Temptation (16 page)

But as I struggled to reassemble the skewed jigsaw that was last night, I also reached a decision: I was going to leave the island today. I’d been kept waiting around for too long, and for no particular reason, and I didn’t want to indulge a rich man’s whims any longer. So I picked up the phone and rang Gary, and asked him if it was possible to arrange my transfer to Antigua this afternoon, with an onward connection to Los Angeles. He said he’d get back
to me. Then, five minutes later, the phone rang. It was Martha.

‘Have you ever made the acquaintance of something called Berocca?’

‘Hello, Martha.’

‘Good morning, David. You sound a little shell-shocked.’

‘I wonder why. But you sound amazingly awake.’

‘That’s because of the wonderful restorative properties of Berocca. It’s a soluble vitamin, with a horse-sized dose of Vitamin B & C – and it’s the only known cure for a hangover I’ve ever encountered. They make them in Australia, where they know about hangovers.’

‘Please send two over right away.’

‘They’re en route as we speak. Just don’t chop them up with a credit card and snort them up a rolled $50 bill.’

‘I don’t do that sort of thing,’ I said, sounding defensive.

‘That was a joke, David. Lighten up, please.’

‘Sorry . . . and, by the way, I really did enjoy the evening.’

‘Then why do you want to leave us this afternoon?’

‘News obviously travels fast.’

‘I hope this decision wasn’t prompted by anything I said.’

‘Hardly. I think it’s more to do with the fact that your husband has kept me waiting here for just over a week. And I have a life to be getting on with . . . and a daughter I need to visit in San Francisco this Friday.’

‘That’s easily taken care of. I’ll have the Gulfstream booked to fly you direct on Friday morning. With the time change in your favor, you’ll get there by mid-afternoon, no problem.’

‘But that means cooling my heels here for another two days.’

‘Look, I understand why you’re peeved at my husband.
As I said last night, he is playing a game with you . . . like he plays games with everybody. And I feel very bad about all this, because it was me who suggested that he should try to work with you. I’m such a great fan of yours. Besides
Selling You
, I’ve actually read all your early theater stuff . . . ’

‘Really?’ I said, trying not to sound flattered, but failing.

‘Yes, I got one of my assistants at the foundation to track down all your play scripts . . . ’

That must have taken some work, I thought . . . considering that none of those plays were ever published. But if there was one thing I now knew about the Flecks, it was this: if they wanted something they got it.

‘. . . and I also really want to talk with you about the rewrite you’ve just done on the movie for Philip.’

Which, evidently, Joan had slipped to her.

‘You’ve read it already?’

‘First thing this morning.’

‘How about your husband?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said. ‘We haven’t talked for a few days.’

I was about to ask why but thought better of it. So, instead I said, ‘Did you really come back from New York to meet me?’

‘It’s not very often that we have a writer I admire staying on the island.’

‘And you
really
like the new version of the script?’

She let out a dark laugh. ‘Searching for reassurance?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said.

‘Well, I think the job you’ve done is terrific.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Believe me, I’d tell you otherwise.’

‘I’ve no doubt about that.’

‘And if you do stay, I promise not to force vodka down your throat again . . . unless, of course you want it forced down your throat.’

‘Not a chance.’

‘Then we’ll be alcohol-free Mormons all day. In fact, I’ll even call you Elder David if you wish . . . ’

Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘All right, all right. I’ll stay one more day. But if he’s not here tomorrow, I’m gone.’

‘It’s a deal,’ she said.

The Berocca arrived a few minutes later – and much to my surprise, it actually did lessen my hangover agony. But so too did the afternoon I spent with Martha. Given the amount of Stoli she’d thrown back the night before, she looked damnably alert, almost radiant. She arranged lunch on the main balcony of the house. The sun was high, but a light breeze tempered the heat. We ate cold lobster and drank Virgin Marys and talked our heads off. Martha had dropped the coquettish tone which had characterized the previous night, and revealed herself to be funny, erudite, and someone who could talk about a dozen different subjects with great intensity and brio. More tellingly, she really knew her stuff when it came to the business of play writing – and she had a lot of smart, intelligent points to make about the new version of
We Three Grunts
. Much to my amazement, she really had read the entire David Armitage oeuvre . . . including two forgotten plays of the early l990s which had been given one-off readings by obscure off-off-Broadway companies, and which had been gathering dust in their script archives since then.

