It was November 25th, and at 9 AM Christopher was meant to attend a Job Club. This appointment had been made on his behalf by the Department of Employment, who had said in a letter that they were ‘concerned about his long period of unemployment’. Christopher didn’t share their concern. He had long ago reconciled himself to never working again, not in electronics.
After his grandma had died, a ridiculous thing had happened to him. He’d gone to work one day, a week after the funeral, and had started to cry. A song playing on the radio in the workshop had triggered it off. A Buddy Holly song that had held no significance for him, or for his grandma. He’d gone into the tiny room where he did his paperwork, and had tried to control himself, but it was as though a dam had burst and the waters were washing him away He saw the embarrassed faces of his employees watching him through the interior windows. Douglas, the foreman, had come into the room and patted him on the shoulder and had made him a cup of tea and offered to drive him home. But Christopher had sat there ignoring the ringing phone, letting the tea go cold. The heating had switched itself off at 7 PM, and he was aware that the temperature had fallen, and that he was very cold, but he couldn’t move out of his chair. He was pinned down by a sadness so profound that he thought it would suffocate him.
In the morning Douglas had come in early and found Christopher asleep with his head on his desk. He had woken him up gently, and Christopher had started crying again. Douglas had not known what to do, apart from offering Christopher his handkerchief. The other employees had turned up and were dismayed to find their boss, usually so confident and fearless, whimpering like a small child, afraid of the telephone and hanging on to Douglas’s hand. It was Douglas’s wife, Anne, who had diagnosed a nervous breakdown, later to be confirmed by Christopher’s GP. Tranquillisers had reduced the misery, but when he returned to the workshop three months later, he found a chaos of unpaid bills, unpresented invoices and unfilled orders. His business, of which he was now sole owner, so painfully built up over fifteen years, had unravelled like a badly knitted cardigan. In the short time he had been absent, he felt that he’d been left behind by the electronics industry. After the business was wound up he joined a large firm in the city. He’d got it into his head that he wouldn’t live for much longer. He knew there was no rational reason for these morbid thoughts: he was in good health, it was more a feeling that he had already run the full span and was coming to the end of his life.
♦
He took the dog for a walk on the heath. The police had gone, leaving deep tyre tracks in the muddy ground and a litter of cigarette stubs. He looked down into the ditch where the bag had been. It was half full of melting snow water. When he was a boy he would have delighted in playing in such a place, wading in his Wellingtons, building a small dam, sailing tiny ships made of acorn shells with a dried leaf for a sail.
The dog jumped into the ditch and ran along its length, churning the mud at the bottom. Christopher walked away quickly. He was anxious to be as far away as possible when the dog climbed out of the ditch and shook itself. He was wearing his best suit and his only decent overcoat. He waited at the side of the dual carriageway for the dog. The traffic was heavy now with people on their way to work. A car passed him, pipped its hooter, pulled in and parked a hundred or so yards ahead. It was a Volvo estate, its hazard lights were flashing. The driver’s door opened and Angela got out and started to walk towards him. He walked to meet her.
“I thought it was you,” she said. “Can I give you a lift?”
“I’ve got the dog with me,” he said. At that moment the dog emerged from the scrubland wagging its tail and bounded towards him. Angela was taken aback by how different Christopher looked from yesterday. He had shaved and brushed his hair. He looked good in the masculine clothes he was wearing.
“I dreamt about you last night,” Angela lied.
“We don’t see each other for seventeen years, and then twice in two days,” said Christopher. He bent down to click the lead on to the dog’s collar so that she couldn’t see from his face how happy he was.
“It is a strange coincidence,” she said. It was her second lie to him that day. The day before he had told her where he walked the dog in the morning. She had already driven around the perimeter of the heath seven times, in the hope that she would see him. Though she hadn’t intended to stop the car, or to approach him directly.
“I’m going into town, but I’ll have to take the dog home first,” he said. She was willing to put the wet and muddy-pawed dog in the back of the car. But the car was immaculate inside and Christopher insisted on walking the dog home. He gave her his address and she was sitting in the car brushing her hair outside his house when he and the dog turned the corner of the street.
“I love her,” he said to the dog. “I still love her.”
The dog looked up at the sound of his voice. Then carried on sniffing excitedly at the pavement. It was always happy to return home after a walk.
She got out of the car, and smoothed her long overcoat down over her massive hips. She was wearing black suede ankle boots with delicate high heels. A black suede bag was slung over one shoulder. Her hair shone in the feeble morning sunlight. She had made up her face very carefully that morning, and had taken the cellophane wrapper off the Coco perfume she had bought in the duty-free on the Calais ferry a year ago. The nozzle was faulty and the perfume had poured down her neck in a stream, but she was glad now as she watched Christopher walk towards her. She wanted him to be intoxicated by her. To be enveloped and seduced by the smell of her.
Christopher hadn’t wanted to show her around the house. He was ashamed of its masculine sparsity. He explained about the burglary and she sympathised. Her office had been burgled twice in the last year. They talked about insurance companies in his monastic bedroom. Christopher sat down on the double bed to change his shoes, and Angela caught a glimpse of herself in the wardrobe mirror. This was always a shock to her. She turned away quickly and went out on to the small landing. She looked into the other two bedrooms and was surprised to find that the walls were entirely lined with books. The shelves reached almost to the ceiling. Other books were stacked into cardboard boxes. One was full of Rupert annuals. She read the title of the top book through its polythene dust cover: Rupert and the Snowman. Christopher joined her at the threshold of the larger bedroom. “So many books,” she said. She took a book out of its box. “The History of Great Yarmouth,” she laughed. “It’s what I do now. I read them and collect them.” Both of them felt weak with desire. However, they were careful not to touch each other, and made subtle and deliberate manoeuvres to keep a space between them as they looked around the rest of the house.