See How They Run (13 page)
But I leave him on the stairs and tell him to keep away. Men are all the same, walking pricks. Anyway, I say as I walk away, we’ve got to make some money quick or we’ll starve to death. Got any bright ideas? I slam the door and lock it. Hopefully he’s got the message now.
October 28 – I’ve spent a few days trying to work out how we could make some dosh. Made
a list of our strengths and weaknesses and it’s obvious that M’s rugby fame is our biggest
asset. Why not market a new-style rugby boot with his name on it? We could get a grant. Will suggest it to him tomorrow.
October 29 – The rugby boot idea went down
like a lead balloon. He says he’s been out of the game too long, people want a happening
person, someone on the scene right now. Spent the day in my room putting together a business plan. I’m sure it’s a possibility. What else can we do in a place with no people, no jobs? Heard him rattling on my door, saying
let me in Ziggy, I need to talk to you
but I ignore him, let him stew.
Are you all right in there
, he asks in his best
voice but I stay by the window, smoking.
Down to my last 100 fags now, will have to do something soon. Maybe leave without him?
October 30 – Breakthrough! I tell him about my plan to go it alone and he comes over all soft and concerned, says he can’t let me go away on my own, he’s promised Pryderi he’ll look after me etc. etc. I beg him to consider my plan.
But Ziggy, he says, who’ll design these boots, how do we make them? What about finance?
Listen, I say to him, I’ve got it all sorted.
We’ve got to leave Wales, no jobs here. Never has been much to do around here except be Welsh, been like that since the Ice Age. We’ve
got to go back to England for a while, they
love fiddling about with their little businesses, it’s in their blood. Something to do with neat
Saxon compounds, goats in tidy little pens,
yeoman values, puritan prosperity. We’ll get a
grant easy peasy, set up shop on one of those
interminable industrial estates with bleeping lorries and pallets stacked up like bodies at
Belsen. Scenes from a zombie movie every
dinnertime, dead-eyed people wandering about looking for flesh.
I say to him – you design the shoes and I’ll market them, we’re onto a winner. Besides, I’m running out of fags.
Can’t argue with that, says M.
Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, says I.
Meaning?
Those deadly charms of yours would get to me eventually. I can feel myself weakening.
He comes over and gives me a hug. Brotherly, keeps his pelvis well away from me.
Ziggy, you’re a crazy woman, he says. Any other time I’d be running after you with a club,
you’re gorgeous, but I’m a nice guy, really.
Rhiannon and me, we’re for life now. And
you and Pryderi will be together soon, I just
know it somehow. He’ll come out of it one
day a happier man, trust me. We’ll have a big party at Hotel Corvo, we’ll open those windows and give the place a lick of paint. Seven bars humming every night, good times again. Trust me? He steps away and holds me at arm’s length. He’s smiling like he’s everyone’s best friend. Those flecks in his eyes seem extra lovely, I feel a tug.
Yes, I say. I trust you. Now let’s get the Bentley and go. An hour later we’re on the road with two cases in the back and just enough petrol – maybe ¬– to get us over the border. Besides, I say to his left profile, it would be nice to see some real living people again.
Even if they’re English?
Even if they’re Martian, I reply.
I like the open road, top down. Don’t care if I never see Hotel Corvo ever again. I know we’ll go back to get P and R when they’re in better shape.
Sometimes people need to be left alone to sort things out. Mental illness builds a wall around you, like you’re an obscene statue with huge naughty bits, people want to hide you from children and
Daily Express
types.
M holds my hand for a bit and I know it’s all right now, he’s not on heat. He’s a real gent
really, gone up in my estimation. I squeeze his
hand and tell him so. I like the way a web of
little white lines spread around the corners of his eyes, slicing up the sunburn. I like the smell of him too, solid and warm. He was in blue denim today with strap leather boots. Still in good shape, one of those men who keep their looks till they’re old I’d say. He’s like a brother to me now, I feel safe. What a relief.
