He smiled a forlorn smile. “But it’s always been sin, Donkey.”
Now there were some things I might have expected from Mick Watson, but this took me aback. I could not imagine him bringing up the gods don’t like this and gods don’t like that with me. The idea that having a drink was sinful did not sit easily in a sentence that also included ‘Mick Watson’.
He smiled again, and answered the question I did not ask. “For ages, Don, all I’ve been able to take is sin.”
“It’s a diet I could manage,” I said.
“You don’t understand, Donkey. You think I’m talking about vice...”
“...as in President? Grow a penis?”
“No, you stupid sapropel, I’m talking about sin as in Spanish sin[16], sin alcohol. I have been sin, wine sin, beer sin, everything sin for years. I can´t always keep it up, but I am supposed to. Now I am completely sin sin, life sin, sin life...”
We were both quiet for a while. I knew precisely what he meant, but didn’t want to let on, because he himself had never suggested the slightest inkling until now. He took another sip of brandy. I took a little more. Just two years older than me and, until this evening, an apparently fit, healthy and even hearty life and soul of everyone’s party, Mick Watson now looked like death warmed up. It seemed like his entire frame had shrunk. The broad shoulders had hunched narrow, wide eyes were half shut, grand gestures were tired, the straight spine curved. And most obvious of all was the voice. Mick’s voice of old was an assured, full baritone, sonorous if somewhat throaty, always tending to break into gravel if raised, but otherwise rounded, even musical at times. Now it had raised a full two tones, had slowed and had frayed at every edge. This was now a tired and elderly voice, no longer driven by an energy greater than itself with more held in reserve. It was merely a vestige of a socially confident assertion I had known on and off for sixty years.
“And you´re supposed to be sin Paradise as well...” I had said it before I realised my mistake. It registered, but he seemed too morose to pursue the matter.
“I know, but the others can go and furuncle off... I´ve got things...” He paused to look me in the eye. I could see the mechanism behind his sustained gaze churning out the answer to two plus two and it was more than four. “How did you know I was not supposed...”
“Mick,” I answered quickly, brushing away my tracks, “you´re not well. You should be at home in bed.”
His laugh was both relieved and ironic. “At home, alone...” The pause lasted almost a minute. “She’s gone, Donkey,” he said, fingering the blue plastic desk tidy that Olga kept so fastidiously stocked. “She’s gone.” I didn’t need to ask who had gone. Olga was not at her desk.
“When?” I said the word, but also asked myself why I wanted to establish fact. Wasn’t this just spurious, unnecessary accuracy? Did facts matter when the result was so obvious and so obviously unpalatable? When a woman walks out on you, does it help to pinpoint events, to locate reasons in either time or space? Isn’t absence the only relevant consideration? It was, however, something I could ask, something that was effectively neutral, something external, something male.
He looked up, his eyes blank sockets beneath the apparently endless forehead that rose into a shaven scalp. I did not know then, but have since learned, that Mick’s pate had not been mechanically created for years. It is, I now know, chemically induced, a side-effect of drugs he has to take every day. There were pleas in those eyes. A hand reached to the pocket inside the left front of his jacket. It came out holding a single sheet of paper, stiff, crisp and blue, torn from a high quality letter pad, the type that comes with its own envelopes whose seals are finished with wavy lines. He handed it over. It gave a distinct parchment crinkling crack when I unfolded its quarters.
“Mick. I finish with you. Work with you finish. I go. O”
That’s all it said. There was neither date nor day, the single character signature as much a digit as a letter, itself a statement of loss, zero.
“When?” I repeated, inanely.
“I found it propped up on her bathroom shelf this morning.”
“Did you have an argument?”
“Of course not. Come off it, Donkey... Do you think a beautiful twenty-eight year-old Russian blonde needs the excuse of an argument to justify leaving a sixty-six-year-old fabulist from Kiddington? Especially one that’s got... one, like me that’s suffering...”
The words would not be free of their conscience. I kept my silence. I knew he would find a way. Truth will out.
