Bahamarama, page 9
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
I kept looking through the binoculars until Mr. Pindle cleared his throat.
“Best head on up to the cottage,” he said.
16
After Mr. Pindle deposited my duffel and returned to the shade of the bougainvillea, I spent a few minutes snooping around the cottage. It was small and simple—a single bedroom, a tiny living room with a broad triptych of jalousie windows, and a bathroom that could hold no more than one occupant at a time.
The living room displayed evidence of Barbara at work—manila folders, magazines, a Tropics tote bag filled with page proofs of the upcoming issue, an unopened bottle of Beefeater gin, three limes, a bottle of tonic, and, chilling in the ice bucket, a magnum of Schramsberg 1998, which I could only assume was there to celebrate my arrival.
Barbara’s laptop was on, with the “Deep Space” screensaver repeating its monotonous cycling. I tapped the space bar. The cosmos dissolved to reveal a spreadsheet. It looked like a tally of costs for the photo shoot. Didn’t interest me in the least.
Sweet notes of Barbara hung everywhere in the bedroom—a paisley scarf draped over a chair, a pair of pink flip-flops by the bedside table, a white silk bathrobe on the bathroom doorknob. The bathroom counter was not the temple of bottles and squeeze tubes and aerosol cans often erected by females on the road. There was only moisturizer, baby powder, and a small bottle of Coco Chanel that I had bought for her at a duty-free shop at the airport in Trinidad, when we had gone down to Carnival a couple of weeks before my arrest. It was almost empty. Time to get her a new one. On a hook by the vanity hung a linen blouse, white and gauzy, with a filigree of rosebuds. I rubbed it between my fingers, then drew it to my nose, seeking a scent of Barbara. It was there, all lavender and sweetness, and I summoned a vision of Barbara and the nape of her neck, where I liked to bury my face when we slept. But to hell with fantasies, it was time for the real thing.
I left the cottage and followed the path down through the dunes to the beach. There were maybe thirty minutes of daylight left, and the photo shoot appeared to be breaking up—some people were hauling off boxes and coolers, some were breaking down the blue cabanas, some were just standing around talking. Given the distance, I couldn’t make out who was who.
The sun was playing its twilight tricks. Not an hour earlier, the ocean had been a shimmering turquoise, mottled with gray-green reefs and coral heads. Now a deep blue blanket spread out from shore and covered what lay below. The famous pink sand of Harbour Island, which is actually more of a salmon color, was taking on the hue of a slightly bruised peach as the sun went down. It is truly remarkable, the sand here, finer than sugar and of a color I’ve never seen anywhere else. It’s the result of mighty forces and countless elements conscripted over eons—Atlantic currents washing away decaying flecks of coral, hurricanes pounding the limestone shelf on which the archipelago rests, the churn and roil of water battling land against time. I’ve read stories that describe the sand of Harbour Island as having the texture of talcum powder. It’s only a slight exaggeration. I stooped down and gathered a small handful of it, rubbing it and letting it drip between my fingers like silky grout.
I saw a seagull in the water, a white and gray speck bobbing atop the darkening waves. Then I looked closer. It wasn’t a seagull, but a man—an old man, white-haired and withered. He was neck-deep in a trough between sandbars about fifty yards offshore, and although he didn’t seem to be struggling, he clearly wasn’t in control of the situation. The surf wasn’t that big, but the brief squall had made it choppier than normal. Each wave that rolled in covered the old man completely. As it passed he would emerge, gulping for air.
I looked around. Other than the photo-shoot crowd a quarter mile away, there was no one else on the beach. The old man kept slipping farther and farther from shore, the intervals when he could catch a breath between waves becoming shorter and shorter.
I pulled off my shirt, kicked off my sandals, and hit the water at what passed for a respectable gallop. I hurtled the first set of waves, dove, and came up in a rescue crawl, keeping sight of the old man as I swam. A couple of dozen strokes and I was almost on him. He hadn’t spotted me yet, but I caught a glimpse of his face—eyes wild, mouth wrenched, his expression tortured. And I could see now that he was holding something in one hand—a walking stick, thick and knobby, with a brass handle.
