The Beat by Simon Payne Read Free Book Online Page A

of the accepted men who got on with their mates. Poor old Gerry. Not that Gerry didn’t work hard, she knew he did, but — well people didn’t take him seriously. They suspected he was a bit bent. It was Pauline’s own term for Gerry — bent, a bit off the straight and narrow.
    “Shoot them all,” Connie was repeating to no one in particular.
    “Where were you when the Führer called?” Gerry asked. It didn’t register at first. Then Connie gulped her fruit cake in indignation. Her reply was almost comic.
    “What? I’ll have you know both my husband and father fought the Germans.” That’s right, women and children first, apart from when it came to waging war. That was Connie all over.
    “Perhaps they didn’t know how to change sides,” he quipped. And he left the tea room. Why should he take shit from her anymore?
     
    The rest of the morning passed quickly enough. Sue took her magazine to tea with her and came back with the dour advice from Connie that brides always lose weight before the wedding so you couldn’t get your dress made too much beforehand. Connie knew of one girl who had paid and extra $100 because the dress had to be altered the night before and all the beadwork redone. Of course, Connie would. Pauline had pointed out that many brides she knew put on weight drastically before the wedding — mainly in terms of a swelling stomach and milk-enlarged breasts. That wasn’t going to happen to Sue. Steve was prepared to wait. He was a gentleman. Gerry was wondering if anyone saw him slipping out of the park or his car idling away into the night. The evening stayed in his mind with a queer exhilaration. He had finally struck back. All through the morning this dull thought had been there. Now it found words. At last he had struck back. He could sit through all the wedding talk, Pauline’s talk of her conquests, Connie’s principle of the final solution; it all no longer mattered. His own life had always been shoved under the carpet at work. With whom could he share the stories of his infatuations, his loves, his fond memories? For years he had been relegated to some backseat position at work. The middle-aged single man, like a maiden aunt. No one knew of his desires to share his life, to own his own home, to have his own special memories, to celebrate his own special anniversaries. It was considered not nice to have aspirations outside of marriage. Could he tell them of his lover, their strivings and disappointments? Could he pull out a gay guide to the city and discuss his forthcoming weekend, or even discuss it in retrospect? Yet compromising himself so far, he had been overlooked time and time again for promotion. As Connie pointed out, they promote the married men first, it’s fairer. Could he then cry to the equal opportunity board? Not being one of the boys had had its consequences, but it was still legal to discriminate against him on terms of his “sexual tastes”. “Sexual taste”, such a distasteful word. It sounded as if he was obsessed with oral sex. He had been pushed back into mediocrity for all these years. At work he was a sexless freak. In society it was alright for him to be denied housing, a joint loan or even joint insurance with his lover. And here was Sue organiz-ing her wedding of the year. No wonder he was bitter. But he had hit back on Friday night. The thing that both exhilarated and petrified Gerry about Friday night was that he felt no guilt about the boy. Gerry was apprehensive that Robert would find out where he had been. Their relationship was too important for him to have put it at that kind of risk. Ten years they had been together. Had he put those ten years in jeopardy? He regretted being there but not what they had done. The realization made him feel light and crazy in the head. Sue’s phone rang. It was Steve. They always indulged in long personal calls during the day. She was uninhibited now about exchanging terms of affection and did it with a new