The Man Who Loved Islands

by David F. Ross

  Laurie Revlon had her manicured fingers in every lucrative pie, it seemed. Yet she retained a relatively low profile. She continued in football for a few years after the Terry Dooley affair, but she already had eyes on bigger prizes. She set up a sports promotions business and put on a number of world championship boxing events across England. Then, in 1982, she moved the base of her operations to Spain. And in 1985 – having peripherally contributed to the success of the Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia – she moved to Europe’s Pleasure Island, becoming the resident of a pristine-white, modernist villa overlooking San Antonio bay.

  ‘Fuck me, whit a great arse, eh?’ said Hammy. ‘Ye’d need an experienced mountain rescue squad to haul ye oot ae a crack that deep. Ah’d certainly ram it!’

  Bobby just smiled ruefully. It had seemed like a strange encounter. They had been around the nightlife of San Antonio for most of the past two seasons, Bobby working as a club DJ and Hammy as a handyman at the campsite where they stayed during the summer months. They were becoming better known to the locals, and they both got into the bigger ‘first division’ clubs, such as Amnesia and Ku, for free. But neither had ever heard Laurie Revlon’s name mentioned. Bobby accepted that their lifestyle was myopic, but he still felt it was strange that they’d not come across the long, blonde, crimped hair, the power-dressing white business suit and the Marilyn Monroe posterior of this magnetic forty-five-year-old woman.

  ‘Yous jus’ need be careful, okay?’

  The conversation with Demis Dimitri that evening was as strange as the meeting with Laurie Revlon. Bobby had anticipated a difficult discussion with his current employer, and initially it had indeed been strained. But when the Greek club boss inquired about where Bobby might be going, the answer led to a complete change of tone.

  ‘She eat you up, spit you out, you no’ careful,’ said Demis.

  ‘Fuckin’ hope so, man!’ laughed Hammy.

  ‘You need to listen to Demis.’ He looked around and behind himself, then leaned in. Bobby and Hammy reciprocated. ‘Laurie Rev-lon ista total cunt!’ he whispered.

  As they walked back to the campsite, a full moon illuminating their way through the field, Bobby wore a pained expression.

  Hammy couldn’t understand it. ‘Look, he’s jist pissed off that yer leavin’. Dinnae take nae notice ae aw that fuckin’ voodoo shite. Ye ken whit these Greek cunts are aw like. They smash their ain bastard crockery when they’re fuckin’ happy, fur Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Aye, mibbe.’

  ‘Mibbe, nuthin’. This Revlon lassie’s possibly gie’in ye a shot at somethin’ decent … somethin’ much bigger than Santorini’s.’ Hammy’s upbeat-o-meter was redlining. ‘Remember when ye first chucked it at the Metropolis? When ye telt Doc Martin it wisnae big enough for ye?’

  ‘Aye, but that wis different.’

  ‘Naw it wisnae. It’s aw aboot ambition, man.’ And then, the killer blow: ‘C’mon … fuckin’ get in there!’ Hammy wrapped an arm around Bobby.

  Bobby laughed. He had much to be grateful to Hamish May for. His relentless optimism in the face of all adversity had comforted Bobby in the early days of 1983, when his family pressures were at their greatest. He’d also steadied Bobby’s emotional ship when his relationship with Lizzie King finally sank just off the east-Spanish coast. Hamish May was a rock of the ages, and whilst a significant part of Bobby still wished Joey Miller was here to share in it all, he couldn’t have hoped for a better life companion than Hammy. Hammy was there for him all the time, through thick and thin, in good times and b—

  ‘Hammy, where the fuck are ye goin’?’ shouted Bobby, having just realised his friend had taken a different route.

  A distant voice wafted back through the gloom. ‘Doon tae the caravan park. On a promise ae a wee three-way. Met a couple ae Dublin women earlier. Ah’m ther’ ultimate fantasy apparently.’

  Bobby sighed.

  ‘See ye in the mornin’,’ shouted Hammy. ‘Away an’ have a wee Sherman Tank tae yersel’. Think ae Missus Revlon scouring yer baws wi’ a Brillo pad soaked in honey.’ His laughter faded.

