by WHS McIntyre
‘But it’s our trial honeymoon.’
‘No, Robbie, not even for our actual honeymoon.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Because if this had really been your idea of a trial honeymoon, you’d have done the sums, worked out that for the same money, me, you and Tina could have all gone somewhere sunny for a fortnight.’
‘Don’t you like it here?’
‘No, I do. I love it. What I’m saying is that I might only have got engaged to you four months ago, but I’ve known you for nearly seven years and we’ve worked together for at least three of those. I know you, and I know that by whisking me off on a romantic city-break-slash-trial-honeymoon, you’ll be thinking you’ve killed one bird. What I want to know is what’s the second bird and who paid for the stone?’
I had wondered about telling Joanna the true reason behind the Prague visit; perhaps over dinner, after she’d been mellowed by a couple of glasses of wine. Not when I was standing inches away from a five-storey drop.
‘Great view from here, isn’t it?’ I eased past her and gazed to my left along the bustling street below to the immense statue of Prague’s patron saint, guarding the way to the National Museum. ‘Now you can say you’ve looked out onto good King Wenceslas. Instead of the other way around.’
‘Robbie . . .’
‘You know, like in the Christmas carol?’
‘Robbie . . .’
‘There’s some great shops too. Maybe we should have a quick look in some of them while we’re here.’
Joanna didn’t so much as flinch. ‘Robbie. Seriously. I’m warning you.’
If the prospect of retail therapy couldn’t sidetrack her, I was a man running fast out of ideas. ‘Look, there’s a pigeon on the next balcony.’ Joanna took my bicep in a loving but viciously tight grip. ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, ‘let’s go out and explore. I’ll explain everything. You’ll laugh when I tell you.’
She let go my arm. ‘I’d better.’
We left the hotel, took a right and strolled down Wenceslas Square towards the Old Town, cutting in and out of a maze of side streets, stopping now and again to look in shop windows.
‘You know, you’d make a hopeless witness,’ Joanna said, when we’d walked and talked and ended up, as most tourists do, in the Old Town Square, where we formed part of a crowd that had gathered to watch the Astronomical Clock strike the hour. ‘You crack under pressure.’
‘I didn’t crack. I was going to tell you anyway. I was just waiting for the right moment.’
And talking about right moments, we’d arrived just in time to see the old clock in action. Joanna had been reading all about it, as well as some of Prague’s other tourist attractions, on the flight over. The ancient mechanism was apparently a fascinating piece of six-hundred-year-old chronometric kit. Certainly it was way too complicated for me to work out what was happening.
‘You see the twenty-four numerals in gothic script around the perimeter?’ Joanna said. She was standing in front of me, head tilted so that the back of it rested against my chest, pointing up at the clock tower of the Old Town Hall. ‘It indicates the approach of sunset, depending on the time of year. Twenty-four is sunset. All the others are the hours before or after sunset. And you see those four colourful statues?’ She had to shout in order to be heard above the excited chattering of those gathered about us. ‘There are two either side of the clock face. One of them represents vanity. That’s him holding a mirror. The one next to him is a miser with a bag of gold and across from those two there’s a man dressed in fine clothes and playing a stringed instrument. He stands for lust and earthly pleasures.’
I didn’t need any help with the fourth and final figure. Death was a skeleton and at precisely three o’clock he struck the time by pulling a cord and ringing a bell. As he did so, the other figures shook their heads, supposedly signifying their unreadiness to go with him.
The show was over in a matter of seconds and the crowd began to disperse, many of the clock-watchers making their way to the crowded restaurants, cafés and hot food stalls all around the square. Joanna put her arm through mine.
‘Come on, we’ve got to have a look in there,’ she said, leading me towards the nightmarish spires of the Church of Our Lady before Týn. It was good to have brought my very own tour guide along with me, but right at that moment I’d have preferred someone with more knowledge on Pilsner Urquell, Budvar and Staropramen and less about the Hussites, counter-Reformation and ornate, baroque altarpieces.
‘Air travel can be very dehydrating,’ I said, as we passed fellow clock-watchers now sitting at tables and being brought amber liquid in tall glasses. ‘It said so in the in-flight magazine.’
