THE FRONT OF PALMA by night is not as ratty as the back of Palma is by day. But that of course is thanks to the lighting. The lights inside and outside the hotels and the fairy lights along the beaches do the same kind of job that the lights do around Piccadilly Circus, translate tat into magic.
I find the Hotel Los Toros. It’s opposite the beach, just over the road from all the thatched parasols. I park the car on the beach side. Tina makes no move to get out.
“The club far from here?” I ask her.
“Ten minutes,” she says.
“You’ve not forgotten where it is?”
“I was only here in August, wasn’t I.”
“So in that case you won’t have any trouble finding it.”
“You going over there?” she says, indicating the hotel.
I don’t answer her.
“Only I thought I’d have a drink with you before I went to the club,” she says.
“You thought that, did you?”
She doesn’t answer for a while. Eventually she says:
“All right, I’ll go. I’ll be at the club when you’re ready.”
She opens the car door and gets out and begins to walk away. I let her get about ten yards from the Mercedes then I stick my head out of the window.
“Hang on a minute,” I say to her.
She turns round and hurries back to the window my head’s sticking out of, then she waits for me to say what I’ve got to say.
“Just supposing I do get through tonight, it might help if I knew the name of the club.”
She doesn’t quite spit at me.
“Picador,” she says.
“Ta very much,” I say, and smile at her. She looks at me for a long moment before she turns away.
I wait until she’s out of sight before I get out of the Mercedes. Then I walk over to the hotel and walk up the steps. The steps divide a raised narrow frontage that supports four parasolled tables on either side. The tables are deserted all except one. And at that one sits the old dad that was a member of the Dagenham boys’ party on the flight over. He’s still wearing his Robin Hood hat and his Hammers scarf and his foam-backed overcoat and he’s staring out to sea as if he’s waiting for his dentures to wash up on the next wave. I pass by him without him being aware of the fact.
I push inward on the plate glass and two things are immediately released into the night air; first, there’s that dreadful, female, bathed-and-powdered, after-dinner smell, all antiseptic and expressing the determination to have a good time in spite of the old man. And the other thing is the sound of a Hammond organ fitted with a rhythm attachment. The organist is playing “South of the Border” and he’s so bad and so out of time that if it wasn’t for the rhythm box you’d think he was playing free form.
The organ is set up in a small ballroom that opens out from the other end of the bar on my left. There are two middle-aged women dancing together in the centre of the floor and there are various families dotted around in the low seats, thinly spread in the off-season emptiness.
I decide that before I meet Audrey a nice stiff vodka will be in order so I walk into the bar and sit on one of the bar stools and the white-coated drunk of local colour drifts along the bar and raises his eyebrows by way of inviting my order. I ask for a vodka and tonic and I get it poured the way I got it in the cafe the day before; vodka four-fifths up to the rim, and only enough room for a few bubbles from the tonic bottle. Nevertheless I manage to get some of it down and dilute it a bit more with the tonic. I’m just taking a second sip when one of the Dagenham sons rounds the corner from the ballroom, carrying a tray of empties. As I’m the only one at the bar it doesn’t take him long to suss me out as having been on the plane, and as the barman is temporarily missing that’s his excuse for a bit of bonhomie.
“They supposed to have waiter service through there,” he says, “but it’s quicker to do it your bleeding self.”
I look at him.
“Don’t know what work is, this lot,” he says.
I manage not to smile.
“You staying here, are you?” he says.
I shake my head.
“Smart. The cement’s not even dry. The hot water only comes on when you don’t need it, mid-day. Bleeding manager’s a wanker, and the agency girl, she’s never here; poking with a fellow what owns a place round the corner. That’s all she does all the time.”
“So, taking everything by and large, you’re having a good time?”
“Oh, we’re having a good time, yeah. Just the fucking place.”
This time I do allow myself a smile.
“Thing is about this kind of an holiday, you get to meet some right characters, know what I mean?”
Even though I don’t, I nod, so that I don’t have to say anything.
