It feels like I’ve decorated our house a thousand times. I wonder if ever I’ll get it right.
Sometimes I’m not sure if my wife knows we’re married, and I don’t know if she knows I’m her husband. But that’s because a lot of the time she’s dosed up with a truckload of contraband sedative, to get hold of which almost drained my bank account, and I have a few regrets if I’m totally honest, which I’m not. I don’t know if my wife knows who I am. That sedative is pretty strong stuff.
I was in the office with Chloe, a super pretty girl, the best secretary I ever had and then some. My wife left me a voicemail and I thought she said there would be an antelope waiting for me on the mantlepiece when I got home. I laughed. An antelope! I told Chloe as we pored over the spreadsheet, our heads almost touching, her perfume subtle and sensuous, I told her how my wife has a brilliant sense of humour. Chloe giggled her delightful and very attractive giggle.
People were chatting by the water cooler today and Sally said that everything in the world is there for our benefit. Then Gavin said that Purity with a capital P is a notion out of reach in this day and age, a day and age in which all things are soiled. I noticed that an angel who was standing by and giving lazy ear to all that was said seemed to take especial interest in that remark. I don’t think anyone else could see it.
Back at my desk I was behind on my invoices, and I thought to myself how I can’t solve problems but I sure as hell know how to plant them, and nurture them like a gardener tends to his plants and then bring in the harvest when the time is right. I’m tired of living alone with someone else in the house.
I’ve spoken to my boss, and he said he doesn’t mind if I leave and he never sees me again. Of course I care about what’s going on in the rest of the world but I’m pretty sure the rest of the world doesn’t care about what’s going on in me. It’s a reciprocal arrangement that doesn’t seem at all fair.
I asked Sally if she wanted to go for a drink after work but she said she was going to Prayer Group, and if I cared to join her I would be very welcome. I didn’t care to. As we left the building at 5.30 a thunderstorm of biblical proportions hit the neighbourhood, but it lasted no longer than it has taken me to write this down. Everything in the world strikes me as being there largely to confound us. I don’t mean Nature and the trees and sea and purring kittens and all those kinds of things. Actually, I’m not sure what I mean. I really should think more before I put words on paper.
I care about what clothes I wear and how I look and what people think of me. I’m going to learn how to swim and to skydive and I dream of climbing to the top of a very tall and hitherto unscalable mountain from where I can look down upon the world and sneer a bit.
When I got home it wasn’t an antelope on the mantlepiece, it was an envelope.
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Conrad Titmuss
Photo By Margi
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