Again – as much as I would have liked to defend a mate – I couldn’t disagree. Archie was an idiot and I’d told him he was an idiot. He’d pointed out, though, that he didn’t have any girl or any kid, he had no siblings and both his parents were dead. There was just him and he was beholden to no one. His argument being that he wasn’t letting anyone down by being an idiot. No one apart from himself and, right now, me, for the awkward position he seemed to have put me in.
“He knows all that,” I told Luca. “He knows it and he’ll pay back the money. I have his absolute word on that. He just needs this McGuinness bloke to stop leaning on him so heavily in the short term. Then in the long term he’ll get the money. You’ll get the money.”
“Fancy words pay no debts,” he intoned.
“He’ll do it. He gave me his word and I believe him.”
His eyebrow rose. “With the requisite interest? Which I guarantee you won’t be cheap.”
“Of course.”
He took three deep breaths and then raised his glass up high and stared at it under the spotlight of the bar. It was the only truly bright light currently switched on. Everywhere else was half-light and shadows. The place was cavernous and could easily seat three hundred punters. Generally, though, they lurked in the darkness and just stared at the stage – so brightly lit it could have been the centre of an A-bomb blast – and watched Luca’s various voluptuous girls take off just as many clothes as the local authority allowed. Although frequently Luca’s bombshells went a lot further.
“The thing with good whisky, really good whisky, is that you can tell its quality by just looking at it.” His gaze was lost in that glass. “It needs to have the right texture under the light, the right consistency. I’m no expert yet – it’s not as if I was born to the finer things in life, after all – but I’m getting better. I’m getting better at telling which are the good blends, and which are the bad. I can do it just by looking at them, just by smelling them.”
Lowering the glass again, his jaw set while his eyes narrowed and the full hardness of the man came into his face.
His voice, though, remained soft, like he was stroking me with a cut-throat razor. “It’s the same with people. It’s getting so I can tell the good ones and the bad ones just by staring at them. You, I like, Joe. Even if we didn’t have a somewhat shared past, I’d know I could rely on you. You’re the kind of stolid, good-as-his-word bloke that should always be relied on. This Archie Sandibanks, on the other hand – I’ve never seen him but from what I hear, he doesn’t impress me much. Remember all those small men who used to get their pay packets and come down from the Valleys for trouble in Cardiff? Friday night thugs the lot of them. No brains and no impulse control. Why would I have trusted those worthless little men back then, and why the fuck should I trust your shit of a little friend now?”
His hand was gripping the edge of the bar. Despite the coolness of his tone, it was clear that he was just holding his rage back, that all it would need was wrong turn and he’d snap the polished wood of the bar into bits.
“You’ll get the money,” I assured him. “He’s promised me that. It’s just going to take a bit of time. Please, he’s asked me to come here as a favour. That’s how serious he was. He wants to deal with the organ-grinder rather than the...”
I broke off as his brow furrowed and his gaze darkened. An H formed at the top of his nose, like a punctuation mark between two gleaming balls of malice. “Are you likening my men to animals, Joe?”
“Sorry, I really don’t mean to cause any offence.”
Suddenly, like the very changing of the wind, his mood lifted. The threatening storm clouds were swept away, and his smile when it came was as if full of delight for the world.
“Fine,” he said. “As a favour for you, I’ll put the Irish reprobate back in his box. I’ll pay him off from my pocket, assume the debt myself. Which means, of course, that your friend, Sandibanks, now owes me the money. Tell him that the next call he receives will be from men in suits, carrying fountain pens and ledgers. They are going to sit with him and work out exactly what he has to do to pay me. Make sure he understands that they won’t take any shit. That he has to be straight and honest with them, and they’ll know if he tries to spout any self-serving nonsense. Make sure he understands that they will have suits and fountain pens and ledgers and knuckle-dusters, so if he does get it into his head to for some reason mess around, there will be trouble.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And of course, make it clear to him that there’s to be no gambling for him from this second on. If I so much as hear that he’s put on a bet for the value of a single cigarette with his next-door neighbour on what tomorrow’s weather will be, then I’ll have both his legs broken just as starters. And since you’re the one vouching for him, Joe, I might have your legs broken as well.”
I stared at him and tried not to shift back on my stool.
Luca laughed and squeezed my arm. “Only joking, bach, we’re old friends, aren’t we?” He didn’t sound like he was joking at all.
Then he clinked his glass again to mine, as if that alone was going to crumble the tension.
“How’s your mam?” he asked with a grin.
I tried to smile fulsomely back and, I think, just about managed it after a big gulp of booze. “She’s fine. Still holding a grudge that I moved to England.”
“She doesn’t let things go easily, that one, does she?”
Luca may have made his criminal reputation in Cardiff, but I think he grew up in Newport or Bridgend or somewhere like that. As far as I knew, he’d never even met my mother. I didn’t raise that point, though.
“How’s your little girl?”
