The Umbrella Man and Other Stories (7 page)

In due course, Mr. Cleaver came to regard himself as an expert on wine, and inevitably he turned into a colossal bore. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he would announce at dinner, holding up his glass, “this is a Margaux ‘29! The greatest year of the century! Fantastic bouquet! Smells of cowslips! And notice especially the aftertaste and how the tiny trace of tannin gives it that glorious astringent quality! Terrific, ain’t it?”

The guests would nod and sip and mumble a few praises, but that was all.

“What’s the matter with the silly twerps?” Mr. Cleaver said to Tibbs after this had gone on for some time. “Don’t none of them appreciate a great wine?”

The butler laid his head to one side and gazed upward. “I think they
would
appreciate it, sir,” he said, “if they were able to taste it. But they can’t.”

“What the heck d’you mean, they can’t taste it?”

“I believe, sir, that you have instructed Monsieur Estragon to put liberal quantities of vinegar in the salad dressing.”

“What’s wrong with that? I like vinegar.”

“Vinegar,” the butler said, “is the enemy of wine. It destroys the palate. The dressing should be made of pure olive oil and a little lemon juice. Nothing else.”

“Hogwash!” said Mr. Cleaver.

“As you wish, sir.”

“I’ll say it again, Tibbs. You’re talking hogwash. The vinegar don’t spoil my palate one bit.”

“You are very fortunate, sir,” the butler murmured, backing out of the room.

That night at dinner, the host began to mock his butler in front of the guests. “Mister Tibbs,” he said, “has been trying to tell me I can’t taste my wine if I put vinegar in the salad dressing. Right, Tibbs?”

“Yes, sir,” Tibbs replied gravely.

“And I told him hogwash. Didn’t I, Tibbs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This wine,” Mr. Cleaver went on, raising his glass, “tastes to me exactly like a Château Lafite ‘45, and what’s more it is a Château Lafite ‘45.”

Tibbs, the butler, stood very still and erect near the sideboard, his face pale. “If you’ll forgive me, sir,” he said, “that is not a Lafite ‘45.”

Mr. Cleaver swung round in his chair and stared at the butler. “What the heck d’you mean,” he said. “There’s the empty bottles beside you to prove it!”

These great clarets, being old and full of sediment, were always decanted by Tibbs before dinner. They were served in cut-glass decanters, while the empty bottles, as is the custom, were placed on the sideboard. Right now, two empty bottles of Lafite ‘45 were standing on the sideboard for all to see.

“The wine you are drinking, sir,” the butler said quietly, “happens to be that cheap and rather odious Spanish red.”

Mr. Cleaver looked at the wine in his glass, then at the butler. The blood was coming to his face now, his skin was turning scarlet. “You’re lying, Tibbs!” he said.

“No sir, I’m not lying,” the butler said. “As a matter of fact, I have never served you any other wine but Spanish red since I’ve been here. It seemed to suit you very well.”

“I don’t believe him!” Mr. Cleaver cried out to his guests. “The man’s gone mad.”

“Great wines,” the butler said, “should be treated with reverence. It is bad enough to destroy the palate with three or four cocktails before dinner, as you people do, but when you slosh vinegar over your food into the bargain, then you might just as well be drinking dishwater.”

Ten outraged faces around the table stared at the butler. He had caught them off balance. They were speechless.

“This,” the butler said, reaching out and touching one of the empty bottles lovingly with his fingers, “this is the last of the forty-fives. The twenty-nines have already been finished. But they were glorious wines. Monsieur Estragon and I enjoyed them immensely.”

The butler bowed and walked quite slowly from the room. He crossed the hall and went out of the front door of the house into the street where Monsieur Estragon was already loading their suitcases into the boot of the small car which they owned together.

It was getting on towards six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deck chair by the swimming pool and have a little evening sun.

I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden towards the pool.

It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees, making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.

There were plenty of deck chairs around the swimming pool and there were white tables and huge brightly coloured umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.

I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel. The boys I didn’t know about, but they sounded American, and
I thought they were probably naval cadets who’d come ashore from the U.S. naval training vessel which had arrived in harbour that morning.

I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.

It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.

The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They’d reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.

Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up on to his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he came bouncing along the side of the pool, looking at the people and the chairs.

He stopped beside me and smiled, showing two rows of very small, uneven teeth, slightly tarnished. I smiled back.

“Excuse pleess, but may I sit here?”

“Certainly,” I said. “Go ahead.”

He bobbed around to the back of the chair and inspected it for safety, then he sat down and crossed his legs. His white buckskin shoes had little holes punched all over them for ventilation.

“A fine evening,” he said. “They are all evenings fine here in Jamaica.” I couldn’t tell if the accent were Italian or Spanish, but I
felt fairly sure he was some sort of a South American. And old too, when you saw him close. Probably around sixty-eight or seventy.

“Yes,” I said. “It is wonderful here, isn’t it.”

“And who, might I ask, are all dese? Dese is no hotel people.” He was pointing at the bathers in the pool.

“I think they’re American sailors,” I told him. “They’re Americans who are learning to be sailors.”

“Of course dey are Americans. Who else in de world is going to make as much noise as dat? You are not American no?”

“No,” I said. “I am not.”

