Maureen really lit up when we uncovered a big and flattering photo of Tatiana the Tightrope Walker. Maureen told me the whole story. She was here during the nineteen seventies and eighties. I was surprised, because Don and I were here quite often in that decade. We certainly never saw her perform. But then Maureen told me that Tatiana, being totally clean and just a little bit talented, could only perform early doors, before ten o’clock in the evening. Don and I, of course, in our time would never have decanted to the club until after ten, because we’d have been in the pub watching the football or the rugby league until then. Apparently, Tatiana liked to work the early shift because she ran a home business in the later and earlier hours. Maureen called her Tanyushka, because they were close at one time until the Russian lady became the destination of a majority of Mick’s interest. This development was not in the least bit surprising since, like most of that gender, she had two at the front and one up and in between, everything needed to guarantee Mick Watson’s concentration, unlike myself these days, of course, who’s now somewhat lacking in this essential equipment. She first appeared in Benidorm in the mid-nineteen-seventies, when The Original Official Russian State Circus visited the Costa Blanca. Tanya on the tightrope was one of the star turns, a young, beautiful blonde woman, elegant and graceful, skilled and trained but unfortunately for her Soviet managers, both ambitious and utterly selfish. She deflected, ran away from the circus. I laughed, saying that usually young women seeking adventure made the change the other way round.
Tatiana had a friend, it seems, a pen-pal who lived in Benidorm. And that friend was none other than the woman who soon afterwards started calling herself Randy Sandy. She used to call herself La Bruja and made her name by doing some rather strange things with Coca Cola bottles introduced to various parts of her anatomy. Imagine being able to open a bottle of San Miguel with your... She couldn’t do the litre bottles, however, because she couldn’t cope with the screw cap, even Dutch ones. And to think the lady has made a lifetime of earnings out of her skills. Each to his own.
Anyway when the circus got to Benidorm, Tatiana deflected and La Bruja hid her for a couple of months until the brouhaha died down. All those years ago, of course, a deflecting Russian circus artist was automatically granted asylum and Tatiana even got full Spanish papers after a year or two. It seems that she and La Bruja had communicated over a couple of years and Tatiana had learned how much money she could make from exploiting her talents in a tourist centre. Though the Benidorm clubs at the time were probably not crying out for a tightrope walker, one with near celebrity status was assured of work for a while, which is precisely what she achieved.
Tatiana gave auditions and she got her work, including with The Castle, where she was a regular until the end of the eighties, always playing the early evening. At the end of the decade, she surprised everyone by correctly anticipating the changes afoot in Russia and returning, without telling anyone, to her homeland. She had lived in the same block as La Bruja, who was called Randy Sandy by then, Maureen told me. The arrangement worked well because Randy, of course, was a late night act, while Tatiana’s tight rope was always early, because in public it was always perfectly clean. When Randy went to work, Tatiana was just arriving home, bringing with her the employment task she had picked up along the way. This home-based business was Tatiana’s main earner, apparently. She used to single out punters from the early club goers. She used to parade through the bar in her sequined leopard-skin leotard with those perfectly proportioned muscular legs which were on view all the way from cut-away hips to toe. She was extremely beautiful and could charge the highest rates for her services which, of course, she could begin to minister immediately she got home because her flatmate was just going off to work to open her bottles. Their personal and professional lives were thus perfectly coordinated.
Tatiana’s act usually involved juggling balls or dumbbells while dancing along a tightrope. And that’s how she lived her life. Maureen tells me that she was so popular that Mick paid her rent for a time, as long as she did a show cut price wherever he worked. No doubt he was a customer as well. No doubt Mick Watson managed to secure all sorts of performances for her and I bet all of them were cut price.
But unfortunately Tatiana fell into drugs and became dependent. By the end of the decade, she’d got no work left, either on her rope or her back. The years take their toll on the working woman, it seems. And that’s why she went back to Russia, or not Russia - Maureen wasn’t sure of her geography. She seemed to think that Russia was in eastern Germany...
And by then, Tatiana had a daughter, Maureen said, and she took her back as well, even though the little girl had never lived anywhere else but Spain. The girl was just seven years old, had gone to school in Benidorm, had Spanish friends and spoke fluent Spanish, though her mother had taught her Russian at home as well. Apparently she’s now doing translation work. It defeats me how Maureen, who after all is still in Benidorm and has come and gone back and forth to the UK over the years as well, might know such things in such detail. There’s more to her than meets the eye.
People’s stories are amazing, aren’t they? To think that you have a Russian woman, a little girl born in Spain, no doubt as a result of poor availability of birth control to a father who was a paying customer, facilitated by pesetas paid by British tourists on their nights out, supported by an eventually successful flatmate who made her living by opening bottles with a part of her anatomy that is usually reserved for religious observance, who had deflected, and then gone back to Russia and then... and then... Who knows? Thirty years in a sentence.
