Paradiso

by Allan Prior

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Bermuda, 1972. The island is a paradise of sea, sand and sub-tropical flowers in abundance under a blazing sun. To Abbott, the money-man, it offers a haven of rest and peace, an idyllic setting for his passionate affair with the golden-skinned Angel. To Angel da Sousa it is merely a stepping stone towards her dream of becoming a star. But beneath this tranquil facade, dangerous undercurrents are stirring. Some see Bermuda as a political symbol, the farthest flung colony of the British Empire, and they threaten to shatter the peace and prosperity of the island paradise. For Abbot and Angel these undercurrents prove treacherous indeed.

Release date: October 24, 2013

Publisher: Mulholland

Print pages: 256

Sample

The money had done it, of course.

Abbott knew that.

Until the money arrived his life had been uneventful and, despite all the work, placid. The need for the money had made him keep his head down—exactly why he could never be sure, certainly not simply to get rich; but it had happened. The money had come, like an involuntary sexual climax, and everything in his life had abruptly and violently altered. The need to work had gone, and with it a whole way of life. Instead of there not being enough hours in the day, the very minutes dominated by the tyranny of the desk-diary and the company car, there were suddenly too many hours, all to be filled in a new and alien and sometimes frightening way. The money had come and the work had gone, and with the work had gone the old props and stays, home and family—God, Helen’s face, when he told her! And with the money had come the new ways, the new needs, the new and seemingly inescapable life-style.

With the money had come Angel.

She stirred amongst the huge silken pillows, propped herself up on her elbows and swung off the bed. She padded nude, golden and firm-breasted, to the window, and surveyed the grey and smoggy New York morning through two panes of glass.

‘Shit, what a city,’ said Angel.

It was her first visit to New York and she had not been as enthusiastic as Abbott thought she should have been. After all, they were staying at the Regis and they had been to lunch at Twenty One, and supper at Sardi’s, and for drinks at the Four Seasons. They had sailed round Manhattan on the steamer and they had been up the Empire State Building and to Radio City Music Hall. It had been a strictly tourist trip, all right, but Abbott still felt that she might have shown a little more appreciation. Instead, she had stood outside St. Pat’s, and looking up and down the dramatic sweep of Fifth Avenue, declared, ‘But I’ve seen all this on the movies.’

Abbott had recognised the disappointment in her voice. It was the tone she used when a promised celebrity had not turned up for drinks after one of her shows, had excused himself and run, probably from her dramatic beauty. Angel’s looks scared people off, unless they were very famous or very confident or very rich, and sometimes even then. Poorer, less talented men did not feel they deserved her, Abbott had noted. He would never have dreamed of approaching her himself, before the money.

‘I thought you said we’d be meeting Snow in this town.’ Angel turned from the window, and Abbott, looking at the small but perfect breasts, the sloping, tiny waist and the dark V of pubic hair (above all the angelic, golden face, the strong white teeth, the afro hair style) thought: I have no right here with her, she’s too beautiful, we don’t belong together, we have nothing in common except our flesh. He sighed, and stretched out his hand. ‘Come back to bed.’

Angel did not get back into bed. She padded sulkily into the bathroom suite and left the door open so that she could talk to him. As she made water she called, above the splashing sound, ‘I don’t know why we stopped off in New York.’

‘Because you wanted to. And I had to talk to his agent. You know that. Don’t worry. We’ll get everything fixed on the Island.’

‘I hope so.’

‘We’ll see him today, after all, darling.’

‘I dunno. He could have waited for us, maybe he’s gone cold on the idea.’

‘If he had done that he wouldn’t have asked us to fly over. He’s just gone ahead to get some sun.’

The splashing sound stopped and Angel came back into the bedroom, still naked. ‘Do you think it’s bread that’s worrying him?’

‘Anything but. Morris said he’d take no fee, just a large cut of the profits. If he decided to go ahead with it.’

