by David Carter
‘Ya come from Lanchester, Michigan ya say? Can’t say as I know it.’
‘Small town America,’ Lisa would reply in her best American twang. It was no surprise her newfound colleagues didn’t know of Lanchester, Michigan, for it didn’t exist outside Lisa’s fertile mind.
Nicoliades spotted her the moment she entered his bar. It was half-past eight. She was tall and slim and looked round as if she was with someone, but there was no one there. She was on her own, Nic instinctively knew that, and somehow she looked a little lonely too. Nic had become an expert in loneliness. He could lecture on the topic, he’d seen so much of it, and he’d long since learnt that the lonelier they were, the more vulnerable they would be, and the easier to seduce.
This girl reeked of loneliness, yet so beautiful. She wasn’t red at all, unlike the others, but a tanned bronze, her short pageboy haircut strangely sexy, not severe at all, her light brown hair bleached blonde by the fierce sun. She wasn’t a recent arrival, she’d been in Greece a while, and yet it was strange that such a beautiful young woman remained alone.
She ambled to the bar and half smiled at Nicoliades. He was drying and shining a glass, his body language oozing disinterest. He guessed she might be German or a Swede, and she hadn’t yet decided who she would be that night. She’d flirted with the idea of becoming Irish for the evening. She’d seen the way they disdainfully rolled their eyes in disgust when a bunch of rowdy English women threatened to destroy the romantic ambience everyone else was intent on soaking themselves in. They shrieked so, whenever they laughed, the English, shrieked, hideously.
She practised that eye roll and the hand gestures. Lisa Greystone was an inveterate practiser, so it was a surprise when she smiled at the guy and said, ‘Hello,’ in her natural English voice, as she peered past him at the drinks that filled the mirror-backed shelves.
She was English; he was surprised at that. She seemed far too beautiful to be English. Her skin was perfect, more like an Italian’s, and her haircut expensive, as he watched her admiring his whiskies through those clear eyes.
‘Hello,’ he replied, ‘drink?’
She nodded and smiled. ‘Yeah. White wine.’
Her teeth were small, yet perfect, and the whiteness stood out against her bronzed face. Her lips were inviting, not too full nor too thin, with just a hint of pink lipstick, and he knew he’d like to kiss those lips, but he was getting ahead of himself. He poured her a large white wine from the cooler and the glass instantly frosted.
Lisa slipped her purse from the maroon leather bag she’d bought up in Patrai and unzipped it to pay for the drink. The girl had taste.
‘Are you eating?’
She nodded, and he waved the money away saying, ‘You don’t pay for the first glass, not if you’re eating.’
She mumbled, ‘Cool,’ and smiled again and glanced around the bar. It was half full of diners experimenting with their Greek food, as they gazed into their partner’s eyes. There were half knowing smiles aplenty as if to say: If you think last night was exciting, you wait for what I’ve in store for you tonight!
Glances. Stolen whispers. A heavy breath on the side of the face, or neck. A shared smile. Two knees might touch. A finger might tickle an opposing palm, before flitting away, like scorpions dancing, as quickly as it had arrived. A light kiss on the ear as one stood and ambled towards the bathroom.
Outside the bar, under a freshly painted pergola on the quayside, were more tables set within a few feet of the rhythmically swaying water. They were bathed in a mixture of moonlight and blue light from the limited neon sign that proclaimed Nicoliades’ Bar. The dark sky was filled with stars and an occasional pathetic cloud raced across the face of the yellow round moon hanging low in the sky above the harbour entrance, as if signalling late sailors home.
‘Shall I show you your table?’
Lisa nodded, collected her bag, and sipped and carried her half finished drink.
He led her to a small square table set at the side of the restaurant, where it was close enough to attend. He’d sat her there not so much to keep an eye on her, but to ward off chancers who might wander in. This girl was his, at least while she was in his bar. He shouted something in Greek she didn’t understand, and a young boy appeared as if by magic. The kid was maybe fourteen and already cute, a boy she wrongly guessed to be Nicoliades’ son.
