“Oh yes? Sounds interesting.”
“I can only suppose the pragmatical traits were uppermost when my wife fell in love with me, but unfortunately the longer we were together the more the rigid and authoritarian traits came out, which didn’t make things easy. In the beginning I never quite realised that I was so pragmatic and easygoing. In fact the phrase didn’t come to me till it was far too late for me to do anything about it. And when rigid authoritarianism had me in its grip I felt like committing murder for even the smallest of her faults.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very accommodating attitude.”
He didn’t hear me, and leaned closer. “The pragmatic and easygoing part of my nature must have come from my mother, while the rigid and authoritarian part of me was obviously from my father. Or so I read in a book on psychology. Anyway, I married Muriel when I was pragmatic and easygoing, didn’t I? But after a few years the rigid and authoritarian part of me clicked into place, at which we realised that something had gone too wrong to repair.”
I thought I’d rather be tangling with the hatchback on the killer highways of Jugoslavia than bending my ear to this rigmarole, but my heart wasn’t stony enough to stop him.
“It’s the pragmatic and easygoing half that’s letting me talk to you, while the rigid and authoritarian side tells me to button my lip. The advantage is that by talking in this way I feel it doesn’t matter what the bitch does, though when we drive up the coast of Italy on the way home, if the rigid and authoritarian side of me comes back, I’ll push her out of the car and kill her. Or I’ll get up to two hundred kilometres an hour on the motorway and put an end to us both in one of the tunnels.”
“If,” I said, in as pleasant a tone as could be mustered during such a fraught confession, “you use the words pragmatic and easygoing, and rigid and authoritarian once more, I’ll take you apart, which will be the least I can do for my sanity, and possibly for yours as well. As for killing Muriel, what would be the point of that? She’s doing it on you, but people survive worse.”
There were so many tears in his eyes he’d soon need another towel. “When you talk about killing her,” I said, “it must be the rigid and authoritarian side of you coming out.” I had caught the virus myself. “Why don’t you get back to your pragmatic and easygoing self, forgive her, and go into the hotel to fuck one of the waitresses? Show a bit of easygoing authoritarianism or pragmatic rigidity. Maybe the waitress’s boyfriend will kill you but, failing that, why not try it on with one of those gorgeous French women up the beach?”
It wasn’t easy for such a man to straighten his back. “That’s not my way. Revenge is the father of progress, so I’ll just have to murder her.”
“Stop harping on that. I could understand you killing her if you get hanged afterwards, but the law doesn’t even oblige you with a length of rope these days. Meanwhile, have another brandy.”
I ordered two more, and before I could stop him he’d thrown both into himself as if they were water. “You can certainly take the booze,” I observed.
His smile was no smile. “What else have I to live for?”
“Don’t get like that.” I put a hand on his shoulder, but only for a second. “While you’re alive you have everything.”
He found my remark encouraging, proving that with such an idiot the more banal you were the better. “I’m glad I met you, for saying such wise words. God often puts wisdom into the mouth of the inexperienced.”
“Thank you very much.” He didn’t know I was the son of Gilbert Blaskin. I wouldn’t care if he stood up, did a belly flop into the water, and drowned himself. I had enough cares of my own, though realised his were bigger, especially when the lovers of Verona came arm in arm out of the hotel, Muriel’s laughter a decibel or two higher than Bill’s. He had changed from his suit into stylish shorts, a dazzlingly colourful shirt, and sandals. I wanted them to come to us and spin a few picturesque untruths, but they walked up the beach as if we were invisible. Maybe Ernest would call them back, or go after them for the satisfaction of being knocked down but, mouth open with loss, he stayed where he was and said: “What a bloody cheek.”
I could only agree, and take another swig at the firewater just put down. “You know what I would do if I was in your place?”
Disagreement already shaped his lips. “No, I don’t.”
“I’d pack my gear, pay the hotel (no, maybe not pay. Leave her to do it, especially if she doesn’t have enough money) get in the car, and drive away.” I rubbed it in. “They’re like two schoolkids in love. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
His mardy lips turned truculent. “I don’t think I’ll do that. I want to see where it ends. I’ll settle with her when I’ve got all the time in the world to do what I want to do.” The ugly bastard laughed. “She’ll live to regret what she’s done, believe you me.”
“Look,” I said, if only to find out how he would respond, “I’m going home up the Italian coast, and if I see you laying into her I’ll stop the car and give you a bloody good hiding. I wear heavy boots when I’m at the wheel.”
His eyes looked troubled. “I don’t mean it, do I? And if I did kill her neither you nor anybody else would be there to see it.”
“You wicked bastard,” I said, in a friendly manner, though ready to clock him. “A man should never hit a woman, no matter what she’s done. The only response is to have an affair yourself. See how she enjoys the sight of you getting your own back.”
“Who’d want an old sod like me?”
He had a point. “Look,” I said, “a man of experience like yourself, who’s cunning and cheerful, can always get what he wants. Go into W.H. Smith’s, buy a book of jokes, memorise them, and make a young woman laugh. That’s all you need. You’ll be drinking cocoa in her bedsitter in no time.”
I don’t know why I was trying, but I had to be right. That old roué Blaskin, who fucked every girl who came into his sight, wouldn’t die with his boots on, and that was a fact. My mother, who was about the same age as him, and grabbed any male or female she fancied, wouldn’t die with her knickers on, either. It didn’t bear thinking about, though I debated mentioning their antics to Ernest in the hope of elevating his morale, but had to look close at him instead and say: “I don’t know where my friend Bill’s got to, but here comes your wife.”
I wondered long before Ernest why she was in such a hurry, more tears pearling out of her than I’d seen on his cheeks. Her lips were twisted with a distress that could only have been from justifiable chagrin. I offered my chair, but she grabbed Ernest’s hands: “We’re going,” she said. “Come on, we’re getting out of this awful place.”
He was already standing. “What is it, dear? What’s wrong?”
She looked at me as if I’d been the cause of whatever her trouble was. “Nothing you’d want to hear about. Just pay the bill. We shan’t be staying here. At least I won’t. Not for another minute. Oh, hurry. You’re so bloody slow.” She all but dragged him into the hotel, and even from my chair I could hear her screaming at him to get a move on.
Blaskin would have used the word flabbergasted. I certainly was. Ten minutes later their Rover 2000 shot towards the main road as such speed I couldn’t imagine where they were going and why. Either pragmatism or authoritarianism would take him over, but if his feeble mind kept switching from one to the other, as it had while talking to me, nothing less than a catastrophe would be on the cards, and I wondered why everyone couldn’t be as straightforward as I was, though I felt myself blink at such a daft question.
Not unnaturally I was scorching to know what had gone wrong, but not till Bill came back from the beach half an hour later with a young woman on each arm, did I find out. The three of them were heading for the hotel door, and when I called him over he delayed my game of twenty questions by asking: “Have you seen that hot-headed Muriel?”