by Ted Lewis
“I always enjoy seeing you, Audrey,” I tell her. “You coming in?”
She’s about to give me an answer to that one when I notice a movement behind her shoulder and she sees that I’ve noticed and that the movement has nothing to do with Tina and therefore instead of giving me the answer her expression changes into a mirror-image of the one I was giving her beyond the plate-glass, and the movement which in fact has drawn my attention is the parting of some bushes on the perimeter of the block of light and the emergence of the Dagenham boys, flicking the dewdrops off their prick-ends, grinning into the bright plate glass as though they’re seeing Blackpool Illuminations for the first time.
“What the fuck’s this?” I say to Audrey. “You gone into the mystery tour business?”
“There’s no mystery about this, darlin’,” Audrey says, walking past me into the hall. Tina begins to sway in after her, like a reed caught in the slipstream of a powerboat.
“Wally!” Audrey shouts. “The above have arrived. Start mixing the drinks.”
Behind me, the lounge lights come on, and Wally emerges from round the corner and gives her the big glad.
“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” he says. “This is great. It’s really great to see you.”
“I know it is,” Audrey says.
Wally starts back-pedaling into the lounge.
“Yeah, it’s great. A real treat. Unexpected, like,” he says.
There’s a marked change in the tone of Wally’s voice. He now sounds like a snide kid whose mother’s arrived on the scene to put everybody who’s in the right in the wrong. Audrey, followed by Tina, follows Wally into the lounge. Meanwhile, the Dagenham boys have filtered into the hall, the movements of their necks making them look like geese. I turn to face them and give them the look. Son number one looks back but from the state he’s in it’s difficult to tell whether anything as specific as my expression is registering. Number two son says:
“This is favourite. Better than Pontinental.”
“Too bleedin’ right,” says Benny.
They start to move in the general direction of Audrey and Tina, sniffing like mongrels on heat. And I never did like dogs.
“You going in then?” I ask them.
Number two son snaps up.
“You what, sunshine?” he says.
“I said, you going in?”
“Yeah, that’s where we’re going. In.”
“Only I thought you might be supplementing the rate of exchange by running a taxi service.”
The sarcasm doesn’t reach as far as Benny who says: “We hired one of them runabouts for the fortnight. Jesus, it’s even worse than one of our Friday afternoon cars, ain’t it?”
Barry ignores him and musters himself to make a reply to me, and it’s sort of like him trying not to be sick in reverse, all sweat and swallow.
“Here,” he says, putting his hand in his racing jacket and pulling out some pesetas. “You done your job smashing. Have a drink on me, my old son, and don’t tap me again on the way out.”
I’m just about to do more than tap him when Audrey reappears in the hall and says:
“I thought you two was dying for a flamin’ drink?”
“We are,” says Barry. “We was waiting for the butler here to fetch it.”
“He’ll fetch you something else if you carry on like that.”
The boys grin at what they imagine to be Audrey’s very funny joke and shuffle off through into the lounge as if they’re entering a Chinese chippy on a Saturday night.
I watch them go through and I’m considering following them and serving them their drinks in my own inimitable way but I don’t get to do that because I’m distracted by a noise up above my head, something that sounds like a foal breaking wind. I look up and I can see D’Antoni’s head at floor level on the balcony, peering down from the top of the stairs, his lips pursed and responsible for the farting sound.
“What’s going on?”
His voice is a cross between a whisper and a shout.
“It’s party time,” I tell him.
“Who is it?”
“It’s a delegation from the T.G.W.U.”
“What?”
“It’s all right. It’s not the Boston branch of the Mafia.”
“Listen—”
“You want to find out, come down and join the party.”
D’Antoni’s disembodied head begins to wobble and the veins on his forehead stand out like a printed circuit.
“Listen—”
I walk into the lounge, where I don’t have to listen, at least to him. The scene in there is very cosy. Everybody has got their drinks, due to the speed Wally has used to demonstrate his eagerness to please. The two Dagenham boys are still looking round like they’re in St Paul’s Cathedral. Tina is sitting on the floor, and Audrey is sprawled out on one of the leather sofas, her legs splayed out in front of her, feet shoeless, her drink clutched to her bosom. She raises a leg and plants it on the table in front of her. Benny is distracted from his appraisal of the villa’s architecture.
“Christ—” he says. “Stockin’s.”
Audrey looks me in the eye and says:
“Yeah. I used to wear them for a friend of mine what I used to have.”
Barry says:
“My old lady wears stockings.”
“Yeah?” says Benny.
“Yeah. Surgical. A right turn-on, they are.”
They both laugh, fit to bust their anoraks.
“And winceyette drawers. And then she wonders why I’m out pulling every night.”
More laughter.
I go over to the drinks and make myself one and when I’ve done that I go and sit down opposite Audrey. Audrey ignores that fact and says to Wally: “Bring some music, Wal, will you?”
“Yeah, sure. Anything in particular?”
“No, I’m not particular. Something with a bit of balls. Make a change round here, that would.”
“So would being particular,” I say to her.
Audrey looks at me and smiles her sweet and sour and cocks another leg up onto the table. Barry is slightly to my left, swaying a bit, not believing his luck at being able to see right up to the maker’s name.
