by Lex Lander
‘They’re still going strong,’ I replied. ‘They live in the wilds of Newfoundland. You know, Canada. My dad’s English – very. My ma’s Québécoise. We meet up now and again.’
More again than now.
‘You don’t sound very English. The way you talk, I mean.’
‘Ah, that’s on account of living in Canada until I was nineteen. I grew up North American and never lost the accent.’
‘Promise me something, will you?’ she said later, over the corbeille de fruits.
‘Promise? That’s a big word for new acquaintances.’ I raised my glass, indicating she should do likewise. We clinked, drank the last of the Margaux in an unspoken covenant. ‘But if I can, I will.’
‘Promise you won’t expect too much too soon.’ She frowned deeply. ‘I’m sorry … that sounds presumptuous. Who’s to say you expect or even want anything from me?’
Before I could answer that, the fancy carved clock on the filigree panel that screened the staircase gave off a tinny chime. It was half after ten.
‘Elizabeth … !’
‘Lizzy … !’
We spoke in chorus, then laughed in chorus.
‘We’ll have our nightcaps at the hotel,’ I proposed, summoning the head waiter.
Which, after a mad rush across town to where a lightly-fuming, arms-folded Lizzy and her anxious beau awaited us, is how we rounded off the evening.
* * * * *
Elizabeth Power, who looked like a dead Italian girl called Pavan.
I sat drinking into the small hours, memories of the Pavan girl triggered anew by the entry of her lookalike into my life.
As so often before, I saw the gun barrel coming up in slow motion, saw the scarlet-orange spear of flame spew from the muzzle, even saw the bullet in flight, rotating lazily, deviating by not so much as a millimetre from the straight and true. I saw it strike – that terrible, bone-splintering impact – saw, finally, the spray of bright blood, the bouquet of her quietus.
A sob caught in my throat. I jumped to my feet and hurled the glass at the wall. It shattered as the girl’s head had shattered, into a thousand fragments, one of which glanced off my cheek.
‘Fuck!’ I said, not in an outburst, but deliberately and with depth of feeling. Bad enough to have to endure nightly replays on the ceiling. Now I had to contend with my victim in the flesh, teasing, tormenting, and driving me mad.
Five
After dining on bastela, a stuffed pigeon in layers of flaky pastry with saffron, almonds and sugar, in the hotel restaurant, I wandered through to the bar. The bar and restaurant at the Rif are separated by an open-work screen and the division patrolled by a swarthy maitre d’, impassive of visage as any Buckingham Palace sentry. The hotel’s main bar is convivial, relaxing, and orderly, with the air of a London club, and abounds in much-buttoned leather. The staff are appropriately attentive.
I had an after-dinner date with Clair and out of olde worlde courtesy had made a point of being early. The barman, befezzed and perspiring in his enclave of multi-coloured lighting, greeted me with an easy civility.
‘Double vodka and ice,’ I ordered. Clair was not of that breed of women who tolerate drunks, so I had renounced the hard stuff all day. Now I felt I could open the sluice just a crack.
‘Volontiers, monsieur.’
I cocked a leg over a stool and swivelled through a hundred and eighty degrees to survey the floor. The place was not busy: just a few couples and a blond-haired man alone in a corner seat, briefcase open beside him, pecking away at a tablet with two fingers.
‘Monsieur.’ My vodka and an ice barrel were placed on the counter. I added a rock of ice, swished it around.
‘Santé,’ the barman said, lingering to watch me dispose of a good third before another customer called him away. I nursed my glass and savoured the warm glow in my gut, soaking up the soft music that filtered through some hidden speaker. Music to dance to, make romance to. Poetry by Warner. I harboured idle thoughts of another kind of poetry, that of Clair naked and in my bed. Forming a detailed picture was beyond me but the general package, I was sure, would be to my liking. Her body definitely went in and out where it was supposed to.
‘Is quiet tonight.’
The voice came from my left and I assumed the speaker was addressing the barman. But the barman, when I looked up, was fitting a spout to a new vodka bottle and had his back to the counter.
