He looked like a tough guy gone early to seed. I put him no older than thirty-five, and he could easily have been younger. His build suggested an athletic past hiding behind recently acquired pneumatic additions. The playful grab at Karen that accompanied the end of his speech seemed strangely clumsy, his attempted embrace more of a collision.
Karen, now clearly used to filling out the knobbly navy tracksuit that she bought those years ago to hang loose, offered a gentle push against his belly, affectionate enough, but entirely without passion. But it was sufficiently heart-felt to cause her to drop the beer glass she had been wiping. The article was genuine plastic and bounced noisily across the laminate flooring. “Get off, you great lump,” she said. The accent was immediately and unmistakeably Scouse. A foreigner...
“It’s a good job I employ you as photographers,” said Mick. “If you were on the bar my profits would all be on the floor!”
“It’s his hand, Mick,” said Karen. “It’s got a mind of its own.”
“And my hands would head for the same place, believe me, Karen, if I were to get a hold of you. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?” said Mick with an over-stated laugh. “And this here is Maureen, the last member of our happy family. Maureen is the quiet one of the afternoon set, aren’t you Maureen? Maureen’s from the wrong side of the Pennines, aren’t you Maureen.” Assertion of dominance is obvious when a name can be worn through with use. “And now let’s play Family Fortunes!”
Maureen looked our way. A withering, frightened manner pushed through the sad eyes and suggested smile. Maureen was the type who seems to have apologised three times before she has said a word. Her lips mouthed their greeting, but no sound came. She was sixty-ish, or older perhaps, with greasy black hair flattened down the sides of a round, freckled face, rendered ruddy by recent exertion. A pair of balloon-like eyes hardly blinked, but their gaze darted this way and that as if seeking reassurance for her thoughts, being the words she dare not say.
“Maureen’s been doing afternoons at The Castle for the past seven years, haven’t you Maureen. She’s our longest serving staff member,” said Mick, managing, addressing her like a ventriloquist might speak to a dummy. “She’s been here three years longer than I have.”
“Nay, Mick,” I said, “some of your turns have been here for decades, and their saponaceous scripts preceded them!”
“Ho sanguine ho, Cottee D,” he said. “The acts aren’t staff like these people. Acts come and go, but this crew is permanent. They are on the payroll, whereas the acts are on roll-over pay...” He paused to allow the titters to register. “These people, and the bar staff in the evenings, of course, are what makes this place great.”
“So how many people do you have serving these days?” asked Suzie, as ever the down-to earth practical business professional that her birthright created.
“They don’t start until eight, darling. We usually have four serving and one in the kitchen,” said Mick, anticipating that Suzie’s question had really wanted to ask when the business usually got going. Mick’s expression changed mid-sentence, as soon as he realised his words were not impressing his interrogator.
“Only four?” Suzie asked at piercing volume. “I can remember not many years ago when, even in the off season, there were at least eight behind the bar. In the good old days you couldn’t move in The Castle. It was so popular at one time that if you didn’t see people in The Castle you assumed they’d stayed at home.”
“Well trade isn’t like it was in those stupefactious splendifereous good old days of long ago, Suzie. Fings aint what they used to be, you might say. It’s all hens and stags these days, and they don’t come here early doors to play bingo, laugh at a comic or sing along to sixties hits. They arrive late, already half rat-derrièred and proceed to fill the other half as fast as they can. Then they move on to the next place, often having to carry the ex-wife’s sister’s step-daughter’s lesbian lover because she’s already passed out. Well, that’s what it probably says under the vomit across the front of her personalised t-shirt that’s been specially printed by the hen-party tour company as part of their package deal. At least it’s trade.”
Suzie’s expression betrayed that a different interpretation was running through her mind. Once a businesswoman, always one, I thought. For Suzie it had gone beyond a birthright. Now it was an identity she could adopt at will like donning a loose jacket.
“So what do you photograph, Phil?” I asked, sensing a subject-changing moment.
