Beta Male

by Iain Hollingshead

  ‘And how was your bar mitzvah?’

  ‘Emotional. So emotional, in fact, that I barely remember anything about it.’

  We both laughed at ourselves. ‘Just look at us now,’ I said, pointing at the Gap Kids carrier bag he was holding, full of clothes for Debbie’s children, and smoothing down my father’s suit, which I had put on at Rosie’s house that morning. ‘We’ve almost made it, haven’t we? Almost fulfilled what we set out to do.’

  Matt smiled. ‘Yep, almost. We don’t have to work at all.’

  ‘Well, you don’t.’

  ‘We’re in the pub in the middle of the day.’

  ‘Yep, until you have to go and pick up Debbie’s eldest from nursery school.’

  ‘We’re not losing touch with our friends.’

  ‘Well, not all of them.’

  ‘All we have to do now is get these two to marry us.’

  ‘And move them a bit closer together. The same street, ideally.’

  Matt clapped me on the back. ‘Thanks, mate, for persuading me to keep going a bit longer. It was all worth it to meet Debbie.’

  ‘No worries. I’d love to meet her properly. I’d love you to meet Rosie, too, as long as you can remember to call me Max all night.’

  He laughed again. Maybe this was the right moment.

  ‘Matt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have five thousand pounds?’

  ‘No.’

  And that was that. No hard feelings. Just a simple, direct ‘no’. He didn’t have the money. And why should he ask Debbie to help? He had won her on his own merits, by being himself, or at least a non-Gentile version of himself. I was the one who’d dug myself into an awkward, deceitful hole.

  No one else seemed that willing to lend me a shovel, either. Ed had less money than the average sixth-former he taught, and although I’d written Alan a letter of apology which, frankly, grovelled well beyond the call of duty, I thought it probably wasn’t wise to ask him for a loan. We were back on speaking terms, but it would take a while to patch up some of those stupid things I’d said. Our friendship meant too much for me to risk blowing it again.

  Most disappointing of all was Claire’s reaction. She’d been uncharacteristically blunt and unfriendly when I’d called after the opera.

  ‘Well, that was great fun, thank you,’ I’d said. ‘What are we three musketeers going to get up to next?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she’d said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have to go back to work and stop spending all this money. Anyway, haven’t you two got what you wanted?’

  And that was that. Claire went back to work in a grump and I didn’t see her again for months. A scheme that had begun with the intention of spending more time with each other had ended up driving most of us apart.

  Still, there was Rosie – she was my life now. I had actually learned to do everything right in this relationship. I listened, even when she was being boring. I bought her thoughtful presents. I didn’t fart in bed. Maybe that’s what all the other failed relationships in my twenties had been about – practice for the one that actually counted. If I could just keep this going, everything else would somehow work itself out. The game of relationship musical chairs I had banged on about at Lisa’s wedding appeared to have stopped and I was perfectly happy with where I was sitting. I’d grown bored of the dating game, now that I’d found someone I really liked. I had grown up, despite myself. Frankly, I’d become a little bit like Alan.

  I don’t say all this to excuse what happened next – there are no excuses for what happened next. There was, however, a very good reason: I had exhausted all other options over those four months to pay that bloody £5,000 invoice. The interest was still mounting and I couldn’t stall Rosie and her firm indefinitely. Mary, then, was the only person left who could ‘kill’ Max. Thanks to the duplicitous hole into which I’d dug myself, Mary and Rosie had become inextricably entwined.

  *

  Since the opera Mary and I had stayed in fairly regular contact, often going for a coffee during the day – whenever my busy schedule of making coffee for other people or pretending to be a banker allowed – or meeting up at church, if I felt able to convince Rosie I had to work late. My apparent conversion had spread like wildfire among the Clapham Christians, much to my embarrassment. The closest I came to pulling the plug on the entire charade was the evening the vicar asked me to come to the front and ‘testify’ in front of the congregation about my amazing Damascene moment. I’d conducted a serious search of my conscience, but to my mild alarm found it to be almost entirely clear. Anyway, I knew enough about the Bible by then to know that God wasn’t that bothered about different grades of sin. Human beings are inherently sinful. This was no worse than the things most people got up to in an average day. The important thing was saying sorry afterwards. And meaning it. In any case, I’ve always thought God had something of a sense of humour. Ultimately, I convinced myself with weasel logic, this was all for a good cause. God was love, wasn’t he? And anyway, Mr Money-Barings wasn’t exactly a textbook example of selfless, tolerant Christianity in action.