Angel sat on a chair, ignoring, possibly not even seeing, Abbott’s newly outstretched hand. She crossed her legs exactly as if she had clothes on, and said, ‘The bastard probably never even heard of me.’

‘Well, of course he did. Anyway, we sent your tapes, didn’t we?’

‘If he bothered to listen to them.’

‘Why should he talk to us unless he was interested?’

‘Fellas like Snow, big dealers, they never mean a word they say.’

‘How can you know—you never met the man?’

‘I’ve met plenty like him.’

The truth was, Abbott thought, she probably had. Small-time, of course, but the type did not change, it was international. He sighed. ‘Angel, we are over the big hurdle. We are going to talk to the man today. Come to bed.’

Angel ignored that. She moodily inspected her toenails, which were painted silver. ‘You sure you sent him the right photos? The Bailey ones?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Not the others, those ones that made me look thirty?’

She made it sound obscene.

‘No, the Bailey ones. Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.’

Abbott recognised in his voice the tone he had used when talking to his children, when they were young and distressed. The comparison saddened him. He missed them (and Helen too, sometimes) and the house. And even the garden, which had been simply there, as far as he was concerned, to walk in, but which Helen had tended lovingly, delicately, as she did everything she touched. It astonished him now that occasionally he looked back to it as to a haven, whereas when he had been imprisoned there (Helen’s word to him at the final tearing break-up, ‘You always thought of it as a prison, you always hated it!’) he had forever fretted about what was happening to other men on the other side of the hill. A needling, fortyish ache for a different life, dismissed as a regretful pipe-dream by most men his age. Not, in the end, by him. The money had brought the dream real. He was now, this minute, actually on the other side of the hill. Abbott checked his thoughts: what was this ridiculous nostalgia for smoky suburbia all about? The world was his to choose from, and he had chosen. He smiled at Angel’s golden body, and told himself, I like it in this place I have chosen.

‘He’ll flip when he sees you.’

Angel said, a trifle mollified, but still anxious for reassurance, ‘Snow’s used to big stars. I’ll be a nobody to him.’

‘No, you won’t. He isn’t all that used to big stars either. He takes unknowns and makes stars of them.’

‘In his last big Broadway musical he had a top star.’

‘It flopped.’

The remark cheered her, as he knew it would.

‘You’re right, Mister Snow had a flop! That’s good, I like that, that makes him human.’

‘Everybody has a flop sometime, everybody has a disaster,’ Abbott said, gently. He did not want to be there on opening-night, if ever this whole project came real, and find himself staring into Angel’s eyes, the show truly a flop.

But Angel laughed and got to her feet and danced round the room, her breasts so firm that they hardly shook, and called out, ‘Not me, I’m never gonna have a disaster, never, never, never!’ and he knew it was no use talking about failure to her. She had come from too unlikely a place. To get to this point was almost as much a miracle for her as the money had been for him. Perhaps there was something else besides the flesh, after all?

He reached for her wrist. ‘Come to bed, there’s time.’

Angel pirouetted around the bed, showing to him first her trim bottom and then her flat belly and the dance (perfectly executed, she had been a dancer, after all, if only in a chorus-line) took her to the bathroom door. She stopped there, a little breathless and smiled at him, lips parted. His groin stirred, and he got out of the bed and made for her.

‘You bloody tease, you!’

‘No, no time, we have to go at nine, right?’

And the bathroom door slammed, just as he reached it.

Abbott hammered on the door. ‘Hey, come out!’

Inside, water flushed and roared.

‘I’m having my bath now. You’d better pack. You’re the one always saying we haven’t much time.’

