Cape Cod is a peninsula shaped like the foot of a jester. It lies on the eastern seaboard of the United States just below Boston, and sticks its thin curling toe seventy miles into the Atlantic ocean. On its instep is the gulf called Wabash Bay, on one headland of which lies the Eisenkopps’ summer residence. On the day before Good Friday, Ben and I flew there accompanied by Bunty Cole and the whole of the Eisenkopp family with the exception of Gramps, who was to spend the weekend, I understood, at the Playboy Club.
I thought we should fly Eastern Shuttle to Logan. We didn’t. We flew in Comer Eisenkopp’s personal seaplane, made a perfect landing in Wabash Bay and chugged to the jetty, where the garden buggy was waiting to save us the long, difficult walk up to the house. The two principal cars had arrived the night before, bringing the houseboy and the Italian couple. Benedict’s pram was waiting on the garden patio and his cot and luggage were already in the night nursery when I got there. He was to share it with Sukey.
I had the other twin bed in Bunty’s room. I set Ben to kick in his cot and then walking through, opened Bunty’s french windows and stepped out on to the balcony.
The Eisenkopp house was architect-built in the Hollywood hacienda tradition, all white marble and wrought iron and potted geraniums. Below me was a paved terrace edged with creeper-hung rail and equipped with lights and with flower-tubs, and white and red tables and chairs for breakfast, or Sundowners. Sunk below the terrace was a walled garden, and beyond that, lawns which appeared to stretch to the beach. You could just see the tops of upturned dinghies and what looked like a speedboat. On either side, beyond the walled garden, were glimpses of stables and tennis courts. I wondered if there were horses, and thought it a pity Donovan wasn’t here to break his other arm.
Beyond the beach was the flat April blue of Wabash Bay, with a number of small boats already out sailing. And beyond that, the curving line of the Cape Cod jester’s sole, disappearing round to the north. The air smelt mild and salty and fresh, with the slightest touch of roast duck and orange. An Italian voice said, ‘You no need to unpack, miss. We do this. Miss Bunty to say to tell you lunch is in one half-hour, and there is brandy and vodka in the refrigerator.’
Here, also. I was standing holding the vodka and wondering, in a mild haze of wellbeing, where Hugo Panadek was when the door opened a second time and a brown, bald, ear-ringed figure strolled through and paused, clicking its tongue.
‘Well, darling,’ said Hugo Panadek. He walked forward, removed the vodka, kissed me warmly, replaced the vodka and stretched himself full length on Bunty’s bed. After a moment he extended a hand and, removing Bunty’s Ho Hang from the dressing table, sprayed his naked chest liberally and lay back again, breathing deeply. His eyes shut, ‘Really, darling,’ he said, ‘I am not intending to abduct your poor Warr Beckenstaff infant. Was it not I, Hugo, who shot all your bears for you?’
‘So what?’ I said, sitting down on the windowsill. He had short Central European legs in flared velvet trousers and a striped silk Charvet shirt, open to the waist, and an assortment of chains and medallions. The bald head, of course, was ridiculous, but the skin, though sallow, was smooth, and he had a torso the same size and shape as a rodeo barrel. I added, ‘That doesn’t prove anything, does it? You might be deeply in debt and suffering a total toy-invention block which threatens to throw you into the hands of your creditors. I haven’t noticed you invent anything recently.’
‘Heartless!’ said Hugo Panadek comfortably. ‘But I have, darling. Ask Comer.’ He lifted one finger, with his eyes closed, and pressed a white button on the bed head. There was a cautious creak, a groan, a buzz, and the mattress beneath him began to vibrate. His medals ringingly started to clatter on one another. ‘They’re called massage-boys,’ I said. ‘They have them all over France. Try again.’
‘Darling,’ said Hugo Panadek. ‘I had no need to invent the massage-boy. Of that I assure you. I am merely throwing off the weight of your disapproval. I am also postponing the time when I have to go downstairs to lunch and witness the appetite-destroying spectacle of Comer swimming thirty-two lengths of the pool before every mealtime. You know there is a swimming pool in the sitting-room?’
