wrong line to take. The enormous eyes opened and Beverley said, ‘But honey, have you seen the security precautions? Why, there are two men patrolling the grounds right at this minute and of course I shan’t be alone: Paolo and his wife are there in the kitchen. You run along tomorrow and have yourself a good time.’

The clincher came with Johnson’s assenting voice. ‘Yes. Why don’t you?’ he said.

If he was convinced that neither Beverley nor the Italian couple wanted to kidnap Benedict, then it was all right by me. I wanted to see the yacht, and to sail again. My father used to race, once. I agreed.

The third week of April is too early for Squibnocket Beach, but the mild, sunny weather had brought quite a few cruising boats out next morning, as Comer collected his crew along with Grover and myself on the terrace. The crew consisted, it appeared, of one or two stockbroking neighbours and their polite sons. Then Johnson came downstairs in a stained yellow nylon kagool and promptly outraged both the Eisenkopps by ripping undone and taking off the tasteful Little Mermaid life jacket in which Grover had been dressed by his father.

‘Burn it,’ said Johnson.

‘My kids wear these,’ someone said. ‘Hey, they’re all right. They float.’

‘Of course they float,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s finding out whether they’ve floated face up or face down that’s the exciting bit.’

We boarded the boat: a handsome Australian-built auxiliary sloop my father would have approved of.

Grover objected to his orange cork lifesaver, his harness and his running leash, to the sound of the anchor coming up and the noise the engine made when it started. Then they got a sail up and the engine went off and he saw the house with Sukey in it falling behind and other beaches coming up, and gardens, and houses; and Johnson asked him to get the frozen octopus out of the ice box. And he stopped crying.

I won’t say there was much to do. Comer held the tiller and issued the orders, and the boat was so full of tanned, husky week-end sailors that there were three people to every sheet and the winches were whipped incandescent. Grover and I went and sat on the foredeck and watched Johnson baiting lines and waved at all the people we knew on their jetties or gardens or putting lawns.

Wabash Bay is a private community and the beachside properties are expensive and large: anyone from the Third Crusade would have felt instantly at home. And because the morning was wearing on by this time, a good many of the patios and terraces were occupied with neighbours having their pre-lunch stingers in company. I spotted at least a dozen of the Eisenkopps’ guests from the other night outside three different houses.

We drifted on, fairly close inshore and were passing the last house in the bay before sailing out into the Sound towards Chappy when someone onshore hailed us.

Among the knits and tight denims and jumpsuits, there was no trouble in identifying the one bald and volatile head. It was Hugo Panadek, in yellow fringed poncho and boots, and waving a drink in his hand.

What he heard could not be said, even though we could see him put down his drink, embrace his hostess and stride, calling, down to the boatless jetty. I said to Johnson, ‘Do you know he does all Mr Eisenkopp’s automation? Heat-sensitive burglar precautions, sit-up beds, garden sprinklers, dust extraction and humidity, robot snack-servers and squash players, magnetic door locks, movable wall dividers. The garage opens if you walk towards it with the key in your pocket. And the safe won’t open unless you put your gloves in the fridge before touching it. It’s your name he’s calling.’

Johnson went on fixing bait. ‘So it seems. My guess is that he wants a lift back to the house and is dying to spill a good joke he’s just heard about Comer.’

‘It’ll be a long lift,’ I said. ‘We haven’t started fishing yet.’

‘We haven’t even started drinking yet,’ Johnson said. ‘My other guess is that he has noticed there’s a girl on board, and who she is. Do you want him, or not?’

‘If you mean on board, I have no strong views either way,’ I said. ‘Provided he brings his refrigerated gloves… Are you going?’

The glasses looked pained. ‘What else? You’ve just sent me, haven’t you?’ said Johnson, and disappeared aft. Grover put some bait in his mouth. ‘One for Grover,’ he said. ‘What did Josso want?’

I reckoned that, without the hook, the bait could do no permanent harm. ‘He’s gone to get Hugo,’ I said. ‘Look, the wind is blowing towards Grover now, and the boat has stopped. That’s to let Mr Johnson get into the dinghy.’

He did, too, without any fuss and also without any company: a fact accounted for by the unmistakable clink and splash of drinks being served in Comer’s saloon.

I went to find out if there was any juice for Grover, and didn’t even see the collision.

One moment there was a narrow strip of blue bay water, with Johnson’s dinghy and sundry small craft in it, and Hugo waiting, arms akimbo under his poncho.

The next, there was a shout and a crash, and the belting roar of a strong speedboat engine.

I swung up the companionway: the others jumped to the rail, or the portholes.

Where Johnson’s boat had been was the overturned wreck of the dinghy: a mess of curved and sprung wood with planks, rags and litter wagging about in the shearing wake of a white ocean racer. Of Johnson, there was no vestige. ‘Oh Great Christ,’ said Comer, and seizing the helm, put it down.

Someone said, ‘You’ve only got eight feet, and shoaling.’

Comer said, ‘I know. Jake, take Clem and unlash the speedboat. Marty, the lifebelts. Ready to anchor. Who swims best? Stewart?’

No sweat. I was down to my bra and bikini pants by then, with Grover screaming beside me. ‘No. I do,’ I said; and as she came round to anchor, I dived.

It was freezing. Who swims best? Comer, you’d think, with his thirty-two bloody lengths daily. But he was handling the yacht. Of course. I shook my head in the air, got a line on the wreckage and put my head down again, with my arms turning like ships’ propellers. There are two things I can do, apart from the jobs I am paid for. One is swimming. The other, as it happens, is sailing.

I thought, a speedboat from the local boatyard would have had to stop. So that was a stranger. An accident? A diversion? An effort by the kidnappers to get rid of Johnson? Hardly. Even at the Golden Wonderland, Johnson had scarcely made an impression as Benedict’s most dangerous ally. And anyway, no one could have known that Johnson would be alone in a boat in Wabash Bay at this moment

Except, of course, Hugo.

I was close now, but there was no movement ahead in the water.

Behind, I heard the splash as the yacht’s speedboat was lowered. I heard Hugo’s voice shouting and realised that he, too, was swimming towards the overturned dinghy, from the opposite direction. I couldn’t move any faster.

He had been under for four minutes.

If he was thrown in the path of the keel, he could be broken in two. Not pretty. A lot nastier than the things you saw in a maternity hospital.

My mother’s voice:
Johnson is coming over. He’s painting the duchess
.

Painting was all he’d done really. And play jokes with the Eskimos and the baby alarm. And shoot badly. And forget to belt in the Brownbelly Bruin.

I had got to the wreckage. I was tired, and my breath was sobbing anyway. There was nothing on top, so I dived.

There was air under the hull of the boat, and something solid encased in slippery nylon. ‘I remember when you got a gold medal for doing that,’ said Johnson appreciatively. ‘Get me back in the launch. I’ve concussion.’

I made a mad sort of sound. Before I’d bitten it off, he had grinned, shut his eyes in the gloom, and slid off his perch into the water. I hung there, stupidly watching him sink. His hair waved up, black in the green, and his yellow nylon swelled out and his hand, white and limp, gave a couple of testy twitches and became white and limp once again. With the start, I let go of the boat and went headlong after him, before he drowned.

I met Hugo half-way with Johnson’s clothes in his hands, already shoving him up to the air. The gagging and choking he did when he got there had the stamp of true authenticity and won no sympathy from me. It was agreed, as we heaved him into the speed launch, that he’d had a bang on the head and was in a state of concussion. As a nurse, I got the job of getting his lungs clear of water, and I enjoyed that as well, I can tell you.