Disagreement already shaped his lips. “No, I don’t.”
“I’d pack my gear, pay the hotel (no, maybe not pay. Leave her to do it, especially if she doesn’t have enough money) get in the car, and drive away.” I rubbed it in. “They’re like two schoolkids in love. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
His mardy lips turned truculent. “I don’t think I’ll do that. I want to see where it ends. I’ll settle with her when I’ve got all the time in the world to do what I want to do.” The ugly bastard laughed. “She’ll live to regret what she’s done, believe you me.”
“Look,” I said, if only to find out how he would respond, “I’m going home up the Italian coast, and if I see you laying into her I’ll stop the car and give you a bloody good hiding. I wear heavy boots when I’m at the wheel.”
His eyes looked troubled. “I don’t mean it, do I? And if I did kill her neither you nor anybody else would be there to see it.”
“You wicked bastard,” I said, in a friendly manner, though ready to clock him. “A man should never hit a woman, no matter what she’s done. The only response is to have an affair yourself. See how she enjoys the sight of you getting your own back.”
“Who’d want an old sod like me?”
He had a point. “Look,” I said, “a man of experience like yourself, who’s cunning and cheerful, can always get what he wants. Go into W.H. Smith’s, buy a book of jokes, memorise them, and make a young woman laugh. That’s all you need. You’ll be drinking cocoa in her bedsitter in no time.”
I don’t know why I was trying, but I had to be right. That old roué Blaskin, who fucked every girl who came into his sight, wouldn’t die with his boots on, and that was a fact. My mother, who was about the same age as him, and grabbed any male or female she fancied, wouldn’t die with her knickers on, either. It didn’t bear thinking about, though I debated mentioning their antics to Ernest in the hope of elevating his morale, but had to look close at him instead and say: “I don’t know where my friend Bill’s got to, but here comes your wife.”
I wondered long before Ernest why she was in such a hurry, more tears pearling out of her than I’d seen on his cheeks. Her lips were twisted with a distress that could only have been from justifiable chagrin. I offered my chair, but she grabbed Ernest’s hands: “We’re going,” she said. “Come on, we’re getting out of this awful place.”
He was already standing. “What is it, dear? What’s wrong?”
She looked at me as if I’d been the cause of whatever her trouble was. “Nothing you’d want to hear about. Just pay the bill. We shan’t be staying here. At least I won’t. Not for another minute. Oh, hurry. You’re so bloody slow.” She all but dragged him into the hotel, and even from my chair I could hear her screaming at him to get a move on.
Blaskin would have used the word flabbergasted. I certainly was. Ten minutes later their Rover 2000 shot towards the main road as such speed I couldn’t imagine where they were going and why. Either pragmatism or authoritarianism would take him over, but if his feeble mind kept switching from one to the other, as it had while talking to me, nothing less than a catastrophe would be on the cards, and I wondered why everyone couldn’t be as straightforward as I was, though I felt myself blink at such a daft question.
Not unnaturally I was scorching to know what had gone wrong, but not till Bill came back from the beach half an hour later with a young woman on each arm, did I find out. The three of them were heading for the hotel door, and when I called him over he delayed my game of twenty questions by asking: “Have you seen that hot-headed Muriel?”
“Gone. They booked out. Fled. What happened?”
A furrow of self-satisfaction went across his brow. “All I did was get into conversation with those two beauties at the door waiting to go into the hotel with me. On the beach I just happened to put a finger near one of the girls breasts to scare a mosquito. Muriel didn’t see it, so took my gallant action the wrong way. I mean, I wasn’t married to her, was I? She lost her temper when I kissed one of them. It was only a bit of fun. She said she’d never seen anything like it. But what had I been doing with her in my room? I told her if that was how she felt she could get lost. But I’ve got her address in England, so I’ll make it up when I see her again.”
“I don’t think you will. It must have been the shortest affair in history.”
“I doubt it. But just because I started chatting up those two girls! By the way, I’ve promised them a ride to Athens in the morning. They’ve never been in a Rolls Royce before.”
