Tour de Force (5 page)

‘Lem Putt was talking about being in a lavatory, dear.'

‘But looking out through a little window, shaped like a star. That's me now – looking out on the whole of life through a window shaped like a star.…'

‘And seeing nothing but this ugly, cross fellow, Leo Rodd?'

‘Is he ugly?' she said. ‘To me he looks like the Angel of Light. And of course he isn't cross with
me
.' The moonlight gleamed on the bright bent head, threw tiny shadows of curved false eyelashes across the high cheekbones; but it took the red dye from her lipstick and left her mouth dark and somehow rather sad. ‘Well, but, Louli – what happens now?'

‘We get through the next two weeks as well as we can, and then when we're all home again, we sort it out: and then we'll get married or not get married, but anyway we'll be together.'

‘And his wife?' said Cecil.

She was silent. She said at last, ‘You see – the thing that happens is that you get this sort of – sort of a glory: and you can't see anything except yourself and the person you're in love with. You try to think about other people and mind about them, but it's like looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope, you see them as terribly tiny and terribly far away and you simply can't make yourself realize that their feelings aren't tiny and far away too …

‘But, ducky, surely it's just an infatuation?'

‘If it is,' said Louli, ‘it doesn't make any difference. It's real to us.'

‘Will she let him go?'

‘You can't keep something that doesn't belong to you any more,' said Louli. ‘One must just pray and pray and pray that she doesn't mind too much.'

Cecil thought back to the recent defection of Francis – Francis who had been coming on this trip with him, who had suddenly up and rushed off to Majorca instead, with that horrid little ballet-beast Boris: to his own first meeting with Francis and the consequent quarrellings with Basil; to the first days with Basil and how ruthless Basil had been about Piers.… To all the scenes and the dramas, the triumphs, the despairs, the pleasures, the pain. To all the sordidness – for that was what it boiled down to in the end, tricks and evasions and treacherous little lies. In the depths of his heart he resented it because here was something that lifted its head up out of the mire he knew; and he was impelled to try to drag it down. ‘You and your Leo – don't you feel just a bit – mean?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Louli. ‘About the little things. He feels mean, sneaking off and meeting me in the evenings, I feel mean being insincere to her. But not about the big things; we can't help that.'

They had come to the end of the beach, to where the high rock cast its black shadow across the moonlit silver of the sand. ‘And may one ask, dear, what you're thinking of living on? I mean, the money is all hers, isn't it, they make no secret of that?'

‘
He
makes no secret of it. She never mentions it.'

‘Of course he used to make a lot, I suppose, but obviously he'll never play the piano again, he'll never make a farthing …'

‘I'll make the farthings,' said Louli. She smiled in the shadowy darkness beneath the rock. ‘You don't think that I can – but I will. You'll see!' And suddenly she started forward. ‘Did you hear? – is that him coming now?'

But it was five minutes more before he came and found her alone there in the shadow of the rock; and put his one arm round her and held her as though he could never let her go.

Away above the silver and black of the sea, the moon hung like a silver lantern, tipping with silver the shining edges of the oleander leaves, black shadowed by the night. At the balcony rail outside the row of bedrooms, Mr Fernando leaned with Miss Trapp and like a troubled schoolboy explained, excused, promised reformation and at last with most unwonted diffidence, took her thin hand and held it in his own. In the pinewoods behind the hotel, Helen Rodd walked alone, anxious and sorrowful; through the scented gardens, Mr Cecil strolled and Vanda Lane hurried with pain and hatred in her bitter heart; in the shadow of the rock the lovers leaned in one another's arms and forgot the world and time. And on the terrace above them, Inspector Cockrill stirred restlessly in his deck-chair and tried to get back to Carstairs and could not concentrate. Carstairs never fell in love: perhaps because his eyes were so constantly narrowed that he was unable to recognize a pretty girl when he saw one. Inspector Cockrill, on the other hand, recognized a pretty girl only too easily and nowadays sometimes worried in case he should grow into a dirty old man; and he could not help being fond of this particular girl – and sorry to see her making such a mess of things. And yet … He looked out over the scented gardens, over a sea like wrinkled black treacle under the silver moon: and suddenly the magic and romance seemed all that was real, and England and his little world of crime and punishment, unimportant and far away. He could not know that he was looking at a stage set for murder; that the prologue had been spoken, that the cast was assembled, dressed and made up, in the wings: that to-morrow, when the curtain of darkness rolled back and the footlights flooded the stage in bright Mediterranean sunshine – the play would begin.

