Dolly and the Singing Bird (24 page)

Ogden didn’t trouble to look up. “We’re bound to drift south anyway. There’s quite a chance I can reach the right spot on the shore. Victory out of defeat, eh?” He looked up then, and grinned into our staring faces. “Oh, there’s a risk. But there’s a risk in staying hove-to. I’m going, anyway. And you haven’t much choice, have you?”

“Single-handed?” said Kenneth. I shut my mouth, and so did Victoria. “Won’t you need help with the sails? And relief from the tiller? You don’t suppose any of us is going to help you?” And after a moment he added, “We don’t need you now, you know, Ogden. There are enough of us to keep her afloat until help arrives. Head to wind, we can handle her as well as you can. If you sail, you’ll have to sail her alone.”

There was a long silence. In the quiet, it seemed to me I could hear above the constant movement and splash of the seas an odd and remote murmuring, like the growl of a hungry animal on a hot summer’s day. Then I dismissed it, for Ogden was saying, “Not alone. Tina will help me.” He added amiably, catching Kenneth’s eyes on his ballpoint, “Like it? It isn’t in the shops yet. You could call it a travellers’ sample. Tina, sing to us.”

“
What
?” I, too, lifted my blank gaze from the pen to Ogden’s cynical face. “You’re mad.” It
was
a growling, a low, distant murmur.

“I’m not mad. I just feel like a tune. What about something good and high? The Bell Song. The Doll Song. The Jewel Song. Something with a really nice sharp
cadenza
, with a top note to finish.”

The growl had become a very soft roar. “You
are
crazy.”

“Maybe.” Ogden was still smiling, but one hand was slipping into his pocket and when it reappeared it was holding an automatic, pointing straight this time at Victoria’s heart. “Maybe. Mad enough to tell you to sing, dear. Sing one phrase. One note, even. Sing your party piece, dear. The last
cadenza
in
Lakmé
, with that famous G sharp in alt. Or Rupert’s young dollybird will meet a sad end.”

“Why? No!” And as his fingers tightened on the trigger and Victoria’s white, eye-filled face went rigid with horror: “No!” I added more rationally. “No. All right. But I don’t know if I can strike it. Not after all this. And in any case, I can’t guarantee it exactly: I haven’t got perfect pitch.”

“That’s all right,” said Ogden. “I have. Sing.”

Every coloratura from the beginning of time has recorded the Bell Song from
Lakmé
: I did it in Rome. That was when I first caused a sensation by altering the top
cadenza
from E to G sharp in alt. All the same, it was a good piece of work.

Now, I looked at Kenneth, and at Ogden’s hand hard on the trigger. I drew a long, deep, quelling breath, and I prayed to the gods of ambition and hard work and justice and I felt in all the spaces of my head the high, pure note I had chosen. 1 opened my lips, shaped to the sound of the bell, and I sang the last pointed phrases and the rising notes of the final
cadenza
—and at the top note, I held it.

I sang into silence, and I finished in silence: a long, spreading moment of infinite quiet. Then Kenneth said, his voice unaccustomed and hoarse, “
The note isn’t true
?”

Ogden was smiling. “The pariah’s daughter has a rather flat bell, sweetie. Sing it again.”

I could not move.

The cultured, bodiless voice blandly continued. “You can’t simply let Victoria die? You have the note there, all right. All you must do is produce it. A single tone higher. And if you don’t get it this time, you can try it again. I’ll tell you when you hit it. Or you’ll know when you hit it, won’t you? Won’t you,
cara, carissima dival
”

“Valentina!” It was Kenneth’s harsh voice again. “Sing. For God’s sake sing as he asks you.”

And I could not. Even if that dirty hand tightened and the automatic went off and Victoria lost her life, I would do nothing about it. For I knew, and Kenneth now knew that I knew, that the pen lying so innocently on the bench at Ogden’s far side had much more than solid ink in its case. It was a piece of concentrated, high-power explosive triggered off by a sonic device. It was, in fact, the twin of the pen which last week had exploded inside the
Lysander
. And another copy of Kenneth’s own prototype, which I, Tina Rossi, had abstracted from his locked Nevada laboratory for my principals to photograph and return.

