On Honeymoon With Death

25

Susie let Gabrielle keep the sweater. She hugged it to herself, and looked at her gratefully, as Ramon picked up her pathetic wee case. He had brought his wife with him to collect the girl, a sensible move, so that she wouldn’t be frightened.

I walked them out to their car, a roomy family saloon; Alejandro was in the back, asleep and strapped into his safety seat. The girl’s face lit up as she saw him. Without her make-up, her skin was a very light brown; she could have passed for his older sister.

‘Are we still going, then?’ Susie asked as I walked back inside.

‘Where?’

‘This cocktail party Shirley mentioned last night. At Fred’s, or wherever.’

‘Frank’s. You want to go?’

‘Unless you’ve lost your bottle, and don’t fancy being talked about.’

‘They’re going to talk about me anyway, like Shirley said. Sure, let’s go. Unless you’d rather watch rugby on Sky that is.’

‘That will be right,’ she snorted. ‘What should I wear? Frock or trousers? Shirt or sweater?’

‘Those trousers you’ve got on, and a shirt.’ I went upstairs with her and gave the nod to her choice of a fawn shirt from the magic suitcase. I sat on the bed and watched her as she changed; I hadn’t realised it before, but she was built very like Prim, an inch or two shorter, a cup size bigger in the bust, certainly, but with the same narrow waist and assertive hips. With her back to me, she could almost have been my wife in a wig.

I changed into my jeans, another white shirt, and cowboy boots. This time as we checked ourselves in the mirror by the door, me in my black leather jacket and Susie in the red one that she had bought in Torroella, I fairly towered over her.

Remembering my offer to Shirley of a lift, I called her, but she turned it down. ‘I’d rather keep the option of a quick getaway, Oz. So should you, if you’ve any sense.’

I had been to Frank and Geraldine’s house before, in my first spell on the Costa Brava. It’s a nice, fairly new villa, in a part of L’Escala called Montgo and it’s built on two levels, with loads of space inside and out and a small swimming pool with dark blue tiles like mine, so that it looks cool in the summer, and bloody freezing in the winter.

When we got there at about ten minutes after three, the place was already crowded. Gerrie met us at the door. ‘How good to see you, Oz,’ she said, enthusiastically. ‘And this is your sister, that Shirl told us about, is it?’

‘This is Susie,’ I answered. Not a lie, and I didn’t fancy any long explanations.

I gave her a couple of thousand pesetas entry money for the Catalan Society funds, and a bottle of champagne as a raffle prize, and she sold me twenty quid’s worth of tickets so that I could win it back. The weather had brightened up, and it was pleasantly warm again, so most of the crowd were outside. JoJo gave us a cheery ‘Good afternoon’ and two glasses of some pink stuff that she said was ‘punsh’, and we wandered off to mingle.

I hadn’t been a great player in the British Society of Catalunya during our first stay; I was given to loafing then. Still, I knew most of the faces from that time. The mingling part of it was easy; I was buttonholed straightaway by a couple from Yorkshire who admitted, in the slightly guilty way that grapple-fans of their age always have, that they watched the GWA wrestling on television, and wanted to know what it was like to be its ring announcer.

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.’