‘You can borrow my moisturiser later.’ Joanna was unrelenting in her march towards the cathedral. She was either really keen on turning this trip into an exploration of Bohemian history and cultural identity, or just trying to annoy me.
I was looking for a suitable cobble on which to twist an ankle when Joanna said, ‘When have you arranged to see this Freddy guy?’
‘I haven’t quite finalised arrangements,’ I said. ‘There are still a few loose ends to tie up.’
‘How loose?’
I had to admit the ends were hanging pretty freely at that precise moment.
Joanna stopped and stood in front of me. ‘But you do have an address for him?’
‘No . . . not as such . . . I thought I could go out looking for him tomorrow morning. You can have a long lie, order room service and, when I come back, we’ll go somewhere nice for lunch. After that we’ll have the rest of the week to ourselves. Assuming I can find him. How does that sound for a plan?’ I asked.
‘Not as good as mine,’ she said.
15
Joanna’s plan, which I was strenuously encouraged to adopt, was to find Freddy Fletcher, get the business with him out of the way and then get on with our holiday. I knew he lived somewhere in Prague, but it was a big place, and Ellen hadn’t been able to narrow it down that much for me. All she knew was that her estranged husband had a souvenir stall on Charles Bridge. Presented with an all-expenses-paid trip, that information had seemed sufficient for me to go on at the time. After all, how hard could it be to find a man on a bridge? The Freddy I knew was a tall and solidly-built individual with a loud voice, even louder clothes and a full head of disobedient brown hair. Once seen, never forgotten. I reckoned that if he was standing on a bridge selling souvenirs I couldn’t miss him. But I did. At least I did on my first two sorties.
On the short walk from the town square, Joanna, my tour guide, explained that the bridge spanning the Vltava River was the main pedestrian passage between the Old Town and the Prague Castle complex, so I expected it to be fairly busy. I didn’t expect a five-hundred-metre fairground along which an army of tourists ran a gauntlet of buskers and hawkers. It looked not so much like an excellent place to find a long-lost husband, as for an about-to-be husband to lose a wallet.
To save time, I stopped to speak to one of the caricaturists. He seemed helpful enough initially, but the more questions I asked about Freddy Fletcher, the less English he understood.
It was on our third stroll along the fourteenth-century bridge that I spied him. The brown hair was gone, transplanted from his now shaved head to a splendid Van Dyke with moustaches that curled up at the ends. He’d lost several stones in weight which made him look even taller, the vibrant clothing was gone, replaced by a jumper and jeans and the only remnant of his previous flamboyance was a pink cravat knotted at the neck. So different was he to my mental image that the only reason he caught my eye at all was because, out of all the other street vendors, he was the one not actively seeking to attract my attention to a display of paintings, jewellery and fridge magnets. But for this abnormal reticence I could have walked up and down the bridge all day and not recognised him. Ironic, that by trying to remain inconspicuous, he’d only made himself stand out from the crowd.
Without making eye contact, but a
ware that I was being watched, not breaking stride, I continued my stroll, hand in hand with Joanna, back along towards the Old Town side of the bridge until, swallowed up by the crowds, I was certain I was out of sight. Then I doubled back, leaving Joanna to study the statue of St Jan of Nepomuk, the most visited of the thirty religious monuments lining the bridge. St Jan, so tradition had it, had been a priest unwilling to disclose to King Wenceslas IV the confession of his queen whom he suspected of adultery. For that he’d been thrown off the Charles Bridge. Most historians thought the actual reason for his execution had less to do with a strict adherence to the confessional and more to do with politics and an allegiance to the wrong Pope, there being two at the time; whichever, martyrdom made for a better story. It also made Jan the patron saint of the drowned. Rubbing the bronze plaque beneath his statue was said to bring you whatever you wished for within one year and a day. I was wishing for a fat payday from Ellen Fletcher and didn’t want to wait that long to collect.
