Split Code (18 page)

For the last three days of my stay in Wabash Bay, I was never alone with Beverley Eisenkopp, although I caught her sometimes watching me, with sheer fright in her eyes. I didn’t see all that much of Grover, either.

Johnson I told of my interview and dismissal. There was no time for much comment. I gathered he thought I was right to agree, and that it might have set their minds more at rest had I accepted the ten thousand dollars. Then I saw the glasses flash, and knew he was less than serious. Simon had left without staying the night.

I told Bunty on the flight back to New York that I was leaving the Booker-Readmans because of a cable to tell me my aunt Lily in Toronto was ill. I had sent the cable to myself, and knew half the household had seen it. The Eisenkopps, father and mother, were casually sympathetic but not over-concerned. Beverley’s face cleared as if swept by a snow plough, and Comer’s mind was on other things.

It wasn’t until we had almost landed that he turned and called back to me. ‘Say . . . You won’t be staying in Wabash with Benedict then?’

‘No, Mr Eisenkopp. I think Mrs Booker-Readman will be taking the baby to Venice.’

‘Well, that settles it.’ He was pleased, for whatever reason. He turned to his wife. ‘Hey Beverley, baby. We don’t need to leave you alone, all those days after the party. Bunty can bring the kids right over to Venice, and fly down to Dubrovnik. They can come and visit you. Cheer you up while that nice little derriére is being taken care of.’

He grinned and, from the jump she gave, I thought he probably pinched her. But alarm had something to do with it as well, and maybe even real consternation. I wondered how much of her time would have been spent alone at the Radoslav Clinic. And I remembered Johnson’s remark. When Comer Eisenkopp had burst into my room in New York that evening, he might well have believed that his wife and Simon were there together. I wondered how much he really knew.

Bunty flung her arms round my shoulders and hugged me. ‘Did you hear that! Oh Jo, love. I’m bloody sad about Auntie but yippie! I’m going to Venice!’

I didn’t remind her: with Sukey and Grover. It seemed a pity to spoil it.

I didn’t know until I got back to New York that Rosamund hadn’t come back from Florida yet. When I arrived, with Benedict and the luggage, Simon was at the gallery and the house was empty, but the drop-side cot I had ordered before we left had arrived, and I unwrapped it and put it up in the nursery, with its mattress and new sheets and blankets, and then sat down and moped until recalled by Benedict, evincing a desire for his tea.

That meal, he took a spoonful of coddled egg for the first time without fussing. After, when I laid him in the new cot, he pumped with both legs in his excitement, and lay for a bit after that, cooing and lacing his fingers. He was sixteen pounds, and his eyes were blue-grey, and he would laugh if you were witty enough merely to shake your head at him. I spent a couple of minutes morning and night brushing his downy head with a baby brush, to encourage a parting, which I would never see.

I had been blowing my nose hard again when Donovan rang to ask about the Swiss cheese plant with white fly, and I had to tell him that all its leaves had dropped off. He came round for an hour just to look at it, and I was glad of his company. I think too, his arm being out of plaster, that he had a hope of being taken back on to the strength but Simon, finding him there, had nothing of moment to say and I could see why.

In a few days they would be abroad with the baby, and if Benedict needed any protection, presumably Mrs Warr Beckenstaff was the lady to fix it. And in any case, for the opposite reasons from Comer, Simon had no desire for a friendly neighbourhood bodyguard in a neighbourhood which was to include Mrs Beverley Eisenkopp.

Rosamund returned on my last day, when Bunty had asked the Eisenkopps to let her put on a small party for me in her rooms. The Eisenkopp parents were out, but Charlotte was there, and half a dozen other Maggie Bee girls, and Donovan and three other boys and two of the original Huskies who flew down from Toronto.

In fact, most of the talent was Charlotte’s. I once asked Bunty if she collected pen-friends like our Charlie and she said no, most of her mail came through answering nanny ads. I suppose it gets to be a habit, however cushy your current posting. The ones she liked were the ads the Maggie Bee told you not to touch with a barge-pole, such as
Casper, Amanda and Dominic and all the dogs want a young, cheerful nanny to take Mummy’s place. Must have sense of humour and a driving licence.
The kind, perhaps, I ought to be perusing.

The fact that she had her eye on her next few posts didn’t inhibit Bunty from exploiting the present one to the full, to my benefit. We had a buffet supper, accompanied by wine and spirits from her never-failing resources, and some dancing to her quadruple stereo record player. At their own request Hugo and Gramps Eisenkopp arrived and joined in, and a little later Hugo phoned Simon and invited him over.