A real smile pushed my lips just thinking of her. “She’s fine, I think. I’ve been a bit busy recently and not seen her. I keep meaning to get down there, but other stuff keeps getting in the way.”
“Her and her mam are still just down in Lewisham, aren’t they?”
“And her grandma,” I said ruefully. “I know it’s not far, but it’s trying to make the time.”
“You should,” he said, pointing his index finger at me, issuing an order. “Family is important. Children especially. I’d be lost without my boys.”
He had two sons (or was it three?) with a wife he’d brought with him from Cardiff. There were lots of girlfriends on the side, though, including most of the club’s scantily clad cabaret, allegedly.
“I will do.” I nodded.
“Tell me, which does your mam hate more? The fact that your daughter is English or that she’s a bastard?”
I shrugged and tried not to show any irritation at his choice of words. “It’s difficult to truly say. Things have been tense between me and my mum for a while. But I’ll take Daphne back home to meet her one day, and I’m sure her heart will melt then.”
He grinned at me. “And how’s the lovely Eden St. Michel? I’m guessing she’s the one who’s been keeping you so busy?”
The knowingness of his tone was enough to send me for another large gulp of my whisky. “You’ve heard about me and her, then?”
“Of course I have, bach. Everybody in the know has heard about you and the glamorous Miss St. Michel. I think it’s sweet. Impressive, even. You’ve come a long way from courting that red-headed barmaid at The Anglesey, haven’t you? What was her name again?”
As if he didn’t remember – he’d had a dalliance with her himself. “Doris,” I told him.
“Ah yes, Doris. And now you’re with the lovely Eden St. Michel, which is a definite step up in the world – even if she was once apparently called Edna Michaels. Tell me, as a mere mortal who has never got to bed a film star, is she all you’d imagine?”
I quickly swooped my lips again to the rim of my glass. “She’s great,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be so coy, bach. Women have different flavours. We’re both men of the world, we know that. I imagine a proper movie star girlfriend is sweet and rich enough to send sh
ivers through all five of your senses.”
Maybe I blushed, even as I tried not to. “We’re having a lot of fun together.”
Luca finished his drink with one heavy swallow. “Ever so chivalrous, aren’t you? It must be love. Of course you owe me now. Maybe I’ll make meeting your girlfriend my payback. Or maybe I’ll make it a night with one of her film star friends. How about Kim Novak? Does Eden know her? Those two could be twins.”
I shrugged. Eden was far prettier than Kim Novak. “I’ve no idea.”
“Well, check with her. A night on the town with you and me and two lookalike film stars, it would be a treat, wouldn’t it? Two lads who used to ponce cigarettes and coffees down at The Hayes, and suddenly we’re the most envied pair in the smoke of London. Just think of it!”
Hoping that my smile wasn’t completely dead, I took another final sip of my drink. “Sure,” I said. “Sounds good.”
“Or maybe – if Kim Novak is too busy in Hollywood – I’ll just ask you for a kiss of your film star girlfriend’s sweet lips? You wouldn’t mind, would you? That’s not too much for an old mate to ask, is it? Particularly when that old mate has gone out of his way to help you.”
I just stared at him, my knuckles tensed beneath the bar, and hoped that I was keeping my face completely blank.
Chapter Nine
The first night we were together again, Eden and I barely spoke. There’d been too many phone calls of lust-filled words and frustration to make talking a priority. Instead we tore each other’s clothes off and went at it again and again between her sheets. It was the day after that we finally got around to talking, lying lazy and spent on the bed. The impossible-to-ignore subject of better people for me to punch came up quickly. I’ll be honest, as much as I hated myself for it, I was desperate for her to tell me. And I could see that, no matter how cool she tried to be, she was anxious to unburden herself too. It was something hanging there between us now: we both knew that we shouldn’t touch it, but it was too hard to resist.
“Well, Raymond Wilder would be a good start.”
“Raymond Wilder?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
It was in the small hours of the morning that she told me about the photographs. Curled up in my arms, she awkwardly went through what had happened.
I’m not proud of my reaction, but the first time I heard about those photos, it excited me. Even though within the last hour I’d had her and we’d both screamed with delight, I actually felt the stirrings again.
But then I always felt a stirring for her. The thought of her just stood in the kitchen doing nothing got my juices pumping. She aroused me in everything she did.
I knew, though, that she wouldn’t appreciate me rolling her over right then, and so I concentrated on her eyes. They didn’t sparkle like they normally did. They looked sad.
It was that sadness which killed my lust, which made me focus.
“I was younger back then, Joe,” she whispered. “So much younger and so much stupider. And I was more excitable and I did things I shouldn’t have. Things I now terribly regret.”
No doubt a small scowl had crossed my face at the very mention of his name. Raymond Wilder and I had had a run-in about a year ago. As ludicrous as it might sound, I’d been a stand-in for him on his war film, The Valiant Three. Ludicrous because it would take two and a half Ray Wilders to make one of me. Apparently the way I ran and threw myself from an explosion wasn’t to Wilder’s liking. It made his character look weak, he thought. Despite the fact I left it to the last possible second to leap from the blast. After I’d spent three afternoons being blown half a dozen feet into the air, Wilder stamped his delicate little feet and insisted I be replaced by a more “manly stuntman”. He didn’t see the irony of issuing that order while sat in a silk dressing gown and a pair of shorts, having his shoulders massaged by a Kraut named Hans.
