April Sucs

As a 'Johnny come lately' I've had to push the date back a bit, but I am none the less grateful for the opportunity to add my meagre effort to those who've gone before me.

For those who are fed up with so many new versions of George Anderson's great story, my apologies, but fear not, this is not so much just a different ending as a companion piece. It can actually be read as a free standing story, but so much better if you're familiar with the original!

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My two pals and me, along with our wives, having recently got back from our overseas posting were enjoying a long week end at Dave and Julie's place, to celebrate that the three of us had got back in one piece and without a scratch between us. We'd drank, golfed, drank, eat, drank and even took the wive's shopping. But that night, the one that you may be interested in, our hosts had taken Tim and Sally and me and my wife Jilly out to nice club called Morrison's. In deference to our earlier over indulgence we held back on the drinking even though we had a taxi booked to take us back at the end of the evening, but we were none the less feeling quite jovial.

"Who's the three big guys on the table over there?" Julie asked Dave. "The one facing us looks familiar."

"They're all pro footballers," Dave answered. "They play for the local team."

"Oh my God yes," Julie gushed, as the other two wives looked round to see what, or rather who had caught her interest. "The one facing us is that Valler guy."

"Marc Lavalliere," her hubby corrected her. "Quite a local star."

"Quite a hunk as well," giggled Sally, and the other two wives quickly agreed with her.

"Down girls," laughed Dave. "He's dangerous."

"Might be worth getting my fingers burnt," Jilly teased me, nudging me in the ribs.

"Might be more than just your fingers Jilly," Dave warned her, suddenly getting more serious. "He's already caused problems with more than one marriage."

"That's him," gasped Julie clearly just realising who he was. "That's the one I was telling you girls about. That's him who all the fuss has been about."

Now us guys are not ones for idle gossip, but this we had to know about, and what we heard wasn't terribly pleasant.

"Apparently he was here a few weeks ago and asked some guy's wife to dance with him without asking her husband," Dave started.

"And she got up and danced with him," Julie added. "Danced three or four in a row with him."

"Well that's not that bad," I offered. "Not bad enough to cause a marriage to break up."

"But afterwards she slipped out and went off with him," explained Dave. "Didn't get back home till the next afternoon, so they say."

"Didn't her husband try to stop her?" Demanded Tim, frowning as he glanced round at the offending party.

"Didn't know she'd gone apparently," Dave continued. "She went off to the ladies with one of her friends and when the friend came back she didn't come back with her."

"You meant she left her husband sitting there and went off with another man?" I exclaimed, unable to believe such a thing was possible. "Their marriage must have already been in trouble."

"Not according to what we've heard," Julie joined in again. "Apparently they were out for a romantic evening and even had a room booked in a local hotel."

"Well he's a good looking guy, but nobody's that good looking," my wife sighed. "How could he persuade her to do that?"

"Looks like one of you girls might be about to find out," growled Tim. "He's coming this way."

And he was!

Without so much as a word to us, or me in particular, Lavalliere simply held his hand out to Jilly, my wife, and taken by surprise she took it and stood up. She had actually taken two steps away from the table with him when reality dawned and Jilly stopped dead in her tracks.

"You haven't asked my husband's permission," she pointed out to him, standing her ground to his annoyance.

"I don't have to ask anyone's permission," Lavalliere snapped, turning and sneering down at me, which was a mistake of course, because he totally missed the chance to dodge Jilly's hand as she slapped him hard round the face.

Him raising his hand to hit her back was his second mistake, as I leapt up, and as big as he was, grabbed his arm, the pair of us tumbling onto the table and all but overturning it.

Mayhem followed!

Lavallier's two team mates charged in to help him and of course Dave and Tim leapt up on my side. With three guys all over six four against three guys of average height, the fight, if you could call it that, didn't last very long. Especially when the three smaller guys were recently back from a four week operation in a very sandy place, where they'd been sent to use the very special skills they'd been taught.

Three big guys were soon picking themselves up from the floor and scuttling back, or in Lavallier's case limping back to their table with their tails between their legs, quick to realise that they'd taken on a lot more than they were capable of handling.

They'd no sooner sat back down again probably wishing the floor would swallow them up, the entire club seeming to have gone deathly quiet, adding to their humiliation, when my wife decided to add to it.

"I didn't finish talking to him," she mumbled as she traipsed over to where the three of them sat there hanging their heads down. A few words from her, which she later laughingly refused to disclose to us, and the three of them stood up and trudged unhappily out of the club, accompanied by an enthusiastic burst of clapping and laughter from just about everyone in the club except us six; their humiliation complete.

A bottle of champagne mysteriously appeared on our table, and the room was suddenly filled with the sounds of people enjoying themselves. Everyone wanted to buy us a drink and suddenly everyone was up and dancing, the whole atmosphere having changed. We noted though that no men asked our wives to dance without checking with us first.

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Things continued well with us but less so for Lavallier. The two minute tussle with us left him with more than just a temporary limp and he was let go by his club and never played football again.

According to Dave when we asked, he just seemed to disappear off the radar.

We also enquired about what happened to the wife that had gone off with him that evening, but he wasn't sure. Apparently there's been a huge amount of speculation about what happened between her and her husband. So much in fact that he joked that there was enough material for any number of stories to be concocted.