Susie saw that I was trapped for a while and slipped quietly away to talk to Shirley.
The Milligans, as the Yorkshire tag-team were called, knew every wrestler. . they actually called them ‘superstars’. . not only by their ring names, but by their real names as well, details that normally can only be found on websites for addicts. I could tell that they were real marks, as we call punters in the wrestling business.
‘Who’s really the toughest?’ Mrs M asked.
‘Big Everett,’ I told her, truthfully. ‘You really wouldn’t want to upset him.’
‘And who are your best pals?’ her husband chipped in.
‘All of them,’ I answered, ‘but I suppose I’m closest to Everett, Liam Matthews and Big Jerry.’
‘Ahh, the Behemoth,’ said Mr M knowingly. ‘Tell me, are these chaps really that big in real life?’
‘No. They’re bigger.’ I thought of the first time I’d met Everett ‘Daze’ Davis in my flat in Glasgow, and smiled as I pictured Jan’s astonished expression when she came in and saw him there. I remembered Jerry Gradi lifting a Glasgow hooligan clean off his feet, without effort. But it was the fact that the thug was sat on a three-seater sofa at the time that had made it really impressive. ‘You can’t imagine how big they are, until you’ve met them.
‘Would you like to go to one of the live shows?’ I offered. ‘I’ll fix you up with a couple of tickets for an event, in the UK or in Spain. We do Barcelona quite often.’
‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Milligan in a millisecond. ‘Thank you, but no thank you. Television is one thing, but we couldn’t possibly go!’
I slipped out of their stranglehold, scrounged another couple of glasses of ‘punsh’ from JoJo and made my way round the pool to join Susie, Shirley and a veteran English watercolourist whom I’d met on my previous stay. His name had gone from me for that moment, but I recognised him at once, for he’s blessed with the twinkliest eyes I’ve ever seen. Vaguely, I seemed to remember that whatever he was called, he spelled it with three ‘l’s.
Very often, ex-pat conversation on the Costa Brava is confined to what’s happening within the community: whose family are coming out and when, whose dog just snuffed it, and who’s gone back to the Elephants’ Graveyard that they call ‘home’.
The old artist was different though; he’s been there since God retired to Augusta, and he mixes with Catalans as much as with the other Brits. It came to me at last that his name was Lionell; he kept us smiling for ten minutes with stories from way back, and he also talked me into giving him a commission for a painting of Casa Nou Camp. (I don’t know what was in that ‘punsh’.)
I told him, and Shirley, about our experience that morning, about Gabrielle’s arrival on the doorstep, out of the blue. The twinkle left his eyes and his leathery face grew serious. ‘That’s the worst business under the sun, Oz. White slavery, they called it in my day, and it’s bloody awful that it’s still going on.’
‘And Rey was into it?’ asked Shirley. ‘You’re sure of that?’
‘I’m certain of it. The kid thought that I was him.’
‘Bloody shame,’ Lionell muttered again, into his elegant beard.
‘Sorted now, though,’ I said. . and then I felt a thump between my shoulder-blades.
At the best of times, I don’t like people slapping me on the back; when it’s done by someone I don’t like, I really don’t like it. A subtle change in Shirley’s expression tipped me off a second before it happened, but too late for me to do anything about it.
‘Oz, old boy! How good to see you again! And where is the lovely Primavera? Made an honest woman of her at last, I hear.’
Before I go any further, I want to say a word about car salespeople in general. I have nothing against them at all; I regard them, until shown otherwise, as honest, upright, helpful, well-trained, professional automobile consultants.
But in any walk of life, you’ll always find one, won’t you? Suppose he was a Samaritan by profession, Steve Miller would still be an arsehole. I had only met the guy a couple of times, and never had a civil conversation with him, yet here he was ‘old boying’ me like a public school chum and all over me like a cheap suit.
‘My wife is very well, Steve,’ I answered him, not trying to sound anything but cold. ‘She’s in the States right now, with her mother, who’s been taken ill over there.’
