Eden Burning Page 36

  Through the window on the side of the room Patrick could see the bay and the cupping hills, with the pale-green water lying at the bottom of the cup. The Lunabelle and the steel-framed cubical skeleton of new construction severed the sky. He pointed and heard himself speaking.

  “I understand you’re a part owner of all that.”

  Nicholas started. “I? Who told you that?”

  “Doris told Désirée originally. But it’s common enough knowledge by now, I suspect.”

  Nicholas leaned across the desk. “Women’s talk! Damn women!”

  Eyes like lumps of coal, Patrick thought; hard and dull, with sudden glisten when a streak of sunlight strikes the turning head. I’ve made him furious.

  “Yes. I’ve put a few dollars in here and there. Is it any business of yours how I invest my money?”

  “Yes. There’s conflict of interest.” Patrick’s voice rose, sounding high as a boy’s, so that he had to clear his throat.

  “You’re a nitpicker. I’m running a government, planning a stable future for thousands of people, and you’re upset because I’ve earned something for myself.”

  “You’re not planning a future for anyone except yourself. You only want money and the power to keep making it. Don’t you have enough now?” The high voice again, sounding like pleading.

  “Grow up, Patrick.” Nicholas’s anger had receded. “And get out of politics. You don’t understand it. You never will. You’d be better off back in the classroom before it’s too late.”

  “It’s too late already.”

  “Quit, Patrick. Don’t make me throw you out.”

  “I won’t quit. And I won’t let you throw me out.”

  “Let me give you some advice. What you really should do, what any sensible man in your shoes would do, is to go off to the States. We may be in for some hard times here. You could go off to the States and pass. Actually, you could have done that long ago when we were in England.”

  “I couldn’t have and can’t, and if I could, I wouldn’t.”

  “Of course, with Désirée it might be somewhat difficult.” Nicholas smiled. “But you could get rid of her if you wanted to. Maybe Kate Tarbox would go with you instead.”

  “You bastard! If there’s anyone who’ll leave here, it’ll be you. Yes, when you’ve ruined the place with prostitution, gambling, and dope so it isn’t fit to live in, you’ll leave and meet up with your money in Switzerland.”

  I’ve struck home. He will vault over the desk and come at me.

  But anger had made Nicholas go rigid. “If my wife weren’t a friend of your wife’s, if I didn’t have some memory of our being boys together, I’d make you pay for what you’re saying.”

  “Yes, you could have me shot like that poor fellow at Cade’s Hotel.”

  “What do you think a communist government would have done to him? And, while we’re talking, what do you think it would do to a woman like Kate Tarbox? You think I don’t know what she’s saying? Luckily for her, she’s been smart enough to keep her fuzzy ideas out of that newspaper of hers. Besides, she has friends among the planters and some of them are my friends. So no matter what I think of her lies—”

  “She doesn’t lie, Nicholas.”

  The men stood up and faced each other.

  “I want to tell you something else, Patrick. There’s no reason why I should, but out of the friendship you’ve just tossed away, I will tell you. We know about your son Will. We know about his meetings and his plans. They’re a slippery lot, his people, but even a slippery fish ends up in the net. Tell him to remember that.”

  “I can’t do anything about Will.” Patrick’s heartbeat changed to a reckless pounding. “He’s a harmless boy—”

  Nicholas mocked him with a look.

  “Nicholas, I’m going to run for office. You’ve got an election coming and you’ll have to go through the motions or there’ll be real turmoil here, turmoil that even your Red Men won’t be able to contain. And I’m going to oppose you in that election.”

  The black eyes still mocked.

  “I had loyalty to you,” Patrick said quietly, “but it’s been strained beyond bounds or bearing. So now I’m going to fight you.”

  Nicholas smiled. “You do that. You won’t get very far.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Francis and Nicholas stood in Eleuthera’s hall, talking confidentially.

