The Night Manager

SEVENTEEN

There was Crystalside and there was Townside, and though the two were separated by a mere half-mile as the frigate bird flew, they could have been different islands, because between them sat the hillock proudly called Miss Mabel Mountain, the highest point of all the islands far around, which wasn't saying much, with an apron of haze hoisted round her midriff, and the broken-down slave houses at her feet, and her forest where shafts of sun shone like daylight through a broken roof.

Crystalside was meadowed as an English shire, with clusters of umbrella trees that from a distance could have been oak, and English cattle fences, and English ha-has, and vistas of the sea between soft English hilltops artfully landscaped by Roper's tractors.

But Townside was dour and blowy like Scotland with the lights on, with scraggy goat fields on the slant, and tin shops, and a cricket field of blown red dust, with a tin pavilion, and a prevailing easterly that flicked the water in Carnation Bay.

And around Carnation Bay, in a crescent of pastel-painted cottages, each with its front garden and steps leading to the beach, Roper accommodated his white staff. Of these cottages, Woody's House was unquestionably the most desirable, by virtue of its stylishly fretted balcony and its unspoiled view of Miss Mabel Island in the middle of the bay.

Who Miss Mabel was, God alone knew, though she had left her name on a presumptuous hillock, an uninhabited island, on a defunct bee farm, an abortive cotton industry and a type of lace doily nobody knew how to make anymore. "Some fine old lady from slavin' times," said the natives shyly when the close observer asked. "Best let her memory sleep."

But everyone knew who Woody was. He was Mr. Woodman from England, a predecessor of Major Corkoran from way back, who had come with the first wave when Mr. Roper bought the island, a charming friendly man to the natives till the day the Chief ordered him locked up in his house while the protection asked him certain questions and accountants from Nassau went through the books, tracing Woody's rackets. The whole island was holding its breath by then, because one way or another the whole island had been a partner in Woody's operations. Finally, after a week of waiting, two of the protection drove Woody up Miss Mabel Mountain to the airstrip, and Woody needed both of them because he couldn't walk well. To be exact, his own mother could have been forgiven for stepping over him on the pavement without recognising her little boy from England. And Woody's House with its fretted balcony and fine view of the bay had stayed empty ever since, as a warning to everyone on the island that while the Chief was a generous employer and landlord and a fine Christian man to the virtuous, not to mention donor and life chairman of the Townside Cricket Club and the Townside Boys Club and the Townside Steel Band, he could also be relied upon to beat the living shit out of anybody who ripped him off.

* * *

The combined role of saviour, escaped murderer, convalescent houseguest, Sophie's avenger and Burr's spy is not an easy one to master with aplomb, yet Jonathan with his limitless adaptability assumed it with seeming ease.

You give the air of looking for someone, Sophie had said. But I think the missing person is yourself.

Each morning after an early jog and swim, he put on a T-shirt and sneakers and a pair of slacks and set off to make his ten o'clock appearance at Crystal. The walk from Townside to Crystalside took him barely ten minutes, yet each time he made it, it was Jonathan who set out and Thomas who arrived. The route led him along a bridle path cut in Miss Mabel's lower slopes, one of half a dozen Roper kept open through the woods. But for most of the year it was a tunnel because of the overhanging trees. A single rain shower left it pattering and dripping for days.

And sometimes, if his intuition had guided him correctly, he would meet Jed on her Arab mare, Sarah, returning from her morning ride in the company of Daniel and Claud the Polish stable master and maybe a couple of houseguests. First he would hear the sound of hooves and voices from higher in the woods. Then he would hold his breath as the party trekked down the zigzag path until it appeared at the opening to the tunnel, where the horses broke into a homebound trot, the equestrienne leading and Claud bringing up the rear, and Jed's flying hair turning red and gold in the light patches and making an absurdly beautiful match with Sarah's blond mane.

"Gosh, Thomas, isn't it absolutely gorgeous?" Jonathan agrees it is. "Oh, Thomas, Dans was pestering about whether you'd take him sailing today ― he's so spoilt.... Oh, will you really?" She sounds almost despairing. "But you spent the whole of yesterday afternoon teaching him how to paint! You're a darling. Shall I tell him three o'clock?"

Take it down, he wanted to tell her, as a friend. You've got the part, so stop overacting and be real. All the same, as Sophie would say: she had touched him with her eyes.

* * *

And other times, if he took an early run along the shore, he might chance to meet Roper in shorts, ploughing barefoot through the wet sand at the edge of the surf, sometimes jogging, sometimes walking, sometimes pausing to face the sun and do a few exercises, but all with the mastery he brought to everything: this is my water, my island, my sand, my speed.

"Morning! Marvellous day," he would call, if he was of a mood to play. "Run? Swim? Come on. Do you good."

So they would run, and swim in parallel for a while, talking sporadically till Roper would suddenly wade ashore, collect his towel and, without a word or backward glance, stride off in the direction of Crystal.

* * *

"Of every tree you may freely eat," Corkoran told Jonathan as they sat in the garden of Woody's House watching Miss Mabel Island darken with the sunset. "The serving wenches, parlour maids, cooks, typists, masseuses, the lady who comes to clip the parrot's claws, even the guests, are yours for the discreet plucking. But if you ever try to lay so much as a you-know-what on Our Lady of Crystal, he'll kill you. So will I. Just for deep background, old love. No offence."

"Well, thanks, Corky," said Jonathan, making a joke of it. "Thanks very much indeed. Having you and Roper baying for my blood would just about complete my luck. Where did he find her, anyway?" he asked, fetching more beer.

"Legend has it, at a French horse sale."

So that's how it's done, thought Jonathan. You go to France buy a horse and come away with a convent girl called Jed. Easy.

"Who did he have before?" he asked.

But Corkoran's gaze was fixed on the pale horizon. "Do you know," he complained in frustrated marvel, "we tracked down the captain of the Star of Bethel, and even he can't prove you're lying in your fucking teeth?"

