D’ANTONI’S RIGHT. After he’s eaten, he’s much better, by his standards. He’s smiling all the time and occasionally cracking jokes that are about as funny as him being sick into the pool.
I pour myself some more tea.
“What time does the paper lad come with the Express, Wally?” I say to him.
Wally shows his appreciation of my funny joke.
“I usually pick up the week’s ration when I go into Palma,” Wally says.
“Just wondered how the Spurs got on,” I say to him.
“Yeah,” Wally says, grinning at me and D’Antoni.
“More coffee,” D’Antoni says to him.
Wally picks up the coffee pot and makes for the kitchen but before he’s a yard away from the table, D’Antoni says: “So where’s the broad? The one with the tits and the black black hair, if you get my meaning.”
Wally turns round but he doesn’t stop moving.
“Tina? Oh, she’s about somewhere. If I know her she’d be in the bath.”
“She’s just been in the pool.”
“Yeah, well, you know women.”
D’Antoni laughs his laugh and Wally disappears into kitchen.
The dining room is slightly smaller than the other rooms in the villa, which makes it not quite as big as the Savoy Grill. It has the same kind of carpets on the walls as all the other rooms and the arrangement is beginning to make me feel like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
“Well,” D’Antoni says, wiping his mouth with a napkin, “at least we now got some ass with which to while away the hours.”
“You think so,” I say to him.
“That’s what I think,” D’Antoni says. “No problem with that one.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe. Listen, I seen broads like that before. At that age? They know how to turn more tricks than a forty-year-old hooker, and enthusiastic with it. We would get broads like that anytime, to entertain associates, and younger. Once, I saw these two ten-year-olds, a boy, a girl, they—”
“Yes,” I tell him. “I seen things like that. They make me throw up.”
“You’re in a minority. Big market in that kind of thing. Lot of people pay big money for it.”
“I know.” I pour some more tea. “I also heard what happens to some of the kids that took part, to protect some of the senior citizens involved.”
“Yeah,” D’Antoni says. “Well, those things have to be taken care of.”
“Not by me they don’t.”
“You think I have? Personally? I never had nothing to do with that side of the operation. I just saw some things, now and then.”
“Well, on my firm, we don’t have that kind of an operation.”
“Yeah?” D’Antoni says. “I must know the Fletchers better than you do.”
“There’s nothing I don’t know about the firm.”
D’Antoni laughs.
“You should see some of the movies they ship over.”
“I don’t see every movie the firm makes.”
“That’s what I mean,” D’Antoni says. “Compared to me, you’re first grade. I knew where every cent I handled was buried. You’re supposed to be their number one man and you don’t even know the kind of movies you’re making.”
I don’t say anything.
“A joke,” D’Antoni says. “Berll could use you.”
“Well,” I say to him, “at least I still work for my firm. They haven’t decided to give me a free transfer.”
“Comes the day they need to, they will,” D’Antoni says. “It’s the same the world over.”
There’s no arguing with that, and I’m not going to give D’Antoni the satisfaction of giving him one. Instead I get up and walk away from the table and into the kitchen where Wally has started the washing up. I light a cigarette and watch him for a while. Wally doesn’t turn round. He just gets on with the dishes, like a woman not speaking in the course of a barney.
Eventually Wally says: “She turned out just like her old lady, that’s what she done.” He puts the last plate in the drainer and unties his apron. “The way she goes on you think she’d been mixing with our sort all her bleeding life.” He folds the apron up and lays it on the work surface.
“You’re out of touch, Wally,” I tell him. “Stuck out here in the wilderness.”
“I’ll be in touch with her when I see her.”
“Oh, leave her alone. You’re like an old woman.”
A voice behind me says: “You should be very happy, then; old man, old woman. Just get the banns read.”
I turn round and Tina’s standing in the doorway and the novelty is she’s wearing some clothes. Only a bikini, but for her it’s some kind of breakthrough.
Wally begins marching over to her.