  “I quite realize that he’s not your type, Francis. Somewhat vulgar, shall we say? But you ought to listen to him, just once. They’ve come down from the States with money unlimited. Your Uncle Lionel’s probably going to make a deal with them, you know.”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  Lionel had been exuberant these past weeks. “First offer I’ve got and it happens to be dazzling,” he’d said.

  Well, you could hardly blame him for being dazzled. He could go to England and live for the rest of his life on the invested income from the sale of his lands. Fleetingly, irrelevantly at this particular moment, Francis wondered about the woman whom Lionel had cherished all these years. Most certainly he would not be taking her to England! Francis had only seen her once, when he’d been arriving at the airport in Barbados and Lionel had been leaving. They had pretended not to see each other. She’d been a stunning woman, reminding him of—yes, of Patrick’s wife, except that Désirée was jet and Lionel’s woman was milky tea.

  Nicholas brought him back now to the subject. “Did you know that the High Winds people are interested, too? The old man’s over seventy and his sons don’t want to run the estate.”

  “They haven’t told me.”

  “Well, people don’t talk about these things until they’re signed and delivered. It’s always a good policy to keep one’s business close to one’s vest. At least I’ve always found it so. Listen, Francis, you’ve got more beach than High Winds has, by far. And beach is what they need for a hotel project as big as this. You’re in a position to ask almost any price you want for the place.”

  “I don’t want to sell Eleuthera, Nicholas.”

  “But one has the impression,” Nicholas said politely, “that your wife does. Isn’t it true that she wants to go back to New York?”

  So, one “had the impression”! Of course, everybody knew everything in this little place. And Nicholas, especially, had means of finding out whatever he wanted to find out.

  “I have good reason to believe,” Nicholas continued, “that you could get a couple of million.”

  Francis looked out to the lawn where Marjorie, already dressed for dinner, was sitting with two men. In their city woolens, the men obtruded on the pastel glimmer, the gauzy trees, the perfection of the waning afternoon. He wondered what conversation she could possibly be having with that pair. Frank Aleppo’s wraparound glasses swathed his upper face. Francis hated it when people hid behind dark glasses; they reminded him of the black youths from the Trenches who went swaggering around town these days, except that these two men were white, so white that their skin in this warm light had the greenish cast of a reptile’s underside. Aleppo’s suit was hand-tailored. To be sure, Francis was accustomed to men who wore expensive clothing, but this man, these two, didn’t wear it—they flaunted it.

  “I don’t like them,” he said abruptly, aware that he sounded petulant as an adolescent.

  Nicholas laughed. “With all respect to you, Francis, that’s really not the issue, is it? Business is business. In justice to yourself and your family, you should at least give it some thought.”

  Why was Nicholas so anxious? Because of course he’d have a piece of the investment. It amused Francis to think that Nicholas assumed he wouldn’t figure that out. There was, after all, no sin in putting your money where you chose. As Nicholas had just said, business is business! A clever man, Nicholas Mebane, so clever that he didn’t realize other people could have quick wits, too. But he was charming, all the same—an eminently civilized man.

  Francis frowned. One had heard some troubling things of late, things ab
out torture and secret police and drugs and God knew what else. That was the news of the world, wasn’t it, from Argentina to the Soviets? But way out here at Eleuthera he’d seen nothing unusual going on. Maybe the one thing he had noticed, the prevalence of the Red Men in town and on the roads, was all to the good. There’d been a lot of petty and not-so-petty crime last year, but ever since this force had been established it had diminished considerably. Or so one heard. Personally, he’d had no experience of it, nor had anyone he knew.

  As for the other business, there was possibly a kernel of truth, a bit of “roughing up” going on but most of it was exaggerated rumor. All that stuff about a ravine where they threw your remains if you spoke out against the government! How could he relate to such atrocities a man like the gentleman standing with him now? Anyway, no matter what government was in power, one was better off keeping within the law, earning one’s honest living, and staying away from the disputes. He himself was no man for the political fray. He’d heard somewhere that Patrick Courzon was to run against Nicholas in the next election. The more fool he, Francis was reflecting, when Nicholas spoke again.

