Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the work of a professional bodyguard consisted of one activity: frowning. You frowned here, you frowned there. You frowned this way, that way. Got to be seen to be vigilant: got to keep frowning. Some mornings-after you’d wake up thinking: Fuck. Who nutted me last night? Like your brow was one big bruise. Only it wasn’t the fighting. It was all the frowning … But Car was different. Normally a bodyguard protected the client from the outside world. With Ainsley, you protected the outside world from the client. Mal Bale, who had been hired by Car’s agent, stood at the bar of the Cocked Pinkie, rubbing his eyes like a child. He wouldn’t be called upon to do a lot of frowning. He would be called upon to do a lot of gaping — as a prelude to more concerted action. It’s weird, thought Mal. Ainsley’s just about controllable till the six-o’clock personality change. Half a shandy down him and he’s a different bloke. His eyes go.

There they sat in their booth, Ainsley and that Clint: talking business. Ainsley’s fourth cocktail looked like a Knickerbocker Glory — with a child’s umbrella sticking out of it. You’ve got to respect him as a player, Mal inwardly conceded. And Mal in his early days (a different epoch, really) had been a loyal supporter of his native West Ham: the punnet of sweet-and-sour pork on the overnight coach to Sunderland; the frenzied, lung-igniting sprints down the King’s Road; the monotonous appearances at the magistrate’s court in Cursitor Street. Then disillusionment had come to him, one Saturday at Upton Park. It was half-time, and they had these two mascots romping around in the corner where the kids all sit; they were plumply, almost spherically costumed, one as a pig, one as a lamb. Suddenly the pig gives the lamb a whack, and the lamb whacks him back. It was comical at first, with them flopping and floundering about. You thought it was part of the act — but it wasn’t. The lamb’s on his back, flailing like a flipped beetle, and the pig’s doing him with the corner-flag, and you can hear the kids screaming, and there’s blood on the fleece… Up until that moment Mal had considered himself nicely pumped for the post-match ruck; but he knew at once that it was now all over. Over. Something to do with violence and categories: he couldn’t articulate it, but never again would he fight for fun. Mal had recently become a dad himself, which might have had something to do with it. He heard later that the lamb had been stuffing the pig’s bird, in which case the lamb, Mal believed, definitely had it coming.

He consulted his watch (seven-fifteen). Darius, his relief, was due at ten.

‘Over the past two years Ainsley Car and the Morning Lark have enjoyed a special relationship,’ said Clint Smoker. ‘Fact?’

Ainsley did not demur. During his years at the top he had opened his heart to a series of mass-circulation dailies about his benders and detox programmes, about the drunken car-crashes, the wrecked hotel rooms, the stomped starlets. But that was in the days when, with a drop of his shoulder and a swipe of his boot, Ainsley could hurt whole nations, and instantaneously exalt his own. And he couldn’t do that any more. These days, even his delinquencies were crap.

‘There comes a point in every athlete’s life’, said Smoker in his loud and apparently humourless voice, ‘when he has to take off his shorts and consider the financial security of his family. You have reached that point — or so we at the Lark believe.’

No, he couldn’t do it any more: on the park. In his early pomp, Ainsley was all footballer: even in his dinner-jacket, at an awards ceremony — if he turned round you’d expect to see his name and number stitched on to his back. Ginger-haired, small-eyed, open-mouthed. In the dialect of the tribe, he was tenacious (i.e., short) and combative (i.e., dirty); but he was indubitably in possession of a football brain. His mind wasn’t cultured or educated — but his right foot was. Then it all went pear-shaped for the little fella. The aggression was still there; it was the reflexes that had vanished. Usually, now, Ainsley was being stretchered off the field before the ball had left the centre circle: injured while attempting to inflict injury on an opponent (or a teammate, or the referee). The Lark ‘s most recent in-depth interview had concerned the ‘moment of madness’ at a proceleb charity match when, with the vibrations of the starting whistle just beginning to fade, Ainsley went clattering into the sixty-six-year-old ex-England winger, Sir Bobby Miles. They broke a leg each.

‘I got years left in me, mate,’ said Ainsley menacingly. ‘You know where I keep me pace?’ And twice he tapped his temple. ‘Up here. I can still do a job out there. I can still do a job.’

‘Let’s have some realism, Ains. Never again will you pull on a Wales shirt. You’re on a one-year with them slappers up in Teesside. And they won’t renew. You’ll have to drop down. In a couple of seasons they’ll be kicking chunks out of you down in Scunthorpe.’

‘I ain’t a slapper, mate. And I ain’t playing for … for fucking Scumforpe. You know who’s enquiring after me? Only Juventus.’

‘Juventus? They must be after your pasta recipes. Ains. Listen. You were, repeat were, the most exciting player it’s ever been my privilege to watch. When you had it at your feet coming into the box — Jesus. You were something unbelievable. But it’s gone, and that’s what frustrates you. That’s why you’re always in hospital by half-time. You’ve got to believe that the Lark has your best interests at heart.’

‘The people’, said Ainsley, with bitter gratitude, ‘will always love Ainsley Car. They love their Dodgem, mate. That stands. It stands. ’

Resembling an all too obviously non-edible mushroom, Clint’s tongue slid out of his mouth and licked the handcuffs dangling from his nose. He said, ‘You’re done, Ains. You’re gone. You’ve given. It’s that nagging brain injury called self-destruction. You’re fat, mate. And you sweat. Look at your chest. It’s like a wet-T-shirt competition. And that wedding-ring is getting smaller every week. Which brings me to my next point.’ Then, his sadism more fully responding to the masochism it sensed in Car, he gestured at the waiter, saying, ‘Raymond! Another drink for Tits.’

Smoker paused. He was, this night, experiencing an unfamiliar buoyancy — rather to the detriment, perhaps, of his diplomatic skills. In the inside pocket of his big boxy black suit there nestled an enticing e-mail from his cyberpal, ‘k’. In response to Clint’s query, ‘What kind of a role do you think that sex plays in a healthy relationship?’ she’d e’d: ‘a minor 1. have we all gone stark raving mad? let’s keep a sense of proportion, 4 God’s sake. it should only happen last thing @ nite, as a n@ural prelude 2 sleep. none of these dreadful sessions. i find a few stiff drinks usually helps — don’t u?’ Reading this, Smoker became belatedly aware that his most durable and fulfilling relationships had all been with dipsomaniacs. To put it another way, he liked having sex with drunk women. There seemed to be three reasons for this. One: they go all stupid. Two: they sometimes black out (and you can have a real laugh with them then). Three: they usually don’t remember if you fail. Takes the pressure off. Common sense.

‘We at the Lark reckon you’ve got one mega story left in you. The challenge, now, is for us to maximise that story. We’ve discussed various ways you could make the world sit up and listen. And this is what we want you to consider. Doing Beryl.’

‘Doing Beryl?’

‘Doing Beryl. And having Donna.’