Byron Easy

by Jude Cook

  ‘It is now. I used to share the cupboard next door with my boyfriend until my breakdown.’

  I let this sudden, significant revelation of her mental precarious-ness (so casually introduced) pass while attempting to digest the agoraphobic dimensions of her room.

  It’s not often in London one sees rented accommodation, or a single room, that has any sense of perspective, but this candle-softened pad (no other word for it) almost had a vanishing point. To my right was a limo-length sofa counterpaned in ebony fleece fur. Then there were the spanned orange walls, teeming with posters, framed rock stars, flyers and a Polaroid-thicketed noticeboard. To my left were racks of clothes, books and rare vinyl. As my eyes acclimatised to the scarce light, I suddenly noticed the crouched figure of a man by one of the three open sash windows, the black apertures of which were letting in the exquisite June night air. He was holding a paintbrush.

  Christ, I thought. She’s brought me back for an orgy.

  ‘Byron, this is Steve,’ said Mandy, turning on me with a corkscrew.

  Steve cocked his head towards me, and my gaze met his booze-destroyed eyes.

  ‘Easy, mate,’ said the man, in a bass voice.

  ‘All right.’

  Steve assessed me for a moment, sitting erect, like a bull mastiff in a painting smock. Then he spoke.

  ‘Byron. What kind of name is that for a bloke?’

  For this, I didn’t have an answer. I never did. I had always thought the predictable and dreaded enquiry over my ludicrous name had no defendable riposte.

  ‘Shut up, Steve. I think it’s a fab name. Anyway, I thought I told you to have this done by the time I’d finished rehearsal.’

  ‘Sorry,’ growled Steve, plopping his brush into a jar of turps. ‘You’re the boss.’ He raised himself to his full height of five foot six and shouldered past me, his transit having that unmistakable masculine tang of staked territory, proffered violence. ‘Gloss takes a fucking aeon. You know that.’

  Once Steve had disappeared through the doorway, candle flames trembling in his wake, the whole room seemed to relax tangibly.

  ‘Sorry about Steve. He’s one of my tenants.’

  ‘You’ve got tenants?’ I asked, overstressing my surprise, as I attempted to reclaim some lost masculinity by virtually smashing the cork out of a bottle of red wine.

  ‘Oh, yeah. I’m the landlady here. That’s how I got the biggest room. He’s a total nutter, Steve. I’ll have to go down in half an hour to put out his fag and turn off the telly. He always falls asleep pissed out of his mind. He’s a brickie; got loads of cash—see that?’ She pointed to a dinnerplate-sized gash in the plasterwork of the far wall. ‘He did that with a baseball bat when he thought Matt was getting out of hand with me. He’s very protective. Heart’s in the right place …’

  ‘Who’s Matt?’

  ‘Another tenant. The other bloke who lives here. A total hippy—wouldn’t harm a fly, but try telling Steve that.’

  ‘They weren’t fighting over you, were they?’

  ‘No, not over me. Over the microwave. Matt was using it when I wanted to. And to Steve that deserved a smack.’

  ‘Very protective, then?’

  ‘Yeah, and very drunk, though he’s great at disguising it.’

  ‘So, er, who else lives here?’

  ‘Harriet. Thinks she’s a photographer. Almost twenty-one and still a virgin. She told me blokes have got it in, but not up, if you see what I mean. Says she gets tense …’ At this point I realised there was something profoundly wrong about Mandy. Something that didn’t add up. Full of innuendos, but very definitely not a sexual woman. Bursting with banalities, but very certainly possessed of a resourceful cunning. I would have to watch my step. She continued on the subject of Harriet, all the while monitoring my reaction. ‘… I thought she was stuck-up at first ’cause her dads this journalist on the Independent, but she’s sound. In fact …’ Mandy suddenly patted a space on the limo-sofa, indicating that I should sit next to her; I grimly complied, bearing the heavy bottle and two glasses, ‘… he’s gonna help the band out. Write our first piece of journalage.’

  ‘You mean journalism.’

  ‘No,’ and she fixed me with the twin infernos of her stunning eyes. ‘I mean journalage.’

