by Jude Cook
I would later discover from Mandy, after much interrogation, that she had thrown poor Fidel against the door in a fit of rage when he had demanded his daily bowl of Chum.
A week after this unforgivable incident Mandy was back at work. She didn’t want it mentioned. It was regrettable, in the past. Her mood was up, effusive, future-facing. There had been some kind of breakthrough with the band. Privately, I didn’t hold out much hope. More than once during that strangled spring I cadged a lift to work from Mandy, as she had managed against strong odds to keep the job at Iberia. In the vexed toil of the rush hour she would tailgate cars as we took corners at fifty miles an hour, her slickly polished shoes working the pedals. Often, we would be gridlocked for tense interludes on the bleak Forest Road, during which the conversation turned to the urgent need to find somewhere else to live. Always the next thing with her. Her long straight nose twitched as she brainstormed desperate plans: benefit scams, identity theft, escort work. The stripey red and white of her uniform resembled a barber’s pole made from fabric. She announced, with unanswerable assertion, ‘You might like living in a squat with bugs and an outside toilet, but I’m not putting up with it. My dad’s a stingy bastard, but he’d be appalled to see me there. I deserve better. And that stink from next door. It’s worse than an abattoir.’
‘Okay, okay,’ I groaned, observing her patience unravel like a loose seam, ‘I’ll call Keenan on Monday. See what else he’s got.’
‘Forget about Keenan. He’s the reason we’re in this mess. Antonia reckons there’s a place just round the corner from her, on the first floor. You’re much less likely to get vermin on the first floor. I can’t stand this hole with nothing to do, and all the people looking like they live on a council estate.’
‘I thought you liked east London. Cheap and cheerful, you said,’ I muttered, watching a thin patina of disgust disfigure her features.
‘It will be okay when they finish fucking building it. Anyway, that was then, before the reality kicked in—no one comes to visit you here. They all said they would but how often have we had people over?’
I thought about the flat above the yeasty bakery, with its numerous parties, the phone always ringing. Just up the road, the shuttered, turreted houses of Highgate and Crouch End, with their milk-cheeked children growing up in an atmosphere of safety, Chopin, macrobiotic pulses and the Independent on Sunday. Yes, there was a sense of grand isolation out here, fenced off from civilisation by the Hackney marshes and the great dolorous reservoirs.
‘I was getting sick of all those people traipsing in and out.’
‘You get sick of everything, that’s your problem. I like meeting new people, new friends. Plus it’s miles away when we have to rehearse. We’ve got these big gigs coming up. It’s make or break time. And I never go out any more. You have to show your face on the scene or they forget who you are.’
If they haven’t already, I thought to myself. But I didn’t share this fear. Instead, I said, ‘But what about the money? That’s why we moved here, because we couldn’t afford to live over there.’
‘I don’t care, I’ll work all the hours I can get.’
I frowned at this statement, but directed my expression out of the window at the furious stationary drivers. It wasn’t worth the argument.
‘Okay, I’ll see if Martin can give me some overtime.’
‘That’s just pocket money,’ she sneered. ‘I want things. I want holidays, a new car, new clothes. A new life.’
‘There’s only one problem. What about the money we owe Keenan?’
‘Well,’ she snorted ostentatiously, ‘he can forget about that!’
Ah yes, the small problem of the money we owed Keenan. Close on two grand in back rent. Which we didn’t have. In fact, we were nowhere near the rent. If the rent was a famous summit and we were climbers, we wouldn’t even be in the foothills sorting out the guide and the map, we’d still be at home saving up for the plane ticket. On Mandy’s orders we had initially withheld payment until the infestation had cleared up. But that was three months ago. In the intervening time she had frittered the money that should’ve gone to Keenan, who was probably fuming about this fact at that very moment in his Bond Street boutique. This left us with no choice but to shoot the moon, owing thousands, and hope he never caught up with us. An operation that would eventually lead to us assuming different identities for large portions of the week and looking over our shoulders all the time. The date for this subterfuge had been set for the end of June, just before Keeney was due to arrive to inspect the creepy-crawlies and collect his wad.
