But he had news, he reminded himself, trying to cheer himself up. It didn’t entirely work, he still felt gloomy, but at least the thought of how cheery the news would make Kelly and Frank eased his moroseness a little.
He dismounted from his bicycle at the entrance to the yacht club, left it leaning against the wall there, and went into the building, downstairs, out the other side, and along the dock to Nothing Ventured IV. He passed Redoubtable on the way, saw Major ffork-Linton and Miss Rushby sitting on deck to view the sunset, and was surprised when Miss Rushby smiled pleasantly and waved to him. “Lovely sunset,” she called.
Robby hadn’t noticed it. “Beautiful,” he said, and smiled back, grateful for small acts of humanity and hating himself for being grateful. He walked on and noticed now that the sunset was indeed beautiful, the sky blue and purple and orange and red, the sea violet with a yellow-orange road leading straight to the red ball of the sun sitting on the far horizon. It made him smile, and for the moment forget his troubles.
Frank and Kelly were not on deck. Robby boarded the ship and found them down in the main cabin, Kelly looking at slightly blurred photographs of Sassi Manoon at an airport. Frank was pointing, saying, “That guy came on the plane with her. They didn’t seem to get along too well. I think maybe he works for her.”
Kelly nodded, and looked at Robby. “How’d you do?”
“Fine. But I’ll never get the Jamaican accent. It’s kind of English, but different.”
Frank, in a perfect Jamaican accent, said, “Mon, it’s a distinctive sort of speech here on the islands.”
“That’s it,” Robby said. “That’s exactly what it sounds like. Every time I try it, I sound like Barry Fitzgerald.”
“Well, work on it,” Kelly said. “Anything else to report?”
Robby removed his portable tape recorder, sliding the strap over his head and putting the machine down on the coffee table. “Lots of stuff on there,” he said. “Background material. And I got all these pamphlets and things,” he added, pulling bright-colored brochures from all his pockets. “And I heard some gossip down in town,” he said. “Sassi Manoon is staying at a house outside of town rented by Sir Albert Fitzroy, the big English movie producer.”
“I followed them out there,” Frank said. “Big house. White, two stories high, up on a hill. Very Spanish-Mexican-looking.”
“They’re having a party there tonight,” Robby said. “A huge party with hundreds of people, with Sassi Manoon the guest of honor.”
Kelly sat up, looking alert. “At the house? Where she’s staying? A party?”
“Huge party,” Robby told him. “Too big to tell if they’ve got gate-crashers or not.”
Kelly jumped to his feet, rubbing his hands together. “The gods are smiling,” he said. “This is a good omen.”
“We must have a lucky star,” Frank said, grinning. “Or anyway we’re going to get one.”
“And tonight we get to see her in the flesh,” Kelly said. “And case the joint where she’s staying. And maybe get a lot of valuable information. Robby, what time is this party?”
“It starts at eight.”
“We’ll get there at nine thirty.” It was one of the few times Robby had ever seen Kelly smile.
(6)
Coming to Meet
The driveway curving up to the house was full of parked cars — here a Rolls, there a Cadillac, somewhere else an Alfa Romeo. The late arrivals were parking way down near the public road and walking up the slanting blacktop past the double row of amber lights hanging from the palms. White and amber spots shone on the front of the house, highlighting it against the darkness. Island music pulsed from somewhere inside.
Kelly and Frank and Robby got out of the cab at the foot of the driveway, paid the driver, and walked up to the open front door. All three were dressed in ties and sports jackets, and even Kelly looked festive for the occasion.
Other people were still arriving, and there was no one at the door to greet or challenge them. Kelly and Frank and Robby strolled casually inside, nodded to one another, and separated, each heading for a different part of the house.
Downstairs, the house was full; upstairs, empty. Servants moved in and out of the kitchen, carrying trays of drinks, hors d’oeuvres, empty ashtrays. Guests moved, talked, laughed, munched, drank, tinkled ice cubes.
The older the guest, the closer to the front door he was likely to stay. The main living room, off the entrance, was full of the cigar smokers, the businessmen, the money boys; words like probate and percentage thudded off the white walls and buried themselves in the purple carpet. Some wives were there, too; fat-armed women expensively but uselessly dressed, sitting in a cluster like a display of joke dolls in a novelty shop, talking to one another about the quality of service in this hotel, that hotel, all over the uncivilized world. Amid them sat Miss Rushby, blending with the group like a submarine in a school of whales.
Deeper in the house, in what was called the library because it was full of books bought en masse at an auction, were the pipe smokers, the intellectuals, the established writers and directors, and here and there a creative producer, telling each other how crappy their agents were. The wives here tended toward straight hair and plain talk; some of them hadn’t seen each other since the last march on Washington. In a corner, Major ffork-Linton was involved with five others in a game of liar’s poker, and seemed to be so far the only winner.
Beyond the library, in what was called the solarium because it leaned heavily to windows and plants, were clustered the cigarette smokers, the pros, the actors and singers and comedians and personalities and celebrities, telling each other what great book jackets they’d read recently. Here the wives looked like audition day at the Copa — leggy, expensive, blank-faced. Benny Bernard, trying to do himself a little good, was looking around for a conversation to join.
Out by the pool were the pot smokers, the young hippies, the twenty to twenty-five crowd, the new breed — TV series regulars, rock group members, actors who were feeling guilty about copping out on La Mama because they were too young to have copped out on Circle in the Square and too old to have copped out on Yale. Nobody was married out here, or at least not very married, and everybody had already slept with everybody else, so there was nothing to do but dance around the pool and talk to one another — shouting over the music — about analysis.
Scattered through all the rooms, like the yeast in an upside-down cake, were the critics, the magazine writers, the free-lance journalists and the book-compiling aficionados who fill the chinks and crannies of every film festival worthy of the name. These were the only guests talking about movies, and they were doing so passionately, knowledgeably, and interminably.
It was out by the pool that the band had been set up. Marimba, electric guitars, drums, gourds, bongos — the boys in the band stood there and drove toward morning, pumping music out over the pink translucent pool. The pool had underwater lights, with red bulbs. Green spots shone on the palm trees by the bamboo fence at the edge of the property, blue and yellow circling disk lights shone on the faces and drinks of the dancers. Beyond the pool area lay the tropical night, black, heavy, alive with mosquitoes.
It was to the pool that Robby gravitated, moving like slender smoke through the house. The only Negroes inside the house were servants, but out back there were half a dozen Negro guests, and Robby relaxed at once. There was a surge of motion counter-clockwise around the pool, people dancing singly or in pairs — it was hard to tell which — and Robby forced his way into the jumble, found a tiny clearing, and began to flag.