The Man Who Understood Women (23 page)

By craning her neck, and holding on to a bunch of thistles, she was just in time to see the merciless waves swallow up her husband’s Crimplene-shirted body, just like an abandoned stick, and draw it effortlessly out into the boundless sea in whose bosom lay his lobsters and his crayfish, his oysters and his clams.

All that Maisie could think of, to her eternal horror, to her eternal shame, was that at last Marvin would be happy. At last he had got his moules.

Southern Comfort

1998

I am well-travelled in all senses of the word. Five continents and four husbands. I don’t make a big issue of either. I can go down with cramps, rashes, fevers, gnat bites, snake bites, stomach acid – anything that doesn’t require major surgery –
anywhere
in the world and be my own physician. In my drugs bag I carry every pill known to man and then some, yet I haven’t slept in twenty years. Twenty years is a long time.

I know you have panaceas. Hot milk. Cold milk.
Hypnotism
. Relaxation tapes. Sleep clinics. This therapy. That
therapy
. Leave me alone. I’ve swallowed the pharmacopoeia. I’ve heard your theories. I’ve tried them all. Twenty years is long enough. I get into bed. Or not. I fix my pillows. Goose-down, duck-down, feather, fibre, rubber, synthetic, non-allergic, orthopaedic, square, oblong, crib, air-filled, water-filled. Even hops. Hops! Sometimes I pick up a book. Then the whole damned pantomime begins. A blue pill, then a yellow, then a white. like candies all night long. I drop off for an hour, two
maybe, till my whole body shrieks out ‘pill’ and I fumble like a drunkard for the water carafe. Those to whom sleep is no
problem
, ‘balm of hurt minds’, ‘sweet nature’s second course’ and all that garbage, cannot hope to understand. They will never know how long are the small hours or how empty though peopled with forgotten voices, fragmented places, familiar and recurring anxieties. They will never know the blind panic that comes with the first tongue of light as it identifies like an aching tooth the hairline cracks in the dense drapes, with the first note of the earliest bird signalling the utter desolation of yet another
nuit blanche
. They will not have yearned, prayed, wept for oblivion that will not, no matter what the pill nor the strength of it, descend. They will not know what it means to be more vigilant, more alert, than in the day, wide-eyed, the senses painfully aware, while the old snore and the young coil innocently like snakes round sleeping partners, and golden babes with flickering eyelids quietly breathe away the night plucking at the blankets with scaly fingers like those who are about to die.

At such times death would be welcome. Don’t think I haven’t considered it. Unconsciousness at any price.
Anaesthesia
, concussion, it doesn’t need to be natural.

It comes, of course, sleep. If you can call it that. Ten
minutes
, twenty, before it’s time to rise. Although there’s
nothing
to rise for, 6.45 a.m. is my wake-up time and that’s when I wake up. Wake! Well, I open my eyes from the few minutes’ respite that was the night and wonder whether with my arid mouth, my reverberating head, the raw orbs that pass for eyes,
my snarled-up nerves, it is possible to make it through another day. One way it is possible. Only one. Across the room is my lifeline, my life. Appraising the shape of the familiar bottle with its reassuring label, I know that only with its help will I manage to traverse that no man’s land of time that lies between now and the next confrontation with the enemy.

There are doctors, you say. Doctors bore me. They agree I am an interesting case, although it’s my money that interests them. Who can blame them? A wealthy widow with an art collection worth tens of millions of dollars (husband number four) and as much again in the bank. Old money.

Milward brought me to Jamaica the last Christmas before he passed away at the wheel of the Merc. An insulin-
dependent
diabetic, he succumbed to a coronary infarct. It was on the cards. Macabre as it may seem, Jamaica is the only place in the world to which I have remained faithful.