* * *

Corkoran's warning is a waste of breath. The close observer has no protection from her. He can watch her with his eyes shut. He can watch her in the candlelit bowl of a silver spoon by Bulgari of Rome, or in the silver candlesticks by Paul de Lamarie that must appear on the Roper dinner table whenever he comes back from selling farms, or in the gilt mirrors of Jonathan's own imagination. Despising himself, he explores her night and day for confirmation of her awfulness. He is repelled by her and therefore drawn to her. He is punishing her for her power over him ― and punishing himself for giving way to it. You're a hotel girl! he yells at her. People buy space in you, pay you and check out! Yet at the same time he is consumed by her. Her very shadow taunts him as she saunters half-naked across the blushing marble floors of Crystal on her way to swim, sunbathe, caress oil onto her skin, turn crookedly onto her hip, her other hip and then onto her belly, while she chats with her visiting friend Caroline Langbourne or gorges herself on her escapist bibles: Vogue, Taller, Marie-Claire or the Daily Express, three days old. And her jester Corkoran in his Panama hat and rolled-up trousers, sitting ten feet from her, drinking Pimm's.

"Why doesn't Roper take you with him anymore, Corks?" she asks lazily over her magazine, in one of the dozen voices Jonathan has noted down for permanent destruction. "He always used to." She turns a page. "Caro, can you imagine anything more awful than being the mistress of a Tory minister?"

"I suppose there's always a Labour minister," suggests Caroline, who is plain and too intelligent for leisure.

And Jed's laugh: the choking, feral laugh from deep inside her, which closes her eyes and splits her face in impish pleasure, even when everything else about her is trying its damnedest to be a lady.

Sophie was a whore too, he thought dismally. The difference was, she knew it.

* * *

He watched her as she rinsed her feet under the electronically controlled tap, first stepping back, then lifting one painted toe to produce a jet, then shifting to the other foot and the other perfect haunch. Then, without a glance for anyone, walking to the poolside and diving in. He watched her dive, over and again. In his sleep he replayed the slow-drawn act of levitation as her body rose without movement and, everything in line, tilted itself into the water with a splash no louder than a sigh.

"Oh, do come on in, Caro. It's divine."

He watched her in all her moods and varieties: Jed the clown, gangly-bodied, legs splayed, cursing and laughing her way round the croquet lawn; Jed the chatelaine of Crystal, radiant at her own dinner table, enchanting a trio of fat-necked bankers from the City with her deafening Shropshire small talk, never a cliché out of place:

"But I mean, isn't it simply heartbreaking living in Hong Kong and knowing that absolutely everything one's doing for them, all the super buildings and shops and airports and everything, are just going to be gobbled up by the beastly Chinese? And what about the horse racing? What's going to happen to that? And the horses? I mean, honestly."

Or Jed being too young, catching a cautionary glance from Roper and putting a hand to her mouth and saying, "Down!"

Or Jed when the party ends and the last of the bankers has waddled off to bed, climbing the great staircase with her head on Roper's shoulder and her hand on his bottom.

"Weren't we absolutely gorgeous?" she says.

"Marvellous evening, Jeds. Lot of fun."

"And weren't they bores?" she says with a great yawn. "God, I do miss school sometimes. I'm so tired of being a grownup. Night, Thomas."

"Good night, Jed. Good night, Chief."

* * *

It is a quiet family evening at Crystal. Roper likes a fire. So do six King Charles spaniels who lie in a floppy heap before it. Danby and Mac Arthur have flown in from Nassau to talk business, dine and leave at dawn tomorrow. Jed perches on a stool at Roper's feet, armed with pen and paper and the circular gold-rimmed spectacles Jonathan swears she doesn't need.

"Darling, do we have to have that slimy Greek again, with his dago Minnie Mouse?" she asks, objecting to the inclusion of Dr. Paul Apostoll and his inamorata among the guests for the Iron Pasha's winter cruise.

"Apostoll? El Apetito?" Roper replies in puzzlement. "Of course we do. Apo's serious business."

"They're not even Greeks, did you know that, Thomas? Greeks aren't. They're jumped-up Turks and Arabs and things. All the decent Greeks got wiped out yonks ago. Well, they can bloody well have the Peach Suite and put up with a shower."

Roper disagrees. "No, they can't. They get the Blue Suite and the Jacuzzi, or Apo will sulk. He likes to soap her."

"He can soap her in the shower," says Jed, affecting to show fight.

"No, he can't. He's not tall enough," says Roper, and they all laugh uproariously because it is the Chief's joke.

"Hasn't old Apo taken the veil or something?" Corkoran asks, looking up from an enormous Scotch. "I thought he gave up nooky after his daughter topped herself."

"That was just for Lent," says Jed.

Her wit and bad language have a hypnotic draw. There is something irresistibly funny to everyone, including herself, about her convent-educated English voice enunciating the vocabulary of a navvy.

"Darling, do we actually give a fart about the Donahues? Jenny was pissed as a rat from the moment she came aboard, and Archie behaved like a total turd."

Jonathan caught her eye and held it with deliberate lack of interest. Jed raised her eyebrows and returned his stare, as if to say, Who the hell are you? Jonathan returned her question at double strength: Who do you think you're being tonight? I'm Thomas. Who the hell are you?

* * *

He watched her in fragments forced upon him. To the naked breast that she had carelessly granted him in Zürich he added a chance view of her entire upper body in her bedroom mirror while she was changing after riding. She had her arms raised and her hands folded behind her neck, and she was performing some sinuous exercise that she must have read about in one of her magazines. As to Jonathan, he had done absolutely everything in order not to look in the direction of her windows. But she did it every afternoon, and there are only so many times that a close observer can force himself to look away.

He knew the balance of her long legs, the satin planes of her back, the surprising sharpness of her athletic shoulders, which were the tomboy bits of her. He knew the white underneath to her arms and the flow of her hips as she rode.

