sniff them to ascertain that, for they were spotless and the material was soft and springy to the touch. I peered inside the waistband and found a faded Bloomingdale’s label attached, confirmation that they belonged to Alex - not that I could think of any other suspect who might have played this trick in the last forty-eight hours. It occurred to me that I might easily have pulled them out of my pocket in the presence of Fred. If for instance I had worn the overcoat instead of my raincoat yesterday evening, when we went to a press night at the Playhouse, I might have done so here in the hall as we were going out, or in the foyer of the theatre as I was checking my coat into the cloakroom, surrounded by curious and amused spectators. ‘What on earth . . . ?’ I imagined myself saying, drawing the folded panties from my inside pocket and holding them out, gaping at them as people laughed and nudged each other and Fred looked astonished and then furious. In either scenario she would have demanded an explanation, and what could I have given, without revealing my visit to Alex’s flat and making it look a much more guilty action than it was? I was seized with a spasm of anger at Alex’s reckless behaviour.
I looked at myself in the hall mirror, a gaunt, grey-haired man in a formal dark overcoat holding up a pair of white knickers, like a detective with a piece of incriminating evidence, and wondered what to do with them. To put them out with the garbage was my first thought, but there have been occasions in the past when Fred lost her keys or a piece of jewellery and made a meticulous search of our garbage bins, laying out their contents on sheets of newspaper in the back yard, and fate might decide that she should do so again before our next refuse collection. I thought of burning them, but we don’t have any solid fuel fires indoors, and if I did it outdoors, on the barbecue say, there was always a chance that I would be observed by a neighbour, turning over the charred panties with a pair of tongs. I thought of cutting them up with scissors into small pieces and flushing them down the lavatory; but the plumbing in this old house is not its strongest point, and what would happen if the soil pipe got blocked and Dyno-Rod retrieved a sodden ball of cotton fragments, one bearing a Bloomingdale’s label? These scenarios got more and more bizarre and paranoid as I ruminated. In the end I put the cause of all this agitation in a jiffy bag addressed to Alex at Wharfside Court, and enclosed a postcard with a curt message: ‘I believe this undergarment is yours. I don’t understand why it came to be in the inside pocket of my overcoat, but it was a very foolish action which could have caused me acute embarrassment. In the circumstances I cannot undertake to give you any assistance or advice concerning your research. D.B.’ I mailed the package at the post office on my way to the bank. I sent it first class, wanting her to feel the force of my displeasure as soon as possible.
10th November. Alex Loom phoned me this morning, having just received the package. Fortunately Fred had already left home to go to the shop.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said abruptly, without giving her name, as soon as I answered the phone. ‘I’m very very sorry. It was a stupid thing to do.’
‘Yes, it was,’ I said coldly. She murmured something which I didn’t catch. I turned up the volume on my phone and said ‘What?’
‘It was just a joke.’
‘Well I’m afraid I didn’t find it funny.’
‘They were clean panties.’ (This said as if pleading mitigation.)
‘I know they were clean,’ I said, unnecessarily. In the pause that followed I could sense her inference that I had examined them closely. ‘That’s beside the point. It could have been highly embarrassing if I had pulled them out of my pocket in front of . . . in front of other people.’ There was a faint sound on the line which might have been a stifled snigger.
‘You mean, like your wife?’
‘Precisely.’
‘I didn’t think of that,’ she said. ‘I was sure you would find them before you got home.’
‘Well, I didn’t.’
‘Look I’m really sorry. I promise not to do it again.’