by Ted Lewis
“Has the milk been delivered yet?” I say to him.
D’Antoni whirls round and almost fetches the curtains with him.
“What’s happening?” he says. “Where’d you go?”
“Nothing’s happening, and you know where I went. I went upstairs, didn’t I?”
“What for?”
“I went to the karsi, didn’t I?”
“There’s one down here.”
“Is there really? Silly of me.”
I walk over to the button that operates the curtains and they swish apart. D’Antoni retreats from the light with the madness of a moth in reverse.
“Bang, bang,” I say.
“Listen,” he says. “You’d be the same. You don’t know the score. You’re from nowhere. You don’t know what kind of guys these are.”
I smile to myself and open the windows and walk back to the drinks and pour myself another one.
“For Christ’s sake pour yourself a drink and calm down,” I tell him. “You got nothing to worry about.”
I walk past him and out onto the patio. The pool is as flat as formica and the day’s heat is already building up. By the pool there’s a lounger with the back raised, under the shade of a parasol. I walk over and get on the lounger and stretch out my legs and prop my back up and survey the mountains. They’re still the same colour and they’re still as boring. I take a sip of my drink. D’Antoni’s voice drifts across from the open windows.
“Get back in here.”
I take a sip of my drink.
“Those calls,” he says. “I know what they were.”
“Don’t be silly. Who would they be intended for?”
D’Antoni doesn’t answer.
“Well, there you are then.”
“It smells, that’s all I know,” D’Antoni says.
From further back in the lounge comes another voice.
“What smells?”
“Nothing.”
There’s a clink of glasses and Audrey says: “I thought the drains might be acting up again.”
D’Antoni goes back into the lounge and for a while there’s the sound of the two of them talking together and from the tone of their voices Audrey is swinging the conversation the way she’s supposed to. I sip my drink and continue to watch the mountains. Nothing happens to them but inside the villa the talking eventually stops. I give it another five minutes and then I get off the lounger and walk back into the villa. The lounge is empty except for the aroma of Audrey’s perfume. I cross the lounge and walk upstairs. The door to Audrey’s room is closed. I keep going until I get to my room. This time Tina is lying on her stomach, but although the position is different, the snoring is the same. Without waking her, I dig out D’Antoni’s shooters from their hiding place and then I go back downstairs and look for Wally. I try all the usual places but I finally find him in the garage, sitting on a petrol can and staring out at the brilliant square of white sunlight beyond the open garage door.
“What you doing sitting in here on your tod, Wal?” I ask him.
“As a rule, nobody comes in here, that’s why,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, perching my backside on the edge of tire. “It must be a piss-off, you having the run of the place all year round and then suddenly everywhere you turn there’s characters in every room.”
Wally doesn’t answer. I look out into the sunlight.
“That Merc’s going to get warmish if you leave it out there much longer,” I say.
“Fuck the Merc,” Wally says.
I take out my cigarettes and light up.
“Anyway,” I say, “there’ll be a couple more for you to fall over shortly.”
Wally looks at me.
“What?” he says.
“A couple more. Coming up the villa.”
“Who?”
“Con McCarty and Peter the Dutchman.”
Even in the garage gloom, Wally’s change of colour is noticeable.
“Con and Peter?” he says.
I nod my head. Wally gets up off the petrol can and walks over to me.
“Jack,” he says, “what the fuck’s going on, eh?”
“Nothing you need worry about,” I tell him. “Only when they get here, if you’re around when they first arrive, don’t get the megaphone out, will you? Just let them come in and do what they want and keep your mouth shut, eh?”
“Jack, listen—”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve told you. There’s nothing to worry about.”
I get off the tire and walk out into the sunlight and go over to the Merc. I put my hand on the bonnet and it’s like touching a kitchen range.
Compared to the rest of the day, stretched out under the bushes, it’s relatively cool, but that is only relatively. From time to time I make myself feel better by looking between the leaves at the path that leads to the road, and imagining what it would be like lying out on that hot earth. I look at my watch. Any time now, they should be here.
An hour later, and I’m still looking at my watch, and there’s still nothing. I swear to myself. The only way they can get to the villa is along this path. But even if there was another way, there’s been no sound of a motor up on the road, and even if they’d parked miles away, I’d still have heard it, up in this silence. I swear again and get to my feet. I look towards the road. Nothing. The path’s just the same as when I came down it the other night, only sunlit. I turn and look towards the villa. That’s still the same too. Except from beyond it, from the side where the swimming pool is, black smoke is billowing up into the clear blue sky.
I make my way out of the bushes and start hurrying back down to the villa. I round the corner of the building. The pool is still as flat as before. There’s nobody on the patio, but there is an oil drum, and the oil drum is where the smoke is gushing from, and a few feet away from the oil drum is, if I’m not mistaken, the petrol can that Wally was sitting on when he was in the garage.
I walk a little closer to the oil drum and while I’m doing that Wally emerges from the lounge windows carrying a stack of boxed films, which he starts throwing, one by one, into the drum.
“What the Christ are you playing at?” I ask him.
Wally continues throwing the films into the fire.