  Bobby smiled. He recalled a time when he too was as bullishly buoyant about absolutely everything; a time before the Falklands War intervened.

  Chapter Five

  October 2014. Shanghai, China

  ‘’Scuse me?’ Megan Carter, Manager of Guest Relations, turns around. It’s a practised pirouette; as graceful as Fonteyn.

  ‘Hello sir. How can I help you today?’ she says.

  Joseph reckons she must be in a perpetual state of mid-smile; like the personification of a Brian Wilson melody. It momentarily makes him forget his lines.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Aye … yeah. Look, ah just wanted to apologise for the other day. Y’know, wi’ the flowers, an’ that.’

  Megan Carter’s expression doesn’t change. Joseph wonders if she has a twin. Or maybe she genuinely doesn’t recognise him. He is more Charlie Watts than Keith Richards today, after all.

  Then her glorious smile softens slightly. ‘It’s absolutely no problem, sir. To be honest, I wasn’t having a wonderful day either, so I should apologise too.’

  It isn’t what he’d expected to hear and it takes him a bit by surprise.

  She recognises his awkwardness, and she’s suddenly serious. ‘See, I shouldn’t even have said that. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘No, listen, there’s absolutely no need. Ah was rude tae you, an’ ah’m really sorry. Ah just felt ah should say.’

  Megan’s polished smile returns. Joseph smiles a little too. He hasn’t done that in a while. He’s lost count of the amount of times some fatuous cunt has informed him that frowning involved fewer muscles than smiling; but, given how unusual the upturned corners of his mouth now feel, maybe it’s actually true. He turns slowly away. He wants to say more, but he has no connection with this girl beyond a few, inconsequential words.

  ‘If you need anything else, just let me know, sir. My name is Megan.’

  Joseph turns to face her. He is ten feet away now. God, she is fucking beautiful.

  ‘Thanks. Ah will. Bye’

  ‘Good evening, sir.’

  Later, he sits on the bed. After reading an email from his duplicitous partners expressing shallow concern for his wellbeing, he paid for a substantial room upgrade. Gone is the inherent sense of fiscal responsibility he normally demonstrates. He unwraps one of two chocolates perched on pillows whiter than an Osmond brother’s teeth. It’s a farcical bed for a hotel room. Its width is its length and then half again. It is a bed fit for a Roman orgy, its size only seeking to remind this traveller of his solitude, not of the perceived royal grandeur of his upgrade.

  He shuffles himself back up the bed and leans against the padded headboard. Six soft pillows create a nest for his body. It takes him a full fifteen minutes to flick through every channel on the wall-mounted TV. Chinese television is a confusing brew of talking heads, overdramatic melodramas and live-action table tennis, all presented with throbbing, surround-sound infographics. There are a few Western channels, principally 24-hour news, repeating the same stories every half hour but calling them ‘breaking’. Joseph recalls the days when you had to make an appointment with the news. The impact of some of those news stories from his youth has remained with him. They were intertwined with the demeanour of the person delivering it at the time everyone heard it first. A succession of male anchors sensationally updating the numbers attributed to the Yorkshire Ripper as if he were a brutal bowler in a surreal game of cricket. An actor’s voice replacing that of a blacked-out Gerry Adams every time an ‘Irish atrocity’ prompted his comment. The MOD spokesman, Ian McDonald, despatching devastating statistics from the Falklands, including one which wrongly included Gary Cassidy. How things had changed. Nowadays, news was everywhere. It found the recipient and latched on like bacteria, trivialising the impact of real tragedies by placing inconsequential celebrity scandals on an equal footing. To Joseph the news media of today t
hus seemed in a perpetual state of shock or outraged offence, but lacked the compassion or empathy that would make such emotions genuine.

