Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon Read online

  “Ooh, yes please,” his wife says. “Only not yours, eh?” Three more shrieks.

  “Here, Barry, can you arrange one for me?” the other wife says.

  Three more shrieks.

  A stewardess pauses in sweeping by and says to Barry: “Would you mind fastening your seat belt, sir?”

  Barry swivels round in his seat and says: “I was hoping you’d fasten it for me, darlin’.”

  The hostess smiles and keeps going so as to prevent herself spitting at him. Then she goes into pantomiming the oxygen drill, every action exaggerated, eyes fixed on a point somewhere slightly above the heads of her audience, like a bored stripper waiting for her disc to end, the voice of the unseen stewardess like a send-up of a fashion house commentary. When the visible stewardess has finished her act the Dagenham sons give a round of applause. The stewardess walks back and is very good at totally ignoring the sons while seeming to smile very sweetly at everybody before her. Barry gives a crooked arm and a clenched fist as she deports herself by. The old dad turns to his left but the aisle seat is still vacant and it strikes me how none of his family’s bothered about sitting next to him, nor do I fucking well blame them. Of course part of the thought occurs to him too. “ ’Ere, ain’t none of you lot going to keep me company, then?” he asks.

  “Can’t be done, can it, my old son?” Barry says. “It’s down to the numbering of the seats, innit?”

  “Yers, well, how come I’m the one as is on me own? Why can’t one of the nippers change places?”

  “I was afraid he’d think of that,” Barry says under his breath. He speaks to the old dad: “Look, you’re all right where you are. Besides, we don’t want to put the mockers on a budding romance, do we?”

  “I’ll change places with Grandad,” the brat next to me says.

  Oh Christ, I think to myself. Vauxhall here we come.

  “You stay where you bleeding well are,” Barry says. The kid does as it’s told and I breathe at least one small sigh of relief.

  But the relief is only temporary. Because ever since we left the terminal, I’ve been as tense as a minder who’s having to wait a minute longer than he ought to. Not that I ever felt that kind of tenseness myself. But I’ve seen it in others. And that is what I’m feeling now. Those clever sods up in the Penthouse had sussed it. I’d never flown before.

  Of course, I’ve often thought about it. And after having thought about, I’ve always sworn nothing would ever get me in the inside of an aeroplane. I mean, the things you read. Those reports in the papers. (Reports I always read, not missing a detail; I’m drawn to them; if there’s one on the front page I always lap it up, even before I’ve turned to see how Spurs have gone on.) Bodies strewn over a ten mile radius. Tape recordings of the last minutes in the flight deck. Pictures of the stewardesses, smiling. And on T.V., it’s even more favourite with my stomach muscles. The smoking wreckage. The anonymous sheets on moving stretchers. Zooming in on a chiffon scarf hanging from a tree branch, a briefcase, a kid’s spouted drinking cup lying on its side in the drizzle. I mean, it’s not that I’m frightened of going. If it was that, I’d have taken up flower arranging years ago. When you’re gone, you’re gone, no argument, seeing as how that’s the one thing there’s no answer to. No, it’s just that I like the idea of having some say in the matter of my going. Not to mention the matter of when.

  I’m all for self-determination. I like having odds. Somebody’s coming at you with a knife, you’ve got chances. Somebody’s got a pump action massaging your vertebrae, you can always make a decision. A motor coming at you down the wrong side of the M.6, you can still take evasive action. There’s a chance. And, besides, experience is a great teacher. You know what happens with a knife, a pump-action, a steering column. If you’re going to go they all have one thing in common: the swiftness of progression from cause to effect. Whereas it’s always struck me that in a plane, there’s fuck all the individual can do about anything. No room for any determinism there; no chance for the individual with the quickest reactions to take evasive action. You just go with the rest, and never having been a lover of crowds, the close proximity of other people—that descent of a minute or a minute and a half, surrounded by the wailing and the screaming of the assembled throng—would seem as long as the eternity we were all about to enter. Another thing: when I used to organise tickles, there were never any wankers on a team of mine. If I asked a specialist his opinion of a particular facet of his part in the job, I’d expect a straight answer; no flannel just so he could row himself on something for the sake of possible readies. Whereas a mate of mine, Jimmy Fish—he once told me he was in this plane coming in to land one time. It was mucky weather, the plane was circling, and the loudspeaker came on when it shouldn’t and the whole fucking planeload heard the captain saying to his copilot: “Well we can’t stay up here all night going round and round; let’s go down and have a crack at it.”

