No Place in the Sun

by John Mulligan

  He picked up his drink and walked back to Pauline’s table. ‘You don’t mind if I continue our chat?’

  ‘Of course not, and thanks again for the lift. I’ll be in Tyre in twenty minutes from here, your driver says that there’s a bus every hour, so I don’t have too long to wait.’

  ‘So you think I should start telling the truth?’

  ‘Absolutely. It will change your life.’

  ‘It just goes against the grain of everything I ever learned about selling. I mean, we create a scenario that makes the customer think we are their friend, that we have their interests at heart. That’s how we get inside their guard.’

  ‘But there’s no conflict between the telling them the truth and getting them the best deal, is there?’

  Tom laughed at the idea. ‘You’ve never worked in the overseas property business.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, in my view. If you believe in the product it’s far easier to be convincing about it.’

  ‘A lot of what is sold in this business isn’t great value, to be honest. It ranges from middling to absolute rubbish.’

  ‘You see, you’re starting to tell the truth now. I bet you never told that to anyone outside the business before now.’

  ‘You’re right. I’m not sure why I told you.’

  ‘That place we stopped, it’s beautiful. I gather that you’re going to sell property there. It shouldn’t be hard to sell that and tell the truth as well. I mean, it’s a fabulous location, and anyone who buys it will see that as well.’

  ‘Depends on the price though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I always heard that something was worth what someone was willing to pay for it, no more and no less. Any buyer that gets a place there will love it though.’

  ‘I guess so, I wouldn’t buy there myself, but I could see how others might be tempted.’

  The woman stood up and gathered her belongings. ‘I have to go; the bus will be here in five minutes. Thanks ever so much for the lift, the car was lovely and comfortable.’

  ‘It was very nice to meet you, Pauline, have a good holiday.’

  ‘And you mind yourself, and remember what I told you, truth sets you free. Try it.’

  She turned and waved as she joined the crowd of people filing on to the ancient bus. Tom waved back and got into the front of the Mercedes. The car was cold, almost too cold. Haddad sat upright and put on his seatbelt. ‘We go?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  The driver paused as he faced the car out of the dusty parking lot. ‘We have plenty of time; do you want to see other places?’

  Tom looked at his watch. ‘Is there anything else to see around here?’

  ‘Not really, but if you like....’

  ‘Where does that road go, if we turn right?’

  ‘No place, at the junction over there the right turn goes into Tyre, straight on goes to the border with Syria; you can go all the way to Damascus if you have time, but who would want to go there?’

  ‘And the other way?’

  ‘Back to Beirut.’

  ‘Ok, let’s head that way, back to the airport.’

  The show was starting to fill and Andrew was panicking. ‘Did you see Tania, Tom? There’s a TV crew here.’

  ‘Leave it with me, Andy, I’ll find her.’

  Tom called Tania’s private mobile number; it answered after two rings.

  ‘Something urgent?’

  ‘The place is hopping, Tania, are you far away?’

  ‘I’m in the hairdressers; what’s the panic?’

  ‘You were in the hairdressers yesterday.’

  ‘I’m in the hairdressers every day, Tom, I have to look my best for my media appearances. You don’t want my roots showing, do you?’

  ‘There’s a TV crew here, doing a piece for the evening news about property, do you want me to handle it?’

  ‘Tell them to wait for an hour.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Tania, these guys want to get in and out and get the item done; they won’t hang around. Is the hairdresser far from here?’

  ‘I can’t get there in less than an hour. You’d better do the piece yourself, but be sure to mention me.’

  ‘Ok.’

  The camera crew looked bored; they wanted an interview and they had a list of questions already written in big letters on a pad on the clipboard that the young assistant was waving about. ‘Can we speak with your spokesman Mr. Murphy? We need to get this in the can in the next ten minutes; there’s a statement from the agriculture minister due in half an hour and we have to cover it.’

  ‘Ok, I’ll do the piece for you; Doctor Sherry is detained in a meeting and won’t be here for an hour.’

  The cameraman clicked the legs of the tripod into place and focused on Tom as he sat behind the desk. The assistant wasn’t happy.

  ‘No, not there, over here in front of that big display, the pictures of the Spanish things.’

  The cameraman raised his eyebrows; he moved his equipment and resumed focusing. The reporter peered into the lens and squinted at her image on the tiny screen as she touched up her makeup; she began to read the page that the assistant was holding up behind the camera.

  ‘We’re here at the Scorpio Properties investment seminar, and we’re looking at the phenomenon of Irish people investing abroad. Hold the fucking thing up where I can see it, Meghan.’

  The assistant sighed in an exaggerated manner and held the clipboard higher, and the reporter started again.

  ‘We’re here at the Scorpio Properties investment seminar, and we’re looking at the phenomenon of Irish people investing abroad. At a time of unprecedented wealth in the country, is it the right strategy for us as a nation that we should invest so much of our hard-earned cash abroad? I’m here with Tom Murphy, sales manager of Scorpio Properties. What’s your view, Tom?’

  Tom was tired; it had been a long week with all the travelling and he wasn’t in the humour for all this nonsense. For some reason, the words of the girl he met in the Lebanon kept interrupting his thoughts. ‘Tell the truth, it will set you free.’

