Caribbean Sunset with a Yellow Parrot (The Belchester Chronicles Book 5) Read online

  She awoke at five o’clock that afternoon, fresh as a daisy and ravenous: just time for a quick swoosh under the shower – mustn’t forget her bonnet de douche – and to run a comb through her curly locks. Definitely time to approach Beauchamp about getting her roots seen to, she thought, as she reached for the hand mirror to check her rear view.

  Hugo had also roused himself, and appeared on the landing wearing a pair of bright orange shorts and a T-shirt with Snow White and the seven dwarves on it, his hair fluffy from its recent meeting with that unusually exotic – for him – piece of equipment, the hairdryer.

  As they were descending the stairs, they heard the hooting of the local bus, and the ringing of the doorbell. The others were evidently ready as well.

  They were taken first to Old Uncle Obediah’s Rum Keg Landing Beach Bar, or as close as they could get to it, for it was down on the sand, just above the water line. It was a small shack, roofed with dried palm fronds, its bar a piece of driftwood supported by lengths of bamboo, and behind it was a very small man, introduced to them as Short John Silver. The man’s grizzled hair was greying and cut close to his scalp, his eyes a mid-brown, his smile toothy.

  As he emerged from behind the bar, everyone new to the island noticed his slightly odd gait and, when he appeared, he laughed at their stares and explained that as a child, he had been involved in an argument with a truck, and lost his legs. After a couple of years crawling around on his stumps, he had been given prosthetics, and been lucky enough to have them ever since.

  They were so short that Lady Amanda wondered if they’d ever been changed since that time. Certainly, he had a very long body, and his legs were definitely out of proportion to the size of his trunk, but he seemed happy enough to run his bar, and was already mixing them something he said was a Banana Daiquiri.

  It took some time for them all to be given a long, cool glass, and by the time he had served the last of them, the first served were holding out their glasses for a refill. The drink was absolutely delicious, although it packed a punch (pardon the pun) that none of them realised at that moment.

  With what seemed like unnecessary haste, Windy herded them back on to the old bus and they arrived a few minutes later at the Lizard Lounge. A few steps into the building, and they believed what their former head girl had meant about how it had got its name. Tiny lizards skittered across the floor, avoiding the hefty footsteps of the new arrivals, and one or two of them screamed, and rushed outside again – the old girls, that was, not the lizards.

  ‘Don’t be silly girls; they won’t hurt you,’ called Windy after a couple of retreating backs. ‘They’re more frightened of you than you are of them.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put money on that,’ replied Wuffles, who was actually trembling.

  ‘Come back in and have a couple of cocktails. They’re marvellous antidotes to irrational fears. A couple of Grasshoppers, and you’ll be as right as rain.’

  ‘I can’t stand grasshoppers either,’ wailed Wuffles, and Windy enquired,

  ‘Of the alcoholic kind? Made with Crème de Menthe?’

  ‘I think I could tolerate a couple of those,’ replied Wuffles, but still standing her ground just outside, until she was handed a glass containing a creamy emerald green liquid. Two glasses later, she had ventured inside to re-join the others.

  ‘We’re going to have a nice lobster salad here before the music starts, then we’re going to boogie,’ trilled Windy, smiling graciously at her charges, whom she considered should be very grateful she had such good island contacts to have arranged all the treats she had managed.

  ‘I don’t think I know how to boogie,’ Hugo whispered in Lady A’s ear.

  ‘You don’t have to do much,’ she replied. ‘You don’t even have to move your feet – just sway and wiggle your botty a bit, then wave your arms around.’

  ‘I don’t think I could do all that without falling over,’ he replied in a worried voice.

  ‘Then do them in sequence: a few seconds of swaying, then a few seconds of botty action, then just wave your arms around for a bit, as if you’re drowning. Would you be able to manage that?’

  ‘Possibly, but I’ll have to slip outside first and have a little practice.’

  ‘Well, do it now, before we sit down to eat. I’ll get you another cocktail.’

  Hugo slipped out of a side door and commenced his first practice boogie. While he was gone, Lady Amanda approached Windy and hissed into her ear that she still had not had that private word she had requested.

