Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird (24 page)

“Yes,” said Johnson. “It’s not only possible, it is certain. The question being, naturally, which two?”

I went to bed almost immediately afterward. Whichever two they were, they had to be brilliant golfers. Otherwise it just wouldn’t be my bloody luck.

I awoke to cloudless skies and a thoughtful breakfast tray, followed rather tentatively by the Begum, who sat erect at the foot of my bed and said: “Everyone is quite well and Sir Bartholomew has had a splendid night I am told. Beltanno dear, I expect you want to call the whole golf match off?”

I said, “If I don’t marry, will you really walk out on my father?”

She gazed at me for quite a long time from those painted eyes. At length: “Yes,” she said.

“And tell everyone who Johnson is?”

This time the silence was longer. “No,” she said.

“That wasn’t what you said downstairs yesterday.”

“If I had,” said the Begum, “you wouldn’t have agreed to the match.”

“And you wanted me to agree to it? To have my husband picked out by his putting?”

“Yes,” said the Begum with disarming simplicity. “I want you and James Ulric to discover that you can’t control one another by force any more. Will you do it, Beltanno? Now you’ve had time to consider?”

“Try,” I said heavily, “and keep me away.”

The morning dragged. Sergeant Trotter sailed off to Great Harbour Cay to measure the ground for the unspeakable MacRannoch Gathering. Wallace Brady ostensibly went swimming and was actually found at the back of the orchid wood with a driver and a bucket of golf balls. Krishtof Bey posed by the swimming pool for Johnson until I walked past by accident, upon which he jumped to his feet and leaped around me, finishing in a one-footed arabesque with both my hands pinned to his bosom.

When I protested, he assembled himself back in the normal standing position and said, “I am behindhand with my mating proposal. Is there a standard form of wording particular to the MacRannochs, or may I express it in the universal language of the dance?”

“Can you play golf?” I said.

He could. I let him dance around me for a bit, and then went to look for my father.

I found him with a bag of golf balls by the flamingo pond. I went away without speaking, and made sure that the Begum had put his nose filters into his suitcase. I had a feeling he was going to need them.

Then I went to my room with the Chinese vase and the white bearskin carpet, and packed my own suitcase for Great Harbour Cay. My fate was going to be decided there this afternoon, and I wasn’t going to miss it.

MY FATHER is a man of firm prejudices, and has driven many a sociologist out of his mind on a golf course. He has a swing like a flail forage harvester which can carry a British ball 260 yards and an American one 3 feet, still teed up on its divot. James Ulric dislikes American balls. James Ulric dislikes hundred-yard tees and large greens with five pin positions. He doesn’t like big trees in his way. He doesn’t like soft sculpted sand traps, which he likes to call bunkers; or Old Man Par, whom he refers to as Bogey. He doesn’t like conspicuous golf wear but neither does he like to be heated, so my father walks around a golf course wearing long, seated shorts, tennis shoes, and a white jockey cap a trifle too large for him. Today, as a concession to Hymen, he had put on a shirt.

We were all nervously jocular, there on the terrace in front of the Great Harbour Cay golf club. Stepping ashore from the restored splendors of
Dolly
, we had enjoyed iced drinks on the club sun deck while Johnson made a necessary trip to see Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, and Wallace Brady went off to check our golf carts and booking.

James Ulric was grumbling, I remember, because it was later than planned through Johnson’s delay in bringing around
Dolly
.

I thought it a little unfair, since after all, he had had to sail her single-handed with Spry gone. Then I realized that James Ulric would have grumbled in just the same way before playing Toulouse Lautrec at lawn tennis. My father likes to be certain of winning.

Wallace Brady on the other hand was thoughtfully silent both before and after his absence, and Krishtof Bey concealed whatever he was feeling by paying shameless compliments to the Begum. Mr. Tiko, whom I had seated as far as possible from my father, discoursed a little distractedly on how to rake a Zen garden. We were all, I think, thankful when the time came to walk down to the terrace with our golf clubs, where Johnson soon joined us.

Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, we gathered, was still in good health, and his arm was making sound progress. My father cleared his throat. “Trotter tells me you’re calling the police in this evening. About time, too. If that man Edgecombe’s an Intelligence agent, I’m not surprised the Russians are everywhere.”

The Begum Akbar gazed at him severely. “You don’t read enough thrillers,” said Thelma. “Of course he is being attacked by enemy agents, and he has volunteered to remain so that his colleagues may trap them. The island is probably full of M.I. Five at this moment.”

“Planting the bloody palm trees heads down,” said my father. “I know the Civil Service. And I say call the police. You know that fellow Harry? I had a talk with him just before coming away. He says you were all nearly killed on
Dolly
yesterday morning.”

There is a limit to the length of time even a broker may be anaesthetized. The failure to blow up
Dolly
had been a public act which had forced Johnson’s hand no less than the murderer’s. There had been five people on board
Dolly
, and not all of them were going, as I had, to make stupid promises of silence. With Harry awake and Trotter restless and the rest of us thoroughly alarmed, the private stalking bit was going to stop, as of this evening. Either Johnson got results or Sir Bartholomew was going to be whipped off to safety and the chances of finding the culprit had vanished forever.