“If you’re not careful,” I say to Audrey, “we’ll be able to see all the way up to the top of your clouts.”
“Clouts,” Audrey says, snorting with laughter. “Bleeding clouts. Tell where you was brung up, can’t you.”
“You can tell that,” I tell her. “Also, you can tell where you weren’t.”
Audrey gives out with her fishwife cackle, to prove how coarse and drunk she is, but she’s not being as clever as she thinks she is, because I’ve seen this act before, that act being appearing more drunk than you actually are, to give yourself an opportunity to bluff the opposition into a false sense of security, but what as yet I’m unable to suss out is who the performance is aimed at, and for why.
While these thoughts are coursing through my mind, Wally has sorted a cassette and bunged it into the machine which is custom-built into the wall adjacent to the back of my head. He’s chosen a Shirley Bassey, which in the circumstances is a complement to the act Audrey is putting on for the benefit of the assembled company. And, after all, “Big Spender” is the number Audrey always uses when she’s auditioning hopefuls at the club. And while she’s listening to the music, now, she allows her features to relax into the kind of expression she normally reserves for the more successful of successful applicants, the ones who occasionally have to go through the rigours of an extra audition, that audition not necessarily being anything to do with the act they’ll be presenting on the club stage, in public. So in the event, my gaze strays over to the closed-eyed figure of Tina, chin-on-knee on the floor, swaying very slightly to the beat of the number, and I consider whether or not Audrey is boiled up enough to have her revenge on me in that direction.
Barry manages to break the rabbit/ferret syndrome of his gaze and moves to get a little closer to the object of
his fascination, sitting down on the leather next to Audrey. He strikes a pose not unlike a down-and-out character out of Film Fun, presented with the just rewards of a job well done, those being a fat cigar, bangers and mash, and a bottle of pop.
“Well,” he says, “this is better than feeding rum and blacks to the old lady.”
“Yeah,” says Benny. “All it does is give them headaches.”
More Tweedledum and Tweedledee laughter.
“Here, darlin’,” Barry says to Audrey. “Rum and blacks give you headaches?”
“I don’t get headaches,” Audrey says.
“No, I didn’t think you would.”
More of the same from the sons.
“What about you, darlin’?” Benny says, nudging Tina in the back with his knee. “I bet you don’t get headaches either, do you?”
Tina carries on swaying and not opening her eyes.
“I’m very happy,” she says. “Very, very happy.”
At which remark, Wally decides to make his presence felt.
“Tina,” he says, “ain’t it about time you was climbing up the wooden hills?”
With the same contented expression on her face, Tina says: “Piss off.”
The sons go into their chorus again.
“Yeah, piss off,” says Benny.
“Yeah,” says Barry, “either that or fix us up another drink.”
“Now look here,” Wally begins, but Audrey cuts him off short.
“Turn it in, Wally,” she says to him. “She ain’t only grown up to be your daughter.”
“Well, I mean to say,” says Wally.
“You don’t mean to say anything,” Audrey says. “You never did. Your stock-in-trade is saying fuck all. It always was. That’s why you’re here. So. If you got nothing to say, stop pretending you have, and pour the drinks again.”
Wally allows himself the luxury of shooting a glance at Tina, but apart from that he goes to work on the job that Audrey’s suggested. I notice, though, that he misses out Tina and serves my drink last. Just a passing observation. And while I’m observing that, I also observe that I’m getting the fish-eye from Barry.
“Well then, squire,” he says, when he realises I’m returning the compliment, “you the owner of this little pile, are you?”
The accompanying smirk I’m getting from him is a real stoker, but until I’ve sorted what Audrey’s playing at I’m prepared to swallow and go along with the panel game.
“Not all of it,” I tell him. “Just a couple of air bricks in the west wing.”
“Put them in yourself, did you?”
“That’s right. After I’d dug out the foundations.”
Benny suddenly gets the idea we’re having a serious conversation. “What you mean, foundations? They don’t have foundations out here. Too much trouble, that is. Bleedin’ wops start at the top, judging from our hotel.”
“Not like the workmanship that comes off your production line,” I say to him.
“What you mean?”
“I once had one of your heaps,” I tell him. “Until then I didn’t appreciate the true meaning of panel-beating.”
“You’re taking a bleedin’ liberty,” he says.
I shrug. Barry says: “You a liberty taker, are you?”
“It has been known.”
“Taking one now, are you?”
“I dunno. You tell me.”
Barry leans forward.
“All right,” he says, “I’ll tell you. I’ll—”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Audrey says. “Can’t you think of any better ways of proving you’re butch?”
Barry looks at her.
“Any time, darlin’. Do you mind having an audience?”
Audrey, of course, wouldn’t care if it was the middle of Wembley stadium on Cup Final Day, providing that I wasn’t in the crowd, knowing, as she does, what the consequences would be if she ever pulled that kind of performance on me. It’s different with birds at the club. That I’ll wear, because she’s no ulterior motives directed against me. So, in the event, as a reply to the Dagenham son she stands up and gets in time with the music and sways over to where the drinks are. I get up too and join her as she’s pouring the second half of her drink.
