1
Inglorious Iain
It wasn’t fair: all he was doing was walking down the street minding his own business like a good little boy, when out of nowhere a voice of the stuffed-shirt variety said: “Good God! Iain Ross! What the Hell are you doing in town—in civvies? Cashiered, was it?”
Never mind who Her Majesty’s forces might be shooting up over in Afghanistan or Iraq at this precise moment, Major Richardson was also in civvies. But as his consisted of a heavy camel-hair overcoat, double-breasted, yet, a bowler set firmly not askew, and the shiniest brown briefcase ever seen under the stratosphere, a fair indication that he was still with the fucking War Office, not to say still had that ramrod up his arse, Iain merely groaned: “Hullo, Martin. Not quite.”
Sniggering slightly, Major Richardson seized his arm in a meaty and, naturally, pigskin-gloved paw and hauled him off for “a spot”. Which apparently chaps like him still said. Iain wasn’t precisely averse to drinking single malt at Martin Richardson’s expense, so he let him.
He’d got two and half swallows down him when Martin asked baldly: “What happened? Didn’t cop one, like poor old Gil Sotherland, did you, old man?”
Iain eyed him drily. Colonel Sotherland to his humble self, shouldn’t it be? But admitted: “I haven’t lost a lung, no. How is he?”
“Doing very well, actually. Gone out to Australia, ’s matter of fact.”
“Why?” returned Iain blandly.
Major Richardson coughed. “Well—uh—got cousins out there meself, y’know. Well, why not? That dim nephew of his inherited a place out there—not much, something less than a hobby farm, but Gil thought they might make something of it, so he went out to help turn it into a, uh, holiday horse-trekking place.”
Iain eyed him drily “Dood ranch is the expression you’re desperately seeking, I think. Requires bags of initiative, drive, and organisational ability, does it?”
Major Richardson’s wide mouth was seen to tighten. “I dare say it does, yes. And?”
“Sounds right up Colonel Sotherland’s alley,” said Iain simply.
“Oh. Uh—well, yes, had a couple of postcards from him: seems to be enjoying the challenge. Very pleasant group of people round those parts. You know Hill Tarlington, of course. One of the ecolodges belonging to that hotel group he works for is just up the road from Gil’s place.”
“Uh—thought Tarlington was managing poncy conversions of stately ’omes?”
“He is. These ecolodge places are another string to the firm’s bow, evidently. Well, to hear Hill tell it, for the environmentally-conscious jet-setter with more moolah than sense. But anyway, there’s that, and a nice B&B with a crafts centre attached, and apart from that just a lot of native bush up their road.”
Iain waited but that seemed to be that. Okay, good show, Colonel Sotherland—though in his time he’d torn several strips off him, Iain Ross—was a very decent chap, and getting shot up had been very bad luck, and he was glad he was apparently busy and happy.
Those who had thought Major Richardson might have side-tracked himself were wrong. He called for refills. “So why are you out?”
Iain sighed. “I was a very, very bad boy, and told Ponsonby that if he sent poor little Smithers along road X with patrol Y they would inevitably cop it, because an Iraqi informant who’d proven quite reliable in the past had told me that three days after our boys had cleared it a new lot of land mines had been laid along it. Ponsonby ignored me; result, Smithers and four of his men sent home in body bags.”
“That wouldn’t— Hang on, did he try to claim you’d never warned him?”
Iain eyed him drily. “Something like that, Martin. I did write out a report and send it to Brent, because I felt that I owed the poor chaps that much, but at the same time, unbeknownst to little me, Ponsonby had also written out a report accusing yours truly of fraternising—with a lot of lurid detail—with the informant in question.”
He watched sardonically as it sank in.
“You mean it was a girl?” gasped Major Richardson, turning a horrid colour. Mottled puce, really.
“Mm—well, woman, a widow, didn’t fancy losing ’em to an enraged Iraqi husband.”
“You benighted ass!”
“Thanks,” said Iain modestly. “She was a very reliable informant.”
Major Richardson just drank whisky blindly.
“You see,” said Iain dulcetly, “Brent believed his story, and furthermore believed that I’d sent in that report as a pre-emptive strike, not vices reverses.”
“Hah, hah,” said Martin feebly. “Jesus, Iain!”
Iain shrugged.
Major Richardson was then seen to lick his lips. “Well, um, well, um—”
“Thrown out,” said Iain with another shrug. “Asked to resign my commission and told I was lucky not to end up in a military prison. Think I would have, but there was no proof. Well, there might have been some proof that I was doing the woman, but she skedaddled. Couple of chaps had seen me talking to her, but,”—he smiled a little—“when hauled up before Brent by Ponsonby, they denied it.”
“I should damn’ well hope so!”
“Thanks!” said Iain with a startled laugh. “Have one on me.”
Major Richardson was seen to flounder, looking askance—yes, askance was the word—at Iain’s shabby jeans and well-worn anorak, but good form prevailed and he accepted. Oh, jolly good show.
Iain knew of several fellows who had left the Army in the not-too-distant past for rather more legitimate reasons than his—make that more respectable reasons—for whom Martin Richardson had kindly found cosy niches in the City, or less cosy but possibly more interesting niches with a security firm that he was quids-in with, possibly because it was owned by his pal Tarlington’s uncle. Funnily enough, though, offers to set him up likewise were not forthcoming. What he did do was tell a long, rambling and very boring story about some people Iain had never heard of and didn’t want to hear about now and then give him the name and address of a temp agency that was guaranteed to find him a job to tide him over and not ask too many questions about why he needed it, old man.
“Martin,” said Iain feebly, receiving a slip of paper in a palsied hand, “this so-called temp agency isn’t a front for something nasty of ’5’s, is it?’
Oh, dear, he was quite affronted, no pun intended, by the mere suggestion. Mm, well, possibly that indicated the thing wasn’t a front run by his pals at MI5. Iain thanked him humbly, assured him he would contact, uh, Fridays Every Day, and was finally allowed to escape.