  Unbelievable. That kind of thing gives me the fucking creeps.

  So eventually the plane begins to trundle out onto the runway, and out of my porthole I can see the wing shuddering, the unsettling crudity of the bolts holding the individual metallic sheets together, the simplicity of the wing flaps. I turn away and re-read the William Hickey column, concentrating on the given reasons for the display of today’s ear to ear smile. Then when the plane is (presumably) pointing in the right direction for takeoff, there is a small pause. The jets reach screaming pitch, the plane begins to move, accelerating along the runway like an arrow from a bow, only I hope this particular arrow isn’t going to emulate the one in the nursery rhyme. Then the runway slants away and we’re up and streaming through the clouds and, although I’m still concentrating on the words in that boxed caption, the statistics going through my mind are of a different variety, the statistics for the incidence of major disasters during the first few minutes of takeoff. Of course, the Dagenham Boys have their own method of passing the time by joking loudly about all the various forms disaster could take, just to prove they’d been through it all before.

  “Hope the rubber bands are new,” the one called Barry says.

  “I bet the corner garage gave them a price on a job lot of tires,” Benny says. “Should make for happy landings.” They both bellow with laughter and it’s a toss-up whether the nearest one gets a knuckle or I keep my clenched fist clutching the newsprint.

  The plane veers and suddenly we’re above the clouds and the quilted whiteness that stretches to the horizon is reassuring enough to counter-act the Mike and Bernie Winter cross talk on my left. Then the illuminated lettering goes opaque and I shuffle my Players and my lighter out of the mohair and light up and inhale gratefully, and after I’ve done that I try and get myself into a position that will cause as little stress and strain on the mohair as possible; I don’t want to be seen getting off the plane looking like Gerald.

  Then, at last, they wheel out the trolleys, and after the Dagenham lot have performed I order a handful of vodkas and some cans of tonic and settle down to get quietly and methodically pissed.

  Chapter Five

  OF COURSE, THEY’D SAID, Wally’ll be there to meet you. Don’t you worry about that. Wally’ll be there and waiting while you’re still up in the wild blue yonder. So don’t you worry about that. Once you’ve landed you’re on velvet.

  When the plane lands and the doors are opened I stand as upright as is possible between my own seat and the back of the seat in front and wear the Dagenham family’s commotion while they get themselves sorted, holding up the flow behind them as they play pass the parcel with their Adidas bags. Finally, Christ knows how, they manage to get themselves in the aisle and the queue starts to move and eventually I’m let in and I get to the door and the stewardess smiles and hopes I’ve enjoyed my flight, and I nearly tell her, but I don’t.

  Outside the sunshine’s like a multibarred electric fire. The dry heat tingles through my mohair and I can feel the warmth of the runway through the soles of my shoes. I adjust my sungl
asses and the bunch of us weave our way towards the airport buildings, and inside we mix in with a crowd off an earlier flight, gathered round the oval conveyor belt, gazing at its monotonous emptiness. Of course, the Dagenham crowd have to show everybody they’ve been through it all before by making a production of settling themselves down to wait on some of the airport furniture. While they’re doing that I go to the sunlight end of the lounge and look out into the brightness and see if there are any signs of Wally. There’s a line of coaches and beyond the coaches a line of hoardings black against the sun, but no Wally, at any rate, not in my line of vision. I turn away and look round to see if there’s a bar or anything but there’s nothing and I begin to wish I’d brought some of the duty free stuff on the plane, to pass the time by keeping myself stoked up. And there’s some time to pass because the luggage from the first flight doesn’t spill out for over half an hour. The travellers pick out their luggage and move like moths towards the light at the end of the lounge and when they’re outside I watch them flutter some more as they sort out the relevant coaches. Inside, the lounge is relatively quiet again. Outside, a coach begins to move off, then another—revealing nothing, I look at my watch. I swear to myself and light another cigarette. I’m fucked if I’m going to have another look for Wally. Another twenty minutes goes by before the luggage from my flight begins to flop onto the conveyor belt. A new crowd collects and I join it and of course my case is among the last to appear. I grab it off the belt and walk across the lounge and out into the still sunshine. I put my case down and scan the forecourt. Nothing, except the stacking of the cases on the remaining coaches and the push and shove of the customers. Then they all get settled and the motor of the final coach starts up and somebody gets off the coach and starts walking towards me. She’s dressed in some green drag and there’s a badge on her lapel with her name on it. She gives me a thoroughly routine smile.

