Richard - The Lying Art

By Will Stebbings

Richard – The Lyin' Art

Richard Randall is unable to stop himself. He is a compulsive liar. When Wes Higginbottom encounters him and hears some of his lies, he takes an instant dislike to him. After all, why waste time waiting until you get to know someone better, when you can go for a full blown hatred immediately. However, Wes' judgement is soon fully justified as his annoying nemesis causes one upset after another. They both belong to a social group which organises regular events enabling members to meet up. These members are mostly divorced or widowed and seek group friendship rather than any romantic liaisons. That doesn't stop Wes from forming attachments to some of the female members but so does Randall and there is inevitable conflict.

The problem with continuously telling lies is, at some point, you might need someone to believe you – and they won't!

Also included in this book are four other short stories from the pen of Will Stebbings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Will Stebbings
• Release date: Mar 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224661565

Will Stebbings

Will Stebbings is rapidly gaining critical acclaim for his insightful novels, encapsulating nostalgia for the sixties and seventies, whilst adding a fair smattering of humour. His first novel 'Off the Mark' received so many plaudits that he felt compelled to write 'Further Off the Mark' which continues the rites of passage for its main character, Mark Barker, who left an all-boys' school with no experience of girls or the adult world in general. 'Completely Off the Mark' is about Mark's further exploits in the early 1970s, while 'Mark's Out of Eleven' takes us back to 1960 and his days at an all boys' Grammar School, when educational institutions were as much about discipline as they were education. 'Tess of the Dormobiles' is a comedy thriller and is not part of the Mark Barker quadrilogy, being set firmly in the 21st century and featuring a female lead character. Will's love of soul music features heavily in his work, where he often used sixties and seventies soul records as the chapter titles. All of Will's novels are set predominately in Norfolk, which is where he was born and raised.

Book preview

Chapter 1

There was a plethora of reasons why I detested Richard Randall. However, I was in a very small minority. Ironically, that was one reason for my dislike. Unlike me, he was always surrounded by people who hung onto his every word, even though they probably didn’t believe any of it. That was the second reason for my dislike. He’d lied to me too many times for me to warm to him. The fellow certainly had charisma and attracted the ladies like wasps to a picnic; probably some of the men too. He never seemed short of money to splash around and he drove a Jaguar XK with a personalised number plate, which to me was a travesty. In my opinion, the two letters RR should only adorn a Rolls Royce, but then, that car company doesn’t make flashy sports cars and a Rolls wouldn’t suit his image.

I guess you’re starting to get the picture. Richard Randall was the polar opposite to me and I heartily disliked him. It was important that I did dislike him. That I will explain in due course.

Perhaps, I should introduce myself before I proceed with my story. My name is Paulo Rossi and I have Italian blood somewhere in my veins albeit diluted by several generations. Of course that’s not my real name. None of the names in this story are real, but the people are. My real name is Wesley Higginbottom; well, it is for this tale. I’m known to my friends as Wes; not that I have many friends. I used to have a few more, but I’ve been an idiot most of my life.

My biggest act of idiocy caused me to lose my wife and with her, because of my stupid behaviour, all of our mutual friends. It was what I deserved but that doesn’t make it any easier. I fooled around, you see; just the once, but that was once too often for her.  I’m ready to take the blame for my foolishness but I suppose the real culprit is Stellar. She was my little dalliance. It all started out so innocently. We were colleagues who had to work closely together and we got on like a house ablaze. Up until then, I had never looked at another woman and had no reason to do so, but Stellar was immensely proud of her wonderful bottom. She usually wore tight skirts or tight trousers to accentuate her asset – and I couldn’t fail to admire it.

My wife, Christine, had a great figure, even after the birth of our daughter Madeline (Maddy to her friends, but Madeline to her parents). So why you might be asking would I be tempted by Stellar’s impressive little asset? It was simply that Stellar wanted me to be tempted, almost as a favour to a colleague. She often caught me admiring her, especially if I followed her down a corridor. She would suddenly turn and catch me looking away with guilt written all over my face. She loved that. She often teased me and I think I loved it, always assuming that it was just teasing, but one time it went beyond that. I won’t go into all the sordid details, but it was everything that I had been dreaming of.

The danger with ‘playing away’ is that it’s so easy to think it will be a nice little ‘one-off,’ but it is never that simple. If it’s not very enjoyable for whatever reason, you are left with disappointment and recrimination, not to say probable embarrassment in your future dealings with that person. However, if the encounter is pleasurable, you’re going to want to repeat the exercise – and carry on repeating it until something has to give; and we did repeat it, like two sex-starved teenagers.

