Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (26 page)

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 interpretation. 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.

“ ’Course they bleedin’ are,” Audrey says.

“You what?”

“What did you think they was: this is Aunt Edna paddling and that’s those nice people from Watford in the background and what was on the same table as us on the barbecue?”

Barry clasps his hands and rubs them together. “Christ,” he says, “it gets better. It’s Christmas all over again.”

Wally has not yet moved so Audrey says to him:

“Come on, then, Wal. Get your skates on. We’re only here for a fortnight.”

“You want me to get the projector now?” he says.

“Yeah, that’s right, Wal,” Audrey says. “And a couple or three films as well, eh, or there won’t be no point in getting the projector, will there?”

“I’ll have to go down to the basement to get it,” Wally says.

“That’s right,” Audrey says. “Handy, that is, because that’s where the films are as well. Save you a journey, won’t it?”

“Yes,” Wally says. He turns away and begins to walk towards the blackness of the hall.

“And make sure they’re different ones you get,” Audrey calls after him. “Not all the same, eh, Wal?”

Wal disappears into the blackness and I listen to his footsteps disappearing in the direction of the basement door: either D’Antoni’s doing an impression of the fish’s reflection or he’s cleaned off out of it because the sound of Wally’s footsteps disappears naturally into the darkness. Audrey, in the event of Wally’s departure, makes a production of struggling up from the floor and over to the drinks for a refill. I walk over and join her.

“You’re taking lots of chances tonight,” I tell her.

“Oh yes?”

“I mean, for all you know D’Antoni could have been on sentry duty with his magnum.”

“Could have been, couldn’t he?”

“On the other hand, how could you be so sure I wouldn’t open the door and smack your teeth down the back of your throat?”

“Perhaps you would have done at one time, sweetheart. But now you’ve lost your balls, I reckoned I was in no danger of that happening.”

I come to the decision that it’s been too long since I fetched Audrey one so I decide to remedy that state of affairs when Barry arrives in the vicinity of my right shoulder, to which part of my anatomy he applies his bear-like hand, not pushing, exactly, but resting there with a certain force which would need application from myself in order to move forward against his outstretched arm.

“You getting bother from him, darlin’?” he asks Audrey.

“Bother?” she says. “From him? You must be joking.”

Now, naturally, the Dagenham son poses me no problems whatsoever, except perhaps one, that being leaving off before I actually put him out of this life forever. And I have to confess, that whereas I seldom indulge in that kind of business except in a strictly professional capacity, at this moment I would enjoy taking a Busman’s Holiday and seeing him off in the way it should be done, a way that he would be both unlikely and unlucky if he were to ever encounter it again. On the other hand, I would probably get more satisfaction out of giving Audrey one or two, it being her that is getting farther up my nose than anybody else in the assembled company. But I never get round to choosing between the two alternatives because Wally has returned with the jollies and he announces his presence by dropping the films and putting down the projector and jumping in, as it were, at the deep end of the sunken area, his actions inspired by the fact that it’s not now just a matter of Benny having his hand up Tina’s cheese-cloth; events have progressed, and Tina’s giving Benny a massage, albeit on the outside of his trousers. But before Wally has time to drag Tina up off the Boor to the safety of his bosom, Benny has sussed what’s about to happen and he’s surprisingly neat at getting up and getting a grip on Wally, and quite an effective grip at that, because he’s grasped Wally by the balls, and Wally’s only course of action is to flail his limbs about like a monkey on a stick.

“What’s your fucking story, then, Grandad?” Benny says. “What’s your story all about when it boils down to it?”

“Jesus Christ,” Wally screeches. “Let go for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah, let go,” Audrey says. “He’s got to operate the machine.”

She uses the diversion as an excuse to walk back to the centre of the room, and at the same time Barry drops his hand as he turns away to watch the curtain raiser to the forthcoming entertainments. I restrain myself from giving
him one in the back of the neck and limit my arm movements to putting some more alcohol into my glass. So Benny then lets Wally go and Wally sits down on the leather for a minute or two until the tears have shed themselves from his eyes. Then, when he can see again, he sets the projector up on a low stool outside of the sunken area and breaks open one of the boxes and begins to thread the celluloid through the machine. When he’s done that, he flicks on the projector for a second or two to see that it’s taken properly, then he goes over to the wall and switches off the lights. Now the whole villa is in darkness. Wally walks back to the machine and trains it on the white wall and switches on again. Blank leader flickers on the whiteness. Then the title appears, out of focus. Wally adjusts the lens and the title is as sharp as one of Les’s suits.