Death of an Ordinary Man: A Novel by Duncan Glen

Author:Duncan, Glen [Duncan, Glen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2007-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

For every man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal on his imagination has set her seal for good. He will travel over no more horizons; he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders; he will retire from those scenes. He will have gone out of the business.

Someone had underlined it. A man, presumably, since it was the only thing underlined in the whole book. Nathan had paused, having read it, recognising himself. Cheryl was the woman, and he’d met her when he was twenty-one years old. A young age to go out of the business. But he had, and never regretted it. Apart from Adrian he didn’t know if she’d been faithful. He supposed not. There’d been a couple of holidays without him from which she’d come back with a look. He’d chosen not to know. The thought of her fucking other men from time to time would have hurt, of course, if he dwelled on it; he wasn’t insensible. He just hadn’t dwelled on it. There were the kids, his and Cheryl’s life around them like a roaring fire. That would incinerate anyone who came near. In any case, he, as The Good Soldier had it, had gone out of the business.

It brought the need up in him again, thinking of the times she’d come back with that look. She’d confessed infidelity by bringing her enriched self back and giving it to him. It’s still for you. Still yours. It only gets better for you. He’d understood, he thought now (circling closer again as the shadow of a gull rippled over her); even at the time the logic of it had got through. There was no denying she’d fucked him with guilt, but with love, too. There’d been a temptation to resist it, to go along with his furious cuckold. But his understanding had got in the way. Then Adrian. That had been different, he supposed – had to suppose because he still couldn’t remember how he’d come to find out about the two of them, assuming he had found out. All of which woke the insistence again, stupidly (maybe it genuinely was beyond his control?), like a second tumescence. Suffering again the dirty feeling of his own weakness he searched the spiralling slew around her, came very gently closer, knowing he might not———

It’s three thirty in the Queen Victoria the summer of 2000, two weeks after Cheryl’s brief arrest and release. There’s been the usual rise in the pub’s urgency as the ghost of the old closing time’s shaped up, but it’s passed, and now the place lazes again, ambered with sunlight and muscled with smoke. Cheryl sits opposite her dad at a corner table.

‘I’m not saying no,’ he says. ‘I’m just asking why.’

George sits hunched forward, leaning on his forearms. He’s long-boned and broad-backed, with a big ribcage and a monumental head. Still uses hair oil; the widow’s peak liver-spots gleam. He tans easily but unevenly and the front of his cranium sports a patch like a birthmark.

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