by Marian Keyes
As I passed over the threshold behind the speeding Gus, I suddenly thought—I hate this pub. I had never noticed before, but I always felt uncomfortable there.
It was dirty and no one ever wiped off the tables. It was full of men who all stared at me when I came in, and the staff were downright rude to women. Or maybe it was just me.
But I tried to think positive.
I was with Gus and he looked beautiful. He was cute and funny and sexy. Even if he was still wearing that awful sheepskin coat that I was sure had fleas.
There was a momentous break with tradition when the time came to buy the first drink—it was paid for by Gus.
And what a production he made of it. Naturally, as soon as we were sitting down, I had reached for my purse, as I always had to with Gus. With everyone, I thought gloomily. But instead of placing his order with me, like he usually did, he jumped up and practically roared, “NO, NO! I won’t hear of it!”
“What?” I asked, slightly irritated.
“Put your money away, put your money away!” he urged, waving his arm in a “put your money away” fashion at me, like drunk uncles do at a wedding. “I’m getting this round.”
It was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds—Gus had money. It was a sign telling me that everything would be fine, Gus would take care of me.
“Okay.” I smiled.
“No, I insist,” he said loudly, making flapping movements in the direction of my purse.
“Fine,” I said.
“I’ll be insulted if you won’t let me. I’ll take it as a personal insult if you won’t permit me to get this round,” he insisted, with great magnanimity.
“Gus,” I said, “I’m not arguing.”
“Oh. Oh. Right then.” He sounded a bit put out. “What do you want?”
“A gin and tonic,” I muttered humbly.
He arrived back with my gin and a pint of lager and a measure of whiskey for himself. His face was dark with annoyance.
“Jesus,” he complained. “It’s daylight robbery! Do you know how much that gin and tonic was?”
Not as much as I’ll have to spend on you for the next round, I thought. Why do you always have to order two drinks at once, when everyone else has just one at a time?
But all I said was a meek “sorry” because I didn’t want to cast a blight on the evening that I had looked forward to so much.
His bad mood didn’t last long, though; they never did.
“Cheers, Lucy.” He smiled, clinking his pint against my extortionate gin.
“Cheers,” I said, trying to sound as if I meant it.
“I drink, therefore I am,” he announced, with a grin, and drank half the pint in one gulp.
I smiled, but it was an effort. Usually I was delighted by his witty remarks, but not this evening. It wasn’t going the way I had wanted it to.
I didn’t really know what to talk to Gus about, and he didn’t seem to be bothered talking at all. In the past, we had always had so much to talk about, I thought wistfully. But suddenly it was awkwardness and tense silences—at least on my part.
I desperately wanted to make it all right, to push us through the tension barrier, but I hadn’t the heart to kick-start the conversation.
Gus made no effort either. In fact he seemed oblivious of the silence. Oblivious of me too, I realized after a while.
He was a man at peace with himself and the world, settled in his armchair with his drinks and his cigarette, comfortable, pleased with himself, surveying the pub, nodding and winking at the people he knew, watching the world go by.
As relaxed as a newt.
He grinned and finished his two drinks in record speed, went back to the bar and got himself another couple.
He didn’t offer to get me another drink. Not even one. I hadn’t minded this behaviour before. I certainly minded now.
We sat there in silence, me mute with expectation, while he drank his two drinks and smoked a cigarette. Then he threw the remaining half pint or so down in one gulp and, before he had even finished swallowing, gasped, “Your round, Lucy.”
Like a robot, I got out of my seat and asked him what he wanted.
“A pint and a small one,” he said innocently.
“Anything else?” I asked sarcastically.
“Thanks very much, Lucy,” he said, sounding delighted. “Fine girl you are, I could do with some smokes.”
“Smokes?”
“Cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes? What flavour?”
“Benson and Hedges.”
“How many? A thousand?”
He seemed to find that hilarious. “Just twenty will do, unless you really want to buy me more.”
“No, Gus, I don’t,” I said coldly.
While I waited at the bar, I wondered why I was so pissed off.
It was my own fault, I decided. I had set myself up for disappointment. I had come with so much expectation. And too much need.
I yearned for Gus to be nice to me, to pay me attention, to tell me he’d missed me, that I was beautiful, that he was madly in love with me.
And he hadn’t. He hadn’t asked how I was, he didn’t explain where he had been, why he hadn’t contacted me for nearly four months.
But maybe I was asking too much of him. I was so unhappy with the rest of my life that I had hoped Gus would be my saviour. Someone to take care of me, someone to whom I could hand over my life and say “Here, fix this.”
I wanted it all.
Relax, I advised myself, as I tried to catch the bartender’s eye, enjoy yourself. At least you’re with him. Didn’t he show up? And he’s still the same witty, entertaining person he always was. So what more do you want?
I came back to the table, loaded down with drinks and renewed hope.
“Good on you, Lucy,” said Gus, and fell on the drinks, like a starving man to food.
Shortly after that he announced, “I’ll have another drink.”
Almost as an afterthought he added, “And you’re buying.”