  “Hello,” she says, “I’m Barbara, your Funbreak representative. Which hotel are you going to?”

  “I’m not,” I tell her.

  A slight frown.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “I’m not going to a hotel.”

  She looks down her check list.

  “You’re—”

  “Carter. Jack Carter.”

  She brightens again.

  “That’s right,” she says. “Las Arenas. I thought we’d lost you.”

  “I’m not going to a hotel.”

  “But you must be. You’re on the list.”

  “I know I’m on the list, darling,” I tell her. “But I’m not going to the hotel.”

  She looks at me as though I’ve just told her the earth’s flat.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” she says.

  “It’s paid for, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes—”

  “So why worry?”

  “Well I—”

  “Tell you what,” I tell her. “You’ve got an empty room for a fortnight, right? But it’s paid for. Now I’m entitled to that room whenever I like, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well I tell you what you do; you nip in there every night, warm up the sheets, all right? Part of the job, yes? Only, one night you’re warming it up, I might pop in to test the mattress, right? One of the perks of the job, O.K.?”

  When it sinks in her face becomes a blank and then I get the total ignoration and she walks off back to the coach. “Hasta la vista,” I call after her, then I sit down on my case and light another cigarette. The buses rev up and move off in dusty convoy and when they’re gone all I’m left with is nothing apart from a distant group of Spanish porters, hands in pockets, talking about whatever Spanish porters talk about. Well, at least it won’t be Millwall, I think to myself.

  The other thing I think to myself, while I’m staring unseeing at the blank hoarding, is stoicism. Why that word should drift back into my mind after all these years, I’ll never know, I can see the situation where I first heard the word, a dusty June classroom, old Henry explaining why this particular character in this play we were going through, why he’d just accepted the fate that was about to be dished out to him. None of us could figure it out. Why, he was asked, why should the guy just accept it, why didn’t he earhole the bastards that were out to get him, at least go down fighting? Henry’d smiled and agreed with the difficulty we’d had in accepting what the gut accepted. Only, he’d said, maybe twenty or thirty years from then, some of us might become stoics. No chance, the chorus’d been. Only, a couple of weeks later, I’d gone to the Star and seen this picture, The Killers, starring Burt Lancaster, and he’d been this guy, lying on a bed, and somebody’d come and warned him of two killers were coming up to see him off, and he’d just lay there relaxed on his bed, virtually saying, let them come. Let them do it. The rest of the picture had been in flashback, showing why he’d reached that stage, how Ava Gardner had helped him reach it.

  I shake my head. Funny, I should think of that right now. I look at my watch and fuck Gerald and Les from Bow to Bromley.

  It’s only an hour, an hour and a quarter later, that something actually happens. And, as begins to seem usual round here, the happening is encased in a cloud of dust.

  A car rounds the corner of the terminal building and draws up opposite me. The dust falls away like midges at sunset and a door opens and a Spaniard approaches. I remain seated. He smiles and stretches out his hand. He’s dumpy without being fat, he’s fortyish, and he’s got a very nice haircut.

  “Mr. Carter?” he says.

  I nod. The hand stays outstretched. I shake it. His grin widens. Then he goes into his act. I gather it’s all about why he’s here instead of Wally, why he’s late, and what’s wrong with the car. Only most of it’s in Spanish, but I don’t have to speak Spanish to gather there’s got to be something wrong with the car. Faulty plugs sound the same in any language.

