Bahamarama, page 10
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
“Neat, right?” he said.
“Neat,” I said.
The Barbancourt wasn’t nearly as sweet as Mount Gay. It was smoky and smooth, hardly any bite at all. Dangerous stuff. I felt like I could drink about a gallon of it. Pacing was clearly in order. Too bad I am a lousy pacer.
I nodded to a couple sitting next to me. They introduced themselves—the Something-or-Others from Somewhere. He was a doctor. She was a doctor’s wife. Lovely place, isn’t it? Yes, it is. We’ve been coming here for years. Me, too.
“What line of work you in?” asked Dr. Something-or-Other.
“No line,” I said.
“Retired?”
“Mmmmm,” I said.
“Lucky you.”
“Mmmmm,” I said again.
The people on the other side of me were four couples from Charleston, South Carolina. The women all wore Lilly Pulitzer dresses and were drinking white wine. They were talking about the last trip they had taken together, to Bermuda. The men were partners in the same law firm. They were drinking bourbon, talking about mutual funds, and wore blue blazers just like mine. Yep, I fit right in.
I asked Mr. Pindle for another Barbancourt, and I took it and stepped over to one of the salon windows and looked up the hill to the cottage. The lights were off, no sign of Barbara. When I returned to the bar, Chrissie and Charlie Hineman were there, talking to Dr. and Mrs. Something-or-Other and the Charleston crowd.
The Hinemans had been managing the Albury Beach Club for nearly ten years, since about the time I first started visiting Harbour Island. Chrissie was big and loud and bosomy, but in a good way. The bigness (she was almost as tall as me), the loudness (it was operatic), the bosomyness (we’re talking grand tetons), all of it worked for her in a manner that was charming, sort of like a chunkier version of Julia Child. Chrissie had taught Renaissance poetry at Duke, but she wasn’t a stuffy academic. She was a born conversationalist, someone who seemed to know a little something about everything. I once stayed up half the night at the bar with her discussing the coral reef ecology of the Indian Ocean, while she matched me rum for rum and offered a brief discourse on how the small distilleries of the French West Indies turned out a more traditional and pleasing product than those of Barbados, where they had been swallowed up by big liquor corporations like Hennessy.
Chrissie was the extrovert in the marriage, the Albury Beach Club’s p.r. department, the force that kept the clients happy, and kept them coming back. Not only did she remember the names of all the guests, but she knew the names of their kids and their grandkids, where they all came from, and what they all did, and who preferred Miles Davis on the salon stereo, and who preferred Buffett. Charlie Hineman had retired from Delta after thirty years as a pilot and stayed mostly behind the scenes at the Albury. He made sure the plumbing worked and the gardeners kept the hedges trimmed and the food order arrived on the daily boat from Nassau. He was strong-jawed and handsome and played tennis every day, mostly with female guests whose husbands were off fishing. Other, lesser, men in his position might have enjoyed occasional, discreet post-match dalliances—Charlie certainly looked like a ladies’ man—but he only had eyes for Chrissie.
“Oh, Zachary, come here to me this instant,” trilled Chrissie, giving me a kiss and a bear hug, and not spilling a drop of her champagne.
I shook hands with Charlie Hineman.
“Zack,” he said, which was about as much as Charlie Hineman ever said. A pleasant guy, just quiet.
“Where’s Barbara?” asked Chrissie.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
Chrissie gave me a funny look, but didn’t say anything. She pulled me into the circle of people at the bar. I stood around doing my best to keep up my end of the banter, mostly by smiling and saying “Mmmm” when it seemed appropriate, and being as agreeable as I could manage to be, which wasn’t very.
Where the hell was Barbara, anyway?
19
After a few minutes of playing party hostess, Chrissie Hineman took me aside.
“You look like the canary who swallowed the cat,” she said.
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“Neither am I, but you are clearly uncomfortable and your mind is elsewhere, Zachary.”
“Guess I’m just anxious to see Barbara, that’s all.”
