Seven Lies South

5

The flamenco dancers performed for an hour. Afterward an immense buffet supper was served on the terrace. There were turkey and ham and roast suckling pig, shrimp and lobster and snail, artichokes with lemon mayonnaise, and platters of hot and cold vegetables decorated with intricate designs of pimiento. Corks flew up from bottles of French champagne. Some of them bobbed about in the centerpiece of floating geraniums and roses.

Laura sat on the wall beyond the swimming pool, her skirt spread over her knees, and her legs crossed at the ankles. Beecher stood beside her with a hand resting against the small of her back. There was nothing behind her but the vast silver sea, and a hundred-foot drop straight down to the beach.

“Come on now,” she said. “Tell me about Don Willie. You’ve been looking mysterious long enough.”

“Care for everything else to eat?”

“Goodness, no. I won’t be able to look at food for days. What did he want?”

“Well, he offered me a job, that’s all.”

She looked puzzled. “Do you want a job?”

“To put it more accurately, I need one.”

“Well, aren’t you excited then?”

“I don’t know if I want or need this particular job.” He looked at her with a smile. “There’s one inducement, though. The job’s in Morocco. And Don Willie wants me to go down with him Monday on the 11 P.M. flight.”

She seemed confused for an instant. “But that’s when I’m going.” Then she grinned. “Mike, how exciting. Are you going with him? Oh, please! Don’t make me drag it out of you. What kind of a job is it?”

“Don Willie’s got brokerage offices in Rabat and Casablanca. They sell desert development issues. Oil, water, ores, that sort of thing. Very high yield, but all very shipshape, with the Moroccan securities commission keeping an eye on things. I speak Spanish, for one thing. Most Moroccans do, you know. Secondly, I’m an American. Customers will equate American with financial solidity, he feels.” He lit a cigarette and flipped the match over the wall. “Maybe I’ve been wrong about the guy. But I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

Beecher shrugged. “I don’t like him. Never did. And I don’t trust him. It’s not a business or personal thing. It’s a philosophical point. I just don’t think any good will come out of my helping to extend his...” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m getting cloudy as hell, I know. But you can’t wind up with something you didn’t start with. You’ll just have more of it. That’s what I mean. We’ll have more of Don Willie in the world. And even though it’s just business, it’s his business, his personality and his ambitions that will be growing. And maybe the less we have of all that the better.”

She smiled. “If you were trying to lose me, you succeeded.”

“I know I must sound damned woolly.”

“I was going to suggest something devious. Why not make the trip anyway? We could see a little bit of Morocco together, and you wouldn’t have to take the job if you didn’t like it. But it’s more serious than that, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. In the moral sense, if you’ll pardon one more deep purple patch, it would be paying a high price for a free plane ride.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I’ll think it over.” And he would, Beecher realized; perhaps his feeling about Don Willie was just an unreasonable and stupid prejudice. And, on a more mundane level, he needed a job and this was a good one. Four hundred dollars a months, plus a percentage of the yearly sales as a bonus, and a living allowance to be paid in Moroccan francs. Beecher realized that his mood had turned sour. Until now he had felt great. The fight with the Frenchman had restored his confidence. He had handled himself well, he knew, patient at first, determined to avoid a scene, and then, with the chips down, facing the challenge with a good healthy anger. There had been no compromise, no tactful smile, no retreat to a fresh drink. But in spite of all this Beecher felt troubled.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked him.

“Nothing very interesting.”

Don Willie’s proposal had put all his problems into an uncomfortable focus, he realized; it was consoling to maintain that he was too old for the pace of America, spiritually and emotionally out of touch with its confident driving expansion. This qualified him to do nothing but sit in the sun and drink until his money ran out; but Don Willie’s offer couldn’t be evaded so conveniently. It was work he could learn. And the salary was good. He had no out, considering the matter practically, unless he confessed frankly that he was too lazy or too insecure to try his hand at it.

Laura touched his shoulder. “Look, Mike.”

Beecher glanced up. The Frenchman was coming toward them through the garden. He was moving slowly and unsteadily, but with an unmistakable sense of purpose. The crowd had thinned out by now; many of the Spaniards had gone, and the remaining guests were standing about the bar on the terrace. Beecher and Laura were alone in the flag-stoned area behind the swimming pool. The beach was a hundred feet below them. There was the fragrance of flowers in the cool air, and a breeze made a tiny whispering sound in the folds of Laura’s skirt. Beecher saw that the Frenchman had his right hand pushed deep into the pocket of his blazer.