Jamaica, with its Blue Mountains and undulating fields of sugar cane, where the lukewarm waters of the Caribbean lick the white sands to reach the coconut palms and red-leaved almond trees. Jamaica, land of cloves, of cinnamon, of spice, with its yellow corato and hibiscus, its oleander and its
jasmine
and its fragrant jacaranda. It is for none of these that I return, as faithfully as the humming bird, the moment the Christmas trees appear in the windows of Park Avenue. It is not for my cottage where the bougainvillea and thunbergia hang sweetly from the pergola and tiny lizards drop on to my breakfast table with its moist bowl of papaya and watermelon. It is not for Agatha my maid, dark as night and golden of
heart, who will be there waiting, nor for the daytime song of the blackbird, the chorus of the evening crickets with the solo call of the bullfrogs. It is neither the ever-changing colours of the mountains nor the rainbow curtain of the falls that brings me back to the island year after year. It is for oblivion. It does not come cheap.

The cottage Milward rented, and which I ultimately bought, was in a complex of privately owned hillside
properties
not too far from the facilities of the main hotel. It has no name. Only a number.

That first Christmas, the last we were to spend together (if you can call it that), there was an urgent message from New York waiting for us on our arrival. Milward said it was a
crisis
, but I guessed it was nothing more urgent than the charms of his latest PA – a raven-haired girl young enough to be his granddaughter – and without waiting to unpack, he headed straight back to JFK, saying he’d be back in a few days and leaving me in the care of Agatha.

I never take more than a cup of clear soup and a little cold chicken or beef at lunch. Agatha told me that if I was tired from the journey she would call room service and have it brought to the cottage. I wanted to take a look at the place, however, and find out who was staying there – we never did the circuit without bumping into someone we knew – so I showered and changed and took the cinder path in my gold mules, through the soursops with their heavy prickly fruits and the giant flame trees towards the restaurant, which was set on stilts and open on all sides.

There was the usual mix of well-heeled travellers in exotic leisurewear lifted straight from the winter holiday pages of the women’s magazines. It was the year of the sarong, which, cunningly tied and in bright colours, looked, according to the fashion gurus, particularly alluring in the crystalline light of the tropics. I recognised poor blank-eyed Poppy Wilmington whose elevator no longer quite reached the top storey, and the Hailey-Whites, my neighbours in the Hamptons, and waggled a couple of fingers in greeting as I was ushered by the Captain to a prime table overlooking the ocean with its coral reef.

I sat, gold linen napkin in my lap, fortified by the
Southern
Comfort I had imbibed before leaving the cottage, feeling only moderately self-conscious at my unaccompanied state, when a soft voice said, ‘Good morning, Madame. My name is Carstairs. I’m the maître d’. Today I can recommend the
lobster
and the red snapper papillot or you are welcome to help yourself from our luncheon buffet.’

I looked up.

Six foot three and dark as velvet. Bamboo slim with an exquisite head, flat ears, moist eyes, and a slow smile, which revealed impeccable teeth, only one of which was gold. He stood motionless, his pale-blue tuxedo elegantly draped round his spare frame, his notebook poised, ready to take my order. He did not stir, yet I knew that when he did his movements would be fluid, effortless.

‘Carstairs,’ I said, as much to test the name out on my tongue as anything else.

‘Madame?’

‘You can bring me a little bouillon and some beef. Rare. I seldom take anything more at midday. And Carstairs …’

‘Madame?’

‘After lunch I should like to discuss my menu for tonight.’

Throughout lunch he did not come near me. Lithe,
boneless
, his lapis studs winking from his frilled shirt-front, he attended to his duties, conducted his orchestra, the darting eyes missing nothing, the commanding presence everywhere, gliding smoothly between the tables, greeting, directing with the merest wave of the menu. Coordination itself. And so beautiful.

Over the bouillon on which floated a green julienne of
scallions
, I laid my plans. I always got what I wanted. My four
husbands
had seen to that. There was nothing that did not have its price.

I only played with the beef, realising that it was not going to be easy. I knew what I was up against in this part of the world where the white man no longer ruled and the destiny of the country had long been in the hands of the native
population
. I guessed how it would be with Carstairs, but I was not accustomed to being thwarted.