  So I put in one of the finest performances of my life at the front of that church. The vicar cried; I cried; the congregation cried. Jesus wept. And when the man with the guitar appeared on stage, I sang along with the best of them, often in my own key. You’re altogether lovely / altogether worthy / altogether wonderful to me. I did the Holy Spirit. Hooooo, naaaaaaa, widddiiii. I made snow angels on the floor alongside Mary. I listened attentively while Stock Market Christian told us about his latest multi-million-pound deal. And through it all, I out-Christianed the Christians. If someone made a joke of which I felt Jesus would disapprove, I censured them. Whenever Mary attempted to renew any level of sexual contact beyond kissing, I would point her to the relevant Bible verse. ‘Not before marriage, dear,’ I would say. ‘Not again before marriage, at least.’

  It made me feel marginally better about Rosie that I wasn’t being sexually unfaithful, even if the levels of emotional infidelity and deception were far worse. Mary, meanwhile, grew increasingly frustrated the more fervently religious I became. ‘What’s happened to you, Sam?’ she demanded one evening. ‘I’ve never seen the Spirit take someone like this before. Being a Christian doesn’t mean you have to be completely boring, you know.’ But we were the golden couple of the church, much to Stock Market Christian’s annoyance. The beautiful trust-fund girl and her lost-actor convert: it was a happy ending Mary appeared unable, or unwilling, to resist.

  As for me, I was so into the part that there were some days when I questioned whether I actually had gone native. There was a peace in that church, a purpose, a sense of community, role-play or no role-play, which I wasn’t sure I had ever found elsewhere. There were also a lot of good people – kind, generous, loving people who thought hard about life’s questions and believed they had found an answer. Who was I to say they were wrong? Could this be my way out, too? My absolution? Could I become Sam again? Write off my sin along with my debt?

  But Rosie was my sin and my debt, the girl I was unable to resist, and still unable to be entirely truthful with. So when Mary finally invited me down to Gloucestershire to spend a Sunday in late January with her parents, I accepted and told Rosie I would be away for business, which was a fairly accurate description of how I saw the excursion.

  The Money-Baringses lived in a small, pompous village near Stroud in Gloucestershire, where we attended a church service led by a small, pompous vicar.

  ‘Be nice to the ponce,’ said Mr Money-Barings with an attempt at a wink as we left. ‘Might be back here soon yourself, eh?’

  The old homophobe quickly warmed to me again, just like the night at Tosca. Alan has always had a problem with Jess’s parents and vice versa. Ed used to turn into a nervous wreck around Tara’s father. Personally, with the exception of Mrs Geoffrey Parker, Lisa’s mother, who took an instant dislike to me, I have never found any difficulty with the parents of
girls I’ve been interested in. Their daughters, yes. The parents, no. All you have to do is flirt gently with the mother and convince the father you’re a solid sort by discussing manly things neither of you understand, such as quantitative easing or the Middle East peace process.

  Mrs Money-Barings was also on fine form on our second meeting. ‘I’m sorry I was so quiet, Sam, that night at the Albert Hall,’ she said as we sat down to a Sunday roast in their cavernous dining room. ‘I’m afraid London’s just not my scene. Is it your scene?’

  I wasn’t sure if I had a scene, but I said it was, as that appeared to be the answer she was looking for. Tucking into my lunch, however, I could see what she meant. Gloucestershire was very definitely her scene: several dogs wandered languidly around the hall; a fire was roaring next door in the drawing room; Mrs Money-Barings had already changed out of her church clothes into a threadbare old jumper and corduroys. It was a very pleasant setting, to be honest, and for a while I let myself be carried away by an enjoyable fantasy of Rosie and me one day living somewhere like that. I would play the piano in the evenings. Our friends would come round for weekend house parties. We’d walk the dogs. Maybe I could build a theatre in the garden.

