‘Mr Zarco liked a drop of sherry,’ explained the old man. ‘Particularly this Oloroso. Which goes well with Iberian ham.’
I tasted the sherry; it was delicious. ‘When was Zarco last here?’ I asked.
‘Several weeks ago. And on more than one occasion. He came to apologise for all of the building work next door, which has been going on for the best part of six months now. Quite intolerably. Well, you can judge for yourself if anyone could live with that noise from first thing in the morning until eight at night. At our time of life you look forward to peace and quiet. For reading and listening to music. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were deaf, but we’re not.’
‘Yes, I can quite understand how irritating it must be,’ I said. ‘And you have my sympathy.’
Mariella spotted another cloud of dust falling from the ceiling onto the sideboard and went after it fiercely with the duster.
‘We tried to reach some accommodation with him about it,’ continued Mr Van de Merwe. ‘But I’m afraid we failed.’
‘What sort of accommodation?’
‘A financial settlement,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘We had hoped we might all go back to South Africa for a while. That’s where we come from, originally.’
‘From Pretoria,’ his wife said, helpfully. ‘It’s really lovely there at this time of year. Around twenty-five degrees. Every day.’
‘But the air fares are very expensive,’ continued her husband. ‘And so is accommodation. Even a cheap hotel costs a lot of money.’
‘Do you know South Africa, Mr Manson?’ asked Mrs Van de Merwe.
‘A little. I was there for the World Cup in 2010. My ears are still recovering from all the vuvuzelas.’
When the old couple looked at me blankly, Mariella said, ‘The lepatata mambus.’ She looked at me and shrugged. ‘That’s the proper Tswana name.’
‘I see.’
‘Pretoria is very beautiful at this time of year,’ repeated Mrs Van de Merwe.
‘Couldn’t you have gone somewhere else?’ I said. ‘Somewhere nearer, perhaps, like Spain? It’s warmer there than it is here at this time of year. And cheaper to get to.’
I started to stuff my mouth with the ham; that was delicious, too, and would maybe save me from having to make dinner. Now that Sonja was gone my enthusiasm for doing anything but make coffee in the kitchen was much reduced.
‘We’ve never really liked Spain,’ said the old man. ‘Have we, dear?’
‘We don’t speak the language,’ said his wife. ‘South Africa was the only real alternative for us.’
‘Mr Zarco did make us an offer,’ said the old man, ‘to cover the expenses of our temporary relocation, but it simply wasn’t enough, so we turned it down. I think he thought we were trying it on. But we really weren’t, you know. It was all most disappointing.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Do you mind me asking how much money he did offer? To compensate you for all you’ve suffered while the work has been going on?’
‘Ten thousand pounds, wasn’t it?’ said the old man.
His wife nodded. ‘Yes. I know that sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But the flights alone were about three or four thousand.’
I made a quick mental calculation, picked up my backpack and took out four bundles of cash. It’s always nice being generous with someone else’s money. Not that this was entirely my own idea; it was Tristram Lambton who had put the germ of the idea in my head and it seemed as good a way of getting rid of Zarco’s bung as anything else I could think of.
‘There’s twenty thousand pounds,’ I said, feeling a sense of relief to have got rid of yet more of Zarco’s bung. ‘To cover all your expenses, and to compensate you for what you’ve had to endure these past few months.’
‘What?’ Mr Van de Merwe’s jaw had started to sag in a rather alarming way, as if he’d had a stroke. ‘I don’t understand. Mr Zarco is dead, isn’t he?’
‘Look, please don’t ask me to explain, but I’m quite sure he’d have liked you to have this money.’
The Van de Merwes looked at each other, bewildered.
‘Twenty thousand pounds?’ said Mrs Van de Merwe.
‘It’s very generous of you,’ said the old man. ‘Of Mrs Zarco. But really—’
‘Are you serious?’ asked her daughter.
‘Very.’
‘No, really, we couldn’t,’ said the old man. ‘Not now he’s dead. It wouldn’t seem fair, somehow. I mean on the television it said the man had been murdered. We couldn’t accept it, could we, dear? Mariella? What do you think?’
‘Oh, Dad,’ his daughter said irritably. ‘Of course we can accept it. It only seems unfair. But it isn’t unfair at all. After all you’ve gone through, it’s exactly what you and Mum should do.’
‘But Mrs Zarco is a widow now,’ said his wife. ‘She can ill afford this kind of expense, surely. That poor man. What his wife must be feeling now. We should speak to John. Ask him what he thinks.’
‘We’ll take it, Mr Manson,’ Mariella told me firmly.
Her parents looked at each other uncertainly, and then Mrs Van de Merwe began to cry.
‘It’s all been very trying for my wife,’ explained the old man. ‘What with the noise and everything. She’s quite exhausted.’
‘We’ll take it,’ repeated his daughter. ‘Won’t we? I think we should. And I’m speaking for John now, too. If he were here he’d say that this is absolutely the right thing to do. Yes, we’ll take it.’
The old man nodded. ‘If you think so, dear, then yes.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I think you’re doing the right thing, too.’
I got up to leave with Mr Van de Merwe accompanying me to the door.
‘You’ve been very kind to us, Mr Manson,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say, really. I’m almost speechless. It’s more than generous.’
‘Don’t thank me. Thank Mrs Zarco. Only not right now, eh? Perhaps when the work is complete and she’s finally living next door, you might thank her then.’
‘Yes, yes I will.’ He held my hand for a moment too long; there were tears in his eyes, too.
‘The blue plaque outside,’ I said in the hall, anxious to be gone from my good deed. ‘I’m just curious — who was it who lived here?’
‘Isadora Duncan,’ he said and pointed at the glass figurine on the hall table. ‘That’s her.’
‘The stripper,’ I said.
‘If you like.’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘Yes, I suppose she was, really.’
Isadora Duncan wasn’t really a stripper; not as such. I knew that. It was just my way of making him think a little less highly of me. That seemed only proper; after all, it wasn’t my money I’d just given away.
42
I shouldn’t have been nervous but because this was my first match as the new manager of London City, I was. The previous Saturday’s game against Newcastle didn’t count; then I’d been talking to a football team that Zarco had picked and which was playing for him. All of the players had wrongly assumed that at some stage Zarco would turn up in the dressing room and hand out praise to those who’d played well and, more importantly, bollockings to those who’d played badly. No one ever wanted a bollocking from João Zarco.
But the game against West Ham was very different and everyone knew it. A manager’s first match in charge sets the tone for how his tenure is perceived, not just by the owner and the sports writers, but more importantly by the club’s supporters, who are as superstitious as a wagon-load of gypsies. My ex-wife’s brother refuses to go to an Arsenal game without his lucky cat’s whisker; he’s just one of many serious, rational men who follow football but who believe in jinxes and curses and the acts of a capricious God who ordains a win or a loss. A bad defeat in this first match would be like an albatross around my neck. I don’t know what Napoleon’s opinion of Premier League football was, but he knew the value of luck and I badly wanted to be lucky with my first game in charge. In spite of what Geoff Boycott says, good luck is the most valuable commodity in sport.