And there was an episode that Jonathan scarcely dared remember when, thinking he was Roper, she called out to him, "Hand me the bloody bath towel quick." And since he was passing their bedroom on his way back from reading Kipling's Just So Stories to Daniel, and since the bedroom door was ajar, and since she had not mentioned Roper by name and he honestly believed, or nearly so, that she was calling him, and since Roper's inner office on the other side of the bedroom was the constant target of the close observer's professional curiosity, he softly touched the door and made as if to enter, and stopped four feet from the peerless rear view of her naked body as she stood clutching a facecloth to her eye and cursing while she tried to rub away the soap. Heart thumping, Jonathan made his escape, and first thing next morning, uncaching his magic box, he spoke for ten excited minutes to Burr without once mentioning her: "There's the bedroom, there's his dressing room and then on the other side of the dressing room there's this little office. He keeps his private papers there, I'm sure he does."

Burr took fright at once. Perhaps, even at this early stage, he had an intimation of disaster. "Stay away from it. Too bloody dangerous. Join first, spy later. That's an order."

* * *

"Comfortable, are you?" Roper asked Jonathan, on one of their jogs along the beach in the company of several spaniels. "Getting your health back? No cockroaches? Get down, Trudy, you silly tart! Hear young Dans did a decent sail yesterday."

"Yes, he really put his heart into it."

"You're not one of these left-wing chaps, are you? Corky thought you might be a pink 'un."

"Good Lord no. It's never crossed my mind."

Roper seemed not to hear. "World's run by fear, you see. Can't sell pipe dreams, can't rule with charity, no good at all. Not in the real world. With me?" But he didn't wait to discover whether Jonathan was with him or not. "Promise to build a chap a house, he won't believe you. Threaten to burn his place down, he'll do what you tell him. Fact of life." He paused to double-mark time. "If a bunch of chaps want to make war, they're not going to listen to a lot of wet-eared abolitionists. If they don't, doesn't matter whether they've got crossbows or Stingers. Fact of life. Sorry if it bothers you."

"It doesn't. Why should it?"

"Told Corky he was full of shit. Nose out of joint, that's his trouble. Better go gently with him. Nothing worse than a queen with a chip on his shoulder."

"But I do go gently with him. All the time."

"Yeah. Well. No-win situation probably. Hell's it matter, anyway?"

* * *

Roper returned to the subject a couple of days later. Not of Corkoran, but of Jonathan's presumed squeamishness regarding certain sorts of deals. Jonathan had been up to Daniel's bedroom to suggest a swim, but Daniel wasn't there. Roper, emerging from the royal suite, fell in beside him, and they walked downstairs together:

"Guns go where the power is," he announced without preamble. "Armed power's what keeps the peace. Unarmed power doesn't last five minutes. First rule of stability. Don't know why I'm preaching to you. Army chap, army family. Still, no point in getting you into something you don't like."

"I don't know what you're getting me into."

They crossed the great hall on their way to the patio.

"Never sold toys? Weapons? Explosives? Tech?"

"No."

"Ever bump into it? Ireland or somewhere? The trade?"

"I'm afraid not."

Roper's voice dropped. "Talk about it another time."

He had spotted Jed and Daniel sitting at a table on the patio, playing L'Attaque. So he doesn't talk to her about it, thought Jonathan, encouraged. She's another child to him: not in front of the children.

* * *

Jonathan is jogging.

He says good morning to the Self-Expression Wash & Beauty Salon, no bigger than a garden shed. He says good morning to Spokesman's Dock, where some weak rebellion had once been quelled and Amos the blind Rasta now lives in his tethered catamaran with its miniature windmill to recharge his batteries. His collie, Bones, sleeps peacefully on deck. Good morning, Bones.

Next comes the corrugated compound called Jam City Recorded & Vocal Music, full of chickens and yucca trees and broken perambulators. Good morning, chickens.

He glances back at Crystal's cupola above the treetops.

Good morning, Jed.

Still climbing, he reaches the old slave houses, where no one goes. Even when he comes to the last slave house he does not slow down but jogs straight through its smashed doorway to a rusted oil can that lies on its side in one corner.

Then stops. And listens, and waits for his breathing to settle, and flaps his hands to make his shoulders loose. From among the muck and old rags in the can he extracts a small steel spade and starts to dig. The handset is in a metal box, cached here by Flynn and his night raiders to Rooke's specification. As Jonathan presses the white button, then the black button, and listens to the bird song of space-age electronics, a fat brown rat lollops across the floor and, like a little old lady on her way to church, lollops into the next-door house.

"How are you?" Burr says.

Good question, thinks Jonathan. How am I? I'm in fear, I'm obsessed by an equestrienne with an IQ of 55 when the sun's shining, I'm clinging on to life by my fingernails twenty-four hours a day, which is what I seem to remember you promised me.

He recites his news. On Saturday a big Italian called Rinaldo flew in by Lear and left three hours later. Age forty-five, height six foot one, two bodyguards and one blond woman.

"Did you get the markings on his plane?"

The close observer has written them nowhere but knows them by heart.

Rinaldo owns a palace in the Bay of Naples, he says. The blonde is called Jutta and lives in Milan. Jutta, Rinaldo and Roper ate salad and talked in the summer-house, while the bodyguards drank beer and sunbathed out of earshot lower down the hill.

Burr has follow-up questions concerning last Friday's visitation of City bankers identified only by their Christian names. Was Tom fat and bald and pompous? Did Angus smoke a pipe? Did Wally have a Scottish accent?

Yes to all three.

And did Jonathan have the impression they had done business in Nassau and come to Crystal afterwards? Or did they simply fly London to Nassau, then Nassau-Crystal in the Roper jet?

"They did business in Nassau first. Nassau's where they do the respectable deals. Crystal's where they go off the record," Jonathan replies.

Only when Jonathan has completed his report on Crystal's visitors does Burr move to welfare matters.

"Corkoran gumshoes after me all the time," says Jonathan. "Can't seem to leave me alone."

"He's a has-been and he's jealous. Just don't press your luck. Not in any direction. Hear me?" He is referring to the office behind Roper's bedroom. By some feat of intuition, he knows it is still Jonathan's goal.

Jonathan returns the handset to its box and the box to its grave. He treads down the earth, scrapes dust over it, kicks bits of leaf, pine kernels, dried berries over the dust. He jogs down the hill to Carnation Beach.

