The Life and Loves of Gringo Greene (57 page)

At home that evening Gringo’s phone rang just after eight as the telly programmes were changing. He’d often noticed that pattern. Telly programme ends, phone rings.

   ‘Hi Gringo.’

   His heart skipped a beat.

   He sat up and paid attention. Glenda.

   ‘Hi Glen, how are you doing?’

   ‘I’m fine. How are you?’

   ‘I’m cool, you know, ticking over.’

   Great, he thought, at what point do I ask her out?

   ‘I’ve something to tell you, Gringo, and I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

   He slumped in his chair. This was something he did not want to hear, he instinctively knew it from the corn on his little toe to the tip of the longest hair on his head.

   ‘Oh yeah, like what?’

   ‘Harry’s been offered the VP,’ and then she explained herself, assuming that Gringo would not be familiar with American banking terms, ‘Vice President, in a branch of the bank… in Argentina.’

   ‘At least that’s a long way away,’ he said, unthinking.

   ‘He’s asked me to join him.’

   Gringo grimaced. Thought as much.

   ‘And?’

   ‘I’ve said yes.’

   ‘Oh Christ, Glen, have you still not learned your lesson? The guy is a complete tool.’

   ‘You don’t know him, Gringo. You’d like him if you met him.’

   ‘I doubt it.’

   ‘I love him.’

   ‘Sometimes you don’t know your own mind!’

   ‘I know my own mind better than anyone else does, better than you possibly could.’

   ‘I’m not so sure of that.’

   ‘Anyway, I just wanted to tell you before I go.’

   ‘When are you going?’

   ‘Friday.’

   ‘So soon?’

   ‘Yeah, we both thought the sooner the better. It will be so much easier down there without his family and pushy parents hanging about, sticking their oar in every five minutes, we both realise that. We’re looking forward to it so much. Neither of us knows anyone in Argentina so we’ll have to work it out together.’

   ‘Can we have dinner before you go?’

   ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

   There was a brief silence as he thought of something to say, so she jumped in and spoke again.

   ‘Anyway, I wanted to thank you for all your help when I came back from New York.’

   Gringo ignored that.

   ‘What does Paul say about all this?’

   ‘He’s in bits.’

   ‘Poor dear.’

   ‘Don’t be so nasty, Gringo.’

   ‘Do you want me to take you to the airport?’

   ‘No, but thanks for asking. Dad’s taking me.’

   ‘Okay. Makes sense I suppose.’

   ‘You’re not too disappointed, are you?’

   ‘Me? Disappointed? Course not! Why should I be disappointed?’

   ‘I just thought you might have been; that’s all. Well, bye, Gringo, and keep well.’

   ‘You can always ring me if you want.’

   ‘Thanks for the offer, but I won’t this time. Farewell Gringo, and keep smiling,’ and with that she was gone, out of his life forever,
Farewell Gringo,
just like that, is if some fancy fairy story had come to an end, if only it were that simple.

   ‘Fuck it!’ he yelled to the four walls. ‘Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!’

  
Why did she always make him feel that way? It had been an horrendous couple of days, and Glenda Martin had just about topped it off, and if that wasn’t bad enough, things were about to get worse.

Five days later he received a handwritten letter postmarked Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His heart rate jumped as he tore it open.

   Dear Gringo,

   Thank you so much for your kind letter. I have to admit I had reservations about moving up here but everyone has been so welcoming. To top it all I have met a truly wonderful man called Toby, between you and me he is a minor aristocrat, a Right Honourable no less, and talk about whirlwind romance, he has proposed and I have accepted.

   I can’t believe my luck, and all because of you. I wouldn’t have come here at all, but for you.

   We are so busy getting the Hall ready before I move in, before our big day, and after that we shall be known as The Right Honourable Toby Wellingham and his wife, Lady Julie Wellingham.

   I have to keep pinching myself. Sometimes I feel like it’s all a dream and I shall wake up at any moment. Me a lady no less, can you believe it?

   He is not a Feb twenty-niner like us; that will never happen to me again, meeting another rare bird such as we, but a girl can’t have everything.

   You must forgive me if I refuse your kind luncheon invitation; let’s just say that I have far too much to do, which is the truth of the matter on this occasion.

   Concentrate on one lady, Gringo, that’s what matters, for no one wants a butterfly who flits from bloom to bloom.

   I shall always think of you with great fondness and shall go into my marriage with newfound confidence, and all because of you.

   Please accept a big kiss from

   Your private and personal VAT inspector,

   Julie C,

  XX    

   He folded the letter and returned it to the envelope and sat back and closed his eyes. When things go against you, they really do.

The following day more mail arrived; fifty-six letters in total, each one a neat brown manila envelope. Seeing them nestling there on his doormat he imagined there must have been an election on, an upcoming poll that had totally passed him by. He grabbed the letters and took them through to the kitchen table and sat down and stared at the first one. 

   It looked mighty official.

   Each one was addressed exactly the same. No title, name in full, Kevin Houseman Greene. In the modern way of things the envelopes didn’t bear a stamp or postmark. Citizens were no longer permitted to know from where their post had originated, or so it seemed to him.

