‘It’s rather noisy,’ I said. ‘The tiled floor and those Formica-topped tables . . . What about the University? The Senior Common Room in the -’
‘No, I don’t want to meet you at the University,’ she said emphatically. ‘If you want somewhere quiet, I have an apartment just minutes away from the ARC.’
As I wondered and hesitated about this proposal, she gave me the address, and I wrote it down.
‘What is your research about?’ I said.
‘You really do have a hearing problem, don’t you? I’ll tell you again on Tuesday,’ she said, and terminated the call.
When I went back into the kitchen, Fred had gone. I brought the kettle to the boil, freshened the teapot, poured another cup and picked up the Guardian again, but I couldn’t get back into the article about ageing, or into anything else. Marshall McLuhan said somewhere (McLuhan, how that dates me!) that we don’t read newspapers in an orderly systematic way, like a book, we scan them, our eyes skipping from one column to another and back again, but mine were twitching all over the place, and my hands turned the pages restlessly until I found myself staring at the back page, a full-page ad for cheap broadband, without any memory of what had preceded it. The call had disturbed me, for several reasons. It was completely unexpected; and that I had apparently made an appointment to meet this woman to discuss her research without the slightest awareness of doing so was not only deeply embarrassing but also a depressing index of the extent of my deafness. What kind of research could it be - something to do with linguistics, presumably. But how did she know that was my field? I didn’t recall telling her. I didn’t even recall telling her my name, though I suppose I must have done so, since she found my telephone number. We are in the book and there is only one ‘Bates D.S., Prof.’ in it.
I was conscious that Fred had left the house without knowing the identity of the caller, and I am conscious now, as I write this late at night in my study, that she still doesn’t know. If she had asked me on her return home this afternoon I would have told her of course, but she didn’t. She asked me if I had remembered to get a Galia melon. I said, ‘No, I got cantaloupe instead, they were two for the price of one.’ That was my excuse, thought up on the spur of the moment, pretending that I overrode her instruction for reasons of economy, when in fact I hadn’t heard the instruction, which had been, I inferred, ‘Only get a melon if they have Galias.’ She said: ‘We don’t need two melons, darling, we’ll never eat them before one goes bad, especially cantaloupes.’ She had evidently forgotten all about the call in the morning, and in the ill-humour that followed this little dispute over melons I didn’t feel like reminding her, or telling her who it was from. In fact, I knew who was calling as soon as I heard the voice on the phone say a name that sounded like ‘Axe’, but when Fred said, ‘Who is it?’ as I made for my study to take the call I replied, ‘I don’t know.’ Why was that? Because I wasn’t in fact absolutely sure? Or because I wanted to find out why ‘Axe’ was phoning, and have a little time to think about it, before telling Fred? Well, I’ve had all day to think about it and I still haven’t told Fred. It seems to me that I have somehow compromised myself by agreeing to go to the woman’s flat - not that I suppose she has amorous designs on me, I have no illusions on that score - but whatever favour she intends to ask will be more difficult to refuse in her own home than on neutral, public ground, and the ARC café is probably not all that noisy in mid-afternoon. I would have phoned her to change the venue back again if I knew her number - but I don’t, nor do I have any way of discovering it. I tried dialling 1471, but ‘The caller has withheld the number.’
Apart from that unsettling little episode it’s been an ordinary sort of retirement day. I did the shopping at Sainsbury’s in the morning. When I’d unpacked the bags and put away the food I