by Paul Theroux
I saw nothing. She never spoke to anyone. She read her Evening Standard and that was that. And nothing was more dispiriting to me than to sit in a London train filled with homeward-bound commuters. They were tired and pale and rumpled; I was sure they dreamed, but they looked defeated. Being among them frightened and depressed me. Once I had felt like an alien: I was different, I had hopes and my own work, I was a bird of passage. Now I suspected that I resembled them—we were all being cheated.
I opened her mail, and I discovered that the phrase “steaming open a letter” is meaningless. There is no such process, none that serves any purpose. Steaming destroys the envelope, the ink runs, it makes a mess. It was the postman who showed me the best way.
A postage-due letter had come from the States and I had to pay twenty pence on it. The handwriting was irregular: a reader’s letter, care of the publisher. They could be very kind or intensely irritating. I needed a kind one; I didn’t want the other.
I hesitated with my money and said, “I wish I knew what was in it.”
The postman said, “Here, got a pencil?”
He inserted the pencil point under the flap at the side—not the one that is licked, but one that is stuck down already, one of the seams of the envelope—and by rolling the pencil he separated the glued seams, and opened the triangle at the side.
The letter began, I have never written to an author before. I read a bit more and then handed over the twenty pence. And nearly every day a letter came for Jenny. I opened them all the postman’s way, but they told me nothing. They were from Oxfam, and her college tutor, and the Labour Party.
The note I had found in her handbag I was sure had been passed to her at work. And the other week, when in my fury I had said that her lover had been someone at work she had merely sobbed. She had not denied it.
There were not many men in the bank, and I knew most of them by sight. One sat at a desk near the Enquiries window. He was about my age, early thirties, and he worked with an air of concentration, seemingly unaware of the noise and motion going on around him. He did not wear a suit like the other men in the bank. His corduroy jacket was slightly stained, but his tie was fashionably wide and bright. He looked out of place there. He reminded me of myself. The name-slot on his desk said A C SPEARMAN.
The other men in the office whose desks and name-slots I could see—Dinshaw, Roberts, Wilkie, Slee—all wore dark suits and looked dull and rather stupidly hardworking. They went home defeated, like the commuters I saw swaying on the 17:43 to Catford Bridge.
I loitered because I had nothing else to do, and I followed Spearman for a few days, as I had followed Jenny. He lived in Sydenham, which was suspiciously near, though he was on a different line. He always went to Charing Cross Station alone. There was something about his shoes—scuffed, misshapen, with worn-down heels—that convinced me he was the man. He lived on the top floor of what had once been a huge family house, now divided into flats. His name was beside one of the eight bells.
“I know who it is,” I said.
Jenny had just come home. She was always at her most vulnerable then, too tired to fight; she wanted to sit quietly and have a drink. She was grateful that I had made the evening meal, and that it was ready.
She had put her briefcase down and was sitting away from the light. She was pale and looked exhausted.
She said, “Please don’t.”
“I’m not starting a quarrel,” I said. “I’m not angry anymore. I believe you when you say it’s over. I’m working on my book. It’s just that I know—”
Every word was a lie.
“It’s Spearman—I know it.”
She sighed and said, “No, no,” unwilling even to argue.
When I started to insist she put her face into her hands.
She said, “I’m glad you believe me when I say that it’s over—”
There was no irony in her voice: she really did believe me.
“But it wasn’t Andrew Spearman. That poor fellow. He lives in fear of being sacked. I loaned him the electric fire.”
“I could ask him about you,” I said. “I know where he lives.”
“Andy, please. If you promise me that you won’t make a scene, I’ll tell you who it is.”
She was speaking from the darkness on the far side of the lamp, and she remained in the shadow as she went on.
“Sometimes it’s better to know the facts. The less you know, the worse it is for your imagination. I wish you had never found out.”
I said, “I promise I won’t make a scene. I just want to know. I agree with you about the facts. My imagination is really dreadful sometimes.”
I was talking softly, but I was trembling. Didn’t she know that I would have promised anything? But it was like lying my way into a building—conning someone to gain entrance. It was more than that, though, because I was smiling, I was agreeing with her, I was using my charm and putting her at ease. It was like seducing her, and with a sigh—seeing no alternative—she submitted.
“It was Terry Slee,” she said. “Don’t be angry, darling.”
“I’m not angry at all.” I thought: I’ll kill the bastard.
5.