Whether or not because of a guilty conscience, my late employer did his best to be sociable, throwing himself into the dancing and even more into the spirits department, egged on by Hugo. By the time his wife Rosamund had arrived at her empty home, found the scrawled note and walked round to ring the bell of the Eisenkopp duplex, Simon had kissed all the girls in the room several times and was trying to get Charlotte to take his temperature while they were dancing; and with the kind of profile he had, he wasn’t getting much resistance at that.

Then the door opened and like the traditional figure of doom, Rosamund stood in the doorway.

Grandpa Eisenkopp ordered his wheelchair to right turn and run up to her which it did, bringing his neat black hairpiece just under the fisher lapels of her coat. ‘Well ma’am, you’ve come to the right place. It wouldn’t be a send-off without Benedict’s mother. Come and tell Joanna how sad we all are that she’s going.’

‘Going!’
said Rosamund Booker-Readman. And I realized then, as Simon turned, that he hadn’t told her.

I went forward, fast. ‘I’m afraid it’s true. It is my last day, and I hate to tell you. But my aunt in Toronto is really ill, and they’re going to need someone to nurse her. I said I’d come this weekend. It’s going to be a long business, I’m afraid, and there’s no one else.’

‘There is,’ said Rosamund, ‘your second cousin in Winnipeg. Isn’t there?’

Simon pulled his shirt down and stepping forward, cleared his throat. I said, ‘She can’t travel, and they can’t leave Government House. I’m afraid there’s no way out. Believe me, I’d have taken it if there was. I’m going to miss Benedict more than I can tell you. I’m so sorry. But at three months at least . . .’

She wasn’t listening. She said to Simon, ‘When did this happen?’

‘When I was at Wabash. On Tuesday,’ he said.

‘And you didn’t think of telling me?’ She turned to me. ‘This is not a month’s notice.’

The record had ended and the conversation had dwindled, too, into an embarrassed silence. Charlotte, rounding up the nearest group of guests, took them over to the drinks table and started a fevered conversation. Donovan hung nearer, listening. I said, ‘I was needed by the weekend. Mr Booker-Readman did say it would be all right.’ I didn’t see why I should have to play Simon’s game for him.

‘Mr Booker-Readman.’ Rosamund said, ‘has nothing to do with the upbringing of Benedict, in a sense either moral or monetary. You were hired by myself and my mother. If you wish to leave, it is to us you must make your case. I have yet to hear one.’

‘Look, Rosamund,’ Simon said. He was sweating, and his lips and tongue and breath had got out of step with one another. ‘Look, Rosamund. The girl made a perfelly reas’able case and I said right. Can’t go back on it now.’

‘If you committed yourself, then that is Joanna’s misfortune. You had no authority to do so. You came to us, Joanna, on the understanding that a month’s notice on either side was obligatory. There was also a clear understanding that your employment would endure far beyond the span of three months. Why therefore should we release you?’

I looked at Simon. I was beginning, very faintly, to enjoy myself. ‘My aunt,’ I said.

Rosamund surveyed me, and I was glad to be wearing, on this occasion, more than bikini underwear. ‘Your aunt in Toronto, I think you said. She cannot afford help?’

‘She can’t get it,’ I said.

‘What help does she require?’ Rosamund said. ‘Nursing? Cleaning-women? A housekeeper?’

‘It’s. . . She needs a housekeeper and a little regular nursing by someone who is strong and willing,’ I said. I kept my face straight. My aunt Lily is a lawyer and shares a large, well-run house with her brother, who is a retired cabinet minister. Charlotte opened her mouth and then shut it again.

Rosamund said, ‘Are you perfectly sure that without you, no such help would be forthcoming?’

She was a shrewd lady. I said, ‘So her doctors said on the phone. But of course . . .’

‘Of course, you only had their word for it. And what could be easier from their point of view than to phone up a niece and have her drop everything and come north. I applaud,’ said Rosamund bleakly, ‘your sense of family duty, but I really think all this self-sacrifice is unnecessary. If you are really concerned about the well-being of Benedict -’

‘Oh, I am,’ I said. I didn’t dare look at Simon.

‘Then I shall phone my lawyer. You shall fly north with him tomorrow, sort this whole business out, get your aunt settled and return here on Monday. Have you any objection?’

