Things Are Not Always That Obvious

I'm not really sure where to place this story. There are no cheating wives and no sex, and yet, it isn't really a 'Romance' story.

No doubt I will get lots of comments that it shouldn't be there, but I'll put it in the 'Loving Wives' category (all the best comments come in there LOL) and take my chances.

Thanks once again to the brilliantly helpful Azure-Skies for his editing and encouragement and if you do find anything glaringly wrong, that'll be me missing it when I did the final draft.

Best wishes and I hope you enjoy,

Oldie.

Forward

Rugby League (for the uninitiated) is a great, tough game mainly played in the North of England, where it originated from, Australia, New Zealand, France and several south-sea islands like Fiji and Papua New Guinea(not a south sea island but very tropical.)

A little like Hockey in the USA it is very much a minority sport but even so inspires hero worship and adoration among its followers for the 'Stars' of the game.

For all our American readers, it has all the pace of Basketball combined with the 'attitude' and aggression of American Football, so if you ever get the chance to watch a game, give it a go, I'm sure you'll enjoy it immensely.

The 'hero' of the following story has all the qualities I think I have myself in that he always tries to do the right thing no matter what, and is always prepared to help out the underdog. I would love to claim that his ability as a rugby player is based on me also but unfortunately, although I did play this wonderful game for over 20 years man and boy, I never reached the heights that Jim did.

That playing ability and other characteristics are inspired by one man, my hero. The great, great Mal Meninga. Mal is an ex-international rugby league player who was quite simply the biggest, strongest, hardest, best player it was ever my good fortune to see. Unfortunately he is Australian, but I can't hold that against him. He totally battered a very good Great Britain side for years every time we played them but it was still an honour to watch him. He came over to the UK and played for my team St Helens a couple of seasons in the eighties and still has 'god-like' status in the town...Thanks for the memories Mal!!!.....

Lastly, please remember this is a work of fiction and don't take it too seriously. Certain things are exaggerated for the sake of the story so don't take them too literally.

As always, constructive criticism and voting is always welcome. However personal abuse I will not tolerate and such comments will be immediately removed so don't even bother to post them.

Best wishes and I hope you enjoy my effort

Oldie.

"Are you Jim Mackay?"

I abandoned the usual Friday night disagreement I was having with my lovely wife Anne about the different merits of whether it's better for a woman to do the shopping on her own, or, as in our case, should the poor downtrodden husband be prevented from getting home after a hard week at work to a nice cold one straight from the fridge. Smiling broadly, I turned around, thinking it was probably another Saints fan wanting my autograph.

"This is for fucking around with my wife you bastard!!!...."

CRACK!!!!... My nose exploded in pain on the end of some sneaky fucker's fist and down I went like the proverbial sack of shit, toppling backwards as the shock went straight to my legs, before cracking the back of my head against something very, very hard as I landed.

Shaking my head, I did my best to stand up again, my eyes barely able to focus on the big dark haired bloke who was walking quickly away from me, only for my brain to go into scramble mode as I blacked out.....

I suppose I'd better tell you a little about myself. My name is Jim Mackay ('Jimmy Mack' to most rugby league fans). I am 39 years old; a shade over 6ft tall and built like a brick shithouse. I'm a ruggedly handsome bloke, with a physique like Brad Pitt and a head of hair like an ageing rock star - (At least that's what I see when I look in the mirror in a morning, others probably see nearer the truth.)

My hair really is quite long, although now showing flecks of grey, but my face is, well, shall we say, 'battle-worn'. I actually am just over 6ft, and do have a very powerful physique, so it's not all lies. My poor nose has now been broken a total of 4 times, leaving it misshapenly spread over most of my face, and both my eyes have extensive scar tissue above them.

I played the great game of rugby league a total of 384 times for my local team St Helens, a smallish town in the Northwest of England about 14 miles from Liverpool, playing for just over 12 years until I retired in 2004 at the age of 30 with a busted knee. I also played 32 international matches for the England or Great Britain teams, many times against our big rivals Australia, who I hate with a vengeance but admire enormously. I suppose you could say I was a bit of a 'star' back in the day - (Well I was certainly 'world famous' in St Helens anyway).

