Ménage (9 page)

Dot kissed my cheek.

— So, show me, she said then. And so I taught her the prole walk. Two legs wide apart, the upper torso stiff, shoulders rigid, the hand in fists, as she filmed and Saul expounded.

— Yes, you see, like the pavement is yours and everyone else can fucking die. Someone wants your space, some refugee mother with a child, you take wider strides to say fuck off. Spread your legs, like you have a humungous cock.

— But I –

— We’ll fashion one later with a sock.

Later we shoplifted a can of beans and headed home and I felt like he was Henry Higgins and she Eliza Doolittle. The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain – By Jove, I think she’s go it! A woman passed us by. Dot lowered her eyes.

— What in hell’s teeth do you think you’re doing? Saul muttered.

— Sorry, what – what?

— Women! My God, don’t you know this? You’re supposed to stare the poor bitches down, once they’ve passed, turn and ogle their arses. It’s despicable and bestial, I know, and I’ve never done it myself, but I’m told they like it, women that is, even expect it of you. We have yet to evolve.

Dot tried to man-walk but she was too curvaceous.

— No wiggling and giggling!

— It must be so dull being a man, she laughed.

— Indeed, I try to avoid it as much as possible, Saul muttered in utter seriousness.

Back on Old Street, Dot asked me to take the camera and film her, as she ran to a certain point then turned and walked slowly back towards us both, trying to eradicate that swing of the hips that had so aroused me. She stumbled and we both reached to help her up, our hands meeting round her waist. We marched then,
à trois
, struggling to keep straight faces as we passed the many that stopped and stared at the three apparent men, two with moustaches. But Dot was disappointed, people had thought it a joke and she wanted to
pass
as a real man – in Safeway’s or the Queen’s Head. It could be her first artwork. We were all drunk and it was crazy. To ‘go for a pint’ as men. A joke gone far enough.

It was almost 4 a.m. but Dot insisted on binding her breasts with a bandage to make them lie flat, and asked me
to
help. As I assisted my fingers brushed her areola and I had to leave swiftly to address my growing affliction.

I must have been dozing off when I heard her voice in low tones.

— C’mere, you sexy man – yeah you, you’re so cool, so hard.

I opened my eyes but she was nowhere to be seen. I crept to my door and discovered her in the bathroom, the door half closed. Again I heard her say, — C’mere, sexy guy, big strong man. I peered through the gap in the door and there she was in the mirror, flexing her muscles in the mirror, talking to her own moustachioed face, filming herself. I must have made a noise because she opened the door and caught me there. After a humiliating silence she burst into a fit of the giggles. She laughed so hard her moustache flew off into the toilet. I fished it out and we stared at it as if it were dead. I returned to bed telling myself I was not to fall in love. It was a weakness, Saul said, and I thought him right.

We’d been hit by a plague of moustaches. In the days that followed she scrawled them on every available newspaper and magazine visage. I vividly recall a very large Nietzschean one on the lip of the newly elected Clinton. She’d taken her moustache video to Goldsmiths and it had not, however, gone down at all well. Nonetheless, she was unperturbed in her quest to pass as a new man. Saul insisted she desist. — We are being emasculated, he claimed in utter seriousness and went clean-shaven in protest.

The Queen’s Head was a terrifyingly proletarian establishment full of old piss-head cockneys and young concrete-covered builders and a barmaid who looked like Dolly Parton’s mother and always had red lipstick on her teeth. Even when it was just Saul and me in the pub we were invariably threatened with death, so for us to turn
up
with a moustachioed Dot was beyond insanity. However, her promise of free drinks had Saul reaching for his coat.

Dot had her video camera primed but I insisted it would only draw attention and proposed we at least hide it. As we hesitated before the pub entrance, and she checked to see if her moustache was still in place, I had a sudden urge to hold her hand and tried one last time to talk some sense into them both – it would lead to A&E tonight. But Saul was already marching in with Dot’s twenty in his hand, proposing Scotch malts. It was not that I did not want to appear a coward, but rather that I thought they would be safer with me there, and so I followed.