   He had no idea what was inside unless perchance he had won fifty-six prizes on the premium bonds, which though possible, was highly unlikely, seeing as he only possessed three hundred of the darned things.

   He opened the first and unfolded the news.

   He had, according to the printed writing, exceeded the speed limit on Saturday the such and such, at such and such, and accordingly had been fined £60, and had received three penalty points on his driving licence. The good news was that if he voluntarily attended a Safer Drivers’ Training Course, (To be held at the old aerodrome on the edge of the city, with any number of vacant dates still available, and, get this, no charge would be levied to attend,) the number of points would be reduced to two. Generous.

   All fifty-six letters repeated more or less the same thing. Fifty-six separate £60 fines, his office-based expertise advised him that that totalled £3,360. Fifty-six identical speeding offences at three penalty points each, totalled 168 points on his driving licence, and with twelve points attracting a year’s driving ban, or so the small print happily informed him, he was looking at a loss of licence of fourteen years. Lovely!

   All the offences had taken place during the period that Staff Nurse Linda Drayton had been hurtling around the town in his car, though as it turned out, and to be more accurate, up and down and up and down the same stretch of tightly controlled tarmac, in his black beast, the previous Saturday afternoon.

   At the foot of the letter were some condescending remarks relating to any possible appeal.
If you would like to appeal please write to the Chief Constable at blah blah blah.

   Too right I want to appeal! But before that, a certain little lady had some explaining to do. He picked up the phone and punched in the number as if he were punching her face. No reply. Transferred to voicemail. He thought of yelling at the recorder, but resisted the temptation. He would ring again later, and he did.

   This time she was in.

   ‘Hello, Gringo,’ she said, a note of optimism in her voice, perhaps she imagined he’d come to his senses, perhaps he was going to beg her forgiveness, but that optimism was short-lived.

   ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

   ‘Excuse me?’

   That awful Americanism that has inveigled its way into the English language. Excuse fucking me. What is wrong with pardon, or I beg your pardon?

   ‘You know what I’m talking about. Speeding through a radar trap… time and again!’

   ‘Oh, you’ve heard, have you?’

   ‘Of course I’ve heard, fifty-six fucking times!’

   ‘I wish you wouldn’t swear so much, and if you must know, I actually drove through seventy times, but because of the slow traffic, I was forced to go under the limit for fourteen of them.’

   ‘Well that’s a
fucking
relief!’ he yelled, deliberately cursing.

   ‘It serves you right.’

   ‘What do you mean?’

   ‘For being so beastly to me. You upset me, Gringo, you really did.’

   ‘I’m really sorry, Lin, I’ve already said sorry, haven’t I?’

   ‘Yes, well, saying sorry is hardly enough, is it?’

   ‘You don’t think I’m going to accept this, do you?’

   ‘I really don’t care what you do.’

   ‘I’ll deny I was the driver. They will have photographs. You are looking at a very long driving ban, Miss Drayton, and a huge fine to boot.’

   ‘I doubt that,’ she said, and her confident manner worried him.

   ‘Why?’

   ‘You’ll see.’

   ‘What have you done?’

   ‘Me? Done? Absolutely nothing. If you had paid a little more attention I think you will find that it was
you
who was doing all the doing, if you get my drift.’

   ‘I’m going to write to the Chief Constable and tell him I’m not responsible for any of this!’

   ‘You can write to the King of Siam for all I care!’

   That was a phrase her father often used when arguing with her mother when she was twee. She’d always wanted to use it in anger, and now she had. Was there a King of Siam, she pondered, with a queer giggle, was there even a country called Siam? She didn’t have a clue, and cared even less. When she was a young teenager SIAM scrawled on the back of love letters or valentines cards meant Sexual Intercourse At Midnight, not that it ever happened of course, but it was fun, and she giggled again at those childish memories.

   ‘You haven’t heard the last of this!’ yelled Gringo, yet even to him it sounded a hackneyed line.

   ‘No, I rather imagined I hadn’t. Would you like to come round later?’

   ‘No, I would not!’

   ‘Suit yourself,’ she said, and gently set the phone down, happy with her day’s work, chuckling loudly.

Gringo sought out the writing pad and wrote a furious denial to the Chief Constable. The thought occurred to him he was becoming something of an inveterate letter writer, almost an
Angry of Tunbridge Wells
or a
Beastly from Eastleigh
type character. He would have to watch that.

   A few days later in the early evening a uniformed policeman called at the house. A youngish guy who couldn’t stop smiling by the name of PC Colin Rifleman, very apt. Perhaps he was in the wrong profession, thought Gringo, or maybe not.

   ‘This is a most unusual case,’ he said, grinning.

   ‘You can say that again.’

   ‘Fifty-six speeding tickets in one afternoon is something of a record on our beat.’

   Gringo could imagine that, on any beat.

   ‘You say you weren’t driving?’

   ‘Of course I wasn’t f… driving!’

   The guy rolled his eyebrows, happy that the object of his investigation, one Kevin Houseman Greene, had at least refrained from swearing in his presence… just about.

   ‘So who was driving the vehicle?’

   ‘It was… look I don’t know who was driving, but it certainly wasn’t me.’