Unfaithfully Yours (9 page)

I want more fuel for my hatred of him. I want to know everything about what he gets up to with that unspeakable woman. I’ve started something I suppose I’ll have to finish. Perhaps I should talk more frankly about Mary Dimmock. And, indeed, Pamela Larner. Pamela Larner – it is easy for me to say this to you because I know we will never meet – was a self-centred, self-opinionated, profoundly silly, vulgar woman of a kind that was all too common in the St Jude’s Putney Parents and Teachers Association twenty years ago.

For some reason still not clear to me, I found myself on holiday with her on several occasions. Her odious, talentless children went to the same primary school as my dear Conrad and my desperate Julia. Mary Dimmock and her ridiculous husband were also, usually, of the party when six of us St Jude’s parents went off to southern Europe, in search of sunshine, all those years ago. God knows why. I think Conrad liked their Elaine. It was pretty clear to me, too, that
la
Larner had designs on my husband.

You probably do not understand, Mr Gibbons, what it is like to love someone and to be betrayed by them constantly, as I have been betrayed by my husband for at least thirty years. You have probably never felt the self-hatred, the fury and inexpressible loneliness that goes with loving someone who does not love you back.

Sniff around the Putney Thespians. Sniff around Mike Larner – if you can bear it. Bring me film and recordings and prose descriptions that make me cry. Get to know this ludicrous Dimmock woman. I certainly never want to see her again, but I like hearing about her, in just the way you scratch at a scab or open a newspaper in which you have been criticized. By all means go to the dentist – and allow me to pay! Ingratiate yourself with Mary’s equally loathsome husband. I will fund root-canal surgery if that is what is required.

I enclose cash to the value of the amount you requested.

Yours truly,

Elizabeth Price

PS I didn’t want to write ‘yours truly’ but the word-processing program made me do it. Even in letter-writing, surely one area where one might have thought that free will was still an option, we are being constrained!

PPS Use as many ‘inverted commas’ as you like. Feel free to violate the rules of the thing what is called grammar; and be careless with the semi-colon. Question marks???? Why not???? Exclamation marks are good!!!! Perhaps the tone of my letter surprises you. I am certainly not the rational schoolmistress who wrote to you first, am I? But, then, I have just sat through a three-hour video of my husband performing sex acts with a dental nurse in her late fifties.

From:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

8 September

To:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

Dear Mrs Price,

Try not to worry about all this. I will take care of everything and, perhaps, in a few weeks we will have enough information to gain you a very satisfactory divorce settlement. It is a beautiful day and London is wonderfully empty. I do hope you are managing to enjoy it.

I am, as you asked, getting more information about Mrs Dimmock; but, in some ways I feel that Mrs Dimmock is a victim. She has often – as I think you will see from the transcripts – expressed a desire to stop the affair. I feel sure that as soon as you have separated yourself from Mr Price all will become clearer. If, however, you do decided to confront him with the information, recordings and video footage I have supplied to you, I would be glad if you would not mention, at this stage anyway, that they came from me.

I have, I will admit, become a little obsessed with a case that does not – at the moment – seem to have anything to do with the reason you hired me! I am talking about the mysterious death of the woman called Pamela Larner. She was, I have now learned, a hairdresser, a physiotherapist, a Pilates instructor and a Jungian analyst! I cannot, by the way, quite work out whether she did these things all at the same time or whether they form a kind of career path. If they do I am at a loss to work out in which order they came, but everyone seems to agree that she was abnormally unpromising at nearly all of them. Although even Mary Dimmock seems to think she had some talent for hairdressing.

Was she murdered? And, if she was, who murdered her? Was it your husband? I have not been hired to find out whether it was him although it may well be that if I come across proof that he did slaughter her in cold blood it may provide additional grounds for your divorce. I could, if you wanted, ‘throw in’ an element of murder investigation to add to my final bill, although I am not qualified to do this kind of work and any results I produce would not have any legal force and should not, probably, be even mentioned to the police.

What does it matter? She has been dead for ten years.

Let me know how you wish to proceed.

I remain yours faithfully,

Roland O. Gibbons.

PS I do not think, as far as I can tell, that Pamela Larner actually qualified as a Jungian analyst. This may or may not be relevant to the circumstances surrounding her death.

From:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

10 September

To:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

Dear Mr Gibbons,

Keep digging away at Mrs Dimmock. She is a fat and artful woman who is about as far away from being a victim as am I from being a downhill racer or a concert pianist.

Yes, my husband is quite capable of murder, and if you find that he has done such a thing I will expect you to furnish me with evidence, in as much detail as possible, but I am not, repeat not, interested in why or how or even when Pamela Larner died. It is very sad that she did so but it is not something I wish to think about. You do the job for which I hired you and I will do mine. Which is, as someone in Dante observes, to get on with the business of suffering. Jealousy, whether current or retrospective, is a horrible feeling, but disapproving of it, even in oneself, does not make it go away.

Yours

Elizabeth Price

PS Ha! Beat you, Microsoft Word Tyrant!

PPS I would be glad if you did not mention Pamela Larner again. I really do not wish to think about her.

The
Putney Free Sheet

Affiliated to the
Wandsworth, Balham, Clapham, Croydon, Reigate, Banstead, Coulsdon, Raynes Park, Tooting, Earlsfield and Southfields Free Sheet

PERSONAL ADVERTISEMENTS

For terms and conditions, please see page 13.

Payment terms, see page 23.