You may have noticed, sagacious reader, that time has been zipping and speeding past at a furious rate without due reflection on a number of troubling incidents. I had been married for over a year. My wife had just thrown a living animal against a bedroom door with the intent to injure it. Why didn’t I press that the RSPCA take poor Fidel away, or at least that Mandy seek a psychiatrist? Why did I stay with her and what did we do with our time together? All difficult, intelligent questions. The first being the easiest to answer. Over the months, I had become softened, brainwashed, acclimatised to her behaviour. Not that I thought it was normal or legitimate, rather that I didn’t see such madness as strange any more. It took a while for me realise that Mandy was morally and mentally deranged: these things aren’t immediately apparent in people, they’re revealed slowly, like mercury poisoning. My major aspiration was just to get through the week intact. And also, I suppose, to retain what I thought was her love; to impress her with my diligence; to hold up my side of the marriage bargain; to prove to myself that I could pay my way and not let these incidents derail the institution of holy matrimony. Again, I found myself in the position of counsellor or social worker, gently persuading the delinquent away from its destructive behaviour with the positive example of love. Love given unconditionally. Love, the best tonic. She always managed to appeal to this capacity in me. On the rare occasions that Mandy actually went to work she came home tearful and distraught. Nevertheless, she always received the full quota of care and concern from me. My role had become that of helper, not husband. Mandy—that irksome, brawling scold—was sick, in every sense of the word. I now think she suffered from a recognised condition: ‘Histrionic Personality Disorder’. Look it up, it’s in all the textbooks. She was an invalid. And everyone suffered and sickened in her slipstream. Poor Fidel. Our vet, Mr Morris, didn’t believe for a moment that he had broken his foot chasing a randy female sheepdog in Walthamstow’s Water Park. The perceptive eyes in his square head held a grave admonishment as he inspected the whimpering Fidellino. Of course, I covered for her with a load of persuasive bullshit, just as I did when she threw the vodka glass at my face. By this time she knew I would … So part of me remained with Mandy in order to improve her, to make sure she never took out her Juno’s rage on other living creatures. A very womanly impulse. Somehow her imbalance of hormones (or even chromosomes) had feminised me, made me passive. But I had a strong desire to help her. In this I wasn’t passive. It had become an altruistic enterprise.
As to the other questions, I really don’t know what we did with our time. It just seemed to slip from us, like the leading horse in the Grand National, nosing ahead effortlessly. Our days and evenings were filled with work; endless squabbles over money; the machinations of her time-hungry band. All supposedly fruitful and purposeful activity, but looking back I just see a void. Everything seemed to get us nowhere. My time could have been more rewardingly spent lying on the couch reading, an activity that was tantamount to masturbation in Mandy’s eyes. I had to be seen to be doing something at all times. The scowl of the world when it catches you dreaming! It was enough to give you cancer, ulcers and turn your hair white. At the time I equated her with the philistine tyrants at school—those brute-force bastards who just can’t wait to give you a playground pasting, or smack a football into your head, or pour Lucozade down the back of your shirt, or fart in your face in the rugby scrum.
&n
bsp; By the time we reached the East End, an invisible barrier had been erected between us. Something obfuscatory had got a hold. Ultimately, I knew all this pointless activity was just a front, a racket to cover our lack of intimacy. Without realising it, we had stopped having sex. The frequency of our violent rows seemed to advise against this activity. After scarring each other physically and verbally, the last arena you want to get involved in is one where strong and spontaneous emotions are hard to hide. I would watch her dress in the morning, sliding her terrific legs into tights and boots, as if I were watching a movie. Her body became a statue in a museum, an unimpeachable Praxiteles, and equally untouchable. Also, it was anomalous to me that someone with such a great figure could be so non-sexual, could have so few carnal needs. Erotic love was off the menu, seemingly indefinitely. So, for a quiet life, I would assent to virtually everything she said. The cost of conflict was too much for my own interior economy. If I had won victories in the past, every one was pyrrhic or indecisive, and liable to revision by her selective memory if they ever came up in conversation.
Predictably, on the sizzling morning of our escape from east London, with the removal van waiting on the street, the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line said, ‘Ah, Byron—you’re in. Now, the rent.’
