The Life and Loves of Gringo Greene

by David Carter

  He started the car and drove away, heading for the ring road and the Henderson Country Club beyond.

  ‘Is that another new suit?’ she said, as he threw the car down the dual carriageway, checking him out from the side of her eyes.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘had this for ages,’ mimicking her voice, a little skit that was not lost on her, as she let slip a girlish giggle.

  The Henderson Country Club was just as before; reeking of expensiveness and opulence which was precisely what Gringo was after. There were three guys on the door, suited and booted to impress. The young one from last time, the over officious one, was missing, and Gringo guessed that Richie had given him the elbow, for he wouldn’t tolerate any member of staff who didn’t treat his customers as royalty. There was another guy there too, a stranger, younger, but taller and better built, a guy who demonstrated his finer manners by remaining silent.

  ‘Hello, Mister Greene,’ said Richie cheerfully, taking a pace toward them. ‘So pleased to see you again and your beautiful young lady,’ and he smiled a little flirtatiously, thought Gringo, at Glen. ‘Show them through to the bar, John,’ and the younger guy held open the doors as Glen swept through with Gringo close behind.

  She took in the palatial bar; dripping with mahogany and marble and thick pale green curtains. It was exactly as she remembered, and it was good to be back.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ said Gringo, as they stood amongst a busy crowd of beautiful people at the bar. Some of the women put Glen to shame, not in the looks department; no one could do that so far as he was concerned, but in the dressing league. Three women standing beside Gringo wore full length ball gowns, low cut frocks that might have come from some glitzy movie or a classic novel. They must have cost a small fortune; glamorous clothing that Glen itched to wear, yearned to have occasions where such dresses were necessary. She could do glamour as well as any woman, but rarely found the opportunity.

  ‘Oh, Gringo,’ she said. ‘I wish you’d told me we were coming here. I feel so underdressed now.’

  There was real concern on her face and in her voice.

  ‘Think nothing of it, babe. You’re the most beautiful woman in the room,’ a remark that tripped off his tongue without a hint of flattery, a remark that caused all three of the model type women standing close by to turn and stare at the girl the dark guy had referred to as: You’re the most beautiful woman in the room. Bloody cheek!

  She was okay, they thought, as they snootily looked down their patrician noses at Glen’s Building Society Manager-like clobber, but she was not in their league. No way. She hadn’t made much of an effort to dress up for the guy. He wasn’t bad though, at least two of them considered that, as they waited for their waffling Rodneys to return from the Gents. Jesus, some of the blokes spent more time in front of the mirrors than the girls ever did. Blame Nivea for that! The women turned away and shared glances and snide grins, and sipped their drinks and thanked their lucky stars that they had been able and willing to buy a decent dress.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ Gringo repeated.

  ‘Can we sit down?’

  ‘Sure,’ and he pointed to a vacant table against the far wall. It was set before a huge painting of a Civil War Cavalier family, historical figures Richie always insisted were his actual forebears, when in truth it had been painted by his first serious girlfriend, a crazy French student from the art college who had committed suicide in her flat the day after she had discovered love bites all over Richie’s neck and torso, indentations and bruises that clearly didn’t match her tiny teeth.

  ‘White wine,’ said Glen eventually, heading for the sanctuary of the table and chairs, still slightly miffed with those women dressed up to the nines, and at Gringo too, for allowing her to come out looking outclassed and upstaged in that way. Didn’t he realise that all girls desired to be the Queen of the ball? All yearned to display their finery on nights such as these? Sometimes she wondered about him. For all his efforts, in her eyes, he simply didn’t try hard enough. That was his problem, and not for the first time he’d allowed an opportunity to slip away.

  A pretty waitress appeared and introduced herself. She checked they had a booking and advised she would be looking after them. If there was anything they wanted or needed; anything at all, they only had to say.

  ‘Anything?’ said Gringo, smirking at the girl and Glen in turn.

