January 2012
I had been waiting for what seemed ages at the little rural bus stop in a small Scottish village when the slightly greying bearded gentleman, who had evidently preceded me there, told me we might very well have another hour to wait. Naturally, as a matter of course, we began chatting about the state of the country, the weather and the usual topics. Then unexpectedly he glanced at my wedding ring and asked me how long I'd been married and, in so many words, whether I was happily married. This is the advantage the old have over the young; they can ask very direct questions!
He seemed envious that mine indeed was a happy marriage so I felt emboldened to ask him if he had ever married, noticing he wore no ring.
'Yes, I married when I was very young, or very naïve at any rate.'
And this is the story he told me:
'It was what they call a whirlwind romance, we met through a friend of a friend. I won't bore you with details. Suffice to say I really didn't know a lot about her till we tied the knot.
'We had only been married about a year, I suppose, when my wife's true character started to emerge – the sudden unforeseeable bursts of anger, the unjustifiable, laughable, jealousy. I stood it for as long as I could, years in fact, but then when her father had died and she announced her that her mother would be moving in with us, I knew I had to get out of it, somehow to, in effect, completely disappear.
'The first thing I would do would be to change my name by deed poll, obviously without informing my beloved spouse. I did think of tipping my car over a cliff, but when the police investigated they would naturally wonder why there was no trace of a body and in any case I didn't want any investigation. I just wanted to be yet another of the thousands of people who go missing and are never heard from again.
'No doubt you are wondering why I didn't go for a divorce, but I just couldn't stand the – well – messiness. In any case I somehow knew that my wife would still hound me till the day I died. No, I would just disappear. The problem was how I was going to disappear without raising a hue and cry that would go on for month after month?
'I was still contemplating the problem of disappearing with the minimum loss when my boss called me into his office and told me he was sending me on a course to this particular part of Scotland, as it happened. It was the height of summer when I actually went on the course and I immediately fell in love with the area. I was satisfied that here I could start my new existence. The course was for two weeks duration so I had a fair amount of time in between lectures to scout around for a suitable place to rent in my new name. My wife of course would have the house, which was a council house, so there shouldn't be much of a problem regarding the continued tenure of it by her alone.
'When I had found a really charming little cottage, had paid the deposit and awaited my opportunity to move myself and what few of my possessions I could transfer up here without arousing too much suspicion back home, I had in fact done a premeditated bunk.
'The chances of my wife ever coming to this part of Scotland or indeed any part of Scotland were very remote, so hopefully I wouldn't always be looking over my shoulder, wondering if I might bump into her some day.
'The problem was how to effect my disappearance and transport my belongings up to my new cottage then return the car or leave it somewhere. I certainly couldn't take it with me. It was bound to be traced, even if I sold it.
'I was puzzling over this dilemma one morning at breakfast when my dearly beloved announced out of the blue that she and mummy were going to spend a fortnight on the Costa Brava. I wasn't invited, needless to say.
'My prayers were answered. All I had to do was fill the car with a few of my clothes and other objects of mine that wouldn't be missed by my wife and take them up to Scotland in one or two journeys. I decided on reflection to leave the car back in the garage after the second journey then take the train up here, that way the whole affair would appear unpremeditated.
'Since then as you can see I've grown a beard and I've managed to earn a living, under another pseudonym, as a writer; something my wife would never contemplate me doing.
'So that's how I come to be telling you my story twenty years later in this remote spot. In the event I never saw my wife again from the date of this.'
Twenty five minutes later the bus came and I never saw the bearded unassuming man again.