"Hidah! Mist' Thomas the magnificent, how you do today, sir, in your soul?"

It is Amos the Rasta, with his Samsonite briefcase. Nobody buys from Amos, but that never bothers him. Nobody much comes to the beach. All day long he will sit upright on the sand, smoking ganja and staring at the horizon. Sometimes he unpacks his Samsonite and sets out his offerings: shell necklaces and fluorescent scarves and twists of ganja rolled up in orange tissue paper. Sometimes he dances, rolling his head and grinning at the sky, while Bones, his dog, howls at him. Amos has been blind since birth.

"You been out runnin' up there already, high on Miss Mabel Mountain, Mist' Thomas? You been communin' with voodoo spirits today, Mist' Thomas, while you was up there doin' your runnin'? You been sendin' messages to those voodoo spirits, Mist' Thomas, high up on Miss Mabel Mountain?" Miss Mabel Mountain being seventy feet at best.

Jonathan keeps smiling ― but what is the point of smiling to a blind man?

"Oh sure. High as a kite."

"Oh sure! Oh boy!" Amos executes an elaborate jig. "I don't tell nothin' to nobody, Mist' Thomas. A blind beggar, he don't see no evil and he don't hear no evil, Mist' Thomas. And he don't sing no evil, no sir. He sell scarves to gentlemen for twenty-five sweet dollar bills and go his way. You like to buy a fine handmade silk foulard, Mist' Thomas, for yo' lady-love, sir, in exquisite taste?"

"Amos," says Jonathan, laying a hand on his arm for good fellowship, "if I smoked as much ganja as you do, I'd be sending messages to Father Christmas."

But when he reaches the cricket ground he doubles back up the hill and recaches the magic box in the colony of discarded beehives before taking the tunnel to Crystal.

* * *

Concentrate on the guests, Burr had said.

We must have the guests, Rooke had said. Everyone who sets foot on the island, we must have his name and number.

Roper knows the worst people in the world, Sophie had said.

They came in all sizes and durations: weekend guests, lunch guests, guests who dined and stayed and left next morning, guests who did not take so much as a glass of water but strolled with Roper on the beach while their protection trailed them at a distance, then quickly flew away again, like guests with work to do.

Guests with planes, guests with yachts; guests with neither who had to be fetched by Roper jet or, if they lived on a neighbouring island, Roper chopper, with the Crystal insignia and the Ironbrand colours of blue and grey. Roper invited them, Jed welcomed them and did her duty by them, though it appeared to be a matter of real pride to her that she knew not the first thing about their business.

"I mean, why should I, Thomas?" she protested, in a gulpy stage voice, after the departure of a particularly awful pair of Germans. "One of us worrying is quite enough in any household. I'd far rather be like Roper's investors and say, 'Here you are, here's my money and my life, and mind you bloody well look after them.' I mean don't you think it's the only way, Corks? I'd never sleep otherwise ― well, would I?"

"Dead right, old heart. Go with the flow, my advice," said Corkoran.

You stupid little equestrienne! Jonathan raged at her, while he piously agreed with her sentiments. You've put yourself in size-twelve blinkers, and now you're asking for my approval!

For his memorising, he filed the guests by category and dubbed each category with a piece of Roperspeak.

First came the keen young Danbys and MacArthurs, alias the MacDanbies, who manned the Ironbrand offices in Nassau and went to the same tailor and trailed the same classless accents and came when Roper beckoned and mixed when Roper told them mix, and left in a flurry or they'd never make it to their desks in time next day. Roper had no patience with them: neither had Jonathan. The MacDanbies were not Roper's allies, not his friends. They were his cover, forever twittering about land deals in Florida and price shifts on the Tokyo exchange and providing Roper with the boring outer shell of his respectability.

After the MacDanbies came Roper's Frequent Fliers, and no Crystal party was complete without a smattering of the Frequent Fliers: such as the perennial Lord Langbourne, whose luckless wife minded the children while he danced groin-to-groin with the nanny; such as the sweet young titled polo player ― Angus to his friends ― and his darling wife. Julia, whose shared purpose in life, apart from croquet at Sally's and tennis at John-and-Brian's and reading housemaids' novels by the pool, was to sit out their time in Nassau until it was safe for them to claim the house in Pelham Crescent and the castle in Tuscany and the five-thousand-acre estate in Wiltshire with its fabled art collection and the island off the coast of Queensland, all of which were presently the property of some fiscal offshore no-man's-land, together with a couple of hundred million to oil the wheels.

And Frequent Fliers are in honour bound to bring their houseguests:

"Jeds! Over here! You remember Arno and Georgina, chums of Julia's, dinner with us in Rome, February? Fish place behind the Byron? Come on, Jeds!"

Jed frowns the dearest frown. Jed opens first her eyes in incredulous recognition, then her mouth, but holds a beat before she is able to overcome her joyful astonishment. "Gosh, Arno! But, darling, you've lost pounds! Georgina, darling, how are you? Super! Gosh. Hullo!"

And the obligatory embrace for each of them, followed by a reflective Mmnh, as if she were enjoying it a little more than she ought. And Jonathan in his fury actually goes Mmnh in imitation of her under his breath, swearing that next time he catches her pretending like this he will leap up and shout: "Cut! One more time, please, Jed, darling, this time for real!"

And after the Frequent Fliers came the Royal & Ancients: the sub-county English debutantes escorted by brain-dead offshoots of the royal brat pack and policemen in attendance; Arab smilers in pale suits and snow-white shirts and polished toecaps; minor British politicians and ex-diplomats terminally deformed by self-importance; Malaysian tycoons with their own cooks; Iraqi Jews with Greek palaces and companies in Taiwan; Germans with Eurobellies moaning about Ossies; hayseed lawyers from Wyoming wanting to do the best by mah clients and mahself; retired vastly rich investors gleaned from their dude plantations and twenty-million-dollar bungalows ― wrecked old Texans on blue-veined legs of straw, in parrot shirts and joky sun hats, sniffing oxygen from small inhalers; their women with chiselled faces they never had when they were young, and tucked stomachs and tucked bottoms, and artificial brightness in their unpouched eyes. But no surgery on earth could spare them the manacled slowness of old age as they lowered themselves into the kids' end of the Crystal pool, clutching the ladder lest they split again and become what they feared to be before they took the plunge at Dr. Marti's clinic.