‘I wondered where it was,’ I said.
‘One part water to three thousand parts disinfectant. The only known mix that kills both the germs and the anti-bodies,’ Hugo said. ‘Then there is the Health Room, with the Rowing Machine, the Electronic Bucking Horse, the Electric Camel and the Traxatou Massage Couch with Vacumatic Suction. You must admire Comer. He persists.’
‘What at? His weight?’ I said. It was fascinating.
‘That, too. A major counter-offensive in the general battle against varicose veins, thrombosis, diabetes, dental caries, arteriosclerosis, peptic ulcers and appendicitis,’ Hugo said. ‘Obesity enters somewhere but that is more Beverley’s field. She would so dislike you to know that she is thirty-five years of age. Myself,’ said Hugo, ‘I prefer European women. Every civilized person should spend at least one third of the year in Europe. Even in England. I have had some commissions of great interest in England.’
I made the sort of reply he was asking for, but I was really thinking of Beverley. That made her two years older than Comer, when I had put her down as an easy twenty-five. Not that I’d had the chance to make a study in depth on the two occasions I’d met her: once when falling flat over Sukey, and today sitting with Comer on the lounge seats of the sea-plane, well away from the regurgitating kids and their staff in the rear. A mink jacket, what else, over a russet suede pants suit and striped yellow shirt: bouncing blonde hair like satin and a Barbarella profile with eight different shades of under-cream, and the nostrils oiled. And that, I can tell you, is a trick that only one nose in ten thousand can use and end up looking like Dewi Sukarno and not Bella the Cook. ‘She doesn’t have to worry,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ said Hugo. ‘But she is a perfectionist. Do you imagine she would have had her two children if Comer had not finally insisted?’
Something caught his eyes and infuriatingly, he broke off. Rolling on to one elbow, he examined the row of aerosol cans on Bunty’s dressing-table. ‘You know, you could kill a woman, making her dress in the dark. Foot refresher spray, makeup spray, toilet water spray, fly spray, hair spray, deodorant spray, all insulting the ozone layer and for what?’
‘Putting money into inventors’ pockets, when they wear any,’ I said. A thought struck me. ‘She’s had a nose job?’
‘Beverley?’ said Hugo lazily. He lay down again. ‘Beverley, darling, has had everything lifted. Chins, chest, eyelids, haunches, everything. She hasn’t tried Bucharest to date, but you can be sure that as soon as the Warr Beckenstaff gala is over, she will be in the pits for an overhaul at the Radoslav. Bunty tells me she booked in a month ago.’
Everyone who has worked in a rich woman’s household has heard of the Radoslav clinic in Dubrovnik. Cosmetic surgery in Yugoslavia has been in the news since the first nose-bob doctor thought of advertising a combined ten-day holiday offer and was knocked down in the rush of misshapen tourists. ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘It’s Missy’s Radoslav Clinic?’
‘Is every science to be laid at my door? I had nothing to do with it,’ said Hugo Panadek. ‘Merely, the first time Beverley answered an advertisement and went by herself. Perhaps to escape from her father-in-law, who deserved a stroke but had not yet had it. A lady friend of mine introduced us. That is how I got to know Comer. I owe my fortune to the Yugoslav National Health Service. Now you tell me something. Why is the daughter of Professor Sir Bernard Emerson performing menial services for punks like Simon and Rosamund?’
I knew now why the Eisenkopps called me Nurse Joanna. Indeed, it was surprising that, unlike Hugo, they hadn’t tried pumping me earlier. I said, ‘Charlotte’s father is actually better off than mine. But, you know, we’re big expensive girls with big, expensive tastes. We have to earn a living.’
