How to Be Bad (6 page)

“That's still every woman alive.”

“No, it isn't. You suffer from low self-esteem, you know that?”

“In that case,” he said, “number five is that actress who was in
Pirates of the Caribbean.
I know she wouldn't fuck me. In fourth place, who's that tall Russian tennis player who wouldn't fuck me?”

“Sharapova?”

“Yeah. I'd stand no chance whatsover there. As for third place, my number three woman who I'd like to fuck but who wouldn't countenance it is probably your mother.”

“My mother? My own mother?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Did I never tell you she was sexy?”

“You're disgusting.”

“Yes, I am. Which is why, despite the fact that you once skidded down that poor woman's birth canal, Mrs. Madden is definitely at number three. On some days, in her nurse's uniform, she might even make it to second place.”

“You'd stand no chance with my mother. No chance at all.”

“Exactly,” said Wallace wearily. “Which is why she's on a list of women who wouldn't fuck me.”

I sighed. “You know something? We need to get out more. Our vital forces are ebbing away.”

“What vital forces?”

“You know what they say in Tahiti? ‘Eat life or life will eat you.'”

“What does that mean?”

“Well. Look at us. We do the same things night after night. We even have the same conversations.”

Wallace swallowed his drink and watched the suds sliding down the inside of his beer glass. “I suppose we could be a little more spontaneous than we are. But you can't be spontaneous just like that.”

Wallace went for a piss while I bought the next round. On his return, Wallace nudged me. “Don't look now—I said
don't look
—but there's this right evil-looking bastard behind us who looks like he wants to kill you.”

I turned round. There, sitting at a table under the window, was Wuffer. His hair was neatly brushed back from his one inch forehead, and a little golden medallion dangled from his neck. Although it was winter, his prehistoric arms protruded menacingly from a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt. He was sitting perfectly still, a cigarette in one hand and a pint of beer in front of him. Next to him was a big greasy woman with red streaks in her hair and a face that seemed to have been cast in concrete. This had to be his wife. She and Wuffer were made for each other.

Wuffer was indeed staring at me as if he wanted to kill me. So was his wife.

“Oh, fucking hell,” I said to Wallace.

“What?”

“That's the guy I told you about.”

“The one who threw a brick at your bonce?”

“No.”

“The one who burned your book?”

“No. This is the one who hit me for stopping his son from beating up some kid.”

“I'll say this for you,” said Wallace. “You're a popular guy.”

I tried to attract the attention of Phil, the landlord, but he was too busy trying to impress a young barmaid.

“Anyway, now's your chance,” said Wallace.

“My chance for what?”

“You said he surprised you last time. Now you can surprise him. Go over and punch the bastard.”

“Wallace, he's looking right at me. What kind of surprise would that be?”

“It was just a suggestion.”

“Here's another. Drink up. We're leaving.”

As we walked out the door, Wuffer and his wife walked after us. Wuffer's wife shook her fist at Wallace. “Lay anuver fin on ma kid and arl fucking twad yer.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Wallace.

That was all it took. Bingo wings quivering, Wuffer's wife grabbed his hair and started hitting him. Wallace had to use all his strength to break away. Wuffer was laughing, his pistachio teeth glistening with beer and spit. “Yer god the ronwon, yer bent cun,” he said to his wife, then pointed at me. “Him. Heed the nob-end wot clogged are Darren.”

But Wuffer's wife wasn't fussy about who she attacked. Wallace started to run, and she began to chase after him, her belly lurching up and down inside a dress that resembled an orange tent. In a genteel suburban street lined with desirable prewar dwellings, it was a truly surreal sight.

Wuffer snarled at me. “You ger in mah fuckin drinker agin an arl slice yer fuckin bans off.” He lunged forward, and I stepped backward so suddenly that I staggered. “Ah,” said Wuffer, triumph in his eyes. “Nah yer get ooze fucking boss, yer can. Nah yer fuckin dinch.”