“We do all the promotional material, leaflets, discount cards, fliers and the like...”
“But mostly it’s trinket trade,” said Karen with a candour that seemed to embarrass Phil. “We photograph the punters on their night out, as they arrive, as they leave, or sitting in their groups at their tables. And then we mount them into key rings and try to flog ‘em back to the purpureal punters before they go home.”
“And we also do shots of the customers on stage with the acts as souvenirs.”
“How do you do the processing? Do you contract out or have you got equipment here in The Castle?”
“We have some here on site. Quite a bit, in fact. You’re into photography, then, Don?”
“Not really,” I answered, “but I have developed quite an interest in computers. I did a course called T101, Basic Information Technology For The Self-Confessed Complete Beginner. I bet you have some tasty stuff here.”
“Come and have a look,” said Phil, setting off in his waddling way. During the millisecond hesitation that followed, I caught an unmistakable pause and glance towards Mick before he set off again towards the stairs behind the bar. This tough guy clearly needed clearance from the big man before he could visit his own workroom.
The stairs were narrow, steep and resonant. Their linoleum treads had randomly arranged holes and the non-slip strips along the edge had slipped off or come loose. The original ceramic tiles showed through holes here and there. The upper floor itself was surprisingly small, just a landing with three doors, two of which were open, revealing their dedicated interiors. One was a staff toilet and the other a store room that seemed to be full of dust-caked reject air conditioning units. The third door, however, was solid and sturdy, double-locked and double-padlocked.
“Does Mick have his office up here as well?” I asked as Phil struggled to find the right key. I have to record that I have rarely seen a bloke as physically clumsy as him.
“No. Mister Watson does all his work from Paradise.” My silent question prompted a continuation. “It’s another of Mister Watson’s places,” he said, removing the second padlock with a snap of its hasp. “It’s a club along the strip on the main road. He has his office there and, because it’s now a bigger business than The Castle, he does all the admin for both places from there.”
I was going to ask another question, not because I was all that interested, not because I thought that there was something to know about Mick Watson, but merely because I have always been a nosey bulbul. But as Phil pushed the door open and flicked on the light with a veritable slap of the hand, he revealed a sight that rendered me absolutely glyptic speechless.
It was a small room, just an office, but there was no desk at its centre. Around windowless walls was a wide work surface, recently installed, judging by the contemporary mock granite effect finish that adorned the medium density fibre, and almost its entire area was covered with hardware. There were four computers and six printers, a couple of which were obviously heavy-duty, high throughput machines. There was a large format colour plotter, capable of doing posters, even medium-sized billboard displays, and there was a laminating machine that looked nothing less than professional. They had video editing facilities and a large sound desk. There wasn’t even space to put a mug down between the machines.
“Do you use all of this? I thought business wasn’t good. This lot must have cost a puniceou
s packet!”
“We do some production and printing for other people as well,” said Phil, reaching with a wheeze to an upper shelf to extract a leaflet. It was a sturdy, laminated, full colour, folded and glossy flier for a free bus trip to a blanket factory. “We did two thousand of these this morning,” he said. “Now we are really a separate business from The Castle.”
Now if I had been writing this for a technology blog, I would have proceeded to wax lyrical about the pixels here, the resolution there, the speed of this and the throughput of that. But I am getting used to the requirements of this, my newly-adopted role, and I accept that the Cottee blog must continue to aim at the general reader who would surely switch off if presented with such detail. Suffice it to say that I was gob-smacked envious.
“Just think of what I could do with this lot,” I said, talking to myself but addressing a non-existent audience.
“Well, we use it to make photo-tags for key rings,” said Phil, “and most of that happens between midnight and four o’clock in the morning.” And with that he excused himself for a moment and headed for the loo.