He felt so weak after this encounter that he didn’t do any of the things he’d been sort of vaguely planning to do in town: he just went round to the lock-up and rescued poor old Purple Portia and set off— No, on second thoughts he popped in to Skin-Flint McMurtrey’s garage and told him ta very much but he wouldn’t be needing the lock-up any more. Almost driving past it: the thing had doubled in size and got even shinier than when last seen and now appeared to incorporate a supermarket as well as the petrol pumps and diesel pumps and the giant shed where Skin-Flint and his merry men cut up clapped-out nicked cars for parts and resprayed better nicked cars and rewound speedometers and reground the engine numbers of cars that had been in giant and horrid accidents.
Skin-Flint was a tall, greyish, cadaverous man with a lugubrious expression that gave no indication of the shrewd and horrid brain behind it. “If yer give it up, Captain, yer won’t ’ave nowhere to park ’er,” he remarked, nonetheless pocketing the cash dough.
“I won’t need a base in London,” replied Iain simply.
“Right. Court martial, was it?” he enquired without apparent animus.
“No, asked nicely to leave.”
“I should koko!” replied Skin-Flint with a certain satisfaction. “What was it this time? Glue in another orficer’s car again?”
“That was when I was very, very young, Mr McMurtrey,” said Iain plaintively.
“And the rest! –Disobeyed orders again, didja?”
“Certainly not! And that was only a very, very small order that would’ve got me deaded!”
“Yeah, hah, hah. Nice work if ya can get it. If you’d of been one of the boys instead of an orficer they’d never of let yer get away with that one.”
“I told them it was an accident,” explained Iain plaintively.
“Yeah, right. Well, our Jim lived to tell the tale, so I’m not blaming yer for it. –OY, JIM! The Captain’s getting out of London!” he bellowed.
Jim emerged from the shed, grinning. He was a tall, cadaverous but amiable young man with nothing like his father’s lugubrious expression or, perhaps unfortunately for the future of the family firm, the brain behind it. “Sacked, was it, Captain? Them artefacts yer nicked orf that museum, was it?”
“It was only a tiny little museum, Jim,” said Iain plaintively.
Jim snickered, but pursued: “Was it?”
“No, they never found out about that one.”
“Those ones, by my count. Found out about that Iraqi bird you were doing, did they?”
“N— Well, sort of. Another bird entirely, but I was certainly—” He didn’t need to go on: both Jim and his father had collapsed in horrible sniggers.
Iain then attempted, though without hope, to get his deposit for the lock-up back but as he hadn’t given Skin-Flint any notice that he was giving it up— Yeah. Quite. He was about to let Jim wring his hand and sling his hook when Skin-Flint put forward one of his typical proposals. He could see his way clear to letting the Captain have that deposit money back if he would do them a bit of a favour, like, if so be he was headed to his mum’s place in France.
The last bit of a favour, like, had resulted in the brakes failing and a French ditch, not to mention the discovery that the door which had collided with the edge of the ditch was crammed with small electronic components. What, he didn’t know to this day: they were all in neat little plastic packages whose labels, surprisingly enough in English, were impenetrably technical. Luckily for him he’d been able to wedge the door lining back in before the French cops arrived.
“I’m not up for smuggling electronic components that fell off the back of a truck, thanks.”
“Wouldn’t dream of asking yer, Captain,” replied Skin-Flint with complete insouciance. “Nah, only to take a car across for us.”
“Has it got anything resembling likely papers?”
Skin-Flint had all the documentation and it wouldn’t take but a minute to gas ’er up—free, Captain! And see, it wasn’t illegal to drive a gent’s car across the Channel for ’im, was it? Nor to drive it in France, neither: you saw loads of ads asking for drivers!
“One per year if you’re very lucky, mm. It’s not anything as totally conspicuous as a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, is it?”
Of course not.
Uh-huh. Iain just waited while Jim rushed into the shed to fetch ’er.
It was a pleasant two-door, four-passenger convertible in a shade of, um, maroon-ish? A bloody Rolls-Royce Corniche 2000! Christ!
“The precise number of these ever built is known,” he noted acidly.
“Three hundred and seventy-four,” replied Skin-Flint on a smug note. “2000 to 2002. So what? No-one won’t ’ave a list in their hand as yer drive by, will they?”
“You wanna bet?”
“Let’s face it, Captain, ’ow many chances yer ever gonna get to drive one?” replied Skin-Flint, unmoved.
Uh—yeah. She was the last car developed by Rolls-Royce before BMW bought them out... Oh, what the Hell! He could only end in clink, and it’d be worth it!
“All right, but just mind you do bloody fill ’er up, I’m not up for refuelling a gas-guzzler like that,” he warned.
“Yeah, Jim’ll do it. –Get on with it!”
“Can I just ask—not whether that’s a genuine Rolls colour—but whether it’s its original colour?” he whispered as Jim drove ’er carefully over to the pumps.
“Do me a favour!”
Iain sagged. “I might have known.”
“Wildberry,” he added smugly.
Uh—if he said so. “Well, you can put Purple Portia under cover for me as part of the price of getting myself nicked for Roller-nicking, and I won’t say no if you give her a free tune-up, either.”
“Right you are, Jim can ’ave a look at ’er.” Insouciantly Mr McMurtrey produced the keys to the lock-up from his pocket.
“I hope you don’t think I’m paying for you to use your lock-up,” said Iain politely.
“’Course not. ’Ere, wotcher thinking of doing with yerself, anyway, Captain?”
Iain eyed him drily. “Not driving nicked cars round the Continent for you on a permanent basis, thanks awfully.”
“Could make it worth yer while. And it’s a nice life: see a bit of Europe, even get over to Turkey on the odd occasion.”