‘Hell, even I haven’t read those plays in years,’ I said.

‘Well, when Philip told me he wanted to work with you, I thought it would be smart to see what you’d been up to before you were famous.’

‘And is that how you managed to find
We Three Grunts
?’

‘Yes, I’m to blame for putting it into Philip’s hands.’

‘And was it also your idea to put his name on my script?’

She looked at me as if I was deranged. And said, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

I explained about her husband’s little stunt with my screenplay . . . how it had arrived (via Bobby) with his name on the title page.

She exhaled slowly – through clenched teeth.

‘I am so sorry, David,’ she said.

‘Don’t be. It’s not exactly your fault. And the fact is, I still accepted his offer to come out here . . . which shows you just what a fool I am.’

‘Everyone gets suckered in by Philip’s money. And it allows him to play the games he loves to play. Which is why I feel bad about this. Because when he called me to ask about you, I should have known that he’d start messing you around too.’

‘He
called you
to talk about me? Aren’t you kind of married?’

‘Actually, we’re kind of separated.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘It’s not official or anything. And it’s certainly something that neither of us wants to be made public. But, for around the last year or so, we’ve essentially been living apart.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Don’t be. Because it was my decision. Not that Philip exactly begged me to reconsider, or pursued me to all four
corners of the earth. That’s not his style, anyway. Not that he has any style to begin with.’

‘Do you think it’s permanent?’

‘I don’t know. We talk from time to time – maybe once a week. If he needs me for a public appearance – a big charity benefit, some heavyweight business dinner, or the annual invitation to the White House – I put on the appropriate dress and the appropriate fixed smile, and let him hold my arm, and play-act the happy couple. And, of course, I live in all his houses, and use all his planes – but only when he’s not using them. The fact that he has so many houses and so many planes means that it’s easy to avoid each other.’

‘It’s gotten that bad between the two of you?’

She paused for a moment and stared out at the interplay of sunlight and water on the glistening surface of the Caribbean Sea.

‘From the outset, I knew that Philip was just a little odd. But I fell in love with his oddness. And his intellect. And the vulnerability which he keeps hidden behind his taciturn rich man facade. For the first couple of years, we really did get along. Until, one day, he started going into retreat. I couldn’t figure it out at all. Nor would he explain it to me. The marriage was like a shiny new car that, one morning, simply refuses to start. And though you try everything to get it moving again, you start worrying: might this be a lemon? And what makes this worry even worse is the realization that, despite everything, you still love the idiot you’ve married.’

She fell silent, staring out again at all that water.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘looking at that view, you must think: everyone should have her problems.’

‘A bad marriage is a bad marriage.’

‘Was yours very bad?’ she asked.

Now it was my turn to avoid eye contact.

‘You want the facile answer or the honest answer?’ I asked.

‘That’s your call.’

I hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘No, in retrospect, it wasn’t that awful. We’d lost our way a bit – and I think there was a certain amount of built-up resentment on both sides because she had been carrying us financially for so long. And my success didn’t really simplify matters between us. Instead, it just created more of a gulf . . . ’

‘And then you met the astonishing Ms Birmingham.’

‘Your researchers are very thorough.’

‘Are you in love with her?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is that the facile or the honest answer?’

‘Put it this way . . . it’s very different from my marriage. We’re a “power couple”, with all that that implies.’

‘That sounds like a pretty honest answer to me.’

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four o’clock. The afternoon had slipped by in a nanosecond. I glanced up at Martha. The sun had angled itself in such a way that her face was bathed in a soft glow. I looked at her carefully, and suddenly thought: she is actually beautiful. So smart. So damn witty. And (unlike Sally) so self-deprecating. More to the point, we were so attuned to each other’s sensibility. Our rapport was instant, all-pervasive, so . . .

