On Honeymoon With Death

27

All the way back up the autopista I could think only of Susie, and what she’d told me at the airport. I had accepted Chandler ne Fowler as her attacker not just because it was convenient but because it was the only logical explanation.

But if it wasn’t him. . and it wasn’t. . then who on Earth, and, yes, just as important why on Earth?

If Susie didn’t have an enemy, that just left me. I ran through the field.

Fortunato? Never in a hundred; I was the answer to the guy’s prayers. When Prim turned up in L’Escala again he must have been the most relieved man in town to see that she had brought a new husband with her, after the way he had ditched her. The grief she could still have given him over that must have weighed heavily on him, especially with things patched up with Vero and her believing, as naively as I had, that he knew nothing about Prim’s aborted kid.

Steve Miller? He was an even less likely candidate. His remodelled hooter gave him something against me, but until then he hadn’t taken me seriously. I knew quite well that he’d seen me as no more a sap over whom he held a supposed edge, by virtue of having shafted Prim once upon a time. Anyway, no way was he capable of picking a lock expertly, nor could I see him manhandling Susie either.

Reynard Capulet? Even if he was still in the vicinity, which I doubted in a big way, what could he possibly have against me? I was the guy who had bought his house, and given him a big slab of money for it into the bargain. Okay, I had found the stiff in the pool, but someone had to, eventually, especially if they’d been meant to.

Someone from my recent, fairly exciting, past? Again, no, for one good reason; those who might have had an axe to grind against my skull are all dead. Okay there’s one who isn’t, but if he had been going to have a pop at me he’d have done it long ago, and somewhere else.

No one came to mind; no one at all. By the time I hit L’Escala I was back to thinking of Susie again, about our incredible three days together, and of the many truths she had told me and shown me, about herself, about Prim and about me.

No, Oz doesn’t love any more, not anyone alive, at least, but he can be attracted if the magnet is strong enough. I hadn’t thought of her in that way before. Back then, she was with Mike Dylan and he was my pal, and the old Oz didn’t do things like coveting a pal’s lady, far less covering her. Now, I thought of her, of our last kiss at the airport, of her retreating back, and I felt that pang again.

I swung the Voyager into the driveway, through the gate which I had left open, and drove it into the garage, beside the Merc. I took the shorter route to the back door, unlocked it, and stepped inside, my hand going up quickly to disable the alarm. But the active light was out. I frowned and walked along the short corridor, into the kitchen.

She was leaning over the dishwasher, with her back to me. I looked at her, and felt even more disorientated than I had on the previous Thursday, when Susie’s voice had sounded behind me. I had had more than enough surprises for a while; and I sure wasn’t ready for this one. I had wanted time, time to think about her, and of what I was going to say to her.

My foot squeaked on the tiled floor and she jumped. She turned quickly, gasped with relief and smiled.

‘I know that “Welcome home” is in order,’ I said, ‘but I have to ask. How the hell did you get here?’

‘It’s a short story, really,’ she answered. She came to me and hugged me. ‘After we spoke on Friday, I went out for lunch with Miles and Dawn. We met an actor friend of his, Nicky Johnson. You’ve heard of him, I’m sure. Miles mentioned that I was there from Spain, and he said that he was about to fly to Madrid, in his private jet. He offered me a lift, said he would drop me off in Barcelona.

‘I thought it was too good a chance to miss, so here I am. I beat you home by five minutes; my taxi’s just gone.’ I had passed a Barcelona Airport taxi as I crossed the town boundary; its green light on top had caught my eye.

‘So where’s Susie?’ she asked.

‘She’s gone home. She felt awkward,’ I lied glibly, ‘with just the two of us being here, so she brought her flight forward. I’m just back from the airport myself.’

‘It’s a wonder I didn’t see you there, with our luck.’

Too right, I thought. Then something important came to me. ‘Put on the coffee,’ I said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ I strode out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Quickly, I stripped the sheets and pillowcases from our bed and shoved them into the laundry basket in our bathroom; then I crossed the hall and did the same in the bedroom which Susie had used, if only briefly.

Prim was in the living room when I came downstairs; a mug of instant lay, waiting for me, on the coffee table. ‘So,’ I began, ‘tell me all about Elanore.’

‘She’s recovering well from the surgery,’ she replied. ‘They decided to hold off on the chemo for now: they’re going to give her time to regain a bit more strength. I had a long talk with the surgeon who operated; he’s as optimistic as he could be under the circumstances.

‘He thinks he got it all, and he thinks that the follow-up treatment will minimise the risk of spread, but he can’t say for certain.’

‘Worst case, what could happen?’

‘She could develop another tumour, maybe in the liver or colon, and that in time would be that. I prefer to think of best case, that she has full remission from the thing and dies of old age.’

