Red Herrings (16 page)

Was it his imagination, or was there a sudden slip in her composure. She was just getting out of the car and she seemed to stumble slightly. ‘Shit!' she swore, slamming the door, ‘I'm always snagging that wretched window handle. I'm sorry darling, I didn't catch you. What did you ask?'

‘A company called Dull Boy Productions,' he repeated. ‘My boss phoned about it this morning.'

‘Dull Boy Productions,' she said thoughtfully, ‘what a peculiar name. It doesn't mean anything to me but then Perry has so many companies. I should ask him.'

She seemed lost in thought for a moment, then looked at him almost suggestively and said, ‘Darling, what about a swim? You do look terribly terribly hot.'

‘I am hot,' said Bognor. ‘And I'd love a swim, only I don't have any trunks.'

‘Oh, if you're going to be prudish you can borrow a pair of Perry's. But no one's going to care if you swim in the buff. We usually do when we're on our own. There's no one else here. Perry won't be back for hours.'

Bognor's mouth felt dry. He wasn't sure whether he was being propositioned or not, but he did know that she was challenging him not to be a prude. He thought of her photograph and of his friend the swami and his brides and he thought, ‘Dammit'. And out loud he said, ‘Good idea!'

‘Fine,' she said. ‘You swim and I'll change into something cool and fix us a drink. I'll see you on the terrace in ten minutes.'

‘Right you are,' said Bognor.

‘You know where it is,' she said. Which he did, having swum there before, though always in trunks. It was a spectacularly sensible pool – half in and half out of doors. A glass screen came down to just below water level, and ran the entire width of the pool. If you wanted to move outdoors from the indoor pool you had only to duck under this window and swim on into the garden. If swimming out of doors the weather suddenly turned cold you had only to duck under the screen and swim back in. Bognor could not think why there weren't more pools like it.

He undressed in the men's changing room – they were labelled, predictably enough, Guys and Dolls – and slightly apprehensively wrapped himself in an enormous bath towel before heading out into the pool area. He did not, he had to confess, look wonderful without any clothes on, and he was not at all sure he wanted to be surprised. At least not until he was in the water. And even then … He did rather fancy Mrs Contractor and he sometimes wondered if perhaps … and some people found him quite attractive … and what in God's name would Monica say … and …

There was nobody in the pool but he wasn't taking any chances. Sitting down on the edge he did not divest himself of the bath towel until he was almost in the water, somehow managing to half sidle, half jump in with only a fleeting exposure to anyone who might be around, of what he still tended to think of as his ‘private parts'. He was all in favour of others flaunting these parts wherever they wished but he wasn't sure he would ever come round to the idea himself.

It was wonderfully cool after the sticky heat of wandering around in grey flannels, and he felt pleasantly liberated. The towel was close at hand right by the steps so that if he should be surprised he could almost certainly manage an exit with decency and dignity intact. ‘Aaaah,' he sighed. This was the life. If only a little more money had adhered to his fingers how much happier he would be. This was bliss. In a second he would be out on the terrace drinking champagne with the beautiful Samantha and, perhaps, who knows? He lay on his back and closed his eyes. He could lie like this for ever.

‘Aaaah,' he sighed, and then suddenly changed pitch. ‘Aaargh!' he gasped as he felt himself seized from below and ducked. Luckily he was in his depth but he had been taken by surprise and was gasping for air. Whoever it was had hands secure over both eyes.

‘Guess who?' said Samantha, giggling. She must, he realised, have come in from the garden without him noticing.

‘Samantha,' he spluttered, ‘let go.'

She giggled again. ‘Not unless you promise.'

‘Promise to what?' He tried to sound indignant but it had to be admitted that the proximity of her naked body was rather exciting.

She nibbled his ear. ‘To kiss me passionately,' she whispered.

‘Don't be ridiculous Samantha I really can't. It's broad daylight. I mean what on earth would Perry say? And Monica? Let go and don't tickle. Please, I'm not ticklish. No really I'm not. No absolutely not.'

