Two dollars to my mind is a high price for the half-moon toll-bridge which connects Nassau to Paradise Island. Since I have no interest in the Casino and the golf-course has only recently been restored, I seldom trouble to cross it. At that hour in the morning the gamblers, the tennis players, the waterskiers and sunbathers were asleep; the helicopters and the yachts not yet in motion. Only a few other cars besides the Ford Anglia crossed the bridge with me: contractors for the development company; early-morning golfers like myself. It is warm for golf by mid-morning in the Bahamas, and some people still have work to attend to.
Wallace Brady awaited me at the golf-course, which is on the right, or eastern, end of the island. Although several luxury hotels and duplex villas have been created, and the excellent beach is fully equipped, some of Paradise Island is still largely jungle, and the straight avenues of pines dissolve into unmade roads edged with scrub, partly cleared here and there for new sites.
Bought originally by Mr Huntington Hartford, it bore the name Hog Island, I understand. The new packaging, I have no doubt, will match the new brand name chosen for it. Hog Island, to my mind, is the more honest appellation: both simple and etymologically sound.
However, my views on such subjects are not generally the popular ones. I drew up outside the low, canopied entrance of the golf- club, greeted Wallace Brady without undue fuss, and brought my clubs round the corner, where he had already hired an electric golf- cart, a sorry sight. We entered, and he put his foot down and drove off.
I should here mention, I think, that golf, a game played in Scotland largely by the unemployed, is in America and those countries adjacent to her coasts regarded as a highly esoteric pursuit,.followed largely by the middle-aged and the elderly, and requiring real wealth and leisure. The equipment and facilities, as Johnson had noted, are all accordingly priced for this market in addition, naturally, to the obvious cost of maintaining in prime order many acres of grass which in Scotland would be watered, free, by the elements. For all these reasons I have noticed that if an American can afford to play golf at all, he can usually afford to do it better than anyone else.
Mr Wallace Brady, self-styled acquaintance of Bartholomew Edgecombe and working on Great Harbour Cay, was an American. The first hole was over three hundred yards long, a dog-leg to the north: par for both, 4. I took out a Wilson X31 No. 1 wood, flexed my knees, dug in my unlined Gullanes with white aprons and replaceable spikes, and swung.
There was a whicker and a click, and my ridiculous American ball flew, straight as a rule, well over two hundred yards down the fairway. Wallace Brady said, ‘I knew it. I’ve asked to play ball with a tiger.’
‘Not a tiger, Mr Brady,’ I said. ‘Just an average player from Scotland.’
There is no virtue in exaggeration, after all.
To describe the round would be tedious. Paradise Island golf-course is scenically attractive, with coconut palms, flowering bushes and a small lake stocked by coots, whose wooden bridge we crossed in the golf-cart. An advantage perhaps in the long American fairways, these are still to my mind no substitute for a caddy. However, I am, I know, a reactionary.
I played well that morning, and the two balls I shot into the rough I recovered, although on the fourth I had to play a tricky chip shot from the sand. The fourth, fifth and sixth at Paradise all run by the sea, and I have known couples break off their game to sit on the rock-strewn white sand and foster their sun-induced cutaneous cancer.
But then, on an American course one can hardly tell golfers from sunbathers. Brady, at my side, was moderately dressed in thin stone- coloured trousers and a knitted white shirt with short sleeves. But three of the foursome behind us, I noted, sported all the atrocities of bright shirts and long coloured Bermudas: one overweight person in a straw hat was playing in his bare feet. For golf, I have always worn an Orkney tweed skirt with a low inverted pleat at the back, and oversocks with good shoes. If one wishes to play properly, one must be properly dressed.
I won that hole, and Brady the next, which reduced my slight lead, but not enough to concern me: I was clearly the better player of the two. As we turned from the sea I noticed, a little way out in the channel, the long white lines of a gaff-rigged ketch tacking idly in the light wind: her power boat was quite clearly missing. Someone on Dolly had risen early this morning. I wondered who was ashore. Spry or Johnson; and where. The thought gave me confidence, and at the next hole I got a birdie which Brady, unlike many of his sex, took in good part. After the doubtful start at the Trueman Hotel, I was finding him mildly congenial.
