He looked at me. ‘We work hard. You want to go for a drink now.’ As I looked at him in astonishment he reached behind the driver’s seat of the truck and produced a flask and two clean glasses. In the moonlight he filled each with strong, smooth new red wine. We looked east as we drank, at the first intimation of the new day, away out on the edge of the sea.
We finished the flask in half an hour. Miguel spent the time telling me of his national service. He had served his time in the Spanish navy. Towards the end, his ship had been ordered to North Africa, to help in rescue and recovery following a Moroccan earthquake.
‘After that, my friend, tonight’s work was, as you might say, a slice of cake.’ He threw the last drops of his wine on the ground, as if to bless the poor sod we had just reburied.
‘Come, or the Senora Prim and the Senora Maria will think we went to the place beside the go-karts.’
‘What the hell is the place beside the go-karts?’
His smile lit up the dying night. ‘Ah, Senor Oz! I see there are things you still have to learn about L’Escala!’
7
I was aware, but only dimly, of a nose, buried in my chest and sniffing.
‘Badedas,’ said Prim, approvingly. ‘So you did have a shower before you got back in here.’
‘Course,’ I murmured, and rolled over.
‘I love the smell of Badedas,’ she said, following me. ‘It turns me on.’
‘What doesn’t?’ I whispered in her ear, as I settled on my back, far too tired for any serious exertion, but far too interested to stay asleep.
Afterwards, I knew I was really in the good books when she brought me breakfast in bed. Sliced tomatoes, and a baguette, bought as dough in a batch and baked in our own oven. We ate together, sitting up, looking out of the open terrace door across the sun-washed bay, with our naked backs cool against the wooden headboard.
‘It went all right, then?’ asked Prim, at last.
‘Mmm,’ I said, wiping a sliver of tomato from my chin. ‘He’s gone, the poor bugger, and St Marti is saved for tourism, saved from the attentions of the coppers and the tax inspectors.’
She looked up at me. ‘Er, where did you put him?’
‘Up behind Riells, in the back of beyond.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be able to find him again, in the daylight?’
‘Sure. In a couple of days we’ll be able to go for a walk, like we agreed, and just sort of accidentally stumble over the poor bugger.’ If the dogs haven’t found him first, came as an afterthought, but stayed unspoken.
‘Can’t we go today?’
I shook my head. ‘No, we should give him a couple of days to … settle into his new surroundings. Anyway, I’ve got something else to do today.’ I glanced at the time. It was five minutes past midday. ‘Scratch today; make it tomorrow.’
We had been so busy cooking and enjoying the monkfish the night before that I hadn’t told Prim about my conversation with Ellie. She listened as I explained about my sister’s decision, her husband’s ultimatum, and my decision to involve myself.
‘You don’t mind me driving up to Lyon, do you?’
She squeezed my arm and rubbed her forehead against it. ‘Course not. Any sister of yours is a sister of mine. Allan’s a prat and a boor, and he needs to be told so. Let him know too that if it does get to court, he needn’t think he can rely on outspending her.’
I smiled. That was what I’d hoped she’d say. Then a mischievous thought struck me, and I nudged her. ‘Hey, what you said about sisters. If Dad and Auntie Mary get hitched, will that apply to Jan too?’
She looked at me, sideways. ‘Given Jan’s circumstances,’ she said at last, with a grin, ‘I think it can.’
All at once she stretched herself, as only Prim can, a real stre-e-e-etch, arms straight above her head, back arched, breasts thrust out, and looked around the room. ‘Ugh!’ she shouted, suddenly enough to startle me, and pointed towards the doorway to the living room. ‘Those!’ My sweatshirt, jeans, socks and jockeys lay where I had dropped them before taking my Badedas shower. ‘My God, think where they’ve been. Oz, they’re for the wash right now.’
She jumped out of bed, pulling on her towelling robe, and trotted around to my pile of discards. Gingerly, she picked them up, patted the pockets of the jeans to check for change and keys. She paused, then reached into the right hand pocket. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, holding it up.
