The Cherry Blossom Corpse (7 page)

Lorelei's going, as usual, gave the signal for a general break-up. Logically it ought to have signalled the beginning of festivities, but somehow or other she seemed to constitute some dreadful centrepiece, and we rather collapsed without her. First Arthur Biggs and his party evaporated off towards the grounds, then the rest of us began scraping our chairs backwards, and making general getting-up motions.

Amanda, of course, could not simply evaporate. She
had not asked her Australian editor back to dinner, and had been sitting quite thoughtful throughout the meal. Now she made motioning signs to the boy-of-all-work, who had been bringing wine to the few who could afford to drink it.

“I'm
sorry
to trouble you, but you were
so
helpful this morning, and I wondered if you
could
be an angel and translate for me a
tiny
letter I've written to your local paper. One sentence, literally
one,
I promise you.”

“It is not necessary. They print in English,” said the boy.

“But I want to reach the
widest
possible audience,” said Amanda. “After all,
her
piece did, it will take
three
minutes—two!—no more.”

The boy looked round at the proprietress, and with pursed lips she nodded acquiescence.

“Come to my room!” cooed Amanda, and sailed ahead so that she did not see the look of sheer horror that came over his face. Clearly he was convinced that he was going to be raped by this pink predator, and I must say the rest of us rather wondered too. Bravely he squared his shoulders and followed her.

So we all went our various ways. I wandered out into the grounds with Cristobel and Bernard. After we had strolled in the brilliant evening sun-and-shadow for ten minutes or so, I realized they would much prefer to be alone. Perceptive of you, Perry! Bernard was to take the last bus back to Bergen, but there was an hour or so for them to make good use of before then. I walked back towards the house, irresolute. Prudence suggested that I should shut myself in my room with a good book. I had brought with me the memoirs of a former head of Metropolitan Police, to see how many direct lies I could catch him out in. Still, it was not riveting stuff.

Im
prudence and inclination suggested the bar. And
in the bar, doubtless was Maryloo Parker . . . While I was still dithering, down the stairs came Amanda, with the waiting boy following behind with a relieved expression on his face.

“Thank you
so
much,” fluted Amanda. “I
think
that puts her in her place, don't you? And you'll put it in the post-box for me? Wait . . .”

She fumbled in her bag, and I expected her to produce a fifty-kroner note, or even a hundred, to tip him. In the event it was ten. His manner of acceptance was no worse than graceless, which it probably would have been whatever the denomination of note. I had the impression that most Norwegians wouldn't recognize a Grace if it came down and landed on their head. The boy tootled downstairs towards the bar, and—quite without thinking on my part—Amanda and I slowly drifted in the same direction.

“I think just a tiny gin and tonic to take up to my room,” announced Amanda. “I have an immense amount to do.”

“Are you writing?” I asked.

“But of
course,
darling! I don't regard this as a holiday. I have to do ten pages of
The Pretender's Sweetheart.”

“Ah—a historical,” I said wisely. “Do you have to do an immense amount of research for them?”

She shot me a sharp, intelligent glance.

“Someone has been talking,” she said.

“Oh, you know what people are. Someone said you'd sent your heroine down to Regency Brighton on a train.”

“Darling, I
never
discuss my books! What is written is written! . . .
Could
I have one of your
lovely
gin and tonics, do you think?”

We were at the bar, where the proprietress presided. Amanda turned from that lady's slightly grim demean
our back to me, and fixed me with her most dazzling smile. “Or should that be gins and tonic? Grammar was never my strongest point either.”

But I was busy scanning the assembly. This evening there was no sprinkling of locals to gaze at us unashamedly out of cunning, peasanty eyes. Instead there was a family of four Americans, doing Norway, and there was a party of three Bavarian men, all looking like Franz Josef Strauss. One of them banged on the table for service, but the proprietress rightly ignored him.