Abbott laughed, gave the door a last thump and threw himself down on the bed. He did not wear pyjamas with Angel (with Helen he always had, buttoned up, right from the beginning) probably because his skin was brown now, after a month at Cannes in October. His fingers explored his waistline, feeling for the roll of fat that had been there a year ago; hardly any. The expensive course of slimming, at the best clinic in the Home Counties, had got rid of it, and the workouts at Jack Solomons’ gym had put muscle in its place. He had not been so fit, or looked so good, since he had finished his army service. While he was married to Helen he had always been starting on a slimming course, or a keep-fit course, and abandoning it after a few days or weeks. For a very good reason: there had been no need to go through the punishing routines for Helen. She had always laughed at his efforts and kissed him, and said, ‘I love you, fat or thin.’ The remark had irritated him then, as the recollection did now. The memory of himself, twenty pounds overweight, the collar straining at his throat, the waistband of his trousers tightening after each too-large meal, was a ridiculous one. He had tried to drown himself in food, and in work, and in Helen. None of it had been enough, in the end, when the real test came—the money.

It had not happened all that quickly, simply he had not expected it to be so much, when, finally, he rested to count it. The buy into television shares, when the companies were first formed, had been a slice of astonishing good luck. The group had wanted an accountant who understood show-business dealings and he had happened to be around. There had been no money to spare to pay his fees. Any there was had to go on the ‘presentation’—the document that would decide whether the consortium would be given the priceless franchise, or get nothing at all. His own work had been easy enough, simply to make sense of their possible assets and to check that they would have backers in the City of London, if their application should succeed. There was nothing to that—any banker would come in with a big smile and an open cheque, once the consortium had the franchise; but the members, mostly showbiz people, producers, actors and directors, had not known much about that. Abbott was personal accountant to several of them (working, as he did, for a big showbiz agency) and they trusted him. They had offered, in the casual, easy way of such people, a seat on the board if they were successful, and a hatful of shares in the company. All that, old Jack, as one of them had said, arm round Abbott’s shoulder in the Savoy Grill, all that but no cash now; what say?

Abbott had said yes, what else could he say?

It had been the best decision, anyway the most momentous decision, he had ever taken. Against all the odds, the unlikely consortium had been given the franchise—a licence, as another lucky applicant had once said, to print your own money—and Abbott had simply, overnight, become very, very rich.

That had been four years ago. Three of those years had been taken up with work. Then he had met Angel. Of course, he knew who she was, the moment he met her at the party. Her face smiled from the television screen every Monday evening, in a popular advice-giving panel game. She was on it, the producer had told Abbott tipsily and confidentially, because she had wonderful tits and wonderful teeth. The producer had, in the user’s manner of such people, thought her just another beautiful scrubber. He had never expected her to come up with any good advice. But she had, salty and funny and practical advice, based, Abbott supposed, on experience, although she was only twenty-four, or so the publicity handouts—which Abbott sent for the next day—insisted. Angel’s commonsensical replies to the fatuous questions had become mildly famous. She had been the first woman to use a four-letter word on British television. It had come out so smoothly and naturally that most viewers had not really registered it, at the moment. Abbott had registered it. He had watched her say it, and from that moment he had wanted her, sexually. The scandalous incident had created a sensation in the British press and the show had been taken off the air, for, as everybody at the Network piously insisted, a rest.

‘Why the hell do we need a rest?’ Angel had demanded. ‘The people want to hear me say it again, they’ll switch on in their millions in the hope I might.’

Abbott knew that she was right, but although the publicity had been useful to her, it had landed her without a job. She had told Abbott, at the party to celebrate the last show, that all she had been offered was a nudie part in a horror film. He remembered the conversation word by word, because from it everything had stemmed.

‘What will you do? Take it?’

He had kept his eyes from her golden, unsupported breasts with great difficulty.

‘Hell no, it’s a rubbish movie. I can’t see the billing, Angel da Sousa in Vampire Virgins, can you?’

‘No, but you have to do something?’

‘I suppose.’ She was wearing a dress cut to her thigh and three men—all much younger than Abbott—were standing around, holding drinks, just staring at her. Abbott found this offensive, but she did not seem to mind or even notice.

‘Nothing else in sight, nothing at all?’

Angel opened her huge dark eyes and looked straight into his. ‘Well, I do have a script for a musical.’

