A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  I take the call. As usual, I am not required to say much.

  ‘Well, Christian, I suppose you’re all feeling pretty pleased with yourselves?’

  ‘Not especially,’ I say.

  ‘You have completely destroyed Dan Smith, you know that? Digby Spain tricked him into admitting that he had claimed some tiny sum of money that he wasn’t entitled to – just because it made a good story. Just for the story, Christian. Do you know, Christian, what it’s like to be poor – to be really poor? The care home hardly paid him a fortune, but it was work. Once they’d sacked him, nobody else was going to take him on. Do you know what it’s like to apply for job after job and not even get an interview? Dan Smith had a pregnant wife and three children to support – on benefits he was perfectly entitled to, Christian. Then somebody told him it would be OK if he worked a couple of days a week stocking shelves at the supermarket and that he did not need to declare it to the benefits people. A bloke in a pub told him. People like Dan can’t afford to consult lawyers and don’t trust officials of any sort. Officials don’t trust them either. They don’t have the money to buy computers and check it out on the Internet. So, he took the advice of the bloke in the pub, and December was the one time when it was easy to get a part-time job – even for him. So he worked nights to try to get enough money to buy the children Christmas presents. Not flashy new bikes or computer game things, Christian, just something so that when the kiddies went back to school after Christmas they wouldn’t have to say to the other children that their family was too poor to buy them anything at all. And he didn’t tell anybody he was working because the bloke in the pub said it was OK not to. Do you know what it’s like to have no money?’

  ‘No,’ I reply, without really thinking too much about what I’m saying. ‘I’ve always been very well off, really. Since my parents died anyway – they left me the house and stuff, you see. Financially, at least, I’ve been fine.’

  Barbara chooses not to pick up on this last remark. She’s not a great listener anyway. But she can talk. ‘You’re all the same. It’s like the investigators who tricked him into saying that his parents had always given him a good hiding when he was naughty and that was the best way to deal with things.’

  ‘But that is what he thought?’

  ‘He’s a good man, just not too bright. He had no training, no supervision to speak of at that place. He just did as he was told.’

  ‘So, basically, guilty as charged,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ says Barbara. ‘In fact, I think he was the only one at the care home not abusing the inmates. He didn’t want to tell tales on his colleagues though, and ended up taking the blame.’

  ‘Sounds like misplaced loyalty to me.’

  ‘He’s spent most of his life out of work. They gave him a job. They made him feel wanted.’

  ‘But he knew what was going on. He should have reported it.’

  Barbara for once says nothing.

  ‘Look, he’s been cleared of the charges of assaulting people at the home,’ I say, ‘when as far as I can see he was at least an accessory. He’s been unlucky to be caught claiming benefits he wasn’t entitled to. But, in the end and when you balance it all up, there’s a sort of natural justice to the final result.’

  ‘Natural justice?’ she says wearily. ‘Do you seriously call this outcome just? His life is ruined, Christian. The punishment for being a bit stupid, and for standing by workmates he trusted and liked, is that in all likelihood nobody will ever employ him again, nobody will ever respect him again. Do you have any idea what that will be like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. But she’s right. I know nothing about people like Dan Smith. They occupy a different reality.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ she says. ‘I just hope you are proud of what you’ve done. Are you, Christian? Are you?’

  The line goes dead before I can decide whether I am or not. This must be the shortest conversation I’ve ever had with her. I slump back in my chair and breathe a sigh of relief. Finally I get to press the button at the front of my computer and watch it boot up. I go first to my emails. There are over three hundred (307) unread messages. I wonder where to start, then I notice something is wrong. There is something about the screen in front of me that is different. It takes a few seconds to realize it is because there is nothing (ο) in the DRAFTS folder. So I must have deleted the dumping email to Virginia. Or conversely . . .

  I click on SENT.

  Dear Virginia,

  I doubt that this email will come as a surprise to you. You must have noticed how we have been growing apart lately. It’s not your fault. You need somebody more mature than I am. You need somebody who is ready to make a lifetime commitment. I on the other hand am not sure what I want or need. I am not Mr Right. I am not even Mr OK. One of the few things Dave has said that you’ll agree with (eventually) is that you deserve better than me. I am offering you the chance to find that person. Virginia, you are a wonderful woman who will one day make some lucky man a wonderful wife. I hope you can forgive me and that we can remain friends.

  With much affection, Chris

  Yes, that seems pretty much as I remember it and, on reflection, clear enough for anyone. Excellent drafting, Chris. The question is: has she seen it yet? I know she didn’t check her emails while we were away. There is that option that allows you to recall an email that you’ve sent, but the first thing I always do when somebody tries to recall one is to go and read it simply to see what they were so embarrassed about – it’s usually quite rewarding. Maybe if I phone her quickly I can get her to delete it unread. I’ll say it was something Fat Dave put me up to when we were both pissed. She’ll believe that. I just need to act fast.

  * * *

  The phone seems to ring for ever before Virginia answers.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, but her voice is a little odd.

  ‘You opened the email,’ I say.

