The Life and Loves of Gringo Greene (59 page)

   Sometimes in life you have to do things that aren’t considered right, but right for whom? Her marriage wouldn’t stop him missing her; it wouldn’t stop him thinking about her, because he couldn’t.

   Gringo shook his head and returned the paper to the envelope and pushed it to one side. He forced himself to think of the other women in his life, past and present, but his mind refused to be sidetracked. The simple truth was; he could never remember feeling so miserable.
      

Christmas came and went like the wet and windy day it was. It would be the first Christmas Gringo had known where his mother was absent from the earth, and it would be the first Christmas when
She
was abroad living at an address he did not know, with people he had never met, in a country he had never visited.

   He did his best to ignore Christmas, to wish it away. He didn’t write a single card, or buy a single present. Neither did he open the cards he received, leaving them propped up, still sealed, out of sight behind the breadboard. His immediate neighbours, still making an effort at friendliness, would be puzzled and miffed when their cards were not reciprocated.

   The house remained cold and sterile, no sign of festivities anywhere in Gringo Towers. He would not turn on the TV. The idea of being railroaded into confronting oceans of forced and fake happiness, and the slightly tight bonhomie that always came with it, was one too terrible to contemplate. He did watch four DVD’s over the holiday, while the rest of the time he spent in the company of his thoughts, and the songs of Leonard Cohen.

   The nurse rang, though he declined to visit, crying off, suggesting a bout of the latest global flu epidemic, sniffing into the phone as he did so. Fact was, he was as fit as he had ever been. She bought the deception wholeheartedly and willingly stayed away. The thought of her being the one to introduce illness to Princess Alexandra’s was one too terrible to contemplate.

   He thought back to Christmas Eve and that last postal delivery that revealed a surprising Christmas card bearing Argentine stamps. His heart skipped a beat as he ripped it open.

  
To Gringo

   From Glen and Harry Wildenstein.

   XXX

   Hope you have a great Christmas.

   Surprised? Thought you would be.

  
She’d written it in Christmas tree green ink. He sat and stared at the card for some minutes, and pondered if the wonder boy was aware that his wife was sending cards to single men in England. He wondered too if Harry approved of the whole idea of Christmas cards, bearing in mind his religious bent. Gringo tried to imagine what Christmas was like in Argentina. Did they have Christmas trees and cakes and crackers and turkeys and presents, and make love beneath the tree when they were finally alone?

   He wondered why she had sent a card at all. Was it to make him jealous? To make him feel even more miserable than he already was? Or could it be to remind him of everything he was missing? He hated Christmas. Loathed it. He hated life, and most of all… he hated her. Yet strangely that card was the best, nay, the only thing that he would ever remember of Christmas that year. He set it up on the kitchen worktop and peered at it wistfully whenever he went to make a coffee or a snack.

   On Boxing Day he rang his father. Gringo had considered going there for the holiday but couldn’t bring himself to do it. His dad informed him of the concerned neighbours who’d taken in the lonely and frail old widower from down the lane. They made a huge effort to make him feel wanted and part of the family atmosphere, his carefully chosen presents on the tree. But if it wasn’t your true family, your own flesh and blood, it could never be the same. They set before him a meal that would have fed him for a week. In truth, he couldn’t wait to get away, and did so in the middle of the afternoon, just as the Queen was slipping uninvited into many a living room. He’d left as soon as it wouldn’t have appeared rude to do so, thanking them profusely, happy to be away.

   His dad spent, so he said, Christmas night sitting before the fire, slowly making his way through the chronological photograph albums that Gayle had kept so well, plotting his wife’s life from that incredible day at the tennis courts when he’d first met her. The whole gang were there, gee whiz, she was a stunningly beautiful woman at nineteen, they all were, to the wedding album and honeymoon in Stockholm, a strange place to honeymoon many people said, but Ray thought different, and afterwards so did Gayle, and she would always recommend the place.

   The next album was devoted to the birth. Kevin was such a bonnie baby, his huge dark eyes peering out questioningly at the world, a smile never far from his cheery face, a gurgle and a hiccup often there too, and on through Kevin’s school years, and the cubs and scouts, and laid up with measles and mumps, and the happy family holidays in Mousehole and Oban, all tackled in that old beige Hillman Hunter that galloped half a million miles, and never once let them down. Kevin’s school leaving do, Kevin’s first day at work photo, taken by Ray himself with that fantastic new Japanese camera his wife had bought for his birthday, and of course, countless pictures of Gayle herself, his wife, the love of his life, on holiday, at home and abroad, in the garden, in the house, by the river in Shrewsbury, feeding the geese at Ellesmere, at the Chelsea Flower Show, on the battlements of Ludlow Castle, and Arundel Castle too, watching the Australians teach us how to play cricket, at the local tennis club, on the Norfolk Broads and the Grand Union Canal, with the Barbary apes in the rain high up on Gibraltar, and even one taken years ago outside the Pier theatre down in Bournemouth, at the Roy Orbison concert where everyone was so excited. He was truly great, the Big O, and sadly missed still, and in each picture she became almost imperceptibly older, yet never less beautiful.

   There was something stately about her, as if she should have belonged to one of the Royal families from the Low Countries, her thick hair now flecked with grey, until the last few frail pictures that now he could see in her eyes, for the very first time, real concern that the snapping and clicking and flashing of pictures was all about to end.

   The final album was practically full.