And then there were the Romantics. Arthur Biggs with his two fans were at one table, well away from the rest. I was getting the impression that Biggs regarded himself as a Person of Consequence, who could not be expected to fraternize lightly. Then, dotted untidily round two tables, there were Mary Sweeny, the Kenyan, the Finn, Patti Drewe and—inevitably—Maryloo Parker. I had been spotted as I came in, and Maryloo was regarding me with Your Destiny written in her eyes. I wandered over in her direction, telling myself that my Destiny was still firmly in my hands rather than hers. The night, after all, was still young.

The talk, oddly enough, was drifting towards politics. Mary Sweeny started it off by saying that you could say what you liked about Mrs. Thatcher—and she could quite happily say plenty—but one thing her government had done was bring in Public Lending Rights, which had transformed the economic position of writers.

“Mind you,” she said, “it would have transformed mine a damn sight more if public libraries bought as many Romances as they ought to.”

The Americans were naturally avid to hear more about anything that improved the financial situation of writers, and from Thatcher we drifted on to Reagan. Patti Drewe said you could say what you liked about
him,
but he was a great communicator.

“But what exactly
is
it he communicates?” asked Mary Sweeny.

Then it was on to the next Prime Minister, the next President, and then back in history to that dreariest of topics, the Kennedy family. Maryloo Parker, who claimed to go weak at the knees at the sight of Gary Hart, had apparently been part of every abortive Kennedy campaign of the last twenty years.

“You seem to have been a willing helper,” I said.

“Boy, if you were not willing, you weren't a helper,” she said, making meaningful eyes at me.

From there we would probably have gone on to Kenya and South Africa, but the Kenyan, whose name I now found was Wes Mackay, looked at his watch.

“Looks like the half-hour is up,” he said. “It's us for the lion's den—and I never even took a thorn out of her paw in the distant past!”

“Us?” I said, surprised, for he was jerking the comatose Finn to his feet.

“Yes—Martti and me. We were having a sherry with her last night in the lounge before dinner, and la Zuckerman asked us both up for tonight. We've been having a few chats about markets and agents and trends, and she said we could have a good confab about them. I want to get as much gen as I can about the American market. I think I showed my surprise at the invite, because she just muttered ‘Too few men' as she hobbled off. I'm not too sure that Martti knows what he's in for yet.”

But he managed to get him to his feet, and he steered him solicitously through the tables in the little bar, and then gradually up the stairs.

“Boy, do they have guts!” said Maryloo Parker.

“What the Finn has is alcohol,” I pointed out.

“And she has been rather less fearsome, this last day or two,” said Patti Drewe. “Compared to that first horrendous evening.”

“Always to men—have you noticed that?” put in Maryloo. “Of course, we're all like that, but I'm a bit surprised at her. She hasn't made any nice noises in the direction of any of the women here.”

“Felicity seems devoted to her—or something,” I chipped in.

“But apart from Felicity, la Zuckerman seems happiest—silly word!—with men. God knows what she hopes to get out of them.” She gave me her look again. “The mind boggles.”

“What
is
her background?” I asked.

Patti Drewe seemed to have heard most.

“All sorts of stories seem to go around. Maybe people make them up because nothing is actually known. The one about her having been a fairground wrestler I doubt. The ones that seem to surface most often are a stint in the armed forces, the CIA, a spell in Britain, and a smalltime opera singer.”

“The spell in Britain didn't rub off on her accent,” said Mary Sweeny.

“That sort of accent is unalterable. It's there for life, like freckles or a club foot. We're used to it in the States—I suppose it grates on you?”

“It certainly doesn't fall gratefully on the ear,” I admitted, “though somehow it seems to fit the whole personality so perfectly I'm not sure I'd want her to speak any other way. I presume the lady has never been married?”

“We don't call women ladies any more in the States,” said Maryloo.

“It was a courtesy title only,” I murmured.

“No husband or ex-husband has ever been spotted, but it is rumoured there's been one. One
can
imagine her grinding some poor devil down to a powder, then flushing him down the john, don't you think?” She gave
me that look again. “A man has many uses, and for her one would guess the principal one would be as victim.”

