Second Intention (7 page)

If all went to plan, and I was allowed the time off, we could fly out to
Denmark on the Thursday, spend Friday unwinding and getting to find our way around, compete on Saturday, go sightseeing on the Sunday and fly back on Monday afternoon.

Phil reckons that Simplifly is the best of the budget airlines to go with, and their website certainly tries to make booking a flight a painless experience. The prices were actually pretty good, but what surprised me most was the difference in the cost of flying out on Friday rather than
Thursday. It was another thirty-six pounds a head, the result, I suppose, of the simple law of supply and demand in operation. Everybody wanting a weekend away in Copenhagen would have largely filled the Friday flight, whilst the one the previous day would be mostly empty.

Phil also
pointed out that the prices go up a lot the nearer you get to the departure date, which is why I had hoped to get an answer from Douglas that day. I only hoped that they weren’t going to hike the fares too much in the following twenty-four hours.

The less we had to spend on getting to Copenhagen, the more we had to spend once we were there.

Seven

Sue was very perky when she finally got in that Monday night, at well past ten. It was some time since I had seen her that animated about anything, and I was pleased to see it, but also a little puzzled. I had no idea fine art could be that exciting.

I thought about it quite a bit as I drove to work the next morning. Was it a sign that her condition was lightening up? Was she just excited about the exhibition? Or maybe it was the prospect of a long weekend in an exciting city like
Copenhagen?

Whatever. It was good to see, and it brightened my day.

It was a day which needed brightening, too. An angry wind was blowing sleet in from the East, and the forecast said we could expect several more days of it. The news on the radio was all doom and gloom, and our neighbour’s cat had left muddy footprints right across the roof of the car, which I had only washed three days before. Even Ely wasn’t looking its usual, beautiful self.

As I passed through the outskirts of the city I saw a disturbing bit of graffiti on a wall, some kid with a sick imagination having sprayed the image of a clown
’s face, its mouth twisted into a nasty sneer, and its eyes malevolent. It was simple, and yet alarming, and I was astonished by it. What sort of person would corrupt a cheerful concept like a clown and turn it into something so full of menace?

Just what the hell was the world coming to?

Maybe I’m just getting old, but it’s beginning to worry me, the path society seems to be taking. People are less tolerant, less patient, and much more cynical than they used to be. Every day I turn on the TV and see that the dumbing down is getting even worse - it seems that nobody can make a programme nowadays without it having to involve the audience texting in votes to affect the outcome. And then there are programmes which seem to glorify rudeness, or trampling on the self esteem of “losers”. What sort of message is it all sending out to young people? Whatever happened to the good old days of quality drama and intellectual debate?

When I was a kid we used to watch
Top of the Pops
as a whole family, and my mum would always sit and sigh, as MC Hammer or Betty Boo would appear. ‘Oh dear,’ she would say, a distinct note of disapproval in her voice, ‘this does make me feel
very
old.’  My sister and I thought it was so unhip, we vowed we would never turn out like that.

We we
re completely wrong, of course.

*                  *                  *                  *

It was three thirty by the time I finally got hold of Douglas, who was on his way between meetings.

‘
Ah, yes,’ he said, after I’d reminded him about my request, which he seemed to have completely forgotten. ‘I was going to find out what Madrid were up to, wasn’t I?’

‘
Mmmm.’ I tried not to let my irritation show. ‘I don’t mean to nag, but I’d like to be able to get it all booked, and the longer I leave it, the more it’s going to cost.’

‘
Sure, sure,’ he nodded, and began flicking through a file he was carrying as he strode along the corridor.

‘
So … er … will it be okay then? Having those days off?’ I didn’t like trying to negotiate like this with him, on the move as it were. I felt like a little dog trotting along beside its master.

‘
No problem with Friday and Monday,’ he said, looking up and giving me the merest flicker of a smile. ‘Still not sure about Thursday though. Still waiting for Madrid, you understand?’

‘
Yes, of course, but I
do
need to go ahead and book it, so shall we just say that we’ll forget about Thursday, and I’ll just take the two days either side of the weekend, eh? That’ll be much simpler.’

He actually stopped at that point and turned to face me.
‘Look,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m sure there won’t be a problem, and I really want to be able to say yes. I just can’t say one way or the other until Gonzalo has got back to me.’

‘
Ah … and when will that be?’

‘
Well …’ he closed the file and glanced at his watch. ‘Give me an hour or so, and I should be able to give you a definite answer. Call by before you head off tonight.’

Like an idiot, I left it at that.

*                  *                  *                   *

A strange thing happened when I got back to my office.

I had been expecting a response from one of our suppliers, with whom there was an outstanding query, and I logged on to see if the e-mail had arrived. It turned out that it hadn’t, but three others had so, naturally, I opened them up so I could read them. The first was from Little Bob, who had heard through the club grapevine about my success on Sunday and was sending his congratulations. The second was from the manager at our depot in Halesowen wanting to know if the Spanish stock run was likely to affect their routine at all the following week. The third was from Phil.

At least …
that’s what the address said.

When I clicked on it, all that came up was a blank screen. It was weird - there was just a blank page in front of me. No message or anything. Why the hell would my coach go to the effort of sending me an e-mail and not writing anything? Then I noticed the little paper clip, telling me that there
was an attachment.

Maybe I just wasn
’t thinking straight. Maybe I was a little distracted by Douglas and his failure to give me a straight answer about my leave request. Who knows? I did the wrong thing anyway. I should have just left it, but I didn’t.

Like a fool I clicked on it.

The little blue bar in the box at the bottom of my screen swelled, and disappeared, the screen flickered for a moment, and then … nothing.

Absolutely nothing happened.

