Маргарет Миллар - The Murder of Miranda

“What?”

“The notepaper. If you hadn’t lent it, I’d have pinched it of course, but this way is preferable.” The old man cleared his throat. “You will be able to take credit for making some small contribution to the cause of world literature.”

“What?”

“I’m writing a novel.”

“On our club paper?”

“Oh, don’t thank me yet, Henderson, it’s a bit premature for that. But some day a single page of this stuff might be worth a fortune.”

“What?”

“You keep repeating what. Is there something the matter with your hearing?”

Henderson dipped a chip in his cottage cheese but he couldn’t swallow, his mouth was dry. The good old dependable river had stopped flowing at its source. “This writing you’re doing on our club paper, you claim it will be worth a fortune?”

“Oh yes.”

“To whom?”

“Posterity. All those people out there. In a figurative sense.”

In a less figurative sense Henderson pictured all the people out there as a line of attorneys waiting to file suit against the club for libel, character assassination and malicious mischief. He went over to the water cooler and poured himself a drink. Perhaps he would buy a ticket to Mogadishu. If there was going to be a war there, he might be lucky enough to become one of the first casualties.

“By the way,” Van Eyck said, “to facilitate my research you might tell me how the club got its name.”

“The birds.”

“What birds?”

“All those penguins out there diving for fish.”

“Those are pelicans. The nearest penguin is ten thousand miles away. They’re an antarctic species.”

“There must be a penguin around here some place,” Henderson said quickly. “How else did the club get its name?”

“My dear chap, that’s what I asked you. ”

“Ten thousand miles?”

“Approximately.”

“This puts me in an intolerable position. I’ve been telling everyone those little beasts are penguins, and now they aren’t.”

“They never were.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. But go on lying if you like. No law against it.”

Van Eyck returned to his table on the terrace. There seemed little doubt that Henderson was getting peculiar, exactly like every other manager before him. In the next few weeks the same symptoms would emerge, a tendency to twitch, to smile at inappropriate moments, to mutter to himself. A pity, Van Eyck thought, taking up his pen. He’s not really a bad sort in spite of all that money he owes his bookie.

Admiral Young’s battle plans for Mogadishu were of no concern to his two daughters, who were busy conducting a war of their own in the snack bar. Their weapons were simple, their attacks direct. Cordelia hit Juliet over the head with a piece of celery, and as she was running for the door to avoid retaliation Juliet caught her on the ear with a ripe olive. The incident was reported to Ellen, who in turn telephoned Admiral Young and advised him to come and take the girls home.

Within a few minutes Young drove up in his vintage Rolls-Royce. Though he’d been retired for a number of years, he still moved like one of his own battleships, with a complete confidence that the way ahead was clear, and if the seas got rough the stabilizers were in operational order. His thick white hair was kept in the Annapolis crew cut of his youth, so that from a distance he looked like a bald man who’d been caught in a light flurry of snow.

He parked the Rolls-Royce in the No Parking zone outside the front door where his daughters were waiting with Ellen.

“Now, girls, what’s this Ellen tells me about your fighting? Surely you’re old enough to know better.”

“She knows better,” Juliet said. “She’s older than I am.”

“Only two years,” Cordelia said.

“Which means you were talking and walking when I was born.”

“Well, I wasn’t learning not to fight.”

“You should have been. Here you are all grown up and you haven’t learned yet.”

“Dear me,” the Admiral said mildly. “Are you really all grown up, Cordelia?”

“You should know. Mrs. Young sent you a cable when I was born. You were in Hong Kong.”

“I don’t recall that it was Hong Kong.”

“It was. She tried to get there but she had to stop off in Manila to have me. There were a lot of rats around the hospital.”

“So one more wouldn’t matter.” Juliet laughed so hard at her own joke that her head, with its short brown hair, shook like a mop and she almost lost her balance.

“You mustn’t tease your sister, Juliet,” Admiral Young said mildly. “It’s unkind.”

“Well, she’s unkinder than I am, she’s had two more years of practice. I’ve got to catch up. It’s only fair I should have a chance to catch up.”

“Nobody has a guarantee that life will be fair, girls. We’re lucky to get justice, let alone mercy.”

“Oh, Pops, don’t start throwing that bull at us,” Cordelia said.

“Save it for the ensigns,” Juliet added.

“Or second looies.”

“We’re your daughters.”

“Serves you right, too.”

“We’re your fault.”

“Think about it, Pops. If you hadn’t—”

“But you did.”

“So here we are.”

And there they were, a problem not covered in the Navy rule book, yet to a certain extent a product of it.

They’d been brought up all over the world.

At the language academy in Geneva they learned enough French and Italian to order a meal and summon a taxi or policeman. They attended finishing schools in London, Rome and Paris, with no visible results except to the teachers. At the music academy in Austria, during the periods set aside for Cordelia to practice the violin and Juliet the flute, they listened to Elvis Presley records in the basement and went to old Hollywood movies dubbed in German. At the American school in Singapore most of their time was spent tearing through the streets in a jeep, Cordelia having learned to drive somewhere between Sydney and Tokyo. The effect of this cosmopolitan background had been not to make them more sophisticated and at ease with people but to isolate them. While the real world expanded around them their personal world grew smaller and tighter. No matter who was present on social occasions, they talked to or at each other, as if they were surrounded by foreigners, interchangeable and of no importance. They had become immune to people as beekeepers do to stings.

“I never really liked this club,” Cordelia said. “Did you?”

Juliet pursed her lips as though she were pondering the subject. There was no need to ponder, of course. If Cordelia didn’t like the club, neither did she. “Never. Never ever.”

“Let’s go home.”

“We’d better say goodbye to Ellen.”

“Why?”

“Noblesse oblige.”

“That’s French. I don’t recognize French rules in the U.S.A.”

“Pops is giving us an executive look.”

“Oh, all right. Goodbye, Ellen.”

“Goodbye, Ellen.”

“Goodbye, girls,” Ellen said.

Nearly everyone called them girls. Cordelia was thirty-five, Juliet thirty-three.

From his carefully chosen position on the terrace Van Eyck had an unobstructed view of what was happening at the entrance to the club. With a kind of detached loathing he watched his brother-in-law, Admiral Young, drive off in the Rolls-Royce with the two girls.

Van Eyck had strong feelings about the military and for a number of years he’d been working out plans for bringing it under control. His ideas, though varying in emphasis from time to time, remained basically the same. Salaries must be immediately and drastically reduced, especially at the upper levels. Pensions should begin no earlier than age seventy and continue only for a prudent and reasonable time. The brass should not be encouraged to live longer than necessary at taxpayers’ expense. Wars should be confined to countries with unpronounceable names and severe climates — the former would prevent television and newsmen from mentioning them, the latter would keep foreign correspondents to a minimum.