18
Saturday 3 January
Garry Starling and his wife, Denise, had gone to the China Garden restaurant most Saturday nights for the past twelve years. They favoured the table just up the steps, to the right of the main part of the restaurant, the table where Garry had proposed to Denise almost twelve years ago.
Separated from the rest of the room by a railing, it had a degree of privacy, and with Denise’s increasingly heavy drinking, they could sit here without the rest of the diners being privy to her frequent tirades – mostly against him.
She was usually drunk before they had even left home, particularly since the smoking ban, when she would quaff the best part of a bottle of white wine and smoke several cigarettes, despite his nagging her for years to quit, before tottering out to the waiting taxi. Then, at the restaurant, Denise would polish off one and often two Cosmopolitans in the bar area before they got to their table.
At which point she usually kicked off and began complaining about defects she perceived in her husband. Sometimes the same old ones, sometimes new ones. It was water off a duck’s back to Garry, who remained placid and unemotional, which usually wound her up even more. He was a control freak, she told her girlfriends. As well as being a sodding fitness freak.
The couple they normally came here with, Maurice and Ulla Stein, were heavy drinkers too and, long used to Denise’s tirades, they tended to humour her. Besides, there were plenty of undercurrents in their own relationship.
Tonight, the first Saturday of the New Year, Denise, Maurice and Ulla were in particularly heavy drinking mode. Their hangovers from New Year’s Eve, which they had celebrated together at the Metropole Hotel, were now distant memories. But they were also a little tired and Denise was in an uncharacteristically subdued mood. She was even drinking a little water – which, normally, she rarely touched.
The third bottle of Sauvignon Blanc had just been poured. As she picked her glass up, Denise watched Garry, who had stepped out to take a phone call, walking back towards them and slipping his phone into his top pocket.
He had a slight frame and a sly, studious face topped with short, tidy black hair that was thinning and turning grey. His big, round, staring eyes, set beneath arched eyebrows, had earned him the nickname Owl at school. Now, in middle age, wearing small, rimless glasses, a neat suit over a neat shirt and sober tie, he had the air of a scientist quietly observing the world in front of him with a look of quizzical disdain, as if it was an experiment he had created in his laboratory with which he was not entirely happy.
In contrast to her husband, Denise, who had been a slender blonde with an hourglass figure when they had first met, had ballooned recently. She was still blonde, thanks to her colourist, but years of heavy drinking had taken their toll. With her clothes off, in Garry’s opinion – which he had never actually voiced to her because he was too reserved – she had the body of a flabby pig.
‘Lizzie – my sister,’ Garry announced apologetically, sitting down again. ‘She’s been at the police station for the last few hours – she’s been done for drink-driving. I was just checking that she’s seen a solicitor and that she’s getting a lift home.’
‘Lizzie? Stupid woman, what’s she gone and done that for?’ said Denise.
‘Oh, sure,’ Garry said. ‘She did it deliberately, right? Give her a break, for God’s sake! She’s been through the marriage from hell and now she’s going through the divorce from hell from that bastard.’
‘Poor thing,’ said Ulla.
‘She’s still way over the limit. They won’t let her drive home. I wonder if I should go and-’
‘Don’t you dare!’ Denise said. ‘You’ve been drinking too.’
‘You have to be so damned careful, drinking and driving now,’ Maurice slurred. ‘I just won’t do it. I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy with people who get caught.’ Then, seeing his friend’s darkening expression, he said, ‘Of course, except for Lizzie.’ He smiled awkwardly.
Maurice had made gazillions out of building sheltered homes for the aged. His Swedish wife, Ulla, had become heavily involved in animal rights in recent years and not long ago had led a blockade of Shoreham Harbour – Brighton’s main harbour – to stop what she considered to be the inhumane way that sheep were exported. Garry had noticed, particularly in the past couple of years, that the two of them had less and less in common.
Garry had been Maurice’s best man. He’d secretly lusted after Ulla in those days. She had been the classic flaxen-haired, leggy Swedish blonde. In fact he’d continued to lust after her until quite recently, when she had begun to let her looks go. She too had put on weight, and had taken to dressing like an Earth Mother, in shapeless smocks, sandals and hippy jewellery. Her hair was wild and she seemed to apply make-up as if it was warpaint.
‘Do you know about the Coolidge effect?’ Garry said.
‘What’s that?’ Maurice asked.
‘When Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States he and his wife were being taken around a chicken farm. The farmer got embarrassed when a rooster began shagging a hen right in front of Mrs Coolidge. When he apologized the President’s wife asked him how many times a day the rooster did this and the farmer replied that it was dozens. She turned to him and whispered, “Would you mind telling my husband?”’
Garry paused while Maurice and Ulla laughed. Denise, who had heard it before, remained stony-faced.
He continued, ‘Then a little later Coolidge asked the farmer more about the rooster. “Tell me, does it always screw the same hen?” The farmer replied, “No, Mr President, always a different one.” Coolidge whispered to the man, “Would you mind telling my wife?”’
Maurice and Ulla were still laughing when crispy duck and pancakes arrived.
‘I like that one!’ Maurice said, then winced as Ulla kicked him under the table.
‘A bit close to home for you,’ she said acidly.
Maurice had confided to Garry, over the years, about a string off affairs. Ulla had found out about more than one of them.
‘At least the rooster has proper sex,’ Denise said to her husband. ‘Not the weird stuff you get off on.’
Garry’s mask smiled implacably at her, humouring her. They sat in awkward silence as the pancakes and spring onions and hoisin sauce appeared, and while the waiter shredded the duck before retreating.
Helping himself to a pancake and rapidly changing the subject, Maurice asked, ‘So, how’s business looking going into the New Year, Garry? Think people are going to cut down?’
‘How would he know?’ Denise butted in. ‘He’s always on the sodding golf course.’
‘Of course I am, my darling!’ Garry retorted. ‘That’s where I get my new leads. That’s how I built my business. I got the police as customers through playing golf with an officer one day.’
Garry Starling had started in life as an electrician, working for Chubb Alarms, doing installations. Then he had left and taken the gamble of forming his own company, operating at first from a tiny office in central Brighton. His timing had been perfect, as it was just when the security business began to boom.
It was a winning formula. He used his membership of his golf club, of the Round Table and then the Rotary Club to work on everyone he met. Within a few years of opening his doors, he had built up Sussex Security Systems and its sister company, Sussex Remote Monitoring Services, into one of the major security businesses in the Brighton area for home and commercial premises.
Turning back to Maurice, he said, ‘Actually, business is OK. We’re holding our own. How about you?’
‘Booming!’ Maurice said. ‘Incredible, but it is!’ He raised his glass. ‘Well, cheers, everyone! Here’s to a brilliant year! Never actually got to toast you on New Year’s Eve, did we, Denise?’
‘Yep, well, sorry about that. Don’t know what came over me. Must be the bottle of champagne we had in our room while we were getting changed!’
‘That you had,’ Garry corrected her.
‘Poor thing!’ Ulla said.
‘Still,’ Maurice said, ‘Garry did his best to make up for you by drinking your share, didn’t you, old son?’
Garry smiled. ‘I made a sterling effort.’
‘He did,’ Ulla said. ‘He was well away!’
‘Hey, did you see the Argus today?’ Maurice said with an abrupt change of tone.
‘No,’ Garry said. ‘Haven’t read it yet. Why?’