He smiled down at the smart lady, for she was prettier than the usual crew they saw in Uncle Nicoliades’ Bar; not so old, red and puffy. She returned his smile, and that was all he could wish for. He carefully set the table, just the one place, and disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived. At no time had he asked if she was alone, and she wondered if it was that obvious.
She glanced at the laminated menu. It was in Greek, English, and German, though it might as well have been in Urdu, such was her knowledge of Greek food. Nicoliades returned, standing above her, holding in his stomach, pencil poised.
Lisa smirked. ‘What do you recommend?’
‘The lamb, the lamb’s lovely and fresh.’ He pointed to the best lamb dish. ‘Try that one. Don’t have the beef.’
‘The beef’s not lovely and fresh?’ she teased.
It was his turn to roll his eyes.
She nodded. ‘OK. The lamb it is.’
They both watched as the young man returned with a tray bearing meals for two American women sitting two tables away.
‘Two beef stifados!’ he trumpeted, as he laid the steaming spicy dishes before them.
‘Thanks, young fella,’ said the older, wrinkled one in a voice so deep it could have emanated from Lisa’s grandfather.
Lisa glanced across at the meals, and then at Nicoliades. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘One lamb, coming up,’ and he disappeared, as did, in due course, the beef dinners, without complaint, without so much as a hiccup, but what revenge lay in store for beef diners later?
‘Thanks, young fella,’ drawled Lisa, parroting again. ‘Thanks, young fella.’ It was a phrase that had not previously been in her expanding vocabulary.
The lamb was excellent. Rich and fresh as if butchered that morning, the sauce peppery and spicy, bearing flavours she barely recognised. It made her belch behind her hand, and she smiled self-consciously across the restaurant to no one. Her fellow diners were too engrossed in their partners to notice the tall single English girl who was on her fourth glass of potent wine.
The Greek youth cleared the table and flashed his teeth. He glanced down at her naked long legs. She caught him eyeing her up, lasciviously, and at his age too, she couldn’t miss it, and yet she returned his smile. The cheeky thing, she thought, he’d be a handful, and all too soon. Nicoliades returned and placed the bill on the table.
‘Would you like to come to the bar? Perhaps a nightcap?’
He beckoned towards the counter where six red-topped stools stood in a line like soldiers. The end two had just become free, vacated by two young Germans who’d hurried away arm-in-arm, as if unable to restrain themselves any longer. Lisa smiled. She hadn’t intended staying late, yet the night was warm, and she knew that sleep would be hard to find, and what harm was there in one final drink?
‘OK, just the one.’
She hauled herself onto the end stool and placed her bag on the bar. He gestured at the whiskies.
‘Are you tempted?’
‘Oh no, another wine.’
He poured her a fresh glass, before replenishing the drinks of two dark haired drinkers at the end of the bar who were speaking in a language she didn’t recognise. Then he was back, smiling, making small talk, telling childish jokes, and glass rubbing. The perfect host.
‘You’re alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘No.’
That at least he could understand.
She would never be alone for long.
‘Have you somewhere to stay?’
‘Yes, I’ve booked a room at the Pelios Hotel.’
He
laughed contemptuously, and shouted something in Greek to his friend Aris, who was serving drinks further along the bar. Aris grinned patronisingly at the girl and returned the laughter with interest.
‘What are you laughing at?’
‘The Pelios Hotel! Hardly the Ritz, is it?’
She saw the joke. It wasn’t, but it was clean and boasted the luxury of a decent toilet, and holy of holies, a fresh roll of toilet paper. That was all she needed. A toilet, a basin, a bed, and a mirror, and it was cheap, for she had no desire to thrash the credit card, not with the wedding looming. Midge Ridge would be miffed enough with her travelling alone to Greece without her running up a hefty hotel bill.
Lisa yawned and wafted her hand in front of her pink mouth.
‘I’ll have to go before I fall asleep.’
She finished the drink and paid the twenty-euro bill.
Nic took the money and slapped it in the till with a flourish.