So I angled leftwards to face a wide-shouldered man sitting a few stools down from me and looked into the staring eyes of Mr Rik de Bruin, Dutchman, aspirant to play house with Clair. It was an interesting face. European without doubt, yet of obscure ethnic heritage: dark crinkly hair, threaded with grey. Not handsome, not with those pock-marked cheeks and swollen lips, but definitely not forgettable. Vaguely menacing, even. I could understand why Clair was not keen to make his closer acquaintance.
‘I say is quiet tonight,’ he repeated.
I gave a double nod and hoped he would settle for that. With Clair due to show any moment I didn’t want to get drawn into chitchat.
‘Friday is usually busy,’ he persevered. He was wearing a loud-check jacket that emphasized the width of his shoulders. A chunky spirits glass was lost in his grapefruit-sized fist.
‘You on vacation here?’ I asked, submitting to the inevitable.
‘I am renting a villa on the coast, the Mediterranean side.’ He stool-hopped until he was alongside me and extracted a card from his top pocket.
‘Henrik de Bruin,’ I read aloud. To piss him off I deliberately mispronounced his last name ‘Brew-in’.
‘De Brown,’ he corrected, with just a whisker of irritation. ‘Like the English name.’
I trotted out my alias, adding, ‘Which is an English name.’
I studied his card afresh. Below his name it read DeB Publications, Egmond aan Zee. No street address, telephone, cell phone, fax, email or website. This guy was ultra low-profile. Suddenly I was curious about him.
‘Egmond aan Zee,’ I read off the card. ‘Where’s that? It sounds Dutch.’
‘It’s in the north, near Amsterdam, but by the sea. You know my country, Mr Melville?’
‘Tolerably well.’ I placed the card by my glass. ‘What line are you in, Mr de Bruin?’
His forehead grew folds.
‘Line?’
‘Business.’
‘Ah, of course.’ He cleared his throat, gulped at his drink before replying. ‘I am in publishing. Also movies.’
Well, well.
‘And you?’ he said, raising his glass again and quizzing me as he drank. His eyes were slightly bloodshot.
I gave him the stock answer.
‘You are fortunate to be able to retire so young.’ He rubbed his rather prognathous jaw left-handedly. The top half of the little finger had been amputated and the stump jutted out stiffly as if it were stuck on. ‘I would also like to retire, but …’ he made a disparaging gesture, accompanied by a travesty of a grin, the fleshy lips writhing like a pair of slugs in an embrace. ‘I like even more to make money.’
‘Who doesn’t? Another of those?’ I indicated his drained glass.
‘An excellent suggestion. Gin, please.’ Then, when the refills came: ‘Prosit.’
‘Cheers,’ I said. His glass stayed upended longer than mine. ‘Is the Rif your local?’
‘Local? Ah, yes, I remember. Is what you English call your pub, is it not? The place where you always drink.’
I nodded. ‘You’ve gotten the general idea.’
His pleasure at having recognised the idiom unaided moved him to slake his thirst again. He could certainly soak it up. Were it not for my new-found moderation and looming date with Clair I might have paced him. First to fall down picks up the tab.
‘Actually, I am here to meet a lady,’ he confided, backhanding a dribble of gin from the corner of his mouth.
‘A lady, eh?’
He rocked towards me. ‘Business, strictly business. She is staying here in the
hotel. If you are a guest, perhaps you have seen her. She has a daughter, a beautiful girl …’
So he was still hankering after Clair. I was half-amused, half-resentful.
‘She plays, I think you say, hard to get.’ He winked, man to man. ‘Tonight, though, I believe she will change her mind.’
I crushed my irritation to ask, man to man, ‘How so?’
‘I recently buyed a cruiser and today it was delivered to me. Is magnificent. Forty meters long …’ He spread his arms like an angler telling the tale of The One That Got Away. ‘Five staterooms, all with satellite television and wi-fi, sauna, Jacuzzi, gymnasium … magnificent. She will not be able to resist it. I will take her on a cruise to the Canaries.’
Refusing to believe Clair had double-booked me with this self-styled movie mogul, I merely said, ‘Let’s drink to your success then,’ not bothering to hide my irony. ‘I have a feeling …’ I was at that moment distracted by the passage, majestic as an ocean liner, of a lissom black-haired beauty in a glued-on evening dress. She tossed the most casual of glances in my direction, and I twitched the extremities of my mouth as encouragement. For all the interest this come-on generated I might have been the invisible man. She swept regally on into the arms of a hunky Latin-type of about thirty. I detested him on sight. Resented, I mean.
