Gail glances at Perry, she is not sure what for. Perry does not return her glance.
‘He was just so snaky,’ she complains, using Mark, rather than Luke, as the object of her disfavour, and wrinkles up her face to show how the bad taste lingers.
*
Mark had barely sat beside her on the bottom bench, she began, before he started banging on about what an important millionaire his Russian friend Dima was. According to Mark, Three Chimneys was only one of his several properties. He’d got another in Madeira, another in Sochi on the Black Sea.
‘And a house outside Berne,’ she went on, ‘where his business is based. But he’s peripatetic. Part of the year he’s in Paris, part Rome, part Moscow, according to Mark’ – and watched as Yvonne made another note. ‘But home, as far as the kids are concerned, is Switzerland and school is some millionaire internat establishment in the mountains. ‘He talks about the company. Mark assumes he owns it. There’s a company registered in Cyprus. And banks. Several banks. Banking’s the big one. That was what brought him to the island in the first place. Antigua currently boasts four Russian banks, by Mark’s count, plus one Ukrainian. They’re just brass plates in shopping malls and a phone on some lawyer’s desk. Dima’s one of the brass plates. When he bought Three Chimneys, that was for cash too. Not suitcases of it but laundry baskets, somewhat ominously, lent to him by the hotel, according to Mark. And twenty-dollar bills, not fifties. Fifties are too dicey. He bought the house, and a run-down sugar mill, and the peninsula they stand on.’
‘Did Mark mention a figure?’ – Luke is back.
‘Six million US. And the tennis wasn’t pure pleasure either. Or not to begin with,’ she continued, surprised by how much she remembered of the awful Mark’s monologue. ‘Tennis in Russia is a major status symbol. If a Russian tells you he plays tennis, he’s telling you he’s stinking rich. Thanks to Mark’s brilliant tuition, Dima went back to Moscow and won a cup and everybody gasped. But Mark isn’t allowed to tell that story, because Dima prides himself on being self-made. It was only because Mark trusted me so completely that he felt able to make an exception. And if I’d like to pop round to his shop some time, he had a dandy little room upstairs where we could continue our conversation.’
Luke and Yvonne offered sympathetic smiles. Perry offered no smile at all.
‘And Tamara?’ Luke asked.
‘God-smacked he called her. And barking mad with it, according to the islanders. Doesn’t swim, doesn’t go down to the beach, doesn’t play tennis, doesn’t talk to her own children except about God, ignores Natasha completely, barely talks to the natives except for Elspeth, wife of Ambrose, front-of-house manager. Elspeth works in a travel agency, but if the family’s around she drops everything and helps out. Apparently one of the maids borrowed some of Tamara’s jewellery for a dance not long ago. Tamara caught her before she could put it back and bit her hand so hard she had to have twelve stitches in it. Mark said if it had been him he’d have had an injection for rabies as well.’
‘So now tell us about the little girls who came and sat beside you, please, Gail,’ Luke suggested.
*
Yvonne was leading the case for the prosecution, Luke was playing her junior, and Gail was in the box trying to keep her temper, which was what she told her witnesses to do on pain of excommunication.
‘So were the girls already ensconced up there, Gail, or did they come skipping up to you the moment they saw the pretty lady all on her own?’ Yvonne asked, putting her pencil to her mouth while she studied her notes.
‘They walked up the steps and sat one either side of me. And they didn’t skip. They walked.’
‘Smiling? Laughing? Being scamps?’
‘Not a smile between them. Not a half of one.’
‘Had the girls, in your opinion, been dispatched to you by whoever was looking after them?’
‘They came strictly of their own accord. In my opinion.’
‘You’re sure of that?’ – becoming more Scottish and persistent.
‘I saw the whole thing happen. Mark had made a pass at me that I didn’t need, so I stomped up to the top bench to get as far away from him as I could. Nobody on the top bench except me.’
‘So where were the wee girls located at this point? Below you? Along the row from you? Where, please?’
