I cringed at his spiel, that any woman of her sort would laugh into scorn but, so much for my smug assumption, it was obvious from her look of interest that she believed every word. “It seemed a pretty serious argument to me,” she said.
He couldn’t take his gaze from her breasts, and neither could I. “I’m glad you think so,” he said, “but I only put the performance on for your benefit. ‘I can beat these lads in two seconds,’ I said to myself, ‘but I’ll deal with them more severely than they deserve just to give that beautiful woman the sort of show she can never see on television.’ In fact they’d done nothing to us at all, and I paid them a few akkers each to pretend to attack my pal so that I could help him, and show off in front of you.”
She opened her mouth and laughed. “Oh, you didn’t!”
“I did, Muriel, but I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else. ‘Now there’s a personable woman,’ I thought. ‘I’d go to hell and back for her. She’s got something I’ve never seen in a woman before. It’s in the face, and I’m finding it deeply interesting?’”
Such uninhibited chat was touching, yet she was amused. “Now stop it,” she said, her tone suggesting a desire for him to continue, for she blushed as far down—and maybe even further—than her unharnessed bosom. “You must be having me on.”
I pressured his foot under the table, but there was no stopping him. “I’m sure your husband makes the same compliments,” he said, “and tells you funny little stories like I do.”
Everything being calculated, he must have expected the shadow that crossed her face. “Not on your life.”
“You mean to say he doesn’t entertain you as you deserve? He must know that the best sound in the world is a woman’s laughter.” Her too plain expression said that the poor bloody husband knew no such thing, that he didn’t, or couldn’t, or even wouldn’t make her laugh, at which Bill went on: “If you can’t make a woman laugh you don’t deserve her. I learned that very early, though it wasn’t something I had to learn. It was part of me. I was born like that. I had my mother and five sisters in stitches all the time. The things I came out with! The old man didn’t like it, the miserable swine. He never even got a smile out of them, and turned ratty whenever I did. I grew up knowing it was best never to take life too seriously, and let the serious part of life take care of itself.”
Every word she took in was a nail in her husband’s coffin, though he’d looked a miserable old get, and was probably dead asleep already, when he should have been out here fighting her away from Bill, who I’d always known to be a charmer, though at the moment he was going a bit over the top. The recent agro must have got him going.
He asked where she lived in Blighty (his word) and she told him. She’d tell him anything. He wanted to know what work she did, and she said she was a journalist and free lance writer. He asked if she knew Sidney Blood. She didn’t. “What about the famous novelist Gilbert Blaskin? Do you know him?” No, but she’d read one or two of his books, and they weren’t bad.
“We know Blaskin,” he said, “so you’re in luck. He’s a special friend of mine. I’m going to let my pal here meet him when we get back home. If you like I’ll introduce you as well. I can arrange for you to interview him about his life and work.”
His technique dumbstruck me. He was already setting up a meeting with her in England. “Sounds a brilliant idea,” she said. “I’d love to do something on him.”
Bill leaned back, a posture that brought on an even wider grin. “Seems you’ve met the right people on your trip abroad then, Muriel. But tell me what your hubby does.”
The touch of bitterness played even more into his immoral scheme. “He worked in insurance, but took early retirement a year ago.”
“He’s lucky to be retired, but I’ll never be able to in my job.”
“And what’s that?”
“Bodyguard, Bouncer, Mercenary soldier. Ladies’ masseur.” He looked at me. “We’ve smuggled as well, haven’t we, Michael? Do you know how much a single bar of gold weighs, Muriel? No, I didn’t think you would. How could you? We had to go through special training to carry a briefcase full of gold bars, as if it was only paper inside, but it weighed a ton. I was in Rome once on my way to deliver a load, walking along the pavement, and two young thieves on a Vespa came up and snatched the briefcase, thinking it only had a bit of cash and some travellers’ cheques inside. They got fifty yards, and their caboodle capsized from a weight they didn’t expect, and I ran up and gave them a kicking they’d never forget. People were cheering on the pavement as I picked up what was mine and walked away with the ash still on my cigar.”
More laughter. “What a wonderful story. Is it true, though?”
“It’s true enough. Stories aren’t worth telling unless they are. I’ve been through so much in my life I don’t need to make them up. I’ll tell you more, anytime you like.” He took a long pull at his beer. “But how does your husband pass his time now he’s not working?”
He was stepping on dangerous ground, but had light enough feet to trip through any minefield unscathed. “It must be boring, being retired,” he went on, lighting a cigarette. “I knew a man who left his job at fifty. He collected model trains as a hobby, but he soon got fed up with that, and took to walking the streets, not knowing what to do with himself. Then he met a woman. Well, you know what men are. She was a cheeky-daft little slut from a highrise housing estate. One day he was doing what a man’s got to do in her scuffy flat, and went out like a light. Heart attack. Best thing that ever happened, for the wife anyway, who was glad to get rid of him, after she’d cried a bit for the benefit of a couple of his friends he used to work with.”
