THE DREAM IS VERY clear, very sharp. Gerald and Les are the spitting images of themselves. And that’s more or less what they’re doing in the dream, because they’re in the dock at the Old Bailey, and I’m on the stand, giving evidence against them. I’m not exactly saying anything, but I know that’s what I’m doing. And I know what the result of what I’m doing is going to be. So when the judge reaches for the old black cap, I’m not exactly surprised. He doesn’t say anything but then he doesn’t have to. Gerald and Les look at him, bow, then they turn in my direction and take their shooters out and point them at me but they don’t fire straight away. Instead, between me and them, in enormous close-up, is the face of Audrey, smiling at me. Then the shooters sound off and although Audrey is still smiling the same smile, blood begins to dribble out from between her teeth, vying for brilliance with her lipstick.
Then I wake up, and I realise that the perfume of the dream is a reality, because Audrey is crawling into bed next to me, and she doesn’t stop when she’s beside me, she keeps going until she’s on top of me, squashing her mouth and the rest of her against me, her stocking’d legs slithering up and down like pistons. A hand slides down to my waist and undoes my pyjama cord. Then Audrey’s head goes under the sheets and she starts travelling south, a direction I’m normally more than partial to, but tonight I don’t want her being bad-mannered when she’s talking to me so I grab hold of some of her hair and arrest her progress. Audrey’s voice muffles up through the bedclothes.
“Jesus Christ!”
Her head re-appears, an inch or so away from mine.
“What’s the bleedin’ game, then?”
“Finding out yours, that’s what.”
Audrey rolls over onto her back.
“I mean,” I say to her. “Considering we reached the end of the road a few hours ago, this is a bit sudden, isn’t it?”
There’s a long pause before Audrey answers.
“You really are a berk, aren’t you?”
I don’t say anything.
“I come to tell you something to your advantage, as they say.”
“Why should you do a thing like that?”
“You really are a berk. I mean, you really are.”
It’s my turn not to say anything for a while.
“All right,” I say eventually. “So why the circus? Why not just use the phone if you’ve got something to tell me?”
Audrey sighs.
“Because, sweetheart, you’re not easy to convince of anything face to face, let alone over the phone.”
“Not to mention via Her Majesty’s Mails.”
“Yeah, well that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Come to apologise for the spelling mistakes, have you?”
“Listen, you stupid bastard, I’ve had a phone call since you left the hotel.”
“I thought you might have.”
“Yes. Well.”
I reach out and pluck my cigarettes off the bedside table. I light two up and hand one to Audrey. After I’ve inhaled I say: “So what did they have to say?”
“You mean after they got through describing their feelings about you?”
“I can imagine all that. It’s the other part I’m interested in.”
“You should be. You’ll find it fascinating.”
She doesn’t go on to tell me how fascinating I’ll find it. What she wants me to do is to ask her to tell me. Which, of course, I do, seeing as Audrey is prepared to wait until Stanley Bowles tells the referee it wasn’t a penalty, he just fell over himself. I say to her:
“All right. So tell me what I’ll find fascinating.”
“Well, what it all boils down to, they decided to take contingency measures, haven’t they? They decided to pass the brief elsewhere.”
“And that’s fascinating, is it?”
“You don’t think so?”
“What else could they do? They painted themselves into a corner and for once Jack the Lad isn’t lifting them out of it. So they’re still in the corner. They got to do something, haven’t they.”
“That’s right. And they got to do something about you, haven’t they? I mean, since you’ve resigned, they don’t want you starting up in competition, do they?”
I stretch out my arm and stub out my cigarette.
“I’ll worry about that when I get back off my holidays.”
“You will.”
“That’s right.”
Audrey doesn’t say anything for a while. Eventually I say to her:
“So what are they?”
“What?”
“The alternative arrangements?”
“Oh, them. Nothing really.”
“You what?”
“Forget it. You’re on your holidays, aren’t you?”
