Free Byron Easy by Jude Cook Page A

pissing like a Tiny Tears doll the moment they’re picked up. To stop barking at you or their own berserk reflection in the bedroom mirror. To make friends with three grimly established and territorial tomcats (or jungle lions, as they must appear to a chihuahua) … But Concepcion managed it somehow. She pulled it off by pretending that she—the smallest dog in the world—was in fact the biggest dog in the world. Her impersonation, standing all of six inches in her stockinged paws, of a drooling, terror-toothed Dobermann or pit bull was really something to be witnessed. She would bark herself to a croak at approaching postmen, friends, vets, in-laws or televised dogs, her rancour becoming progressively more intense (and striped with a certain concussed bewilderment) as she discovered the reaction she invariably received was not fear, but laughter. Oh, what amusement she caused in the street! On the rare occasions that she consented to walking on a lead in that scampy, pizzicato way that all lapdogs have (as opposed to her usual method of transportation—that of being dragged unwillingly across pavements on her belly like a kind of canine sleigh), the looks she and we used to elicit were treasureable. Small children would point in frenzied amazement: ‘Mummy, mummy, look at the puppy!’ And that was when, at eighteen months, doomed Concepcion was already a fully expanded, six-nippled bitch. Grown men, scaffolders, labourers and tattoo-wristed car thieves would weep openly as the little doll did her heartbreaking, scurrilous wiggle down the sweating High Street. Owners of mangy pooches and lactating Labradors would turn up their commoners’ noses with envy when they saw our formidable miniature approaching.
    It was then, genetically fascinated, and also not a little sorry for the poor circus-attraction wretch, that we decided it was a good time to find her a mate. Enter Fidellino, or rather, enter a fantastically libidinous hairy Swiss roll called Rusty Gold, sold to us by a devious builder in Totteridge for a hundred and fifty quid. Obviously, he couldn’t stay Rusty Gold. After all the Ricios and Juans and Xaviers and Joaquins had been worked through, I timidly suggested Fidel, as his straggled pubic hairpiece of a coat reminded me of Castro’s beard. With a slight alteration, Mandy loved it, and Fidellino he became. It was Spanish-sounding after all. We both hoped he would gallantly go on to sire many children.
    Didn’t I mention my wife’s name was Mandy? Always hated it. Wouldn’t you, O hip and cultured reader? Wouldn’t you despise its silly vowels? Wouldn’t you wince slightly at the altar or tatty registry office desk as your sober marrier spaketh the sentence: ‘Do you, Mandy, take this …?’ Or maybe you’re married to a Mandy already and the name has become a kind of phonetic blank, something not heard any more. I always heard it; always had a problem with it. Always cringed at having to introduce her, at seeing it on an envelope, or calling her name in a public place, or saying the sentence: ‘Mandy, I love you.’ It was that perky, tooth-decaying last syllable that was to blame. Dee. Like Suki or Debi or Plebi—those abysmal, made-up Page Three monikers. (And before you ask, plain Amanda was never an option. Not even her mother had called her Amanda; her daughter having been conceived to the castrato strains of 10cc’s ‘I’m Mandy, Fly Me’ in the deluxe wedding suite of a Bayswater hotel.)
    I used to exhaust myself with tumours of research into an appropriate nickname for her. I even considered cooking up an acronym , but there aren’t any, not sufficiently romantic anyway, for any girl’s name anywhere—unless her initials spell L.U.V. All I came up with was ‘Man’. (‘Hi, here’s my woman: Man. And my name’s Tarzan.’) Or Dee. Or worse, Dee Dee. But the name refused to conform to any meddling, so there it stayed: irreducibly, eternally, miserably, Mandy.
    Let me stop now,