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Two days earlier a comedian type actor, famed for his witty and atypical brand of comedy that had instituted a British type of humour across the globe that perhaps helped the demise of the image of Brits being a little less boring than beans on toast and ‘God save the goddamn Queen, (no disrespect ma’am). Oh yeah… he had fervently admired this comic in his youth and now quite confusingly faced a deep and rather personal embarrassment for both he and the comic. The comic-stroke-actor-stroke-douchebag, had brazenly stated that London was not the city it used to be and now it was- quote “overrun by newly arrived asylum seeking tax bleeding immigrants”. At the time of reading this impetuous declaration by the now slightly deranged comic, he had reacted with fury by throwing his copy of the Sunday Times magazine supplement on the toilet floor with utter disgust and then stared blankly at the white of the white wall. He had long finished what he had to do anyway but he sat so when he would finally decide to leave the throne the seat would go with him for a while- a brief friendship between backside and seat. It happens. Sometimes. If it was not an entirely earnest reaction to throw the magazine it was however one of spontaneous polemic makeup. He himself was of Jewish descendent, his mother’s sister Aunt Becky had told him this when he was nine years old. He remembered the stale custard cream biscuits that she offered from the cookie jar in the mess of her cramped council flat kitchen. He wanted to watch television. His favourite TV show was on, Lee Majors in the ‘six million dollars man’. She told him how her Father had changed his name to avoid being ship off with the rest of his fellow brethren to that ghoulish camp in Poland. He felt no connection to his roots, perhaps because his mother had declared his Aunt Becky 'as nutty as a fruitcake', (where are the bloody nuts in a fruitcake?) Unfortunately Aunt Becky could not exactly denounce this indecorous stake from her prim and proper sister, for dozens upon dozens of times through the last decade she had been spotted wandering around shopping centres all over the south of London in nightgown and slipper talking to her long dead husband about the choice of sherry they would buy for their late evening supper and other such unimaginable nonsense. It would be hash to called Aunt Becky mad but unconventional she certainly was. Yet now he felt crushed and baffled as his Aunt Becky during the years of her loss. (For she loved her husband despite the mean and cruel bastard he was known to be). His wife’s claim to be going on another business trip with her communication firm to one of those glamorous cites aforementioned left him uneasy. He had proof of her regular secretive tryst with the young engineer whom she had met last December at her office Christmas party. He had witness quite a nauseating scene behind the silver metallic blinds of the glass window in her boss’s office. He had seen his wife and that chiselled jawed young stud with her tongue searching for something in the depth of his throat, whilst Miss Whitney (rip) belted out from those turbo charged lungs, the ‘I will always love’ you part of the song. That dreadful build up and that piercing voice practically screaming at his fragile soul those terrifying words. 'and IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII will always Love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!'
All the same she said it as she left that morning. "Everything is a tissue of lies,” she said. She was speaking about the news broadcast that played out on BBC radio 4. The war on Terror! He was thinking about his own mistress or “mistress to be” since he had yet to commit any act that could have that all-knowing finger from the unbounded blue pointing down at him condemning him as an adulator, a fornicator; flee ye from sexual immorality! She was to meet the engineer at Gatwick airport. He should secretively follow her (he had longed to be a spy ever since Sean Connery don the 007 suit in Goldfinger) and break the engineer bastards neck. Or shoot his wife with a silencer from room 407 on the 16th floor of the airport hotel. But perhaps there were no holiday or romantic break to Milan, Prague, Paris, Berlin or Reykjavík… Iceland only existed on the map he told himself. Maybe they do it in a room on the 16th floor of the airport hotel. Room number 407? No 408…09… what the hell!
He would play some golf with his two mates this weekend and then off to the local for a piss-up. He would tell them about his fantasy mistress adding extra fiction to his fiction. How they did it here and there and how they would do it there and here again, and again so hard in the most ungodliness’ of places. He even had a face for her. A cross between Rita Hayworth and Kim Basinger, with the quivering lips of Sue Ellen. The theme tune, the three-split screen, the changing face of Miss Ellie breaks his daydream. Followed by the piercing sound of high heels of the wooden floor entering the kitchen where he had been sitting staring at his mug of black coffee. For how long? Time. Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real. Now where did he hear that? His coffee is cold. Confirmation. Time. How long had it been sitting there? What had he’d been doing all that time? Time. Oh dear God. Time oh time oh time. "Leave me alone you tormentor of the innocent.
She smiles sweetly at him and says something about the taxi waiting outside. He opens his faded leather wallet. She kisses him on the left cheek and heads for the front door leaving behind a deathly trace of Chanel no 5 in the air.
That odious scent on the delicate material of deceit.
Put it on a tissues.
Smell.
