About a year after the incident in Waterstone’s, something so profound, so shocking and so unexpected happened to me that my life was never to be the same again. I fell in love.
Like most people my age, I had long thought myself immune to powerful passions, long settled into a sedate and comfortable existence with little in the way of strong emotion to upset its even keel. If I have unsatisfied or unrequited hopes and wishes, then I am in good company, for who hasn’t? If I regret some of the sacrifices I have made for the comforts I have gained, who doesn’t? And if I sometimes feel that my life lacks adventure, lacks spice, then again, who doesn’t? In all that, I felt, I was perfectly normal.
Life, it had come to seem to me, was a slow betrayal of the dreams of one’s youth and a gradual decline from the desires of one’s adolescence. Little did I know what a fragile illusion all that was until I met Katrina.
Imagine, if you can, my utter amazement when the bells started to ring, the earth moved and a sudden spring came into my step every time I saw her. Absurd, I told myself, she’ll never pay the least attention to an old fuddy-duddy like you. But she did. Oh, indeed she did. Love truly must be blind if such a gorgeous creature as Katrina could give herself to me.
Katrina came to work for the branch in summer, and by autumn we were meeting clandestinely whenever we could. She lived alone in a tiny bedsit in Kennington, which was convenient, if a bit cramped. But what is a little discomfort to a pair of lovers? We were consumed with a passion that could no more be stopped than an avalanche or a tidal wave. It picked us up, tossed us about like rag dolls and threw us back on the ground dazed, dazzled and breathless. I couldn’t get enough of her sad eyes, her soft red lips, her small breasts with the nipples hard as acorns when we made love, her skin like warm brown silk.
Needless to say, this affair made life very difficult both at work and at home, but I think I managed to cope well enough under the circumstances. I know I succeeded in hiding it from Evelyn, for I surely would have felt the repercussions had I not.
We went on meeting furtively for almost a year, during which time our passion did not abate in the least. Katrina never once asked me to abandon my marriage and live with her, but I wanted to. Oh God, how I wanted to. Only the thought of all the trouble, all the upheaval, that such a move would cause prevented me. For Evelyn wouldn’t take it lying down. So, like many others embroiled in affairs, I simply let it run on, perhaps hoping vaguely that some deus ex machina would come along and solve my problems for me.
Then, one day, after an excruciatingly painful Christmas spent away from Katrina, Evelyn reminded me of a conversation we had had some time ago about getting a country cottage, and pointed out the ideal place in an estate agent’s brochure: a rundown, isolated cottage in Oxfordshire, going for a song.
Furiously, I began to think of how such a move might prevent me from seeing Katrina as often as I needed to. We would have to sell the Dulwich house, of course, but the Oxfordshire cottage was indeed going for such an unbelievably low price that I might be able to afford a small flat in town.
At a pinch, however, Evelyn might suggest I could commute. The thought of that was unbearable. Though Katrina and I wouldn’t be separated totally, anything other than a quick session after work before the train home would be impossible. And neither of us wanted to live like that. A quickie in the back of a car is so sordid, and we were passionately, romantically in love.
On the other hand, I could hardly crush Evelyn’s dreams of a place in the country without thinking up a damn good explanation as to why we should simply stay put. And I couldn’t. The price was right, and we might not have another chance for years. Even with the renovations that would need to be done, we worked out, we could still easily afford it.
And so we took the plunge and bought the cottage. To say I was a soul in torment might sound like an exaggeration, but believe me, it doesn’t even come close to describing how wretched I really felt as I signed on the dotted line.
We had sent Sam Halsey, a jack-of-all-trades in the renovation business, over to Oxfordshire on a number of occasions to assess what needed doing and how it could be done to our liking and to our budget. One of his complaints was that, due to its isolation and to the odd whims of its previous owners, the toilet arrangements were far from adequate.
After much deliberation, one afternoon at the house in Dulwich, Sam said, ‘Of course, you could have a septic tank put in.’
‘A what?’ I said.
‘A septic tank. Perfectly respectable. Lots of country folk have them. Of course, you’ll need some carrion.’
‘I’m sorry, Sam, I don’t follow you.’
‘Carrion. To get the whole process going. Now, some of the younger chaps in the business will tell you a bit of compost will do the job just fine, but don’t believe them. Don’t you believe them. My old boss told me-’
Sam’s voice faded into the background as, suddenly, it hit me. I thought of my old lunchtime companion, Edward Grainger, and that guilty look that flitted across his features the time I saw him in Waterstone’s with Joyce, the blonde.
I remembered the tragedy of his wife’s disappearance, and how, after that, I saw less and less of him.
And I remembered how the disappearance occurred around the time they were having a septic tank installed at their cottage in Hampshire. Carrion, indeed.
And then I thought of my Katrina, my beautiful, beautiful Katrina, who took my breath away with her sad eyes and her skin like warm brown silk.
And, lastly, I thought of Evelyn. Life just isn’t fair, is it? Some people don’t simply fade away quietly into the obscurity from whence they came when you want rid of them, do they? No, they have to cause trouble, create scenes, make unreasonable demands and generally do their damnedest to ruin your hopes of a decent and happy future without them. They just won’t go away. Well, as I have already explained, Evelyn is one of those people. I’m certain of it.
On the other hand, people disappear all the time, don’t they? And people change. Harriet changed into Joyce, didn’t she? Sometimes you just have to give a little kick-start to get the process going, like the carrion in the septic tank, and then nature takes care of the rest.
‘Penny for them?’
‘What? Oh, I’m sorry, Sam. Miles away.’
‘That’s all right. I was just saying as how you’ll need some carrion for the septic tank. My old boss swore by it, he did.’
At that moment, Evelyn passed by the open French windows in his shabby beige cardigan, secateurs in hand. Wisps of grey hair blew in the March wind like spiders’ webs, and his glasses had slipped down his nose. Yes, people disappear all the time, don’t they? And if it can happen to wives, I thought, then it can bloody well happen to husbands too.
‘Yes, Sam,’ I said slowly. ‘Yes, I suppose we will. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’
APRIL IN PARIS
The girl sitting outside the cafe reminds me of April. She has the same long hennaed hair, which she winds around her index finger in the same abstracted way. She is waiting for someone clearly – a lover perhaps – and as she waits she smokes, holding her cigarette in the same way, taking the same short, hurried puffs, that April used to do. With her free hand, she alternates between taking sips of milky pastis and tapping her cigarette packet on the table. She is smoking Marlboro, as everyone in Paris seems to do these days. Back then it was all Gitanes, Gauloises and Disque Bleus.
Still, it wasn’t smoking that killed April; it was love.