De Bruin had followed my gaze. ‘You can dream. She is Elsa Macchioni, a neighbour by me. A very hot lady.’
The couple mooched off towards the restaurant where the three-piece band was warming up for its evening stint. Coinciding with their departure, a group of about ten people entered the bar, mostly middle-aged, and if their loud English chatter had not revealed their origins, their dress most certainly would have. De Bruin slid off his stool.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, and then I saw why: bringing up the rear of the group and in discussion with an elderly man, whose rigid carriage and grey bar of a moustache hinted at a military pedigree, was Clair. De Bruin swooped on her, and I hadn’t a hope of dissuading him even if my reactions had been fast enough. Clair glanced up as he homed in and an icy wind of hostility emanated from her.
The strength of de Bruin’s obsession with her was extraordinary. Fair enough, Clair was an attractive piece, but in a beauty contest with the likes of the Macaroni baggage she wouldn’t even figure. And where, I wondered, was Mrs de Bruin while her man was out on the prowl? At home knitting?
What followed next was an action replay of yesterday morning. Having detached Clair from her moustachioed companion, to the latter’s undisguised dismay, de Bruin launched into a harangue, arms flying everywhere, like a bookie at a race meeting.
‘Won’t you take no for an answer?’ Clair’s voice was shrill, slashing through de Bruin’s, but failing to silence him. Chatter in the immediate area dwindled. A waiter, skipping past with a tray load of empty glasses and goggling at the spectacle, almost ploughed into the English group. Enough was enough. In the absence of other intervention, that peace-loving saviour of damsels in distress, alias Alan Melville, would gallop again to the rescue. It was getting to be a habit.
For openers, I tried diplomacy.
‘Hey, Henrik,’ I called cheerily, coming up behind de Bruin and slapping him midway between those weightlifter shoulders. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your lovely lady?’
He gave a start, releasing Clair’s arm. The relief on her face was transparent, and she took a fast step back, out of his reach.
I said to him, ‘I can see now why you’re so keen. Not going to keep her all to yourself, are you, you old rogue?’
My initiative had deprived him of speech. He stood open-mouthed as Clair, entering into the spirit of the stratagem, introduced herself to me.
‘I’m Clair Power.’ She smiled, extending a languid hand.
‘So nice to meet a friend of Rik’s.’
The military type also joined in the game, elbowing de Bruin aside.
‘My name is Hordern,’ he said, smoothing the precision-clipped moustache with a bent forefinger. ‘Brigadier Hordern. Retired, of course.’
I reciprocated the introduction.
‘Pleasure to meet you, Melville. Friend of Mrs Power, are you?’
I said I was now.
‘D’you know this blighter?’ he asked, in reference to the outmanoeuvred de Bruin, who was hovering on the perimeter of our little circle, looking thunderous.
At this juncture the “blighter” himself recovered sufficiently to speak on his own behalf.
‘Why don’t you all mind your own businesses?’ he hissed, and suddenly I was on red alert. This was not a man to be treated lightly, still less mocked. ‘I am talking to my friend, Mrs …’
‘Friend!’ Clair’s tone was cutting. ‘We hardly know each other, and only that because you keep forcing yourself on me.’
De Bruin’s eyes slitted. ‘All I have done is ask you to come sailing. Is this a crime?’
Clair glared poisoned darts at him. ‘And I’ve given you my answer.’ She turned to me. ‘Sorry you’ve gotten involved in this, Alan, and you, Brigadier.’
A deprecating murmur from Hordern. In the restaurant the band launched into “Temptation,” and the hum of conversation resumed as the crisis showed signs of receding.
Then de Bruin’s hands, big as gauntlets, shot out to grab fistfuls of my lapel. Caught wrong-footed, I was dragged up close to him. We bumped like fairground dodgems. A spluttered ‘I say!’ from Hordern overlapped a gasp from Clair.
‘So you pretend not to know each other, hey?’ De Bruin’s nose and mine were inches apart. At this range the pock marks on his cheeks were the size of lunar craters. ‘You think to make me look foolish.’