“I hope he’s in a happier mood,” Laura said.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Beecher said, and wondered why he had been impelled to make such an obvious remark.

A curious thing happened then. Lynch appeared from the shadows of the garden and moved with long ungainly strides toward the Frenchman. The two men collided in the graveled pathway, a seemingly accidental encounter, and Beecher heard Lynch laugh and say, “I beg your pardon, old chap. I must be frightfully tight. Hardly saw you coming along there.”

Maurice muttered something unintelligible and started forward again, but something checked him abruptly, and Beecher saw then that Lynch’s big hand was clamped above the Frenchman’s elbow. He couldn’t be sure there was a struggle; in the uncertain light he had only an impression of shifting and restraint, and then the two men turned and walked back toward the terrace. Lynch was still holding the Frenchman’s arm.

Laura apparently hadn’t noticed anything odd. “Well, I’m glad he found someone besides us to bother,” she said.

“I think we’d better be going,” Beecher said. “We can stop at the Irishman’s for a nightcap.”

“Are you sending me off to bed?”

Beecher smiled as he swung her down from the wall. “I thought you might be tired.”

“Not at all.”

The hard core of the community’s drinkers stood about the bar on the terrace, paying little attention to anything but the business of emptying and refilling glasses. The buffet table looked as if it had been smashed with a big fist; half-empty plates were blackened with cigarette ashes, and bits of food, olive pits, bones, and crusts were scattered among goblets smeared with lipstick, and coffee cups afloat with soggy cigarettes. Someone had placed a high-heeled slipper in the centerpiece of flowers, the toe pointing down into the water. It was a jarring note, Beecher thought — as if the person wearing it had been snatched from a preposterous disaster at the last instant.

Laura went into the villa to get her wrap, and Beecher debated the wisdom or necessity of having another drink. He didn’t feel like one, and this surprised him pleasantly. Also he didn’t want to get involved with the serious drinkers around the bar. Laddy Curtis would want to tell about the time he had walked into the New York Racquet Club wearing swimming shorts; Ferdie McIntyre would be cursing Spaniards; old Polly Soames would put her thumbs in her ears and go “Hoot! Hoot!” at him; Juggy Olsen would be insisting that bullfighters were yellow; while the rest would have maid problems, car problems, or passport problems to discuss in tones of pioneer excitement and enthusiasm.

Then, from beyond the double doors leading into the villa, he heard Laura cry out softly: “No, stop it! For God’s sake, please.”

Beecher reached the doors in two long strides and pushed his way into the living room. Laura stood inside the entrance with a hand pressed to her mouth. Don Willie was crouched in front of the fireplace, staring over his shoulder at them with a guilty but imploring expression on his flushed face. Tears streamed from his eyes and gleamed on his plump cheeks. One of the shepherd dogs lay at his feet, whimpering softly, a wet red tongue lolling from its great jaws. In Don Willie’s hand was a leather crop as thick as a walking stick.

“I must punish him,” Don Willie cried. “He has been bad. He is too strong to have his own way.”

“You’ll kill him!” Laura said.

“I am sorry you saw this thing.” He stood and put the crop behind his back as if he were ashamed of it. “You will think bad of me. But I must do it. I do not enjoy it. Look, please. I am weeping. I love my little babies. But he did wrong. And he knows he must be punished. See, he is crawling to lick my shoes. If you raised your hand to me he would fly at your throat.”

Beecher took Laura’s arm. He could feel the tremors running through her body. “We’d better go,” he said.

“Mike, please explain to her,” Don Willie said, dabbing at his tears. “You are a man. You can understand. She must not think I am cruel and unkind.”

Beecher hesitated; his own reaction was confused. Obviously a large and formidable dog needed discipline. But the weight and size of the crop sent a chill through him. And Don Willie’s tearful distress was also disturbing. The tears were a license to violence. You could do what you damn well pleased, as long as you wept to prove you didn’t enjoy it.

“All right,” he said at last. “Thanks for the party. It was fun.”

As they walked up the road to his car, Beecher said, “Don’t let this upset you.”

She looked up at him suddenly. “Is that why you don’t want to work for him?”

“Because he’s brutal with his dogs? No. But he’s made them like it. That’s something to think about, you know.” He opened the door of his car. “Let’s not spoil our evening with this.”

“All right. What’s the Irishman’s like?”

“You’ll see.”