Stories: All-New Tales

About a week later, while Lu visited her hypochondriacal mother, I went over to see how Rex was doing. He’d been drinking heavily. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “I wanted you to know about a favour I did you a few years back.” I cooked us dinner, after which he told me what he’d done for me. He was sure I’d be pleased, he said. I didn’t know who he was mocking. Gasping and yelping with pain from the arthritis brought on by the booze, he poked up the fire and poured us cognacs. Then he started with the slow, dramatic relish he reserved for his readings. I suppose you could call it a revenge tale, with all the elements he enjoyed in Balzac and the Jacobeans. Soon after Jenny and I split up, and blaming her for “luring” him into the threesome with which he had taunted Chick, Rex became, in his words, her confessor, suggesting ideas to her for sexual adventures, often helping her make specific contacts and introducing her to what he called his list of “forty famous perverts.” He had sometimes accompanied her to dinners and parties, encouraging her to risks she’d never have dared take on her own. “I drove her farther and farther down that road, Mike. You’d have loved it! Whenever she faltered I was there encouraging her to stay the course. I told her heroin wasn’t addictive!” (Luckily he’d only been able to persuade her to snort it.) “I convinced her she was a natural whore. I became her best friend, just as Vautrin took Emma under his wing!” That terrible, self-approving chuckle followed as he sat there in his big leather chair overlooking the darkening fell, staring in sardonic satisfaction at the sky, speaking in the tones of measured mockery usually reserved for his satirical verse. “I knew you wanted to do it but couldn’t. So I took your revenge for you, Mike!”

“Jesus, Rex. She didn’t deserve…I would never…”

“Oh, Mike, you know what she deserved. You’d never do it, but Vautrin could, eh? I learned the lessons of Balzac better than you ever did!” At that point, as the world grew darker and the fire reflected on his face, he was every inch Balzac’s monster, apparently completely mad. I felt physically sick, concerned for his sanity, deeply sorry for Jenny. I wondered if Lucinda had guessed what had gone on. Was that why she had refused to let Chick tell us anything? Rex relished every revelation. Giggling, he explained how he persuaded her to do something particularly demeaning. I was no sadist but of course he was. He could hate women. He went on for ages, offering chapter and verse, names, places, bringing all the horror and misery back. He explained little mysteries, offered anecdotes, consequences, a whole catalogue of betrayal. Chick could not have known the half of it. I wanted to walk out on him there and then but I was too fascinated. Besides, I had promised Chick I would stand by Rex. I couldn’t abandon him. This was Rex’s way of being my friend. I knew how much he relished revenge. He sincerely believed others merely pretended not to take the same pleasure in it.

I had promised to stay the night. By the time I went to bed, I had nothing to say to him. I knew how kind he could often be, how kind he had been to Jenny. I could hardly imagine such complicated, elaborate cruelty. Around three A.M. I took a couple of sleeping pills and woke up at eight on a wonderful sunny morning. Under a clear grey-blue sky the granite glittered and the grass glowed. Rex was down in the big, stone-flagged kitchen making breakfast. I ate it as if it might be poisoned. Standing in his drive beside my car, I hugged him. “I love you, Rex,” I said. And I did, even at that moment, when I could barely look at him. He paused, appearing to consider this. Then he teared up, making that muted humming sound I became used to hearing when he searched for an appropriate word, the little smack of his lips and intake of breath when he’d found it.

“I love you, too,” he said at last.

I got home that afternoon. I’d had to pull over twice to collect myself. Lucinda was still out. I’d hoped so much she would be home before me. The message light was flickering on the phone. I had a sickening premonition something had happened to her. But it was Rex sounding dramatically cheerful, a sure sign he’d been drinking. “Hi, Mike! I know you’re off ratting with your friend the vicar and your Jack Russells. Clearly you’ve no time to spend for poor old Rex…” And so on until the machine cut him off. I was relieved I’d taken longer getting home. When Lu finally arrived with fish and chips from the local, she was too full of her own frustrations with her mother to notice my mood so I explained how I was tired from staying up all night with Rex.