‘You usually spend more time choosing.’
‘I’d like to believe that … Well, anyway, there I was in Barbados, with a mean man who behaved like a dirty animal … I can’t tell you what he was like, Johnny. He used to scratch himself for hours. And he had enormous yellow toenails. Like tusks! He never cut them … It’s not funny,’ she said, seeing my expression. ‘They slashed me!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Some of the hazards of the profession are new to me.’
‘It’s not a profession,’ she answered. She brooded for a moment. ‘At least, I don’t want it to be … I suppose that’s really why I walked out. He was disgusting, and it wasn’t any fun, and I had a little money left, and I was still me. So I said, that’s all, my friend, thank you, and he went back to the States with the mink stole, and I stayed on here, by myself.’
‘When did all this happen?’
‘About two weeks ago.’
‘And how much money left now?’
‘Not much. But enough. And I’ve got my ticket back to Miami.’
It was the end of her story, and it had been sad, and moving, and somehow important. The thing which struck me most forcibly was the terrible vulnerability of a girl like this one, as soon as she had opted for a life set in this pattern. What started out with glamour and hope and excitement, tailed off into rented minks, French fries, intrusive toenails, and just enough money to get halfway back home … If this was what could happen to the pick of the candidates, how fared the ugly and the old?
Of course, I was probably being naive again. The fiasco – and all comparable setbacks – were entirely her own fault; she could just as easily have chosen to be the world’s most beautiful waitress, and her worst hazards would then have been gravy-stains and fallen arches and ten-cent tips. But, stern common sense apart, I still could not help feeling sympathetic, and vaguely protective.
There was, I found, no residue of distaste. There was quite a lot of jealousy, but that was something different … Above all, this girl, who had put herself in the public domain, still kept intact her own private quality; she had remained a free spirit, and she had not feared to cut loose when she fell out of step with what she was doing.
It seemed to me that she would never weep, nor blackmail, nor beg for favours, nor move in and try to clean up the masculine half of the human race, no matter how brutally she might be brought up short by its imperfections. She would shrug it all off, and start again.
The two of us had been silent for a long time, while the music beat its pathway through the gloom, and the smoke shrouded the dubious stationary figures on the dancefloor. It was Susan who spoke first.
‘Thinking?’
‘Just a little.’
‘You want to go?’
‘Yes, if that’s OK with you. Let’s breathe some fresh air.’
‘I hope that wasn’t meant for me.’
‘No. No! Actual oxygen. I’ve had enough of this zoo.’
She did not argue about that, either.
That evening’s farewell, on the beach outside her hotel, was far more gentle than the night before. It was not that Iwanted her less; there was, as I now found out when I kissed her, only one thing which would slake that particular thirst, and it wasn’t lime-sherbet. But I had discovered quite a lot more of what she was thinking and feeling, in the course of the evening; I recognised her reasons for withdrawal, and they were good ones. She had been manhandled, in several disgusting sequences, and she was still showing the scars.
If she needed time to clean the decks, and forget the taste of ordure, then time she could have.
In all sorts of ways, she was now, more than ever, just what I wanted.
But this tender and forbearing
courtoisie
was not the sort of thing that lasted – not with Susan Crompton, not with me. She didn’t need time, I decided next morning, as soon as I awoke, refreshed and ambitious once more; she needed encouragement. I walked along the dawn-deserted beach, and ate breakfast, and downed the first medicinal daiquiri of the day, with a total recall of appetite. Faced by man’s most momentous challenge, I felt lion-hearted, and lion everything else. Today was going to be the clincher, or else.
All other urges apart, I was in a wayward mood of benevolence, the sort which, in northern latitudes, encouraged men to hand out chinchillas to comparative strangers while the martinis ran out of their ears. I made a quick trip into Bridgetown, and came back with the best example which the modest town afforded, in the realm of diamond bracelets. Then I changed back into Tropical Alert, and walked along the beach again, my little present in my hand, like any dutiful envoy; and there was Susan, just spreading out her wares under the beach umbrella.
It was bikini day, and I wasn’t quarrelling with that, either. I sat down, and put my hand firmly round her ankle, by way of making the first shy contact.
‘That was a message from your sponsor,’ I said. ‘Good morning, out there in TV-land.’
‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘My fraternity doesn’t have that grip.’
‘The man of the moment.’ I proffered the jeweller’s case, unwrapped, brash as a bare chest. ‘I was just passing the flea market … This is for you, Susan. I thought you deserved it.’
She opened it, and gave the traditional gasp of surprise. Then she looked up, her eyes shining. ‘But Johnny – it’s beautiful!’ Swiftly the bracelet was out of the case, and swiftly clasped round her wrist; she turned it this way and that, allowing the sun to set up a very respectable sparkle. ‘Is it really for me? It must have cost a fortune!’
‘It cost about the same as a small car, and I don’t care who knows it.’
‘Oh,’ she said, watching me, but smiling, ‘it’s like that, is it?’
‘Just like that.’
‘You don’t have to give me presents.’
‘That’s all I want to know … How about coming on a picnic?’
‘I’d be a fool to say yes.’
‘I’ll get the hotel to set up a lunch for us. A shaker of daiquiris and some wine and lots to eat. You like chicken-in-a-basket?’
‘Now just a minute …’ she began.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll make the jokes, you – er – make the coffee.’
Suddenly she put her hand on top of mine, which had left her ankle and was thoughtfully playing scales up and down her leg. ‘Thank you, Johnny,’ she said softly. ‘I was afraid I’d scared you off.’
‘Afraid?’
‘Just that.’
‘I think we’ll have smoked salmon and cold grouse and some of that Brie, don’t you?’
‘You mustn’t put yourself out.’
‘The very opposite.’
‘Hey!’ she said. But she was laughing. ‘So early in the morning.’
‘Actually,’ I told her, and I almost meant it, ‘I thought we’d just wander off somewhere in the car, and enjoy ourselves.’
‘I’ll have to change, and get ready.’
‘Come like that,’ I said, eyeing the bikini.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘The bracelet will stop the sunburn.’
‘Slacks and a shirt,’ she said, ‘for a very minimum.’
‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll pick you up. Twelve o’clock. “
When the bawdy hand of the dial is on the prick of noon
.” Romeo and Juliet.’
‘You’re full of alibis this morning.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m taking over that department.’
It was cooler inland, on the high ground which formed the spine of the island, as we jogged along in the minute hired car which was all that was viable for the Barbados road system. Susan’s idea of clothes suitable for a picnic turned out to be lemon-coloured stretch pants, and a gaping scarlet shirt with bare black footprints stencilled on it, and a nutty kind of frayed straw hat such as I wore myself, and gold-strapped Roman sandals; this unabashed get-up did not improve my driving, though it did no harm to the scenery. The clink of bottles from the basket on the back seat made music for our holiday mood.
After a lot of local inquiry and back-tracking – Barbados was signposted strictly for those who knew their way around already – we found the place I was looking for. It was an elegant ruin of a former plantation house, transformed alike by time and by a film company which had tried to make it over into Hollywood’s image of British colonial magnificence; but the later excrescences – fake plaster colonnades, a garden staircase with false magnolias stapled to the balustrade – were now becoming happily overgrown, and the superb shape of the old house, of pink coral stone weathered to a honey-gold, was beginning to assert its mastery.
We wandered hand in hand through a succession of bare, echoing rooms, and kissed in strange places – larders, slave kitchens, a vast oval ballroom whose ceiling had sagged down in one corner to meet a floor itself buckled and rotted out of shape. Some of it was sad, but we were not sad; if we had a vanished past, it had vanished in favour of a buoyant, impulsive, living present.
We were followed round, all the time, by a small ragged smiling boy, who might have been the official guide. I gave him some money quite early on in our tour, but he continued to cling to us, wide-eyed, watchful, interested perhaps in human nature for its own sake. True to artistic integrity, we did not censor the show on his account.
Then it was time for pastoral delights. We found a place for our picnic, on a high bluff of rock with a magnificent view eastwards to the sea; far away, caught by the sun, the marching lines of gleaming white breakers advertised the surge and assault of the great Atlantic. I broke out the bar with a flourish, and we drank to scenery, and sunshine, and us; figured against a pale blue sky, Susan looked very lovely, and I told her so, with words always at the command of a writer with half a tumbler of rum cocktail in his hand. She seemed pleased, but admitted to being hungry as well.
