The Tropical Issue (26 page)

I thought it would be nice if he went on talking. ‘And where would they get it from? South America?’

‘Colombia, or points north and east,’ Johnson said. ‘Most of it comes in the first place from there.’

‘By boat?’

‘More often by plane, up to now. Small planes usually aimed at the American market. Straight to Florida, with a refuelling stop somewhere halfway.

‘Unfortunately for the smugglers, it’s getting too risky. One or two rings are still operating, but the rest are casting about for other ways. Hence the Coombe idea.’

I said, ‘Aren’t planes searched?’

‘Airport staff can be bribed. The Pipers and Cessnas may not even go to an airstrip, but crash land on a beach. A written-off plane hardly makes a dent in the profits in this business. Unless you’re talking in loads of nothings, there’s no point in all this trouble.’

‘And that’s what the Van Damned guy is in it for?’ I said.

‘Perhaps,’ said Johnson. ‘They may be blackmailing him too. That’s very common.’

‘And when you catch them all retarded, you expect him to confess? To killing Kim-Jim?’

‘Red-handed,’ said Johnson.

‘I don’t care what it is,’ I said. ‘Will you make him confess? And if he doesn’t, how will you prove that he did it?’

‘I will repeat the promise I made you in London,’ said Johnson. ‘Whether he confesses or not, I will personally pursue the murderer of Mr Curtis and see that he receives the fate that he deserves. Word of a Necrosis Officer.’

‘Narcotics,’ I said.

‘There you are,’ said Johnson.

He looked pleased.

I thought. I said, ‘What was that about sailing?’

‘I was coming to that,’ Johnson said. ‘But let’s see first where we’ve got to. Point one, there’s a meeting coming off soon we want to know about. You’re not involved. Keep clear of it.

‘Point two, as a result of that meeting, there may be some hanging about waiting for a drug consignment. If they’ve bought the stuff already, they’ll want to shift it quick to raise funds to run the new scheme with.

‘Like the meeting, we don’t know what island they’ll pick, but
Dolly
’s very well tricked out with radio, and she has every excuse to wander about. After the meeting, I hope to know where to wander to.’

‘And never mind the Rotary Club of St Lucia?’ I said.

‘The Rotary Club of St Lucia,’ Johnson said, ‘is the flagship of my plans, as you would hear if you stopped interrupting.

‘Three, I have a floating engagement to speak in St Lucia, which is a mere twenty-five miles south of here, and from which I can fly in an hour to Barbados. Therefore I am setting sail for St Lucia tomorrow.’

‘Josephine was born on St Lucia,’ I said.

‘So she was,’ said Johnson. ‘Although a Martiniquaise, I am told, would dispute it.’

I said, ‘Natalie meant to go there. With Ferdy.’

‘So I should expect,’ Johnson said. ‘But Ferdy, unfortunately, is snapping Birds of Paradise in Tobago. For you, I understand.’

‘With the Toboggans,’ I said.

‘Actually,’ said Johnson, ‘the Tobagonians. Don’t let’s get into a rut. Do you think Natalie would agree to come sailing with me to St Lucia?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And if you promise to paint her, she’ll marry you.’

Johnson coughed. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘I could risk upsetting Raymond. Which reminds me. He’ll be back soon, and there is something I want to show you. But meanwhile, can I rely on you? If Natalie comes, you’ll come and protect me from her?’

It was, of course, the only way he could be sure I wouldn’t muck up his programme for Roger.

I said, ‘If you’ll protect me from Raymond and Lenny.’

It was the only real flash of Owner of the day.

The bifocals turned full on me. ‘If either of them shows you one shred less than the fullest courtesy,’ Johnson said, ‘you will report it to me, and I shall keel-haul him. And that means . . . Oh, never mind.’

I knew. It was a Newcastle boating song. But I didn’t bother mentioning it.

Exactly as Johnson planned, we set sail, all six of us, for St Lucia on
Dolly
next morning.

He may not have had to marry Natalie, but the appearance of that terrific painting had done wonders for their relationship. If she wasn’t angling to get her portrait painted, she would never have turned up for dinner the night before in the one-shouldered Italian silk that was one of her most impressive dresses.

She had decided to sail on
Dolly
even before she climbed the companionway and found the saloon all done in orchids and candlelight, and the British Consul there, with his wife, and someone grand from the Prefecture.

