Читать книгу William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story - Matt Rudd - Страница 21

Pub crisis meeting with Andy and Johnson. Johnson starts, as he always does, by sucking in his cheeks, crossing his elbows and rocking back on his bar stool authoritatively. He reminds me, as he also always does, that he’s been married for ten difficult years; that if he can do it, married to the woman he is, then anyone can. What he doesn’t know about patching up quarrels, dodging marital bullets and ducking domestic pincer movements isn’t worth wasting good beer time discussing.

‘Come on then,’ Andy and I say in unison, ignoring, as we always do, the fact that Johnson’s hard-working, sensible, intelligent, patient and long-suffering wife Ali has almost certainly had a harder time putting up with ten years of the infant Johnson than he has putting up with her.

‘It’s not traditional,’ he offers at last.

‘Said that.’

‘How’s a piece of jewellery going to make any difference whether you’re faithful or not?’

‘Said that too.’

‘If you’re going to shag someone, a ring won’t stop you. You could just take it off.’

‘Yep, didn’t say that.’

‘And besides, there’s a certain type of woman who goes for men because they’re wearing wedding rings. Predatory women who want sex. Terrible women, these. They come at you in a bar, you’re sitting there having a drink, minding your own business, wearing your wedding ring, and they strike. These wanton, brazen, ravishing women with their short skirts and their stockings and their completely amoral attitude to fornication. The wedding ring is no defence. “Look, I’m married,” you say. “I don’t want a relationship, you sexy, sexy man,” they purr, running their filthy-temptress fingers down your tie. “I want you. And I want you now.”’

Johnson is running his fingers down my chest seductively.

‘I’ve got the idea.’

‘And before you know it, you’re waking up in the wrong hotel room with some brazen harlot in some filthy negligée ordering postcoital petit déjeûner.’

Andy says a ring to him is like a symbolic chattel, a sign of ownership—a ring-cuff, if you will. Love, if it’s true, doesn’t need symbols of repression. I point out that Isabel has a wedding ring. Andy nods sagely and, not for the first time, I wonder why I ever bother asking my two best friends anything.

Nevertheless, it is worth one more try. I wait until Isabel is brushing her teeth before mentioning the brazen, harlotish, fornicating women in bars. She says she’s prepared to take the risk, then spits for effect.

Getting a ring next week.