“Oh, well that’s super. Congratulations, Thomas.” She looked at him at last. Her smile was distancing, but no longer so theatrical. “Just be awfully careful you don’t do anything you don’t want, won’t you? Roper’s terribly persuasive. Darling, can I tell them yes? Maria’s so madly in love with you, I’m sure it’ll break her heart if I don’t.”
“Anything else going on?” Burr asked, when he had listened in near silence to Jonathan’s account of these events.
Jonathan affected to search his memory. “The Langbournes are having a marital tiff, but I gather that’s par for the course.”
“It’s not unknown in this neck of the woods either,” said Burr. But he still seemed to be waiting for more.
“And Daniel’s going back to England for Christmas,” said Jonathan.
“Nothing else?”
“Not of any moment.”
Awkwardness. Each man waiting for the other to speak.
“Well tread water and act natural,” said Burr grudgingly. “And no more wild talk about breaking into his holy of holies, right?”
“Right.’
Yet another pause before they both rang off.
I live my life, Jonathan told himself with deliberation as he jogged down the hill. I am not a puppet. I am nobody’s servant.
18
Jonathan had planned his forbidden assault on the state apartments as soon as he learned that Roper had decided to sell some more farms and that Langbourne would be accompanying him and Corkoran would be stopping off in Nassau to attend to Ironbrand business.
His resolve was confirmed when he heard from Claud the stablemaster that on the morning following the men’s departure, Jed and Caroline proposed to take the children on a pony trek of the island’s coast path, setting off at six and returning to Crystal in time for brunch and a swim before the midday heat.
From that moment his dispositions became tactical. On assault day minus one he took Daniel on his first difficult climb up Miss Mabel’s north face—more truthfully up the face of a small quarry cut into the steepest part of the hillock—which required three pitons and a roped traverse before they arrived triumphant at the eastern end of the airstrip. At the peak he gathered a bunch of sweet-scented yellow freesias, which the natives called shipping flowers.
“Who are they for?” Daniel asked while he munched his chocolate, but Jonathan managed to dodge the question.
Next day he rose at his usual early hour and jogged a stretch of the coastal path to make sure the trekking party had set out as planned. He came face-to-face with Jed and Caroline on a windy bend, with Claud and the children straggling behind.
“Oh, Thomas, will you by any chance be going up to Crystal later?” Jed asked, leaning forward to pat her Arab’s neck as if she were starring in a cigarette advertisement. “Great. Then could you be frightfully kind and tell Esmeralda that Caro can’t eat anything with milk fat because of her diet?”
Esmeralda was fully aware that Caroline could eat no milk fat, because Jed had told her so in Jonathan’s hearing. But Jonathan was learning to expect the unexpected from Jed these days. Her smiles were distracted, her behavior was more contrived than ever and small talk came hard to her.
Jonathan continued jogging till he reached his hide. He did not uncache the handset, because his will was his own today. But he did help himself to his subminiature camera got up as a Zippo lighter, and to the camera he added the bunch of lock picks that were not disguised as anything, and clutching them in his fist so that they didn’t chime while he ran, he returned to Woody’s House and changed, then walked through the tunnel to Crystal, feeling the tingling of prebattle across his shoulders.
“Fuck you doin’ with them shippin’ flowers, Mist’ Thomas?” the guard at the gate demanded of him good-humoredly. “You been up there robbin’ poor Miss Mabel? Why, shit. Hey, Dover, come over here and put your stupid face in these shippin’ flowers. You ever smell anything so beautiful? The shit you did! You never smelt nothin’ in your life ’cept your young lady’s cherry pie.”
Reaching the main house, Jonathan had the giddying sensation of having returned to Meister’s. It was not Isaac but Herr Kaspar who received him at the door. It was not Parker standing on the top of the aluminum ladder changing light bulbs but Bobbi the odd-job man. And it was Herr Kaspar’s nymphet niece, not Isaac’s daughter, who was languidly squirting insecticide into the potpourri. The illusion passed, and he was restored to Crystal. In the kitchen Esmeralda was conducting a seminar on world affairs with Talbot the boatman and Queenie from the laundry.
“Esmeralda, would you please find me a vase for these? Surprise present for Dan. Oh, and Miss Jed says to remind you that Lady Langbourne can’t eat any milk products at all.”
