Marked for Life
A short story from the book of short stories by Lloyd Rees. Read below or listen on spotify.
I was never what you'd call really handsome. I used to think I had pleasant features, charming in a way perhaps, but I knew I was no looker, right from the start. You compensate for these things though. I mean, I don't look like some guys, the ones with freckles like someone has spilled coffee granules all over their face or ginger hair like their head was some old busted settee. I'm just sort of ordinary. Apart from the stigmata, as you might say.
You see, there's two things about me. The first thing is, I bruise easy, and I seem to stay bruised. Every little dent, dint, collision, contusion, bang, graze and tumble leaves me marked for life. The second thing's to do with my appearance. I don't mean just my face, I already mentioned that. No, my walk, my stance, my hair - whatever style I choose, oddly enough - everything about the way I strike people reminds them of somebody else. My voice. My laugh. Someone just said the other day my footstep reminded her of her husband. I mean, footstep! Perhaps we both get our shoes from Marks and Sparks, I said. No, she said, don't be silly, you've got a special way of walking into a room, you should have been a dancer. Only my husband can walk into a room like that, she said. I had this impression it was because it was her bedroom I was walking into. Perhaps it's only me and him that get to shuffle in there, I was naturally enough thinking. Anyway, you get the point, it's an example of me reminding people of other people for all these different reasons. Quite frankly, I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted; it's all very well one day being told you smell like Clint Eastwood, but when you stop and analyse it you start to wonder what this woman means. She's certainly never met Clint Eastwood, so it probably means I smell of horseshit. Anyway, the next day someone says you've got the same sort of nervous half-smile as Woody Allen. It's not much wonder, if people are saying you've got a funny walk, and you smell like the man with no name.
Well, you're probably getting the picture by now, I am a little partial to a little bit of a fling. I'm not saying I'm a raving sex maniac or anything, it's just that I seem to have had my share of good fortune. Well, good fortune in one sense.
I was in the bath this morning and I got to examining my body, as you do from time to time, especially as you get to, well, thirty or so. I know, you also do it a fair bit when you're fourteen or fifteen, but somehow, I don't know how, the time just rushes by in between and you don't get a chance to give yourself a good looking over, so to speak. Anyway, as I say, I was having a nice contemplative bath, the water was getting a bit tepid and my hands were getting those massive crinkly fingerprints, and I couldn't help noticing the scar on my stomach again. I thought it would disappear, but it hasn't. It just goes a funny aubergine colour when I'm steeped in water too long. Honestly, I feel like a teabag, or a piece of litmus paper sometimes. But before I could begin to think about the woman who did that I was distracted by the mark on my leg. There’s absolutely no chance of that kick mark ever going away. It’s a funny little brown hollow right in the middle of my shin. Hard to think that she did that with her normal pointed shoe, not a steel toe capped workman’s boot. I felt like I was some sort of ‘Try Your Strength’ machine they used to have at fairgrounds.
I’ve got that scar on my abdomen from a knife wound but it’s a bit like a caesarean, below the waist, so no one much sees it. Worse is the scar down the back of my calf, but that’s from when I came off my bike, so it doesn’t count. The other stuff is fairly minor really, though my thumbnail is black and never grew back properly after that Australian girl tried to electrocute me with a table lamp, and I’ve got a tiny scar above my left eye from when the Ford Escort went into a parked van. That was Shirley losing her shit at me about something.
It was Mandy who did the mark on my shin. I don’t really know why I married her. Not many blokes of my acquaintance do know how their wedding comes about. Seems like you’re in a bit if a daze for a while and then when you come round preparations are too far advanced to call it off. Some insurance salesman had me much the same way once. I'd been having a bit of a kip on the settee and there was this knock on the door, so I stumbled up and let him in. I couldn't have been properly awake because I remember thinking, if I just sign whatever it is he's got here he'll go away, and I can get back to sleep. Tenacious creatures, insurance salesmen. Like young brides-to-be. But I had to cancel Mandy's policy before too long, I have to say. That was on the cards from the moment she started comparing me to her first husband.
Now I don't mind a drink. Nothing spectacular, just a few bevvies with my mates once or twice a week. And a game of snooker now and again. Well, she starts in on me that I'm out seven nights a week. That was a downright fib.
'Just like Derek,' she'd say. 'Can't stay in like a normal married man.'
