“How are you, love?” she said. “I’ve been missing you something terrible.”
“Oh yeah? Right.”
Then she started to make conversation. It was the kind of stuff that women expect you to put up with when you’ve recently started having sex with them. I’m not very good at tolerating this at the best of times, but just now I really had to cut her off. Lisa was upstairs, and I thought I could hear her putting her knickers on. You know that sort of slither and snap that you’re usually only half aware of while you’re still sleeping it off? That’s what I could hear, and it sounded like approaching trouble.
“Yeah, yeah, Nuala. Right. I might be able to see you tomorrow afternoon. Yeah, well, I’m really busy, love. You know what it’s like.” Well, she soon would if she was around me for any length of time. Nuala is a bit of all right, but my God can she talk. When she opens her mouth, it’s like a slagheap shifting — it just never stops coming at you.
Nuala is an Irish name, and it’s pronounced Noo-lah. She tells me her long-disappeared dad was from County Wicklow. I don’t mind this, because I’m part Celt myself. My old granddad was one of a band of Lowland Scots who trekked down to find jobs in the pits back in the 1930s. We’re a Nottinghamshire family now all right, though. My dad never went to Scotland in his life. And me? I wouldn’t know a haggis from a sheep’s intestines.
I met Nuala when I called in the travel agent’s one day. No, I wasn’t going on holiday. All those foreign countries leave me cold. Or too hot. You can keep your villas and bistros and your Hotel Paso Doble. It seems to me that most folk travel out there and straightaway run into some family called Cunliffe who live in the next street back home. Am I right? And then they spend a whole fortnight talking about people they know and getting pissed together watching Blind Date on the telly with Spanish sub-titles. Bloody marvellous. Why couldn’t they just have nipped round the corner to the Cunliffes’ house and saved the money? You can get sloshed on cheap Spanish wine just as easily if you buy it from Tesco’s as you can if it came over-priced from Manuel’s Los Bravos Bar. Why bother with a seafood paella on the harbourside at Tossa de Mar when you can give yourselves the thundering squitters just as quickly with a few out of date haddock fillets from the fish stall at Medensworth market? The blokes could even shag each others’ wives without having to go through all that business of swapping hotel bedrooms and getting lost in the corridors. And they wouldn’t have to risk getting skin cancer from falling asleep on the beach on the first day; and they wouldn’t have to wear those bloody stupid straw hats for the rest of the fortnight to stop their noses falling off. So why do they bother? Well, at least the Cunliffes save them from having to come into contact with the natives, I suppose. Y viva bloody Espana.
Anyway. I was in this travel agent’s. I wanted some travellers’ cheques, you see. Yes, there are reasons for wanting travellers’ cheques other than going abroad, but now isn’t the time to explain it. All I’ll say is that it’s a neat trick, but you can’t do it too often.
Nuala wasn’t actually serving me. That job had fallen to some other bird that I hardly noticed. This was because I was distracted by an Irish voice that was going on and on about some tour company rep she’d got off with in a hotel room during some steamy weekend freebie in Rotterdam. Apparently he’d seemed very promising when he was handling her bookings, but he’d failed to check the entire party in at reception, if you know what I mean. Nuala didn’t quite put it like that. But the way she did put it, you couldn’t quite ignore what she was saying.
It was when she noticed me that the situation changed. She peered over the other bird’s shoulder to see what she was doing, and then became an instant expert on Brazil. Yes, Brazil — but don’t ask.
“The basic unit of currency is the real,” she said helpfully. “Portuguese is the official language, but German and Italian are spoken by many Brazilians, especially in the southern cities.”
“Thank you very much,” I said. “Now about these travellers’ cheques—”
“The climate ranges from tropical to subtemperate. The average temperature in the capital, Brasília, is a comfortable seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and rainfall is about sixty-three inches a year. Hundreds of species of beautiful exotic plants abound, including begonias, laurels, myrtles, and mimosas, as well as palms and mangroves.”
“I’m not actually going—”
“And did you know that Brazil is the home of the puma, jaguar, ocelot, and the rare bush dog? Anteaters, sloths and armadillos are also common.”
There was a lot more of this stuff. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, and the Amazon basin occupies one third of its surface. You can vote there at sixteen, and the capital, Brasilia, was only built in the 1960s.
These and other fascinating facts were force-fed to me while I looked at Nuala. Looked, I said, not listened. She’s worth looking at far more than she’s worth listening to. The trouble is, that was how I ended up taking her for a drink, then later on going back to her flat. By not listening to her, I mean. She tells me she did discuss it with me in great depth at some stage. It must have been somewhere between the population of Sao Paulo and the length of the River Amazon. But, like the Amazon itself, I just seem to have gone with the flow.
“Haven’t you ever thought of getting some nice curtains for this room, Stones?”
Lisa had come down the stairs behind me. Thank God I’d already cut off the call. But she was well used to me being on the mobile, setting up meetings, that sort of thing. Poor tart, she thought I was a scrap metal dealer or something.
“I don’t need them. I don’t have the lights on much.”
“Some cushions, at least. I know where you can get some lovely ones, not too expensive. They’d go with the carpet. Sort of.”
I said nothing while we both looked at the floor and tried to picture something that would go well with curry stains.
“Perhaps a rug would be a good idea,” she said. “Something big and furry that you could cuddle up on in front of the fire.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this room,” I said. “Nothing at all.”
But she was drifting about, looking classy and smart in a pale green trouser suit, deliberately trying to make my wallpaper seem shabby and clashing with my off-yellow paintwork.
“You could really make something of it, if you tried,” she said. “There’s the basis of a nice home under this rough exterior.”
She’d somehow sneaked up on me and laid a hand on my chest. The look in her eyes set alarm bells clanging in the back of my head, even as the soft hairs began to stir on my belly.
“It suits me, this house. It matches my personality,” I said.
“Of course.” She backed down then, smiling as she watched me pick up my jacket from the floor. Somehow I wasn’t quite sure whether I’d said what I meant to say.
“Are we going out somewhere, Stones?”
“I’ve got things to do later,” I said. “Business. I’ll take you home, but I’ve got to call at the church first.”
“Oh?”
I didn’t like the way her eyes lit up then. She was supposed to be disappointed that I was taking her home. Then I realised it was the word ‘church’. Women’s minds only run on one track after they’ve known you for a bit. They start thinking about white dresses and wedding rings and revolting nephews in bow ties, all that shit. I really had to get out from under this one very soon. A pity she was so sexy and good in bed. It sort of takes your mind off the risks.