The Colonel's Daughter (18 page)

‘Well, I don't know if I'm up to it, Brewer. I mean, with this cold . . .'

‘Course you are. Best thing. Blow the cobwebs away.'

‘Well, are you sure Mr Weissmann doesn't mind?'

‘Absolutely! Told him George was not only an old friend, but a banker. He has the greatest respect for bankers.'

‘It's very kind of you, Brewer . . .'

‘Monica's coming. She's really looking forward to seeing you.'

‘How is she?'

‘Monica? Well, you wait till you see her! I tell you, Beryl, she's a changed woman since we moved here. If you say Woodbridge to Monica now, she can hardly remember what you're talking about!'

‘Really?'

‘Changed woman! But how are you and George finding it? Paradise, eh? Good first impressions, eh?'

Beryl hesitated. She realised the hesitation made her sound somehow ungrateful.

‘I think it's all . . . extraordinary, Brewer. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but I'm sure once we do . . .'

‘You'll never want to go home! Guarantee it, Beryl. Only to pack and get back here as fast as you can. You wait and see. But hats off to George for getting you here, anyway. So look, I'll be round to fetch you at 10.15. Oh, and Beryl, lunch is on us.'

Beryl sat down in the foodless kitchen. It's the kind of day, she thought, when I'm going to find it quite hard to believe anything that's happening.

*

‘I'm new,' George had said to the girl.

‘Yeah?'

She moved the pool vac with a steady, practised motion. George watched her. Her feet were bare. Her legs were long and tanned, the hairs on them golden and flat and unshaven.

‘This is my first morning.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Yes. I was just doing a little, you know, recky.'

‘Pool's okay. I prefer the ocean, though.'

The ocean. The thundering little word struck chords of magnificence in George's willing mind. He saw the girl walking bravely into breast-high surf, hair flying and wet, mouth parted on gleaming teeth. America, he thought. She is vigorous America. He wanted to scoop her and the ocean into his lap.

‘You've got the lot here, I'd say.'

‘Pardon me?'

‘Here. Climate, beaches, comfort, golf, ocean . . .'

‘Yeah, it's okay. I miss the city, though.'

‘The
city
? Do you?'

‘Kind of. People want to learn in the city. Here, they're just all hipped on forgetting.'

George began to walk round the pool. Trying not to stare at the girl, he concentrated on its tiled blue depths.

‘I suppose you do gardening as well? I saw your truck. If I may say so, I think the Palmetto gardens are most attractive.'

He heard her laugh. The young laughter made him feel suddenly old, and he stood still.

‘I'm a qualified landscape architect,' said the girl. ‘I got fired when I had my baby. Gardener was all I could get.'

‘Um,' said George, uneasily, ‘there's a lot of that happening.'

‘Pardon me?'

‘Well, that kind of thing. People over-qualified for the jobs they're doing.'

The girl didn't comment. George allowed himself to look up at her arm, slim but seemingly strong, moving the pool vac. The vigorous brown hair she chose to display in her armpit gave him a feeling both of excitement and of disquiet. Everything, he thought, in this country is utterly unfamiliar to me. I will go home an altered man.

‘So you've got a baby?'

‘Yeah. She's three months now.'

‘A daughter? I have a daughter, Jennifer. She got married this year.'

‘So you miss her, uhn?'

‘Yes. In a way. My wife does.'

‘Your wife with you out here?'

‘Yes.'

‘Great. Well have a nice stay.'

George recognised this as a dismissal. He began to walk slowly towards the pool exit, disappointed that the encounter had had a dull shape. Without identifying what, he knew that the minute he saw the girl he had hoped for something more. He stood, hands in his stiff new pockets, and stared at the roman end of the pool.

‘Bet no one much gets up this early.' he said.

‘No. We do, the gardeners and cleaners.'

‘If I'm not being rude,' George began, ‘I'd very much, I mean very much like to know –'

‘Know what?'

‘Your name.'

The girl held the pool vac still and stared accusingly at George.

‘Want to fly me, or something?'

‘What did you say?'

‘Never mind. I don't give my name, though. Not to strangers.'

