IN THE DARK, LYING on my bed, smoking, I consider what to do when I get back to London, whether to do it to Gerald and Les first or wait and see if they’ve got the sense to forgive and forget, and if they haven’t, wondering in what manner they’ll choose to remember. If, of course, after all these years of my allowing them to lie fallow they’re still up to moving for themselves. On the other hand, there’s probably one or two self-lovers who imagine that flaking me could take them to the top of their profession. On the other hand again, if I were to do unto Gerald and Les as they would do unto me, the same law that they employ might remain unconvinced that the readies that play such an important part in their decision making processes might not be so cast-iron and regularly forthcoming if the Old Firm was disbanded. Old Bill might even feel the need to put on a show trial, just to keep the paper readers happy, and I’d be number one down the steps. A number of possibilities, I think to myself. And all because I’ve lost my rag about being asked to top a wop whose shuffling off would be basically a matter of sublime fucking indifference to myself. I stub my cigarette out and reflect on how much good my holidays have done me. Even Cleethorpes had nothing on this.
From downstairs there is no sound whatsoever. D’Antoni is probably embarking on route for his third hangover of the day, whereas Wally is probably maintaining a low profile in the karsi belonging to the next villa which is approximately four miles down the road. Again, in the quiet, I try and work out which alternative I’m going to take, but the quiet is too quiet, it’s not like the night-buzz background back in Soho, and my mind goes as blank as the Spanish silence. But the silence doesn’t stay blank for very long. In through the windows drifts the far-off sound of a car gasping up the mountain road, a noise like a very small bronchial gnat. The sound drones on and on, never seeming to get any closer. Then, abruptly, it stops. For a minute or so, inside and out, everything is quiet again. Then the silence is broken by the sound of D’Antoni flip-flopping up the stairs, the noise of his beach-shod feet sounding like tripe being thrown on a monger’s slab.
Inevitably, he appears in the bedroom doorway.
“You hear that?” he says.
I don’t answer him.
“It’s stopped now.”
“Then I can’t hear it, can I?”
“It stopped out there on the road.”
“The noise?”
“An automobile. It stopped on the road.”
“It’s a steep road.”
“There’s only one reason to stop out there and that’s to call here because there ain’t nowhere else.”
“Maybe they ran out of petrol.”
“And maybe it’s Mickey and Donald and Goofy out having a midnight picnic.”
I don’t say anything.
“Where are the guns?”
“I forgot.”
“I want them.”
“No.”
“You really want me knocked over don’t you?”
“I mean, you like the idea so much, why don’t you just go ahead and fix up the job yourself?”
There’s no answer to that either.
“So what are you going to do?” D’Antoni asks.
“You mean about knocking you over?”
“Listen, you bastard, the hills could be crawling with pistols.”
“Or, like you say, maybe it’s Mickey and Donald and Goofy on a midnight picnic.”
D’Antoni stands there for a minute or two, then he turns around and disappears into the darkness, pad-padding as far as the top of the stairs. Then there is silence again. Silence, that is, until the darkness is reversed by the illuminating of the hall and the landing from down below.
“What the Christ,” shrieks D’Antoni.
There is no immediate reply to that.
“Turn ’em off, you mother,” D’Antoni continues.
The lights go off, sharp.
After a little time has elapsed, Wally’s voice drifts up from the well of the hall.
“What’s the bleedin’ game, then?”
My earlier remarks have allowed a little brave petulance to act as a splint for his tonsils. D’Antoni tells him to shut up and keep quiet. I light another cigarette. Time passes and the silence gets heavier.
Eventually Wally says: “What’s going on?”
D’Antoni shuts him up again.
More time, more silence, and a couple more cigarettes. D’Antoni and Wally remain frozen in the black aspic. Then something happens.
It happens outside. The surface of the silence is rippling with the sound of footsteps on the gravelled part of the villa’s approach. For a little while this is all that happens. Then D’Antoni’s Disney croak floats into the bedroom.
“Now you hear,” he says.
I don’t answer him, neither do I move.
“They’re here,” he says. “They came for me.”
The footsteps get closer. Then they stop. I can hear D’Antoni crawling along the landing back in the direction of my bedroom, and while he’s on his way back, he makes another request to have his shooters back, but he’s cut short in the middle of his appeal by the sound of tinkling laughter from beyond the plate glass, or at least that’s the way Audrey would describe it. To me, it’s the sound of the well-pissed brass, and immediately I begin to feel a little more at home. Then the laughter is augmented by more of the same, in a slightly higher key.
“Broads,” D’Antoni says.
The laughter dies down, then wells up again.
“There’s broads outside,” D’Antoni says.
“They got Women’s Lib in the Mafia yet?” I ask him.
“What?”
I get off the bed.
“Forget it.”
I switch on the light. D’Antoni is on all fours, half-in and half-out of the bedroom doorway. He looks up at me like a cat caught in headlights.
“Get up,” I tell him. “You got nothing to worry about. It’s only Wally’s skin and your philanthropist’s old lady.”
“What?”
“Gerald’s missus.”
D’Antoni looks back at me, his mouth hanging open.
“Mrs. Fletcher,” I tell him. “You mean to tell me you never met Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why’s she here?”
“Well, seeing as how for one reason or another the villa’s in her name, why shouldn’t she be?”
“You know why she’s here?”
I let him off the hook.
“She probably came on account of Gerald and Les. See if you was all right, and that.”
“Not until tonight. I saw her in Palma. She’s staying there.”
Something I said seems to make sense to D’Antoni.
“She’s staying there, hey? That’s not bad.”