She sipped her coffee as I settled on to the sofa beside her. ‘What about you, now? What did you and Susie get up to?’

I looked at her, poker-faced. ‘What do you think?’ I replied. ‘We shagged each other senseless.’

Prim laughed. ‘I’d know if you had,’ she said. ‘You’d have bags under your eyes and you’d be tripping over yourself with guilt.’

‘You can see though me in a second, can’t you?’ I murmured.

‘You better believe it. No, really, what did you do?’

‘Saw the sights, ate well; that was it. I told you about going to Barcelona on Friday. We did Pals as well and some of the other sightseeing places.

‘One very odd thing did happen, though.’ I told her from start to finish of Gabrielle’s arrival on the previous morning, and of the strange story she had to tell. As it unwound, I watched her expression become more and more indignant.

‘Do you mean to tell me that the girl’s father sold her to a pimp, as if she was livestock?’

‘Exactly so; and she turned up here looking for Capulet, so that he could give her the once over, make sure the sailors hadn’t given her the clap, or anything like that, on the way across, then put her to work. The poor wee lass is completely innocent. She really did think she was going to be a cocktail waitress.’

‘Can we find her father, Oz? Can we trace him and report him to the Filipino police?’

‘We won’t have to; your old boyfriend’s taken her under his wing. He’s going to arrange her repatriation through the Philippines consulate. When they hear the story, I’m sure that Papa Palacios will get what’s coming to him.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Prim frowned and chewed her lip; that mannerism always means that she’s about to come out with something. It didn’t take long.

‘Darling,’ she murmured. ‘Have you considered that if the girl was sold out of poverty, it might not be the kindest thing in the world to send her back to it?’

‘The thought did flutter across my mind, my jewel, to be followed by another. What the fuck’s it got to do with us? I’m not, we’re not, sending her anywhere. We just happen to have bought a house that seems to have been used as a dropping-off point for prostitutes on their way to long-term horizontal employment.

‘I’m as angry as you are about what happened to the kid. But I’m chuffed that we’ve saved her from a life of shame, as the Daily Star would put it. What more can we do?’

She turned on the full persuasive power of her baby blues; until that time, that would have been enough. ‘Couldn’t we give her a job?’ she suggested.

‘Don’t be daft. Give her a job as what?’

‘I don’t know. A live-in maid, something like that.’

‘But we don’t need a live-in maid! We’re not going to live here full time. What would she do while we’re away?’

‘Look after the place for us?’

‘God! Prim, you’ve never even met Gabrielle. She’s a nice kid, sure, but she’s a kid nonetheless. She’s too young to be given a responsibility like that.’

‘Did you tell Shirley about her? Maybe she’d take her on.’

‘Sure, and I’ll bet Lionell would give her a job as well, cleaning his brushes. Prim, the best is being done for her; Fortunato has her and he’ll make sure that she’s sent home under better conditions than she came here. The Philippines is a modern, developing country; she’s not simply going to be given back to her father so he can sell her again.’

‘Mmm,’ she muttered, ‘maybe you’re right. Still, I think I’ll phone Ramon just to make sure she’s still all right.’

‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘Don’t you trust him with the kid?’

She flushed. ‘Of course. I just thought that maybe he and Veronique could use a nanny. That wee Alejandro’s a handful.’

‘Too much of a handful to give to a sixteen-year-old. . If she is sixteen, that is. No. Take my word on this and leave things as they are.’

She looked reluctant to do that, but I knew that in the end she would.

‘We’ll see,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Do you have any other strange stories to tell me? Anything else I’m going to find out about?’

I hadn’t planned to raise the subject, but I knew that there was a better than even chance that someone else would, the bulk of the ex-pat community having been witnesses at Frank and Geraldine’s cocktail party.

‘Well there is one thing,’ I began. ‘Someone bust Steve Miller’s nose at a drinks do yesterday afternoon. He was boasting too loud about one of his conquests, and a guy took violent exception. Guess who the guy was? Guess who the conquest was?

‘Why didn’t you tell me you fucked him after I left?’ I looked her in the eye as I asked her.

It took her a while to answer me. When she did, her voice was small, not hers at all, someone else’s, that of someone uncertain and insecure. ‘Didn’t think it was any of your business.’

‘You’re right. It wasn’t.’

‘Who told you?’

‘He did, in effect. He told everyone else too, round the Barnetts’ pool, when he started talking about you getting horny in Madrid. But most of them knew about it anyway, I suppose.’ She stared at the coffee table. ‘You couldn’t stand the guy, Prim, any more than I could. Did you hate me that much, that you let him. . into you?’

Her face flushed again; I thought I could feel her shaking, beside me on the couch. ‘Yes,’ she yelled, silence-shattering.

