Half Light One

It had been nagging at him all morning, like an itch he had to scratch.

He tried to bury himself in work. Pulling out old projects and chasing up leads.

He rang his wife, hoping to busy himself with the everyday mundane. But the itch was still there. He’d been here before; he knew that no matter how successfully he distracted himself sooner or later his treacherous mind would return to this insistent craving.

He’d always thought of it as the itch. Perhaps remembering a childhood summer with his arm in plaster and how he’d been driven half crazy by the need to scratch, experimenting with half the kitchen utensils until he’d discovered a knitting needle was just long and just thin enough to reach the spot. Christ that had felt good.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Long ago he’d decided that wasn’t the life for him. Wife, kids, nice house, that’s what he’d worked for, the suburban ideal.

So why this need? This gnawing want?

Sure it had been fun when young, he couldn’t deny that. But it hadn’t been what he’d wanted from life. Things that are fun at twenty can be sad at forty, he told himself. He’d grown up.

He could go for months without. It wouldn’t even cross his mind. Then he’d wake up one morning, or be driving home from work, or eating dinner and the old familiar urge would be on him.

And in his heart he knew it wouldn’t be gone until he’d satisfied it.

Sussex Gardens he thought, you could always get it there,

No, he thought. Not this time. He had too much; he’d built the life he’d once only dreamt of. It wasn’t what he wanted. He’d worked too hard to beat the habit.

He ate his lunch, a roast pepper salad prepared by Ginny. She was a good cook, he thought, a good woman. She kept him healthy, fretted over what he ate and drank, and though he complained it pleased him. He wasn’t afraid to admit that it was thanks to her he’d become the man he was today. The successful man. The kind of man people looked up to, he thought.

Eventually he threw the remnants of his lunch in the bin and forced himself to focus. He swept back into the office, shattering the afternoon torpor. Bantering with the sales team, shooting off emails to the regional managers and barking orders at his Assistant.

But still… that itch.

He spoke to his wife again, and they came close to arguing. Craig had been fighting at school again. He accused her of overreacting, getting hysterical. Sure he should know better but boys will fight, and he’d rather the lad learned to stand up for himself than grow up a pushover.

The Finance Manager came in with the monthly figures and ended up getting both barrels. His growing irritability became outright anger as they went through the profit and loss account, and the meeting ended with him roaring his disapproval at the disappointing results and hurling the cash flow statement across the table at the startled number cruncher.

Knowing why he was really so furious just made it worse.

He did something he hadn’t done for months and cadged a cigarette from the Receptionist. He’d kicked that habit but sometimes…

He’d come too far to risk it all. He thought of the kids, his friends, the career and the respect he liked to think he’d earned. He wasn’t the permanently stoned kid who hadn’t given a fuck what anyone had thought. The kid who’d do anything as long as it felt good. He had a life now. He was someone.

The office was quiet when he returned, heads down, everyone studiously avoiding his gaze. It was good to chew one of them out occasionally he decided, remind them who’s boss. Eighteen years he’d been here, starting on the phones and working his way up. Hard graft it had been, but he’d got to the top in the end.

He sat and stared at his big cluttered desk. At his sales awards and pool trophies and the school photos that took pride of place. The kids were everything to him he always said. His whole world. Family, he told himself, that’s what it’s all about, not some fleeting buzz.

He imagined the reaction if he was caught; his wife’s tears, his children’s shame, facing his staff. The stares and whispers.

Fucking hypocrites, he thought. They all had skeletons of their own. He wondered what secrets they were hiding, what deeds they would rather die than have revealed to the cold glare of the world.

He cracked his knuckles. Gazed through the office windows at the stark autumn trees. It wasn’t going to happen, he told himself. He was better than that. He was the one in charge.

He knew though. Even as he walked to his car that evening planning to drive straight home he knew. As he planned the evening; talk to the kids, dinner, slump in front of the TV.

He knew as he drove in the opposite direction to his comfortable new house on the nice estate and parked up on the gravel next to the scrubby recreation ground and left his life behind.

He’d have no peace until he’d had his fix.

Just scratching an itch he thought. Just now and again.

He began to very gently shake as he approached the place. Apprehension, excitement, shame. The old thrill.

Dusk was beginning to fall.

His little secret. His little treat.

Sometimes a man needs a little more.

He felt himself harden.

He stepped into the dank half light of the public convenience, slipped into the middle cubicle and waited.