"My goodness, Thomas," Jed whispers, in a strangled aside to Jonathan, as a blue-haired Austrian countess dog-paddles herself breathlessly to safety. "How ever old do you suppose she is?"

"Depends which bit you're thinking of," says Jonathan. "Averaged out, probably around seventeen." And Jed's lovely laugh ― the real one ― her bucking, born-free laugh, while she once again touches him with her eyes.

After the Royal & Ancients came Burr's pet hates, and probably Roper's too, for he called them the Necessary Evils, and these were the shiny-cheeked merchant bankers from London with eighties striped blue shirts and white collars and double-barrelled names and double chins and double-breasted suits, who said "ears" when they meant "yes" and "nice" when they meant "house" and "school" when they meant "Eton"; and in their train, the bully-boy accountants ― the bean counters, Roper called them ― looking as if they'd come to extract a voluntary confession, with take-away-curry breath and wet armpits and voices like formal cautions that from here on everything you say will be taken down and faked in evidence against you.

And after them again, their non-British counterparts: Mulder, the tubby notary from Curaçao, with his twinkling smile and knowing waddle; Schreiber of Stuttgart, constantly apologising for his ostentatiously good English; Thierry from Marseilles, with his pinched lips and toyboy secretary; the bond sellers from Wall Street, who never came in less than fours, as if there really were security in numbers; and Apostoll the striving little Greek-American, with his toupee like a black bear's paw, his gold chains and gold crosses and unhappy Venezuelan mistress toppling uncomfortably behind him on her thousand-dollar shoes as they head hungrily for the buffet.

Catching Apostoll's glance, Jonathan turns away but is too late.

"Sir? We have met, sir. I never forget a face," Apostoll declares, whipping off his dark glasses and holding up everybody behind him. "My name is Apostoll. I am a legionary of God, sir."

"Course you've met him, Apo!" Roper cuts in deftly. "We've all met him. Thomas. You remember Thomas, Apo! Used to be the night chap at Meister's. Came west to seek his fortune. Chum of ours from way back. Isaac, give the Doc some more shampoo."

"I am honoured, sir. Forgive me. You are English? I have many British connections, sir. My grandmother was related to the Duke of Westminster, and my uncle on my mother's side designed the Albert Hall."

"My goodness. That's wonderful," says Jonathan politely.

They shake hands. Apostoll's is cool as snakeskin. Their eyes meet. Apostoll's are haunted and a little mad ― but who is not a little mad at Crystal on a perfect starlit night with the Dom flowing like the music?

"You are in Mr. Roper's employ, sir?" Apostoll persists. "You have joined one of his great enterprises? Mr. Roper is a man of rare power."

"I'm enjoying the hospitality of the house," Jonathan replies.

"You could do no better, sir. You are a friend of Major Corkoran's perhaps? I think I saw you two exchanging pleasantries some minutes back."

"Corky and I are old pals."

But as the group moves on, Roper takes Apostoll quietly aside, and Jonathan hears the words "Mama Low's" spoken with discretion.

* * *

"Basically, you see, Jed," says an evil by the name of Wilfred as they lounge at white tables under a hot moon, "what we at Harvill Maverich are offering Dicky here is the same service as the crooks are offering, but without the crooks."

"Oh, Wilfred, but how terribly boring. Wherever will poor Roper get his kicks from?"

And she catches Jonathan's eye again, causing serious mayhem. How does this happen? Who looks first? For this is not affectation. This is not just playing games with somebody her own age. This is looking. And looking away. And looking again. Roper, where are you now we need you?

* * *

Nights with evils are endless. Sometimes the talk is got up as bridge or backgammon in the study. Drinks are self-serve, the ushers are told to hop it, the study door is guarded by the protection, the servants know to stay away from that side of the house. Only Corkoran is admitted ― these days not always Corkoran.

"Corky's fallen from grace a bit," Jed confides to Jonathan, then bites her lip and says no more.

For Jed too has her loyalty. She is no easy frontier-crosser, and Jonathan has warned himself accordingly.

* * *

"Chaps come to me, you see," Roper explains.

The two men are enjoying another of their strolls. This time it is evening. They have played fierce tennis, but neither has won. Roper doesn't bother with scoring unless he is playing for money, and Jonathan has no money. Perhaps for this reason, their conversations flow without constraint. Roper walks close, letting his shoulder ride unconsciously against Jonathan's, as it did at Meister's. He possesses an athlete's carelessness of touch. Tabby and Gus are following at a distance. Gus is the new crusher, recently added to the strength. Roper has a special voice for chaps who come to him:

" 'Meestaire Ropaire, geeve us state-of-art toys.' " He graciously pauses to allow Jonathan to laugh at his mimicry. "So I ask 'em: 'State of what art, old boy? Compared to what?' No answer. Some parts of the world, if you gave 'em a Boer War cannon, they'd move straight to the top of the heap." An impatient gesture of the hand moves them there, and Jonathan feels Roper's elbow in his ribs. "Other countries, pots of money, mad for high tech, nothing else will do, got to be like the fellow next door. Not like him. Better than. Miles better. They want the smart bomb that gets into the lift, goes to the third floor, turns left, clears its throat, blows up the master of the house but doesn't hurt the television set." The same elbow nudges against Jonathan's upper arm. "Thing they never realise is: you want to play smart, you've got to have the smart backup. And the chaps to work it. No good buying the latest 'fridge and shoving it in your mud hut if you haven't got electricity to plug it into, is it? Well, is it? What?"

"Of course not," says Jonathan.

Roper plunges his hands into the pockets of his tennis shorts and gives a lazy smile.