“Over my dead body,” I shouted. “I’m on Moggerhanger’s official business, and you know his rule that there are to be no hitchhikers in the Roller.”
“Michael, you occasionally manifest yourself as something that I have never been in my life, and that is uncharitable. All I can say is that it behoves you to listen to me, and give me a fair hearing. You talk as if Moggerhanger is the be all and end all of our existence, but he’s not, and shouldn’t be allowed to be. Regarding his so-called golden rule about hitchhikers, he’s got to be wrong in this particular instance, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve got my wits about me, and know that it’ll be tactically sound to have a bevy of beauties in the back, because if any of the Green Toe Gang are still lurking around to check us out they’ll think you’re only a middle-aged gent on pleasure bent when they see our girls waving arms and legs out of the windows. The master planner—me—has thought it all out.”
“Let them travel in your car.”
“Michael, it’s only a small favour, and I ask you to recall the big one I did for you not more than a couple of hours ago. If it hadn’t been for me you’d have been served up already as meat pies in some canteen by the roadside, or sliced up in a kebab joint and swilled down with a few gallons of that porcupine wine they drink out here. I don’t like to harp on it, but the fact is, you owe me. Anyway, don’t take it so hard. As a quid pro quo I’ll let you have one of the girls. I’m not greedy.” He finished my brandy. “Come on, they’re waving to us. We can’t let them down.”
They were teachers from a village in the Languedoc, Janine a bit spinsterish with short fair hair and a mousey little face. Marie, who was mine, had a fringe of dark hair and looked about nineteen, though I learned she was thirty. They seemed too nice and respectable to be attached to the likes of us, but they were good sports, and spoke perfect English, so what could I do?
They wanted a bit of fun, and good luck to them, because so did we. Judging by noise from Bill’s room next door it seemed as if he and Janine were having it off on the ceiling. As for Marie, when she came it was force nine on the Richter Scale. I hadn’t made love since being with Sophie, so flooded out as much as would have set the alarm bells ringing in Holland.
At supper Bill wanted champagne for the four of us. “We can’t afford it,” I told him.
“Of course you can. Doesn’t Moggerhanger pay?”
“Not for that. I’ve got to keep an itemised account. What about Blaskin’s expense sheet?”
“He told me to bring receipts back as well, and I don’t want to be writing Sidney Bloods for the rest of my life, do I? He only allows beer for the sergeants’ mess.”
It was lucky, because my heart was softening and I was about to give in, that the proprietor had no champagne in stock, so we settled for ordinary red, drinking in a way that didn’t fit well with any hanky-panky later.
The girls were on a cultural tour of Greece, and that day had done an excursion to the Vale of Tempe. Tomorrow they were off to Athens, then Thebes, Corinth and Delphi. Bill winked that we should all go around the sites together, to see how thorough the RAF had been in the rest of the country, but I turned the idea down. “It’s business only from now on. The sooner I get back to London and report in the better.”
“It’s a lot more convenient to tour in a Rolls Royce.” He put on a show of moodiness, as Janine stroked h
is arm. “The girls will be disappointed after they see what it can do on the road to Athens in the morning, won’t you, my darlings?”
They let us argue, and I was tempted to do as he and the girls wanted, but more than anything I hankered to be on my own again, away from Bill’s baleful influence and unpredictable behaviour which would bring nothing but trouble. I had of course appreciated his assistance that afternoon, and would be sorry to see him go.
When like a true gentleman he passed the reckoning for the merry supper to me I was too tired to protest, and too proud to argue in front of Marie and Janine. Gluttonous and amicable to the end, at eleven we went slap and tickle to our rooms. On the way upstairs Bill suggested, in a whisper, that we change the girls over, but I said no, telling him that they’d be shocked, or hoping they would be, and I was right when he hinted at it with them.
I had put three hundred miles under the wheels since my half sleep in the Macedonian fleapit, survived a fight for life on reaching Greece, and gone through the shock of meeting up with Bill, who I had last seen begging at Liverpool Street station. After that was the nursing of daft Ernest through a nervous breakdown, or I hoped so, and then a pleasant though exhausting hour or two in bed with Marie, finally drinking more at supper than I could calculate.