I have never had such a reception in my life for my singing, as I had that night for my silence. Ogden did not shoot Victoria. He waited, the insufferable, interfering fool, until my refusal was established, and all my refusal implied; and then he laughed and dropped the gun in his pocket, and said, “No, Madame Rossi won’t sing. She doesn’t want to explode in mid-ocean. She is hoping to glide homewards soon to those cosy bank accounts and those cinnamon diamonds; to the applause and the adoration and the comforting arms of Dr. Holmes… I underestimated your ambition, Tina. I apologise. I made sure you were going to betray us: I was convinced you were flying to Rum to confide all to your loving friend Kenneth.

“What a loss to the world of music, if our attempt with the mine had succeeded! What a loss to the world of science if Dr. Holmes had killed himself, there in Rose Street, a self-confessed traitor.” His voice was jibing and thin. “You could have continued to work for us then, with no risk of suspicion. If my colleague hadn’t taken Chigwell for Holmes, and killed the wrong man…

“Your assignation was ill-chosen, Tina. We didn’t mean you to be involved in that killing. We didn’t mean you to meet Johnson. Especially we didn’t mean you to meet Johnson…”

I said, through my excellent capped teeth, “Why didn’t you tell me about him? Why didn’t you make yourself known?” and saw that he was smiling. He was truly crazy.

“Haven’t I told you? We didn’t trust you, my dear,” Ogden said.

“But it’s all gone now, Tina, hasn’t it? There’s nothing left for you now back on
Dolly
but handcuffs. So you and I had better make for the mainland, hadn’t we? You see, Dr. Holmes, how I have a helper after all? Ogden’s mate!”

We are kept, we agents, we amateur contact people, as a rule quite separate from each other. In the chain stretching from me to the man who finally passed the ballpoint pen bomb, innocently, as a present, to one of the crew of the fated
Lysander
, I do not know what part Ogden played, and I did not know until Johnson exposed him that Ogden was one of us. On the other hand Ogden it seemed, had all along guessed my identity. I suppose since he found me on board, he had known that he had only to expose me to make of me an ally of necessity. I wondered, a little, why he had held his hand up till now. Either to earn kudos, since I could then continue to operate. Or for blackmail.

It did not now matter. Behind us the roaring was now quite distinct: it was near, and growing second by second louder. “We don’t need this,” continued Ogden, picking up the ballpoint pen between finger and thumb. “Do we? It served its purpose. Let’s confide it to the ocean. Then even if someone ever comes and sings a G sharp in alt. over it, Tina, it still will not explode.” And he rose, turning, to fling it as Victoria screamed.

It is a sickening sight, to see rolling out of the dark a long, black glistening wave, streaming dully with foam, which is advancing steadily along all its length towards you with the whole ocean in storm drawn behind it. I watched it quite without feeling, as if a bad film had intruded on some deep personal grief. Kenneth, I thought, felt the same. He sat limply across the well of the cockpit, his hands loose between his knees, and his gaze resting, almost blank, on my face. He was not seeing me. He was seeing, probably his precious, world-famous
diva
with the candid heart, who rose, unspoiled from her humble beginnings. I am sorry, Kenneth. That was me, too. But Michael was expensive, and although I was against the blackmailing at the beginning, it did permit him to live perfectly happily on his ten per cent. And having seen how easily Michael did it, I found it child’s play, myself, to toy with the grown-up, deeper, better paying end of the game… My God, I have never handled money like it. I was richer than my voice alone could ever have made me. But Michael didn’t know that.

We were sitting there, staring at each other still, when the renewed storm overtook us.

It was Ogden and Victoria who saved
Seawolf
in that first terrible impact when four hands on the helm were hardly enough; and we bucked and rolled in spite of our shorn pole and our sea anchor, with the seas pouring black on our shoulders and sheering down the worn decks in response to our tilt. Then we lifted our heads from the first onslaught of water, and Ogden swung the helm to the new compass point of the wind, while Kenneth began to lurch about cautiously, trimming the remaining scraps of sails, and I went below and restarted pumping. Victoria stayed, taking her orders from Ogden.