“And you would probably prefer seeing her alone, just the two of you, and not standing around this bar making small talk.”
“Mmmm,” I said.
Chrissie turned her back to the crowd at the bar and lowered her voice.
“Was that you I saw just before sunset, carrying Lord Downey from the beach?”
Yes, I told her, it was. Then I told her how I’d come across him struggling in the water and how I had delivered him into the very capable hands of Clarissa Percival.
“That poor, poor man. That makes at least the sixth or seventh time he has wandered off in the last couple of weeks.”
“He’s getting old.”
“Old, hell. It’s the daughter. He’s worried sick about her.”
“Burma?”
“Yes, do you know her?”
“Only by name.”
“Well, surely you’ve heard about her.”
“No. Clarissa Percival mentioned her. But other than that . . .”
“Zack, where have you been?” Chrissie immediately caught herself, and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No problem. I didn’t take it like that.”
“What I meant was, Burma Downey is, well, I don’t know any other way to put it except to say she is notorious. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of her,” said Chrissie. “But then I must admit that I do follow these things a bit more closely than others might.”
During her years on-island Chrissie Hineman had become a devoted Anglophile. She read all the London newspapers and immersed herself in the minutiae of British royalty and titled folk, several of whom had homes on Harbour Island.
“Burma is Lord Downey’s only child. Came very late in his life. I believe it was with his fourth wife, Lady Paula, just before she died in that plane crash in Kenya. Lord Downey’s a dear, but he has always been something of a libertine himself, and I rather doubt he raised Burma with anything that even came close to resembling a firm hand. Which would explain a lot.”
“Like what?”
“Like if you’ve got the rest of the evening, Zachary, then I might be able to tell you about a tenth of it. Burma Downey had a short run as a fashion model. Did the whole thing—sex, drugs, and total excess. She’s the original wild child, that one.”
“Maybe she has a ‘Boy Named Sue’ complex.”
“Say what?”
“The name. How would you like to be called Burma? Good thing her father isn’t Lord Shave.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Burma—I think it’s rather exotic. It was quite the thing amongst all those upper-class British gents who served abroad and did their damnedest to prop up the Empire. Named their daughters after the places where they did battle, or where they were stationed, or where they once had a rubber plantation or something.”
“What did they name their sons after?”
“Themselves for God’s sake. All Nigels and Phillips and Johns. But the girls—I know of at least three Indias, a couple of Chinas, and one Rangoon.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. The Rangoon even goes by ‘Goonie.’”
“Ah, may there always be a Britain.”
“Burma Downey is the one who had the affair with Celia Ashton a few years back.”
“Sorry, I’m blanking on that one, too.”
“Well, at the time, Celia Ashton was the chancellor of the exchequer’s wife,” said Chrissie. “Meantime, the chancellor was cavorting with choirboys in a closet. Or so that rumor goes.”
“Burma Downey’s a lesbian?”
“She can be.” Chrissie let it ride, sipped her champagne. “She’s had some very public affairs with men, too. I don’t think it really makes much difference to her one way or the other.”
“How veddy, veddy British,” I said.
“Burma is also the one who, shortly after all the sordid details about her and Celia Ashton were aired out in The Sunday Telegraph, posed for Tatler on the front stoop at No. 9 Downing Street, draped in the Union Jack and wearing nothing but her birthmarks. I suppose she must have been off-island the last time you and Barbara were here or you would definitely remember her. She always went topless down on the beach. Not a bit of decency.”
“Appalling.”
“Oh, spare me.”
I caught Mr. Pindle’s eye and signaled for another drink. Chrissie wiggled her glass for a refill, too.
“Burma used to shuttle quite a lot between here and South Florida. Quite the club girl, always bringing back some of her club friends and putting them up for weeks on end at the house here. A very rough trade they were, too. Not nice people at all. Then came the accident.”
“Accident?”