“I mean tonight. The missuses want to go on this barbecue up in the mountains with about forty thousand other people. Well, me and we can get burnt sausages back home, so it seems reasonable that as they want to go, and we want to stay here, they should go, and we should stay here, right? You’re joking. If we’re not going, they’re not going, and that’s that, arms folded, legs crossed, eyes fixed on the pelmets, the flaming lot. We don’t go, they don’t go. Like kids, they are. So we says to them, all right, as we’re staying here, and you’re not going, what’re you going to do? Not bleeding well staying here with you, that’s for sure, they say.”
He hits himself on the side of his head.
“Unbelievable, isn’t it. We won’t go up there with them, so they won’t go, they’ll martyr themselves, but on the other hand, they’ll go somewhere else, so long as it’s without us. Beyond me, that is.”
The barman reappears.
“Oh yeah,” the Dagenham son says. “Two rum and blacks and a vodka tonic. And I’d better have one for Dad, I’ll have a rum for him, no black. Give him any more beer and he’ll be knocking us up all night.”
He gives me a wink. The barman dispenses the drinks with all his native warmth.
“Anyhow,” the Dagenham son says, “in the end they go off to this club, the mum as well, and leave me and Barry to it down here, which on its own can’t be bad. But a bit later on this piece on her own, she comes down and sits at the next table. Maybe she’s getting on for forty but you’d never know it. So’s my old woman and this one makes her look like a pensioner. Mind you, she’s obviously got the bread to coat it.” And your old lady can’t, I think to myself, you being an impoverished Daghenham worker.
“Anyway, we soon get rapping and it’s plain she’s had a few and now me and Barry are wondering what we got on our hands as the impression she’s showing out is the kind of thing you only read about in Men Only, in fact at one point Barry asks her if her name isn’t Fiona, know what I mean?”
I’m beginning to think I do.
“What is her name, by the way?” I ask him.
“What? Oh, turns out to be Audrey as a matter of fact.” He picks up his tray of goods. “Don’t look like an Audrey, though. A lot classier than that, know what I mean?”
He gives me a wink and an elbow and then he goes off in the direction of outside to deliver the old dad his rum. I get off the stool and stroll down towards the ballroom part. The organist has left off for the time being so I don’t have to break step with the rhythm box. There is a step down creating a division between the bar and the ballroom. Once I’ve taken this step I turn to my right, the direction the Dagenham boy appeared from. And, as they say, my suspicions are confirmed. There, at the table closest to me, is Audrey, couched in conversation with the number two son. Of course, Audrey notices me straight away, but I can tell immediately that she’s in the kind of mood where she’s going to have as many pounds of flesh as she’d need to open a Wimpy. And in that mood, if I want to find out what happens to be in the envelope before Boxing Day, I’m going to have to play the scene the way she’s going to direct it. So I move to the table and stand there until Audrey gives up on this part of the game and deigns to recognise my presence.
“Evening,” she says, settling back in her seat. I look at her and the number two son turns round to look up at me and it’s not an unfamiliar look, the old askance eyebrows asking the silent question.
“Evening,” I say to Audrey.
“Do we know you?” the Daghenham son says.
I shift my attention from Audrey to Barry.
“ ’Course you do,” I say, smiling. “I’m the bloke that stands by your table and says ‘Evening’.”
“I know where I seen you before,” Barry says. “You were on Who Do You Do doing an impression of a clever bastard.”
“Stand-out, was I?” I ask him
“You are now,” he says. “So just push off.”
“What’s this?”
“A clever bastard,” Barry explains.
Benny puts the drinks tray down on the table.
“Oh, yes,” he says. “You’re right. He’s a right clever bastard, he is. Susses out the situation through in the bar and comes round here and starts moving in. Yeah, a right clever bastard.”
“Well, just push off,” Barry says. “Then maybe we’ll forget what a clever bastard you are.”
“Oh, I’d hate you to do that,” I say to them, sitting down on a seat between Audrey and Barry. The sons look at each other. Then Benny leans over, his face a few inches from mine.
“Listen, my son,” he says, “you made your point. You’re a brave cavalier. Now if I was you I’d go and try out your technique in one of those Guitar Bars. You’re less likely to get hammered in one of those.”
I smile at him.
“You don’t mean I’m likely to get hammered here, do you?” I ask him. “I mean, what for, and who by?”
The sons look at each other again.
“All right—” Benny begins, but he doesn’t finish because Audrey decides it’s gone far enough; she probably doesn’t want anything spilt down her dress what she bought new in Oxford Street the other day.