Not pointing out that the Middle East was no treat to him, Iain replied: “Right, with me return fare in me hot little hand, no doubt?”
“Jack you up transport back, no sweat.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Aw, go on, Captain! See the thing is, Jim ’ere, or any of the lads, well, they ’ave to make out they’re just the driver, like delivering it, or the chauffeur, ya see, only you could be real convincing as the owner!” he urged.
Christ Almighty, how many of the things did the man— Don’t ask, in fact don’t even think about it!
“If I’m ever in need of a trip to Europe or Turkey I’ll let you know, but Mummy’d be very upset if I got done for driving nicked cars.”
“Actually, that’s true, Dad, ’cos she was very upset that time he got done at ’is posh school when ’e was just a nipper. –You remember, Captain, you told us boys all about it that time we was stuck in that bloody ruined stone ’ut and the regiment nowhere in sight and we all thought we’d bought it!” he reminded him.
“Oh, yeah. Bloody Ponsonby’s map references were out.”
“Right,” agreed Jim sourly.
“Don’t think you told me about that one, Jim,” noted Skin-Flint, handing him the keys to the lock-up.
“Yeah, I did, Dad! Turned out Captain Briggs’s lot had the same map references and come up with their armoured cars just as the Iraqis were shooting the Hell out of us next day.”
“Aw, right. –I won’t ask why you got kicked out, Captain, and fucking Ponsonby, ’e’s still in, large as life and twice as natural, ’cos that’s the system for yer, eh?” said Skin-Flint sourly. “So wotcher get done at school for?”
There were so many that Iain was at a loss for an answer, here, but Jim put in swiftly: “Only twelve, ’e was, Dad. Nicked the headmaster’s car and drove it to the late flicks.”
“I put petrol in it coming back, though,” said Iain meekly.
Oddly, this seemed to strike a chord with Skin-Flint: he went into a shaking, spluttering, wheezing fit. “’Ow’d they catch yer?” he gasped at last, mopping his eyes with a huge and unlovely rag.
“Well, it was very strange, actually, ’cos the headmaster noticed it was missing when he did his late rounds,” explained Iain plaintively.
“Yeah, hah, hah. Serves yer right,” said Mr McMurtrey on a weak note. “So wotcher get?”
“Sent home for the rest of the term.”
“See, his mum, she bawled ’er eyes out,” added the helpful Jim.
“Can’t blame ’er. –All ’e ever got,” his father said to Iain, “was a week’s suspension when ’e blew something up in the chemistry lab. When ’e was fifteen.”
Iain laughed. “Well done, Jim!”
“What in ’Ell was the film yer went to see?” asked Mr McMurtrey.
Iain looked dry. “Never Say Never Again.”
“Eh?”
Helpfully Jim began: “Sean Connery, Kim—”
“I know! Strewth, they sent yer home for that?”
“Were you expecting something juicy? No, these were serious crimes: underage driving, driving at night, headmaster’s car-nicking, nicking of any kind, and unaccompanied attendance at the cinema.”
“Flaming ’eck, not even any cherry brandy in the picture?” said Mr McMurtrey in disgusted tones.
The two younger men looked at him blankly; he sighed and acknowledged: “No, all right, yer both too young to remember that. Made ’eadlines all over the country, in its day. –Ruddy Never Say Never Again? Jesus!”
“It was the headmaster’s car, though, Dad,” said Jim fairly.
“Yeah.”
“’E nicked a general’s car once, too,” added Jim thoughtfully.
Iain coughed. “Shut up, you prat, I never told you that!”
“Yeah, all right, Jim, you were stuck in a ruined stone ’ut thinking yer last hour ’ad come,” said his father on a tolerant note as Jim opened his mouth.
“No, this was when the regiment was stationed in Germany. ’E’d tied one on, forget why, exactly. Well, there was a bird, I remember that much. Me and Shorty Bakewell, we ’ad late passes, we found ’im on the verge about a mile from the camp.”
“Right. Threw you out of the car, did she, Captain?” said the sapient Mr McMurtrey.
“Something very like that, mm. It was my car, too,” he said sadly.
Jim went into an agonising fit of the splutters, smacking his thigh and choking: “That’s right! I’d forgotten that bit!”
“Thought it was the general’s car?”
“No, Dad, you got the wrong end of the stick: that was when ’e told us about the general’s car! See, this was his car that the bird had thrown ’im out of!”
“Right. Well, just don’t pick up any birds that are likely to throw you out of the Roller, or any birds, for that matter,” advised Mr McMurtrey on a dry note, handing over the keys.
“Want a receipt?” asked Iain sweetly.
“Very bloody funny. Can you remember a foreign address without writing it down?”
“I think so, Mr McMurtrey,” he said humbly.
The garage proprietor eyed him drily but told him the address.
“Just leave it there?”
“No! Knock at the door and ask for Fidel.”
“Pardon?” said Iain weakly. It was a French address: not unnaturally he’d been expecting a French name.
“Fidel! Like Fidel Castro!”
“Okay, Fidel. Um, how’ll I know it’s him?”
“He’ll have a set of keys for it, that’s how.”
“Roger, wilco,” said Iain weakly.
That seemed to be that, and with hard handshakes all round he was off. No mention of how he was gonna get back to Blighty to pick up Purple Portia, of course. Oh, well, sufficient unto the day.
Mr McMurtrey watched as the Roller rounded the corner of the street and disappeared. “Go on,” he said on a tolerant note, “yer might as well look inside that purple thing of ’is.”
“Right you are, then, Dad. –I quite like, ’er, really. Almost veteran, isn’t she?”
She was an old Humber Snipe. Mr McMurtrey could remember clear as clear his old dad having one of those—almost new, she’d been. Not purple or anything like it: nice quiet shade of grey. They’d been the envy of their whole street, though as Dad had been in the trade, why wouldn’t he of had a car?
“Almost veteran my arse—her and ’er ruddy Porsche badge!”