  He looked at the camera. ‘It might be a good strategy, and then again it might not. Maybe it’s not for everybody.’

  The reporter was thrown by his answer, but she stuck with her list of questions. ‘So, where is the best place right now for an investor, what will give the best return?’

  ‘Hard to say. Spain maybe, that’s still doing ok, more or less.’

  ‘And Bulgaria, Scorpio is the biggest Irish company operating in Bulgaria. What about these ski apartments in Malko, in Bulgaria, how do you rate these as an investment?’

  Tom was still stuck in truth mode; he was finding it hard to lie to the reporter. Maybe the woman was right; if you told the truth then people would trust you and buy lots more from you. He looked back to the reporter.

  ‘They’re all right, I suppose; if you like skiing they’re fine.’

  The reporter was in a dilemma; this wasn’t going according to the script, but she had to get the minister’s statement and time was passing. She decided to stick with the list of questions on the pad. ‘So, overseas investment is definitely the way to go for us as a nation, it’s the best strategy for personal and national wealth creation going forward?’

  ‘Not necessarily, but some of it is probably ok.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom. And there you have it. This is Kerry Miles here at the Scorpio Properties investment seminar, and now it’s back to you, Jerry.’

  What the fuck were you thinking when you said all that shit? Have you lost your fucking marbles?’

  ‘Don’t you see, Tania, if we tell people where the bad stuff is, we can sell them the good stuff and they’ll trust us, we’ll have an edge on all the other outfits.’

  ‘I really think you’ve lost it. What good stuff for fucks sake? Surely you of all people know that ninety nine percent of what we sell is absolute shite?’

  ‘Not all of it, Tania, be fair.’

  ‘Tom, you
know yourself that we have puffed up the prices of everything we sell by a huge margin. If any of our customers were to try to resell anything we sold them, assuming they could sell it at all, they would lose half their money. You know this; you were the one that created these rental products.’

  ‘They’re not all bad, some of them are ok.’

  ‘Some of them are worse than others, you mean.’

  ‘Well yes, I suppose so. Malko is absolute rubbish, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘Of course its rubbish, but it’s the place that’s paying you and me a shed load of money every week; it’s still our big banker and the mafia doesn’t have a slice of it either. You need to keep your focus and start shifting it again; that news report is going to do us damage.’

  Tom sighed. ‘Ok, I admit that it might have been an error of judgment, maybe I’m getting cynical about the whole thing.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time that you weren’t involved?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Maybe you’ve come to some kind of a crisis, losing your bottle for this game. I can manage fine without you, I can do the business with Mickey as the front man, and Andrew can manage the sales, he’s doing most of it anyway.’

  ‘You want to get rid of me?’

  ‘Now that you put it that way, yes. We’ve been having one disagreement after another the last few weeks. Yes, let’s just call it a day before we start having a war with each other.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  Her voice softened a little. ‘No, Tom, not just like that, but let’s say you stay with us for the rest of the show this weekend, and I’ll give you a very generous severance payment, just to show that there’s no hard feelings.’

  ‘How generous?’

  ‘I’ll give you the entire take on this weekend’s show, the whole nine yards. Every penny of profit we make between now and Sunday, and everything we made this afternoon, it will all be yours. You just have to sign a contract that you’ll stay out of the business for at least two years; I don’t want you working for Harry again, or even for someone like Simpson.’

  Tom felt a sense of relief. It would all be over; no more looking over his shoulder and worrying about having it all crashing down on him. He was still shocked at how things had turned out, but maybe it was all for the best.

  ‘Tania, you have a deal. I’ll give it my best shot tomorrow and Sunday, and then I’ll walk away. You can do what you like with it all after that.’

  It had been a hell of a long day. Tom’s heart wasn’t really in it, but he knew that he had to get as much money on the meter as possible in order to give himself a good paycheck. He still had a feeling that if he could somehow tell the truth to people, he could convince them to buy the better projects and ignore the rubbish like Malko, but that strategy didn’t seem to be working. Business was down on previous weeks, and the people who did come to the show had all seen the piece on the news the night before. They had questions to ask.

  ‘Are you sure that this place is worth buying?’ The woman was suspicious of the sales pitch.

  ‘Of course, madam, we wouldn’t be selling it otherwise.’

  ‘I saw you on the news last night; you didn’t seem too enthusiastic yourself. You said it was all right if you liked skiing yourself.’

  ‘But that’s true, I would like to think that buyers would buy there with a view to getting some use out of it sometime.’

  ‘Use it myself? Do you really see me on a pair of skis?’

  ‘Why not?’

  The woman snorted. ‘I can hardly walk with my weight, not to mind ski. Anyway I have no interest in going somewhere that’s that cold; I’d rather go somewhere warm.’

  ‘Then can we interest you in something in Spain? It’s warm there.’

  ‘I thought that Bulgaria was warm.’

  ‘It is, but Spain is warmer still.’

  ‘I don’t like it too hot. I get a rash.’

  ‘Then maybe you’d like something in Sunny Beach North; we have a few left there, and it’s close to the beach.’