“Leave it out,” she says, “we’re old friends. Let’s all be old friends, eh?”
Now even though the Dagenham sons have only been acquainted with Audrey for a short time, they recognise the voice of authority when they hear it. They both look at her.
“One of those mine?” Audrey says, indicating the drinks on the tray.
“Oh, yeah,” Benny says. “Here you are.”
He hands her her drink. Then he sits down and for a moment there’s a silence while the sons practise their hardest looks on me. Eventually I say to Audrey:
“Good flight, was it?”
“Great flight.”
“Only I was wondering if you’d landed yet.”
Audrey ignores that one and takes a sip of her drink.
“Room nice, is it?” I ask her.
“Nice. Lovely room. I’ll draw you a picture, so you’ll know what it’s like.”
“Got somebody to carry your bags up, did you?”
“Yes, I managed that.”
“Didn’t drop them, did he?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“I expect that was a relief.”
“Not for me, no.”
“No, I could see how it wouldn’t be.”
“Still, I gave him a tip, just the same.”
“That’s nice.”
“That’s what I thought.”
In the ensuing silence Barry says:
“You like another drink, Audrey?”
“What do you think?”
Barry puts Audrey’s glass on the tray alongside his and his brother’s and lifts the tray and begins to get up but before he can straighten himself I lean across the table and plant my glass on the tray with the others.
“Mine’s the same as Audrey’s.”
“Oh, had the operation, then?”
Barry comes to the conclusion that he’s not going to give me an argument over my glass so he straightens up and makes off for the bar. Benny offers Audrey a cigarette and lights both of them up. Audrey blows smoke out and says to me:
“Things all right up the road, then?”
“Oh yes, really smashing.”
“I told you you’d like it once you got used to it.”
“Yes, that’s what you told me. You know, plenty to do, sparkling company, all that kind of thing.”
“I’m glad. I really am.”
Just as Audrey’s saying that, some of the sparkling company from the villa enters the room, in the form of Tina. She stands in the archway for a minute, then she sees me and gives me a certain kind of smile and starts walking towards our table.
“Oh, fuck me,” I say.
“Oh yes,” says Audrey. “And who’s this?”
“You know who it is,” I say to her. “It’s Wally’s offspring, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know. Last time I saw her was when she was sitting on Les’s knee when she was about eleven.”
“She’d like that.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“Stays with Wally for her holidays, doesn’t she?”
“Oh yes? As opposed to a ride in?”
I shrug. Now Tina’s reached the table.
“So this is where you hold your business conferences, is it? Well, it’s nice and peaceful for it.”
She sits down the other side of Audrey.
“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” she says. “On your holidays as well?”
“Remember me, do you?”
“ ’Course. Long time ago, though. These days you’re mostly out when I call round to see Dad’s benefactors.”
“Oh, yes? Give you presents, do they?”
Barry returns with the drinks. Benny says to him: “Things get better all the time, don’t they?”
Tina looks at him, then says to me: “These on the firm as well, then?”
I give her a look. She smiles sweetly back at me.
“What firm?” Benny says.
“Audrey,” I say to her. “Think it’s about time we were moving on, don’t you?”
“About now, yes,” Audrey says, standing up.
“You want to join us, Tina?” I say to her.
“Why? You going somewhere good?”
“Yeah. You’ll really enjoy it. Just your scene.”
“In that case,” she says, and gets up.
The Dagenham boys look as though Storey’s just put through his own net. I down my drink and put the glass on the tray.
“Hope the trouble and strifes get back all right,” I say to them.
I turn away from them and let Audrey and Tina get out from behind the table and when they’ve done that I begin to follow them in the direction of the bar. Barry says:
“That’s what I really like. A geezer what pays his corner.”
I turn round and walk back to the table.
“Well, I agree with you,” I say to him. “So when I go through the bar I intend getting a grip of the barman and sending you through a couple of Snowballs, all right?”
I turn away again and catch up with Audrey and Tina and when I’ve done that I herd the stupid cows over to the bar and sit them down; I mean, if Audrey hadn’t been trying to stir my pudding with Tweedledum and Tweedledee then Tina wouldn’t have had the opportunity to drop bollocks the way she did. And if Tina hadn’t crept back then Audrey wouldn’t have the aroma up her nostrils she now has.