However, two things changed all that. Firstly, Stellar eventually turned her attention to a more attractive young stud. That should never have come as a great surprise since I have never been much of a looker. My nose was broken in a fight whilst in my teens and I’m only five feet six inches tall. My dress sense is abysmal and I was struggling to afford the upkeep of a wife and a mistress.

My sex life with my wife deteriorated while I was still seeing Stellar and Christine soon became suspicious, especially as I had stopped fondling her buttocks which I always used to do. My depression when Stellar dumped me reinforced Christine’s suspicions and she soon learnt the unpalatable truth.

So from having two women in my life, I suddenly had none – and my depression intensified. Christine is by nature a very forgiving person and it is to her great credit that she forgave me, but I had betrayed her trust. Trust is something that once lost can never be rebuilt and a year later, we divorced.

It’s a little like trusting someone to tell the truth which brings me back to Richard Randall. He had always told so many lies that even when he was actually truthful, how could you believe him? I remember once telling him that there would come a time when he needed someone to believe him and it wouldn’t happen. Truth and trust should never be betrayed. Some of his anecdotes might well be true, but even then, I’m sure he would have embellished them. However, so many of his tales were obviously pure fiction.

One example was the story he told to our little group which was so outrageous that it would take an idiot to believe him. Such an idiot was Tracy; a light-headed young lady in her early twenties. He managed to convince her that he had once been swallowed by a python. He had been visiting a friend in Saudi Arabia. This friend had his own private zoo with many exotic species. The snake was allowed the freedom of the property and one day while Richard was sleeping on a terrace, it attacked him and swallowed him whole. His friend appeared in time to force the python to regurgitate him. He suffered a few bruised ribs and was covered in slime, but otherwise lived to tell the preposterous tale. Would you believe such a story? I told him that I thought that pythons squeezed their prey to death before swallowing but Richard wouldn’t have it. I liked to point out the flaws in his stories, but he had a gullible audience in Tracy so he was happy and so was Tracy who thought I was just jealous of Richard’s experiences. In response to my statement, he added that after his struggles with the snake came to nothing, he pretended to be dead so that it stopped squeezing. I can’t help thinking that if the python had stopped squeezing, he had an opportunity to escape but if others were prepared to believe him, that’s there lookout.

The group I just mentioned was a local ‘Meet Up Group.’ This was made up of a cross section of the local community who just wanted to socialise without any recourse to dating or anything sordid like that. In fact, some of the members attended as couples. The group’s activities were quite wide ranging from a simple night out in a pub to a coach trip to a theme park or a London show. The age range was from someone like Tracy in her twenties, to Alf and Meg who were a couple of pensioners, not married but always together.

Anyway, more of this group later. I was telling you about myself before I went off at a tangent. So my name is ... wait, what was it I said?  Oh yes, that’s right. I’m Wes. I’m in my mid-forties, divorced, tall and good looking with bright sparkling attractive blue eyes and always surrounded by stunning ladies ... if only! I am divorced, of course. I’m five foot six inches tall. My nose is big and misshapen and I have a bulbous chin. My hair is jet black. Well, it’s black. I don’t know the difference between black and jet black. You can’t have different shades of black, can you? Unless it’s a car; then you can have metallic black. Imagine having metallic black hair. I’ll have to ask my hairdresser next time I visit him. I could start a new fashion. But that’s not me, is it? My taste in clothes only stretches to what’s in the Charity Shop. I do have Italian blood from a few generations ago.

I used to be quite sporty and fit, but now I’ve gone to seed. I joined a gym once but I felt intimidated by all the tattooed enthusiasts grunting away – and the blokes were even worse. I always thought that a treadmill was a form of punishment used in prisons, so why do people volunteer to use them? There they all are, pounding away and never getting anywhere. Then there are the stationery cycles. For the price you pay to join these establishments, you could buy a proper good quality bike and see some scenery and, what’s more, do it in the fresh air. That was what I thought when I cancelled my membership. Of course, I never bought a bike but if I wanted to use a cycle, that’s what I would do. The fanatics tell you that it is important when exercising to raise your heartbeat If I really wanted to raise my heartbeat, I’d take a drive along the M1; one of those so-called ‘smart motorways.’ They’re scary if you ask me. The idea of breaking down on one of those fills me with dread.

So that’s me in a nutshell. I suppose you want to know where I live. Let’s just say somewhere in the middle of the country; as far from the coast as you can get. A day out at the seaside was a rare event for the family. I don’t think that

I mentioned that I also have a son as well as a daughter. Gregory has now left school and is earning, so I no longer have to pay maintenance for him and Madeline. I still see him occasionally and we do speak to each other even though he blames me for the break-up of our marriage. I also remain on surprisingly good terms with Christine and Madeline.

