Dirty Tricks

from the kitchen. Karen stood there filling a glass of water.

‘I thought you were in bed,’ said her husband.

Karen rinsed her mouth out and spat in the sink.

‘Just been clearing up a bit.’

‘You mean eating up! Never happy unless she has something in her mouth,’ he confided to me. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Karen giggled hysterically, spluttering water all over the counter.

I knew then that we were bound to go all the way, wherever it might lead, whether we wanted to or not. As for Dennis, well, after that killing him would have been a kindness, wouldn’t it?

There are times, frankly, when one longs for a video camera. All these words! It’s absurd, these days, like submitting a portrait in oils with your passport application. Oh yes, very tasteful, sir, a very speaking likeness I’m sure, and such tactility in the brushwork, but what we really wanted was a while-you-wait snapshot, a quid the strip of four down the machine. The kids these days don’t bother with language. Even life doesn’t do much for them. It’s just not state-of-the-art any more, life. How can you be sure what really happened unless you can rerun it in slo- mo? To say nothing of mashing the boring bits down to a slurry of images, hosing them away with a touch of your finger.

Which is what I’d like to do now, ideally. What would you see? Karen and I on the sofa, Karen and I in the back seat of the BMW, Karen and I at the river, up the alley, down the garden, round the corner, in the pub. Our movements are furtive, frantic and compulsive. Our pleasures are brief and incomplete. Our frustrations are enormous. Because if you look closely at the background of every scene, you’ll see Dennis.

Do you believe this? I didn’t, and I was there. Even while it was happening to me, I couldn’t believe it. Here was a woman who would go down on me in her husband’s presence, but wouldn’t touch me, wouldn’t speak to me, wouldn’t see me, unless he was there. And when I asked her why …

‘He’s my husband, isn’t he?’

‘Karen, you blew me. Remember? You stroked yourself off in front of me. It’s a bit late to be coming on like the Angel in the House now.’

‘I won’t cheat on him, I don’t care what you say. I just won’t. I like you ever such a lot, I really do, but the bottom line is I’m still married to Denny.’

The wonder of it is I didn’t kill her then, never mind later. It was bad enough being mercilessly teased and tantalized, without having to listen to this sort of humbug. Because what all the fine talk came down to was hard cash. If Dennis dumped her, Karen and I would be another Trish and Brian. I could quite appreciate that she didn’t want that. I didn’t want it either. I just wished she’d cut out the bullshit about cheating on Dennis. We could have saved ourselves so much time and grief.

My relationship with Karen may have been stormy, but her husband and I got on perfectly. I had finally worked out why Dennis was so keen on me. Although a barrow boy at heart, he had a yen for the finer things in life. The condition was that the transaction be conducted in whorehouse terms: he paid the trick, he called the shots. There was nothing very remarkable about him in this respect. You only have to walk into any art gallery these days to see that the real action is in the shop. Most people want to like art — they know it’s good for you, or at any rate looks good on you — but face to face with a great painting they feel like gate-crashers at a Mayfair reception. Back in the gallery supermarket they can happily check out the product like so many pin-ups, wallet in hand, the big spender, in control again.

That’s how Dennis felt about me. I was everything he would never be: Oxford educated, widely travelled, still more widely read, a man of the world at ease in several languages. My saving grace was poverty. With the cash to match my pretensions I’d have been a menace for our Dennis. As it was, I was cheap at the price. An extra bottle of wine and some spare grub and he had himself a harmless court jester whose sallies were guaranteed to shock or amuse. Roll up, roll up! See the Eternal Student! Watch him go through his repertoire of quotes and quips. Listen to him sing for his supper. Didn’t he do well? Now watch him cycle home in the rain. He’s nearly forty-two, you know, and still living in digs!

I couldn’t have cared less what Dennis Parsons thought of me, of course. If his judgement rankled, it was only because it accorded perfectly with my own. It was that inner voice that made me cringe as I lay sleepless on my lumpy mattress listening to the pogoing of the bedstead against the wall next door, where my co-tenants were pursuing their nightly quest for the elusive grail of Trish’s orgasm. I was merciless with myself, but the only thing I envied Dennis was his money. We thus had a perfect relationship: each of us felt that he could patronize the other.

OK, let’s roll it. The hands of the clock spin round, the pages drop off the calendar, shots of punting and cricket replace those of rowing and rugby. It’s summer, and the English middle class prepare for their annual pilgrimage to the land of their putative forebears. Actually Dennis and Karen’s ancestors most likely dwelt among the cattle and kine in a wattle-and-daub barrio beneath the castle jakes, but their descendants cultivated a taste for wine and continental cooking, went riding and spent the obligatory two weeks a year in a rented villa in the Dordogne. They and the Carters were to have shared it that year with the computer analyst and his wife, but one of this couple’s children was involved in an accident and they had to cancel at the last minute. Very much to my surprise, Dennis asked me if I wanted to go instead.

‘It won’t cost you anything except for booze and eats. Their holiday insurance will cover the rent, and since Thomas and I are both taking cars there’ll be plenty of room. It’s just to make up the numbers, really. It gets a bit dull with just the four of you, and of course everyone else has already made plans.’

The only problem was my work. June to September is open season for EFL students. During the winter Clive scraped by as best he could, bagging a rich brat here, a group of businessmen there, but come summer he cleaned up, netting the poor startled witless kids in droves. To pack and process them he needed staff, so our terms stipulated a minimum of two months’ summer work, the understanding being that when contracts came up for renewal, priority would be given to those who had put in most time on the slime-line.

But I was no longer in awe of Clive. Had we not dined together? And had I not wiped the floor with the little squirt, conversationally speaking? Judging by his expression, Clive had not been best pleased to find me ensconced in the Parsons’ sitting room that night. He didn’t mind socializing with his staff as long as it was on his terms and at their expense, but to meet them as equals on neutral ground was another matter. None are so ruthlessly exclusive as those who have worked their way up from the ranks. That evening Clive could only grin and bear it, but when I told him I wouldn’t be able to do the second summer course he was distinctly cool. I explained that I’d found someone to substitute for me — one of the Carter boys was looking for holiday work — but he kept making objections about unqualified staff, mentioning a notorious case a few years earlier when one malcontent teacher wreaked his revenge by teaching a group of teenage Italians that the English greet each other in the street with the phrase ‘Piss off, wanker.’ Half the class had to be invalided home, and Clive’s name was still mud in Emilia- Romagna. I assured him that Nigel Carter wouldn’t dream of playing tricks like that, but the discovery that my replacement was the son of the friend of a friend, one of his own kind, was a further blow. Nor was he at all happy with the idea of me swanning off to France with the Parsons.

‘Do I detect a wick-dipping situation?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Contrary to what the course books say, we do distinguish between familiar and formal modes of address in English, between tu and usted. It’s just that we don’t do it grammatically.

‘SAS training, isn’t it? Who dares wins. Faint fart never won hairy lady.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Clive ran a hand through his hair and gave me his wide-boy grin.

‘Our K.P. Sauce. Nice lips, shame about the teeth. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Asbestos sheath time.’

He kept up this sort of thing a while longer, but I refused to be provoked and in the end he had to let me go. I rushed out to a payphone to break the good news to Karen. Her reaction was less than ecstatic.

‘Aren’t you glad?’