Well, we thrashed over the subject, and went on to this and that, or rather to him or her. We did over Arthur Biggs pretty thoroughly, in hushed voices, and the Americans went to town on the conference's president. Maryloo, from time to time, trained her artillery on me, and after a bit I began to respond. Part of me still resisted, though. At five past nine I looked at my watch.

“I promised to ring Jan at Oppheim. She should have got Daniel to bed by now.”

It wasn't true. I'm not sure whether it was a way of stiffening my virtuous resolve, or making sure she was there. Anyway, I slipped out, but not before Maryloo had smiled at me again with her Your Destiny smile.

The phone was in a little nook off from the main lounge. I had no sooner got through to the hotel, and they were hunting through their book for Jan's room number, than I saw Amanda swanning it down the stairs. Presumably she was taking time off from romps in the heather in '45. She was in a purply-pink dress, without coat or handbag, and altogether
au naturel.
She wafted out through the front door, and on to the little lawn in the centre of the drive. It was twilight, but still warm, and she let the wind ruffle her hair caressingly. It would have made a lovely cover.

“Jan?” I turned away from the little window that gave me a view to the front of the house. “I thought I'd ring you and tell you I will be coming tomorrow.”

“I know that. I didn't think there would be anything at the conference to detain you.”

“Or any
one,”
I said, rather too forcefully.

“Well, I didn't think so, but—”

“How's Daniel?”

“Oh fine. He just loves it here. I think we had somehow given him the impression he'd be able to ski, but otherwise—”

As Jan talked I turned back to the window. Amanda had stepped daintily across the lawn, and was now heading towards the little tree-lined path that led down to the boathouse. The gentle breeze was still ruffling her hair, for all the world as if she were standing on a Hollywood set in front of a wind machine.

“And the hotel?”

“Perfectly all right. Not so charming as KvalevÃ¥g, not by a long chalk, but the
scenery . . .”

We chatted for some time, and I kept it going with question and answer, because I thought Jan's sensitive antennæ had picked something up, Finally I told her that I'd catch the same train she and Daniel had taken the next day (though alas, as Amanda might have said, it was not to be), and we said goodbye. When I put the phone down it was twenty past nine, but there was still light outside. I was surprised to see Cristobel and Bernard wandering back to the house from the path that led to the road. It did not escape my supernaturally sharp policeman's eye that they were hand in hand. I went out on to the porch.

“Thought you were catching the last bus back to Bergen,” I said to Bernard, trying not to make it sound too heavy-father.

“There's been an accident somewhere between here and Bergen, and it's blocked the road,” said Cristobel defensively. “We've been standing up there for ages with the boy, who's meeting hotel guests. In the end someone who'd had to turn back stopped and told us. The boy says he'll let us know when the bus goes by to KvalevÃ¥g, then we can go down and Bernard can catch it on the way back to Bergen.”

“Oh, fine. I'm off down to the bar. Coming?”

“Oh no. No, I don't think so,” said Cristobel, looking at Bernard.

“No, we'll just—walk around,” said Bernard—not exactly soppy, but not entirely sensible either.

“Right, well, er, good night,” I said, watching them go off hand in hand. I didn't go back to the bar at once. I needed to think. I went up to my room and had a cigarette. I thought. I suppose you could say I struggled with my conscience. To no avail. I stubbed out my cigarette, and went back to the bar.

But downstairs was beginning to break up. That tended to happen in Norway, the price of drinks being what it was. You buy one, toy with it playfully for as long as possible, then decide on an early night. In fact, things were a lot more fluid down there, and it was a fluidity that I cursed later, for I had no clear idea who was where for the next half-hour. The Biggs party and my party were both standing up and beginning to mingle. The lady in the family of American tourists had come over to beg autographs first from Patti Drewe, then from Maryloo Parker, and both were being gracious and friendly. Mrs. Biggs, as a relief from all that husband-worship, was talking to Mary Sweeny about the Norwegian folk-products in the local Husfliden shop. And to make my perceptions of what was going on still more unclear, Arthur Biggs sealed his growing unpopularity with me by coming up and saying: