"They told me to ask Jesus. Joke of some sort."
"Anyone else decided not to show?" Roper asks, his eyes still fixed upon the cruise ship.
"Everyone else is on cue," Langbourne replies tersely.
Jonathan hears their conversation, and so does Rooke. seated with Millie and Amato at their table next to the protection. The three of them are poring over a guidebook of the island, pretending to wonder where they'll go tomorrow.
* * *
Jed was floating, which was what always happened to her when her life got out of sync: she floated, and she kept floating till the next man, or the next crazy house party, or the next family misfortune, provided her with a change of direction, which she then variously described to herself as fate, or running for cover, or growing up, or having fun, or ― less comfortably these days ― doing her own thing. And part of floating was to do everything at once, rather like the whippet she had had when she was young, who believed that if you ran fast enough round a corner, you were sure to put up something you could chase. But then the whippet was content that life should be a succession of patternless episodes, whereas Jed had for too long been wondering where the episodes in her own life were leading.
So in Nassau, from the moment Roper and Jonathan had left, Jed went straight to work doing everything. She went to the hairdresser and the dressmaker, she invited simply everybody to the house, she entered herself for the Windermere ladies' tennis competition and accepted every invitation that came her way, she bought files to contain her household bumf for the winter cruise, she telephoned the Pasha's chef and housekeeper and drew up menus and placements, even though she knew that Roper was certain to countermand her instructions because in the end he liked to do it all himself.
But the time scarcely moved.
She prepared Daniel for his return to England; she took him shopping and got in friends his age, even though Daniel loathed them and said so; she organised a barbecue for them on the beach, all the time pretending that Corky was quite as much fun as Jonathan ― I mean, honestly, Dans, isn't he a scream? ― and doing her absolute best to ignore the fact that ever since they had left Crystal, Corkoran had sulked and puffed and shot pompous scowls at her exactly like her elder brother William, who fucked every girl in sight, including all her friends, but thought his little sister should go virgin to the grave.
But Corkoran was even worse than William. He had appointed himself her chaperone, her watchdog and her jailer. He squinted at her letters almost before she had opened them, he earwigged her phone calls and tried to elbow his way into every bloody corner of her day.
"Corks, darling, you are being a bore, you know. You're making me feel like Mary, Queen of Scots. I know Roper wants you to look after me, but couldn't you possibly go and play on your own for some of the day?"
But Corkoran stuck doggedly at her side, sitting in the drawing room in his Panama hat and reading the newspaper while she telephoned; hanging around the kitchen while she and Daniel made fudge; writing out the labels for Daniel's homebound luggage.
Until finally, like Jonathan, Jed retreated deep inside herself. She gave up small talk, she gave up ― except when she was with Daniel ― her wearying efforts to appear on top of life, she gave up counting the hours and allowed herself instead to roam the landscape of her inmost world. She thought of her father and what she had always considered to be his useless and outdated sense of honour, and she decided it had actually meant more to her than all the bad things that had happened on account of it: such as the sale of the debt-ridden family house and the horses, and her parents' move to their present dreadful little bungalow on the old estate, and the perpetual rage of Uncle Henry and all the other trustees.
She thought of Jonathan and tried to fathom what it meant to her that he was working for Roper's ruin. She wrestled, as her father would have done, with the rights and wrongs of her dilemma, but all she could really come up with was that Roper represented a catastrophic wrong turning in her life, and that Jonathan had some brotherly claim upon her that was unlike any other claim she had ever felt; and that she even found it companionable when he saw through her, provided he was also confident of the good parts of her, because those were the pails she wanted to get out and dust and put back into service. For instance, she wanted her father back. And she wanted her Catholicism back, even if it woke the tearaway in her every time she thought about it. She wanted firm ground under her feet, but this time she was prepared to work for it. She would even listen sweetly to her bloody mother.
Finally came Daniel's day of departure, which by then she seemed to have been waiting for all her life. So Jed and Corkoran together took Daniel and his luggage to the airport in the Rolls, and as soon as they arrived Daniel needed to dawdle alone at the newsstand in order to buy sweets and reading material and do whatever small boys do when they're going back to their bloody mothers. So Jed and Corkoran waited for him in the middle of the concourse, both suddenly miserable at the prospect of his departure, the more so since Daniel was on the verge of serious tears. And then to her surprise she heard Corkoran speaking to her in a conspiratorial whisper.
"Got your passport, heart?"
"Corks, darling, it's Daniel who's leaving, not me. Remember?"
"Have you got it or not? Quick!"
"I've always got it."
"Then go with him, heart," he begged, taking out his handkerchief and fussing his nose with it in order not to look as though he was talking. "Jump for it now. Corks never said a word. All your own work. Seats galore. I asked."
But Jed didn't jump for it. It never crossed her mind, which was something she was at once extremely pleased about. In the past she had tended to jump first and ask questions afterwards. But that morning, she discovered that she had answered the questions in her mind already, and she wasn't going to jump anywhere if it meant jumping further away from Jonathan.
* * *
Jonathan was dreaming deliciously when the phone rang, and still dreaming as he lifted it. Nonetheless, the close observer was swift in his reaction, stifling the first ring, then switching on the light, then grabbing a notepad and pencil in anticipation of Rooke's instructions.
"Jonathan," she said proudly.
He pressed his eyes shut. He jammed the phone to his ear, trying to contain the sound of her voice. Every practical instinct in him told him to say, "Jonathan who? Wrong number," and ring off. You stupid little fool! he wanted to scream at her. I told you, don't ring, don't try and get in touch, just wait. So you ring, you get in touch and you bubble my real Christian name straight into the listeners' ears.
"For Christ's sake," he whispered. "Get off the line. Go to sleep."
But the conviction in his voice was fading, and it was too late now to say wrong number. So he lay with the telephone at his ear, listening while she repeated his name, Jonathan, Jonathan, practising it, getting the hang of it in all its shades, so that nobody would send her back to the beginning of the course to start her round again.
* * *
They've come for me.
It was an hour later, and Jonathan could hear footsteps trying to be silent outside his door. He sat up. He heard one step, and it was sticky on the ceramic tiles, and he knew it was a bare foot. He heard a second, and it was on the carpet that ran down the centre of the corridor. He saw the corridor light go on and off in his keyhole as a body slipped past, he thought from left to right. Was Frisky sizing up to burst in on him? Had he gone to fetch Tabby so that they could do the job together? Was Millie returning his laundry? Was a barefoot boot boy collecting shoes to clean? The hotel does not clean shoes. He heard the click of a bedroom lock across the corridor and knew it was a barefoot Meg coming back from Roper's suite.