The Tropical Issue Read Free

all you heard, Europe’s leading magazine and society photographer was by now into his third round of crumpet.
    Ferdy was the original population explosion. Working with him was great, because he had all this energy left over from the Army. He was big, with suntan all over his head, and a fuzz of sideburns in a sort of speckled fawn.
    He looked like a goalie. He would, I knew from experience, take no for an answer, after a struggle.
    Now, he put me down just as the housekeeper came in, smiling, with a fresh cup and saucer. In exchange, he gave her the sugar bowl, which she went off to refill. He stood, looking at me over the bluebirds.
    ‘Rita, my sweet sucrose junkie. A great big bikini and little black teeth, darling. It isn’t worth it. Let me look at you. There’s something different.’
    He walked all round me, still hugging the teacup.
    ‘Not the hair: still that boring old magenta and blue. And the Dracula eye shadow. And the Biro finger-rings. But where are the stripes, darling? The tattoos? The gold balls in the nose?’
    ‘I slept in,’ I said. I knew he would notice when I left off the face painting.
    ‘And the clothes,’ he went on. He twirled a chair and sat down, while I filled his cup for him.
    ‘All that lovely warm wool, just like Johnson. You should see Johnson’s cardies – straight out of the Personality Knitting Quarterly, and the same page, too, I shouldn’t wonder. You could swap your back numbers.’
    The Navajo waistcoat was a Lauren. The rest of the gear cost just under eight hundred pounds in South Molton Street, which he knew and I knew he knew.
    I said, ‘What about Johnson, then? He’s here, and you didn’t mention it?’
    The sugar came back and I poured myself more coffee and added three spoonfuls before Ferdy drew the bowl slowly away.
    He said, ‘I told you, my small plain and pearl, my tuppence coloured. My studio’s being rewired, and Johnson’s lent us this one to photograph the great Mrs Natalie Sheridan, who arrives at any moment. Ask me, What about Natalie, then?’
    ‘You told me,’ I said. ‘She likes you to do her publicity stills. She flies in this morning, gets made up for the photographs, goes off to the Award Lunch and then flies back to wherever she came from, or maybe somewhere else. And I’ve told you before. I don’t like creating one make-up for two different scenes.’
    A row of capped teeth appeared between Ferdy’s sideburns.
    He gave a howl. ‘You’re spooked!’ he said. ‘You’re nervous of Natalie! You’re an ignorant dwarf with a stupid conk and hockey legs and pink hair, who’s frightened of Natalie Sheridan! I apologise for taking the bowl away. Have some more energising, comforting sugar.’
    It was true that I have a stupid conk and hockey legs and pink hair. It was even true that I was unstriped because of this engagement. It was not true that I was nervous.
    Who is Natalie Sheridan? A syndicated political journalist. A divorcee. An economist. A maker of sharp documentaries with powerful pals in five continents. A rich woman. A woman.
    Nothing there, as I see it, to worry Rita Geddes.
    ‘Are you joking?’ I said. ‘She asked for me; I didn’t ask for her. If she isn’t nice to me, I’ll do her up like Elephant Man, and then where will your bleeding photographs be?’
    Ferdy and I stared at one another, a thing he sometimes does, until one of us blinks. It tells you not to take his insults for real. Sometimes it goes on for so long you need eye drops.
    The housekeeper broke it by coming to tell us that Mrs Sheridan’s maid had arrived, and her secretary, and a fitter with the clothes she was going to wear, and that they were all waiting, installed in the guest suite.
    And that Mr Braithwaite’s assistant had sent to say he couldn’t manage.
    The housekeeper, in a quiet way, looked a bit worn. I guessed that the appointment had been for Mrs Sheridan, dressed, not for Mrs Sheridan undressed with her groupies.
    Ferdy wasn’t