Even Stranger

by Marilyn Messik

  John stopped being his usual, easy self rather gradually, when we all came back to work after the Christmas holidays that year. His endless patience suddenly wasn’t quite so endless, his office door, previously always open was now, more often closed and his temper bursts were a little more frequent, although he invariably apologised afterwards as he’d always done.

  I was sorry about whatever it was that was going on with him, but I’d learned lessons from the past, what wasn’t my business, was best steered clear of. This seemed like a sensible take on things, until one Monday afternoon when I went in with a batch of corrected proofs on bowel problems, and he yelled,

  “Get the hell out of here.” And threw a typewriter at me.

  Had it been one of the electric ones, it would have flown only a short way across the room, being tethered by wire and plug. Instead, it was the small, manual portable he kept for his own notes. He’d thrown it with both hands, so it sailed, unimpeded and at great speed, straight towards my head, before I stopped it in its tracks and sent it crashing to the floor.

  For a moment he and I were both frozen, equally horrified. I hadn’t been in any danger, but he didn’t know that. He sank back down into his seat and buried his head in both hands. After a moment, I bent and picked up the typewriter, absently noting it seemed remarkably undamaged, certainly more than I’d have been had it hit me. I put it back carefully on the desk, picked up John’s briefcase from the floor and lifted his coat and scarf from the hook behind the door.

  “Come on.” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Preferably somewhere there’s nothing heavy to throw.” He moaned from between his fingers,

  “I am so sorry, I’m so, so sorry. Appalling behaviour, don’t know what to say, just lost it. You came in at the wrong moment, wasn’t really throwing it at you…” I tutted, this wasn’t going to get the baby bathed. I took his arm firmly and pulled him out from behind his desk. I could smell he’d been drinking. I knew there was a bottle of Scotch in the desk drawer for end-of-book celebrations, but I’d never known him touch it at any other time.

  The ground outside, in Berkeley Square, was slushy and dangerous with dirty, left-over snow and not a nightingale in sight. Street-lamp and showroom-window lit and shadowed, we shuffled our cautious way to a coffee bar across the road, in Shepherds Market. I held tightly on to his arm, as much for my benefit as his, the pavements were lethal. Seated across from each other in a booth at the back of the room, with coffee ordered, he finally looked up at me.

  “Stella,” he said. “I’ve been unbelievably stupid. So bloody, ridiculously, stupid.”

  “Tell me.” I said, although by then I knew. John; sensible, honest, moral John had been to the office Christmas party. Tonya should have been with him, but that morning, Evan had a horribly aching ear, a situation which, by lunch-time had evolved into raging inflammation, high temperature and antibiotics from the GP. John had said not to worry, he really wasn’t that bothered about the party. He’d finish off a bit of work, pop his head round the door of the pub for politeness’ sake, grab a quick drink, wish everyone merry whatsits and head home.

  But by the time he did pop his head round, the party was in full if somewhat awkward swing, the way only office parties can be – amalgamation of acute reluctance and reluctant enthusiasm. The one polite, quick drink, led to another which led in turn, and in the general spirit of things, to a Hokey Cokey, participation insisted upon by Bert from Accounts, who rather over-relished the role of MC. And so it was that John found himself, and he seemed genuinely bewildered by the turn of events, in a dark nook at the back of the pub, lip to sweaty lip with Fredella (DIY).

  I wasn’t nearly as surprised as he seemed to be. It was a well-known fact, Fredella had a bit of a crush on John, although I really don’t think he’d ever picked up on it. But if it had passed him by before, it certainly wasn’t passing him by now. I understood it wasn’t much more than a quick and clumsy peck, but it was also now a source of abject guilt and overwhelming mortification – he said, in fifteen years of marriage, nothing, nothing like this had ever happened, he just wasn’t like that and he was telling the truth, he wasn’t.

  I could see things hadn’t always been a smooth run for him and Tonya. It was Tonya’s chronic insecurity that seemed to have caused most of their problems. From the very early days of their relationship, she’d got it stuck in her head that he was some kind of lascivious, lone wolf, on the prowl for any hapless female who might stumble across his path. I also understood, from what was swirling round in his mind, that these fears had only been exacerbated and exaggerated throughout the years of trying for a family. Evan had only arrived, after a succession of heart-breaking miscarriages, which nearly ripped them apart as a couple. I gathered, although this was really rather more information than I wanted or needed, Evan’s birth hadn’t been easy, forceps, stitches and all-sorts. Relations, as John termed it, never really got back to normal after that.

  But he was a loyal husband and a devoted father, with the conviction that hurdles plague every marriage and were there to be dealt with and overcome. I could also see, that towards the end of last year, things had been easing between them and, for the first time, they’d started tentatively talking about issues instead of turning their back, pretending they couldn’t see anything wrong. The stupid incident in the pub had derailed everything. Although Tonya knew nothing about it, John was being eaten up by guilt.

