Then he smiled broadly. “Well, here comes Hunt again. Mr. Heller, I’ll let you get back to that charming young lady. Your daughter?”
“No.”
He beamed. “Isn’t that nice! Good evening, Mr. Heller.”
I said something or other, nodded at both of them, and walked numbly back to the table.
“Who was that?” Kelly asked.
“The devil,” I said.
“Oh, Heller-you’re so bad!”
“What did you say?”
She looked at me curiously. “I don’t know. What
“Nothing. Nothing.”
She wanted to stay to watch the limbo contest, but I wanted out of there. That was the last weekend I spent with that particular stewardess; seemed I hadn’t been much fun, on our little getaway, after a certain point.
Axel Wenner-Gren died of cancer a year later. His fortune was estimated at over one billion dollars.
It wasn’t till 1972 that I got back to the Bahamas, this time with a woman closer to my own age, who I happened to be married to. In fact, it was our honeymoon and my wife-second wife, actually-had always wanted to see the Bahamas.
Specifically, she wanted to see Government House, because she’d been so taken as a girl with the bittersweet love story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Nassau hadn’t changed much, although the ways it had changed weren’t for the better: American fast-food joints on the fringes and, on Bay Street, interminable T-shirt shops and an offer of drugs from a ganja-reeking black guy every few paces.
But there was (and is) a time machine known as Graycliff, a large old rambling Georgian Colonial home near Government House that first opened its doors as a small hotel back in 1844. The honeymoon suite, by the poolside, is a small separate building amidst an exotic tropical garden. The hotel restaurant-you dine here and there on the main floor, but we preferred the porch-is five-star.
The first evening we were there, after a meal that included goose-liver pate with truffles and a Hollandaise- smothered steak as thick as a phone book and as tender as a mother’s touch, we were served steaming hot souffles in custard cups.
“I’ve never had coconut souffle before,” my wife said.
“I have. And as good as this place is, they’ll never beat it.”
She was having a taste. “Hmmm. You better try some and see if you still feel the same way….”
I broke the light brown skin and spooned the orangeish white custard and tasted its sweetness, the shredded coconut, the hints of banana and orange and rum….
“What’s wrong?” She leaned forward. “Too hot, dear?”
“Yellow Bird,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Waiter!”
He came over, a young handsome black. “Yes, sir?”
“Could I speak to the chef?”
“Sir, the chef is…”
“I have to compliment him on the dessert. It’s important.” I pressed a ten-spot into his hand.
My wife was looking at me like I was crazy; it wasn’t the first time, and it was hardly the last.
“Actually, sir, the chef doesn’t prepare the desserts and the pastries. His missus does.”
“Take me to her.”
My wife was confused, and half-standing.
“Please, dear,” I said, patting the air with one hand. “Just wait here….”
I went back by the kitchen and waited and in a few seconds that were an eternity, she came out, wearing a white apron over a blue dress not unlike the maid’s uniform she wore so long ago.
She didn’t recognize me at first.
“Marjorie,” I said.
Her face-her lovely face, touched by age but gently-looked at first incredulous, then warmed, and she said, “Nathan? Nathan Heller?”
I took her in my arms; didn’t kiss her. Just held her.
“I’m here on my honeymoon,” I said.
I let go of her and we stood apart, but rather close. Her hair was lightly sprinkled with white, but her figure was about the same. Maybe a little thicker around the hips. We won’t discuss my gut.
She smiled widely. “Only just now you get married?”
“Well, this is the second time. I think this one’s going to last, or at least outlast me. And you’re married to the chef?”
“For twenty-five years. We got three little ones-well, not so little anymore. Got a boy in college.”
My eyes were getting wet. “That’s so wonderful.”
Her brow wrinkled. “How did you…?”
“That souffle. One taste, and I knew you were responsible.”
“So you ordered that! It’s still good, isn’t it?”
“Still good.”
She hugged me again. “I have to get back to work. Where are you stayin’?”
“Right here. We have the honeymoon suite.”
“Well, I simply must meet your wife…if she won’t mind sharin’ you, just a little. You have to excuse me, now-”
“You know where to find us.”
She started to go back in, then turned and looked at me, and her expression was half happy, half sad.
“Tell me, Nathan-do you ever think of your Marjorie?”
“Not often.”
“Not often?”
I shrugged. “Only when I see the moon.”
We visited a little, during the week my wife and I were there. Not much-it
But Marjorie told me something, in one of the few moments we had alone, that sent me whirling back in time just as surely as had that coconut souffle, only not so sweetly.
It seemed she had run into Samuel, once-the missing night watchman from Westbourne-about ten years after the murder….
He had told her that on that awful night he had seen things and people at Westbourne that had scared him; and that Harold Christie had come around later to pay him and the other boy, Jim, to “disappear” for a while.
Everything Samuel had told Marjorie, and which Marjorie was now sharing with me, confirmed the story I had told Lady Diane Medcalf, so very long ago, in the aftermath of a tropical storm on Hog Island, during carnal hours, right before she shot me and I shot her.