Gail took a breath to control herself, then spoke with deliberation:
‘The wee girls were sitting on the second tier, with Elspeth. The older one turned round and looked up at me, then she spoke to Elspeth. And no, I didn’t hear what she said. Elspeth turned and looked at me, and nodded yes to the older girl. The two girls had a consultation, stood up, and came walking up the steps. Slowly.’
‘Don’t push her around,’ said Perry.
*
Gail’s testimony has become evasive. Or so it sounds to her lawyer’s ear, and no doubt to Yvonne’s also. Yes, the girls arrived in front of her. The elder girl dropped a bob that she must have learned at dancing lessons, and asked in very serious English with only a slight foreign accent: ‘May we sit with you, please, miss?’ So Gail laughed and said, ‘You may indeed, miss,’ and they sat down either side of her, still without smiling.
‘I asked the elder girl her name. I whispered, because everybody was being so quiet. She said, “Katya,” and I said, “What’s your sister’s name?” and she said, “Irina.” And Irina turned and stared at me as if I was – well, intruding really – I just couldn’t understand the hostility. I said, “Are your mummy and daddy here?” To both of them. Katya gave a really vehement shake of her head. Irina didn’t say anything at all. We sat still for a while. A long while, for children. And I was thinking: maybe they’ve been told they mustn’t speak at tennis matches. Or they mustn’t talk to strangers. Or maybe that’s all the English they know, or maybe they’re autistic, or handicapped in some way.’
She pauses, hoping for encouragement or a question, but sees only four waiting eyes and Perry at her side with his head tipped towards the brick walls that smell of her late father’s drinking habits. She takes a mental deep breath and plunges:
‘There was a game change. So I tried again: where do you go to school, Katya? Katya shakes her head, Irina shakes hers. No school? Or just none at the moment? None at the moment, apparently. They’d been going to a British International School in Rome, but they don’t go there any more. No reason given, none asked for. I didn’t want to be pushy, but I had a bad feeling I couldn’t pin down. So do they live in Rome? Not any more. Katya again. So Rome’s where you learned your excellent English? Yes. At International School they could choose English or Italian. English was better. I point to Dima’s two boys. Are those your brothers? More shakes. Cousins? Yes, sort of cousins. Only sort of? Yes. Do they go to International School too? Yes, but in Switzerland, not Rome. And the beautiful girl who lives inside a book, I say, is she a cousin? Answer from Katya, squeezed out of her like a confession: Natasha is our cousin but only sort of – again. And still no smile from either of them. But Katya is stroking my silk outfit. As if she’s never felt silk before.’
Gail takes a breath. This is nothing, she is telling herself. This is the hors d’oeuvre. Wait till next day for the full five-course horror story. Wait till I’m allowed to be wise after the event.
‘And when she’s stroked the silk enough, she puts her head against my arm and leaves it there and shuts her eyes. And that’s the end of our social exchange for maybe five minutes, except that Irina on the other side of me has taken her cue from Katya and commandeered my hand. She’s got these sharp, crabby little claws, and she’s really fastening on to me. Then she presses my hand against her forehead and rolls her face round it as if she wants me to know she’s got a temperature, except that her cheeks are wet and I realize she’s been crying. Then she gives me my hand back, and Katya says, “She cries sometimes. It is normal.” Which is when the game ends and Elspeth comes scuttling
up the steps to fetch them, by which time I want to wrap Irina up in my sarong and take her home with me, preferably with her sister as well, but since I can’t do any of that, and have no idea why she’s upset, and don’t know either of them from Adam – well, Eve – end of story.’
*
But it isn’t the end of the story. Not in Antigua. The story is running beautifully. Perry Makepiece and Gail Perkins are still having the happiest holiday of their lifetimes, just as they had promised themselves back in November. To remind herself of their happiness, Gail plays the uncensored version to herself:
Ten a.m. approx., tennis over, return to cabin for Perry to shower.
Make love, beautifully as ever, we can still do that. Perry can never do anything by halves. All his powers of concentration must be focused on one thing at a time.
Midday or later. Miss breakfast buffet for operational reasons (above), swim in sea, lunch by pool, return to beach because Perry needs to beat me at shuffle-board.