‘Hi Freddy,’ I said, approaching him from the rear. His stall was one of the last at the far end of the bridge, nearest the road leading to the Lesser Town and onwards up the winding cobbled street to the Castle. I guessed he was in his early fifties, but the years seemed to be piling on him by the second. He stared at me, puzzled, before saying something in a language I took to be Czech. I wasn’t to be put off. ‘How you doing? It’s me, Robbie . . . Robbie Munro.’ I held his stare. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was considering keeping up the pretence of being someone else. ‘You’ve really picked up the language,’ I said, before he could continue his confused foreigner routine. ‘How long have you been out here now? Got to be a good few months. I like the beard.’
Freddy had assessed his options and decided the mistaken identity route wasn’t going to work. ‘Mr Munro,’ he smiled, ‘good to see you. What brings you here?’
‘I’m on holiday.’
‘Well, enjoy yourself. It’s a great town.’ He bent to rummage around in a cardboard box full of trinkets.
‘Also, I’ve been asked to bring you a message,’ I said.
He straightened. The corners of the moustache drooped slightly. ‘I’m busy. How’s about we catch up later?’
‘I’d rather do it now,’ I said. ‘It won’t take long. Can you take a ten-minute break or something?’
Freddy looked from side to side. ‘Sure.’ The mouth amidst the facial hair was smiling, but the eyes weren’t joining in. ‘I’ll go and ask one of the other chaps to mind the stall. Wait here,’ he said, and was gone.
The speed at which he departed took me by surprise, and left me in little doubt that he wasn’t planning on coming back anytime soon. Jostling and zig-zagging my way through the throng I set off after him, spurred on by the occasional glimpse of a bald head, bobbing up and down just a few yards ahead, separated always from me by the mass of tourists. When I passed the halfway mark of the bridge I’d made up very little ground if any. The archway of the Gothic tower on the Old Town side loomed before me. If Freddy made it through that to the maze of side streets beyond, I’d never see him again. My chances of catching him were even more reduced when a group of giggling Japanese girls stopped for a photo-shoot, blocking my way. I dodged through them, jinking this way and that, bumping into people, shouting apologies over my shoulder, all the time watching the head in the distance bob up and down like a boiled egg on a trampoline, putting more distance between us with every step. I’d more or less given up hope, when in front of me the crowd suddenly parted and people backed away to either side of the bridge, leaving a gap in the centre. I drew to a halt. There in front of me Freddy Fletcher was sprawled on the cobbles being helped to his feet by a profusely apologetic Joanna. I took a hold of him by the arm. ‘Freddy, are you okay?’
‘No, I’m not okay.’ He tried to pull free, but I wasn’t letting him get away again. ‘This wee bitch tripped me up. I take it she’s with you?’
‘Firstly, the wee bitch is my fiancée, so watch it. Secondly, I only want to talk.’
‘I know what you want.’
‘I don’t think you do.’
He grabbed my hand, twisting my fingers, loosening my grip. ‘Here’s the cops coming. You ever seen the inside of a Czech prison?’
A couple of police officers, one male, one female, wearing peaked caps, pale blue shirts, grey trousers and expressions of faint interest, made their way over to us. The female clearly worked out and was slim and athletic looking. The male looked like he’d worked out where to insert doughnuts and decided to leave it at that.
‘No, and he’s not going to,’ Joanna said. She turned to Freddy. ‘What’s the penalty here for trying to dip a tourist’s handbag?’
The female cop wandered over to check that everything was all right. ‘Dobre?’ she enquired.
Freddy stepped forward to meet her and give his assurance that things were extremely, dobre. Satisfied at the three happy faces in front of her, with a smile and a nod the policewoman re-joined her colleague to continue their patrol of the bridge.
‘Let’s go for a chat,’ I said, not letting go of Freddy’s upper arm.
‘What about my stall?’
‘How much is the stock worth?’
‘A few hundred.’
‘Then leave it,’ I said.
He looked worried. ‘I’m not going back to Scotland, if that’s what you think.’
‘What I think is that you’ll change your mind when you hear my news.’
‘And that is?’
‘Well, Freddy,’ I said, releasing my grip, and instead throwing a friendly arm around his shoulder. ‘There’s good news and there’s bad news.’