He looked her in the eye and smiled again.
‘Will we have the pleasure of your company again tomorrow?’
‘I don’t know, you might.’
She stepped down and started towards the door, before half turning.
‘Goodnight, and thanks for the free drink.’
‘Goodnight, English girl.’
He watched her to the door, her back, her shorts, and what lay beneath, and then she was gone, and oddly, his full bar seemed quite deserted.
Aris laughed and shouted, ‘That’s the last you’ll ever see of her. She was far too good for you.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Fifty euro says she doesn’t come back tomorrow.’
‘You’re on, fifty euro... and don’t forget!’
Nicoliades sniffed and perked up. The night was young and a gaggle of six ravenous American women had slithered into the bar. The Greek men exchanged knowing glances. There was money to be made, and dancing to be done before the sun came up, vanity to be preened, and opportunities to exercise the heart. Nicoliades’ Bar would close at midnight, but the doors would be locked, the shutters turned, the invited ones remaining inside, and for as long as Nicoliades saw fit.
Carsos was an idyllic island; everyone said so, especially the women, who couldn’t stay away.
Chapter Three
THE RIDGE FAMILY LIVED in a mock Tudor mansion bordering Caldy golf course in what was considered to be the best residential area on the Wirral peninsula. The house had been christened Misnomer, though no one knew why, and the Ridge’s never once considered changing it.
It seemed the family had always had it easy, portraying an image of old money. Yet nothing was further from the truth, for it was only Vimy Ridge’s father who had dragged the family from the gutter that was the slums of inner city Liverpool.
He began trading during the depression and built up his business from nothing. Vimy Ridge’s father’s name was Norman, but he hated the name. He worked on the Liverpool docks, buying and selling substandard commodities. He’d started in 1930 as a fourteen-year-old lad, after his father had died prematurely of TB. Norman was sent out early in life to earn a living and support the family, for if he didn’t earn, he didn’t eat, and neither would they.
Norman bought anything he could lay his hands on from the lascars who crewed the filthy tubs that slipped into the docks every day, anything that would turn a shilling. Pilfered stock, sweepings left over in the depths of the hold, scrap metal he suspected had been ripped from the fabric of the rust buckets that came and went through the mucky river, and after a while he began calling himself Rocky Ridge, and unknowingly set in motion a tradition of the family naming their children, what they liked to call, interestingly.
He thought it made him sound harder, Rocky, formidable even. He thought it made him sound tough, and slowly he built a decent reputation. He’d purchase materials the other dock traders wouldn’t touch, and he paid well and always in cash. Rusty metal, insect ridden grain, wet cotton, black bananas, saturated timber, sea water damaged groundnuts, tainted molasses, damaged goods of every conceivable kind, it was all the same to Rocky, for he knew in those hungry days of the thirties they retained some value, and he’d buy it.
Within a year he had become known to the lascars, and their faces would light up whenever they saw him skipping up the gangplank, their white teeth like beacons against their dark skin. Word spread quicker than a command from the skipper that Rocky Ridge was on the ship, and some of the seamen made more money liberating cash from Rocky’s pocket than their meagre wages. It was no surprise he became popular. He was a kid of honour, and somehow smuggled the bloot, local slang for dodgy goods, off the ship and through the dock gates, often under the nose of the red-faced copper, Sergeant O’Grady, who made it his business to nab smugglers and bloot runners at every turn.
Rocky stored his precious booty in a filthy warehouse he’d rented in Oil Street that ran between Great Howard Street and the Dock Road. He had to move the rats out first and he did that with the aid of Gladstone and Disraeli, two tough tomcats he’d bought from Mrs Devlin for a shilling. She was an alcoholic and though she would miss the cats, the barley wine the coin bought was ample temporary compensation. The rats disappeared, and Rocky’s precious stock remained unmolested.
