And I had met him. Just before Christmas two years ago at The Black Friar. I had arrived early. They came in together breathless, laughing, pink-faced from the cold air, sharing a joke. Jenny saw me and stopped laughing.
“This is my husband.”
“I’ve heard so much about you,” he said. Not all English people shook hands; was that the day I learned it?
“I haven’t heard anything about you.”
“Perhaps that’s just as well.”
He spoke with a trace of a smile, believing that he was devastating.
Why hadn’t I suspected him? It was simple: because he was such a horse’s ass. I would never have guessed that Jenny would take up with someone like that.
I had been so wrong about her, so deceived, I felt justified in retracting my promise — all my promises.
“What are you thinking?” she asked me one day.
I have decided not to kill you, I thought.
When I did not reply, she said, “You never listen to a thing I say.”
I had no clear intention, only a general idea of destroying him; of making him as miserable as he had made me.
Every morning at eight-thirty, Jenny went to work. I stayed at home, wondering what to do, and stupefied by the thought that she had set off to meet him. They were together all day. I often imagined them sharing a joke, as I had seen that first time. The joke was me.
Almost every evening she said, “How’s your work?”
She did not dare say Your book.
“It’s coming along.”
There was no book. There wasn’t even a start. A book seemed like an evasion of all this, and anyway I was incapable of writing anything. My work was my dealing with this deception, even if dealing so far meant doing nothing. It occupied the whole of my privacy and had displaced everything else in my mind.
I imagined shooting him — suddenly opening fire, as he mounted the steps to his home; not killing him, but wounding him terribly, tearing an ear off, severing a hand, disfiguring his face, crippling him. He had a flat in a house in Islington. I sometimes loitered there. I thought of breaking all his windows, or setting the house on fire; pouring paint stripper over his car. I had heard of a man being able to bear severe persecution, even torture, and then breaking down completely when his dog was stolen. Slee had a cat. I had seen the creature at his window. I devised various ways of hanging the cat.
One night in February, Jenny said that she would be home late, and would I babysit? I said, of course I would. Later that evening, doubting her, I called her at the bank on her direct line.
“This had better be important, Andy. I’m going through the Chancellor’s budget proposals.”
That sounded convincing, she was in the office, as she had said.
“Sorry to bother you, darling. I couldn’t find the cough syrup. Jack’s got a cold.”
“There’s some cough mixture in the upstairs bathroom—”
But I was only half-convinced. I called Slee’s number in Islington.
“Hello … Hello,” he said. “Who is this? Speak up!”
I was satisfied. I put the phone down.
But I liked hearing his puzzled and irritated voice, and so after that, whenever I had the chance, I called him.
“Hello … Hello … Bloody hell. I don’t know what you—”
I was always determined to be the one to hang up first. On one occasion I played a tape of a dog barking, on another a sound-effects tape of maniacal laughter. I woke him at four o’clock in the morning, and the next time I tried his number was busy. To thwart me he left his phone off the hook. This was only ten days or so after I had discovered his name.
One Friday night Jenny called to say that she would be late.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll be waiting.”
I then dialed the Islington number. It rang and rang, but I had had four gins and my drunkenness made me patient.
Strangely, after so many rings, a woman’s voice came on the line. It was a timid and defensive whine, elderly and unsure of its vowels. The woman’s dentures wobbled, and she gave the impression, when speaking, of sucking candy.
“Mr. Slee is not here at the moment. You’ll have to ring back some other time.”
“Can you tell me where he is?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m just up here feeding the cat.”
“You see, it’s an emergency. There’s been a break-in at the bank. Criminals, I’m afraid. It is absolutely vital that I get hold of Mr. Slee.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, audibly weakening. “Who are you anyway?”
“Officer Remington,” I said, glancing at my typewriter. “I’m a police constable. Crime Squad.”
“You sound like a Yank,” the woman said in a blunt bewildered way.
“That is correct, madam. Federal Bureau of Investigation. This an external matter. I must ask you to keep it absolutely confidential.”
“He’s at Mr. Wilkie’s for the weekend. I’ve got the number here somewhere—”
She dropped the phone with a clang, then returned, rustling paper and panting, and read me a ten-digit number.
“Can you tell me where that is?”
“Afraid not,” she said, and then she protested, “You said you only wanted the number!”
“Of course. I was just curious. Thank you, madam.”
After I put the phone down, Jack called out, “What are you laughing at, Daddy?”
Jenny appeared at about nine. I brought her a drink. She sat quietly, in the mute recuperating way she always did when she returned home. I left her to herself for a while, and then I sat next to her and we watched the news.
The main story was of a bomb in a milk churn in Northern Ireland — footage of a country lane, with a five-foot crater beside a hedgerow. In the background was a lovely meadow, a stone farmhouse, and farther on blue wintry hills.
“I wonder what it would be like to live in the country.”
“Very boring, I imagine,” Jenny said. “And it takes ages to commute. South London is bad enough.”
“Doesn’t Wilkie live in the country somewhere? I remember your mentioning it.”
“Kent,” she said. “That’s different. He’s on the main line.”
“Where’s his house, anyway?” I asked lightly.
“Sevenoaks. Don’t even think of moving there. I’d never go.”
Greville Lodge, Wilkie’s house just outside Sevenoaks, was of gray stone and it had the odd sunken look of solitary houses in the English countryside, as if it were slipping into the soft earth. In the meadow next to it were a dozen browsing cows, and in its circular driveway four cars. It was a house party, and on this rainy afternoon the guests were inside, probably having tea and looking forward to a drink, and then dinner — the English ritual of feeding and drinking to fill the time.
I had told Jenny I was going to Folkestone.
“For my book,” I said. My book was my excuse for everything. But there was no book.
I reflected on what I was doing: I was standing on the outskirts of Sevenoaks, in a narrow lane, in a light drizzle, in the early deepening dark of a February afternoon. The patter of the dripping trees was like soft applause.
My heart was racing. I was very excited, because this was the place I most wanted to be, and I was on the attack, facing the problem head-on. I also felt a wicked and irresponsible thrill at the thought that I might be crazy. I had gone to such lengths to be here, made such a mystery of it. Standing under the dripping tree, and hiding behind the hedge on this drizzly Saturday afternoon, seemed both absurd and appropriate. But I didn’t need to explain my behavior to anyone, and I giggled, thinking: My craziness is my excuse. But I also saw that my insanity was my personal and unique logic for living.