The Tropical Issue (3 page)

She didn’t need line fillers. Her eyes had large, smooth lids; her lips were thinnish but workable, and her cheekbones were a gift. You could see why the cameras loved her.

I had the kind of false eyelashes she was used to. The permanent work on her eyebrows and her hairline had been done by her own man, Kim-Jim Curtis.

And that, if you like, was the snag.

I had to do this make-up to a standard set by Kim-Jim Curtis, who had been with her for years. And who for years had been her gofer, her make-up artist and her hairdresser in her New York apartment, her Paris nook, and her Madeira hideaway.

What’s more, I had to do it if possible better, because Kim-Jim had suggested me for this London job. And if Mrs Sheridan was impressed, more would follow.

I knew about Kim-Jim. I’d met him.

A few make-up specialists develop private clients all over the world and live the rich life, flying from party to party to paint on the faces. Some make a success with one client, and get themselves on to their personal payroll for life.

Not many employers can afford a service like that. Natalie Sheridan was one of them.

The best T.V. make-up man she ever came across was this big red-headed Californian, twelve years older than she was; and she bought him as soon as she met him.

Kim-Jim was perfect for her. He had social sense and camera-sense. He could make her look right for any setting she wanted to queen it in.

And that’s a great art, and it only happens when the artist really hits it off with his client.

Kim-Jim Curtis, I suppose, fell for Natalie Sheridan from the beginning.

She slept around, according to Ferdy; but with partners so well protected, usually at government cost, that the public never got wind of them. If Kim-Jim knew, and he must have known, he didn’t split on her.

When she didn’t have anyone else, he maybe went to bed with her; but I don’t suppose he tore the sheets getting there. There was a sort of motherly side to him. He can’t have had much drive, to stay with her all that time as he did, just working on the odd film if she let him.

It was on one of those that he’d seen me in action. That was why Ferdy had been told to get me for Mrs Sheridan’s make-up in London. Bossy Natalie might be, but she wasn’t silly. If Kim-Jim said someone was good, she would listen to him.

Ferdy thought I’d wiped off my face-stripes because I wanted Kim-Jim Curtis’s job, and not just some chance work in London.

He was wrong, but not all that wrong. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.

All the same, I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I hadn’t made such a success of her face. If I hadn’t changed her colouring very slightly. If I hadn’t spent all the time I could spare fixing her weaker profile, so that, keeping his word, Ferdy could give her some photographs of her left side, instead of all the rights she was used to.

But then, if I’d been bad at my job, I’d be dead by now.

Twice, before I had finished, Mrs Sheridan excused herself and, sitting up, called out a few more commands to the secretary.

Both times, I noticed, she had a good look in the mirror. The second time, she said, ‘That’s coming along very nicely. I like the eyeshadow.’

The eyeshadow was different from Kim-Jim’s, and so was what I had done to her nose. She hadn’t noticed that yet.

I finished exactly within the time I had set myself, and just before her deadline for dressing.

She took a long, sharp look then, when I’d removed the towels and the headband. She said, ‘A very nice job, Rita. I’m sorry there wasn’t more time.’

Which you could take either way and would stop me from getting swell-headed.

Her dress was silk, with tapestry flowers on it, and there was a velvet jacket to match, and a lot of Italian suede.

She looked smashing.

In the studio, Ferdy treated her like a duchess, and behind her back, put both his thumbs up.

He had the cameras waiting. He got the lights right, and I bovvered about, holding things and switching things, and standing on chairs, which I am very used to. Mrs Sheridan stood, sat, leaned and smiled, and Ferdy shot film. Rolls and rolls of it.

Then it was over, and she was stretching and smiling, while he told her how great she had been. The fitter had gone, and so had the agency man. There was only the maid Dodo left, packing things in a case in the bedroom.

Mrs Sheridan said, ‘I do have some time in hand. Ferdy, I really can’t go without seeing your Johnson.’ You couldn’t call her a quitter.

I waited for Ferdy to talk her out of it. He just smiled at her. Like all session people, he’d gone into photographer’s menopause. I don’t think he even heard what she said. I could see him wondering if he had put any film in the camera and wanting to throw back a whisky and lay someone.

Mrs Sheridan waited, turned and just left. Since the housekeeper wasn’t there either, I followed my afternoon’s work out of the studio. Then, in the interests of Ferdy’s business arrangements, I hung about while she walked to the invalid’s door and rapped on it.

