Connections (19 page)

It had not been a hard journey. Fleur had been collected from Adelaide House in a car driven by a uniformed chauffeur. The journey through the early morning streets of London, in darkness, had been rapid and a little over an hour later they were among fields where the little airfield lay. Two or three jets and what looked like a military helicopter were stationed on a vast concrete area. To one side lay the low building containing a lounge where the Andriades' guests had assembled. They were Valentine and Diana Keith – who was a tall, very thin blonde woman with a down-turned mouth – their children, Violet, a girl of about ten and the boy, Jonathan, perhaps two years younger, and the children's nanny, a round-faced girl of twenty who looked nervous. There were the Joneses, Henry and Fiona; Fleur herself; the Jethros and the Andriades and, perhaps to relieve the monotony of such a domestic party and provide companionship for Fleur, Hugh Cotter, an aetiolated young man with long hair, a long pale face and an expression of suppressed humour in his eyes. He worked as an auctioneer of fine arts, Sophia said when they introduced him.

Once they were in the air breakfast was served by the stewardess, the Keiths' nanny assisting. George Andriades was silent over his
Financial Times,
with his wife sitting opposite reading a magazine. Valentine Keith, Dickie Jethro and Henry Jones were chatting over their coffee in the corner of the cabin while Diana Keith made an effort with Fleur. The nanny, Sue, was trying to get the children to take a nap on couches in the back of the plane. A row about an electronic game began.

Diana said to Fleur, “I would have preferred to leave the children with my parents, but Val wouldn't hear of it. I don't think he understands that once a woman has children, relaxing holidays become a thing of the past for her. Have you got any brothers and sisters?”

“No,” said Fleur. Then she thought of her unknown stepbrother and stepsister and added, “Well, none I knew about until fairly recently.”

“I suppose you must have known something about your father – his life before,” Diana Keith said. “From magazines and that sort of thing. Dickie's not unkeen on publicity, really. It's quite important these days, to have some kind of a public profile.”

Dickie Jethro came up and sat down. “I'm afraid we're a bit overcrowded, Fleur. Not too uncomfortable?”

“It seems very splendid to me,” Fleur said, “travelling in your own plane.”

“Something of a cattle truck at the moment,” he said.

“I'd really better go and see what Silly Sue is doing with the brats,” Diana Keith said, getting up and walking away.

Val slipped quickly into her seat. “Looking forward to it?” he asked.

“Very much,” she said. She'd been taken over by the excitement of leaving Adelaide House, speeding through silent streets out into the countryside, and now the thrill of being in a plane flying far away to somewhere she'd never been. She still didn't know what she was doing there, but now she didn't care.

“A good idea to leave it all behind – get a new perspective,” Jethro said. “Right, Fleur?”

“Right,” she agreed, looking at the man who was her father. He
wore chinos and a striped shirt without a tie, his brown-grey hair ruffled and his eyes bright and challenging.

“I suppose you'd really like to make a feature film,” he asked Fleur.

“Not really,” she said, terrified he was going to make her an offer she couldn't refuse, buy her a studio, a script, a director.

“You're in films, though,” he said. “Isn't that the Holy Grail – a full-length film?”

He must have met a lot of would-be film-makers looking for money. “It is,” Fleur said. “But it isn't what I want to do.”

“What
do
you want?” he asked her.

“I like television,” she explained.

“The Brits have had to,” he said, “because up to now there's never been a self-sustaining film industry. But say you could choose, big screen, small screen, which would it be?”

“I'd still rather make good television,” she said.

“Fact or fiction?” he asked.

“Either,” she said.

“Tell me about this failed business of yours.”

Fleur told him everything about Verity – the well-thought-of documentaries, the firm's beginnings based on Ben's damages from a successful law suit in the USA over a commercial he'd made and her own small legacy from her grandmother. She explained the funding thereafter: Channel Four and personal overdrafts, in her case secured by the flat she'd bought when working. Out of pride she did not expose Ben's weak control over the firm's finances or her own stupidity in assuming he had the money side under control. She did not say that she and Ben had been lovers, or that Verity's creditors were pursuing her. But she thought he knew, or guessed, both things. She did not enjoy the inquisition, but felt better in the end, as if she'd been to see a doctor with some nasty symptoms and found out that a lot of other people had them and that they were treatable.