I stand between the two of them and get a grip of Tina’s upper arm.
“Now listen,” I say to Tina, “Audrey and me’s got some business to do, and I mean business. So just bugger off to where you were going and stay away from those two fairies, all right?”
“Why should I?”
“I’ll tell you why; because if you don’t your old man’ll end up behind a whelk stall without a pension and there’ll be no more duty free holidays and no more art school fees and no more of the gear, but what there will be will be having Wally breathing down your neck until you meet your chartered accountant and go and live in Bromley.”
The barman appears and I order a drink for myself.
“Well,” Tina says. “You got a point.”
“So clear off and let us get on with it.”
She puts her hand on my knee and gives me her sweetest smile.
“Seeing as you’re such a little charmer,” she says.
She slides off the stool but her hand stays where it is.
“Going to pick me up later, then?” she says. “After you’ve finished your business?”
“It might take a long time,” I tell her.
“Well, you know where it is, when you’re ready to get me.”
The hand finally leaves the knee and Tina floats off towards the foyer. I stop watching her progress when I hear the sound of Audrey’s fingers snapping at the barman.
“I’ll have another one as well if you don’t mind.”
“You don’t think we ought to go to the bedroom?” I say to her.
“I want a drink.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you haven’t got any up there?”
“Listen, I want one down here. Or do you want me to go into the glasses routine?”
I order her a drink.
“Boring up at the villa, then, is it?” she says.
“You know Wally.”
“Yeah, I know Wally. Now I know his daughter, don’t I?”
“You met her before.”
“Not when she was wearing stockings and a suspender belt.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Stockings and a suspender belt. You could see them through the cheese-cloth. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”
“No, I didn’t notice.”
“No, you probably got first-hand knowledge.”
I don’t answer her.
“Well?”
I still don’t answer.
“You been poking her, haven’t you?”
I shake my head, in all sincerity, secure that I’m telling the truth.
“Pull the other one,” she says.
I shrug.
“I’ll rip that suspender belt off her and strangle her with it.”
“Listen,” I tell her, “if you thought I’d had her off she’d have been hanging from the chandeliers by now, so leave it out, eh? I’m waiting to get the message it was so important for you to get over here.”
She switches moods again.
“Oh yes,” she says. “I was forgetting about that. Meeting new people, and all that.”
“Where is it?”
“In my room. Where do you think it is?”
“Well for fuck’s sake let’s get up there.”
“You want to get up there, do you?”
I close my eyes.
“Are we going or aren’t we?”
“It’s up to you. I’ve been waiting since I got off the plane.”
“Yeah, well you’ll have to wait a bit longer,” I say to her. “I’ve got one or two things to tell you before we get down to any of that.”
“Feel like getting down, do you?”
There’s no talking to her so I guide her off the stool and walk her into the foyer where the lifts are and press a button.
“You do know which floor you’re on,” I ask her.
She gets into the lift and it’s her turn to press a button. The door slides to and Audrey folds her arms and leans back against the panelling, eyes closed, a dreamy expression on her face.
“If I thought you had had her,” she says, “you know what I’d do to you, don’t you?”
I’ve got a pretty good idea, but I don’t tell her I have.
The lift stops and the door slides open and all we have to do is cross the hall and Audrey’s taking her room key out of her handbag. She unlocks the door, pushes it open and stands back for me to go in first.
Compared to the rooms at the villa this one’s a matchbox. There’s just enough room for a couple of single beds and a fitted wardrobe. There’s a bathroom off to the left and between the single beds there’s a bedside table and on it there’s an ice-bucket with champagne sticking out of it. It has the atmosphere of the inside of a suitcase. Audrey follows me in and closes the door and locks it and puts the key back in her handbag. Then she goes over to the bed and sits down on the edge and leans across it and with a bit of a struggle pours two glasses of champagne and manages to manhandle mine over to me without spilling too much of it, but that’s immaterial as far as I’m concerned because I say to her:
“You got anything else?”
She looks at me. “You what?”
“Anything other than that. To drink.”
“What’s the matter with you then?”
