by Will Smith
‘Use my quallies then.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘We’ll do it together. You find the money, I’ll buy it for you.’
‘Buy what, though?’
‘The Crow’s Nest is for sale.’
‘How much?’
‘Sixty.’
‘So I’d need a six-grand deposit. Plus another four or so for the refurb. That place hasn’t been touched since the seventies. Anyway, that would make you my boss. I don’t think either of us could handle that.’
‘We’d be partners. Mine on paper only. I run the restaurant, you do the rest. And we split any sale fifty-fifty.’
‘Oh, Christ, Danny. This is some weird future fantasy you’ve worked out. How many times? I don’t need you to save me.’
‘I’m looking at it as a business proposition. You’re bright, Lou, brighter than me. And tougher. I don’t want to spend my life chopping carrots and reheating shepherd’s pies so some hotelier can own three cars and a pool, but that’s all I’ve got ahead of me. You can pull me out too.’
‘Pull you out of what? You’re Jersey born and bred. You’re fine.’
‘We’re not all fucking millionaires and tax exiles. Some of us work bloody hard, same as your lot.’
‘Do not compare yourself to my lot. My lot have been shat on. How many of your school-friends have been stabbed or banged up?’
She started to feel hungry so opened her purse to check how much cash she had left. She found two pounds and a scrap of paper scrawled with Le Petit Palais, La Rue de Grassière, Trinity. Rob’s home address. She had surreptitiously obtained it from the office before she left the Bretagne. She hadn’t known why. A vicious letter to his duped wife? An anonymous threat? A dog turd in a box? She looked back at the café where the parents of the local family were wolfing their food, the wife clutching her handbag on her lap rather than risk putting it on the floor against her chair. What did she expect would happen? That it would be hooked and tossed into the throng of the great unwashed who would close ranks like a League of Thieves from a nineteenth-century romance? This Island had branded her since she had first touched down, a two-star accent in a five-star town: Scousers were thieves, untrustworthy. Very well, if that’s what the Island wanted, maybe that’s what the Island should get.
She strode back to her bedsit and used the communal phone in the hall to dial a cab, then went back to her room and took a tenner from Danny’s wallet, leaving him an IOU and a promise to be in touch in the week.
On the way into the belly of the Island, sunbeams darted through the spindly branches of the wind-stripped trees, adding to her headache. She shifted to the other side of the car and wound down the window to let the cool breeze enliven and narrow her sense of purpose. This had the bonus of drowning out the insinuations of the prying local driver.
‘Friend’s house?’
‘Yeah, going for lunch.’
‘Nice houses round there.’
She wanted to say, ‘Keep the car running while I rob them,’ but settled for ‘Hm.’
The houses on the hawthorn-edged lane began to thin out and swell. As, she imagined, did the hair and girth of the male owners, fattened by the confluence of middle age and wealth. The waists of their wives would slim with the need to retain the attention and resources of the tailored sloths.
‘Just pull up here,’ she said. She paid and got out in the road.
The white house looked big but, then, anywhere looked big compared to the council flat in which she’d grown up. It had had two windows: the front and the back. This house had twelve on the front, all with wooden shutters painted gold to match the fake Victorian gas lamps that lined the snaking drive at intervals too close for the desired effect to work.
A metallic green Renault 5 approached, its indicator flashing to turn in, so she continued walking towards the next house to muster her courage. After it had pulled into Rob’s drive, she snuck back to see who it was. She knew who it wasn’t: there was no way that the man she had fucked would drive a car like that.
She peeked round the trunk of a beech tree that stood at the edge of the front garden and saw a rowing couple get out of the now parked car. The woman was attractive, in spite of her frown, which looked to Louise as though it had become the default setting for her face. Their raised voices drifted over.
‘I can’t believe you only mention this now. Where’s the letter?’
‘Back at the flat.’
‘And he said he was a pupil? I’ve got to go back now.’
‘You can read it later. This is embarrassing.’