He kept his good temper even at the end when we finished our nine holes, he one over and I one under par. There was time for coffee, but he would not consider help-yourself instant on the terrace and asked me instead to wait and accompany him to the hotel. Thus it was that I entered the pro’s shop to look round while he paid for the cart.
As usual, the golf-bags looked like elephant howdahs, and there was a display of crossed irons which would have done credit to the Great Hall at Inverary itself. The guest-book was open on the counter, where he had written our names, and below it were the names of the players behind us, including the foursome whom I could now hear playing the ninth. Three of the names gave Nassau addresses: the fourth gave no address at all, not even Scotland.
But the name was MacRannoch. T. K. MacRannoch. The name of James Ulric’s despised heir.
It was the merest coincidence, but I always prefer to make certain. I walked out of the pro’s shop, almost bowling over Wallace Brady, who was coming to find me. I had no time for Brady just then. I was looking at the fourth, sober member of the gaily dressed foursome, who was occupied, head bent, in holing an extremely difficult putt. He looked up, smiling, and I saw that my native sixth sense had not failed me. The player was Japanese.
‘What’s the pitch?’ said Wallace Brady eventually, after we had driven in silence to the hotel complex, walked through the darkened casino with its covered tables and clicking, glimmering rows of one-armed bandits and up through the simulated leopard-skin to a lounge where we could sit and have coffee. ‘You don’t like playing golf with poor performers? I thought gilt-edged was weakening there for a bit.’
He had, after all, paid for the round. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘I enjoyed the game very much. I dare say I have more practice than you do. I play whenever I can.’
‘Outside Mickey Wright, I don’t know who you’d have trouble beating,’ said Brady. ‘Did you ever think of becoming professional?’
I have, of course. There is a great deal of money in golf. But one needs money, or backing, to start with. I said, ‘Some day, perhaps. My father has multiple allergic sensitivity, and it will be difficult to leave Nassau until he improves.’
He had an extremely deep suntan, in which his eyes were quite pale, but the eyeballs unveined and apparently healthy. It was hard to guess his profession. ‘You miss your home, Dr MacRannoch?’ he said.
Across the lounge I had just spotted the back of Johnson’s head. The question reminded me of my anger. ‘Unfortunately,’ I said, ‘I have little chance to do so. My father is head of a Scottish clan , Mr Brady, and is prone to bring his surroundings with him, wherever he goes.’
‘His drapes, you mean?’ He looked slightly bewildered.
‘His clansmen, I mean,’ I said, no doubt with some grimness. ‘Didn’t you see the register at the clubhouse? T. K. MacRannoch.’
‘You don’t say?’ He looked duly astonished. Then he said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t bawl out the old man too quickly. There are an awful lot of Scots in the Bahamas.’
There may be, but they are not all MacRannochs. The word gets round. Even among the unwanted, like T. K. MacRannoch, the word travels like typhoid. I said, ‘I knew it. Father is planning a MacRannoch clan gathering.’
‘Here?’
I wasn’t thinking of Brady. I was thinking of James Ulric’s bronchial spasms.
‘Here, or at the Begum’s house,’ I said, on reflection.
‘But,’ he said, ‘I thought the Begum spent the winter at your castle in Scotland?’
I stared at Wallace Brady with surprise, and then with increasing suspicion.
I hadn’t told him that. I had no desire to talk about the Begum, who is the decayed English widow of an extremely rich Indian prince, and who annually rents Castle Rannoch as a shooting-lodge from James Ulric MacRannoch.
While he disports himself in the sunshine, the Begum Akbar from the time of my senior schooldays has moved into the castle with her clothes, her butler and maid, and using our gillies, our cook and our house staff has killed deer and fished salmon and shot our grouse with her friends.
I had never met her. I would never go home when she was there, and I had avoided her house here on Crab Island by Nassau. It was she who had found our present villa and rented it in advance for my father. It was because of the Begum, I was sure, that James Ulric had come to Nassau at all. They were welcome. I do not care for life on the edge of a Barclaycard.