  “I’ve reserved a table for dinner at the Lunabelle. I’ve also invited some other people who’ve been doing business with Mr. Aleppo. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, certainly not.” He never enjoyed himself at places like the Lunabelle, but that was not something one would tell the prime minister.

  “Senator Madison Hughes will be there, just flew down from Washington yesterday. Also my neighbors, the Jürgens. I don’t believe you’ve met them, a very wealthy Swedish couple? American citizens, though.”

  Their citizenship was of no interest to Francis, but it was Nicholas’s habit to furnish details, especially when he thought they might be impressive. The truth was that planters had no liking for the members of the foreign retirement community; their interests were often at odds. The winter people cared nothing about the welfare of the island except as it concerned themselves; they lived on the island without being of it. But that was something else he didn’t care to discuss with the prime minister.

  Marjorie came to the door. “We’re ready if you are,” she said pleasantly. She would despise Aleppo and his young friend, Mr. Damian, but they would never guess it.

  “It’s too bad your wife can’t be with us,” she said to Nicholas as they drove off.

  “I’m sure she’d rather be where she is.” He laughed. “Every year I let her take a few weeks off to go to Paris. She adores it. But then, why not?”

  The car had descended the hill and was passing the beach when Aleppo said, “Wow, what a spread! Could we stop a minute and take another look?”

  The four men got out, while Marjorie, whose shoes were silk and perishable, waited in the car. Nicholas and Aleppo walked ahead up the strand, both their pace and their flung gestures revealing animation. Damian was less enthusiastic. He sat down on a rock while Francis stood and waited.

  “You own this river?” he asked languidly.

  “Nobody owns it. It just happens to run through this land.” Something about the other man’s languor made Francis disagreeable.

  “What’s it called?”

  “Spratt River. They seine sprat at the mouth, near the cove.”

  “What do you call this place? This beach?”

  “The whole cove is called Anse Carrée. You can see it’s almost square, and that’s what the name means.” Saying so, Francis looked up to where the two sharp sides of the cliff turned at right angles into a sheer drop and then down to the third side, a mild slope onto the broad clear beach.

  Damian followed his gaze. “Fantastic!” he said with growing interest. “You made a smart buy all right! How long you own this place?”

  “My family has owned it for three hundred years.”

  There was a silence. Damian’s somber eyes squinted into the sun and back at Francis.

  He doesn’t believe me, Francis thought, and there being no more to be said, he walked a few steps to the water’s edge and stood there looking straight out through the dazzle to where, if you were to keep on going, you would bump into Spanish Sahara.

  Drifting at his feet in shallow water a sea anemone waved its delicate feelers. He picked up a stick of driftwood and gently touched the creature, who, withdrawing from the touch, rolled itself into a knobby ball.

  “What’s that?” Damian had come up behind him.

  “A sea anemone.”

  “What do you know! Crazy-looking thing!”

  Suddenly Francis felt sorry for the man. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because he was so out of place.

  “The sea is filled with strange things, plants that look like animals and animals that look like plants. Coral is an animal, you know. But some of it looks like trees. You can see whole gardens growing underwater.” He didn’t know why he was telling all this, either, except that it had something to do with that feeling of being sorry for this little man with the bored, superior air.

  Nicholas and Aleppo came back, still talking vigorously.

  “This is solid rock here,” Aleppo was saying. “You could build eight, maybe ten stories, five hundred rooms eventually, adding wings, with the casino on top. There’d be a fantastic view. Nothing like it anywhere.”

  “Something like the Lunabelle?” Francis asked dryly.

  “The Lunabelle, let me tell you, is a dump next to what we’d put here.”

  “And the house? What would you do with the house?” He felt himself tensed, as with the imminent expectation of pain.

  “Tear it down, probably. Unless maybe it could be kept for a clubhouse. We’d have to go into all that. And you know what? I’d have elevators going up the side of the cliff from the beach. You ever seen that? People would get a kick out of it. Look up there, will you! What a location!”