  ‘Not now, with everyone around. I’ll catch you later, when everyone’s gone to bed,’ she replied, ‘but you’ll have to get rid of darling old Hugs too.’

  Blast!

  Droopy-Drawers, who had gone out of a rear door in search of the little girls’ room, re-entered through a side door, and called out to Lady Amanda, ‘I think you should come out here. Hugo seems to be having some sort of a fit. Is he prone to them?’

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ replied the erstwhile ink monitor, and followed her old friend outside.

  One look explained everything. Hugo was trying to bop and boogie. Unexpectedly, Lady A suddenly broke into a lively body wiggle, stepping from side to side, and moving her arms rhythmically, and Hugo stopped, flabbergasted. ‘I never knew you could do that!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘You never asked. Now, follow my movements as best you can, then we’ll go inside and eat when you can manage to do “summat like”.’

  Hugo did as he was told, and Droopy-Drawers disappeared into the cocktail bar, disgusted that there had been no emergency after all.

  The lobster dinner was fantastic, especially as it was accompanied by a fizzy white wine, even if this latter was of Californian origin. As soon as the plates were cleared away, Short John (who had closed down for a while, having no customers, and was helping out with the unexpected influx of customers here) began pushing the tables to the wall, and within a few minutes a steel band appeared at the far end of the space and the music had begun.

  Hugo had a go at strutting his funky stuff, but when several people asked him if he was OK, and another asked if an insect was bothering him, he took a break and sat with Lady Amanda, who was saving her sassy moves for later on.

  The place was filling up with locals now, but Lady Amanda, ever sharp-eyed and shamelessly nosy, noticed that one of their group kept disappearing out of the door to where she knew the ‘facilities’ to be located. Short John also kept taking small trips away from the bar, and she wondered if there had maybe been an instant attraction between the two. Horseface wasn’t exactly easy on the eye, but there was no accounting for taste, and Short John wasn’t exactly the most attractive of men either.

  Halfway through the evening, Lady Amanda heard a small cheer go up near the entrance, and swivelled round to find that the Beauchamps had joined them, both of them in laid-back colourful clothes. Enid had on the ubiquitous kaftan that seemed to be the staple of female island clothing. Beauchamp was attired in a lilac T-shirt partnered with a batik sarong, and Hugo’s eyes nearly fell out on to his lap. Beauchamp in a skirt? Whatever next? Had the world gone mad?

  Neither he nor Lady Amanda knew what the two newcomers had been drinking, or whether they were just drunk on love and the tropical atmosphere, but they cleared the dance-floor, giving a display worthy of a couple years younger.

  After her turn on the floor, Lady A made a last minute visit to the ladies’ before they left, disturbing a whispered conversation between Horseface and Short John and apologised as she passed through where they had been standing, hoping she had not disturbed plans for a lovers’ tryst.

  Soon, it was time to go, but the band had other ideas, and urged them to form a conga line, while a fair number of them decided that this was the perfect time to light up a little ‘smoke’. Playing as loudly as they could, they led the customers of the establishment out on to the beach, right along to Old Uncle Obediah’s, round his bar, and back to the Lizard Lounge.

  ‘What
is that peculiar smell?’ asked the old prefect, sniffing the air in confirmation of her nickname of former days.

  ‘It is rather pungent, isn’t it?’ agreed Hugo, his nose in the air, his nostrils twitching like those of a small mammal that scents danger.

  ‘I believe you’ll find that’s marijuana, your ladyship,’ Beauchamp’s voice boomed in her ear.

  ‘Shh! Someone might hear you and call the police,’ from Lady A.

  ‘What do you mean, “call the police”?’ interjected Windy, who had been shamelessly eavesdropping. Most of the members of that band are the police, or what passes for the forces of law and order on this island.’

  ‘Good grief!’

  When Winstone had dropped them all off and they had dispersed to their various villas, Hugo gave an anguished squawk, and made a rush for the downstairs bathroom, from which, shortly, could be heard distressed moans and groans.