I told her. I said, 'I don't mind staying in now and again, Mand, but occasionally I have to have a pint with the thirty of forty other abnormal married men down the local.’.
So she broke my snooker cue. She wasn't big. Average, you'd have to say, average height, and quite slim with it. But she snapped that cue right across her knee like it was a twig. Then she threw one half of it across the room like I was some sort of retriever. I said, 'That's not on, Amanda.' And I walked out.
I didn't walk out, walk out. I just caught the bus into town, because I knew I'd have a few beers, and drink driving's one thing I don't do. I went to a sports shop and bought myself a nice new cue and went for a game of snooker. I was going to go home again. But she turned up in the car outside the club. I was coming out after a quick couple of frames and just going to have a quick pint or two in the pub when I saw her striding down the street at me. I sort of shrugged my shoulders, held up my new cue to show her I didn't harbour a grudge, you know, and the next thing she'd taken a run at me and tried to kick my leg off at the knee. The cue and me just clattered to the ground. Luckily, the cue was unharmed this time, but I did seriously think my leg was a goner for a second or two. Do you know what it's like when a person breathes with every inch of their body? I was going to say, she stood there shaking with rage, but that doesn't describe it at all. It was like she was a massive pile of snakes all hissing and spitting and breathing in and out very fast at the same time. Quite a sight.
‘You remind me of my husband!' she said. I suppose she hadn't quite got used to me being her new husband. Then she walked off. I just lay on the pavement expecting to see shards of splintered bone sticking out of my trouser leg and a damp red patch spreading on the ground. I had serious trouble getting on the bus, in point of fact. But there was no blood, no breakage I'm aware of. Just a dent. I mean, I'm marked, but I can't say, ‘Oh, that's where I broke my leg once.’ I have to pretend it's a forceps mark from when I was dragged screaming out of the womb. Anyway, I got home eventually, had to sit on the lower deck of the bus too, and I hate that. Got home and she'd buggered clean off. I'd had a good half hour to rehearse my speech and there was no one to make it to, just a note on the TV screen that said 'I CAN'T STAND IT ANY MORE, AMANDA.' Just what I wanted to write, apart from the comma.
Anyway, she divorced me for mental cruelty. I could have gone to court, could have gone on crutches now I think about it, and shown them all about cruelty. Sod it, I thought. I pleaded guilty by post.
Then I found myself on the loose again, so to speak. But within a few months I was sitting in Casualty holding my nose on with a red wet hanky. Now Christine, she was a volatile type of woman. Red hair and big eyes. I hadn't considered she was given to violence on Mandy's scale though. Turned out she wasn't averse to attacking a man's olfactory organ when it came down to it, I now see. And why did she bust my hooter? It's funny really, she smacked my head against the steering wheel of the car because I'd been seeing Maureen. Little was she to realise, Maureen was going to smack it back into shape, more or less, before the week was out. Squash racket, she used. I tell you; they didn't know what to think at Casualty.
The thing is, it was a bit of a rebound. Not the racket, now, the relationship, I mean. It was only a day or two after the decree nisi that I bumped into Christine, and I thought she was the most marvellous thing on two legs I'd ever seen. She was serving in this wine bar and somehow I got talking to her, you know how you do, and next thing I was back at her place most nights. I know, you're not supposed to break that magical but unreal bond between barmaid and customer, but in Christine's case I had to make an exception.
Trouble was, she started saying things like, ‘Shall I give up working evenings? We could see more of each other then,’ I thought, hang on, I'm barely an outpatient from my last marriage and she's already moving her clothes out of one of the wardrobes for me. So I knew it was time to put the brakes on, and accordingly I started not turning up. First of all, I said it was to do with work; later on I just said, ‘It's more fun if it's spontaneous. You know now I really want to be with you when I come round; it's not just me coming round out of a sense of duty.’ I mean, I never thought this stuff would work, but it's amazing what people will let themselves believe sometimes. She agreed. She said, ‘You're right, a man's got to be free to decide what he really wants.’ I didn't know if she was taking the mickey when she said this, but it suited the occasion. Because frequently the occasion was Maureen.