I am so grateful to Maureen for having shared some of these stories about the past. We agreed, when we had finished going through the photos, that we’d have Phil and Karen blow several of them up so we could frame them and hang them on the walls of The Castle. It’s our heritage, after all. I think it would also be interesting to put captions underneath telling the stories. The punters would like that. Maybe the bloke who fathered Tatiana’s little girl might put to and two together. There’s so many stories to tell and my friend Maureen seems to know most of them!
Then she let something slip that stopped me dead. I thought I heard her correctly, but I was so stunned I couldn’t react. She went on, but I stopped her in mid-flow because my mind was still toying with those few words, sifting them, sorting them, rearranging them. I had to speak.
But the problem with Maureen is that she never answers a question, except with another question. If you ask, “Is that all right with you?” she’ll answer, “Is it for you?” She’ll tell you something, you’ll ask for a simple confirmation and all you will get is another question that this time seems to question the truth of what she just said. Then she moves on, as if nothing was ever said in the first place. You can never pin her down. At first I thought it was because she had a few screws loose upstairs, Now I am beginning to think that she might know quite precisely what she is doing. An old dog fights with an aim.
We were talking about Tatiana and her living conditions. I don’t really remember how we arrived at that subject, but we did. The idea that Mick was paying the rent on her flat for all those years was a shock, but hardly a surprise, if you see what I mean. Before that sank in, however, Maureen had already described Tatiana as a drug addict and then calmly tacked on the end that Mick was her supplier. Strangely, none of that took me by surprise. After all I’d had some first-hand experience of the way Mick operated in this town, and I’d had my suspicions about his line of business going right back to the early eighties. There’s nothing about Mick that would surprise me, I thought. I was wrong.
“He’s bankrupt now, as well,” she said. “Hasn’t got a penny...”
Now that was news. How on earth had I finished up running a business for a bankrupt? And how could I possibly...
“... and he’s HYV.”
...be running a club called The Castle for Mick Watson, on the u
nderstanding that ...
I was momentarily nonplussed. It took several seconds for the message to sink in and I still didn’t believe it. “He’s what?” I asked.
“Bankrupt?” she said. It was another question.
“Yes. I heard that...”
“He hasn’t got two pennies to scratch his sphincter,” she confirmed. “Hasn’t he said anything to you about it?”
“No...”
“Well he is. He’s bankrupt. It’s those other people who run everything, isn’t it?”
“Who? Those two upstairs, Phil Matthews and Karen?”
“No,” she scoffed, “not those two skivers. The others. It’s the others who have all the say. All Mick does is their dirty work. Well, some of it. Mick only does the bits that aren’t very dirty. Haven’t you met them?”
“Who?”
“The others.”
“Which others?”
“The big guys! The ones with all the money. Have you never noticed them come in and walk around The Castle to see what’s going on?”
I racked my memory, but I couldn’t recall ever having been introduced to anyone in particular. But it was those other words that had to come out.
“What did you say about Mick?”
“He’s bankrupt.”
“No the other thing...”
“What, that he’s HGV?”
I had no idea how to react. Initially, I was not sure what she meant. Let me rephrase that. Of course I knew what she meant, but I wasn’t sure whether she meant he was dying, seriously ill or something else.
“For how long?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “At least two or three years... He has to have drugs, and not the sort he usually provides for other people. Hasn’t he mentioned anything to you?”
It wasn’t self-interest. My relations with Mick ended years ago, but my mind filled with names of other people who might have been infected either along with or by him. There was Olga for a start. And, I ask you, how unlikely is that partnership? Makes you think. Misery loves company.
Thirty Three
I was passing Paradise... - Don has been in the mountains painting windmills. He has suffered overheating. He stops for a beer opposite Paradise. He sees people he recognises. He then makes a visit and discovers something interesting. He takes two photographs. He goes for another beer, spectates, recognises another visitor and then returns to Paradise to make an even more interesting discovery.
I was passing Paradise so I thought I’d call in. It was mid-afternoon, not a time when the general public usually accesses a massage parlour. I’d been out on the quad. I’d been way up beyond Jalon, up the mountains beyond Parcent and then high above Pego, some of the tracks almost causing the Raptor to overheat.
Now normally it likes to run hot, but then sometimes it boils, which it shouldn’t. I’ve already changed the head gasket and I thought I had it fixed when I found the bullets only half-connected under the seat. I got the fan working properly, which it wasn’t when I first took it home from Mick’s Montesinos mansion. I checked the thermostat and that was within its specification as per the workshop manual that I accessed via the Raptor’s user and troubleshooting site on the internet. I downloaded the entire thing. It was very useful, once I had printed out its three hundred full colour pages. And that only cost me seventy-five euros for two printer cartridges, if you ignore the paper. I fixed the radiator cap, which was cracked, and then the cooling system seemed to maintain about fourteen pounds per square inch on a one hour test. I did notice that the fins on the water-pump impeller seemed rather crinkly at the edges, like badly bitten thumbnails in places, but there wasn’t enough damage to account for the scale of the problem I experience whenever I take the machine up a steep incline. Everything turns when the bike is started, and the system seems to operate as indicated in the book. The radiator does not seem to be blocked. Personally, I think it might have something to do with the thin air up in the mountains not providing sufficient throughput at the chosen fan speed to maintain the temperature within operational limits. But still, more of this later, when I have got to the bottom of it. As I said, I was passing Paradise.