"Used to enjoy supplying guerrillas when I was your age. Ideals before money... cause of human liberty. Didn't last long, thank God. Today's guerrillas are tomorrow's fat cats. Good luck to 'em. Real enemies were the big power governments. Everywhere you looked, big governments were there ahead of you, flogging anything to anybody, breaking their own rules, cutting each other's throats, backing the wrong side, making it up to the right side. Mayhem. Us independent chaps got squeezed into the corner every time. Only thing to do, get in ahead of 'em, beat 'em to the draw. Balls and foresight, all we had left to rely on. Pushing the envelope, all the time. No wonder some chaps went off the reservation. Only place to do business. Young Daniel sail today?"

"All the way round Miss Mabel's Island. I didn't touch the rudder once."

"Well done. Cooking another carrot cake soon?"

"Whenever you say."

As they climb the steps to the gardens, the close observer notices Sandy Langbourne entering the guesthouse and, a moment after him, the Langbourne nanny. She is a demure little creature, about nineteen, but at that instant she has the casual larceny of a girl about to rob a bank.

* * *

There are the days when Roper is in residence, and there are the days when Roper is away selling farms.

Roper does not announce his departures, but Jonathan has only to approach the front entrance to know which kind of day it is. Is Isaac hovering in the great domed hall in his white gloves? Are the MacDanbies milling in the marble anteroom, smoothing their Brideshead hairstyles and checking their zips and ties? They are. Is the protection manning the porter's chair beside the tall bronze doors? It is. Slipping past the open windows on his way to the back of the house, Jonathan hears the great man at his dictating: "No, damn it. Kate! Scratch that last paragraph and tell him he's got a deal. Jackie, do a letter to Pedro. 'Dear Pedro, we spoke a couple of weeks ago,' blah-blah. Then drop him down a hole. Too little, too late, too many bees round the honeypot ― that one, okay? Tell you what, Kate ― add this."

But instead of adding this, Roper interrupts himself to telephone the Iron Pasha's skipper in Fort Lauderdale about the new paintwork on the hull. Or Claud the stablemaster about his fodder bills. Or Talbot the boatmaster about the bloody awful state of the jetty on Carnation Bay. Or his antiques dealer in London to discuss that decent-looking pair of Chinese dogs that are coming up at Bonham's next week, could be just right for the two seaward corners of the new conservatory, provided they're not too bilious green.

"Oh, Thomas, super! How are you ― no headaches or anything ghastly? Oh, good." Jed is in the butler's pantry, seated at a pretty Sheraton desk, talking menus with Miss Sue the housekeeper and Esmeralda the cook while she poses for the imaginary photographer from House & Garden. She has only to see Jonathan enter to make him indispensable: "Now, Thomas. Honestly, what do you think? Listen. Langoustines, salad, lamb ― or salad, langoustines, lamb?... Oh, I'm so glad. Well, that's exactly what we thought, isn't it. Esmeralda?... Oh, Thomas, can we possibly pick your brains about foie gras with Sauternes? The Chief adores it, I loathe it and Esmeralda is saying, very sensibly, why not just let them carry on with champagne?... Oh, Thomas" ― dropping her voice so she can pretend to herself that the servants can't hear ― "Caro Langbourne is so upset. Sandy's being an absolute pig again. I wondered whether a sail might cheer her up, if you've really got the energy. If she goes on at you, don't worry, just sort of close your ears, do you mind?... And, Thomas, while you're about it, could you bear to ask Isaac where the hell he's hidden the trestle tables?... And, Thomas, Daniel is absolutely determined to give Miss Molloy a surprise birthday party, if you can believe it, on the eighteenth. If you've got any ideas about that at all, I'll love you for absolutely ever...."

But when Roper is not in residence, menus are forgotten, workmen sing and laugh ― and so in his soul does Jonathan ― and happy conversations break out everywhere. The buzz of handsaws vies with the thunder of the landscapes' bulldozers. And Jed, walking pensively with Caroline Langbourne in the Italian gardens, or sitting with her for hours on end in her bedroom in the guesthouse, keeps herself at a careful distance and does not promise to love Jonathan even for an afternoon, let alone for absolutely ever.

For ugly things are stirring in the Langbourne nest.

* * *

The Ibis, a sleek young sailing dinghy available for the pleasure of Crystal guests, is becalmed. Caroline Langbourne sits in the prow, staring back to land as if never to return. Jonathan, not bothering with the tiller, is lounging in the stern with his eyes closed.

"Well, we can row, or we can whistle," he informs her languidly. "Or we can swim. I vote we whistle."

He whistles. She does not. Fish plop, but no wind comes.

Caroline Langbourne's soliloquy is addressed to the shimmering horizon.

"It's a very odd thing to wake up one morning and realise," she says ― Lady Langbourne, like Lady Thatcher, has a way of singling out the unlikeliest words for punishment ― "that one has been living and sleeping and virtually wasting one's years, let alone one's private money, on somebody who not only doesn't give a damn about you but behind all his legal flim-flam and hypocrisy is actually the most complete and utter crook. If I told anybody what I knew ― and I've only told Jed a bit because she's extremely young ― well, they wouldn't believe the half of it. Not a tenth. They couldn't. Not if they're decent people."

The close observer keeps his eyes tight shut ― and his ears wide open as Caroline Langbourne charges on. And sometimes, Burr had said, just when you're thinking God's handed in His notice, He'll turn round and slip you a bonus so big you'll not believe your luck.

* * *

Back in Woody's House, Jonathan sleeps lightly and is wide awake the moment he hears the shuffle of footsteps at his front door. Tying a sarong round his waist, he creeps downstairs, all prepared to commit murder. Langbourne and the nanny are peering through the glass.

"Mind if we pinch a bed off you for the night?" Langbourne drawls. "Palace is in a bit of an uproar. Care's blown her top, and now Jed's having a go at the Chief."

Jonathan sleeps fitfully on the sofa while Langbourne and his paramour noisily do the best they can upstairs.

* * *

Jonathan and Daniel lie face down, side by side, on the bank of a stream high on Miss Mabel Mountain. Jonathan is teaching Daniel to catch a trout with his bare hands.

