A writing exercise

Where once I saw infinite possibilities, the world where I swam like a salmon upriver to ever improving prospects, has shrunk to a microcosm. I look around, taking in the new house (too new…I’ve always appreciated the richness of a period property.) I’m already tired of the room where I am spending much of my day. I’m in my familiar chair from which I watched television for years. Somehow it doesn’t seem as comfortable; perhaps it is as shocked at its uprooting as its owner. My glance moves away from the rather shiny arms, my feet fidget and move about.

The room is waiting for up-to-date furniture to fit in with the square space, pale walls, a glossy white kitchen in the background—it really doesn’t suit the antiques we have brought with us. Squinting from the dazzling afternoon, from the room’s west facing aspect and forensic revelation of every speck of dust, I look about. The quartz worktop, look, there are some crumbs spoiling the desired expanse of gleaming black. It is reasonably large in here, with French doors onto an oblong lawn with a flowerbed down each side. Meagre patches of colour, yellow and pink, are all that remain of the summer bedding plants Jess put in when we first arrived in late spring. I’m spending too much time staring out through the glass at nothing in particular.

I’m constantly pervaded by a sense that we did it all wrong. Mostly my fault, I’m quite ready to admit. Fighting that stupid court case, going to appeal…all the actions of a madman who couldn’t see that justice had nothing to with him. I won’t dredge all that up. Jess has sworn me to silence on the subject, threatening that if she ever hears the word why come out of my mouth again, she will push off. That’s an empty threat of course, she might last a couple of weeks with Maddie in Bristol but that would be it. She hasn’t got the patience for Tom and the grandchildren in anything but small doses. And she wouldn’t last five minutes in Ian’s flat in Hammersmith. Anyway, there’s only one bedroom and he’s a bit tall for the sofa.

Over there is the flat screen television, smug in its corner, striking a contemporary note. I tend to move into the kitchen when Jess puts it on in the evenings.

I’m not following the financial markets any more so I tend not to listen to the radio either. They’re always on about the movements of the markets… I tell myself I’m well out of it but there’s a stain that no amount of scrubbing will wash off. Manipulating the Libor rate, they accused, as if I was the only one.

 That’s enough I tell myself. Switch off that train of thought. Do something, I can hear Jess say, all patience and understanding long gone from her tone. Well, she did all the hand-holding for a long while. Move on, as they say.

‘He’s depressed,’ people have suggested to her but I disagree when she throws that one at me. No, I won’t see the new doctor, I couldn’t jump ahead of all these poor young people that I ‘ve read about, suffering mental health issues with little support.

What no one knows is that I’m doing penance. Penance in my own way, not walking to Santiago de Compostella, or doing good works, but penance for my pride and inflexibility, and of course for messing up our lives.

Jess would say, ‘What nonsense, you know too well that we could have lost all our money in the dotcom crash, in the pension fund that collapsed, in some business enterprise that that failed.’ We didn’t, though. I lost it through a belief in my own innocence and a towering miscalculation. Hence my punishment needs to go on. Pretending, as Jess does, that this house is a nice place to live, on an estate—no, not that sort of estate, all rolling acres and big gates with a deep gravel drive up to the main house etc, etc. No, no, this estate is one of identical boxes with cars on the drive (the garages are always full of the overflow from the house) is not for me. I can’t pretend I like it but I agree that I will get used to it, because it’s not the house, it’s not the neighbours, not the sheer dullness of the surroundings but the total impossibility of working at what I’m good at. My brain seethes sometimes with visions of a sudden unexpected aptitude for a new type of employment where financial matters are a long way from me and my reputation is unimportant. Maybe while my penance unfolds, day by day, there will be a revelation, though I’m far from the mystics of old…staring out of the window is hardly meditating.

The children, our grown-up children haven’t been over for a while. Busy with their own lives is the phrase. Jess tries to drag me along but the effort is too great. They are disillusioned with me, from hero to zero, their dad is no longer quite the man they thought he was. I’ve been sullied by the conviction while others who quietly accepted their wrongdoing have slunk away to lick their wounds invisible to the public gaze.

I doubt I’ll get over it. I was too used to thinking of myself in terms of success. Monied with a streak of altruism, my self-approval rating was pretty high. I was a gregarious, likeable chap, keen to do my bit in the community with no airs and graces; if not a pillar of the place I was happy to lend a hand whenever needed. You see my amour propre was fairly invincible. Until my downfall that is. The biggest individual fine for a banker, ever, not to mention the suspended sentence. Okay, let’s stop brooding as Jess would say.

I might have a look at Private Eye. Now I’m well past being newsworthy, I take pleasure in the figures of fun being derided in its pages. I look at the politicians and captains of industry, the celebrities and pundits; it’s your turn now, I think.