by Ted Lewis
“Listen,” Wally begins, but I cut him short.
“Yeah, leave it out, Wally. We know what you’re going to say.”
Wally lowers his voice and says:
“Listen, Jack, I overheard what he was on about through there. Fuck me, how’d you feel, if it was your daughter was being discussed like that? Eh?”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “She’ll be looked after.”
“You mean that?”
Tina’s crouching down and looking in the fridge.
“I can look after myself, thanks,” she says.
“You just keep out of his way,” Wally says. “He don’t need no provoking.”
“Who don’t?”
Now it’s D’Antoni’s turn to appear in the doorway. He’s looking at Tina’s arse as she’s bent by the fridge.
“I said who don’t?” he says.
Wally doesn’t say anything. D’Antoni doesn’t take his eyes off Tina, and even when she stands up and turns to face us his gaze stays riveted on the same level of her body.
“You going to cook my breakfast, then?” Tina says to Wally.
“Cook your own bleeding breakfast,” Wally says.
“I’ll cook your breakfast anytime, baby,” D’Antoni says.
“No thanks,” says Tina. “I like my eggs hard.”
Later on I’m sitting out on the patio under a Cinzano-style umbrella, wondering how the fuck I’m going to stop going barmy during the next three days, when Wally comes funnelling out of the villa and says to me: “He’s acting up again.”
“What?”
“D’Antoni. He says he wants you inside.”
“What for?”
“I dunno. In case, he says.”
“Tell him to fuck off.”
“He says if there’s anybody around looking for him and they see this place is inhabited they’ll just naturally investigate.”
“He should have thought of that this morning when he was puking in the pool.”
“Jack—”
“Tell him to fuck off.”
“Jack—”
I close my eyes. Eventually Wally goes back into the villa. A moment or so later D’Antoni’s voice comes drifting out of the villa.
“Carter!”
My eyes remain shut.
“Carter.”
“Fuck off.”
There’s a silence. The next time D’Antoni speaks his voice is closer. About six inches from my left ear.
“Listen, you fucking creep,” he says. “If there’s anybody comes along out there they’re going to know somebody’s here.”
“And if they’re as thorough as they’re supposed to be and the place looks as if it’s empty and shut up then they’ll come down and take a look anyway.”
“Yeah, but if we’re all inside we got the edge on them. That way we stand a better chance of seeing them coming.”
“How? With the fucking curtains drawn?”
“Look—”
“No, you look. Either way it makes no difference. They’ve got to be sure before they start popping off and to be sure they’ve got to get close, know what I mean?”
“You know they already invented telescopic sights?” D’Antoni says. “I suppose you heard about those things?”
“The only way they can get a line on this particular piece of patio is by getting sherpas to carry their equipment.”
“They just could, you know that?”
I don’t answer him. I just keep my eyes shut and wait for him to go away. It takes a long time, but in the end, he does.
I go inside when it starts to get too warm for me. I go into the bathroom and take a quick shower and after that I’m strolling down the stone steps to get to the lounge and the drinks when Wally interrupts my progress by appearing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jack,” he says. “You got to do something.”
“Oh, yes?”
“They’re playing patience.”
I look at him. “They’re playing patience,” I say to him.
Wally advances up the steps a little bit.
“Yeah,” he says. “They’re playing patience and they’re getting pissed to the gills.”
“They’re playing patience and they’re getting pissed to the gills.”
“Yeah. On that champagne mixture.”
I look down at my feet and then back at Wally.
“Wally,” I say to him, “you really do have a load of problems, don’t you? Every moment, something new to worry about. I don’t know how you manage, one day to the next.”
I begin to walk past him.
“No, listen,” he says. “They’re playing strip patience. With two packs. The one who gets out last has to take something off.”
“That don’t give Tina much a chance, then.”
“You don’t get it. She ain’t lost yet. It’s D’Antoni that’s losing. He’s down to his fucking underpants.”
“Well, he’s wearing the right pair then, isn’t he?”
Wally looks blank. I walk past him and down the last few steps and into the lounge and I discover that Wally hasn’t been at the cooking sherry, the game he’s just described is still in progress. Tina and D’Antoni are getting pissed to the gills, only Tina’s gills seem to be situated somewhat higher than D’Antoni’s as her concentration is more together than D’Antoni’s, although he’s more than making up for the softness in his head, judging by the hardness elsewhere, and to paraphrase the words of the lady, that’s not a gun he’s got in his underpants.
I cross the floor and make myself a drink and carry it over to where the game is. The two of them are kneeling on the floor like Buddhas, looking down at their own facing lines of cards like retired generals replaying the Battle of Waterloo. Tina has two aces out and an empty space waiting for one of the two kings showing. But this time D’Antoni looks as if he’s better placed as he’s showing three aces and all the cards he’s got face up are movable, and as I sit down on the arm of a leather settee D’Antoni is in fact engaged in moving the rows. Tina flips three cards from the top of her deck and comes up with a black five which she needs at the moment like she needs a Valentine on February 14th. But as I sit and watch, the thought I have, going on Tina’s previous behaviour, is that she wouldn’t give a fuck if she had to take her bikini off; all she’s really interested in is getting D’Antoni down to the buff, because that’s the kind of girl she is.