“Um, it’s not illegal, is it?”
“Wot, to put a ruddy Porsche emblem on a decent old Humber and paint ’er purple? It oughta be!”
“It’s a joke, see. ‘Purple Portia.’ That’s how they say Porsche, in Germany.”
“Just go and get on with it, Jim.”
“Um, he is all right, the Captain, ya know. He’ll deliver her for yer, Dad.”
“I know that, do ya think I’m barmy? Geddon with it!”
Jim vanished into the shed.
Mr McMurtrey stood and gazed for some time at the spot where the Rolls was last seen. Finally concluding: “Well, fuck the bloody system!”
Looking back, it was probably a mistake to stop off at Aunty Meggie’s. But she was a darling, she fed you superbly, and she didn’t ask awkward questions. Well, in this precise instance, opened the door of her shabby little cottage, took one look at Caroline Corniche, asked: “Who’d you pinch that from?” and collapsed in giggles, but not awkward questions as such. She was, of course, a relative on Mummy’s side: the ones on his father’s side were, almost without exception, putrid. Actually, make that without exception, since his distant cousin Colin had died after being shot up in, fancy that, fucking Iraq.
“On my way to see Mummy and Rudi,” he explained.
“Oh, you don’t have to explain anything to me, Iain!” said his aunt with a gurgle.
Well, no. And probably nothing he did attempt to explain would surprise her: Aunty Meggie was an actress, and since she was now in her mid-fifties, had pretty much seen it all. She’d never been a beauty and had always done character parts, and had been in pretty steady work. Well, she’d accept anything, and for years had been the voice-over of a particularly unpleasant cartoon witch in some damned kiddies’ TV thing. Calculated to curdle the mother’s milk in their poor little mouths, if you asked him, but according to her, the more gruesome it was the better the under-twelve set liked it. Recently she’d also had a supporting rôle in a reasonably long-running comedy series—the not-young heroine’s not-young sister-in-law, or ex-sister-in—or put it like this: she’d had quite a few lines in every other episode. She was also known to most of the British Isles as the Raspberry Ripple lady. Not ice cream, no: boiled lollies. Possibly the manufacturers did actually believe that their customer base consisted of middle-aged women who would identify with Aunty Meggie zooming through her housework in order to collapse onto the couch with a bag of Raspberry Ripple boiled lollies? God knew why the ad was immensely popular, but apparently it was, they’d been running it for four years now. Still versions of it had appeared in magazines, too, though Aunty Meggie hadn’t yet made it to the side of a bus.
Her shabby little cottage in rural Hampshire was miles from the nearest train station and just far enough from Portsmouth to make it a real fag getting there and back, but although she still had an enormous mortgage it was more or less her own. And as a consequence was usually infested with very old, dear friends from the theatrical life. Some of whom she had actually known for more than five minutes. In the course of his visits over the years Iain had encountered innumerable gays there, mostly red-eyed, all convinced that the next audition would be It and that the adored object of the moment would reciprocate after all. Most of them couldn’t act for toffee and had never appeared in anything one had ever heard of, however remotely, except perhaps for provincial productions of Cats. They had all, however lachrymose, done their best to eat Aunty Meggie out of house and home, departing at long, long last with fervent kisses and promises, nay vows, of eternal friendship, never to be seen again unless the bottom fell out of their little worlds a second time. There had also been innumerable would-be ingénues, mostly red-eyed, all convinced that after the Big Break they were gonna be the next whoever-it-was, that skinny girl in those ludicrous pirate films came to mind, going on to end their careers in blazes of glory as the next Dame Judi or Dame Helen. They were, without exception, incapable of acting their way out of a paper bag. Most unfortunately very, very few of them had been yer recognisably female or Bridget Jones type, which Iain, actually, preferred. Well, not to the exclusion of anything else that might be offering—no. But if given his druthers. Something more than two pimples up top, as it were. A decent handful or two down below didn’t come amiss, either. The ingénues didn’t eat Aunty Meggie out of house and home, because they were all on strict diets which necessitated long drives into Portsmouth in search of very expensive slimming muck from health-food shops. Of course they all departed full of undying gratitude and promises, never to be—etcetera.
Iain had helpfully done his best to cheer up one or two—or several—of these young ladies, but oddly enough Aunty Meggie hadn’t wholly appreciated his efforts. “Must you make it worse?” in fact was the usual cry. He wasn’t making it worse, he was making it much, much betterer being Iain’s usual response.
The other sort of cottage guest was usually middle-aged—Aunty Meggie’s age or older—and of either sex, make that any sex. The males, or putative males, were often blue-rinsed with cravats, though determined jeans and short ponytails had also been observed, and the females were assorted, usually bravely dyed and dieted but sometimes just cosy and ordinary-looking like Aunty Meggie. Funnily enough nothing like yer actual Dame Helen had ever been encountered there, in fact judging solely by Aunty Meggie’s friends you would have had to conclude she was merely a myth, or a lovely dream.
“Come in,” said Aunty Meggie hospitably. “This is Helen”—it wasn’t, alas—“and this is Veronica. This is my idiot nephew, dears.”
Cor. Veronica was human! Female and human! Not precisely young, perhaps his own age—mid-thirties—and, well, luscious was the only word, luscious. Huge velvety dark eyes, huge mass of dark curls, huge tits. That would have been enough, actually, but she also had a skin that must be what the poets and the lady romance writers meant by the expression “rose petals,” or “rose leaves” in the case of the more old-fashioned kind. Though rose leaves were green, according to Iain’s personal observation. Veronica’s skin was not green. It was sort of, um, a velvety and very pale pink, lightly flushed with deeper pink as to the cheeks. No make-up? The woman could not possibly be a nacktress, then! Added to which, unless the British telly producing scene was composed entirely of cracked gays—which Iain wasn’t maintaining it wasn’t—but unless it was composed entirely of cracked gays completely out of touch with what the average red-blooded telly punter wanted, if she was an actress he would have seen her in something, in fact that face and figure would be on the box every night!
