The Life and Loves of Gringo Greene (64 page)

   She peered enquiringly into his face.

   It had perked up. He was slowly nodding.

   ‘The thing is, Gringo, we need to move on, things need to resolve themselves, so I thought I might move in here, with you.’

   ‘I thought you already had,’ he said, unable to keep quiet any longer.

   ‘No, I mean collect my things from home, and move in with you, permanently, if you want, I mean move in with you completely, bloody hell, I am not explaining this very well, am I, I mean move all my things into your room.’

   He glanced at her face and saw that she was nodding slowly too, almost as if she was trying to detect if the penny had dropped.

   ‘You mean, sleep with me?’

   ‘I sleep with you now.’

   ‘You know exactly what I mean, Miss Martin.’

   ‘Well,’ she said uncharacteristically coyly. ‘Well… yes… maybe… perhaps we could give it a try.’

  
Perhaps we could give it a try.

   He reflected on her words. It wasn’t the most romantic phrase he’d ever heard, but then Glenda Martin was strangely like that. Like most women she desired romance and surprises, but she also needed clarity and planning, she needed to know exactly where she was going, and how things would turn out, and sometimes the two didn’t quite fit together.

   
Perhaps we could give it a try.

   
What, like trying out a new car, or a new lawn mower?

   
Perhaps we could give it a try
.

   He’d been thinking of
giving it a try
from the very first day he had set eyes on her. He’d thought of it every day, some days hundreds of times, some days he could think of little else. Of course he’d like to
give it a try
. Wasn’t it self evident? Hadn’t she noticed his tongue hanging out these past three or four years?

   It wasn’t how he’d dreamt things might turn out, but when it came to Glenda Martin, she would always call the tune, especially when it came to her men friends, and if that was the way she wanted it, what could a man do?

   He didn’t say another thing, contenting himself with a lame: ‘You know I’ve always been very fond of you, Glen,’ imagining that a lady’s ears would prefer such a comment to the base thoughts that were swirling through his head.

   ‘I know that, Gringo. I am not totally blind.’

   ‘And when did you come to this momentous decision?’

   ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she mumbled, when in truth she knew quite clearly how long she’d felt that way. She certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of revealing how long ago it was. A girl had to keep some secrets, and anyway, it would keep him on his toes, and that was how she liked it.

   ‘And when do you think we might put this new arrangement into practice?’

   ‘There’s no time like the present,’ she said, that coquettish smile back on her almost healed phizog.

   Gringo’s face cracked into a smile. He looked like a little boy from years ago with a new teddy bear and train set on Christmas morning, and then she was talking again.

   ‘So I thought,’ she said, her right index finger curiously disappearing momentarily into her mouth, ‘That I might um… move my stuff into yours, like now, ready for later, if that’s all right, if you want…’

   There was a brief silence and then he gabbled, ‘Be my guest,’ and he pointed to the stairs before she could change her mind.

   ‘Thought you might say that,’ she said, standing and smirking and ruffling his hair and prancing toward the door. ‘Put a bottle of champagne in the fridge, I think we should celebrate; make it a night to remember,’ and they shared another look as he watched her disappear from the room and hurry upstairs.

   ‘Yes! Yes!’ Gringo whispered-shouted, not an easy thing to do, shouting in a whisper, as he grabbed a bottle of Moet from the cupboard beneath the sink, and slipped it into his pretending-to-be -metallic refrigerator.

   She hadn’t been gone long when he heard her calling down the stairs.

   ‘Gringo! Gringo!’

   It wasn’t a welcoming call, more of a big spanner in the works call, and Gringo didn’t like it. He went to the foot of the stairs but already she was shouting again, just the once this time, and yet more stridently.

   ‘
Gringo!
’

   ‘Yes, honey.’

   ‘Can you come up here please, right away?’

   She sounded like an old woman teacher he once had in the juniors who yelled in that way when she was trying to be fierce.

   ‘What is it honeybunch?’

   He was almost at the top of the stairs, and then he saw her standing there, framed in his bedroom doorway.

   ‘What the hell are these?’

   My God, she looked angry. Christ, she was beautiful.

   He glanced at the little white box she was holding. Ah yes, he’d forgotten all about those. Product Number 2029, courtesy of Sarah Swift, still unused, well… pretty much unused, definitely not run in, still very usable, almost like new.

   The box was open in her hands. The tentacles had awoken; excited by her clammy mitts, static electricity, and you don’t need much. Pink tendrils were wafting in the non-existent breeze. It was as if Gringo and Glenda suddenly had company, alive and dangerous.

   ‘They are not mine,’ he said limply.

   ‘What do you mean, they are not yours? I found them in your bedside table!’

   ‘They were a silly gift. I meant to throw them away.’

   ‘Well you can bloody well do that now!’ and she rushed across the landing and pushed them into his chest.

   His hands came up but not quickly enough. They tumbled to the floor, two pink creatures, a separate top and bottom of the box, tissue paper, instruction notice, disclaimer card warning on inappropriate use, all falling to the floor in a muddled mixed up heap at his feet.

   Gringo bent down.

   Glen retreated to the bedroom door.

   He picked up the pink creatures and gazed at her as if he had never seen her before. She turned and saw his eyes, the craziness there, like some wild beast.