“I’m sick of the sight of it. I’ve seen enough this twenty-four hours to send me back to large browns.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. Now where’s the bleeding envelope?”
Eventually Audrey tears her gaze away from me and puts the glasses down on the floor and reaches her handbag and opens it and takes out a long brown envelope and hands it to me. I tear the top off and slide out a small sheet of paper typewritten on both sides. I begin to read.
Dear Jack,
By now you will have met Joseph D’Antoni, the associate of our associates in the States, and also by now he’ll have told you his story. We left that to him rather than tell you ourselves for various reasons, one being that we wasn’t sure he’d make it there and if he didn’t well what was the point of spoiling your well deserved holiday, eh, Jack? Didn’t want you fretting did we? Anyway, as it transpires, he did make it, so now you know the story, what he’s told you. Only you don’t, as it happens and neither did we until today, so don’t think yourself a cunt for not sussing it because we didn’t either. You know we’re pushovers for a hard luck story. It seems Joseph didn’t tell us everything and that what he did tell us was cobblers anyway and the real story is he took some liberties and our associates don’t know exactly how much he already said but if he says anymore not only them but us as well will be in dead lumber concerning a certain side of our operation, because if the lot over the water go down the pan we not only lose considerable readies we might go down it with them, if you get our meaning. So our friends get in touch with us today and it comes up that you’re over there and them being not a little bit pissed off with us it’s their suggestion that we do something about it, it being convenient that you and he are both out there, so to speak. We know that you will get our meaning and we don’t have to tell you what sort of bonuses will be in order regarding this one. Any removal work that might come in necessary Wally will put you right on and we know you can take care of things without disrupting your well-earned holiday too much.
Gerald and Les
P.S. Let us know how things go when the phone comes back on again.
When I’ve finished reading the letter I hold my thoughts in a kind of deepfreeze while I pick up the two glasses that Audrey’s set down on the floor and drink them dry, one after the other.
Now I’ve worked for the Fletchers for nearly twelve years, and many events have occurred over those years, many strokes have been pulled by the two of them, some of them so bizarre that they wouldn’t bear chronicling. But over the years I’ve grown accustomed to those kind of strokes, because I’ve been put in so many times. I mean, there was once a time they sent me out to fit up Jimmy Madison by pulling a job that had all the hallmarks while Gerald and Les were treating him to lunch at the Club, the idea being that when the law came to Jimmy’s doorstep he’d think he had it cast-iron with Gerald and Les, only what they said they intended saying when Old Bill checked up, what that not only had they not had lunch with him, they’d never even heard of him, not even his old mum what bore him gloriously into the world, and that denial, together with the testimonies of various handpicked witnesses, would put Jimmy away and out of competition for at least until Millwall won the European Cup. Anyway that was the story I was told, but what was really on was that a member of Old Bill who was on the wages sheet had been indiscreet about how he spent his money; and so to scotch any impending investigation he’d been set to pull a few names out of the hat, Jimmy and the Fletchers being among them. So they’d got together and worked out that if the member of Old Bill was put on to the job, was tipped off about Jimmy, named him, then due to Jimmy’s alibi was made to look a right berk, the impending investigation would be speeded up by the vigour of the press. Which was all fair enough except that nobody put me in it, and as it happened a smart copper broke down a witness and I got put in it via a different route. I didn’t go down, because our brief was too good, but the point was, I could have done, and I wouldn’t have put myself in that position if I’d known all about the double shuffles the Fletchers were playing at with Jimmy.
Now I know life’s cheap, and when you’re in my line of business you have a lot come your way you have to chew on hard and swallow but you do, as often as possible, like a chance to choose what’s coming at you, and on more than one occasion the Fletchers have put me in things where if I went down, not only would they lose the best Number One in the business, but—and this is what riles me—is they either don’t care they’ve got the best Number One in the business or they don’t know they’ve got the best Number One. Either way, they don’t care if they lose the best Number One, the geezer that’s kept them out the centre court more times than they’ll even know about. And it hasn’t exactly been unknown for me, as a matter of policy as far as the firm’s concerned, to see to transgressors from members of the opposition on a more or less permanent basis, the more or less depending on the degree to which your religious belief extends. Now obviously, unless warm emotion enters into those events, as it sometimes does, one would rather be watching the Spurs giving the Arsenal a pasting, but in those cases stoicism is always a comfort for both parties, as it were, but an even greater comfort at times like those is the knowledge that there but for the grace of God goes me; it’s not just the Fletchers’ necks I’m saving.
