Dead And Buried

Nine

In the rooftop restaurant, Paula Viareggio gazed across the table at the two men opposite. ‘When I look back at you characters fifteen years ago,’ she said, ‘I see the two widest wide boys I’ll ever see in my life. Honest to God, Lou, they were known in every bar and disco in Edinburgh.’

‘Known and loved,’ Neil McIlhenney interjected. ‘The owners smiled when we went in their places, and the bouncers breathed that bit easier, because they knew there wouldn’t be any trouble that night.’

‘Yes,’ Mario McGuire added, ‘and how do you come to remember all that way back? Let me remind you: it’s because you were tagging along with us, more often than not, playing the little Italian princess with her two minders.’

‘I was not!’ Paula protested. ‘My heart used to sink every time I was in a place and you came in. The number of times you ruined my chances of getting off with someone. .’

‘Rubbish! The number of times you ruined mine by turning up at my elbow just as I was about to score.’

She grinned, her silver hair shimmering in the candle-light. ‘I only ever did that when I thought you were about to make a serious mistake. I knew who the slags were, you didn’t: I saved you from countless erotic diseases.’

‘Don’t you mean exotic diseases?’

‘Same thing, I guess.’

‘Remember that night with the Spanish girl, in that pub in Rose Street?’ Neil chuckled.

‘What was that?’ Louise McIlhenney asked.

‘Mario was doing really well with this lass, a real wee stunner, she was, and Paula moved in to do her thing. She thought that she was being real clever, speaking Italian as she tells Mario what a slag the girl was. But Italian and Spanish aren’t all that far apart as languages, so she understood most of it. She went ballistic, and Mario had to separate the two of them. The lass threw her drink over him, kicked him in the shins, and stormed out into the night. It took us months to live that down.’

‘Why did you catch the flak for it? You weren’t involved.’

‘If someone threw paint at either of us, the other one got splashed too. That’s the way it was. Paula was something else, though. She was there the night I met Olive: I was dead scared she’d come over and do her trick with me. She did once or twice, you know.’

‘What trick?’

Mario looked at his friend’s wife. ‘The same as she did with the Spanish girl. She’d walk up to me, just as I was about to seal the deal, and speak to me in Italian. If it was Neil, she’d take him aside and whisper in his ear in English. Everywhere we went, she claimed to know the personal history of just about every woman in the place, and she’d relate it in some detail. I always tried to ignore her, but she was really good at it: she always said enough to put me off the woman.’

‘She was only looking out for you, Mario.’

‘No, I wasn’t, Lou,’ said Paula, ‘not entirely. I have to confess that I fancied him myself, even then, but I was too wrapped up in my shawl of Italian guilt about kissing cousins and all that to come out and tell him. When I did get round to it, I found that he had the same hang-ups. Then he went and married someone else. It’s taken us half a lifetime to get together.’

‘And now you are, you’re happy.’

‘Blissfully. We will never marry, we will never have children, we will carry on as we are for the rest of our lives. That’s how we see it,’ she winked at Mario, ‘isn’t it?’

He smiled back at her and nodded his head.

‘Will you live together?’

‘We’ll always have two homes,’ Mario replied. ‘But in the future one might be in Edinburgh and another somewhere else.’

‘Like Bob and Sarah,’ said Louise. ‘They have property all over the place, between them. I was going to call Sarah to invite them to join us tonight. . Bob’s the man who gave us the reason for this promotion celebration, after all. . but Oloroso only had a table for four left at this notice.’ She saw a change in her husband’s expression. ‘No? Why not?’

Neil said nothing, but drew his right index finger across his throat.

‘You mean they’re. .?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, they are, but I don’t want to talk about it here.’

‘Does it have anything to do with. .?’

‘It has nothing to do with anyone else: it’s been brewing for a while. I’m sure he’ll tell you about it himself when he’s ready, after he gets back from London.’

‘What a shame.’ Louise sighed. ‘London,’ she said. ‘That’s something else I have to thank him for: the fact that you don’t have to go there.’

‘Me too, I suppose. Although when he told me, I thought that O’Malley had advised him to bench me.’

‘He did,’ said Mario. ‘The boss told me that after you and Dottie Shannon had left this afternoon. He was right, too. When you’re involved in something like you were, you need a recovery period, whoever you are. . even Bob Skinner, although there’s nobody brave enough to tell him that, now that Andy Martin’s gone. There’s Alex, maybe, but she thinks he’s immortal.’

‘Sarah tried.’

‘Then she should have known better. This London job: what’s it all about anyway?’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘You’re right: this isn’t the place.’

‘No, I can’t talk about it at all, even though you are my new gaffer.’

Mario picked the last petit four from its paper casing. ‘I see,’ he murmured. ‘That, by itself, probably tells me all I need to know.’