‘Oh yes, what’s it called?’

‘Paradiso.’

‘Is it good?’

‘It would be good for me, if I could find anybody to put it on.’

That had been the moment to withdraw, into the smoking, sweating crush, to move on to the next, safe group with a grunt and a smile, to allow the quickest of the joyless young men eyeing her to step in and make claim. Abbott had not taken advantage of the moment. Instead, he had said, somewhat astonished at himself, ‘I’d like to read it.’

‘I didn’t know you were on the production side?’ The dark eyes widened. ‘What do you do exactly, Mister Abbott?’

‘Jack.’

‘I don’t like Jack. I like Abbott.’

‘Then call me that. I’m the company accountant.’

‘A money-man?’

‘Sort of.’

‘I have a copy of the script at my place.’

Angel had smiled then, and Abbott could have wished the smile had come earlier, when she didn’t know who he was, but what the hell, if a man was somebody, then he had to expect that. Women gravitated towards success; it wasn’t new, when hadn’t they? It was in their natures. Unless they were new women, denying it all, protesting too much. Anyway, those kind of women had never appealed to him. But he did not mind the aristocracy of real talent. His work in the agency had brought him in contact with enough of it to recognise it, when he saw it. He smiled back at the black-haired girl, and said, happy and suddenly reckless, ‘Then I’ll come and read it.’

‘Now?’

‘Why not, the party’s nearly over?’

She looked round. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’

Abbott had left with her and a lot of people had noticed. He had not cared.

It had all started then, the return to life, or more likely, since Abbott had been studying textbooks and account books since he was sixteen, his first real crack at living. The other lucky men, who had won the money with him (he still thought of it as a gambler’s throw), had fared no better than himself. Some had taken to drink, one or two to illness, a couple to megalomania. He had taken to Angel. Helen had seen it happening, and had not understood. Why was it that the only women who knew anything about men were the whores, actual or temperamental? Ordinary nice women never knew, which was why they had to be protected. That, at least, had been the theory, except that he had not been able to protect Helen, in the end. He had not been able to protect himself.

So it had all begun, the parties and the air-flights to Paris and Rome and the drinking (it always seemed to be champagne, he had discovered quite a taste for champagne) and finally the large Mayfair apartment rented for Angel, in his name, and the late-night visits straight from the office, his mind reeling with figures (Christ, the money they were all making!) and then the falling into bed, the frenzied outpouring of his sexual want for her. It had, from the very first night, been a physical relationship, and he had not wanted any other. Not until it was too late, after Helen’s discovery of the keys to the apartment, the lipstick marks, the scent, the telephoned reports from girl-friends who had seen him with Angel in public places. He had become very careless, a part of him—the deprived lust-for-life part—wanted Helen to know, to end the deceit, to set him free; and another part, the accountant part, said no, what kind of emotional book-keeping is this?

Emotionally, he had gone into the red with Angel, the dark reds of desire and need, and he had been helpless to stop himself. No more, he thought, than he could now. He was still in the middle of it, there had been no slow-down. Adroitly (he supposed) Angel gave him no chance to become used to her. He had never lived with her in any permanent place. She insisted on keeping her own apartment, and that Abbott lived somewhere else. It hurt him a little that she didn’t seem to care where he lived. In the end he had moved out from Helen into a small service-flat near his office.

‘Do you love her?’ Helen had demanded, at the end, still anguished and shocked.

‘I think I must.’

‘Surely you know?’

‘No, I bloody well don’t know. All I know is I must be with her.’

‘And for that you’d give up everything? The house, the children, me?’

‘What do you mean, for that? You say it as if it’s nothing! I married you for that, and now you talk as if it’s dirty!’

‘So it is, so it is, you and her! She’s only a …’

‘Shut up, Helen.’

‘Oh go and screw her, it’s all she’s for. You’d throw us all away, and your job, for that!’

‘It won’t affect my job!’