But I had said nothing of all that to Brady. I said, ‘How do you know that? You knew about Father before I mentioned him to you?” And. as an unlikely thought struck me. ‘Mr Brady. What do you do for a living? On Great Harbour Cay?’
To do him credit, he looked me in the eye as he answered. ‘My firm has a project there,’ he said. ‘A big constructional project. I’m a civil engineer, Dr MacRannoch.’
There was a deadly and sundering silence, fully understood by both contributing parties.
‘You build bridges,’ I said. I opened my handbag, selected my car keys, snapped it shut and stood up. ‘I’m sorry I can’t introduce you to my father .’ I said. ‘He has built five bridges, Mr Brady. And those were five bridges too many. Thank you for the golf and the coffee. Good-bye.’
He didn’t say anything, but half-way to the door a thought struck me, and I went back to give him the benefit of it. ‘You might go back to the golf-course and try Mr T. K. MacRannoch,’ I suggested.
The hospital was busy when I drove in under the blue arch: there had been a triple crash in Bay Street and a British frigate had called on her way south for combined exercises; which meant sixty pints for the blood bank and a long, robust queue of A.B.s calling four-letter words to the nurses while poor Currie, the lab technician, sat inside draining them off in batches of four.
It was needful to keep our blood stock replenished. But I sometimes wondered if the naval platelets storming through the Bahamian vascular system were not the source of the strange tribal love-rock appeal of New Providence Island.
However, it was cool as yet, which cuts down the casualties; and too early for the rum and meths drinkers, so we got through the work unimpeded, and by mid-afternoon I was able to look in on Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, about whom I had already taken advice. Although there was no cause for anxiety, renal function after the second attack had undoubtedly been more seriously impaired than the previous day, and was not responding to treatment as well as it should. Dialysis was indicated, and after this had been settled, I walked through the private wing to inform Sir Bartholomew.
The United Commonwealth is an informal hospital: peanut-sellers and newsvendors have free access to the front door, and it is the habit of the staff to take matters at comfortable speed and with many sociable exchanges in the passages. While white patients and even white doctors require to be reassured about this, there is no doubt that the Bahamian cases thrive in such an atmosphere. I was surprised therefore amid the hum of conversation and laughter coming from the short private wing to distinguish the complaint of a woman, coming from Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe’s room. I walked in briskly, closed the door, and folded back the short screen.
It was Denise, Lady Edgecombe, seated on a chair with her head on her husband’s sheeted lap, snivelling. I can use no other word.
I have no patience with this sort of thing. I said, ‘Well, this is hardly the way to cheer up your husband. Lady Edgecombe,’ and she sat up looking tearful and sulky, and attempted patently to recover her lost dignity. My patient, throwing me a wretched look, patted the woman’s hand and said, ‘She’s just upset. We both thought I’d be out of here by now, you see. It’s our wedding anniversary.’
I have never been able to fathom why the elapse of the arbitrary number of 365 days or its multiple from any significant event should be a matter for either celebration or mourning. I have known a Trendelenburg sink into a condition of acute post-operative shock because she had forgotten to mark the dog’s birthday. It is as well that in this world we are not all alike.
I said , ‘It’s a pity, but perhaps she’ll enjoy a day or two in Miami instead. I’m sending you over to the Jackson Memorial Hospital in the morning, Sir Bartholomew. Their equipment is just a little more sophisticated than ours, and the right treatment now could cut your recovery time by quite a few days. I imagine you know Miami well?’
That had roused Lady Edgecombe. She sat erect of a sudden, her blonde hair stuck to her cheeks and her mascara running, and said in an excited voice, ‘What’s wrong with him? What will they do to him there?’
One has to simplify. I explained that they would clear the remains of what he had eaten out of his system and enlarged on this until she was satisfied: I had no time to deal with hysteria. No sooner had I done this, however, than she felt able to turn to her first complaint: addressing her husband in a shaken voice, she observed that it would be the first anniversary since their wedding they had not spent together.