“Yes, in Fort Lauderdale, I believe it was. A collision. Must have been six weeks or so ago. The details are a bit sketchy, but the Island Voice ran a front page piece about it. Burma suffered broken bones, horrible lacerations, a crushed larynx. Lost her voice and everything. Whether it’s permanent remains to be seen. She’s confined to a wheelchair. And heaven knows how many plastic surgeons have struggled to put her back together again. She’s at the house here now, recuperating, still covered in bandages.”
“And that’s what has Lord Downey all torn up.”
“That, and the fact—from what I hear, anyway—that Burma won’t have anything to do with him. Ignores him completely. Wheels herself out the moment he steps into the room.”
One of the dining room servers, a young woman in a starched white uniform with a pale blue collar, came to the door by the bar and tinkled a tiny brass bell. The 8 P.M. call to dinner. The crowd at the bar began filing to their tables.
“Come,” said Chrissie, ushering me toward the dining room. “You and Barbara will be sitting with Charlie and me tonight.”
“Look, if you don’t mind . . .”
Chrissie stopped. She smiled.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Zachary. You’d probably prefer to wait out here for her, have a moment for yourselves before you join us.”
I nodded.
“Ah, sweet boy, you are smitten, aren’t you? Well, it’s good to see, good to see.” Chrissie gave me a peck on the cheek. “I can only think that Barbara might have gotten caught up in something down at the Bahama Sands. I understand they were finishing the shoot today and perhaps she might have spotted the crew a drink at the bar. Shall I call down there for you and see?”
I told her no, I’d just sit in the salon and wait, maybe go check the room again if Barbara hadn’t shown up in a few minutes. Mr. Pindle arrived with our drinks and Chrissie went off to join Charlie in the dining room. I took a chair in the salon, flipping through magazines, not even paying attention to what magazine I was flipping through, sipping the Barbancourt much faster than I should have been sipping it.
Wonderful aromas wafted from the dining room. The evening’s menu was posted outside the dining room door and I got up to look at it. Pan-seared snapper with toasted couscous. Barbecued breast of duck with peanut-whipped potatoes. Grilled double-thick veal chop with vegetable tart. I would have to order one of everything. Couldn’t risk insulting Chef Ludo.
Mr. Pindle was no longer tending bar, so I poured a rum for myself. I found my name on the bar sheet and made another mark under the “Brand Name” column. That made four rums—four big rums. And not much in the way of food. I was pacing myself, it was just a fast pace. I was definitely feeling it, all giddy and pretty and gay.
My ass . . .
I was antsy and grouchy and tired of sitting around. I walked outside and up the hill to the cottage. No one there, just as I’d left it. I drained the last of the Barbancourt and headed for the Bahama Sands.
20
I took the back way to the Bahama Sands, cutting behind the Albury’s tennis courts and following Barrack Street as it wound north, buffering the other beachfront properties—big homes and small hotels and a few vacant lots that were on the market for more money than I would ever see. Barbara wasn’t one to walk alone on the beach at night. And the only other way to get between the Albury and the Bahama Sands was to follow Barrack Street.
I walked past the Coral Inn and the Castaway Beach Club. I walked past a big yellow French Provençal house owned by a famous clothing designer and past a giant Mediterranean-style villa that belonged to a former co-owner of the Tampa Bay Bucs. Barrack Street skirted the edge of Dunmore Town, the only town on Harbour Island. It was hopping on Saturday night, at least as much as it can hop. A small crowd of young men and women stood around a Honda Civic wired for sound with two bass-thumping speakers blaring from its open rear hatch. Little kids zipped around on shiny scooters. The Faith in Jesus Victory Tabernacle Church carried on its gospel sing-in with the windows and doors thrown open and a choir of twenty belting out hymns backed up by electric guitars, piano, trumpets, and tambourines. And the take-away shops did brisk business—the proprietors dipped up fried fish and cracked conch from sizzling cast iron skillets, spooned out mounds of peas ’n’ rice, and plopped everything into Styrofoam containers for their customers. I was sorely tempted to chow down, but I was a man on a mission.
