Byron Easy

by Jude Cook

  ‘I adore her.’

  ‘That’s not the same as being in love.’

  ‘Well, that’s the best she’s getting.’

  ‘How is she anyway?’

  Nick looked wary, before saying, ‘She started talking to Mandy again.’

  ‘I thought they already were—talking, that is.’ A sharp pain was again present in my heart. It seemed I heard about my wife’s life third-hand now. Maybe I should get used to it—used to the general conspiracy. I had been disappeared from everyone’s life, like an Argentine dissident. ‘I mean—they went on holiday together to Italy. Women can’t do that without talking.’

  ‘I know, but Antonia was still keeping Mandy at arms length. They were best friends once.’

  ‘How can I forget?’

  ‘I thought you may like to know a cheering bit of trivia.’ Nick leant forward again. ‘Do you remember that dog you and Mandy had? The first one? The smooth-coated chihuahua?’

  ‘Concepcion?’ Trust dog-mad Antonia to keep track of Mandy s mutts. ‘Yeah. We sold her to a loony granny up in Hampstead who lived in, like, a turreted castle.’

  ‘Well, the other week Antonia announces she wants a pedigree dog. Not content with the fact that her father’s farm is swarming with them, she insists she has to have one that very day. Hormonal, of course. One minutes it’s M&Ms by the bucketload, then Angel Delight, now pedigree dogs. So she carts her bulk over to Hampstead and finds this mad old woman wanting to sell three smooth-coated chihuahuas.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, the mother was called Concepcion.’

  ‘Dead right. And she apparently had these puppies just after you sold the little terror to her.’

  ‘But we were told she couldn’t give birth. That it would kill her …’

  ‘Well, she was a freak of nature. So that means the father must be—’

  ‘Fidel!’ I said, and felt a hot pain well up in me. Dangerously unstable, sensitive as a thermometer, over the past few days the slightest things had forced tears into my eyes. A chipped cup. A certain song. The look of the towering chestnut tree out back fencing with the wind.

  Nick sat back smiling, as if a valve had opened and pressure had been let out from his neck. I would miss Fidel terribly, that I knew. Pride, nevertheless, for his paternity, after we had done so much to obstruct it, swelled inside me. Then a sadness that Fidel would never get to see his children. In the end, he would be just another absent father. I fought back the strong impulse to weep and said, ‘So is that it then? The purpose of this meeting? I thought you had something important to tell me.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ A strange squint in Nick’s eyes told me the game was up now.

  ‘What, then?’

  He took a deep breath and said, ‘When did you last see your friend Rudi?’

  The subject of Rudi very rarely came up with Nick. They had disliked each other intensely from the word go. Nick thought the Scots wheeler-dealer a barbarian and Rudi, in turn, had Nick down as snooty poseur. I said, ‘The other night. No, last night. Why?’

  ‘Did you know that Rudi fucked Antonia?’

  Stunned, I said, ‘Jesus. No. When?’

  ‘A couple of years ago. He came round to fix her car and I found them hard at it on the back seat.’

  I started to tremble nauseously at this revelation. My jogging top felt wet with sweat, as if I had just completed a half-marathon. I knew Rudi was always leching after Nick’s girlfriend, but he did that with every woman. To see him in action was a marvel: he had to be the most sexually successful male on the street at any given time. Argus-eyed Rudi—out shopping with his latest squeeze, but still checking out every piece of tail on the pavement: white, black, oriental, pubescent, menopausal. Rudi with his philanderer’s toolkit: toothbrush, condoms, deodorant, A—Z, importuning sexual stare. And he always said Antonia was the ultimate: stacked, petite, and young, too. But there was a paradox here. Because, though seemingly an equal-opportunities skirt-chaser, when it came to close liaisons, any woman past twenty-five was a write-off in his universe. According to him, once they started to wither on the vine they turned into neurotic old biddies—or became less malleable, depending on how you viewed it.

  For a moment I thought this might all have been a big fib on Antonia’s part to keep Nick interested, then I remembered he had had the ocular proof. I stammered, ‘What did—how did you react?’

  ‘I offered him out, of course. You must remember that black eye he had. It gave me great pleasure to see it lasted for almost three months.’