Of course, it had. Finally, he had requested a year’s leave and the chairman had not asked any questions. Probably he knew the facts about Angel by then, they were common enough property. ‘Jack, you don’t need to come back if you don’t want to, you know that. We’ve got fifty good accountants now.’

Abbott had shaken his head. ‘Maybe I won’t.’

That was the day Snow had telephoned from New York, the dark brown voice faint over the transatlantic telephone.

‘Mister Abbott, I got the tapes and the script you sent, through Morris Simons.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘I like them, I think there’s maybe something here.’

‘You like the script?’

‘Quite a lot, yes. Mainly I like the tapes.’

‘Would you be interested in doing a production, I mean in directing it?’

Snow had hesitated, coughed politely, faraway and wary. ‘Well, I tell you, Mister Abbott, about that I haven’t made up my mind, I’d like, y’know, to talk to you about it?’

An electric joy had coursed through Abbott’s limbs. He thought of Angel’s ecstatic face when he told her such news. But he had merely said, in what she called his accountant’s voice, ‘Why don’t we do that?’

Snow had coughed, again. ‘I don’t know that I have any plans to come to England at this time.’

‘We could both come to New York?’

‘You could?’

‘Yes.’

‘You and Miss er …?’

‘Da Sousa. Angel da Sousa.’

‘When?’

‘Next week maybe?’

‘Great. You’ll have to talk to my agent first, of course.’

‘Naturally.’

There had been a pause. ‘One thing, Mister Abbott …?’

‘Yes?’

‘Had you thought about backing?’

‘If need be, I could find the backing.’

‘You could?’

‘If it wasn’t a huge extravaganza. And it isn’t that, is it?’

‘I don’t know, I haven’t thought about costs yet.’

‘Well, I was thinking of Shaftesbury Avenue first, Broadway later.’

‘We’d need a top impresario.’

‘I’ve talked to Cowan …’

‘Rex Cowan?’

‘He said if you liked it, he’d handle that end of things.’

‘He did?’ Snow’s voice had been suddenly respectful. ‘Then let’s meet very soon. You’ll cable my agent to confirm?’

‘Right.’

‘Oh, and I look forward to meeting Miss da Sousa. Great pictures you sent.’

‘Thanks, goodbye.’

Angel, when he told her, had flipped. Her arms had gone round his neck, and they had waltzed around her apartment, Abbott carrying the bottle of Brut he had brought to celebrate, and she had cried out, ‘Snow! New York! Next week?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Oh, Abbott, you’re so good to me.’

‘I thought we might go down to the cottage for the weekend?’

‘Oh, yes, fine, great, let’s do that!’

And so they had gone, and walked in the woods, tweeded and suèded, not talking much, Angel throwing away the hard, professional mask of capability and eagerness and, sometimes, manic enthusiasm. Here, in the country, hand-in-hand, soft turf underfoot, it was difficult to believe she was the same girl. The excitements of town, the drinking, the spiced food, the late hours, the slam of car doors and the falling asleep at dawn—all that was as if it had never been. Here Angel was kindly, where she was irritable in town. Here she was loving, where in town she was offhand and preoccupied. Here she found time to be womanly. Their sex was leisurely and natural, and not the frantic, exhausted thing it was apt to be at the end of a long restless day of conferences and late drinking and eating. They ate plain food at midday, steaks and eggs and coffee, and went to bed early and slept late. With her soft young body in his arms, rested and happy, Abbott would waken to birdsong and the waft of sharp, pure air from the open windows.

‘We ought to come and live here one day.’

Angel stirred, took his hand and put it on her breast. ‘Um, it’s great.’

‘No, I mean, really live here.’

She opened one eye. ‘You’d hate it.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I want you all to myself.’

Angel opened the other eye. ‘Do you mean it?’

‘Of course.’

‘I couldn’t. Not yet.’

Abbott kissed her. ‘I know.’

‘I have to work, Abbott.’ Her tone was serious, and she looked at him as if she cared.

