Mine has been trained to be no longer there. In many areas.
Up to a point.
So today I can make a disinterested search of Val’s house without distraction …
She’d be disappointed if I didn’t search.
The hangers were heavy with her winter coats, several of her pensioned-off evening dresses and winter outfits he recalled and — yes — a couple of men’s suits.
Neither of them was his.
A couple of men’s suits. The suits, in fact, of a couple of men. That blue should be illegal and that one looks like it was issued by a workhouse — faux Edwardian labourer. Spare me. His week’s spend on moustache wax and beard-care products would be more than a labourer earned in a year. And, yes — he will have a moustache and, yes, he will wax it. Twirled ends, I bet.
And there were shirts. Four … no, five shirts. Ghastly shirts and ghastly in two different ways. He surmised that numbers one to three belonged to the blue suit, which belonged to a moron who thought that deep cutaway collars could be worn in civilised society — youngish, probably works in finance, how fat does he anticipate having to make his tie knot …? What would that prove? Dear me … And then there were these two unaccountable efforts from yet another man: not-bad point collars, but silk and in colours and oppressive patterns which strongly suggested a last dash for sex before taking the friends of one’s twenty-something daughter out for tea becomes an acceptable way to express one’s desolation. Oh dear again. It’s always sad to see a past mistress finally losing her form.
Passed mistress.
Still, it truly doesn’t hurt any more. It does not hurt me. I think. As far as I’m aware, the pain isn’t waiting, or boxed, or numbed. It has departed. It has upped and left — in this, as in all things, my pain preceding me.
He’d undergone a sort of nerve death, obviously, over the years — the same pain repeating consistently and therefore disappearing in almost every way, if one were to discount all its more lateral symptoms.
And this isn’t any kind of pain I’m feeling.
Strange to have one’s grief lifted when one no longer minds if it’s gone or not. And to find that I simply feel as if I’m wearing slightly better shoes. I wouldn’t have wished so hard to be free if I’d known it was this unimpressive. Assuming that I am free. Not sure. Does being divorced equate with emancipation?
The phone chimed and shuddered against his chest, indicating a volley of texts and — no doubt — emails, very probably from Sansom. No one else should have any reason to be in touch. The department was no more or less besieged than usual, not in any real sense.
And Sansom’s reasons for trying to reach him would not be real. Sansom wasn’t real.
He’s like the hen-night version of his profession — not that I’m familiar with hen nights. Went to a stag night once — for twenty minutes. Sansom is as convincing as the lady who appeared and pretended she was a policewoman to no avail, before disrobing. He’s like a pre-striptease phoney fireman. I believe that hen nights have firemen. I’d imagine that fake male nurses would give out a number of mixed messages with regard to sexual orientation and the onset of diseases … And military uniforms might suggest PTSD. Who would want that? Would that be sexy? I can’t say.
I can say that Sansom is a Hen-Night Special Advisor. Or a Stag-Night Special Advisor. Both. He’ll swing in whatever direction is necessary. Loyal as a tick.
He closed the wardrobe doors. Then decided to leave just one open — so she’d be sure that he’d been there. She always closed her doors — afraid of moths.
No spare suit means I’ll have to trail back home and then change before work. Can’t be observed in disreputable trousers. We don’t stand on ceremony, but even so … I can’t proceed in unhappy trousers, not with hard-to-identify mishaps having left signs on the inner thigh, for God’s sake. And my shirt’s an irritation … but, even if the sleeves were long enough, I couldn’t wear the shirt of a debt-happy child, or a dick-happy failure or somebody lurking behind a moustache. That can’t happen, not today.
I cannot contentedly wear the shirt of some man who’s been making love to my wife. My ex-wife. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable position.
And then the phone butted in again, ringing. Jon was old enough to remember when being away from the office actually involved being away from the office.
It was Sansom.
The concept of deferred gratification was unknown to Sansom.
Jon reached out the mobile and pondered it.
What? What is it? What could I possibly do for you? And why?
Which wasn’t a permissible attitude and Jon would have to do better, but the scent of Valerie’s perfumes, their weird mingling of discordant notes and the threat of past occasions — they were combining to throw him off.
I’m not sad. Not injured. It’s equally clear that I’m not delighted, not even content … I’m uncomfortable, I do know that … Is it nostalgia …? Neuralgia …? Indigestion …? Delayed shock after the struggle on the patio …?
And here was Sansom’s name in annoying, shiny letters on the caller display.
Apologies Mr Sansom — Andy — for my failure to maintain the high performance standards we always do seek to achieve. I will be with you shortly. I am currently experiencing an unwilling recollection: the temperature of the interior of my wife’s mouth — you know how it is. Quite possibly you know exactly how it is.
No. She would only have tried Sansom to make a gesture and she and Jon had moved beyond the stage where any gesture could be necessary almost a year before Sansom had even taken up his post.
Or, more precisely, I believe this to be the case, but could be mistaken.
Dear God, I feel weird. Am I just tired? I don’t sleep. I should be tired. End of the working week — early start to get in here and then leave again on time, because I’ll have no chance in the evening … I’ve a right to be tired.
Seeing him there in the corner of rooms — embedded and feeding. Why is a thing like a Sansom necessary?
He pressed the appropriate key, lifted the phone to his ear, let himself pour Sansom’s hectoring whine into his head.
Yes, here it was, the usual tepid rush. Like spittle. Like drool. Another’s mouth infecting yours.
Her mouth … all those movements … and the words … mine, too, as well as hers. She felt contagious and I volunteered to be infected.
Sansom continued. And you had to reply, because that was your duty in most situations, both professional and private. You were the replying type of man, you were of service — or if you weren’t and an informal resolution of your perceived failings was not possible and your customer was still dissatisfied then they might apply for an independent internal review by contacting — please God — someone other than you. ‘Sansom, what can I— Well, I—’ Sansom was forcing in a drumming pelt of injured something or other. There were shades of accusation.
I haven’t failed you, though. I don’t fail in that context. I do the job. I am relentlessly effective in that regard. That is what I am for. Sansom is not what I am for.