The Tropical Issue Read Online Free PDF Page A

You should go back to Surrey. I don’t know why you came here. The family didn’t want it.’
    The guy in the dressing-gown lay back with his feet on the dog. He remarked, apparently to me, ‘You’d better choose something else. He isn’t going to get you a vodka.’
    Ferdy, worrying about Connie Margate, never noticed. He said, ‘She can’t go on sleeping here every night. She’s got her own house to run. She’ll get ill, and then where will you be?’
    ‘Back in Surrey. I thought that’s what you wanted. I’m going to bed,’ said Pal Johnson, and took his feet off the dog.
    I wasn’t going to help him. He was doing Ferdy the favours. Ferdy said, ‘You can go to bed if you like, but I’m going to send that woman home for twenty-four hours. She can have one good night’s sleep in her own bed, and a day free of you and your telephone calls. What are you eating?’
    ‘Humble pie,’ said Johnson shortly. He had his hands on the arms of his chair, and had stuck there.
    I got up to go away. Every girl knows what happens when a man suddenly needs help in the house. I didn’t want to be caught there when Ferdy let the housekeeper off as a reward for lifting Johnson out of his chair.
    Ferdy suddenly caught sight of me leaving, and leaped up saying, ‘Now, Rita? Who’s Ferdy’s best friend? Who got to meet Natalie Sheridan?’
    He followed me into the bedroom forbidding me to leave, and would have chummed me into the bathroom too if I hadn’t locked the door.
    When I came out he had gone, and I put on my shawl and stuff and picked up my case and went to tell Mrs Margate I would let myself out. I didn’t want to get within arm’s length of the guy Johnson or Ferdy again.
    Mrs Margate wasn’t there. Instead Ferdy was in the kitchen, surrounded by bowls and packets and pans, with a warm smell coming from the cooker already.
    ‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘Put your case down, darling, and go and help Johnson to bed while I make us some lunch.’
    Ferdy is quite a good cook. My mother, Robina, is the best cook I ever knew, and I learned a lot from her that even Ferdy didn’t know. I stood thinking, while he looked up from his pan, his capped teeth like barley in his speckly fawn whiskers.
    ‘Go on, darling,’ he said. ‘Natalie’s decided to give London another two days, and wants you to do her for her parties. Why pay for a hotel? Think how Scotch and saving it will be. You sleep on one side of Johnson’s guestbed and I’ll sleep on the other.’
    ‘You sleep on both sides,’ I said. ‘I’m not staying. I lied to you. I know you had your prostate fixed.’
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Don’t stay. Just help while I get the meal.’
    To tell the truth, he had a point. By afternoon, the security shift in the hall would have changed. I put my case down. ‘On one condition. I make the meal and you help your crippled chum. What’s his first name?’
    ‘Johnson,’ Ferdy said. ‘Same as his last. The registrar had a stutter. Call him J.J. if he ever speaks to you again. That’s the melted butter, and there’s a dish in the oven. Call when you’re ready.’
    He disappeared. I put my case out of harm’s way in the bedroom, took off my shawl and jacket and waistcoat and shirt and put on my overall again. I caught sight of my unpatterned face below the Dracula eyeshadow and if the butter hadn’t started to burn, I would have painted my cheeks then and there, in pure protest.
    As it was, I went back to the kitchen and made a smashing meal for all of us, which Ferdy and I enjoyed, and which Pal Johnson either forgot, ignored or slept through, according to Ferdy. Then I found something for Bessie, and left Ferdy to wash up while I took her out for her aged business.
    The two new men in the foyer gave me some long funny stares but didn’t stop me, mainly because Bessie would have stopped too, and that to some purpose.
    It took longer than I expected, since Bessie, having held out as far as the middle of