The Dave Bliss Quintet. James Hawkins
go to the beach. Not on a Sunday.”
“Not on Sunday,” echoes Mavis, though John and Jennifer keep out of the discussion, heads in the menu with an unspoken air of insurrection.
“Tomorrow then,” suggests Bliss, but Hugh is ahead of him.
“Monday — washday — always do our washing on Mondays, don’t we Mavis?”
“Even on holiday?” exclaims Bliss.
“Especially on holiday,” says Hugh.
“Got to keep a sense of proportion, keep a routine,” chimes in Mavis forcefully. “You could lose your sanity if you don’t keep to some sort of routine.”
John and Jennifer look ready to take the risk when Hugh appears to offer a compromise. “We’ll probably go Tuesday, if the weather holds.”
“It’s held perfectly for the past two weeks,” Bliss explains.
“Exactly. That’s what I’m afraid of,” scoffs Hugh, searching the cloudless sky. “Must be about time for it to break. I think I’ll wait to see what the BBC forecasts tomorrow evening. No sense in getting our hopes up.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to look out the window in the morning?”
“I think I’d rather rely on the professionals, if you don’t mind, old boy,” says Hugh huffily.
The squeal of a train’s hooter announces the arrival, or departure, of another crowd of tourists, and Hugh laughs, “Mavis says the train whistles here sound like strangled ducks.”
Bliss smiles at the image of the driver in his cab throttling a duck into a microphone, then John breaks into his comical thoughts. “Personally, I think it sounds more like an elephant,” he says, but Hugh slaps him down.
“Don’t be silly, old boy. You couldn’t get an elephant in one of those.”
As Bliss sits apprehensively on the promenade, checking every face for Edwards or Marcia, an American tourist, foolishly assuming that red traffic lights at a pedestrian crossing will bring traffic to a standstill, is clipped by a flashy Italian bird-puller as he steps onto the crossing.
“Where are you from?” asks Bliss, as he drags the man from the brink and guides him to a chair on the promenade.
“New Jersey,” replies the stranger. “Say, thanks bud — that Ferrari nearly got me. It’s like a racetrack out there.”
“Traffic lights are only advisory here,” Bliss explains. “Mainly decoration, in fact.”
“Let me get you a drink,” says the Yank, summoning Angeline. “You take dollars?” he asks her.
“Sure,” she counters. “When you take euros.”
A couple of street musicians set up in front of the preassembled audience. “Pinky and Perky,” Bliss christened them the first night they showed up — two animated little pot-bellied creatures with a piano accordion and a set of pan pipes whom he quite enjoyed, until he realized they played the same four tunes every evening, always culminating in “Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera.”
But it isn’t just Pinky and Perky — every pianist in every bar, and every busker on the beach and quayside constantly belt out “Guantanamera.” It is as if they wait for him as he strolls along the boulevards. He can hear them warming up, timing his arrival. “Guantanamera, gua-ji-ra Guantanamera.”
Jacques, the fisherman, isn’t at the bar — too embarrassed to admit his weather forecast was off track again, perhaps — or is he out hooking a bigger fish? But the potter is at his wheel. At least a dozen delicately thrown pots are paraded past Bliss by beaming young women and girls, and another half-dozen carried by men, their feelings clearly signalled on their faces: “Merde! This one’s going straight down the toilet.”
“So what was your name before?” Marcia startles him, sliding into an adjacent chair.
“What d’ye mean?”
“Look, one of us is going to have to lay our cards on the table, starting with your name. I mean — Dave Burbeck?”
“It could be,” he says, giving nothing away, offering her a drink.
“A cocktail, if you’re paying,” she says, then refuses to be drawn until Angeline has taken the order and is waltzing her way through the wall of death towards the bar.
“How did you know it was me?” he asks.
“You’ve been wandering around like a lost Japanese tourist for the past two weeks.”
“You’ve been spying on me!” he exclaims.
“I had to be sure,” she starts, but Pinky and Perky, sensing the possibility of a burgeoning romance, appear out of nowhere and jump in with “Autumn Leaves.”
“It’s July, for gawd’s sake,” mutters Bliss, hoping to deter them, but they switch to “Strangers in the Night.” He tosses them ten euros, which they mistake as a sign of approbation and delve into “Guantanamera” with gusto. Bliss puts his head in his hands, complaining, “Oh God, Perky’s singing,” then pleads through his fingers, “Please don’t sing.”
Marcia buries herself in her handbag as heads turn in their direction, and Bliss, worrying she may bolt again, angrily waves the musicians away.
“Please be careful. And make sure you’re not followed,” Marcia says, sliding a fiercely twisted scrap of paper into his palm, then she slips smoothly into the crowd.
“Bloody woman,” Bliss mouths after her, and Pinky and Perky, finally getting the message, seek their next victim as the waitress returns with a giant goblet sprouting vegetables.
“Oh! Your friend, she has gone,” Angeline says, her disappointment evident. “She is very pretty.”
“She didn’t like the orchestra,” he says, giving the departing performers a poisonous stare. Then he stops momentarily as he gives Marcia’s appearance some thought: shortish — petite, even — with all her lumps and bumps developed in the right places. However, the tautness of concern in her face has left a cloud. He assumes her to be about forty, but is totally confused by the compression of ages, having decided that virtually all women between fifteen and fifty somehow manage to look twenty-five in this never-never land. “Yes,” he agrees, “I suppose she is fairly pretty.”
Pinky and Perky strike up “Guantanamera” at the next table, and Bliss pointedly puts on his headphones as he debates whether or not to run after Marcia. Dave Brubeck’s quartet, playing “Por Que No?(Why Not?)”, reminds him that he is still clutching the paper twist. “Watch the potter,” says the message, and he realizes that was why she was scrabbling in her handbag — scribbling a note. But what does it mean?
“Are you Engleesh?” asks a woman with more than a mouthful of teeth and a nose-in-the-air sneer that says, “I detect smelly armpits and skid-marked underpants.”
“Yes,” he starts, removing his headphones, then switches to French, thinking: I’m supposed to be blending in. “Oui. Je suis Anglais.”
Apparently undeterred by his admission she invites herself into Marcia’s seat. “Cigarette?” she queries, but it’s an offer, not a request, and, as she delves into her Louis Vuitton bag for a packet of Gauloises, he wonders if she is somehow connected to the case. Quickly pulling his thoughts together he realizes that after two weeks of inactivity, concerned he is chasing his tail, he is suspicious of everyone.
“Excuse me,” he says, guessing her game and rising to leave. Her face falls. “Please, have this on me,” he says, offering her Marcia’s cocktail in consolation, and she beams.
“Zhanks, Engleesh,” she sings out. “Maybe next time.”
I doubt it, he thinks, heading off along the promenade, though