‘But in this fashion?’ said Hugo. ‘With jumping beans in your pockets and the mouth full of nappy pins? You swim. You shoot. The Tiffany Bridges’ Register is not, I suspect, your immediate goal. Did no other career commend itself? You are meticulous: precise as in an engineer, a scientist. Did you never wish to pursue such a calling?’
Shrewd Mr Panadek. I grinned and said, ‘Are you making a cross-cultural sociological study or offering me a job? I don’t need to change my work. I’m a social engineer as it is. And I do try hard. I promise you, not to neglect my potential.’
‘According to Mr Donovan,’ Hugo said, ‘not hard enough. What is the appeal of other people’s children?’
‘Very little,’ I said. ‘But it grows on you. Some people can’t even stand their own children. Hence the market. You might say that punks give their kids a punk childhood which leads to the next generation of punks.’
‘And every Margaret Beaseford nurse is dedicated to breaking this chain?’
He had impudent eyebrows. ‘Wouldn’t do much good if we were,’ I said. ‘You can’t fight heredity. Keep ‘em healthy, teach ‘em manners, and give the kids and their parents a break from one another. Bearing in mind that a bad parent is better than a bad nurse any day. Do you suppose that’s a summons for lunch?’
Hugo swung his neat feet to the floor. ‘It is. And I am lunching over the Bay with the Princess. I expect, since she is our local celebrity, to find our Brownbelly colleague Mr Johnson staying with her. Comer tells me he is coming to visit here next, and moreover has been invited on Wednesday week to the Warr Beckenstaff gala. What it is to be simple, and shortsighted, and popular.’
He slid off after I made a sufficiently flippant rejoinder. Conversation with Hugo Panadek had some aspects in common with hang gliding. Afterwards, I allowed myself to dwell on Johnson’s shortcomings. His interest in Mike Widdess, it seemed to me, was as erratic as his interest in Benedict. And now he was going to Venice.
It wasn’t that I had come to depend on him. But it was hard to look around, and find neither the board nor the player.
He came to stay two days later, and was immediately sucked into the vortex of the Eisenkopp routine, which began with a swim, a ride or some tennis or squash before breakfast and proceeded with several rounds of competitive sport culminating in Comer’s thirty-two lengths of the pool. Some of his guests got in and swam with him. The rest sat about drinking martinis. The pool was cleaned by a pool bug called Percy, who ran about at the end of a cable and ate all the dead leaves and popcorn. Sometimes it tried to eat Comer.
After lunch, everyone slept, and there would be a sail, a race or a fishing expedition before the evening drinking began, either at home or in one of the neighbouring mansions.
After dinner, there were games. Both Comer and Beverley were taking backgammon lessons.
Bunty and I had our meals in our room with the children. While the others were out, Bunty showed me the rest of the house. Beverley’s suite was done in shell-pink taffeta and had a mirrored ceiling and frilled zip-linked beds: Separate in a Jiff for a Sniff or a Tiff. Automatic switches opened the curtains and put on the lights and the TV and radio and controlled the record player. Bunty pressed a button and a rich voice started intoning behind the heaped pillows. ‘Relax. You are going to lose weight. You will not be able to overeat. Sometimes you will not be able to finish a meal . . .’
I listened fascinated for a bit, and then Bunty switched it off and led the way out, scooping up a boxful of Bissinger’s Nut Balls from under the bed before, she said, the dogs got it. There were two dogs and they each got three Panteric and four vitamin E tablets a day and their own beef-flavoured Doggy Dent toothpaste. Grover liked the taste too, and ate it until Bunty found it all squashed up in the pocket of his Fairy Tooth Pillow and threw it away.
I made him some dough and he wrung out a dirty grey flower and a fish, and the Mafia let us put them in the oven. We had them quickly for tea, the plague in every mouthful, before Comer could see us. Then I boiled coloured eggs and we rolled them down the chute, what else, which at least took Grover’s mind (and Bunty’s) off the chocolate kind which arrived by every post from the expense accounts of Comer’s business colleagues.