‘At the time I did. You were such a calm, cruel bastard when you told me you were leaving me for Jan; cunning too, the way that you seized on my friendship with Davidoff as a counterweight for your conscience. . if you had one at all.’

‘A bit more than friendship, I remember. You told me so yourself, in some detail; about the two of you. “He was my lover”, I recall you saying, only a few days ago.’

‘No, it wasn’t!’ she snapped at me. ‘It couldn’t have been any more than it was.’

‘If he could have, you would have.’

‘No! Oz, he was very special, to you too. And he was very sad, and very old. It was nowhere near the same as you and Jan. You just chucked me to one side and you went back to her. Not out of the blue either. I knew that you’d got together again in Edinburgh before that, when you went back on business.’

She paused. ‘You were pretty late admitting that too. And you didn’t have to anyway; I knew for sure at the time, as I told you.

‘I found a credit card slip, from Laing the Jeweller. A gold necklet, as I remember.’ She laughed, short and shrill. ‘I actually thought you were going to surprise me with it. Oh you surprised me all right. Too fucking right I hated you! Too fucking right I had Steve Miller!

‘Good old Steve. “I say,” ’ she mimicked. ‘ “One size fits all.” ’

‘What?’

‘That’s what he used to say; when we were in Madrid. “One size fits all!” It was a sort of a war-cry with him, as he was struggling into his condoms. . Not that he was talking about them. God, he’s so crass, and God how you deserved it.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But did he?’

‘What do you mean? I’ll bet I’m the best lay he ever had.’

‘I wonder if he’d think you were worth it now?’

She frowned at me, her anger turned to fear. ‘Why? What have you done?’

‘Less than I might have at another time. I might have done a hell of a lot more than just spread his nose all over his face. I told you, he was mouthing off at the Society do yesterday. Of course I let him have it.’

‘Stupid bastard!’

‘Who? Him, or me?’

‘Both of you!’

‘No. All three of us, you included. If you had told me, Prim, I’d have understood. I might have said that you’d dropped your knickers to spite your face, so to speak, but I’d have understood. Yet you didn’t, even though you had going on two years to bring it up. At first you even made a point of telling me you hadn’t been with anyone after me. Then you sort of let it slip that there had been one casual thing. Fine; that didn’t bother me.

‘Then we get married, come back here on honeymoon, and I find out that it was more than casual. You will agree that living together and making a baby is more than casual, will you? Still, I understood; I felt as guilty as sin, in fact.

‘But now, I find out about Steve Miller, not from you at all, but from the local grapevine and from him. Too right I filled him in, and you can blame yourself for that just as much as me. You set him up for it by not telling me, just as much as he did himself.’

‘So much for your understanding then,’ she murmured, bitterly. ‘You found out and you battered him.’

‘But that’s my whole point!’ I yelled at her, shoving myself up from the couch. ‘I didn’t find out from you! You even let us get married without telling me.’

‘And if I had?’

‘It would have made no difference. I might even have admired you, in a strange way.’

‘Now?’

‘Now, nothing. It’s none of my business, just as it never was. Yes, I was mad when I found out, but I took that out on Miller’s nose. End of story.’

I looked down at her. ‘It is the end of the story, isn’t it?’ I asked, quietly. ‘There’s nothing else I might hear around the pool at someone else’s party?’

She shook her head and said, ‘No.’

If she’d come out with everything then, I think I’d have told her about Susie, to clear all the decks. But she didn’t, so I didn’t, and I let it go at that, for that time. Life can be a bit of a poker game, you know. It might be against the rules, but it’s always comforting to know that you have an ace up your sleeve.

She stood up, and came to me. She took my hands in hers and laid her forehead on my chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m also very tired. I didn’t sleep at all on that flight; Nicky Johnson talked non-stop all the way across the US, and all the way across the bloody Atlantic. Can I go to bed?’

‘Sure you can,’ I said, ‘once I make it up. I took the sheets off to be washed. Have yourself a drink, while I go and do that.’

She nodded and headed off towards the kitchen. I trotted upstairs and found a fresh fitted sheet from the linen cupboard; to be on the safe side, I changed the duvet cover as well. The room smelled fresh enough, but I raised the shutter and opened the window slightly, just to be on the even safer side.

When I went downstairs, Prim was on the couch once more. She was asleep, and the gin and tonic which she held was about to slip from her fingers. I took it from her, put it on the table and picked her up. As I carried her to bed it occurred to me that I had hefted enough weight up those stairs over the last few days for it to be classed as part of my work-out programme.

I turned back the duvet on Prim’s side of the bed, laid her down and undressed her. As I tossed her knickers on to the pile of clothing on the floor, she came half awake. ‘Get in?’ she murmured, half request, half question. I realised that I was tired too.