  The blinding graphic display is giving him a headache. He flicks the switch. Megan, the blonde-haired hotel emblem, slides languorously into his empty head, like honey dripping from a golden sceptre. His eyes close. He thinks about how her naked body might look if she was standing in front of him at the bottom of this rectangular island of a bed. He can’t escape the thought of her sharing it with him: two castaways from the unforgiving ship of modern life. His hand is around his cock, although he hasn’t even been aware of it developing into a hard-on sufficient to be useful to him. There is less feeling there nowadays – a byproduct of the inhibitors he takes to regulate his soaring blood pressure. In his subconscious, Megan is now stroking her own golden thighs and moaning as her delicate hand reaches between her legs. He is masturbating, trying to focus, but his cock is losing the brief hardness it had. He struggles to concentrate, guilty about using the girl like this, even though she is unaware of it. Eventually he ejaculates but not with any force or euphoria, more with a shameful, sputtering resignation.

  Afterwards, his breathing is deep and forced, as if he is recovering from a long run or a steep climb. He gets up from the bed, rolling across the small wet patch he has just made, and walks, head down, to the bathroom. The light over the mirror comes on automatically and illuminates him as he wipes the sticky spunk from his belly button, and then the tears from his eyes.

  The expansive reception area feels like the inside of a hollowed-out, multi-tiered wedding cake. An elaborate atrium stretches through its volume and becomes smaller with every three storeys until the top of it is barely visible. Joseph arches his neck back and stares up at it again. The building is a strange juxtaposition of the contemporary and the classical, or a pastiche of it, at least. Nothing in China seems authentic. It is a country lacking in identity, trying to become something it isn’t. It makes Joseph briefly yearn for home and the more honest and thrawn environment of Jock Tamson’s bairns. Even the buildings aren’t allowed to get ideas above their station in Scotland. He looks at his watch. The date flickers. It is 13th October, four days since his birthday, and a full week since he arrived in Shanghai. He considers the time in Barcelona and then – holding the piece of paper from the flower basket far enough away to be able to see the numbers – he punches them into his phone. The long, single dialling tone for international calls sounds four times before it is answered.

  ‘Hola.’

  ‘Hello, Sophia? Sophia, it’s Joseph … Joseph Miller. Is Carlos at home?’ Joseph speaks slowly and clearly, sanding down the rough edges of his west-of-Scotland demotic. Sophia’s English is good, but they haven’t spoken at all for years and formal pronunciation seems appropriate.

  ‘Hola, Joseph. How are you?’ Despite obvious surprise, her tone is warm.

  Joseph relaxes.

  ‘Carlos is out at a doctor appointment, now, but I tell him you phone,’ she says. ‘He be very please to speak to you.’

  ‘How’s he been? I got a message from him. I’m over in China just now, writing. I wasn’t sure if he’d have known I’d been away from Glasgow,’ says Joseph, his speech picking up speed.

  ‘Yes, he know. He not been so good lately. His skins are very sore. Difficult for him to paint now or do any things he loves.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Sophia. Can you tell him I’ll call again in a couple of days? I have to go to Huangshan for a day or two but I’ll speak to him properly when I get back,’ says Joseph.

  ‘I will, Joseph. He need to talk to you. He has proposal for you,’ says Sophia.

  ‘Do you know what it’s about?’ Joseph asks her. This message from his old partner is becoming more intriguing. It is certainly unexpected.

  ‘I should leave to Carlos to tell you,’ Sophia says. He can’t read anything into her delivery. It’s neither positive nor negative.

  ‘Okay, Soph. Thanks. Tell him I was askin’ for him. Speak soon.’

  ‘Bye, Joseph.’

  ‘Bye.’

  The discussion – such as it was – leaves Joseph Miller a little sidetracked. He’d no intention of contacting any of his current partners, but for Carlos Martorell to get in touch after all the acrimony, something significant must have happened. Whatever it is, it will have to wait. He has promised to visit Chan Li, his first client for a competition-winning cultural centre in the emerging third-tier city of Huangshan at the foot of the Yellow Mountains. Mr Li speaks no English, and Joseph has forgotten all of the basic Mandarin he picked up five years ago, but there is a bond of sorts between them, and Joseph is looking forward to seeing the older man again, as well as the building he designed for him.

  He gathers up his papers, slides them into his small case and heads across the shiny marble floor towards a small army of smiling, uniformed hotel porters. The entrance is bustling. It is 5 pm and people of all nationalities are coming and going. Joseph ignores the good evening, sirs of everyone in a red tunic and walks out to hail a cab to the airport.