Not that there was any shortage of means by which the Wabash community could get shot of their Special Little Princes and Princesses as and when it seemed desirable. There were films for children and play groups and puppets and Punch and Judy and musicals. You could have your Little People taught to swim, play tennis, speak French, ride, play an instrument, dance, fish and play simple card games. Left to Bunty, Grover would have spent in a play group all the waking moments he wasn’t already spending in his high chair, his cot or his playpen.
I begged him off after a day and whipped him out when I’d finished with Ben to the shore or the swings or the chute. We had a bucket with starfish in it, and a wheelbarrow for pebbles. I taught him eight more nursery songs and started a big Easter mural of cotton wool rabbits and crepe paper trees.
Johnson arrived to stay while I was working on it and escaped a whole afternoon’s riding by devoting himself to equipping the bunnies with large-eyed, smiling and flattering likenesses of all Grover’s immediate circle, including Sukey and Benedict. Grover watched, building bricks in an absent-minded way, quite entranced, and unaware that with exceptional sleight of hand, Johnson was sketching him at the same time.
The sketch was quite brilliant, as well. After Grover had returned to his sand-pit I said, ‘The guest for whom every door is open. Did you draw the Princess as well?’ He looked no trendier, but a little less like a lush from a quilting bee. He was also unmoved by sarcasm. ‘That’s how I do it,’ he said. ‘Swiss quality at Hong Kong prices. Have you seen Comer’s computerized bar? It served three Virgin Marys into my pocket, and a pack of Sun Giant Almonds the Adult Nut zing into the automatic shoe cleaner. It was like Bad Day at Black Rock.’ He stuck some black cotton wool on his upper lip, looked at himself in the nursery mirror and then peeled it off’’. . . . But I will say they’ve got the War on Want licked. No further bloodcurdling incidents?’
‘Not so far,’ I said. ‘But Bunty wants danger money.’ She was in the next room, not quite within earshot, trying to persuade half a pound of tuppenny rice out of Grover.
‘Nonsense,’ said Johnson abstractedly. ‘The house is wired, and the garden is full of Alsatians. You’ll be better off here than you would in New York, with Donovan changing you into a bottle garden. It was the nearest thing to the rats and the pumpkins that I ever saw outside Cinderella.’
‘But in ten days’ time, you’re going to Venice?’ I made it pointed. I daren’t embark on anything less than ambiguous. ‘A free suite at the Gritti and you’re painting the manager?’
His glasses flashed. ‘You forget,’ said Johnson. ‘I’ve worked my passage already, commissioned by Benedict’s grandmother Ingmar. My costume’s all fixed: too exciting. Then after the bash, I may drift on to Malta.’
‘To paint Mabel?’ I said. I was not amused. I didn’t know, either, that it was a fancy dress party.
‘To pick up Dolly. She’s wintered at Sliema,’ said Johnson.
His yacht. I had forgotten. The one he brought over the Atlantic, sometimes; and painted on, and lived aboard, and used from time to time as a means of exit. I said, ‘And what about Benedict’s portrait? He’s going to look a bit odd in collar and tie and a christening robe.’
The riding party was back. The dulcimer chimed. It was time for the plunge pool with the hydrojet massage. Johnson said, ‘You let me worry about that and everything else. Just put your mind to being polite to itinerant painters and doing everything that everyone tells you to. That way you won’t get the sack.’
But I did.
Easter Monday was the Eisenkopps’ ninth wedding anniversary, and the house was full of florists, electricians and caterers and six-foot vats full of crushed ice. Dr Gibbings arrived in the morning to check Benedict’s vaccination and to give one to Sukey and Grover. This represented a triumph of Maggie Bee diplomacy over an army of Eisenkopp prejudices. I didn’t know until later that - anything for a quiet life - Bunty had agreed to have her charges vaccinated, but hadn’t actually mentioned it to her employers.