I hadn’t been sure of the time we’d gone to sleep, but when I came back to the surface, it was just after five in the evening. The fresh air from the open window was overcoming the heating, and the room felt chilly. I got up to close it, then wakened Prim, not wanting her to sleep so long that she’d be awake all night.

She smiled at me, and I felt sorry about our confrontation. I couldn’t have handled it worse, and I knew it. ‘Hi,’ she whispered. ‘How are things?’

‘My thing’s fine. How’s your thing?’

She laughed and opened her arms to me. ‘Missing your thing. Come here.’

I had been half afraid that it would have been different; it wasn’t. Well it was, different from Susie, that is, but I forced myself to look on her as a closed chapter in my life. With Prim it was as good as ever, with maybe, even, an added touch of wickedness. ‘One size fits all, indeed,’ I whispered in her ear as I thrust into her. ‘Poor bastard, that’s all he knows.’

We showered together and dressed, then realised how hungry we were. I made a sandwich to keep us going, we watched some television, then at around eight we drove into L’Escala for a pizza in La Dolce Vita, up there in a window seat watching the traffic. We had just been presented with two pizza sorpresas when Prim glanced outside, then did a double take. I followed her eyes and saw that she was looking at a Lotus Elise with British plates, its top open even in January. The driver was jammed behind the wheel, wearing a heavy jacket, and distinguishable by a white plaster over his nose. I didn’t know whether he had seen us or not, but, sure as hell, I didn’t wave.

‘Just think,’ I said, with a certain amount of acid in my tone, but not enough to spoil the taste of the pizzas, ‘if you had played your cards right, all that could have been yours.’

‘I’ll stick to the Mercedes, thanks,’ my wife replied, with a smile which made me decide that whatever I knew about her, I would do my best to forget it.

‘It’s a pity about Susie,’ she murmured, a little later, after we had found and dealt with the surprises in our pizzas. ‘I’d have liked to have seen her. Just why did she go home, Oz?’

I was sure that the question was completely straight; that no suspicion lay behind it.

‘I told you, she felt awkward. After the thing with Miller yesterday, she got scared that people might start to gossip about us.’

‘You took her to the party?’

‘Of course. We had dinner at Shirley’s on Friday; she suggested it.’

‘I’m not surprised she went, then, after what you did to poor Steve.’

I frowned at her, not in jest at all, even if she thought it was. ‘You call him poor Steve again and you and I will have another row. I was protecting your tattered reputation, remember.’

She made a face at me; just like the old times. ‘Thank you, sir. But what did Susie say?’

‘Nothing. She was a bit surprised that good old Oz could have done such a thing, and that I was so good with the head; but then, I’ve been coached by professionals.

‘Actually, there was another reason why she went home. It has to do with a piece of business out here that’s gone sour on her.’ I filled her in on the Castelgolf fiasco, and on its resolution. Naturally, I said nothing about her other misadventure.

‘That’s terrible,’ Prim exclaimed. ‘Two million down the toilet!’

‘Probably so. They might trace the money, but it’s touch and go. The man Fowler will be under deep cover by now; they’ve more chance of finding Lord Lucan than him.’

‘I’m really surprised,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that Susie’d have fallen for a scam like that.’

‘Both her partners were heavy hitters, apparently. I think that helped to persuade her. Anyway, it was an investment; some pay off, others crash. As for the amount, it would be a disaster to you and me, but not to her. She’s still rolling in it.’

‘That’s good, at least.’ She paused. ‘How is she, though, Oz? Is she still broken up about Mike?’

‘She’s better now,’ I told her, truthfully. ‘She’s got herself a new goal in life. She’s made it in business, now she’s after a titled husband to help her climb the social ladder.’

Prim looked at me, incredulous. ‘Susie said that?’

‘Yup.’

‘That’ll be the day. Susie Gantry’s a Glasgow girl through and through, and proud of it. The idea of her in the drawing rooms of Mayfair. . No, she had to be kidding you.’

‘I don’t think so. Susie’s out for herself now; she’s through with sharing. She wants a husband only as a necessary part of having a couple of kids. When she goes shopping for one it’ll be in Harrods, not M amp;S, and there are plenty of exhereditaries around with an eye to the main chance, now that they can’t hang around the House of Lords, drawing money for the privilege of being privileged.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’ She paused as a waiter brought two cappuccinos. It was a different bloke from the guy who had served us until then. I recognised him; I hadn’t seen him in La Dolce Vita before, but he had come up in conversation at Shirley’s a couple of nights before. He gave Prim what was meant to be a knowing smile. She frosted him out, completely.

‘Change of subject,’ she said briskly, as if he had never been there. ‘My brother-in-law said I should ask you how you’re getting on with that script. Next month is drawing nearer, my darling, when you learn to become a real actor.’

What the hell does she think I am now? I wondered.