A Peculiar Affair

“Well, Mrs Daly, I can assure you that your husband is not having an affair with another woman at any rate.”

She fixed me with that beady stare of hers and not for the first time I felt a little sorry for Mr Daly. I imagine she kept that expression handy along with a rolling pin on a table in the hall ready for his return from work.

The next part was going to be awkward. This interview definitely fell in the ‘good news’, ‘bad news’ category and she was not the type to take well to bad news. I had a fair idea of that fact the first time I had encountered this formidable woman a fortnight ago.

 I had been minding my own business chasing through a couple of old insurance files. Despite operating under the rather grandiose title of ‘Private Investigator’ and having some surprisingly clever surveillance gear, the thing that really paid the bills was still getting film of some idiot winning a tap dancing competition the day after the council supposedly ruined his leg and life with a careless pothole. Oh you got the odd ‘missing dog’ or ‘find a long –lost relative’ to spice things up, but the big bucks remained in checking out suspicious compo claims for big insurance companies.

Anyway, there was a sharp knock at the door and without so much as a ‘by-your-leave’, in marched Mrs Daly, an unsmiling 4 foot 8 of black-clad, middle aged battle-axe. Fixing me her best basilisk stare she rudely inquired as to whether I was that ‘snooping fella that told the guards about that Seamy that drinks in Murray’s Bar.’ Slightly anxiously I confirmed that I was indeed the cause of the unfortunate Mr Murphy’s court appearance and subsequent fine. This seemed to please her immensely and she then proceeded to outline the reasons for her unwelcome appearance in my office.

To cut a long story short, she felt Mr Daly had been acting strangely of late, taking up tennis (a word she pronounced with particular distaste, as if it was some unsavoury cult) and disappearing three nights a week to follow his new passion. This change of habit had been accompanied by what she referred to delicately as a lack of attention towards herself. Forcing several unwelcome images out of my protesting mind I pressed her as to whether anything suspicious was actually happening. With the tenacity (and indeed the facial features) of a bulldog she insisted that ‘he was up to something’ and that I was to find out what it was.

She readily agreed to my fee, which surprised me a little, though I guess the chance to get one over on her spouse was worth much more to her than mere money. She also had a picture of her husband, an old instamatic snap of a depressed looking fellow wearing an inappropriately cheerful sweater in front of a Christmas tree. His drooping moustache and demeanor jogged my memory and I remembered a tall, very skinny man I had encountered occasionally in one of the quieter bars in town.

We agreed that I would follow him as he left the house in pursuit of his sporting leisure and report back if I saw anything untoward happening. She was sufficiently keen on this idea to pay me, in advance, to carry it out three times over the following fortnight.

In the first week I followed his red Nissan twice down to the tennis club and found him to be guilty of nothing worse than having both an appalling backhand and a feeble second serve. From a discrete vantage point in a darkened part of the town park, I never saw him give so much as an sideways glance at any of the bouncier ladies on view. In fact i rather admired his restraint, as that seems to me to be the only point in playing the wretched game. At the end of the evening he traipsed back to the clubhouse, changed quickly and trudged alone to his car. This was then piloted at no great speed directly back to his house and presumably the unloving bosom of his family.

The following Wednesday night, however, was different. A couple of cars behind the Nissan, I was caught unawares as he made an unexpected sharp right shortly after leaving the house. A steady stream of traffic coming the other way made it a couple of minutes before I was able to follow him across and into the quiet residential area. Cursing under my breath, I drove slowly along the darkened street, twisting my head from side to side to see if I could spot his vehicle.

In fact I missed the car but saw him instead, silhouetted in the doorway of a house I was passing. By the time I had pulled over and had a chance to look further, his tall figure had disappeared again. The house itself was dimly lit, with blinds firmly shut in all the windows. Although this was irritating, I was more concerned by the fact that I had recognized the place and knew the couple that lived there. Mr Gibson was another quiet man rarely seen about town but it was his wife that concerned me. A less likely object of desire I couldn’t imagine, she made Mrs Daly seem like a playful kitten. Teaching in the girl’s school, the only lesson I could imagine her giving her class would be that middle age turns you into an evil, vindictive monster.

I spent the next hour puzzling out the whys and wherefores of my target's strange taste in women. He must be some glutton for punishment was my only certain conclusion. Eventually frost was just starting to form on the windscreen and I was thinking longingly of the roaring fire in my front room. Although cold, I was still alert enough to react then to the opening of the front door of the house by sweeping my sadly underused army binoculars across to the scene. Initially no one emerged but I could see the back of Mr Daly in an unmistakable tender embrace. This was held for a minute or so until abruptly he pulled away and turned to walk out to his car. It was then I realised that far from being driven into the arms of another woman, unknown to myself I had been watching him kissing Mr Gibson.

So that was the unexpected news I now had to pass on to the impatiently waiting lady in front of me. Some days I really wish I had taken my mother’s advice and gone to study accountancy in Dublin.