Right at that moment, I had no conscious memory of how the watch had got into my pocket. But I knew at once what it was, and from the look on my face, Prim guessed in the same second where I had found it.
‘Euchh!’ she cried, and tossed it away from her, on to the bed. ‘Horrible! Clean it up for God’s sake. Better still, get rid of it.’Without waiting for my reaction she disappeared towards the kitchen, carrying my clothes.
As I thought back to my adventure, it came back to me through the foggy curtain which Miguel’s new red wine had cast over the later part of the evening. How the body’s left hand had fallen out of the shroud as we lifted it into the crate, and the watch with it. The disgust with which I had thrust the bony extremity back beside its arm. The hesitation with which I had put the watch into my pocket, meaning to return it later to what was left of its owner.
I picked it up, from where Prim had thrown it, and looked at it, as closely as I could manage on a full stomach. The face and back were dirty but there was no sign of corrosion. The leather strap was in better condition than I had thought, although there were a few scraps clinging to the inside. I tried desperately not to consider what they might be.
I took the watch through to our bedroom, and set to work on it, with soap and a nail brush. The dirt was dried on, but after a few minutes it began to loosen, and with more vigorous rubbing, and polishing with the small towel which hung on a ring by the bidet it was soon shining, looking for the most part brand new. Only the leather strap still looked a bit tired. I took the thing out to the terrace and examined it in daylight, front and back. There was no doubt: it was exactly the same model that I had bought for my father. The black face which he said was a bugger to read in anything but good light; the steel back, engraved with the maker’s name, his crest, and a number. I peered at it. ‘930100,’ I read aloud.
‘What?’ asked Prim from the living-room doorway. ‘And for God’s sake put some clothes on. Standing around in the buff after midday doesn’t fit with our new work ethic.’
I grunted and held up the watch. ‘There’s a number on the back. These things don’t cost enough to be exclusive, though. Chances are it’s just a piece of designer flash.’
‘Mmm.’ She followed me as I headed for the shower. ‘What are you going to do with it? Put it back.’
‘Hardly. Not now that I’ve cleaned it up. Right now, I don’t have a bloody clue what I’m going to do with it. Although throwing it in a communal dustbin seems like a good idea.’ Leaving that thought aside, I shoved it away into my sock drawer, out of sight … and, after a while, out of mind.
8
Naturally, I asked Prim if she wanted to come to Lyon, but I didn’t try too hard to persuade her when she said, ‘No.’
Our serious discussion two days before had made me realise just how much we were living in each other’s pockets, and given me a nostalgic urge to do something on my own, just to remind myself what it was like. I was pretty sure that Prim felt the same.
I did no tourist driving heading for Lyon, but followed the autoroute all the way, sticking to the coast past Narbonne this time, on through Montpellier and Nimes, finally heading north after the Orange junction.
Although I had never stopped in Lyon before, I knew that Allan worked at the head office of Sprite Oil, in the heart of the city. I had no intention of giving him advance warning of my visit, so I stopped at a filling station near Vienne to buy a street map, and check the address in the telephone directory.
Lyon is a big place, and like many of the major French cities, a river runs throu
gh it. By the time I reached my destination the Rhone seemed like an old friend, since I reckoned that I had crossed and recrossed it at least four times on the journey. Its smell was strong in my nostrils when I found Allan’s office, just where the phone book and the map said it should be. I was prepared to give my French a whirl, but the receptionist’s English made it unnecessary. Going on for three months in Spain, my Mediterranean tan shining gold in the light reflected from the building’s big glass walls and, she still clocked me as a Brit before I’d opened my mouth.
‘Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you?’ She was a nice-looking girl, with a wide smile and curly brown hair.
‘I’d like to seeAllan Sinclair, in your marketing department.’
‘Of course. Who shall I say is calling?’
I smiled at her. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. Could you just tell him it’s someone with a message from his wife.’
The receptionist nodded, dialled a number then spoke rapidly in French. The only words which jumped out clearly at me were, ‘sa femme’. After a few seconds, she looked up at me again. ‘Would you wait over there, please, sir. In that room.’
