Free (2008) Mister Roberts by Alexei Sayle Page A

anything
out of me …
    ‘Oh,
Monty, Monty, Monty,’ Donna said with a vicious little smile on her face. ‘You
are not going to like what happens next.’
     
    Late that evening when
Dawn got back from Orgiva in their old post office van she almost drove past
Monty sitting hunched up and trembling in front of the town hall with all their
belongings heaped around him and a terrified look in his eyes. She stopped in
the middle of the square and hurriedly clambered out of the driver’s seat.
‘Monty, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong, what’s happened?’ she asked the
quaking figure clutching its knees and whimpering on the cold stone steps.
    It took
Monty a good fifteen seconds to haul himself back from whatever terrible place
he was in. ‘That’s the last time we rent a cottage from the Guardian ,’ was
all he said.
     
    Across from Noche Azul was
the village’s basketball court which, like most of the improvements in the
last few years, had been paid for by a generous grant from the EC. In the bar
when the locals started their usual moaning about the perfidious Ingles hanging
on to Gibraltar, Baz would shout back at them, ‘You can ‘ave the rock back when
you give me back all the bleeding Sports Halls, Highways and regional
parliaments my UK taxes have paid for!’
    All the
Brits knew that Baz had never actually paid any tax when he’d been in the UK,
which was one of the reasons why he’d had to move to Spain, but they agreed
with his general point.
    The
concrete, mosaic inlaid bench in the shape of an angel in front of the court
was where the teenage boys and girls gathered after school. Overlooking this
scene seated at their usual table on the terrace of Noche Azul, faces upturned
to the bright winter sun but bodies wrapped in down-filled ski jackets,
Laurence said to Nige, ‘Have you noticed how the young Spanish girls have
changed over the last few years? A while back seeing them come off the school
bus they were these stubby-legged, black-haired peasant girls, bodies perfectly
suited for farm work. Now there’s all these willowy things with blond
highlights and tight trousers showing off their flat brown bellies. These girls
look like five minutes working in the fields would kill them.’
    ‘It’d
certainly make a mess of their nails,’ Nige said.
    Laurence
sighed. ‘Sometimes, you know, I miss the way things were when I first came
here. When there were donkeys in the streets and you and me, Roger and Baz were
the only Brits.’
    ‘Well,
things change, Laurence, and you can’t stop them and we’re not doing such a bad
job of holding on to a lot of the old ways up here. Besides, your old mate
Donna’s been doing her bit to scare away any more British coming here with her
new friend Mister Roberts.’
    ‘You
heard about yesterday then?’
    ‘Miriam
told me Monty had to be sedated with some of her nervous breakdown pills before
they could get him into their van to take him to Granada Airport. If Monty
Crisp goes around telling the Frida Kahlo of Basingstoke and the Pablo Neruda
of Darlington what happened and it puts them off coming to the valley, then it’s
no bad thing.’
    ‘Sure,’
Laurence said, ‘but I was there with Miriam, I saw Monty before he went and the
look on his face and the things he said Donna got Mister Roberts to do to him …’
    ‘Oh, I
expect he’s just exaggerating because he got scared out of the house that he
was living in for free.’
    Laurence
didn’t feel able to let it go. ‘I’m not sure if I don’t believe what he said.
You don’t know Donna like I do, that girl is full of fury It’s not a good idea
for any of us if she has a sidekick like Mister Roberts, somebody who seems
happy to do what she wants. She’s not that stable in the first place.’
    ‘Oh,
Laurence, you always get like this with women you used to be friends with. And
if it comes to it, well, we’ve dealt with difficult women before.’
    ‘I know,
but I’ll tell you something, you