A Short Story: "Beryl the Nympho"

Beryl the Nympho

Life had never been kind or fair to Beryl Jones. Growing up in Stockport in the 1970s as Beryl Potter, she had been one of those girls who had been written off as factory and shop fodder by her teachers and had witnessed domestic violence at home. Her father Jim had used her mother as a punch bag and then walked out on the family when Beryl was eight years old. Her older brother Kevin had died of a heroin overdose while the pair of them were watching Tiswas one Saturday morning. Beryl remembered being annoyed at the ambulance men blocking her view of the telly and talking as they took the corpse away.
Beryl now lived at number 42 Gladstone Road with her husband Phil and children Craig and Shannon. None of them enhanced her life in any way. Phil was a plumber and pipe fitter whom Beryl had met in Boobies Nightclub in 1984. He had been a good-looking youth back then and Beryl remembered with fondness his long, curly hair and vibrant lovemaking. Now he was a dull, obese warehouse worker who stank of beer and spent most of his evenings in the pub with his builder mates discussing football.
Beryl sat in the kitchen of her modest little terraced house and finished her cigarette. The morning sun was gleaming down on the yard outside where two cats were having a fight. Into the kitchen slouched Beryl's twenty-something son, Craig:
"Hey, mam, I like need some cash like, y'know. Goin' out later", he moaned. Beryl sighed:
"You could try earning some. Oh why bother Beryl. Here, take this". She threw some notes on the table. Craig picked them up.
"Thirty quid? That ain't enough like", he moaned.
"It's all I've got. If you want more then get yourself a job you sponging lazy parasite. Now ¤¤¤¤ off", Beryl exclaimed. Craig grimaced:
"Ere that's child abuse that is, talkin' to me like that like. I'm like losin' my self esteem." He slouched out of the kitchen in a huff. As he did so, his sister Shannon came bounding down the stairs:
"Hey mam. I've just met this fella online and he's asked me out on a date later." Beryl sighed:
"And let me guess, you want money to go out with?"
"Yeah of course. Well its not like you need it mam, you're ugly, old, fat and northern." Beryl lit another cigarette:
"Well you can't have it 'cause I've just given it to your brother. So piss off and get your fella to pay. Offer him the promise of certain favours". Shannon flounced out in a huff.

Beryl stared at the wall of the kitchen and felt tired. Oh so tired. She was only 52 but she felt like she was 92 and an inch away from the grave. She was sick of her grisly, smelly husband and sponging, whiney twenty-something kids. She wished that she was back in her old bedroom in the 1970s, listening to her David Cassidy records and staring at his picture on her wall. But that was a very long time ago and her family from back then were all dead. Not that she missed them that much, but she missed the time and the promise of youth. Before all of that was pissed away. She finished her cigarette and decided to go for a walk.
She walked out of the house and down Gladstone Road, gazing at the houses of neighbours she didn't really know with front gardens full of black bin bags and motorbikes. She walked past ASDA and down Military Street towards the alleyway behind the old Adams factory, now boarded up. Eventually the alleyway led onto some waste ground behind the new Aldi and to Jackie Powell's Pond. The pond had once been quite large but part of it had been filled in when they built the Aldi so now it was a rather pathetic ditch full of brown water. Jackie Powell had been a young apprentice who had drowned himself in the pond in 1888. Since then it had acquired a reputation as a suicide spot and Beryl stood and stared into the water. She wondered what it was like to drown and whether you passed out after breathing in the first lungful of water. As she stared into the murky depths, Beryl realised that her life hung in the balance and that she had two clear choices. She could either end it all now by throwing herself into what was left of the pond or she could go home and listen to the Smiths. Reluctantly she chose the latter.

Back at home, Beryl lay on the settee eating a packet of Walkers cheese & onion crisps and listening to the Smiths' 'The Queen is Dead' lp. The song 'The Boy With The Thorn in his Side" was playing and Beryl listened to the words:
"And when you want to live,
How do you start, where do you go,
Who do you need to know...."
She had these words many times however this time was different. Because suddenly a shock revelation occurred, like the conversion of St Paul. Beryl realised that she new the answers to the questions that Morrissey was posing in the lyric. How to live and where to go..... the answer was clear. She would become a sex-crazed nymphomanic and go out on the pull. Starting right now.

Two hours later, Beryl was squeezed into her tightest skirt, dolled up in make-up and strutting down Balaclava Street towards the Cross Keys. In the pub she ordered a double gin & tonic and sat at the bar on a stool, pulling up her skirt to reveal her shapely thighs. Several young men started mumbling something about mutton dressed as lamb but Beryl gave them a wink and grinned:
"Better a bike that has some miles in it than a brand new thing that's so stiff it needs oiling."
Within a few minutes she was being chatted up by a car salesman from Salford and Beryl offered to go with him to his car for a quick one on the back seat.

And that was how it started. From that day onwards, Beryl's life became one long moan of pleasure. She had Barry the fishmonger in the back of his fish van, two apprentice mechanics in Bentley's Garage and even old Stan, the landlord of the Cross Keys, to name but a few. Some were acts of charity but most were extremely enjoyable romps. When her husband Phil was sentenced to five years for armed robbery and Craig and Shannon moved in with their dopey mates, she converted the house into a love nest and splashed out on a whole new wardrobe from Anne Summers with money given to her by various men. Beryl was the talk of Gladstone Road and she loved every minute of it. Whoever would have thought that life would begin at fifty-two she often thought to herself with a grin.