I was aware that the groups nearest to us were edging very slightly away. This was not imagination on my part; they really were.
‘What a pity,’ Miller oozed. ‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing her again. Talking over old times as it were.’
Right there, Susie saved him. . or so it seemed. She stepped between us and took his arm. ‘So you’re Steve, are you? Oz has told me all about you. I’m Susie; a pal of Oz and Prim from Glasgow. I’ll do as a substitute; you can talk to me instead. I like interesting men.’
‘I say,’ he said, in a voice that was pure Leslie Phillips. Yes, he did. I didn’t believe that real people really say ‘I say’, like that, until he said it. There are those who sound camp; there are those who sound lecherous. But there are very few who can combine the two.
‘And what do you do, pretty lady?’ he oiled.
‘I run a multimillion-pound construction group.’
‘I say.’ A faint look of uncertainty crossed his face.
‘And what do you do, Steve?’ she asked.
‘I’m deputy dealer principal of a specialist automotive f irm.’
‘I say.’ She wrinkled her nose at him, and he bought it. ‘How specialist? What do you sell?’
‘Imported vehicles,’ he answered.
‘Imported from where?’ I chipped in.
‘The Far East. Malaysia, actually.’ He looked back at Susie, dismissing me, now that he had a quarry to pursue. ‘What kind of car do you drive, my dear?’
‘Just a wee runabout,’ she answered.
‘Ah. A Focus, Astra, something like that?’
‘Porsche Boxster, actually.’ She laughed lightly. I had the feeling that she was up to something, and I didn’t have to wait long to find out what it was.
‘So you’re a friend of Prim, too,’ she continued.
‘Yes indeed. Very much so.’
‘That’s funny. I don’t really remember her talking about you.’
‘Oh yes, we’re friends,’ he insisted.
‘But casual, like?’
‘Oh no. We were much more than that.’
‘What, you mean like. .?’
Miller sniggered; maybe he thought he was out of my earshot, but I have very sharp ears. I tried to keep my gaze fixed on Shirley, but I wasn’t looking at her at all, and she knew it. ‘Well a gentleman has to be discreet,’ he said, ‘but yes. Like that.’
‘Mmm. You do surprise me. Prim’s always struck me as very reserved with men.’
‘Oh no!’ he exclaimed, ‘not at all.’ Then he chuckled. ‘Maybe it’s the hot climate. Why,’ he bellowed, ‘I remember back when she and I were in Madrid …’
And that was as far as he got. I turned round, grabbed him by the lapels of his navy-blue blazer and nutted him.
When a pro wrestler fake-butts another, either he stops just short of contact or the other guy gets a hand up to take the impact. There was none of that when I stuck the head on Steve Miller. I heard the crack as his nose broke, and heard a satisfying crunch of gristle. He squealed and his knees buckled, but I didn’t let him fall. Instead, as the blood and snotter erupted from him and drenched his shirt front, I lifted him clear of the surrounding terrace, held him out at arm’s length over the deep end of the swimming pool, and dropped him in. He went straight under, nice and clean with hardly a splash, then bobbed to the surface, spluttering and thrashing his arms about. I waited until he reached the side; when he grabbed the edging, I stood on his fingers, just for luck.
‘What the ’ell’s all this about?’ Frank Barnett’s voice boomed from the other side.
‘Don’t ask, Frank,�
�� I told him.
He looked at me, then he saw who was in the pool. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I won’t.’ Then he turned on his heel and went back indoors.
I reached down, grabbed Miller by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out. He flopped on the terrace like a beached porpoise, blood still running freely from his bent beak.
I crouched down beside him, taking care not to let the bastard bleed on me. ‘If I ever hear you, or hear of you,’ I warned him, ‘boasting again about having my wife, I’ll hold you under until the bubbles stop coming up. You better believe that, pal.’