“What?”
“Her on the look-out in Palma.” He gets to his feet. “That’s not bad. They said they’d look after me real good.”
And they meant it, I think to myself.
The footsteps clatter across the flagstones and then there’s the noise of plate glass shuddering as one or the other of them try to slide the door open. It doesn’t. And from the language when it doesn’t I gather it’s Audrey that tried the sliding. I walk past D’Antoni and out onto the landing. By now Audrey is giving the plate glass a right seeing to, the shuddering glass accompanied by more of the language. I reach the balustrade and call down to Wally to put the lights on, but Wally is no longer there, which is no small surprise if he’s recognised the voice of Audrey. So I go downstairs and find the light switch and flick it on and Audrey and Tina are illuminated against the deep blackness like twin Cinderellas. I look at them and they look at me. It doesn’t need a breathaliser to rate their condition. In the hard light from the hall they look like two moths drunk with neon. Tina is grinning at everything in the whole world whereas Audrey is at the stage of drunkenness where the number of things that she finds amusing is rapidly diminishing. We continue to look at each other. Audrey is fucked if she’s going to indicate in any way at all that she wants to be let in. I smile at her for a minute to two, letting her bask in the sweetness of my smile, then I walk across the hall and unbolt the panel and slide it open.
“Enjoy that, did you?” Audrey says.
“I always enjoy seeing you, Audrey,” I tell her. “You coming in?”
She’s about to give me an answer to that one when I notice a movement behind her shoulder and she sees that I’ve noticed and that the movement has nothing to do with Tina and therefore instead of giving me the answer her expression changes into a mirror-image of the one I was giving her beyond the plate-glass, and the movement which in fact has drawn my attention is the parting of some bushes on the perimeter of the block of light and the emergence of the Dagenham boys, flicking the dewdrops off their prick-ends, grinning into the bright plate glass as though they’re seeing Blackpool Illuminations for the first time.
“What the fuck’s this?” I say to Audrey. “You gone into the mystery tour business?”
“There’s no mystery about this, darlin’,” Audrey says, walking past me into the hall. Tina begins to sway in after her, like a reed caught in the slipstream of a powerboat.
“Wally!” Audrey shouts. “The above have arrived. Start mixing the drinks.”
Behind me, the lounge lights come on, and Wally emerges from round the corner and gives her the big glad.
“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” he says. “This is great. It’s really great to see you.”
“I know it is,” Audrey says.
Wally starts back-pedaling into the lounge.
“Yeah, it’s great. A real treat. Unexpected, like,” he says.
There’s a marked change in the tone of Wally’s voice. He now sounds like a snide kid whose mother’s arrived on the scene to put everybody who’s in the right in the wrong. Audrey, followed by Tina, follows Wally into the lounge. Meanwhile, the Dagenham boys have filtered into the hall, the movements of their necks making them look like geese. I turn to face them and give them the look. Son number one looks back but from the state he’s in it’s difficult to tell whether anything as specific as my expression is registering. Number two son says:
“This is favourite. Better than Pontinental.”
“Too bleedin’ right,” says Benny.
They start to move in the general direction of Audrey and Tina, sniffing like mongrels on heat. And I never did like dogs.
“You going in then?” I ask them.
Number two son snaps up.
“You what, sunshine?” he says.
“I said, you going in?”
“Yeah, that’s where we’re going. In.”
“Only I thought you might be supplementing the rate of exchange by running a taxi service.”
The sarcasm doesn’t reach as far as Benny who says: “We hired one of them runabouts for the fortnight. Jesus, it’s even worse than one of our Friday afternoon cars, ain’t it?”
Barry ignores him and musters himself to make a reply to me, and it’s sort of like him trying not to be sick in reverse, all sweat and swallow.
“Here,” he says, putting his hand in his racing jacket and pulling out some pesetas. “You done your job smashing. Have a drink on me, my old son, and don’t tap me again on the way out.”
I’m just about to do more than tap him when Audrey reappears in the hall and says:
“I thought you two was dying for a flamin’ drink?”
“We are,” says Barry. “We was waiting for the butler here to fetch it.”
“He’ll fetch you something else if you carry on like that.”
The boys grin at what they imagine to be Audrey’s very funny joke and shuffle off through into the lounge as if they’re entering a Chinese chippy on a Saturday night.
I watch them go through and I’m considering following them and serving them their drinks in my own inimitable way but I don’t get to do that because I’m distracted by a noise up above my head, something that sounds like a foal breaking wind. I look up and I can see D’Antoni’s head at floor level on the balcony, peering down from the top of the stairs, his lips pursed and responsible for the farting sound.
“What’s going on?”
His voice is a cross between a whisper and a shout.
“It’s party time,” I tell him.
“Who is it?”
“It’s a delegation from the T.G.W.U.”
“What?”
“It’s all right. It’s not the Boston branch of the Mafia.”
“Listen—”
“You want to find out, come down and join the party.”
D’Antoni’s disembodied head begins to wobble and the veins on his forehead stand out like a printed circuit.
“Listen—”
I walk into the lounge, where I don’t have to listen, at least to him. The scene in there is very cosy. Everybody has got their drinks, due to the speed Wally has used to demonstrate his eagerness to please. The two Dagenham boys are still looking round like they’re in St Paul’s Cathedral. Tina is sitting on the floor, and Audrey is sprawled out on one of the leather sofas, her legs splayed out in front of her, feet shoeless, her drink clutched to her bosom. She raises a leg and plants it on the table in front of her. Benny is distracted from his appraisal of the villa’s architecture.