  Knocking on the door, Lady Amanda enquired in a rather worried voice, ‘Are you alright, Hugo?’

  From within there came a hollow moan, and the reply, ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Manda, the world seems to be falling out of my bottom, and it burns like hell – excuse my language in the presence of a lady.’

  ‘Have you been sick?’ she called through the door.

  ‘No, it’s just that my bowels have turned to water, and it feels like I’m suffering from that delicacy I saw in the freezer centre when you took me round the shops in Belchester once – Rings of Fire – only in my case, in the singular.’

  ‘It must be something you’ve eaten. I’ll give Windy a quick ring to see what she suggests. She hasn’t had that private word with me yet, and I’m just dying of curiosity.’

  There was another almighty groan, and she hurried to the telephone to seek advice as to the best treatment for her suffering housemate.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Sniffy. It’ll be the island hot sauce from lunchtime. I forgot to warn you that it doesn’t burn too much on the way down, but it feels like your bum’s on fire when it decides to make its exit. I’ve got some soothing cream that I’ll bring round. I also have an old-fashioned commode, if he thinks he might need it, otherwise he could be on the lavatory all night, or even find himself waking up and finding that it’s too late. I’ll get Beep-Beep to bring it over when I come with the cream,’ Windy gabbled.

  Oh Lord, and Maria had put the local hot sauce in their omelettes at breakfast time. It looked like Hugo’s recent gastronomic past had finally caught up with him, although Lady Amanda felt perfectly OK. But then, she did have the digestive system of an old goat, as her late father used to say.

  Getting back to the present, she said, ‘But what about that private ch …’ But the head girl had already hung up, so all that Lady Amanda could do was to relay the information she had been given through the firmly locked door of the downstairs bathroom, and wait at the door for the delivery of the soothing medicament.

  Within a minute or two, she answered a peremptory knock at the door, and Beep-Beep was the first to enter, carrying a lightweight commode chair, his arms straight out in front of him, a disgusted look on his face, as if the thing had already been used. He headed up the stairs without a word, easily identifying Hugo’s bedroom, in which he left his despised cargo.

  He left again, still without speaking, while Windy called instructions for the use of the unguent she had delivered, and begged Hugo to open the door just a crack so that she could slip the container through. ‘You’ll feel much better after you’ve put a coat of this on the affected area,’ she assured him.

  Another hollow groan greeted the suggestion of actually touching the ‘affected area’, but they heard the lock slide back, and a hand crept through a crack just large enough for it to get through. ‘Thank you.’ The voice was feeble and pained, and Lady A and Windy exchanged a worried look.

  ‘I say,’ began Windy, ‘Do you remember anyone from school who qualified as a doctor?’ she asked, ‘only we haven’t got an ex-pat one here, and I thought it might be an added incentive to the sale of the villas if one of them contained a doctor. I could offer her rent-free accommodation if she were to come out of retirement just for the aches and pains of a few creaking old limbs.’

  ‘What about Stinky Stenham?’ queried Lady A, after a quick riffle through her memory bank.

  ‘Grand idea. Well done, Sniffy,’ replied Windy with a smile of triumph. ‘Do you have any contact details for her?’

  ‘’Fraid not.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll try Facebook, to see if I can track her down, if not I’ll give some of the other girls a ring and see if any of them are still in contact with her.’

  Both turned their heads as they heard the bathroom door open, and Hugo emerged looking drawn but with a tentative smile on his face. ‘Ahhh!’ he sighed. ‘That’s better. Thank you so much for the ointment,’ he said, addressing his neighbour. ‘Did someone try to poison me?’

  ‘No. Just the revenge of the Caribbayan hot sauce at lunchtime. Beep-Beep’s put a potty chair in your room in case you have any trouble in the night. It has been known to strike more than once,’ she informed him, looking him up and down to check he really was alright.

  ‘Windy, what was it you wanted to discuss with me in priv …’ But, once again, her old friend cut her off, saying, ‘I must get back to Beep-Beep. He does so like us to have a quiet little nightcap together before we go up to bed.’