It took a minute, during which time he lowered his head, rubbed his scalp with his left hand, sighed, stretched the soft flesh of his cheek and pulled at his chin. But I was proved right. He spoke again.
“Don, I’m not a well man. I can’t cope any more. I get so tired...”
He was going to speak again. He stalled. I merely stood and looked, offered a frowning, feigned confusion. It worked again. Now he spoke with an authority that sounded almost rehearsed.
“I’ve got a... a condition... that doesn’t get cured. I’ve got a disease. It’s an auto-immune disease called idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura...”
The words left a gaping silence. I tried to count the syllables whilst making a mental note of the name.
“It’s like AIDS, but it’s the body attacking itself. It thins your blood. You bleed a lot. It’s not very pleasant.”
“There aren’t many pleasant diseases, Mick,” I said ruefully. “Just ask Suzie.” I noted that he wasn’t listening.
“I’ve had it for some time. I haven’t been able to cope, haven’t been able to work properly for the last couple of years. Olga has been doing everything. Now she’s gone, I have no idea what to do. Without her, I’m finished...”
I can’t pinpoint why, but the feeling of rehearsal that pervaded his words only strengthened as I listened. His speech was delivered in a faltering voice alongside a confessional manner, but it all seemed too coherent, the pauses inserted for effect, not out of confusion or question. Given Suzie’s plight, I know how illness promotes the adoption of a standard response to query. When it’s that serious, the last thing you want to do is dwell on things, but if you don’t stress the seriousness, all you get is more questions. A standard response is the only way of not dwelling on something that’s painful. It both satisfies the query and closes the subject. But in Mick’s case there was more than this, more than assurance designed to limit communication. Surely, also, there was motive.
“But you still have the businesses, Paradise and The Castle,” I said.
He smiled. “I suppose you’re right. I have them as much as I ever did.”
Now this surprised me. He had never before entertained even the suggestion of a chink in his armour. I didn’t pursue the issue, but now I realise that I should have done. I let him off the hook. True to his enduring role in life, Mick was presenting no more than a front. He was the bloke who sat in the office. He was one who in the past had strutted around The Castle looking and sounding important, like a cock in a hen’s coop. He had patted part-timers on the back as if he were management, whereas in the only reality he knew, he was always someone else’s pawn. Questions immediately came to mind. Why did he project such assurance when he had no authority? Who was running him? Why did he offer Suzie The Castle when he was himself just a lackey? Did the real boss of the place know anything about Suzie and her work? What the uliginous trachyphonia was going on?
But still I felt that this was not the time to press. Mick, suddenly, was old, infirm and inadequate. He was also newly alone, bereaved perhaps, his solitude created by the goal of my own dreams. It was not the time to ask questions, not least because I could easily divulge my own motives, but I could not prevent those unasked questions from flooding to the forefront of my interest. Who was Olga? Where did she come from? Why did she choose to work with Mic
k? Who was running Mick? And how did this mid-sixties Kiddington boor attract a mid-twenties Russian beauty? Who was paying whom? And who was on the make? And Mick’s illness, was his syndrome as auto as he claimed? Or was it distinctly more external? And did Olga have it? And if Olga... Again self-interest raised its ugly head, so I pushed it back into its hole with a determined bash of the mallet.
“Is there anything we could do to help?”
I remember the sound of those words as they cut through the dull background hum of traffic along the main road. In particular, I recall sensing immediately the absurdity of what I had just said. I was offering to help a man I despised. And I was also offering ‘our’ help, thus including Suzie, a woman scarred for life as a result of his attention and later wrenched out of a happy marriage by his crazed fantasy. Why would Suzie want to help this man? It was a question, and I asked it of myself, only to answer it immediately, and strangely without doubt. I even repeated it to myself as a means of checking my almost automatic response. Neither she nor I would need a reason. She would just do it. And so would I. And we would help not because there was any residual attraction, friendship or even loyalty. We would help because we are Kiddington people, all three of us. Frankly, even if one of the repulsive Stokes boys stood before me asking for help, I would offer. I would still have called them the viripotent wanderoos that they are, but still we would help, if, that is, either of them had survived into older age.
