Alexander Smith - Unbearable Lightness of Scones

He stressed the word “fiancée” and watched the effect on Watson Cooke. It registered. Watson’s mouth twitched slightly at the edges.

“Oh yes,” said Watson Cooke. “You should take her out a bit more yourself, you know. Women like to be fussed over. Did you know that?”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. Does he think that I don’t know about women? Does he really think that? How many girlfriends has this stupid… stupid hunk had? Two?

“I have to go,” said Bruce suddenly. “Thank you very much for the party.”

He opened the door and went out onto the landing, slamming the door behind him. On impulse, he stopped for a moment and detached the note from the neighbour that he had found stuck to the door. To the message which the neighbour had written, he added two brief, scrawled scatological words, addressed to Watson. Then he pinned the note back on the door and went downstairs, out into the night.

He walked straight home, mentally rehearsing exactly what he would say to Julia when she came back that night. He thought that for a few minutes at the outset he would refuse to talk to her at all; the cold shoulder always registered with women. She would approach him, of course, and come up with something about not knowing why he was being so cold, and that would be his signal.

“Cold?” he would say. “So I’m cold, am I? Well, that’s not something that you suffer from, is it? Particularly when it comes to other men. Nobody would describe you as cold.”

Her jaw would drop. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh don’t you? Little Miss Innocent? Well, I refer to your habit of dining tête-à-tête with other men when you’re meant to be engaged. That’s what I mean. Dining with that Watsonian gorilla and lying about it. Yes, lying. Oh, I can tell all right. Don’t think for one moment that I couldn’t tell that you were lying.”

Her face would crumple. “Oh, Bruce, don’t! I beg you! I love you so much. I worship the ground you tread on, I really do. I’d do anything for you, Brucie, anything. Oh, Brucie, please forgive me. It was madness, pure madness. And he’s such a creep, Watson Cooke. I hate him. I really hate him. He’s useless. And he’s impotent. Did you know that? Something happened in a rugby scrum and he’s impotent. You should feel sorry for him, Brucie. You should. You’re so… so… and he’s so… so… Really, Brucie, it’s true. Please forgive me. I feel wretched.”

He would be magnanimous. “All right. And are you going to be a good girl from now on? Promise.”

“Oh, Brucie! You know I’ll be good.”

He reached the flat with this satisfying dialogue still in his head. It made him feel considerably better, and by the time he had had another shower and slipped into his purple dressing gown he had almost forgotten his distress of the earlier part of the evening. Now he went through to the kitchen, prepared himself a bowl of muesli and began to watch a television replay of a Scottish football defeat.

He was still watching that when Julia came in.

“Why did you leave without me?’ she asked, flinging her coat down on the kitchen floor.

“Leave?” asked Bruce. “Oh, the party. Well, it was pretty dull. I got bored, I suppose.”

“And how do you think I felt?”

Bruce looked up from his muesli. “You had your friend there. Watson Cooke. You could talk to him.”

Julia picked up a copy of Vogue from the table and then, quite suddenly, but accurately, threw it across the table at Bruce.

“Temper!” said Bruce. “Temper! Temper!”

“You can get out,” said Julia quietly. “Tomorrow morning. Get out.”

Bruce stared at her. “You… You’re my fiancée,” he said. “And that, that’s my baby. You can’t…”

“Oh yes I can,” she said. “Engagement over. And the baby…well, sorry, Bruce, it was Watson Cooke’s all along. I meant to tell you, but you know how it is. Anyway, please move out tomorrow morning. I’ll phone Daddy and ask him to get a couple of his men to help you. You know those bouncers from that place he owns? They’ll help you move.”

“Is there anything wrong?” asked Nick McNair as he ushered Bruce into his studio the following morning. “Or shouldn’t I ask? A hangover from the party last night?”

Bruce shook his head. “No. It’s not that. And I’ll be all right.”

Nick looked sideways at Bruce. “You look a bit washed out, if I may say so. Not quite yourself.”

Bruce rubbed his face in his hands. “Maybe. It’s just that… Well, the truth is that I broke up with my fiancée last night. It was a bit heavy.”

Nick put on an expression of sympathy. “Oh, poor girl! Was it hard for her?”

Bruce nodded. “Yes, it was. Still, it’s probably better to do it at this stage than to do it after the wedding.” He smiled weakly. “Cheaper this way.”

“That’s true,” said Nick. “I split up with Colleen – she’s my ex – about two years ago and, oh my goodness, did we ever fight! This is mine. No, it’s mine. And this is mine too. And so on. We even fought about forwarding mail. She chucked my mail in the bin – wouldn’t even drop it in the post for me.”

“They hate us,” said Bruce. “I don’t know what we do to deserve it, but they hate us.”

Bruce closed his eyes for a moment. He would have to try to forget that morning’s scene, but he felt that it would be difficult. When he had woken up – after a night spent on the less-than-comfortable couch – it was to the sound of knocking on the door. Julia, he learned, had already made a telephone call to her father, and he had arrived on the doorstep with the two bouncers Julia had talked about. They were dressed in the ill-fitting black suits of their calling, with thin, dark-coloured ties. One of them, Tommy, had HATE tattooed on the knuckles of one hand… and HATE on the knuckles of the other. The other, Billy, had a line tattooed across his forehead. Bruce could not help but peer forward to read it: BRAINBOX.

Julia appeared in the doorway of the bedroom and conferred briefly with her father, who then walked over to Bruce. “I’m sorry that it’s come to this, Bruce,” he said. “But I always think that it’s best for incompatibility to be discovered at an early stage. I would have appreciated you as a son-in-law, but it’s not to be. I hope that there’s no ill-feeling.”

“It’s her,” said Bruce. “She’s chucking me out.”

“Well, it must have been something you did. I don’t think I should go into that.”

“Something she did,” snapped Bruce. “She was seeing another man.”

Julia’s father frowned. “I don’t think my daughter would do that,” he said. “We’re not that sort.”

“Well, she did,” Bruce retorted. “Watson Cooke. You know him? Watson Cooke.”

There was a flicker of recognition, and Bruce suddenly realised that Julia’s father looked pleased. “Well, I don’t think we should go into all that,” said the older man. “Julia has asked me to help you move your stuff out. I’ve brought the men. They can pack things up and store it somewhere for you. And if you wouldn’t mind giving me the keys of the Porsche, I’ll take care of that. And as far as the job is concerned, I’ll arrange for the accounts department to send you a couple of months’ salary in lieu.”

Bruce had been sitting on the couch during this conversation. Now he stood up. “Now hold on! Just hold on. You gave me that car.”

Julia’s father looked down at his feet. “Not gave, Bruce. Provided. And the registration documents, I’m afraid, are in the company’s name. So if you wouldn’t mind giving me the key?”

“Actually, I would mind,” said Bruce. “I’d mind a lot.”