Then a second thought immediately popped into my head:
don’t even think about going there
.

‘Penny for them,’ she said, interrupting my reverie.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your thoughts, David. You seemed to be somewhere else.’

‘No – I was definitely here.’

She smiled and said, ‘That’s nice to know.’

At that moment I realized . . .
what
? That she’d been watching me watching her . . . that there was ‘an unspoken thing’ between us? . . . the makings of a really messy
coup de foudre
? . . . ‘
Grow up, you idiot
’ (I heard the Voice of Reason whisper in my ear). ‘
So what if there’s an attraction? You know what would happen if it was acted upon. Terminal fallout, followed by the longest nuclear winter imaginable
.’

Now it was her turn to glance at her watch.

‘My God, look at the time,’ she said.

‘Hope I haven’t kept you from anything,’ I said.

‘Hardly. Anyway, time flies when the conversation flies.’

‘I’ll drink to that.’

‘Is that a cue to break our vow of sobriety and order us something French and fizzy?’

‘Not just yet.’

‘But later, perhaps?’

I heard myself saying, ‘If you’re not doing anything . . . ’

‘My social diary isn’t exactly full down here.’

‘Nor mine.’

‘So if I suggested something . . . a little outing, perhaps . . . you’d be game?’

Don’t do it,
Mr Voice of Reason hissed in my ear. But, of course, I said, ‘Fine by me.’

An hour later, with the sun in steep decline towards night, I found myself sitting with Martha on the deck of the Cabin Cruiser, sipping a glass of Cristal and steaming towards the horizon. Before we embarked, she told me to bring a change of clothes and a sweater.

‘Where, exactly, are we going?’ I’d asked her.

‘You’ll see,’ she said.

Around half an hour later, a tiny island came into view: hilly, verdant, festooned with palms. From the distance, I could make out a dock, a beach, behind which was a trio of simple buildings – built in pseudo-Easter Island style, with thatched roofs.

‘Quite a little hideaway,’ I said. ‘Who does it belong to?’

‘Me,’ Martha said.

‘You serious?’

‘Absolutely. It was my wedding present from Philip. He wanted to buy me some huge, absurd Liz Taylor-style rock. But I said that I wasn’t really a Star of India gal. So he said: “How about an island?” And I thought: well, that’s pretty damn original.’

When we docked, Martha led me ashore. The beach wasn’t large, but it was perfectly white and sandy. We walked up to the little development of buildings. The main structure was circular, with a comfortable lounge (all bleached wood and bleached fabrics), and a large verandah, with sun-loungers and a large dining table. A kitchen took up the rear of the building. On either side of this central structure were two burees: Polynesian-style cottages, each furnished with a king-sized bed, stylish cane armchairs, more bleached fabrics, and a bleached-wood bathroom.
House and Garden Goes Tropical
.

‘Quite a wedding gift,’ I said. ‘I presume you had a hand in the design of the place?’

‘Yes, Philip flew in an architect and a builder from Antigua, and essentially gave me carte blanche. And I told them that, of course, I wanted a five-star facsimile of Jonestown . . . ’

‘You mean, you’re going to start your own cult?’

‘I think there’s a clause in my prenup that specifically forbids me from founding my own religion.’

‘You have a prenuptial agreement?’

‘When you marry a fellow worth $20 billion, his people definitely insist that you sign a prenuptial agreement . . . which, in our case, was about the same length as the Gutenberg Bible. But I hired an exceptionally tough lawyer to negotiate my end of the deal . . . so, if things do fall apart, I am well covered. Ready for a little island tour?’

‘Isn’t it getting dark?’

‘That’s the point,’ she said, taking me by the hand. On our way out of the buree, she grabbed a flashlight positioned by the door. Then she led me up a narrow path that began behind the main building and headed straight uphill through a jungly thicket of palms and labyrinthine vines. The sun was still casting a fading glow, but the nocturnal tropical soundtrack of insects and ornithology was in full swing . . . an echo chamber of hisses and unearthly shrieks which brought out my deep city-boy fears about the call of the wild.