Then I looked. Rupert, glistening, saluted me with a wave of the rope end. Johnson was treading water again in much the same place, spouting sea water like a small table fountain, but safe. And between them in its yellow calyx the mine rocked, also unharmed and secure.
Beside me on the rocks, Michael Twiss snorted suddenly and groaned. I gave him a smack on the face, and then, as he sat queasily up, I dispatched him up the rocks to hang on to the rail. Now, if I held his hand and Rupert held mine, we could make a chain long enough to let Johnson in turn touch the opposite wall of the cave. He would not have much of a grip, but enough perhaps to save us all until help came.
The next wave arrived, and it worked. It was an interesting achievement and I had forgotten all about my diamonds, perhaps because Michael was so frightened. With a score or an agent he was a man of acid and iron, but physically, I knew so well, he acted as do the underfed and unloved in the backstreets where he was born.
After that, each wave was a fresh calculation: how big this time, how far the mine would travel, how much play to allow it. Deluged every few moments anew, clinging to slippery handhold or water-soaked rocks, the men in the water couldn’t hold on for ever. I remembered as they probably did, that Lenny was not at the jetty but holding Cecil Ogden’s hand in his impossible boat. The steamer passengers by now would be safely embarked, other yachtsmen warned off. Who was going to risk returning for us?
“I am betting my bottom dollar,” said Rupert at this moment, emerging, rather green in the face, from the last hideous comber, “on Victoria.” He paused. “All my other dollars, I need hardly say, Madame Rossi, are on you.”
He was a likeable boy. No one could leave him to drown.
He was right, too. Behind the rolling emerald of the next wave I could see a swaying of something at the cave mouth. There was a shrill hail, and a shout, and there was Victoria in a boat of magnificent scarlet, together with half the crew of the King George V, hell-bent for death, glory and danger beside her.
They rode up the long waterway towards us like the Valkyrie, laden with canvas and netting; and working in teams of two or three at a time, trapped and cushioned the mine where it floated.
I watched them, with Victoria, from the cave entrance where Johnson had sent us. Michael had already disappeared, walking quickly. I saw Johnson finally haul himself out of the water and begin, dripping, to hunt for his jacket, which lay on the causeway beside me. On the premise that if he was bothering about jackets, the mine must be safe, I climbed down and took it to him. I also took to him the revolver which had fallen out of its pocket.
He thanked me profusely. “Used to lose rubbers out of my schoolbag as well.”
“Do you usually carry a gun?” I enquired.
“Every portrait painter should have one. But it’s my clasp knife I’m after. In this pocket. Here we are.” He bent over the mine, did something, and straightened.
“Yes. Well, if all the good helpers and those who have provided the tea and buns will kindly get the hell out of it, I think I can remove the sting from this gentleman.”
“That’s a job for experts,” I said. “Don’t be an ass. Now it’s lashed, it can’t joggle.”
“Doesn’t matter if it joggles or not,” said Johnson. “And if I hadn’t been having an osmosis like a bloody buttercup every two minutes I’d have spotted it earlier. It isn’t a trembler mechanism at all: it’s the kind you set off by radio signals. So unless you know anyone with a transmitter and evil intentions, we are all perfectly safe.”
Which, in its way, was the insufferable, ultimate irony of Fingal’s horrible cave.
Rupert, I remember, talked all the way back to the jetty and was annoyed when I didn’t reply. I was busy, thinking. About, for example, Johnson’s revolver.
We set off much later from Iona, under sail. I remember, through a haze of champagne, discussing the whole business with Johnson.
He was pleased with himself; no doubt because he had employed the old Navy touch without blowing his head off. I found there were advantages, as well, in being a popular heroine. Today, the six hundred passengers of the King George V. Tomorrow, the world. There was, I remembered, an airstrip on Barra. Reporters could come by the planeload. Or a television team, at the least. I should give my first interviews there.
Without Michael. Of that I was sure. He had said nothing more about Kenneth or the cancelled South American tour, and Michael didn’t as a rule lie down to defeat. But if he was still on board, it was for a reason. And it wasn’t to bolster my ego with journalists, I was sure.