“Christ—” he says. “Stockin’s.”
Audrey looks me in the eye and says:
“Yeah. I used to wear them for a friend of mine what I used to have.”
Barry says:
“My old lady wears stockings.”
“Yeah?” says Benny.
“Yeah. Surgical. A right turn-on, they are.”
They both laugh, fit to bust their anoraks.
“And winceyette drawers. And then she wonders why I’m out pulling every night.”
More laughter.
I go over to the drinks and make myself one and when I’ve done that I go and sit down opposite Audrey. Audrey ignores that fact and says to Wally: “Bring some music, Wal, will you?”
“Yeah, sure. Anything in particular?”
“No, I’m not particular. Something with a bit of balls. Make a change round here, that would.”
“So would being particular,” I say to her.
Audrey looks at me and smiles her sweet and sour and cocks another leg up onto the table. Barry is slightly to my left, swaying a bit, not believing his luck at being able to see right up to the maker’s name.
“If you’re not careful,” I say to Audrey, “we’ll be able to see all the way up to the top of your clouts.”
“Clouts,” Audrey says, snorting with laughter. “Bleeding clouts. Tell where you was brung up, can’t you.”
“You can tell that,” I tell her. “Also, you can tell where you weren’t.”
Audrey gives out with her fishwife cackle, to prove how coarse and drunk she is, but she’s not being as clever as she thinks she is, because I’ve seen this act before, that act being appearing more drunk than you actually are, to give yourself an opportunity to bluff the opposition into a false sense of security, but what as yet I’m unable to suss out is who the performance is aimed at, and for why.
While these thoughts are coursing through my mind, Wally has sorted a cassette and bunged it into the machine which is custom-built into the wall adjacent to the back of my head. He’s chosen a Shirley Bassey, which in the circumstances is a complement to the act Audrey is putting on for the benefit of the assembled company. And, after all, “Big Spender” is the number Audrey always uses when she’s auditioning hopefuls at the club. And while she’s listening to the music, now, she allows her features to relax into the kind of expression she normally reserves for the more successful of successful applicants, the ones who occasionally have to go through the rigours of an extra audition, that audition not necessarily being anything to do with the act they’ll be presenting on the club stage, in public. So in the event, my gaze strays over to the closed-eyed figure of Tina, chin-on-knee on the floor, swaying very slightly to the beat of the number, and I consider whether or not Audrey is boiled up enough to have her revenge on me in that direction.
Barry manages to break the rabbit/ferret syndrome of his gaze and moves to get a little closer to the object of his fascination, sitting down on the leather next to Audrey. He strikes a pose not unlike a down-and-out character out of Film Fun, presented with the just rewards of a job well done, those being a fat cigar, bangers and mash, and a bottle of pop.
“Well,” he says, “this is better than feeding rum and blacks to the old lady.”
“Yeah,” says Benny. “All it does is give them headaches.”
More Tweedledum and Tweedledee laughter.
“Here, darlin’,” Barry says to Audrey. “Rum and blacks give you headaches?”
“I don’t get headaches,” Audrey says.
“No, I didn’t think you would.”
More of the same from the sons.
“What about you, darlin’?” Benny says, nudging Tina in the back with his knee. “I bet you don’t get headaches either, do you?”
Tina carries on swaying and not opening her eyes.
“I’m very happy,” she says. “Very, very happy.”
At which remark, Wally decides to make his presence felt.
“Tina,” he says, “ain’t it about time you was climbing up the wooden hills?”
With the same contented expression on her face, Tina says: “Piss off.”
The sons go into their chorus again.
“Yeah, piss off,” says Benny.
“Yeah,” says Barry, “either that or fix us up another drink.”
“Now look here,” Wally begins, but Audrey cuts him off short.
“Turn it in, Wally,” she says to him. “She ain’t only grown up to be your daughter.”
“Well, I mean to say,” says Wally.
“You don’t mean to say anything,” Audrey says. “You never did. Your stock-in-trade is saying fuck all. It always was. That’s why you’re here. So. If you got nothing to say, stop pretending you have, and pour the drinks again.”
Wally allows himself the luxury of shooting a glance at Tina, but apart from that he goes to work on the job that Audrey’s suggested. I notice, though, that he misses out Tina and serves my drink last. Just a passing observation. And while I’m observing that, I also observe that I’m getting the fish-eye from Barry.
“Well then, squire,” he says, when he realises I’m returning the compliment, “you the owner of this little pile, are you?”
The accompanying smirk I’m getting from him is a real stoker, but until I’ve sorted what Audrey’s playing at I’m prepared to swallow and go along with the panel game.
“Not all of it,” I tell him. “Just a couple of air bricks in the west wing.”
“Put them in yourself, did you?”
“That’s right. After I’d dug out the foundations.”
Benny suddenly gets the idea we’re having a serious conversation. “What you mean, foundations? They don’t have foundations out here. Too much trouble, that is. Bleedin’ wops start at the top, judging from our hotel.”
“Not like the workmanship that comes off your production line,” I say to him.
“What you mean?”
“I once had one of your heaps,” I tell him. “Until then I didn’t appreciate the true meaning of panel-beating.”
“You’re taking a bleedin’ liberty,” he says.
I shrug. Barry says: “You a liberty taker, are you?”
“It has been known.”
“Taking one now, are you?”
“I dunno. You tell me.”
Barry leans forward.
“All right,” he says, “I’ll tell you. I’ll—”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Audrey says. “Can’t you think of any better ways of proving you’re butch?”
Barry looks at her.
