Philip Kerr - False Nine

‘Believe me, Wandsworth nick isn’t Jumby Bay. And it’s eighteen months of my life I won’t ever get back. Especially as those eighteen months might have been the best I’ll ever know. I was playing for Arsenal when it happened and it doesn’t get much better than that. Not for me.’

‘I’d have thought management could be a lot of fun.’

‘There’s nothing that’s as much fun as playing. Take my word for it. And it’s best you do. That way I can spare you a lot of the clichés about football. I tend to suffer from those the way normal people have dandruff.’

‘I’ll certainly let you know if I get bored in that way. I’m the female equivalent of Head n’ Shoulders.’

I opened the envelope and found an open return ticket to Guadeloupe. But that was all there was in the envelope. ‘What, no suggestions for where to look? No addresses? No names? I thought that was the deal. Unless he’s hiding at the airport.’

‘I wish he was.’

Grace tapped her head and as she lifted her arm I caught a strong scent of her perfume, which did little to dissuade me from finding her attractive.

‘They’re all in here. Oh, don’t worry, Scott, this little magical mystery tour won’t take us long. Guadeloupe isn’t very big. And it’s a dump, too. Frankly, the less time we have to spend there the better. The airport is the best thing on the island. That’s not a joke. If Guadeloupe was half as nice as Antigua the British wouldn’t have let France have it. There’s certainly nowhere like Jumby Bay on the island. It’s probably the least charming island in the Caribbean and is full of French people who can’t afford to go to St Barts. About the only thing on Guadeloupe which is better is the education system, which ranks among the best in the whole of France.’

‘You know the island well?’

‘I used to go on holiday there, for a while, when I was a child. But originally I’m from Montserrat, which is a little island just south of here. My mother was from Antigua, which is how I came to live here. What about you? What’s your background?’

I told her about my Scots father and my black German mother.

‘That’s quite a mixture,’ she said.

‘I sometimes wonder where the black part of me originated.’ I grinned. ‘I know it’s not Scotland. That’s been pointed out to me more times than I care to remember. The Scots aren’t exactly known for their sensitivity in matters regarding race. Or about anything else, for that matter. But now and again, I’d really like to know where my ancestors came from. Which part of Africa, you know?’

‘You can’t help that when you’re in the Caribbean. It comes with the territory. My great-great-grandfather was white. But whether that means he owned my great-great-grandmother I’m not sure.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not even sure it matters. Not any more. The slavery thing, I mean. When I lived in Birmingham I used to get pretty worked up about things like that, but not now. Life’s too short. And me, I’m such a mixture of races that it would probably take the CERN particle accelerator to separate all of my atoms out and say where they came from.’

‘You got that right.’

‘It’s ironic though. The way rich Europeans bring the descendants of the young black men they used to transport across the Atlantic to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations, to play football in places like Liverpool, Lisbon and Lagos. Those were the centres of the European slave market.’

‘Not just the Caribbean,’ I said. ‘There are plenty coming straight from Africa, too, these days. But it seems especially true of Guadeloupe. Half the French team would seem to hail from Guadeloupe. Why is that, do you think?’

‘I think maybe you’ll have a better idea after you’ve been to the island.’

‘You know, I wish I’d met you when we were in the overlap, at Birmingham University. I might have enjoyed it a bit more.’

‘I bet you did all right with the girls.’

‘I was a pig.’

She smiled patiently. ‘You wouldn’t have liked me. I was always working in the library. Law is rather demanding in that respect.’

‘I like libraries. Just because I work in football doesn’t mean I don’t read. I might have worked a bit harder myself if I’d known you. You might have inspired me. I think I had it rather easy in comparison with you. It must have taken a lot to get yourself there from somewhere like here.’

‘I’ve no complaints.’

‘No, you’re not the type to complain. I like that, too.’

‘Anything else? You’re doing well. And I’m in the mood for compliments.’

‘You like to hear them, I guess. But I doubt you take any of them that seriously. It strikes me you already have a pretty good idea of who and what you are. Someone else’s affirmation isn’t of much importance to you. And you can take that as a compliment.’

‘That’s three in a row. Means you get a prize.’

‘Oh, what’s that?’

‘You get to buy me another drink.’

We talked some more, and then Grace said she should probably go.

‘I’ll walk you down to the ferry,’ I said, signed the bill and stood up, expectantly.

‘Good manners, too,’ she said. ‘How I’ve missed that in a man.’

‘You can thank my mother.’

Grace stayed put in her chair.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘I only said I should go,’ she said. ‘Not that I am going. There’s a subtle difference between the preterite form of “shall” and the present progressive tense. Especially when it comes to sex.’

‘That sounds like a lawyer’s argument.’

‘It is. But as it happens I’m a little easier to persuade than an English jury where you’re concerned. Then again, I am biased. I didn’t expect to like you. A lot.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t look so shocked, Scott. I’m a single woman. And I’m not in a relationship. Nor likely to be either. The men on this island leave a lot to be desired. At least by me. I’m not about to share everything I’ve worked hard to get for myself so that I can support some lazy good-for-nothing who stays home, drinking beer and watching cricket on television all day. I have the example of my mother and my father to know that’s not for me. Slavery may have been abolished but believe me, it still exists in thousands of homes all across the Caribbean. Uncomplicated sex suits me just fine for the moment. Of course, if you’d rather not then just say so. I won’t be offended. Like all lawyers I have one safe place to keep the cash box and important documents, and another for my feelings.’

I sat down again and took her hand. ‘Just one thing. Even if you don’t always understand them you’ll have to allow me the odd sporting metaphor in bed. You see, for any Englishman, football, not poetry, is the gold standard for metaphors about sex and love. Without football no Englishman would even know how to make love. And I always sing when I’m winning.’

There were several things about Guadeloupe that reminded me strongly of France: the autoroutes, the cars, the number plates on the cars, the postal vans, the occasional Casino, and the airport, of course, which, like the road to England from Scotland, was perhaps the island’s most impressively modern and inviting feature. But as soon as we left the airport and the main highways things turned more ramshackle. Nature was rampant, as if the lush tropical vegetation itself was in the process of staging some irresistible green revolution against the march of civilisation — although on Guadeloupe civilisation was less of a march and more of a slow, barefoot, sideways shuffle. Indeed, the island seemed to be trying to push mankind and all of his pathetic and unwelcome structures back into the sea from where they had originated. Palm trees grew out of abandoned buildings and bushes flourished on rooftops like hundreds of eco-friendly satellite dishes. Old wooden planters’ mansions on fire with banana leaves and which were little more than tottering façades, looked like the forgotten sets from a Hollywood movie. As your eyes passed over their once elegant lines you half expected to see Stanley Kowalski appear on the street and drunkenly howl ‘Stella!’ with frustrated desire at one of the padlocked upper doors and windows. And if all that wasn’t enough for the islanders to contend with, there was the occasional earthquake as well — the most recent a 5.6 magnitude less than two months ago.