  ‘That’s what you do with them,’ she says. ‘Somebody sends you an email. You open it. You read it. I actually read yours first. I thought it would be something nice.’

  ‘Delete it and forget I sent it.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘Not intentionally.’

  ‘So you never planned to dump me by email?’

  ‘It was a joke,’ I say feebly and improbably.

  ‘That’s worse,’ she says.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Well, maybe marginally better,’ she concedes. ‘But . . .’

  I remember that I was going to blame Dave. Still worth trying? Probably not.

  ‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘We can’t do this over the phone. We need to meet. We need to talk. There’s a Starbuck’s round the corner.’

  ‘No, let’s meet at the Costa in Marylebone High Street.’

  ‘OK, see you there.’

  ‘See you there, Puppy.’

  As I hang up a thought crosses my mind: that’s the last time she’ll ever call me Puppy. But, no, there’s still got to be hope.

  As I sprint for the pedestrian crossing at the Euston Road I think: If the sign stays green until I am across then Everything Will be All Right. The lights are still green as I spring from the pavement and I watch them, my heart in my mouth, until my foot hits the central reservation.

  Green!

  Virginia is already there at a table, her coffee untouched in front of her. She looks up as I come in and gives me a half-smile. But her eyes are those of a stranger. A stranger that I’m never going to get to know.

  ‘Don’t you want to get a coffee?’ she asks, just a little too politely, as I sit down.

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ I say, cutting to the chase. ‘You have to believe that.’

  (Silence.)

  ‘OK, maybe I did mean it then, but I don’t now. I’ve changed,’ I add.

  This is true. I don’t know when I fell in love with her; all I know is that I did. Love, grief – it’s like I say, you can’t predict it.

  ‘I kno
w you’ve changed,’ says Virginia slowly. ‘The problem is: so have I.’

  ‘I don’t see the problem.’

  ‘No change in that respect, at least.’

  ‘Explain it for me.’

  ‘Do I really need to? All right. You may not have meant to send it, but everything you said in it was true. I know it and you know it. We have been growing apart. I did need somebody who wanted to make a commitment.’

  ‘I’ll make a commitment if that’s what I have to do.’

  ‘Wanted to, Chris. Not had to. There’s a whole world of difference in that one word. I understand you heaps better after the trip. My heart really goes out to you. I understand why . . . you have problems with relationships. I can see what has happened to you would make you sort of detached. I can see why commitment might be a problem. But that’s why I have to let you go. I’m the wrong person for you.’

  ‘I’ve changed,’ I say again.

  She nods.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘before we went to Grasmere, I really did think the relationship was at an end. But when we were there – sorry: this sounds a bit corny – I really, genuinely fell in love with you. It’s OK. I love you, Virginia.’

  ‘But you were planning to dump me,’ she points out, not unreasonably.

  ‘Well . . . OK . . . yes, then possibly, but not now. So that has to be all right.’

  ‘You didn’t think I might be about to dump you?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Well, I was.’

  I try to take this in. The point is, I don’t get dumped. It’s not something that happens. Then, suddenly, all sorts of premonitions of this moment start to come back to me. What had Daphne been trying to tell me that morning in Horsham, as I sat on the rose-embroidered bedspread? What did she say? ‘Hugh liked you a lot. He’d always hoped that you and Virginia would get married, though I understand how things are now.’ And what had cheered Virginia up so much outside the Internet cafe in Ambleside? What were these vague events at her work that had taken up so much of her time? As I may have said before, I just hate it when they do that thing where they take away your stomach and replace it (in this case) with a sack of cement.

  ‘And are you still going to dump me?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I used to think you existed in your own little world, possibly believing that everything had been put there solely for your benefit. Now, of course, I know for certain that’s what you believe. But even you must have seen this coming. There was a limit to how long I would be strung along, playing second fiddle to a clapped-out MG.’

  ‘There’s somebody else?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘At work?’

  ‘At work. It happens.’

  I think of Lucy and the fact that nothing at all had happened there. On the other hand it is undeniable that elsewhere, unseen by me, such things do happen. Such things have always happened.

  ‘And you were always planning to dump me as soon as we got back from Grasmere?’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Then, later, no. You were so nice to me. You didn’t hesitate when I needed you to drive me to Horsham. You didn’t hesitate when I needed you to drive me to Grasmere. You made my mother tea.’

  ‘You changed your mind and decided you were going to spend the rest of your life with me because I made your mother tea?’

  ‘That’s how it works. It’s all about small stuff. You’re planning to dump your boyfriend but don’t want to have to go to your best friend’s wedding next week without a man and the right hat, so you go shopping for a hat and put off the dumping thing for a bit . . . a year later you’re still together but can’t remember why. Don’t expect logic in any of it. And anyway, you said lovely things to me by Easedale Tarn. Harry wouldn’t have done that. So I thought . . .’

  Harry?

  ‘Harry?’ I say. ‘Precisely who or what is this Harry?’

  ‘Just a friend,’ she lies.

  ‘Just a friend?’