The British abroad can be remarkable sometimes. A very nice black-haired lady, a retired doctor, someone told me, took charge of the wounded. She led him off to pack his nose with cotton wool, or string, or whatever, and a minute or so later it was as if the whole thing had never happened. The normal buzz of conversation resumed, golf matches were arranged, more ‘punsh’ was poured. Eventually, they drew the raffle. Lionell won my champagne, I won a bottle of Moscatel, which I donated there and then to the next raffle, Shirley won a fluffy parrot which repeats whatever anyone says to it. . hours of fun around the pool, pity she has no grandchildren. . and Susie won dinner for two at El Roser II, also known as Roser Dos, in which the King of Spain once ate.
Miller didn’t appear again, I had a fleeting worry that he might vandalise my car on his way out, but I decided fairly quickly that not even he would be so stupid.
The party was starting to break up when Shirley took me aside. ‘That was pretty vicious, you know,’ she murmured. ‘Steve’s dad’s an ex-copper. You might hear more of it.’
‘I don’t think so, Shirl. I don’t think I’ll ever hear from him again.’
She slipped an arm around my waist; she’s as tall as me, so she had no trouble whispering in my ear. ‘You’ve changed, Oz. I noticed it as soon as you came back. It’s no bad thing, mind you; I think I prefer the later model. Just don’t go too far in the new direction, eh.’ She nodded imperceptibly towards Susie, who was just coming back from the toilet. ‘And be very careful of your little friend there.
‘She’s absolutely deadly, that one. I reckon if she wanted something, she’d go to extremes to get hold of it: and even if you haven’t realised it, it’s obvious to me she wants you.’
26
I thought of Shirley’s warning as we drove home; I wondered what she’d have said if I’d told her that she’d already had me. I decided not to let it fester. As soon as we were inside the house, I took Susie by the hand and turned her to face me.
‘Shirl reckons you’re after me.’
She looked up at me. ‘She’s a perceptive lady, then.’
She paused for just long enough for me to feel a frown ridge my forehead. ‘But don’t worry,’ she swept on, ‘I’ve told you what my game plan is, and it doesn’t include breaking up you and Prim. I’m Scotland’s most eligible spinster, but that’s not a title I plan to keep for long.’
‘So what do you want me for?’
‘I want you to be my minder,’ she said.
‘Your minder?’ I laughed, even although I could see that she was dead serious.
‘Sort of. Over the last couple of days I’ve found out that what I’ve always suspected about you and me is true, right enough. We’re two peas from the same pod. We’re cloned from the same animal. Put it anyway you like, but what I’m really saying is that we’re natural partners, you and I. If it turned out that you were my long-lost brother, like Shirley told Geraldine, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.’
I smiled, and jerked my thumb in the direction of the bedroom. ‘But that would make all that stuff …’
‘So what? “The game the whole family can play”, like someone said.’ For a fleeting second I wondered about her and the monstrous Lord Provost, then put the thought out of my mind.
‘Oz,’ she continued, ‘not once have I told you that I love you; because I don’t. I don’t love, period. . any more than you do.
‘What I have done is take shameless advantage of Prim being away to get close to you, and to make you more honest about yourself, and less naive about other people …’
‘You mean Prim?’ I interrupted.
‘Okay, yes, about her; but you’d already found out some of it.’
‘Aye,’ I said bitterly, ‘and now I’ve found out that when she wasn’t keeping the truth from me, she was twisting it to suit herself.’
‘That’s as may be, but it’s between you two. Just don’t let it break you up.’
I frowned at her. ‘Hey, you’re the one who told me she hated me.’
‘Past tense. She was right to, and all. I think she hated herself too, though, when she slept with that creep.’
‘Speaking of Miller, don’t you go thinking I don’t realise you set him up this afternoon. You engineered it so that I’d fill him in. Did it give you a buzz, was that it?’
Susie looked up at me, with a delicious spark of triumph in her eyes. ‘It did, as a matter of fact. But that’s not why I did it. I saw the look in your eyes when he appeared, slapping you on the back like that, and I knew that sooner or later you were going to do him some damage. I reckoned to myself that if you came across him when there was no one else around, that you might have really hurt him, but that if you squared him up in a crowd, you’d be stopped before you got carried away.