“You already have helped, Don.” he said.
“The Castle?”
“I wasn’t coping. The place was a mess and getting worse. Suzie has done a fantastic job.”
My tongue burned. Behind my eyes I could see in perfect resolution the pair of documents I had photographed just a couple of weeks before as they lay on the very blotter where his hands still rested. My sympathy with his plight was undiminished, as silently I called him a two-faced lying, deceiving physagogue.
It was in Z126, a first level zoology course, Instinct, Training, Captivity, Husbandry, that I studied the behaviour of giant cats. As any lion-tamer will tell you, there is never a point with a lion when you can be sure that the cat will not attack. You may have perfected your act, repeated it as many times every day over the years as you have seen fit. Every time the cat has complied, knocked the beach ball back to you with its forehead and taken its reward. But you can never be sure that next time it will comply. Maybe next time it will lash out with a paw and strip the flesh from your ribs. And this is always more likely if there is an added reminder of the cat’s instinctive behaviour. In other words, you can condition a response, but there is always an unpredictable instinct whose greater power can take over if it is baited.
In current circumstances I wasn’t sure who might be the trainer or who might be the trained. There were at least four candidates for both posts, some of which would not qualify if the advert was specifically for a cat. Months ago, when Suzie first arrived in our Spanish sunshine, Rosie the Sundance retirement retreat, we were the spectators. Any analysis at the time would have Mick Watson as the tamer and Olga Pushova certainly the cat to be tamed. Mick seemed to be in control. He called the shots. There was never any doubt, of course, that at any moment if Olga should turn on him then he would be hurt, even mauled to death, but we never picked up any suggestion that such a drastic transformation might be on the cards. Looking back, it seems strange to realise that Mick’s offer of The Castle to Suzie only strengthened our assumption of his control. That it might be an admission of weakness never entered our heads.
But in recent months it has been Suzie who has called the shots. Throughout, Mick has always stressed how little profit came from The Castle and how much arose out of Paradise. He was patronising at first, even condescending, his manner communicating that no matter how hard Suzie might work, no matter how successful she became, nothing she did could ever challenge the status quo. Paradise was top of the pile and The Castle was some way down: it could not compete. As I write, Mick’s words continue to resonate. They repeat and repeat, recalled from encounters in The Castle, in Paradise, in his Montesinos fortress, on the street, in passing. It was a conscious and carefully planned preparation for failure, his way of preparing a soft landing for his once-beloved Suzie when her efforts came inevitably and as expected to nought.
And then, when the ‘under new management’ signs went up alongside the new pink flashing ‘Poncho Suzie’s’, the punters voted with their feet and came back to their old haunt in droves. It was a simple blend, aimed at a varied audience, but effectively created four nightspots in one, depending on the time you went there. No-one but Suzie could have carried that off. She could sell anything to anyone, and the punters would always go away satisfied, convinced that’s what they wanted in the first place. Suzie was over her personal moon, of course, and so was I. And, as the months have passed, she’s gone from strength to strength. And then the visits started.
Suddenly Suzie was a focus of interest. People started to call round, people who you think wouldn’t set foot in a place like The Castle in a month of Sundays. Johnny Squibb and his lads were round there regularly. In a way you would expect that. There’s an asset that needs a bit of protecting, after all, and what better way than to have the insurance brokers underwrite their own policy by showing their faces every now and again?