Maureen was married. Oddly enough, despite this she liked to play house. I mean, her old man was often away on important courses and such, so she obviously didn't get enough of being the housewife. Don't get me wrong, but all women like that, don't they? So what used to happen was, I'd go round to her place and she'd make me a meal, then we’d watch TV, then we'd go up to bed. From then on it was a bit different from being married, of course. It was more like we were seventeen and we had the house to ourselves because her parents had gone out. In point of fact, we never had the house to ourselves because I used to go round there late, after she'd put her kids to bed. She was a devious woman, was Maureen, but sexy. Dead skinny she was, but warm and sticky, like candyfloss. Quite the opposite from Christine really, who was on the large side, but soft and loving. And as open as a village pub, if truth be told. But she had a dormant violent side too, in the event.
As luck would have it, Christine spotted me the one time I ever appeared in daylight with Maureen. I knew it would be a mistake, but I foolishly let Maureen persuade me to go shopping with her. Her husband was away in America, so I knew the only danger was the rest of the malicious world sniping, sneering, and snivelling jealously at my good fortune, but I didn't really think I'd be that unlucky as to be spotted by Christine herself.
You know how it is: you're pushing the trolley, a little bored but not too much, and you think you see somebody you know just disappearing behind the next aisle. I didn't realise who it was, of course, I just had this faint notion that there was somebody always behind the tins of asparagus or the rows of rum babas. I never used to get the feeling, oddly enough, when Joyce's nerdy little husband had that private detective following me. I did, of course, spot him (her husband, I mean) following me in their stupid Renault that time. That was so typical. He was that paranoid, he was trailing his own private detective to see if he was getting value for money. But I digress.
Maureen got all the stuff she wanted. I wasn't all that interested because most of the grub wasn't for me, it was for her husband, but I did have my eyes on some fresh salmon she'd put in the trolley. Probably it was concentrating on that that made me miss Christine lurking behind the Italian wines while I was hanging around at the checkout. I never got nearer to that salmon than that salivating, needless to say.
It all seemed to happen so quickly. I'd driven Maureen home, dumped the food in the kitchen, and we were just starting to get amorous in the front hallway when there was the sound of the BMW in the drive. Maureen froze. I nearly wet myself. Her husband wasn't due home till late that night and here we were, miraculously still dressed, but definitely in a tricky situation, entwined in her hallway at three o' clock in the afternoon. This sort of situation calls for quick thinking but the best I could come up with was that I was the delivery boy from the supermarket. There were several things that were a bit suspect though:
(a) I was thirty-five at the time.
(b) Where was my bike?
(c) Since when did M&S actually send round someone to put your stuff in the freezer for you?
Maureen was no help. She hotfooted it into the bathroom. I was left to my own deviousness. Later she told me she was going to deny all knowledge of me and claim I was a burglar or a rapist.
Of course, the one thing that saved me was the BMW. It was brand new, more or less, and he wasn't out of the habit of putting it in the garage. We both stood there frozen, as I said, as he pulled up and got out. Then the next thing Maureen was bolting the bathroom door. But then the guy walks past the front door and I hear the garage door opening. It was crazy, but I opened the front door and just walked out on to the front lawn. I knew I'd never make it down the drive, so I ducked to my right and vaulted clean over this low privet hedge and landed in their next-door neighbour's flower border. I don't suppose I could ever clear it again without tearing myself to ribbons or ending up sprawled across it like a piece of washing, but I found myself lying in a bed of chrysanthemums uninjured, apart from my dignity. Of course, there was worse to come, but I didn't know this because I didn't know that Christine was watching this piece of suburban drama from the passenger seat of my car. I'd parked opposite because I hadn't been worried about Maureen's husband getting back from Houston or Dallas, or wherever it was, this early. I didn't even see Christine was sitting there though till I'd slipped into the driver's seat. Cool as you like.
She just said, ‘You've got mud on your knees.’
There's only a set number of traumas you can take in the space of three minutes, and in my case it's not two. I couldn't even begin to think of a lie. After the opening tirade of bitterness though, my heart slowed down to about a hundred and forty and, very convincingly, I like to think, I begin to tell her that Maureen was an old friend of my former wife's that I'd bumped into carrying all these heavy bags of shopping. I'd simply offered her a lift home. Her husband was a paranoid maniac who would have killed her on sight if she'd so much as recognised that there were other men in existence on the planet, let alone allowed herself to be given a lift by one. Hence my urgency to depart the place rather sharpish.
She simply said, ‘How many bags of shopping did she have then?’
I should have known this was a trick question.
‘Five,’ I lied.