  Easy does it, I found myself thinking. This is someone who always, even when they conclusively know they’re not, has to be right. Every time. Over the next three hours, as the empty bottles of gut-rot red queued up on her chaotic coffee table, I learnt about the terrible privations of her Windsor boarding school (tabbed by her flash dad), her phenomenally spoilt single-child upbringing in some leafy cul-de-sac (conducted by Granny Monsterrat and Aunt Leocadia), her aloof father’s maniacal passion for DIY over parental duty, and her drift towards ever more villainous and violent boyfriends culminating in a schizophrenic drug-dealer now doing time for ABH (the stolen credit card sprees down the King’s Road in a hotwired four-wheel-drive; the orgies of house-breaking).This was followed by the tale of her three-year relationship with a self-pitying madman, climaxing in her eventual breakdown and emergence as the Future of Rock ’n’ Roll.

  Meanwhile, she (when I could get an epithet in edgeways) learnt about my estranged father; Delph and my mother; my ‘stalled’ literary career; my current diffident yet perplexing girlfriend, Bea; the years of heating my room by taping Bacofoil to the wall behind the electric ring of the cooker (still ongoing) and my current emergence into someone who was very eager to sleep with her indeed. That very night, if at all possible.

  It was then that I noticed something, two things, on the sturdy Victorian mantelpiece that dominated the nearest wall: a pair of gilt-framed black-and-white prints on either side of an arch-shaped mirror. A sombre diptych. Not sepia photographs, but 1950s glossies. Hard to make out much detail, the light in Mandy’s room being a relentless, subterranean amber that made you feel as if you were in a cave, straining to make out Palaeolithic daubings. In each frame smiled a Mediterranean-looking woman, with grey flourishes streaking a Steinway-black cascade of hanks and tresses. Both head-shots had strongly memorable features—so reminiscent that I thought they must be of someone famous: Eva Peron or Maria Callas perhaps, though they appeared to be family portraits. I was studying them so hard that I forgot the hot proximity of the girl at my side, talking away to the deaf ear of my averted profile. Then I realised who the subject of the photos was. It was Mandy.

  ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ I interrupted suddenly, pointing to the mantelpiece. Mandy followed my nicotine-jaded forefinger.

  ‘No! That’s my mother, Ramona. I wish it was me,’ said Mandy, beaming. I made eye contact with a younger, infinitely altered, yet morbidly similar version of Ramona. ‘She died when I was sixteen … in a car crash. Everybody loved her.’

  ‘You look more like—like sisters.’

  ‘Ah, she would’ve loved you.’

  At that instant the door swung open and there stood Steve: ruffled, grossly panting; a gaseous nimbus of seventy-per-cent-proof air in front of his puckered mouth.

  ‘Ron. I need your help, mate. Gotta shift something.’ Mandy went to stand up. Steve held out a trembling, admonitory hand. ‘Nah, it’s a man’s job. Needs a strong pair of mitts.’

  ‘Steve, it’s three in the fucking morning. And it’s Byron, not Ron.’

  You had to hand it to her: she had authority, as well as glamour, energy and great legs. Although I could have done without the emasculation of her correcting Steve on my behalf for the second time that evening.

  ‘Whatever,’ mumbled Steve.

  I met Mandy’s eyes with a kind of mute desperation.

  ‘Go on, then,’ she sighed, exhaling a rich plume of cigarette smoke into the summer night. I followed the sweating rhinoceros of Steve’s back through the open doorway. Then her voice: ‘But don’t tire him out. He’ll need all the strength he’s got.’

  With this shocking statement jangling in my ears like a fire alarm, I accompanied Steve to the la
ir-like opening of his pauperised room. Suddenly he turned. I saw at once how evolution had beautifully developed the short man to give him the optimum height and range for delivering a headbutt.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said Steve, as I ingested, with the torrent of his breath, what amounted to a virtual short, a whisky chaser. ‘I like you, Ron. I’m a good judge of a geezer’s character. But I’ve become very—how shall we say—protective of Mandy over the last few months. She’s a sweet girl. Sweet girl.’

  ‘You’re not wrong there, Steve,’ I said, as neutrally as my temple-throbbing fear would allow.

  ‘A lot of people like her a lot. A great many chase after her. Fuck—’ And he nudged me with the freckled haunch of pork that was his right arm. ‘Sometimes it seems like half of north London is trying to get into her knickers. Know what I mean?’

  He was smiling now, his very blue, very drunk eyes flecked with light. But still he seemed to be occupying the entire corridor, his bulked obduracy like an invitation to do or say the wrong thing; his leer full of pre-emptory menace.