At the end of his interrogation Jethro said, “You'll know better next time. We pay for knowledge.”

“I don't think there'll be a next time,” she told him.

At this point Henry Jones came up with a message and Dickie
Jethro went off with him to the part of the cabin they were evidently using as an improvised office.

Keith bent towards her. “Fascinating story,” he said. “What about this Ben? Where did he go?”

“Last heard of in Miami. That's the rumour,” Fleur told him.

“Has there been anyone in your life since then?” Val enquired.

“That's my business,” Fleur told him firmly.

He was about to say something else when Diana came up and told him one of the children had been sick.

Pre-lunch drinks were offered, then lunch and later, Fleur, beginning to feel oppressed in the overcrowded cabin, went to the rear and got out her book. Although the flight was a hundred times more comfortable than the average tourist flight, the strain here came from being with a group of people she barely knew and where, she sensed, currents were always moving. She fell asleep, waking to find the two children to her right, the girl asleep, the boy absorbed with an electronic game. In front of her were Zoe and Sophia, two well-coiffed heads bent together, speaking in low voices.

“I dropped every hint I could they should take a commercial flight,” Sophia was telling her mother. “They were all ignored. Finally Diana rang up and told me the flights were all booked, though I know they weren't because Judy Arnott got one later.”

“Dickie's very annoyed.”

“I know. They were trying to get me to pay for first-class tickets for them.”

Fleur made grunting noises and shifted about in her seat and the conversation halted, then continued again smoothly as Zoe asked her daughter about a picture she was thinking of buying.

They landed at Grantley Adams Airport in brilliant light, though a great sun was setting over a flat, green landscape. The temperature was in the eighties, without humidity. They drove slowly from the airstrip in three cars which had been waiting for them. After ten minutes they were on a narrow road bordered with fields of sugar cane stretching away on both sides. They turned between pillars and started up the drive of Braganza House.

Hugh Cotter, who was sitting next to Fleur in the third car,
along with the Keiths' nanny and the two children, told her, “It's an eighteenth-century plantation house. Not very big. There's an extension at the back, bigger than the original house. And a terrace with a view over the golf course and the sea. It's quite fantastic.”

“You've been here before, then?” Fleur asked.

The car stopped and the two children, relieved to have room to run, bolted out, their nanny in pursuit.

“Ghastly sprogs,” Hugh muttered. It was true the Keith children had shown few signs of being likeable, but, Fleur thought, in the spirit of Grace and Robin, they probably weren't to blame for it. Just the parents.

A tall, slender black woman stood on the steps of the house. Zoe Andriades advanced. “Marie,” she greeted her.

“Welcome. Welcome, madam,” she replied.

They all clustered into a high, marble-floored hall where stood, in a corner, the bust of a bewigged man in marble, with a shining brass plaque beneath. The children and the nanny retreated upstairs, the children protesting, Sue upbraiding. The rest of them followed Zoe down a short passageway on to the long terrace outside the house. To their right was the lower part of the house, as described by Hugh Cotter; beyond, a mile off, a silver line where the sea and horizon met.

Fleur was in a daze as drinks were served and the long table which had been set up in advance was covered with a cloth and cutlery. Food was ferried rapidly from the house. A man stood by to deflect insects and other predators from the table. She stood at the parapet of the terrace, gazing out. Behind her Valentine Keith and Sophia discussed various activities with which they might entertain themselves during the holiday. “If we can get my father off the golf course we might get him to take the boat to St Lucia,” Sophia was saying.

“How many will it take?” Valentine asked.

“Nine or ten,” she said. “The children might have to sleep on deck. Fun for them.”

