How Was It For You?

by Carmen Reid

  ‘Well, maybe you’re right, but even the doctor said you have to have a rest,’ he told her.‘You’re in a state! You’re just not yourself any more and God alone knows what the drugs are doing to you in the long term. You need to get well again. And anyway . . .’ he moved on to his foremost concern: ‘we’re not going to be together for much longer if we carry on like this. But maybe that’s what you want?’ Anger rising in his voice now.‘It’s just the baby at any cost, isn’t it? You don’t care what this is doing to your health, our relationship . . . I won’t even mention our bank balance.’

  Worst of all was the Saturday conversation which had begun quite amiably with Dave asking her if she was feeling better, if she was ready to talk. They had managed to begin quite calmly, only to watch the vicious genie spiral up out of the bottle, out of control.

  ‘What shall we do next, huh? Just what shall we do next?’ She had folded her arms across her chest and stepped towards him.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ he’d answered.‘We can’t keep doing this. We’re fucked, we can hardly bear to be in the same room together.’

  The words This is your fault, this is all your bloody fault, were choking Pamela. She was desperate to scream them at him, but up till now, she’d held back. Up till now, it was mainly his sperm, but their problem. This time it was all her fault. His sperm hadn’t even been involved.

  ‘We should have done donor sperm from the outset,’ he’d accused.‘We’ve wasted all this time, all this money and still no result.’

  ‘I did the other stuff for you!’ She couldn’t stop the scream now.‘I did it for you. I thought it had to be your child too, or else it would never work between us.’

  ‘See! You haven’t got any faith in us any more.’ He was still seated, but shouting now.‘Why are you endlessly tidying up and getting rid of things? The flat looks like we’re about to move out. Just face it. You have no faith in us.’ With every one of those final six words, he smacked his hand hard on the low table in front of him.

  For the first time in her life, Pamela understood what it was to see red. She started to run, easily clearing the coffee table, and leapt on him, eyes closed, punching his neck, his shoulders, pulling his hair, whatever she could get hold of, as hard as she could.

  He wrestled for her hands and for several moments they grappled, Pamela furiously trying to free her arms, hitting him in the face with an elbow as she did, Dave yanking hard at her arms, burning the bare skin on her wrists.

  And just as suddenly as it had appeared, her fury evaporated. She collapsed against him and began to weep. This was pathetic, downright tragic . . . and where did they go from here?

  Just where, exactly?

  Chapter Five

  ‘WE’RE ALL OFF to sunny Spain . . . Y, viva España.’

  This was Alex’s way of saying hello at 6.50 in the morning in grey and grimy Heathrow.

  It was all her idea, of course. Well, wasn’t it always? A ‘working trip’ to Barcelona, so they could cruise the cool furniture shops, meet some designers, hang round a salesroom or two and generally have a totally tax-deductible mini break.

  Alex was much more glamorous than usual. The turquoise blue afghan had been replaced with a vintage pink and silver dress coat slung over silky trousers and high-heeled boots.

  ‘Now, you did bring your heels, didn’t you?’ Alex asked her as they queued to check in. ‘Because you need to know that all the women in Barcelona, every single bloody one of them, will be more beautiful, more groomed, more fabulously dressed than us. But this is not going to bother us, because we are British. We are allowed to be eccentric, one-off and totally unique, but most importantly, we are going to be TALLER.’

  Comfortably cocooned in the aeroplane, they had a late breakfast and a very early mini bottle of white wine each.

  ‘Isn’t nine o’clock just a tiny bit early to be drinking?’ Pamela scolded.

  ‘Ten o’clock Spanish time. Think of it that way, a pre-aperitif,’ Alex had assured her, filling up their clear plastic glasses and badgering the hostess for ice.

  Nothing goes to the head like cold white wine in the dehydration of a plane. Pamela could feel her brain numbing as it soaked the drink up like a sponge.

  ‘Very many good-looking men in the city we’re going to,’ Alex was telling her.‘I mean, I know you’re not allowed to touch, but absolutely no harm in looking, absolutely no harm at all. You just wait and see.’

  It had struck Pamela before that Alex approached men the way she approached her work. She was always on the lookout for genuine ones, always sourcing ‘real finds’, but she never seemed to hang onto them for long and was always more than happy to pass them on to a good home.

  Pamela had asked Alex about it often: didn’t she want to find someone just for her? Someone to keep? Someone to lurve?

  But Alex’s views were typically forthright. She didn’t want children and therefore she didn’t need a long-term relationship thing either.

  They’d discussed the not wanting children bit very hard over several different conversations, Pamela trying to drag every little reason out of her friend, trying to come to an understanding of how someone quite casually couldn’t want the one thing in the world she was desperate to have.

  ‘I don’t want children. I want money, occasional sex, cigarettes, to keep my figure and more wine, please,’ Alex had told her.‘And I don’t care who knows it.’

  In a more serious vein, she’d said that her four brothers and sisters and a tribe of nephews and nieces was plenty.

  ‘They’re all domesticated up to their ears and it’s lovely to visit them once in a while, just like it was lovely to grow up in our big, noisy household, but it’s even nicer to have my own place, peace and quiet. I’m a natural spinster, a born maiden aunt . . . a wannabe hermit. That’s me. And,’ she would confide once in a while, ‘my sister, Moira, who has three, keeps telling me that if I don’t want children with all my heart then I shouldn’t do it because it is the hardest job in the world. No pay, no overtime, no holidays. I mean lots of perks, of course . . . lots of lovely perks–’ and here she almost sounded a little bit wistful – ‘but there you go. Hardest job in the world.’