But this, this is something else. Apart from what those bastards want sorted, what is stoking me up to the valve of ten is the way they’ve gone about it; not only that, but they think I’m the kind of cunt that’d believe the crap in the letter. Oh yes, I’m supposed to say to myself, I can see as how it would be, very unfortunate, Gerald and Les being put in lumber like that, and them only thinking as how they was doing somebody a favour, the way they often do. Naturally, under the circumstances, as I work for them, I’ll be pleased to do the honours then finish the holidays that they’ve been good enough to provide for me out of the kindness of their hearts.
I walk between the two beds to where the champagne is and stock up my glass again.
“What is it?” Audrey says.
I sit down on the edge of the opposite bed and look at her.
“You read this?” I ask her.
“ ’Course I haven’t read it.”
“Don’t flannel me. You read everything of theirs whether they know it or they don’t.”
“Well, this time I haven’t, all right?”
I light a cigarette.
“And you don’t know what’s happening at the villa.”
“Only that one of the Yanks is staying there, yeah, I know that.”
“Well, I’ll tell you why he’s supposed to be staying there, then I’ll tell you why he’s actually staying there. It’s better than Andy Pandy, because although it’s on the same intellectual level, there’s more twists to the plot.”
Audrey looks at me as if I’m a drunken husband telling her nobody loves him at two in the morning when he should have been home for his fish supper at half past seven. So I wipe the look off her face by first telling her the events starting with my arrival at the villa, leaving out the bits concerning Tina. Then I avail her of the contents of the letter which she has just delivered unto me. When I’ve finished doing that I pour two more glassfulls of champagne and hand one of them to her. She takes it from me, and like me, after I’d read the letter, she downs it in one. After she’s done that she thrusts her glass in my direction and I fill her up again and when she’s drained that one she launches into a descriptive monologue concerning the latest strokes of Gerald and Les, putting into words the thoughts I’ve been having, only some of the words Audrey’s selecting do far more justice to the eggs than the rather mundane similes I’ve come up with in my own mind, but then the profession Audrey was in before she took up with Gerald afforded her a much greater command of the English language than I’ll ever have. When she’s exhausted everything she knows she stretches out her arm and I fill the glass for her. For a while after I’ve done that the room itself is full of silence, but outside in the darkness there’s the sound of a pneumatic drill going to work on the next hotel to be finished by the start of the season. It’s the least annoying thing about the whole evening.
It’s Audrey who eventually breaks our mutual silence.
“So what you going to do then?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I say. What you going to do?”
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
There’s another silence. Again it’s Audrey who breaks it.
“We’ve got a lot to come out of the firm,” she says. “When we make our move, I mean.”
I don’t answer her because I don’t consider the question worth answering.
“You know what I’m talking about,” she says. “When we upset the applecart we’re going to be set for life. I don’t have to tell you that. When we make our move, we’re not just worth a fortune. We’re worth a fortune each.”
“I do know that.”
“I’m glad you think that. So what you leading up to.”
“Nothing. Except to remind you we’re not ready to move yet.”
“That’s right. I am aware of that.”
Audrey nods.
“So?” I say to her.
“So we can’t make that move unless you’re still working for them, can we?”
It’s my turn to nod in agreement.
“You’re right about that, too,” I tell her.
She stretches her arm out for her glass to be re-filled again. I lift the bottle and when I’ve poured she takes a sip and lies back on her bed.
“Well,” she says. “There you are.”
I pour myself some more champagne.
“Where am I, would you say?” I ask her.
She closes her eyes and snuggles the back of her head into the pillow.
“Well, it won’t be any sweat, will it?”
I don’t say anything.
“All right, they’re cunts,” she says. “That we know. They gone about things in their usual way, which is a piss-off. It makes me boil up, it really does. You know that. But on the other hand, we’re in business for ourselves. We can’t afford to move yet, the time’s not right. We can’t do anything now which gets in the way of what we’ve planned since we ever set eyes on each other.”