One thing I do have trouble with though is my quick temper. I was known for it early doors in my professional rugby career and opposition teams used to play on it when I was younger, provoking me to react and giving the referee no option other than to send me to the 'sin-bin' for 10 minutes, or even worse, send me off for the rest of the game. Now anyone who follows rugby league will know that being a man down for any length of time (never mind the rest of the game) puts a great strain on the rest of the team. The older players all tried to get through my thick skull what was happening and all pointed out how if I didn't sort myself out I would ruin my career before it really got started. Eventually the club had had enough of my childish tantrums and sent me on an anger management course. This helped a great deal but the underlying problem is still there and I have to make a conscious effort to control myself no matter what the provocation. I now try to count to ten when I feel myself getting angry. That does work most of the time but just occasionally I only get to two or three before I blow.

I was quite well paid for a rugby league player, nowhere near the wages those sissy-boy soccer players get but enough to have put a bit away for my retirement. After I finished playing I took a job as manager of a local builders merchant, owned by a huge Saints fan, and eventually bought him out when he wanted to retire. Since I took over, we have expanded the business to include a large organic garden centre which has turned into quite a profitable sideline. I also coach part-time some of the junior sides at the Saints academy along with several of my ex-playing colleagues and have a great time trying to bring the kids along to the standard required for the first team. All in all then, we are doing very well.

When I say 'we', I mean me and my second wife Anne. She is a gorgeous blonde girl 10 years younger than me who's the daughter of lovely lady called Mary, and an arsehole called Ralph Garvey. You may get the impression I don't get on too well with my father-in-law, well you'd be one hundred percent right.

I can't be doing with the loud mouthed, drunken pillock. He's one of those ex-pros all players hate. He played about a dozen times for the first team back in the eighties but to hear him talk he was one of the all-time greats. He always appears at ex-player functions at the club, inevitably getting so pissed he can hardly stand up straight, and spouting to any poor bugger he can corner just how great 'his' team were and how none of today's players would have stood a chance of playing in his day. - Just what you need when you're trying to have a quiet drink catching up with old friends....

Anne, as I said, is my second wife. I met her when she had just returned from university after

graduating her Fine Arts degree course in 2006. I was at the annual kids Christmas party the rugby club put on for the local orphanage, playing the role of Santa Claus can you believe, when her mum brought her up and introduced us. (I was on a drinks break, sat at the bar with some other ex-players). I think I probably fell for her at that very moment....

She was 22 at the time, so the lecherous thoughts of young girls sitting on Santa's knee that immediately ran through my mind were only slightly perverted for a 32 year old divorcee who, incidentally, hadn't had any for at least 2 years....

Anne knew just about everything about me. She was, and still is, a huge rugby fan, so when she found out Mary knew me well she begged her mother to introduce us. We chatted away like old friends for about the next half an hour, Mary having left us to it after a couple of minutes, and I found her so much easier to talk to than any woman I'd met since my very antagonistic divorce the year before.

My first marriage had ended acrimoniously to say the least. I had married Diane in 1996 after knowing her for just over 2 years. I was just over 21 at the time, whilst she was 24, and we were very much in love at first. Gradually she had become jealous of my increasing fame and local celebrity, absolutely hating it whenever a fan asked for an autograph when we were out together, quite often being unnecessarily rude to them at times.

We'd found out early doors that Diane was unable to have kids, didn't bother me too much at the time but she'd been devastated, and that had caused all sorts of problems in our relationship. I do understand nowadays that being unable to conceive must have been a terrible blow to her sense of womanhood, but at the time I was definitely insensitive to her needs. - (Hey, I was a big macho rugby player; we didn't 'do' sensitivity very well).