I floated over a wave and closed in on the old man as he bobbed up.
“You OK?” I called out.
At the sound of my voice he swung around and, whether by accident or not, just missed whacking me with his cane. I ducked below the water. I grabbed the old man by the knees and flipped him around, then came up from under him, hooking my right arm beneath his jaw and thrusting my hip into the small of his back for support. There wasn’t much to him, just sinew and bone. It was like holding a sack of twigs.
“Just take it easy,” I told the old man. “It’s gonna be OK.”
He didn’t fight me. He coughed and sputtered as I stroked the water with my left arm, pulling us in. Catching a wave as it crested and broke, I bumped along the sandy bottom, then got my footing and dragged us ashore. I stretched the old man out on the sand, but he insisted on sitting up.
“Leave off, will you?” he said, indignant. His accent was British. “I’m quite alright.”
That was a matter of debate. He was thin to the point of emaciation, and he wore the haunted, hollow look of a sub-Saharan refugee. As he sucked in air with a raspy wheeze, his jaw hung open, making his sunken cheeks seem even more pronounced. Dark circles ringed his gray eyes. His hair needed trimming and was the yellowish ivory of old piano keys. He wore a white linen suit and a white linen shirt. His shoes were still on—camel-and-white wingtips à la Jay Gatsby. Except for the fact that he was drenched, the old man looked as if he had just stepped away from a cocktail party for the cadaver crowd. He was anything but quite alright. And he was certainly not the same fit and engaging gentleman Barbara had introduced me to three years earlier.
“Lord Downey?” I said.
He studied my face, trying to place it, coming up with nothing.
“Zack Chasteen,” I said. “I met you a few summers ago. I was here with Barbara Pickering.”
“Pickering?”
“Yes, Barbara Pickering. Caroline Pickering’s daughter.”
“Caroline Pickering. Ah yes, Caroline Pickering,” he said, eyes suddenly aglimmer. “I once diddled her, you know.”
I couldn’t think of a suitable response.
“Mmmm,” I said.
“Quite fine, she was,” said Lord Downey. “Quite fine.”
“Mmmm,” I said. Once you find a line that works, then you might as well stick with it. I’d be sure to share Lord Downey’s endorsement with Barbara. She’d be delighted to know her dear, departed Mums had made such a lasting impression.
“Where’s Burma?” Lord Downey cried out suddenly, panic returning to his face.
“Excuse me?”
“Burma. Where is Burma?”
He tried to stand, but fell. I kneeled by his side. His eyes rolled back in his head. He was out of it, but his breathing seemed steady enough. I grabbed his cane, picked him up, and put him over a shoulder.
I remembered where Lord Downey lived from when Barbara had taken me there. It sat just a short way beyond the Albury Beach Club, in the direction from which I’d come. I headed there.
17
Technically, I suppose, Lord Downey’s place qualified as a compound. It sat on several acres, all by itself, open to the ocean and with a high block wall running along the other three sides. There was nothing stately or manorly or British-lordly about it. It was divided into several different pods, each comprised of a gangly stilt house, and each painted a different color—bright blue, bright green, bright pink. The houses were connected by lattice-covered walkways that radiated from a low-slung main pod, which was all angles and glass and painted black, topped off with a spindly turret, as if inspired by the Seattle Space Needle. It was a place of whimsy, something Dr. Seuss might have imagined, and it had been designed by a famous Dutch architect, whose name I forget. Barbara told me the compound had won all kinds of awards for its design, and during our visit I recalled seeing a framed story from Architectural Digest, which gushed praise, saying it seemed to “sprout organically from the natural landscape.” To me it didn’t resemble anything sprouting so much as it looked like a LEGO space ship that had crash-landed on the sand dunes. It was almost dark by the time we got there.
“Hello,” I yelled up from the beach. “Anybody home?”
