The Life and Loves of Gringo Greene (61 page)

   Gringo missed his friend.

   He still did, and always would.

   And did that strange foursome enable Eddie to forget about Sarah Carpenter? Did following Carver’s advice to find and bed two busty blondes one after the other, sooth his aching mind?

   Of course it didn’t.

   When you really love someone you love them forever, and go on loving them regardless of what they do, or where they go, or how they treat you, or what they say. Love is love. Love is everything.

   But did it help?

   Of course it did.

   No one wants to be alone in such circumstances.

   Gringo sat silently in the kitchen, Leonard Cohen turned down low, warbling in the background, as he thought back to those happy days and their
fab foursome
, as they gleefully referred to themselves. He laughed aloud. Happy days indeed. Where do they go?

   Unrequited love?

   Get lost!

   Could that apply to him?

   No! Not in a million years.

   He booted up the computer, navigated to MatchmyMate.net, picked out the ten prettiest girls and wapped out ten identical emails, each one a dinner invitation to a swanky place. It still seemed an odd thing to him, connecting to the Internet to order a new woman, as if buying a book, or a CD, or a new camera. Were British men becoming lazy? Taking the easy way out? Afraid of being rejected when asking the age old question
Fancy a drink one night, Fancy dinner?
Gringo had never been scared of rejection; he’d simply shrug his shoulders and seek out someone new.

   Now you could do it all without being treated bad, without being cut to the quick, without seeing the girl’s face in the flesh, or the tell tale signs in her eyes. All you had to do was cut and paste a few emails and away you go, Joe.

   But wasn’t that all part of the great adventure? The short of breath speech as you looked deep into the girl’s eyes, the search for signals that betrayed her true feelings. That wonderful frisson and tingle that only ever came with close personal contact, hearing and seeing her breathing, smelling her perfume, watching for the slightest movement in her eyes, checking out her body language. Touching her arm, and face.

   There was no excitement in fingering a computer keyboard.

   No, he would always prefer the direct approach, that’s where the true electricity lay, confident the sparkle in his eyes and the rhythm in his words and voice would land the catch. After all, there are three billion women in the world, more than enough to go round. Ask and ye shall receive.

   Course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t use the Internet as well. The modern man had to utilise every tool at his disposal. It would be stupid not to, and with a little luck, he’d hook at least three or four good replies. He could manage that too, three or four on the go at the same time; it wouldn’t be the first occasion. Two big busty blondes perhaps, now wouldn’t that be nice, and wasn’t that what Carver had recommended all those years ago? Gringo had a feeling he was going to be busy.

   Perhaps it was time to buy a new suit.

In every person’s life there are a tiny fraction of days that affect them profoundly, days that are remembered forever, days that are impossible to forget; days that become ingrained on the psyche, days that make people what they are.

   Most folks can count such days on the fingers of both hands. A parent dies. A child is born. A child dies. A life partner discovered. A magical meeting. A first kiss. A wedding day. A funeral. A birth day, the zero birthday that no one remembers and no one ever forgets, and of course, the final day.

   Everyone has days like these. They are
the
defining days.

   For a small band of people these days can be counted on the fingers of one hand, for a few, a very few, on one or two fingers. They are the days that make people what you are. They are life itself; and death too. Life may be fragile, but love is not. Love laughs at fragility, scorns vulnerability, and is capable of living way beyond death. What else can do that?

   Thoughts such as these persisted in flitting through Gringo’s scrambled brain, stirred up and splattered about by that dribbling demon. For all of Gringo’s frantic activity most of his defining days still lay ahead, but then he had a good excuse. He’d only celebrated eight birthdays and as eight-year-olds do, he was fast asleep, dreaming nightmares he would never remember. He turned over and grunted. 

   Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.

   Gringo thought about stirring but it was a hard thing to do.

   Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.

   He could hear the telephone burbling well enough, but hearing and answering were quite different things.

   Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.

   Whoever was calling was a persistent git!

   Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.

   The night before he’d drunk two thirds of a bottle of French red; a sleeping draught that remained active.

   Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.

   His eyes fell open. The only thing he could see was the clock, 4.07am winking back at him. The only thing he could hear was the blessed telephone.

   Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.

   He reached across and grabbed it and mumbled: ‘Nineteen sixty-six.’

   A middle-aged woman gabbled in words he didn’t understand. For a second he thought it was a practical joke. Then something clicked deep within his head and he yelled: ‘English! Speak English!’

   ‘Sorry sir,’ the woman said, as she switched language and put on a textbook English accent. ‘Will you accept a cost collect call from Buenos Aires?’ except she pronounced it quite deliberately Bwey-noze Air- rees?’

   ‘Yes! Sure. Course!’

   His heart skipped a beat, and then roared away like a scarlet Ferrari.

   ‘Go ahead, caller.’

   ‘Gringo?’ she said, pathetically.

   She sounded so far away, much further than the operator, as if she were on the other side of the earth, which of course, she was. That same sweet voice, the familiar and comforting sound bouncing up from the southern hemisphere, hopping the Atlantic Ocean, reverberating into his ear.

   ‘Yes!’

   ‘You took ages to wake up.’  

   ‘It’s gone four in the bloody morning!’

   ‘Sorry, Gringo.’

   ‘Where are you?’

   ‘I’m in Argentina.’

   ‘I know that, soft bollocks. Whereabouts?’

