The Lamorna Wink (41 page)

She did remember to introduce him, and quite graciously. One could hardly blame poor Vivian's nervousness and reticence; she'd taken so much over the years on this man's account.

The table needed one more chair, so the count wheeled one around and placed it beside Vivian's.

Small talk about Italy, about Venice, occupied them for the few moments it took Dick Scroggs to make his way over to the table for orders.

“Just a sherry,” said Vivian.

And the count? “Pellegrino.”

Scroggs asked, “You mean the fizzy stuff? That mineral water, like?”

Giopinno nodded.

Scroggs started to move away when Diane said, “And what?”

“Pardon?” The count's smile was a trifle supercilious.

“Pellegrino and
what?
”

“Nothing. I always drink water
minerale.
Good for you.”

Looking at Diane Demorney's expression, one might challenge that last statement. Melrose hoped she had not gone into a coma, and that hers was merely like that look of wild surmise that Keats attributed to Cortez, or perhaps that seaward look on the face of Hardy's heroine, “prospect impressed.”

For that of course was what “water” meant to Diane—the sea, a river, something to swim in, to boat on, to idle by. One might wash in it, dip one's pedicured toes in it, give one's flowers another measure of it. It even had its uses in tea or coffee, which then ceased to be “water.”

The only thing one didn't do was drink it. The count contravened that rule, airily pouring the bubbly stuff into the tall glass Dick Scroggs had brought him, and drank it down.

They all looked at the money on the table.

You could have heard a pin drop.

Today was Melrose's second encounter with Vivian's intended.

“Where's our Viv?” asked Trueblood of Franco Giopinno as they sat round the table in the window of the Jack and Hammer.

Giopinno's smile was knowing and proprietary. “Gone to London.” He exhaled a stream of smoke, thin as his smile. “To see about her dress.”

“Ah,” said Diane. “Then she isn't going to wear her mother's?”

Not only did Giopinno raise a questioning eyebrow, Trueblood and Plant did as well.

Diane also blew out a dragonlike puff of smoke. “Mad Maud's.”

The eyebrows went higher all around the table.

“Well, surely she told you about her mum.”

“No. No, she didn't,” said Giopinno.

When both Trueblood and Plant seconded this “no,” Diane gave them a blistering look as if she'd seen quicker uptakes. “Don't tell me
you two
don't know about Vivian's mother.” This was said in such a slow, lesson-for-idiots way that both of them wiped the confusion from their countenances and said, Oh, yes, of course. Sad little story, that.

“And what might that sad little story be?” asked Giopinno.

“Oh, it's just the family, you know, with this strain of madness which only turns up in the women, for some reason,” said Diane, who then quickly, falsely, took Vivian off the hook of this crazy streak in the Rivington ladies. “I don't mean that Vivian—”

Pompously, Trueblood put in, “Of course not, no, not Viv-Viv. I certainly wouldn't say that little episode last year had anything to do with the mother and so forth.”

“Episode?”

“Oh, never mind,” said Diane. “It was nothing.”

“Nothing at all. Hardly worth the mention. I wonder you even bring it up, Diane. I mean, after all, it's Vivian's business—”

“Let's just drop it,” said Melrose. “It's nothing, anyway.”

Franco Giopinno looked from one to the other, chillingly. “There is probably some level of madness in every family. Certainly, there is in mine.” He excused himself and walked over to the bar, where Scroggs was apparently giving him directions to the gents'.

“Oh, bloody great,” said Trueblood. “Certainlythere-is-in-mine! How condescending, how fatuous.”

“They both can sit around going crazy together. What a lark.” Melrose watched Giopinno's elegantly suited figure disappear into the dark environs of Scroggs's back rooms.

Diane looked at Melrose “Vivian, darling, is not crazy. God, you two.”

“A brilliant idea, though, Diane.”

Trueblood had plucked a stub of pencil and an old envelope from one of his pockets. “We must make a list.” Trueblood loved lists. “A list of anything that might provoke some anxiety in old Drac. Now”—he scrunched down over the bit of paper—“money is notorious in provoking it. I'll just put that down.” He wrote. Then, “Okay, what else?”

“Property,” said Melrose.

Trueblood paused for a beat. “But wouldn't that be covered by money? It's part of the estate, after all.”

“Yes, but it's not liquid. There's her house, probably bring in a million quid on today's market, but there's no cash flow there.”

Trueblood grunted, nodded. “Okay, I have ‘Property' down under ‘Money' as a kind of subheading.”

Diane screwed another cigarette into her ivory holder and said, “Cohorts. Friends and cohorts.”

Trueblood frowned. “But that's us.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Marshall. I'm talking about anyone around who might be considered unsavory. Tonight, the two of you could begin by taking him to dinner. Somewhere rather awful; that should be easy around here.”

“You mean the three of us. You too.”

“Melrose, I have no intention of eating at someplace awful. No, you two must do it. Three of us would be too threatening. Anyway—” She sat tapping her fingernail on her glass. Ordinarily, she only did this when she wanted her glass refilled, so she must have been thinking hard. “We'll divide it up: You two take, ‘friends and cohorts' and I'll take ‘money and property.' ” She sat up straighter. “Hush. Here he comes.” She whispered. “Remember, dinner tonight, someplace awful.”

 

“Awful” was probably the first word that came to mind in describing the Blue Parrot, Trevor Sly's one or two acres of Mojave or Sahara. The gaudy sign on the main Northampton Road pictured a smoky room, a belly dancer, dark-featured and festooned gentlemen in turbans and golden chains in a scene meant to depict a place such as Tangier. The sign pointed the thirsty traveler down a rutted, narrow road, at the end of which was what one might have taken for a mirage: a bright blue building sitting in a waste of stubble and sandy gravel.