He retained stock for as short a time as possible to thwart snoopers and would want it away and take a modest profit. Turn it over, move it on. Buy cheap, sell quick, get rid, and count the profit was Rocky’s mantra, and it served him well. It kept him out of the courts and the sales numbers turning. The man trudged the docks from dawn till dusk, wearing his shoe leather quicker than any man. From Garston to Gladstone, striking deals, making acquaintances, pressing flesh, becoming known.
He supported his mother and four siblings single handedly for four years, promising he passed every surplus penny to her. In reality, she received a shilling for every three he deposited in his savings account in the redbrick post office on Stanley Road, Bootle. He slowly built up financial muscle to enable him to buy big. Bigger consignments meant fatter profits for him and all the Ridges. They depended on him for survival, and all the while he harboured glittering dreams. Of beautiful women, of building a future, of creating a dynasty, of gaining power and influence. He could see it all before him, and it excited him to his bones. Sometimes it would keep him awake at nights, as he slipped into his imaginary world. It kept him warm in the winter and raised him from his bed in the morn.
Rocky understood how the world worked. There was nothing you couldn’t do or couldn’t buy, providing you had money. No one rich ever starved, and he knew hundreds of people who were going hungry and it would never happen to him. His goal was to amass cash as fast as possible. If he lived to be a hundred, there wouldn’t be enough time to build the castles he saw in his head.
When he was twenty, he took his younger brother Jack into the business. It was a particularly tough time, but that additional manpower meant greater strength, and more respect. He was no longer a one-man band, and people were beginning to take notice of the ruffian and his kid brother.
When he was twenty-two something happened to Rocky Ridge that changed his life forever. He met Mary Downing. She was eighteen and served behind the bar of The Cutlass on the Dock Road where her father was the landlord. Legend had it he’d won the pub with a hand of stud poker, but no one could remember the unfortunate soul who’d staked all on his losing three queens. Four threes, four wicked threes!
Mary wore her jet-black hair tied up in a bun, revealing her long slender porcelain-like neck. Rocky wasn’t the first man to notice that. There would be many rivals for Mary’s hand and he knew it, all the more reason to make haste.
The day he first set eyes on her, he instinctively knew she was the girl for him. The first time he saw her neck he harboured a crazy desire to kiss it, and worse. Rocky hadn’t felt that way about anyone before and told no one of his desires, not even young Jack, with whom he shared so much, lest they’d think him crazy, or step in before him.
When it came to pretty girls trust no one, not even Jackie. Mary wouldn’t be single for long, not a stunner like her, and he wouldn’t tolerate interlopers. The second time he saw her, he told her she would one day become his wife and she’d better start getting used to the idea. You should be so lucky, she thought, but the look in his eyes said everything.
‘Get away with you,’ she admonished him. ‘Don’t be so daft.’
The Downings were third generation Irish and despite the fact Mary had lived all her life within fifteen miles of the River Mersey, she possessed a soft Irish accent picked up through listening to her plentiful aunts and uncles. Deep down, she knew it wasn’t daft at all, for she liked Rocky as much as he liked her. It was meant to be that way, she knew that, and the only thing that mattered was playing their cards in the correct order.
She believed in love at first sight, always had, and try as she might to remove this man from her mind, she could not, and gave up trying. She liked him there, inside her head; in her mind. It warmed her heart and soothed her spirit. She adored being in love, even if she could never tell a soul.
His attraction lay in the way he carried himself, his broad shoulders and huge powerful hands. His thick cropped hair, and the individual animal-like hairs that stood straight out from the back of his hands. She loved his expensive, thick shiny shoes and the heavy brown suit he often wore. There wasn’t anything she disliked about him. It helped that he didn’t seem scared of anyone or anything, and everyone in the bar was wary of him. You could tell that, just by being around him, that no one would mess with Rocky Ridge. He’d grown strong. He had a presence, an aura.
Nor was he pushy or coarse. He never told filthy jokes that some of the other saloon bar slime-balls would spit out within earshot, as if trying to embarrass her. She thought him a gentleman, and in his own muddy pool, he was, and God knows, in the world inhabited by Mary Downing, they were mighty hard to find. She felt safe when Rocky Ridge was in the bar, and that meant everything.