“Any time, darlin’. Do you mind having an audience?”
Audrey, of course, wouldn’t care if it was the middle of Wembley stadium on Cup Final Day, providing that I wasn’t in the crowd, knowing, as she does, what the consequences would be if she ever pulled that kind of performance on me. It’s different with birds at the club. That I’ll wear, because she’s no ulterior motives directed against me. So, in the event, as a reply to the Dagenham son she stands up and gets in time with the music and sways over to where the drinks are. I get up too and join her as she’s pouring the second half of her drink.
“What’s the bleeding game, then?” I ask her.
Audrey takes a sip of her drink.
“Any game that’s going, sweetheart,” she says, hiding behind the fifty per cent falseness of her boozy act. “Any game at all, and any number can play.”
“Brought this lot to make the numbers up, did you?”
“They are the numbers. From tonight you’re not included in anything.”
I pick up a bottle and hold it poised over my glass.
“Stop playing the silly buggers. It’s Jack Carter you’re talking to, not your old man. I’m not exactly your Wilton or your Axminster. Just cut out the cobblers and tell me what you’re really about.”
Still she persists.
“You’ve had your chance to find out what I’m about, ducky,” she says. “Now it’s time somebody else had a turn.”
She turns away and begins to make it back to the sunken area. I pour my drink and drink half of it and then top it up again. I look at the group in the sunken area. They’re like figures in an empty swimming pool and Wally hovers round the edge playing the role of lifeguard, as well he might, because Benny is now sitting on the floor right next to Tina, in a mirror position, the only part of him not reflected being his right hand which is somewhere underneath the edge of Tina’s cheese-cloth, although Wally, as yet, has not sussed this development, not being precisely adjacent to the proceedings.
“The beauty of this situation,” says Barry to nobody in particular, “is that if we tell our old ladies about it, there is no way they’re going to believe it, so we’re in the bleedin’ clear, aren’t we?”
“Makes no difference,” says Benny. “I never tell the old cow nothing. She can like it or bleedin’ lump it and if she lumps it she knows where she can bleedin’ go looking for herself.”
“Too right,” says Barry.
As he’s endorsing his brother’s views on the essence of matrimony, the light in the hall is switched off. Barry flicks his head in the direction of the blackness.
“What’s that then?” he says. “Is it remote control, or has the bulb gone?”
I walk over to the edge of the sunken area.
“It’s the resident ghost,” I tell him. “All castles in Spain have one.”
“Oh yeah?” he says. “What is it? A Spanish plasterer what got too close to his work?”
“No,” I tell him. “It’s the spirit of the last bloke Audrey had up here and ate for breakfast. Last thing he ever did was switch the light out.”
“Not quite the last,” Audrey says, sitting down next to Barry again and again giving the assembled company a treat. Even I can see right up to the top and I’m standing on the upper level.
“What is the name of this gaff, anyway?” asks Barry. “The Casa Nova, is it? Get it? Casa Nova. Casanova?”
More laughter.
“The Karsi Nova,” Benny says.
And more.
While that’s going on I saunter over in the direction of the blackness and as I approach I can make out the shape of D’Antoni’s head peering round the corner of the wall, like some voyeur who by rights should be on the other side of the plate glass. I’m far enough away from the assembled throng for anything I say to go unheard so I say to D’Antoni: “Looks like a late night chat show, don’t it?”
“Who are they?”
He still sounds as though Henry Cooper’s fetched him one in the gut.
“Pick-ups,” I tell him. “A bit of rough trade for the lady of the house.”
“Is she crazy? Jesus. Doesn’t anybody care what all this is about?”
I don’t answer him.
“She could blow everything, what she’s doing?”
Mentally I agree with his words, but I give them a coarser interpretation. Especially, looking back at the group, now that I can see that Audrey’s sitting on the floor with her back to the settee, her head not all that far away from the vicinity of Barry’s crutch.
“Don’t worry about it. They’re smashed. In the morning they’ll think they dreamt it.”
“How’d they get up here?”
“They’re in the Seat, parked out on the road? Forget it. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Look—”
“Calm down. Come and join the party. That’s the only thing’ll kill you round here.”
I walk back to the centre of the room. I don’t have to look back to know that D’Antoni has declined to step out of the shadows; however, Wally moves instead, intercepting me before I reach the edge of the sunken area, and judging from the expression on his face he’s had a different aspect of the sub-cheese-cloth activities of Benny. Under cover of the noise of the music he says to me:
“Here, Jack, I mean to say, is this going to be a bit strong?”
“Changed your tune a bit, haven’t you? Where’s all the open arms bit gone to?”
“It’s not the open arms I’m worried about.”
“Well, take it up with the lady of the house,” I tell him. “She’s in charge.”
As if to underline my statement, Audrey’s voice climbs above the level of the music.
“Here, Wal, you got the new batch in?”
Wally turns away from me and shows Audrey his other face.
“Beg pardon, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“The new batch. They get here all right?”
“Oh, them. Yeah, thanks, Mrs. Fletcher. Smooth, like as usual.”
“Checked them out, have you?”
“Oh, yes. Mint condition, they are. ’Course, I didn’t check them all yet, seeing as they only just come in, like.”
“I bet.”
“Well, been seeing to our guests like, ain’t I?”
“Yeah, well, see to our guests now, then.”
“Eh?”
“They need livening up. Don’t want them nodding off, do we?”
“No.”
“So wheel the projector out. Let’s have some real holiday movies.”
Barry says: “What’s all this, then?”
“Thought you might like to watch some home movies.”