Four p.m. approx. Return to cabin with Perry victorious – why doesn’t he let a girl win even once? – doze, read, more love, doze again, lose sense of time. Polish off Chardonnay from minibar while reclining on balcony in bathrobes.
Eight p.m. approx. Decide we’re too lazy to dress, order supper in cabin.
Still on our once-in-a-lifetime holiday. Still in Eden, munching the bloody apple.
Nine p.m. approx. Supper arrives, wheeled in not by any old room-service waiter but the venerable Ambrose himself who, in addition to the bottle of Californian plonk we have ordered, brings us a frosted bottle of vintage Krug champagne in a silver ice bucket, priced on the wine list at $380 plus tax, which he proceeds to set out for us, together with two frosted glasses, a plate of very yummy-looking canapés, two damask napkins and a prepared speech, which he intones at full volume with his chest out and his hands pressed to his sides like a court copper.
‘This very fine bottle of champagne comes to you folk courtesy of the one and only Mr Dima himself. Mr Dima, he says to thank you for’ – plucking a note from his shirt pocket together with a pair of reading spectacles – ‘he says, and I quote: “Professor, I thanks you very heartily for a fine lesson in the great art of fair-play tennis and being an English gentleman. I also thanks you for saving me five thousand dollars of gamble.” Plus his compliments to the highly beautiful Miss Gail, and that’s his message.’
We drink a couple of glasses of the Krug and agree to finish the rest in bed.
*
‘What’s Kobe beef?’ Perry asks me, sometime during an eventful night.
‘Ever rubbed a girl’s tummy?’ I ask him.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Perry says, doing just that.
‘Virgin cows,’ I tell him. ‘Reared on sake and best beer. Kobe cattle have their tummies massaged every night till they’re ready for the chop. Plus they’re prime intellectual property,’ I add, which is also true, but I’m not sure he’s listening any more. ‘Our Chambers fought a lawsuit for them and won hooves down.’
Falling asleep, I have a prophetic dream that I am in Russia, and bad things are happening to small children in wartime black and white.
3
Gail’s sky is darkening, and so also is the basement room. With the dying of the light, the wan ceiling lamp seems to burn more glumly over the table, and the brick walls have turned to black. Above them in the street the rumble of traffic has become sporadic. So have the shadowed feet trotting past the frosted half-moon windows. Big, genial Ollie with his one earring but without his beret has bustled in with four cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits and disappeared.
Although this is the same Ollie who picked them up from Gail’s flat in a black cab earlier this evening, it is by now acknowledged that he is not a real cab driver, despite the licence badge he sports on his ample chest. Ollie, according to Luke, ‘keeps us all on the straight and narrow’, but Gail doesn’t buy this. A blue-stocking Scottish Calvinist is not in need of moral guidance, and for a gentleman jockey with a wandering eye and an armoury of upper-class charm, it’s way too late.
Besides, Ollie has too much behind the eyes for his menial role, in Gail’s opinion. She’s also puzzled about his earring, whether it’s a sex-signal or just a lark. She’s also puzzled about his voice. When she first heard it over the house entryphone in Primrose Hill, it was straight cockney. As he chatted to them through the partition about the dismal weather we were having for May – after that lovely April, and dear me how was the blossom ever going to recover from last night’s deluge? – she detected foreign underlays and his syntax began to break up. So what was his home tongue? Greek? Turkish? Hebrew? Or is the voice, like the single earring, an act he puts on to bamboozle us punters?
She wishes she’d never signed that bloody Declaration. She wishes Perry hadn’t. Perry wasn’t signing when he signed that form, he was joining.
*
Friday was the last day of the Indian honeymooners’ holiday, Perry is saying. They had therefore agreed to play the best of five sets instead of the usual three, and in consequence again missed breakfast.
‘So we settled for a swim in the sea, and maybe brunch if we were hungry. We picked the busy end of the beach. It wasn’t the bit we normally used, but we had our eye on the Shipwreck Bar.’