“Which means?”
“I know how you feel. I feel the same. I can’t stand it when I think those two think they got the nous to put anything over on you or me. You know how I feel about that.”
“Yes, I know how you feel about that.”
“At the same time, there’s something that ultimately makes me feel better, and that is the knowledge that they’re not; they’re not smarter. Ultimately it’s us that’s screwing them, and what will be delightful is their contemplation of that fact when they’re where they’re going to be when we’re where we’re going to be. That’s going to be all the fun, that knowledge, the knowledge of their knowledge.”
“Yes, that’s true as well.”
“Well, then, looking at it sensibly, what’s the odds? Some months from now, we’ll be laughing. I mean, it’s not as if you’re coming new to this kind of thing. For instance, I remember the night you had to go out and top Tony Bridges because of the liberty he took and that amount of money what was missing from what happened in Wembley that time. Before you went to report back to Gerald and Les you stopped off on the way and gave me a right seeing too, and after you’d done that you had five minutes kip and then had a shower and went off to tell the bastards how things had gone.”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Wasn’t any sweat, was it?”
“Tony took a big liberty.”
“I know, and so did this one by the sound of it.”
“It’s not personal, like with Tony.”
“So fucking what? You won’t lose any sleep. And there’ll be no danger. Nobody knows he’s on the island. It’s better than Epping Forest up there for getting rid. Never find anything in a million years.”
“Well, that’s all right, then.”
“ ’Course it is. It’s worth wearing, just this once.”
She stretches her arm out for another refill. She’s still flat on her back, her eyes are still closed. I pour her champagne and she takes a sip and then waves her arm about until she’s located the bedside table. Then she puts the glass down and puts her hands to the waistband of her skirt and unzips the zip and raises her bum and wriggles out of her skirt. After she’s done that she unbuttons her blouse and eases that off her and she’s left lying there in this silk slip with lace trimmings that she often wears when we’re getting at it. Then she draws her knees up and the sound of her tights is like static electricity.
“So now we’ve settled that,” she says, “why don’t we settle the other business what we’re supposed to be meeting about.”
There’s more static as her knees part, revealing the black underwear beyond the lace edging of the slip, and whatever I’ve said or thought about Audrey in the past, one thing has always been constant, that being that the prospect of sinking one with her is never better than the actual act, and the familiarity of that act has never bred contempt, rather it has re-enforced the memory of how good it’s going to be when it’s got down to, which, in my experience, is a rare experience. And no one knows this better than Audrey. Audrey, in fact, would get along extremely well without any of the considerable brains she has in her head, just on the strength of what she could achieve in the wide world by the use of her body. But for once, and only once, she’s going to be surprised and disappointed. I reach for the phone on the bedside table and pick up the receiver. The sound makes Audrey open her eyes.
“What are you doing?” she says.
Nothing happens at the other end of the phone.
“Eh?” she says.
“I thought I’d just phone Gerald and Les and tell them how much I’m enjoying my holidays and thank them for the arrangements they’ve made for me.”
Audrey sits up on the bed.
“You what?”
I put the phone down and pick it up again. Still nothing.
“I said what you doing?” Audrey says.
“I know. And I told you.”
“You’re joking.”
I don’t answer her. She reaches over and tries to grab the phone off me but I push her away and she bangs her head on the wall at the top of the bed.
“Christ,” she yelps, but I’m not interested in any of that, all I’m interested in is getting through to those eggs in London and telling them all the things I’m really looking forward to telling them. But of course the crack on the head makes Audrey come back strong and it’s only a matter of seconds before we’re thrashing about on the bed like a couple of kids fighting over who has the teddy bear. Now normally this kind of behaviour would be good warm-up stuff for things to come but not now, because I’m so stoked up everything that is not the phone call is superflous, so I try and stop the proceedings by fetching Audrey one round the ear-hole but the effect that has is only to intensify her activity; at the moment she is concentrating on trying to do irreparable damage with her knee to that part of my body which she loves best. I give her another one but only to similar effect so I take hold of both her wrists and straddle her and pin her down that way and wait for her to come to terms with the fact that there’s no way she’s going to be able to do anything about the situation. So for a while I stare down at her and she stares up at me and nowhere in her expression can be found a trace of the memory of eight happy years. After a while she says:
“I always thought Gerald was the most stupid bastard I ever met. Which was why I married him, his stupidity being an asset as far as what I intended doing. Then I met you, and it became what we intended doing, me thinking you were smart, as it were. But now it looks like I was wrong. I did Gerald an injustice. He’s not even as stupid as I am, thinking how smart you were.”