  ‘Almost,’ she said, through widened eyes. ‘Almost, Mister Greene,’ peeking back at the booking reservation to check that his name really was on the sold out list. She took their order and shared a look with Glen as if to say You could have your hands full with that one. I’m not so sure I’d want to be in your shoes, and then she was gone.

  ‘You are terrible; you shouldn’t tease the poor kid.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s heard a lot worse. She can look after herself.’

  Twenty minutes later the waitress took them through to their table. It was similar to the one he had shared with Melanie, but on the opposite side of the room.

  ‘Would you like to see the wine list?’ asked the girl.

  ‘No. Bottle of champagne. Moet.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ she said, as if already counting the commission she’d rack up on an ultra premium drink sale.

  ‘Champagne?’ said Glen, unable to keep a hint of excitement from her voice; that same note of expectation and buzz that often came when he uttered that magical word. Champagne. Crazy really, a fizzy alcoholic drink and women get excited. He wasn’t sure he understood it, though he relished the reactions it always brought.

  The starters arrived and were duly devoured by enthusiastic diners. Presentation is everything, and the chefs in the Henderson were forever seeking perfection. She told him all about Amsterdam, tactfully leaving aside any mention of the crazy Archie, who got up to things you just wouldn’t believe.

  Then she said: ‘What do you make of the surprise news?’

  ‘Eh? What news?’

  ‘Honestly Gringo, sometimes I think you wander around with your head in the sand. I’ve been half way round the world and I still know more about your staff than you do.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Julian? Yeah well, that was only to be expected.’

  ‘Not Julian, you prune!’ and then she paused and said: ‘What about Julian?’ as she set down her drink and pondered on what gossip she might have missed.

  ‘Getting the bullet, being made redundant, but you didn’t hear that from me. It doesn’t go any further, understand?’

  ‘Course,’ she said, smiling across the table, her bright green eyes glittering in the candlelight. ‘You know me, Gringo, soul of discretion, I would never repeat a word about anything we discuss, and I assume you do the same.’

  ‘You can be sure of that,’ he said, wiping his mouth and moustache. ‘We two happy breed, we gossip, we share information, tittle-tattle and secrets, we tell each other things that will never leave this little room,’ and he glanced around in an exaggerated fashion at their hundred dining colleagues, smiling and laughing and drinking and hoping, and then he put his finger across his lips and whispered: ‘Just between the two of us, kid.’

  Glen bobbed her head and smiled and mouthed You’re mad across the table, before leaning to one side, making room for the large rare steak that had just arrived.

  ‘That’s right, Gringo,’ she said, after the waitress had retreated. ‘Our little secrets that bind us together.’

  An odd phrase he thought, but not a disagreeable one.

  ‘Girls like to have their little secrets, don’t they,’ said Gringo.

  ‘And boys don’t, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh boys love secrets too, even if they say they don’t. Secrets make the world go round. Secrets get me out of bed in the morning. The world would be an awfully dull place without secrets.’

  ‘So you have secrets too?’

  The smiling way in which she spoke, the teasing and charming delivery forced him to smile. He couldn’t avoid it even if he wa
nted to, a sucker every time. He’d make a hopeless poker player.

  ‘Of course, hundreds of ’em.’

  Glen laughed aloud as an impish look spread across her black and white feline-looking face.

  ‘Do you know something, I believe you,’ she said, but he suspected that what she really meant was, if she desperately wanted, she could wheedle any meaningful secrets out of him in no time at all, and worse than that, any time she liked. The only question was, whether she was that way inclined, and whether the secrets would be worth the effort.

  ‘Pity about Julian,’ she said. ‘He was always pretty decent to me. I’m surprised they are letting him go.’

  ‘Yeah, but it comes to us all.’