  ‘And what are you up to at the moment, Sam?’ asked Mr Money-Barings over coffee. ‘Any plays in the offing?’

  I looked around the table at his wife and daughter. I’d half expected them to withdraw after dessert – sorry, pudding – to allow Mr Money-Barings and me to crack open the port and chew a Romeo y Julieta while discussing whether or not we should return to the Gold Standard. Maybe I’d been watching the wrong era of films as research.

  ‘Well,’ I said, taking a gulp of coffee, ‘Ashley, I’ve got a bit bored of waiting around to be cast in something while keeping my business ticking over, so I’ve decided to put on my own production.’

  ‘That’s great, Sam,’ enthused Mary. ‘Isn’t that great, Daddy?’

  ‘Not opera, is it?’ barked Mr Money-Barings. ‘No pon – ?’

  ‘Darling,’ interrupted Mrs Money-Barings. ‘Please.’

  For a man who professed to have found God late, I felt Mr Money-Barings had a rather unhealthy obsession with homosexuality. Had he only read the Old Testament?

  ‘No,’ I reassured him. ‘Not opera. Actually, I think you’ll rather like it. It’s going to be a musical about the Prodigal Son. Looking at it in a modern light, and so on.’

  ‘That is great,’ said Mr Money-Barings. ‘Expensive business, I imagine.’

  ‘Well, yes, the production won’t be cheap. But I thought I’d finance it through a loan from the company I run.’

  Mr Money-Barings rose to his feet, went next door to the drawing room and returned with a cheque book.

  ‘I think we can do better than that,’ he said, producing a fountain pen from his jacket pocket.

  ‘No. I couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘Nonsense, boy. You’re as good as family.’

  Mary winced, opposite.

  ‘No, seriously, I couldn’t. It’s an expensive production.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Well, it’s going to cost five thousand, all-in.’ Then I remembered Claire’s opera ticket. ‘Sorry, five thousand one hundred, if we include the lighting guy.’

  ‘There,’ barked Mr Money-Barings, sliding over my get-out-of-jail-free card. ‘Now, who’s for a walk?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’d argued with Sam before, of course, at various junctures over the last twenty-five years. When we were seven, we fancied the same girl and used to shove each other outside the classroom so we could sit next to her in Geography (Sam always won, incidentally). Then, aged twelve, Sam went through an annoying phase of setting alarm clocks for different times in the middle of the night and hiding them all over my bedroom, which I didn’t find very amusing. It was the one occasion my mum got really angry with him. Inevitably, there was also the odd spat over the years while sharing a flat in London. Most of the time, I put up with his many foibles, but occasionally I’d flip and we’d have an argument to clear the air. It’s difficult to be angry with Sam for very long.

  The row over Jess, however, cut very deep. I know you shouldn’t care what your friends think about your girlfriend. I know that no one else can really understand a relationship from the outside, because a relationship is between two people, not an entire group, and that often the couples who are most outwardly gregarious and happy in company are miserable alone. But it was impossible not to care – my friends were important to me. Although I didn’t need their blessing – Jess was not a trophy for which I demanded applause or recognition – it would be nice to think they didn’t loathe her.

  Sam’s outburst also made it difficult for me not to question my entire relationship with Jess. First my mother; then my friends… Was I the only person who actually saw anything good in her? Was it more likely that all of them were wrong and I was right, or the other way round? They couldn’t all just be jealous, surely? Was I simply too lazy to find anyone else? And why had it taken so long for me to ask her to marry me? For the first time in my life I began to have doubts.