“Leave it out,” she says, “I’ve heard it all before.”
Wally keeps on going but Tina ducks round him and makes for the fridge. “What’s for breakfast?” she says.
“Listen,” Wally begins, but I cut him short.
“Yeah, leave it out, Wally. We know what you’re going to say.”
Wally lowers his voice and says:
“Listen, Jack, I overheard what he was on about through there. Fuck me, how’d you feel, if it was your daughter was being discussed like that? Eh?”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “She’ll be looked after.”
“You mean that?”
Tina’s crouching down and looking in the fridge.
“I can look after myself, thanks,” she says.
“You just keep out of his way,” Wally says. “He don’t need no provoking.”
“Who don’t?”
Now it’s D’Antoni’s turn to appear in the doorway. He’s looking at Tina’s arse as she’s bent by the fridge.
“I said who don’t?” he says.
Wally doesn’t say anything. D’Antoni doesn’t take his eyes off Tina, and even when she stands up and turns to face us his gaze stays riveted on the same level of her body.
“You going to cook my breakfast, then?” Tina says to Wally.
“Cook your own bleeding breakfast,” Wally says.
“I’ll cook your breakfast anytime, baby,” D’Antoni says.
“No thanks,” says Tina. “I like my eggs hard.”
Later on I’m sitting out on the patio under a Cinzano-style umbrella, wondering how the fuck I’m going to stop going barmy during the next three days, when Wally comes funnelling out of the villa and says to me: “He’s acting up again.”
“What?”
“D’Antoni. He says he wants you inside.”
“What for?”
“I dunno. In case, he says.”
“Tell him to fuck off.”
“He says if there’s anybody around looking for him and they see this place is inhabited they’ll just naturally investigate.”
“He should have thought of that this morning when he was puking in the pool.”
“Jack—”
“Tell him to fuck off.”
“Jack—”
I close my eyes. Eventually Wally goes back into the villa. A moment or so later D’Antoni’s voice comes drifting out of the villa.
“Carter!”
My eyes remain shut.
“Carter.”
“Fuck off.”
There’s a silence. The next time D’Antoni speaks his voice is closer. About six inches from my left ear.
“Listen, you fucking creep,” he says. “If there’s anybody comes along out there they’re going to know somebody’s here.”
“And if they’re as thorough as they’re supposed to be and the place looks as if it’s empty and shut up then they’ll come down and take a look anyway.”
“Yeah, but if we’re all inside we got the edge on them. That way we stand a better chance of seeing them coming.”
“How? With the fucking curtains drawn?”
“Look—”
“No, you look. Either way it makes no difference. They’ve got to be sure before they start popping off and to be sure they’ve got to get close, know what I mean?”
“You know they already invented telescopic sights?” D’Antoni says. “I suppose you heard about those things?”
“The only way they can get a line on this particular piece of patio is by getting sherpas to carry their equipment.”
“They just could, you know that?”
I don’t answer him. I just keep my eyes shut and wait for him to go away. It takes a long time, but in the end, he does.
I go inside when it starts to get too warm for me. I go into the bathroom and take a quick shower and after that I’m strolling down the stone steps to get to the lounge and the drinks when Wally interrupts my progress by appearing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jack,” he says. “You got to do something.”
“Oh, yes?”
“They’re playing patience.”
I look at him. “They’re playing patience,” I say to him.
Wally advances up the steps a little bit.
“Yeah,” he says. “They’re playing patience and they’re getting pissed to the gills.”
“They’re playing patience and they’re getting pissed to the gills.”
“Yeah. On that champagne mixture.”
I look down at my feet and then back at Wally.
“Wally,” I say to him, “you really do have a load of problems, don’t you? Every moment, something new to worry about. I don’t know how you manage, one day to the next.”
I begin to walk past him.
“No, listen,” he says. “They’re playing strip patience. With two packs. The one who gets out last has to take something off.”
“That don’t give Tina much a chance, then.”