  ‘He told me that was from a ruck outside a boozer.’

  Nick said sniffily, ‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he.’ He preened himself on the creaking wooden chair. I suddenly admired him for doing what any man automatically should under the circumstances. Men had evolved strangely. Clubs at sunset had probably metamorphosed into pistols at dawn, and so on into mere words wielded by generations of passive eunuchs. Or was that just me?

  ‘I’m stunned.’ Then a horrible thought crossed my mind. ‘The baby. Antonia’s—your—child? You don’t think it’s …?’

  ‘Not a chance. She swore blind. And just to be sure, I’ve booked the DNA test.’

  ‘Rudi Buckle! The slimy jock bastard!’

  Nick cleared his throat and said, ‘Fancy another?’ I looked down at my glass. Without realising, I had finished my whisky. Then he added, ominously: ‘You’re going to need it.’

  Moments later another triple Bell’s and a Guinness were on the table. Nick’s sensitive eyes caught the low pub lighting as he said, ‘That’s not the worst of it.’

  ‘Well, that’s pretty bad.’

  ‘Remember when we came here that time after the market?’

  ‘Yeah. The good old bad old days.’

  ‘And the football came on. Man U versus Bayern Munich in the final?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Well I was about to tell you something, but unfortunately that contest was too good to miss.’

  This was typical of Nick. No sense of proportion whatsoever. I scratched my stubbly chin and took a sip of fire water. On an empty stomach it was already making my head spin.

  ‘Well, the season’s over. Feel free to fire away’

  Nick looked grave, as grave as I had ever seen him as he said: ‘Rudi fucked Mandy too.’ I went to open my mouth but no sound came out. Instead I swallowed back a mouthful of vomit combined with the finest Scotch whisky. Shaking his head in that mock-weary way of his, Nick continued, ‘And not just the once—he still is.’

  I was never cut out to be a philanderer. I knew this for a fact when I was fifteen. Conclusive proof came when Rhianna, my first sweetheart, took me to the youth-club disco one Friday night. There, under the eternal mirror balls, her best friend Monica slipped her phone number into my pocket, with the urgent message ‘Call me—your Lordship’ written under it in a girlish hand. When I examined it later, with my heart racing at an accelerating rate of knots, I noted that the biro ‘i’ of Monica bore a love heart instead of a dot. This almost caused me to ejaculate on the spot. The truth was, Monica had been giving me the eye for months. She never missed an opportunity to gently touch my arm or giggle flirtatiously in my presence at parties. Nubile, slim-waisted and fond of suede miniskirts, I can see Monica now playing havoc with marriages as she slips her mobile number into the pockets of her girlfriends’ husbands at sophisticated dinner parties; a lipsticked kiss under her name, the same love heart over the ‘i.’ A singular man-stealer and goer. I spent the following weekend in a riot of testosterone-driven panic. Monica filled my dreams like the archetypal erotic enchantress: Salome, Carmen and Clara Bow rolled into one. Then, finally, on the Sunday night, I flushed the number down the toilet. Why? Because I loved Rhianna. I thought we were going to get married and live in the country with dogs and books while she raised my heir. She would get fat (or fatter), but I would be faithful. This is the first mistake that a would-be philanderer can make. To be troubled by your conscience virtually
counts you out from the off. The seasoned womaniser or girl-gourmet knows that whoever he is going out with or married to will either never find out, or if she does, will suddenly agree on the spot to an open relationship just to keep him. This is the first rule of the roué: never let anything so unfashionable as morality bother you. For a split-second. Wait too long and someone else might be in there, yanking off that suede skirt with his teeth.