Lord Downey was slipping in and out of consciousness, limp as linguini. The dunes were high, and there weren’t any steps that sprouted organically from the natural landscape to help me up them. After much slipping and sliding, I reached a stone landing at the top of the dunes. I was catching my breath when a woman appeared on the path through the hedge. She was a slim, striking, black woman, mid-thirties. She wore a white sleeveless blouse and a flowery skirt that rustled as she knelt beside me, gently cupping Lord Downey’s head in her hands. He didn’t stir. The woman looked up at me. Her hair was pulled back tight against her head and tied in a bun at the back. Her big almond-shaped eyes looked almost oriental.
She said, “Is he alright?”
“I think so. We just need to get him laid down somewhere.”
“Come, come,” she said, leading me along the path through the sea-grape hedge and toward the house. She moved briskly. For such an otherwise slender woman, she had full hips and they swung freely. She was a pleasure to follow.
We passed an empty swimming pool with a forlorn ceramic cherub fountain stranded in the middle. We passed a rose garden that wasn’t blooming and that had seen far better days. Then we walked through a sculpture garden. Or, at least, I think it was a sculpture garden. I didn’t see any Confederate generals sitting atop rearing horses or naked Roman goddesses holding wine jugs. But there were some big pieces of polished rock cut into different shapes—ovals and squares and triangles—sitting on top of tall white pedestals with spotlights shining on them. It was like walking through a 3-D geometry textbook.
We headed for the main pod. The woman pushed a button by a sliding glass door, it purred open, and we entered the same living room where Lord Downey had once entertained Barbara and me. The air inside was stale and stuffy. Either the air conditioner wasn’t working right, or it was set to run in the eighties.
I lowered Lord Downey onto a leather L-shaped couch. He still hadn’t stirred, but he was breathing regularly and appeared to have fallen into a deep sleep.
“I’ll be right back,” the woman said. She left the room. I looked around. The room seemed considerably barer than it had two years ago. There were still floor-to-ceiling bookcases along one wall, complete with a library ladder on wheels. Gone, though, was the Steinway grand piano where Lord Downey and Barbara had, after several martinis, teamed up on show tune after show tune—he played, she sang, I hummed along pretending like I’d heard them before.
Gone, too, were three big paintings that had hung along another wall. The wall still bore the outline of the canvases. They were Jamalis. It’s not that I know my art—although I can tell a Van Gogh from a Norman Rockwell—but I do know Jamali. He’s a Florida guy, by way of India, and one of Barbara’s many artsy acquaintances. She had connected Lord Downey with Jamali, who had sold him a series called “Woman Giving Birth to the World.” It looked better than it sounds, and the room was the less for its absence.
A glass-topped sofa table held an assortment of framed photographs. There were black-and-white shots of a young Lord Downey in a British army uniform, posed atop an elephant; shots of him playing croquet with friends; shots of him with various beautiful women. The largest photograph looked fairly recent and appeared to have been taken at the compound with the dunes and the ocean in the background. It showed Lord Downey standing arm-in-arm with a gorgeous, willowy young woman with long brown hair, both of them laughing and holding glasses of champagne.
“Where did you find him?” said the young black woman, as she returned carrying a wet washcloth and a bottle of Evian. She knelt by Lord Downey and wiped the sand from his face. She tried to get him to drink some of the water, but couldn’t wake him. She stood, looking up at me with those big eyes of hers.
I told her how I had spotted Lord Downey struggling in the water and pulled him to shore.
“He seemed kinda out of it. Is he on medication?”
“No, not really. Every now and then for his arthritis, but that’s about it.”
“Are you his nurse?”
“No,” she said. “But I do take care of him.”
She stuck out a hand.
“I’m Clarissa. Clarissa Percival.”
“Zack,” I said, shaking her hand. “Zack Chasteen.”
She studied me more closely.
“Barbara Pickering’s friend?”
I nodded. Clarissa smiled.