I ran after Wallace. Wuffer's fat wife had him in a headlock and was trying to wrestle him to the ground. He punched her. She lost her balance, tottered, and lurched over a garden wall. I looked back and saw Wuffer charging toward us, screaming. Wallace and I started to run.

Wallace was heavier and less fit than me, which was presumably why flabby Mrs. Wuffer managed to catch him in the first place. As we reached the passage at the end of the road, Wuffer, who was in worse shape than either of us, briefly caught up with him. Wuffer thumped Wallace once before relinquishing the chase and doubling up in a cigarette wheeze. Only when we were about four streets away did we stop to draw breath. Wallace started giggling, and I joined in. It wasn't that we saw the funny side of what had happened. There was no funny side. Ours was the hollow, joyless laughter of the truly unmanned.

In the light of a streetlamp, surrounded by nice middle-class houses, I glanced back and noticed a trail of dark spots on the pavement behind us. It looked as if one of us had trodden in oil. Then I looked at Wallace, saw him falter, and realized the oil was leaking out of his side.

*   *   *

W
ALLACE HAD
been stabbed above the right hip, probably with a small kitchen knife. It was only a flesh wound, but it required seven stitches. Early in the morning, when we were riding back from Casualty in a taxi, Wallace made a somber announcement. “I don't think we should go out for a while,” he said.

“That's crazy,” I said. “Something like this happens, you need to get out again at the first opportunity.”

“I agree,” said Wallace. “I just don't want to go anywhere with you.”

“You're joking.”

“No,” said Wallace. “I don't like being around you, Mark. I think you're unlucky. In fact, I think you're probably cursed.”

*   *   *

T
HE NEXT
day was a Sunday. I had lunch with my parents. They still lived on the wrong side of Kew Bridge, in the house I'd grown up in, with my father's huge white refrigerated van parked outside to annoy the neighbors. There was always a good roast dinner on Sundays because Dad owns a food store in Twickenham called Madden Foods. When I turned up at one, my mother kissed me affectionately, but my father and Tom, already seated at the table, merely grunted. Tom, my brother, is my junior by two years. We like each other but have never found much to talk about. Tom works for Dad—works long hours, his heart already set on taking over the business when Dad retires.

They asked where I'd got the bruises. I told them about Wuffer, but not about Caro. Mum and Dad had never quite forgiven her for fucking up my exams. When I described how unhelpful the police constable had been, Dad started jeering. “What were you hoping for? A big wet French one?” To illustrate his point, Dad stuck his tongue out and wriggled it about obscenely.

“Maurice!” said my mother reprovingly.

“Well,” said Dad, nodding to me. “He doesn't seem to know what being a man entails.”

(It seems unlikely that a working-class Londoner like my father would use a word like “entail,” yet he did. He was full of surprises.)

“Let me guess,” said my brother, raking roast potatoes onto his plate. “You're about to tell him.”

Dad launched into a familiar speech. “Well, he's got to learn. Someone hits you, you hit 'em right back. There's no point crying to the law. What did the law ever do?”

Ever since I discovered Nick Hornby as a teenager, it had been my desire to bond with my father. So far, it hadn't happened. He didn't understand why I wanted to sell rare books, just as I didn't understand why he had devoted his life to sausages.

As I held out my plate for more roast beef, I spilled gravy in my lap. My brother laughed. “Fingers!” That was his nickname for me, having observed at an early age that I was accident prone. Eighteen months ago, without telling anyone, I attempted to tackle the problem through therapy. My therapist told me the clumsiness came from a deep-seated feeling of unworthiness, dating back to childhood, when my newborn brother had usurped my place in my mother's affections. This may have been true, but knowing it made no difference. I was still a clumsy bastard.

“You've got to fight your own battles in this life,” said Dad. “The only man you can depend on is you. Your grandfather worked in the stone quarries down at Weymouth. Day after day, a dozen blokes breaking rocks with bloody big hammers. Now, they were hard men. There weren't any women there, women couldn't have done the job. You wouldn't have got Granddad talking about his feelings. He may have cried sometimes. If he did, he kept it to himself. That's what a man does. He does what he has to do. He keeps his head down and gets the bloody job done.”