"Why's Roper in a bait with Jed?" Daniel whispers, so as not to alarm the trout.

"Keep your eyes upriver," Jonathan murmurs in return.

"He says she should stop listening to a lot of junk from a woman scorned," says Daniel. "What's a woman scorned?"

"Are we going to catch this fish or not?"

"Everybody knows Sandy screws the whole world and his sister, so what's the fuss?" Daniel asks, in near-perfect imitation of Roper's voice.

Relief arrives in the form of a fat blue trout nosing its way dreamily along the bank. Jonathan and Daniel return to earth, bearing their trophy like heroes. But a pregnant silence hangs over Crystalside: too many secret lives, too much unease. Roper and Langbourne have flown to Nassau, taking the nanny with them.

"Thomas, that's totally unfair!" Jed protests too brightly, having been summoned with huge shouts to admire Daniel's catch. The strain is telling in her face: pinches of tension pucker her brow. It has not occurred to him till now that she is capable of serious distress.

"Bare hands? However did you do it? Daniel won't sit still even to have his hair cut, will you, Dans, darling? Plus he absolutely loathes creepy crawlies. Dans, that's super. Bravo. Terrif."

But her forced good humour does not satisfy Daniel. He sadly replaces the trout on its plate. "Trouts aren't crawlies," he says. "Where's Roper?"

"Selling farms, darling. He told you."

"I'm sick of him selling farms. Why can't he buy them? What will he do when he hasn't got any left?" He opens his book on monsters. "I like it best when it's Thomas and us. It's more normal."

"Dans, that's very disloyal," says Jed, and studiously avoiding Jonathan's eye, she hastens away to offer more comfort to Caroline, who strides alone on the beach, contemplating the vileness of man.

* * *

"Jeds! Party! Thomas! Let's cheer this bloody place up!"

Roper has been back since dawn. The Chief always flies at first light. All day long the kitchen staff has been toiling, planes have been arriving, the guesthouse has been filling up with MacDanbies, Frequent Fliers and Necessary Evils. The illuminated swimming pool and the gravel sweep are freshly groomed. Torches have been lit in the grounds and the sound system on the patio belts out nostalgic melodies from Roper's celebrated collection of 78s. Girls in their flimsy nothings, Corkoran in his Panama hat, Langbourne in his white dinner jacket and jeans, form eightsomes, pass partners, drawl and squeal. The barbecue crackles, the Dom is flowing, servants scurry and smile, the Crystal spirit is restored, even Caroline joins in the fun. Jed alone seems unable to kiss her sorrows goodbye.

"Look at it this way," says Roper ― never drunk but the better for his own hospitality ― to a blue-rinse English heiress who gambled away everything one had at Vegas, darling, such fun but thank God one's houses were in trust, and thank God too for darling Dicky. "If the world's a dung heap, and you build yourself a spot of Paradise and put a girl like this in it" ― Roper flings an arm round Jed's shoulders ― "in my book you've done the place a favour."

"Oh, but Dicky, darling, you've done us all a favour. You've put sparkle into our lives. Hasn't he, Jed, darling? Your man's a perfect marvel, and you're a very lucky little girl and never you forget it."

"Dans! Come here!"

Roper's voice has a way of producing silence. Even the American bond salesmen stop talking. Daniel trots obediently to his father's side. Roper releases Jed and places a hand on each of his son's shoulders and offers him to the audience for their inspection. He is speaking on impulse. He is speaking, Jonathan immediately realises, to Jed. He is clinching some running dispute between them that cannot be resolved without the backing of a sympathetic audience.

"Tribes of Bonga-Bonga Land starving to death?" Roper demands of the smiling faces. "Crops failing, rivers dried up, no medicines? Grain mountains all over Europe and America? Milk lakes we don't use, nobody gives a toss? Who are the killers, then? It's not the chaps who make the guns! It's the chaps who don't open the larder doors!" Applause. Then louder applause when they see that it matters to him. "Bleeding hearts up in arms? Colour supplements wingeing about the uncaring world? Tough titty! Because if your tribe hasn't got the guts to help itself, the sooner it's culled the better!" He gives Daniel a friendly shake. "Look at this chap. Good human material. Know why? Keep still, Dans. Comes from a long line of survivors. Hundreds of years, strongest kids survived, weaklings went under. Families of twelve? Survivors bred with the survivors and made him. Ask the Jews ― right, Kitty? Kitty's nodding. Survivors, that's what we're about. Best of the pack, every time." He turns Daniel round and points him at the house. "Off to bed, old boy. Thomas'll come and read to you in a minute."

For a moment Jed is as uplifted as the rest of them. She may not join in the applause, but it is clear from her smile and the way she squeezes Roper's hand that, however briefly, his diatribe has granted her a lightening of the guilt, or doubt, or perplexity, or whatever it is these days that clouds her customary pleasure in a perfect world.

But after a few minutes, she slips silently upstairs. And does not come down again.

* * *

Corkoran and Jonathan sat in the garden of Woody's House, drinking cold beer. A red halo of dusk was forming over Miss Mabel Island. The cloud rose in a last ferment, remaking the day before it died.

"Lad called Sammy," Corkoran said dreamily. "That was his name. Sammy."

"What about him?"

"Boat before the Pasha. The Paula, God help us. Sammy was one of the crew."

Jonathan wondered whether he was about to receive Corkoran's confession of lost love.

"Sammy from Kentucky. Matelot. Always shinning up and down the mast like someone out of Treasure Island. Why's he do that? I thought. Showing off? Impress the girls? The boys? Me? Rum. Chief was into commodities in those days. Zinc, cocoa, rubber goods, tea, uranium, any bloody thing. Sit up all night sometimes, selling forwards, buying backwards, sideways, buying long, selling short, bulling, bearing. Insider stuff, of course, no point in taking risks. And this little bugger Sammy, nipping up and down the mast. Then I twigged. Hullo, I thought. I know what you're up to, Sammivel, my son. You're doing what I'd do. You're spying. Waited till we were anchored for the evening, as usual, sent the crew ashore, as usual. Then I fished out a ladder and pottered up the mast myself. Nearly killed me, but I found it straightaway, tucked into an angle beside the aerial. Couldn't see it from the ground floor. Bug. Sammy'd been bugging the Chief's satcom, shadowing him on the markets. Him and his buddies on shore. They'd pooled their savings. By the time we nabbed him, they'd turned seven hundred bucks into twenty grand."

