The Tropical Issue by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

asked me to stay while she dressed, and before she went out, she sat down and poured me a sherry, and told me what I knew already: that Kim-Jim was out of action for a short time, and she needed someone on call for her make-up.
    ‘I like your work, Rita,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t take jobs abroad, but it’s only a plane hop to the villa. And now this film idea has turned up, I’ll be in London for quite a few days yet, and I’d like to suggest an arrangement. Would you care to stay on call while I’m here? Will you come and work for me at the villa while Kim-Jim’s away? If, of course, my fee is agreeable.’
    It was what Kim-Jim had wanted. It was why he had arranged my engagement with his employer. I knew what he had in mind. People retire. People like the chance to pick the person who will fill their shoes after them.
    A pretty innocent plan, and a generous one. For an American at the top of his profession, Kim-Jim was a pretty innocent guy. And he and I were good friends.
    Just professional friends. We’d met only once.
    An innocent plan.
    The laugh of the year. I really thought, accepting Natalie Sheridan’s offer, that it was Kim-Jim’s scheme and mine, and had nothing to do with anyone else.
    The plan to make a break. To go abroad for the first time in my life. To help Kim-Jim. To do the work I loved doing. To have a great time, staying with Natalie Sheridan, in her hideaway house in Madeira.
    Of course I said yes. Nothing warned me. The only man who could have warned me had been in a wheelchair.
     
    I flew to Madeira in April.
    Madeira, so my mother said, was a place you used to take your aunty to in the winter.
    It depends what sort of aunty you’ve got, but I wouldn’t take one in April: not if she’s easily shot.
    You can’t wear wool there in April either, so I had clothes to buy first, and a passport to apply for, and my accountants in Glasgow to visit.
    A passport, because I’d never been overseas before. Britain for Rita, I’d sworn. I felt a traitor, going now. Not afraid, but a traitor.
    I had a story all ready to spin my mother, but I didn’t need it. When I got to the nursing home, they said she had gone a bit confused again, and I wasn’t to mind if she was bad-tempered.
    She wasn’t, and she knew me, although she thought I was still at school. It wouldn’t be Robina to be bad-tempered. We talked about hockey.
    The rest of my things were in Troon, including my tape recorder and radio and cassette player, and all the make-up stuff I’d need for Natalie Sheridan. I went to pick them up, not liking the house without my mother in it, and had words with my Geddes aunt, as I always do.
    That’s one aunt I wouldn’t take anywhere. She wouldn’t go with me anyway. She has a motto as well: ‘Your Dad, God rest his soul, would never have let you.’ But she runs the house while my mother’s away, and sees the gutters don’t leak and the taps have washers on them. And takes messages for me, on the telephone.
    The night before I left Glasgow, I went on the town in Byres Road with a bunch of old pals from show business. Two were girls I’d been friends with at school. One of them was a singer and the other had become a producer.
    Put together, they earn half what I do, and that’s leaving out my investments.
    They can spell.
    They liked these clothes I’d bought, and my hair. I’d had my hair cut and made a new colour. It finished up quite a nice shade of chrome with some blue in it.
    They asked about the new job, and I told them.
    Natalie’s villa had a swimming pool, Kim-Jim had said. He never had much time to swim, but I wasn’t to let her work me so hard. I would be there as her beautician, and anything else I did was up to me. The most I might have to do was book the odd plane or hotel, or phone up people with messages. There were English girls Mrs Sheridan could hire for dictating. Everyone else spoke Portuguese.
    Phone up people with messages.
    I was glad that Natalie had