Poisoned Cherries (2 page)

“It’s Mum I feel sorry for,” said Dawn, mournfully.
 
“She’s only just got over her cancer scare, and now this .. . She’ll take it very badly.”

I had to shake my head at that one.
 
“Elanore’ll take it in her stride.
 
Prim’s a force of nature like her, in that respect at least.
 
She can’t be controlled or confined, and your mother knows that.
 
I was wrong for her from the start; we should never have got back together after Jan died.”

“Of course you should have!
 
You were an ideal couple, two peas from the same pod.”

‘..
 
. Which is exactly why it hasn’t worked.”

Miles laid a brotherly hand on my shoulder.
 
“I admire the way you’re taking it, but you don’t have to put on a show for us.
 
You can let it out if you want.”

If I was a better actor I might have summoned up a tear for him, but that was beyond my skills.
 
“You know me,” I said instead, with what I hoped was an appropriately half-hearted grin.
 
“Laughing boy Oz; smiling on the outside, crying on the inside.
 
It’s my way.”

I thought to myself that if he had known the whole truth, my acting career might have hit a roadblock right there and then.
 
As it was, he gave a sympathetic nod, and led me through the small kitchen beside his private office, and out to the pool, stopping to pick up a rack of cold beer on the way.

I don’t drink the stuff much any more; I’ve become a wine buff since I bought a fully stocked ... in fact, slightly overstocked..
 
. wine cellar with my Spanish villa.
 
But to please Miles, I took one .. .

they were Victoria Bitter, imported from Australia ... ripped off the ring pull and swallowed most of it in a gulp.
 
It might have been bitter to an Aussie, but it tasted like damn fine lager to me.
 
I finished it and held out my hand for another; all of a sudden it seemed like a good idea.

After the fourth, I began to realise just how tense I’d really been; and I knew why.
 
It was sheer relief.

I hadn’t really wanted to go back to Prim in the first place; I had only done it because of the leverage it gave me with Miles.
 
Now she and that idiot Johnson had given me the perfect out.
 
As my sympathetic in-law handed me another VB, I decided I’d play the part he wanted.

I took out my hand phone found Prim’s stored number, and keyed it in.
 
As I expected, it rang; she’s embraced cellular technology more keenly than anyone I know.

She must have looked at the readout and known who was calling, for she sounded hesitant as she answered.

“Bitch!”
 
I snarled at her.
 
That was enough to end the hesitancy.

“At least I didn’t screw anyone else on our honeymoon,” she snapped back.

“What are you talking about?
 
Of course you did.”

“Well, yes,” she conceded, unabashed, ‘okay I did; but only after I found out about you.”

“Is that what this is about?
 
Do I still owe you?”

“No,” she answered, ‘this is different.”

I thought I could hear seagulls in the background, and the sound of other people.
 
“Where are you?”
 
I asked her.

“Puerto Vallarta.”

“I know that, but whereabouts?”

“In a cafe.”

“Does your drink have ice in it?”

“Yes.
 
Why do you ask that?”

“Because I hope it gives you the shits.
 
Is he there?”

“Yes.”

“Put him on.”

“No.”

“Listen, sooner or later, it’ll happen.
 
Might as well be now.”

“Okay,” she murmured, after a while.
 
“Nick.”

Johnson tried to sound cool as he took the phone.
 
“Oz, buddy, I’m sorry; you have to believe that.
 
But these things happen; we just couldn’t help ourselves.”

“Sure,” I said, as harshly as I could, for Miles’s benefit.
 
“You just

couldn’t help banging my wife.
 
Well here’s something else that’s going

to happen; you’d better get ready to play ugly parts.
 
When I’m

finished with you, you’re going to look like Brando did at the end of

On the Waterfront.”1

“Oz, please,” I heard the weasel protest.
 
“This isn’t your style.

Don’t act the tough guy.”

“I’m not acting, Johnson; I am a tough guy.
 
I’ve trained with tough guys.
 
I know ways to hurt you that you couldn’t even imagine.”
 
That much was true; my time working with my wrestler pals had taught me plenty.
 
I was beginning to look forward to showing him, too.

“Put my wife back on.”
 
He did as he was told; I guessed I’d convinced him, because when Prim took the phone she sounded worried.

“What did you say to him?”

“I made him a promise.
 
Miles was going to blow him out of Hollywood, but I want that pleasure for myself.
 
Now listen, honey; I’ll ask you this just once.
 
Come home.
 
Leave that bum hole sitting in the bar and catch the first plane back to LA.

“But I really mean it.
 
Now or never; I won’t ask you again.”

There was a silence.
 
The longer it lasted, the more I worried. Christ, maybe I’d done too good a job, and she would catch the bloody plane.

So as she answered, I concentrated hard on wincing, and on not cracking an involuntary smile.

“I’m sorry,” she told me.
 
“I just can’t do that.
 
I don’t love you any more, Oz.”

“You never did love me,” I murmured, with an Oscar-winning edge of bitterness in my voice.

“Maybe not; and maybe that cut both ways.
 
Listen, I have to go.
 
You do what you have to do, see a lawyer; I want a fair split, that’s all.
 
Just don’t hurt Nicky, please.”

“That’ll be difficult, but for you, okay; I won’t touch him.”
 
I decided that I’d leave that piece of business until she’d signed the divorce settlement.
 
“Take care; just don’t trust that guy.”

“As if I would, after you,” she replied.
 
“Goodbye.”

I looked across at Miles, just as Dawn appeared at the poolside, and shook my head, slowly, and ... I hoped ... sadly.
 
“You heard me,” I said.

“Yes, mate, I did.
 
I don’t know if I could have done that in your shoes.”

“You’ll never be in his shoes,” exclaimed his wife, indignantly.
 