  As he nursed his coffee, turning the spoon endlessly between his fingers, apologising over and again for the typewriter and pouring out as much of his story as he wanted me to hear, I saw, aside from his conscience, which was killing him, there was another sizeable practical problem, which wasn’t going away. It appeared that what had been a stupid drunken kiss to him, had assumed pulsing Mills and Boon proportions to Fredella.

  “Won’t leave me alone,” he said, his voice cracking, “Keeps leaving notes, I bloody well find them everywhere. In my coat pocket, on my desk, in my case, Christ Almighty, she even found where my car was parked and stuck one under the wiper. She keeps coming into my office, on one pretext or another and saying… things.” Even in the dark of the booth I could see him flush.

  “Have you told her, there’s nothing doing?”

  “Course I have,” he snapped, “What do you think I am? Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to shout. I said I was tired, bit drunk, should never have happened. Apologised profusely if I misled her in any way. She didn’t seem to want to hear. I just don’t know which way to turn.”

  “Maybe best just ignore her, it’ll pass.” He looked up at me, and smiled, although it was more of a grimace.

  “Don’t think so. Found this before – hence the typewriter, just lost my temper, could have hurt you, I’m so…”

  “Never mind that,” I interrupted, putting out my hand. “Show me.” He pulled a crumpled envelope from his pocket and slid it across the table. Inside was a flowers and hearts embellished, sweetly scented Waverley notelet, the message hand-written across the right hand side was, ‘Always in my heart, until we’re together again!’

  “See,” he said despairingly, “And she’s only ruddy well gone and given me a deadline – end of the week. Says I’ve got to tell Tonya, tell her I’m leaving. If I don’t, she will.”

  “She can’t be serious?” I protested, he sighed,

  “God, I don’t know, seems serious enough to me, doesn’t it to you? What in the name of all that’s holy am I going to do?”

  “Maybe tell Tonya, just get it out in the open, make it clear it was a silly mistake, then you won’t have anything hanging over you, nothing you can be threatened with. Tell the truth, explain what happened.”

  “I can’t, you’ve no idea what it would do to her.” And I saw, in that instant, he was absolutely right, saw how emotionally fragile she could be, shared his fears and hers.

 
“Well, maybe I can talk to her.” I said. He reared back in horror,

  “You can’t.”

  “Not Tonya, Fredella.” He shook his head sharply,

  “Don’t be daft, all due respect, but what could you possibly say?”

  “Don’t know.” And indeed I didn’t, but someone had to do something. “Maybe I can make her see sense.” He shook his head again, but there was a tiny ray of hope. Simply sharing, had released some of the gut-churning tension that was tearing him apart.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Lunch?” I said to Fredella the following morning. She looked up in surprise. We worked, every day across the large office from each other and had been out a few times with the other girls, but never on our own.

  “Today?” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “OK then.”

  I turned attention back to the notes I was working on. From force of habit, I always kept my head blinds tight-closed in the office, it was so darn noisy I’d get nothing done if I didn’t. It wasn’t only the people in my room but the overall, overriding hum from all the surrounding offices, a building chock-a-block full of people focusing on one thing or another, often several anothers, all at once. Because of this, although I worked with a group of individuals, I knew little more about them than they knew about each other and I’d never really wanted to find out more, other than what cropped up in the normal course of conversations.

  I did know Fredella was a few years older than me, late-twenties. She was neatly made, but surprisingly ungainly, always knocking things off her desk or someone else’s, teased unmercifully for her clumsiness by Diane (Cookery), who had a slightly spiteful edge to her humour and honed it regularly. I knew Fredella had been named after her father and cordially loathed the name. She loathed it even more when others shortened it to Fred, but other than an initial protest, when we’d both first started working there, she quickly saw the uselessness of kicking against office bonhomie, and now nearly everyone used the short form.

  She and I hadn’t had a great deal to do with each other over the past year, although there was one memorable occasion when we’d both been working late and left the office at the same time, only to get stuck in one of the lifts. There were two of them serving the building, both modern and overhauled regularly but, as John often said, those lifts had old souls, and operated with disturbing jerkiness and a tendency to stop unexpectedly between floors. That time, Fredella and I were the only passengers and when we juddered to a not entirely surprising halt, I pressed and re-pressed the ground floor button in the pointless way you do, before resorting to the red one, which would alert the building caretaker. I knew though, from previous experiences, he never considered a stuck lift any kind of emergency, and would take his own sweet time getting it sorted. When I turned back to Fredella, to share exasperation, she’d gone very pale.

  “I only got in because of you.” She said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I usually take the stairs, hate lifts, only got in because you were there.”

  “Well, not to worry, Mr O’Horgan will be along in a while, he’ll give it a kick or whatever he does and get it going, it’s always doing this.”

  “I know it is,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “That’s why I never use it.” I couldn’t help but feel I was unfairly shouldering blame for both the lift failure and her presence in it, but she was starting to breathe in a shallow way, a muscle was jerking in her jaw and she was clenching and unclenching her hands in time with her teeth. I tried a couple of light remarks, to take her mind off things, until she told me to shut up. Her face had whitened even more and in the neon light, freckles on her nose and cheeks stood out, lividly discoloured. She had her shoulder-bag clutched defensively across her stomach, and sweat was beading her hair-line. She was also feeling extremely nauseous, I so hoped she wasn’t going to throw up. I don’t do sick, and certainly not in enclosed spaces.