While D’Antoni’s moving his cards, Tina pours some more champagne and orange juice from the jug into their glasses, but I notice D’Antoni gets about twice as much in his glass as Tina does, and while he’s flipping three of his cards, Tina flips three of hers and considering she’s the age she is and the amount she’s had to drink she very neatly palms the Ace of Clubs from the middle to the top, which very neatly releases the two of hearts off a face-down row and after that, when she’s turned up the naked face-down card she can move a few more around to her advantage. Meanwhile D’Antoni is merrily flipping through his cards failing to notice that he has a black nine and a red ten waiting to go and although Tina has noticed it, naturally she isn’t letting on. I smile to myself, and he prizes himself he’s a numbers whizz-kid.
They carry on flipping through their cards. D’Antoni susses out the black nine but that doesn’t do him any good as all it releases is a six of hearts and although he’s up to the four on his Ace the five isn’t in his deck and it isn’t showing.
“Looks like maybe this one’ll be a draw,” D’Antoni says, taking another drink.
Tina looks at the lay-out of her cards and nods solemnly. Then she puts the palm of her hand to her nose and starts to giggle, and the giggle turns into silent uncontrollable laughter and she begins to rock from side to side.
D’Antoni looks at her.
“What’s so funny?” he says.
Tina shakes her head but she doesn’t stop her rocking and laughing. In fact she’s rocking so much that she over-balances and she steadies herself by putting her hand on D�
��Antoni’s crutch and although D’Antoni jumps as if he’s just had the electrode treatment, Tina doesn’t actually hurry to move and when she does go through the motions of righting herself she makes it more clumsy than it needs to be by shifting her hand a couple of inches so that D’Antoni gets another grope.
“Whoops,” she says, finally getting back to her former position, “Sorry about that. No visible means of support.”
The hand goes to the face again and again the giggling starts. Then she goes through a pantomime act of pulling herself together and when she’s done that she makes a poface and flips through three more cards—and would you believe it the final ace she needed turns up on top, and when she lays it out it releases all sorts of goodies for her and it seems she’s going to have a great deal of bad luck in order for her not to complete her game. On the other hand, D’Antoni appears to be stuck as he begins to flip through the remainder of his deck after not laying anything out the last two times, and he’s beginning to think that perhaps the outcome will not be a draw after all, and for a while he just sits there watching Tina move her cards around.
“Now then,” she says, when she’s moved as many as is presently possible, “I wonder if I’ll get it out or not? Do you think I’ll get it out, mm, D’Antoni?” D’Antoni and Tina look at each other, D’Antoni blank, Tina smiling sweetly. Then D’Antoni starts going through his deck again.
“What happens when the natural course of events takes place?” I ask nobody in particular.
“Fuck all,” says Wally, from the safety of the higher part of the split level.
“Beat it,” D’Antoni says, not looking up from his cards.
“Yes, piss off,” says Tina.
“Here, leave it out, you,” Wally says.
“That’s what I intend doing,” she says, going into her hysterics routine again.
“Listen—” Wally begins, but he’s interrupted by D’Antoni heaving himself up off the floor and making in Wally’s general direction.
Wally of course begins to back off, but he’s too slow because he’s trying to give the impression he’s not moving and when D’Antoni gets to him he grabs Wally by his shirt and his belt and hustles him out of the room.
“I hope he flushes him down the bleeding toilet,” Tina says, searching through her deck to find a card that will fit with what she’s already got on the floor.
“Funny how you can go on people,” I say to her.
She looks at me as if she’s only just noticed I’m there.
“What you talking about?”
“It’s just that after what you expressed about D’Antoni’s personality by the pool this morning, I would have thought there was nothing else left to say, let alone getting pissed together half naked.”
“What the fuck’s it to you?”
“I was just thinking, why don’t you give Wally a rest for half an hour. Just let his impending coronary sack out for a while, eh?”
She doesn’t answer me. Instead she wangles herself another card out of the pack and arranges the cards on the floor to accommodate the new one. When she’s done that she pours herself another drink and while she’s pouring it D’Antoni returns and sits down on the floor and looks at his cards.
“I locked him in the basement,” he says after a while.
Tina moves a couple more cards. Then she says to D’Antoni, “I don’t think you’re going to do it.”
D’Antoni flips through three more cards, then another three.
“You can’t, can you?” Tina says.
D’Antoni looks at the cards on the floor.
“You ain’t got through yourself yet,” he says.
“No, but you’re finished.”
D’Antoni makes as if he’s going to flip through his deck again but instead he drops the cards on the floor.
“Give in?” says Tina.
“You got to finish first.”
“I’ll finish first,” she says. “I always do.”
She surveys her cards and flips three more off the deck and comes up with the red jack she’s been needing to move a row headed by the ten of spades, releasing four cards still face down, and typically she’s able to clear all four cards and open up another row, and from now on it’s downhill all the way, and when it’s apparent she can get out she says:
“Do you want me to play them onto the aces?”