She looked at me.
 
“You called her after all?”

“Yes, more fool me.”

Miles opened yet another beer and handed it to me.
 
I took it, but made a mental note to slow down.
 
I didn’t want to get pissed, not there, not then.

“Bruce has gone down for the night,” Dawn said.
 
“I thought we might cook steaks and bake potatoes on the barbecue, if that’s all right with you boys.”

“Couldn’t be better,” I told her.

We threw a few chunks of Texas beef on the outdoor grill and sat down to eat them with the spuds and a salad, at the big oval table at the shallow end of the pool.
 
I was starving, but I made a show of shoving my food around the plate, and sipping morosely at my Long Flat Red ...
 
Miles imports most of his booze from his home country.

He watched me for a while, until eventually he leaned across towards me and punched me lightly on the shoulder.
 
“I can see this has blown you right out of the water, mate,” he began.
 
He was speaking slowly; the Tyrrell’s is heavy stuff.
 
“Me too, I don’t mind telling you.
 
I always thought Primavera was a straight arrow..
 
. and for her to go off with an arse hole like Johnson, that just makes it worse.

“But you must not let it get you down.”
 
He rapped the table with his knuckles, hard enough to make him wince.
 
“You have a future in our business, buddy.
 
You were good in your first movie, and better in the one we’ve just finished.
 
You’re a natural actor, Oz Blackstone, and you could be a big star.
 
My advice is, concentrate on your career and use it to get over what Prim’s done to you.”

I felt myself frown.
 
“What career, man?”
 
I asked him.
 
“Okay, I’ve made a couple of movies for you, and I’m very grateful for the chance .. . not to mention the money..
 
. but my agent in London hasn’t exactly been bombarding me with projects.”

“Fuck him,” Miles drawled, earning a nod of disapproval from Dawn.
 
“We’ll get you a real agent, out here in California.
 
But even before that, I’ve got a proposition to put to you.
 
I was going to talk to you about it in a couple of days, but now’s as good a time as any.

“I’m making a sack of money from the last Scottish project.”
 
I knew this for myself; I was on one per cent of the gross and up to that point I’d made one and a half million dollars.
 
“So much, in fact, that I’m going back there for my next movie.
 
I’ll direct, not act, but Dawn will have the female lead.
 
I want you in the second-guy role.”

“Oh yeah?”
 
I felt my ears prick up, and my eyebrows rise.
 
“What is it?”

“It’s a cop story, based on one of a series of novels.
 
If it works out right it might even be the first in a series of movies.”

“Where’s it set?”

“This is the bit you’ll like most of all.
 
It’s set in your old home town; in Edinburgh.”

in

Two.

I made a show of thinking over Miles’s offer of the Edinburgh part; I was even pretentious enough to ask to look at the script.
 
Because of my grief, he humoured me, and I spent a few days at Malibu reading it between teleconferences with Greg McPhillips, my lawyer in Scotland,” and meetings with Roscoe Brown, my brand new Hollywood agent.

I briefed Greg to draw up a legal separation from Prim, and a property settlement that was fair to us both, yet left me well fixed financially.
 
He was gob-smacked when I told him, of course; he’d known us both when we lived in Glasgow and had played a significant part in our interesting lives.
 
His shock didn’t stop him giving me some pretty sharp advice, though, and promising me his personal loyalty in the event that my ex decided to cut up rough.
 
I knew quite a bit about Greg’s practice, having worked for him in the past, and I reckoned that I was on my way to becoming his biggest private client.

Roscoe Brown was positive too.
 
Miles sent him along to see me the day after Prim dropped her bombshell.
 
He was a young black guy, and he was offered to me as the coming player in the game.
 
I figured out why, straight away; the reek of sharpness coming from him was as strong as his Eau Sauvage.
 
I wasn’t sure who was interviewing who ... sorry, whom ... at our first meeting, but whatever the truth of it was, we both passed.

It took him three days to make me realise that I didn’t have to go back to Scotland.
 
He came back to see me on the following Tuesday with offers of parts in three different projects, two of them to be shot in the States and the third back in Canada, in Vancouver this time.

He also brought with him an offer of a voice-over in a golf ball ad.
 
I admit that I went a bit Hollywood when he tabled that one; I thought it was a step back down the ladder, until he showed me the money on offer.
 
It was enough to change my mind.
 
“If it’s good enough for Jack Nicholson,” I told him, ‘it’s good enough for me.”

When it came to choosing a movie, Roscoe was all for me staying in the States.
 
He told me what I knew already, that sooner or later I had to cut the string that tried me to Miles.
 
I heard him out but I decided that it would be later.
 
I would take the Vancouver movie, I said, but first, since the schedules allowed it, I was going back home to shoot Miles’s cop flick.

What I didn’t tell him, or anyone else .. . least of all Dawn and Miles .. . was that I had another reason for going back to Scotland.

I had a promise to keep.

Three.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel, walking back into my old flat in Glasgow.

It was part of a conversion of a classic nineteenth-century building:

Jan and I had bought it on a whim, lured by its spectacular views across the heart of the city; but it had brought us only a few months of happiness, before it all went to rat-shit.

I should have moved on straight after Jan’s death, but I didn’t.
 
I was pretty numb at the time, so I stayed there, until it became home to Prim and me as we renewed our ruptured relationship, drifting eventually into our brief, rancorous and disastrous marriage.

When I did sell it.
 
I had misgivings about the buyer; call me superstitious if you like, but if the fucking place was cursed, as I thought, I wasn’t sure if I should take the risk of passing it on to her.

But she had insisted, and when Susie Gantry digs in her heels it would take a pretty strong guy to deny her what she’s after.
 
Besides, she offered me twenty-five per cent over valuation.