Something slipped from a shelf inside me and went crashing to the floor.
I was not a charity. At least, not anymore.
“Oh really,” I said, unable to hide my anger. “Since when have they started accepting fresh air as legal tender?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, looking at me warily. There was something unfamiliar about me.
“Gus,” I said, with grim delight. “I don’t have any money left.” That wasn’t quite true. I had enough left to get me home and even to buy a bag of chips on the way, but I wasn’t telling him that. He’d wheedle it out of me if he knew.
“You’re a terrible woman,” he laughed, “trying to scare me like that.”
“I’m serious.”
“Go on out of that,” he joshed. “You’ve got one of those magic little cards that gives you money from the hole-in-the-wall.”
“Yes, but…”
“Well, what are you waiting for—off with you, Lucy, there’s no time to waste. Run down and get the loot and I’ll wait here and watch our seats.”
“What about you, Gus?”
“Well, I suppose I could manage another pint while you’re gone, thanks very much.”
“No, I mean, don’t you have a cash card, Gus?”
“Me?” he yelled and laughed and laughed. “Are you serious?” He laughed and laughed again, and then made a face to convey that he thought I’d gone crazy.
I sat in silence, waiting for him to finish.
“No, Lucy.” He cleared his throat and finally calmed down, but his mouth kept twitching. “No, Lucy, I don’t.”
“Well, neither do I, Gus.”
“I know you do,” he scoffed. “I’ve seen you use it.”
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“Give me a break….”
“Really, Gus.”
“Well, why don’t you?”
“It was swallowed. Because I didn’t have any money in my account.”
I’ll show him, I thought with satisfaction. Then I felt ashamed. It wasn’t right to take it out on Gus just because I was annoyed with Dad.
I suddenly felt that I wanted to tell Gus all about it, to explain why I was in such a bad mood. I wanted understanding and forgiveness, sympathy and affection. So, without further ado, I launched into the whole saga about living with Dad and having to give him money and having none left for me and…
“Lucy,” interrupted Gus urgently.
“Yes?” I said hopefully, looking forward to a bit of sympathy.
“I know what we’ll do,” he said with a brilliant smile.
“You do?” Great! I thought.
“You’ve a chequebook, right?” he said.
Chequebook, I thought? Chequebook? What’s that got to do with how unfortunate I am?
“Well, I know the bartender,” continued Gus, eyes shining. “And he’ll cash your check if I vouch for you.”
I swallowed. That wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear.
“So write the cheque, Lucy, and we’re in business.” He beamed.
“But, Gus.” Even though I shouldn’t have, I felt like a spoilsport. “I don’t have any money in my account; in fact I’m overdrawn over my overdraft limit.”
“Oh, never mind that,” said Gus. “It’s only a bank, what can they do to you? Property is theft! Come on, Lucy, let’s beat the system!”
“No,” I said apologetically. “I really can’t.”
“Well, good riddance to you, Lucy, and the horse you rode in on; we might as well just go home,” he said sulkily. “Bye, nice seeing you.”
“Oh, all right,” I sighed, reaching for my handbag and my chequebook, trying not to think of the terrifying phone call from my bank that was certain to follow.
Gus was right, I thought, it was only money. But I couldn’t help feeling that I was always having to give and give and that, for a change, I wanted someone to give to me.
I wrote a cheque and Gus went to the bar with it. From the length of time he was gone and the expression on the bartender’s face, he wasn’t finding it too easy to cash.
He eventually came back, loaded down with drinks.
“Successful mission.” He grinned, stashing a handful of notes into his pocket. I noticed that the fly of his jeans was held together with a safety pin.
“My change, Gus,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.
“What’s wrong with you, Lucy?” he grumbled. “You’ve gotten very stingy and cheap.”
“Really?” I was nauseous with fury. “What’s cheap and stingy about me? Haven’t I bought you almost every drink this evening?”
“Well,” he said, all indignant, “if you’re going to be like that about it, just tell me what I owe you and I’ll give it back to you when I get it.”
“Fine,” I said. “I will.”
“Here’s your change,” he said, slamming a bundle of bills and coins down on the table.
That was the point where it was obvious that the evening was ruined, beyond redemption. Not that it had been a wild success before that. But at least before that, I still had hope that it would get better.
I knew it was a deeply insulting thing to do, but I picked up the bundle and began to count it.
I had written a cheque for fifty pounds and he had returned about thirty. A round of drinks for two—even a round including Gus—didn’t cost twenty pounds.
“Where’s the rest of my change?” I asked.
“Oh that?” He was annoyed, but tried not to show it. “I didn’t think you’d mind, but I bought Vinnie—that’s the bartender—a drink for facilitating us, I thought that was only fair and decent.”
“And what about the rest?”
“While I was up there, Keith Kennedy came along and I felt that I should see him right too.”
“See him right?”
“Buy him a drink, he’s been awful good to me, Lucy.”
“That still doesn’t account for it all,” I said, admiring my tenacity.
Gus laughed, but it sounded a bit high-pitched and forced.
“…And I, er, owed him some money,” he finally admitted.