Over her head, I met Sir Bartholomew’s eye. I knew, without being told, that it would do no good to suggest that she might, with the greatest of ease, draw up a chair and spend the whole evening in the hospital with her husband if she so wished. It was the celebration she had been counting on, not Bartholomew Edgecombe’s company.
He knew it, too. He squeezed her hand and said , ‘Denise. Wallace Brady would take you out like a shot. Why not phone him?’
‘I’m tired of Wallace,’ she said. I could imagine it. Wallace Brady was interested in bridges, not in cafe society.
‘Well, Johnson, then?’ he said. ‘He squired you about all day yesterday. Charm him into painting your picture for nothing.’
She gave a watery smile, and I gave her husband top marks for diplomacy. I said, ‘Would you like to use the hospital telephone. Lady Edgecombe? I think you could get Mr Johnson at Coral Harbour.’ I added, civilly, ‘He would give you a splendid evening out. I am sure.’
‘I don’t much like yachts,’ said Denise; but she was clearly thinking.
‘Cafe Martinique? Junkanoo Club? Charley Charley’s? Tell him I’ll spring the cash,’ said Edgecombe, smiling. He had had, I judged, just about enough, and I wished the woman would make up her mind before I had to do it for her. He added, ‘Or the Bamboo Conch,Denise. The nurse said they’re putting on a special show there for Krishtof Bey.’
I should think Lady Edgecombe and I stiffened at the identical moment. Her nylon lashes fell wide apart and she exclaimed, ‘Not Krishtof Bey? Bart, is he going to be there?’ but I was quite silent because I was using my brain.
I said, ‘You should meet him, Lady Edgecombe. He was on the plane yesterday morning, but perhaps Sir Bartholomew doesn’t remember? The young Turk who helped out the steward?’
His lips parted, and a little colour came into his face. He had been, and was still, a man of striking appearance, and until lately, I judged, in perfect condition. I understood why Denise had married him, and thought too that he probably had all the qualifications for a secret agent in this part of the world: socially acceptable, noncompetitive and a handy man, I supposed, in a fight.
He said, ‘Was he the ballet dancer? I didn’t even look at him properly. It was damned embarrassing as it was.’ He grinned at me over his wife’s head. ‘A first-hand unique encounter with one of the world’s greatest dancers, and I can’t even describe it in company.’
‘How kind you are, Doctor,’ said Lady Edgecombe. ‘Did you say there was a telephone?’
I had her husband medicated and settled for the night by the time she came back: her walk down the corridor was slow, and at first I assumed that Johnson had turned her down flat.
But it wasn’t that at all. She came in, leaving the door open, and said to me, ‘He would like you to go with us.’
I make it a matter of practice to show no surprise. In any case, I could think of one or two possible reasons why Johnson Johnson might want my presence at a night-club attended by both Bart Edgecombe’s wife and one of our suspects, although Denise clearly could think of none. I said, ‘Well, I’m free, as it happens. But I am sure you would prefer a tête-à-tête?’
‘No. I expect he’s right,’ said Denise, and, bending, ranged her husband’s two slippers firmly under the bed with brittle efficiency. She straightened. ‘In these colonies people do talk.’
I took her with me out of the room.
I went back once, to check on Edgecombe before I left. He was alone this time and not yet asleep. He looked up vaguely and smiled.
‘I hope you don’t find it too dreary. Johnson tells me you know what we’re up to.’
‘Yes.’
He said, ‘I’ve got one worry. They might try to get at me through Denise.’
‘I expect Mr Johnson is thinking of that ,’ I said. ‘We’ll take good care of her.’
‘She used to be in the theatre,’ he said. ‘She’d set her heart on ballet, and once she wants to do something, she’s really determined, you know. She would have done very well. But when she grew too tall, there was only show business. She missed the stage when we were young. And now, of course, she rather misses the Embassy life.’
‘You didn’t have any family?’ I said.
He was far too sophisticated to show any emotion. He said , ‘Denise wasn’t too keen. And in my kind of job it isn’t wise. Look at the worry we might be having now if we had youngsters to think of as well.’