  The second rule is: never pass up an opportunity. Life is short, shorter than any of us realise, and no one wants to be sitting there at eighty, like Betjeman in the wheelchair, tartan travel rug over his legs, moaning that he didn’t have enough sex. The professional philanderer or crumpeteer knows the world is full of women and will set about them systematically, if not alphabetically, then at least geographically by country of origin. When I was contemplating marriage with Mandy, I thought with real regret about all the sex I would never have, that I was disqualifying myself from by promising fidelity. The raunchy afternoon encounter with the unmarried mother of two (the dressing-gowned greeting, the unbelievably professional fellatio); the pneumatic sugar with her voluminous folds and dusky aroma; the trapeze-artist Chinese with her versatile waist and flower-like hands (who will walk on your back and crack your bones); the ice-maiden Swede with legs as long as the Baltic channel; the three-in-a-bed romp with two pierced punkettes met down the Electric Ballroom on a cider binge; the businesswoman in her night-black stockings bent over the hotel mini-bar; the Jacuzzi encounter with a notorious dollybird or Page Three regular; the identical twins who both resemble Farrah Fawcett Majors in her goddess period; the willing cheerleader; the five-grand-a-night hooker; the girl next door; the nymphomaniac dominatrix; the list of platonic girlfriends as long as your arm; the schoolgirl; the slut; the Vestal Virgin.

  None of the above, atrocious reader, I reflected, would I ever get near. The philanderer, on the other hand, wouldn’t see marriage as an obstacle—he would see it as cover. And that highlights another handicap, another reason why I would never make it as a practised tail-chasing skirt-merchant: I am the world’s worst liar. My overly candid eyes, too impercipient for a man of thirty, have a habit of dilating and announcing, look at me, I’m lying to you very badly. My inept mendacities would land me in the divorce court within hours of any forbidden encounter.

  Lastly, and most importantly, I wouldn’t be able to stand the strain on the soul. As much as the hyperactive running around town, the jellied legs, the struggle to remember so many female names is exhausting, the stress on the soul is greater. The inner emptiness, the animal cunning, the sheer fraudulence required to be a top-notch screwer of women (an Alfie or a Mark Antony—pick your model) would send me to the loony bin. Byron Easy: poet and failed womaniser. Mad, sad and not very dangerous to know.

  None of these scruples, however, troubled my dear friend Rudi one whit. Honest, honest Rudi. According to Nick, it turned out he had been balling my missus behind my back, virtually from day one … It fills me with relief to get this off my chest, to lay my palms flat on the Formica before you, reader. It may go some way to explain my behaviour, or the strange mental areas I was leading you into. The special trouble I referred to earlier. Maybe this will elucidate my pathological anger. If there’s any divine justice Rudi will end up in the Ninth Circle, with all the other prolific betrayers, with Brutus and Judas. But the world as it is tonight tells me there is no justice. I’m not making excuses for myself, don’t get me wrong. I’m just relating the facts as they are, in reality. It wasn’t such a mystery after all. Because it all adds up. Only a blind man would not have noticed it. But then, many things just recently have confirmed me to be partially sighted at the very least. The frequency with which the Scottish carouser of Kentish Town was getting away with it was spellbinding. I should be issued with a guide dog! That ubiquitous Sir Smile! His stocky presence in my kitchen when I came home unexpectedly, the secret late-night calls by Mandy, her frequent disappearances from the market stall with Rudi to ‘talk business’, and, more recently, more flagrantly (and my heart boils to recall it), the way he insisted he keep the honeymoon underwear that Mandy returned. You guessed it. It wasn’t for Suki, the poetry-mad gangster’s moll. It was for my lawfully wedded wife.

  When Nick told me all this in the Regent I blacked out. Five minutes later, covered in whisky and spittle, a mad dog on a chain, I was forcibly restrained by the three Irish pub hardmen who lurked by the pool table. ‘I’ll cut them to pieces!’ I howled, as Nick helped by getting me in a headlock. ‘The fucking both of them!’

  But I didn’t, in the end, want to be seen as one who loved unwisely.

  The train is thundering, hurtling, plummeting to its destination … an arrow in the night. The blue gardens of Leeds are splashed with moonlight. In the distance is the vast, humming, orange glow of the urban conurbation. Cold, impersonal as a circuit board. It won’t be long now … Not long till I meet my mother; not long till we all hear the dreadful twelve gongs of Big Ben that signal the end of a millennium. No, the end is close to being achieved.