Anyway we rumbled on with our marriage for a few years and in 2004 she decided she needed something away from me that was all her own. She'd always enjoyed painting and drawing from being a kid so she joined an art class at the local night college. That's where she met 'That Cockney Prick' as he quickly became known in our marital home. He was Paul Defries (I mean... c'mon...), and he was her night school teacher. He was older than her, 42 to her 31, and was a typical arty-farty adult education teacher, couldn't paint for toffee himself but felt he was qualified enough to teach others how to do it. He was a tall skinny fucker, always dressed in what looked like someone else's cast-offs and with the most stupid hairstyle you've ever seen, almost totally bald on top with a fucking ponytail that almost reached his waist at the back. - Talk about looking a complete twat!!!....

Over the next few months he started taking her for a drink after class and it would appear that those 'quick drinks' turned into a full-blown affair. She started meeting him when I was away at games, and I imagine they were shagging each other silly. All this came out in the divorce. He'd eventually convinced her that she was far too intellectual and intelligent to be with a Neanderthal like me and she'd be much better off with him.

This all came to a head when she'd casually announced to me at home one Sunday evening that she'd fallen in love with someone else, wanted a divorce, and demanded half of everything we owned. She moved in with him that night. The following day she took a restraining order out preventing me from contacting either her or him, citing that I was a very dangerous man, as proved by my occupation, and she was terrified I would go after her and her new partner. She knew me so well, if I'd have got near the little shit, I'd have ripped his balls off and hung them round her fucking adulterous neck. However, being a local celebrity does have certain advantages and I was able to hire the best, most ruthless divorce lawyer in the area. They, on the other hand, were skint and couldn't....

Using their admitted adultery, and my grief-stricken innocence (Ha!!!), my lady shark of a lawyer took them to the cleaners, proving to the court that my wife had abandoned our marriage to commit adultery with someone who should, as a teacher, have been beyond reproach. The judge agreed with her (He was a big Saints fan) and awarded me the house and most of our assets, while Diane got alimony of £50 a week for 3 years or until she re-married, whichever came soonest.

Now Mr. Defries may have thought himself superior in every way to a thick, under-educated lout like me, (actually I do have an IQ of 140, several A level exams from school, and a degree in Business studies I took part time in between playing rugby), but that didn't stop the money-grabbing pair of shits from living together for 3 years and only getting married the week after her fucking alimony finished! - I may well be giving the impression I am bitter about all of this, well too fucking true I am! - I hope his cock falls off while he's fucking her and rots inside her cheating cunt!!!....

The experience with Diane and 'The Prick' had left me suspicious and mistrustful of virtually any woman I met for the next few months. Sure I dated a few times but could never allow myself to become emotionally involved with any of them. I only had sex with three of them, all just the once, and then I met Anne....

We became close friends long before we ever became lovers, getting to know each other really well, much to the chagrin of her arsehole dad. Co-incidentally, considering how Diane had met fuck-face, Anne introduced me to fine art and other so-called highbrow pursuits. We would go down to London many weekends after my retirement from rugby, always going round the world famous art galleries, and even several times attending the opera in Covent Garden.

I have always been a big 'rock' fan; so to say it was all a culture shock for me is a huge understatement. Anne would take time to explain to me what actually contributed to a painting or sculpture being 'great' as adverse to just very good. She really does love her art, but unlike 'The Prick', she knows she is not talented enough as an artist herself and is now employed as an art historian and curator with the Tate gallery in Liverpool.

We were actually friends for 3 years before we became lovers - (a truly wonderful 35th birthday present for me); although I had known for months before that I was deeply in love with her. I was still very nervous about making a commitment though, plainly mentally scarred by my previous disastrous marital experience.

Eventually, in 2010, Anne had obviously had enough of my lack of commitment to our relationship. So on her 26th birthday, as we lay languishing in the glorious afterglow of a wonderful two hours of love-making, she decided to take things out of my hands and turned to face me with a stern expression on her beautiful face,

"James Mackay! I have had a crush on you since I was 14, and I've been in love with you ever since I met you.... So if you don't fucking ask me to marry you right now, I'm going to flaming swing for you!"