He waved away a seagull from trying to get its beak into his glass of ale. “The trouble was he came back to haunt her. While she was cleaning the house he’d tell her not to do this or that. It was unnerving. If she did what he told her it was always the wrong thing. She was afraid of having an accident. He was trying to get at her, as he’d done all his life. There are men like that, though I can’t think why.
“She got rid of the ghost, though. He was standing by the bath while she was taking a shower, and she turned the water on him. He couldn’t stand that. Maybe all ghosts can’t. But he vanished, and never showed up again. So if a hubby ever comes back as a ghost, Muriel, you’ll know what to do.”
We were startled when her laugh ended in a weird scream. “Men! I can’t believe the things that happen when Ernest tries to help me in the house.”
“Surely you appreciate his assistance?” I caught Bill’s wink, hidden from Muriel by the splatting of a mosquito on his forehead. “It must be useful.”
“Ah yes,” she said, “he tries, I’ll say that for him. But you’ll never believe what happened a few weeks ago.”
“I’ll believe anything you tell me, darling. Won’t we, Michael?”
“I had so much work to do, stories and articles to finish, that he volunteered to help me by vacuuming the flat. It was getting towards filthy, and time someone did it, so I let him try his hand, the sort of simple job he’d often seen me or the cleaning woman do. Anyway, I thought he’d feel wanted if I let him help mummy. I needed the time it would take me to do it. ‘I’ll vacuum your study,’ he crowed. ‘I’ll do the hallway as well. Every room will be so clean you won’t know them afterwards.’ How marvellous, I thought, he’s not so useless after all.
“He got going, while I went through some papers in the living room. The whine of the busy little bee pulling the machine all over the floors, as if he was doing a very thorough job, lulled me into thinking life was improving. He can turn into a dependable house husband, I told myself, and can go on doing it whenever the cleaning woman goes on holiday to Jamaica for two months. I might not even need her anymore. In half an hour his task was over. He moved me out of the living room so that he could do that as well. Then I went back to work in my study.
“I almost died. I shrieked. I frothed at the mouth. Do you know what he’d done? To plug the vacuum cleaner in he’d pulled all the plugs from my computer system and sent a month’s work down the chute. I hadn’t done the back up had I? But even so, he rushed in at my screams, thinking I’d put my fingers into a live socket and electrocuted myself. I wished I had, or I wished I’d done it to him, finger by finger. ‘I’ll kill you,’ I raved, as his not so pretty face went red with guilt and chagrin. ‘You godforsaken idiot, what did you do that for?’
“‘I had to plug it in somewhere,’ he said. ‘Oh did you?’ I cried. ‘Well, what’s this, and this? And bloody this?’ I did widdershins, pointing out all the plugs he could have used with nothing attached. How I didn’t murder him with the breadknife I’ll never know.”
“What an awful thing to happen,” Bill said smarmily. “Yet you’ve got to have a bit of sympathy. Everybody makes mistakes.”
“Not like that,” she said.
He passed my packet across. “Have a fag, duck.” After she’d lit up from his match with a shaking hand he reached to stroke her bare arm. “Don’t let it bother you. I’d do a lot better than that, though, if it was me who had the job of looking after you. I’d even sweep under your carpets.”
My battered face was still giving schtuck, but life was pleasant again, sitting by the blue water, an afternoon breeze cooling me as I listened to their billing and cooing. Her look was unmistakable as she pressed his hand: “I wish it had been you.”
“I’ll leave you two lovebirds, while I take a stroll along the strand.”
He let rip with his top of the world hee-haw laugh: “Don’t get like that, Michael!”
My knee wasn’t as badly hurt as I’d expected, though it might have been worse if I hadn’t walked. A couple of lovely French women were lying almost nude on the beach, but with my face so botched I didn’t see any point trying to chat them up. Cars on the quay were being loaded onto a ferry, and seeing little else of interest I went back to the hotel tables.
Bill and Muriel had gone to fuck their arses off in his room, and good luck to them, I thought, hoping to do the same with Sophie in a few days. Life seemed pointless after my fight, and the days of playing snakes-and-ladders with the black hatchback. Having got shot of my pursuers all I had to do was deliver and receive Moggerhanger’s goods which, having a one-man battalion of the British Army as my backup force, should go according to plan.
I was interested on seeing Muriel’s morose husband come out of the hotel with a towel over his shoulders. He sat by me. “You don’t know where my wife is, by any chance? I’ve been looking everywhere, and can’t find her.”
“She’s in my mate’s room,” I said, “having a very enjoyable experience. I expect he’s already slipped it in a few times.”
Thick smoke seemed to shift over his eyes. They closed, hoping to get rid of it. Then they opened, wide, looking at me again as if he hadn’t heard right. He tugged at his natty beard. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Take it as you like.”
“And if I do believe it, do you suppose I’ll go in, find them, and humiliate myself still further by getting into a fight with a man like that?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Dogs aren’t noted for loyalty,” he said. “You can never do anything about a bitch on heat.”
“If you say so.”
“She’s only getting her own back because I bedded the au pair three years ago.”
“Life can be a can of worms,” I said.
“So I knew this had to happen, sooner or later.”
The throbbing bites at my face kept me in an unkind mood. “It probably happened sooner than you think.”
