On Honeymoon With Death

2

On the face of it, my second wife has always seemed to be a sensible, straightforward, ingenuous woman. On the face of it.

I thought that for years. From the moment of our first meeting, when she walked into her flat and found me there, alone yet not alone, in most unusual circumstances, she struck me as just that solid no-nonsense person, an ultra-capable woman given neither to fear nor panic.

We fell in lust at first sight. Ever since then I’ve barely passed a day which in my old world would have seemed normal. Some might say that sharing a loft in Edinburgh with a green iguana named Wallace is not everyone’s idea of normality, but it suited me at the time.

Not even our courtship was straightforward. We did our thing together, and, our lucky shamrock having made its presence felt at an early stage, went off to Spain with a bag of money and spent some time shagging ourselves insensible. Then Prim fell in love with someone else, at the same time as I realised that I wasn’t a real person without Jan, the girl with whom I had grown up, and whom I had mucked around for several years.

They’re both dead now, Prim’s soul mate and mine. That old Devil had an invisible hand in Jan’s death, that’s for sure. As for the other one, I’m pretty certain now that he and STA were related. I should have guessed it at the time, but I was still an idealist then. I told myself that I believed in the basic goodness of the species. Now I admit publicly what privately I’ve always known, that the Seven Deadly Sins have a hell of a lot more pulling power than the Ten Commandments.

The night my wife Jan died, I was fifteen hundred miles away, in another city. And whom did I meet, right there, for the first time since we had gone our separate ways? Primavera Phillips, that’s who.

In my innocence, I thought it was a kind of serendipitous coincidence. But I’ve seen a lot of evil since then and I don’t believe that any more. I believe in Fate, but not that it has a kindly eye and a long white beard. I don’t believe that Luck is a Lady either. No, I see them for the single demon they are.

Okay, okay, okay. I’ve got my tongue in my cheek. I’m not the happy-go-lucky yuppie I once was, but if I have a saving grace it lies in the fact that I’m still Mac the Dentist’s son, and that’s all that a bloke could ever hope for. When my dad dies. . if he ever does, because he’s strong as an ox and never ill. . then the Architect of the Universe will have a partner at Augusta, one who’ll give him a few tips on those fast greens, at that. Someone once said to me, watching him hole a curly forty-footer on the difficult thirteenth at Elie, ‘Your old man putts like God.’ That was rubbish, of course; I don’t care how long God’s been playing, he can’t be as good a putter as Macintosh Blackstone.

And don’t get me wrong about Prim, either. She’s not Jan and I’m not. . him. . but when I married her it was because I thought I loved her to bits. Sure she’s a trouble magnet, but while she’s been at my side I have also done things I had never even dreamed about, and come into possession of a right few million quid in the process.

So when she proposed that for our honeymoon we took an extended break in Spain, to give it a second shot together in happier and more settled circumstances, I worked out the odds against lightning striking three times and fell into line. (You’d think a guy who’s won the lottery would have been less likely to disregard a long shot.)

There was nowhere else we wanted to go but the Costa Brava. This was not as simple as once it might have been, since we had sold the apartment which we had owned together in the historic village of St Marti d’ Empuries. We had bought it at a knock-down price from a Dutch bloke whose wife had left him, and who flogged it way under value just to spite her. She must have got the message, for after a while she came back, and he asked us if he could buy it back.

He was amazed when we said that he could have it for what we paid him; but the truth was that the place was too full of ghosts for me. . and for Prim, but I’ll get around to that.

So we booked into the finest suite in a country house hotel called Crisaran, a medieval building which has been beautifully restored by its lady owners. We arrived in mid-November, checked in for a month, and barely left the place for the first week, doing mostly what honey-mooners are expected to do — reading and watching television.

When we had had our fill of that, we climbed into our hired Mondeo and set out to visit an old friend. Shirley Gash, the ex-pat queen of L’Escala, isn’t that old, actually. Somewhere in her late forties, one might say, but it would be irrelevant, for she is a woman in her prime. . a lot of woman. About six feet tall, blonde and gorgeous, with a figure that outdoes any screen goddess I’ve met since I made my first movie.

Miles Grayson’s Snatch, co-starring his wife. . Prim’s sister Dawn. . and ‘introducing’ Oz Blackstone, private enquiry agent turned wrestling announcer turned actor, had just opened in New York. Shirley watches CNN and Sky News like some people watch Coronation Street and EastEnders, so after brief congratulations on our marriage, there was only one thing she wanted to talk about.

‘Was it a one-off?’ she asked. ‘Or are you going to do another? They say you’re great in it. . Well, not bad for a newcomer, anyway.’