It’s against my nature to court trouble, principally because it attracts the attention of the police. De Bruin, although a couple of inches shorter than me, had the solid, indestructible look of a bank vault door. So I didn’t react according to reflex or male vanity. I simply said equably, ‘Don’t do that, de Bruin. You’ll spoil my suit. Let’s shake hands and part friends.’
He shook all right – not my hand but all of me, and so violently my teeth chattered.
‘Qu’est-ce qui se passe?’ The enquiry came from behind me. I tried to look over my shoulder but it wasn’t easy, jammed up tight against de Bruin as I was. ‘Monsieur, je vous prie,’ the newcomer said, addressing de Bruin in a placatory voice. ‘Il faudra vous expulser à moins que vous ne arretiez pas de faire la bagarre.’ We’ll have to throw you out if you don’t stop making trouble.
The closing bars of “Temptation” were thumping forth from the restaurant but I doubt that anyone was listening. De Bruin and I were stars of the show.
‘Monsieur!’ The plea was stronger now, overlaid with rising impatience.
De Bruin was still clutching my labels. I was bracing myself to dispense a knee to the groin when all at once the madness went out of him, like a volcano cut off in mid-eruption. He blinked three or four times in succession and released me. I staggered free, serendipitously into Clair’s arms.
‘Alan?’ she said, half supporting me. ‘Gee, I’m so sorry …’
‘Blasted foreigners!’ Hordern barked, presumably forgetting he was in a minority among multiple nationalities.
The newcomer, I now saw, was the duty manager, who had introduced himself on my first day at the Rif. Young, slightly built, smooth. Until now I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him to break up a couple of squabbling toddlers let alone two hefty guys.
‘Thanks,’ I said to him, slightly out of breath.
‘De rien du tout, monsieur,’ he said with a small bow. He was holding de Bruin by the shoulder, and now attempted to coax him away. De Bruin snarled at him, like a tiger about to pounce on its next meal.
‘Keep your hands off me.’ Saliva sprayed from the blubbery lips. ‘You will hear more of this.’
The duty manager was not overtly impressed by this bluster. He stood aside to give de Bruin a clear exit. The Dutchman’s parting shot was reserved f
or me.
‘You, also,’ he said, finger stabbing, voice crackling with the static of his humiliation. ‘You also I am not finished with.’
The English party took Clair and me under its collective wing, plied us with liquor and sympathy, and insisted we join it in a corner of the bar it had evidently made its own. The men were all retired army officers, it transpired, on a privately-organised tour of North Africa. If the group could be said to have a CO, Brigadier Hordern was it. Clair had met them earlier in the evening.
‘We were dining in the other restaurant,’ she explained. ‘Somebody had mixed up the reservations and Lizzy and I were put on the Brigadier’s table.’
‘Deuced glad to have you, m’dear,’ the Brigadier boomed, confiding aside to me, ‘Lost m’wife last year, don’t you know. I’m the only bachelor in the party.’
‘Some might say lucky you,’ I remarked, taking a liking to him, in spite of his blimpishness and his transparent designs on Clair.
‘And what about that daughter of hers. A cracker, what? Give her another year and she’ll be fighting ’em off.’ He knuckled furiously at his moustache. ‘My God, she will!’
‘Are you here on holiday, Mr Melville?’ one of the wives asked – a thin, scraggy-necked old girl with a habit of arching her eyebrows as she spoke.
‘In the main. I had some business to transact, but that’s all settled now.’
There was much more in this vein as the evening advanced. Clair and I scarcely managed two words to each other.
‘Ever do any hunting?’ Hordern asked me around midnight.
‘Some. I usually spend a week in the Dordogne in the fall and do a bit of pot-shotting with an old friend.’
He nodded at that. ‘Tell you what – how’d you like to do some boar hunting tomorrow?’
‘Boar hunting?’ I stared at him. ‘You mean here?’
‘Not exactly here. South a bit, not far.’
‘That’d be great. But the hunting season doesn’t start until the fall, does it?’
Hordern cackled as he dismissed a hovering waiter. ‘Only in the game reserves, dear fellow. This will be on a private estate. Belongs to a friend of mine, a Government minister.’ He swayed towards me, closed a surreptitious blue eye. ‘No names, no pack drill, eh? Just, well, let’s call it mutual back-scratching.’