Michael Dibdin: Dirty Tricks

And they had, over and over again, so many times that no one except me seemed to remember that things had ever been different. I felt like Rip Van Winkle, an anachronistic laughing-stock, a freak. Failure was no longer acceptable, particularly in someone with my advantages. I had thrown away my chances in life, pawned them off for a few cheap thrills. And it was too late to do anything about it. In the new Britain you were over the hill at twenty-five, never mind forty. The key to success, an article in the local paper informed me, was to sell yourself hard, but I had nothing to offer that anyone wanted.

Except, perhaps, for Karen Parsons.

So my phone call to the Parsons’ household the next day was in the best traditions of the society in which I found myself living. Indeed without any wish to evade my responsibility for subsequent events, I think I may fairly claim that in everything I did in re Karen and her husband I was market-led. There was a hole waiting to be plugged. I had identified a need and was aiming to satisfy it.

Dennis answered the phone. I thanked him for dinner and said how much I’d enjoyed myself.

The reason I’m calling, actually, is that my wallet seems to have disappeared and I wondered whether I could possibly have left it there.’

‘Hang on, I’ll ask Kay.’

I stood looking down at the pavement below the payphone while Dennis padded across the wall-to-wall carpeting and called distantly to his wife. Half-eaten turds of Spud U Like nestled on a bed of throw-up curry. I looked up at the concrete-grey sky, still surprisingly free of graffiti. I tried not to look at anything in between.

‘It’s OK, we’ve got it,’ Dennis said in my ear.

‘Sorry?’

‘When do you want to come and pick it up?’

I got my wallet out of my pocket and held it up in front of my eyes.

‘You’ve got it?’

‘Kay found it when she was clearing up. She was going to ring you but we don’t have your number. Look, we’re going shopping this morning, we could drop it off if you like. Where do you live?’

This brought me to my senses. I would rather have died than let the Parsons see where I lived.

‘No, I don’t want to put you to any bother.’

‘It’s no bother.’

‘Well actually I’m going out this morning too.’

But I was talking to myself. There was another muffled exchange at the other end.

‘Why don’t you pop in this afternoon and get it? I’ll be going out briefly at some stage, but Kay’ll be here.’

Fair enough, I thought as I walked home. I was beginning to appreciate Karen Parsons. I’ve always been good at thinking on my feet. It’s the other kind of thinking I’ve never been able to muster, the long-term stuff. ‘Never confuse strategy with tactics,’ one of my tutors advised me, but I can’t even remember what the words mean. Over the short distance, though, I’m pretty impressive, and I admire the same quality in others. I liked the way Karen had picked up that my story about the wallet was in fact a message, and I liked the message she was sending back even more. It was risky. If I marched round there and demanded my wallet in front of Dennis, she would be in deep doo-doo. She was trusting me not to do that, putting that power in my hands. I liked that, too. It’s good to go dutch on power. I’ve always made a point of borrowing money from women early in the relationship so as to give them a hold over me. It also helps when the time comes to break off the affair, because you can talk about the money instead of feelings and love and messy, painful stuff like that.

At a quarter to three I was in position behind the grime-sprayed glass of a bus shelter on the Banbury Road. The entrance to Ramillies Drive was about thirty yards away on the other side of the road. There I stood, waiting for Dennis’s car to emerge. It was mizzling steadily, so I had lashed out on a minibus ticket, which cost more than a taxi would here. The afternoon was cold and raw, and I soon regretted my choice of clothing, a light linen suit dating from my time in this country. But I wanted to present an exotic image, a man of the world blown in from foreign parts to bring some much-needed glamour to Karen’s drab suburban existence.

I had hoped she would be able to get rid of Dennis quickly, but it was almost 4 o’clock before the red BMW finally appeared and roared away in the direction of the ring road. By that time I was chilled to the bone, exhausted from the relentless battering of the traffic, sullen and depressed. This had better be good, I thought grimly as I crossed the road and walked up the cul-de-sac to the Parsonage. This had better be bloody good.

I had to ring the bell several times before Karen finally appeared. I knew at once that something was wrong.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ She sounded surprised and displeased. ‘Dennis isn’t here.’

She was wearing clingy jeans and a ribbed woollen sweater which emphasized the lines of her body. It still wasn’t my kind of body, but dressed like that it looked quite different, a gym teacher’s body, supple, firm and fit.

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I’ve just spent an hour and a quarter waiting for him not to be here.’

‘Why did you do that?’

Ah, I thought. Right. Fine, if that’s the way you want to play it.

‘Sorry if I misunderstood. Just give me my wallet and I’ll be off.’

‘I haven’t got your wallet.’

‘I know you haven’t.’

We measured each other with our eyes.

‘Then what are you doing here?’ she asked.

This was not the first time I had dabbled in adultery. I’ve always had a yen for married women — it’s something to do with being an only son, I suspect, some sort of Oedipal urge to play Daddy’s part with Mummy — and I knew by experience how much care and tact is needed. However tenuous it may have become, once a marriage is under threat it can suddenly turn into a territory which has to be defended at all costs, like the Falklands. Neither partner has given it a thought for years, but let some outsider come barging in as though he owned the place and it’s war. Perhaps I had been too forward, I thought, taken too much for granted. After what had happened the previous evening exquisite delicacy had seemed uncalled for.

‘I assumed you wanted me to come. Why did you say you had my wallet otherwise?’

She shrugged pettishly.

‘You’re late. I thought Dennis would still be here.’

I tried this on from various directions, but it still didn’t make sense.

‘Speak of the devil,’ said Karen.

There was a swish of gravel as the BMW drew in. Dennis clambered out looking disgruntled.

‘Bloody thing’s on the blink. There’s another up your end of town somewhere, but I can’t be bothered.’

Registering my look of bewilderment, but mistaking the cause, he added, ‘Car wash. I go every Saturday. Prevents grime build-up.’

He grasped my elbow and led me through the hallway and into a long room knocked through the whole length of the house. A three-piece suite and coffee table occupied the front half, a fitted kitchen and dinette the rear. These were the real living quarters, as opposed to the receiving rooms on the other side of the house, where guests were entertained. Dennis apparently saw me as ‘family’, or at any rate as someone he didn’t have to impress. What I still couldn’t understand was why he wanted to see me at all.

Almost the biggest shock of the many I had sustained on my return home was the loss of the social cachet I had enjoyed for so many years. In Spain, in Italy, in Saudi — well, no, forget Saudi — and above all here, among your warm-hearted and hospitable people, I had been sought-after, even lionized. As a foreigner and a teacher, I was the object of general interest and respect. At the end of the EFL training course I did in London, a British Council type gave us all a pep talk before we were packed off to Ankara or Kuala Lumpur. ‘Never forget, you’re not just teachers,’ he told us, ‘you’re cultural ambassadors.’