‘For her,’ I corrected him.
‘Sorry. Whatever it is, it suggests that she’s having second thoughts about this hasty marriage of hers.’
‘Not one hundred per cent, but certain aspects of it, yes.’
‘So she’s looking to someone she can trust to help her out.’
I nodded. ‘Two people. Audrey Kent as well.’
‘In which case she’s in good hands,’ he said. ‘You’ll take care of her.’
‘We’ll do our best. It may all be plain sailing, but the unpredictable factor is the new Mr Gantry. He knows nothing of this, and he’s decided that he’s my sworn enemy.’
‘What can he do to you?’
I told him about his threat to attack Oz’s memory.
‘That’s his plan, is it?’ Liam murmured. ‘Look, Primavera, an enemy of yours is an enemy of mine; he might find that’s a bad place to be. Not to mention being an enemy of Oz … if anyone can reach out from beyond the grave, it’s him.’
I shivered as he said that, thinking back to my conversation with Conrad a few hours before. Put that back in the box, woman.
‘Do you feel uncomfortable,’ he continued ‘about … whatever it is you have to do? Because if you need some backup, you only have to ask, and I’ll be there.’
I smiled at him, the shiver replaced by a lovely warm feeling. ‘You’d be my knight in shining armour?’ I murmured. ‘Oh, Liam, that’s nice, it really is.’
‘There was a time in my life when I’d have been a shite in whining armour,’ he chuckled. ‘But no more, I hope. I mean it, if you need me, say the word.’
‘I promise you, if I think that I do, I will. But it would have to be serious; you don’t need to be bodyguarding the likes of me.’
He winked. ‘Hey, babe, I’d guard your body any time.’
‘I’ll bet you say that to all the ladies.’
‘Yup, I sure do. Usually it doesn’t get me very far, though … and when it does, invariably I find it wasn’t worth it.’
‘Anybody serious since you and Erin split?’
‘No. I got burned there; don’t fancy repeating the experience. Maybe I should find myself a nice nun as a companion. Follow your example with the parish priest.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t recommend it.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Gerard. He was a very good friend, and Tom liked him. For a while I thought he might become more than a good friend, but he was a deep and complex man, with a past I learned about from someone else, not from him. Still, there was a time when we might have got together.’
‘Any regrets that you didn’t?’ Liam asked.
‘None,’ I answered immediately. ‘Relief, more like. He was too bloody serious. I can see now, he was too bloody serious. I like men who make me laugh, but since Oz … died, I haven’t come across a single one of those. I think I felt sorry for Gerard more than anything else. Never fuck anyone out of sympathy or compassion, Liam.’
‘You didn’t, did you?’
‘Not him, no. Somebody else, though, but he was conning me. I won’t make that mistake again.’
‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘By that I mean invest emotionally in the wrong person. Solitude is better than a miserable togetherness. I learned that lesson at home.’ He hesitated, as if he thought that continuing was a serious step; and then he did. ‘My parents hated each other. My dad was a bully who knocked the shit out of me when I was a kid, until he couldn’t any more. He knocked my mother about as well, but she was capable of beating him up with her tongue. And me; I was never spared that, and she kept that up till she died, five years ago.’
‘Some upbringing,’ I murmured. ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
‘No, it was just me; nobody to share the pain with.’
‘Poor kid.’
‘Not really; it made me a horrible little bastard as a young man, before Oz straightened me out. You’d have thought it would get better with my mother after my old man died. I hoped it would, but it didn’t. All her venom was for me alone after that.’
‘Your father,’ I ventured, ‘he was …’
‘Shot by the Proddies? The UVF? That’s what the cops, the RUC assumed, since he was a Catholic, but it’s not true. My uncle killed him.’
‘What?’ I gasped.
‘My mother’s brother, Bobby McBride: he was an officer in the local Provo brigade. My dad was never involved with the IRA, not because he was anti, purely because he didn’t have the bottle for it. Anyway, one time he gave my mother a particularly bad going over and Uncle Bobby found out about it. She didn’t go to him, he called at our house and she didn’t have time to cover up the bruises. He told my father that if it happened again he was a dead man. A year or so later it did. Uncle Bobby denounced him to his brigade as an informant, and they took his word for it. No trial, no nothing, they just took him into the countryside and shot him, then they dumped his body in a Loyalist area.’
‘Rough justice. Had your uncle called in unexpectedly again?’
Liam’s gaze dropped to somewhere in the middle of the table. I could see behind the spectacles, and his eyes were hard. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I told him. How about that, Primavera? I called a death sentence down on my own father. And you know what? If Uncle Bobby would have been up for shooting his sister, I’d probably have told him to do that too.’
I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there and looked at him, until once again he was ready to go on.
‘I don’t know why the hell I just told you that,’ he whispered, when he was. ‘The only other person who knew the truth was my uncle, and the UDA put a bullet in his head a couple of years later. I’ve never shared that with another living soul, not even Oz, and he was my best friend latterly; Christ, my only friend. If you want to leave now, I’ll understand.’
I looked at him, making him return my gaze. ‘If Gerard was still here I might tell you to go to confession. You’d probably get off lightly; he’d a similar background, and it messed him up big time. Just you promise me you won’t try and atone by taking holy orders and I’ll stay right here.’
He smiled. ‘That’s a promise I can make, no problem.’
‘Fine, duly noted. You did what you did. I’ve done stuff too that I wouldn’t want to see the light of day, but it’s firmly in the past.’ I smiled at him. ‘You know what I think?’
‘No,’ he chuckled, ‘but I do know you’re going to tell me.’
‘Damn right. I think you should have kept a connection with the GWA, even after you weren’t fit enough to perform. The thing I remember most about that crowd is that they were a family, and probably the only real one you’ve ever had.’ I did what I’d said I wouldn’t. I reached across the table and took his hand in mine. ‘Miles said I was cool; well, so are you. You’re a cool guy, but you’re also very lonely. You don’t have anybody in the whole damn world, do you?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m pretty short,’ he murmured, ‘I admit it.’
‘Then I’m glad you’ve come here. You were Oz’s friend and this is his place, and mine. You’ll never be alone here … apart from through the night,’ I added, ‘for I’m still not going to sleep with you. Take your past down to the beach, or somewhere else suitable and bury it there. Then get on with the future.’ I paused. ‘And with the fish soup,’ I said as Jose Luis appeared with two bowls and a large tureen.
We changed the subject over dinner, having confessed as much as either of us wanted to for one evening. Liam told me stories of his wrestling career, from its pretty brutal early days in Japan, to the showbiz of the later years. I told him some, but not all, of what I’d done since I settled in St Martí with Tom.
The food was brilliant, as it always is in Meson del Conde (indeed in every restaurant in the square), and as the evening wore on I found that the Vichy Catalan was having the same effect on me as a bottle of decent white.
‘So,’ I said, once we were at the coffee stage, ‘I’m willing to be your tour guide, as soon as I can. Meantime, do you want some ideas for filling in the next week?’