He was so arch about saying this that his audience burst into fits of uncontrollable laughter, which followed Jonathan up the marble staircase as, vase in hand, he headed for the second floor, apparently on his way to Daniel’s quarters. Reaching the door to the state apartments, he paused. The flow of cheerful chatter from downstairs ran on. The door was ajar. He pushed it and stepped into a mirrored hallway. The door at the end of it was closed. He turned the handle, thinking Ireland and booby traps. He stepped inside, nothing blew up. He closed the door and looked round him, ashamed of his exhilaration.
The sunlight, filtered by net curtains, lay like ground mist on the white carpet. Roper’s side of the enormous bed was not slept in. Roper’s pillows were still puffed up. On his bedside table lay current copies of Fortune, Forbes, The Economist, and back numbers of catalogues from auction houses round the world. Memo pads, pencils, a pocket recorder. Shifting his gaze to the other side of the bed, Jonathan observed the imprint of her body, the pillows crushed as if by restlessness, the tissue of black silk that was her nightdress, her utopian magazines, the pile of coffee table books on furniture, great houses, gardens, great horses, more horses, books on Arab bloodstock and English recipes, and how to learn Italian in eight days. The smells were of infancy—baby powder, bubble bath. A luxurious trail of yesterday’s clothes was spread haphazard over the chaise longue; and through the open doorway to the bathroom, he saw yesterday’s swim-suit hanging in triangles from the shower rail.
His eye quickening, he began reading the whole page at once: her dressing table, cluttered with mementos of nightclubs, people, restaurants, horses; photographs of laughing people arm in arm, of Roper in bikini shorts, his maleness much in evidence, Roper at the wheel of a Ferrari, of a racing boat, Roper in white peaked cap and ducks, standing on the bridge of the Iron Pasha; the Pasha herself dressed overall, berthed majestically in New York harbor, the outline of Manhattan soaring behind her; book matches, girlfriends’ handwritten letters spilling from an open drawer; a child’s address book with a photograph of soulful bloodhounds on the cover; notes to herself scribbled on bits of yellow paper and stuck to the edges of her mirror: “Diving watch for Dan’s birthday?” “Phone Marie re Sarah’s hock!” “S.J. Phillips re R’s cufflinks!!”
The room felt airless. I’m a tomb robber, but she’s alive. I’m in Herr Meister’s cellar with the lights on. Bolt before they wall me in. But escape was not what he had come for. He had come for involvement. With both of them. He wanted Roper’s secrets, but he wanted hers more. He wanted the mystery of what joined her to Roper, if it did; of her ludicrous affectations; and of why you touch me with your eyes. Setting the flower vase on a coffee table, he picked up one of her pillows, held it to his face and smelled the wood smoke from singing Aunt Annie’s hearth. Of course. That’s what you did last night. You sat up with Caroline in front of the fire and talked while the children slept. So much talk. So much listening. What do you say? What do you hear? And the shadow on your face. You’re a close observer yourself these days, eyes staying on everything too long, including me. You’re a child again, seeing everything for the first time. Nothing is familiar to you anymore, nothing is safe for you to depend on.
He pushed the mirrored door to Roper
’s dressing room and entered not her childhood but his own. Did my father own a military chest like this, with brass handles to lug it through the olive groves of Cyprus? This folding campaign table stained with ink and sundowners? This pair of crossed scimitars hanging in their scabbards from the wall? Or these dress slippers with their braided monograms like regimental crests? Even the rows of handmade suits and dinner jackets, wine red to black to white, the handmade shoes braced by wooden trees, white buckskins, patent evening pumps, had an unmistakable air of uniforms waiting for the signal to advance.
A soldier again, Jonathan checked for hostile signs: suspicious wires, contacts, sensors, some tempting trap to consign him to kingdom come. Nothing. Just the framed school groups from thirty years ago, snapshots of Daniel, a heap of small change in half a dozen currencies, a list of fine wines from Berry Bros. & Rudd, the annual accounts of his London club.
Does Mr. Roper go to England much? Jonathan had asked Jed at Meister’s while they waited for the luggage to be loaded into the limousine.
Good Lord no, Jed replied. Roper says we’re terribly nice, but absolute wood from here up. Anyway, he can’t.