So, as I was saying, a trip to the seaside was a rare event. We managed to get to Skegness on one occasion, but we all agreed that it wasn’t one of our most successful days out. We had a mutual friend who always raved about Skeggy, but we were not impressed. When I saw him again, I joked that Hitler had bombed the place in the war and did ten thousand pounds worth of improvements, but our friend still liked the place. Perhaps he knew something we didn’t. If we wanted a trip to the coast, we made a week of it somewhere else – Cornwall and Norfolk spring to mind as happy memories. If only I hadn’t been an idiot.

Chapter 2

A few years ago, my son Gregory met a charming Australian lady who was working in a local coffee shop. He was soon smitten; as was I if I’m honest although I didn’t see as much of her as I would wish. She was one of those fine boned healthy outdoor types and it was hard to find a flaw in her appearance or her demeanour. Christine didn’t share my enthusiasm especially as she knew that Charlene had a work visa that was going to expire at some point. Of course, Charlene is not her real name, but it suits her as a typical Aussie.

Anyway, Christine could see this would end in tears and she was right, but it wasn’t Gregory’s, it was her own, because our son decided to seek a new life at the other end of the world. According to his irregular messages, he is now prospering. I’m happy for him. After all, a parent’s main function is to raise a family and ensure they lead a fulfilling life; not that I played a big part in that. That’s yet another reason why I bitterly regret my foolish fling, although I still have nice memories of Stellar’s arse; especially when she would ... but you don’t want to hear all of that, do you? If you do, this isn’t the literature for you, but I know of some web sites that might interest you. Just make sure your virus protection is up to date. Safe sex has a different meaning these days.

My one dear wish has always been to find enough money to take Christine and Madeline over to Australia to visit him. Of course, that would be complicated by Christine’s marriage to bloody Tim. I’m not paying for Tim as well. In any case, it’s just a pipe dream for now. I’m not likely to find that sort of money unless I rob a bank or do something illegal.

Since our divorce, I have struggled financially. We sold our home and split the proceeds. I now live in a pokey little semi-detached house with little chance of bettering myself, having been forced to start a new mortgage from scratch. Christine fared better because good old Tim contributes to a joint income and they can afford a nice house in a nice area. How nice for them. But I would like to do that one thing for my family. I haven’t been a very good husband or father, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about them all and the thought of never seeing Gregory again fills me with despair. I would do almost anything to rectify that. An opportunity presented itself; an opportunity that would severely test my sense of morals, but more of that later.

One of the most popular activities of our Meet Up group was the quiz night. This was always organised by our unelected administrator whose name was Paul Bearer who worked in a Funeral Parlour. As you may have realised by now, that’s not his real name but I felt like adding it for comical effect. His real name was Terry Dacktell, but we’ll stick with Paul.

He was a born organiser and was only really happy when he was organising – a bit like Martin Bryce from Ever Decreasing Circles.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you have missed out on one of the best situation comedy programmes ever. He was played by Richard Briers with Penelope Wilton as his long suffering wife Ann (whom I quite fancied actually). Penelope later appeared in Downton Abbey playing a completely different character. What Ann saw in Martin, I couldn’t fathom. His organising always took top priority in their marriage.

On the rare occasions, when he wasn’t being annoying, Ann would typically suggest an early night (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and Martin would say ‘That would be nice, love. I’d really like that. I’ve just got time to check the tyre pressures in the van. I don’t want to leave it until the morning.’ At which point, Ann would pour a drink over him or demonstrate her annoyance in some other way. There would be no early night.

Anyway, I’ve digressed again; back to Paul Bearer and his quiz. This man was not the sort to just turn up with a bunch of questions while everyone teamed up with their friends. Oh, no! These quizzes were organised on almost military lines. To give everyone a fighting chance, the individual players were seeded, so that it wasn’t possible for the better players to make up their own team to wipe the floor with everyone else. When I say ‘seeded,’ I mean he would allocate everyone into several ‘pools’ of players of roughly equal ability. I was, naturally, in the top pool. I’ve always enjoyed a good quiz. When I’m not participating, I watch all the best TV quizzes.

The ‘pools’ not only separated the best quizzers, but also allowed each team to be represented by both sexes and people of different age groups, which suited me, because I am useless at modern pop music. Whereas Tracy, whom I mentioned earlier, was hot on all aspects of modern culture, but, it has to be said, useless at everything else. Nevertheless, most players welcomed her for her limited knowledge which was mostly lacking in the older players. She was also nice to look at.

Couples were always split up, except for Alf and Meg who refused to participate if they weren’t allowed to play together. Nobody objected to that because they weren’t that brilliant at quizzing.

To cut a long story short, I often found myself in the same team as Richard Randall because I believe that he was in the second ‘pool.’ On one such occasion I want to talk about, when