Look at the worry you are having now with Denise instead. I nearly remarked. But I didn’t. Recommending children as one form of therapy can be a dangerous business.
The Bamboo Conch Club is contained in the basement of a large Nassau hotel called the Ascot. I met Lady Edgecombe and Johnson there in the foyer, and he led us into the hotel Hibiscus Room restaurant, where the three of us were first to have dinner.
Lady Edgecombe was gracious, and in the faintest degree nervous of Johnson. I wore a navy blue tailored silk dress I had bought five years before for a wedding. Denise, her hair perfectly set, had put on a knitted silver dress which bared the fatty pads at the tops of her arms.
On the other hand, Johnson looked to my mind perfectly harmless. The terry shirt he had naturally changed; his black hair was brushed down and glossy, and his burnished bifocals glimmered in the fashionable dark of the foyer: he wore a wide shot-silk tie in crimson and a pale shantung jacket a shade too large for his shoulders.
He was quick to notice my glance, ushering us into the floral delights of the Hibiscus Room. ‘It’s a double-blind controlled trial for Hung on You,’ he said. ‘My underprivileged wardrobe has got itself burgled, and Lady Edgecombe has lent me the wherewithal to be a turned-on type for the evening. Denise, what will you do if my trousers fall down?’
Denise smiled, with dignity. ‘Time your reflexes.’ I said. Someone had to say something.
It was one of those dining-rooms with hibiscus blossoms lying all over the table and a bottle-top dance floor. Upon this, obese tourists of both sexes in pants suits revolved to the tunes of their courtship, watched with distaste by their offspring, attired in bow ties and a flourish of bacterial acne.
I do not dance. Johnson, maintaining gay conversation of determined vacuity, managed to withstand until after the clam chowder the wistful gleam in Lady Edgecombe’s fringed eyes. After that, with an apology to me, he stood up and asked her to dance.
He had picked an unfortunate moment. The small coloured orchestra, which up till then had contented itself with foxtrots, waltzes and cha-cha-chas of genteel moderation, suddenly broke with relief, for all I know, into a request number for jiving.
Or it may have been rock-’n’-roll. At any rate, the rhythm became syncopated and ragged, the percussion appeared suddenly to have a major epileptic convulsion, and the elderly matrons melted away, to be replaced with three or four younger couples, and some who were obviously not couples at all. in the traditional marital sense. These Johnson and Lady Edgecombe found themselves joining. They halted.
‘Who’s got your bet?’ said the voice of Wallace Brady unexpectedly from just above me. ‘I think I’d back Denise to pull him through, but it’s going to be a near thing.’
He stopped. Dressed in white tuxedo and tie he looked both distinguished and nervous. I was not surprised to observe. He said,’Look, I hate misunderstandings, and I’d like to clear one up. D’you think I could sit down? While they dance?’
I didn’t answer. I was watching the floor. ‘Christ!’ said Wallace Brady with reverence, and sat down unasked. I couldn’t have stopped him.
Dragooned occasionally by fellow students into the Bring-and-Buy Sale for the King George V Fund for Sailors, I have known this stiff-arm. roll-and-unroll form of jig to break out, with a stack on the stereo, after the last fruit-cake was bartered. But I have never seen it done with such impassive expertise as Johnson lent to it now.
Her eyes wide open, Denise found herself gripped, twirled, and launched into disciplined motion which lost never a beat, an opportunity, or a new angle for torso or limb. Johnson’s face, which wore a kind smile, altered not at all from the moment he flung her from him into the lip of the trumpet and sucked her with the next beat from the path of the advancing trombone. Lady Edgecombe, ranging quickly from amazed horror to dawning respect, settled for open-mouthed concentration. ‘
In twelve bars she progressed from being an ageing self-centred woman to the firm confidence of an expert performer, and Johnson helped it to happen. Then he released her to dance face to face. They improvised: they came together dead on the beat. They circled. They danced back to back, her long, well-shaped legs flashing; his hair bouncing above the gaudy swish of his tie, the shantung rippling like sheeted snakes down his arms.