  ‘Well I never!’ exclaimed a gob-smacked Lady A. ‘First she has to talk to me about something urgently, then she avoids the subject every time I see her. Whatever is she up to? Either she wants to confide in me or she doesn’t, and if she doesn’t, why doesn’t she just say so?’

  ‘Pardon?’ asked Hugo, who hadn’t quite followed all that.

  ‘You’d better get to bed and not hang around for explanations. We don’t want you pooping your shorts in the hallway, do we?’

  Hugo scuttled off, with as much urgency as he could manage in his gait.

  Collapsing on to the huge sofa in the open-plan living room, a large gin and tonic in one hand, Lady Amanda suddenly wished that Beauchamp were here to make her a cocktail. How she missed their usual routine. Being on holiday was OK for a few days, but it didn’t take long for it to pall, and for her to miss her usual pace of life and surroundings.

  It was no good, she’d never sleep, so she finished her drink and decided to have a moonlit walk along the beach. It must have been the unaccustomed siesta that had robbed her of her usual bedtime eagerness to get some rest. And she had too much on her mind. Maybe the lazy swell and hiss of the waves on the sand would relax her enough for her to want to retire.

  A short walk took her to the eastern side of Parrot Bay, where the moonlight sparkled on the tips of the wavelets, effortlessly dancing into oblivion on the shoreline. Just out to sea a little way, a dazzling white boat took her attention. What time was it? she thought, looking at her watch. Why, it was past one. Surely no one was going to moor at this time of night, or rather, the morning?

  As her eyes became adjusted to the reduced light of outside, she noticed a very small boat bobbing over the waves towards it. Whoever could that be? Was it one of the residents of Parrot Bay? Why? What were they doing?

  Squinting, she managed to see something passed from the white yacht to the smaller craft, but whatever it was, was too small for her to recognise. And she also noticed that there were no lights on the yacht. The only light came from the moon and stars. Surely a boat out at sea, especially this close to the shore, should be showing some lights even if it were just mast, port, and starboard?

  Stepping back a little to the shelter of a highly scented bush, so that she didn’t stand out as a silhouette on the shoreline, she watched the small craft come into shore, and be deflated, eventually being secreted in some dense shrubbery about fifty yards away. The figure then made for Parrot Bay again and, although far away, there was no mistaking that thatch of pure white hair and the gait. What was their erstwhile beloved
up to now?

  Taking her gaze from the figure, evidently on his way to his villa, her eyes caught the outline of someone else standing further up the beach. The dark shape of a tall man watching through a pair of binoculars – or at least that would explain why his arms were in the position they were. Within a few seconds, he had turned and begun to walk away, but he had a strange shambling way of walking that seemed to ring bells too. Whatever was going on, on this island? The only person she had met who walked a little like that was Short John Silver, and he was practically a midget.

  Chapter Eight

  After a very disturbed night, during which she was constantly being woken by Hugo rushing off to the bathroom with audible cries of ‘Argh!’ and ‘Oh no, not again!’, Lady Amanda awoke the next morning wondering if the things she had seen the night before from her hiding place on the beach had been real, or more a product of the exotic fumes she had inhaled while doing the conga. She’d have to tell Hugo and see what he thought. Then another thought struck her.

  Good Lord, she had actually done the conga! How humiliating. Would she ever be able to live it down? On the other hand, all the others had joined in, so there was probably nothing to worry about, and none of the good folk of Belchester need ever hear about it.

  Maria’s alto tones filtered up to the first floor, informing the two house guests that she had breakfast prepared and laid out for them downstairs. ‘Ah hee-ah Miz Winterbottom got a treat lined up for you all today,’ she greeted them.

  ‘I thought everyone was going to view the houses today,’ countered Lady Amanda, as Hugo tucked into a huge plateful of fruit, his body obviously completely emptied out by his unfortunate experience with the local hot sauce.

  ‘Oh, she decided dat you all hadn’t seen all de beauties of de island yet. She going to take you to de market today, den lunch in de township, and on to a guided tour round some of de jungle,’ the native maid explained with one of her white, toothy smiles.