I’d done so much riding around I was almost pegged out. I’d done almost a hundred of my stencilled, two-colour windmills in my quest to conserve the environment. I was most of the way home by the time it hit me. The strain of the activity coupled with the growing heat between my legs started to take its toll. I needed a rest, a relief, you might say. It was perhaps also an opportunity to check the status of what I had discovered on my last visit. So, on leaving Altea I resolved to turn off along the commercial strip, park the bike and have a break.
I passed by on the other side, along the parallel service road, before finally deciding to make my approach. Paradise offered an air of quiet. I parked some distance away, passing in front at high revs to wake up anyone who might be sleeping inside before walking back down the slight incline to the famous gates.
I let myself in. I have my methods. When you are good with your hands, good with machines and technically minded, then most locks present rather less than a problem. The fact that it was locked suggested, note only suggested, that there was no-one inside. Care was needed because I noticed, once inside, that the bar was closed but the office open. That, in itself, was strange. The office door was never left open. I looked inside, but was careful not to enter, deciding that the best course of action was inaction, at least for a while.
I planted myself on a stool to take my rest. In a reversion to primary school, I placed my forearms on the bar before me, and rested my head. I had intended just to get my breath, but clearly dozed a little, maybe a few minutes at most.
I was awoken by a vision of heaven, right there in Paradise. Clonking down the stairs a pair of stiletto-heeled black patent boots gradually appeared in my sideways field of vision. There followed a pair of the most spectacular legs this side of Punslet.
At first she didn’t notice me. The interior was dim. “Good afternoon, Miss Pushova,” I said.
She was startled, but only for a second. Then she was the model of calm. “Good afternoon, Mr Donkey,” she said as she brushed past, brusque, bristling with the bravura of power. She disappeared into the office with the words, “How the quodlibet did you get in here? I locked the jussive door.”
“No,” I said innocently with professional nonchalance. “I pushed it and it opened. I was passing by. I’m not feeling well. I needed somewhere to rest.”
There was a rustle and a scrape from within the office. Then she reappeared, closing the door firmly behind her and pausing to double-check its security. She crossed to the entrance and gave the door a good rattle. “Then how the jalap is it still locked?”
“I dropped the latch,” I said.
“I lock the door properly, not just the pisiform latch!” She was not impressed. “You cannot get in pushing the door. This is the second time I find your nose in a hole it should not poke...”
I raised my head and smiled confidently. “I do it only so I can see you, my treasure.”
“Flocculate off, you lying sphincter,” she said. It sounded harsh, but I knew she was just being playful. She crossed the foyer and went back into the office. I have no idea from where she managed to produce the key. I followed, my eyes glued to the gently gyrating hemispheres that threatened to break out of the stretch-fabric of her pants. It was a sight of such invitation I could not resist the subtle placement of a flat palm against their vulnerability. She hit me across the face, as ever playing hard to get.
“Keep your semelincident hands to yourself, you postjacent pig,” she shouted. “I have things to do. You can stay until you feel better. But Paradise is not open until eight. Tintinnabulate off home, Donkey.”
“There’s no point in going home,” I said, playing along with her game
, “because Suzie will have already left for The Castle.”
“Then jerque off to The Castle yourself. Paradise shut until eight.”
It was her next move that really made my day. I can only describe her manoeuvre as an attempt by a stand-off half in rugby league trying single-handed to dump a prop forward over the touchline in a tackle. She put her head down and simultaneously her chest out, which takes some doing unless you have a well-developed chest, planted both just beneath my rib cage and pushed. She had surprising strength, but then I knew that already from our encounter in Mick Watson’s cave, if you see what I mean, because it’s her house as well.
I couldn’t help but laugh. It had all the comedy of farce. I felt a bit like Brian Rix being forcibly exited stage right before someone anticipated by the audience but unexpected by the plot entered stage left. She pushed me towards the door. I giggled. I didn’t resist. I went along with her little girl’s game whose rules, no doubt, would change in the near future if I chose not to comply.
After turfing me down the three steps of Paradise’s porch, she just had time to deliver a few words as the door slammed. “You want business here. Come back after eight. Don’t bring wife.”
But in the end she did trust me. There was no chain on the door to Paradise, that much I knew. But there was also no heavy object pushed up against it from the inside. She did believe my story about the door being open. All she did was lock it again.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 36
