Michael Dibdin - Dirty Tricks

‘I’m afraid the prospect of surrogate fatherhood doesn’t attract me, Karen.’

As usual, she skipped the word which did not compute.

‘But you said you were ! You said you wanted us to get married and have a child …’

‘Yes, but I was rather taking it for granted that it would be my child.’

She stared at me aghast.

‘It is !’

‘That’s not what Clive says.’

‘What does he know?’

‘What do you know? You can’t have been on the pill because you were trying to get pregnant with me.’

‘We used something else.’

‘What?’

She hesitated. Close-ups of Clive unrolling a sheath over his engorged member were definitely unsuitable for the family audience to which she was hoping to appeal.

‘An old balloon?’ I suggested. ‘Cavity wall insulation foam? Herbal pessaries? Whatever it was, it didn’t work. Be honest, Karen, you didn’t even want it to work. You were so desperate to get pregnant you were beyond caring who the father was. You’d probably have preferred it to be me, all other things being equal. But you weren’t really unduly worried about that aspect of it, were you?’

‘That’s not true! It’s your child! I know it is. Women know these things.’

‘OK, let’s get a paternity test done.’

‘No!’

She glared furiously at me. I shrugged.

‘I rest my case.’

‘Those tests can be dangerous! I’m not letting some doctor mess around with the foetus just because you’re a heartless shit who won’t believe what I say.’

‘If you think I’m a heartless shit, just wait till you tell Clive that he’s going to have to assume his responsibilities because we’re getting divorced.’

She stood up, her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth on her heels, muttering something I couldn’t make out. Then she sighed deeply and stroked her midriff, as though to reassure the foetus.

‘You can’t wriggle out of it that easily, you bastard! I’ll bring a paternity suit. I’ll get those tests done all right, once the child is born.’

‘As many as you like, Karen. All they’ll prove is that the only bastard round here is the one in your womb.’

That did it. She threw herself at me, shrieking and spitting, battering me with her fists and shoes. Women get a good press these days. It’s become intellectually respectable, even among those who otherwise reject gender-based distinctions, to suggest that they’re somehow intrinsically nicer than men and that the problems of the world would magically resolve themselves if we all became more womanly. In my view this is sexist bullshit. Given the chance, woman can be every bit as unpleasant as men. Karen’s expression as she attacked reminded me of photographs of Ilsa Koch and Myra Hindley. She looked quite literally devilish.

‘You cunt!’ she screamed.

The inappropriacy of this term of abuse was lost on both of us, I fear. Irony was never Karen’s strong suit, and I was too busy staving off her frenzied assault to appreciate it. Karen was smaller and lighter than me, but fitter and much more highly-motivated. She kneed me in the groin, savaged my face with her nails and battered my shins and ankles with her sharply pointed shoes. Her energy was demonic, the sudden release of months of pent-up hatred and frustration. I tried to contain her, but my defences were swiftly overwhelmed.

She wanted me to hit her, of course. That would prove her right, prove me to be the heartless bastard she said I was. What worried me was that it would prove it not just to her but to everyone. She could have her bruises examined and described and then produce photographs and medical witnesses in court to discomfort me. Those marital stigmata would transfigure Karen from promiscuous bitch into battered wife, while I would appear a sadistic adventurer who was not content with taking her money but had to beat her up as well. I would be lucky to get off with a suspended sentence, and I could certainly kiss goodbye to any hope of favourable settlement. And to Alison, needless to say.

I did hit out, but not physically. Garcia would have been proud of me. I chose a blow that hurt her worse than any punch, but left no marks at all.

‘Do you know what a vasectomy is, Karen?’

She kicked me viciously on the ankle. I gritted my teeth, wrenched her arm painfully and repeated my question.

‘Of course I bloody well know!’

‘Well here’s something else you should know. I’ve had one.’

It took a moment for this to sink in. Then her body went limp in my arms.

‘What you mean?’

‘I mean that I’m incapable of fatherhood. I’ve been surgically sterilized. Cut, snipped, gelded.’

Her eyes were wide open, but she was looking inward now, assessing the damage. Reports were still coming in, but already she could tell that it was very bad, a major disaster.

‘Then it was all lies.’

I said nothing. I’d made my point, and I wasn’t in the mood to chat. She turned away, mumbling the same phrase I’d heard earlier, but louder now, more urgently.

‘No love, no love, no love, no love, no love.’

Yes, well, it was all very sad. It would be nice if there was more love around. We thought we could make it happen, back in the sixties. We were wrong. Love’s gone the way of Father Christmas, the tooth fairy and the man in the moon. It’s for the kiddies, that stuff. We’ve grown up now. We don’t believe in love any more.

I left Karen to her maudlin reveries and went upstairs to lie down for a bit before she came back for the next round. It didn’t seem likely that either of us would get much sleep that night.

When I awoke the room was dark. Through the uncurtained window the upper branches of a tree outside the house were backlit by the streetlamp opposite. I was lying fully dressed on top of the covers. Karen’s side of the bed had not been disturbed at all. In addition to a totally irrelevant erection, I was suffering from a splitting headache and a nasty case of heartburn. The clock was in one of those positions — ten past two, in this case — where it seems to have only one hand.

I got up and went to the bathroom, where I took some paracetamol and Alka Seltzer. The upper landing was illuminated by the glow of the hallway light. Karen, I assumed, was drowning her sorrows in the dusk-to-dawn movies accessible via the satellite dish which Dennis had installed. She might even have fallen asleep in front of the set. It wouldn’t have been the first time. I leant over the banister and peered down the stairs.

For the past week, a magazine wrapped in a plastic cover had been resting on the third step from the bottom, a professional journal which Dennis had subscribed to and which kept arriving despite our attempts to convince the publisher’s computer that the intended recipient was beyond caring about such topics as ‘1992: The Implications for Your Clients’. Now, however, the glossy package was no longer on the step but lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway.

It was the very triviality of this fact which drew me downstairs to investigate. The displacement of the magazine seemed such a meaningless gesture that my curiosity was aroused. I was about half-way down the stairs — almost exactly where Dennis must have been standing the morning he almost caught us in bed together, in fact — when I spotted one of Karen’s shoes lying in the doorway to the living room. Even more interesting, her foot was still in it.

A few steps more and I could make out the rest of the body sprawled on the parquet flooring a few inches away from the hideous neo-Spanish cabinet which the Parsons had chosen to ‘add a bit of character’ to their hallway, an over-elaborate mock-antique affair with metal strengthenings at the corners, cast-iron handles with sharp edges and a massive key protruding from the cupboard doors. Dennis had remarked jocularly that someone would do themselves an injury on it sooner or later. At the time this had seemed just like one of those things you say.