Unless she had a voice like a corncr— No. Soft and low, an excellent thing in woman.
“Hullo, Iain,” she was saying nicely but with, or his name wasn’t Iain Ross, absolutely no interest in him as a chappie of the opposite sex at all! Surely she couldn’t be gay? With all those assets? Added to which, Aunty Meggie didn’t often have the Sister George type down to stay—not that she had any prejudices at all, but they usually had their own little support group that wouldn’t bother to give the hetero side the time of day.
Um, to be strictly accurate his name wasn’t Iain Ross, it was Iain Hamish Andrew McGregor Duff-Ross, but he’d been Iain Ross ever since poor Mummy found out his bloody father had strings of girls all over Europe that he did with monotonous regularity every time her back was turned, and walked out on the bastard when Iain was two. But take it as meant. No interest in little Iain. Well, bother! He could just have done with a luscious Veronica!
Aunty Meggie was reminding him that he’d seen Helen in Never Heard of It on the BBC. And The Bill, Iain! she urged.
Dammit, she knew perfectly well he never watched that unless forced. It or any other soapie, in or out of uniform. Um, and did this mean that Helen Watson had been one of the dykey pleece ladies, or not?
“Um, well, don’t watch telly all that much, I’m afraid, Helen. This play of yours was on recently, was it?”
It had been on six weeks back.
Iain did his well-known impersonation of Martin Richardson et al. “Oh, I say, bad show, ’fraid I missed it, Helen. Out in Iraq, for me sins, y’know.”
“We won’t ask why you’re not still out there!” said his aunt cheerfully, thus cutting Helen off in her prime, or Iain had never seen a disconcerted middle-aged gossip in his life before.
“No,” agreed Veronica with an ironic look. Ironic but still not interested, bugger!
Iain shrugged. “Given it away. Any nosh going, Aunty Meggie?”
Of course there was, oodles of it. He wasn’t too sure what it was, some sort of stew but with lots of beans and, um, well possibly haricot de mouton, but with beef? Well, possibly not, but it was delicious and so was the green salad accompanying it, and the mashed potatoes, as, usual, were out of this world. ...Far too much for lunch, yes. Should have just had the salad, yes. Oh, well. The wine wasn’t bad, either. Uh—Australian? He was being haunted by the Antipodean motif, apparently. As a great concession he got up and made the coffee for them all.
“Why is it,” said Veronica thoughtfully, lifting her cup and allowing the aroma to drift past that delightful straight nose, “that a certain type of man insists on making the coffee?”
“Whilst avoiding the kitchen stove at all other times like the plague?” responded Aunty Meggie cordially. “I think it’s a Y-chromosome-linked gene, Veronica.”
All three of them immediately went into fits of the sniggers. Iain waited until the noise had died down and asked coldly: “What type of man, pray?”
“You’re not driving this afternoon!” returned his aunt cheerfully. “Well, QED, dear.”
More giggles. Really! Talk about ganging up on a poor little minority group!
Over the dishes—his aunt let him help but didn't trust him to do them alone—she said cordially: “She’s not an actress.”
“Didn’t think she was, ’cos if she was, she’d be on the box every night—unless the purblind gays in telly production have no notion of what appeals to the red-blooded male viewer.” He waited but the bloody woman didn’t elaborate, so he said baldly: “What is she?”
“An accountant.”
Iain choked.
“Hah, hah! Gotcha!” said his aunt gleefully. “Careful with that plate, it’s almost—”
“Almost an antique, we know,” said Iain with a sigh, drying it carefully. It was only almost an antique in Aunty Meggie’s terms, being as how it sported a lovely picky of lovely pussies. She had scads of ’em, some with lovely puppies and others with lovely— Yeah. She collected them. Horror value, or some such. Well, it had started out that way but now she was addicted to them. Helen had been favoured with this one, Persian pussies with bows under their chins, Veronica had got the noble-looking retrievers straining into the wind—a bit of a departure from Aunty Meggie’s norm, she’d bought it because the grass round them wasn’t blowing in the wind—and Iain had had the sweet trio of mother tabby face, spotty kitty face and stripey kitty face. All with bows, of course. Meggie herself had eaten off the spaniel puppies but then, she always did. Many misguided persons had tried to point out to her that the things had probably been intended as sandwich platters or cake plates, and had got the sort of reception that could be imagined. Well, gales of giggles, usually.
“She’s thinking of renting one of Miser Matthews’s cottages,” explained Aunty Meggie.
“Oh? Thought accountants had loads of moolah; why doesn’t she buy?”
“Well, Miser Matthews’s prices, for a start! No, well, she’s just down here for a bit of a rest and to look at her options.”
Iain swallowed a sigh. “Not another lame duck, Aunty Meggie?’
She patted his arm with a soapy hand. “Most of us are lame ducks, over the age of thirty, darling, unless we’re very, very lucky.”
“Thirty?” said Iain feebly.
“Mm. One’s twenties are for huge surges of optimism and perpetuating the species—otherwise we’d have died out long since—but by thirty the seven year itch has usually had time to kick in. In other spheres than the purely sexual, before you start.”
“Wouldn’t dare to. Oh—see what you mean.”
“Mm-hm. A few are lucky enough to be able to plunge themselves into their careers or into bringing up the family they incautiously launched during the previous decade, and a very, very few are happy combining both.”
“Males and females, is this?”
“Still largely male as far as the careers go, Iain. Only if you’re living in the same world as the rest of us, of course!” she said with her usual cheer.
“I am, what gave you the idea that I’m not?” he said crossly.
“Unending strings of bird, fifteen years in the bloody Army with nothing to show for them at the end of it?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Did you go to see my agent when you were in town?”
“No,” he said heavily. “I don’t want to be on the telly, Aunty Meggie.”