The Bentley hums along country roads, air coming in bands of warm and cool. Green and brown smells, cattle vapours, huge oaks crouched like trolls by the roadside, ready to pick us up and swallow us up.
November 1 – We arrived late in the evening at a border town, some thirty miles into England. Petrol low and we failed to find anywhere to stay, so he put the top up and we slept under rugs in the car, somewhere quiet by the river. We were dropping off, me on the back seat, him in the front, when a copper arrived to annoy us, shining his torch through the windows. Asked us what we were doing. Told him we’d heard the streets were paved with gold, wanted to get rich quick, seen
The Apprentice
and knew it was a doddle in England, everyone a millionaire. He got suspicious and asked us if we were Welsh, suggested we buggered off back home. Big M managed to pacify him, fortunately the cop was a rugger fan and when he found out who Big M was the two of them were off talking about rugby until I got testy.
November 2 – Managed to find a cheap B&B
but we had to sell the Bentley, nearly broke M’s heart. Never actually seen him in that state
before, he’s usually so even tempered & accepts everything that comes, in that cool way of his. Bentley another matter, I thought he was going to cry. It wasn’t the value of the motor or the kudos of driving it, he said. He just loved its sheer good looks and its classiness. Like his footwear and his clothes, M likes top stuff. Says he was born like that, regal tastes.
November 3 – M in a funk, completely thrown by the Bentley sell-off. Moping around, so I went out and bought a couple of sketch pads and some colouring pens, told him to draw. Mournful looks all round. But Ziggy, he says, we’ve lost everything now. I can cope without any people, he says, I can cope without a home, but I can’t cope without any
style
in my life.
Well get weaving, I says. Design some great shoes, set the rugby world on fire. You’ve got the golden touch, everything you’ve done has star quality.
Ziggy, do you really mean that? he asks.
Of course I really mean it you plonker, look at your track record, I says.
Great rugby player, brilliant cook, all round nice guy and great friend...
Can it be that this guy has no confidence in himself, under all that bravado?
Bloody men, they always manage to surprise me. Don’t try to tell me there’s a sensitive little soul lurking beneath the surface. National hero, or is he just a little wuss?
November 5 – Really busy week, setting up the business. For now the boots are called Big M’s. Enterprise Agency have agreed to give us a free home for a year and free advertising for a month, then it’s up to us. M will have to get
some more dosh from P, then off we go. M’s
designs look great to me, but what do I know about rugby boots?
He’s asked me to go back to the huts with him to see P and R, get some money. Don’t know if I can face P, all this action has taken my mind off things and I’ve enjoyed it all. M has been great fun, his enthusiasm infectious. Initial ebay run of 150 boots – with a signed picture of M taken on the day Wales beat Ireland at Dublin – have sold within a few days, so things look good.
November 12 – Manufacturing unit on the
industrial estate starts full-time work with an initial staff of 12, using imported Sami reindeer leather, with his signature in gold, final product nicely packaged and sold at sports outlets in Britain’s main cities as well as on the web. Orders very encouraging. Bank not so impressed and wants £10,000 injected into our account asap, so we’re off back to Wales tomorrow. Need to see P anyway.
November 14 – Drove back to Wales in a hired saloon, M grumbled and made me drive. We got to the psychiatric unit at dinner time and had to wait in the foyer till they’d finished. Both of them came out to see us, hugs all round and a bit of hope I think; at least their eyes were alive, looking at us sadly but clearly. M managed to get a wad of cash off P, said it was urgent or Hotel Corvo would go into repossess and we’d all have to move to a council house, that’s if we could get one. We promised we’d be back soon to take them home. Tried to give them some hope.
November 20 – Things going well, cash flow has increased. M’s designs are wowing everyone; one of the Welsh stars has promised to wear a pair for this year’s internationals so it’s all going in the right direction.