Leaving behind him the scorching Arabian sun (or so it must have made the count feel) and entering the cooler environs of the pub, Franco Giopinno stood for a while staring at the camel.

Trueblood gave him a little dig in the ribs. “Clever, that. Sly has so much imagination.”

“Sly? You confuse me, dear man.”

“Trevor Sly's the owner.”

“And is the owner a foreigner, then?”

“Only if you consider Todcaster foreign.”

Said Melrose, “Many do, I'm sure.” He was scanning the menu on the chalkboard set into the papiermâché camel's middle. It was the same as always. Half a dozen unpronounceable Middle Eastern or Lithuanian dishes. He was familiar with only one, one being enough.

Trueblood said, “The Blue Parrot is way off the beaten track—”

The count choked up a derisive laugh. “I can well imagine.”

“—but it's Vivian's favorite place to dine.”

“That I
can't
imagine.”

Melrose, who had left the camel to make its own way, was standing now at the bar. “Hey! You two!” He was at the bar, waving them forward. “We want to order before he closes the kitchen.”

Joining Melrose, the count looked at his watch in astonishment, pointing out that it was but six-thirty.

“Sly is eccentric; he shuts down the food by seven.”

Again, astonishment from the count. “But that is very early to dine. Does this Sly have to feed the camels?”

Melrose and Trueblood whooped with laughter. Only “whooping” could describe the breathy, braying noises that came from their throats. It was such staged laughter that Melrose was amazed the man could be taken in.

Trevor Sly made his angular entrance, his sharp shoulder blades separating the beaded curtain, which tinkled behind him, his thin gnarled hands washing each other in the insincere supplication Melrose was used to. This tendency toward deference greased all the joints of his tall body. He was a study in seeming submission.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, so honored.” His hands kept washing away. “Mr. Trueblood, Mr. Plant, and—?” Sly raised a quirky eyebrow as he looked at the count, who bowed slightly and tendered his name.

He pronounced it, thought Melrose, almost as well as Diane, hitting those first two syllables with a hammer so that they came out Gee-yp-
peen
-o, almost with the unfractured sound of
gyp.

And now, as if the gods looked down for a good laugh, Sly asked, “And how is Miss Rivington? Always enjoy seeing Miss Rivington.”

For once, Trevor Sly's trying to convince his listener that everybody in the English-Arab-speaking world loved nothing more than a drink and a meal at the Blue Parrot (“Tony Blair only just missed the turnoff; I'll have to do something about the placement of my sign”)—for once Melrose welcomed Sly's name-dropping. They might have dragged Vivian here once, but certainly once had been enough for her. Melrose had never been able to sort out just how Sly managed to keep the place running, for in all the times he'd been here he'd never seen more than one or two other people.

“You've not run out of the Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi, now?” said Melrose, turning to the count. “You must have that,” he said, clamping his hand on Giopinno's shoulder. He and Trueblood had been doing a lot of clamping, punching, and shaking of the count.

Trevor Sly had drawn their beer—a Cairo Flame for the count—despite the man's preference for Pellegrino. Trueblood insisted. “Good lord, you don't expect our old drinking buddy Vivian to quaff mineral water!”

Sly had helped himself to a tot of cognac after Melrose told him to have a drink on them and was sitting on his high stool, legs wound round its legs like ivy. Now he said, “There's been a real run on that today, Mr. Plant.” To the count, he said, “You see, it's my specialty-of-the-house—”

If no one was ever
in
the house, how could the kitchen have had a run on anything?

“—but I'm sure I can eke out one order of Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi, seeing it's you, Mr. Giopinno.” Sly had it rhyming with Geronimo.

“Eke-ing out” was about all the Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi could do.

Mr. Giopinno said he would gladly give up the order to Mr. Plant or Mr. Trueblood, Mr. Plant and Mr. Trueblood waved away his most generous offer.

“No, no,” said Trueblood. “You must have it; that dish is Vivian's favorite and she makes it now herself, having got the recipe from Trevor here.”

Trevor looked about to interrupt, and Trueblood hurried on.

“Miss Rivington is soon to be married, Mr. Sly, and
this
is the lucky man!” He punched Giopinno's shoulder.

Sly was all astonishment. “Well, I never . . . well, that's good news, isn't it, gentlemen? And when's the happy event to be?”

“Next month,” said Trueblood. “October . . . tenth? Is that it?”

Giopinno seemed a bit reluctant to confirm this. “We were thinking of the fifteenth. There has been some little problem with the invitations.” His smile was a trifle weak.

Sly said, “You'll be living in Italy, I expect? How romantic.” Back on his stool after pouring himself—at Plant's suggestion—another slug of cognac, he said, “And where is the reception to be?”

Melrose said, “Why not here, Mr. Sly? They could come by camel.”

Before the count could clarify their intention to live in Italy, Melrose said, “Not in Italy altogether, no. Much of the time they'll be living right here!” He pounded the bar as if “right here” really did mean “right here.”

Unfortunately for him, the count had just taken a mouthful of Sly's Cairo Flame and choked on it. The beer was hellish all by itself; coupled with the announcement that he would always have access to it by living “here”—that was hell indeed.

“So they'll be in Italy only part of the year,” Melrose said. This was, actually, what Vivian had told them. The truth was so relaxing, he reflected. One didn't have constantly to be keeping track; one could always revert to it with confidence and a clear conscience. Melrose raised his glass and Trueblood followed suit. “So drink up! Mr. Sly, bring on the Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi.”