   Ray had never noticed that before, that concern. She knew. She was aware of what was about to happen. She had never said a dickey bird. Not once did she complain of feeling unwell. It made him feel humble. It made him feel ashamed, as if he had let her down in not noticing. It reminded him of something that he had always known, that she was one in a million, in ten million, twenty, a hundred million, a billion, however many billions of human souls are out there, floundering around on this confused and peculiar planet.

   Gayle was something special, truly unique, and he’d been incredibly lucky to meet her, to know her, to woo her, love her, and marry her, and care for her for every one of her days from engagement to death. Life was barely worth living without Gayle Greene, nee Edwards, by his side, but he would live it as best he could, endure every slow day that remained to him, because that is precisely what she would have wanted.

   The cat woke up and began purring. Ray leant down and patted its head, the same cat that had never once seemingly noticed that its mistress had departed; disappeared, died, the same woman that had cared for it so lovingly, especially after that road accident when two of its legs had been smashed.

  
The kindest thing to do is have it put down
, advised the vet. 

   ‘No Ray!’ She’d yelled, and Ray knew he couldn’t do that to her. The cat was operated on at some expense, and nursed back to health over a full year by Gayle herself.

   During Gringo’s call to his father Gringo had said: ‘I had a Christmas card from Glen.’

   ‘Burn it!’ he snapped. ‘Burn the bloody thing and forget her!’

   His reaction had surprised Gringo. He didn’t quite understand it. His father had never shown such bitterness before to anyone or anything, not that his opinion mattered so much to Gringo, because he could no more burn that card than he could burn himself. It had become his most prized possession.

   For his part, Ray couldn’t stop himself comparing the sweet Gayle, his Gayle, to the teasing and tantalising and heart-breaking Miss Glenda Martin, who, though beautiful, had led his son a merry dance. That was how he saw it, a not so merry dance; the bitter truth.

   Why couldn’t things have turned out differently?

The year turned over and January slid agonisingly by, another year for Gringo without a birthday. That didn’t worry him one iota for it meant he would not grow old. Show me a man who wouldn’t jump at the chance of not growing old, or a woman come to that.

   His affair with the nurse petered out to nothing. She’d finally confessed that she was not pregnant at all; there had been a rogue test, she said, when in truth a test had never been carried out, other than in Linda Drayton’s confused and pretty head. The fact that she had not fallen pregnant at all was the defining moment in her own mind that perhaps he was not the man for her after all. She should have been expecting, ten times over, after all the naughtiness he had been up to. Maybe he simply wasn’t up to the job.

   She knew full well she was fertile, indeed she had teased him constantly that he would only have
touch her,
after they were married and they would click, just
touch her
, and it would be as easy as that. She would be pregnant and they would be on their way to the family they both craved, and she had some grounds for believing that too, for she had previously terminated three times, and what more proof could you need than that?

   At the end of their final assignation, a date where conversation was at a premium, they went their separate ways, each promising to call the other before the weekend, but neither of them picked up the phone, nor ever considered doing so, and each of them knew they had reached the end of the line.

   A week later Gringo tore up his hospital appointment card. He didn’t see the point of it. He doesn’t donate his vital fluids any longer, not blood anyhow.

   The following week he received a letter from the Chief Constable stating that he was satisfied that Kevin Houseman Greene had not been responsible for the traffic violations. All fifty-six notices were to be rescinded. There was an added pleading note that said they would be extremely grateful if he could provide any further information as to who exactly was driving the car. He never once considered doing so.

   Rebecca became engaged to Billy the kid; though in Gringo’s eyes she never once appeared deliriously happy. It seemed to him she was doing what she thought necessary, what was expected of her, but did she really love him? Gringo doubted it. Perhaps the young, a group of people to whom he’d finally realised he no longer quite belonged, did not wish to display happiness, and that was sad.

   Maybe happiness wasn’t cool.

   Gringo yearned for it.

   Raman Ganesh bought a swish three-story townhouse overlooking the river and invited Maria in. She had finally moved away from the railway line that she would later confess had bugged her all along. He delighted in teaching her cookery, and other things too, but always come the weekend, he would retreat to the matriarch, his wife of thirty years, who, if she knew of Raman’s philandering, never once mentioned it in the marital home.

   She had gained considerable weight and bedroom activities were no longer high on her agenda, and men will be men, she knew that well enough; and whatever their age, they will always admire and aspire to possess a beautiful young woman. That’s the way men are programmed. It is the cross that women are forced to endure. But worrying about it would never change human nature. Men will never change. It was best not to think of it, and anyway, the washing needed doing.

   Melanie was growing bigger by the day. Soon she will leave the employ of Dryden Engineering. Richie has been busy redecorating his older brother’s bedroom as a nursery, now that Mickey has gone off to live in Cyprus with his Greek Cypriot girlfriend, a pretty kid he met on the dance floor downstairs.

   Brian took everything badly; so much so that after Mel left he set fire to the marital home, drove into town and slipped the house key through the letterbox of the mortgage company, together with their letter demanding considerable arrears, with an added red ink note scrawled across the top that simply read:
Hah-hah-bloody-hah!

   He bought a one-way ticket to Winnipeg where he harboured desires to become a lumberjack. His plan was to head up into the wilderness where no one would ever find him, and no one ever did.

  
Julian was duly pensioned off and Gringo’s workload exploded. For once he didn’t mind for it filled his head with worries and essential tasks to the point of taking work home, and anything that kept him busy and distracted was more than welcome. Dryden’s ticked over as Dryden’s always does, in time with Gringo’s heavy heart.  Tick-tock, tick-tock.