I remembered that she knew nothing, even what Ogden was accused of. And what had happened just now was a total mystery to her—except that Ogden somehow was about to shoot her, and that, asked to save her, I refused.

In everything, Victoria was solitary. Slave to the drunks, the leper colonies, the children’s missions, the jobs where no one cares if you have talent or beauty or intelligence or anything but a capacity for unremitting, unsavoury work, she got her satisfaction perhaps from our horrified alarm at her abasement. From that, and the power she wielded. We were very alike. She was calming to work with.

We took turns at the pump, Victoria and I, for a long time. It was not a matter of sailing anywhere: it was a matter once again of staying alive. The Aldis, safely lashed, had been switched off to save electricity and all the ship was quite dark. Kenneth and Ogden in the freezing cockpit spoke very little. One had to shout, against the violence of the new wind. Against its freezing impact, we had no protection. I did not care, at that moment, where Ogden took me.

After a long time, Kenneth came below. I was pumping and retching, for I who was never sick had found that there comes a time when will power and good physique together can do nothing more. He had to touch my arm to make me look up. “You can stop pumping now. It’s moderating a little. We’re sailing.”

It was foolish to hope. I knew Kenneth. But something must have communicated itself to him, for he shook his head sharply. “North. With the tide, towards
Dolly
. The transmitter was working well until just before the mast went, and radio is one of my things. Johnson knows just about where we are… I’ve come for the Aldis.”

My voice did not work very well. I said, “Ogden?” And Kenneth answered, “Ogden is dead.” He talked, and I listened, but I didn’t take in much of it. The temporary boom, it seemed, had broken apart, and since there was almost nothing now on deck to give a handgrip, Kenneth had made Ogden fit on a lifeline before crawling along the side deck to fix it. The motion had been pretty bad, and the lifeline was an old one, rust-eaten at each end by the splices. They had found this out, he and Victoria, after the line broke and Ogden, without even a cry, had tumbled sideways like a large bony doll into the sea, the pixie cap fixed on the long, melancholy cranium. The tape had gone with him. The tape, with the conversation between Ogden and Michael Twiss, in which Michael accused Ogden of spying and Ogden had said—what? about me.

Now we should never know what was recorded. For not even Johnson had heard it. I thought, standing in silence beside Kenneth: now the concrete evidence clearing Kenneth and fixing the guilt for
Lysander
on Ogden has gone. All the other evidence against him and against me, was so far circumstantial. And the only real proof—the trick Ogden played on me with the pen and what followed— was seen only by Kenneth and Victoria,

Victoria even yet did not understand it. Victoria was always, in any case, for the underdog. I drew breath and Kenneth said, in an abominable voice, “Don’t. I can’t bear it.”

So long as there was the fainest chance that I might not be guilty, Kenneth would have loved and protected me: would even, perhaps, against all his own interest, have destroyed Johnson’s tape if he got it from Ogden, unheard.

But not now. He was a man, hell, of Victorian principles.

I didn’t try to dissuade him.

Soon after that, the lights of another boat appeared far away and approached dancing, blinkered by the intervening seas. It was a largish boat, a motor cruiser, and coming from the south, not the north where one would expect
Dolly
or
Binkie
to be. Kenneth, roped round the waist, knelt on the coachhouse roof with the Aldis, and after a moment, their signal replied.

Soon they were alongside; a tow rope passed, and a man in yellow oilskins jumped nimbly aboard to belay it. Then one by one we were guided over the rail and on to the other smooth manicured deck, shining like a well-kept street with its wash of storm spray; its windows glistening and spreading the warm golden light from its plate-glass over the heaving, watery wastes.

Rotund in oilskins, the owner trotted out to greet us. “Madame Rossi! Victoria, my dear! Come in, come in. What an ordeal. What an experience! My, you’ll have something to terrify the old folks back home with! Come along. Hot baths. Hot drinks. Then straight to bed with a bottle. Not that kind of bottle, ha! ha! Though I’d say you deserve it. Come along, sir. We’ve room for you all. Come along; May is waiting inside.”

It was the floating Wimpy Bar. May and Bill Bird with their power yacht
Evergreen
.

I lay for a long time after waking in my warm bunk, watching the sunlight from the porthole casting a golden disc, seamed with watery light, on the panelled walls of my room.