“I heard you were coming. Ms. Pickering stopped by here just the other day. Lord Downey was so glad to see her. He seemed so much better after her visit. And then . . .”
She stopped as Lord Downey bolted upright on the couch, his face wrenched in terror.
“Burma!” he shouted. “Where’s Burma?”
He cast about, looking at Clarissa, then at me, not seeming to really see either of us. Clarissa sat down beside him. She gently placed her hands on his cheeks, like a mother caressing a child.
“Look at me,” she almost whispered. “Look at me.”
He looked at her. And immediately he began to calm down. It was those eyes of hers. They would have soothed the beast in me, too.
Clarissa eased Lord Downey back down on the couch. She stroked his face and soon he was asleep again.
“That’s the same thing he was yelling when I pulled him out of the water,” I said. “What’s the deal with Burma?”
“Burma is his daughter.” She nodded at the big color photograph on the sofa table. “That’s her.”
“She lives here?”
“Sometimes. When it suits her.”
The way she said it told me it wasn’t a subject I needed to pry into. Clarissa stood up from the couch and offered her hand again. I took it. It was a very nice hand.
“Mr. Chasteen, I cannot thank you enough for what you did,” she said. “But if you don’t mind . . .”
“No problem. I have to go meet Barbara.”
“You haven’t seen her yet?”
“No, I just got here an hour ago, and she’s been busy with the photo shoot.”
“Oh, I know all about that. They hired several girls from the island, and they say it has been such a thrill. Plus, they get to work with that famous photographer. Mr. Gannon, I believe it is?”
“Yes, the one and only.”
“The girls say he makes them all feel like movie stars. He must be very charming.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “I can find my way out.”
I stepped to the sliding glass door, but Clarissa stopped me.
“Oh no, go out the front,” she said, leading me across the living room and into the foyer. The door was stainless steel. It looked like it could have been the door of a meat locker. “That way you won’t break your neck going down the dunes.”
“Why didn’t that Dutch architect think of building some steps out there?”
“I guess for the same reason he didn’t think of building any windows that open to catch the ocean breeze,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, none of the windows in any of the houses will crank open. They are just glass to look through. We have to run air conditioning all the time. You don’t want to know what the electric bills are,” she said. “I apologize if it was uncomfortable in there. I like to keep the thermostat up high and I guess I’m just used to it.”
“No problem,” I said. “It keeps me loose and supple.”
Clarissa bit back a smile as I stepped through the door. With the sun down, it was actually cooler outside than inside.
“Good night, Mr. Chasteen,” Clarissa said. “Do give Ms. Pickering my regards.”
“The moment I see her,” I said.
18
It was after seven when I made it back to the cottage. I thought Barbara might be there, but she wasn’t. I took off my clothes, tossed them in a hamper, and hopped in the shower. Maybe Barbara would surprise me while I was in the shower. Maybe I would turn and look and she would be standing there smiling at me. Maybe she would be holding the Schramsberg ’98. Maybe she would take off all her clothes, toss them in the hamper, and get in the shower with me. Maybe we’d skip dinner.
Barbara still hadn’t shown by the time I was toweling off, and as I stepped into my new dress-up-for-dinner duds—tan linen pants, white linen shirt, blue blazer—it occurred to me that perhaps she had been to the room before I returned from Lord Downey’s and, not finding me there, had gone looking for me in the main house. She was probably sitting down there waiting on me.
“No, sir,” said Mr. Pindle, as I claimed the only empty stool at the bar. “Haven’t seen her.”
Mr. Pindle was wearing his bartender’s outfit—a black tux with a red bowtie and a red cummerbund. He wore red sneakers. His Atlanta Braves cap was stashed under the counter.
There was fifteen-year-old Barbancourt Reserve du Domaine on the shelf, and I asked Mr. Pindle to pour me some of that. He was a much swifter bartender than he was a bellman—mainly because the bar was tiny and everything was within arm’s reach. Mr. Pindle poured two fingers of the Barbancourt into a lead crystal tumbler, then he looked at it and poured another finger on top of that.