I should have known. She had not chosen a man who resembled me—she had chosen my opposite. He was older—divorced, I discovered—rather well-dressed in a conventional bankerish way (the same uniform with slightly brighter stripes). He was worldly and ambitious. I woke every morning with the sense that I was far from home. This man was a Londoner, like my wife. He was the assistant manager at the bank. He had probably hired her. She saw him every day. I found that unbearable. I hated the way she had called him Terry—so familiar. The truth didn’t ease the pain. It only made it worse. I thought: There’s more, there’s always more.
Because she had chosen someone unlike me in every way I felt she had rejected me. I might have been able to rationalize another American, or explain a ne’er-do-well; and I had almost gotten used to the idea of Spearman and his broken shoes. But this ridiculous spiv, who had dumped his wife, so pleased with himself, his three-piece suits, his copy of the Financial Times, his affectation of carrying a sensationally battered briefcase—this was an insult. How could she?
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.
I walked the nearby lanes in the dark, letting the rain fall on me. No one must see me here, I thought. I put my head down each time a car went by. I could have spent the time drinking in The Horse and Groom, which I passed three times, but then I would have risked being seen. And: If I am seen I will be recognized—they will remember me later and the photo-fit picture of a dripping American would be shown on the news.
Keep this mission secret until the moment of action, I said to myself, and I laughed at my own words.
Then it was eight or so, and I was drenched. The lights were blazing in Greville Lodge. I mounted the steps, smiling, and reminded myself not to smile.
The bell chimed inside, and the door was opened by a woman in a white blouse and black skirt.
“Telegram for Mr. Wilkie,” I said. “I need his signature.”
I had first taken this woman to be Wilkie’s wife, but when she said softly, “Just a moment, sir. I’ll tell him you’re here,” I realized she was a servant.
Stepping softly on the long carpet, I followed her down the hall and into the dining room. It was not until I entered this lovely house that it struck me how ugly I looked. I caught sight of my raw wet face and wild hair in the mirror.
“Something about a telegram—”
The woman twitched when she saw I was just behind her.
Wilkie stood up. He was small and angry, and his size, and the way his standing up hardly mattered, gave him a peculiar fury.
“Who are you?” he said.
The room was warm, and fragrant with food; another mirror, and bright lights and pictures. Eight of them were seated around the table—Slee at the far end. He looked almost amused. He did not recognize me. I knew he was thinking: Wilkie’s got a problem. I watched him as I spoke.
“Message for a man named Slee,” I said.
His face went smooth and bright with anxiety. He started to stand up. There was a twitch in his cheek.
“Sit down,” I said, and drew a pistol out of my pocket.
One woman
breathed hard in a pumping motion, nodding and moving her shoulders, and another screamed like a cat. The men were petrified and silent—afraid to do anything because they would reveal the extent of their fear. And the thing was a water pistol I had taken from Jack’s toy box. I held it half inside my sleeve. Just an hour before, in the rain, I had pissed into it, dribbling into the small hole.
I said, “I don’t want to use it, so don’t make me.”
Wilkie was fussing, but more carefully now. He was saying, “See here. If this is a robbery—”
“Shut up,” I said.
I loved the frightened way he backed up and made his mouth square.
“This isn’t a robbery,” I said. “I’m Andre Parent—”
Someone whispered, “Jenny’s husband.”
“And that man, Slee,” I said, pointing with my pistol and making him wince, “has been fucking my wife!”
“That’s rubbish!” Slee said, speaking to a woman across the table, obviously his companion, possibly fiancée.
“While I was away,” I said. I was dripping on the food, my sleeve over the table. I liked the suspense, the way they listened and gave me room. “This bastard came to my house. Messed around with my son, and got into bed with my wife. Yes, you did.”
Wilkie was staring at Slee.
I said, “That’s unprofessional, you slimy fucker.”
“Please calm yourself, Mr. Parent,” Wilkie said. “I can take care of this. Come to my office. We can discuss—”
“Shut up,” I said.
A woman started to cry and so I skipped the rest of my speech and said, “I’ve got a message for you.” I took a piece of paper out of my pocket.
I hated the way Slee glared at me. I guessed he was thinking, I’ll get you.
With my coat steaming and my hair over my eyes and water dripping from my elbows I read the paper.
“ ‘I would like to say in the nicest possible way that I love you in the nicest possible way.’ ”
Slee’s face hardened.
“You wrote that to my wife.”
He said, “What if I did?”
Surprised by his arrogance, I menaced him with the pistol, making him squirm. I said, “Take it,” and handed him the wet paper.
