Free Pleasure and a Calling by Phil Hogan Page A

astonishment when she returned and saw justice restored.
    By then Gwyndyr was also finding his life unexpectedly rich in mystery, albeit in a less welcome way. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for a busy man such as himself to wake up on successive mornings to find his shirt buttons pinging off as quickly as he tried to fasten them – or, worse, as he was perhaps eating that second breakfast on the train or in the office. And his shoelaces – why, it was almost as though someone had cut them three-quarters of the way through with a scalpel (I always carry a scalpel). Gwyndyr had a fine collection of watches, which he kept in an old-fashioned rosewood display case on his dressing table. But where was his 1970s Rolex – his favourite? Where indeed! (In my mind’s eye I saw Gwyndyr turning the marital bedroom upside down in search of his precious watch, buttons flying off his shirt, giving his wife merry hell.) I had no idea of the watch’s value, but a dry-lipped pawnshop owner in Bethnal Green said he’d give me a hundred and fifty for it. ‘Excellent!’ I said, with a brightness that probably surprised him.
    The following Wednesday, Mrs G arrived back from her weekly appointment with her hair stylist to find water dripping through their sitting room ceiling from a spurting joint in an upstairs radiator. She called the plumber. On the Friday, it happened again, this time a faulty connection on the compression tank. Oh, the drip, drip of steady mischief!
    On Saturday, a delivery truck appeared with a new washing machine they hadn’t ordered, and in the evening two fusesblew, plunging the house into darkness during dinner with the Ericksons. On the Monday, a rowing machine arrived, followed on Wednesday by a suite of teak garden furniture. In a state of alarm, the Gwyndyrs cancelled the credit card that had seemingly, somehow, called up retail suppliers and ordered these goods, though that didn’t stop more arriving (did they forget they had other credit cards?): they were soon the bewildered recipients of an electric piano, a wedding dress, ornamental statuary, and a handsome leather dressage saddle from an equestrian superstore. The police could only scratch their heads. The morning post, meanwhile, brought daily confirmations of holidays booked in Mauritius, New Zealand and the Norfolk Broads, along with tickets for London musicals and a festival of traditional sports in the Highlands.
    For weeks the Gwyndyrs lived in fear of the doorbell. After an Easter break visiting relatives in Wales, they arrived home to find the house full of miaowing cats, which had gained entry via the cat flap but hadn’t been able to get out again, not even to pee. Had Mrs G mistakenly switched the cat flap to ‘in-only’ before driving their own two Siameses, Pootle and Ming, to the kennels? In the absence of alternative evidence (all traces of inducement – fishy baits, free kitty dinners inside – had of course been removed), who could the Gwyndyrs blame but each other?
    During their next absence, an out-of-town firm of landscape architects, paid in advance (in cash, their records would show, by a Mr P. Gwyndyr, who had personally come into their office with instructions and had even greeted their chainsaw-wielding operatives on arrival), removed a handsome yew hedge that bordered their property to the north. A few mornings later, Mrs Gwyndyr rushed out in her bathrobe to challenge a team of contractors from the travelling community who told her in theroughest of terms and most impenetrable of accents that they had been hired to rip up the couple’s semicircle of stone-paved driveway and resurface it with plain tarmac.
    Unsurprisingly the Gwyndyrs were almost afraid to leave the house. In the autumn, Gwyndyr made the local paper when he was fined by magistrates after pleading not guilty to the theft of a tankful of diesel at a filling station. His explanation – that someone must have stolen his car, filled it