“Hm,” he replied. “Hope so.” Then they all sat down. Zoe and Sophia began to discuss the virtues of the various Caribbean
islands as dwelling places – Jamaica, too violent; Antigua, difficulties with residence qualifications; St Lucia, very hilly. Dickie Jethro and George Andriades were mostly silent. This was how it worked with such alpha males, Fleur noticed. They left the others to carry the burden of the conversation, but when they did speak, everybody listened.

Soon enough Zoe stood up, saying, “Fleur – let me show you where you'll be.”

Zoe led Fleur to a suite of three rooms. In the white-painted sitting-room a large vase of flowers sat on a low table. Her hostess threw open the bedroom door, which contained a four-poster bed surrounded by light, white curtains. “The curtains are for those phobic about insect attacks at night,” she said. “And darling, don't open the shutters. It lets them all in. Also there are bars on the windows, which is rather depressing. Not that there is anything to worry about. It's very peaceful here and Arthur is in the hall all night. Ask him if you want anything.”

Fleur sat down on the white sofa for a short while, then had a shower in the luxurious bathroom and, early as it was, went to bed. In her room a pile of new books stood on a table, with water in a cooler and a basket of fruit. Her luggage had already been unpacked and put away.

She woke early next morning, fuzzy-headed, and went out on to the terrace, already cleared of last night's table and with the dampness of a recent hosing just beginning to evaporate. She plunged into the pool. When she emerged Zoe had been there.

One of the servants brought coffee and croissants and little pats of cool butter.

Zoe told Fleur, “There's a party tonight. Have you anything to wear or would you like to borrow something?”

Fleur, tired of offers to kit her out, said, “No, I have a dress, thanks. This is quick, this party.”

“I sent some invitations out before we left,” Zoe said. “Marie did the rest.”

Her portable phone rang and the Keith children burst noisily from the house with Valentine, who looked as if they'd woken him up. He sat at a table dealing with questions of water-skiing, snorkelling and
sharks. Then he wearily delegated the rest to the nanny and drifted over to where Zoe and Fleur were sitting. Zoe was saying into the phone, “At least two weeks. George is here for a big rest and we do hope Dickie will try to take some time to relax.”

Valentine draped a casual arm over Fleur's shoulders and asked, “How do you like it so far?”

“It's wonderful,” Fleur said, standing up and going over to dive into the pool again. Valentine dived in after her. A third splash was Hugh Cotter, who came up under Valentine and somehow hoisted him out of the water and then dropped him back in with a splash. Fleur saw spindly Hugh as the wimpy schoolboy, his only skill swimming, confounding the class thug.

Valentine began to race up and down the pool. When Hugh surfaced he said, “Race?” but Hugh went into a convincing imitation of a dolphin, leaping out of the water, squeaking and squealing, and Fleur laughed so much she nearly drowned.

Hugh fell back in the water and turned up near Fleur. “I'll take you sightseeing this morning,” he said. “Do you want to go?”

Fleur said, “Yes,” pleased she would have a plan ready when Valentine came up with some proposal such as a walk round a dark cave together or a car tour of the island destined to end up in a motel bedroom.

Others arrived – Fiona Jones, heavily swathed and wearing a large hat, predictably allergic to strong sunshine; Dickie, in a white shirt and trousers, his arm round Henry Jones, who wore a panama hat and held a bunch of faxes in his hand; Diana Keith, a honed and shapely figure in her swimsuit.

Fleur and Hugh explained their plan to Zoe and soon left. Hugh had told Zoe they were going to look round Bridgetown and promised they would be back by lunchtime. But in fact he got the chauffeur to ferry them downhill past the golf course to the beach, where he hired a boat from an old man in a straw hat. While they were waiting for it he sank a glass of white rum at a beach bar while Fleur stood, stunned under the unimaginably blue sky, gazing over the blue, blue sea.

When she turned round Hugh was chatting with a tall, handsome, bare-chested man in a pair of white trousers. Something prompted her to turn back and continue to contemplate the view.

She was not particularly surprised to find out, when a small, ramshackle boat with an outboard motor turned up, that the handsome Bajan was coming with them.

“Don't worry, Fleur,” Hugh said easily, interpreting her doubtful glance at the boat, “I spent half my holidays here as a boy. That right, Chris?”