“Blues, are they?” Barry says, thinking she’s joking.
“ ’Course they bleedin’ are,” Audrey says.
“You what?”
“What did you think they was: this is Aunt Edna paddling and that’s those nice people from Watford in the background and what was on the same table as us on the barbecue?”
Barry clasps his hands and rubs them together. “Christ,” he says, “it gets better. It’s Christmas all over again.”
Wally has not yet moved so Audrey says to him:
“Come on, then, Wal. Get your skates on. We’re only here for a fortnight.”
“You want me to get the projector now?” he says.
“Yeah, that’s right, Wal,” Audrey says. “And a couple or three films as well, eh, or there won’t be no point in getting the projector, will there?”
“I’ll have to go down to the basement to get it,” Wally says.
“That’s right,” Audrey says. “Handy, that is, because that’s where the films are as well. Save you a journey, won’t it?”
“Yes,” Wally says. He turns away and begins to walk towards the blackness of the hall.
“And make sure they’re different ones you get,” Audrey calls after him. “Not all the same, eh, Wal?”
Wal disappears into the blackness and I listen to his footsteps disappearing in the direction of the basement door: either D’Antoni’s doing an impression of the fish’s reflection or he’s cleaned off out of it because the sound of Wally’s footsteps disappears naturally into the darkness. Audrey, in the event of Wally’s departure, makes a production of struggling up from the floor and over to the drinks for a refill. I walk over and join her.
“You’re taking lots of chances tonight,” I tell her.
“Oh yes?”
“I mean, for all you know D’Antoni could have been on sentry duty with his magnum.”
“Could have been, couldn’t he?”
“On the other hand, how could you be so sure I wouldn’t open the door and smack your teeth down the back of your throat?”
“Perhaps you would have done at one time, sweetheart. But now you’ve lost your balls, I reckoned I was in no danger of that happening.”
I come to the decision that it’s been too long since I fetched Audrey one so I decide to remedy that state of affairs when Barry arrives in the vicinity of my right shoulder, to which part of my anatomy he applies his bear-like hand, not pushing, exactly, but resting there with a certain force which would need application from myself in order to move forward against his outstretched arm.
“You getting bother from him, darlin’?” he asks Audrey.
“Bother?” she says. “From him? You must be joking.”
Now, naturally, the Dagenham son poses me no problems whatsoever, except perhaps one, that being leaving off before I actually put him out of this life forever. And I have to confess, that whereas I seldom indulge in that kind of business except in a strictly professional capacity, at this moment I would enjoy taking a Busman’s Holiday and seeing him off in the way it should be done, a way that he would be both unlikely and unlucky if he were to ever encounter it again. On the other hand, I would probably get more satisfaction out of giving Audrey one or two, it being her that is getting farther up my nose than anybody else in the assembled company. But I never get round to choosing between the two alternatives because Wally has returned with the jollies and he announces his presence by dropping the films and putting down the projector and jumping in, as it were, at the deep end of the sunken area, his actions inspired by the fact that it’s not now just a matter of Benny having his hand up Tina’s cheese-cloth; events have progressed, and Tina’s giving Benny a massage, albeit on the outside of his trousers. But before Wally has time to drag Tina up off the Boor to the safety of his bosom, Benny has sussed what’s about to happen and he’s surprisingly neat at getting up and getting a grip on Wally, and quite an effective grip at that, because he’s grasped Wally by the balls, and Wally’s only course of action is to flail his limbs about like a monkey on a stick.
“What’s your fucking story, then, Grandad?” Benny says. “What’s your story all about when it boils down to it?”
“Jesus Christ,” Wally screeches. “Let go for fuck’s sake.”
“Yeah, let go,” Audrey says. “He’s got to operate the machine.”
She uses the diversion as an excuse to walk back to the centre of the room, and at the same time Barry drops his hand as he turns away to watch the curtain raiser to the forthcoming entertainments. I restrain myself from giving him one in the back of the neck and limit my arm movements to putting some more alcohol into my glass. So Benny then lets Wally go and Wally sits down on the leather for a minute or two until the tears have shed themselves from his eyes. Then, when he can see again, he sets the projector up on a low stool outside of the sunken area and breaks open one of the boxes and begins to thread the celluloid through the machine. When he’s done that, he flicks on the projector for a second or two to see that it’s taken properly, then he goes over to the wall and switches off the lights. Now the whole villa is in darkness. Wally walks back to the machine and trains it on the white wall and switches on again. Blank leader flickers on the whiteness. Then the title appears, out of focus. Wally adjusts the lens and the title is as sharp as one of Les’s suits.
RANDY THREESOME, the title reads.
“Here,” Barry says to his brother, “remember when Sammy Spencer used to run the Blues in the paint shop at twenty pence a time?”
“Yeah. Favourite, that was. Then that bleedin’ shop steward had to put his spoke in.”
“Never got re-elected, though, did he.”
On the wall, the action begins.
It starts the way they all do. The bird is sitting on the inevitable sofa, leafing through a magazine. Close-up of her looking bored. Back to the initial shot. She closes the magazine, lies down on the settee, then begins giving herself a seeing to. That goes on for five minutes or so then there’s another shot, outside this time, and guess what, it’s the man to come and see about the waste-pipe under the sink. The girl pulls her drawers up and lets the man about the waste pipe in and from then on there’s about ten minutes of action centring around the kitchen table and of course it’s got sod all to do with unbunging the plumbing.
Then drama rears its ugly head in the shape of the returning husband, by which time I’m over by the window and parting the curtains and looking out at the comparative excitement of the movement of the sky at night. Still, judging by the remarks, the rest of the audience is appreciating the action.