Lenny, in a white jacket, served herb soup and lobster and souffle, while Raymond in a tuxedo poured French wine as commanded by a gentlemanly Johnson in ditto.

I wore culottes and this jacket with epaulettes on it. Maggie wore a bikini under a crinkle gauze top with a neck-ring. The crinkle gauze lasted until we had digested our dinners. Then we all went overboard for a swim, bathing-suits in all sizes being provided by
Dolly
and stored, I shouldn’t be surprised, next to the scent stocks.

During the meal Natalie talked about this cockfight she’d seen, and the ruins at St Pierre, where the volcano killed everyone except this guy who was sitting in jail, and who made a fortune afterwards appearing in circuses; which goes to show it’s an ill eruption, as Johnson said.

And about waterfalls and tree ferns and stuff in the rainforest, which gets four hundred inches of rain a year, putting it upsides with Glasgow and making it hell for the cameras.

And, of course, about Josephine, whose mascara, I could see, was going to look like the tree ferns unless I was careful.

While we had our coffee, Johnson hired a boatload of Martins to sing us Beguines from the water. There were cigars and stuff.

About then, when we were all pretty mellow, he started using Natalie’s first name.

He was already calling me Rita. He had said his name was Johnson, but I didn’t call him anything while the others were there. Maybe there were some wavelengths of his that reached me, at that.

Natalie loved it. She kissed Johnson’s cheek, and delivered a small speech, and threw some orchids across to the Martins, with a bunch of ten-franc notes taped on to them. She had style, had Natalie Sheridan.

We left
Dolly
at midnight and were back on board eight hours later, with our bits of luggage.

By nine we were sailing. My Bakoua straw hat toppled off when the mainsail went up, and Natalie and I were encouraged to go below, where I oiled her gorgeous skin round her perfect bikini, and then larded myself all round my swimsuit.

Every now and then the bottles would slide one way or the other, and you could hear a lot of rattling and running footsteps up on deck, where Lenny and Raymond and Maggie were doing what Johnson told them.

Real, genuine Owner stuff, I can tell you. He lay back in the cockpit with the gear lever under his fingers, and never raised his voice once. He didn’t have to. He owned the bloody ship.

She was beautiful. I’d got used, now, to the way she looked below.

Johnson’s own bedroom, the master stateroom, was at the back of the ship.

I’d only seen glimpses of it. There were two beds in it. Everything was fitted and padded and carpeted, and there was a bathroom off. You got to it from the cockpit, which was this sunk-level sitting-place in the open air. It was lined with cushion-topped lockers, and the wheel and the gear lever were there.

Tiller, Johnson says.

There were also a lot of dials for the engine, which was under the floorboards, and which you could turn on, Johnson said, if you were late for a date and the wind was wrong.

From the cockpit, you went down steps, past more lockers, to the saloon, which was for eating and lounging in. Flowers, cushions, books, a radio, a stereo: even a telly let into the panelling by the bar. A table that folded out, for a dinner party. Another table that let down for maps and charts.

Everything was hand-finished, and there was a lot of brass about in the way of clocks and barometers, shining like gold. There were fitted cupboards and lockers everywhere, and hidden lighting, and a thick carpet with toning curtains and cushions, all done in wasteful, fadeable blues.

The two long deep-cushioned seats could be made into bunks, and you could hang hammocks for two people more. There was a toilet, off one corner, with an actual bath in it.

Through from that, a passage led you past a single room on one side, and a bright fitted kitchen on the other.

Galley, Johnson says.

At the end of the passage was the neat, two-bedded room that I’d been in before, when Lenny pounced on me. And in front of that, reached by a hatch, a small room for a hand or someone to sleep in.

If you used that, and two hammocks, ten people could sleep on
Dolly
, five of them in beds. Bunks.

Bunks with merino blankets and perchance sheets and tailored covers that matched the fringed curtains. And wash in washrooms that had American towels and handmade soap, and mirrors, and boxes of tissues and cupboards full of suntan lotion and toothpaste and shampoo and sting cream and elastoplast. And Tampax. Man of the world, Johnson was.

Man of the world, and stacked, with a yacht valued in hundreds of thousands.

A stacked heel.

And since galleries don’t pay this kind of money, or Government departments,
Dolly
must be financed, as I was, from vanity. From what people would pay to look better. In my case, to look well in photographs. In Johnson’s case, to look well for ever, stuck on somebody’s wall.

