2007-01-29
Oops.I think I just did something I ought not to have done. I think I just spoke to Dave.
Against Lynne’s better judgement, in fact against her instructions, I went in to work today. So that she didn’t know I waited until she had left and then got up, had a shower, dressed and caught a bus. I guess I was about an hour later than normal. I took a dose of some non-non-drowsy cough concoction before going to sleep last night, and I reckon it was around the back of eleven this morning before it had properly worn off . There was a hallucinatory magic mushroom feel about the bus and its troll-like inhabitants today.
I got though the day OK, caught up a little, got to spend time with Jo. It wasn’t really in my mind to try to get home before Lynne and hide in bed so that she didn’t know I’d been out, but I did intend to leave early. Because Dave is away in Paris for two days Jo had to go reasonably promptly to collect her boys. Just after she’d left a phone rang nearby, which we now know was hers. You’ll understand that in more than four years I have studiously ignored and refused to answer her phone when she’s not there - just because it might be Dave. It’s even been mentioned (by the oh-so-tolerant Lesley) as a source of irritation that I always leave it to others to pick up her calls so conscious have I been that it would be a bad idea to have to remind him of my existence.
But for some peculiar reason when I looked across the desks this evening I was absolutely convinced that it was Lisa’s phone that was ringing. I punched in the group-call-pick-up digits on my phone, and spoke my name.
There was a definite pause. Isn’t it funny how much interpretation you can put onto a silence? Or how many alternatives you can up with? How did it take dramatists so many centuries before Harold Pinter to come up with the significance of someone not speaking? So in my case I now ask - was that a pause because he recognised me, heard my name? Was it a pause because he thought he’d heard and knew who it was and couldn’t believe that moment had finally come? Was it just a pause on an international line? Was it someone on hands-free picking up the receiver? Was it just surprise at a male voice when it should have been female? Was it the pause of ‘have I got a wrong number?’.
Whatever. He said something like: ‘I was wanting to speak with Jo….’ I, suddenly shocked at my mistake, said ‘I’m afraid she’s already left for the evening’. He said something more, merely an acknowledgement, but I was already putting it down.
Of course, the thickness in my throat may have momentarily concealed my identity. Of course I may be wrong - it might not have been him. In those few words there was sufficient warmth, or politeness at least, to light a hope that we might not to have to always avoid each other, but that would be a ridiculous burden to put on so little substance.
The probability is that it is the pause in the minutes after our conversation that has been filled on both sides. I’ve been wondering about it for three hours now, so I am sure will he have been. And that wonder won’t have been healthy for him because even if he can convince himself that it wasn’t me, he’ll have been forced to remember that I still exist. And although I don’t really think he would do anything to bring that existence to a conclusion, I know his - impossible-to-fulfil - wish would be that I never had come into being.