While Dr Gibbings was there, I got him to look at Grover’s throat also. He advised a waiting game over his tonsils and was prevailed upon, without difficulty, to remain for the party.
The party was attended by two hundred guests and had as its main feature a surprise neon sign from Mrs Eisenkopp to Mr Eisenkopp which said, COMER I LOVE YOU. The Wabash Bay Musical Society rendered a selection of Great American Love Songs in harmony after the buffet.
The only conversation which came within our range of hearing as we sat, Bunty and I, out of sight at the top of the stairs, was about the lethal properties of maraschino cherries. An argument broke out, as I remember, to do with fruit salad, in the purest of senses, during which Bunty broke into weeping.
Next morning, Grover had a field day throwing building bricks, tiddly-winks and bits of paper from his mother’s bedroom into the pool, finishing up with the entire contents of his bottle of Giant Little Folks’ Bubble Bath. When Comer came in for his thirty-two lengths the water looked like the effluent stream of a soda pop factory with the pool bug lurching and wheezing about like a hand whisk.
The scene that followed is only relevant insofar as it ended with Comer, swollen with rage, gouging Percy out on to the wall-to- wall carpet and prising open its glutted mouth-trap from which emerged a stream of small toys, cigarette butts, Adult Nuts, dirty tissues, crumpled paper and rejected maraschino cherries. It was what I might have expected to find in Bunty’s loo, for example, if the party had been held there.
There were other parallels. One of the pieces of paper, uncurling itself in Johnson’s careless hand, proved to be a fragment of writing, much chewed and washed out by bubble bath, which said nevertheless quite distinctly, ‘Look out for me then, darling, on Tuesday.’
‘Why, he’s torn Gwenny’s letter,’ said Beverley quickly. ‘You bad, bad boy, Grover.’
I saw Comer Eisenkopp’s hand rise quivering to waist height and then, disappointingly, drop again. He knelt. ‘Son. What you’ve done today has made your Momma and Dad very unhappy. Are you glad you made your Momma unhappy, Grover?’
‘Yes,’ said Grover.
Bunty smoothed out her coffee striped nylon, and kneeling also, laid her hand on Grover’s forehead. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a little temperature, haven’t we? Mr Eisenkopp, you’ll have to let me take him away to lie down. It’s all come as a shock, poor little baby. Mrs Eisenkopp, you know you have a very sensitive son.’
She looked reproachfully at Beverley who had already switched expressions and was saying, her hand on Comer’s naked shoulder, ‘He didn’t mean it, I know. Easter always upsets him, darling. Why don’t we just go and have a sauna instead?’
They retired. Grover got the flat of Bunty’s hand three times, cried, was given half an Italian Easter egg and was sick in the sandpit. His parents, clean, pink and restored to calm, knelt on either side of his bed and promised to take him sailing on Dadda’s yacht in the morning.
Or Comer did. Beverley never boarded the thing, it was common knowledge, since she got sick to her stomach, in the colourful phrase, if she walked on wet grass. And by arrangement, it was Bunty’s day off.
I remember saying, in an attempt to stem the flood of reconciliation, ‘Mr Eisenkopp . . . He’ll have to have someone with him in case he falls in. And I’m looking after Ben and Sukey.’ Grover burst into tears. Beverley looked up. Her nose in profile was high-bred and slender as a humming-bird feeder, and if there were any tucks. I couldn’t see them. Her skin was flawless. She said, ‘He is so sensitive. Nurse Joanna, you go with Grover. No problem. I’ll stay at home and look after the babies.’
Even bearing in mind Bunty’s serial horror story of precisely how Mrs Eisenkopp looked after the babies on her weekends off, I was tempted. Then common sense took over and I said, ‘It would be simply splendid, but I did promise I’d stick with Ben. His parents are so upset about these rotten kidnappings.’