‘No – I’ve got to go now. I’m sorry … I’ll come straight back – we’re just down the road.’
‘Fucking hell, Colin, why does everyone have to come before me? Fine, piss off. And don’t bother coming back. I’ll get a taxi.’
‘I’ll be back …’
As he jumped back into the car and began to reverse clumsily at speed, Louise ran forward to hide behind one of the large bushes that pocked the garden. He headed out of the drive and back the way he had come, while she spied on the woman she supposed was Colin’s girlfriend or wife. She watched her collect herself, then ring the bell. The door was opened by a blonde woman in a Breton top and white jeans with a gold chain-link belt. She was pretty, but the kind of pretty you could buy. Rob hovered in the background. Louise bristled at the sound of indiscriminate shrieking. She knew their sort: they were finicky orderers and bad tippers. As the door with its large fish knocker shut behind them, she thought of how people like that didn’t know they were fucking born. She’d love to choke the forced shriek in that stupid bitch’s throat and give her a real howl of pain.
She collected herself. The wife wasn’t the enemy. Rob was. She pitied the poor cow. She looked at the cars parked in front of the house and in the open garage. A Porsche, a small jeep, some kind of classic car, an old soft-top VW Beetle and a sporty yellow cabriolet. More cars than her dad had owned in his life.
The phone was ringing as she eventually approached the house. She heard Rob yell that he’d get it and caught a glimpse of him through the glass panels at either side of the door that looked on to the front hall, which was bigger than her living quarters. It sported an oak sideboard the size of her bed, on which sat a large pink conch shell, a piece of white coral and a golden bowl overflowing with sunhats and sunglasses. He had picked up the phone and had his back to her.
‘Hi … Oh, hi, you going to be joining us eventually? … Sure, I’ll get her.’ He held the receiver away. ‘Emma, Colin for you!’
As Emma approached, her view of Louise blocked by Rob, he pointed at the phone with his spare hand, motioned ‘ssh’, then opened his arm for an embrace. Emma allowed him to kiss her, while Colin waited at the other end of the line. Louise stood still and smiled: this prick couldn’t be asking for it more if he tried. As Rob moved aside and Emma took the call, she spotted Louise and pointed, then turned her back, terror in her eyes.
‘Hi … I put it on the coffee table … Well, you must have moved it without knowing what it was …’
Rob caught sight of Louise and his jaw dropped, as if he’d just been told he had thirty seconds to live. She moved in front of the door, which he opened, then stepped through, shutting it behind him.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘What the hell are you doing? She’s not your wife, is she? I’m pretty sure your wife was the blonde who opened the door. And Emma has a husband, or at least a boyfriend. Called Colin. I was over there when he dropped her off. And I heard him ring and saw you two kiss while he was waiting to talk to her. Classy.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Let’s talk about what you want. I assume you don’t want a divorce, or at least a couple of long nights in the doghouse. Mind you, a doghouse round here might be roomier than most people’s flats.’
‘Look, I’m sorry about what happened. I was drunk and—’
‘Drunk when you fucked me, or dr
unk when you sacked me?’
‘I understood you were well compensated.’
‘Now you’re just making me feel like a whore.’
‘You’re the one making you feel like a whore. You already got us to double the offer.’
‘We can keep insulting each other like this, but I’m just worried your wife might hear and wonder who I am. You’re already going to have to explain me to Emma.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Well, now that I’ve seen your cars and your house, I reckon I can name my price and you wouldn’t feel it.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Cheaper than what happens if I tell your wife about us, and also tell her about you and Emma. And Colin. Quite a lot to lose.’
Rob tensed. He didn’t look the sort to hit her, but you could never tell. Let him try – she’d go straight for the nuts.
He breathed out. ‘Just go, I’ll be in touch.’
‘Why not make a date right now? Tomorrow night, the Black Dog, for old times’ sake. This time just drinks, though, no need to book a room. Be there at nine.’