December 1 – Bad news, very bad. Couple of hoods walked into the office today, waved a gun and frightened us all. Shades, expensive suits, could have been the same mob as the Hotel Corvo outfit. Told us we’d outstayed our welcome, the Welsh weren’t welcome on their manor. Gave us a week to sell up and move on. M just sat there in his chair without saying a word. Wasn’t much point really with a Smith and Wesson stuffed up one of his lugholes.
Why can’t they leave us alone Ziggy, he says afterwards. Is it me or something?
We sit around, trying to decide what to do. If it’s the same mob following us around, playing cat and mouse with us, we’re in deep shit. They won’t mess around. Shallow grave in the woods, farewell cruel world.
Lou unscrambled the final part, which had been
added as a coda by someone else. Faced with an
execution-style death, Ziggy and Big M had no
option but to cut and run. This time it was Ziggy who was heartbroken; seeing all her hard work go down the drain was too much. They lost almost everything – the bank took the business and left them with a grand to get home. Even Lou was moved by their final plight: left with nothing but
their clothes and a few belongings, they’d had to buy old charity-shop rucksacks and hitch to the
border. From there they got back to Hotel Corvo by attaching themselves to a small travelling fairground which was moving westwards; the journey must have taken many weeks. Apparently Big M had earned his keep by fooling around in a clown’s outfit, complete with red nose, revolving bow tie, water-squirting flower and floppy outsize shoes. Even in adversity he’d managed to hold on to his unusual footwear.
Lou had a vision of a small convoy of wagons,
trailers and caravans travelling slowly under a huge western sky; he saw the big top on a village green somewhere, ringed by the yellow grasses of winter; and finally he saw Big M’s clown-face captured in a swag of multi-coloured bulbs: his hair shining purple, his hands green, his feet mauve.
When they got to their home patch in the
western region the audiences had faltered and then dwindled to none, as people began to recognise Ziggy and Big M; the old curse had returned. It seems that the two of them had left the troupe rather emotionally because they’d grown to like their new friends, and had fitted in well.
They completed their return to Hotel Corvo in a battered taxi, after calling at a supermarket to stock up on tinned goods and essentials, and then at a farmers’ co-operative to get some seeds and grain.
They knew that life at Hotel Corvo would be
difficult and bare as they waited for Pryderi and
Rhiannon to recover; Big M planned to grow all
their own food, since they would have to be self-
sufficient and resourceful. A hard winter lay ahead, the two of them living alone on the wild, remote cliffs of Dyfed.
Lou heard the doorbell ring and a huge adrenalin rush set his heart racing. Was that Catrin, returning?
But no, she had a key of course. The police?
Would you like to sit down Mr Evans, we have some news for you...
He took the stairs in a rapid shuffle and opened the door to a young female face. It took quite a few seconds for him to recognise their Polish cleaner,
Anka. He waved her in, but she immediately flustered
and started to retreat. What could be the matter with the silly bitch? She stammered something in Polish
and fluttered her hand apologetically, adding a confused sentence in broken English:
I come again
tomorrow maybe if Mrs McNamara here...
Then he remembered that he’d goosed her neat little bottom when he’d passed her in the hallway on his way to work the last time they’d met. Stupid girl, didn’t it go with the job?
He closed the door on her and returned upstairs, where he retrieved the memory stick and put the
computer to sleep. After that he made himself a
sandwich and sat in the kitchen, trying to form a plan. He’d have to do something about Catrin, or their relationship would be buggered for ever. That’s if it wasn’t already. And if she had genuinely disappeared the police might wonder why he hadn’t tried to find her. But where was she? West Wales, probably – her note had mentioned the coast, and her sister had a caravan not so far from Hotel Corvo. He’d mentioned the hotel to her so many times that she’d
been fascinated by it. It seemed that fate was about to lead him back there again. Twice the place had drawn
him in and enthralled him. Now, for a third time, he would have to return there to finish the matter.