*

‘The telephone went,' said a brightly dressed Beryl, who had decided bravely that she wouldn't mention her cold to George. ‘It was Brewer.'

‘Brewer?'

‘Yes, Brewer. We're invited onto Mr Weissmann's boat for the day.'

‘Which day?'

‘Today. Now please let me have the key, George, and I'll go and buy us some bread and what they call jelly for breakfast.'

‘How was Brewer?'

‘Very cock-a-hoop. He said Monica was a changed woman.'

‘Did you agree?'

‘I haven't seen her yet, dear, so how could I agree or disagree?'

‘No. To go on the boat.'

‘Yes. It's very kind of Mr Weissmann.'

‘It's our first day, Beryl.'

‘Well, I know, but Brewer said there's a trip to some fish restaurant and I know you'd like that.'

‘Suppose we can get in a game of golf this evening.'

‘If we feel like it. I mean, after cocktails and lunch and all that, we may want a little sleep.'

‘Oh I won't. We've only got a month, Beryl. We shouldn't waste a second.'

‘Well, we'll see. I'll go and get the breakfast on Square 3, wherever that is.'

‘Easy, dear. Just follow the map.'

When Beryl had gone, George opened the sliding window and sat down on the balcony under the white parasol. Here I am, he thought, like the man in the brochure. In the picture, though, there didn't seem to be any wind. Everything seemed hotter and calmer and much safer than it feels. Slightly breathless from what had been a long walk, he noticed in himself a mildly disturbing sense of unease, a feeling of fright. He slowed his breathing, took gulps of warm air. Careful never to lie to himself about his states of mind, he asked himself, was it the girl, her presence by the pool, her misunderstanding of an innocent, yes innocent question? Had the girl got in the way of contentment? He'd tried to forget her as he'd trod the lush turf of the Palmetto Golf Course, saying to himself she doesn't belong, she's a fugitive from the city, that's it, the Fugitive Kind, giving birth on Greyhound buses, breastfeeding on the freeway, in the subway, no matter where, never belonging with her provoking underarm hair, belonging nowhere, particularly not here, in a guarded village where no one passes without a pass, where the marble maps reassure you every few yards, YOU ARE HERE. Yet he hadn't been able to forget her. The girl and the great wind blowing from the east, they buffeted him and made him feel small.

George got up, crossed to the louvered bedroom cupboards and dragged out the leather bag of golf clubs. He carried them to the balcony and sat for a moment with his arms around them.

*

Brewer Smythe drove a Cadillac. George and Beryl sat beside him in the wide front seat, both wondering but not asking whether the car was Brewer's or Weissmann's.

Brewer was immensely fatter than when last glimpsed, trailing fatigue and failure around his Woodbridge boatyard. But he wore his new flesh proudly, like he might have worn a new suit, set it off with the whiteness of his naval shirt, topped it with a grinning, ruddy face and a naval-style cap gold-inscribed
Nadar III
. Body and uniform said, I've prospered. Freckles had formed on his arms so densely, they merged into a blotchy, chestnut coloured tan. On his wrist, an oversized platinum digital watch seemed put there as a reminder that here was a man to whom time had behaved kindly. Fifty-five now, this was Brewer's fourth year in Florida, working for the rich boat-owners of the most expensive waterways in the world, transforming years of worthless nautical knowledge into a sudden bonanza.

‘Well, Monica's falling over herself!' said Brewer, simultaneously pressing a knob marked ‘window lock' and another marked ‘air'. ‘Faces from Suffolk in our very own Boca Raton! It's hard to believe, honestly it is.'

‘You look ever so well, Brewer,' said Beryl.

‘Me? I'm in the pink. Never happier. Honestly. Best years of my life out here. You wait and see.'

‘What's this Weissmann like?' asked George.

Brewer drew effortlessly into the fast lane of the freeway and accelerated.

‘He's rich, George. I'd never seen wealth like his till I came out here. You wait till you see
Nadar
. And his house. Jesus! I'm not fooling when I say he's got a Picasso in his hallway.'

‘Good to work for, is he?'

‘Man of the world. Married three times. Knows how to treat people. We'd be nowhere, Mon and me, without someone like him.'