   ‘I am outside a place called Santa Rosa; it’s about 300 miles from Buenos Aires, give or take. Right out in the sticks, the capital of the Pampas, so they call it.’

   ‘What are you doing there?’

   ‘It’s a long story.’

   ‘I’m paying for the call.’

   ‘Harry brought me, he’s here on business, trying to do some refinancing deals with some of the farmers’ groups, it’s all agricultural here, something like that, incredibly boring. You wouldn’t be interested.’

   ‘So what can I do for you?’

   There was a short silence and then she said: ‘I want to come home, Gringo.’

   ‘Haven’t we been down this road before?’

   ‘I know all that. I can’t help making the same mistake twice.’

   If only it were twice, he wanted to say.

   ‘So come home. What’s stopping you?’

   ‘I can’t.’

   ‘Why not?’

   ‘Harry burnt my ticket and took my money. He disabled my mobile as well, he thinks of everything.’

   ‘Why am I not surprised?’

   ‘I need some cash, Gringo. Urgently. I’ll pay you back when I get home, every pound, every cent.’

   ‘How much?’

   ‘A thousand dollars, US.’

   ‘That’s a lot of money.’

   ‘I need to fly across to BA, and pick up a London flight from there.’

   He paused as if thinking of it for a second. In that delay she imagined he either didn’t have the cash, or was about to refuse.

   ‘I’d better ring my dad. He’ll help.’

   ‘Just a moment, I’m thinking!’

   ‘I need help,’ and then she said: ‘Well, Gringo?’ and in the sweet way she said that,
I need help
and
Well, Gringo?
it melted his heart. He couldn’t refuse her, and he knew it, and she’d guessed that would be the case all along.

   ‘How do I send it?’

   ‘There’s a Western Union office in Santa Rosa. Here are the details,’ and she began reeling off numbers and addresses.

   ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ he yelled, as he scrabbled about for a pen. ‘Go on, carry on.’

   She rattled through everything he needed; all the information ready to hand. ‘If you express wire it first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll get it tomorrow afternoon.’

   ‘Okay, Glen, consider it done.’

   ‘Thanks Gringo, I owe you one.’

   ‘Damned right you do! And don’t you dare forget!’

   ‘I won’t, Gringo.’

   ‘Where are you staying?’

   ‘I am in this really odd hostel, it’s a kind of home for battered wives, I think they’ve sort of adopted me, they don’t speak any English and I don’t speak much Spanish, but they are very kind to me, though they all peer at me as if I am from the backside of the moon.’

   ‘I hope
you
are not a battered wife.’

   She ignored that and said: ‘I’ve just popped out for a few minutes, I’ve been thinking about calling you all day, I was worried about what you might say, I thought you might tell me to eff off. I’ve nipped down the road to the only public callbox in the district that works. It’s like the back of beyond round here.’

   ‘When will you fly home?’

   ‘I won’t know that till I’ve got the cash and buy the tickets. I’ll ring you again tomorrow to let you know.’

   ‘Try and ring earlier.’

   She didn’t answer but then said in a rush: ‘I’ll have to go now, Gringo, it’s late here, and there’s some crazy guy in a big hat standing right outside the phone box glaring at me, and there are two vile looking dogs at his feet. Christ, they all look famished. This is one scary place, Gringo, I can’t wait to get home,’ and then the line went dead.

   Jeez, how am I supposed to sleep after that, he thought. What exactly happened there? Did the big guy grab the phone? Did the dogs bite her legs? Did she get safely back to the home for battered wives, and why was she living in such a hellhole of a place anyway? It didn’t bear thinking about, yet he couldn’t think of anything else. There would be no more sleep that night. His mind was in turmoil. 

The following morning a bleary eyed Gringo made an excuse and left the office as soon as the banks opened. He wired two thousand dollars to her name at the Western Union branch she had given, and after that the day dragged horribly by until he could leave the office and hurry home and wait for her call.

   The bitch didn’t ring.

   He sat up all night waiting.

   She still didn’t ring.

   Bastard!

   She’d scammed him out of a thousand dollars, or so she imagined, as his confused mind flashed up a picture of her grinning evilly at her success, counting the money in some shady bar, ordering another round of cocktails for the crazy wild-eyed gang around her. She’d be doubly happy when she discovered that his concerned mind had sent twice as much. What a prick he was! And yet, and yet, did he really believe that? Truth was; he didn’t know what to believe. For some reason his mind flashed back to the altercation he’d had in the supermarket.

   ‘What do you think I am going to do? Commit suicide?’

   ‘Well are you?’ the woman snapped, glancing at the desperate looking unshaven character.

   Gringo didn’t possess the courage to commit suicide, or the stupidity or shortsightedness either, but that didn’t stop him feeling suicidal that night, and murderous. It was a good job he couldn’t lay his hands on her, for if he could, he’d have knocked her into next week, no doubt about it, except that Gringo Greene could no more hit Glenda Martin than he could whack Felix the cat. Like most men there was violence in him, latent and brooding, but not when it came to her.  
  

She rang the following evening, full of apologies. There had been a slight delay before Western Union would release the funds; some technicality on the paperwork they weren’t happy about to do with her marital status, though why that should delay anything was a mystery. She’d hurried back to the bucket shop travel agent in Santa Rosa but found they had just closed for the day, and when she arrived back at the hostel the only local phone was out of order.