I thanked her and followed her pointing finger to an obscured glass door at the side of the hall, behind which was a small office with a view down to the river. I had been waiting for almost ten minutes when the door opened and my brother-in-law appeared. Quite suddenly it dawned on me that as a professional interviewer I had prepared badly for this one. I had no idea what I was going to say.
Allan solved my problem for me by kicking things off and making me mad in the process. He arched his eyebrows, and looked at me down his nose — or should that be up his nose, because he’s three inches shorter than me — in that ‘This is too tiresome’ way of his. This is a guy who could make you feel unwelcome in your own house.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘I was told that it was someone from Ellen.’
‘So?’ I said, belligerently. ‘Listen, Allan, if I’d said it was me, then all of a sudden you’d have been in a meeting. I know you, pal.’
He shuffled his feet and started to reply, but I beat him to it. ‘Anyway, I do have a message from my sister. She’s not coming back to France, Allan, or to you. I’m sorry, chum, but that’s it. Now, what she wants, what we all want is that you should face up to it and accept it.’
He hunched his shoulders. ‘Why should I? She’s my wife, dammit. She made vows, that sort of thing. Now she’s broken them, and she’s stolen my sons.’
Allan had always got on my tits, even from the days when he and Ellie were newly engaged, but I was doing my level best to keep to my honest broker role. That crack got to me, though.
‘Am I hearing this? Are you calling my sister a thief?’
He held up his hands as if to ward me off. For an instant it had been necessary. ‘Okay, taken them, if you prefer. But she did. She just took the boys and left me a note on the kitchen table. No warning, no nothing.’
I looked at him. ‘Allan, I spent one night in your house in France, and I could see the warning signs. You were just too fucking blind.
‘It’s time you opened your eyes and faced up to some truth about yourself. My sister’s bright, man, as bright as you. She’s dynamic, if anything more so than you. Time was when she had ambition too. Yet you stuck her away in that place in the middle of nowhere, with no other function than to look after your kids and make your meals.
‘When was the last time you took the boys to the seaside, or took Ellie to the theatre? I know the answer, Allan. Never. You imprisoned her over here, pal. Now she’s escaped.’
My brother-in-law looked at me, huffily. ‘She felt enough for me to marry me, Oz.’
For the first time, I began to feel sorry for him. ‘True, Allan. Because you’re good at your job. You felt you should have a wife, so you looked at the women you knew and you picked Ellen. Then you marketed yourself to her, like a barrel of oil. But you never had a fucking clue what being a partner’s about. It’s not something you are, it’s something you become. You have to work at it. It’s taken me thirty years to realise that. It’s bloody hard work too, I’ll tell you. You both have to make the effort. Ellie did, but you never had a fucking clue. So now she’s given up, and you only have yourself to blame.’
I looked at him. ‘Tell me honestly, Allan. Do you think that you and she were ever really in love?’
He sat down on one of the wooden chairs set around the room’s small table, and looked up at me, for quite a long time. Finally he did something that for him was really very strange. He smiled. I hadn’t seen him do that since Jonathan was born. ‘It’s funny that you of all people should ask me that. When Ellen and I were engaged, I used to think that you were a waster. A scatter-brained, self-indulgent waster, without a career plan, and with no idea of where you were going in life.’
I laughed. ‘Life’s a Mystery Tour, pal. Didn’t anyone tell you?’
But he held up a hand to shut me up. ‘Yet there was one thing about you of which I was really jealous. I used to look at you and Jan, the way you were together, the way you touched each other without even knowing you were doing it, the way you looked at each other, and I wished that I could be like you, in love like that.
‘I supposed that once you were married, that was what did it. I was wrong, though. I was proud of Ellen, and I did my best to give her the best, but I never could feel that way you and Jan used to look, or the way you and what’s her name looked when you turned up in Perrouges, just before Ellie left.’ He paused. ‘You didn’t persuade her to go, did you?’
I shook my head. ‘No, man. You did that yourself.’ I felt thoroughly sorry for him now. And a lot more reflective than I had been half an hour before.