Louise turned and walked all the way home. She arrived forty-five minutes later, pride restored, hangover vanquished. Danny was still sprawled on her floor. She nudged him awake. ‘Morning,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about the kind offer you made last night, and I’d like to accept.’
5
ROB
Saturday, 10 October 1987
‘Sorry, Sal, got caught up with a lost tourist looking for the zoo in our driveway.’
‘The zoo? That’s bloody miles away! Why can’t grockles read a map?’
‘On the plus side, the more they drive, the more they’re spending on our petrol. Right, where was I? Drinks. Emma, what’s your poison?’
In the twenty seconds it took to walk back to the lounge following Louise’s departure, Rob strained to conjure his charm and mask the depth charge of panic that she had set off. Emma was just sitting down when he walked back in. He quelled a second wave of horror at the thought that she might have hung around to hear what Louise had said to him, then segued into suave-host mode, regaining the cocksure aura of a man who wasn’t going to remove his hand from a wall at a party without a kiss, all wrapped up with the smile women told him reminded them of Tom Cruise. He told some of his conquests that by coincidence his surname was ‘Maverick’, Cruise’s handle in Top Gun. Underneath, he was reeling from the seismic shock to his swagger. What had just happened? How had it happened? He was used to sailing close to the wind, but this was a capsizing.
With the drinks orders in, he went to forage for ice. He thought of feigning a lack of lemons and jumping into the Porsche to burn some rubber and clear his mind, but knew he had to maintain an air of normality. He returned to stand in front of the chrome drinks cabinet, where he fixed Emma a gin and tonic and Sally a Malibu and pineapple juice, all the while thinking, What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? Luckily the women were engrossed in a conversation about the ageless beauty of their former French teacher, so he could take his time with the drinks and steady his flayed nerves with a Jack Daniel’s and Coke.
‘How old was she when she was teaching us, then?’
‘She must have been in her fifties.’
‘No way, Em. She looked thirty, if that.’
‘But she is actually French, and they just age better. They don’t give up like we do. She was always dressing younger, but not in a muttony way.’
His extra-curricular fucks were not supposed to know his name or address. Most of them thought he was from Guernsey, for Christ’s sake. To his way of thinking, he hadn’t been lying the day before when he’d told Emma he hadn’t slept with anyone but her and Sally. She’d specifically brought up her tally of sexual partners ‘in the Island’. And in the Island he’d slept with just those two. And Louise, but she wasn’t from the Island, so he reckoned he could transfer her to the off-Island tally, a considerable number that nobody needed to know about. When he went to France with his mates on a jolly, or flew to conferences on hotel management, or just went to look at upmarket establishments in Saint-Tropez or Monte Carlo, the sort of places he wanted Jersey to compete with, that was another matter. Off came the ring, and more often than not the name would change as a secondary precaution. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Sally: he really did, even though she could give him a hard time. He had only started dating her to hurt Emma, but Sally’s devotion had knocked him out. She worshipped him – at least, she had at first. Probably because she was punching above her weight, although she really had morphed into a stunner. But they’d been together since they were seventeen, and there was a whole world of women out there. She was great as a homemaker, but it felt wrong to put that homemaker on all fours and pound into her in time to Robert Palmer, as was his wont.
‘So now she’s, what – fifty?’
‘No, Fee told me she’s retiring, which makes her at least sixty.’
‘Must be early retirement. I’m still convinced she’s forty.’
‘I’ll get Colin to check – he knows a couple of the teachers there – but I’m telling you she’s sixty.’
Why, oh, fucking why had he broken one of his three rules with Louise?
Never go lower than a nine.
Never in the Island.
Never fuck them more than once.
This last rule stopped anyone forming an attachment, and also made for rather frenetic sex; he always aimed to have them in all positions so that he wouldn’t feel the need to go back for more.
‘I saw her a few months ago in Voisins. My God, if I look that good at her age it’ll be a miracle. Never married, though, did she?’