D’Antoni looks at her cards.
“Ah, screw it,” he says.
Tina pours them two more drinks.
“So,” she says, handing him his glass. “You lose.”
D’Antoni takes a sip of his drink.
“Your pants,” Tina says.
“You already got my pants.”
“Oh, do beg pardon. You call them shorts, don’t you?”
“Yeah. That’s what we call them.”
“Well, your shorts, then.”
D’Antoni looks at me.
“Shove off,” he says.
“What, and miss the main event? Always provided it is an event, that is.”
“Move it.”
“I’m supposed to be your bodyguard. What could be a more appropriate situation?”
“I’m telling you—”
“You’re telling me nothing. While I have to be on the same fucking island as you, you’re telling me nothing.”
D’Antoni looks at me. Tina says:
“The shorts. I won. Give me the shorts.”
“Piss off,” D’Antoni says, missing his mouth with his glass, the orange liquid slopping onto the thick curly hairs on his chest.
“Listen,” Tina says. “I know what you’re fucking banking on with me, sooner or later. If you don’t want to fuck up your chances, give me the shorts.”
D’Antoni has another shot at getting his drink in his mouth and this time he’s more than fifty per cent successful. His eyes are glazed over a little bit, partly due to the booze and partly due to the prospect of getting stuck into what he partly sees before him.
Eventually he says: “Aw, fuck you.”
Then somehow he manages to get up off the floor and to stay upright long enough to push down his shorts and step out of them. Then he laughs. “Worth waiting for, hey?” he says.
Having said that he reels backward and plants himself down on one of the leather settees, making a sound like a diver hitting the water wrong.
“Yeah,” he says.
Tina, at any rate, seems to be quite impressed, although she’s not the kind of girl who’s going to show it. What she does is to shrug and take another sip of her drink.
“Yeah,” he says. “I never got no complaints.”
He closes his eyes and smiles.
“Yeah,” he says again.
A minute later he’s asleep.
“Jesus,” Tina says. “I can see my holidays are going to be real rubbish unless I get out of this place.”
“You should have seen out the term at college,” I tell her. “More variety.”
She drains her glass and wriggles across the floor so she’s closer to where I’m sitting.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “This is variety to me. I mean, when the fellers can’t actually be bothered to do anything about it.”
I stand up.
“Like you said,” I tell her, “it’s all down to old age.”
I walk over to the curtained windows.
“Oh, fuck off,” she says.
I part the curtains and step outside.
Outside it’s bright and hot, but just the same I walk round the villa and take in the surrounding scenery just in case the remote possibility of D’Antoni being sussed out beats the odds. Knowing my luck at this present time I’m surprised I didn’t step through the curtains to be greeted by a minuteman.
But there is, of course, sod all, except for the stillness of the scrubby foliage and the empty silence of the mountains and the uniformity of the sun’s heat. I find some shade and squat down and light a cigarette and think about Southend, at the height of the s
eason.
When I go back in through the curtains, the lounge is empty. D’Antoni and Tina are no longer part of the fixtures and fittings. Apart from their absence the only other thing that’s different is the fact that Tina’s bikini is lying on the floor, both bits draped across the scattered cards. I look at my watch. Ah, well, I think to myself, if I want any dinner tonight I’d better leave Wally locked in the cellar for a while. So I pour myself another drink and lie down on one of the settees and close my eyes.
When I wake up I look at my watch and I see that I’ve been asleep almost three quarters of an hour. I sit up and light a cigarette. Tina’s bikini is glowing gold in the shaft of light that’s streaming through the gap in the curtains. I get off the settee and pick up the bikini and go in search of the castaways. I find them in the room D’Antoni was put to bed in the previous night. D’Antoni is doing his usual sleeping beauty impression, and at first I think Tina’s doing the same, until I walk to the head of the bed to wake her up and it’s then that I notice she’s lying there with her eyes wide open.
“It’s tea-time,” I tell her. “Time to put your dollies away and wash your face and sit down at the table and eat your fairy cakes.”
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t even blink. I lean closer and it’s then that I notice her back is covered in bruises.
“What happened?” I say to her.
Still nothing. I lift her up so that she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, but her eyes stay the same while I’m moving her.
“All right,” I say to her. “I won’t say it serves you right. All I’ll say is this; just put some clothes on that, cover up the damage, and go and lie down so’s your old man just thinks you’ve baked out. You think you can do that?”
She looks at me without any expression. So I lift her off the bed and carry her through the bathroom to my room and lay her down on the bed. Then I sort through her luggage and find a dressing gown. After I’ve done that I manoeuvre her into her bikini and then I put her dressing gown on her and it’s like laying out my old granddad the time I had to, her body all stiff and her eyes wide open the way they are. There’s no way of knowing whether I’m getting through to her but I try anyway.
“When Wally talks to you, all you did was come to bed and lie down and you don’t know how D’Antoni got into his pit, all right?”