‘Then how come you only had two bags leaving Marks and Spencers and you only took two bags into her house?’
This was uttered at some decibels, so my ears were ringing even before she grabbed my head and smashed it against the steering wheel. You see, I had an old Triumph Herald at the time with the horn in the middle of the wheel. It was a good car, that. Red and white two-tone. Bit like my face after, as a matter of fact. Two things happened at the same time. She broke my nose, but she also broke the horn. The button just bounced up on a spring while I promptly bled all over the steering wheel and, incidentally, on to my muddied trousers. I mean, the blood was bad, but the blaring horn was almost worse. It did shut Christine up though. I didn't say anything, I just tried to ram the spring and the button back into place, but it was difficult because I was also trying to hold my head back to stop the bleeding. Apparently, quite a few people observed the incident. Even Maureen and her husband came to their front door to see what all the racket was about. If you care to date these things, it has to be said that it was at this time that I began to realise that there was little future left in my relationship with Christine. But, ever the gentleman, I drove her home as soon as I'd fixed the horn.
The squash racket episode was scarcely a week later. Now, I don't want to be controversial, but it's got to be said, women are fickle. And none more so than Maureen. I'd naturally felt it was time to lie doggo after this near sighting by her husband, so I didn't go round for a few days, and I didn't call her up either. Actually, I was a shade embarrassed about being beaten up by a woman outside her house too, to tell you the perfect truth. Maureen, in the meantime, had taken up with a past lover of hers. Her husband had gone away again, saying that he was on a course for a week, but in fact, because he was suspicious of what she was getting up to, he'd sneaked back after a couple of days and very nearly caught her with this guy. He said he'd just returned because there were some important papers in the house that he needed, but then she more or less got him to confess that he'd come back to prowl about and catch her out. In flagrante delicto, I think was the term she said he used. Posh bastard. Anyway, in righteous indignation, she'd packed him back off to his course, then she sat back to think about how she was pushing her luck a bit.
Now, because I hadn't rung, and presumably because she'd seen me getting a simple fracture at the hands of another woman whilst parked outside her house, I simply wasn't in her thoughts the night I called round. My own fault, I suppose, for being a little cowardly, but I didn't just walk up and ring the bell. There was no BMW in sight and the garage door was open, but I'd been known to park well away from the house myself, so I wasn't going to fall for a simple trick like that. So I crept round the house and peeked into all the downstairs windows first, to look for signs of a husband rocking slowly with a 12 bore across his knees. I caught sight of Maureen once, disappearing into the kitchen, but there was no one else in evidence and the kids were obviously in bed at this time of night. I'd just tried the back door but thought better of it and was going back round to the front of the house when she came flying out brandishing what I later realised was a squash racket.
When I was sitting in the kitchen a few minutes later wearing a cold, wet flannel over my nose, Maureen explained that she'd planned to teach her husband a final lesson for snooping on her. Just as she'd done to me, she was going to break a squash racket on
his head and pretend that she'd thought it was a burglar. It served him right for behaving like one, or worse, a Peeping Tom. It seems like this burglar theory had stuck in her mind. In a bunged-up sort of way I quietly complained about her aim, saying I almost would have preferred a lump on the back of my head and possible unconsciousness to yet more blood and a seriously impaired sense of smell. Needless to say, my heart wasn't in it that night and I decided not to stay.
So, as I say, I ended up in Casualty again. Just to be on the safe side, and also, I've got to be frank, because I'd taken a bit of a fancy to a little nurse they had there. She said I reminded her of Jack Palance, and she liked a man with a lived-in look. I have to admit I nearly backed off for a minute when she started saying I reminded her of somebody. It's funny really - they start off thinking I'm just like someone else, then they get to like me because I'm me. More probably they see the raw materials that they think they might be able to mould into a me that they would like. Then they end up attacking me because they think I'm their husband. Like I'm being confused for somebody else, but really I'm being confused for me. Do you get what I'm saying?
You don't mind me going on like this, do you? No, the reason I ask is, some girls don't appreciate you talking about your previous experiences. I know I couldn't talk like this to my present wife. But you, you're different ...
More info about Out of Reach by Lloyd Rees is below:
Out of Reach
Through moments of humour and heartbreak, triumph and vulnerability, these stories paint a rich portrait of the human experience. They remind us that in our search for love, we are all more alike than we often realize.
