“A sort of cultural ambassador.”
“That is how I think of myself.”
She helped herself to a second spiny lobster tail, the one I had been saving for dinner. She smacked as she ate. When I brought her the drink, she favored me with a smile, but it was too late, I was out of sorts by then — the break in my routine, the interruption of lunch — and I saw nothing in her smile but the cheerful look you notice sometimes on the round faces of the demented, framed by a blonde Dutchboy cut and eye shadow applied with lunatic abandon. She was about fifty-five. Old.
A plane flew overhead. “Why is he circling?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, not looking up. “Listen how he throttles down. Having a good look, I’d say.” She could tell by the sound of the engine. “Cessna 120, same as mine. Wonder where he came from. Wasn’t at the airport when I landed.”
Burnett’s voice came crackling over the radiophone. I excused myself, went inside to take the call.
“Woman coming to stay — she there yet?” said Burnett. “Awfully sorry.”
I wanted to complain bitterly, but Mrs. Arbuthnot was just beyond the kitchen door; I thought I could hear her smacking from where I stood. Then I heard an actual voice — low, male, sibilant. I picked up the dessert — ice cream and papaya — and pushed the screen door open with my hip. On the terrace was a pile of luggage. And sitting not at the table but on the wooden bench in the shade by the wall, a man of thirty at most, pale, thin, slightly stooped. He held in his lap a hissing cassette machine. The red light was on. He was recording the event.
“My son,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Lloyd, say hello.”
“ ’Lo.” The fellow stared at me like a dead fish. Not one but two guests, and one of them a bit off.
“Lloyd is taping my concerts,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “He is into electronics. He is also my radio man and navigator.”
After Mrs. Arbuthnot and Lloyd had taken their things to their rooms, I urged them to walk across the island to the museum and the old cholera cemetery; sometimes a human bone turned up in the sand — always startling to visitors. I cleaned the kitchen and checked the bedrooms. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s suitcases were half unpacked on one of the twin beds. On the night stand table were books, brushes, creams, perfumes, and other toiletries. But in Lloyd’s room there was no evidence of human visitation. Nothing on the floor, on the beds, or on the bureau. I opened the top drawer. There was his clothing, packed orderly and tight, even his shoes, as in a sardine tin.
I heard a footfall behind me, a doe walking on moss.
“See anything you like?” Lloyd stood behind me, his head through the doorway.
I cleared my throat. “Just making sure you have towels.”
“The towels are behind the door.” Lloyd pointed. He was ten years younger than I, but his movements were of someone much older. His gestures reminded me of Ichabod Crane.
I strode past him into the hall. Confidence — that’s what’s wanted in situations like these. Lloyd followed, hands behind back. I said, “Here we have the bathroom,” as though I were an innkeeper showing off the premises.
“Mineral oil in the medicine chest,” said Lloyd. “If you’re constipated, you should use fruits and fiber. Plenty of fiber.”
“I am not constipated,” I replied icily. “The mineral oil was here when I rented the house.” The tour continued to the living room.
“See you like Glenn Gould. I do, too.” He’d been here two hours, yet he’d examined the medicine chest and my cassettes. It occurred to me that his interest in electronics was only the tip of the iceberg. I had read about people like Lloyd. They lived in rooms by themselves. They had binoculars. They kept dossiers on people. One day they went berserk.
I strolled to the bookcase and scooped up the Gould tapes. “My gift to you.” Overdoing it, I know, but a way of atoning for being caught going through his things. I didn’t want to be the object of his fury when he finally snapped. With my gift and his own snooping, I felt I had regained the upper hand. “I thought you were going to the beach,” I said.
“I’ve been to the beach,” said Lloyd. “Came back to check on my equipment.” This sounded ominous, but I let it pass. “Just as well. Mother’s cello has arrived.”
“Mother’s cello?” I had had it in my mind that she was a pianist.
“Couldn’t fit in the taxi, had to get a van. There’s a man here, wants us to go down to the harbor and pick it up.”
We borrowed Drover’s golf cart, the thing he used for picking up vegetables and meat from the freight boat, and drove down to the pier. The cello wasn’t heavy so much as awkward; we finally secured it with ropes to the jitney top. The water-taxi operator stood waiting. Lloyd shrugged and gave me a blank look, so I told the man to put it on my account. At dinner that night Mrs. Arbuthnot said, “I owe you money for the water-taxi.” She said there would be a letter of credit coming from Massachusetts; we would settle later.
My visitors were soon well known in the village. Mrs. Arbuthnot visited every gimcrack souvenir shop, talking, buying (the kind of tourist the villagers loved), delivering circulars about the concert. Lloyd’s appearances were more peculiar. He said little, he dressed somberly, and he went farther afield. The second day he rose early and walked the length of the island. The third, he borrowed a rowboat from the hotel and explored the coves, the hurricane hole, and the mangrove swamps on the lee side. Wherever he went, he carried one of his tape recorders. He had several small cassette players and a large machine with dials and fluttering needles. Madame Grumbacher told me that he spent several afternoons at the bar at the Majestic (the new Palm Court). He was the only person there besides the dart players. The red light of his tape recorder glowed in the gloom. He had a boom mike.
“What do you think you’re doing,” one of the men in the dart league had asked.
“Just testing,” said Lloyd. He stared the man down. “For the concert.”
At the Terrace Bar, he sat on the far side wearing earphones, the boom mike aimed across the pool towards the thatched hut with the bar. It made people edgy. He even ventured into the Riverside, ordered Coca-Cola — Lloyd did not drink alcohol — and sat with a recorder in his pocket. The Riverside was where the drug dealers gathered, the petty crooks and thugs who came in outboards from other islands to play pool and while away their afternoons. The room was silent but for the whirr of Lloyd’s cassette player and the click of the cues, until the bartender told Lloyd to shut the recorder off or have it shoved down his throat. Ti-Paul from the ferry came into the bank expressly to tell me about this incident. “That man you got staying with you — he the police?”
“Does he really look it?” I asked.
“Yeah, well, he better be careful. The boys at the Riverside, they got bad nerves. He spooks them.”
“Tell them he’s just a tourist, good for business.” But I knew what they meant. Mrs. Arbuthnot was rarely in the house; when she wasn’t out “getting to know the villagers — so colorful,” she was at the Methodist Chapel where Madame Grumbacher had arranged for her to rehearse. But Lloyd was in and out like a wraith. He would materialize in the kitchen, on the terrace, in the living room, his tape recorders whirring. Then vanish back into the ether.
Friday was my busiest day, and I was at the bank by eight o’clock. The restaurants, the merchants, the visiting yachtsmen — everyone needed cash for the weekend. Besides, traffic in my bathroom was heavy. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s ablutions took almost an hour, including a bath, a shampoo, and drying her hair with a blower that made the lights fade and the toaster pop. I was glad to be out of the house and at my desk. Winnie came bursting in a few minutes later.