But instead, I had a new standing with others. Victoria had kissed and apologised: “We did think, all of us, that you weren’t mad about poor Johnson and us and our junketings . . . But you were super. I’ll never speak to anyone again who says you weren’t super. And the drip-dry non-seat chic bit just wasn’t Madame Rossi at all.”
I related then, I remember, an abbreviated version of my childhood, with grateful results, and was sorry when she returned to Ogden and Seawolf, which awaited off Staffa, duly mended by Lenny. The race forced itself unfortunately on the attention every time one looked at Rupert, who wore the expression of a man now worrying about five thousand pounds. On sailing time, only Hennessy and Seawolf had beaten us. On handicapped time, our likeliest rivals were Hennessy still, Seawolf from her recent fast reach, and the Buchanans on Binkie.
With the surface of my mind, through a meal of Chinese water chestnuts and snow peas, I made all the appropriate noises. But I was both glad and relieved when at midnight, Johnson leaned below from the cockpit and asked if I should like to come and see Ardnamurchan light from the deck. With my little gold alpaca coat pulled round my shoulders, I followed him up and kneeling, looked out to sea.
In the summer night, the Inner Hebrides lay all about us, black on the indigo sea. Above us, the uninterrupted sky stretched, a light, dense ultramarine, its ghostly clouds and small, sharp white stars suspended over the bright winking lights, near and far, of a constellation of lighthouses, and the grey, dimly voyaging waves here below. To our right, a dark mass and the fitful beam of a lighthouse announced the furthest west land mass of Britain. Ahead, and much nearer now, were the islands – Muck, Eigg, Rum, Canna, already seen from off Mull.
Behind and around us on the pleasant seas and warm breeze were the dim sails of the cruising yachts, wake and canvas gilded, like ours, by the faint radiance of escaped cabin light. I drew the saloon door shut behind me, not to dazzle Johnson’s eyes, and went to lean where he was resting, his pipe between his teeth, his arm on the tiller, his bifocal lenses trained on the waves, the sails, the burgee, the other boats, but never on me. He said: “There’s Rum. If Rupert could be trusted not to have kittens, we could call on your friend there tomorrow.”
I forgot about the gun. Idiot that I was, I thought only that here was a man self-sufficient as I was myself, who had shown no scruples about walking out on a corpse, and no sentiment afterwards. Since Crinan, my mind had been changed for me, radically. I said: “Dr Holmes isn’t there. They’ve moved him to South Rona. I’m to meet him on Saturday in Portree.”
“How do you know? Oh, Tom McIver,” Johnson answered himself, centring me briefly in the short-focus lenses. “Lenny mentioned he came round at Crinan. Was the message from Holmes?”
I told him. “So Kenneth Holmes warned you off, and you replied that you weren’t having any, and made a new assignation,” said Johnson. “The bulldog breed. And now the mine. They are keen to keep you apart, aren’t they?”
“Then the mine wasn’t a coincidence?” I said.
The bifocals tipped upwards. “Coincidence, hell! That mine was so new it was a wonder anyone recognised it as such. I did, because it’s a hobby with me.”
“So did I.” There seemed no point now in failing to mention it. “Because I saw it last night. On an identification chart in Hennessy’s wheelhouse.”
There was a long silence. Then: “Did you, indeed?” said Johnson thoughtf
ully.
I knew what he was thinking. With the tide as it was, that mine was planted – if it had been planted – no more than a short time before Dolly’s party arrived. And Hennessy had been at the cave just before us. I said it aloud.
“Yes. Hennessy could have carried it,” said Johnson. “It wasn’t big. A small packing case or a reinforced kitbag would hold it. Also, from what you say, he had the radio equipment to trigger it off.”
I sat down and hugged myself in my alpaca coat, and the silver of my Mexican earrings pattered cold on my cheek. I said: “But it needn’t be Hennessy. There must have been other boats, too.”
