Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

… for the both of them. The uh, the mongrel’s Bena. The Alsatian’s Mick. Know why I love dogs?

Tell me, love.

Dogs don’t kick you when you’re down.

That’s true.

Dogs don’t nag at you. Dogs don’t rip you fucking off. Dogs don’t give you bullshit.

They give you dogshit.

Yeah but … yeah but … Dogs don’t —

‘Jesus. Well at least they’re in bed by the sound of it.’

‘How long’s he got?’ asked Darius. ‘You’d think he’d be making a pig of himself. Donna Strange?’

‘“I always enjoy the Lark’ s annual Top Titcrack Competition (pages 19–26),” ‘typed Clint. ‘“It’s a chance to have a few drinks and a laugh and generally relax. After the lunch and the playoff, we sat around with the proud winner, Donna Strange, and had a few drinks. Spirits were high. And it was hard to take your eyes off Donna’s cleavage. Talk about Silicone Valley! A bit later someone suggested that we move on to the bar for a few drinks. At this stage, the thought of any monkey business was the last thing on my mind. I’m a happily married man. And after all, little Beryl was due to join me at seven.

‘“After a few drinks Donna suggested we move on to the restaurant for a snack and a few drinks. Call me naïve, but I thought little of it when Donna complained of hoarseness in the foyer and asked for a glass of water. We went up to my room on the twentieth floor. I don’t know if she was having me on about the tickle in her pipe. But this was for certain. Five seconds after that door closed behind us, Donna Strange had a frog in her —”‘

— I’ve nutmegged their number two and come haring into the box. The goalie’s come out to close me down but I’ve gone and chipped him. Two-all. The crowd’s going spare. In the eighty-sevemf minute, Gibbsy’s played a long ball out to the left …

‘The time is nigh.’

‘Yeah, well. Donna knows what time it is.’

Clint now typed very fast for fifteen minutes. ‘“At last,” ‘he went on, ‘“she smiled up from beneath my sopping knackers. I needed no second invitation when she offered to start taking her clothes off. In all the excitement I clean forgot that …”’

‘Five to,’ said Darius.

… with a power header just before half-time. Shortly after the resumption I —

Where are we now, Dodge? Kestrel Juniors?

Kestrel Juniors? No, love, this is the Under Nines. Shortly after the —

Here, darling, we’d better get started.

… I’m uh, I’m not bothered.

Pardon?

I’m not bothered. With Beryl due. Bit embarrassing for a bloke, his wife seeing him with his arse in the air. No offence.

I don’t mind, sweetheart, but it’s not up to us, is it? Look … Undo your … If I … Just get your …

‘He’s not even got his clobber off!’ cried Darius.

‘She’ll have him. Donna Strange? She’ll jack him up. She’ll be there.’

And now they could hear her, through the Babicom (its red light straining), through the matt wall: Donna, gathering it up from the depths.

Ainsley Car had impressed it upon Clint that Beryl was a woman of pathological punctuality — especially in her dealings with things like Central London, and public spaces, and Ainsley Car when he was putting himself about … Clint approached the door and opened it narrowly. The hand-mirror he held gave him a flickering view of the empty passage. He stuck his head out — his head, like the shaved hump of a camel. The Bostonian had recently been dragged into the twenty-first century, but it remained an old, sprawling, fire-haunted hotel: the corridor unreeled itself like an opium vision, as if to infinity. Clint waited. At 7.58 the specklike pixel of Beryl Car began to detach itself from the distance. So small; and already so strafed by fears. Funny: she’s getting nearer — but no bigger. And shit nerself, he thought… Her want of inches was like an exertion of humility; and the stride, too, was just a series of starts and hesitations, buffeted by invisible fingerstabs of mockery or reproach.

Sternly Clint backed into Room 2011. ‘Wait for it,’ he whispered. ‘First the waterworks. Then boof. ’

With their heads dipped and their mouths stretched in grins of suspense, the two men listened to what they had heard many times before. But only on their television sets: the shuddering, self-righteous birthsong of Donna Strange — so operatically brought to bed.

He gave it half a minute longer, then stepped up and opened the door. He looked left, he looked right.

‘You little bitch,’ he said.

Clint entered the conference room, the next day, to a standing ovation. There was nothing triumphal in it. Rather, the applause expressed a grave and considered solidarity — a sense that, though much had been achieved, much abided their care; a sense that, however uncertain the outcome, the attempt itself had spoken, and not in a quiet voice, for professional intrepidity and esprit.

‘Well thanks, lads, for the moral support. Thanks, Chief. Appreciated. It was never going to be easy out there last night, but I was … “Doing Beryl” was my baby, and I wasn’t about to mess this one up. No danger.’

It was Desmond Heaf’s practice, when the paper mounted one of its coups de théâtre , to retire to the sidelines for a day or two. He now had the air of a fuddled corporal emerging from a foxhole. ‘Would you care to take us through it, Clint?’

‘Okay. Beryl’s done a runner on us. Yup. Seems she approached the door, heard Donna belting it out — and she’s done a runner.’ Down the far end of the passage she was disappearing into the motes at the vista’s end. ‘So be it: plan B. I got Dodgem out from under Donna and hauled him next door. I said, “Dodge? You know what you got to do, boy? You got to go in there and do Donna.”’

‘I almost gave birth when I saw it,’ said Heaf. That morning’s edition rattled faintly in his grip: WHY I DID DONNA BY AINSLEY CAR *WORLD EXCLUSIVE *Dodgem Goes Apes **t After Hotel Sex Fest. ‘Why I did Donna? ’

‘“Do Donna?” says Dodgem,’ said Clint. ‘“Why do I do Donna?” I said, “You don’t do Donna. What you do is you ‘do’ Donna: when I give the word, you make a racket and smash up the furniture, and we’ll do the rest.” He said, “But why, mate?” I said, “If it’s motivation you’re after, she’s just cost you your marriage.” Course I was rewriting it in my head: the piece. Like: “When I realised that those three hours of madness might mean the loss of little Beryl, my anger naturally turned on the rotten slag who’d led me astray.” Et cetera. Then I rang Marge Fitzmaurice.’

Clint’s colleagues were listening with unrelieved solemnity, their faces dry and grey. Even Supermaniam looked like Voltaire.

‘I told Marge to get her vanity case and her fat arse over to the Bostonian instanter … It was a pleasure to watch her work. If you turn the page, Chief — the bruises on the inner thigh? And on the bosom? Then we slung in the black eye and the split lip. I told Dodge to get started. Give him a minute and I’ll call Security. Well I heard a thud or two, nothing much, and I looked back in: Ainsley’s on the floor, and there’s Donna in her pants smashing his head in with a glass ashtray. Said he took a right swing at her, so she did him. After that it was just logistics.’

‘Had Ainsley been drinking?’

‘Drinking? He doesn’t remember anything from about noon on. And guess what. He didn’t do Donna — and he didn’t have her either. Rather talk about his dogs and Kestrel Juniors. Donna straddled him and that, for Beryl, but it was strictly soft-core.’