“You’ve got the looks.”
“Balls.”
“Them an’ all,” said his aunt rudely. “They are looking for your type.”
“Aunty Meggie, if you tell me once more that I look a bit like the new James Bond I shall scream!” he warned.
“You do a bit,” said his aunt placidly. “Genuinely fair, what’s more.”
“I’d have said gingerish.”
“Rubbish, darling. Strawberry blond,” said his relative with satisfaction.
“Give over!” Iain had the Duff-Ross hair. It ranged from a genuine heavy gold through to plain ginger. His was on the fair side, with a hint of red, falling naturally into untidy curls of the fluffy rather than tight variety. Possibly Aunty Meggie’s “strawberry blond” did come close but by God if a chap had said it he’d have decked him! The face was nothing very much. Squareish. Lots of chaps’ faces were. Fairly wide mouth, fullish lower lip which certain ladies had assured him was an asset. The nose was straightish but flattish, the second characteristic owing something to having been thumped and reset when he’d been labouring under the delusion he could box decently. And also when he’d been labouring under the delusion that Rosamund Sykes’s hubby didn’t know that little Iain had been up her. His eyes were the clear, very pale grey that characterised the Duff-Rosses, together with a goodly portion of the rest of the British Isles. The cheekbones were highish. And since the British Army did not encourage its officers to go unshaven with their hair down to their collars, the hair was short and the chin was depilated. Eat your heart out, new James Bond, in short.
“The skin’s lovely, of course, but they’re not into that, these days—not as liberated as they think they are,” said his aunt, washing the salad bowl carefully. “Watch out for that, it’s—”
“The cheapest sort of French hardened glass, available at many supermarchés and in the basement of Le Bon Marché for almost nothing. I shall be very, very careful.”
“I’ve had it for years. Got it that time Dorinda Robinson was convinced she was gonna be the next Pet Clark and she and Geoff Lennox and I went to Paris,” said his aunt, staring into space with a reminiscent smile.
“Yeah, yeah. I won’t ask which one of you slept with him, ’cos I’m afraid of the answer. Hang on! This wouldn’t be Sir Geoffrey Lennox, would it?” he gulped.
“Yes, of course. This was after he’d lost those pretty baby-boy looks and before he blossomed in character rôles. Well, ages before. His career was in the doldrums for years.”
“Until he blossomed as an axe murderer and Merlin, you mean!” said her nephew acidly.
“No, darling, you’ve got it all wrong. Until they cast him as Prospero at Stratford and Hollywood cast him as an adze murderer—not axe, adze—on the strength of it. And not Merlin. Though you’re right in essence.”
“Well, neither of you would’ve wanted to sleep with him, that’s for sure!”
“Not in the sexual sense,” said his Aunty Meggie with a smile. “We did all share one big mattress on the floor for months.”
“Don’t tell me any more, my feeble twenty-first-century psyche can’t take your horrid Seventies’ liberation,” he shuddered.
“Hah, hah. –It’s lasted well,” she added on a brisk note.
Iain goggled at her. “What has?”
“The salad bowl, of course.”
Oh, good God! “Mm,” he managed feebly.
“Anyway, we were talking about your skin.”
“We were not.”
Ignoring this, his aunt pursued: “You’re not freckled like so many people with red hair in the family, you see. That very pale but muscly look has tremendous appeal—especially with the gold fur on the arms, dear,”—Iain glared and pulled the cuffs of his jumper down pointedly—“but the producers have all been brainwashed by the Hollywood sun-bronzed depilated thing, though chest hair’s back, have you noticed?”
“If we’re still talking about James Bond, Connery had chest hair! And can we drop the subject, please? I do not want to be a fillum star! Nor an actor of any kind, Meggie,” he warned.
“You’ve got to do something to keep the wolf from the door, though, Iain. Well, I suppose you could go cap-in-hand to your Uncle Hector Duff-Ross—”
“Not Pygmalion likely.”
“No, well, there you are. Your father had nothing but a pretty face and the fact that he was a cousin of the Duff-Rosses, so if you don’t want to work on Hector’s bloody estate—”
“NO!”
“Ssh! –That’s out, then. Old Rudi Borovansky would find you a job, but I thought you didn’t want that?”
Iain sighed. The chap his mother was now married to—well, they’d gone through a ceremony of marriage, though God knew how many other wives he might have back in Mother Russia—was more or less retired Russian mafia. Not a scruple in sight. He and old Skin-Flint McMurtrey would have got on really well.
“Anything Rudi found for me would almost inevitably result in clink. Possibly European clink, even more possibly Russian clink.”
“I know,” said Ellie Borovansky’s sister placidly. “But what are you planning to do?”
He wasn’t planning to do anything, ’cos when your career had been summarily ended you generally didn’t have a fall-back position, did you? Though he couldn’t honestly have said he was too upset over it. The Army was far too full of Medes and Persians, spit and polish, and these days, alas, a lot of smooth New Age lip service which was actually harder to take than all the rest. The action was good and he’d enjoyed commanding small groups of men but he and the Army, Iain had long since discovered, were basically incompatible. He’d had, all things considered, a bloody good run for his money.
“Nothing much,” he said easily. Suddenly he remembered that slip of paper from Martin Richardson. It was still in his jeans pocket, so he produced it. “Might contact these people. Sounds as if they could provide a bit of variety.”
His aunt took the paper. Her jaw fell. “Fridays Every Day?” she croaked.
“Person Fridays, one presumes.”
“Y— Not that! Half the Profession works for them!”
To those in it there was only one Profession, of course. “The half that aren’t working in the Profession, one presumes?”
“Y— Well, not half, slight exaggeration, but I know loads of out-of-work actors who’ve signed up with— Hell, I’ve signed up with them myself!”
Well, good, at least they were genuine. Er, unless— “As what?”