  It all seems pretty obvious now. Like my father before me, I had been royally cuckolded. There was a sweet symmetry to it all; an ordered sense of proportion and rightful return that I found almost soothing. Like father, like son—and I formerly thought we had so little in common. Sobering to finally find out where you stand in the majestic roll call of men, of history. All great men have been heroes, conquerors and cuckolds in their time, or so spake the great poet. I was the drunken patsy, the motley-wearing fool jeered at by the court when he believes he’s making them laugh. Nick had known for almost two years. I wonder how many other things he had withheld from me. Thanks, friend. I won’t bother talking to you again. What to do with Rudi, though? That was the question I struggled with for three long weeks. During which time I saw him almost every night. That was a test, as you may imagine. Maybe I’m stronger than I give myself credit for. I didn’t act immediately, of course, that would have been hasty. But instead of writing an ottava rima on the weekend’s events—my usual instinct—I began to make fiendish plans in earnest. I wanted to cook up something special for both of them, those two actors, those Oscar-winners. Something Biblical, something Shakespearean. I also needed to broil in my own goulash of self-reproach for a while.

  It wasn’t until last night that I cracked it. Last night, the twenty third of December—the day after my wedding anniversary of course, with delicious apposition—I paid a visit on my old friend Rudi Buckle.

  He had been expecting me. The hefty-shouldered Scot ushered me in, then automatically went to undo the latch of his patio doors at the far end of his bachelor lair. This was a Pavlovian reaction to the cigarette I always sparked on arrival. His movements were slow, solid, plausible as ever. The picture of innocence, I thought!

  ‘That’s all right,’ I shouted to him, aware that my voice was as chilly as the night air. ‘I gave up, remember.’

  Rudi stopped in mid-movement and pulled the door back. He surveyed me curiously, suspiciously. Our long acquaintance informed us both instantly when something was up with the other. We could sit in silence for half an hour at a time and not feel the imperative to speak, or say a single sentence and convey something was amiss. I didn’t want the latter. I wanted to play him along for a little while. To wade up to my neck in the sewer of shit one more time. I smiled, and he smiled back.

  ‘What can I get you, big man?’ He was wearing his customary red shirt, with an undergrowth of eager chest hair escaping uncontrollably from the collar. His large, white, fleshy hands looked warm and pillow-soft, the nails bitten. The bangs of his hair, now grown long to his shoulders, flopped like oily fronds onto his shirt. His black eyes glowed under his strong brows, garrulous and arrogant, the whites yellowish, off-colour.

  ‘A beer. No, make that champagne.’ I knew his fridge always held champagne, and I knew he wouldn’t refuse.

  ‘You all right, spunker?’ he asked in his tactful Scottish voice, and took a step toward
s me as if to assess me better. I felt the maleness of the moment. Two stags in a clearing. ‘What’s there to celebrate?’

  Throwing my coat down on the scuffed brown leather sofa, I said, ‘You’ll find out, by and by.’

  ‘I’m fascinated. Champagne it is then.’ Seemingly placated, he disappeared to the ceiling-high fridge behind the breakfast bar. I looked around the room and tried to not to think, as I had done for the past three weeks, of all the places he and Mandy might have made love, or fucked, as you would more accurately term it. The unusual, or non-obvious surfaces: the tumble-drier, the step-ladder. The positions they used. The things he said. The noises she made. The luxurious rug before the fire bore no evidence, no used condoms, no telltale ruffles. Why would it? Neither did the big armchair, the kitchen table or the dark aperture to the bedroom scream their secrets at me. The framed prints of world-class tastelessness on the wall kept their counsel: silent, vigilant, neutral. A fire burnt in the grate as usual: aureate, like whisky held up to the light.

  He returned with the heavy bottle of bubbly and sat down on the sofa opposite, still a little wary. His guilty eyes (and oh how guilty they now seemed to me, as guilty as a little boy’s who had transgressed against paternal authority!) evaluated my posture, which was tense, crabbed, ready for anything.

  ‘Relax, pal. It’s Christmas in a couple of days. The time for goodwill to all men.’

  The cork popped, and vapour rose from the dark gun barrel of the bottle. An arid ejaculation.

  Flatly, I said, ‘How’s your hassle progressing? Heard from the porn baron lately?’

  Relived that I hadn’t opened with a personal question, Rudi leant forward and filled my flute to the brim with champagne. He went into his routine of strongly vexed evasion, his brows pressing down heavily like two black slugs, ‘Och, you dinnae wanna know.’

  I chinked his glass with mine. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘So what’s the occasion?’