It was Keenan—timed to perfection.
‘Yes, we’ve been having a bit of—’
Mandy, with a heavy box under each arm, knifed me with a look, as if to warn against any infirmity of purpose.
‘Yes, I know you’ve had problems with little creatures, but I can’t wait any longer. I have to bank the money by Monday’
Money? What money? He meant the rent, of course. The explorers on that particular expedition had perished from frostbite months ago. I played for time: ‘Have I ever let you down before?’
He gave out a sort of strangled titter at the other end, as if somebody had their hands around his throat while simultaneously tickling him. Unfortunately, his next sentence confirmed that they didn’t. ‘Frequently, Byron. Now, to save you the trouble of coming all the way to Bond Street you’ll be happy to hear that I’m just down the road. So I thought I’d pop over.’
It was too late to deter him. As this information went around, panic broke out in the ranks. The unfortunate removal men were asked to shift an hour’s worth of packing cases in ten minutes, with me and Mandy frantically helping; our sweat sprinkling the dust-dry pavements of June. As the hulking van took us away from the East End for the last time, Fidel rubbernecking passing dogs as he sat on my lap, I thought I saw Keenan rounding the corner at the end of the road. But it was only a mirage of summer, one of many that year. A paranoid calenture. My landlord turned out to be a lumbering Nigerian in a rainbow-hued traditional shawl. I had mistaken this blazing cape-of-many-colours for one of Keenan’s waistcoats.
‘You don’t want to look inside the oven,’ Mandy said once we were across the threshold of number seventy-two Seaham Road. As this kind of imperative always invites disobedience, I immediately opened the door to the cooker. On the middle shelf of the lard-begrimed oven was a dish that contained half a meat pie, possibly chicken, but most likely steak and kidney. A pathologist could probably have told us with a degree of accuracy the cause of death and how long it had lain in situ, but we estimated three months. Too long anyway, for its rank stench caused us to hurl the windows wide and dispose of it with all the precautions reserved for clinical waste. But this wasn’t our most disheartening discovery, oh no. On top of one of the high kitchen cabinets were two aerosol canisters: one of air freshener, the other the strongest insect repellent you can buy over the counter. Sure enough, the wretched flat had cockroaches. Not a Teutonic infestation, but a population of the startlingly large and shiny brutes that look and move like tropical beetles. This time, Mandy took charge and phoned Antonia at Acquisition.
‘They’re as big as mice. I can’t believe you didn’t warn me about this.’
Ah, the irony of it all was finally making me smile. I wasn’t sure that I didn’t quite like cockroaches by this stage. They were, after all, just another of God’s creatures. I could hear Antonia’s golden public-schoolgirl voice at the end of the line—croaky, enunciated, blind to ridicule. As I watched the window to see if Keenan had followed us, I idly pondered whether I would get bored of breasts as big as Antonia’s if I had married her instead of Mandy. I turned and surveyed the empty echoing rooms of the new place—just four walls and a ceiling again, not a home. And there was my wife, that master of living well on nothing a year, standing in the middle of it, her long glossy mane absorbing the sun, directing operations once more with her silver baton.
‘Darling,’ the muffled voice rasped, ‘don’t panic. I’ll send my father round this weekend to advise.’
