Operation Nassau Read Online Free Page B

my father, I felt that this unfilial action should at least discharge the MacRannoch from the duty of paying for me as a daughter. What he chose to do with his money was therefore his affair, although he made it, such was his excitable nature, all the world’s.
    There was in fact a crowd of people on the terrace when I made my way through the house. They had not changed for dinner and from their costume I guessed that there had been a tennis party on our excellent hard court. One couple from Government House, I recognized, and there was a titled lady from the retired British colony, a banking family and one or two of the younger moneyed set from Lyford Cay. There was also a tall hair-lacquered blonde lady in a bikini a little too smart for her, for whom my father, in flowered Bermuda shorts and green shirt, was pouring a large Bloody Mary. F noticed that it was more blood than Mary, and after a second hard glance at the lady, diagnosed why. Then he turned round.
    ‘Beltanno! Did you kill ‘em off early? Come and get a nice strong tomato juice under the whalebone. You know my daughter Beltanno, Denise, everyone?’
    I call myself, as I have said, Dr B. Douglas MacRannoch, Douglas being my middle name and the surname of my mother. It is unimportant, but perhaps simpler to explain now that I was christened Beltanno, which was the name of Cairbre’s wife, the daughter-in-law of Cormac. Since it conveys nothing but a sense of ridicule to members of an Anglo-Germanic culture, I never use it and dislike hearing it used, as my father well knows. The woman called Denise smiled graciously, and someone said, ‘Good evening’; then they all returned to their drinks. The MacRannoch said, ‘Denise here has been deserted by her dear husband. The hotel wouldn’t let her hang on to her room. I’ve said she can stay here till he comes.’
    Denise. The white population of Nassau is not all that enormous. I said, ‘Is his name by any chance Edgecombe?’ and received half my tomato juice down my Bri-Nylon two-piece as the woman Denise jolted my arm. ‘He’s in hospital? Bart! Is he hurt?’ she said, her voice sliding upwards.
    Conversation stopped. There was no point in doing anything about the tomato juice. It is in any case possible to put the whole garment into a washing-machine. I said briskly, ‘He is perfectly well: only getting over a fairly sharp stomach upset. The hospital has been trying to reach you . . Lady Edgecombe, all afternoon.’
    She stared at me, frowning. Her voice was attractively husky: her accent less native, I felt, than the result of an excellent tutor. She said. ‘Oh, Bart! I had to leave my hotel. He was a day late . . .’ She pressed my wrist again, her sharpened nails damaging the first and even second stratum of my epithelium. ‘You work there! Is he all right? He’s not badly ill? Oh, dear!’ She broke off to stare at me as a new danger occurred to her. ‘I hope he has a good doctor!’
    ‘Does he have a good doctor, Beltanno?’ asked my father, his hair a quiff of white above that ridiculous gnome’s face, and the orange and green flowered shorts.
    Spasmodic childishness is a feature of my father’s condition. I addressed Lady Edgecombe. ‘I am his doctor. I am sure my father will arrange for you to go straight to the hospital, and find another hotel in Nassau for a day or two. Perhaps your brother George could assist.’
    ‘Who?’ said Lady Edgecombe. Her hair, I now saw, was not naturally blonde, although it had been skilfully treated, and she wore false eyelashes, though no other make-up. A certain development of the leg muscles, added to the undoubted grace of her carriage, made me think that she had belonged at one time to some branch of the dancing profession. ‘I haven’t got a brother George,’ said Denise Edgecombe.
    ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘It was another patient. I do beg your pardon. Father -’
    But Sadie, Father’s big Bahamian driver from Eleuthera, was already