The pronunciation, hi hybrid-Spanish-Italian, of the name of the hotel, phased even the Experienced Travellers who would have died rather than call the island anything but San Hoowarne. Mr Cecil and Louvaine called it frankly Bello-mare and had succeeded in convincing one or two of the more credulous that it referred to the lavish cuisine of the hotel and meant The Stomach of a Horse. Certainly the meals were gargantuan. Replete with tortilla and pizza, on the afternoon after their arrival, Cockie resisted all attempts to get him to join an expedition to see over the ducal palace on the hill and retired for the siesta. It had been amusing, he reflected as he stripped to his vest and underpants and lay down on the white-curtained four-poster bed in his close-shuttered room, to observe the skirmishings of those who, for less innocent reasons than an assignation with Carstairs, also wished to cry off. The outing had been arranged by the hotel and Fernando had been only too thankful to let his party go off without him for once, with the other guests. Miss Trapp, obviously prescient of this intention, started a positive epidemic of headaches. Helen Rodd, defensively clearing the way for her husband and his latest light of love, was the first to be infected; Leo and Louvaine, drifting in separately to announce the same affliction, discovered too late that she had been before them and that they were now all three condemned to spend the afternoon together after all. Vanda Lane, overhearing Leo's stumbling speech, succumbed immediately and only Mr Cecil, delighted at the possibility of mischief arising from this narrowing down of the party, struck out for himself and declared that ideas for Hoowarnese-inspired designs were simmering on the hob, duckies, and he must get out Little Red Attashy case and dash them down forthwith. They drifted to their rooms. Out in the blistering sunshine, the explorers moved off reluctantly upon their jaunt, the hotel staff retired to their remote and unbeautiful quarters to doze away the precious off-duty hours, and soon there was no sound or movement but the hissing breath of the sea cooling the hot white sand. Inspector Carstairs slid off the gentle protuberance of Cockie's full tummy and lay with rumpled pages on the floor, and the peace of the long Spanish afternoon siesta fell softly upon the Bellomare Hotel.

It was an hour or more before Cockrill awoke. It was pleasantly cool in the bare little cell-like room, but the sunshine was streaming through the slats of the shutters and he jumped up quite gaily and splashed about under the shower in his tiny bathroom and put on a light jacket and the hat which he had dashingly purchased in Rapallo some days ago. Contrary to custom, he had bought it not two sizes too large, but considerably too small and it sat on his splendid head like a paper boat, breasting the fine spray of his greying hair. He patted his pockets to be sure of a stock of tobacco and paper for his cigarettes, tucked Carstairs under his arms, and went out on to the balcony whose rail was draped already with the bathing impedimenta of the hotel guests. Directly below were the main reception rooms, their great doors standing ever open upon the lovely terrace, roofed in with bougainvillea; two curving flights of steps led down to the terrace from the balcony, and from the terrace a central flight of shallow steps ran on down and across a lower terrace, and so to the beach. To his left as he looked seawards, a hump of rock jutted out like a great nose at the level of the lower terrace, dividing the beach from a little beach beyond; along its sharp ridge, a narrow path had been worn by the bathers running out to a diving-board which had been built into it, twenty feet above sea level, at its tip. At the terrace end of the ridge, a row of little bathing cabins had been erected; the upper terrace ended in a short curve of steps leading through a tunnel of flowering jasmine down to the huts. In the angles where the rock nose joined the face of the mainland, rough, steep little paths had been worn, tippling down to the beaches below.

