He waved at the boy for more beer. “Angry, are you? Well, let me tell you that anger’s no good, either. You can’t think clearly when you’re angry. You make mistakes when the blood is up. You aren’t yourself, and that can be a lot more dangerous for you than for those you’re angry at.” He leaned forward to whisper: “What did I tell you? She’s looking at me.”
If she was it could only be because he was staring so brazenly at her. She was slender, with short dark curly hair, in her thirties perhaps, small features until a smile showed the sort of eagerness for life that appealed to Bill.
Having witnessed our conflict with the hatchback men she had taken note of his abilities, and had probably heard every word of our subsequent talk, as he no doubt had intended her to. I told him to keep his big mouth shut, while taking another look at her.
Her husband, a bald and overweight man with a pointed grey beard, stood up. “Muriel, I must get some shut-eye. That long drive tired me out.” She nodded her permission, and scornfully (I thought) watched his unsteady walk to the hotel.
As soon as he was through the door Bill rubbed his large hands, as if ready for some after battle fraternisation: “Will you join us? Me and my pal are having a much needed drink together, and would be delighted to have you that bit closer.”
She didn’t hesitate, said thank you, moved over, and sat between us. Her thin orange dress had strings for shoulder straps, and sufficient cleavage to show she wore no bra, her delightful breasts shifting slightly whenever she moved her arms.
Bill leaned forward. “I know it might sound a bit cheeky, Muriel, but I hope you don’t mind me saying that you’re very beautiful. I fell in love as soon as I saw you. In fact I noticed you even before we had that bit of bother. Those two fellows had been spoiling for a fight all last week. I happened to mention at a hotel in Jugoslavia that we backed a football team that they hated. They’d been trying to run us off the road ever since, so I had to take them out at last, especially since they attacked us first.” He nodded at me. “This is my friend Michael. It was all his fault, for opening his mouth. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but he’d been chatting to one of their wives, and they didn’t like it. They had it in for us. I only came to his assistance because friends must stick together. Don’t you think so?”
I cringed at his spiel, that any woman of her sort would laugh into scorn but, so much for my smug assumption, it was obvious from her look of interest that she believed every word. “It seemed a pretty serious argument to me,” she said.
He couldn’t take his gaze from her breasts, and neither could I. “I’m glad you think so,” he said, “but I only put the performance on for your benefit. ‘I can beat these lads in two seconds,’ I said to myself, ‘but I’ll deal with them more severely than they deserve just to give that beautiful woman the sort of show she can never see on television.’ In fact they’d done nothing to us at all, and I paid them a few akkers each to pretend to attack my pal so that I could help him, and show off in front of you.”
She opened her mouth and laughed. “Oh, you didn’t!”
“I did, Muriel, but I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else. ‘Now there’s a personable woman,’ I thought. ‘I’d go to hell and back for her. She’s got something I’ve never seen in a woman before. It’s in the face, and I’m finding it deeply interesting?’”
Such uninhibited chat was touching, yet she was amused. “Now stop it,” she said, her tone suggesting a desire for him to continue, for she blushed as far down — and maybe even further — than her unharnessed bosom. “You must be having me on.”
I pressured his foot under the table, but there was no stopping him. “I’m sure your husband makes the same compliments,” he said, “and tells you funny little stories like I do.”
Everything being calculated, he must have expected the shadow that crossed her face. “Not on your life.”
“You mean to say he doesn’t entertain you as you deserve? He must know that the best sound in the world is a woman’s laughter.” Her too plain expression said that the poor bloody husband knew no such thing, that he didn’t, or couldn’t, or even wouldn’t make her laugh, at which Bill went on: “If you can’t make a woman laugh you don’t deserve her. I learned that very early, though it wasn’t something I had to learn. It was part of me. I was born like that. I had my mother and five sisters in stitches all the time. The things I came out with! The old man didn’t like it, the miserable swine. He never even got a smile out of them, and turned ratty whenever I did. I grew up knowing it was best never to take life too seriously, and let the serious part of life take care of itself.”
Every word she took in was a nail in her husband’s coffin, though he’d looked a miserable old get, and was probably dead asleep already, when he should have been out here fighting her away from Bill, who I’d always known to be a charmer, though at the moment he was going a bit over the top. The recent agro must have got him going.
He asked where she lived in Blighty (his word) and she told him. She’d tell him anything. He wanted to know what work she did, and she said she was a journalist and free lance writer. He asked if she knew Sidney Blood. She didn’t. “What about the famous novelist Gilbert Blaskin? Do you know him?” No, but she’d read one or two of his books, and they weren’t bad.
“We know Blaskin,” he said, “so you’re in luck. He’s a special friend of mine. I’m going to let my pal here meet him when we get back home. If you like I’ll introduce you as well. I can arrange for you to interview him about his life and work.”
His technique dumbstruck me. He was already setting up a meeting with her in England. “Sounds a brilliant idea,” she said. “I’d love to do something on him.”
Bill leaned back, a posture that brought on an even wider grin. “Seems you’ve met the right people on your trip abroad then, Muriel. But tell me what your hubby does.”
The touch of bitterness played even more into his immoral scheme. “He worked in insurance, but took early retirement a year ago.”
“He’s lucky to be retired, but I’ll never be able to in my job.”
“And what’s that?”
“Bodyguard, Bouncer, Mercenary soldier. Ladies’ masseur.” He looked at me. “We’ve smuggled as well, haven’t we, Michael? Do you know how much a single bar of gold weighs, Muriel? No, I didn’t think you would. How could you? We had to go through special training to carry a briefcase full of gold bars, as if it was only paper inside, but it weighed a ton. I was in Rome once on my way to deliver a load, walking along the pavement, and two young thieves on a Vespa came up and snatched the briefcase, thinking it only had a bit of cash and some travellers’ cheques inside. They got fifty yards, and their caboodle capsized from a weight they didn’t expect, and I ran up and gave them a kicking they’d never forget. People were cheering on the pavement as I picked up what was mine and walked away with the ash still on my cigar.”
More laughter. “What a wonderful story. Is it true, though?”
“It’s true enough. Stories aren’t worth telling unless they are. I’ve been through so much in my life I don’t need to make them up. I’ll tell you more, anytime you like.” He took a long pull at his beer. “But how does your husband pass his time now he’s not working?”
He was stepping on dangerous ground, but had light enough feet to trip through any minefield unscathed. “It must be boring, being retired,” he went on, lighting a cigarette. “I knew a man who left his job at fifty. He collected model trains as a hobby, but he soon got fed up with that, and took to walking the streets, not knowing what to do with himself. Then he met a woman. Well, you know what men are. She was a cheeky-daft little slut from a highrise housing estate. One day he was doing what a man’s got to do in her scuffy flat, and went out like a light. Heart attack. Best thing that ever happened, for the wife anyway, who was glad to get rid of him, after she’d cried a bit for the benefit of a couple of his friends he used to work with.”