Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

‘D’you remember who he was?’

She shook her elegant head, slowly. ‘No. I remember who you mean, but I don’t know him. Never been in here before. . and I’d know if ’e had.’ She turned to Miguel. ‘You were playing pool with him. You musht know who he was.’

The gentleman of the sea looked at her. ‘Why should I?’ he growled in Spanish. ‘I was at the table alone and he came in and picked up a cue. He didn’t even ask if I wanted to play, he just joined in. Then, after a while, he went into the lavatory, came out again and went away.’

‘Yes,’ said Jo, ‘and he gave me a five thousand note for one beer and didn’t wait for his change, just took his stuff from your Susie and shot out the door!’

‘Do you know anything about him?’ I asked Miguel.

He looked at me, sideways. ‘Only that he was English, like you.’

‘I’m Scottish, mate, not English.’

He treated me to his full frontal glare. ‘Is all the same!’ he barked.

For at least an hour after I woke next morning, I regretted becoming involved in a discussion of sub-national identities. It took a litre of Evian and a session on the weights before I felt anything like normal, and I don’t think I’d even won the argument that Jocks are in just the same constitutional position as Catalans.

Still, I had been sober enough when I got home to remember to check my talcum powder burglar trap. It hadn’t been sprung and my note was still there, untouched.

It was quarter to ten before I settled down to my script, sitting close to the phone in the living room, to be handy for Prim’s call, whenever it came.

When I was at secondary school, I studied French and Spanish. For the first couple of years I found them difficult; but I stuck at it. (I didn’t have any choice: my mother and my sister saw to that in their different ways.) Then about halfway through my third year, when I was fourteen, it just clicked. I looked at a piece of Spanish text one day, the words meant something and it all just fitted together. I never looked back after that. I scored ‘A’s in my Grade Highers, and for a brief period I thought about becoming a modern languages teacher, until the thought of a lifetime in the classroom chilled me to the bone.

I had a similar experience that morning. I sat down with the screenplay, closed my eyes and went through it from memory, scene by scene. I was almost at the end when the realisation came to me. I could do this thing: it wasn’t beyond me. Indeed, even on my own in Spain I knew that I was making a passable job of delivering my lines. With coaching, and firm direction from Miles, I would be pretty good. For the very first time, I looked forward to getting back on to a sound stage, and to giving it my best shot. Apart from anything else, it would be a blessed relief from everything that had happened.

I had to tell someone. I realised that I hadn’t spoken to my dad for a while, so I called him. I had lost track of the days, and almost forgotten that he still filled teeth for a living. I was lucky, though; I caught him between patients.

‘Guess what,’ I began, ‘I think I’m an actor.’

‘I could have told you that when you were four and I caught you dressing up in your sister’s clothes and putting on your mother’s make-up.’

I felt myself blush through my tan at the memory. ‘Well, please, please don’t tell anyone else.’

‘That’ll depend on how much the tabloids offer me. How’s it going with you anyway? What’s the news on Elanore Phillips? I’ve been meaning to call to ask you.’

‘I’m in seclusion with my script, and that’s going pretty well. As for Elanore, everyone’s fingers are crossed, but the signs are still good. They think she might be all right.’

Mac the Dentist heaved a great sigh. ‘Thank the Lord for that. My blood went cold when I heard about her; it brought your mother back, all of that awful time.’ He paused. ‘Is that what’s been eating you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s still something up with you, I can tell that. Is Prim still in America, is that it?’

‘No, she came back on Sunday. Hitched a ride with a mate of Miles.’

‘Let me speak to her then.’

‘I can’t; she’s in Barcelona for a couple of days.’

I could almost see his eyes narrowing. ‘Have you two had a fight?’

For a moment, I almost blurted out the whole story, but I kept myself in check. I didn’t want him going back into the surgery and drilling a hole in some poor bastard’s gum. ‘Slightly,’ I admitted. ‘Let’s just say I found out some stuff about her and she found out some stuff about me that puts neither of us in a good light in the eyes of the other.

‘Dad,’ I asked him suddenly, ‘since I’m your son, and Mum’s, how can I be a cruel, ruthless, self-centred bastard?’

‘Who said that about you?’

‘I did.’

‘Hmphh. If it was anyone else, I’d batter the crap out of him. But since it’s you. . You’re not cruel, Oz, or not knowingly so, at any rate. And you’re not a bastard, I promise you. As for the rest, you can’t help it. In truth, I envy you in a way. In the last few years you’ve gone from a state of sloth into one of restlessness; you’ve always got to be moving forward, doing something new.

‘I think you’re running away, son.’

‘From what?’

‘From the hurt, and from the loss. From what happened to Jan, and to your baby. But I tell you this from experience; you can run as fast and as far as you like and it’ll keep pace with you. It’ll be with you until you die.’

‘That’s a coincidence,’ I said to him. ‘Jan told me exactly the same.’

‘When?’

‘Last night.’

‘Did she now?’ I could tell from his voice that he didn’t doubt me, or think me crazy, not one bit. ‘And did she tell you how to cope with it?’

‘She told me to do my best. . Oh aye, and she told me to look after Jonny.’

‘I’m with her on both counts,’ he murmured.

‘About you and Prim; you probably expect me to tell you to forgive and forget, but I’m more of a realist than that. Just concentrate on forgiving each other. Forgetting’s beyond most of us, but as long as we keep on forgiving, it’s usually all right.’

He paused. ‘And speaking of you two,’ he went on. ‘I’m going to a seminar at Glasgow Dental Hospital tomorrow; I’ll look in on your flat while I’m there.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘I might even look in on your wee pal Susie, if I’ve time. She was like a wee wounded bird at your wedding, and when she called me the other week, she still didn’t sound like her usual self.’

I didn’t like to tell him that she did now, so I let it go. We left it at that, and he went off to his eleven fifteen patient.

I went back to the script, and I was feeling mildly exultant again when Prim called, bang on twelve. ‘Hi,’ I said, breezily.

‘Hmmph,’ I heard her sniff. ‘You sound full of yourself. What’s up? Is Susie back?’

‘Chuck it. I’ve had a good morning’s work, that’s all. I needed it, too. It helped bring me back to a degree of sanity.’

‘You mean you’ve stopped thinking that someone’s out to get you, and accepted that Susie staged that wee stunt on the stairs just to get her leg over you?’

‘You can cut that out as well,’ I told her, firmly. ‘No one’s out to get me as such. . other than you, maybe. . but someone is trying to get us both out of this house. I think they’re looking for something, something connected with Capulet.’

‘If you’re right, can’t it be Capulet himself?’

‘No, otherwise he’d know where it was, wouldn’t he? Anyway, enough of that. Are you coming back home?’