And I didn’t see, frankly, how Johnson was going to get results during a golf match with Sir Bartholomew safely under guard in his house. Unless I was wrong, and not all of his suspects were going to take part in the golf match? For example —

“Good afternoon all,” said Sergeant Trotter, beaming across the bridge to the terrace. “I heard you were foregathered for a historic occasion. Any room for a little ’un?”

My father’s face was a remarkable blend of unnatural courtesy strongly tinctured with blatant hostility.

“Not as a candidate: no, no!” went on Sergeant Trotter, with speed. “A great admirer and all that, but the rover type I am. No. But a cracking good golf game, now: that I should like to see. If nobody has any objection?”

Wallace Brady, Krishtof Bey, and my father were silent. Mr. Tiko bowed. The Begum said, “Not at all. Come along. Johnson and I are going to watch, too. How shall we pair off the golf carts? James, shall I drive for you?”

The carts were standing two by two with their blue and white canopies, freshly out from the feeding grounds. The Begum, peach colored tissue fluttering, took the leading one beside the white-hatted person of my father. Mr. Tiko, bowing, led the way to the next and invited Sergeant Trotter to take the high wheel while he strapped on his golf bag. Johnson, in a creased khaki bush shirt, said to Krishtof Bey, “Come on. They call me the Devil of Brooklyn,” and they got into the third. I looked at Wallace Brady.

“Well?” he said. He was looking rather presentable, in a chalk-striped cream tunic and trousers, which set off his tan. He said, “Can you stand it? I feel it gives me an unfair advantage — to sit beside my incentive.”

“I can stand it,” I said. Conversation became suddenly full of unnatural pitfalls.

Brady strapped on his golf bag and came to sit beside me on the white passenger seat. He said, “Edgecombe’s got you in a hole, hasn’t he? I guess since the whole story is going to be bust wide open this evening, this must be Sir Bartholomew’s last chance to pull off a capture. And I’d further guess this golf game is no accident. He thinks one of us is trying to kill him still, doesn’t he? Trotter, Krishtof, or me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. The other three carts had set off before us, rolling silently down the smooth slope.

“I think he does,” said Brady. I moved my foot slowly onto the right starter pedal, and he laid his hard hand over mine on the steering wheel. “No. Don’t go yet. I tell you, I don’t believe Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe is lying there in his home, surrounded by a thicket of bodyguards. I’d give even money that before this game is finished, we see him out on the golf course.”

“I don’t know,” I said again, rather dimly. “But I can tell you one thing. It was never like this at North Berwick.”

He laughed, and took his hand off the wheel. “No. It sure has its own brand of gamesmanship,” Brady said. “And I’m as mixed up over it all as you are. But I wanted to say one thing, Beltanno Douglas MacRannoch. Whoever wins this game, remember I want to marry you. And remember, if you don’t want to marry me, you just have to say so.”

It was a gallant offer, and I was grateful for it. I thanked him and set the cart in motion, white fringe jogging, down the broad pale path under the palm trees, and up to the bright, fresh-sprayed green of the No. 1 tee.

The first hole at Great Harbour Cay is a goodish par 5, followed by a short par 3 and a nasty par 4. By the time we all reached hole No. 4, all conversation in my wing of the convoy had stopped. Krishtof Bey, when he remembered, was still deploying a few flamboyant gestures for Johnson, but he didn’t remember so often. Mr. Tiko’s golf cart was silent because Mr. Tiko was not a talkative man. Only in cart No. 1 did disharmony ring to the skies, borne on a threatening gale of inspirational rhonci, as James Ulric consigned American golf to the abyss. Mr. Tiko was winning.

Mr. Tiko was winning because he was, self-evidently, a brilliant player who had no need now to moderate his game to the emotional demands of a Lady Edgecombe. With disbelief, we observed him drive off in his neat navy blue sweater and trousers, knees flexed, shoulders and stance parallel to the exact line of flight. Then his No. 1 would come back like a bird. He would hang there a moment, eyes on the ball, left shoulder tucked neatly under his neat chin. Then the club head would sweep down,
whee-whack
, and the ball disappear.

No. 4 hole was a dog-leg ending just by the commercial plane runway. Mr. Tiko placed himself nicely just over halfway down center fairway, and with his second shot pitched his ball like a peppermint drop exactly onto the green. Wallace Brady, demoralized, landed in the long, pale trap in front of the green and stayed there doing explosive shots with a sand wedge. Krishtof Bey, after an inspired drive, overplayed his approach shot and landed in the other trap at the back of the green, from which he took a chip and two putts to extricate himself.

My father’s performance I am ashamed to set down on record. Standing spider knees planted, he took off like a Hawker Harrier at every roar from the airport, and hit fades and banana shots with equal mismanagement. Arrived on the green, he pursued the ball around the pin as if it had black lace underwear and finally sank it at nine. I could hear him shouting as he stumped off to his chariot; he got into it like a man who has just noticed Charlton Heston arrive in the paddock. The Begum leaned over and plugged in his nose filters. Being my father’s mistress is not all fast living and glamour. We all moved around to hole No. 5.