Why not? Jonathan asked.
Oh, I don’t know, said Jed too carelessly. Tax or something. Why don’t you ask him?
The door to the inner office stood before him. The inmost room, he thought. The last secret is yourself—but which self: his or mine or hers? The door was of solid cypress, set in a steel frame. He listened. Distant chatter. Vacuum cleaners. Floor polishers.
Take your time, the close observer reminded himself. Time is care. Time is innocence. Nobody is coming upstairs to find you. Bedding at Crystal is changed at midday, after the clean sheets have had a chance to air in the sun: Chief’s orders, diligently executed by Jed. We are obedient people, Jed and I. Our monasteries and convents were not in vain. He tried the door. Locked. One conventional lock, pipestem. The room’s seclusion is its own security. Anyone found near it will be shot on sight. He reached for his picks and heard Rooke’s voice in his ear. Never pick a lock if you can find the key: first rule of burglary. He swung away from the door and ran his hand along a couple of shelves. He lifted the corner of a rug, then a pot plant, then patted the pockets of the nearest suits, then the pockets of a dressing gown. Then he lifted a few of the nearer shoes and turned them upside down. Nothing. To hell with it.
He fanned out the picks and selected the one he thought likeliest to fit. It was too fat. He selected a second and, about to insert it, had a schoolboy terror of scratching the polished brass escutcheon. Vandal! Who dragged you up? He dropped his hands to his sides, breathed slowly a few times to reassemble his operational calm, and began again. Gently in . . . pause . . . gently back a fraction . . . in again. Stroke her, don’t force her, as we say in the army. Listen to her, feel her pressures, hold your breath. Turn. Gently . . . back another fraction . . . now turn harder . . . and a little harder still. . . . You are about to break the pick! You are about to break the pick and leave it in the lock! Now!
The lock yielded. Nothing broke. No one emptied his Heckler in Jonathan’s face. He removed the pick intact, returned it to its wallet and the wallet to his jeans pocket, and heard the squeak of the Toyota’s brakes as it pulled up in the stableyard. Go cold. Now. The close observer stole to the window. Mr. Onslow Roper has returned unexpectedly from Nassau. Players from across the border are coming to collect their weapons. But it was only the day’s bread arriving from Townside.
But nice listening, he told himself. Calm, attentive, panic-free listening. Well done. Your father’s boy.
He was in Roper’s den.
And if you step out of line, you’ll wish you’d never been born, says Roper.
No, says Burr. And Rob says no too. His holy of holies is out of bounds, and that’s an order.
Plain. A soldier’s plainness. Everyman’s decent moderation. No embroidered throne, no tortoiseshell desk, no nine-foot bamboo sofas with cushions that send you straight to sleep, no silver goblets, no Sotheby catalogues. Just a plain, boring little office for making deals and money. A plain leatherette-topped office desk with filing trays on a collapsing stand, pull it and they all take one pace forward. Jonathan pulled and that was what they did. One steel tubular chair. One round dormer window staring like a dead eye at its own blank piece of sky. Two swallowtail butterflies. How the hell did they get in here? One bluebottle, very noisy. One letter, lying on top of other letters. The address, Hampden Hall, Newbury. The signature, Tony. The topic, the writer’s straitened circumstances. The tone both begging and threatening. Don’t read it, photograph it. Calmly extracting the remaining papers from the tray, he laid them out like playing cards face up on the desk, removed the base of the Zippo lighter, armed the camera inside and peered through the tiny eyepiece. Spread the fingers of both hands for range and thumb your nose, Rooke had said. He thumbed his nose. The lens was fish-eye. All the pages were in shot. Aim up, aim down. Shoot. Change the papers. Keep my sweat away from the desk. Thumb my nose again to check the range. Calmly. Now just as calmly, freeze. He stood at the window, frozen. Observe, but not too closely. The Toyota is driving off, Gus at the wheel. Go back to work. Slowly.
He completed the first tray, replaced the papers, took the papers from the second. Six closely written pages of neat Roperscript. The crown jewels? Or a long letter to his ex-wife about Daniel? He laid them out in order, left to right. No, not a letter to Paula. These are names and numbers, lots of both, written on graph paper in ballpoint pen, the names on the left, the numbers set beside them, each digit carefully entered in its square. Gambling debts? Household accounts? Birthday list? Stop thinking. Spy now, think later. He took a step back, wiped the sweat from his face and breathed out. As he did so, he saw it.
