By eight, when the first guests began to appear, Nolan and Petit Manuel had still not arrived. On the terrace the evening was warm and lamplit, but overhead the storm-clouds sidled past each other like uneasy giants. I walked up the slope to where the gliders were tethered. Their wings shivered in the updraughts.
Barely half a minute after he rose into the darkening air, dwarfed by an immense tower of storm-nimbus, Charles Van Eyck was spinning towards the ground, his glider toppled by the crazed air. He recovered fifty feet from the villa and climbed on the updraughts from the lake, well away from the spreading chest of the cloud. He soared in again. As Leonora and her guests watched from their seats the glider was hurled back over their heads in an explosion of vapour, then fell towards the lake with a broken wing.
I walked towards Leonora. Standing by the balcony were Nolan and Petit Manuel, watching Van Eyck climb from the cockpit of his glider three hundred yards away.
To Nolan I said: ‘Why bother to come? Don’t tell me you’re going to fly?’
Nolan leaned against the rail, hands in the pockets of his suit. ‘I’m not — that’s exactly why I’m here, major.’
Leonora was wearing an evening dress of peacock feathers that lay around her legs in an immense train. The hundreds of eyes gleamed in the electric air before the storm, sheathing her body in their blue flames.
‘Miss Chanel, the clouds are like madmen,’ I apologized. ‘There’s a storm on its way.’
She looked up at me with unsettled eyes. ‘Don’t you people expect to take risks?’ She gestured at the storm-nimbus that swirled over our heads. ‘For clouds like these I need a Michelangelo of the sky… What about Nolan? Is he too frightened as well?’
As she shouted his name Nolan stared at her, then turned his back to us. The light over Lagoon West had changed. Half the lake was covered by a dim pall.
There was a tug on my sleeve. Petit Manuel looked up at me with his crafty child’s eyes. ‘Major, I can go. Let me take the glider.’
‘Manuel, for God’s sake. You’ll kill—’
He darted between the gilt chairs. Leonora frowned as he plucked her wrist.
‘Miss Chanel…’ His loose mouth formed an encouraging smile. ‘I’ll sculpt for you. Right now, a big storm-cloud, eh?’
She stared down at him, half-repelled by this eager hunchback ogling her beside the hundred eyes of her peacock train. Van Eyck was limping back to the beach from his wrecked glider. I guessed that in some strange way Manuel was pitting himself against Van Eyck.
Leonora grimaced, as if swallowing some poisonous phlegm. ‘Major Parker, tell him to — ‘ She glanced at the dark cloud boiling over the mesa like the effuvium of some black-hearted volcano. ‘Wait! Let’s see what the little cripple can do!’ She turned on Manuel with an over-bright smile. ‘Go on, then. Let’s see you sculpt a whirlwind!’
In her face the diagram of bones formed a geometry of murder.
Nolan ran past across the terrace, his feet crushing the peacock feathers as Leonora laughed. We tried to stop Manuel, but he raced ahead up the slope. Stung by Leonora’s taunt, he skipped among the rocks, disappearing from sight in the darkening air. On the terrace a small crowd gathered to watch.
The yellow and tangerine glider rose into the sky and climbed across the face of the storm-cloud. Fifty yards from the dark billows it was buffeted by the shifting air, but Manuel soared in and began to cut away at the dark face. Drops of black rain fell across the terrace at our feet.
The first outline of a woman’s head appeared, satanic eyes lit by the open vents in the cloud, a sliding mouth like a dark smear as the huge billows boiled forwards. Nolan shouted in warning from the lake as he climbed into his glider. A moment later little Manuel’s craft was lifted by a powerful updraught and tossed over the roof of the cloud. Fighting the insane air, Manuel plunged the glider downwards and drove into the cloud again. Then its immense face opened, and in a sudden spasm the cloud surged forward and swallowed the glider.
There was silence on the terrace as the crushed body of the craft revolved in the centre of the cloud. It moved over our heads, dismembered pieces of the wings and fuselage churned about in the dissolving face. As it reached the lake the cloud began its violent end. Pieces of the face slewed sideways, the mouth was torn off, an eye exploded. It vanished in a last brief squall.
The pieces of Petit Manuel’s glider fell from the bright air.
Beatrice Lafferty and I drove across the lake to collect Manuel’s body. After the spectacle of his death within the exploding replica of their hostess’s face, the guests began to leave. Within minutes the drive was full of cars. Leonora watched them go, standing with Van Eyck among the deserted tables.
