and that was the beginning of his fleet – Holroyd Haulage. It might not be the biggest flotilla of artics in the North but it certainly seemed to be amazingly successful, if Tommy’s lifestyle was anything to go by. He was flashily affluent, with a swimming pool and a second wife, Crystal, who, rumour had it, had once been a glamour model.
Tommy wasn’t the kind of bloke who would pass you by on the street if you were in trouble, although Vince wondered if there might be a price to pay later. Vince liked Tommy though, he was easy-going and had what Vince could only think of as presence, a kind of northern swagger that Vince often coveted, feeling the singular lack of it in his own make-up. And Crystal was stunning. ‘A Barbie doll’ was Wendy’s verdict on her. Vince thought that Wendy’s idea of stunning would be to taser him, her once benign indifference to him having turned to loathing. And what had he done to provoke that feeling? Nothing!
Not long before Vince was first introduced to Tommy, Lesley – Tommy’s first wife – had died in an awful accident. She had fallen off a cliff, trying to rescue the family pet – Vince remembered reading about it in the Gazette (‘Wife of prominent East Coast businessman killed in tragedy’ and so on), remembered saying to Wendy, ‘You should be careful if you take Sparky up on the cliff.’ Sparky was their dog, a puppy at the time. ‘Who are you more worried about – me or the dog?’ she said, and he had said, ‘Well …’ which he could see now was the wrong answer.
The Merry Widower, Andy had called Tommy, and he had indeed seemed surprisingly unmarked by the tragedy. ‘Well, Les was a bit of a burden,’ Andy said, rotating his index finger against the side of his head as if he was trying to screw a hole through to his brain. ‘Looney Tunes.’ Andy wasn’t the sentimental sort. Quite the opposite. At the time, there had still been a desiccated bunch of flowers attached to a bench close to where Lesley Holroyd had gone over the cliff. It had seemed an inadequate kind of memorial.
‘Earth to Vince,’ Tommy said. ‘A seagull’s going to land on you if you don’t move off that tee soon.’
‘What’s your handicap on the crazy golf course, Vince?’ Andy laughed, obviously not willing to let the subject go just yet. ‘That windmill’s tricky, those sails are a bugger to get through. And, of course, you have to be a real pro to face the rocket. It’s a killer, it’ll get you every time.’
Andy wasn’t showy like Tommy. ‘Yeah, he’s a quiet one, our Andrew,’ Tommy chuckled, putting his arm round Andy’s shoulders and giving him a (very) manly hug. ‘It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch, Vince.’
‘Piss off,’ Andy said good-naturedly.
I’m a quiet one, Vince thought, and no one needs to worry about watching me. Andy was a small, wiry sort of bloke. If they were animals, Tommy would be a bear – and not a harmless soft teddy like the ones Vince’s daughter, Ashley, covered her bed with. The bears were still there, waiting patiently for his absent daughter’s return from her gap year. Tommy would be one of the ones you had to watch out for, like a polar or a grizzly. Andy would be a fox. That was a nickname Tommy sometimes used for Andy: Foxy. And Vince himself? A deer, he thought. Caught in the headlights of the car that was about to mow him down. Wendy at the wheel, probably.
Had either of them actually played crazy golf? he wondered. He’d spent hours – enjoyable (mostly) – with Ashley when she was young, stoically encouraging her while she repeatedly missed the tee or mulishly insisted on attempting a putt, over and over, while a queue built up behind them, wailing ‘Daaaad’ every time he signalled to the people who were waiting that they should play through. Ashley had been an obstinate child. (Not that he’d been resentful. He loved her!)
Vince sighed. Let Tommy and Andy have a laugh if they wanted to. Male banter – it used to be fun (more or less), all that swank and strut. Cocks of the North, all of them. It was in blokes’ DNA or their testosterone or something, but Vince was too depressed these days to join in with the (mostly) good-natured jeering and one-upmanship.