“Bet your old lady wouldn’t mind getting one like that up her regular,” Barry says to his brother.
“How’d you know she don’t?”
“ ’Cause she told me, last time I gave her one.”
Laughter.
“Jesus, look at him. Makes the other fellow look like our old dad before he’s had his mild.”
“After, you mean.”
The projector whirls on. I turn round to look at the group, illuminated as they are in the stream of white light from the projector. So far as I can see nothing is as yet happening between Audrey and Barry, although at the other end of the settee Tina still has her eyes half closed and Benny is close enough to be up the cheese-cloth again.
“You seen this one, Wal?” Audrey says.
“Yeah, this is one of the ones I seen.”
“In that case why did you run it?”
“Eh?”
“Think it’s good, do you?”
“Well, not bad, yeah.”
“It’s bleedin’ terrible. No bleedin’ idea. Jack, who done this one?”
She must be bleeding barmy, shouting the odds in front of the sons, but there’s no real point in me having that thought because she is, and always has been, bleeding barmy; the only time she’s not is when she’s running the business with me on behalf of the Brothers Grimm, and I consider that all things being equal, I’m lucky to have survived as long as I have; maybe the parting of the ways will be no bad thing and I’ll maybe be able to pick up my old age pension in my old age.
“This one one of Terry’s, is it?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“ ’Course you do. It’s one of Terry’s. Written all over it. Apart from the fact he’s using his puffy mate again. Look, he’s getting him to do his thing again.”
And indeed Terry has, because his mate is going down on the other bloke while the girl is going down on him.
“Fuck me,” Barry says, “the dirty bastards. Yeech.”
“Makes you want to fetch up,” Benny says. “People doing something like that. Fucking lettuce leaves.”
I smile to myself. He should have been present at some of the gatherings Gerald and Les have laid on in the past and witnessed some of the heavies with a couple or three topping jobs to their credit behaving exactly as the so-called lettuce leaf in the movie is behaving.
On the wall the activities come to an end with the concerted spurting from the two male leads, then the square becomes blank white again.
“Christ, he only bleedin’ swallowed it,” Barry says.
“You can learn to swallow anything in time, can’t you, Jack?” Audrey says, snuggling a bit close to Barry.
I don’t answer her, taking the view that everything comes to him who waits.
Wally removes the spools off the projector.
“Are you bothering with another one?” he asks.
“They can’t be as piss poor as that,” Audrey says. “Try one of the others.”
Wally loads the projector and the shaft of light begins to flicker again. This time the title says: CLASSROOM RAPE.
The title fades. We’re presented with a different scene, but from the immediate evidence it’s not going to be a lot different from the first one. This time the bird’s in schoolgirl gear, and instead of sitting on a sofa leafing through a magazine she’s sitting at a desk leafing through a magazine. We’re shown a close-up of the magazine which is full of the unlovely faces of the almost current batch of pop stars and it’s not long before the inevitable happens and she’s got her hand in her drawers and she’s having a go at herself. Ho-hum. The shot changes and it’s of another girl sticking her head round a door and reacting to what’s going on out of shot, hand to shocked mouth, all the usual palaver. The thing that lends interest to this pantomime, though, is that underneath the false blonde pigtail wig, the face is somewhat familiar, but before memory has arranged the features into place the film cuts and we’re back with the self-absorption of the girl at the desk, only this time the camera is set a bit farther back and the background is sharper, and although I hadn’t really considered it before, the setting isn’t the usual curtained living room, it’s a much bigger area than any council flat or any semi and the furniture and ornamentation are of a different variety, consisting of a variety of easels and casts of various pieces of classical sculpture. I’ve just about taken that in when the film cuts again to the familiarity of the girl at the door who now is pantomiming to a person or persons unknown, and as it happens it turns out to be persons, because a trio of young yobbos appear behind her in the doorway, all done up fifties style, in leather jackets and drapes, but the thing giving the lie to their assumed period is the hairstyles. Also, they don’t have the feel of the genuine article, the real patina of thickness, they look much too self-aware in a different kind of way. But it isn’t these fine fellows that have my interest at all. It’s the girl beneath the blonde plaits who is holding my attention because I’ve just realised who she is. I look across at Wally who is squatting on his haunches by the projector. He’s paying more attention to what he’s plucking out of his nose than what’s happening up on the wall so as yet he hasn’t twigged who’s a part of the action, which has by now developed to the part where our starlet in the blonde plaits is urging the job trio into spread-eagling the magazine reader across the desk as a prelude to doing their worst. But Wally doesn’t have long to wait to be put in it because of course it’s Barry who is the next to suss it out.
“Here, hang about,” he says. “Hold on.”
“Yeah, all right,” I tell him, standing on the raised part of the floor so that the back of his head is level with the toe of my moccasin. He takes no notice and leans forward, still pointing.
“It’s her. It’s the bird.”
He reaches across Audrey and shakes his brother by the shoulder and his brother takes his tongue out of Tina’s ear and turns round to see what Barry is on about.
“Look at the bleedin’ film,” Barry urges. “Look at it, you wanker.”
Benny looks at the screen and while he’s doing that Audrey fights her way up from the back of the settee and pushes between the Dagenham sons and has a look for herself. At this time, on the screen, the girl in the blonde plaits is taking off the drawers of the first girl who is still being spread-eagled across the desk. Then the film cuts to a close up of the girl in the blonde plaits who is grinning at the camera as a result of her latest accomplishment and if there was ever any doubt, there’s none now.