What could a man say to that? We were married 6 months later in her favourite church surrounded by all our friends, family, and many plug-ugly ex-rugby players. (And with my new father-in-law looking totally sick at the cost of it all.....)

So that's the story of my adult life so far, and now back to that fateful Friday night in June......

Ever so slowly I started coming to, my head gradually clearing as my eyes tried to focus, eventually able to see the small crowd now gathered around me.

Groggily I tried to get to my feet; I felt a firm hand on my chest pushing me back to the ground where I was laying.

"I'm a nurse, please don't try and stand up sir, you've just had one hell of a bang on your head."

Laying my head back onto the pad of paper towels someone had placed under my bleeding skull, I gradually focussed on the ebony black features of my helper.

"My name is Rose and I'm a theatre sister at St. Luke's. That's a nasty cut you have there and I think your nose is probably broken too, so please lay still until the ambulance gets here."

Her voice had a distinct South African twang to it and I could see she was a 'big' girl as they say. Her bosom was quite simply the biggest I have ever seen from beneath, stretching her dark blue sister's scrubs to the limit

Being as she was a caring professional, I was surprised that there didn't appear to be a great deal of sympathy in her voice as she carried on.

"This obviously isn't the first time your nose has been broken by the look of things, but the bang on back of your head may be a big problem. So please just lay still until the paramedics get here."

My eyes now focussing better, I was able to glance around at the quickly growing crowd of onlookers, slowly noticing their facial expressions. Not concern, sympathy, or any of the other natural emotions you would normally show to someone who may be badly injured, but instead, condemnation on some, and downright amusement on the majority.

Totally ignoring Sister Rose's advice, I tried to get to my feet, only immediately to feel faint again and have to sit with my back against the concrete post I had obviously banged my head against as I fell.

"Please, Mr Mackay, please don't move! There may be some serious injury to that head of yours!"

Sensing all is not well with the good sister I asked her softly,

"Where's my wife?...Where's Anne?"

"Do you mean the blonde lady? After you were knocked down by the other man, she loaded all her shopping into her car and high-tailed it out of here like a bat out of hell."

"What?...Why?... Didn't she say anything?"

Giving me a severely disapproving look as she glanced round at the other onlookers, she answered,

"Actually, yes she did, she said quite a lot and shouted even more."

Totally bemused now, I asked,

"She shouted?...What?...Why didn't she stay to help me?"

"She called you a lot of bad names Mr. Mackay, most of them I would never use myself, but from what I gather she doesn't like the idea of you sleeping with another man's wife! And if I may say so, Mr Mackay, I agree with her entirely!...Cheating husbands deserve to get their noses broken!"

"But I've never cheated on her....." I muttered, trying to get a grip on what was happening.

"Pardon?....What did you say Mr Mackay?" The good sister had enquired, leaning closer to me, trying to hear me more clearly.

"I said I've never cheated on her, I'd never do that, she knows I wouldn't!"

"Mr Mackay!.... I saw and heard everything and I certainly don't think that other gentleman would have hit you like that without good reason!" replied the reproachful sister Rose.

I was now getting fairly annoyed with what appeared to be a total misunderstanding. There I was, blood pouring from both my busted nose and the back of my head, both of which were hurting like fuck, and instead of sympathy and concern, all I was getting was condemnation and obvious disapproval.

"I've no fucking idea who he is, never mind who his wife is!....And I'm telling you!.... I have never slept with someone else's wife!....." I was almost shouting with indignation by then.

"Mr Mackay! There is absolutely no need for that sort of language at all, please refrain from swearing like that!"

"I'm sorry Sister; it's just that I can't understand what on earth has just happened..." I replied, suitably chastened by my angel of help, most of the rapidly building crowd laughing at my discomfort as newcomers were informed by the original witnesses what had been happening.

"I don't think I am the one you will have to convince Mr Mackay, but it certainly looked to me like you won't even be sleeping with your own wife any time soon either!....."

So that's how I'd found myself sat in the A & E department of St. Luke's General Hospital at 11:45 pm on a Friday night in June.