16
We let Freddy take us to a small restaurant in the Jewish Quarter where we sat outside on high stools around a circular table. I ordered the fallow deer meatloaf with dumplings and gravy, and a pint of home-brewed dark beer.
‘There’s always lots of game on the menu in Prague,’ Freddy said. ‘The Czechs love to hunt. The guy who owns this place doesn’t only brew his own beer, he probably shot what you’re going to eat too.’
Sounded good to me.
‘So long as you realise that could be Bambi’s mum you’re about to eat,’ Joanna said. She’d opted for one of the few vegetarian dishes on the menu, a frighteningly healthy-sounding vegetable-steak tartare and less health-conscious glass of fizzy wine.
Freddy ordered his food in a language I didn’t understand. There were a lot of those in the world. He had relaxed somewhat after I’d assured him I hadn’t been sent by Jake Turpie, and the presence of Joanna helped, even though he hadn’t completely forgiven her for his tumble. He reached under the table and rubbed his knee. ‘Those cobbles were bloody hard.’
‘It’ll heal,’ I said. ‘A bruised knee is worth what I have to tell you.’
‘Go on then. Give us the good news first. Jake Turpie die, did he?’
Suddenly, I felt guilty about being so cheery. The good news I had to impart was conditional on the imminent death of Freddy’s wife, albeit they’d been estranged for a year.
‘Let’s go with the bad news first,’ I said. ‘It’s about Ellen. She’s the reason I’m here. She has cancer. It’s terminal. She wants to see you, before . . . You know . . .’
There was an awkward silence until the food arrived. Mine consisted of four thick slices of meatloaf, three fluffy dumplings, all swimming in gravy, and a small dish of cranberry jam on the side. Freddy was served a glass of mineral water and an extremely pale omelette laced with grey slithers of mushroom. He started in on it straightaway. News of his wife’s imminent demise didn’t seem to have spoiled his appetite. Not that a fluffy omelette was going to put much meat on his emaciated frame. He looked more like a cancer victim than his wife did. If it was all part of his disguise, he had taken things to extremes.
I waited for Joanna’s vegetable burger thing to arrive and the waiter to depart. ‘Why did you leave her, Freddy?’ Ellen had told me it was her faul
t in some way, but nothing more. ‘I know that you conned Jake out of a lot of money. Everyone knows that. Just like everyone thought they knew Jake had . . .’ I made a slashing motion with my knife in front of my neck. Not close enough to touch my neck, but close enough for meatloaf gravy to splash onto my shirt.
Joanna dipped the corner of her napkin in her wine and dabbed the stain. ‘I told you to bring more shirts.’
‘So what did happen between you and Ellen?’ I asked, once Joanna had finished dabbing.
Freddy stopped mid-chew and looked up from his plate. ‘You’ll have to ask Ellen that.’ He sliced into his food again, impaled a portion of omelette and held his fork up to his face. ‘Great things, mushrooms. Low in carbohydrates and fat-free, they’re high in fibre and protein, stuffed full of vitamins and virtually no calories.’
‘Not much fun, though,’ I said, sticking my own fork into a doughball and rolling it around on the plate, mopping up gravy.
Freddy popped the morsel in his mouth and chewed as he spoke. ‘I’ve got IBS. It’s brought on by stress, the doctors say. Thanks to Jake Turpie, I’m nothing but skin and bone. No deer hunting for me. The only thing I hunt are mushrooms, and an omelette is about as much fun as it gets.’
‘You and Ellen . . .’ Joanna intervened on our food talk. ‘Why don’t you tell us what happened.’
‘Why should I tell you anything? You—’
‘I know, I know, I tripped you up. You’re making it difficult for me to forget. But I’m here on holiday and it begins for real after your business with Robbie is finished, so start talking.’
‘It’s a long, complicated story.’
‘Then,’ Joanna reached out and took hold of the hand that was raising another forkful of omelette, ‘how about you give us the quick and simple version?’
Freddy set down his cutlery, looked at Joanna and then at me. ‘Okay,’ he said, finally. ‘Ellen cheated on me. I left her. Simple enough for you? I’m sorry she’s dying, but I’m not going back, even if she wants to beg my forgiveness.’