I look at Wally again. He’s still got an index finger up his left nostril but now his eyes are focussed on the images playing on the plaster.
“Fuck me,” Benny says, “it’s her. It’s the bird.”
Tina turns her head slightly and half-opens her eyes and she looks at the wall too.
“S’me,” she says. She giggles and then she closes her eyes again.
Wally remains frozen on his haunches, his finger still up his nose.
“I don’t believe it,” Audrey says. “I really don’t believe it.”
“It’s right,” Barry says. “It’s her. Look at it.”
It is then that Wally moves. I’m prepared for this but he doesn’t do as I expected and take the shortest distance between two points so there’s nothing I can do to impede his progress, because what he does is to walk down the steps into the sunken area and very carefully pick his way through the outstretched legs until he’s got to the part of the settee where Tina is. When he reaches her, he stands in front of her for a moment or two, looking down at her, before he stretches out an arm and grabs her by her hair and yanks her up off the settee. Then several things happen all at once. Tina starts screaming at her old man and Benny stands up to intercede on Tina’s behalf, but Wally, with his free hand, lands a lucky punch for the first time in his life and he’s even luckier that Audrey’s legs are at the back of Benny’s knees, making the punch look even more effective. Benny sprawls across Audrey and finishes up with his head in his brother’s lap. Audrey immediately starts shrieking about her drink and his drink which she’s had spilled on her dress, and at the same time Wally starts smacking his offspring round the head, while on the wall his offspring is going down on her pinioned co-star.
“You bleedin’, fucking, bastard, whoring tart,” Wally tells Tina, each word accompanied and underlined by a blow. “No wonder you was slung out.”
He begins to go through his description of her again, blow by blow, and I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking Tina’s had enough strap when Benny struggles himself up off the heap on the settee and grabs hold of Wally and sends him flying to the far end of the sunken area. Benny begins to go after him but Tina is already in front of him, leaning over her old man and taking her turn at shouting the odds. Benny pushes her to one side and starts to give Wally a right old kicking, and now it’s really time, so I put down my drink very carefully on the edge of the sunken area and wade in.
The kicking Wally’s getting hasn’t prevented Tina from carrying on with her shouting and so Wally’s getting it both physically and verbally. But not for too long because I get behind Benny and spin him round and give him a little trio of mine that’s come in very handy ever since my bouncing days. First of all I hit him very hard in the gut. Then, as he’s doubling up, I accelerate the process by grabbing hold of his hair and pushing downwards so that with some speed his face happens to coincide with my up-coming knee, which is also moving at some speed. And that is all there is to it. Never been known to fail. Minimum effort, maximum effect. Benny goes to the floor like he’s made of marble.
I turn round again to face the inevitable rise of Barry. He’s half way up off the settee when I ask him if he wants any of what his brother’s just got. It appears he thinks he does, because he puts his glass down on the low table and exchanges it for a bottle which he smashes on the table’s edge and point in my direction.
“All right,” he says. “That was a good one. Now let’s see you do it again, under these circumstances.”
He starts to grin but before the grin can get very broad I put my foot to the edge of the table and shove it as hard as I can so that the hard edge drives into Barry’s shin just a couple of inches below his knee-cap. He bellows out and drops the bottle and his hands go to his injury. I walk round the table and give him a couple similar to what I gave his brother and as a consequence there’s not going to be much heard from him for the next five minutes or so.
I turn back to Wally. Tina by now has shut up and straightened up and looks completely sober. Wally is still sitting on the floor, nursing his ribs.
“You all right, Wal?” I ask him.
“Not too bad. He was wearing beach shoes.”
“I wish they’d been climbing boots,” Tina says.
“You,” I say to her. “Upstairs.”
“You what?”
“Upstairs.”
“Look, you—”
“I told you. Upstairs. Or if you like, I’ll take you.”
She looks at me.
“Right,” I say. “Now fuck off out of it.”
She looks at me for a little bit longer.
“Well, at least you proved one thing today,” she says.
Then she begins to walk out of the lounge.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Audrey says, taking her eyes off her dabbing for a moment to look up at me.
“Fuck all,” I tell her.
There is a silence. The film is still beating against the plasterwork. All three of us look at it for a while. The plot has been dispensed with. The first girl is no longer acting the victim. The proceedings have developed into the usual free for all. I walk over to the machine and switch it off. The room is pitch black again. I go over to the wall and find the light switch and when the room is relatively bright again the first thing I see is that D’Antoni is standing inside of the lounge area, hands in pockets, grinning all over his face.
“Well,” he says. “Well, well, well.”
All three of us look at him. He crosses the room to where the drinks are. All three of us are still looking at him. He starts to pour himself a drink and while he’s pouring he says:
“That was some movie.”
None of us say anything.
“It really was. One hell of a movie.”
He puts the bottle down and takes a drink from his glass. Then he laughs.
“A star is born,” he says.
He laughs again.
“Cute. A real Shirley Temple.”
He sings the first line of “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” When he gets to the word “Lollipop” he makes a sucking noise, which makes him laugh even louder.
“You met Mr. D’Antoni, Audrey?” I ask her.
“I have now,” she says.
D’Antoni comes down into the sunken area and sits down on the matching settee opposite Audrey.
“So you’re Mrs. Fletcher,” he says. “No wonder I didn’t get to meet you last time I got over.”
“Shame, wasn’t it?” Audrey says.
“That it was.”
There is a silence.
“Hey, Wally,” D’Antoni says, “how about running the movies again. I didn’t catch all of it.”
