‘What is more,’ she continued firmly, ignoring the threat, ‘tonight for dinner we’re having stone crabs, Florida’s pride, and after that Kris can repeat to us the poem he’s been muttering to himself all day, and after that you can watch hours of the weather channel if you like, but don’t wake me in the morning, I’m not catching any flight to anywhere.’
‘What poem?’ Robin asked.
‘There’s no poem. I’m going for a swim,’ Kris said immediately, and was still in the pool at sunset.
‘He did recite a poem,’ Evelyn complained. ‘Why does he pretend he didn’t?’
I said from experience, ‘Give him time.’
In time, he would either repeat his verses or tear them up. It would depend on how he felt.
The stone crabs for dinner, with mustard sauce and green salad, beat fish pie with parsley sauce out of sight, and over coffee out on the terrace in soft silhouetting light, Kris said, without preliminaries, ‘I went to Cape Canaveral, you know.’
We nodded.
‘I’ll fly through a hurricane, but those first astronauts sat on countless tons of rocket fuel and lit a match. So... well... I wrote for them. I wrote about Cape Canaveral, about the past... about the future.’
He stood up abruptly and carried his coffee cup to the end of the terrace. His voice came matter-of-factly out of the dark.
No one spoke.
Kris said,
More silence.
With a sigh, Kris said,
Kris walked over and put his coffee cup on the table. ‘So you see,’ he said, a near-laugh lightening his concept, ‘I’m no John Keats.’
Robin said judiciously, ‘An interesting aperçu, all the same.’
Kris left Robin explaining an aperçu to Evelyn and walked me to the edge of the terrace to look at the moon reflected in the pool.
‘Robin’s arranged a Piper in Cayman,’ he said. ‘I’ve checked that I can fly it. Are you on?’
‘I can’t afford much.’
‘Don’t fuss about the money. Are you spiritually on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great.’ My unqualified agreement excited him. ‘I was sure that’s why you came.’
‘Why is Robin so keen on us going to Odin?’
Kris wrinkled his tall pale forehead. ‘Understanding why people do things, that’s your sort of work, not mine.’
‘I liked your poem.’
He grimaced. ‘You should go to the Cape. You’d never believe that the moon walks were spawned from those concrete slabs.’
There were times, there were days, when the extremes of Kris’s see-saw nature fell into balance, not just as always for his solo two-minute on-screen weather forecasts, but also for a lasting peace. It was as if the careful pilot took over even after the wheels had landed. On the evening of the Cape Canaveral verses he sounded more level-headed than I’d ever known him out of an aeroplane.
‘Did you see Bell?’ he asked.
‘I talked to her on the telephone.’
‘Will she marry me, do you think?’
I blew a breath of exasperation down my nose. ‘First,’ I said, ‘you’d better ask her.’
‘And next?’
‘Both of you practise keeping your temper. Count ten before you yell.’
He thought it over and nodded. ‘You tell her, and I’ll do it.’
I nodded. I doubted that either would manage it, but an attempt was an advance.
In a typical non sequitur he conversationally asked, ‘What do you know of Trox Island?’
‘Er.’ I thought without result. ‘Does Bell like it, or something?’
‘Bell? It’s nothing to do with Bell. It’s to do with Robin and Evelyn.’
I said ‘Oh?’ vaguely. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘It seems that most people have never heard of it,’ Kris said, ‘but suppose Robin wants you and me to fly to Trox Island, never mind through Odin’s eye.’
I said, puzzled, ‘Why ever should he?’
‘I think it’s something to do with mushrooms.’
‘Oh no, Kris,’ I protested. ‘I’m not risking my life for mushrooms.’
‘You won’t be risking your life. In the past, dozens of planes have flown through hurricanes to gather essential and helpful information, and almost none has been lost.’
Almost none, I thought, wasn’t enormously reassuring.
‘So why mushrooms?’ I asked.
‘Robin was talking on the phone soon after I came,’ Kris explained, ‘and I accidentally overheard him, and it was something about me and possibly my friend, that’s you, and Odin and mushrooms on Trox Island.’
‘And you haven’t asked him about it?’
‘Well... not yet. I mean... I don’t want to upset him. He says he’s paying for us to go to Cayman, and he’s paying the cost of the aircraft...’
‘I’ll ask him,’ I said, and later, peacefully, night-cap glass of cognac to hand, I mentioned Bell’s account of the Darcy mushroom and sod farm business and wondered where he found fungus and grass to grow best.
‘Florida,’ he promptly said. ‘I grow my grass in swampland up near Lake Okeechobee. Best wet agricultural conditions for sod in the States.’
‘And someone mentioned Trox Island, too. Where’s that?’ I put no force into an ultra-calm enquiry, but even so I sensed a tightening, and then a deliberate loosening in my host.
‘Trox?’ He took his time answering. He opened a heavy gleaming wood thermidor and fiddled lengthily with cutting and lighting a cigar. Internal debate came out in punctuating puffs of smoke. I sat placidly, looking out from the terrace to the vast untroubled sea.
‘Trox,’ Robin said pleasantly at length, sure he had the whole tobacco tip redly glowing, ‘is one of the many little islands sticking up in the Caribbean Sea. I believe Trox is chiefly constructed of guano — that’s bird droppings, of course.’
‘Fertiliser,’ I agreed.
He nodded. ‘So I understand, but I’ve never been there myself.’ He inhaled smoke and blew it out, and said how much Evelyn and he were enjoying having Kris and myself as houseguests, and how interesting he had found Kris’s view of the future of space travel, and how much he looked forward to Kris’s reports on shaking hands with Odin. He had dropped Trox Island as if of no interest. I tried again to mention it and he cut me off immediately, saying flatly, ‘Think about Odin. Forget Trox Island. Let me fill your glass.’
Evelyn drew me away, wanting me to identify the stars, turning aside as boring our engrossment with shifting winds.
At the end of the evening Kris and I each returned to our colourful basic tropical bedrooms: brilliant fabrics, wicker furniture, white-tiled floor, ceiling fan circling, bright bathroom adjacent, all an ultimate comfort. I fell asleep as easily as on the previous evening, but half-woke hours later in the dark wondering why the London street lights weren’t throwing familiar shadows on the ceiling.