‘Far from a spinster …’
Emma sounded perky. Thank Christ Louise hadn’t spooked her. Tough girl, Emma. If she could front out their affair before their partners, adding Louise to the mix shouldn’t be a stretch. Although if Emma knew he’d slept with her that could be tricky, but not insurmountable. The bigger question was how to deal with Louise. He was buggered if he was going to give her any more money. It would feel like he was paying for sex, and he’d never do that – might as well hang a white flag on his dick.
‘Bit of a goer, was she?’
‘Well, again according to Fee, she did that French thing of taking a series of lovers.’
‘Not just a French thing from what I hear. Ironic that Fee should say that.’
‘What do you mean? Sally, don’t pull that face! Come on, spill!’
‘I heard she was shagging Eric Le Maistre.’
‘You’re kidding! But he’s a Jurat, and married! Can’t afford the scandal. And such a bald little thing. How do you know?’
‘Can’t remember, but whispers turn to roars in this Island.’
‘Not that I’d ever cheat, but if I did I’d make sure I did it off the Rock.’
Christ, what did Emma mean by that? Don’t talk about how you’d have an affair, you dumb bitch! Unless she was doing that thing of hiding in plain sight? Yes, clever girl. Oh, God, what had he been thinking, starting an affair with her? That had broken rules two and three. Pity initially. There was something about Emma that was so down, so unfulfilled, and so palpably unfucked, that he had seen it as his duty to do what Colin couldn’t. Plus, since Colin would never grant him the last word in any argument, he took immense pleasure in claiming the ultimate, if silent, victory by unmanning him in the arena of his own marriage. And he couldn’t deny that Emma was an amazing fuck. Maybe the whole double-guilt thing of betraying her husband and friend meant she really put her back into it. He himself had no guilt, only fear of being caught, which was very different.
‘Here you go.’ He turned round with the drinks.
‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ asked Sally.
‘Yeah, I’m great.’
‘You look like you’re sweating a bit.’
‘Oh, I had a quick peek at the chops, got a blast of hot air.’
‘For God’s sake, Rob, I’ve t
old you not to open the oven when the meat’s in there. You lose the temperature.’
‘Not with that oven.’
‘Right. It can subvert convection, can it?’
‘Con-what?’
‘Convection? Movement of heat through gases and fluids. Honestly, Em, he bangs on about his cars and his hi-fi but he hasn’t a bloody clue how they work. I know more about them than he does, just from home economics. And, as you remember, I hardly paid any attention in that class. Or any class, come to think of it!’
‘Men just won’t ask for help, will they?’
‘What’s up with Colin?’ asked Rob, anxious to throw the attention on to someone else. He hadn’t even opened the stupid oven and he didn’t give two shits how the bloody thing worked. He was used to enjoying these lunches, seeing the victim of his cuckoldry at close quarters, not having his two lovers hold him up as an example of an idiot man. He was fucking them both: how could he be an idiot?
‘Some work thing. A pupil dropped something round yesterday and I forgot to pass it on.’
‘Right.’ That had bought him nothing. Fucking Colin. Such a useless prick. He didn’t even need to be there to kill the mood of a room. Just the mention of him cast a dreary pall that had everyone shifting in their seats. ‘Well, let’s not wait for him to start the party.’ Rob pressed PLAY on the remote control of his new Technics SL-P1000 CD player. He’d let slip the price and specs when Colin arrived – be good to get a rise out of him. Stupid cunt was still using tapes.
‘Oh, not this! I hate it – it gives me a bloody headache,’ moaned Sally.
‘Gave the band a headache too. They recorded each individual string of the guitars separately. I think it sounds bloody amazing.’
‘Who is it?’ asked Emma.
‘Def Leppard.’
‘Put something else on. Not boys’ music. Let’s have Belinda Carlisle.’
‘Why don’t we let Emma choose?’
‘Here’s a test, darling. You can have your music on your new toy if you let me take the oak down at the farmhouse.’ Sally turned to Emma. ‘He still won’t budge. I mean, why would you prefer a ghastly tree that blocks out all the light in the front rooms to an illuminated fountain in the centre of a circular drive?’