Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

‘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.’