‘Christ!’ said Wallace Brady again. ‘Will you look at that? Now. isn’t that just a breeze?’
It was a gale, and it wasn’t hard to look at them either: no one else on the platform was dancing. The diners made a ring around the two of them, applauding and laughing, and at length fell into a regular clap. The musicians dropped out. The drums carried on, coming to a rattling crescendo. Johnson hadn’t slowed up, but you could see the sweat as bright as the Lurex under Denise’s mesh.
I saw Johnson assessing her. He put her into a quick spin, which he braked almost immediately. Then with a brisk heave he swung Lady Edgecombe up to his shoulder where she posed, arms outspread, while he walked off the floor. He let her down, the band stopped, and a great deal of alcoholic cheering broke loose, with some stamping and clapping.
A bottle of champagne, ordered by Wallace Brady, had appeared at our table. As the performers freed themselves and presently approached, Denise bright-eyed and laughing, Johnson mopping his brow, Brady held out two brimming glasses. ‘Sir. we haven’t met, but I hope you’ll accept this in heartfelt tribute. Denise. I want to buy shares.”
‘Wallace Brady,’ I said to Johnson, to make everything clear. I added. ‘You have our congratulations, for as long as your diastolic pressure will allow you to enjoy it.’
He grinned and sat down beside me , accepting the alcohol. ‘Look: no blood.” he observed in reply. And for the next five minutes, blandly, he parried Lady Edgecombe’s intensive if lilting inquiries, while I waited for the music to strike up so that I could make my diminished cordiality to Wallace Brady perfectly clear.
My plan misfired completely. As the band returned, settled, and emitted the first notes of a tango, a brilliant figure arrived at our table, smiled at me and addressed itself to Lady Edgecombe. ‘Dr MacRannoch will tell you I had the honour of meeting your husband on his flight yesterday from New York to Nassau. I come to inquire if he finds himself better?’
He wore a silver rope bracelet and a tunic suit in plain violet silk. Krishtof Bey , the Turkish dancer, came to induce Denise Edgecombe to dance.
She did. She had already performed longer that evening than I personally would have suggested. I doubt, however, if the sure foreknowledge of a major cardiovascular event would have stopped her.
She did well, and her partner’s muscular processes, I admit, were an exceptional treat. They were wildly applauded.
Wallace Brady watched their encore in a trance, his champagne dripping unnoticed on to his shirt cuff. Johnson, catching my eye, made a brief face indicative of deeply sympathetic emotion and excused himself to dry off in the washroom.
Brady came to , mopped up his cufT, and said to me, ‘I want to explain.”
I have no time for tedious repetitions. I said, ‘Do you build bridges?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then there is nothing to explain,’ I said. There was no point in thanking him for the champagne, since I was drinking fruit squash.
‘Yes, there is,’ he said. He sounded quite firm, which surprised me. ‘I do make bridges, Dr MacRannoch, and tunnels, and other major constructions which people are fortunately quite pleased to pay for. I have no need to tout for my business, even such important business as The MacRannoch of MacRannoch could give me. In point of fact, as I would have told you if you hadn’t rushed off in such a hurry, I know the Begum Akbar not through your father but because I happen to be doing a job for her on Crab Island. I regard her as a great and elegant lady. I admire a professional in whatever field it may be, and I felt an equal admiration, Dr MacRannoch, for the way you dealt with Bart Edgecombe at that airport, which was why I asked you to golf with me. Not to mention the hypodermic syringe.’
‘What syringe?’ I said. I was unable to prevent myself flushing.
‘It was sticking out of your dressing-gown pocket. Would it have put me to sleep?’ he said. ‘That might have been awkward. The Trueman always makes the beds first thing in the morning.’
‘It would have kept you quiet until the police took you away,’ I said coldly. I do not enjoy being provoked.
‘Incidentally, what did the police do about Bart?’ Brady asked.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. The next course had come: sliced coconut and orange in sherry. I eyed it without appetite.