"What did you do to him?"

Corkoran shook his head. "My problem is, old love," he confessed, as if it were something Jonathan might solve for him, "every time I look into your Pan eyes, all my chimes and whistles tell me it's young Sammy with his pretty arse shinning up the whatnot."

* * *

It is nine o'clock the next morning. Frisky has driven across to Townside and is sitting in the Toyota, trumpeting the horn for extra drama.

"Hands off cocks and pull on socks. Tommy boy, you're on parade! Chief wants a quiet tit-ah-tit. Forthwith, immediately, and get your finger out!"

* * *

Pavarotti was in full lament. Roper stood before the great fireplace, reading a legal document through his half-lenses. Langbourne was sprawled on the sofa, one hand draped over his knee. The bronze doors closed. The music stopped.

"Present for you," said Roper, still reading.

A brown envelope addressed to Mr. Derek S. Thomas lay on the tortoise-shell desk. Feeling its weight, Jonathan had a disconcerting memory of Yvonne, pale-faced in her Pontiac beside the highway.

"You'll need this," Roper said, interrupting himself to shove a silver paper knife toward him. "Don't hack it about. Too damned expensive."

But Roper did not resume his reading. He went on watching Jonathan over his half-lenses. Langbourne was watching him too. Under their double gaze, Jonathan cut the flap and extracted a New Zealand passport with his own photograph inside it, the particulars in the name of Derek Stephen Thomas, company executive, born Marlborough, South Island, expiry three years off.

At the sight and touch of it he was for a moment ridiculously affected. His eyes blurred, a lump formed in his throat. Roper protects me. Roper is my friend.

"Told 'em to put some visas in it," Roper was saying proudly, "make it scruffy." He tossed aside the document he had been reading. "Never trust a new passport, my view. Go for the old 'uns. Same as Third World taxi drivers. Must be some reason why they've survived."

"Thanks," Jonathan said. "Really thanks. It's beautiful."

"You're in the system," Roper said, thoroughly gratified by his own generosity. "Visas are real. So's the passport. Don't push your luck. Want to renew, use one of their consulates abroad."

Langbourne's drawl was in deliberate counterpoint to Roper's pleasure. "Better sign the fucking thing," he said. "Try out some signatures first."

Watched by both men, Jonathan wrote Derek S. Thomas, Derek S. Thomas, on a sheet of paper until they were satisfied.

He signed the passport, Langbourne took it, closed it and handed it back to Roper.

"Something wrong?" said Langbourne.

"I thought it was mine. To keep," said Jonathan.

"Who the hell gave you that idea?" said Langbourne.

Roper's tone was more affectionate. "Got a job for you, remember? Do the job, then off you go."

"What sort of job? You never told me."

Langbourne was opening an attaché case. "We'll need a witness," he told Roper. "Somebody who can't read."

Roper picked up the phone and touched a couple of numbers.

"Miss Molloy? Chief here. Mind stepping down to the study a moment?"

"What am I signing?" Jonathan said.

"Jesus, fuck, Pine," said Langbourne in a pent-up murmur. "For a murderer on the run, you're pretty bloody picky, I must say."

"Giving you your own company to manage," said Roper. "Bit of travel. Bit of excitement. Lot of keeping your mouth shut. Big piece of change at the end of the day. All debts paid in full, with interest."

The bronze doors opened. Miss Molloy was tall and powdery and forty. She had brought her own pen of marbled plastic, and it hung round her neck on a brass chain.

The first document appeared to be a waiver in which Jonathan renounced his rights to the income, profits, revenue or assets of a Curaçao-registered company called Tradepaths Limited. He signed it.

The second was a contract of employment with the same company, whereby Jonathan accepted all burdens, debts, obligations and responsibilities accruing to him in his capacity as managing director. He signed it.

The third bore the signature of Major Lance Montague Corkoran, Jonathan's predecessor in the post. There were paragraphs for Jonathan to initial and a place for him to sign.

"Yes, darling?" said Roper.

Jed had stepped into the room. She must have talked her way past Gus.

"I've got the Del Oros on the line," she said. "Dine and stay and mahjongg in Abaco. I tried to get through to you but the switchboard says you're not taking calls."

"Darling, you know I'm not."

Jed's cool glance took in the group and stopped at Miss Molloy. "Anthea" she said. "Whatever are they doing to you? They're not signing you up to marry Thomas, are they?"

Miss Molloy turned scarlet. Roper gave an uncertain frown.

Jonathan had never seen him at a loss before.

"Thomas is coming aboard, Jeds. Told you. Setting him up with a bit of capital. Giving him a break. Felt we owed him one. All he did for Dans and so on. We talked about it, remember? Hell's going on, Jeds? This is business."

"Oh, well, that's super. Congratulations, Thomas." She looked at him at last. Her smile was distancing, but no longer so theatrical. "Just be awfully careful you don't do anything you don't want, won't you? Roper's terribly persuasive. Darling, can I tell them yes? Maria's so madly in love with you, I'm sure it'll break her heart if I don't."

* * *

"Anything else going on?" Burr asked, when he had listened in near silence to Jonathan's account of these events.

Jonathan affected to search his memory. "The Langbournes are having a marital tiff, but I gather that's par for the course."

"It's not unknown in this neck of the woods either," said Burr. But he still seemed to be waiting for more.

"And Daniel's going back to England for Christmas," said Jonathan.

"Nothing else?"

"Not of any moment."

Awkwardness. Each man waiting for the other to speak.

"Well tread water and act natural," said Burr grudgingly.

"And no more wild talk about breaking into his holy of holies, right?"

"Right."

Yet another pause before they both rang off.

I live my life, Jonathan told himself with deliberation as he jogged down the hill. I am not a puppet. I am nobody's servant.