Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

Beryl was Ainsley’s childhood sweetheart. They had wed when they were both sixteen, and Ainsley had left her two weeks later, the day after his record transfer. In a ceremony largely brokered by the Morning Lark , the pair had recently remarried: the event was designed both to confirm and solidify Ainsley’s triumph in his battle with alcohol. Central to the symbolism of the story was the fact that Beryl, remarkable in no other way, was spectacularly small. Ainsley himself was the shortest player in the Premier League — but he beetled over Beryl. Journalistically, it was felt that a tiny bride would shore up Ainsley’s protective instincts and sense of responsibility, unlike the circus-horse blondes whom he was always brawling over, or brawling with, in various spielers and speakeasies.

‘Follow me here,’ elaborated Clint Smoker. ‘You arrange for Beryl to meet you in your London hotel room at a certain time. Earlier in the day, at a piss-up arranged by us, you pull the top Lark model of your choice. Say Donna Strange. You take her back to your room, and you’re giving her one when the missus walks in. Donna scarpers and you do Beryl.’

‘Why do I do Beryl? Why doesn’t Beryl do me?’

‘Cause she’s one inch tall. No. Come on. She’s bound to give you a bit of stick.’ Smoker put his head at a craven angle and said in a wheedling voice, ‘“You were giving that model one! You betrayed me with another bird!” All this. I mean, how much shit can you take? So then you do Beryl.’

Ainsley’s open mouth opened further, thus deepening the pleat between his nose and his forehead.

Smoker said, ‘I mean every paper’ll cover that. And we’ll have Donna’s tits and arse all over pages one to five, Beryl’s black eyes all over pages five to ten, plus an eight-page pullout soul-searcher from the man himself, Ainsley Car.’

‘How much?’

Smoker said how much: a jolting sum.

‘ All passengers to the rear of the plane! ’ Ainsley suddenly hollered. ‘ Stam back! Don’t no one go near! Fuck amfrax — this geezer’s got hepatitis G an an an-grenade up his arse! OH MY GOD! IT’S THE TOWER! IT’S BIG BEN, IT’S OLD TOM, IT’S BUCK PAL! NO! THE UMFINKABLE! OH MY GOD, WE’RE ALL GONNA —’

By this time several waiters had hurried through the silenced dining-room, and Mal Bale was there with his palms on Car’s shoulders, pressing him back into his seat, and looking round about himself, and frowning.

There’s no hard men any more, brooded Mal (this had recently become an urgent mental theme, following the matter with Xan Meo), as he made his way to the bar, two hours later: all they got now’s nutters. Nutters on drugs. Take Snort: that bloke Snort.

When he reached the bar and its ring of drinkers, Mal turned. Darius had been prompt. At this point Darius was on his first cranberry juice, Smoker was on his third litre of mineral water (he feared for his driving licence) and Ainsley was on his ninth cocktail. A seven-foot Seventh Day Adventist, Darius looked to be having some success in forcefeeding Ainsley with bread rolls.

Take Snort. No bottle. After the Xan Meo business, Mal gave Snort his drink (four hundred in cash) and said, ‘I’m never using you again, mate. All right?’ And Snort just dropped his eyes. And then Mal said, ‘So you’re having that, are you? Just think, “I’ll fuck up, I’ll get me drink and I’ll creep away”? You ought to take a pill called pride , son. You ought to take a pill called pride. ’ See: no bottle. Just nutters on drugs. And playacting, too. Snort says he’s ex-SAS, but all the right dogs say they’re ex-SAS.

Mal was now joined by Smoker of the Lark , who was looking at him oddly, as if pricing his suit.

Smoker meant to say it softly, but his voice wasn’t equal to saying things softly. He said, ‘You’re a face, incha?’

The first thing Mal had to establish was whether he was being trifled with. He was barely aware of the existence of the Morning Lark (and would have been scandalised by its contents), but he knew Clint pretty well, through the Ainsley Car connection and because of that time when he, Mal, had famously bodied topless models for six months and given interviews to various newspapers, the Lark among them. Seemed like there wasn’t much harm in the bloke. Relenting, Mal said,

‘Don’t know about face. I’m a bodyguard, mate.’

‘But you put yourself about a bit, in your time. Let the Lark do this.’

‘Yeah. Well. This and that. A pint of Star please, love. I could have progressed. But I didn’t have the correct temperament.’

Clint quietly rolled his eyes and said, ‘But you’ve run with these blokes. You said in print that you’ve run with these blokes.’

‘Yeah, I’ve known a few in my time. Ah, lovely.’

‘See if this name means anything to you.’

‘Goo on en,’ said Mal briskly, tipping his head back and intending to neck a good few swallows of his first drink of the night.

‘Joseph Andrews.’

Mal emitted a sneeze of foam and dived forward with his face in his glass.

‘Whoah,’ said Clint, wiping the beer off his brow and pounding Mal’s back with a heavy white hand. ‘Yeah. See they did that bloke Xan Meo? Mate of mine witnessed it. Said they were settling a score for Joseph Andrews. Reckons he’ll flog it round the newspapers.’

It’s gone off, thought Mal. It’s all gone off.

At midnight Ainsley Car called for his crutches.

Already ashore, Mal watched the troubled striker as he levered himself along the gangway, with Darius looming in his wake. Beyond them flowed the Thames and all its klieg-lit history. Above, the moist studs of the stars, the sweating stars, seized on to spacetime.

‘Legless,’ said Clint from behind.

‘No, he’ll be getting his second wind about now. Want to be off up the clubs.’ Around eleven Ainsley had entered a quieter cycle, like a washing-machine. Any minute he’d be back to tumbling and fumbling and shuddering up and down. Mal looked at his watch and said, ‘Time for the submarine.’

And you could hear him, Ainsley, as he laboured up the slope, in a low, fiercely rigid voice, going: ‘ All men in level five proceed at once to level four. All men in level four proceed at once to level three. All men in …’

Discreetly the courtesy car drew near. Mal saw with regret that Ainsley’s course would take him past, or over, the poor bastard who was sitting under a lamppost with his dog in his lap … And this homeless person was not in the position of Homeless John, who had somewhere nice to go home to; he was a genuine carpark and shop-doorway artist, a dustbin-worrier hunkering down for his third shelterless winter. The bitch had spaniel in her blood, and smooth-haired terrier; he stroked and muttered and otherwise communed with her. They looked closer than a couple: the impression given was one of intense participation in each other’s being. It was almost as if the dog was his strength, his manhood, surfacing erect from his slumped body.

So Dodgem poles himself into the frame and says, ‘Do you fancy fifty quid?’

‘… Course I fancy fifty quid.’

Out comes the money-clip and he peels off the note.

‘… Thanks very much.’

‘Now. I want to ask you a favour, mate. Can you lend me fifty quid.’

‘I’d rather not. To be honest.’

‘ Honest? You know what my dad said to me?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing! Cuzzy fucked off when I was one. But me mum. Me mum said charity begins at home. And you ain’t got one. Now ghiss it ,’ said Ainsley. His voice was vibrating; his whole head was vibrating. ‘Where’s your pride man …?’