One hair. One long, soft, straight, beautiful chestnut strand of hair that should have been in a locket or a love letter or lying on a pillow and smelling of wood smoke. For a moment he was furious, the way explorers are furious when they reach some hellish end point only to find the hated rival’s cookpot there ahead of them. You lied to me! You do know what he does! You’re hand in glove with him on the biggest dirty deal of his career! The next moment it pleased him to think that Jed had been making the same journey as himself, without benefit of Rooke or Burr or Sophie’s murder.
After that he was terrified. Not for himself, for her. For her frailty. For her clumsiness. For her life. You bloody fool, he told her, leaving your handwriting all over the job! Have you never seen a beautiful woman with her face punched off? A small dog ripped from stem to stern?
Curling the telltale hair round the tip of his little finger, Jonathan poked it into the sweat-soaked pocket of his shirt, returned the second file to its tray and was spreading out the papers from the third as he heard the scuffle of horses’ hooves from the direction of the stableyard, accompanied by children’s voices raised in protest and rebuke.
Methodically, he restored the papers to their rightful home and walked to the window. As he did so, he heard from within the house the sounds of fast-running feet, then Daniel howling for his mother as he came storming through the kitchens to the hall. Then Jed’s voice yelling after him. And in the stableyard he saw Caroline Langbourne and her three children, and Claud the stablemaster holding Jed’s Arab, Sarah, by the bridle, and Donegal the groom holding Daniel’s pony, Smoky, who stood with his head hung in dudgeon as if he were disgusted by the whole display.
Battle bright.
Battle calm.
His father’s son. Bury him in uniform.
Jonathan slid the camera into the pocket of his shirt and checked the desk for careless traces. With his handkerchief he wiped the desktop, then the sides of the filing trays. Daniel was yelling louder than Jed, but Jonathan couldn’t hear what either of them was saying. In the stableyard one of the Langbourne children had decided it was time to join the chorus of complaint. Esmeralda had come out of her kitchen and was telling Daniel not to be a silly boy now, what would his P
apa say? Jonathan stepped into the dressing room, closed the steel-lined door to the den and relocked it with the pick, which took a little longer than it should have done because of his anxiety about violating the escutcheon. By the time he reached the bedroom he could hear Jed stomping up the stairs in her riding boots, declaring to anyone who cared to hear that she would never never take Daniel riding again in her bloody life.
He thought of retreating to the bathroom or returning to Roper’s dressing room, but hiding didn’t seem to solve anything. A luxurious inertia was descending over him, a desire to embrace delay that reminded him of making love. So that by the time Jed appeared in the doorway in her riding gear, minus her crop and hard hat but flushed with heat and anger, Jonathan had placed himself before the coffee table and was arranging the shipping flowers because they had lost something of their perfection on the journey upstairs.
At first she was too angry with Daniel to be surprised by anything. And it impressed him that her anger made her real.
“Thomas, honestly, if you’ve got any influence over Daniel at all, I wish you’d teach him not to be so absolutely bloody wet when he hurts himself. One silly little fall, no damage to anything except his pride, and he makes an absolute—Actually, Thomas, what the fuck are you doing in this room?”
“I brought you some shipping flowers. From our climb yesterday.”
“Why couldn’t you have given them to Miss Sue?”
“I wanted to arrange them myself.”
“You could have arranged them and given them to Miss Sue downstairs.”
She glared at the unmade bed. At her yesterday’s clothes flung over the chaise longue. At the open bathroom door. Daniel was still yelling. “Shut up Daniel!” Her eyes returned to Jonathan. “Thomas, actually, flowers or no flowers, I think you’ve got a fucking cheek.”
It’s the same anger. You simply switched it from Daniel to me, he thought, while he went on tinkering distractedly with the flowers. He suddenly felt deeply protective of her. The lock picks were lying like a ton weight against his thigh, the Zippo camera was practically falling out of his shirt pocket, his story about the shipping flowers, dreamed up for Esmeralda’s benefit, was wearing pretty thin. But it was Jed’s appalling vulnerability that he was thinking of, not his own. Daniel’s howling had stopped while he listened for the effect.