2006-04-28
Either in this diary, or in its predecessor, I have mentioned an ugly evening approaching seven years ago when I was made aware, forcibly, about colleague’s suspicions about Jo and myself. We were all out at a social event and it became increasingly obvious (as seemed to have been the case for a few weeks previously) that people were watching and ,talking about us and not really speaking to us. The result was, of course that we spent almost the whole time exclusively with each other – which seemed to form the substance of the ‘complaint’At the time, although clearly we liked each other a lot and the seeds of what we became were sown, there wasn’t anything going on that all the others weren’t witnessing. There was no iceberg under the surface although obviously everyone assumed there was.
Late at night I was confronted by a rather drunk and very angry colleague, John, demanding that we put a stop to what was going on. To start with I just laughed – in fact amusement wasn’t far away all the time and (sadly mistaken) Jo and I carried on laughing later – but he made it clear he wasn’t going to let up and I seem to remember some veiled threat about letting Lynne know. He was putting himself forward (probably self-appointed) as the spokesman of everyone around us. I remember everyone seeming embarrassed, I remember too a large amount of back-tracking by many of those people in the days that followed: ‘It wasn’t me that was telling the stories, I just heard…’ evidently there had been a huge amount of invention of things ‘seen’ and ‘said’. I kicked up a stink..which in retrospect might not have been the best thing to do.
Anyway. Sometime in the course of that and subsequent conversations John insisted that there is no such thing as a non-sexual friendship between a man and a woman. In his view men and women can’t just be friends without there being some form of sexual intent behind it. He also insisted that he personally takes great pride in the fact that his relationships with female colleagues, or even wives/girlfriends of his friends could never be construed as a friendship.
Plonker, obviously.
And also a complete hypocrite. I’ve noticed (and it’s not only me) that over the years he’s had a succession of women he’s paying just a little more attention to than he should. I’ve been quite sure that he hasn’t done anything more than flirt verbally, probably by email too, and has maintained his self-righteous stance that he isn’t doing anything wrong (Hear me!). However I’ve had reason to suspect him over the last few weeks of going just a little further, certainly further than his wife would like (and amusingly she took me aside at Jo’s 30th birthday party and asked me if I thought there might be anything to his ‘friendship’ with someone else in the office: I was reasonably sure there wasn’t).
It started when we moved office. On the first Friday after work there was a small drinks reception which pretty much everyone went to, but he didn’t. Later that evening I was out with my friend Kenny who runs his own recruitment business. Just chatting, he said: ‘I saw that bloke John from your office earlier, acted like he didn’t know me.’ It occurred to me that John hadn’t been at the reception so I asked where he was. ‘Oh - he was going in to All Bar One with some red-headed girl. I think I know her too, but I can’t remember where from.’
On the Monday someone commented on John missing free drinks. He looked a bit startled for a second and said something along the lines of ‘had a better offer’, which he then retracted to ‘had to go home early’ with that weary shrug that men are supposed to sympathise with as it indicates that “the wife” had curtailed his fun. I started to get a little interested. Then next time I saw Kenny he dropped in: ‘Is your friend John looking for another job? Only I remembered who that girl was – she’s called Rachel and she works at (rival recruitment firm).’ Obviously Kenny’s always on the look out for potential ‘stock’ – candidates for jobs that he might be able to place.
But it clicked with me. Red-haired Rachel. Used to work in HR in our company until about four years ago…moved to a recruitment firm, definitely one of John’s “sniffs”.
I’m not one to judge on the adultery (if so it is) but the hypocrisy and burning zeal of self-righteousness irritate me. Tuesday night, to the initiated, was even more blatant.
We were both invited out for a celebratory dinner. We all met in a pub near-by the restaurant, and John had put his credit-card behind the bar to pay for the drinks. Time came to move on, John called for the bill and the group walked out leaving him just signing the slip. The restaurant was perhaps five minutes walk away, but we sat and waited, ordered, took pre-meal drinks and still he hadn’t appeared. Someone phoned him, line engaged. Five minutes passed, line still engaged. And then the best part of half an hour later he appeared claiming to have made a mistake about where the restaurant was and walked in the wrong direction. Just about plausible. Someone told him that we’d been trying to call him and the pause was just too long before he said ‘Oh I phoned home to get the address’. ‘We phoned twice.’ ‘What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? Jane couldn’t find the Yellow Pages and I had to phone twice!’
Possible…Someone muttered: ‘Getting a taxi would have been quicker, we’ve all been waiting’ and the words just hung in the air like a bad smell.
The meal went well, good food, good company, the wait forgotten. And then John disappeared. He got up as the coffee and port was being served, as though to go to the toilet, and never came back. His friend and neighbour Ricky – actually John’s guest for the evening – was perplexed: they were supposed to be sharing a cab home together. At the end of the night he tried phoning John but there was no answer.
Wednesday morning, of course, people asked. He went into an elaborate story about how he got lost on the way there, but apart from saying he hadn’t been feeling well (which, because we considered it at the time, no-one at the table knew anything about) he didn’t explain the disappearance. And then launched into a complaint that we had all been questioning and laughing at him and we should all have waited for him to walk down together. But strangely he was also claiming of feeling hung-over – not a continuation of ‘not feeling well last night’. And yet he didn’t really have time, with us anyway, to drink too much.
OK I’m adding numbers together and arriving at pre-conceived sums. I’m also acting on inside-knowledge of how these things are done. But in his position I suspect he’s taking some enormous risks in what he’s doing. If – as I guess – he arranged by phone a rendezvous early in the evening, had to leave early to make it, and then drank a bit too much and arrived home at the same time as he would have done from the dinner, he’s very exposed to his friend Ricky commenting on his disappearing act sometime when they’re with his (already prone to jealous questioning) wife.
I could teach him a thing or two. Or indeed I could get some revenge for what he threatened to do to me. I’ll keep observing.
And finally – Bati. I hope you’re OK!!