The Night Manager полностью

"It's called a fever tester," she explained in a stagy, top-hostess accent. "For some extraordinary reason this entire house has no proper thermometer. You're such a mystery, Thomas. Were those all your things? Just one small bag?"

"Yes."

"In the world?"

"I'm afraid so." Get off my bed! Get into it! Cover yourself!

Who the hell do you think I am?

"God, you are lucky!" she was saying, this time sounding like a princess of the blood. "Why can't we be like that? We take the Beechcraft to Miami just for one weekend, and we can hardly get our stuff in the hold."

Poor you, he thought.

She talks lines, he recorded in his misery. Not words. Lines. She talks versions of who she thinks she ought to be.

"Perhaps you should use that big boat of yours instead," he suggested facetiously.

But to his fury she seemed to have no experience of being laughed at. Perhaps beautiful women never had.

"The Pasha? Oh, that would take far too long," she explained condescendingly. Reaching a hand to his forehead, she unpeeled the plastic strip and took it to the shutters to read. "Roper's away selling farms, I'm afraid. He's decided to slow down a bit, which I think is a frightfully good idea."

"What does he do?"

"Oh, business. He runs a company, actually. Who doesn't these days? Well, at least it's his own," she added, as if she were apologising for her lover being in trade. "He did found it. But mainly he's just a lovely, darling man." She was tilting the strip, frowning at it. "He's also got masses of farms, which is rather more fun, not that I've ever seen any of them. All over Panama and Venezuela and places where you have to have an armed guard to go on a picnic. Not my idea of farming, but it's still land." The frown deepened. "Well, it says normal, and it says clean with alcohol when dirty. Corky could do that for us. No trouble at all." She giggled, and he saw that side of her too: the party girl who is the first to kick off her shoes and dance when things warm up.

"I'll have to be hitting the road pretty soon," he said. "You've been terribly kind. Thanks."

Always play hard to get, Burr had advised. If you don't, they'll be bored with you in a week.

"Go?" she cried, making her lips into a perfect O and keeping them there for a moment. "What are you talking about? You aren't nearly ready to go anywhere till Roper gets back, and Dr. Marti said specifically that you've got to have simply weeks of convalescence. The least we can do is build you up. Anyway, we're all dying to know what on earth you were doing saving life and limb at Mama's after you'd been someone totally different at Meister's."

"I don't think I'm different. I just felt I was getting in a rut. Time I threw away my striped pants and drifted for a while."

"Well, jolly good for us you drifted our way, is all I can say," said the equestrienne, in a voice so deep that she might have been tightening her horse's girth while she spoke.

"What about you?" he asked.

"Oh, I just live here."

"All the time?"

"When we're not on the boat. Or travelling. Yes. This is where I live."

But her answer seemed to puzzle her. She laid him flat again, avoiding his eye.

"Roper wants me to hop over to Miami for a couple of days," she said as she was leaving. "But Corky's back, and everyone's absolutely dying to spoil you rotten, and the hot line to Dr. Marti is wide open, so I don't think you'll exactly fade away."

"Well, remember to pack light this time," he said.

"Oh, I always do. Roper insists on shopping, so we always come back with tons."

She left, to his profound relief. It was not his own performance that had tired him out, he realised. It was hers.

* * *

He was woken by the sound of a page turning and made out Daniel in a bathrobe crouched on the floor, with his bottom in the air, reading a large book by a convenient shaft of sunlight, and he knew it was morning, which was why there were brioches and croissants and Madeira cake and homemade jam and a silver teapot beside his bed.

"You can get giant squid sixty feet long," Daniel said. "What do they eat, anyway?"

"Other squid probably."

"I could read you about them if you like." He turned another page. "Do you like Jed, actually?"

"Of course."

"I don't. Not really."

"Why not?"

"I just don't. She's soppy. They're all terrifically impressed you saved me. Sandy Langbourne's talking about organising a collection."

"Who's she?"

"It's a him. He's a lord, actually. Only there's a question mark hanging over you. So he thought he'd better hold off until it's removed one way or the other. That's why Miss Molloy says I'm not to spend too much time with you."

"Who's Miss Molloy?"

"She teaches me."

"At school?"

"I don't go to school, actually."

"Why not?"