  She shrugs. I’m going to find out about Harry soon enough. ‘Anyway, I suppose I started to come round to the idea that – like my mother and Hugh – we’d just sort of end up together. Even that I’d rather like that. It wasn’t as if Harry . . . well, it wasn’t as if we were any more than friends, really. There would be some awkwardness at work, of course, when I told him . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t want you to have awkwardness at work.’ I don’t like the note of bitterness in my voice, but I can see that it’s there.

  ‘So, I guess you and I would have stayed together,’ she continues. ‘We’d have got married. Converted my mother into a grandmother. Yes, it would have been a bit like Mum and Hugh, really. I can’t tell you exactly what they felt for each other, but it worked well enough for them.’

  ‘So, why not?’ I demand. ‘As you say, it worked for them.’

  ‘Because you dumped me,’ she says. ‘By email. Up to that point I’d assumed that you, at least, had never wavered. You were loyal. I had a sort of duty to you. After all, I wasn’t going to do to you what Jimmy did to me. But once I realized that you had doubts . . .’

  ‘What if I’d proposed to you in Grasmere?’

  ‘I’d have probably said OK.’

  ‘So, I blew it?’

  ‘Even as your fiancée, I might still have found your email a little odd.’

  I suppose that’s true. However I had phrased it, however bright the moon on the waters of Grasmere, it would all eventually have come back to that email.

  ‘Chris,’ she says, ‘how old are you?’

  (Silence.)

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-two,’ I say, not for the first time this week. What’s this thing with my age all of a sudden?

  ‘Forty-two,’ she repeats. ‘And how old do you act?’

  (Silence)

  ‘I’m thirty-two,’ she says, ‘but I feel like your older sister a lot of the time. Sometimes I feel like I’m your mother.’

  ‘I’ve bought some socks,’ I say.

  ‘See – even now, you just want to turn everything into a one-liner. God, you’re hopeless.’

  I resist the temptation to turn everything into a one-liner.

  ‘How old is Harry?’ I ask. ‘If he wants to settle down, he must be fifty at least.’

  Virginia laughs. ‘Twenty-nine,’ she says. ‘He’s a bit of a puppy too. I don’t learn, do I?’

  Virginia reaches her hand out across the table. But I pull mine away.

  ‘Look,’ says Virginia, ‘one day you’ll meet somebody else. Somebody who will be better for you than I am. But when you do, promise me this: just try to be yourself. Don’t pretend to be this beer-swilling moron. The real you is lovely. The person you pretend to be . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘. . . isn’t.’

  I say nothing, and she stretches out her hand in my direction again. It comes to rest in the middle of the empty table. There’s nowhere else for it to go.

  ‘I don’t want sympathy,’ I say. ‘If that’s it, if it’s over, just clear off.’

  ‘Can we be friends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose there isn’t any point in asking if you will be at the funeral?’

  ‘You’ve got it in one,’ I say.

  ‘You wouldn’t just be doing it for me. Couldn’t you do it for Mum and Hugh?’

  ‘No.’

  She considers this. She clearly still thinks I should be there. ‘Hugh always had a soft spot for you, even if he did take the piss out of you behind your back,’ she says.

  ‘Did he? Behind my back?’

  ‘And to your face, but you never seemed to notice.’ She pauses and bites her lip. ‘Sorry – you didn’t deserve that. Forget I said anything.’

  ‘When did he take the piss out of me to my face?’

  ‘Drop it. I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I need to know.’

  ‘OK – if that’s what you want – he
did it all the time really.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘For example, there was that lunch when you were talking about Napoleon and Wellington, and obviously didn’t know anything about either of them. He just thought you were a bit of a bullshitter, I suppose.’

  ‘Thanks. That gives me a lot of encouragement to be at the funeral,’ I say.

  ‘OK, sorry – I said I shouldn’t have told you. But it was always good-natured. A bit like you and Dave, I would imagine. Hugh really liked you a lot. And in any case, my mother would want you to be there.’

  ‘She’d probably settle for Harry in my place.’

  ‘Yes, she’s quite fond of him too,’ says Virginia.

  ‘She’s met him?’

  ‘She’s met him.’

  ‘So, she knows . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘Brilliant. Bloody brilliant. Everyone knew except me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Just go,’ I say.

  I am staring at the tabletop, so I don’t actually see Virginia stand up, collect her small, neat handbag from the seat beside her and turn to go. I hear the familiar swish of her skirt and the click of her heels on the hard, cold floor. None of it has anything to do with me any more. The footsteps pause in their outward trajectory. She has turned to look at me, but I’ll never be certain whether it is with annoyance or indifference or compassion or curiosity. It’s not something I need to know. Then I hear the door thud and feel a rush of cool air against my skin.

  It’s over.

  * * *

  The walk back to the office seems to take for ever but that is still not long enough. I climb the stairs up to the highly prestigious first floor.

  ‘Somebody phoned while you were out,’ says Fatima, as I try to avoid her gaze on my way in. ‘Dave Birtwistle. He said you’d have his number. He said he was a friend of yours.’

  ‘No friend of mine,’ I say.

  She gives a nervous giggle. She knows that half of what I say is intended as a joke, but is unsure which half.