I refused coffee and dessert, and waited until he came
soft-footed
to my side. I kept him waiting.

‘Carstairs,’ I said when I was ready. ‘Tonight I should like to have a lamb cutlet and a little green salad. French dressing. I am not a big eater. I don’t care for fancy food.’

He inclined his head and made a note on his pad, the pale undersides of his hands gleaming.

‘I shall have it in my cottage. Number fourteen. My husband is away on business.’

‘No problem.’

‘I would like you to bring it yourself.’

The pencil stopped and I could hear the clatter and chatter of the restaurant.

‘That will not be possible, Madame.’

I placed my used napkin on my plate.

‘Carstairs, in this world everything is possible. What time do you close the restaurant?’

‘After the last guest has gone.’

‘That will do very nicely.’

Signing the bill for my meagre lunch, and without looking at him, I returned to my cottage.

I suppose he checked me out. Mrs Milward Sandilands Burrows who could feed his entire family for a year on what she spent each week at the beauty parlour. Mrs Milward
Sandilands
Burrows to whom to say no was to risk losing a job for which the fight had been long and hard, and which could never be regained.

I have said enough for you to have cottoned on to my secret. There had been men before (apart from my husbands), rough trade I suppose you’d call it, and there would be men again. It was part of my sickness and I could no more live without them than I could contemplate a day without my Southern Comfort. You would be surprised if I told you how many men are
available
to a pampered, bloated and grossly overweight ‘blonde’ crossing the frontiers of old age, even if they are not available.

Back in the cottage Agatha had unpacked. I passed the afternoon between the percale sheets of the cool bed to dispel the fatigue of the long journey.

At six o’clock I went over to the hotel where a boy from Italy, who wasn’t at all bad-looking, fixed my hair. I had my nails done too, mainly to pass the time.

Agatha helped me dress in a pale-blue peignoir with a matching Alice-band. She tidied the cottage and left a
thermos
of ice-water and some fruit and cookies in the icebox. She changed from her pink-checked overall into a cotton dress and armed with the inevitable umbrella against the tropical rains that came without warning, she bade me goodnight,
telling
me that she would see me in the morning.

It was nine o’clock and the steam heat of the evening
swallowed
every particle of air. I sat fanning myself on the lamp-lit patio and watched the limos ferrying the guests from the
cottages
to the restaurant. I thought of them at table, Carstairs waiting upon them. After a while I grew tired of looking at the dark palms and starry sky, and listening to the cacophony of the night. I went inside and closed the shades and switched on the air-conditioning. I didn’t much like the noise of that either.

The black-and-white ceramic tiled floor of the sitting room was strewn with cane mats woven in the intricate circular
pattern
indigenous to the island. On every table there were bowls of flowers – orchids, cups of gold, allamanda – freshly picked. They complemented the tones of the loose covers and the conch shells, open, obscenely pink, on the shelves.

I sat on the sofa holding an ancient copy of
Stories from the
New Yorker
, which someone had left behind, and settled down to wait.

It was not five minutes before there was a discreet knock on the door.

‘Room service.’

It was not Carstairs.

Four boys carried in a round table, covered with a gold cloth, on which, beneath a silver dome, sat my solitary cutlet.

I ate slowly. Very slowly. I don’t think anyone could have made a lamb cutlet last longer. After a while they knocked again to clear away. ‘Was there anything else, Mrs Burrows?’ No, there was nothing else.

It was ten forty-five. I eyed the Southern Comfort and it looked me straight back in the eye. Although there was ice in the icebox I had no mind to struggle with it. I took it straight.

The light in the bathroom was fluorescent strip. I looked a hundred. I went back to the sitting room and the rapidly diminishing bottle.

Towards midnight I began to hear the cars returning along the roads and over the ‘sleeping policemen’, taking the first guests back to their cottages.