It was very still; and only the remotest swaying beneath me betrayed that we were on water, in some Highland harbour no doubt. I felt, as one must feel after childbirth, peaceful and empty and numb. My recollections of arriving the night before were hazed over with heady fantasies of whisky and steam and the warm anaesthetic of bed. I remembered watching Kenneth talking low to Billy Bird and thinking, I was right. He is giving me up, in all the senses there are. That is the kind of man Kenneth is. With another, I might have persuaded this queer pair to help me. I might have got to the mainland and safely away.

At the time, it did not matter because I knew that bodily I could go nowhere. Now, I was sorry; but only a little. In Kenneth, I had found an honest man, who had been my undoing. In Johnson—I face facts; I admit it—I had found a master. I spit. Oh, I spit.

I lay dreaming, until my dreams were dispersed by a voice I knew: Rupert’s. Speaking very close, perhaps in the next room, with a porthole open near to mine, it said, “We played fair.”

And Kenneth’s tired and roughened by exposure and shouting replied, “You call that playing fair?”

Rupert said patiently, “You must see our side of it, sir. A hell of a lot of people depend on your work. There were other leaks, small ones we did know about. Not your fault, we were convinced, but we never felt we had your full confidence. So, we put you on unscheduled work, and took certain other precautions. And candidly, sir—”

“What?” said Kenneth’s voice sharply.

“You didn’t make it too easy.”

He hadn’t. He had protected me all along; and it had led to the
Lysander
. No wonder, poor Kenneth, you vanished from Rose Street when you found the flat had been bugged by your own people. Kenneth said now, curtly, “You didn’t make it easy for her, either. Hounding her… Spying on her… The only rules she knows are the hard ones she’s been made to live by. Now what chance has she got?”

Rupert said quietly, “You told us the truth about her yourself, sir. First thing this morning.”

“I know. Of course I did. I had to—once I knew what the truth was for certain.”

“It may reassure you to know that we gambled on that.” That was Johnson’s voice, rougher too than I remembered it. Of course
Dolly
had also been sailing all night, with Hennessy and Rupert and Johnson on board. Johnson went on. “You and Tina both wanted the tape for your various reasons. It seemed likely that, having got you together, Ogden would exorcise his anger by telling you all about Tina. Obviously, his powers of persuasion would be greater than mine.”

Kenneth said slowly, “So you meant us to join Ogden on
Seawolf
?”

“Which would fall apart, in the classic phrase, if the termites stopped holding hands. Yes, it was intended. For the risks I made you run, I apologise. But Christ, Holmes! the risks moral and ethical you were running made tonight’s big thrills look pretty small beer… What got into you? Oh, no need to answer. Tina Rossi got into you. And despite this rugged exterior of poor-quality talc, I assure you that after a week of her company, I can quite understand.”

I said aloud, “Thank you, Master.” The efficient, dispassionate voice ran straight on.

“It took them a long time to dig Tina Rossi out of your private life; and having dug her, they flung her at me…” There was a pause. Then Johnson went on. “I said I was responsible for the
Lysander
. In fact, I’m responsible for you. I’m the unofficial witch doctor in this bloody outfit. I’ve no commitments and no boss and no office. But if a key man, somewhere, develops unsavoury habits and starts throwing off stress signs like a Catherine wheel, I’m the bloke they ask to cruise around, painting, before the gunmen have to start moving in. Then, sometimes, the gunmen never need to move in… As when you told us the truth about Tina, of your own accord now.”

“And if I hadn’t told you?” asked Kenneth. The tidy, scientific mind.

“Use your imagination,” said Johnson shortly. “In any case, we had our own evidence long before then. There’s a fellow in Stornoway lit up like a Christmas tree with gold teeth and diamonds who’s told us all we wanted to know about Tina Rossi… I knew her history, of course: she made it her trademark. The rich little poor girl who can’t cry, who feels nothing, who has worked hard and earned her rewards without treading on anyone’s toes.

