J. Sudbury

People with blood on their faces find themselves entirely exterior to the fabric of society. Mothers avert their gaze and gather their children more closely to them; crowds of rush-hour commuters part to allow them a wide berth. There is no sympathy and no offering of handkerchiefs or medical advice. It is generally assumed that a man with a bloodied face must have done even more damage to someone else.

James Sudbury realised this as he was walking home from the car crash. He was wearing a suit and not badly hurt, despite the superficial damage to his face. The crash had actually calmed him down. The tension had been building for months. He’d been getting increasingly angry, cutting corners and accelerating into ever more confined spaces, getting closer and closer to the inevitable. By the time it happened, at the exact instant it happened, he felt absolutely calm. And now, walking home with a bloody face, smiling and scaring children, he was serene.

He had starting receiving the letters about six months ago. He had recently moved into a flat nice enough to keep his girlfriend Polly, a mansion flat on a nice street in west London which caught the sun prettily on a summer’s evening and decimated James’s salary. The first letter arrived about two months after they moved in. It was addressed to J. Sudbury, so naturally James opened it. It seemed to be an error from the bank, who had issued someone else’s statement to James’s name and address. James felt mildly guilty to have opened such a personal document and avoided reading the details, once he realised it did not belong to him. He called the bank, but failed to negotiate a labyrinth of passwords and security questions, which, this not being his account, he did not have the answers to. James assumed that whoever was missing this statement would realise soon enough and contact the bank themselves. Then three more arrived. A magazine James did not remember ordering, although he admitted he might have. A membership form for a golf club, and a credit card bill. All addressed to J. Sudbury at the same address. James called the golf club, who apologised for their slow response to his membership form request.

James hit upon an explanation.
“There must have been a previous tenant here, whose name was also J. Sudbury. It’s an extraordinary coincidence, but that’s what must have happened.”
Polly regarded him with typical sarcasm. “Another J. Sudbury? It’s not even a common name. We must track him down, perhaps it’s a more successful long-lost brother.”
James was still thinking aloud.
“He must have had a mail re-direction thing for a couple of months, but now it’s run out and he’s forgotten. That’s why they only started coming recently. Some of the data bases must have his old address. It’s quite common. A few of our things are still going awry. But the name thing, that is really too strange.”

He called the estate agent and asked if their was a previous tenant called Sudbury. The agent thought not but was less than forthcoming, appealing to customer confidentiality. James was insistent. “I think I'm intruding on your customer’s confidentiality more by opening all his mail. It’s very confusing. I can’t tell what is mine and what is his.”
The agent agreed that it was a bizarre coincidence and suggested James simply return the mail to sender.

It kept coming back. Not a flurry, perhaps one letter a week, a minor annoyance. Bills, forms, magazines; the assorted litter of a modern life. Sometimes even after opening James could not definitively identify which letters were his and which were J. Sudbury’s. He soon abandoned his earlier qualms and began devouring the other man’s bank statements with passionate interest, regarding this as one of the perks of what was otherwise an inconvenience. Both James and Polly became acquainted with intimate details of his life. They began to relish each new instalment of the mystery, scouring statements for clues as to the man’s identity. Whoever he was, he was everywhere. Charges came bouncing back from across the globe: five star hotels, designer boutiques, exotic airports. His account never contained less than thirty thousand pounds, and his average monthly expenditure was about the same. They began to speculate, Polly more enthusiastically than James.
“He’s a film-star! No, I supposed we would have heard of him. A footballer? Maybe not. A property mogul?”
James was forced to admit that, in comparison, his life looked rather cheap and grey. He saw Polly thumbing through a luxury brochure that had arrived in the name of J. Sudbury. She joked, “Maybe they’ll send us one of his credit cards and we can upgrade,” but he didn’t smile.

Each new letter seemed to bring Polly a new and more expensive idea. Their arguments got worse, always about money. James was well-liked but he was not a terribly successful man. He had never fulfilled the early promise of excellent exam results and a friendly and outgoing nature. He was an average man, an extra, there to make up the numbers.

It reached the point where Polly pursued J. Sudbury so relentlessly she began opening all James’s mail before he could even get to it. She talked about this man, this alternative existence, constantly. James spent more and more time in the car. As he drove he thought about J. Sudbury and this wire that had been crossed somewhere in the system. He felt the other cars hemming him in, metallic bullies. He wondered what car the other man drove. Often when he arrived home the back of his shirt was sodden with sweat. When people rang and asked for James Sudbury, he responded suspiciously. He created a pile of J. Sudbury’s mail and burnt them every couple of weeks, strongly suspecting he was burning some of his own letters too. He received personal letters from purported old friends and struggled to remember whether or not they were his. He drove around, half thinking he recognised people in the street.

Here he was, lurching towards stationary traffic. If someone in another car looked at him they would think he was singing along to the radio. But he wasn’t. He was shouting: “This is my car! In MY name! James Sudbury, J. Sudbury, James fucking Sudbury!”
He beeped the horn in time. It went unnoticed in the city. He changed lanes, swooping behind taxis and around buses. The drivers behind him were not entirely surprised to see him veer onto the wrong side of the road, where a man in an expensive car hit him head on. They were not travelling fast enough to hurt each other too badly. James staggered out of the car, still humming along to his tune. Things had gone quiet, as though he was in deep snow. The other man came slowly out of his car.
“What’s your name?” asked James, quite calm despite the taste of blood in his mouth. “We need to swap details.”
The other man looked at him.
“Your name?” asked James.

Later, the driver in the car behind told his wife what happened. He saw the other man, the one in the nice car, say something, and then, strangest of all, he saw James, bleeding and laughing and walking away. He told his wife, "I got out of the car and shouted after him, thinking he must be in shock, but he just kept walking, laughing and shouting, 'Sudbury, Sudbury, of course!'"