The Beard by Mark Sinclair Read Free Book Online

entirely possible that it’d continued. It was widely felt that he’d married just to keep his family happy – an arranged marriage of sorts. He was coming to an age when his family saw his philandering as inconsistent with the morally upright Asian community to which they all belonged. As such, and out of the blue, he’d got married. But less than six months later, talk of other women had started up again.
    Their first baby, Carl Jnr. (a family tradition, he said, rather than a narcissist’s cry for help), had arrived only a few months ago. His extra-marital activity seemed to have dwindled, although this wasn’t due to increased child-rearing duties – they were undertaken exclusively by his wife, Fadila. It seemed that Carl’s sole job, as a father, was to visit people to collect credit for inseminating his wife. Much of the glory he duly accepted was for the very child-rearing that his exhausted wife was doing. As such, and as much as everyone liked Carl, there had always been an element of disquiet about the way he was treating her. Carl wasn’t so vain that he didn’t pick up on this. He’d often cite the situation as a “cultural interpretation”, giving a compelling case against anyone who believed that he was having it easy. He’d once argued that he never got to spend time with his child and was merrily seen as the cash machine of the family. His impassioned defence of the situation had quelled any sense of disharmony. He would proceed to ruin it, however, by detailing his exploits outside of marriage. This didn’t sit well with his persona as a victim, and took the sheen from the image of an injured-innocent.
    That said, as a co-worker, he was relatively hard working and decent. Someone you could happily spend time with.
    “You bringing Amy, then?” he enquired, picking at the loose skin around his nails.
    “Probably,” Tom shot back deliberately.
    “You can always bring a friend if you don’t want to bring her,” Carl replied delicately.
    Tom had spent his life surveying the horizon for warning signs. Every walk home after a night at a club was done so in the expectation that some homophobic attacker lay in a bush or around a corner. Every hint, suggestion or intimation that could be interpreted as a reference to his sexuality was picked up on instantly and addressed with calm but sure handling. As a result, he was known to be over-sensitive and touchy, to the point of neurotic. Finding the balance was always difficult.
    As such, he seized on the “friend” comment. Was it loaded? Was Carl alluding to something or merely stating the obvious? Tom wasn’t sure and didn’t want to give anything away, so he took a deep breath and sighed slowly. “I could, I suppose.” He glanced up quickly at Carl, who was taking an unhealthy interest in his fingernails, causing some to bleed. “If I bring a female, I’ll have questions to answer, and if I bring a mate, Derek will be on at me all the time, saying I’m gay.”
    Carl nodded judiciously. “And if he did?” he asked innocuously.
    Tom knew that he was now in uncharted and potentially dangerous water. This was a small office. Whatever society says about women as gossips, it overlooks a well-hidden but universal truth – men gossip far more. Any chink in his cast-iron armour now would open the gossip floodgates. He knew that his next words had to be chosen without panic and delivered with conviction. Evidently, words had been exchanged.
    It was readily accepted that Carl was always the last in the chain to find things out. Tom knew straightaway that this had been flowing for some time and that the source of this gossip bubbled up elsewhere. As such, he needed to ensure that whatever he said – which would flow back to the point of origin – was sufficiently commanding.
    “You’re right. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about me, but can you imagine all the jokes? It’s bad enough now. Besides…” he said, fiddling with some papers