Byron Easy (65 page)

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 towards 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?’

‘You’ll find out.’

His distrustful look returned. He could tell something volcanic was bubbling under in me, magma-like, waiting for an opportunity to vent. He said, ‘Your good health, sir,’ and returned my gesture with his glass. Like an old friend.

‘I mean the contract they had out on you. Two grand for a maiming with a blunt instrument. Three for a sexual injury.’

Rudi winced. I bet he felt that one. ‘Aye, that’s still in the air. I seem to be keeping the bastards at arm’s length though.’ I almost said, ‘That’s a shame’, but let his slimy lips continue the story. He revealed that, the previous night, his foray into the London underworld had culminated in him driving a getaway car to north Wales after an abortive warehouse raid. Once over the border on the return journey, expecting to find five hundred cases of Silk Cut and a kilo of coke, all they discovered were bags of manure and pig feed. He continued, ‘Take the other week for instance. The Welsh fiasco. Because I was the new man on the job, they thought I staged the whole thing as a wee set-up. That I had all the loot in mah hoose. I told them they could come back here and poke about to their heart’s content.’

‘And did they?’

‘Aye,’ said Rudi and sank bank onto the groaning sofas. He rolled his shoulders like an oxen under a yoke. He was at ease now. Sure that I hadn’t found him out. We were playing cat and mouse. I decided to show my claws.

‘Did they find anything?’

Rudi flushed red, intensifying the barbecued effect produced by his sunlamp. ‘Not a crumb. But I had half a kilo of resin in my pocket from the back of the car. The stupid Taffy fuckers who did us over must have left it with the fertilisers by accident.’

‘I bet that required a lot of acting,’ I said, and drained the champagne. Courteously, Rudi reached forward to replenish my glass.

‘I was shitein’ myself,’ he roared. Outside I could hear the same curious clanking that was always present at Rudi’s, like a cowbell relentlessly struck.

‘But you always were good at acting. I remember your Kowalski in the school play. Tough, uncompromising, irresistible to women.’

Rudi puffed up at this. He loved flattery. ‘Aye, that was choice. Hey, you’re knocking that back.’

‘Well I’m celebrating, am I not?’

‘Aw come on man, tell me the occasion,’ he importuned.

‘I’m celebrating a breakthrough. I’ve turned a corner.’ I drained my drink and set it on the table. With the effervescence provided by two glasses of bubbly, I fixed the dark points of his eyes with mine. ‘No longer will I pine after Mandy. I’ve seen through her. She’s as transparent as—as this glass of fizz. That’s all she was, really. Froth in a glass. She was no fury, no termagant.’

‘That’s ma boy!’

‘Do you still do much acting, Rudi?’

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, cradling his glass in his groin. ‘No. Why would I? What do you mean?’

‘How long has it been going on?’

Silence. Except for the hollow clank clank clank from the darkness outside. I watched Rudi seemingly diminish in his seat as his eyes recognised my implication. No need for lengthy explanations between old friends. He knew. I knew. We both knew. His shoulders, hands, chest, head seemed to shrink visibly. The whole room felt suddenly small as a diving bell.

But still no answer. For a moment I thought he was going to bolt from the room. From the inquisition. The expected reprimand.

In his soft dexterous voice he said, ‘About two years. I’m sorry, Bry.’

An electric pause.

‘You were my best man.’

‘What can I say? She made all the running. Honest.’

‘You were my best friend.’

‘I know, I know,’ he looked at his feet, the fireplace. Anywhere but my eyes.

‘Do you know what I’m celebrating tonight, Rudi?’

I took the phallic bottle from the centre of the table and poured us both another glass. The fizzy head overflew the rims and surged down the stems, blackening the wood of the table. Under normal circumstances Rudi would have pulled me up about this, but he had no choice but to sit and endure my supremacy.

Sullenly, like a little boy, he answered, ‘Naw, man. Why don’t you tell me.’