“You may be right.” The twist of his unpleasant lips wasn’t hidden by the beard. “A bitch always finds her dog.”
“Steady on,” I said, “you’re talking about my best friend. Why not just go into his room, get them unstuck, and give them a pasting? My old pal Bill loves a fight.”
“Short of entertainment, are you?”
“Not necessarily.” I couldn’t have cared less. “But she entertained us right enough when she told us about how you’d busted all her computers when you were using the vacuum cleaner. Had us in stitches.”
The revelation knocked him about a bit. “She did, did she? Well, all I can do in return is explain myself.” He filled a Peterson pipe, puffed it into life as if setting fire to a haystack, and wiped away a tear with a corner of the towel around his neck. To call the boy for a couple of brandies was the least I could do for him. “The trouble is,” he said, not blenching at the first scorching touch of firewater, “I’m split in two.”
“Only two?”
“I’ll explain further. You have the time?”
I nodded, willing to let Bill have plenty of leeway, in exchange for the help he’d given me. “The thing is,” he went on, “one side of me is pragmatic and easygoing.”
“Pragmatic?”
“Practical. Taking things as they come.”
“Sounds Greek to me.”
“It is.” He smiled at my lack of education, though I’d know what it meant, only wanting to push him on a bit. “But,” he said, a tad wanly, “there’s another side of me that’s rigid and authoritarian.”
“Oh yes? Sounds interesting.”
“I can only suppose the pragmatical traits were uppermost when my wife fell in love with me, but unfortunately the longer we were together the more the rigid and authoritarian traits came out, which didn’t make things easy. In the beginning I never quite realised that I was so pragmatic and easygoing. In fact the phrase didn’t come to me till it was far too late for me to do anything about it. And when rigid authoritarianism had me in its grip I felt like committing murder for even the smallest of her faults.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very accommodating attitude.”
He didn’t hear me, and leaned closer. “The pragmatic and easygoing part of my nature must have come from my mother, while the rigid and authoritarian part of me was obviously from my father. Or so I read in a book on psychology. Anyway, I married Muriel when I was pragmatic and easygoing, didn’t I? But after a few years the rigid and authoritarian part of me clicked into place, at which we realised that something had gone too wrong to repair.”
I thought I’d rather be tangling with the hatchback on the killer highways of Jugoslavia than bending my ear to this rigmarole, but my heart wasn’t stony enough to stop him.
“It’s the pragmatic and easygoing half that’s letting me talk to you, while the rigid and authoritarian side tells me to button my lip. The advantage is that by talking in this way I feel it doesn’t matter what the bitch does, though when we drive up the coast of Italy on the way home, if the rigid and authoritarian side of me comes back, I’ll push her out of the car and kill her. Or I’ll get up to two hundred kilometres an hour on the motorway and put an end to us both in one of the tunnels.”
“If,” I said, in as pleasant a tone as could be mustered during such a fraught confession, “you use the words pragmatic and easygoing, and rigid and authoritarian once more, I’ll take you apart, which will be the least I can do for my sanity, and possibly for yours as well. As for killing Muriel, what would be the point of that? She’s doing it on you, but people survive worse.”
There were so many tears in his eyes he’d soon need another towel. “When you talk about killing her,” I said, “it must be the rigid and authoritarian side of you coming out.” I had caught the virus myself. “Why don’t you get back to your pragmatic and easygoing self, forgive her, and go into the hotel to fuck one of the waitresses? Show a bit of easygoing authoritarianism or pragmatic rigidity. Maybe the waitress’s boyfriend will kill you but, failing that, why not try it on with one of those gorgeous French women up the beach?”
It wasn’t easy for such a man
to straighten his back. “That’s not my way. Revenge is the father of progress, so I’ll just have to murder her.”
“Stop harping on that. I could understand you killing her if you get hanged afterwards, but the law doesn’t even oblige you with a length of rope these days. Meanwhile, have another brandy.”
I ordered two more, and before I could stop him he’d thrown both into himself as if they were water. “You can certainly take the booze,” I observed.
His smile was no smile. “What else have I to live for?”
“Don’t get like that.” I put a hand on his shoulder, but only for a second. “While you’re alive you have everything.”
He found my remark encouraging, proving that with such an idiot the more banal you were the better. “I’m glad I met you, for saying such wise words. God often puts wisdom into the mouth of the inexperienced.”
“Thank you very much.” He didn’t know I was the son of Gilbert Blaskin. I wouldn’t care if he stood up, did a belly flop into the water, and drowned himself. I had enough cares of my own, though realised his were bigger, especially when the lovers of Verona came arm in arm out of the hotel, Muriel’s laughter a decibel or two higher than Bill’s. He had changed from his suit into stylish shorts, a dazzlingly colourful shirt, and sandals. I wanted them to come to us and spin a few picturesque untruths, but they walked up the beach as if we were invisible. Maybe Ernest would call them back, or go after them for the satisfaction of being knocked down but, mouth open with loss, he stayed where he was and said: “What a bloody cheek.”
I could only agree, and take another swig at the firewater just put down. “You know what I would do if I was in your place?”