‘Well, food-poisoning’s dangerous, isn’t it?’ said Brady. ‘Don’t they have to track down the bacillus by law in case other people get poisoned? Or did they fix the blame on Lady Edgecombe’s crab sandwich?’
‘Luckily, New York seems to have escaped,’ I said. ‘The doctor in charge, I imagine, found the crab was the culprit and took no further action. Certainly there were no police involved that I know of.’
I had got it in before Johnson came back. I saw him as I spoke, threading his way between tables. The music ended at the same time and Pavlova and her partner began to return.
‘Poor Bart,’ said Brady and grinned. ‘He had it public enough as it was, without the cops interfering. Listen, don’t you dance?’
‘No. The place of science,’ I said, ‘is to observe.’
In the end, we were a party of eight for the cabaret, for Krishtof Bey and his three friends insisted on our joining them, and Brady stayed stuck like surgical tape to Lady Edgecombe, Johnson and myself. We walked together out of the light of the restaurant, across the hall and down the dim-lit stairs to the Conch Club. I was not feeling cheerful, and the general inebriated levity of the large crowd accompanying us into almost pitch darkness did nothing to make my mood less gloomy. It came to me that I was probably the only entirely sober person in the room. Then Johnson’s hand gripped my arm lightly, and I realized that I was not. We found a large round table with a red mat, and sat at it.
The cabaret at the Bamboo Conch Club, although paid for by the Ascot, is chosen and run entirely by the chief drummer, Leviticus, whose solo turn on the Congo drums is the subject of most of their publicity. Inside, the architect has tried to give the impression of a native hut, with a wickerwork lining dimly lit by fake torches burning luridly red on the walls. The roof, as I pointed out to Johnson, was low, dodecahedral and wooden, thus increasing both the noise and the fire risk. Round tables like our own pressed against each other without order between the low stage and the doors and an ultraviolet light, placed strategically overhead, made Wallace Brady’s teeth glitter and turned Lady Edgecombe’s tall gin and tonic into a sugar-frosted tumbler of silver. I ordered a jug of fruit squash, and Johnson, surprisingly, a magnum of champagne. Krishtof Bey had whisky and water.
I was listening to him attempting to explain to a waiter, against the uproar of conversation and the near tinkling of a small piano, that he wished an admixture of water, not carbonated liquid or ice, when someone slammed me on the back and said, ‘Blimey, it’s Dr MacRannoch! Hullo, Doctor! How are you, Doctor? I didn’t expect to run across you in these parts, I must say. How’s the chop and rummage trade?’
It was Sergeant Trotter. Sergeant Rodney Trotter, who had been in the Monarch Lounge when Edgecombe took ill. He was lightly intoxicated, with a blood-alcohol level, I estimated, of 120 milligrams to the hundred, or so.
I said, ‘Sergeant Trotter. Let me introduce Johnson Johnson, the portrait-painter. And this is Lady Edgecombe, whose husband was taken ill in New York. Lady Edgecombe, the Sergeant here was most helpful both in the airport and on the flight the following morning.”
Denise Edgecombe gave the Sergeant her hand with strictly moderate warmth, but Johnson edged a free chair one-handed beside him and lifted his bottle out of the ice bucket. ‘A glass of champagne. Sergeant?’
It was not my place to point out the effect of this upon an unknown quantity of iced beer. He accepted and sat down, grinning, next to Brady as all the lights except the ultraviolet one went out.
There is no nobler sound, to my mind, than a march of massed pipes and drums playing Tail Toddle. I learned to pipe, as a girl, back in Scotland. Trained on this, the aural senses could withstand, as they were now called upon to do, a full percussion group of drums and marimba, trumpets, saxophone, piano and electric organ. The resulting cacophony, in quick tempo, made speech quite impossible and even, as I saw glancing around me, acted as a mild anaesthetic. Under the assault, the faces of Lady Edgecombe, Trotter and Krishtof Bey’s companions displayed a type of ultraviolet-lit stupor. Krishtof Bey himself merely showed pleasure, and Johnson, a glass in one hand, was drumming on the table with the other in time with the beat. Wallace Brady was watching me. I looked away.