“They already got Geronimo, you know. It’s too late to warn him now.”
Wally throws the last box into the drum.
“I’m getting rid of that lot, aren’t I?”
“What lot?”
“Those ones. You know the ones I mean.”
He looks at the smoke for a moment, then he goes back inside the villa. A few minutes later, Audrey appears framed in the sliding glass.
“What the fuck’s going on?” she asks.
“Wally’s getting rid of the family album.”
Audrey looks at the smoke.
“The films?”
I nod.
“They’ll dock that lot out of his wages,” she says, then she goes back inside and pours a drink and re-appears.
“They’re late,” she says.
“ ’Course they’re fucking late.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Keep following instructions. That shouldn’t be no hardship.”
“He just sent me down for some more booze. He hasn’t even started yet.”
“Like I say, shouldn’t be no hardship. In fact, I thought the smoke was coming out the bedroom window.”
“Piss off.”
“What’s he doing now, chalking on the wall? Must be like the old days, waiting for the Saturday nighters.”
This time Audrey waits a minute or two before saying anything.
“If you climbed the wooden hill right now, we could be getting the champagne iced up ready for Peter and Con’s arrival.”
I just look at her. She shrugs.
“Suit yourself.”
She plucks a bottle off the drinks cabinet and turns away, swishing off in a slipstream of perfume.
“ ‘I did
it my way,’ ” she sings, as she rounds the corner.
I grit my teeth and pour myself another drink and while I’m doing that Wally re-appears with another batch of boxes and walks past me out onto the patio. I follow him out and I’m in time to see the flames shoot up and the smoke billow out and it reminds me of the time I witnessed the last of William Dugdale’s mortal remains prior to the scattering of his ashes in Epping Forest. Wally watches the smoke for a while. Then he picks up his cigarettes and matches that are lying on the stonework and lights himself up and at the moment he’s setting fire to the end of his cigarette he catches the petrol can with his left foot and topples it over on the edge of the pool so that the can see-saws on the edge and chug-a-lugs petrol onto the surface of the water. Wally shakes the match out and bends over and rights the can but his movement is so quick that petrol spills upwards out of the mouth of the can and lands on his forearm and on his slacks and Wally begins to fuck and blind but the fucking and blinding is short-lived because immediately the noise Wally is making becomes different, a scream, because the match he threw away didn’t go out, and the splashing petrol is adding fuel to its flame, rippling across the stonework to the bottom of Wally’s slacks which start to take light, causing him to start leaping about like Mick Jagger, again knocking over the petrol can. More petrol spills out and the flames join the fresh lot and race across the stonework to the oil drum to augment the celluloid heat. Wally engages himself in a battle with the belt that’s holding up his trousers, but he’s never going to finish first. So I walk over to him and give him a shoulder which sends him flying off the stonework and out into the pool. The splash Wally makes is like a small explosion, throwing water up to sizzle onto the lighted petrol. Wally surfaces and spits out water as if he’s in competition with Gerald’s fish.
“One of these days, Wally,” I tell him, “you’ll do something without doing it arse about face.”
Wally continues splashing about in the water.
“Jack,” he says, between mouthfulls.
“I expect you never learnt to swim before you learnt to set fire to yourself.”
“Jack—”
“You really are a prize cunt, Wal,” I tell him. “No wonder they put you out here, all on your own.”
“Jack—”
I shake my head and I’m just about to turn away when I notice a curious thing. Instead of just the large billowing shadow of the smoke reflecting in the pool, there are two new reflections, gliding softly into view like a couple of water snakes striking out from a canal bank.
“Jack—” Wally says again.
“It’s all right, Wally,” I say, turning round. “I realise what you were trying to spit out.”
It’s funny, looking at Con McCarty and Peter the Dutchman in the Spanish sunshine. They don’t look real. They look like something out of Madame Tussaud’s except the wax is beginning to melt. Con is wearing his eternal leather hat and his leather coat, but Peter, of course, is wearing something more appropriate to the climate, the latest in Mediterranean casual wear, offset by the purple tints of his sunglasses and his bleached hair that’s roughly the same colour as the sunshine. He looks like a bent barman trying to pull them in Piccadilly. The one thing they do have in common, though, are the shooters they’re carrying in their hands.
“Well, well,” Peter says. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”
Wally splashes towards the edge of the pool and I don’t say anything so Peter continues.
“I mean,” he says, “the Son et lumière display. Wally doing his Esther Williams bit. All it needs is Busby Berkeley wielding his megaphone.”
Con looks at the mountains.
“Leave it out, Peter,” he says. “It’s too fucking warm.”
“Is it just the heat, or do you feel embarrassed?” I ask him.
“You not going to give us any trouble, are you Jack?” Peter says.
“ ’Course not. I’m on my holidays, aren’t I?”
“In that case,” Peter says, “you won’t need what you got stuffed up your shirt, will you?”
Peter walks over to me and holds his hand out. I give him D’Antoni’s automatic. Behind me the fire is still sending heat waves up and down my back.
Wally gets to the edge of the pool.
“Give us a hand, Jack,” he says.
