‘I said …’ She’d been facing Jon across the breakfast table, setting down her piece of partly marmaladed toast as if it were a token of love from some diseased former suitor. ‘… I said have you got a new barber?’
‘No.’
‘You look different.’
‘I’m not different.’
‘You look it.’
‘But I’m not. I haven’t even had a haircut from my old barber. I’m the same.’
Valerie had studied him for a moment and then given him his first sight of an expression with which he was now very familiar.
The complicit stare that tells you — I know what you’re up to and you haven’t got away with it.
Because he was different, he did look it and his difference was beginning to show.
It was predictable that he couldn’t spend lunch hours and early starts and extra-late finishes being sweet, just sweet, only that, across paper — to Slim and Patty and Nora and Robyn and Clare — without changing.
This feeling … a definite emotion … not specific, but definitely … this constant … ever since …
And there came, of course, a morning when he’d woken and his reach had been already anxious and seeking and then holding tight around his wife — his wife, for Christ’s sake — hard against her and a mew of insistence, growl, groan, some kind of noise he was making while his face searched in at her neck and his legs moved under, over, clasping, and there was no objection.
Until he realised.
Until he woke fully.
And could not proceed.
Which was a problem.
Which was — to a perhaps significant degree — the root of her actually leaving him in a permanent way.
Or rather requesting that I leave. The house was hers. Her mother married it.
That moment when he pulled his head back, flinched away and she saw his expression, what would have unfortunately been his honest horror at finding her there in his arms.
So absolutely a problem, yes.
Then — which I didn’t think of, or more properly which I ignored as a possibility … Then, it was predictable … Then the letters went on and the feeling also, or feelings, of usefulness, light-heartedness, content.
And these were also months — and then over a year — of increasingly vehement separation from the flesh-and-blood human being to whom he was married and with whom he lived. Then the mess of the divorce and then going off to be in the Junction. There was no absolute need for him to pick the Junction, rather than elsewhere. It had simply seemed correct to pack oneself off to somewhere hard and mortifying …
And then …
He tried an advertisement in Australia, the results of which proved uneventful, stable.
And then …
Another ad was floated out in The Village Voice. The Voice women seemed too demanding, too degrading, too often demanding to be degraded and to degrade.
And then …
He’d tried the TLS. It was closer to home and therefore, Jon hoped, less tiring and more sympathetic. He’d looked — this might really have been quite unlikely — for sympathy from readers of the Times Literary Supplement.
And then …
The vetting people found me out.
They uncovered my hobby and my — which could have seemed alarming — dead letter box. I suppose a PO box could be described as a dead letter box, mail drop, something fishy.
But that was all right.
That part of the matter was all right.
I could explain. And they didn’t even seem to be overly concerned. There were so many worse things I could have been doing. Having a mildly irregular personal life … well, Val had ensured my — by extension — irregularity for years, in her own way.
Silly that she’d been so girlishly keen I should get promoted and yet always managed to undermine my suitability. Not that I didn’t produce my own failings — a certain light missing from my eye. Or else an illumination of the wrong sort.
I was only now — as far as vetting could see — being irregular in my own right. And in a mutually consenting and adult manner.
Although money did change hands … leaves a nasty taste at certain levels … but it also reminded those concerned that we were being impersonally personal. I’d charged £120 for a dozen letters. Or $120. In fact, I ended up giving most of them a baker’s dozen for the money: that one extra lent the arrangement an atmosphere of generosity. And I donated the money to charity and retained my paperwork in that regard, although questions of paperwork didn’t arise. The operation of appropriate oversight had uncovered letters from women, clearly replying to letters from me — letters of an affectionate nature. I simply agreed that I did, yes, receive letters and that I did, yes, write back to the women, because why not?
It seemed shameful to have solicited the interaction and so I didn’t mention the ads. There were just three women in evidence, I think — they were all that was mentioned. I was dealing with five at that time, but I didn’t say — or six, in fact. Or, no — I had escalated to seven. I was sending letters to seven women at that point. Some of them were writing back, three of them were writing back, because why not?
I suppose I approve of the letters having been intercepted. I should be subject to the standard checks and safeguards intended to ensure the suitability and probity of public servants. There should always be oversight and it should be rigorous. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, how they did the deed, if they went to the shop after hours and picked the surely inadequate lock on the box — derring-do and balaclavas? Or did they compel its opening by official means — flashy badges and officially severe haircuts? Did they give that usual smug impression of actively defending the realm with every self-important breath? Or did someone insinuating have a gentle but determined word and rifle through my correspondence on an informal basis? It doesn’t matter, of course. They could find out what I was doing, because why not?
I was receiving and sending letters to women, because why not?
Lucy, Sophia and so forth: no one involved could suggest why not. No one tried to.
They interviewed me.
Without enthusiasm.
I explained that I was corresponding with women as company. That was all. I said that I was courting. Smirks from over the desk when I used the word.
Courting.
I was not indulging in physical contact. There was no possibility of blurry photos in the Sunday papers, there would be no use of the word ‘romps’ … More smirks from the desk confirming they’d never have expected romps from me — all I would be capable of was courting, harmless dicklessness.
There was no plan to use the PO box to betray — as they might have put it — my country. Nobody asked, but if they had I would have mentioned that I was in favour of saving my country.
That was pretty much it.
And so I kept on courting.
Because why not.
HR consulted thereafter.