   ‘Oh no you don’t!’

   He ambled toward her and not for the first time his limbs appeared to have a mind of their own.

   She turned and ran into the bedroom and slammed the door shut as if she were the last defender of the Alamo. She placed her foot against the base of the door and listened.

   Gringo was at the door. She knew he was there. She could hear him panting. He tried the handle. It held fast. She was a young and fit woman. She was strong too; he knew that for a fact. One evening when the telly was rubbish through something better to do, he had arm-wrestled her on the kitchen table. In the end he’d won comfortably enough, but was amazed at how strong she was. You would never have guessed it to look at her.

   But Gringo was built like a middleweight.

   He stood on one leg and casually raised the other. He placed the sole of his leather slipper just beneath the door handle. He tensed his leg and thigh. He opened the handle and exerted all his strength through the leg, transmitting up and through the base of his foot. It wasn’t so much a kick, more a stabbing, jerking motion, issued in a split second, but with all the iron will pent up within him, urged on by the guttural sound that hurtled from his throat, a banshee yell that belonged in some far-eastern martial art movie.

   The door burst open. Glen staggered backwards across the bedroom, falling over the end of the bed, legs akimbo, momentarily stunned, her arms outstretched on either side of her head.

   Gringo advanced into the doorframe and glared down like some monster from an old Hollywood movie. His eyes appeared red, like red-eye you see in some photographs. Perhaps it was the little demon rushing to the party, gazing down through Gringo’s wide eyes.

   ‘Gringo! What you are playing at?’

   He wasn’t listening. He didn’t hear her.

   He wouldn’t have heard a sound if he’d been slouching inside one of Metallica’s speakers. He took a step into the bedroom, his bedroom, his domain.

   His arms were extended on either side of his chest, a pink writhing creature in each hand, the tendrils and tentacles now in a frenzy; thrashing about through the heat coming up through his sweating palms.

   ‘Gringo!’ she shrieked. ‘Don’t you dare bring those bloody things near me!’

   He ignored her. He ignored everything that had gone before. He kicked the door shut behind him, and advanced.

   ‘Gringo!’ she yelled. ‘Ooh… Gringo!’

Fifty years later.

‘What do you want for your breakfast?’  

   ‘Scrambled eggs, it has to be scrambled eggs, cooked the way my mother used to make them in this very cottage.’

   ‘I know how your mother used to cook eggs, I haven’t forgotten, and seeing as it’s your birthday, scrambled eggs you shall have,’ and she coughed roughly.

   She had taken up smoking again, much to his disapproval. She’d started on her sixty-fifth birthday, citing the fact that as she was now collecting her pension, one little cigarette couldn’t do any harm. To begin with she had retreated to the garden to smoke, then she restricted it to the conservatory, but now she smoked wherever the hell she liked. Gringo hated it, but she was such a stubborn woman, born of donkey stock, he would tease her, always had been. She would do exactly as she pleased, just as she always had.

   Felix the Eighth was playing about Gringo’s feet, seemingly quite unaware that the old man with the white moustache only possessed one leg. The cat began sharpening its claws on his one remaining trouser bottom.

   Glen returned and set the eggs on the table, cigarette butt unattended and glowing in her mouth.

   ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘The ash can go anywhere.’

   ‘No it doesn’t, stop moaning, now come to the table and eat your breakfast, and after that, you can open your present.’

   Gringo buzzed the wheelchair to the table, almost de-legging the cat in the process.

   ‘How are the eggs?’ she said, finally stubbing out the ciggie.

   ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘really special,’ and they were too, though not as special as his mother’s.

   ‘Well,’ she said, pulling herself closer to the table. ‘Aren’t you going to open your present?’

   It was a rectangular box. Perhaps eight by six by six, inches, the Greenes were still thinking in inches, regardless of anything the European Super State might say. He took hold of it and ripped off the paper.

   ‘I had an awful job getting it,’ she said.

   ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Just what I wanted. Where on earth did you get it?’

   ‘That’s the funny thing. I bought it when we were on holiday back at our old place. A shop called the New Rosefield Antiques at the top of the hill. I don’t know why they bothered calling it
New
; I don’t think there was ever an antique shop there before.’

   ‘Yes there was.’

   ‘Really?’

   ‘Yes.’

   ‘How do you know?’

   ‘I remember it clearly,’ and a picture, a large colour image in glorious high definition, swept into his mind of Sarah Swift, erstwhile owner of Rosefield Antiques, and their secret weekends away together at that run down old wooden shack down by the river where they had …

   ‘You always did have a good memory, I’ll give you that, you still seem to be able to pluck things out from years ago that everyone else has long forgotten.’

   …made tender and passionate love, all day and all night. How could he possibly forget that?

   ‘My memory is the only part of me that’s still functioning as it should.’

   ‘Never mind, dear. Do you like the present?’

   ‘Lovely, just what I wanted, and he slipped one of the compact discs from the collection of the full works of Leonard Cohen, and squinted at the tiny print on the back, and beckoned for her to set it in the machine.

   ‘I’ll put it on when I go out,’ she said. ‘No one uses discs any more. They’re like gold dust. I was so lucky to find them; nestling there they were, under a bunch of old sheet music and scratched 45’s. Cost a bomb, they did.’