by Henry Sands
He swung from a natural protectiveness over his mother, to a reasoned understanding towards his stepfather for wanting to break the sexual dormancy he had grown to live with.
But the woman who had brought sex back into Anthony’s life was the same woman he had romped with only a few weeks earlier. Was there an element of jealousy or competition that he felt towards Anthony? He found himself stuck in some strange incestuous love triangle with the man he’d grown up with as his father, and there was no one he could talk to about it. No one in the world who’d fully understand.
He left work at 5pm on the dot, without saying goodbye to his colleagues. He decided to leave his bicycle locked in its place in the basement, and instead walk back to the flat in Fulham, hoping the icy January air would help clear his head as he tried to make some sense of the totally fucked-up situation. Every now and again along the walk, he pulled out his phone and watched the shameful video again, where Noelle rode his stepfather in the same ferocious manner he had experienced a few weeks earlier. Utterly appalled, he tried to ignore the fact that he was also slightly turned on by seeing her again.
By the time he reached Stamford Bridge on the Fulham Road, where Chelsea became Fulham, his head was still in turmoil and the last thing he felt like doing was spending the evening with George, his flatmate. Instead, he turned back on himself and walked the 200 yards back down the Fulham Road until he reached the corner of the Billings, a small mews street that had a little pub, The Pensioner, tucked away at the end of the road. Unlike most the pubs nearby that now called themselves gastropubs, The Pensioner had steadfastly refused to change. The only food it sold was pork scratchings and crisps. It was a good old-fashioned boozer.
Jack sat himself down quietly in the far corner and started drinking.
- Chapter Fourteen -
La Touche Vineyard, Franschhoek, South Africa
Lucinda found the notion of autumn approaching peculiar. She had been in the Franschhoek Valley in the Western Cape for nearly three weeks now, and it had been nothing but glorious sunshine. Admittedly, the temperature had started to drop a little in the evenings, but it was nothing compared to the dreary autumns that she was used to.
She was loving her time on the wine farm, with her cousin Pauline. Their working day would start at 11am, when the tasting rooms would open, and there would normally be a small queue of visitors waiting to get in by the time she unlocked the door. She and Pauline would run the tastings, while Greg, Pauline’s husband, ran the winemaking side of the operation.
The whole set-up had been far more professionally run and much more slick than she had been led to believe from her various emails with her cousin over the years. She hadn’t even glanced at the vineyard’s website, and so was rather blown away on arrival. She had visited only once before when the children were young, and had remembered only a slightly run-down farm that felt more like a family home. It had most certainly been spruced up now.
The rapid improvements in the vineyard all started, Pauline had told her, when a wealthy French banking family bought the vineyard down the road, Simondium, and visitors’ expectations shot up quickly for all of the vineyards in the vicinity. They had to up their game, or otherwise faced losing out. Although Pauline and Greg did miss the more relaxed approach they used to have in the valley, from a business perspective, all the vineyards were doing better than they had ever done before. Not just from increased sales and global awareness of the quality of South African wine, but because of the sheer number of visitors coming wine tasting and for lunch each day. Some even brought a picnic to eat amongst their vines, which was permitted if not encouraged.
Lucinda enjoyed meeting the far-flung visitors from all over the world, some from places she had never even heard of. What she found quite peculiar was how many visitors didn’t actually drink. They catered for these guests by offering a selection of olive oils to taste, as well as fruit cordials, and more often than not, they bought a bottle of wine as a guest too.
At 5pm, the last visitors would leave, the security gates would close, and Pauline and Lucinda would often open one of the better bottles which they kept separately, and which would never normally be offered for tasting.
Pauline and Greg were particularly fortunate with the positioning of their vineyard, set high up on the west side of the hill overlooking the valley, so they had sun much later than most of the other vineyards nearby, with the most wonderful sunsets. The evening light fell onto the magnificent mountains in front of them, rising with such power and in stark contrast to the sleepy civility of the Franschhoek village below.
On this particular Friday evening, as it was coming to the end of the month, Pauline had to run through the wine sale numbers with the accountant, so she waited in the tasting rooms and told Lucinda she would catch up with her later.
Lucinda took a twelve-year-old bottle of Pinotage, their signature wine, from the private collection they kept and headed up to her favourite spot, a bench on the edge of the reservoir, right at the top of the vineyard.
Every time Lucinda sat on the bench and looked out across the valley, she felt a rush of appreciation for life and the majesty of it all in front of her. How lucky she was to be able to have this view all to herself. That evening, Lucinda noticed that the particular angle of the light, reflecting off the bald rock face high up on the mountain, made the view even more beautiful than normal.