‘So I egged him on until he stepped over the line. Mind you, I thought you’d only punch him; I never realised you were so good at the Glasgow kiss!’
I had to laugh. ‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘So you kept him out of hospital and me out of jail. Thanks from us both. Now back to what you were on about before. Your minder, you said? Explain.’
Susie led me across to the big sofa, spread herself on it and pulled me down beside her. All of a sudden she looked vulnerable again, as she had when she’d arrived, two days earlier. I wondered if it was real, or if she was trying to lead me on too.
‘It’s like this,’ she began. ‘I feel closer to you, Oz, than I do to anyone else in the world. You think the way I do, you’re as cunning as me, so I can’t pull the wool over your eyes, and you’re afraid of nothing, because the worst has happened already. On top of that, I reckon you care for me. I trust you like I can’t trust anyone else, not even dear old Joe. The fact that he’s my natural father doesn’t make his business judgement any better.’
She put my hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘I want you to look out for me, Oz. I want you to watch my back. I want to be able to come to you whenever I have a problem that I don’t think I can handle on my own.’
‘For example?’
‘For example that Castelgolf business. I did that almost entirely off my own bat, but not quite. I went to Joe for advice; maybe he was dazzled by the notion of having his own golf course, but he was taken hook line and sinker just like me.
‘If I’d come to you, and asked you what you thought, what would you have done?’
‘What you should have; hired Dun and Bradstreet or someone like them. Had a word with a couple of acquaintances. Sure, I’d probably have steered you away from it. But you’ll learn from this experience; you won’t make the same mistake again.’
‘No. But there are other bigger mistakes out there waiting for me. Not just in business either. Oz, I’m a rich girlie in a greedy man’s world. I might be devious, or manipulative if you like, and I might be ruthless, but I still get lonely, and in private, I still doubt myself.
‘I want you to be there for me, Oz. That’s all.’
I reached out and touched her face. ‘That’s easy. You’ve got it.’
‘Will you come on the board of the Gantry Group, as a non-executive director?’
I laughed again. ‘Fuck me, is that what all this is about? You’re offering me a seat on the board. I don’t know about that, Susie. I have no idea what my commitments are going to be for the next couple of years.’
‘There’ll be a salary involved, and shares, if you like.’
; ‘I’ll watch your back, but I won’t be paid for it. You don’t need to make me a director of anything.’
‘It’ll regularise things; it’ll give me an excuse to call you whenever I need you, without pissing off Prim.’
‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘If that’s what you want, okay. Expenses only, though; no salary. And don’t worry about Prim. She doesn’t have a veto over what I do.’
She moved towards me, along the sofa. ‘Thanks,’ she whispered. ‘Now let me show you another kind of Glasgow kiss.’
Afterwards, we decided that we would cash in Susie’s raffle prize that night. As I had expected, El Roser II was busy, it being the end of the Christmas festival, but they managed to squeeze another table for two into a glazed overspill pavilion on the Passeig Maritim, in front of the main restaurant.
The King of Spain went there to eat fish; if that was good enough for him, who were we to disagree?
We started with an assortment of shellfish, then majored on a stew of hake, monkfish, and sea bass with a couple of langoustines added for the sake of appearance. To drink. . not part of the prize. . we selected a bottle of Faustino Rioja. There are several Faustinos, each one with a number. The lower the number, the higher the price; Susie insisted on buying, so I went for number one.
When it was over, and we had scraped the last of our crepes suzette off the plate. . what else could we have for dessert. . I picked up the empty bottle, and looked at the distinguished label, admiring it and wondering how I would look with a beard like that. Susie took my left hand in hers. ‘You do know that we’re sitting in a goldfish bowl here?’ she asked.
Our table was against one of the pavilion walls. I looked out, through the glass, at the Saturday night promenaders, young couples, older couples, families with children, as they walked along the Passeig.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but so what?’
‘You realise that when this movie comes out in Europe, and when it’s a hit, as it will be, this is how your life will be for evermore?’
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