“What’s the bleeding game, then?” I ask her.
Audrey takes a sip of her drink.
“Any game that’s going, sweetheart,” she says, hiding behind the fifty per cent falseness of her boozy act. “Any game at all, and any number can play.”
“Brought this lot to make the numbers up, did you?”
“They are the numbers. From tonight you’re not included in anything.”
I pick up a bottle and hold it poised over my glass.
“Stop playing the silly buggers. It’s Jack Carter you’re talking to, not your old man. I’m not exactly your Wilton or your Axminster. Just cut out the cobblers and tell me what you’re really about.”
Still she persists.
“You’ve had your chance to find out what I’m about, ducky,” she says. “Now it’s time somebody else had a turn.”
She turns away and begins to make it back to the sunken area. I pour my drink and drink half of it and then top it up again. I look at the group in the sunken area. They’re like figures in an empty swimming pool and Wally hovers round the edge playing the role of lifeguard, as well he might, because Benny is now sitting on the floor right next to Tina, in a mirror position, the only part of him not reflected being his right hand which is somewhere underneath the edge of Tina’s cheese-cloth, although Wally, as yet, has not sussed this development, not being precisely adjacent to the proceedings.
“The beauty of this situation,” says Barry to nobody in particular, “is that if we tell our old ladies about it, there is no way they’re going to believe it, so we’re in the bleedin’ clear, aren’t we?”
“Makes no difference,” says Benny. “I never tell the old cow nothing. She can like it or bleedin’ lump it and if she lumps it she knows where she can bleedin’ go looking for herself.”
“Too right,” says Barry.
As he’s endorsing his brother’s views on the essence of matrimony, the light in the hall is switched off. Barry flicks his head in the direction of the blackness.
“What’s that then?” he says. “Is it remote control, or has the bulb gone?”
I walk over to the edge of the sunken area.
“It’s the resident ghost,” I tell him. “All castles in Spain have one.”
“Oh yeah?” he says. “What is it? A Spanish plasterer what got too close to his work?”
“No,” I tell him. “It’s the spirit of the last bloke Audrey had up here and ate for breakfast. Last thing he ever did was switch the light out.”
“Not quite the last,” Audrey says, sitting down next to Barry again and again giving the assembled company a treat. Even I can see right up to the top and I’m standing on the upper level.
“What is the name of this gaff, anyway?” asks Barry. “The Casa Nova, is it? Get it? Casa Nova. Casanova?”
More laughter.
“The Karsi Nova,” Benny says.
And more.
While that’s going on I saunter over in the direction of the blackness and as I approach I can make out the shape of D’Antoni’s head peering round the corner of the wall, like some voyeur who by rights should be on the other side of the plate glass. I’m far enough away from the assembled throng for anything I say to go unheard so I say to D’Antoni: “Looks like a late night chat show, don’t it?”
“Who are they?”
He still sounds as though Henry Cooper’s fetched him one in the gut.
“Pick-ups,” I tell him. “A bit of rough trade for the lady of the house.”
“Is she crazy? Jesus. Doesn’t anybody care what all this is about?”
I don’t answer him.
“She could blow everything, what she’s doing?”
Mentally I agree with his words, but I give them a coarser in
terpretation. Especially, looking back at the group, now that I can see that Audrey’s sitting on the floor with her back to the settee, her head not all that far away from the vicinity of Barry’s crutch.
“Don’t worry about it. They’re smashed. In the morning they’ll think they dreamt it.”
“How’d they get up here?”
“They’re in the Seat, parked out on the road? Forget it. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Look—”
“Calm down. Come and join the party. That’s the only thing’ll kill you round here.”
I walk back to the centre of the room. I don’t have to look back to know that D’Antoni has declined to step out of the shadows; however, Wally moves instead, intercepting me before I reach the edge of the sunken area, and judging from the expression on his face he’s had a different aspect of the sub-cheese-cloth activities of Benny. Under cover of the noise of the music he says to me:
“Here, Jack, I mean to say, is this going to be a bit strong?”
“Changed your tune a bit, haven’t you? Where’s all the open arms bit gone to?”
“It’s not the open arms I’m worried about.”
“Well, take it up with the lady of the house,” I tell him. “She’s in charge.”
As if to underline my statement, Audrey’s voice climbs above the level of the music.
“Here, Wal, you got the new batch in?”
Wally turns away from me and shows Audrey his other face.
“Beg pardon, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“The new batch. They get here all right?”
“Oh, them. Yeah, thanks, Mrs. Fletcher. Smooth, like as usual.”
“Checked them out, have you?”
“Oh, yes. Mint condition, they are. ’Course, I didn’t check them all yet, seeing as they only just come in, like.”
“I bet.”
“Well, been seeing to our guests like, ain’t I?”
“Yeah, well, see to our guests now, then.”
“Eh?”
“They need livening up. Don’t want them nodding off, do we?”
“No.”
“So wheel the projector out. Let’s have some real holiday movies.”
Barry says: “What’s all this, then?”
“Thought you might like to watch some home movies.”
“Blues, are they?” Barry says, thinking she’s joking.