The attachment, whatever it was, didn’t even seem to exist anymore. I was sat there facing a perfectly ordinary e-mail screen with no message written on it, and didn’t really know what I was supposed to do. Whatever Phil had been trying to send me I didn’t have, and since he hadn’t even sent a covering message saying what it was, I didn’t even begin to know how to start looking for it.

I would just have to ask him about it when I saw him later that evening at the club.

*                  *                   *                  *

I could have screamed.

‘I’m really sorry, Richard.’ Marion could obviously tell how miffed I was. ‘He left about three quarters of an hour ago. Said he had to pick up Jean, and that they were heading off to an engagement in Chelmsford straight away. Won’t be in till the morning.’

‘
And he said nothing about my leave next week?’ My exasperation must have been evident to anybody watching. ‘He told me he’d give me an answer today.’

‘
Sorry.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You know what he can be like. You’ll have to see him tomorrow. He should be in first thing.’

*                  *                  *                  *

I received a hero’s welcome when I turned up at the club that night. Phil had obviously told everyone, and I got a round of applause the moment I walked in through the door. We’re quite a close-knit club, and any good result in a tournament tends to give us all a bit of a lift. All the kids wanted to look at the medal which, fortunately, I had remembered to take, knowing that my success at the weekend would be hot news.

Unfortunately I hadn
’t, it seemed, been so careful about remembering to take my wallet. I searched my pockets, I searched my fencing bag, and I even went back out to the car to see if I’d dropped it there, but it was nowhere to be found. Had I left it at home? There was a simple way to find out, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on fencing until I had reassured myself that my cards and cash were somewhere safe.

The first time I tried calling
home I got the engaged tone, which was fair enough. I went off, did my warm up, and tried again ten minutes later, only to find it was still engaged. Whoever Sue was talking to obviously had a lot to say since she normally doesn’t like to linger over a call. She’s very businesslike in that respect. She says what she needs to, and keeps it short.

My lesson with Phil was a good one, although I had that little niggle in the back of my mind about the wallet, which meant I probably wasn
’t as focused on my technique as I could have been. Not that it mattered, of course. My result at the weekend was more than enough for my coach to cut me a
lot
of slack at that point.

As soon as the lesson finished I got on the mobile again. Our home number was
still
engaged, which was really weird. It’s just not like Sue to sit for hours talking to somebody on the phone.

All the same, I really wanted to know if I
’d left the wallet there. For all I knew it was sitting on the kitchen worktop, safe as houses, and I had no need to worry. I tried her mobile.

It didn
’t even ring. There was just a click, and the robotic female voice cut in. ‘The vodafone you are attempting to call is currently switched off.’

Now it really did seem strange. She
’s normally so careful about that sort of thing. Just what was going on? Had she received more of the anonymous phone calls and been scared, deliberately making herself unavailable to anybody?

My first reaction was to get in the car and go straight home, to find out just what was happening, but I realised I was probably over-reacting. There was, no doubt, a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all, and me fussing like that would just make me look foolish in front of everybody.

No, I told myself, everything was fine, and I could get to the bottom of it later. What I needed right then was to get on with some fencing.

Except it wasn
’t that easy. Aside from my concern about why I couldn’t get hold of my wife, I was still fretting about what I had done with my wallet, and no matter how much I told myself, on the surface, that everything was fine, at the back of my mind it was still niggling away at me. I fenced like a complete idiot that evening as a result.

At least Jack was pleased. His 15-13 victory over me convincing him that he, at least, was fighting better than ever. After all, I had just taken a medal in an Open only a couple of days before, and if he could beat
me
now that must mean, obviously, that he could do the same.

Whatever. If the circumstances meant he got a confidence boost, good for him.

Shirley could tell I wasn’t myself, though. She, too, beat me, and it was even more convincing than Jack’s win, although she obviously realised something was up.

‘
Going to the pub later?’ she asked as we shook hands and unclipped ourselves from the spools.

‘
Er … no, probably not.’ I must have looked pretty sheepish. ‘I ... er … I left my wallet at home.’

She tutted and rolled her eyes.
‘It’s a while since I heard
that
one. Come on matey - we’ve got to hear all about your moment of glory. Don’t worry. We won’t let you go thirsty.’

‘
Thanks for the offer,’ I said, and meant it, ‘but I think I’ll call it a night if you don’t mind. I need my beauty sleep.’

‘
Yeah, aint that the truth?’ she said, grinning as she turned towards her bag.

The wallet was waiting for me on the coffee table when I got in, but my wife wasn
’t. She must have been really tired, as in spite of the early hour she had got herself up to bed and was fast asleep. All seemed peaceful in the house, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. All my anxiety that evening had been for nothing, and a good night’s fencing had been wasted.

I half-considered getting back in the car and going to meet them all down at the pub, but realised I wasn
’t really in the mood. In fact, I didn’t really seem to be in the mood for anything much. Maybe it was just tiredness, since I had, after all, had a pretty demanding tournament only two days previously.

Or maybe it was something else? Something strange had been happening over the last week or so. Things which, on their own, one could write off as being nothing too extraordinary, but all together seemed too much of a coincidence.

I knew it was best not to dwell on it. I microwaved a ready meal from the freezer and got myself a beer, then settled down to watch some mindless trash on the TV.

*                  *                  *                   *

‘I’m really sorry, Richard,’ Douglas began, actually meeting my eyes this time, ‘but I honestly thought there wouldn’t have been a problem. It turns out that Gonzalo wants parity with us
and
Hamburg. Says he’d be happier if we did a parallel run.’

I groaned inside. Somehow I just
knew,
deep down,
that this had been on the cards. Maybe I had been hoping to get a ‘yes’ from Douglas before Madrid decided they wanted me involved at our end. Fat chance of that, though, if I’m honest with myself. Douglas is just far too experienced at this sort of thing to let that happen.