“You don’t get it. She ain’t lost yet. It’s D’Antoni that’s losing. He’s down to his fucking underpants.”
“Well, he’s wearing the right pair then, isn’t he?”
Wally looks blank. I walk past him and down the last few steps and into the lounge and I discover that Wally hasn’t been at the cooking sherry, the game he’s just described is still in progress. Tina and D’Antoni are getting pissed to the gills, only Tina’s gills seem to be situated somewhat higher than D’Antoni’s as her concentration is more together than D’Antoni’s, although he’s more than making up for the softness in his head, judging by the hardness elsewhere, and to paraphrase the words of the lady, that’s not a gun he’s got in his underpants.
I cross the floor and make myself a drink and carry it over to where the game is. The two of them are kneeling on the floor like Buddhas, looking down at their own facing lines of cards like retired generals replaying the Battle of Waterloo. Tina has two aces out and an empty space waiting for one of the two kings showing. But this time D’Antoni looks as if he’s better placed as he’s showing three aces and all the cards he’s got face up are movable, and as I sit down on the arm of a leather settee D’Antoni is in fact engaged in moving the rows. Tina flips three cards from the top of her deck and comes up with a black five which she needs at the moment like she needs a Valentine on February 14th. But as I sit and watch, the thought I have, going on Tina’s previous behaviour, is that she wouldn’t give a fuck if she had to take her bikini off; all she’s really interested in is getting D’Antoni down to the buff, because that’s the kind of girl she is.
While D’Antoni’s moving his cards, Tina pours some more champagne and orange juice from the jug into their glasses, but I notice D’Antoni gets about twice as much in his glass as Tina does, and while he’s flipping three of his cards, Tina flips three of hers and considering she’s the age she is and the amount she’s had to drink she very neatly palms the Ace of Clubs from the middle to the top, which very neatly releases the two of hearts off a face-down row and after that, when she’s turned up the naked face-down card she can move a few more around to her advantage. Meanwhile D’Antoni is merrily flipping through his cards failing to notice that he has a black nine and a red ten waiting to go and although Tina has noticed it, naturally she isn’t letting on. I smile to myself, and he prizes himself he’s a numbers whizz-kid.
They carry on flipping through their cards. D’Antoni susses out the black nine but that doesn’t do him any good as all it releases is a six of hearts and although he’s up to the four on his Ace the five isn’t in his deck and it isn’t showing.
“Looks like maybe this one’ll be a draw,” D’Antoni says, taking another drink.
Tina looks at the lay-out of her cards and nods solemnly. Then she puts the palm of her hand to her nose and starts to giggle, and the giggle turns into silent uncontrollable laughter and she begins to rock from side to side.
D’Antoni looks at her.
“What’s so funny?” he says.
Tina shakes her head but she doesn’t stop her rocking and laughing. In fact she’s rocking so much that she over-balances and she steadies herself by putting her hand on D’Antoni’s crutch and although D’Antoni jumps as if he’s just had the electrode treatment, Tina doesn’t actually hurry to move and when she does go through the motions of righting herself she makes it more clumsy than it needs to be by shifting her hand a couple of inches so that D’Antoni gets another grope.
“Whoops,” she says, finally getting back to her former position, “Sorry about that. No visible means of support.”
The hand goes to the face again and again the giggling starts. Then she goes through a pantomime act of pulling herself together and when she’s done that she makes a poface and flips through three more cards—and would you believe it the final ace she needed turns up on top, and when she lays it out it releases all sorts of goodies for her and it seems she’s going to have a great deal of bad luck in order for her not to complete her game. On the other hand, D’Antoni appears to be stuck as he begins to flip through the remainder of his deck after not laying anything out the last two times, and he’s beginning to think that perhaps the outcome will not be a draw after all, and for a while he just sits there watching Tina move her cards around.
“Now then,” she says, when she’s moved as many as is presently possible, “I wonder if I’ll get it out or not? Do you think I’ll get it out, mm, D’Antoni?” D’Antoni and Tina look at each other, D’Antoni blank, Tina smiling sweetly. Then D’Antoni starts going through his deck again.