“What, after the one you just gave me? Fuck off.”
Peter grins.
“Poor old Wally,” he says. “Never could make it on his own.”
“Come on,” Con says to Peter. “Let’s be getting on with it.”
“Just enjoying the sunshine a minute, sweetheart,” Peter says, taking a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket.
“We enjoyed the bleeding sunshine all the way up the bleeding road, when the taxi blew out, didn’t we?” Con says.
“Philistines,” Peter says. “All I get is Philistines to work with.”
“You should start walking a different way then, shouldn’t you?” Con says.
Peter ignores him and unfolds the piece of paper, studies it, then looks at the villa. In the meantime Wally makes it out of the pool and sits on the pool’s edge, coughing and heaving as if he’s just done a lap round White City.
“Yes,” Peter says, agreeing with whatever he’s been turning over in his mind. “Right.”
“You’re sure?” Con asks him.
“There’s no need for you to come,” Peter says.
“What you talking about?”
Peter gives him a look and the look doesn’t have to take me in for Con to get his meaning.
‘Well, all right,” Con says.
“That’s right,” Peter says.
Peter keeps the look on Con for a minute longer then he turns away and walks towards the sliding windows, leaving Con looking even more embarrassed than before.
“You’ll get over it,” I tell him.
“You what?”
I grin at him.
“Never mind. Come and have a drink.”
I start to walk towards the villa.
“Hang about, Jack,” Con says.
I stop walking and face him again.
“Leave it out, Con. You’re not going to do it that way. You’ll probably leave it to Peter, anyway.”
“Jack, this ain’t my idea, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. So come and have a drink.”
I turn away and start walking again and apart from dropping me there and then Con has no choice but to follow on the principle that he can’t risk letting me out of his sight. He’s right with me when I reach the plate glass and he’s still by my side when I reach the drinks. Peter, by that time, has traversed the lounge and is now, I imagine, half way up the stairs.
“What you like, Con?”
“Some kind of beer,” Con says. “Lager, if you got any.”
I bend down and open the refrigerated cabinet and while I’m doing that Con takes a moment out to look round the room and inwardly digest its splendours and so it’s no problem for me to take D’Antoni’s other shooter from behind the lagers where I stacked it earlier, and stand up and put the snub barrel against Con’s lips and get a grip on his own shooter. Con goes rigid. I press the barrel tighter against his mouth and shake my head and Con stays rigid. Then, after a little while, Con relaxes and smiles and with his free hand pushes my shooter away from his face.
“Christ, I don’t mind,” he says. “So you overpowered me. Not a lot Gerald and Les can do about that, is there?” We look at each other and then I smile back at him.
“You got lager in there, or just shooters?” Con says.
“Help yourself,” I tell him. “I got something to do. Only, I will take your shooter, just in case the lager goes to your head.”
Con shrugs and hands me his shooter and is about to turn his attention to the refrigerated cabinet when from upstairs comes the sound of a shot. Fuck it, I think to myself, Peter moved quicker than I thought he would. I run across the lounge and then there’s two more shots an
d I’m in the hall and I’m more than somewhat surprised to see that Peter has only made it as far as the top of the steps and it’s for sure that he hasn’t fired his one because he’s standing there like a rabbit at the arrival of a ferret. I begin to run up the stairs and Peter whirls round and sees the two shooters I’m carrying and hauls a couple off at me but luckily they’re wild because while he’s hauling them off he’s also throwing himself to the landing floor which affects his aim more than a little bit. But at the same time they’re not wild enough to make me feel inclined to continue to the top of the steps so I about-face and scamper to the bottom of the steps and round the corner of the lounge, colliding with Con in the process. At the same time a door upstairs slams and Peter hauls off another shot in the direction of the slamming door and the next thing I hear is Audrey screaming meaningless odds along the passage, and Peter, more intelligible, shouting:
“You fucking bitch, you and your ponce, you set us up.”
It’s my turn to shout now so I stick my head round the lounge corner.
“Peter, you bleedin’ egg, it ain’t a set up. Leave it out and get Audrey out of it. He ain’t supposed to have a shooter.”
“I know he bleedin’ ain’t, don’t I? Oh, yes, I know that.”
Audrey’s screeching stops and farther down the landing there’s the sound of a different door slamming and I guess that Audrey’s made it to my room, where Tina’s still laying her lonely locks.
“I shouldn’t stay there if I was you,” I call to Peter. “He knows you’re there now.”
I must admit I enjoyed that one.
“Yeah, and so do you, don’t you?”
“Suit yourself,” I call back.
“What’s going on, for Christ’s sake?” Con says.
“I’ve no fucking idea. I’d copped for both the bastard’s shooters.”
“So what’s happening?”
“I’ve told you. I’ve no fucking idea.”
As I’m saying that there’s a blur of movement out in the hall and I swing round just in time to see Peter legging it from the bottom of the stairs to the other side of the ornamental fish. He crouches down and rests his gun arm on the fish’s tail. Con and I retreat fully round the corner.
“Leave it out, Peter,” Con calls to him. “Jack’s in the bleedin’ dark like we are.”