  And yet I think I’m as aware of Jess’s faults as anyone. The blinkers don’t stay on after more than eight years. She can be difficult, awkward, manipulative, snobby and self-obsessed. But she’s also loving, kind, funny, intelligent and wonderful in bed (or at least, I think she’s wonderful in bed; I haven’t really slept with that many other girls). I could make long lists all day with Jess’s negative points in one column and the positives in the other. Both lists would be of roughly equal length. But what would be the point? The only real point is that I love her. And that, I thought, was what I had to make everyone who disapproved realise. Frankly, our relationship was none of their business, but still, I wanted the wedding to be a celebration, not a funeral.

  Not that we had even got close to setting a date. Jess wanted a winter wedding so we could go skiing for our honeymoon. For what it was worth (this was another argument I probably wouldn’t win), I preferred the idea of getting married the following summer – partly, I think, because it would allow me to postpone confronting the issue of Amanda’s ultimatum.

  All these myriad problems – some voiced, others kept bottled up – combined, I think, to put an unbearable amount of pressure on our relationship. Maybe I should just have told Jess about Amanda’s indecent proposal. Perhaps I should have explained that I had argued with my friends about her. But I didn’t. Whether through a misplaced desire to protect her or simple cowardice, I kept everything to myself and the relationship suffered as a result. Christmas approached and the engagement ring I’d had commissioned still lay uncollected at the jeweller’s. Every day I meant to pick it up and every day I made an excuse to myself. It was symbolic of a malaise that seemed to have taken root the moment we’d started co-habiting. Other friends who have moved in with their girlfriends – fiancées, even – and become their ‘flatmates’ have told me it was the best decision they had ever made. Whereas before they had had to trek across London to have quiet sex without their flatmates overhearing, check diaries to see when they were free and endure constant arguments about not seeing enough of each other, moving in together solved all these problems in one fell swoop. Ironically, a move you would expect to be trapping was actually liberating. Girls know they’ve ‘got you’, my co-habiting friends told me, so they give you much more freedom to do as you wish. Their nesting instinct satisfied, you are free to stay out until 3am on a Saturday with your mates, as they’ll always know if you haven’t come home eventually. It’s difficult to lie to your ‘flatmate’, or indeed your flatmates. I knew far more about Sam’s life when I was living with him than any girl who thought she’d got close to him ever did.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any friends left to go out with until three in the morning. Ed, I was alarmed to read in the Guardian, appeared to have embarked on some kind of kamikaze mission to ensure no woman would ever speak to him again. Matt
, who rang occasionally to keep me updated, appeared to have quickly shacked up as a house-husband to a Jewish princess. And Sam? Well, we didn’t speak for a while, leaving me trapped with Jess, Jess’s friends and Jess’s bubble bath, which I had surprised myself by taking quite a shine to.

  Throughout the weeks that followed my moving in with Jess, it upset me more than I could really articulate not being in contact with Sam. We had shared everything since we were children and I really wanted him to share my happiness – if that was the right word for it – now. I would certainly be a whole lot happier if he was part of it. I also wanted to know how his little scheme with Matt was going. Sam was fun to live vicariously through. It was like watching a movie featuring a slow car crash from which everyone eventually emerged, shaken but unscathed. But Matt didn’t give me many details. Maybe he thought I would be shocked.

  So when I saw a letter arrive through the post one Saturday morning in December – a proper letter, no less; not a misspelled text message or a dashed-off email – bearing Sam’s handwriting, I pounced on it eagerly. Long, amusing and heartfelt, it contained everything I hoped for. Sam explained why he felt weird about my moving out, how he had never had any stability in his life, and how our flat and our friendship was one of the few constants he enjoyed. He admitted that he was prone to looking back nostalgically at the ‘good old days’ when he should be looking forward to the rest of his life. And to that end, my moving out was really a good thing because it had persuaded him to take some proactive steps to squire a young junior analyst at Taylor Williams called Rosie Morris by assuming the identity of a banker called Max Anderson-Bickley… And so it continued, for several pages, to detail his recent adventures. I felt a small pang of jealousy that he was having all the fun, along with a modicum of disapproval. Most of all, I felt relieved to be back in contact with my friend.