“Anything,” said his aunt frankly. “No, well, they specialise in fill-in jobs, emergency jobs, that sort of thing, and lots of demos.”
“Pardon?”
“Um, that came out wrong,” she said lamely. “Demonstration work. Little bits of cheese in supermarkets. Lovely shiny automobiles or boats, for those with bikini-suitable figures.”
“Oh, right, those sorts of demos. –What are you grinning like a Cheshire cat for, talking of bits of cheese?”
“‘Those sorts’!” said his aunt with a laugh. “The last literate hetero male under forty in the known universe!”
“Thanks for the hetero bit,” replied Iain drily. “Well, that sounds okay.”
“Er—yeah. Well, at least it isn’t Christmas or Easter!”
She always had been slightly eccentric but possibly she was actually losing it. “Eh?”
“Well, along with the temporary counter staff they get quite a lot of jobs as Santa and Santa’s helpers and Christmas elves and, um, the Easter Bunny and his helpers. Don’t say it sounds like fun, the suits are reliably reported to be ruddy hot.”
“Uh-huh. Chickens? You know, like Tommy Lee Jones in—”
“Yeah, yeah. Oodles of chickens, and sandwich men, too. Not if you can type, though.”
“I can use a computer.”
“So can the semi-literate under-fifteens, Iain. –Chicken.”
Mm. Well, just as well he wasn’t shy!
Things were going along swimmingly and he’d definitely decided to stay the night—his aunt was perfectly well aware he meant stay for a free dinner but lodged no objections, though warning he’d better get that great lumbering crate off the verge because Ron Watkins from Number 6 drove a large lorry—and he’d just tenderly moved Caroline Corniche, assuring her she wasn’t a great lumbering crate, she was a beautiful girl, built just as he liked ’em, nice and broad in the beam, when there was a tap at the door and a merry little voice said: “Hullo, darling Meggie, it’s only me!” and in came Celia and it was all over bar the shouting. At a guess, all of twenty-three, wide-eyed, a mop of short frivolous dark curls, and, if very slim, not skinny. She wasn’t red-eyed, or if she was she was concealing it bloody well, and she was impressed by his, Iain’s, manly charms. Ooh!
She elected to come over to France with him because after all she was on hols and it was such an opportunity, wasn’t it? It was that, all right: Iain pretended he hadn’t seen the expression on Veronica’s face. So they took off next morning, bright and early—he’d had to sleep on the couch and Celia had shared the third, very small bedroom with Veronica, the which didn’t bear thinking about: it contained one single bed.
They got as far as the first likely-looking motel. Iain only had to say: “That looks like a nice motel.”
“Ooh, yes!” agreed Celia with a loud giggle.
“Shall we try it out for size?”
“Ooh, yes! Let’s!” agreed Celia with a loud giggle, varying the theme only slightly.
So they did that. Ooh, gee, it fitted. Ooh, gee, she was the sort of girl that let you tear the lacy slip top off—no, well, in the first place she was the sort of girl that wore lacy slip tops over nothing except two small lemon-like ones, very nice—and then let you sort of mumble your face between ’em—ooh, he could almost cover that one with his mouth, ooh, gee, the other one matched!—and then let you mumble your way further down and just ease the lacy knickers down and—
“Ooh, yes! Ooh, yes! Do that, Iain!”
And, in short, the sort of girl that shrieked her head off and clawed your shoulders to blazes two seconds after your tongue got up her, and then you let pull on a rubber and shove it up there and fuck like blazes for as long as you—Oh, GOD! JESUS! “AAARGH! Uh—AAARGH!”—That sort of girl. Jolly good show!
What was more there were no complaints afterwards and the second time round she didn’t start telling him he was doing it wrong or to do that first or slow down or go faster or do it with his finger, or not do it with his finger, or do it with his tongue, or not— Well, nothing, really. In fact it was pretty much a repeat performance except that this time he came first and then did her.
She was also the sort of girl who didn’t mind if you stayed in your motel room all day, dashed out around dinnertime to provide the lady of your choice with a huge helping of fish and chips and beer, and then ate the fish and chips and drank the beer in bed. Golly. In his time Iain had had experience, so to speak, of ladies who let you get the fish and chips and beer but then insisted on getting up and sitting at the motel’s horrid little table to eat them, of ladies who refused to eat greasy fish and chips entirely, of ladies who threw ten thousand fits at the mere idea of fish and chips in bed, of ladies who threw ten thousand fits at the mere idea of beer, in bed or otherwise— Uh-huh. Celia definitely wasn’t one of those.
A trifle unfortunately this might have been because, as he discovered somewhat belatedly the next day, she hadn’t had all that much experience herself, let alone experience of what a besotted person of the opposite sex with sex on his mind would put up with in order to get up her, and in fact was only eighteen.
“What?” he gulped.
“It’s not illegal, Iain!” said Celia with a loud giggle.
Not quite, no. But possibly it oughta be, because if it didn’t make him exactly twice her age it did make him very, very nearly. And he wouldn’t ask when her birthday was, because just in case it didn’t come up until well after his, that would make him twice— Yeah.
Which was why, take it for all in all, it had been a bit of a mistake to stop off at Aunty Meggie’s.
The trip to France went smooth as silk, and he duly knocked at the door and asked for Fidel. Who was Fidel, not a French police trap. Well, he had the keys to Caroline Corniche, which was all Iain was required to ascertain, wasn’t it? Ignoring Celia’s pouts—had the demented kid thought the Roller was his?—he picked up a hire car for the short run to Rudi’s dump.
His mother, who was much, much vaguer and much, much fluffier than Aunty Meggie and in her time had been much, much prettier and was still a very pretty woman at the age of fifty-four, actually noticed that his companion was not of a suitable age for him—she’d been nineteen when she married his bloody father and had him, that didn’t help. While Celia was out in the garden giggling with Rudi over his blessed rose bushes she said: “How old is that girl, Iain?”
