* * *
The day of Jed's arrival in Antigua was the worst in her life. She had had plenty of other worst days till now ― her Catholic guilt had supplied her with a whole bunch. There had been the day the mother superior marched into the dormitory and told her to pack her things, her taxi was waiting at the door. That was the same day her father ordered her to go to her bedroom while he took priestly advice on how to handle a sixteen-year-old virgin whore caught stark naked in the potting shed with a village boy doing his unsuccessful best to deflower her. There had been the day in Hammersmith when two boys she had refused to sleep with had got drunk and decided to make common cause, taking it in turns to hold her down while the other raped her. And there had been the too-wild days in Paris before she stepped over the sleeping bodies, straight into Dicky Roper's arms. But the day she boarded the Pasha in English Harbour, Antigua, had knocked the others off the scoreboard.
On the plane, she had managed to ignore Corkoran's veiled insults by escaping into her magazines. At Antigua airport he had thrust his hand officiously under her arm, and when she tried to shake free he had clutched her in a clawlike grip while two blond boys trod on her heels. In the limousine, Corkoran rode up front and the boys sat too close either side of her. And as she climbed the Pasha's gangway, all three made a phalanx round her, no doubt to demonstrate to Roper ― if he was watching ― that they were obeying orders. Frog-marched to the door of the state apartments, she was obliged to wait while Corkoran knocked.
"Who is it?" Roper demanded from within.
"A Miss Marshall, Chief. Safe and moderately sound."
"Show her in, Corks."
"With luggage, Chief, or was it without?"
"With."
She stepped inside and saw Roper sitting at the desk with his back to her. And he remained there, still with his back to her, while a steward parked her luggage in the bedroom and withdrew. He was reading something, checking it with a pen as he went along. A contract, a whatever. She waited for him to finish, or put it down and turn to her. Even get up. He didn't. He reached the end of the page, scribbled something ― she thought his initials ― then passed the next page and went on reading. It was a thick, typed document, blue, with a red ribbon and a red-ruled margin. There were quite a few pages to go. He's writing his will, she decided. And to my former mistress Jed I leave absolutely sod all....
He was wearing his navy blue tailored silk dressing gown with rolled collar and crimson piping, and usually, when he put it on, it meant either that they were about to make love, or just had. While he read he occasionally shifted the angle of his shoulders inside it, as if he sensed she was admiring them. He had always been proud of his shoulders. She was still standing. She was six feet from him. She was wearing jeans and a knit vest and several gold necklaces. He liked her to wear gold. The carpet was puce and brand-new. Very expensive, very deep. They had chosen it together from samples, in front of the fire at Crystal. Jonathan had lent his advice. This was the first time she had seen it in position.
"Am I disturbing you?" she asked, when he had still not turned his head.
"Hardly at all," he replied, while his head remained bowed over the papers.
She sat on the edge of a chair, clutching her tapestry bag on her lap. There was such over-control in his body, and such harnessed tension in his voice, that she presumed that at any moment he was going to get up and hit her, probably all in one movement: a spring and a sweeping backhand swipe that would knock her into the middle of next week. She'd once had an Italian boy who'd done that to her as a punishment for being witty. The punch had carried her clean across the room. It should have felled her outright, but her riding balance helped her, and as soon as she had grabbed her things from the bedroom, she let the punch carry her out of the house.
"I told them lobster," Roper said, as he again initialled something on the document before him. "Reckoned you were owed one after Corky's little number at Enzo's. Lobster all right for you?"
She didn't answer.
"Chaps tell me you've been having a bit of a tumble with Brother Thomas. Likee? Real name's Pine, by the way. Jonathan to you."
"Where is he?"
"Thought you'd ask that." Turn a page. Raise an arm. Fuss with the half-lens reading glasses. "Been going on long, has it? Quickies in the summerhouse? Knickers off in the woods? Bloody good at it, both of you, I must say. All those staff around. I'm not stupid either. Didn't spot a thing."
"If they're telling you I slept with Jonathan, I didn't."
"Nobody said much about sleep."
"We are not lovers."
She had said the same to the mother superior, she remembered, but it hadn't cut much ice. Roper, paused at his reading, still didn't turn his head.
"So what are you?" he asked. "If not lovers, what?"
We're lovers, she conceded stupidly. It made not one whit of difference whether they were physical lovers or some other. Her love for Jonathan and her betrayal of Roper were accomplished facts. The rest, as in the potting shed, was technical. "Where is he?" she demanded.
Too busy reading. A shift of the shoulders as we amend something with our six-foot-long Mont Blanc.
"Is he on the boat?"
A sculptured stillness now, her father's pensive silence. But father was afraid the world was going to the devil and, by Jove, hadn't the least idea how to stop it. Whereas Roper was helping it on its way.
"Says he did it all by himself," Roper said. "That true? Jed didn't do any of it. Pine's the baddie, Pine did it all. Jed's snow white. Too thick to know what she's about, anyway. End of statement for the press. All his own work."
"What work?"
Roper shoved his pen aside and stood, still contriving not to look at her. He crossed the room to the panelled wall and pressed a button. The electric doors of the drinks cupboard rolled back. He opened the refrigerator, fished out a bottle of the Dom, uncorked it and filled himself a glass. Then, as a kind of compromise between looking at her and not, he spoke to her reflection in the mirrored interior of the cupboard, what he could see of it between a row of wine bottles and the vermouths and Camparis.
"Want some?" he asked, almost tenderly, lifting the bottle of Dom and offering it to her reflection.
"What work? What's he supposed to have done?"
"Won't say. Asked him to, but he won't. What he's done, who for, who with, why, starting when. Who's paying him. Nothing. Could save himself a hell of a lot of aggro if he did. Gallant chap. Good choice you made. Congratulations."
"Why should he have done anything? What are you doing to him? Let him go."
He turned and walked toward her, looking at her directly at last, with his pale, washed eyes, and this time she was certain he would hit her, because his smile was so unnaturally at ease, his manner of such studied unconcern, that there had to be a different version of him inside. He was still wearing his reading glasses, so he had to lower his head to look at her over the top of them. His smile was sporting, and very close to her.
"Simon-pure, is he, your lover boy? Lily-white, is he? Mister Clean? Utter balls, dear. Only reason I took him in was because some hired lout held a pistol at my boy's head. You telling me he wasn't part of the caper? Horseshit, sweetheart, frankly. You find me a saint, I'll pay the candle. Till then, I'll keep my money in my pocket." The chair she had chosen was dangerously low. His knees as he bowed over her were at the level of her jaw. "Been having my thoughts about you, Jeds. Wondering whether you're quite as dumb as I supposed. Whether you and Pine aren't in it together. Who picked who up at the horse sale, eh? Eh?" He was tweaking her ear, making a mischievous joke of it. "Bloody clever chaps, women. Clever, clever chaps. Even when they're pretending they haven't got anything between their ears. Make you think you chose them, fact is they chose you. Are you a plant, Jeds? You don't look a plant. Look a bloody pretty woman. Sandy thinks you're a plant. Wishes he'd had a tumble with you himself. Corks wouldn't be surprised if you were a plant" ― he gave an effeminate simper ― "and your fancy boy ain't saying nuttin'." He was tweaking her ear to the rhythm of each accented word. Not painful tweaks. Playful ones. "Level with us, Jeds, will you, darling? Share the joke. Be a sport. You're a plant, aren't you, sweetheart. A plant with a lovely arse, aren't you?"