‘I’m celebrating the end of our friendship. It’s been, what, twenty years now? We’ve been through a lot. School. Girlfriends. London. But now I’ve finally seen what a bag of shit you are.’

Rudi went to stand. I thought he was going to hit me, but then I saw the glaze of tears in his eyes. Sentiment and deception. That tired old pantomime horse. My nerves were tingling with the arousal of vindication. A hollow excitement sensitised my skin, as if I were plugged into the mains. A hollow high, with all the blowback of an empty victory round the corner, the inevitable turnaround. I held out a hand, and he sat.

‘I’m sorry. What more can I say?’ Rudi pleaded pathetically. His charismatic voice was now flat as beer left out overnight.

‘You don’t seriously expect us to be friends after this?’

‘I didnae think you would find out, especially now with you two being split up and all.’

‘It must have been hard to keep it a secret. For both of you.’

‘Aye,’ he muttered, shamefully, his gaze fixed on the floor. He looked like a broken man, cumbersome; a bag of spuds in a glitzy crimson shirt.

‘The market, for instance. The nights you drove her home after gigs.’ Rudi merely flinched at these concrete examples. He resembled a man undergoing the torture of a thousand cuts. I felt like kicking his head off his shoulders like a football, but I restrained myself. ‘Then there was that time earlier this year, after I burnt Mandy’s breakfast and she—’

‘Who told you all this?’

‘What does that matter?’ The helpless look in his eyes was giving me great pleasure. ‘Okay. It was Nick,’ I said with some satisfaction, knowing Rudi hated him.

He sneered, but refrained from a tirade of righteous disgust. That was my arena. I continued. ‘You were lucky I didn’t catch you at it that day. I almost followed Mandy after she stormed out.’ The morning—the morning of my appointment at the Eastman Dental Hospital, where Mandy threw my copy of
Culture and Society
in the bin along with the burning bangers—she had exited with her high hauteur, her immense attitude, the ceiling light plunging to the carpet as she slammed the door. And in reality she was off to fuck Rudi. My, oh my. I was about to tail her, to make amends, even if it meant getting a cab to follow her Volkswagen, but reason had prevailed. Of course, she hadn’t gone to the supermarket, as she had told me later. ‘Nick said he saw the two of you hand in hand in Waterlow Park that day.’ That last detail had hurt me considerably. It had been years since Mandy had held my hand, let alone consented to sex, or marital duty (as I never saw it). God knows what depravities they had enacted, maybe in the very location where I was sitting guzzling champagne. I felt a constriction in my intestines just imagining it. The champagne was reacting with the acid in my stomach. But these two—Rudi and Mandy. You had to hand it to them. What a pair of consummate thespians. And what a credulous fool I was. It must have been easy. Easy as taking candy from a—easy as pulling the trigger at a pogrom. I gave them every opportunity to display their acting skills, and boy did they take me up on it. An uxorious, patient, loving fool. Now enduring a badly needed lesson. What pedagogy, between them, did they exhibit! It was almost laudable.

‘I didn’t want to, Bry, but …’

‘But it was too good to turn down, wasn’t it? In a way I don’t blame you—no, I do blame you, a lot. With a body like Mandy’s, I mean—’

‘She made all the running, Bry, God’s honest truth! After the first time I didn’t want to carry on!’ Rudi’s eyes were now wild with appeal, sweat bubbling on his meaty forehead.

‘But you did carry on, didn’t you,’ I said coldly, pinning him to his seat. He couldn’t answer for a moment. The room had now transmogrified into something larger, strangely altered, differently lit; the pastel bulbs of Rudi’s seducer’s lighting burning a lemony yellow. The hollow gong outside a death knell.

‘Aye,’ he said ruefully, like a schoolboy before the headmaster.

‘How could you live with yourself?’

‘I dinnae know.’

‘How could you sleep at night?’

He shrugged foolishly, ‘You’ve got me there.’

‘How could you have me round night after night for the last three months, listening to me disintegrate? Bold as fucking brass?’