Autographs In The Rain Part 1

Autographs in the Rain.

by Quinten Jardine.

Acknowledgements.

My friend and fellow mysterian, Richard 'Kinky' Friedman, a star in two galaxies, who suggested the t.i.tle, unwittingly, in a Mongolian hut in

Edinburgh.

Patsy, at Moonmare, wherever in the world, or on the Internet, that be.

may.

Sylvia Cunningham, MBE.

William Crowe, a fellow escapee from an inst.i.tution in Elmbank Street,

Glasgow.

A fine man, nameless on this page at least, who tried to teach me chemistry in that very inst.i.tution, but failed through no fault of his own.

1.

Christmas comes early in London. So does closing time.

The couple stood on the edge of the pavement and looked along Oxford Street; it was just over an hour before midnight, the lights were s.h.i.+ning, their tableaux stretching all the way along towards Marble Arch. Buses and taxis flowed along Regent Street towards the Circus, business picking up again as the pubs began to empty.

'Jeez,' the tall man murmured. 'It's a shallow and inhospitable place, this. d.a.m.n near two months to Christmas and the fairy lights are on show already. Yet try and get a drink after eleven and you've no chance. To paraphrase an old Frankie song, London by night is a G.o.d awful sight. ..

even on a Friday.'

'Come on now,' his companion laughed. In her high heels she stood only three or four inches shorter than his six feet two. She was golden haired, stunningly beautiful in cla.s.sic contrast to his rugged, life-formed features, and her pale blue eyes seemed to reflect the sparkle of the pageant light. Her voice was full and mellow, that of a contralto in her prime, refined and with the faintest trace, if one listened closely enough, of a Scottish accent. 'Glasgow was just the same when we were youngsters,' she said, 'but without the bright lights.'

'I never cared, when you were around.'

'No,' she countered quickly, a chuckle in her throat, 'nor when the other one was, either. You made your choice; and from the way you were talking about your daughter tonight, you've never regretted it.'

Suddenly, for the first time that evening, he was sombre. He hunched his broad shoulders inside his Barbour jacket, his sigh expelling a great cloud of breath into the frosty night. 'Regret is your enemy,' he said. 'If you give in to it, it can destroy you. It's a waste of time anyway; you can't change the past.'

'But would you, if you could?' she asked him.

'Why? Would you? The way you say that makes it sound as if I dumped you, yet I've always understood that our breaking up was a joint decision.'

She reached up and adjusted his tie, looking at the knot, rather than into his eyes. 'Then, sir, that just shows you how good I am at my job. Oh, I didn't make a fuss when it happened. I was a big girl; I put on my mature face and agreed with all the common sense you talked.' She put a fingertip between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 'But in here, my little heart was breaking.'

'I'm sorry. I really am,' he replied sincerely, 'but I still think it was for the best.'

'So do I, now; no doubt about it. But back while it was happening She smiled up at him, with a flash of mischief in her eye. 'Did you love me, then?'

He nodded, his steely hair glinting under the street lights. 'Yup.'

She opened her mouth to respond but broke off as a pedestrian paused, and turned to stare at her. The man seemed to hesitate, then carried on his way. She looked back at him, the interruption over. 'But not as much as you loved her?' It was a statement as much as a question.

'It wasn't just that. I loved her, sure... although to be absolutely truthful, I liked you more. Ahhh ...' He paused for a few seconds, gazing up at the night. 'Look, Lou, I don't care about religion or any of that stuff, just about what's right and what's wrong. My first personal commandment is loyalty.

I've broken it twice in my life, and found that I hated myself for it, on both occasions.

'The way I came to see it back then was that I made a promise when I got engaged. If I had broken it off, I couldn't have hacked the guilt, and sooner or later, I'd have blamed it on you.'

'And I'd have hated that, for sure,' she conceded. She chuckled again, deep and warm, at his frown. 'Don't worry, I haven't spent the last twenty five years pining for my lost love. I've found a few since then: two marriages, three serious affairs . . . not bad for a wee girl from Bearsden. I've never felt a pang of guilt, either. We're totally different personalities, you see: yours is set in concrete and mine's tossing about on life's restless ocean.

'I'd have left you by the time I was twenty-one. For sure.'

She paused as a red bus roared by, close to the kerb. 'When was your other fall from grace?' she asked him.

'A couple of years back,' he answered. 'My second wife and I had a major fall-out; she went back to the States, and I got involved with someone else. We got over it, though. We found out that we mattered too much to each other to let go.'

AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.

She smiled again. 'So there's no point in my asking you back to my place for a nightcap?'

He raised an eyebrow at her question, and glanced away, out into the

street. 'That would depe

In mid-sentence, he stopped, threw his left arm round her waist and flung himself sideways, pulling her with him as he dived behind an abandoned newspaper stand. They heard the blast behind them before they hit the ground, and the scream of tyres as a dark coloured saloon accelerated away down Regent Street.

He was on his feet again in a second. 'Wait here,' he told the woman, then ran off down the street after the car, trying to catch a clear view of its number-plate, only to see it disappear round the curve in the broad street, heading for Piccadilly Circus. She too was standing once again as he returned to their safe haven. No one had come to her aid; indeed, none of the few people who had been pa.s.sing at the time were anywhere to be seen.

She stared at him, bewildered, but apparently not in the least frightened.

'You swept me off my feet once before,' she exclaimed, 'but never like that. What was that about?'

He glared back down Regent Street. 'When someone shoots at me,' he said, tersely, 'I tend to get out of the way!'

Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes seemed to flash as they widened.

'Someone shot at you?'

'It's happened before,' he told her dryly. 'Didn't you see the gun?'

'I heard a bang, but that was all. What was it?'

'The guy in that car had a shotgun. I just happened to be looking that way as he stuck it out the window and took a bead on me.'

'But who would want to shoot you?'

His mouth twisted in a grimace as he unfastened a pocket of his jacket and took out a hand-phone. 'More people than you could shake a stick at, my dear,' he murmured as he punched in the police emergency number.

'Do you ever get enraged about anything, Sammy?'

'What?'

'Enraged, I said. As in, really steamed up with anger.'

He looked at her as she stood there, all lips and legs. 'Enraged? No, not so's you'd notice, anyway. Now if you'd said engorged ...'

'But I didn't.. .' Ruth frowned at him severely.