“What happens when the natural course of events takes place?” I ask nobody in particular.
“Fuck all,” says Wally, from the safety of the higher part of the split level.
“Beat it,” D’Antoni says, not looking up from his cards.
“Yes, piss off,” says Tina.
“Here, leave it out, you,” Wally says.
“That’s what I intend doing,” she says, going into her hysterics routine again.
“Listen—” Wally begins, but he’s interrupted by D’Antoni heaving himself up off the floor and making in Wally’s general direction.
Wally of course begins to back off, but he’s too slow because he’s trying to give the impression he’s not moving and when D’Antoni gets to him he grabs Wally by his shirt and his belt and hustles him out of the room.
“I hope he flushes him down the bleeding toilet,” Tina says, searching through her deck to find a card that will fit with what she’s already got on the floor.
“Funny how you can go on people,” I say to her.
She looks at me as if she’s only just noticed I’m there.
“What you talking about?”
“It’s just that after what you expressed about D’Antoni’s personality by the pool this morning, I would have thought there was nothing else left to say, let alone getting pissed together half naked.”
“What the fuck’s it to you?”
“I was just thinking, why don’t you give Wally a rest for half an hour. Just let his impending coronary sack out for a while, eh?”
She doesn’t answer me. Instead she wangles herself another card out of the pack and arranges the cards on the floor to accommodate the new one. When she’s done that she pours herself another drink and while she’s pouring it D’Antoni returns and sits down on the floor and looks at his cards.
“I locked him in the basement,” he says after a while.
Tina moves a couple more cards. Then she says to D’Antoni, “I don’t think you’re going to do it.”
D’Antoni flips through three more cards, then another three.
“You can’t, can you?” Tina says.
D’Antoni looks at the cards on the floor.
“You ain’t got through yourself yet,” he says.
“No, but you’re finished.”
D’Antoni makes as if he’s going to flip through his deck again but instead he drops the cards on the floor.
“Give in?” says Tina.
“You got to finish first.”
“I’ll finish first,” she says. “I always do.”
She surveys her cards and flips three more off the deck and comes up with the red jack she’s been needing to move a row headed by the ten of spades, releasing four cards still face down, and typically she’s able to clear all four cards and open up another row, and from now on it’s downhill all the way, and when it’s apparent she can get out she says:
“Do you want me to play them onto the aces?”
D’Antoni looks at her cards.
“Ah, screw it,” he says.
Tina pours them two more drinks.
“So,” she says, handing him his glass. “You lose.”
D’Antoni takes a sip of his drink.
“Your pants,” Tina says.
“You already got my pants.”
“Oh, do beg pardon. You call them shorts, don’t you?”
“Yeah. That’s what we call them.”
“Well, your shorts, then.”
D’Antoni looks at me.
“Shove off,” he says.
“What, and miss the main event? Always provided it is an event, that is.”
“Move it.”
“I’m supposed to be your bodyguard. What could be a more appropriate situation?”
“You’re telling me nothing. While I have to be on the same fucking island as you, you’re telling me nothing.”
D’Antoni looks at me. Tina says:
“The shorts. I won. Give me the shorts.”
“Piss off,” D’Antoni says, missing his mouth with his glass, the orange liquid slopping onto the thick curly hairs on his chest.
“Listen,” Tina says. “I know what you’re fucking banking on with me, sooner or later. If you don’t want to fuck up your chances, give me the shorts.”
D’Antoni has another shot at getting his drink in his mouth and this time he’s more than fifty per cent successful. His eyes are glazed over a little bit, partly due to the booze and partly due to the prospect of getting stuck into what he partly sees before him.
Eventually he says: “Aw, fuck you.”
Then somehow he manages to get up off the floor and to stay upright long enough to push down his shorts and step out of them. Then he laughs. “Worth waiting for, hey?” he says.