  Francis followed the man’s pointing arm. At the top of the limestone bluff a pair of sooty terns rose and dove toward a clump of gilded elkhorn coral, having spotted some prey moving there as the tide went out.

  “Water gets choppy at high tide, I imagine,” Aleppo said. “But we could always dredge.”

  “Those are coral reefs out there.”

  “So?”

  “So—if you dredge you’ll ruin them. It took thousands of years to create those reefs.”

  “Mr. Luther is a naturalist,” Nicholas explained to the uncomprehending Aleppo.

  “Very amateur,” Francis said.

  “All the same.” Nicholas was embarrassed. He was apologizing—but to which one of them?

  Some prickling anger drove Francis on. “Flamingos used to breed here years ago in the flats between the river and the ocean.”

  “You don’t say,” Aleppo murmured.

  Patrick Courzon had told him that the day they’d met. He had forgotten that until just now. And he went on, although he knew they were not interested. “I’ve been trying to bring them back. I bought two pairs a while ago and now they’ve got young.”

  “We could name the place Flamingo Hill. No, Flamingo Beach,” Aleppo said. “How about that? Can you put them in cages? Some big fancy cages on the lawn?”

  “You cannot put them in cages,” Francis said. Why had he permitted Nicholas to bring these men?

  Nicholas intervened with ease. “We’d better start. The reservations—”

  They got back into the car.

  Skirting the old stone houses of Covetown’s center, with their flowering back-gardens and Georgian facades, they passed along mean roads where the town met the countryside; mangy dogs, scrabbling chickens, and rusty, derelict cars, along with more children than one remembered noticing only a month before, crowded the front yards.

  Of a sudden they came upon the Lunabelle’s angular bulk and those of its latest neighbors encrusting the hills around the bay. Flags snapped in the wind at the end of the long drive between royal palms. At the portico a black man smiled and sent for another black man to take the car away. And Francis experienced a flash of
déjà vu: from a portico like this you followed the luggage to the room, and they brought a rum punch to welcome you, and the soporific wind blew through the jalousies and you heard the steady, repetitious crash of the Atlantic coming up against the breakwater and you went outside and Kate wore a yellow bathing suit and her hair hung like a mermaid’s, and then you came back in and she took the suit off and—

  “You come here often?” Aleppo inquired, making conversation.

  “No. My wife does. She spends more time in town than I do.” He was aware that for some reason he had purposely drawn a distinction between himself and his wife.

  The enormous, airy lobby displayed at its center a fountain with a naked nymph. Around its sides a row of little shops displayed their French perfumes, their Danish silver, English china, and Italian silks.

  “Oh,” Marjorie cried. “Da Cunha’s branch is open!”

  “Francis,” said Nicholas, “you’d better come look. Your wife sees something she likes.”

  Francis peered over Marjorie’s shoulder at a pale blue pendant hung on a twisted chain of coral, blue, and gold.

  “That,” Marjorie said, drawing in her breath, “is absolutely the most beautiful piece of jewelry I have seen in my entire life. Absolutely. The beads are sapphires, Francis.”

  “Very pretty. But I can’t afford it.”

  Nicholas laughed. “You could very soon though, if you chose to.”

  A young woman came from behind the counter. “Can I help you with anything?”

  She was very dark; her eyes were delicately tilted and her long, heavy hair was Oriental. The men, struck by her presence, took a moment to answer.

  “Some other time, thank you.” Nicholas and Francis spoke together.

  “Half black, half Chinese,” Nicholas explained as they walked toward the dining room. “Her father had a grocery store. Ah Sing, the name is—or was; he must be ancient by now or dead. And his daughter is rising in the world. You see how it is, we provide employment with these places, we create opportunity.”

  “Much envy, too,” Francis answered.

  “Ah, Francis, you’re so gloomy sometimes!” Marjorie complained.