‘You be cook, then,’ I told her, pointing towards the picnic basket. ‘If they haven’t been nice to us, I won’t pay my hotel bill.’
‘Is that place very expensive?’ she asked, already rummaging.
‘Yes. Much too. It’s like all these Caribbean paradise hideaways. They start by being simple and unspoiled and cheap, and then five different airlines decide to run a daily jet service from New York and Toronto and London and Paris, and the prices go up through the roof. What they sell you here is only what they got for free in the first place – the sea and the sun and the climate. And that hotel of mine is only a sort of Dogpatch Hilton, anyway.’
She spoke indistinctly, through a smoked salmon sandwich. ‘Why do you stay there, then?’
‘It’s comfortable,’ I said, munching also. ‘And I can ring a bell when I want anything, and they leave me alone. It’s been a very good place to work. That’s getting to be the most expensive thing in the world – privacy.’
‘It must be wonderful to be a writer,’ she said, traditionally.
‘Now don’t you start … You haven’t got a manuscript you want me to look at, have you?’
‘I used to keep a diary.’
‘And you’d like me to turn it into a book, and go fifty-fifty on the proceeds.’
She laughed. ‘Is that what people say?’
‘It’s one of the things.’
‘What else?’
‘They say: “If only I had the time, I could write a bestseller.” They say: “My life has been much more interesting than that girl in your last book.” They say: “Do you plan it all in advance, or do you wait for inspiration?” They say: “Why don’t you write a book about my uncle? He’s been round the world
twice
.” They say: “Do you write with a ballpoint pen?” They say: “You’re not at all what I thought you’d be like.”
‘What did they think you’d be like?’
‘Dignified, I suppose.’
‘M’m.’ She was thinking, and of course eating at the same time. ‘Johnny?’
‘What?’
‘
Do
you wait for inspiration? I’ve always wondered.’
I laughed, and rolled over on my back, and stared up at the flawless sky, with the sun hot on my face, and the earth under me warm and sustaining. ‘No. You sit down and start writing, and if you don’t sit down you starve. Inspiration is for people with rich old aunts … I’m waiting for you to have inspiration,’ I told her. ‘In the meantime, I couldn’t be more content if I was up to my socks in Krug.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A superior brand of champagne.’
‘I’m so glad …Why do you want me?’ she asked suddenly.
I addressed the listening sky. ‘Because you look like a million dollars, and you make me feel like a man.’
‘Didn’t you feel like a man before?’
‘Not specially.’
‘What happened to you?’
There was a faint echo there, and I knew what it was, and turned deaf to it again.
‘I got in with a fast crowd. They go for canasta.’
‘I was just interested,’ she said, rather far away. ‘I wondered what made someone like you want one girl more than another, or want to change suddenly … If we made love, would you tell me?’
‘If we made love,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t have to tell you.’
‘Oh, tra la la!’ she said, suddenly light-hearted again. She pretended to search through the picnic basket. ‘I can’t find it. Don’t tell me you forgot to bring it.’
‘What?’
‘The violin.’
‘Now just for that,’ I said, ‘I won’t play my piece.’
‘It probably needs a rest.’
It was good to be mocked, when mocking promised such sweet certainties as these.
I think we were both feeling happy on the same secure plane, and sun-drugged, and dreamy – the things which accorded with the spirit but not necessarily the act of love, especially not the first act. We found this out a little later on, when the cool wine was finished, and all the food; we smiled at each other, and presently took to the woods, but it was in search of shade, not of cover.
There was a grove of trees nearby, mostly pine and spreading oak, topped by a lone cork tree which might have served as the banner for my other field of endeavour. We lay down under this interlacing arch, withdrawing into the dappled, speckled shadows, like prudent animals. We kissed, with good average intensity, and Susan was freer with her body than she had ever been, and we saw in each other’s eyes that, by mutual accommodation, the animals need not be prudent.
But it was siesta time, not lovemaking time. I did not especially want to make love to her then.
We
did not want it. Though we were moving towards our rendezvous, and we both knew it, we knew also that it would hold a little longer for us. Ours was not to be a cane-field free-for-all, nor love among the pine needles; no lemon-yellow stretch pants were going to be involved, either. We were waiting for the most liberal licence of night.