She had had time to do a lot of thinking since that fateful morning in Mexico at the end of their holiday three months ago, when Anthony woke up, and recounted the details of his evening to her.
At first, she thought he must have been joking. He was surely winding her up? But when she saw how shaken her husband was, and how unlike Anthony he was being, she realised he was telling the truth.
Initially, she laughed, more out of shock than anything else. She had spent the whole week getting her head around the idea of staying with Anthony, and throwing every part of herself into their relationship at last, making it work for the best. In her mind, they would have lived a content, quiet life, perhaps with a bit more travel and the opportunity to explore new places together in a way they hadn’t done in the past.
Once Anthony had told her about what took place, including the build-up and the excitement that caused him to do it, it wasn’t jealously that she felt. It was disappointment that she herself hadn’t discovered that side of him, after so many years of marriage together. There was also part of her that felt reinvigorated by the prospect that Anthony actually had that side to him. She knew only too well that life has a peculiar way of throwing in the most unexpected curve balls from time to time, and this had been the most unexpected of the lot.
After what had been an awkward conversation, Lucinda had suggested that perhaps the best course of action was to get home to Ferryman’s Cottage and work out what they wanted to do next. Lucinda hadn’t fully digested the situation, and her initial instinct was that they could probably find a way to make it work once back at home. But it was only once their bags were packed and the driver was waiting to take them to the airport that Anthony had dropped the real bombshell. He didn’t want to return home.
He announced to Lucinda that the experience, rather than leaving him feeling appalled and embarrassed, had, in fact, made him feel liberated, and more importantly, for the first time in his life, wanted. Instead, he was going to fly back to Northern California with Noelle, who lived in the small town of Mendocino on the edge of the Van Damme State Park, about three hours north of San Francisco. He said he had wanted “to give it a go” and explained that every aspect of his life had been predictable until this moment. It was time to take some risks.
Shocked, Lucinda replied, more out of vengeance than anything else, ‘Anthony, if you had only been slightly less predictable over the last twenty-two years then we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this bloody mess in the first place!’ But as the words came out of her mouth, s
he knew the words would only serve to affirm his decision.
With that, Lucinda marched past him with her bag and climbed into the waiting taxi, without looking back. As she drove out of the gates, she saw Noelle, standing conspicuously by the reception desk with her bags packed at her feet.
On the flight home, Lucinda tried to make sense of the situation over several double gin and tonics. Her emotions wavered from bewilderment to anger, but soon all feelings of rage subsided, and a melancholic sadness overwhelmed her.
Perhaps it was the gin, but the reality dawned on her that Anthony, her husband of twenty-two years, had gone. A feeling of loneliness gripped every part of her body, and the empty seat next to her only caused her more pain. Tears began to roll down her face.
*
After a hideous journey and a few days back at Ferryman’s Cottage, Lucinda tried to work out what on earth would happen next with her life. Eventually, she decided to revert to her original plan before Christmas, as if she had been the one who left Anthony, not the other way around. She had called Pauline, and a week later her trip to South Africa had been arranged. She planned to go for an initial four months, then return home for Sophie’s wedding.
Lucinda had spent many evenings looking out over the Franschhoek Valley, trying to comprehend what had happened, and what Anthony’s thought process must have been. She considered every option, playing them through in her mind each evening before going to sleep. Sometimes she wondered whether she would ever hear from him again.
The sheer suddenness of the move, and self-destruction of the existence he had built up over his entire life, was just not in her husband’s character. She didn’t need to be a psychologist to recognise that Anthony’s life had been suppressed his entire existence. She also recognised that she had been responsible for much of that behaviour, and rather than managing their relationship with only the small amount of care and maintenance that Anthony required, she knew she had allowed the relationship to corrode.
She had gone to South Africa not just for the adventure, but also to take time for herself to work out how she wanted to spend the rest of her life. When she arrived, she was open-minded about her options and hadn’t ruled out staying for longer, perhaps even indefinitely. But as comfortable as life was out there in the Western Cape of South Africa, and the friends she had made over the last four months, she knew it was not her place. She missed nattering with her friends and the view from her kitchen window, overlooking the church. She missed Sophie and Jack most of all, and their weekend visits to the house. Hell, she even missed the grumpy shopkeeper at her local Londis! And she missed Anthony, particularly his presence, if not always his conversation.
Although she didn’t admit as much, Lucinda had felt ready, and in need, to be in touch with Anthony. Any feelings of anger she’d had towards him were now outweighed by concern. He hadn’t made any attempt to justify his actions to anyone, only apologising profusely to both Sophie and Jack, explaining he needed to explore certain things in life. Lucinda had seen many relationships between couples their age become irreparably damaged, leaving a trail of grief, misery and destruction for themselves and those closest to them. But she just couldn’t believe that their marriage would end like that.