‘About that lawyer’s letter, Oz,’ said Allan. ‘That was temper and pride on my part. Tell Ellen I’m sorry about that; I shouldn’t have tried to bully her. We can sort out a separation agreement, but between ourselves. As long as I can see the kids when I like.’
I interrupted him, right there. ‘No, not just when you like. Jonathan and Colin are best with their mother, all right, but they deserve a father too, even if he does live a long way off. You can stop being a husband, Allan, but you can’t stop being a dad. I know yours wasn’t around, and I know you used to treat mine as if he wasn’t there either. Well, you should look to him now. You’ve got a lot to learn about dadship, and you won’t find a better role model than Mac Blackstone.’
‘I hear you,’ he said, standing up. ‘Tell Ellen from me that it’s okay.’
‘No, sir,’ I answered, firmly. ‘I’m just the bridge-builder. Tell her yourself. Phone her tonight, then as soon as you can, take some time off from this place and visit her and the boys. Sort everything out between you. Think about this as you do it, Allan. You and my sister don’t belong together any more. You probably never did. But maybe there’s someone out there for you, someone to make your eyes light up. Who knows, there might even be more than one!’
My failed brother-in-law smiled again. ‘One step at a time, Oz, eh. But I’ll call Ellen tonight, that’s a promise.’
Allan stretched out an arm to usher me to the door. ‘How are you and Prim doing anyway? Still together, I take it. You haven’t come from Scotland to see me, have you?’ He looked at me, working a few things out for the first time. ‘No, surely not: not with that tan.’
But I wasn’t listening to his small talk. I was looking at his left wrist.
‘Allan,’ I asked at last, ‘where did you get that watch?’ He glanced at me. ‘Familiar, is it? Last time I saw your dad, I noticed the one he was wearing. I saw the same model in Jenners, so I bought it for day-to-day wear. Did you think I’d pinched Mac’s?’
‘Don’t be daft. No,’ I lied, ‘it’s just that I bought my dad his in a jeweller’s shop. I thought it was pretty exclusive, that’s all. Can I have a look at it?’
He shrugged, unfastened the strap, and handed it over. I walked over to the window and looked at th
e steel back. It was smeared by wear, but a quick rub with my thumb cleaned it up. I read the number on the back. ‘921428.’
‘Okay?’
‘Aye, sure, Allan. What did you pay for it?’
‘One ninety, I think.’ That was a relief. Dad’s was ten quid cheaper.
With the air cleared my brother-in-law was more relaxed than I had seen him. ‘Do you want to hang around and eat with me tonight?’ he asked. ‘You could give me some tips about being single.’
I shook my head. ‘No thanks. No hard feelings, but you’ve got a call to make and I’ve got a home to go to. I don’t have an overnight pass!’
I hung around Lyon for an hour or two, after I left Allan’s office. I sent postcards to my dad and to Jan. Finally I phoned my sister, reckoning that I’d killed enough time to let her get home from teaching or from picking up Jonathan from school, whichever was on her agenda for the day.
Ellie was more than delighted when I told her that Allan was seeing sense and would phone her that evening. Her relief came down the phone in waves. ‘Thanks a million, brother,’ she said. ‘I was really worried that he was going to dig in his heels. You didn’t have to lean on him too hard, did you?’
‘No. Not at all. The guy doesn’t exist in the same world as you and I, Ellie. I just made him realise that you can’t live in his any more. He’s got the message now. You should be able to sort things out between you from now on.’
‘Let’s hope so. I’ll do my best. But I’m not going back, Oz, come what may.’
‘No, and he won’t expect that.’
She chuckled. ‘Imagine. You being my minder. What would Mum have thought?’
‘She’d have been astonished. Simple as that.’
‘She’d have been proud too.’ Ellen paused, as each of us thought of our mother. ‘I owe you one, Oz,’ she said.
‘Bollocks to that, Sis. You’re still well in credit when it comes to us looking out for each other. You can do something for me, though. Send me some new photos of you and the kids. I’ll send you some of Prim and me, and of where we live now. It knocks Perrouges for six, I’ll tell you.’
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