*   *   *

T
AKING MY
father's advice to heart, I enrolled in a karate class. Although the idea of learning to fight had appealed to me for some time, I might never have been prompted into action had it not been for my recent humiliations. The instructor was called Lenny Furey. The poster outside Hammersmith tube station said he was a member of the national Shotokan karate squad. I didn't know whether this was good or bad.

I took the train to Hammersmith and walked to the sweaty gym where the class was held. The first session didn't quite live up to expectations. I'd been hoping for a touch of Eastern mysticism, but there was none to be found. Just a lot of stamping, kicking, and grunting. Lenny was a coarse-looking guy of about my height. He had big ears and a stupid-shaped head. Instead of intoning, “The pebble in the pond spreads out ripples; so, too, may the spirit of a warrior radiate ripples of honor,” he barked out orders like “You, straighten your leg!” or “You, give me ten push-ups, starting now!”

In the changing room after the session, Lenny called me over. He sounded like he'd smoked three hundred a day since the age of three. “You. Your sense of balance is shite. Would you agree?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Your punches and blocks are okay, but your kicks are fucking useless. Yes or no?”

“You could be right.”

“I am right. You've got next to no coordination. Has anyone ever told you that?”

I nodded. “How long will it be before I start getting good?”

“You personally? Maybe two years. And that's only if you practice until you're blue in the face. Understand? That's your only chance of getting better. Because you've got absolutely no natural ability. None whatsoever. Would you agree?”

I looked at him. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No. The opposite. I seen those bruises on your fucking bonce, my son. And something tells me you came here on a mission. Someone's been smacking you about, am I right?”

I nodded meekly.

“It's happened more than once. Yeah?” Lenny regarded me with fractionally more sympathy. “Thought so. I can usually tell.”

“I need to be able to learn to look after myself,” I said. “I need to do it now. I haven't got two years.”

Lenny leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I can give you private lessons. How does fifty quid an hour sound?”

“Expensive.”

He shrugged. “I could settle for forty. It'd be fucking worth it.”

“When do we start?”

“How about now?” he said. “I've booked this place till ten.”

“I'm tired,” I said.

“That's no excuse.”

*   *   *

F
OR THE
next hour, Lenny made me do push-ups and sit-ups and run around the gym. After twenty minutes, I had to go out to throw up. On my return, Lenny showed me absolutely no sympathy. He led me over to a punching bag and told me to hit it.

“A karate punch?”

“What do you think this is? The fucking
Karate Kid?
Kick like a ballerina and you're just gonna fall over. I'm teaching you how to fight. Real street fighting's got fuck-all to do with karate.”

“That's strange coming from a karate black belt.”

“Just hit the fucking thing, will ya?”

I slammed my fist into the bag. My fist came off worse. Lenny tutted and sighed, then showed me how to move with the punch so that it carried my body weight, not just the weight of my knuckles. After a few minutes, he advised me to hit him instead.

“Where?”

“In the belly. Don't hold back. Hit me with everything you've got.”

Lenny tensed his muscles, and I slammed my fist into his midriff. It was like hitting a Henry Moore sculpture, but not as enjoyable. By the time the hour was up and I handed over the money, all I wanted to do was go home to bed.

*   *   *

W
HEN
I left the gym, it was pissing with rain and I was very depressed. I knew that if I trained hard, never losing sight of my goal, then in five years' time I might be capable of felling a very old woman with a single blow.

I had no umbrella, so I jogged through the backstreets, my rucksack bobbing up and down annoyingly on my back. I thought I heard footsteps, so I glanced over my shoulder. There was a guy in a pullover, quietly jogging behind me.

When I reached Hammersmith station, I looked back again, but there was no trace of him. The sullen guard standing at the barrier barely glanced at my ticket. As I crossed the bridge, there was a train approaching. I hurried down the steps, but when I reached the platform I saw the train was bound for Ealing Broadway.