It was the wrong line to take. The enormous eyes opened and Beverley said, ‘But honey, have you seen the security precautions? Why, there are two men patrolling the grounds right at this minute and of course I shan’t be alone: Paolo and his wife are there in the kitchen. You run along tomorrow and have yourself a good time.’
The clincher came with Johnson’s assenting voice. ‘Yes. Why don’t you?’ he said.
If he was convinced that neither Beverley nor the Italian couple wanted to kidnap Benedict, then it was all right by me. I wanted to see the yacht, and to sail again. My father used to race, once. I agreed.
The third week of April is too early for Squibnocket Beach, but the mild, sunny weather had brought quite a few cruising boats out next morning, as Comer collected his crew along with Grover and myself on the terrace. The crew consisted, it appeared, of one or two stockbroking neighbours and their polite sons. Then Johnson came downstairs in a stained yellow nylon kagool and promptly outraged both the Eisenkopps by ripping undone and taking off the tasteful Little Mermaid life jacket in which Grover had been dressed by his father.
‘Burn it,’ said Johnson.
‘My kids wear these,’ someone said. ‘Hey, they’re all right. They float.’
‘Of course they float,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s finding out whether they’ve floated face up or face down that’s the exciting bit.’ We boarded the boat: a handsome Australian-built auxiliary sloop my father would have approved of.
Grover objected to his orange cork lifesaver, his harness and his running leash, to the sound of the anchor coming up and the noise the engine made when it started. Then they got a sail up and the engine went off and he saw the house with Sukey in it falling behind and other beaches coming up, and gardens, and houses: and Johnson asked him to get the frozen octopus out of the ice box. And he stopped crying.
I won’t say there was much to do. Comer held the tiller and issued the orders, and the boat was so full of tanned, husky weekend sailors that there were three people to every sheet and the winches were whipped incandescent. Grover and I went and sat on the foredeck and watched Johnson baiting lines and waved at all the people we knew on their jetties or gardens or putting lawns.
Wabash Bay is a private community and the beachside properties are expensive and large: anyone from the Third Crusade would have felt instantly at home. And because the morning was wearing on by this time, a good many of the patios and terraces were occupied with neighbours having their pre-lunch stingers in company. I spotted at least a dozen of the Eisenkopps’ guests from the other night outside three different houses.
We drifted on, fairly close inshore and were passing the last house in the bay before sailing out into the Sound towards Chappy when someone onshore hailed us.
Among the knits and tight denims and jumpsuits, there was no trouble in identifying the one bald and volatile head. It was Hugo Panadek, in yellow fringed poncho and boots, and waving a drink in his hand.
What he heard could not be said, even though we could see him put down his drink, embrace his hostess and stride, calling, down to the boatless jetty. I said to Johnson, ‘Do you know he does all Mr Eisenkopp’s automation? Heat-sensitive burglar precautions, sit-up beds, garden sprinklers, dust extraction and humidity, robot snack-servers and squash players, magnetic door locks, movable wall dividers. The garage opens if you walk towards it with the key in your pocket. And the safe won’t open unless you put your gloves in the fridge before touching it. It’s your name he’s calling.’
Johnson went on fixing bait. ‘So it seems. My guess is that he wants a lift back to the house and is dying to spill a good joke he’s just heard about Comer.’
‘It’ll be a long lift,’ I said. ‘We haven’t started fishing yet.’
‘We haven’t even started drinking yet,’ Johnson said. ‘My other guess is that he has noticed there’s a girl on board, and who she is. Do you want him, or not?’
‘If you mean on board, I have no strong views either way,’ I said. ‘Provided he brings his refrigerated gloves. . . The glasses looked pained. ‘What else? You’ve just sent me, haven’t you?’ said Johnson, and disappeared aft. Grover put some bait in his mouth. ‘One for Grover,’ he said. ‘What did Josso want?’
I reckoned that, without the hook, the bait could do no permanent harm. ‘He’s gone to get Hugo,’ I said. ‘Look, the wind is blowing towards Grover now, and the boat has stopped. That’s to let Mr Johnson get into the dinghy.’