I even tried a couple of the cupboard doors. I’m just nosey, not criminal. My intent is to learn, not purloin. And it sometimes pays to be nosey, especially when people don’t tell you the full story. If this really was a business based on the trinket trade, then it left little evidence of its activity lying around. There was no work in progress. There were no blank mounts to be seen. Several of the cupboards were locked. But it was the machinery that interested me the most and I had ample time to give it the scrutiny it deserved.
He was only gone for a moment, but it gave me enough time for a poke around. I was even more impressed by the time he came back. “Amazing,” I said. “You’ve even got some specialist paper feed on the go. You must do a wide range of jobs.”
“Yes,” he mumbled, distinctively defensive and displaying yet more reticence, a guarded tone I did not expect. “Let’s get back,” he continued, almost pushing me out of the door. Back downstairs we found Mick and Suzie sitting at a table, deep in conversation.
“Swinging or dodgy?” asked Mick with associated thumbs up and down. “Does it, or does it not, beat the clock?”
“Amazing,” I answered. “Quite amazing. I’d like to get my hands on that lot.”
“We reckon it might be the best facility in town, even better than what’s available through the professionals,” he said. “And we are lucky to have found Phil and Karen, because we couldn’t do what we do without them.”
“Phil told me about your other place, Mick, the one called Paradise. He says it’s a bigger concern than The Castle now.”
“Yes,” said Mick, “much bigger.” Suzie’s eyes asked the question. “It’s a club, Suzie, a girlie bar, Spanish-style. Low throughput, but very high spenders, and all in cash. Hey big spender, spend a little time with me.”
“So that’s what your girls sing? Empty pots make the most noise.”
Mick laughed. “You’re a few years older, Susan Cottee, but you’ve still got that fast tongue in your mouth and a nose for an opportunity to use it.”
“And speaking of opportunities,” said my missus, “why on earth are you letting a prime site like this go to such rack and ruin?”
“Business is tough here, these days...”
“But business is still business. The place needs a good clean. It’s shabby. Your menu needs bringing up to date and some of your acts need pensions, not bookings. And as for your bar staff... If last night is anything to go by, they need some skids under them. It took Donkey nearly five minutes to get two drinks when there was no-one else at the bar.”
Mick gave a long-suffering glance at the ceiling. “She’s not been here half an hour and she’s ready to take the place over. And, guess what, there might even be a vacancy.”
I’ve never seen Suzie shut up so quickly, or so reluctantly. “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king,” was written across her face.
Eight
There is no doubt... - Suzie describes a proposition. Suzie ditches Don and suffers a broken limb.
There is no doubt that Suzie and I will look back on today and see it as a turning point. Whatever we decide - and we will decide jointly, I beg to stress! - it will change our entire project here in sunny Spain. “Yes” will effectively defer the retirement we sought when we came here. “No” will render us eternally vulnerable to the imagined failure of a missed opportunity. Heads we lose, tails we lose, perhaps, or even win, who knows? But then victory beckons, a victory that could prove Pyrrhic or glorious or both.
It all started early this morning. I say “early”, but I don’t really mean it. We have drifted into a habit of rising late. Neither of us, until we arrived here, has ever slept in beyond eight o’clock in the morning, even at weekends. But here, in the Benidorm winter, it’s barely light at half past eight in the morning and for a week we have slept each morning until after nine. Suzie puts it down to a newly found ability to relax, to take life easy after decades of being driven by time. We’ve been here all those times in the past, but never in winter, and we expected neither the dark mornings nor the cold. Nor, for that matter, the rain. You don’t think of such things when you are buying pictures out of brochures. I suppose the locals don’t call those hills the Sierra Helada, the Ice Mountains, for nothing.
Dark mornings in a frost hollow are not conducive to early rising, so we were again still in bed at half past nine when Suzie’s mobile rang out its Mozart’s G minor symphony. I pulled the quilt further up over my face and conveniently mumbled that her phone was her responsibility. I knew it was Mick from the second word she uttered. A first “Hello” is always neutral, but the second word is issued after recognition and, even if it’s a mere repetition of the greeting, as in this case, its intonation immediately identifies both the past and future. It was Suzie’s second “Hello” that expressed an overt, over-stated welcome, an unmistakable excitement calculated to draw the caller towards an immediate, conceded intimacy.