  The woman rose from the chair. ‘I’ll think about it, I’m not so sure at all.’

  Andrew caught Tom’s eye from across the room. He tapped his watch; it was time to call it a day. Tom gathered his papers from the desk and stuffed them into his briefcase; one more day of this, then freedom. It felt good in a way, but he would miss it too.

  The girl with the buggy and the little boy was talking to Andrew as he was trying to close the door. She wore blue jeans and a leather jacket, and the boy was trying to wriggle his way out of the straps in the pushchair. Andrew let her pass and she strode purposefully towards Tom.

  ‘Sorry, we’re closed for today.’ Tom had enough, he wanted to catch up with the lads in the Willows and get a couple of pints inside him.

  ‘Don’t you remember me, Tom?’

  She looked familiar; was it was the blonde girl that he had sold the yellow car to back in City Auto, the girl he had met in the club before he went to Spain? It was, yes. She was a stunner right enough, looked a lot better in normal colours; at least she had got out of her yellow phase. ‘Amanda?’

  ‘Yes, at least you remembered that much.’ She sounded angry.

  ‘Sorry, I never contacted you, a lot happened.’

  ‘Not as sorry as me. I saw you on the news last night, that’s how I knew you were here.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  Amanda unbuckled the little boy from the buggy; he stood up quickly and tried to run around the room, but she grabbed him under the arms and lifted him up to stand on the desk. She burst into tears as the little boy looked curiously at Tom.

  ‘Tommy,’ she sobbed, ‘I want you to meet your daddy.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ’Well, fuck me.’ Walter had a way of summing things up. ‘This has been quite a few days for you, Tom, talk about a blast from the past.’

  ‘I’m still in shock to be honest. I don’t mind about losing my job, I was beginning to get tired of working for Tania, but Amanda turning up with the kid, with Tommy, that was a shock for sure.’

  Harry put the tray of drinks on the table. ‘How do you feel about having a little boy? Is it a good feeling?’

  ‘After the initial upset, I’m fine about it, really. He’s great actually, a lovely little fellow. Yes, I’m delighted if the truth be known, but it’ll take getting used to.’

  ‘Did you get to spend some time with him this evening?’

  ‘A case of not having any choice. She shoved him into my hands and said that she was going for a walk, first time she was able to leave him and be alone for the last couple of years. She came back though after half an hour, just before I panicked altogether.’

  ‘You did well to mind him, did he make strange with you?’

  ‘He did at first; I didn’t know what to be saying to him. I just sat him down in my chair and sang songs to him, tried to teach him a few nursery rhymes and that.’

  ‘Imagine, Tom a daddy. Here’s to Tom, and little Tommy.’ Andrew raised his gin and tonic.

  The others raised glasses in salute. ‘Best thing ever happened to you.’ Walter spoke for them all.

  ‘Thanks, guys. My head is still spinning with it all. I need a good night’s sleep.’

  Walter laughed. ‘You can forget that from now on, you’ll have a little alarm clock jumping on your chest every morning now. Andy was saying that they’ll move in with you, your girl and your son?’

  ‘My son.’ Tom pondered the words. ‘My son, yes. Amanda’s just renting that small flat, my place is big, so we’re going to give it a try, take it as it comes for a month or two and see if it works out.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a party pooper, Tom, but you two hardly know each other really. Do you think that an instant arrangement like that can work? Are you not rushing things a bit?’

  ‘I think I’m about ready to try the settled life, and having a kid changes the picture too.’

  ‘But you only met her a few times, an
d you know nothing about each other.’

  I know that, and it may not work out at all, but I fancied her from the first time I met her, and we really hit it off when we spoke this evening. After she had taken out a few years of frustration on me first that is.’

  ‘So you are both willing to take a chance?’

  ‘Yes, we both know it’s a bit of a long shot, but there’s Tommy to consider as well; I missed out on his first couple of years and I don’t want to miss a minute of the rest.’

  ‘So where are they now?’

  ‘She’s gone home tonight; give us both a chance to get over the shock and get Tommy to bed. I’m going to give her the keys tomorrow and she’ll move some stuff over while I’m at work. I’m a bit nervous about it, but I’m looking forward to it in another way. I’m too long living on my own.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Andrew sounded wistful. ‘You were getting crusty, set in your ways.’

  Harry laughed. ‘That’s good, coming from you, Andy. What was that about you leaving Scorpio, Tom? I missed that.’

  ‘Tania sacked him.’ Walter couldn’t resist the jibe.

  ‘She didn’t sack me; we agreed to part the ways.’

  ‘You want to come back to work for me? That door is open still.’

  ‘Thanks, Harry, but she put a clause in my payoff that bars me from working in the business for two years.’

  ‘I don’t think this business will exist in two years.’

  They looked at Walter in surprise. ‘It’s true; I really think we are just riding the crest of a wave here, this will all evaporate as quickly as it grew.’

  ‘You could be right.’ Harry was inclined to agree with Walter. ‘A lot of the business is based on expectations of price rises when places like Hungary and Bulgaria join the EU; if those rises don’t happen fast, if they take a normal kind of timescale, people will get disillusioned and the market may well fizzle out.’