  We waited in increasingly tense silence. In fact Mr O’Horgan, for once, roused himself in a timely fashion and it was probably less than six or seven minutes that we were actually stuck in there, before the wretched thing started up again with a neck-jarring jolt, a moan from Fredella and a sigh of relief from me. When the doors opened on the ground floor, she rushed off without a word. The following day, she came over to my desk, a little shamefaced – she hated small spaces and usually avoided risking the lift she said, she hoped she hadn’t shown herself up too terribly.

  I’d almost forgotten the incident, although it came back to me when we left for lunch, so I deliberately headed for the stairs. We walked, heads bent against slanting sleet, across to the same coffee bar I’d gone to with John, the night before. I really wasn’t sure quite how I was going to approach this, and indeed was worried she might genuinely have some kind of out of control, emotional attachment problem. I knew – we’d just completed the psych section of the book – that odd obsessions could take hold, convincing someone an illogical and skewed view of events was completely genuine. If she was labouring under a misapprehension of affection, I had to tread carefully, and might well be completely out of my depth.

  But I was wrong. I was way off the mark. She wasn’t in the least little bit deluded, she knew exactly what she was doing and I saw immediately, as we discarded coats and unwound damp scarves, she loved the control, relished the level of power she could have over someone else. I saw clearly, the reason John was so baffled as to how the stupid drunken kiss had happened, was because it wasn’t any of his doing, but hers. And this wasn’t the first time.

  She’d done this to other men before. As we waited for our order and chatted, I understood this was a behaviour pattern started many years ago, with a maths teacher at school, whose career had subsequently and satisfactorily crashed and burned. Meanwhile, she was busy telling me, she and John had a bit of a heated thing going on, but I wasn’t to breathe a word to anyone. He was absolutely potty about her, couldn’t keep his hands off, if truth be told. It had all been so sudden and unexpected and naturally, not encouraged at all by her in the beginning, married man and all, but it turned out, he was going to leave his wife, who didn’t understand him anyway.

  She was as animated as I’d ever seen her, repeatedly smoothing the well-behaved fringe of her bobbed hair with her right hand forefinger as she spoke, sparkly-eyed and excitement-flushed. And while I made suitable exclamations of surprise I saw, completely contrary to what I’d imagined, that this was no crush, all that had simply been part of the build-up – she thought of it as laying firm foundations. She really didn’t like John in any way whatsoever, thought him too darn nice to be true and mealy mouthed with it, needed taking down a peg or two in her opinion, and who better than her to make him squirm? She knew precisely what she’d done, was doing and planned to do and in her head at one point, as we talked, was the image of a sleek tabby, patting a frantic mouse to and fro between its paws.

  She hadn’t quite decided yet on her next step, was still deliciously turning over all the options and possibilities. Should she write to Tonya, or should she make an anonymous call? She’d done that before, with explosively spectacular results. On the other hand, she was really relishing seeing him sweat more each day. It was quite a conundrum as to which way to go next and when, but she was having such a good time, she really didn’t want to bring it to any sort of conclusion yet. I don’t know what we had for lunch that day, didn’t taste it much whatever it was. I’d had some unpleasant encounters in my time, one way and another, but the level of pointless personal spite here was quite something. She was a blackmailer, uninterested in money, misery was reward enough and she was milking plenty of that.

  On our way back to the office, she linked her arm firmly and companionably into mine and told me what a huge relief it had been, to share with someone who understood the exciting yet tricky position she was in. She said she felt we’d really bonded. I thought I’d
sooner rub shoulders with a scorpion, but smiled and nodded. I already had an idea of what I needed to do, after all, I couldn’t simply stand by and see this play out, it was just plain wrong.

  However, as you may recall, I’d made snap decisions and taken action in the heat of the moment before and whilst there was nothing I truly regretted, some of those actions had caused a certain amount of concerned reflection. No, I needed to think things over properly and make sure there wasn’t any other way round this. I duly thought it over as we walked, and there wasn’t, so I went ahead. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it was certainly worth a hefty try.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Whatever it was I’d eaten for lunch, was still sitting heavily on my stomach when I settled back at my desk. I had some proofs in front of me that needed checking, but I was focused on Fredella across the room. She was working on labels to go on diagrams of U bends, stopcocks and valves, for the Plumbing for the Uninitiated section. Because I’d been with her in the lift, I knew what claustrophobia felt like – clammy, sick panic clamping down, each new breath harsher to draw, conviction the enclosed space was closing in, ever tighter. It wasn’t pleasant at all, and I could empathise with sufferers in a way I never had before. I found her thoughts of John immediately, he was very much at the forefront of her mind, and I attached thought to memory. It wasn’t something I’d done before and I’m certain I did it rather clumsily, I couldn’t even be sure the link I’d made would hold.