Suddenly one of the American cadets was standing in front of us. He was dripping wet from the pool and one of the English girls was standing there with him.

“Are these chairs taken?” he said.

“No,” I answered.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” he said. He had a towel in his hand and when he sat down he unrolled it and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered the cigarettes to the girl and she refused; then he offered them to me and I took one. The little man said, “Tank you, no, but I tink I have a cigar.” He pulled out a crocodile case and got himself a cigar, then he produced a knife which had a small scissors in it and he snipped the end off the cigar.

“Here, let me give you a light.” The American boy held up his lighter.

“Dat will not work in dis wind.”

“Sure it’ll work. It always works.”

The little man removed his unlighted cigar from his mouth, cocked his head on one side and looked at the boy.

“
All
-ways?” he said slowly.

“Sure, it never fails. Not with me anyway.”

The little man’s head was still cocked over on one side and he was still watching the boy. “Well, well. So you say dis famous lighter it never fails. Iss dat you say?”

“Sure,” the boy said. “That’s right.” He was about nineteen or twenty with a long freckled face and a rather sharp birdlike nose. His chest was not very sunburned and there were freckles there too, and a few wisps of pale-reddish hair. He was holding the lighter in his right hand, ready to flip the wheel. “It never fails,” he said, smiling now because he was purposely exaggerating his little boast. “I promise you it never fails.”

“One momint, pleess.” The hand that held the cigar came up high, palm outward, as though it were stopping traffic. “Now juss one momint.” He had a curiously soft, toneless voice and he kept looking at the boy all the time.

“Shall we not perhaps make a little bet on dat?” He smiled at the boy. “Shall we not make a little bet on whether your lighter lights?”

“Sure, I’ll bet,” the boy said. “Why not?”

“You like to bet?”

“Sure, I’ll always bet.”

The man paused and examined his cigar, and I must say I didn’t much like the way he was behaving. It seemed he was already trying
to make something out of this, and to embarrass the boy, and at the same time I had the feeling he was relishing a private little secret all his own.

He looked up again at the boy and said slowly, “I like to bet, too. Why we don’t have a good bet on dis ting? A good big bet.”

“Now wait a minute,” the boy said. “I can’t do that. But I’ll bet you a quarter. I’ll even bet you a dollar, or whatever it is over here—some shillings, I guess.”

The little man waved his hand again. “Listen to me. Now we have some fun. We make a bet. Den we go up to my room here in de hotel where iss no wind and I bet you you cannot light dis famous lighter of yours ten times running without missing once.”

“I’ll bet I can,” the boy said.

“All right. Good. We make a bet, yes?”

“Sure, I’ll bet you a buck.”

“No, no. I make you a very good bet. I am rich man and I am sporting man also. Listen to me. Outside de hotel iss my car. Iss very fine car. American car from your country. Cadillac—”

“Hey, now. Wait a minute.” The boy leaned back in his deck chair and he laughed. “I can’t put up that sort of property. This is crazy.”

“Not crazy at all. You strike lighter successfully ten times running and Cadillac is yours. You like to have dis Cadillac, yes?”

“Sure, I’d like to have a Cadillac.” The boy was still grinning.

“All right. Fine. We make a bet and I put up my Cadillac.”

“And what do I put up?”

The little man carefully removed the red band from his still unlighted cigar. “I never ask you, my friend, to bet something you cannot afford. You understand?”

“Then what do I bet?”

“I make it very easy for you, yes?”

“OK. You make it easy.”

“Some small ting you can afford to give away, and if you did happen to lose it you would not feel too bad. Right?”

“Such as what?”

“Such as, perhaps, de little finger on your left hand.”

“My
what?
” The boy stopped grinning.

“Yes. Why not? You win, you take de car. You looss, I take de finger.”

“I don’t get it. How d’you mean, you take the finger?”

“I chop it off.”

“Jumping jeepers! That’s a crazy bet. I think I’ll just make it a dollar.”

The little man leaned back, spread out his hands palms upwards and gave a tiny contemptuous shrug of the shoulders, “Well, well, well,” he said. “I do not understand. You say it lights but you will not bet. Den we forget it, yes?”

The boy sat quite still, staring at the bathers in the pool. Then he remembered suddenly he hadn’t lighted his cigarette. He put it between his lips, cupped his hands around the lighter and flipped the wheel. The wick lighted and burned with a small, steady, yellow flame and the way he held his hands the wind didn’t get to it at all.

“Could I have a light, too?” I said.

“God, I’m sorry, I forgot you didn’t have one.”

I held out my hand for the lighter, but he stood up and came over to do it for me.

“Thank you,” I said, and he returned to his seat.

“You having a good time?” I asked.

“Fine,” he answered. “It’s pretty nice here.”

There was a silence then, and I could see that the little man had succeeded in disturbing the boy with his absurd proposal. He was sitting there very still, and it was obvious that a small tension was beginning to build up inside him. Then he started shifting about in his seat, and rubbing his chest, and stroking the back of his neck, and finally he placed both hands on his knees and began tap-tapping with his fingers against the kneecaps. Soon he was tapping with one of his feet as well.

“Now just let me check up on this bet of yours,” he said at last. “You say we go up to your room and if I make this lighter light ten times running I win a Cadillac. If it misses just once then I forfeit the little finger of my left hand. Is that right?”