Wally doesn’t answer.
“Come on. She looked a great little performer.”
Wally begins to get up but he’d never be a match for D’Antoni, so I say to him: “Go and make some coffee, Wal.”
Wally stands where he is for a moment.
“All right,” he says eventually, and makes for the hallway.
D’Antoni shakes his head.
“Jesus Christ,” he says. “Wait till I tell them this one.”
“Tell who?” I ask him.
D’Antoni looks at me. “You’re funny, you know that?”
“Yes, I’m almost as funny as you.”
D’Antoni shakes his head again.
On the floor, Barry begins to stir. I squat down and grab him by his collar and prop him up against the settee. Although his eyes are open it’s quite some time before he sees me.
“You with us, squire?” I say to him.
His mouth moves but no sound comes out.
“You want some more before you go home to your old lady?”
His mouth moves again, to the same effect. I lift him to his feet and point to the floor.
“See that?” I ask him. “That’s your brother. You’re going to take him home, all right?”
I let go of him and he manages to stay on his feet. Then I bend down and pick his brother up off the floor and drape his arms round my shoulders. Then I take Barry’s arm and begin to walk out of the sunken area. The movement starts to revive Benny who heaves right from the bottom of his stomach, the shuddering effect causing one of his teeth to finally dislodge itself and rattle very faintly on the parquet floor.
We make it up the steps and across the rest of the room and out into the hallway. When we get to the plate glass, Barry has survived sufficiently to support himself so I slide back the opening and indicate the black night air.
“There you go,” I tell them. “It’s somewhere out there where you want to be.”
I guide them through the opening and outside.
“If you wake up tomorrow and think of playing evens, don’t bother,” I tell them. “Come back here and I’ll fucking crucify you. Either that or I’ll put your old ladies in what you been up to.”
Benny puts his hand to his face and only just manages not to sink to his knees.
“Right. Enjoy the rest of your holidays.”
I slide the plate glass shut and watch the sons of Dagenham stagger down the steps and off across the flagstones in the direction of the track. When I’ve made sure they’re properly on their way I cross the hall and go down the corridor to the kitchen. Wally is standing by the sink, examining the plughole, or something that’s just gone down it. I light a cigarette. The sound the flame makes Wally turn away from the sink.
“Won’t be long,” Wally says.
“That’s all right, Wal.”
The silence is long and strained. Eventually I break it by saying: “I shouldn’t worry too much about it.”
Wally snorts, very softly, very bitterly.
“She’s a fucking tart, that’s what she is.”
I shrug.
“Maybe,” I say. “On the other hand, you do enjoy that kind of thing yourself, Wal.”
“She’s my own flesh and blood.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I mean.”
“Could be something in that.”
“What?”
“Being your own flesh and blood. In the family, and that.”
I shrug.
“You mean like heredity?” Wally says.
“Something like that.”
Wally looks at me. The percolator begins to bubble. Wally turns away to see it.
“Anyway,” I say, and walk out of the kitchen.
Back in the lounge D’Antoni and Audrey are still sitting in the same positions but since I went away the ice seems to have been broken somewhat.
“Well, I appreciate that, I really do,” D’Antoni is saying as I re-enter the lounge.
“They just thought it might be a good idea, what with the business contacts over here.”
“Yeah. I can see that.”
“I was just telling Mr. D’Antoni, Jack, how Gerald and Les thought it’d be a good idea if I came over and sussed out some of the places we know what might be likely to be ports of call for anybody who might be looking for somebody.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes. And as you’re up, you can get me another drink.”
I wonder to myself why, after the words we had earlier in the evening, she still imagines she can push me the way, for appearance’s sake, she sometimes does in front of Gerald and Les, and live so long without me hauling her off the final definitive punch. But I swallow again because I wouldn’t like to put her out of this world without finding out the real reason for her coming up to the villa. So I say to her:
“I just been into the kitchen. Wally’s fetching the coffee in a minute.”
“Mr. D’Antoni’s right,” she says. “You are funny.”
I smile at her.
“It’s been a funny evening,” I say.
“I can’t believe that film,” Audrey says. “Her being in it, and that.”
“You didn’t recruit her yourself, did you?”
“ ’Course I didn’t. I don’t have anything to do with that side of things no more. You know that.”
“Funny. Tonight was just like old times really. Reminded me of picking up the rough trade and getting them drunk and persuading them to perform. Really took me back. I’d almost forgotten how good you were at that part. You know, the scrubber, smashed out of her mind.”
“Yeah, well I should start getting used to forgetting things,” Audrey says. “Know what I mean?”
Wally enters with the tray of coffee. While he’s putting it down on the low table, Audrey says to him:
“I may as well stay here tonight, Wally. You didn’t put Jack in the master bedroom, did you?”
“No, I didn’t do that.”
“You can get that ready for me then. Sweep the scorpions out the bed. I’d hate to get stung on me first night.”
“You almost did,” I tell her, putting my drink down and picking up my coffee. “Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’m taking my Horlicks up to bed with me. I’ve got last week’s Beano to catch up on.”
I walk out of the lounge and make my way upstairs to my bedroom. The room is empty of Tina. My bed is turned down exactly as I left it. The cot is unruffled. The sheer physical relief is beautiful. No more sparring matches of any description. Just the crisp sheets. I put my coffee down on the bedside table and crawl into the bed and it feels exactly like it did an hour ago; I’m beginning to think of it the way I think of the one I’ve got at home after a hard day looking after Gerald and Les. I close my eyes and start to drift away to blackness for as long as I can before Audrey’s inevitable arrival.