Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [6]
Wanted to give me a dose of “the glass isn’t half-empty, it’s half-full”. Well. I ask you. Pseudo-hippie, tree-hugging crap!’
Barrington nodded in sympathy. ‘Laid it on a bit thick, did he?’
‘Oh, did he ever? “My grandmother lived to be ninety-six and every day she had a smile on her face.” Fair got on my nerves, so he did.’
‘What did you say?’ asked Barrington.
‘I told him about my granddad, actually,’ replied Paynter. ‘I said. “Listen, mate, my grandfather was born in a tenement slum in Northumberland in 1918, the third of ten kids. He grew up during the Depression, for most of which period his father was out of work so the family lived in poverty. He served his country at Dunkirk and watched his best friend drown. He was a bombardier who lost the hearing in one ear because of the noise of the big guns he worked on, which meant that he couldn’t go back to his trade as a welder after the war because he couldn’t work at heights. He received no war pension so ended up doing low-paid menial work for the next thirty-odd years whilst trying to raise three sons. And at the age of sixty-three he was thrown on the scrapheap, a symbol of Thatcher’s Britain, a man representing an industry and a region reclassified as ‘worthless’. Then he developed cancer of the stomach. He died when I was twenty-eight and, do you know something?
I never saw him smile once.” That’s what I said.’
Paynter paused and spent several fruitless seconds searching his pockets before realising that the stubbed-out cigarette was his last. He crumpled up the empty packet and tossed it on to the table in disgust.
‘You’ve given them up, remember?’ stated Barrington. ‘So, what did our stateside cousin have to say about that?’
‘He asked why,’ said Paynter. ‘And I told him. ”Because he never had a single effing thing worth smiling about, you moron!” That shut him up.’
14
Barrington began to laugh. When he smiled, his rugged face was a marked contrast to the surly and often aggressive demeanour of Paynter. Soft and likeable. ‘The trouble with those kind of people is that they have no concept that anything exists beyond their own world-view. It’s a real surprise when somebody shows them what it’s like in reality-central. Case in point . . . Do you remember Leah Large?’
Paynter thought for a moment. ‘That incredibly ugly girl from California in transport that you were keen on?’ he asked.
‘Not quite how I’d have put it,’ said Barrington. His smile was replaced, as quickly as it had arrived, by a wounded look. ‘You know, the first time I took her out, we went to that Thai place on Charlotte Street?’
‘I know it. The food’s good.’
Barrington nodded in agreement. ‘I bought her roses. Because I’m a well-brought-up Englishman who does that kind of thing. And, did she appreciate it?’
‘I dunno,’ replied Paynter in his best Homer Simpson-like voice.
‘Rhetorical question,’ Barrington told him sarcastically. Did she hell?! Spent the whole of the next fortnight complaining about it. About me. About the weather. About the fact that all men are just looking for a bit of acquaintance rape. Then she ditched me for some journalist from Aylesbury with his own fondue set. That almost put me off them for good . . . ’
‘Women, or Americans?’
Barrington seemed to be weighing up his options before replying. ‘Fondue sets,’ he said at last.
‘Funny thing to get shirty about,’ noted Paynter with a glance at his watch.
‘Oh absolutely, I agree one hundred per cent. But . . . ’ Barrington paused and shrugged. He too looked to his wrist. He frowned and put the watch to his ear. The regular ticking seemed to satisfy him. ‘He’s late.’
Paynter ignored him and clicked his fingers towards the blonde woman behind the bar. She raised her head, slowly, a look of boredom on her face.
‘Yes?’ she asked, with a rich Dutch accent.
‘Another two coffees, love. One black decaf, one white caffeinated with three sugars.’
Paynter found himself watching her as she bent down to pick up a coffee cup; at her long stockinged legs and short, tight, black skirt.