9 September

MEN SEEKING MEN

Box 1001A

Professional, early-middle-aged man seeks masterful type for sex, fun and discreet relationship. I am boyish and artistic with a strong interest in wildlife. South-west London preferred. I enjoy outdoor activities of all kinds and long to find someone to keep me in order. Serious enquiries only. Recent and authentic photograph helpful. Reply to ‘Young ’Un’ at above box number.

From:

‘Bo’sun’

Name and address can be supplied

To:

‘Young ’Un’

c/o Box 1001A

Dear ‘Young ’Un’,

I have never written a letter like this before. It has taken a great deal of time to pluck up the courage to do so. About forty years at least.

I first of all realized I had homosexual feelings when I was at school in the West Country many years ago. I was at a prep school not far from Taunton. Do you know Taunton? Not far is not far enough as far as Taunton is concerned.

There was a boy there called Garland. He was small, plump and, at first sight anyway, not an attractive sexual proposition. He had a house near the school and I would often go there for tea on weekdays. After tea we would always be sent upstairs by his mother. He was an only child and he had a large bedroom, crammed with all sorts of mechanical toys, in which I was not really interested.

Neither – as it turned out – was Garland.

After some brief, desultory conversation Garland would say, ‘Would you like to wrestle?’ and I, who have always been very fond of contact sport, would strip off to the waist and leap upon him with a war cry that I had devised for use in playground games with the other boys of my year. After some grappling on his bed (Garland would also strip, often to his pants) the two of us would lie side by side, staring up at his ceiling, and the memory of this comradely moment is what stays with me to this day. We had no genital contact of any kind but those encounters were positively drenched in sex.

Garland is now a happily married man with five children, or so he claimed in his last letter to me, but those encounters remain some of the most vivid of my early years.

I married quite young, soon after I had left university, and although the physical side of my marriage has never been spectacular, we did manage to conceive a child, to whom we are both devoted.

I knew that I was drawn to men in naval uniform but, at first, was not at all conscious that there was a sexual dimension to my feelings. I have always been interested in boats, and I am now the proud owner of my first sloop, but, from an early age, the crew of any ship has been of as much interest as the vessel. When crossing to Cherbourg on the ferry, as a young boy, I found myself drawn to the sailors as they coiled ropes or walked purposefully along the upper decks. I think – if I thought anything of it – it was simply that I liked the look of mariners and imagined that I, too, one day, might find myself tossed about on salt water, feeling the wind in my face as a wild nor’easter drove down the Channel.

I was always particularly drawn to the younger
matelots
and when, later, at my public school I joined the Sea Scouts I soon found one of my greatest pleasures was to drill a group of lads in the basic skills of seafaring. I once took a few junior boys on a trip round the Isle of Wight and, though nothing improper took place, I did find myself attracted to a young rating called Edgar, who allowed me to guide him through the basic principles of knot-tying and shared with me his own unquenchable passion for the briny.

I was in my early twenties when I began to be plagued by a recurrent dream. In the dream I was the commander of a naval vessel in the Second World War. I was, for reasons that are still not clear to me, German although I am fairly sure I was not in Nazi uniform. We were chasing an English frigate through coastal waters off a landscape that looked a little like the Dorset coast and, after we’d fired a few shots across her bows, the vessel surrendered.

When we boarded her we found, to our surprise, that it was crewed by a group of young men some of whom were wearing gym shorts, and some of whom were completely naked. As the captain, I ordered them all to parade on deck and rebuked them strongly for being improperly dressed. I announced that I myself would administer six strokes of the cane to the naked buttocks of each one of them. A junior officer handed me a weapon and I ordered the captured sailors to bend over one of the ship’s guns, which, curiously, seemed to be of eighteenth-century design. I was approaching the first backside when I realized (in the dream) that I was sexually excited. I was just about to give the English seaman his first whack when I noticed that his belt had made a red mark around the line of his waist. I remember thinking how white his flesh was when I ejaculated, violently. I awoke with a feeling of profound joy.

It was after this that I became involved with the Putney Sea Scouts.

I am proud to say that I have never made a physical approach to any of the lads in our outfit, although I did get dangerously close to a German recruit called Gunther, but, during my time in the Service, I became increasingly aware that I wanted to do a lot more to the lads under my care than equip them with basic navigation. I was known as a strict but fair captain and I will admit that, when my wife is out of the house, I quite often behave inappropriately with myself. And that, quite often, the physiques of my imaginary partners bear a strong resemblance to the naval cadets for whom I have been responsible. I have now resigned from the Sea Scouts and devoted myself to my newly acquired sloop the
Jolly Roger
. I share it with a man called Bert for whom I have no sexual feelings. He is seventy-four.

I am looking for an obedient lad who will join in sexual fun and games with me. I am very happily married and do not wish to interfere with the stability of my home life. I work from home and my wife is an extremely supportive partner, who has little interest in sex herself. I would very much like to undertake discreet experiments with a submissive, youthful soul who, like me, has a genuine enthusiasm for things maritime.

Do write to the above box number: you sound as if you might be the perfect partner for me. You describe yourself as early-middle-aged, and a boyish nature is more important to me than someone who has been on the planet for many fewer years than the fifty-nine and a half I have spent burying my true sexual nature. I would like to meet – if you think I might be your type.

In anticipation,

‘Bo’sun’

PS I am heavily bearded but my preference is, obviously, for clean-shaven men.

From:

‘Young ’Un’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

12 September

To:

‘Bo’sun’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

Dear ‘Bo’sun’,

I was very excited by your letter. It stirred things in me that I have tried to hide for many years. Indeed, until I placed that advertisement I had never really thought that I was that kind of person. Like you, I have lived an outwardly conventional life as a married man. I have, indeed, fathered three children, who are all extraordinarily talented and intelligent.