He did, too, without any fuss and also without any company: a fact accounted for by the unmistakable clink and splash of drinks being served in Comer’s saloon.
I went to find out if there was any juice for Grover, and didn’t even see the collision.
One moment there was a narrow strip of blue bay water, with Johnson’s dinghy and sundry small craft in it, and Hugo waiting, arms akimbo under his poncho.
The next, there was a shout and a crash, and the belting roar of a strong speedboat engine.
I swung up the companionway: the others jumped to the rail, or the portholes.
Where Johnson’s boat had been was the overturned wreck of the dinghy: a mess of curved and sprung wood with planks, rags and litter wagging about in the shearing wake of a white ocean racer. Of Johnson, there was no vestige. ‘Oh Great Christ,’ said Comer, and seizing the helm, put it down.
Someone said, ‘You’ve only got eight feet, and shoaling.’ Comer said, ‘I know. Jake, take Clem and unlash the speedboat. Marty, the lifebelts. Ready to anchor. Who swims best? Stewart?’
No sweat. I was down to my bra and bikini pants by then, with Grover screaming beside me. ‘No. I do,’ I said; and as she came round to anchor, I dived.
It was freezing. Who swims best? Comer, you’d think, with his thirty-two bloody lengths daily. But he was handling the yacht. Of course. I shook my head in the air, got a line on the wreckage and put my head down again, with my arms turning like ships’ propellers. There are two things I can do, apart from the jobs I am paid for. One is swimming. The other, as it happens, is sailing.
I thought, a speedboat from the local boatyard would have had to stop. So that was a stranger. An accident? A diversion? An effort by the kidnappers to get rid of Johnson? Hardly. Even at the Golden Wonderland, Johnson had scarcely made an impression as Benedict’s most dangerous ally. And anyway, no one could have known that Johnson would be alone in a boat in Wabash Bay at this moment.
Except, of course, Hugo.
I was close now, but there was no movement ahead in the water.
Behind, I heard the splash as the yacht’s speedboat was lowered. I heard Hugo’s voice shouting and realized that he, too, was swimming towards the overturned dinghy, from the opposite direction. I couldn’t move any faster.
He had been under for four minutes.
If he was thrown in the path of the keel, he could be broken in two. Not pretty. A lot nastier than the things you saw in a maternity hospital.
My mother’s voice: Johnson is coming over. He’s painting the duchess.
Painting was all he’d done really. And play jokes with the Eskimos and the baby alarm. And shoot badly. And forget to belt in the Brownbelly Bruin.
I had got to the wreckage. I was tired, and my breath was sobbing anyway. There was nothing on top, so I dived.
There was air under the hull of the boat, and something solid encased in slippery nylon. ‘I remember when you got a gold medal for doing that,’ said Johnson appreciatively. ‘Get me back in the launch. I’ve concussion.’
I made a mad sort of sound. Before I’d bitten it off, he had grinned, shut his eyes in the gloom, and slid off his perch into the water. I hung there, stupidly watching him sink. His hair waved up, black in the green, and his yellow nylon swelled out and his hand, white and limp, gave a couple of testy twitches and became white and limp once again. With a start. I let go of the boat and went headlong after him, before he drowned.
I met Hugo half-way with Johnson’s clothes in his hands, already shoving him up to the air. The gagging and choking he did when he got there had the stamp of true authenticity and won no sympathy from me. It was agreed, as we heaved him into the speed launch, that he’d had a bang on the head and was in a state of concussion. As a nurse, I got the job of getting his lungs clear of water, and I enjoyed that as well, I can tell you.
While I was pummelling, the speedboat got back to the yacht, and the anxious Comer and his craning son.
I wondered how in the last few minutes, I could have forgotten Grover. Then he saw Johnson and started to wail again.