  ‘Best thing to do is leave before it happens,’ she said, ‘like me. Everyone gets fired in the end,’ and there was just a hint of triumph and superiority in her voice, as she levered another neatly trimmed square of blood red beef into her pretty mouth. He watched her lips close around the food. They began moving as if involved in some ancient dance, and just for a second he was entranced by those lips. They reminded him of an aphrodisiacal sea creature. He couldn’t jerk his eyes away.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she said, suddenly feeling slightly uneasy, all masticating now at a standstill.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yes you were!’

  ‘Well if you must know, I like the way you eat.’

  ‘The way I eat?’ she said, unable to suppress a slight grin.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s odd about the way I eat?’

  ‘There’s nothing odd about it. If you must know, I think it’s incredibly sexy.’

  She smiled again and slowly shook her head and said: ‘I think you are one weird geezer.’

  ‘Thank you, Glen.’

  She sliced another sliver and held it on the end of her fork, waving it between their noses.

  ‘Am I in order to continue?’

  Gringo bobbed his head and smirked and waved his hand across the table, palm upward.

  ‘Without being awarded marks out of ten?’

  ‘That would be ten every time,’ he said in a rush, not really thinking of what he was saying.

  ‘As I said before, you’re a crazy man,’ as the meat disappeared into her captivating mouth, and all the while her green eyes continued to examine him, unblinking and pondering on what the bizarre bloke might be thinking, and what he might say or do next.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘if you didn’t mean about Julian getting the boot, what news did you mean?’

  She downed tools and slipped her elbows on the table, and joined her hands together before her breasts.

  ‘You mean you really don’t know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘About Melanie of course.’

  ‘What about Melanie?’

  ‘Sometimes you’re so slow off the mark, Mister Greene. I’m surprised at you. She’s expecting, up the duff, in the pudding club, preggers, with child, about to drop one, eating for two, in a fix, wearing her apron high, big with pig, sperminated, pip the parasite, her eggo is most definitely preggo.’

  ‘No! You’re kidding me, and you forgot up the stick by the way.’

  ‘Another charming expression probably created by a man.’

  ‘But I thought Brian was…’

  Glen interrupted him. ‘Firing blanks. Yeah, didn’t we all, but it seems not, the evidence is there.’

  ‘Unless…’

  Again she was one step ahead of him.

  ‘Unless someone else has been there too.’

  ‘You don’t think that, do you?’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, not with mad Brian lurking about in the bushes,’ and then she said, as if some crazy thought had conjured up from the outer edges of her mind, from the far reaches of possibility, ’You haven’t been there, Gringo, have you? You’d hump anything!’

  ‘Course not! And I’ll have you know that I am most particular about who or what I hump, as you call it.’

  Glen began giggling at the very thought of it, a giggle so infectious, he was forced to join in, and when finally he stopped, Gringo said: ‘She’ll be leaving us,’ as if that thought had only just registered.

  ‘Course she will, you wouldn’t expect her not to, would you?’

  ‘No, it’s just that it will bring loads more work my way.’

  ‘Ah, poor diddums, typical of a man. All he can think of is a little extra office work, while the woman has to go through the agony and trauma of perpetuating the species, bringing another life into the world. God, give me strength!’

  ‘Yeah, I know that, we men don’t comprehend anything that really matters, and you’re right of course,’ but still at the back of his mind he couldn’t help but ponder on the inconvenience it would cause. More damned interviews, more time lost through training, and inevitably more mistakes, as the replacement people gradually came to grips with the job. And there was something else much more important than that. Something that Melanie had said barely a couple of hours after they had left the Henderson Country Club.

  You don’t need to wear anything. I’m on the pill.

  But had she been? And who really was the father of her oncoming child? Could it be me? he pondered. A cold sweat formed in the centre of his back, and remained there for quite some time.

  Fifty-Eight

  The champagne had disappeared and he knew he’d only drunk a glass. The puddings were on the table and were about to be eliminated. He pointed to her glass.

  ‘Fancy another drink?’

  ‘I’d love a whisky and lemonade,’ she smiled back, licking her spoon clean of lime mousse.