Having said that he reels backward and plants himself down on one of the leather settees, making a sound like a diver hitting the water wrong.
“Yeah,” he says.
Tina, at any rate, seems to be quite impressed, although she’s not the kind of girl who’s going to show it. What she does is to shrug and take another sip of her drink.
“Yeah,” he says. “I never got no complaints.”
He closes his eyes and smiles.
“Yeah,” he says again.
A minute later he’s asleep.
“Jesus,” Tina says. “I can see my holidays are going to be real rubbish unless I get out of this place.”
“You should have seen out the term at college,” I tell her. “More variety.”
She drains her glass and wriggles across the floor so she’s closer to where I’m sitting.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “This is variety to me. I mean, when the fellers can’t actually be bothered to do anything about it.”
I stand up.
“Like you said,” I tell her, “it’s all down to old age.”
I walk over to the curtained windows.
“Oh, fuck off,” she says.
I part the curtains and step outside.
Outside it’s bright and hot, but just the same I walk round the villa and take in the surrounding scenery just in case the remote possibility of D’Antoni being sussed out beats the odds. Knowing my luck at this present time I’m surprised I didn’t step through the curtains to be greeted by a minuteman.
But there is, of course, sod all, except for the stillness of the scrubby foliage and the empty silence of the mountains and the uniformity of the sun’s heat. I find some shade and squat down and light a cigarette and think about Southend, at the height of the season.
When I go back in through the curtains, the lounge is empty. D’Antoni and Tina are no longer part of the fixtures and fittings. Apart from their absence the only other thing that’s different is the fact that Tina’s bikini is lying on the floor, both bits draped across the scattered cards. I look at my watch. Ah, well, I think to myself, if I want any dinner tonight I’d better leave Wally locked in the cellar for a while. So I pour myself another drink and lie down on one of the settees and close my eyes.
When I wake up I look at my watch and I see that I’ve been asleep almost three quarters of an hour. I sit up and light a cigarette. Tina’s bikini is glowing gold in the shaft of light that’s streaming through the gap in the curtains. I get off the settee and pick up the bikini and go in search of the castaways. I find them in the room D’Antoni was put to bed in the previous night. D’Antoni is doing his usual sleeping beauty impression, and at first I think Tina’s doing the same, until I walk to the head of the bed to wake her up and it’s then that I notice she’s lying there with her eyes wide open.
“It’s tea-time,” I tell her. “Time to put your dollies away and wash your face and sit down at the table and eat your fairy cakes.”
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t even blink. I lean closer and it’s then that I notice her back is covered in bruises.
“What happened?” I say to her.
Still nothing. I lift her up so that she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, but her eyes stay the same while I’m moving her.
“All right,” I say to her. “I won’t say it serves you right. All I’ll say is this; just put some clothes on that, cover up the damage, and go and lie down so’s your old man just thinks you’ve baked out. You think you can do that?”
She looks at me without any expression. So I lift her off the bed and carry her through the bathroom to my room and lay her down on the bed. Then I sort through her luggage and find a dressing gown. After I’ve done that I manoeuvre her into her bikini and then I put her dressing gown on her and it’s like laying out my old granddad the time I had to, her body all stiff and her eyes wide open the way they are. There’s no way of knowing whether I’m getting through to her but I try anyway.
“When Wally talks to you, all you did was come to bed and lie down and you don’t know how D’Antoni got into his pit, all right?”
She looks at me but there’s no way of knowing. I turn away and start back towards D’Antoni’s room but before I get to the bathroom door Tina says: “Lock the door.”
I turn to look at her. She’s still staring straight ahead.
“The doors,” she says. “Lock them both.”
She doesn’t say anything else. I go over to the main door and lock it and put the key in my pocket, and after I’ve closed the first of the bathroom doors I lock them too and put the key in my pocket along with the other one. Then I go into D’Antoni’s bedroom and sit down on the edge of the bed. D’Antoni’s still a million miles away.
“Hey,” I say softly.