  ‘Last week she got alcohol poisoning. Spent the whole day in bed, me bringing her little soups and things—her chocolates of choice. That’s what friends are for, ain’t it, Ron?’

  ‘She speaks very highly of you, Steve,’ I said, with an increasingly strangulated cadence as I reached his name. He clapped me on the shoulders, abruptly and without warning. I jumped, and realised that I had been expecting his forehead to be the first part of his anatomy to make contact with mine.

  ‘You do right by her, mate, and you do right by me, ’kay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Take good care of her. She’s a fucking diamond.’ I turned to go but a blood-curdling shout stopped me dead: ‘Oi!’

  This is where it gets nasty, I thought. This is where I start a long and unhappy intimacy with X-rays and hospital radio. When I turned around, Steve wasn’t even looking at me. He was fixated on the floor with full sadness, as if he had been trepanned by some terrible insight into life’s futility, or merely alcoholically winded. There was a long edgy silence. He left such a lengthy pause after his barked imperative that I assumed the sad piss-artist had forgotten what he wanted to say. Then his aqua eyes found mine.

  ‘I haven’t finished speaking yet.’

  ‘Sorry, I thought—’

  ‘Shut it,’ said Steve; though now in a ridiculously high and gentle voice.

  ‘Was there something you wanted me to lift?’

  ‘Nah, nah, nah.’ Then he paused. ‘Ron?’

  ‘Yes, Steve?’

  ‘Do you want to listen to my new CD? I bought it today. It’s fucking amazing.’

  So, there was nothing for it but to listen to Steve’s Fucking Amazing heavy-metal CD at window-splintering volume, while Mandy, alone upstairs, was probably wondering if I’d gone home—or maybe even died. Eventually I escaped, my jaw aching after having to feign an appreciative smile for so many stomach-convulsing minutes. I re-entered her room, like a haggard veteran of Korea, Vietnam and at least two Pacific campaigns.

  But her room was in darkness. Groping my way for the light switch, I softly eased her door to; trying to conceal, with gulps of alcohol-free air, my bilious rage. A vivifying smell of fresh paint started to make my head spin. I found the switch. Then I saw that the big room was empty. About to leave and search for her downstairs, I heard a voice.

  ‘I’m here.’

  I squinted into the distant corner that contained the low, flat play-pen of her futon. There was a person-shaped bulge under a colourful Latina bedspread, at the end of which were Mandy’s pyjama-shrouded shoulders and serene face; her eyes intently closed. Without opening them, she said, ‘You can get in if you want. It’s cold with the windows up.’

  I needed—in the phrase so beloved of cheap (usually British) pornography—no further encouragement.

  ‘Tickets please!’

  Ugh. The whoosh of the smoked-glass door announces the stout inspector. He cranes over the huddled passengers in his brisk, speechless interrogation. The cord of the past is broken. I must engage with the present. Oh, Mandy! How sweet a proposition you seemed before you disgraced the ring you wore.

  Still pissed, I fumble for the documents as the inspector approaches. The man seems to have been born in his nasty navy British Rail suit. I sometimes wonder about the wearers of uniforms, or rather, about the identities beneath the uniforms. How do these individuals appear so happy to be housed in the pressed serge, the crisp white collars? How do they contentedly button themselves up virtually every day of their lives? These actors, these dissemblers! I would feel as if I were wearing a giant conspicuous clown outfit. The man bends over the adjacent seat, though manages to keep me in the corner of his eye for the duration of his brisk ritual. How do officials of all types manage this feat? And why do I always feel a surge of guilt and sickness in the moments before my ticket is scanned? A memory of childhood transgression, of authority evasion? No, I only ever skanked the fare twice when I was sixteen, and on both occasions I felt calmer than I do now. It must be the deep sense that I am not entitled to share the carriage with my fellow passengers, my fellow homo sapiens. That they have more right to this warm seat than I. Or maybe it’s consciousness-guilt; a fear that every straight-talking, straight-backed citizen can read my corroded thoughts, and is scandalised by their perversity, their lack of engagement with the present. A panic descends on me, an intimation that everyone in the vicinity has been sharing that breeze-fragrant June night I spent with Mandy.