I didn’t need to persuade anyone to send Johnson back in the launch: it was the obvious thing to do. It was also obvious that Hugo and I, who were cold and wet, should go with him and that Grover might as well come with us too, and give me rather than his dinghyless father the benefit of his hysterics.
Concern for the health of his favourite international portrait painter had given way, already, to a blast of fury directed against the invisible and unknown hoodlum in the speedboat. The stockbrokers climbed back aboard the yacht. I could hear them all having stiff drinks as Hugo took the wheel of the launch and I sat behind him in a large borrowed sweater with Grover, our feet on Johnson’s motionless torso. We began with a sweep to pick up the sad, floating Ophelia of Hugo’s mad poncho, and in five minutes arrived at the Eisenkopps’. You could hear the screaming babes from the jetty. Obligingly, Johnson recovered enough to paddle his feet up the garden, an arm round each of our necks. I left Hugo to cart him to his bedroom, and dragging Grover, made for the nursery. Sukey and Benedict, lunchless and reeking, screamed each in his or her cot: our suite was otherwise empty.
The sitting-room was empty, and so, literally, was the pool.
There was no one on the patio, or in the garden, or in the Health Room, the card room, the dining-room, the breakfast room or the sauna. I managed to convey to Grover, who was yelling for her, that Bunty was still off for the day. He then wanted his mother.
In the kitchen, I found the Mafia, having its luncheon with the door firmly closed. No, they had not heard any sounds from the nursery. The Signora came when she required heated food for the babies. The Signora had not come so far. Perhaps the Signora was still asleep.
True enough, the door to the pink silk bedroom had been closed. An odd silence reminded me that I was still wearing a chest 44 cableknit sweater and little else, so I explained quickly about Johnson and tacked on a bit about hot soup and brandy and hot water bottles, which fell somewhat flat as they had only just put the lasagne, I could see, on the table. Then I hared off, with Grover, to Beverley’s bedroom.
The door was shut, and when I tapped, no one answered.
I tapped again. Grover said, ‘Are you there, Momma? Come out to Grover?’ The sight of the Mafia had settled him.
I had almost turned away when I heard the voice talking. When I pressed my ear to the door, I could just make out what it was saying. Relax. You are going to lose weight. You will not be able to overeat. Sometimes you will not be able to finish a meal . . .
It figured. After all those Easter eggs, a quick weight therapy session with her Lady Schick Face Sauna, her bio rhythm machine, enzyme peeler and even perhaps oral wormer were just what anyone might have predicted. I said, ‘Mummy can’t hear, Grover: she’s got her weight record playing.’
‘Open the door,’ Grover said. ‘It’s locked. We’ll see her later,’ I said.
‘Key,’ said Grover. In both hands, he held something I recognized as Beverley’s new blonde crocodile handbag.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Lunchtime, Grover. Let’s go and have lunch. Would you like chicken sandwiches?’ Distantly, the hoarse squeals from the two cots redoubled.
‘Key,’ said Grover, undisturbed. He walked up to his mother’s bedroom door, still bearing her handbag. And with a click and a whine, the bedroom door opened.
As I have said, I had been there before. The pink taffeta I knew to expect, and the white and gold paintwork, and the bright mirrored ceiling. I expected the console of switches, and the soothing voice from the record player, assuring Beverley she would gag over cream cakes. But gazing wildly around, I was at a loss to locate Grover’s mother. On the bed with a Danish pastry? Upside down on the Porta-Yoga with a headache? In the Jacuzzi jet bath for two with a loofah?
Wherever she was, she was entitled to privacy. It wasn’t her fault that a combination of Grover and her magnetic locks had given us entry.
I had my hand on Grover’s head and had already switched him round to march out of the room when I saw her. Not in front of my eyes but reflected out of the pink mirrors set in the ceiling.
The angle was too high for Grover. But I saw her, and she saw me before I shut the door firmly and left her.
In the Jacuzzi jet bath for two, with Simon Booker-Readman.