A plan to meet up with Old Friend At Work didn’t work out – but thinking about her, and how long we have known each other, reminded me of one of the stranger evenings that we have had.
It was a dark, Winter night – and OFAW and I were rounding off an evening out (by which I mean: “an evening of drinking”) with a final bottle of Jadot at Oriel: the bar next to The Royal Court Theatre in South Kensington. In the grand tradition of our nights out. OFAW was utterly, utterly incapable of putting one foot in front of another as we finished the evening, and we emerged onto Sloane Square, clutching each other like a pair of pensioners on Blackpool sea-front in a gale. Walking in a straight line required the sort of concentration that is more readily associated with the final stages of brain surgery than the finale of a night out talking about everything under the sun and (inevitably with us two) shouting bits of Shakespeare at each other, and then crying. I staggered into the road to flag down a cab (pleasingly simple) and after a lot of hugging, cheek kissing and hanging onto me, amidst voluble protests of love, dispatched OFAW onto the floor (sadly – but she insisted) of the cab.
As I turned from my task, I saw, recently emerged from The Royal Court Theatre (having been treated to that exuberant, drunken display) the Chief Executive of my Agency at the time: she nodded at me, and slipped into her waiting car…
The next morning, I was in work early: not feeling brilliant, but I know what needed to be done. The thing was, Wife worked at the same Agency as I did – and one of the few things that people knew about us (and that the Chief Executive was bound to know) was that two senior members of the Agency were married to each other – and I didn’t want the Chief Exec – who had never met Wife – to mistake the cackling, drunken and exuberant female of the previous night for my wife: thereby, potentially ruining her reputation before the two women even met.
So, I sent an e-mail to the boss saying: “Hi, I just wanted to drop a quick line to say that the rather over-refreshed woman you saw me put into a cab last night wasn’t my wife.” Immediately, an answer was fired back: “I completely understand.”
And so it was that word went round the Agency that the Chief Executive had happened upon me as I put my drunken mistress into a cab after a night of heavy drinking -and then had sent her an e-mail that asked her to help me maintain my deception… Perfect.
I think I eventually managed to straighten things out with the Chief Executive: but I think she remained slightly confused about why on earth I kept updating her on the state of what she took to be my extra-marital relationships for most of my stay at that (otherwise) very staid agency.