I felt that another such day would see me in the knackers’ yard, but the excess certainly helped me speedily into oblivion.
Chapter Twelve.
Bill claimed to have sprained his thumb in yesterday’s conflict (and who was I to call him a liar?) and stood idle as I laboured carrying bags, cases and rucksacks, and stowing them into the two cars.
“I’ll tailgate you, so that nobody can get between us,” he said, “except the girls. I can signal to them now and again. It’ll be good for my morale.”
I flunkied the girls in. “You’re the last person to need it,” I said, getting a whiff of the best Floris’s aftershave as he took all the thanks for my action on himself.
His Corsa was in my mirror along every inch of the road, delightful feminine French sounding from the seats behind me, and laughter at Bill’s no doubt obscene gestures, blasts on his horn as if leading the advanceguard of an armoured division.
We stopped when my passengers needed a toilet, and over coffee Bill read my instructions regarding the drop off at Glyfada. He brought out his bundle of maps, and swept a blunt pencil along the route. “It’s not far beyond the airport, which is right up my street, not to say a piece of cake, to which I’m very partial, as you know. We’ll put the girls off in town, then drive southeast, to the hotel on the seafront, where you’re to wait outside at half past one. Very convenient, because as soon as the transaction’s done I’ll flip back to the airport. As for you, don’t go home through Jugoslavia, in case the Green Toe lads think to lay on a party somewhere along the line. Moggerhanger wouldn’t like you to have an accident. Nor would Major Blaskin. Or me, for that matter.”
He’d only told me what I already knew. “I’ll take the ferry across to Italy from there.” I pointed out the place on the map.
“Very wise. You should be safe that way. Your tactical eye is getting as good as mine.”
We put the girls out in Athens, where they could take the bus to Delphi, a passionate bit of tongue licking from Bill for both. Traffic blared their klaxons telling us to stop blocking the road.
Bill tagged close, and jumped a red light so as not to lose me, at which every car in Athens played the Concerto for Motor Horns. Signs for the airport made it easy to find the way, and in half an hour I pulled up between the designated hotel and the sea. Bill positioned himself a couple of hundred yards away, and in his flowered shirt and shorts, leaning nonchalantly against the Corsa, and wielding binoculars to take in the boats, he looked as dead common as any holidaymaker.
I lit a cigar, and gazed at a yacht bobbing a little way out, so big and smart I expected Mr Onassis to get off and walk across the water. A dry sharp wind blew in from Africa, so I turned to stop smoke painting my face. A beautiful young girl and her boyfriend paused to adore the Rolls, matching it perhaps against one of her uncle’s. She had short black hair, and eyes like lamps, and I supposed that despite her innocent features she would be able to tell me a thing or two in a few years, should we ever meet.
A decade or more ago Bill had advised me to practice all round vision like a pigeon without being noticed, and I had, enough to realise I was being observed. The town would be crowded in summer but wasn’t now, so I must have been conspicuous.
A boat being rowed from a medium tonnage yacht near the shore was obviously coming for me. A tall thin man with a naval cap directed the two who were rowing. When close enough he called: “What’s the weather like in London?”
I responded with my part of the recognition signal: “Belting it down. We had twenty-six inches last year.”
“Better you than me.”
When I strolled to the boot, as if to begin unloading, he bawled: “No there, you stupid fucker. Drive to the back of the hotel, and wait.”
He was English, so I had to forgive his language, and in any case couldn’t smack him across the chops as he deserved because of the audience we’d soon have if I did. As they tied the boat up I drove round the corner and parked between a couple of Mercedes. It was the right place, because one of them was unlocked by the man with the foul mouth, who now shook my hand, and smiled: “Call me Ronald. We’re glad to see you. Tell Moggerhanger to send you again. We like somebody who turns up dead on time, and knows his stuff.”