But George and horsey Elizabeth Jones? In the past few weeks they’ve almost become regulars. They only have one drink each. He has a brandy and she has a g’n’t, but they stay for a couple of hours, just watching what goes on. Now of course you would never expect a thoroughly middle-class, pin-striped professional and his tweedy, home counties wife, people who would normally be unlikely to admit that they had ever been to Benidorm, to want to sit through one of Randy Sandy’s late night conjuring sessions. And, if truth were told, you wouldn’t expect them to rush to a mid-afternoon sixties karaoke session, at times join in and then stay for the bingo! You should have seen the smile on her face when she won the snowball! The fifty euros, I noticed, however, went straight into his bulging wallet. And they’ve been back again. They were there just a couple of days ago and sat right through a session by Abba Cliché and then half of Joe Storey’s Bernard Manning Tribute, which doesn’t even start until half past ten. And to have managed half of Joe’s act is an achievement in itself when you’ve only had the one drink. I would never have expected it.
Add to that a recognition of the local rule that Spaniards never go to the Brit bars and a true contradiction threatens to arise. I have seen an occasional table full of youngsters outside the Frog, or sometimes the Dogs. You would expect that. If they are here on holiday, why go to a local bar and pay three times as much for a pint of the same beer? But then the locals don’t usually drink pints, so it’s not something you see often. I’ve also witnessed food being sampled. When the Brits come to Spain, they invariably make comments about garlic or chewy seafood. I’ve seen a lad from Bromaton - you’d always pick the accent - out parading his fashion, dressed in a pair of tried and trusted trainers and equally tried and trusted football shorts and no more, except for a pair of metallic red Oakleys casually strewn across his pate, offering their gesture to the sun. He was pushing a pram with side-by-side twins, accompanied by his missus, who was about a week from shoulder to shoulder and his mother in law who shared her daughter’s genes and, by the look of the fit, her jeans as well. He belched. Now it wasn’t a little ‘Oops, sorry..’ affair. This, in the middle of a crowded street in Benidorm’s old town, next to a sign advertising three fresh oysters and a glass of Rioja, and another offering Catalan chocolate snails as the day’s special, was a resounding, open-mouthed, belly-driven, rich and throaty ‘better get on my bike’. He turned to his spouse and said the predictable, “Better out than in,” but then immediately grimaced in apparent pain and followed with “God, smell that garlic, and I’ve only had cornflakes for breakfast.”
Now that is the standard Brit reac
tion of fear and loathing to any food that doesn’t come in a polystyrene box. Imagine then how average Spaniards, used to griddled cuttlefish drizzled with olive oil, garlic and parsley, chorizos flambéd in brandy at the table, roast baby lamb sizzling in a cazuela and seafood zarzuelas cooked with razor clams, mussels, and percebes sticking out like miniature sheep’s feet, imagine how they react to a menu that offers real Bisto gravy, original British Nescafe, and with no accent, and authentic McCain chips. Imagine, therefore, my complete speechlessness when none other than Pedro the Mayor and his shy and silent wife, Alicia, arrived in The Castle. Then, a few seconds later, after being non-plussed by the idea that they had to go to the bar to order their own drinks, they placed a request for a still mineral water and a small beer, which was a perfectly reasonable order. But when Pedro followed that up with a request to see the menu, I was beginning to feel quite flabbergasted. He pointed at the multi-coloured chalk board over the bar and in his impeccable English, sounding more like Surbiton than Santander, asked, “Please, what is this mushy peas?” The difference, which made him Santander rather than Surbiton, however, was that he actually pronounced the u. Suzie tried her best, but the more she explained, the more confusion spread across Alicia’s face. They ordered a portion and a side-plate of chips with sliced Warburton’s and marg. They even ate the chips. But the expression of incredulity that spread across their faces when that bright green amorphous pile appeared, suggesting as it does the presence of something trapped, the facial expressions were something to savour. I did think his comment about its being more usefully employed to erect buildings was a bit over the top, however. Imagine my utter disbelief, then, when they came back - repeatedly!
Only Olga, my goal, did not set foot in the place. She was never even mentioned by any of the others. I did make references to her when it was Mick who poked his nose into the pub, but he always seemed reticent. She was otherwise engaged. Business, as ever, was so strong in Paradise that she was always tied up. I took him at his word. The scenes that this conjured have kept me happy for hours.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 41