I would have thought no more of it had I not heard it before, all those years ago. At sixteen, Suzie possessed a supreme confidence. Everything she did or said exuded presence. She looked at least twenty, wore expensive clothes and already had a proprietorial air in relation to Mullins The Milliners. She was, effectively, her mother’s double, though smaller, slighter and presented to the world in both hairstyle and dress in updated version, though intangibly so, the differences so miniscule they were often not immediately apparent, even after prolonged scrutiny. I used to joke with her at the time that if she was her mother’s size and wore her clothes, she would look every bit the thirty-five years of her father’s wife in the right context. And it says much about Suzie and the age in which we lived that she took my words as a compliment.
So there I was, snuggled up to my own contented warmth when that second “Hello” took me back some four decades and simultaneously re-introduced me to a potentially threatening present, a memory that has remained defiantly at the forefront of my thoughts. Its pain has never diminished, its ability to murmur the heart apparently permanent.
“What, this morning?” asked Suzie. The lengthening silence was attentive. “Wouldn’t it be better if...” The quiet here in the mornings can be deafening. “So what time?” A frosty night in the nineteen-sixties reappeared fresh and clear. “OK. We’re ready.” Suzie’s thumb pressed a concluding beep out of her designer handset. “Phil Matthews is coming to pick us up at twelve,” she said, as if the significance, direction and consequences of this unpredicted event ought to be obvious.
When you have been married to the same person for two thirds of a lifetime, the non-verbals are as powerful as any paroxysm, as immediate as any innuendo. Somehow, I asked a question. And not just any question. It was a quite specific, complex request requiring a detailed response. Suzie gave me the lot without further p
rompt.
“When you went upstairs in The Castle, Mick told me about his Paradise, and a couple of his other interests. The Paradise is a club on the main road towards Altea. It’s one of those places with flashing neon women doing the can-can, just down the road from where the ladies of the night flash their thighs at the passing traffic under the streetlights. His Paradise runs off that trade. I’d guess it’s an up-market, less smelly version of a night-time cattle market. But it does good business and he’s run off his feet. Some of his other pitches are suffering, notably The Castle. I told you I thought there was something wrong. There’s no smoke without fire. There weren’t as many customers as there should be. And the place is dirty and run down. His other places are out of town and are doing fine. He says that their customers are mainly middle-class Spaniards, or German or Dutch or other long-term residents. All men, of course... But The Castle is in the centre of town where the clientele is a hundred percent Brit. Mick reckons he’s lost his way with the Brits, lost touch with what they want because he’s been in Spain for so long. And what’s more, the Brit tourists are now the low spenders along this coast, because most of them are working class and, basically, they are skint when they arrive, don’t have two pennies to scratch their asinines. So The Castle is running down while the others are expanding. So he puts most of his time into the other places and neglects The Castle, and the pub just gets worse because it’s crying out for attention it doesn’t get.”
“Thanks, darling. Is that the time?”
“You did ask!”
“So what about my trip upstairs? That’s where we came in...”
“Well, he told me all this while you were away looking at his machines. He said he’d show us round Paradise if we wanted and I gave him my number. I also said that I could get The Castle moving again, given the chance. Donkey, I reckon that if he’s got a goldmine under his belt, it’s The Castle, and it’s precisely the place he can’t handle. It’s a gift horse, if you ask me, and I’ve already seen inside its mouth. There’s always more dosh available via volume than exclusive targeting, but you have to get it right. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, not like Mick’s efforts. His Paradise might attract a few big spenders and might look good in the short term. But in the end, it’s the masses that make your molasses. When the odd big spender deserts, the masses adhere. Basically, Donkey, life comes with no guarantees, but I’d rather run Coca Cola than Noilly Prat.”
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 7