The snoring stopped.

‘Mr Johnson!’ she said. She looked marvellous. ‘It’s Natalie Sheridan. Mrs Sheridan. An old friend of Roger van Diemen. May I come in for a moment?’

I didn’t hear an answer, but she put her hand on the doorknob, and opened it.

She stopped on her way through. I didn’t blame her. I could see the bed myself, and it was empty.

I couldn’t see much of anything else, because of this very large, very old sheepdog just rousing from sleep. It got up and shook itself blearily. It peered round and saw Mrs Sheridan and liked her right away. It came to her knee, gently slavering on the silk tapestry.

Natalie took three quick steps back and it followed. Then it sat down and thumped its tail carefully.

She looked at it thoughtfully; then, stretching her hand, rubbed its head under the matting.

‘Goodness gracious,’ she said. ‘You’re an old gentleman, aren’t you, to be going about on your own?’

A new and jaundiced bass voice answered. It wasn’t the dog.

It said, ‘She’s fourteen. Die for Mrs Sheridan, Bessie.’

The dog rolled over, looking like an old hobnailed hearthrug. Across it, Natalie and I both gazed at Ferdy’s pal Johnson, in dressing-gown and pyjamas, standing like you or me outside a sort of small sitting-room.

I know polite rage when I see it.

Mrs Sheridan didn’t.

I looked at her being beautiful. Then I raised my voice and roared,
‘Ferdy!’

When in doubt, attack, is my motto. But I didn’t like those few words of Ferdy’s pal Johnson, and I didn’t think Pal Johnson liked us.

He was years and years younger than Ferdy, and about three inches shorter. He had the sort of nose that looked as if it might have been broken a long time ago, and expensively set. He had the sort of mouth that didn’t go in much for lips.

The top half of his face was filled in by a lot of dead-looking black hair, a pair of strong-minded black eyebrows, and his glasses. What was left looked definitely unhealthy.

Behind me, Ferdy came out of the studio, looking vague but willing, and the bifocals, shifting, trained on him.

Ferdy didn’t fall to the floor or anything. Hejust gazed back and said, ‘My God. Candles In Shapes You Never Thought Of. Should you be up?’

Nobody rushed to answer him. I kept my mouth shut. Disappointed noises were coming from the dog.

Americans are good in a social crisis.

In a trail of high-class fabric, Mrs Sheridan lowered herself and massaged the sheepdog’s billowing stomach. ‘We’ve offended man and dog: how horrible of us,’ she said; and rose just as nicely. The dog got up like a dog.

Mrs Sheridan moved forward to the owner of the flat and stood before him, tilting her gorgeous French-pleated head and looking rueful and sympathetic and friendly at the same time. The eyelashes, the lid colour, the highlighter, the eyeliner and the work on her eyebrows all did a great job.

She said, ‘It’s Mr Johnson, isn’t it? You’ve been so kind, letting Ferdy use your wonderful home. I wouldn’t have disturbed you for worlds, but I just had to say hello and thank you to Roger’s friend. He wanted to know how you were, and I swore I wouldn’t go back without seeing you. And now I can tell him. You’re walking about. That’s so splendid. He’ll be so pleased and happy to hear that.’

Almost any answer might have come from under the bifocals, you felt, or none at all. The owner of the flat had both hands behind him, and he didn’t bring one of them forward. Mrs Sheridan, no fool, hadn’t risked holding hers out.

There was another brief silence. Then Ferdy’s pal said, ‘Of course, you know Roger. Give him my regards. Let me give you a sherry. Ferdy?’

‘Do the honours,’ said Ferdy. ‘Come along in.’ And taking big swerves round the dog, he walked Mrs Sheridan quickly through to what seemed to be, right enough, a small sitting-room.

The guy in the dressing-gown didn’t shift. I saw he had a stick sunk behind him like a third leg, and that both his hands were actually on it.

The housekeeper showed in a doorway, looked at him, and then went away again. The phone rang, and I could hear her answering it.

Looking at me, the guy in the dressing-gown made an announcement. ‘You’re Ferdy’s assistant. You didn’t meet a somewhat blood-boltered couple of porters on your way to the lift?’