“I know that, left alone, you feel you could have given her the heart she has lost. I wonder in fact, if you could. You said something just now to Rupert about not making it easy for Tina. But that isn’t the best way for Tina. The best way is to make it hard; and that is what we did, Rupert and I, through all that voyage with
Dolly
. Innocently or not, she was your main worry, we thought. So we set out to discover what she was like; and then to teach her a little about herself. It sounds damned presumptuous. It nearly succeeded. If it
had
succeeded, she would have confessed to clear and save you. But there wasn’t quite enough time, or I hadn’t quite got what it takes… or
she
hadn’t quite got what it takes. It flopped, anyway.”

Rupert’s voice, defending the prestige of his master, broke in against the almost tangible barrier of Johnson’s intention. “She was hard as bloody nails and you know it,” said Rupert, my god-like golden friend Rupert. “As it was, we were afraid, sir, she’d make you her scapegoat. By eavesdropping in the Land Rover, Johnson put paid to that. But that’s not all. She’d have killed Michael Twiss before Ogden did, if she had got to him first, that night on Rum.”

“Michael Twiss? Why Michael Twiss?” Kenneth’s voice was distracted.

“Michael and she were in the blackmail thing together.” Johnson had stepped in, quietly, to break the news to the patient. Dear Johnson. “Selling and photographing papers was her racket solely, however. Twiss didn’t know about it, but she felt it would be convenient to land the blame on his corpse. She had a certain amount of justification in that Twiss had shown distinct signs of wanting to do the same thing to her. She didn’t see the logic of amassing a small fortune to have Michael Twiss walk away with it.”

“She could have had police protection. She could stop him stealing, by law.”

“She could. She tried to safeguard her life, actually, by closing her deposits against him. But the final outcome of any legal case might not have sustained her.”

He paused. He did not, unfortunately, drop dead. He said, “You know the story of how she met Michael Twiss and he became her musical manager? She never told all of it, and neither did he: it would have destroyed the
diva
’s elegant image. But he made one condition, the far-sighted Michael Twiss, when he first became this young, untried girl’s impresario. In the greatest possible secrecy, he married her. Michael Twiss and Tina Rossi were husband and wife.”

There was a long silence. I listened, but Kenneth made no response I could hear. He was probably, like Rupert, rolling over the name on his tongue. Tina Twiss. Damn them.
Damn them to hell
.

I had one other visitor that morning, as I lay sipping my coffee: Victoria. Slipping round the door, dressed in some unsuitable pink chiffon thing of May Bird’s, her hair still uncombed, her feet bare, she stood asking silent permission and then curled up on the chair by my bunk, her hands childishly folded, her gaze childishly direct. She had been crying. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry too. I knew Ogden wouldn’t kill you. It was just a test.”

She said, “He was sick, you know. His people were rotten to him. They set him up with the bare ribs of
Seawolf
, and just dared him to get on with it. He hated them—and all the people with money to spend… He loved his boat,” added Victoria, her voice thickening. “That was the really good part for him. And he got on well with everybody round the coast. They laughed at him, but they liked him. He always had a girl around you know, but he wasn’t interested in us. Just someone he could order around, who would wash his socks and rub his chest when he got his bronchitis… He was getting a lot better with me, I thought. You can’t blame him. I don’t blame anyone… What are you going to do?” asked Victoria.

I don’t know what I should have answered. No, that is not true. I do. But I didn’t get the chance. For the door opened and Rupert appeared, and said briskly and formally, “Good morning. Victoria, Dr. Holmes wants you. Madame Rossi—”

“Rupert?” I said. “Tell me,
is
there a proper bulkhead between this cabin and the next?”

He looked much older than he had done, sailing
Dolly
. He said, still formally, “No. It’s just a partition. Johnson thought…”

“I know just what Johnson thought. And did you think I was as hard as bloody nails, darling Rupert,” I continued sweetly, “when holding my hand back on
Dolly
? I’m beginning to think Johnson’s the only ethical person among you—Don’t go. There’s one thing I must ask you.”

“Ask Johnson.” He already had one foot out of the door.

“No, I want to ask you. Who won?”

He was careful. “Who won what?”

“Who won the race. The race, you idiot. You had a five thousand bet on with Hennessy.”