In no mood for a conference, I didn’t reply, while he took on board what I had brought from London. Then he transferred a dozen parcels into the Roller’s boot, as well as some carrierbags containing, I could only suppose, Lady Moggerhanger’s groceries of local produce.
“Check it,” he told the man I handed the briefcase to.
I wondered, should they find nothing but plain paper inside, if this was where they chopped me into bits and posted me like a bag of Smyrna currants back to Blighty, or fed me to the seagulls. Yet I felt all would be well, and it was, when guardian Bill came from the door of the hotel and passed with a wink of approval at the way things were going.
It was as neat a transaction as could be wished for. The man with the briefcase drove off in his Mercedes to I couldn’t think where and cared even less about, while Foulmouth and his mate, fags smouldering to their satisfaction, strolled back to the boat knowing their work for the day was done.
Bill came out of the hotel. “I’ve booked you a nice room overlooking the sea.”
I had intended churning out a lot of miles before nightfall. “Stop nannying me. I can look after myself.”
He leaned on the bonnet. “Michael, you’ve had a busy week, enough to do in any man. Take my advice, and have a well earned rest for a couple of nights. You won’t regret it. When you leave you’ll be as fresh as a daisy.”
He got into his Corsa and wound down the window. “I might not go to the airport till tomorrow. I’ll find a nice cushy billet somewhere in the mountains and write my operations report to Major Blaskin. He’s a real martinet, and if he doesn’t get it prompt I’ll be on the carpet.”
“Going to Delphi, are you? You’ve fixed me up to stay here because you want those girls to yourself?”
“That’s unworthy of you, Michael. But what if I do stop off in Delphi for a ladle of coffee and some cakes?” He let loose his unbeatable laugh. “It behoves you to trust people now and again, especially me,” and he ground the gears in such a way they’d need replacing in a couple of days: “It’s all right. It’s only a hired car,” he called at my grimace, and drove away without leaving me time to shout that the girls would probably go to Corinth first.
He was right, though. I caved in, and stayed the two nights. Sophie would still be in Italy and, as for Moggerhanger, he could wait a bit longer. After a siesta, whose dreams should have worried me but didn
’t, I threw underwear and a couple of drip dry shirts into the shower. Shampooed water beat down on them, and with a five minute stamping on the mush they were ready for rinsing.
A phone call to Moggerhanger would have given him the pleasure of moving more pins on the map, but I no longer liked being a pawn in the Great Game, nor the risk of my call being overheard. In case he’d brewed up a change of plan I decided to extend radio silence until getting to Italy. Let him worry.
I enjoyed my evening meal of fish, lamb, fruit and a bottle of wine, and as for the list of itemised expenditure, didn’t Moggerhanger already have enough monogrammed toilet paper to wipe his arse on? After coffee and a cigar I went to my room, and fell asleep over a Sidney Blood on realising it was one I had written for Blaskin a few years ago.
Shaved and showered, I lingered an hour over breakfast to let the rush hour traffic calm itself. Then I made sure nobody had taken a tin opener to the motor. Finding Athens’ centre was easy, but unthreading onto the road I wanted made me sweat blood, till at last, more by accident than navigation, I found the great west artery pointing towards Patras.
I coughed up forty draks for the use of the highway, and motored beyond Corinth, till sliding into a lay-by at one o’clock to get the stove going and have a strong mash with sugar and milk that could only otherwise be made at home. A blue flame hissed under the kettle, and boiling water followed tea into the pot. I sat in the driving seat, legs outside, sipping the ambrosial brew.
Cars and lorries played acrobats along the road as I waited to get out into the stream. I waved them on till I made it, then kept up a trundling rate, relaxed and content to be on my own. The back end of a blue Corsa was angled steeply at the edge of the road, and I wondered how its unfortunate passengers had got sidesmacked—probably in trying to compete with a mad local motorist. I sorrowed how a family of man, wife and two lovely kids must have suffered, now in a casualty ward being looked after for cuts and bruises, glad I hadn’t caught a similar packet even in my sturdy Roller.
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