I had practised self-deprecation in front of the mirror, but I still hadn’t cracked it, so I guess my smile was more self-satisfied than modest. ‘That’s kind of them,’ I responded, ‘but you know what they say about beginner’s luck. As a matter of fact, Miles has offered me a part in his next movie. I’ve said I’ll do it; but that’s as far ahead as I’m thinking.

‘Forward planning’s bullshit anyway.’

I looked around Shirley’s new garden. She had sold the house in which she had lived when first we had met, for reasons similar to our own. . to an Australian beer baron, she told us; now she was settled in a newly built bungalow, ostentatiously named Villa Balearic, and designed in what she described as Ibizan style. It was built on a half-acre plot in a street called Carrer Caterina, not far from the old Greco-Roman city of Empuries, and had a fine view across the Golfo de Rosas.

‘Nice this, Shirl,’ I said.

‘Thanks.’ If she’d had feathers she’d have preened herself. ‘I only moved in a month ago. I had a big hand in the design.’

‘That must have been a help to the builder,’ Prim chipped in, so deadpan that not even I could tell whether she was kidding or not.

‘Yes,’ Shirley nodded. ‘Although he never said.’

She looked from Prim, to me, then back again. ‘So,’ she demanded, ‘where you gonna live now you’ve sold your old place in St Marti?’

‘What do you mean?’ we asked in unison. ‘We live in Glasgow,’ I added, ‘with a better view than you’ve got. . If you like buildings and bridges and lots of traffic, as we do.’

‘Sure, but you belong here as well. L’Escala fits you two like a glove. Besides, we need a movie star here. We’ve got all bleeding sorts, Flash Harrys from all over Europe, but we’re a bit low on showbiz. Go on, buy a new place, then we’ll have someone to gossip about.

‘Who knows, Oz, you might even become a tourist attraction. Before you know it the British Catalan Society will be organising bus trips past your house.’

I was flattered, but I had to laugh. ‘One movie does not a celebrity make, Shirley.’

‘Bleeding well does in L’Escala,’ she countered.

‘In that case we’re well out of it,’ said Prim.

‘But you need to invest some of that money in property. Where else you gonna go?’

‘How about Florida?’

‘Too hot, and they’ve got alligators.’

‘Barbados?’

‘Hotter and the sanitation’s lousy.’

‘Rome?’

‘Full of Italians.’

‘Puerto Banus?’

‘Puerto Anus more like. Come on Prim, you love it here, admit it. You too, Oz. You’ve got memories here.’

‘Some of which we’d rather forget,’ I suggested.

‘Sure, but you’ve sold your apartment, just like I’ve sold my house.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Why do you think? After Davidoff went away, I just hated the place. I couldn’t look at that summerhouse again without thinking of him, and without wondering what had happened to him. You don’t know do you?’ She fired her question too quickly for her effort at sounding casual to be convincing.

‘No,’ I lied quietly. I did, of course, but I couldn’t tell her; not even her.

‘Ahh,’ she sighed. ‘There was always a bit of the cat about him. I expect he just went off somewhere to die, just like an old moggie. I miss him, all the same. So that’s why I sold up. Couldn’t leave L’Escala though; so I found this lump of land and I had this house built. That’s what you two should do.’

Shirley had made her point. We didn’t get into a discussion right there and then, but that night, back at the hotel as we did justice to a bottle of cava before going down for dinner, Prim brought it up. ‘She’s right, you know,’ she exclaimed, out of the blue.

‘Who? Margaret Thatcher?’

‘Yes, but apart from her. Shirley is. We should buy something else in L’Escala.’

‘Yes, dear.’

She frowned at me. ‘Are you humouring the little woman?’

‘No, dear.’

‘Well, what do you mean?’

‘I mean okay.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Why? Do you want an argument? I can read that look in your eye, and I know that if we had one I’d lose. So I might as well agree with you and save the hassle.’

She isn’t just a magnet for trouble: she can radiate it too, when she feels like it.

‘Besides,’ I conceded. ‘I happen to agree with old Shirl. I do feel right here. And there’s something else. Back in Glasgow we live in a place that Jan and I shared. Sure, I know you can hack that, but given our financial position it’s only fair that we have a place that’s ours alone.’

‘Aww,’ she murmured, slightly, unusually, stuck for a word.

‘And finally. .’

Prim laughed. ‘Oh yes? You’ve got your smartarse look on. Out with it.’

‘I looked around as we were leaving Shirley’s. There’s a place two doors along with a “for sale” sign, and I like it up there; I like the quiet. So I thought we might look at it tomorrow.’