  Outside, a commotion to his left catches his eye. Megan Carter, the special guest star of his recent impromptu fantasy wank, is at the centre of this too. She is being berated by a heavy-set English guy in baggy, flowery shorts as three others in similar garb laugh and egg him on. The Manager of Guest Relations is struggling to keep her composure over what appears to be a hire-car dispute. Joseph watches the Englishman go way over the top about the fact that the car isn’t an automatic as he’d apparently requested. Joseph is about forty feet away, and he can’t properly hear Megan’s apologetic counters; only the cockney geezer’s increasing personal abuse. Megan lifts her head and glances over, catching Joseph’s eye, so she doesn’t see the cockney’s arm jolt out as if threatening to hit her. She flinches and her face transforms instantly. She wears a genuinely terrified expression. She moves back sharply and overbalances, falling over a small, perfectly trimmed plastic hedge. The back of her head hits the smooth concrete on the other side. The cockney’s mates all laugh, and he turns to them and bows. Instinctively, Joseph drops his bag and runs over, but the cockney has spotted him.

  ‘And who the fack are you then? Her fackin’ dad?’ he says, squaring up. ‘Or maybe her fackin’ grandad?’

  The three mates laugh loudly again. It’s clear they are all drunk.

  ‘Hittin’ a lassie, eh? That make ye a big man, does it?’ says Joseph, shocking himself with his forwardness. From his perspective it looked like the man had actually connected.

  ‘Ow, fackin’ brilliant, boys. He’s a poofy little Jock.’

  ‘Give the cunt a right beltin’, Jack … then let’s go, yeah?’ Cockney Jack leans in, weight on the front foot preparing to launch a southpaw fist at Joseph, but the red army reinforcements have numbered behind him, and the situation swiftly defuses.

  Joseph’s heart rate is accelerating, his temperamental blood pressure now five foot high and rising. The four Englishmen abroad head off in their non-automatic hired Hyundai with Jack mouthing, ‘You’re fucking dead, mate,’ to Joseph through the windscreen as they reverse.

  ‘Are you okay, hen? It’s Megan, isn’t it?’ Joseph helps her to her feet.

  She is shaking. And more than a little embarrassed. ‘Em … sorry Mr … eh, Miller. Yes, of course. Yeah, sorry, yes … I’m perfectly fine. Thank you.’

  Megan Carter clearly isn’t perfectly fine. Her black jacket has a rip at the elbow and blood is evident through the blond strands of her hair. It seems to Joseph that there is more to this altercation than meets the eye. Two porters rush to pick up Joseph’s bag, but none move toward their stricken colleague.

  ‘You should get that seen tae,’ says Joseph, indicating the emerging blood on the back of Megan’s head.

  ‘I will, thank you … Thank you, sir.’ She looks him straight in the eye. He feels ashamed at his earlier private thoughts about her.

  ‘It’s Joseph. Please call me Joseph,’ s
ays Joseph.

  ‘Okay.’ She smiles. It’s a fragile expression. ‘Joseph. And I’m Megan.’ She shakes his hand. Her touch is alabaster smooth, but still trembling. She turns to go back into the hotel but stops and looks back at him as she reaches the sliding doors. She waves to him before stepping inside.

  Chapter Six

  August 1990. San Antonio, Ibiza

  ‘I really want us to take on Space,’ said Laurie Revlon.

  She had called a meeting of her protégés to outline her ambitious plans for the next decade. Bobby Cassidy was sat at the back. He looked bored. Two Italian DJs and three English ones, who had recently been added to the roster, sat in the front row. Bobby knew better. Laurie would occasionally lob in a live grenade and it was always those in the front row who had to quickly defuse it.

  Bobby had been working for Laurie Revlon’s organisation for almost four months. A year ago to the day, he’d signed a ridiculously long contract document without fully reading it.

  ‘She’s fuckin’ payin’ ye £750 a week, ya moron!’ said Hammy. ‘She could have first call on yer fuckin’ vital organs for that. And mine! Other clubs are no’ gonnae be comin’ in for ye … yer no’ exactly the DJ-ing Mo Johnston, are ye? Get it bloody signed, mate.’