Old leather seats, neon lights and Formica tables. No one batted an eye as we stood at the bar. Dot kept re-adjusting her moustache and I worried that with all the fiddling it would fall off in her hand. The stench from the Gents was exactly the same as the beer, as if they were actually drinking piss. An old fuck was slumped in a corner, alone, a pool of fluid beneath his feet, with a catheter tube visible. Two builder types were boasting of some fight with acted-out punches.

— Facka went for me and I ducked and got him a left hook on the fackin’ vera. An’ the uver caant comes at me, knowhatahmean.

— The inherent violence of the proletariat is a result of their failure to embrace their revolutionary potential, Saul muttered discreetly. — One always turns one’s failure against oneself.

He seemed oblivious to the very real threat as he ordered the first round, pints and whisky shots for us all. Dot was shaking and I had to control the need to hug her. Saul whispered to us both, — Stop looking around. The savages are distracted. Just stare at your pint and consider it a phenomenological event à la Sartre.

A scar-cheek asked us where we woz from. Dot was too scared to speak. Saul, having downed his shot and half his pint, had the Dutch to reply on our behalf.

— Idaho, he said in a voice that had no trace of American about it.

— Well, fuck me, the old stinker spat, — they’s Yanks, he called out to the blood-teethed bar bimbo and the assembled pissers. — Wot the fuck you doing here then?

Saul muttered something about a Mardi Gras, which left the old pisser perplexed, and took Dot to one side then, for a whisper. I got the gist – she was doing fine, just to nod and grunt, that he would handle this. I was stuck next to the old pisser, hoping the interrogation would stop soon.

The two bricklayers, just feet away, were doing slo-mo punch moves. The story of violence never-ending.

— . . . wiv a fackin’ bottuw, so I’s duckin’ daan, an’ turned on the caant an’ smacked him a Tyson rite in is fackin’ kissa! BAAAYYYM!

I needed to pee although I’d only drunk a mouthful. Pissing myself with fear, perhaps. I prepared our escape plan but the old stench was shouting: — A round, for the ’merican boys.

But then he turned to Dot, nudged her elbow.

— Oi, wassat – wassat all abaat then? Fackin’ ’merican football? Daan’t geddit, paddin’, an’ helmets anat, bunch of fackin’ sissies, pardon me French.

She looked at me, terrified. Saul whispered in her ear. — That’s it, no need to reply, just swear under your breath, a few fucks and cunt or two or some muttering.

The old fuck was passing the drinks. He raised a glass to clink with Dot.

— Wassat den, that ’merican football, eh, eh?

I could see her twitching, preparing to speak.

— CUNTZ! Dot shrieked, suddenly, extremely high in pitch.

My eyes shot to the doorway, as the place fell silent and the old fucker’s face was deep in the depths questioning, joining the dots. Saul’s face turned white.

The old stench’s hand was on Dot’s shoulder then, the size of a builder’s breeze block, his eyes on me and Saul. I was ready to run.

— You fackers callin’ me a cant?

Dot shook her head nervously, covered her moustache.

The old cunt burst out laughing, patted her on the back. — CANTZ! he shouted. — FACKIN’ CANTZ, his glass in the air. — WE’RE ALL FACKIN’ CANTZ HERE!

Cheers from the back. — CANTZ, CANTZ! A veritable canto of cunts.

Weird, what the old urinal did then, leaning over to kiss Dot on the cheek. — Had you there, didn’t I? Good one, eh. No offence, mate. Maybe he sensed that there was something alluring about her he couldn’t quite place. Maybe this was something very drunk old men did, kiss other men.

Maybe London was too drunk to notice or care if you were two men and a woman with a fake moustache.

Saul, anxious, wanted us to leave immediately but Dot whispered that she wanted to stay. He headed for the door and I was caught in the middle. I spent the next ten minutes running back and forth from him outside to her inside, trying to get us to stick together.

Saul marched off towards Hoxton Square. I dragged Dot along, as she laughed about the adventure, oblivious to Saul’s mood. We finally caught up with him,

— Fucking stupid! he muttered.

— Oh Sozzle, they were lovely, it was perfectly safe.

— Do I look scared? he snapped. — And take off that fucking ridiculous moustache!

It had been our first outright fight and they were both silent all the way home, me between them, trying my best to get them to talk. She tried to take his hand but he pushed
hers
away. She held mine for a minute but must have felt it was wrong, and unequal, so let it go.