I will not pretend that every hole was as abysmal as this. Each of Mr. Tiko’s three competitors recovered in some slight degree from the initial shock of appalled recognition. Wallace Brady steadied up to the level I had become acquainted with on Paradise Island. Krishtof Bey was inspired by a different genius and became more fantastic: pitching, cutting, hitting great cracking drives which either landed him in black disaster or, as in hole No. 6, gave him an unheard-of, against-the-wind hole in one.

Coming back to his golf cart and Johnson, he flung his arms around the black hair and bifocals, as I remember, and embraced Johnson warmly on either impassive cheek. “The angels carried it for me,” said Krishtof Bey. “I have personally shot an eagle. Will you inform Reuter’s, or shall I?”

But Mr. Tiko got a birdie, and was still leading with four holes to two. We left the sea and carried our partners inland with our backs to the wind; past the clutch of Least Grebes in the lake where my father drowned two of his balls and had to be restrained by Sergeant Trotter from following them; past the half-built houses where languid figures sprawled with a tilting hammer, looking down on Mr. Tiko’s par 4, and Wallace Brady’s breathless long putt to equal it.

My father had found the white golfer’s aid and was busy brushing his ball in the warm soapy water and toweling it. When I think of the price, I often feel like doing the same, but in Scotland this is viewed as a weakness. In James Ulric’s case, it merely made the ball roll about better, in no special direction. The game labored inexorably on and we labored with it: we four supporters in our blue and white carriages; separating during play; edging down the fairway after our partners; lifting them, exhausted, from one dark nesting place to the next, and silently, from the defeat of one green to the ever-blossoming hope of the following tee.

Anyone betting on Mr. Tiko that day however would have been onto a pretty safe thing. As the afternoon wore on, it became safer and safer; and by the time we reached hole No. 12, the shadows were lying long and blue on the brilliant grass, and it was all too clear that whatever happened, Mr. Tiko had won. I sat in my empty golf cart behind Johnson and Trotter and the Begum and glanced backward at the dark shuttered windows of Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe’s house and ahead up the steep incline to No. 13, where eight days ago his wife Denise had met her death. It was, I suppose, an appropriate spot at which to bury my spinsterhood.

On the green, his three rivals were grouped around Mr. Tiko and my father was arguing. I suppose that Krishtof Bey and Wallace Brady wanted to abandon the game and my father wanted to finish. So far as I could see, it was only of academic interest whether Krishtof or Wallace came second. Neither the police nor my father was going to declare Mr. Tiko’s win null. Perhaps my father thought that when it came to the crunch, I would back out myself. If so, he was wrong. Once and for all, James Ulric was going to learn not to interfere in my affairs. James Ulric was going to have a Japanese son-in-law.

Johnson got out of his golf cart and ambled in the direction of my father’s white cap. After a moment he left him and came over to me. Behind him the sky was a pale, tender blue, whitening toward the horizon, and the setting sun shone round and red in his bifocals. He said, “Brady and Krishtof Bey have decided to go on. Are you flattered?”

“By an exhibition of the male competitive spirit?” I said bitterly. It was past six o’clock and the light was failing already.

“It’s the athletic atmosphere,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, your father also wants to go on. His reasoning is perfectly simple. If he wins five out of the remaining six holes, he will come in second.” He paused. “On the other hand, if Krishtof wins the next two holes, your father is out of the reckoning. Would you consider that, in view of his asthmatic history, the Begum should then take him home?”

“That isn’t history,” I said. “It’s a current event. I can hear his F.E.V. rising from here.” The roseate glasses did not alter. I got my brain working and said, “You want my father out of here in two holes?”

“Right,” said Johnson.

I looked at him, and then at my bag, which lay beside me on the white seat. The Frommer still nestled inside it.

“Right,” said Johnson again, though I hadn’t spoken. “And I want you and the Begum to go with him.”

Wallace Brady was walking toward us. Ahead, Krishtof Bey was sliding into his golf cart, the pink Bulgar blouse luminescent in the coppery sunset. “No, thank you,” I said. “I think I’d like to see the game through.”

“Beltanno—” said Wallace, and stopped when he saw Johnson.

Johnson removed the frown from his face. “She knows,” he said. “Medical advisor to Matsushita electric.”

Wallace said, “Beltanno, there are limits to what a nice girl will do just to spite her old man.”

“I am going to marry Mr. Tiko,” I said. I think I spoke between my teeth.

“Are you surprised?” said Johnson calmly to Brady. “Remember, James Ulric’s her father.”

Wallace Brady, clearly, was thinking about it. “I’m not surprised,” he said at length, gloomily.

“I know,” said Johnson. “You thought you were integrating vertically, Brady my boy. But it’s lateral thinking nowadays, you know. Broad, lateral thinking. And there are a hell of a lot of MacRannochs once you start looking around you.” He clapped my suitor’s chalk stripe on the shoulder. “Good luck, cat,” said Johnson gravely. “Get out there and slay them.”