HOWZAT

I had written a short feature the paper had headlined “Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson”. It had been prompted by a court case involving a rather good-looking woman in her thirties, living somewhere in the home counties, who for some years had housed French teenage boys on school visits, then seduced them. Most had welcomed the experience (according to one of their teachers, the essays they wrote about their holidays were effusive, if vague), but it all ended abruptly when the latest two rejected her advances, running into the street and bawling in their best English for, of all things, an ambulance. The judge gave her 18 months.

“I’m sorry I have got in touch with you again after ‘that night’. I know I promised not to but I just keep thinking about it all the time and deep down Angie feels the same. She hasn’t mentioned a thing but I look at her across the pool and she’s got a funny smirk on her face. She was very upset about Steve coming back, she promised that he never comes back from the Scottish trips earlier than three days. Honest!

“Anyway he’s such an idle sod he didn’t think there was anything funny about me and her starkers and playing with her daft dog! Not so daft if you ask me. I think he was pissed anyway — Steve, that is. You got back alright I hope, round the back. I know you were upset but we promise it won’t happen again, so if you want to see teeny-weeny me and Angie again you’ll know where to find us on Thursdays. Please, please . . . ” Gilly. X X X.

So she too was writing to a sexual athlete who had appeared in her life like Spring-heeled Jack, then disappeared. Everyone I talked to about it (which was just about everyone I met) thought it hilarious, but I began to get worried. What would Jack do next?

The next thing was a postcard addressed “To the town’s Handsomest, Sexiest, most sought after Lover Boy”. It was written in a large, wild hand, “SOB’s presence is requested at a private dinner to be held at a venue yet to be arranged in aid of the ‘Misfits of the World’. Dress optional. RSVP. EB.”

I went to see the police, who also thought it no end of a joke. “Try to see our point of view: what could we charge him with?” asked a detective sergeant. “I mean, all he’s ever done is go to bed with women. And their only regret is that he’s stopped doing it. The only complainant is you.”

As I was leaving, he said idly: “Just one question, sir. Have you any idea why he should want to pretend he was you?” I said I hadn’t, but as I went through the door I realised I hadn’t quite liked the way he had asked that.

Still, his question was partly answered when the first phone call came. It was from a woman who wanted to know where I was. She wasn’t cross — she said she quite understood if I’d been sent abroad at short notice or something; she just wished I could have let her know.

I explained things to her, and there was this long silence. I asked where she’d met him, and she said at an afternoon dance at the Leicester Square ballroom, when he’d told her he was an international correspondent who was abroad most of the time, living out of a suitcase when he was in this country. Of course: the perfect cover. No address; no number. She then started to cry and the phone went dead.

Suddenly it had become sad.

There were other phone calls, which I managed to avoid, but then one got through, and this time there were no tears. I went round to see a divorcée in her late fifties, living alone in a tower block above Hampstead, who was more annoyed than upset (“Ooh, the bugger”).

She too had met him at a tea dance, for there was one thing about such places, she said: they did allow one to meet people. She coloured slightly at this.

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