Somehow she had managed to turn him or perhaps he had turned himself so that now her mouth was on his and her arms were enveloping him. He half opened his eyes and saw her naked breasts and nipples pressed up against his chest. ‘Oh God!' he thought as she managed to force her tongue between his lips. This was awful. On the one hand it was fearfully, perhaps even dangerously, exciting. On the other it was excitingly, dangerously fearful. What was it about pain and pleasure? To his horror he realised he seemed to be returning her kiss. He tried half-heartedly to break free but she seemed stronger than him or perhaps just more determined. And he knew he was being feeble.

‘Sam,' he tried to say as she relaxed her pincer grip on his mouth and gasped for air. ‘Sam. This is silly. This is terribly terribly silly,' but before he could say more she had her breath back and was grinding her teeth against his and flicking her tongue around his mouth in a way that Monica would have dismissed as downright unhygienic. He had read recently that you could get AIDS from saliva and the thought galvanised him into a sudden spasm of activity. Somehow he must have got one of his feet behind her ankle because she lost her footing though not her grip and the two of them tumbled over into four foot of water. Now she did let go for a moment.

As they resurfaced Bognor was aware of a pair of very shiny black shoes more or less level with his eyes. Raising his gaze he took in pinstriped trousers, a black coat and waistcoat, black tie and white shirt, and above them a leering face, partially obscured by a 35 millimetre Canon ‘sureshot' camera of exactly the kind that Monica had given him for Christmas.

‘Smile please!' said the cameraman and although Bognor did nothing of the kind the camera clicked and the flash flashed. ‘Terrific!' said the photographer. ‘That's the end of the film. Thirty-six pictures.'

‘Dandiprat!' said Bognor, ashen-faced.

‘Thirty-six beautiful full colour pictures,' said Dandiprat, ‘and these are wonderful little cameras. Absolutely foolproof. Never known to make a mistake. Mind you I'm a very good photographer even with more sophisticated equipment, but I thought in the circumstances …' He pressed the re-wind button, then opened the back of the camera to remove the film.

Bognor turned to Samantha.

‘Samantha!' he said, ‘how could you?'

For a moment she returned his stare; then suddenly looked away and flipped backwards towards the glass screen. A little shimmy of arms and legs and her preposterously appealing form was back in the garden.

Bognor did not follow. Instead he stared at Dandiprat as he felt a gentleman should stare at a peeping Tom butler who has surprised him in a swimming pool with a naked lady. Unfortunately he was only too well aware that he did not cut a very imposing figure. Dandiprat, in any case, was not looking at him but was busy extracting the yellow Kodachrome film and, when he had done so, tossing it in the air with an expression of nauseating self-satisfaction.

‘Dandiprat,' said Bognor in his most officer class voice, ‘I wonder if you would be so good as to pass me the bath towel at the top of the steps.'

‘Certainly sir,' said Dandiprat, pocketing the film.

Bognor, slowly and deliberately waded to the stairs, and ascended them, sucking in his stomach to offset any tendency to paunch and trying to drape the towel as strategically as possible. Only when he had regained terra firma did he remember the stories of how Lyndon Johnson had humiliated his staff by dictating to them while sitting on the loo. Oppressive white South Africans were supposed to do the same sort of thing with their kaffirs. Apparently it was very upsetting for staff to have their masters' bodies paraded about in front of them; it made staff and servants feel like unpersons. Bognor therefore made a considerable show of drying himself quite naturally without any show of modesty. Unfortunately this seemed to have no effect on Dandiprat one way or another.

‘Well,' Bognor realised that he could not go on drying himself for ever and that he had better take an initiative he was far from feeling, ‘what have you got to say for yourself, Dandiprat?'

‘With respect, sir,' said Dandiprat, ‘I feel that I should be putting that question to you.'

‘Now listen, Dandiprat,' said Bognor, rolling the butler's surname about in his mouth like Donald Sinden on a first night, ‘since when has it been part of a butler's job to spy on his mistress and take photographs of her with her guests?'

‘Compromising photographs if I might say so, sir.'

‘All right, yes, they might look compromising, yes.'

‘I have always regarded my most important role in life as the safeguarding of my master's interests. Sir.'