I looked this time at Simon. He looked alarmingly sobered. He said, ‘There must be other nurses in New York. We can’t bull- doshe, doze the poor girl, Rosamund. Anyway, the Eis’nkopps are taking their children to Europe. No good, leaving Ben’dict behind in New York. Take him with us.’

‘To the ball?’ said Rosamund sarcastically. She took the dry martini Bunty held silently out to her. ‘Or on board the
Glycera?
I’m sure three-month-old babies will make their own welcome.’

The sarcasm worked. He straightened, got his tongue under control and made a distinct effort, looking round, to put the impossible scene at last into some kind of accepted framework. ‘How boring for everyone. We’re spoiling poor Joanna’s party with all this nonsense. A drink, Mr Eis’nkopp.’

‘Hardly,’ Rosamund said scathingly. ‘The point is, if you remember, whether Joanna has cause for a party. You were going to suggest, I hope, where our happy family party, without nanny, might put up in Venice?’

‘Not in Venice. In Dubro . . . Dubrovnik,’ Simon said. He sat down, and remained there looking up at her. ‘Your mother’s manager cabled today. No berth for the
Glycera
at Venice. They’re having the gala instead in Dubrovnik. And Johnson Johnson says why don’t we stay on his ketch. You know her. The
Dolly.
He’s having her brought round from Malta.’

There was a crackling silence. Then Hugo crowed like a cock. ‘You mean this nice cosmetics lady your mother is to hold her party on the
Glycera
in Dubrovnik?’

‘Of course,’ said Donovan. Below his rectangular pink face, he had a primula in his buttonhole. ‘You live there.’

‘I am Yugoslav. I,’ said Hugo, ‘shall be your interpreter. And Joanna will stay, and will come to Dubrovnik with her little Ben, and will live on board the
Dolly,
where no one can kidnap him with perhaps - why not with Donovan, who can grow vines up the rigging: grapes on the coach roof and muscatels filling the hatches? We shall tread them in the autumn.
Premier cruise! Entre Deux Meres!
The
Dolly vignoblel
Does it not intoxicate, merely to think of it?’

The Booker-Readmans, facing one another, paid no attention. Rosamund said, ‘My mother is pleased with Joanna, and wishes to meet her. There is no question of the girl resigning.’

‘Suppose,’ said Grandpa Eisenkopp’s hoarse, amused voice from the wheelchair. ‘Suppose you put it to the girl. Joanna. You wanna go to Dubrovnik and stay on this yacht with the baby?’

Agree to everything. I said, ‘I’d like nothing better. But ...’

‘There are no buts,’ Rosamund said. ‘You fly to Toronto tomorrow and arrange things. If there is any trouble at all, telephone me. Either my mother or her business associates will arrange things. Is that clear?’

It was. I turned to Simon. For a moment I saw pure, wild-eyed frustration laid over something else much more threatening. Then it was gone and he raised his eyebrows in a resigned way at me. ‘You heard. You fix things, and come back to the baby,’ he said. ‘Remembering that you’ve had an extra month’s salary and a party . . . Mr Eisenkopp? This parcel’s for Comer. Can I leave it with you?’

Fortunately, for my ego, everyone forgot about me and my undeserved salary and fixed their eyes on the thing he was holding.

It was a flat, square package in heavy brown paper: he’d had it with him when he arrived. Grandpa Eisenkopp, taking it, turned it round eagerly. ‘The other ikon? The new one, to replace the Lesnovo thing that went missing?’

Looking at the interest in Hugo’s face, I remembered the quantity of Byzantine paintings in Yugoslav churches. Of course he knew all about it. He said, ‘What can you sell him to replace the Lesnovo?’

‘Wait and see,’ Simon said. He was smiling. ‘It’s not quite as good, of course. Nothing could be. But I think he will like it.’

Hugo’s large, liquid eyes and those of Gramps Eisenkopp met. The old man grinned. ‘Shall I open it?’

The record player had started again, softly, and three or four couples were dancing smoochily at the end of the room, Charlotte and Donovan with them. Rosamund had finished her drink and without being asked was helping herself, her brow corrugated, to another. Simon stood, his hands in his pockets and said, ‘It’s up to you. Open it if you don’t think Comer would mind.’

‘He won’t mind,’ said Comer’s father, and digging in his small, blunt-fingered hands, tore off the wrapping and sat, the light on the painting.

We all moved to the wheelchair to look.

No one said anything. Then Hugo said, ‘But that
is
the Lesnovo ikon.’