The Fantasist

A short story

We are forced to make so many promises precisely because the urge to escape is so strong. As I stood at the railing of the ship, a lonely shoe salesman with his face to the sea, I truly believed that nothing could bring me to disembark. Had my wife arrived in her best dress and prostrated herself upon that icy wharf, weeping for my forgiveness and promising that she would quit her job, never setting foot in that damned university again, and poison her lover the professor, still I would have grabbed the coat and hat from the gentleman beside me, forged a signature, and unhitched the moorings of my life myself.

But my wife’s best dress still hung in that slightly damp closet in our slightly damp home, and no doubt the professor’s hand lay on her slightly damp skin, and nobody gave a tinker’s cuss whether I sailed or swam. I imagined what it might look like for her to arrive dockside, face hot and red with tears, nose running, shouting up my name at the passenger’s deck, and I was disgusted with her. Could anyone blame a man for abandoning behind such histrionics? I went below decks for my cabin and felt the gentle vibrations of the ship’s hardy engines as they bore me across the channel. 

Is there any man in all England as brave as I, a man who risks it all to lead a life less miserable? Who knows love, and chases love as far as he can find it? For if I were to describe to you my circumstances, few amongst you could fail to identify in yourselves the same small frustrations of a small life: tied to a sinking rock of a salaried job, the petty malice of one’s boss and the ticking clock, the train home from the city to its suburbs, the polite small talk with a woman who, fifteen years earlier, was a mysterious and sensuous bride and whom you have since grown to know as a near total stranger.