The ‘sir' seemed to Bognor to be rather slow in coming. He resented this. He had always had a low opinion of Dandiprat, partly because he was so very small, partly because he was so absurdly obsequious. He had also found him unnerving because he was so bloodlessly sinister.

‘It's blackmail is it, Dandiprat?' he asked. This seemed the logical conclusion. And he couldn't for the life of him see how that would help his master.

‘I wouldn't put it quite like that, sir.' The butler leered.

‘No,' said Bognor, ‘blackmailers never do, do they?'

‘I'll be brief,' said Dandiprat, suddenly assuming an air of authority which Bognor found surprising and unbecoming. ‘The fact of the matter is that we're none too happy about your line of enquiry since the death of Wilmslow.'

‘What do you mean “we”?' Bognor wanted to know, but the truculent butler ignored him. ‘In particular,' he said, ‘we don't appreciate your interest in Dull Boy Productions and I think you ought to know that if you persevere with that particular line of questioning we can't be held answerable for the consequences.' At this point Dandiprat took the film from his pocket and made a point of studying it. ‘Seriously, sir,' he said, ‘seems to us locals here in Herring St George that poor Mr Wilmslow was the victim of a most unfortunate accident. RIP is what we say. Nothing you can do will bring him back to life, poor bugger. And the rest of us have to knuckle down and make the best of what's left to us. Don't you think, sir?'

‘Is that all you have to say, Dandiprat?' asked Bognor.

The butler simpered.

‘If we don't like the way you're treating us,' he said, ‘then one set of these pictures goes to Mrs Bognor and one to Mr Parkinson at the Board of Trade. No wife and no job, Mr Bognor sir. And all on account of being so concerned about what happened to a poor VAT inspector who just happened to get drunk one night.'

‘I have to get changed now, Dandiprat,' said Bognor. ‘Do you have anything sensible to say? Or is that it?'

But Dandiprat said nothing at all. He just stood there tossing the film from one hand to the other and whistling tunelessly through his teeth.

‘Melodramatic little runt,' said Bognor, half to himself, as he stomped off to change. It was a bit much. All he had done was have a swim. It was hardly his fault if he had been lying about in the pool when he was attacked by a voracious lingerie model without any clothes on. He had tried to fight her off but she had been too strong for him. He frowned. He did see that if the photographs were anything like as revealing as he imagined then they would be difficult to excuse.

‘Bloody hell!' he exclaimed, getting back into his oppressively inappropriate clothes. And there was a long walk back to the Pickled Herring ahead of him. He had hoped to ride there in the Mercedes with the wind ruffling his remaining hair as he and Samantha careered down the high banked corniche into Herring St George. That was obviously out of the question now.

What was most galling was the way she had set him up. She had obviously gone straight to the wretched butler the second they had entered the house and said, Bognor of the Board of Trade is in the pool without any clothes on, I'll get undressed and you can come and take some saucy pictures of us. Which, in retrospect, was pretty upsetting. Even worse was the fact that try as he might it was difficult to feel entirely innocent.

Not that he had anticipated anything quite like that. Well … if he was absolutely honest, her suggestion of going for what used to be called a ‘skinny dip' had rather excited him in a subconscious sort of way. Not that he had for an instant contemplated being unfaithful to Monica. Absolutely not. He had never been unfaithful to Monica. Not entirely anyway. Something had always conspired to prevent it happening which he always found on the one hand rather a relief and on the other immensely frustrating. Now, it seemed, he was about to incur Monica's wrath without having had the pleasure which might have made it worthwhile. There was no justice. And as for Parkinson, it did not bear thinking about. Worst of all was the idea of Parkinson handing the pictures around at lunch in the Reform Club, sucking his teeth with the Permanent Under Secretary and the Principal Private Secretary, while underneath the mimsy disapproval they would all be having a quiet giggle and a quiet salivate.

Nevertheless his mind was made up. Dandiprat and Samantha (for he had to accept that Samantha was part of a conspiracy much though it distressed him) had picked the wrong person. You couldn't blackmail a victim who refused to be blackmailed. He would go straight to Monica and straight to Parkinson and confess everything. Not that there was anything to confess. He would explain that he had simply gone for a swim when Samantha had tried to rape him.