Which explained the stony welcome, now I thought of it. Not all the telephone calls had been about potted plants.

I said, ‘Maybe you don’t mind having your guests body-searched, but there’s nothing soft about me. If you don’t report them, I will.’

A fight wouldn’t have worried me; but he backed down. ‘Whatever you say,’ Pal Johnson remarked.

I waited, but that was all he said. ‘You’ll report it?’ I said.

‘Why not?’ He still stood like a road surveyor. He added, ‘I can’t really go in until you do.’

I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t even trying to needle me, which annoyed me a lot. However, there was no point in flogging it.

I walked past him into the sitting-room and took a seat not too near Mrs Sheridan, who looked sort of enquiring. Ferdy poured me a vodka martini which brimmed over as he watched his pal Johnson come in after me and sit down. Questions about the little delay hung like balloons all round his sideburns.

Johnson said, ‘We decided to enter in order of zip codes, Mrs Sheridan.’

A half-drunk glass of whisky was already standing by the high-backed leather chair he had picked to sit in. He raised it to her, and to me, and drank a lot of it.

Natalie took a good American slug of hers and said, ‘We were so shocked by it all. I hope you had the best medical care.’

I began to lose interest in the conversation. She knew, and so did I, because I’d heard her ask Ferdy, that Pal Johnson had been two months in the best and dearest clinic in London before his lovely family carted him back to their country mansion. She was making small-talk.

I don’t like small-talk. I looked round the room, which was rigged out like the others in brand-new furniture, this time study-type with oak tables and deep-buttoned leather. On one of the tables was a filing basket of opened letters, and beside it on the floor stood a plastic bin full of new handwritten envelopes with stamps on them.

Mrs Sheridan’s chat moved from the guy Johnson’s health to this friend of hers, Roger van Diemen, who had also had a bad illness but seemed better now.

I tried to read the names on the envelopes, and couldn’t. The curtains were made of silk velvet. In the corner I could see a T.V. but not a video. The word ‘bananas’ came into the talk.

I looked at Ferdy, who had mentioned it, but couldn’t pick up the reason.

No one looked at me, which was all right. Our client had gone on to talk about something she was doing in films, which Ferdy knew about also. She and Ferdy swapped news about cameramen, and she worked the talk round to include painters and some clever compliments about Johnson’s work.

Johnson said the odd word, but hardly more than that. I began to wonder why she was bothering. Perhaps because he was well known. Perhaps because he was snooty, and she felt challenged to try to unbend him.

There was no doubt, either, that she was good at it. Smooth, and funny, and interesting, but letting Ferdy shine too, so that she didn’t seem to make all the running. She tried to get a shine on Johnson as well, but he wasn’t having any, although he stayed polite as polite.

He didn’t signal either, but Ferdy must have come to his senses at last and remembered which of them owned the studio. He stood up, glanced at the clock, and offered, heartily, to top up his famous customer’s sherry.

She took the hint and rising, said she really must go.

Ferdy saw her out. I heard her saying, ‘I couldn’t refuse, but he looks very poorly. Will he paint again, or is it quite hopeless?’ She sounded disappointed. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps she’d hoped to trap him into painting her portrait.

He must have been good once, if Natalie Sheridan wanted him. I didn’t hear what Ferdy answered, but it was bound to be tactful.

Excused from rising, Johnson was sitting nearer the door than I was, and had probably heard the lot. If he did, he paid no attention. When I looked at him, he was pressing a wall bell. His fingers had ink on them. Ferdy’s voice got fainter, as he saw Natalie out to the lift.

The housekeeper came in, looked at her boss and at me, and then went over and collected the envelope bin. As she passed him, Pal Johnson remarked, ‘You’ve met Connie, haven’t you? Mrs Margate?’

The housekeeper smiled. She said, ‘Miss Geddes has been working ever since she arrived. You give her another drink.’

It struck me as funny that the owner of the flat called Ferdy Ferdy and his housekeeper Connie, and that everyone called Johnson Johnson. Then the housekeeper went out and Ferdy came in and Johnson said, ‘Your Bird of Paradise is to have another vodka martini, Ferdy.’

I glared at Ferdy but he didn’t notice. He said to Johnson, ‘Well, you’ve run out of vodka. Where do you keep your supplies in this bloody awful apartment? Who in Christ’s name did it up?’