“Not so many. I checked with MacBrayne and Iona,” said Johnson. “The puffer Willa Mavis, of course, but she had passed hours before we arrived on the scene. Duke Buzzy’s Vallida had long since gone, too, after chucking in the champagne. Lenny and Ogden brought Seawolf over, but that was after we were all in the cave, and if Ogden’s got a children’s telephone set, never mind a shortwave radio, I’m Alexander Graham Bell. The King George arrived afterwards, too. So did Binkie, while we were all in the cave, but the Buchanans didn’t go ashore, and I don’t suppose they’ve got an R.T. Apart from one or two fishing boats who passed through earlier and were miles away while we were there in the cave, that’s the whole list of suspects.” He glanced up at me.
“You realise that someone has been carrying that mine, from Crinan or Rhu, with just this sort of purpose in mind? Stick it near a boat and trigger it off, and there’s nothing to show afterwards why any yacht got blown out of the water.”
I don’t get excited either. Not easily. “Why didn’t this one get triggered off, then?” I asked. “And anyway, how could they be sure of doing it at the right time?”
“Binoculars,” said Johnson. “That’s why it had to be someone who was within reasonable range while we were inside the cave. And frankly, I don’t know why they didn’t explode it. The boat with the shortwave radio maybe couldn’t get within binocular range at the time. There may have been someone with us they wanted to spare. They may have meant simply to give us a fright.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Someone they wanted to spare?”
“Well,” said Johnson, his gaze fixed on the streaming burgee. “Someone might have an accomplice. Are you sure now, for example, that your Lochgair ducking was nothing but accident?”
I stared at him, but there was nothing to be seen of his face but the glittering glass. Lochgair, where the unhitched boom had knocked me into the sea. They had all sworn it was the wind in the crutch. Lenny had declared it was in perfect order when he went to bed, and he and Rupert were both sure that no one could have boarded Dolly that night unheard . . .
And yet – I was thinking – and yet, I heard a whisper that night using the words Kenneth uses. Who else would have known them?
Who else? What about Michael Twiss?
But I was his golden disc-making goose. Why should he try to kill me?
Now, of course, we had quarrelled. But we had patched it up then. Unless, I thought slowly, he planned to quarrel and did not intend patching it up? For Michael, and no one but Michael, knew in which banks, all over Europe, I kept my money under all my various names, and where my jewels were. If I were to die . . .
I had not considered this before. But if I were to die, Michael Twiss would be rich. Except that Michael, too, was there in the cave.
Except . . . No. Put it another way, said my brain. Except that Michael, too, was there in the cave far longer than he had intended. Unconscious, after his fall.
I could face, until I had thought all that through, neither the upper nor the lower reaches of the bifocals. I made an excuse, abruptly, to Johnson, and locked myself into my room.
NINE
That night, I had to use sleeping pills and Michael knew it: I saw it in his sharp, cologne-imbued face the next morning. I behaved as usual, to Michael, to Rupert, to everyone. Johnson would, I believed, give me protection. The rest was my own affair, after all.
On deck there was nothing but sunshine and sea, although Rupert’s silent anxiety dimmed his exuberance. The night’s progress had been abysmal, the winds freakish and contrary, dropping now to something near calm. We were nowhere near the island of Barra, our next port of call. But the twelve yachts still left in the race were doing no better than we.
Only Johnson showed no signs of impatience. He had, I saw, clipped his easel into place behind the cockpit, and when we all adjourned there with our coffee, with Lenny at helm, I sank into my allotted place, back to the saloon. I wanted the portrait finished.
For the moment, smoking, Johnson painted in silence, timing his strokes with the roll of the boat; and it came to me that he also knew that time was running out. The techniques, too, had altered. Now, the glistening coils of colour on his palette were swept off in hodfuls, and laid on the canvas like satiny twill. The reek of linseed oil came in snatches, allowed by the wind. Rupert hovered with turpentine on a rag, vociferating as he lifted from paint and varnish work the flying flecks from Johnson’s sables and hogs.
After a bit, it got easier and Johnson said, unexpectedly: “No advertising could do justice to the planes between your cheekbone and jaw. Hence your voice timbre, I suppose.”
This was true, of course. I have widely spaced cheekbones, with big and resonant hollows within them. Inside, my palate too is arched very high, which gives me my head tones, along with the spaces inside the head, I explained. With age, my range would probably drop, but provided I kept in good health and maintained my technique and breath control, I could sing lyric and even dramatic roles for thirty years yet.