D’Antoni doesn’t stir.
I put my hand on his chest and rock him gently from side to side.
“Hey,” I say, a little bit louder.
This time it’s completely different. He snaps up like a corpse on a bonfire and automatically feels for the shooter that normally adorns his chest but of course being naked he only comes into contact with his left nipple. His eyes of course are now wide open and seeing my face looking into his, what with the expression I’m wearing, makes him wish he’s making contact with something more than a hairy tit-end. And now, as he’s upright, it’s not necessary for me to grab hold of what hair he’s got and jerk him all the way up off the silky sheet. All I have to do is get a grip on one of his arms and push my face an inch or so away from his and speak to him.
“I just saw what you did,” I tell him.
For a moment his face is expressionless, then a sly grin creeps over his delightful features.
“Yeah,” he says. “She really went for that.”
Now it’s my turn to smile.
“You think so?”
“What do you mean? She’ll be crawling back. Crawling back.”
I stroke my nose between my thumb and forefinger.
“She really liked it, did she?” I ask him again.
D’Antoni grins even wider.
“Sure she did,” he says. “You know the kind of broad. Gets her kicks with her lumps.”
“Yes,” I say. “You mean like this.”
I grab his wrist and, because of the surprise element it’s not difficult to whip his arm so that he’s got to be face down on the sheets as an alternative to shattering his arm. Nor is it difficult once astride him, straddling the tops of his thighs, to keep him like that, partly due to the clapped-out state he’s in because of the drinking and the sinewing and the beating, and partly due to the fact that I’m now carrying on where the beating he gave Tina left off, going to work on his back and putting the punches in exactly all the right places. It doesn’t take very long and it doesn’t take very much out of me, but the good work I put in takes just about everything out of D’Antoni because when I’ve finished he doesn’t move, not because he’s unconscious, but because even if he blinks he’s going to send ripples through the bunches of grapes that are the bruises on his back. I get off him and pick up the shooters off the bedside table and I say to him:
“I know you’re not going to answer me, but I also know you’ll do what you’re told because your mouth is all microphone; you’re not going to tell Wally about anything that’s happened this afternoon. Tina went to bed. After that I put you to bed. That’s all that happened. All right?”
Like I said, he doesn’t answer, but I know he’ll do as I say because he doesn’t want to worry about me as well as the cowboys he imagines are going to appear on a rim of the surrounding hills. What he does do is to stay just as he is, face down and naked, motionless.
Then I leave the bedroom and go down the stairs to the basement to free the Widow Twanky.
I must say, the basement is a blessed relief from the rest of the house. It reminds me of when I was eighteen and just in the smoke, working at the North Star, and it was always a treat to go down to the damp coolness and put a new barrel on and get away from the madhouse upstairs, which on reflection is not a dissimilar situation to the one I’m in at the moment. Except of course at the North Star it wasn’t part of my contract to go about unlocking garden gnomes.
It doesn’t take me long to discover which door Wally’s behind because at the sound of my footsteps he starts banging on the door, but the banging stops as quickly as it starts; Wally’s obviously realised it could be either of his keepers.
I unlock the door. Wally’s face peers at me from behind slotted angle racking, his face divided in two by a can of film, the can looking like a false nose placed symmetrically as it is right between his eyes.
We survey each other like that for a moment.
“What’s going on?” Wally says.
“Nothing’s going on,” I tell him. “They’re both sleeping it off.”
Wally emerges from behind the racking.
“Sleeping what off?”
“The booze.”
“Oh, yes.”
“It’s all right. D’Antoni fell asleep, so Tina cleared off to bed. I got sick of the sound of D’Antoni’s snoring so I hauled him to bed myself.”
“You sure?”
I look at him.
“I was only asking,” he says.
Nevertheless he trots off upstairs to have a look for himself. By the time I get to the lounge Wally’s checking what’s going on upstairs. When he reappears he says:
“Her doors are locked.”
“So?”
“Why they locked then?”