“You owed him money and you gave it to him out of my change?” I asked calmly.
“Er, yes. I didn’t think you’d mind. You’re like me, Lucy, a free spirit. You don’t care about money.”
On and on he went, and then he started to sing John Lennon’s Imagine, except the only line he seemed to know was the one about imagining no possessions. He put on quite a show—stretching out his arms beseechingly and making meaningful faces at me. “Oh, Lucy, imagine no possessions, imagine no possessions, sing along! Imagine no poss-eh-SHUNS! Do, do, do, do, doooooooh-oooooooh!”
He paused and waited for me to laugh. I didn’t, so he kept singing.
In the past, I would have been touched and charmed by his singing. I would have laughed and told him that he was a terrible man and forgiven him.
But not this time.
I didn’t say a thing. I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. I was beyond anger. I felt too much like a fool. I was too ashamed of myself to be angry. I didn’t deserve to be angry.
The whole evening had been an exercise in damage control, with me trying to hide from myself just how upset I was. Now the awfulness of it all was right out in the open.
Why did I feel as if this was constantly happening to me? I wondered. So I did a quick review of my life and realized it was because it was constantly happening to me.
It happened every day with my father. I had gotten myself into financial trouble so that I could give money to him. No wonder it felt so familiar.
Hadn’t Gus always depended on me for money? He had never had a penny. I had been glad to give it to him in the beginning. I had thought I was helping him, that he needed me.
The knowledge made me feel sick. I was a fool, a bloody idiot. Everyone knew it, except me. I was a soft touch. Good old Lucy, she’s so desperate for love and affection that she’s prepared to buy it. She’ll give you the shirt off her back because she thinks that you deserve it more than she does. You’ll never go hungry with Lucy, even though she might. But so what? What does she matter?
Gus hadn’t been the only boyfriend that I had taken care of financially. Most of them hadn’t had jobs. And the ones who had jobs still managed to borrow money from me.
The rest of the evening, I felt as if I was outside my body, looking at me and Gus.
He got really drunk.
I should have gotten up and left but I couldn’t. I was fascinated, repelled, appalled at what I was seeing, but I couldn’t look away.
He burned my tights with his cigarette and didn’t even notice. He slopped his beer on me and didn’t notice that either. He slurred, he started stories and meandered and forgot about them. He talked to the man and woman at the next table and kept on talking to them even when it became obvious that he was annoying them.
The drunker he got, the more sober I became. I barely spoke and he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Had he always been like this? I wondered.
And the answer was, of course, yes. He hadn’t changed. But I had. I saw things differently. It barely mattered to him that I was there. I was merely a source of money.
Daniel had been right. As if I wasn’t feeling bad enough, I had to admit that that smug pig had been right. He’d never let me forget it. Although maybe he would—he wasn’t as smug as he used to be. He wasn’t really smug at all. He was nice. At least he bought me an occasional drink. And an occasional dinner…
I sat with an empty glass in front of me for over an hour. Gus didn’t notice.
He went to the men’s room and was gone for twenty minutes and didn’t explain or apologize when he eventually returned. There was nothing unusual in such behaviour. Nights out with Gus were always like that.
Somehow I was always surrounded by men who drank a lot and took ad
vantage of me and I couldn’t understand how it had happened.
But I knew I’d had enough.
At closing time, Gus had an argument with one of the bartenders—a fairly regular occurrence. The bartender shouted “Have you no homes to go to?” in an effort to get everyone to leave and Gus decided that was a terrible thing for him to say because there had been an earthquake in China a few days previously. “What if a Chinese person heard you?” shouted Gus. To describe the rest of the incoherent drivel that came out of his mouth would be too tedious for words. Suffice it to say that the bartender physically hustled him toward the door, as Gus struggled and shouted. To think I once admired that kind of behaviour; that I’d thought Gus was a rebel.
We stood in the street as the door slammed behind us.
“Okay, Lucy, home we go,” said Gus, swaying slightly and looking bleary.
“Home?” I asked politely.
“Yes,” he said.
“Fine, Gus,” I said smoothly.
He smiled the smile of a victorious man.
“And where are you living now?” I asked.
“Still in Camden,” he said vaguely. “But why…?”
“Well, off to Camden we go,” I said.
“No,” said Gus in alarm.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because we can’t,” he said.
“Why can’t we?”
“Because we just…can’t.”
“Well, you’re not coming out to my father’s house.”
“But why not? I’d say your old man and I would get along just fine.”
“I’m sure you would,” I agreed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Something was up, I’d known it all along. He probably had a girlfriend in Camden, one that he lived with, something like that.
But I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have touched him with a ten-foot pole. I couldn’t see how I had ever fancied him. He looked like a little gnome, a little, drunk leprechaun. With his stupid sheepskin jacket and his filthy brown sweater.
The spell was broken. Everything about him revolted me. He even smelled funny. Disgusting, like a carpet the morning after a really rowdy party.
“Save your excuses,” I said. “Don’t tell me why you won’t take me to your apartment. Why you never did, in fact. Save your ridiculous stories.”