‘I know you do.’

‘I have to!’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve got to do it, to make it, or bust trying!’

‘You’ll make it, don’t worry. You have a real talent.’

‘Do you really think I will? I mean really?’

Her voice was very soft and tentative, and nothing like the voice she used in town, in the studios and agents’ offices and in the fashionable restaurants. All that was armour, Abbott knew. This was the real, soft, vulnerable flesh. ‘Of course you will.’ He added, ‘Then you’ll fly away.’

‘I won’t, Abbott, I won’t, honestly. I won’t leave you, ever.’

Abbott ran his hand down her soft belly. ‘I know, I know.’

‘But I won’t!’

‘All right.’

‘You don’t believe me.’ Her voice was sulky. He had reminded her that there was sixteen years’ difference in their ages. It was unfair. He should not do it, it was self-indulgent. ‘You think all I care about is being a success, that I’ll go Charley Star if I do, and nobody will be able to talk to me.’

‘It happens to most people.’

‘Not to me, I’ve seen it too often.’ Her tone was sad, wondering, and Abbott knew that she did not know, any more than he did, what success, if it were to touch her, would do to her. Her arms went round him tightly, and her mouth was on his, and then he was in her moist body and the reds and blacks of desire drowned them both. Afterwards, the sheets thrown back, she said, drawing on his cigarette, ‘Abbott, I know what you gave up for me. I wouldn’t be a bitch to you.’

‘I didn’t give up anything for you.’

‘You did, I know you did. Your kids …’

‘No. If it hadn’t been you it would have been somebody else.’

Angel pouted. ‘Charming!’

‘No, I mean, it was coming, that’s all.’ He kissed her. ‘But it was you, and I’m glad.’

‘Why?’

‘You know.’

She touched her smooth belly, the bush of coarse black hair. ‘Not just this?’

‘No.’ He smiled at her. ‘Not just that.’

‘Why then, I mean really?’

How could he tell her that she excited him, that it was all in that one word? He said, ‘Because I love you.’

That was easier.

‘I don’t like to say that to anybody.’ Angel frowned. ‘It’s too much, y’know?’

‘It’s all right. I don’t expect you to say it.’

Angel passed the cigarette back to him. ‘I’m a bitch to you. I spoil your life and I won’t even say I love you.’

‘You didn’t. And I don’t care.’

Her dark eyes brooded. ‘I meant what I said, Abbott. You’ve been good to me. You’re good for me. I’m happy with you.’

‘Don’t promise. Those reasons … Sometimes they aren’t enough.’

‘Oh, Abbott, I really am a bitch sometimes, but … I have to be like that, oh, I mean hard-shelled and like tough, or else I’ll get trodden under, I’ll just be another scrubber from nowhere who thinks she can sing.’

‘Never.’

‘It could happen.’

‘No, it couldn’t.’

‘Who could stop it?’

‘I could.’

‘You have your job. You’ll have to go back to it sometime?’

‘No, I have you. I want …’ Abbott was careless, he said more than he meant to. ‘I want to see you make it, I want to be there all the way.’

‘All the way?’

‘While you want me.’

‘I’ll always …’

‘… Don’t say it.’

‘Well, I will.’

‘All right.’ Abbott laughed. ‘To prove it, why don’t you do one thing?’

Her fingers touched his body. ‘Anything.’

‘Get up and fry eggs and bacon.’

‘God, you’re asking a lot, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just to show you, then.’ And she had leapt out of bed and gone downstairs and made breakfast, and he could hear her singing (a throaty, beautiful voice, better, surely, than any other of its kind he had heard?) and then she came back upstairs, nude but for a tiny apron, with coffee, eggs and bacon, on a tray. They had eaten with enormous appetite, and at the end of it, drinking their last cups of coffee, she had said, ‘Abbott, I need you. You’re good for me. And I wouldn’t be going to such exciting places without you. New York, wow!’

And so here they were, in New York, and Snow was i. . .