I could understand her confusion – had Saul not filled her head with all this talk of the Duchess and craziness, only to walk away when it all got too real?

He locked his door to her that night, but she did not come to talk to me. For the first time in two months we were each very alone.

It had been a wake-up call. The very next day Dot had been a good student and put in a whole day at art school. She returned with a bunch of flowers and a box of sherry for Saul and a video to watch, by way of making it up to us. It was called
Withnail and I
and was basically a shaggy dog story about two losers who live in squalor, both failed actors. The scene in the pub had been very much like our one of the day before, and she’d wanted to show us it, so we could laugh about it all. Saul sat stone-faced throughout.

— See, you’re so Withnail, she joked, trying to tickle him, but he did not respond. Her plan had backfired horribly as the film’s message was only too clear: Withnail was a drunk and waster and ‘I’ would go on to greater things – it was, after all, his story. The story of I. I was not such a bad role. I was in fact rather flattered to be I. By the end Saul asked us to leave the room as he wanted to be alone. As soon as we were in the hall he locked the door behind us.

Dot was outside his room for nearly an hour after, apologising. He would not let her in, or speak. It had been foolish of her, but understandable. She wanted to show Saul how much she understood him but made the mistake of reducing him to an existing image. He had to be the total innovation of himself, he was not Richard E. Grant, no matter how closely the film mapped our lives. It was perhaps some
subconscious
revenge on her part. Saul had made her slash her canvases and now she had exposed his vulnerabilities.

I couldn’t help but laugh though as I stared at the kitchen sink. There’s something moving in there. It may be a mouse. Then the bastard will rue the day!

Did not Saul have this same fixation on vermin months back? Did he not swear that a rat came out to watch the telly every time he put an art-house tape on? Did he not say at the time, — The vermin is obsessed with Bergman!

— Please open up and stop being so grumpy, I heard her say to his closed door. — It’s just a silly film. But the damage had been done. The power of human weakness is greater than strength. She would be banished from his affections.

That night I finally gave in to the impulse to competitiveness. The event had revealed his weaknesses at last and she would be repulsed. I have to confess that I masturbated with her panties thinking of how she now favoured me more than him.

But, my God, how wrong I was.

— Nothing happened, OK, she said as I found her in only a T-shirt, staggering out of his room. But the fact that she ventured the excuse before I had even asked the question was proof enough. And the guilt on her face, eyes not meeting mine. They had slept together that night. As if overcome with guilt, she ran to the bathroom and threw up.

As if all the world was conspiring against me, I had to sign on that day and declare my earnings from the
Hoxton Advertiser
, which was then deducted, so it all came to nothing. A whole hour and a half in which I had to leave Saul and Dot alone, as I sat there in the dole office.

On my return she was still wearing his T-shirt and little else and they were in the bathroom together, giggling. Dot rushed out. They’d just made her a new moustache from
Saul
’s hair. It was so much more wiry and convincing, didn’t I think?

In a fit of jealousy I tried to put her down.

— So how’s the art coming along? Any plans for your graduation show?

I became the secret double agent, trying to find the split between them. In a moment alone with Saul I told him we shouldn’t be wasting so much time with Dot, he had his book or play or film or art concept or whatever to create, and surely it was time now to really get down to some serious work.

But he was oblivious and so I concocted a plan. I suggested we really should teach Dot how to shoplift food. I had visions of her being caught red-handed, and wanted to see if he would stand up for her when the police came. Saul was all smiles and post-coital stupidity and unaware of my subterfuge. I had time with Dot alone as I ran through the rules. An avocado, some parsley, or a can of beans. Her moustache could be a problem, but I didn’t say it. I wanted her to be arrested. I ran through the moves with her, there in his room, before his eyes, and revelled in making him watch.

In those minutes while I instructed her, I had her full attention and Saul was silent, and I knew then that they had fucked and this whole thing of humouring Owen had been planned to make it seem like nothing had happened. Saul was a hypocrite and a whore. Never let a woman come between us, indeed. She would be caught and he too and then they would do their penance. Or if I was caught and they ran it was a sure sign that they had conspired together.