The singer came on, in frilled peach-coloured satin, slit to the knee. The songs in these quarters are predictable: ‘Yellow Bird’; ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’; ‘Island in the Sun’; proceeding purposefully through a brief range of calypsos and finishing with ‘Back to Back and Belly to Belly’ about the third serving of alcohol.
With enthusiasm, the other members of my party ran this predictable gamut. All the verses of ‘Shame and Scandal in the Family’ were sung without stint by Johnson. Denise, following his lead, slightly out of tune, was becoming faintly confused. The singer left, and Leviticus walked up to his drums. ‘Leviticus’s Number,’ said Johnson, and signalled the red-waistcoated waiter for another bottle of champagne.
Leviticus was of typically African appearance: the face strongly prognathous, the nasal bridge flattened, the two rows of teeth approximately parallel and in excellent condition. He wore black trousers and a black-and-white-striped shirt unbuttoned to the waist, with a large gold locket glittering on his chest. Due to the drumming, the muscular development of neck and shoulders was almost sufficient to dwarf the profile of jawbone and chin: to shake his hand, as I had once done, was like gripping a flat plank of wood.
He came forward and sat facing us, between his two tall oval drums. The electric organ began, followed by the saxophone and trumpets, and, as they gained tempo, Leviticus joined in, the thudding beat mingling agreeably with the strident instruments in a strong rhythm which visibly excited his audience. Then the other instruments reached their fortissimo and broke off, leaving Leviticus to continue his drumming alone.
The effect on a healthy adult of insistent rhythmic experience these days is a common subject for study. At the Bamboo Conch Club that night I watched with interest four hundred people receive the maternal seventy-two p.m. heartbeat with ecstasy. The drummer showed great skill in his evocations. From an exercise in varying resonance he insensibly improved on the speed until he reached a single-toned patter of sound, so quick that the notes blurred one into the other and the bleached palms, flat and flickering, moved too fast for the eye. Behind the barrier of sound a broken rhythm made itself felt, deeper in tone, syncopated and stealthy: it stopped; the drumming stopped, and Leviticus began slowly to slap the parchment of each drum with his hands.
It seemed to me that I could feel the resonance of it in my soft palate, interspersed with bony clatter from my tympanic plates, as tempo, tone and timbre changed from second to second. Leviticus played with incision, his head flung up and down with the rhythm, the speed and colour of the rattling beats stirring the motionless audience, his hands raking curves in the air from one drum to the other.
A ball overhead began to revolve, light from coin-like apertures spinning over the musician’s face, chest, throat and hands in a long wheeling spatter. The drumming rose to a frenzy. Leviticus’s head turned from side to side, his eyes rolling, his upper lip long and underfolded, his nostrils distended. His body glittered with sweat. I wondered what I would do if he had a frank haemorrhage into the ponto-midbrain junction, as seemed very likely. The noise stopped.
The intoxicated applause continued for a long time, and was greeted most civilly by Leviticus, who finally signalled for silence. He then leaned forward, and placing his left elbow carefully on the light skin of the drum, he began with his right hand to pat out a tune on the parchment.
Performed on a single drum surface, the range of notes available to him was not of course large. However, by adjusting the strain on the skin, he produced a simple tune, very soon recognizable. The audience, with shouts of joy, began to break into song with the words, and he acknowledged with smiles their acuity. He played several in fact, and they roared them all in cheerful oblivion. ‘Jingle Bells’ I remember was one. ‘Merrily We Go Along’ I suspect was another. English student songs were never my forte, even when among students in England. ‘Don’t you sing, Dr MacRannoch?’ said Sergeant Trotter, pausing for an iron-lunged breath.
‘I am employed in voiceless approbation,’ I said.
It is not that I object to singing in public. The carbon dioxide output of a resting adult is however 200 ml. a minute and I preferred not to add to my intake.
Silence fell. The patting fingers began the last childish tune. From behind me, quite clearly, a sexless whisper came to my ears. ‘Don’t do it again,’ said the murmur, into the silence. ‘Do you hear, Doctor? Just don’t do it again.’