A sort of wicked thrill went through me when she spoke these words. ‘Adultery facilitator?’ I said. It was exciting just to repeat the phrase.
‘OK,’ said Poppy, ‘I’ll explain. My employer – whose name I’m not supposed to tell anyone – has set up this agency. He’s set it up for people who are having affairs – mainly men, but not always, by any means – and want things to go smoothly and safely. Things are very difficult for the modern adulterer. Technology has made everything much more complicated. There are more and more ways of being in touch with someone, but everything leaves a trail. In the old days you might have written someone a love letter and the only witness would be the person who saw you popping it into the postbox. Nowadays you send someone a couple of text messages and the next thing you know, there they are on an itemized phone bill. You can delete as many emails from your computer as you like, but they’ll still be stored, somewhere or other, on some big mainframe in the middle of nowhere. More and more elaborate strategies are required if you don’t want to get caught out. This –’ (she patted her handbag) ‘– is just one of them.’
‘So how does it work?’ I asked.
‘It’s quite simple. First of all, I travel all over the place, to a number of different airports, I make some recordings, then I get home and compile them all into a CD. A CD which we then sell on to our clients, as part of their package. Now suppose that you’re one of these clients. (Although I have to say, you don’t look much like an adulterer.) You’re away on a business trip in the Far East. But you decide to cut the business trip short, and spend a night or two in Paris with your mistress instead. Obviously your wife mustn’t find out about it. Well, here’s a good way of putting her mind at rest. Just before you come home, you phone her from your hotel suite in Paris. Your loved one has slipped into the bathroom for a shower, so you put the CD onto the stereo system, call your wife, and what does she hear in the background while you’re talking to her?’ Opening the bag, she pressed the recorder’s ‘Play’ button, and from the internal speaker I could hear a recording of the announcement that I’d found myself listening to a few minutes earlier: ‘Welcome to Singapore. Passengers in transit are respectfully reminded that it is forbidden to smoke anywhere inside the terminal building. We thank you for your cooperation and wish you a pleasant onward journey.’ Poppy smiled at me, triumphant. ‘So there’s your alibi. Who’s going to think twice about where you might be calling from, after hearing that?’
I nodded slowly, to show that I was impressed.
‘And people pay for this?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Poppy. ‘Big money.’ (She stretched the word ‘big’.) ‘Honestly, you’d be surprised.’
‘What sorts of people?’
‘All sorts. Unhappily married people are everywhere. But still, the fees are rather steep, so we tend to attract a certain sort of clientele in particular. Investment bankers, professional footballers, that kind of thing.’
I was struck by the insouciance with which she was telling me all this. Titillating though I found the idea of an ‘adultery facilitator’, I also thought it rather shocking.
‘What about …’ I said, trying to choose my words with care, ‘what about the moral dimension?’
‘The what?’ said Poppy.
‘I just wondered if you had any qualms about it. You know … the fact that you’re helping people to cheat on other people. Does it bother your – your conscience, at all?’
‘Oh, that.’ Poppy stirred up the froth at the bottom of her coffee cup and sucked nonchalantly on her plastic spoon. ‘I’ve gone past the stage where I bother about that kind of thing. I got a First in History from Oxford, you know. And do you know what kind of jobs I’ve been doing since? The shittiest of the shitty. The best was PA to the director of a lapdancing club. The worst was … Well, you don’t want to hear about the worst. And that’s without the months of unemployment in between. This job gives me easy money, and it’s regular work, and it allows me plenty of time to sit around reading, and watching films, and going to galleries, which is what I really like doing.’
‘Yes, I know things are … difficult out there at the moment. I just thought –’
‘You know, you’re starting to sound just like Clive. This is exactly what he said to me when I told him about this job. And do you know what I said back to him?’
Of course, I didn’t know what she had said back to him. I didn’t even know who Clive was. But my first – and indeed, only – thought at this point was that I wasn’t happy another man’s name had been introduced into the conversation already.
‘Well, I lost my temper with him,’ Poppy said, ‘which I very rarely do with Clive. I said to him: Do you realize that, if there’s one thing people of my age cannot stand hearing, it’s people of your age giving us lectures on morality. Look at the world around you. The world you’ve bequeathed to us. D’you think it allows us any scope to do things on principle? I’m sick of hearing about how my generation has no values. How materialist we are. How lacking in any political sense. Do you know why that is? Take a wild guess. That’s right – because that’s how you brought us up! We may be Mrs Thatcher’s children, as far as you’re concerned, but you were the ones who voted for her, again and again, and then carried on voting for all the people who came after her, and followed exactly in her footsteps. You’re the ones who brought us up to be these consumerist zombies. You chucked all the other values out of the window, didn’t you? Christianity? Don’t need that. Collective responsibility? Where’s that ever got us. Manufacturing? Making things? That’s for losers. Yeah, let’s get those losers over in the Far East to make everything for us and we can just sit on our backsides in front of the TV, watching the world go to hell in a handcart – in widescreen and HD, of course.’ She sat back, looking faintly embarrassed for having spoken so passionately. ‘So, anyway – that’s what I said to Clive, when he told me I shouldn’t be doing this job.’
Well, it was certainly all very interesting. Poppy had raised a lot of issues there, and given me plenty to think about. In fact, she had touched on so many important subjects, it was hard to know where to begin.
‘Who’s Clive?’ I asked.
‘Clive? Clive’s my uncle. My mother’s brother.’
I breathed a sigh of relief, and said: ‘I’m so glad to hear that.’ It came out before I could stop it.
‘Glad?’ said Poppy, bemused. ‘What are you glad about? You’re glad that my mother has a brother?’
‘Well … yes,’ I said, fumbling hopelessly. ‘It’s not good to be an only child. I mean, I’m an only child, and I wouldn’t recommend the experience …’ This was ridiculous. I would have to change the subject as quickly as possible. ‘Your agency’s fees must be very expensive,’ I said, ‘if they have to cover the cost of you flying all over the world on a weekly basis.’
‘They are expensive,’ said Poppy. ‘But that’s not the reason. Actually it doesn’t cost that much for me to fly out here and back. I do it on standby, you see. It’s slightly unpredictable, because you never know if there’s going to be a seat available – sometime you end up having to sleep in the airport, which isn’t so great – but usually it works out.’
‘And were you lucky this time?’
‘Well, it was a close thing. I’d got my eye on this BA flight …’
‘7371?’ I asked, hopefully.
‘That’s the one. Is that your flight?’
‘Yes. Did you get on it?’
‘I didn’t think I was going to. At first they told me it was full up. But apparently, a seat’s become available, for some reason.’