“How the fuck should I know? Maybe she didn’t want him going in after her.”
“You seen her. You really believe that?”
I shrug.
“She was just prick-teasing. Seventeen-year-olds do a lot of that.”
Wally sits down, looking very glum.
“I dunno,” he says. “I dunno what to think.”
I walk over to the window and look out through the gap in the curtains at the other curtain, shimmering away in front of the empty mountains. Behind me Wally mumbles on about what he doesn’t know.
“Wally,” I say to him. “You got any old newspapers lying about the place?”
The afternoon passes into evening. I’m lying on my back on the sofa and Wally’s in the kitchen lashing up whatever we’re going to be sitting down to tonight. Nothing else is happening. The ceiling is the same as it was half an hour ago. I light another cigarette and I’m just finishing it when there’s a slight movement and the now familiar perfume glides into the room. I raise myself up on my arm and look at her. She’s wearing white jeans and a dark blue tee-shirt approximately the colour her bruises will be by now. She walks over to where I am and picks up my lighter and cigarettes and carries on over towards the windows.
“You all right?” I ask her.
She lights her cigarette.
“Bloody smashing,” she says.
As she inhales, a great shudder goes through her body.
“Well,” I tell her, “now you know.”
“Yes, now I know.”
A minute later Wally comes.
“What’s been the matter with you?” he says to Tina.
“I been lying down.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was worried about.”
She doesn’t answer that one.
“Why’d you lock the doors, then?”
“To keep the insects out.”
Now it’s Wally’s turn to keep quiet.
I got up off the settee.
“What’s that smell you got coming out the kitchen, Wal?” I say to him.
“What? Oh, that. Yes—”
“Smells t’rific. You sure you’re not letting anything spoil or anything?”
Wally gets the idea and reluctantly clears off back to the hot stove. When he’s gone Tina says:
“What happens when D’Antoni wakes up?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
She turns to face me.
“How do you know?”
“Well, he came to me, you know, after you’d been together, and he said he felt really terrible about what had happened, didn’t know what came over him, know what I mean? Really terrible he felt. Asked me if I would see my way clear to apologise for him, like. Just couldn’t bring himself to face you, he said, after what he’d done.”
“I don’t want the jokes,” she says, “I just want to know he’s had enough for today. I mean, otherwise I’ll go and lock myself in my chalet again.”
“I’ve told you. You’ll be all right.”
“You really do, don’t you? You really think you’re all the Super-Heroes rolled together in one costume.”
“It’s a good thing for you that I do,” I tell her, and walk out of the lounge and up the stairs and into the bedroom she’s just come down from. I unlock the bathroom door and start to run a bath. The door to D’Antoni’s room is still closed and it stays like that until I’ve been lying in the bath for about five minutes. Then the door opens and D’Antoni appears. He’s wearing one of his sports shirts and a different pair of slacks. We look at each other then D’Antoni flips down the toilet seat and sits down.
“That’s two I owe you,” he says.
I don’t answer him. After a while he says:
“But what I don’t figure,” he says, “is why? Why put your head on a block? Over a thing like that?”
I still don’t answer him.
“I mean, I could take you out over a thing like that,” he says.
I lie back and close my eyes.
“Hey?” he says.
Another silence.
“Nobody hurts me. You know that?”
I lean forward and run some more hot water into the bath.
“I should cut it off and stuff it in your mouth.”
“I thought that was reserved for squealers,” I say to him.
D’Antoni is quiet for a minute or two. Then he says: “In your case, maybe I’ll make an exception.”
“All right, only do you mind waiting until I’ve cleaned my teeth?”
D’Antoni looks at me a little bit longer, then he eases himself up off the toilet.
“You know, you’re going to be a whole lot luckier if those guys do show up,” he says. “I mean, that way, you only get to be shot.”
I ignore him again and all that’s left for him to do is for him to make his exit. After he’s gone I just lie in the bath for about half an hour, my mind as blank as the silence of the mountains.