His efficient tone, Gail recognizes. Perry the English tutor. Facts and short sentences. No abstract concepts. Let the story tell itself. They chose a sunshade, he is saying. They laid out their gear. They were heading for the water when a people carrier with blackened windows came to a halt in the NO PARKING bay. From it emerged first the baby-faced bodyguard, next the tam-o’-shanter man from the tennis match, now wearing shorts and a yellow buckskin waistcoat, but the tam-o’-shanter still firmly in situ. Then Elspeth, wife to Ambrose, and after her an inflated rubber crocodile with its jaws open, followed by Katya – Perry says, parading his fabled powers of recall. And after Katya, exit an enormous red bouncy ball with a smiley face and grab handles which turned out to be the property of Irina, also dressed for the beach.
And finally Natasha emerged, he says, which is time for Gail to cut in. Natasha is my business, not yours:
‘But only after a stage delay, and just when we’re thinking there’s no one left in the people carrier,’ says Gail. ‘Dressed to kill in a Hakka-style lampshade hat and a cheongsam dress with toggle buttons and Grecian sandals cross-tied round her ankles, and she’s carting her leatherbound tome. After picking her way delicately over the sand for all eyes to see, she then settles herself languidly under the furthest sunshade of the row and begins her terribly serious reading. Right, Perry?’
‘If you say so,’ says Perry awkwardly, and jerks himself back in his chair as if to distance himself from her.
‘I do say so. But the truly eerie thing, the really spooky thing,’ she goes on stridently, now that Natasha is safely out of the way again, ‘was that each member of the party, big or small, knew exactly where to go and what to do as soon as they hit the beach.’
The baby-faced bodyguard headed straight for the Shipwreck Bar, and ordered a can of root beer which he made last for the next two hours, she says, clinging to the initiative. The tam-o’-shanter man, despite his bulk – a cousin, according to Mark, one of the many cousins from Perm in Russia, the city not the hairdo – scaled the rickety steps of a lifeguard’s lookout, hauled a rubber ring from his buckskin waistcoat, blew it up and sat on it, presumably for his piles. The two little girls, followed at a distance by the ample Elspeth with her bulging basket, came walking down the sand slope to where Perry and Gail had made their camp, bearing their crocodile and bouncy ball.
‘Walking again,’ Gail overemphasizes for Yvonne’s benefit. ‘Not hopping, skipping or yelling. Walking, and looking as tight-lipped and bug-eyed as they had at the tennis court. Irina with her thumb in her mouth and a big scowl, Katya’s voice about as friendly as a speaking clock: “Will you swim wit
h us, please, Miss Gail?” So I said – hoping to loosen things up a bit, I suppose – “Miss Katya, Mr Perry and I will be most honoured to swim with you.” So we swam. Didn’t we?’ – to Perry, who having nodded his assent, again insisted on putting his hand on hers, either in a gesture of support or to steady her down, she wasn’t sure which, but the result either way was the same; she was forced to close her eyes and wait several seconds before she was ready to resume, which she did in another gush.
‘It was a total set-up. We knew it was a set-up. The children knew it was a set-up. But if ever two girls needed a splash-about with a crocodile and a bouncing ball, these two did, right, Perry?’
‘Absolutely,’ says Perry enthusiastically.
‘So Irina battened on to my hand and practically frogmarched me into the water. Katya and Perry came after us with the crocodile. And all the time I was thinking: where on earth are their parents and why are we doing this instead of them? I didn’t ask Katya outright. I suppose I had some sort of premonition it might be a bad question. A divorce situation, something like that. So I asked her who the nice gentleman in the hat was, the one sitting on the ladder? Uncle Vanya, says Katya. Great, I say, who’s Uncle Vanya? Answer, just an uncle. From Perm? Yes, from Perm. No further explanation offered. Like: we don’t go to school in Rome any more. Have I foot-faulted yet, Perry?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then I’ll continue.’
*
For a while, the sun and sea do their job, she goes on: ‘The girls splash and leap around and Perry is a complete riot as mighty Poseidon rising from the deep and making his sea-monster noises – no, honestly, you were, Perry, you were marvellous, admit it.’
Exhausted, they stagger ashore, the girls to be dried, dressed and sun-creamed by Elspeth.