Antonia’s father ran a big farm out in Suffolk. He would know the practical measures that should be taken in such a situation. Infestations were his bread and butter. I suddenly felt a deficit of male know-how. Surely, as a husband, I should be the one exterminating vermin and putting up shelves. Not for the first time, I felt complicit in my own emasculation. Christ, outdone by the father of your wife’s best friend! With Mandy as circus master, as per usual. If I had possessed hair to cut off, this Delilah would have exercised the shears. Being a constant passenger in Mandy’s car (literally and metaphorically) didn’t help either, nor did the fact that she seemed to organise everything with her extravagant energies. Why didn’t I learn to drive and take the helm in these masculine matters? These were pressing questions at the time. I suppose the answer was that I was too involved in my own inner life, and its metaphysical demands. The need to respond to life by the perverse and non-remunerative act of writing poetry. Post-pamphlet, I had been hit by a writer’s block that was threatening to be terminal. But these were not legitimate ways, in Mandy s eyes, to spend one’s time. If I did write in those days, it would necessitate creeping from our futon in the small hours and settling myself by the small, cat-shaped table lamp, where I could allow my thoughts to soar and fly. I would never reveal in the morning what I had been up to all night. This was another iron curtain to any intimacy that might have feebly arisen between us. I had my own world of inner concerns, of wrestling with strong mental opponents like the existence of a deity or the possibility of an afterlife, whereas Mandy s world was all outward engagement. And boy, did she engage. In our first month at Seaham Road, she sold the Peugeot and bought a vintage Triumph Stag from the dealership round the corner. The fact that the oily-vested mechanics delighted in her flirtatious and slinkily dressed presence had nothing to do with the massive discount she received, or so she insisted. Other mad profligate escapades saw her acquire a laptop, a new mobile and the complete recordings of Paco de Lucia in a lavish boxset. All in the space of a weekend. Who tabbed all this? Ramona’s bequest, mainly. I knew she felt a rich sense of entitlement about these purchases. It was her money, after all, she argued. The wisdom that it’s never your own money in a marriage was dismissed with a curl of her Catalan lips. We immediately fell behind with the rent. A pink Fender Stratocaster was purchased in anticipation of the big showcase gig at The Dome pencilled in for the end of September, for which Fellatrix were vigorously rehearsing, seemingly day and night. I, meanwhile, plodded on with my midnight metaphysical ministries and barren days in Martin’s shop.
The gig didn’t go well, to say the least. Fellatrix were headlining, though you wouldn’t have guessed by the numbers in attendance. I stood at the back of the half-empty venue watching executive after executive head for the exit. The guitars were out of tune. Mandy looked nervous but defiant behind the big pink Stratocaster. A lone plastic glass smacked into the drum kit as the last chord rang out. Tears appeared in Mandy’s darkening eyes as she hurled the Strat into her amp and stormed off the stage. If a week is a long time in politics, a year is an ice age in the music business. Nobody was interested: the band were, if not checkmated then zugzwanged, washed up, finished. Nervously, I headed backstage. I found
Mandy in conference with the sly and unshaven figure of Victor Moore, one of the few people on the guestlist who had demeaned themselves by showing up.
‘Told you she was a fickle mistress,’ I heard Victor drawl, on nearing Mandy. ‘You should change your name. Write a new set of songs. And sack that drummer—my daughter keeps better time on the saucepans in our kitchen.’
‘I don’t care about your daughter,’ said Mandy, brushing her tears away fiercely with her sleeve.
‘That’s just a random example,’ added Victor with a self-satisfied air, his cunning eyes doing a once-over of the dressing room for any signs of coke.
‘I thought you liked the songs!’ Mandy said imploringly.
I took this criticism of Victor’s to heart, as I had sweated blood in writing all the lyrics.
‘Yeah, well,’ he muttered, and stared at his big, practical Caterpillar orienteering boots.
‘Anyway,’ countered Mandy, high malice in her voice, ‘what do you know about music? You’re just a plugger. And why should we change the name just to satisfy those idiots who walked out? I thought you liked the name.’
‘But it’s past its sell-by date! If you’re not careful you’re gonna have that loser dust all over your shoulders,’ smirked Victor. ‘It’s deadly dandruff.’
Mandy could take it no more. She stood up and pushed Victor out of the way.
‘Fuck you, weasel,’ she hissed.
I felt immediate admiration for this outrageous act of defiance. Go, girl! But it was obviously suicidal. Victor held his hands up in surrender, a grin on his face. He didn’t care that much anyway. He had another three bands to check out that night, all with guitarists less volatile than Mandy. He wouldn’t have to exercise his power of making Fellatrix music-business pariahs—they had performed that task themselves, by hanging around for too long, by being generally surplus to requirements, by telling a well-known industry professional to fuck himself. They were off the radar, dead in the water, shut down for good, banished for ever from the vanity fair of the London scene. Mandy would take a while to digest this information, weeks and months in fact. But the damage had been done. I tentatively went to put an arm round her shaking shoulders.