I walked past Briland Bakery, which also doubled as the ice cream shop. The kid in the Miami Heat T-shirt, the one who had carried my bag from the water taxi, was sitting outside by himself. He held the nub of an ice cream cone that was melting faster than he could lick it. I nodded at him and he leapt up, polishing off the cone and wiping his hands on his shirt. He fell in step beside me, saying, “Hey, Mr. Big Man, you need a guide?”
“A guide for what?”
“To get where you’re going.”
“I know where I’m going.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Bahama Sands.”
“I’ll guide you there.”
I smiled and he smiled back, the scammee acknowledging the scammer.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Nixon.”
“Nixon? Like the president?”
“No,” Nixon said. “Like me.”
“How old are you, Nixon?”
“Soon be thirteen.”
“You get paid more for being a guide than you get for carrying bags?”
“Uh-huh. Being a guide, I tell you all about the history. Now, see, what we are walking through, this is Dunmore Town.”
“I know that.”
“Yeah, but you know when it was founded?”
“No, I don’t.”
“That’s why you need a guide.”
“OK, you’re hired.” I stuck out my hand and he slapped it. Deal sealed.
Then Nixon said: “It was founded in 1713.”
“So who was Dunmore?”
“You mean why they call it Dunmore Town?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, you see, the slaves that came here, they were freed slaves, they named it that. The first one got off the boat, he looked around and he said: ‘They shoulda done more to fix up this scruffy-ass town than they did.’”
Nixon glanced at me to see if it got a laugh. It did.
Then he said, “Dunmore was this Englishman used to be governor of the Bahamas. Back then, Dunmore Town was bigger than Nassau, used to be the capital of all the Bahamas. Nassau wasn’t nothing. Except it had a big fort, Fort Montagu, built in 1741, oldest fort in the Bahamas. Then came the Revolutionary War and the Americans, they captured Fort Montagu. So this group of Brilanders, about fifty of them, they got in their ship and they sailed to Nassau and they attacked the fort. There was about two hundred of them Americans and the Brilanders they whipped hell out of them and got the fort back. You American?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, the Brilanders they whipped hell out of the Americans, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“That’s because your history books don’t tell that story, do they? But it’s true. You can look it up. Whipped hell out of them.”
“I believe you.”
“I read all the history books. Then I give it my own special sauce.”
“You been in the guide business long, Nixon?”
“Just started tonight,” he said.
Barrack Street narrowed as it neared the Bahama Sands, the road dark, the undergrowth thick on both sides.
“Look out for the holes,” said Nixon. “This road’s all broke up.”
I followed him, making my way carefully. The four rums didn’t help my surefootedness. We aimed for the spotlights on the Bahama Sands’ stone arch entry, then walked up the driveway to where a pair of uniformed security guards stood on either side of the double front door. I gave Nixon a five dollar bill. He studied it on both sides and then stuck it in a pocket.
“You want, I can wait here and guide you back.”
“Nah, that’ll be alright, Nixon.”
“I know lots more than what I told you,” he said. “I know everything there is to know about this island.”
“I bet you do.”
“You need guiding, then you come get me.”
I shook his hand good-bye and told him I would keep him in mind for all my guiding needs. He smiled and took off running.
21
Bahama Sands was an outpost of hipness, part of a chain of boutique properties in the Caribbean owned by an Italian sportswear mogul turned hotelier. All the pretty people stayed here—fashion models, fashion photographers, rock stars, actors, agents, producers, and plenty of others pretending to be one of the above.
I walked through the reception area. It didn’t really look like a hotel reception area. It looked more like a Soho art gallery. Huge canvases hung on the walls, the paintings all variations on a theme of beats-the-hell-out-of-me. The front desk clerk stood behind a polished slab of granite that was free of all clutter except a telephone and a laptop computer no thicker than a manila envelope. He didn’t really look like a front desk clerk. He looked like someone auditioning for the part of the idealistic but troubled young doctor on a daytime soap opera. I smiled and gave him a nod as I walked by, auditioning for the part of the tragically maimed love interest of the beautiful leading lady.