The beach was deserted but there were sounds of movement in the rooms strung out along the balcony and at the window of number four, Louli Barker stood with her bright head in a Tiggy-winkle of curling-pins, drying her hair in the sun. She bobbed back when she saw him and simultaneously Leo Rodd and his wife appeared and, nodding to him, went off down the balcony steps to the terraces, turned to their left and disappeared beneath the bright flowers and twisted grey boughs of the bougainvillea that roofed it in. Deprived of her elegant clothes, she looked unattractively thin: her narrow shanks met the close-fitting legs of her bathing dress like the wooden limbs of an old-fashioned Dutch doll, joining its painted body. Leo Rodd carried a pair of rubber frog-feet and a mask with a small, bent, corked tube for underwater swimming; and over his shoulder was thrown, as though carelessly, a towel which covered the stump of his severed arm. Cockie had observed during their bathe that morning on the beach, the unobtrusive protectiveness with which his wife had gone to the water's edge with him and taken the towel at the moment that he plunged into the sea and let the blue waters close over his disfigurement – meeting him with it again, chucking it casually to him, just as he emerged. He wondered briefly if Leo's new love would be so constantly, so loyally, so ever delicately, at his irritable beck and call: and concluded, without much caring either way, that Louli would be more likely to bestow upon him one of her gay, sweet, careless smiles and say that honestly, ducky, nobody would care two hoots about his arm not being there, so not to fuss …

She emerged at this moment, red head gleaming, restored to its shoulder-length mass of curls, red poppies flaring on a diminutive white satin Bikini bathing suit. She looked at him, he thought, a trifle furtively, standing fiddling with the strap of her brassière. ‘Hallo, Inspector. Have – have the chaps gone on?'

‘Gone on?' said Cockie.

‘To watch La Lane diving.'

‘Oh, I'd forgotten,' said Cockie. At luncheon Vanda Lane, one eye on Leo Rodd, had promised to give an exhibition of her skill. Louli had turned pea green at the bare thought of anyone running out along the high razor-back of the rock and actually looking down – let alone leaping off into the sea; and he was a little surprised that she should contemplate watching the demonstration. He said, however, that yes, Leo Rodd had just gone along, adding, somewhat to his dismay in a faintly warning tone: ‘
And
Mrs Rodd.'

It checked her. She had started to move off without another word but now she stopped abruptly and her hand jerked on the narrow strap. ‘Oh, blast! – now I've split the thing.' She stood looking down uncertainly, chin humped on breast, and finally moved on down the steps, one hand holding the split white satin together, the other swinging a gay red plastic beach bag. He saw the flicker of the red and white Bikini passing under the grey bougainvillea boughs. At the far end of the lower terrace, the Rodds emerged from the jasmine-tunnelled steps leading down to where the rock jutted out from the sea.

Miss Trapp and Mr Fernando appeared, popping out of their doors like a couple of cuckoos from synchronized cuckoo clocks. They presented a curious contrast, he stripped except for a pair of bright orange satin shorts on his narrow hips, enormously broad of shoulder, once-splendid muscle rippling under the sun-burned skin; she with a round rubber bath cap pulled down to her eyebrows, her stockinette bathing-dress almost down to her knees, tripping along, half dead with self-consciousness, at his side. Fernando was evidently concerned to excuse himself for his lack of diving prowess. ‘I am, however, great swimmer, Miss Trapp, Cambridge half-blue for swimming just missed: you see – fine muscles, big torso, very strong …' He hammered his magnificent chest with gorilla arms till his bosoms wobbled like the red-brown jelly from under beef dripping. Mr Cecil, appearing now at Cockie's side, leaned over the rail and watched them go, almost with tears in his eyes. ‘I do think he's rather gorgeous.' In the afterglow of Fernando's sun-tanned splendour, his thin limbs looked like a tangle of over-cooked spaghetti. Under one pallid arm, he carried the precious red attaché case.

Vanda Lane came out of her room. It was extraordinary, thought Cockie, what it did for her to be, even temporarily, exalted over her fellows. In the sea and on the diving-board, she was frankly the admiration of all; she accepted it modestly but in this moment of trifling supremacy, she had lost her air of shrinking evasiveness, of resolute discontent: her face and figure were suddenly boldly handsome, outlined in the close severity of tight black cap and tight, well-fitted black satiny bathing-dress. She wore black rubber shoes and carried a rolled-up wrap of white towelling, and the touch of white against the sheen of the blue-black gave her once again, as on the beach at Rapallo, the look of a swallow, exquisitely poised for flight.