I hadn’t been a great reader of the gossip items in the newspapers before Cheesewright, and so hadn’t realised Eden even knew Wilder, let alone that once upon a time they’d been linked as a couple.
My eyes just stared at the tears in hers and I tried not to let any jealousy rise up. What Eden had done before we met me was none of my business, I had no claim on that.
Still, the more the facts sank in, the less I liked the thought of actual photographs existing. As if my Eden was nothing more than a model in a below-the-counter number from a Soho tobacconist.
“What do these photos look like?” I asked. “Do you have copies?”
She stared at me coolly, heavy eyelids blinking once. “Why would I have copies?”
“They’re of you.”
“But they were made for his benefit, as a gesture to him, a gift to him. I saw them, of course, but to have my own copies would have been strange. They were our boudoir pictures to show the love and passion of our romance. Oh, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. Right then I was in love and I was in lust and I just wasn’t thinking.”
“So, Ray Wilder still has these photographs?”
I asked the question knowing that I really didn’t want the answer. There were lots of photos of her looking sexy, after all. Her last film had seen a 10ft-high photo of her in a tight sweater displayed on the sides of buildings right across the country. Stranger at St. Paul’s had used a publicity shot of her in a gorgeous black dress, slit up the side to show both shapely thighs. Men lusted after Eden all the time. I was the only man allowed to actually see her as nature intended, though.
“Oh yes,” she told me. “He still has them. Nearly every time I’ve seen him since – and Lord knows I do all I can to avoid running into Ray Wilder – he likes to remind me of the fact. He says things like: it’s the second time he’s seen me that day, but the first time was much more satisfying. A leer just plastered across his face.”
I wasn’t an innocent. I’d seen blue magazines, even watched the odd movie when some bloke had one and a projector to hand. But even if the girls in those magazines or those films had been attractive, I thought of them as nothing more than slappers making a few extra quid. Tarts, basically, who didn’t know any better. To suddenly have to imagine Eden in their company burnt me up.
“Is he just trying to get a rise out of you? Or do you think he genuinely still looks at them? Do you seriously think that that bastard still gets them out and stares at you?”
She ran her fingers down my arm, soothing and comforting. “You’re not going to like this.”
“What?”
“He shows them around. You know, to his friends and his cohorts. To those other men he wants to impress, I suppose.”
I sat bolt upright on the bed. Trying not to lose control, trying not to scare her with my anger. “How the hell do you know this?”
“Remarks have been made.” Even though this was clearly horrible for her to talk about, her voice stayed eerily calm. There was no more emotion than her usual hint of disappointment with the world. “Sometimes subtle, sometimes overt. But however it’s done, the message is clear – Ray Wilder has shown them compromising pictures of me and they liked it.”
“Are you actually serious?”
“That’s just the kind of man he is.”
My fingers reached for my temples. I’d been so happy, a little drunk, sated after sex, but now I was angry. I was absolutely bloody furious. She was my woman and nobody could treat her like that.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“I didn’t know how you’d react. It happened before we knew each other, and I didn’t know if you’d really care.”
“Of course I bloody care! You’re my girl! I don’t want some dirty bastard staring at you like that. I don’t want anyone seeing mucky pictures of you!”
I shook my head, still unable to credit what I’d heard. Eden’s arms were wrapped tight around me. Her thigh had curled out from under the bedsheet and I stared at her hip.
“What about that?” I asked, pointing at her scar. “Is he responsible for
that too?”
“No.” She shook her head, adamant. “Only the photos.”
“Only?” I scoffed.
Even now her voice stayed calm. “Pretty much since the camera first clicked, Joe, I’ve regretted what I did those evenings with him. Regretted it to the depths of my soul. I’ve never liked the fact he had those pictures. Hated it every single second. Knowing that he could hold them over me, mock me with them. But what could I do? It’s not like he was going to hand them over to me, was it?”
“I suppose not,” I said. “But I bet you he’ll bloody give them to me.”
Chapter Ten
Through Morty, their shared agent, Eden got Ray Wilder’s new address. It was a small two up, two down on a mews in Mayfair which must have cost him all the wages from his failed excursion to Hollywood A few years back he’d been given a contract by MGM and left Britain with the bad grace typical of the man. Once out there, he’d played the fourth lead in an Elizabeth Taylor film, was fired from another movie and had a third barely released. He was back talking about how much how much he’d missed dear old Blighty within eighteen months. Still, it seemed like he’d got this lovely house out of it. The following night, after a day spent seething and brooding – and then steeling myself with a few drinks – I smacked my open palm against his bright red front door.
Eden St. Michel Page 6