  The inspector takes my ticket from its wallet, a wary look on his fringed face. He scrutinises it for a long moment. I feel all the tension of the double agent at the border crossing. Then he hands it back with an intimate waft of some hideous scent. What is it about Christmas and bad scent? Surely there’s enough opportunity to wear it after the twenty-fifth. Aniseed? Bad lemons? I hold my breath for a full ten seconds, then let out a grateful sigh.

  Outside, I can see the dripping hedgerows of deep midwinter under vapour-heavy air. A ploughed field, brown as a chocolate cake, tears past. In it stand pylons, like cowboys on the draw, huge and distinct in the rolling dusk. Above them the sky seems drained of light, of the very property itself; dismal, defeated. Heavy with last days, last things. In the near distance the soil is a weltering sponge, at capacity. Soaked, bogged, downpour-logged, exuding steamy emanations at the very deadest hour of the year.

  The very antithesis of that night in June, in fact. The following morning I awoke to sunshine exploding in fierce pellucid patterns on her orange walls. That big room: even more surprising in daylight. The surly weight of three tomcats, curled upon the radiator of my chest, heaved up and down with my breathing. I was aware that the slightest movement might tip me from the hard mattress into the narrow gap between the bedframe and the skirting board, as Mandy was occupying ninety-five per cent of the space, arms splayed like a starfish. Cramped and confined as I was, I enjoyed the slow, man-of-the-world, you-old-devil crinkly smile that always appears on one’s face after ratcheting up another conquest.

  Except that I hadn’t ratcheted up anything.

  We had spent the whole night talking, interrupted only by hysterical police sirens on the Holloway Road below. When the blackness framed in the big sash windows had begun to alter imperceptibly into the rich holy-blue of dawn, she had produced tarot cards. The Death card had made repeated appearances in my readings, but she assured me it only signified change. Smart girl. Lately I had been doing much thinking on what constituted intelligence. Mandy, with her direct soft brown eyes certainly seemed to sparkle, but she didn’t have what you could call any formal learning. She was quick, adaptable, resourceful, practical. She knew how to get by in certain company But the autodidact is always aware of knowledge as a commodity. How much have you got? How much did it cost to obtain? Put Mandy in a discussion on, say, existentialism, or ask her who Clement Attlee was and she would be at sea. She may try to bluff it with her substantial char
m, but that’s no substitute for knowing what people are talking about. In many ways her candour provided her legitimacy. In a similar fashion, Martin got through life with only the knowledge of electronics and the family trees of rock bands. But did this make him unintelligent? It was, at that time, a hard quality for me to gauge. It had nothing to do with Mensa or heavy-reading. It had more to do with how knowledge impacted on the psyche. My conclusion was, the more you knew, the more complicated it was to act. When thinking about the future, the questioning mind hits the wall of determinism versus free will before anything else. To the unquestioning mind, everything is que sera. For Mandy, everything about her future was graspable, readable. Everything about her past mental instability regrettable but unavoidable. As she shuffled the deck and then merged the two bricks of cards with an expert thrum, I could see lines of strain on her thorax; visible stress from the effort of independence, from being motherless. I could see she wanted us to merge somehow, but not on a deeper level. She was sizing me up. Her brashness concealed a core of people-fear. She certainly didn’t have any notions of taking her clothes off. Although at one point I suggested we formulate a game of strip tarot, an idea that was deliciously refused as I gazed into the liquidity of her Catalan eyes.

  I later learnt that most of Mandy’s friends, male and female, had received the talking-and-tarot-card treatment. With the men, it was her way of neutralising them, of allowing intimacy only up to an invisible, heavily armed perimeter fence. This accounted for her considerable reputation as a cock-tease among the aviator-shaded predators of London’s club scene; and as sexually strange among the women.

  The smell of yeasty cooking from the bakery below and the summer pollen breezing through the big windows gave me the impetus to make a quick exit. I left as rapidly as I could; unshaven, wine-tongued, with outpatient hair, onto the hot tarmac of the Holloway Road. As I made a list of objects I’d accidentally left behind in my haste to leave (and my even greater haste not to encounter Steve on his way to whatever chimp-house of a building site he worked on), guilt, confusion, and shabby regret vied for prominence in the polluted traffic of my emotional bloodstream. What was I doing in this woman’s bed all night when I had Bea to soothe my mortal brow? I counted four things missing: wrist-watch, diary, jacket and cigarette lighter.