  So I get up and he takes my case and carries on with his soliloquy while I get in the back of the car, making my first mistake: there’s about enough knee room for one of Billy Smart’s midgets. I begin to try and signify that I’d rather sit in the front but it’s too late, the driver’s scraped in gear and off, u-turning across the forecourt, and a minute or two later we’re hammering along a stretch of motorway at thirty-five miles an hour. As I look around at the flanking scenery, I think to myself: they could have left Ealing Broadway out of it. Because that’s the impression I get: the architecture’s different, the climate’s different, but there’s the same anonymous scruffiness, the same feeling of characterless uniformity re-enforced by the office blocks that passed for hotels squeezing yards away on my right. But we’re only on the motorway for about ten minutes and then the driver turns off.

  It may be just the angle I’m sitting at, or the vague positioning of the driver’s pointing arm, but I get the impression he’s aiming his finger not at any of the lower reaches of the range, but at the highest peaks, the ones reflecting most brilliantly the disappearing sunlight, and, if I’m right, that the villa’s as high as is possible. Knowing Gerald and Les it’s probably balanced on a peak like something out of Road Runner, liable to tip over the edge if you flush the lavatory a bit fierce.

  About ten minutes later we get to a small town, the main road going straight through the middle, and this place has a completely different atmosphere to the sprawl we left half an hour ago: a real Spanish village, as Spanish as an English market town is English. The only thing about this place, set out to catch the passing tourists, is a leather-work shop with a lot of hide skins tacked up on the outside wall. I tap the driver on the shoulder and manage to get over that I want him to stop, which he does, and gets out of the car and runs round the back and opens the door for me, beaming all over his face. I struggle out, and when I’m out I stretch and try and de-crease my clothes and while I’m doing that he’s already half way across the road, making for the leather shop.

  “Here,” I call after him.

  He stops and looks at me. I
shake my head and point to a bar on my side of the road.

  “There,” I say to him.

  His face falls a bit. No taxi-drop commission tonight. I walk across the broad pavement with the driver padding along behind me and we go into the bar.

  The bar has a modern aluminium and glass frontage inset in the old shuttered structure of the building, a miniature version of the airport facade, and inside there are resonances of the airport, leatherette stools and booths, formica topping on the bar. Formica in Spain. I wonder how they pronounce it.

  Some of the town’s top guys are sitting on the stools screwed into the floor along the front of the bar, eating sea-food from dainty saucers and drinking beer from bottles that look like they should have Schweppes Ginger Beer inside. You can tell they’re the town’s top guys. There are four of them and at least two of them are obviously brothers, but that apart, they’re all out of the same mould, short, portly, beautifully barbered greying hair, similar kinds of sportswear and slip-ons. Even the frames round their glasses seem to match. But the thing that tells you what they are is the atmosphere they have about them, an air of mild unease, dissatisfaction, only submerged when they are concentrating on their food. It’s an attitude I recognise from my adolescence, among the small builders and the chemists and the haulage contractors who used to gather at the bar of the Conservative Club in Scunthorpe; they all looked somehow disappointed by their success too.

  “Vodka and tonic,” I said to the fifteen-year-old behind the bar.

  “Vodka tonic,” he says, already half filling a glass with crushed ice. I turn to the driver who’s at my shoulder and I raise my eyebrows to let him know I’d like to know what he’d like. He beams and clears his throat and very carefully he says, “I would like a large gin and a tonic please.”

  I smile to myself. When it comes down to essentials, the barman can understand what I want, and the driver can make himself understood. But Christ alone knows what a large gin’s like because the lad behind the bar’s still pouring my vodka. No measures, nothing. I motion for him to stop so’s there’s room for my tonic to go in and then I begin to tell him what the driver wants but he’s already started to take care of that so I just stand there and watch. When he’s finished he puts all the stuff on a tray and while the driver’s taking the stuff to a table I give the lad behind the bar a five hundred peseta note and he rings it up and very carefully counts the change out into my hand. I give him too much back as a tip and then I go and join the driver, who is splashing the tonic in both our drinks. I sit down and the driver raises his glass and downs half his drink as though he’s drinking lemonade.