But Lucinda also couldn’t bring herself to reach out to Anthony; nor did she know exactly where he was. There had been no attempt to retrieve any of his belongings from the house, which comforted her somewhat.
The most likely outcome, surely, would be that he would wake up one day and wonder what on earth he was doing living with a Californian hippy nymphomaniac. Anthony was not a hippy. He was a man who liked walks in the countryside, doing DIY in the garden and watching Sunday afternoon television with a decent bottle of Chianti. He was, after all, predictable.
Having not exchanged a word since the morning of their departure in Mexico, Lucinda finally woke up to find an email from her estranged husband.
My Dear Lucinda,
How strange it has been these last few months. Not a word exchanged between us since I last saw you, after twenty-two years of marriage.
Of course, I recognise we had our blips during that time, and I was not always there to support you as I know a companion should have been. But the truth is, Lucinda, I love you and have nothing but the highest admiration for you. More now than ever.
The last four months have been a strange whirlwind and mix of emotion, the like of which I could not have previously comprehended. I have been living with Noelle, in her wooden house, in a small and rather hippy community. We grow our own food and spend a lot of time in the nearby redwood trees doing group forest bathing exercises. Three evenings a week I volunteer in a local library, which hosts book clubs. I think it has certainly been enlightening but, if truth be told, I think I am now sufficiently enlightened and am probably rather better suited to life in England.
More importantly, I miss you, Lucinda. I miss the life we had together. Dare I say, but I miss the predictability of it too. I think it was Horace Walpole who once said: ‘When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.’ If nothing else, this time in Northern California has enabled me to weed my mind. I know with every fibre of my body that I would like to return home and make a fresh start with you. Clearly, we are not as young as we once were, but I would still hope there are plenty of miles left in the tank. I want to make the most of those miles with you; not like it was before, but with spontaneity, travel (though perhaps not Tulum?) and learning.
Sophie wrote to me last week about her wedding, expressing her desire for me to still walk her down the aisle; I cannot tell you how much that means to me after everything I have put you all through these last few months. That said, I fully understand if you would rather I was not there. I told her I would speak with you first. What do you think?
I hear from Sophie you’re now with Pauline and Greg on the wine farm in South Africa. I know you had been wanting to visit them for a long time, so delighted to hear you’ve finally done so.
Funny thing life and the twists and turns it throws at us, isn’t it?
I hope to hear back from you soon.
With my love and deepest apologies,
Anthony
Reading the email, Lucinda could identify many of Anthony’s familiarities, but there was a certain freshness to his tone, and an outlook which she had not seen before. She had grown to develop a newfound respect for her estranged husband.
Anthony had raised Sophie, and he was the closest thing she had to a father. After his email, there had been a great deal of correspondence back and forth between Sophie, Lucinda and Jack, debating whether they wanted him at the wedding at all, let alone to give him the honour of walking the bride down the aisle. Finally, they reached the consensus that he should be there. Sophie was pretty much in denial about the fact that Anthony had left, putting his absence down to an extended holiday in her mind. And Jack had continued to behave unexpectedly sweetly towards his mother, in a way he perhaps hadn’t before.
Perhaps it was the amount of South African wine that Lucinda had drunk over the last four months that allowed her to adopt a far more pragmatic and optimistic approach to life. She knew that her relationship with Anthony wasn’t irreparably broken, but it needed some serious maintenance.
That evening, she drafted a number of replies to Anthony’s email, ranging from long explanations of her feelings and critiques of their relationship together, to more aloof summaries, written more in spite than with any concerted effort to reach harmony. Having see-sawed back and forth in her tone, in the end she opted only to respond with:
We are all looking forward to seeing you, very much.
Lucinda x
Acknowledgements
We live in a world more confused and polarised than ever, yet there has never been a better time to be alive. I fear sometimes we have forgotten how to enjoy life and fail to focus e
nough on what matters, and what does not. How extraordinary it is that we exist at all. This book was written with the single objective of trying to make people smile, at least a little more.
I have relied on the help of a few supportive friends who, not only smile a lot themselves but have been invaluable in the development of this story. In particular, I must thank Charlotte, Rosie and Katy, whose early feedback and helpful notes have been enormously helpful and much appreciated.
Also to Anna, who did everything she could to make the book more readable by providing encouragement and criticism in equal measure. You make me smile everyday, thank you.
And finally, and possibly most importantly, to the dreadlocked woman on Tulum beach who fed me the chocolate cake. I have no idea who you are, but I hold you responsible for the story that unfolded! Thank you.