The work of Mormon, as my aunt would enjoy saying.

How she would be impressed by Johnson. Two heels, but only one of them stacked. Financially, anyway.

Sailing is different from being in a motorboat. Natalie knew all about it. She knew when to duck when Johnson remarked, ‘Ready about,’ and this bloody great pole began swinging over.

The boom, Johnson says.

She knew how to lower the morning papers and lift her elegant legs out of the way when Raymond or Maggie made a dive for the thing that twirls the ropes round and tightens them.

The winch. The sheets. To hell with Johnson.

And when Lenny came up from below with chilled Buck’s Fizz and coffee and flaky buns, and then took over from Raymond and Maggie – she knew how to pump Johnson about
Dolly,
in a way so idle you’d hardly notice it.

She supposed, said Natalie, that they’d find they had quite a lot of friends in common, in Antigua and the B.V.I. and so on.
Dolly
must know every inch of these waters.

The British Virgin Islands, the millionaires’ playground. I’d made up quite a few golden ladies who went there. If Johnson was one of the golden layabouts who played with them, he wasn’t admitting it.

No, he remarked. He’d had the yacht quite a long time but only used her occasionally.

Natalie was surprised. You could sail the world, she imagined, with that amount of electronic equipment. But perhaps he was keen on gadgets?

I knew what she meant. There were Sci-Fi dials all over the cockpit and behind some of the cupboards below decks. Seventy thousand pounds’ worth, according to Raymond.

Johnson had his eye on the sails. ‘I used to need them for racing,’ he said. ‘Very scientific, these days.’

It wasn’t often Natalie made a blunder. She had sense enough not to add to it. It was Raymond, collecting plates, who said crossly, ‘You’ll race again.’

‘Oh, I expect so,’ said Johnson, peering over the side deck. ‘And if not, I’ll use her for painting. Good as a wheelchair, a yacht. Raymond, get the binoculars for Mrs Sheridan. There’s Diamond Rock coming up, and I’d like her to see it.’

He knew the coast. We all watched, shading our eyes, while Johnson produced jolly snippets and instructive snippets about what we were passing, and Natalie gave him all her attention, while the blue sea sizzled beneath us, and the morning sun shone and shone from a cloudless blue sky.

Then Martinique fell behind, and the currents began to kick a bit, and Natalie went below, to freshen up her suntan oil unaided, she said, and Maggie lay on the side deck with half her bikini off, and began again on the fast, sexy double-talk she had been throwing at Johnson ever since Ferdy dropped her on Madeira.

I thought he’d freeze her, but he wasn’t interested enough. He gave her the kind of polite answers I’d heard him give in 17b, in his pyjamas, with a kick like a mule somewhere behind them.

Then, although I didn’t see signals passing, Raymond suddenly appeared again with a chart, which he spread out beside Johnson. A moment later, Raymond was at the tiller and Johnson’s stateroom door was swinging gently behind him.

Raymond said, ‘Do I have to call you Miss Geddes?’

I had given up trying to wear the Bakoua straw, and had settled for a check napkin under a blue berry with a red pom-pom on it, which Johnson said he’d pinched off a coconut.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘O.K., Miss Geddes,’ said Raymond. ‘God gave people punk hair to cover something, I take it. In a minute I’m going about, in the hope that Maggie’s boobs will slide off under the rail, and Natalie and I will be alone together. Are you capable of following a few simple orders?’

‘Don’t answer that,’ said Maggie’s voice. ‘He wrote the Kama Sutra’s bloody appendix. He
is
the Kama Sutra’s . . .’

‘If you don’t mind being wrecked. More than usual, that is,’ I said.

I’m not stupid. Even if I turned out to be stupid, all I could do was sink his bloody boat, and he’d deserve it.

‘O.K. Listen, Miss Geddes,’ said Raymond nastily.

I had my left ring on my left hand and my right ring on my right hand. We went about, and we didn’t sink.

Later, I tightened the mainsail.

Later, I went forward and freed a sheet on the jib.

Later, I climbed the mast, and swayed above the blue of the sea, and watched flying-fish sparking up, and dolphins roll, and below me,
Dolly’s
white coach-house roof and long, satiny deck, with the sun twinkling away on the brasswork, and on the tray of rum and pineapple fizzes coming up, carried by Lenny.