‘What do you do for him exactly, Brewer?' asked Beryl. ‘I mean, I know you're his kind of captain, but is all you do is look after his boat?'

‘I provide a service, Beryl,' announced Brewer. ‘I think today will give you a fair impression of the service I provide. Men like Weissmann, people in the art and business field, don't have the time or the knowledge for practicalities; they want leisure to run smoothly, you understand what I mean? So he relies on me. Total trust. Absolute round-the-clock responsibility. And that's what I'm paid for.'

Off the freeway after a few miles, the Cadillac was ambling now along a series of identical avenues of houses, low, detached and white, or built of sandstone blocks, each with a sloping front garden, tarmac driveway and wrought-iron gates leading to patios and swimming pools. Palms dwarfed the houses everywhere. ‘You can travel,' Brewer informed George and Beryl, ‘from your back garden to the ocean through the Florida canals. Unique in the world, and we've done it in
Nadar III.
Extraordinary, eh?'

‘Cracking,' said George.

Their arrival at
Nadar'
s mooring was awkward. Monica, in slacks and shocking-pink silk shirt and rattling with charm bracelets, mouthed an enthusiastic silent welcome to George and Beryl, while Weissmann, perched like a beady little penguin at the forward controls of the bulky boat, stared at them sullenly. Near to the thrice-married, sixty-year-old Weissmann was a fat, huge-eyed boy of ten, who also stared, sucking gum, with the brazen stare of the uniquely pampered.

Beryl looked up cautiously and smiled at Weissmann. His face remained impassive. Beryl turned to Brewer for help. Brewer, dwarfed by the boat, seemed momentarily to have lost both bulk and bounce.

‘Mr Weissmann,' he said politely, ‘may I present my good friends from England, Mr and Mrs Dawes – George and Beryl.'

‘Welcome aboard,' said Weissmann, flatly. His accent was pure Germanic, almost unmixed with Yankee. He put a hirsute arm on the boy's rounded shoulder and announced, still unsmiling: ‘This is my son, Daren. You see my boat is named
Nadar
. Daren is one half of
Nadar
. Daren is
Dar
. The
Na
piece of it comes from my wife's name. Nadia. Unfortunately, Nadia is in Paris, so Daren is stuck with his old Daddy, aren't you, Choots?'

‘Choots' didn't reply at once, but continued to gaze blankly at George and Beryl.

‘It's very kind of you, Mr Weissmann,' began Beryl.

‘No, no,' said Weissmann, ‘friends of Brewer's from England, this is the least we can do, eh Choots?'

‘Daddy,' said Choots, ‘are you going to pay for their lunch?'

*

‘Do you want to handle her today, Mr Weissmann?' called Brewer from the aft controls, as he swung the boat out into the wide canal.

From the front cabin, where George and Beryl waited silently with Monica, you could just glimpse the enormous metal and plastic chair on the upper deck where Weissmann sat, a complex control panel laid out in front of him. Choots stood disconsolately beside him.

Monica whispered, ‘Brewer has to be ever so careful. It's a new boat, you see, and Mr Weissmann hasn't quite got the hang.'

‘I'll handle her,' Weissmann called back to Brewer, ‘then when we get to River Kingdom, you take her in.'

‘Okay, Sir. She's all yours, then. I'll do the cocktails.'

‘Good. No cocktail for Choots today,' and here began a tremor of a smile in Weissmann's voice, ‘he's too young.'

Brewer turned to George and Beryl who were now both looking at Monica. Monica was indeed a changed person. Like Brewer, she seemed to have undergone a colour metamorphosis. They remembered a faded, brown-shod woman with greying hair and an illusive, apologetic smile. What now confronted them was a blonde with shiny, tanned face, wearing Italian white sandals and azure eye shadow. The smile had broadened, found confidence. The voice, when she eventually began to talk to them, had taken on enough American vowel-richness to alter it greatly. It was, in fact, difficult to believe that this was Monica. Brewer put his arm round his wife and offered her proudly for inspection. ‘Looking neat, eh? Looking terrific, isn't she?'

‘I wouldn't have recognised you, Monica,' said Beryl.

Monica beamed, let Brewer smack a kiss on her blonde head.