  He clicked his fingers like pompous fools do in the movies, and the girl came running as if it were the most polite summons in the world.

  ‘Whisky and lemonade and a bottle of mineral water.’

  The kid smiled and nodded and ran away.

  Glen took a big breath as if she’d been meaning to tell him something all night. ‘My personal life is so complicated at the moment I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Gringo, though he didn’t really want to know any more, but she took that as his signal to continue. The alcohol had loosened her tongue, and champagne was the absolute king when it came to murdering discretion.

  ‘You know I’ve been going round with Paul for years, since we were at school together, and my problem is I just can’t say no to him. I don’t love him any more, not now, oh I thought I did when I was younger, but now I realise it was all just one big teenage crush, but bloody hell, I still can’t say no to him, when he comes round with that hurt puppy dog look in his eyes. It’s mad I know, but there we are.’

  Gringo tried a weak smile and a swig of water.

  ‘And this Archie guy, well, he must be the funniest, strangest man I’ve ever met. I’ve learnt more about men and the big wide world through knowing him for a few weeks than with all the other men put together.’

  Yeah, I’ll bet, Gringo wanted to say, but didn’t. What had she and the marvellous Archie been up to, as if he didn’t know, and one thing was certain; he didn’t want to know either.

  ‘Then there’s Mike at the club.’

  This was something new. He arched his eyebrows.

  ‘Mike at the club?’ Gringo heard himself saying, fearing that he was being drawn into a thread of conversation he’d rather avoid.

  ‘Yeah. Didn’t I tell you about Mike at the club? He’s an older guy I went out with a few times and just because we did it together, you know just a few times, he thinks he owns me, and gets very jealous when I go out with anyone else. My dad absolutely hates him. Last time Mike came round to ours I thought dad was going to hit him with a huge spanner he leaves in the porch. Mike says my dad’s crazy.’

  ‘He might be right.’

  ‘He’s not. He’s a pussy really. He’s just being protective toward his daughters.’

  An old line came into Gringo’s m
ind, though he couldn’t remember who said it or where it came from. The apples are ripe and the pickers have arrived, though he didn’t repeat it aloud, instead he heard himself issuing a weak: ‘I’ll bet. How old is this Mike?’

  ‘Much older than you, Gringo, much older.’

  That at least was illuminating in a shady kind of way. The ten year gap between Gringo and Glen couldn’t be the ultimate reason why she wouldn’t sleep with him, not if the oh so marvellous Mike was much older than you. So what was it? And as he began to think about that she was already talking again.

  ‘And at the back of it all looms Harry like some uncrowned king.’

  ‘Wildenstein?’

  ‘The very same. I love him, Gringo. I can’t help it, that’s the way it is. That’s how I feel.’

  ‘How can you love a man who treats you so bad?’

  Gringo had to rein himself in. His voice had been growing louder for a good few minutes and he’d no wish to create a scene, or broadcast their intimate news and details of her affairs and complicated love life across the restaurant.

  ‘He doesn’t really; treat me so bad, that is.’

  ‘He rearranged your face!’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, Gringo. It was only a slight cuff, and I probably deserved it for nagging him so.’

  ‘Women always say that about men who smack them. It was probably my fault. Well, it wasn’t your damn fault! Wake up girl. Try and see things as they really are.’

  She fixed him with those green eyes that mesmerised him so.

  ‘I love him, Gringo. A girl can’t help that.’

  ‘Love!’ he scoffed. ‘How can you? Really, I mean, how can you?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘Has he rung you?’

  Gringo was horrified to see her nodding.

  ‘Every other day. He had a huge row with dad a couple of nights ago.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Harry wants me back.’

  ‘And you’ll go?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Gringo shook his head. He’d heard enough, far more than enough, far more than he ever wanted to hear. What was it with this crazy kid? Sometimes he wanted to give her such a good smack, and then he thought of Harry Wildenstein; and the black eye and cut brow she’d sported when she came back from New York.