‘Some things stay with you for life.’
‘In that case you might recall that the poem those lines come from is called “Disobedience”. I wouldn’t dream of disobeying my boy.’
‘Not with him being a wing chun black belt.’
I frowned. ‘Are you making fun of him?’
‘Hell, no,’ Liam replied, hurriedly. ‘Nor am I underestimating him. I can’t imagine anything worse than getting my arse kicked by a thirteen-year-old.’
‘Twelve,’ I corrected him.
‘Bloody hell, Primavera, then he really is a big lad for his age.’
‘How about you?’ I asked. I knew hardly anything about the man. ‘No wives, okay, but any kids?’
‘None that have ever come looking for me.’ He chuckled. ‘If any do, they’ll probably be half Japanese. I did some time on the Bushido circuit when I was young, and I was a popular boy there. That’s where I really learned the business. Most of that stuff wasn’t worked.’ I peered at him, not understanding. ‘I mean it was for real,’ he explained. ‘Not rehearsed and staged.’
‘As in “fixed”, like the GWA and the rest?’
‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘It has to be or the audiences would walk. In amateur Greco-Roman wrestling, the guys spend most of the time on the floor looking for submission holds, or trying to manoeuvre pins. Sports entertainment has to be more the latter than the former. Television demands it. That’s why there are more body-builders and second or third tier footballers on the rosters today than there are pure wrestlers or martial artists. And because so many of those guys have no skills or subtlety, it can be a dangerous business. If Tom ever gets romantic ideas about being a GWA superstar, talk him out of it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I promised, ‘I will. Not that it’s likely. Tom’s a very gentle boy.’
Liam chuckled. ‘He didn’t look very gentle on the beach last night when he thought I was going to come on to you. Christ, Primavera, that took me back to the last century and a night in Newcastle.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I had a run-in with Tom’s father.’
Oz had told me that his and Liam’s relationship had a rocky beginning but he’d never gone into detail. ‘Oh yes?’ I murmured, intrigued.
‘I was a young arrogant son-of-a-bitch then, with a lot of the Belfast cockiness still in me. You probably won’t remember; they billed me as being from Dublin, but actually I’m Northern Irish. Oz had just joined the company, so we’d met, but just casually, at home base. I thought he was just another suit. Jeez, was I wrong.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘I made a pass at his wife.’
‘Ouch! What did he do?’
Liam reached up and pinched his nose, just below the big tinted specs. ‘He broke this. I’d never been hit so hard in my life, and I’d been hit plenty. That was the closest Everett Davis … remember, the great big boss man … ever came to firing me, and believe me, I gave him plenty of reasons. He made me apologise to Oz and to Jan, but he didn’t have to because I would have anyway. Oz taught me the error of my ways in that one encounter. I was full of myself, I thought I could do anything to anyone and get away with it. He showed me how wrong I was. He didn’t have any martial arts skills, but wow, upset anyone he cared about, and he was unstoppable.’ He frowned. ‘I’m glad your lad’s gentle, but I’ll tell you this; he’ll do whatever he has to, if it’s to protect you.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I murmured, ‘you’re scaring me.’
‘It’s nothing to be scared about. You must want him to be able to look after himself if you let him study wing chun.’
‘Yes,’ I conceded, ‘but it’s more for self-discipline than anything else.’
‘Yes, and turning the other cheek is fine in principle, but not when it’s someone else’s. How is he at cheek-turning, by the way?’
Immediately I thought of Duncan Culshaw, writhing on the deck beside Susie’s pool, moaning and clutching his nuts. ‘It’s maybe not what he does best,’ I chuckled.
‘What’s his belt grade?’ Liam asked.
‘Black, first dan.’
He whistled. ‘And he’s twelve? I didn’t get mine in karate till I was fourteen. Now, I’m sixth dan; I would love to train with him, while I’m here.’
I looked at hm. ‘Which brings me to … why are you here?’
‘I am genuinely on holiday,’ he replied, ‘properly, for the first time in years.’
‘Are you still in the business?’
‘Sports entertainment? No, my body took me out of that, finally, about seven years ago. That and your brother-in-law Miles, when he cast me in that film with Oz. I did a few more movies after that. The last one was two years ago. Since them I’ve done mostly TV, but not acting; a couple of documentaries, colour commentator on mixed martial arts events. I’ve even been on Celebrity Big Brother, in Ireland. When they ask you to do that, the subliminal message is that you should look for another line of work. That’s what I’ve been doing with the magazine articles, and I suppose the photography, if I can ever make myself good enough. Oh yeah,’ he added, ‘and I’m writing a book.’
I shuddered. Oh hell, I thought, not again. ‘An autobiography?’ I asked, quietly.
‘Absolutely not,’ he declared, putting me at ease instantly. ‘I respect the business I was in too much to take any liberties with it. Also I value my own privacy too much to tell stories about my friends,’ he paused, ‘alive or dead. That’s important to me, Primavera; there’s something in my personal history that I never want to revisit. So you see, if you tell me to fuck off and leave you alone, I’ll understand you completely.’
I recalled Oz telling me, back in the Glasgow days, that when Liam was a boy in Belfast, his father had been killed by Loyalist paramilitaries; and so I understood him completely.
‘I’m not going to do that,’ I told him. ‘You were one of Oz’s close friends, so how could I? But you’re right, I keep my profile as low as I can, so how did you know where to find us?’
‘Miles told me. I met him in Ireland a few months ago. He offered me a small acting gig in a TV series he’s co-producing, but I’d just escaped from the Big Brother slammer, and decided it was time to take a serious look at the rest of my life, so I declined with thanks. I told him I needed a break, some chill-out time. He suggested that I head out to Spain and look you up.’ He smiled. ‘He said you’d turned into the coolest person he’d ever met. I was glad to hear it, because the last time we met, out in Vegas, you were very fucked-up indeed.’
Jesus, yes! The very worst time of my life, and I had blanked out the fact that Liam had been a witness to it. I’d forgotten, completely.
‘So,’ he went on, ‘when I was ready I took him up on the first part of his suggestion, to come here. I wasn’t so sure about the second, though. I thought you might have decided to cut yourself off from the past and the likes of me. As a first step, I booked myself into that hotel at the end of the beach there, the Riomar, and went for a wander last night. And what do you do but wander into the place next door.’ He laughed, quietly. ‘I repeat, that is one considerable boy you’ve got there.’
‘Oh, I know it. And before you say it again, I will; he’s looking more like his dad with every year’s growth.’
‘How does that make you feel?’
‘Proud. I can’t think of a better model. But … there are some things I don’t want him to replicate.’
‘I think I know what you mean.’
I said nothing; I didn’t have to. In the silence a firework exploded, not far away. The San Juan festivities usually carry on into a second day, and sometimes beyond. Liam twitched in his seat, then shifted in it, casually; he’d been startled but wasn’t for letting it show.
‘You guard Tom’s privacy then?’ he continued.
‘Too right.’ I paused, recalling the principal threat to it. ‘If you’ve been doing magazine work, have you ever heard of a man called Duncan Culshaw?’
He frowned. ‘The surname’s familiar, but I don’t know why.’