“Will you?” said Johnson conversationally. “Without Michael Twiss?”
I am Tina Rossi, cara diva to Visconti, Serafin, Karajan, Bernstein; Madame to the world. I did not need Michael Twiss to tell me how to move, to speak, to dress any longer. Michael Twiss’ interpretation of Marguerite, Titania, Tosca, Norma, Lucia, Nedda, Rosina, Ameria and Imogene were all on record, in my voice: I had only to replay them to study them. While Colbert La Berge could earn me five thousand dollars for one Quando rapita in estasi, I should not starve. I had spent all night thinking that out.
So: “Galli-Curci managed without Michael Twiss,” I said now mildly to Johnson’s enquiry. “And Adelina Patti. And Jenny Lind and Luisa Tetrazzini. One can always find managers.”
“But you mean to go on with it?” he asked, all his attention on the planes of my face. “Don’t you get tired of living out of suitcases, of planning every day of your life three or four years ahead?”
“Why?” I said. “Do you think it is better to be of the moneyed idle: to sail, to fish, to form little parties for Bermuda and Ascot, to sleep a little with whoever appeals, to ski, to gamble, to attend charity balls and weddings and hunt balls and first nights and public luncheons and private supper parties until one dies in one’s corseting?”
“Isn’t that why you learned to sing in the first place?”
In my mind only, I answered. Not quite, it isn’t. I learned to sing for fame, as well as for fortune: for that moment when the thunder of the orchestra is suspended, the choirs stop, and my voice is revealed, single, pure and celestial, embarked on a passage of tender bel canto. I do not want to lose that elation, that power, that applause. And how can I start leading a life of style, leisure and luxury when I have no friends?
Then Johnson said placidly, answering himself: “No. I’m sure you have a true vocation. But there is a halfway house, you know, with time for new friends, new relationships. Lots of people work like hell just because they are lonely.”
Almost . . . almost I was tempted. But not quite. I am not Cecil Ogden with my Victoria.
“They are lucky,” I said. “To have solitude, freedom from one’s poor lame dogs and one’s admirers and overpowering friends . . . What bliss! To stay on Barra, for instance.” I gazed where Rupert had pointed out to me the hilly ridge of the Outer Isles, where Castlebay, Barra, was to
be our landfall today. “To retire to Barra. To go native on an unknown island where no one has heard of me . . . There is an airport?” I said.
There was an airfield, of sorts. And save for Sundays, the Glasgow plane arrived there each day.
The wind freshened after that, and soon after lunch, I looked through the starboard porthole to see a low whaleback of sunlit moorlands on the right, beyond a black perch. By the time I was on deck, we were passing the creamy crescent of Vatersay’s beach, and low hills ahead of us were sliding slowly towards our port flank as the harbour of Castlebay, Barra, opened out on our right.
It was a wide bay, limpid blue, with white and grey houses scattered around it and climbing the base of a tall, rounded hill, below which lay the jetty, half-masked by a big MacBrayne’s cargo boat, with a trawler tied up at the side.
Between ourselves and the jetty was a rock rising clear out of the sea, with the square walls of a castle on it. From its roofwalk, a strange flag was flying. I stared.
“On the starboard bow,” said Rupert helpfully, “the Red Hand of the Macneils, denoting that the chief of the clan is in residence at Kishmul’s castle . . . there’s Symphonetta, damn her.”
There indeed was Symphonetta, her poles bare, and, looking through the glasses, one could see Symphonetta’s powerboat tied up by the trawler, with someone in glistening white oilskins therein. Stanley Hennessy had lost no time in checking in. His mouth shut, Rupert scanned the rest of the bay.
Four others, including the Buchanans of Binkie were in, or sailing in just behind us. Ogden’s Seawolf was not yet in sight, though there were one or two strange boats also anchored, including a steam yacht just taking position with a good deal of fussing, having been thrown out from the quay by the steamer. It was a pretty sight: the water reflections like blown silvery dandelion clocks running over hull, flank and sail of the moving boats, while the long, dark wake of the steam yacht slid sideways in bars underneath them, making the smaller yachts tilt, their reflected sails twisted like corkscrews.