“Listen,” I say to her, “I’ve eaten their shit for long enough. Of all the strokes they pulled on me, this is the biggest. And this time I don’t swallow. If they want D’Antoni seeing to, they can get their fucking rowing boat out and come over and see to him themselves. By which time I won’t be here. I’ll be paddling at Cleethorpes with a hankie on my head.”
Audrey shakes her head.
“You berk,” she says. “You bleeding berk.”
I let go of her wrists and cock my leg and swing off the bed and pick the phone up again and still there’s nothing but a stem reply so I smash the receiver down and pour myself some more champagne.
“I mean,” Audrey says, “not only are you prepared to fuck up the whole of our remaining lives, you’re going to do it by speaking your piece via the hotel switchboard. Jesus. I must have been mad, that’s what I must have been.”
“You want some more?” I ask her.
She sits up and places her feet on the floor and bends forward and picks up her handbag and takes out her cigarettes and lights up.
“I said, do you want some more?” I say to her.
She lifts her legs back onto the bed and leans her back against the wall and stares at the wall opposite. Outside, the drill is still pumping away reminding me of what I would have been doing if the Fletchers hadn’t dropped me in all this bother. I have another listen to the receiver but whoever’s supposed to be on the switchboard must be out picking up a little bit extra on the building site opposite because there’s still nothing. So I forget about that for the time being and drain my glass and button up my jacket. This last activity engages Audrey’s attention.
“What you doing now?” she says.
“I’m going up to the villa and collecting my gear and my readies and then I’m clearing out of this karsi,” I tell her. “Oh yes, and before I do that I’m going to make the phone call from up there to express my long-held beliefs about your old man and his brother.”
“You’re really going to do that?”
“I’ve told you what I’m not doing.”
“And what about me?”
“That’s up to you.”
“You know what’ll happen if you go.”
“No. I don’t know what’ll happen. You tell me.”
“If you finish yourself with Gerald and Les, you finish yourself with me.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. I’ve planned things for too long. And I suppose it’s never occurred to you I could go on my own. It doesn’t necessarily have to be with you.”
“Really. You could get somebody else to do the shopping without you getting shopped yourself?”
“I don’t think that’d be a problem, no.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. That’s fine. That’s sorted. We know exactly where we stand.”
“Too right we do.”
There’s a short silence.
“In that case, have a nice holiday.”
“Too right I will.”
“Good. Don’t forget, if all else fails, there’s always room service.”
“Fuck off, pig.”
“In Spanish, there’s no answer to that.”
I walk over to the door and open it and manage not to slam it hard enough for all the plasterwork to disintegrate, not to mention the unfinished hotel next door.
Before I leave the hotel and get into the Mercedes I go into the bar and order myself a large vodka. The bar is as empty as before and while I’m drinking my drink I consider the scene in Audrey’s bedroom and what she put on me about our well-laid schemes and there’s no contesting that her facts are right; it could well be that my refusal to give D’Antoni a seeing to could bring to an end a less than beautiful friendship and the prospect of an eventually beautiful retirement. I mean, Gerald and Les, cunts that they are, could very easily have me put down, not that face to face I’d be easy to put down even by a team fielding eleven Norman Hunters, but they could arrange it in their normal roundabout kind of way, like dynamiting my karsi seat or putting piranha fish in my water bed. But, in spite of these considerations, the way I’m feeling right now, it’d be more of a likelihood that I’d get to them before they got to me, and it wouldn’t be indirectly; I’ve always partaken my pleasures directly of the flesh. And for that matter the ironic thing would be that being as I am so pissed off with the fact that D’Antoni ever took the trouble to get himself born and into my life in the manner in which he has done, I might easily drive back up to the villa and snuff him just on a personal basis.
I order another quick one before I go, and while it’s coming the organist starts up his water torture again; this time it’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon.” I down my drink and try hard not to draw an analogy.