Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

The captain looked again towards the men on the shore. He had stopped smiling. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK.’ He spoke to the men in words she barely understood. In ones and twos they jumped into the sea. Again the image passed through her mind of a Californian party night with friends splashing in the sea.

She turned towards the deck house and pushed aside the bead screen. Behind her the captain said, ‘I was expecting a man.’

In the light of the kerosene lantern she saw a long, narrow room lined with bunks. The stench of fish rose from the gaps in the planking. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll go back to the beach.’

They came out on to the deck and she dived straight from the gunwhale into the sea. As her head broke the water she heard the captain dive in behind her.

From the shoreline two groups watched the moonlit swimmers, the seamen under the big, jutting rock, the refugees a hundred yards distant, their wooden guns held across their chests. As Nan Luc splashed through the shallows among a shoal of spider fish skittering across the surface of the water, a young man detached himself from the refugees and jog-trotted the distance between them. Handing a leather drawstring bag to her, he turned without a word and walked quickly back.

The captain of the fishing boat emerged from the sea behind her. ‘A boat like this, a fine boat, is worth a lot more than you’re paying.’ It was as if he hadn’t spoken. She opened the neck of the bag and tipped the contents into the sand. American dollars fluttered down among gold Napoleon pieces from the distant French past. She took up the hundred dollar bills and counted them. On the dark wet sand the Napoleons gleamed. As he watched she counted them back into the leather bag.

‘Ten thousand dollars,’ she said. He grimaced.

‘That’s what was agreed.’

‘The man in Cahn Roc says five thousand is for him.’

‘Even so, five thousand is a good price.’

‘The man in Cahn Roc said you would pay the five thousand extra.’

‘You’re lying,’ she said fiercely. ‘You want your throat cut? You want the bodies of your men left on the sand?’

He recoiled. ‘That’s what he said. That’s what the man in Cahn Roc said,’ he muttered.

‘Take the money,’ her lips curved in a high, ritual contempt. ‘Take the money and lead your men off along the beach.’

‘If the government patrol…’ he began.

‘If the government patrol catches us, you are safe. They will learn nothing from us.’

He took the leather bag. ‘The boat,’ he said, nodding over his shoulder, ‘was the living for ten families.’

She said nothing, staring at him, until he turned away and walked slowly towards the group of seamen. For some minutes they stood in conclave, their high voices rising higher. Then they straggled off along the beach behind the captain.

The refugees, men, women and six or seven teenage girls, twenty-five people in all, watched them go. The older women smiled, the uncertain smile of fear; the men threw down their stick weapons.

The first hurdle, Nan Luc said to herself. Just the first. She was trembling. She turned towards the boat.

Offshore the oddly shaped black sail from the fishing port of Cahn Roc rode on the glittering water.

Somewhere beyond the fishing boat, across oceans, even continents, was the man for whom she had done all this. Perhaps he worked on a newspaper or TV station in New York; perhaps he was rich and owned a long Spanish house in Arizona or Texas. Perhaps, even, he owned a yacht and gave parties where people played in the water, diving from the deck like members of the fishing boat crew. All she really knew was that if her father was alive in America she would find him.

Find him and kill him.

Inside the dark blue Mercedes the voice of Billie Holiday washed plaintively sweet around the shoulders of the driver. The air was cool, filtered, scented lightly with leather soap. Outside on the South Bronx Grand Concourse it was ninety degrees, humid. An early evening, late in the summer.

In this section of the city seventy-five per cent of the street population seemed to be under sixteen, black or Hispanic, uniformed in thick-soled trainers, T-shirts, jeans, and rasta knits or baseball caps, the peaks pulled asymmetrically to the side of the head.

No less than the car itself the driver of the Mercedes exuded affluence. Blond-haired, clean shaven, perhaps a little over forty, he allowed his eyes to travel along the broad red stripes of the arm of his shirt, to the banded cuff and come to rest on the gold links, hallmarked Dublin 1836.

Lifting his eyes from his hand resting on the leather wheel he pushed out his lower lip in minor irritation. The traffic had been running nose to tail, slowly but smoothly enough so far. Now on the slight slope he could see red tail lights ahead, rippling back towards him. He changed his foot to the brake, picked up the phone and punched buttons with his index finger. As he waited he looked up at the crumbling Art Deco tenement above him. The jacket of his business suit lay on the tan leather seat beside him. He flexed his shoulder muscles. After a game of squash he liked the low ache and even the faint buzz of fatigue. But he was eager to break out of the sweltering city into the countryside.

The Art Deco tenement stirred something in the depths of his memory. Billie Holiday was singing ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’. He let memory and the music wash over him. He saw the butt-end of Detroit; he saw himself as a twelve-year-old, blondhaired, bright as a button, already spending his nights running errands for the South Side street girls. Coffee, cigarettes, a few grams of this or a line or two of that. It kept him eating when no one else was going to. For what he did, he maintained, he had no choice.

In forty-two years there had been other times in his life when, as he saw it, Cy Stevenson had had no choice but to walk on the dark side. Mostly he was happy not to look back too much. Not to reflect. If he did, his answer was that today it was Cy Stevenson wearing a Jermyn Street shirt, the Egon Rossington suit; it was Cy Stevenson sitting in a new Mercedes 300 while others pimp-rolled along Soden Avenue, Detroit, or Grand Concourse, South Bronx, still looking to score in life.

He had scored. By his own efforts he had brought himself from Detroit to a family and home in Meyerick, upstate New York. Over here on the sunny side the only real danger was that there were time when the brightness could be too revealing. Sometimes it had been necessary to duck back into the shadow. Just now and again.

His wife, Sunny, was on the line.

‘How’s home life?’ he said.

‘Quiet.’

‘What are you doing?’ He settled comfortably. The traffic ahead was stuck solid.

‘Nothing special. Lying back on the chaise longue , a kir royale in hand, wearing my usual black stockings, black skirt, black devore blouse, a slash of red lipstick on my mouth and a certain familiar glint in the eye. As I said, nothing special. Why d’you ask?’

‘I get it,’ Cy said. ‘The new gardener showed up.’

‘Matter of fact he did,’ Sunny said. ‘He’s doing a lengthy reconnaissance before coming back for the kir royale on the sofa.’

‘How’s he look?’

‘OK. Name’s Fitzgerald, call me Fitz. Tall, dreamy, good-looking boy.’

‘Thus the black devore. But can he garden?’

‘Yet to see,’ Sunny said crisply. ‘Somehow I think he’d prefer to philosophise. How’s the traffic?’

‘So, so. Be about an hour, I guess.’

‘What do you want to do tonight?’

He mused. ‘Well…’

‘Well,’ she echoed. ‘Mary’s asked us over for drinks after dinner.’

‘Definitely no to your sister.’