“Listen, you came up here to tell me something I’ll find fascinating. You came all the way from Palma to tell it to me. And now you’re not telling me.”
“That’s because you don’t really want to know.”
“I see.”
“It’s right.”
I don’t say anything. After a while she says:
“You’re not going to change your mind, are you?”
“You what?”
“About D’Antoni. You’re not going to change your mind.”
“You know I’m not.”
“And you’re still prepared to screw up everything we been working for?”
I don’t answer her.
Then she suddenly sits up and gets out of the bed, taking most of the top sheet with her.
“Then you deserve everything you get,” she says, and walks out of the bedroom.
I don’t attempt to pull the sheet back on the bed. In fact I don’t move at all. I just lie there and stare up into the blackness until my eyes gradually close and I succumb to the deeper blackness of sleep.
For the second time that night I awake to the scent of perfume. Only this time it’s not Audrey’s.
“Wakey, wakey,” Tina says.
She takes it in her hand and waves it to and fro like a rubber metronome. I take hold of her wrist and pull her hand away.
“No fun,” she says. “Like I always say, you’re no fun.”
“Piss off.”
“I got nowhere else to go, have I?”
“You got the camp bed.”
“Yes, I know,” she says. “Only it seemed a shame that we had to be the couple that dropped out of the game.”
“You what?”
“Us. Not like the other two.”
“What like the other two?”
“Mrs. Fletcher and the spaghetti-eater.”
“What about them?”
“Christ. What do you think?”
I think various thoughts and then I say:
“Where are they?”
“Last time I saw them was when I went back into the lounge for me fags. They was on the settee. Only they wasn’t sitting, know what I mean? And her only with her stockings on. I mean to say.”
I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
“You’re too late if you think you’ll get there just in the nick of time.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, thinking. I come to a decision but before I can get off the bed the sound of Audrey and D’Antoni giggling their way up the stairs drifts in through the open door. Then there’s a slight pause and after that the clink of a bottle and the opening and closing of a bedroom door. Followed by the turning of a key.
“I told you, didn’t I?” Tina says.
I don’t bother getting up off the bed. Instead of kicking in doors, I decide to expend my energy in a different way. I turn and look down at the pale indistinct shape of Tina and remember how distinct it had been on the wall downstairs.
“All right,” I say to her. “Since you been asking for it.” I lift my legs back on the bed and go down on her and for once in her life she doesn’t come up with a pertinent comment on the action. Not one that sounds like any word that has yet been invented, that is.
Comes the dawn.
I open my eyes and not for the first time since I came to the villa it takes me a minute or two to bring my senses to bear on where I actually am. Then, when I’ve established that, I turn my head to my right and my eyes pull focus on the open-mouthed, closed-eyes face of Tina. She’s snoring very, very softly, looking more like one of the plaster madonnas in the background of the Life Room than the character she played out in foreground. I look at her for a moment or two, then I reach out for cigarettes and while I’m doing that Wally appears carrying a tray which supports the morning pot of tea. His reaction on seeing the tableau vivant on the bed is not to drop the tray, all he does is to hesitate slightly on his course to the bedside table, and when he reaches it he places the tray on the table top with the dignity of a goalkeeper who’s picking the fifteenth ball out of the back of the net. I light my cigarette. Wally turns away and begins to walk out of the bedroom.
“Well it’s not as though you didn’t have no idea what she was like,” I say to him.
Wally keeps on moving.
“Wally.”
He stops.
“Turn round when I’m talking to you.”
Wally turns round.
“Don’t come it with me, mate,” I tell him. “All right?”
Wally doesn’t say anything. I take a draw on my cigarette.
“I’ll have the lot for breakfast.” I tell him. “O.K.?” Wally nods briefly, then turns away and goes out of the bedroom.
I smoke some more of my cigarette. Tina opens her eyes.
“Was that the silly old fart?” she says.
“Shut your mouth,” I tell her, and get out of bed.