“Oh.” He had totally forgotten. “I don’t know. Didn’t we abandon it?
Seawolf
’s out of it anyway, using her motor and being towed in the end.
Dolly
didn’t use her engine, except for the bits outside the race at Lochgair and South Rona. It was too damned rough last night: we got way off her, not on—and I don’t think
Binkie
did. Or
Symphonetta
.”

“
Symphonetta
? But we left her at anchor off Rum. Surely you brought Hennessy back with you on
Dolly
?”

“Yes, we did. But the three boys evidently thought they ought to keep up with the old man. They sailed
Symphonetta
hell for leather after us, and came in damned nearly…”

A curious expression had overspread Captain Glasscock’s tanned face. I said encouragingly, “Yes? You came in this morning, after daybreak? By the way, where are we?”

“Tobermory. On the island of Mull. Yes. We came in, all sort of together. We’d all stayed hove-to more or less during the storm, and then
Evergreen
had radioed that she’d pick you up—”

“
Evergreen
? Had she got Dr. Holmes’s S.O.S.?”

“Yes, of course,” said Rupert with some praiseworthy reluctance. “The Birds are colleagues of Johnson’s—did nobody tell you? We’ll be taking you off in about an hour—a boat’s coming from Oban. Anyway…” He returned to his decimating thought. “So when the storm moderated, we went on rather together.
Dolly
sailed well: we got in just ahead of
Binkie
, and
Symphonetta
a little behind. And…

“And I’ve just remembered,” said Rupert simply. “There was a bang as we came into harbour. I thought someone had tripped over a nail in the pier.”

“It was the winning gun,” I offered.

“It must have been,” said the good captain blankly. And a haze of dim, innocent pleasure surrounding him, he went out the door.

I can do this so simply with boys. But then, Johnson wasn’t a boy.

An hour later, dressed in my Ricci suit and sheared beaver jacket sent over from
Dolly
, I stepped out on deck. Below me was
Evergreen
’s speedboat, with two discreet plain clothes men in her, waiting. And over there the ship which would take me to Oban and then to the south for public exhibition and trial.

It need not worry me now, the
Suor Angelisa
I was to do in November with Tolliati, who will not believe his leading oboe is sharp. I did not have to concern myself about the mosquitoes at the Caracalla baths or the long flight to Sydney next year.

Equally, I should not hear from my audiences that year, or the following year, or perhaps ever again, that silence after the
Aushaltung
, when I have finished singing and for seconds, worshipping, they withhold the intrusion of their applause.

I should now be famous as any gutter-child might contrive to be famous. I had made a fatal mistake.

I looked around me. It was high noon and beautiful; the trees and hills all washed green by the storm. From a blue, empty arch the sun blazed down on the bay, and like a flock of silver-toed birds left its track on it. A small class of yachts, at first a thicket of slivers against the deep trees, turned, and became a scatter of slit triangles as they made for their mark. A big steam yacht lay still closed and asleep, with a solitary seaman in overalls swabbing the deck.

There was
Symphonetta
, with her speedboat gone. Hennessy and the rest would be on shore. The boys had shown their mettle and would be proud of it: he might even be proud, with reluctance, of them. Some of his misconduct he had paid for, in diamonds. And there was
Binkie
. Evidence of the Buchanans’ stormy passage was all about: bunk cushions and mattresses drying lay lashed and neatly ranged from back to front of her decking, and strange flags of tea-cloth and towel flew from her rigging. Her bowspit was broken and I saw a tangle of wire still to be mended on deck. She had not got off lightly after all on her self-imposed mission. No one need ever know, I supposed, how tamely the Navy had considered it. Her scars would speak for themselves.

I stirred, and the single man standing waiting for me by the companionway, far down
Evergreen
’s spotless bow, stirred and straightened as well. I had left this to the last, this encounter with Johnson. He had told me indirectly that morning most of what I wanted to know.

It was a morning, I thought, for Sortilège. I had put my hair up in the way Michael had taught me, when I could not have the help of Janine. It was bleached and sticky with salt, but good enough against the tan of my skin. On my suit was a doctor bird in uncut stones and enamel: I had a pearl and enamel dome ring to match. I wondered, as I walked slowly towards him, if Johnson had begun yet to realise what he had done.