And even old Rudi, who in his time had smuggled girls of any age over the whole of Europe, was driven to take him aside over a friendly genuine Havana on the patio and say: “Isn’t that liddle girl a bit yong for you, dear boy? Just h-watch oud she doesn’t ged marritch in her oye.” –He had a very odd accent but an amazing grasp of the vernacular. Just as well, because Mummy had no ear for languages at all and in fact had failed both her spoken and written French exams in her last year at school along with everything else. Perhaps it was just as well she’d met his unlamented father, because she certainly hadn’t been employable. She had a very equable temperament and didn’t mind having to point and smile whenever she wanted to shop at the local market, and Rudi didn’t mind how much the stallholders gypped her for, so that was all right. Well, he came down like a ton of bricks on them if they tried to gyp her when he was with her, but that was just habit.
Iain replied to both enquiries: “She’s eighteen and I’m heading right back to dump her with Aunty Meggie where I found her, and no, I wasn’t aware of her age before, so drop it, will you?”
To which his mother replied: “I think that might be for the best, Iain, but do it kindly, won’t you, dear?”
And to which Rudi replied: “Glad to hear it, bud listen, giff her the definitiff brudge-off, okay? Odderwoise you’ll neffer be rid off the silly liddle bint.”
Right, well, the brudge-off it’d be, because never mind she was cute as Hell, she was also, he had now discovered, completely brainless, convinced she was gonna be the next generation’s Dame Helen, and completely besotted with a weedy, unshaven squirt of an actor whom he did recall very vaguely, once Celia had reminded him, as the unlikeliest Robin Hood ever seen on any screen, large or small, since Errol Flynn’s day. –Why the Christ couldn’t they cast a gung-ho, macho chap who could give a reasonable facsimile of being a leader of men as Robin Hood? That spoof thing—Men in Tights, was it?—had bloody well hit the nail on the head.
Celia had also assumed that he was headed for Paris, it dawned rather belatedly as they sat in a little local café sipping gaspingly strong coffee (Iain) and orgeat au lait (Celia). Er... was this because one had to go to Paris after crossing the Channel? Oh, forget it. Brainless.
“I’m not going to Paris, Celia,” he repeated patiently. Fairly patiently.
“But why not, Iain? Rudi says there’s a nice train service, one can just jump on and one’s there in a hop, skip and a jump!” –She was also, it had dawned rather belatedly, convinced that it was posh to say “one” in every other phrase.
There were many answers he might have returned to this, not least the cost of staying in Paris, but on due consideration Iain only returned one.
“Because there’s nothing worth seeing on at l’Opéra at this precise moment and Paris is a bore with no decent opera.”
Her jaw dropped. “What?”
“Mm. Sort of thing that grown-ups listen to, Celia. As in real music.”
Good, she’d gone very red. “Just because I said I liked Justin Timberlake!”
“Another unshaven weed, is he?” said Iain in a very, very bored voice.
“No!” she snapped. “Anyway, it’s designer stubble!”
“As worn by nancy-boys that don’t know what real women like—got it,” he drawled.
“No!” There was a short pause, during which Celia began to look very, very disconcerted.
“A five-day growth in the party of the second part, or so one is reliably informed,” said Iain languidly, “is apt to produce horrid rashes in uncomfortable places.”
“Shut up!” she hissed, turning puce.
“I dare say their boyfriends don’t mind—well, different physiology,” said Iain with a shrug. “Do you want another glass of that nauseating muck?”
“It isn’t nauseating! Stop criticising my taste!” she flashed.
He shrugged again. “I might, if it’d rise even slightly above that of a child of two.”
“And stop shrugging!”
Oh, good, that had worked; he’d thought it might. “Don’t be a bore, darling,” he said in a completely uninterested voice. “Come on, we will get some train tickets.”
“Ooh, for Paris?” she gasped, bouncing up.
“No, of course not,” replied Iain in a completely uninterested voice. “For the coast, and thence the ferry. Or you could go to Paris by yourself, of course,”
“Don’t be horrible, you know perfectly well I can’t afford it!”
And that was pretty much that. She sulked all the way back to Aunty Meggie’s, and Iain managed to ignore her all the way.
Aunty Meggie wasn’t in when they turned up at the cottage but Veronica was. In a pair of tight black stretch pants of the wearing-them-out-round-the-house variety, a very, very tight washed-out red tee-shirt and, Iain would have taken his dying oath, one other garment. Well, the feet were certainly bare, not that that was the point. Jesus, she was luscious!
“Hullo,” she said mildly, though allowing a certain element of surprise to creep into her tone. “Back so soon?”
“Yes, because he’s a horrible PIG!” cried Celia, bursting into tears and rushing upstairs.
Veronica eyed Iain drily. “You’re a horrible pig, I gather.”
“Yes. It wasn’t unnatural sexual practices, oddly enough, it was a refusal to take her to Paris after the damned little idiot admitted she’s only eighteen.”
Veronica’s perfect eyebrows rose fractionally. “You do surprise me.”
“Well, yes, but I won’t surprise you to the extent of claiming there were no sexual practices at all, Veronica. Give Aunty Meggie my love and tell her I’ll try those person Fridays people, will you?”
“Roger, wilco, Captain Ross,” replied Veronica solemnly.
Smiling a very weak smile, Iain slung ’is hook. What had that been? Modified rapture? Very modified. Blast. Damn and blast. Well, she hadn’t disapproved of his bringing the bloody girl back, but— Damn and blast and Hell! Jesus Christ, he was stiff, what did it think it was doing, the bloody woman wasn’t interested in little Iain and his little fellow! Jesus Christ, why wouldn’t it go away?
And that, when you came to think of it, which he wasn’t rational enough to do for some time, was another reason why it had been a ruddy mistake to pop in at Aunty Meggie’s.
Next chapter:
https://temps-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/chicken-run.html