  It was completely logical to Alex that if you didn’t want kids then why would you want a man hanging about you for the rest of your days?

  ‘Women only put up with men over the long term because they are their children’s dads. I swear to God, there is no other reason. Why else would you let these saggy-underpanted, woolly sock-wearing, snore in their sleep creatures stay? You just wouldn’t. Moira’s husband leaves his toenail clippings on the bedroom floor! He can’t be bothered to have sex when a wank or a blow job would do instead. Why would you put up with that?’

  Pamela had pretended to look shocked. But had also realized with a sinking feeling that her marriage was racing in this direction.

  ‘Don’t you think in the future that wanting to live with someone else for the rest of your life will be seen as a bit strange? It’ll be classed as an addiction and you’ll be able to get treatment for it,’ Alex had offered.

  ‘Oh for goodness sake,’ Pamela had snorted.‘What about parents for little children? Or are you going to have them farmed off to boarding nurseries as soon as they’re weaned?’

  ‘No. They’ll make a special exception for them, I suppose, but there will be so few children left by then. I mean, who will be willing to do that? Spend all that money and all that time creating dysfunctional little skateboarding net heads, who will turn against you as soon as they’ve outgrown their Start-rites? Life is too short.’

  ‘Oh God, you’re being so depressing. Is that what you think parenting is like? And anyway, if none of us have children any more, who’s going to pay for your pension?’

  ‘Now, you know perfectly well how seriously I take my pension.’

  And this was true. Sometimes Pamela thought the only thing Alex spent money on was her pension. It was affectionately known as ‘the Shir
ley Conran Fund’ because, as Alex put it: ‘I too want to live in Monaco, have enormous silicone boobs and a toyboy when I hit my mid-fifties.’

  When they arrived in Barcelona, they were amazed to find that it was already early summer. Much warmer than Pamela had expected. Such eye-wincingly bright sunlight that Alex slapped on ‘vintage’ (i.e. car boot sale) mirrored shades and Pamela peeled off her raincoat, feeling overdressed in her all-boring black.

  In their cool hotel room, with tiled floor and slatted blinds, they changed into lighter clothes, then went out in search of a café table to plan how to fill up the days, both bringing out magazine clippings, address lists, shops tracked down on the internet.

  To Pamela it felt good – warming, thawing and different – just to sit still, sip at tiny, heart-belting coffees and watch all these gorgeous brown people walk past.

  ‘We just can’t do summer dressing like this, can we?’ she thought out loud, looking at her woefully white legs flash between her black skirt and shoes.

  ‘No, we can’t.’ And Alex gave a nod at a woman striding towards them. She was in a khaki linen safari suit, sleeveless, with knee-length shorts ironed into rigid stiffness. On her deeply tanned bare feet she wore suede leopardskin pumps, and her dark, gelled-back hair was tied into a ponytail with a leopardskin scarf. Gold-rimmed sunglasses and a supple brown bag with just a hint of leopard detailing completed the look.

  She was so pulled together, so perfectly chic and accessorized, it made Pamela want to rush out to buy matching shoes and bags, fake tan, hair gel . . . decent sunglasses for once . . .

  ‘Don’t even think about copying,’ Alex warned.‘This is high-level continental dressing; we cannot even dream about going there. Khaki is disastrous on pale skin . . . linen wilts in the damp . . . we have no idea how to put scarves in our hair without turning into Gypsy Rose Lee, we know not the slightest thing about complex accessorizing. We are British: the only options open to us are to look cool, to look classic or to look a mess.’

  ‘Why is that, though?’ Pamela whined, knowing exactly which category she was in despite spending way too heavily on fashionable labels.‘Why can’t we even begin to get it?’

  ‘They have no school uniforms.’ Alex was warming to her topic.‘These women have been co-ordinating and eye-lining since primary three. We don’t stand a chance. Plus there’s still the whole Catholic, marry young, have babies, keep your man happy vibe going on here as well.’

  ‘Ha . . .’ Pamela saw a beautiful mama in a strappy red sundress and matching heels pass, pushing a double buggy with baby and toddler just a year or so apart.‘Who knows,’ she said.‘Maybe they’ve got it right and we’re the major cock-ups.’

  Alex would have liked to utter a pithy ‘speak for yourself’, but her friend was too raw, too fragile. She could see the dark circles on Pamela’s pale face, proof of how badly she’d been sleeping, could see the tiredness, the lack of energy, the grind of trying to act normally, go through the motions with this great weight of depression tied to her every moment of the day.

  She wished she could do more, but there was nothing she could say to make this better and anyway Pamela didn’t want to talk about it much. Alex suspected that the IVF ordeal was now bringing Pamela down, and her marriage along with her.

  The least she’d been able to suggest was a few days’ break, a few days in which Alex was determined to keep her friend busy, amused, preoccupied; give her a mental holiday.

  So they wandered the streets, poking their noses into every shop, art gallery, museum and café that looked interesting. They ate platefuls of seafood, fish and tortilla, sank rough old Spanish Rioja and chilled sherry with ice, nibbled at fat olives dripping oil.

  Pamela began to thaw in the warm April sun, heard herself laughing long and hard at some joke of Alex’s, the sound taking her by surprise. It wasn’t possible not to ache most of the time, especially in a place so filled with babies, children, burstingly pregnant mothers-to-be.

  But maybe it was possible to laugh, really laugh, in spite of the ache. That alone made her feel a little better.

  On their third night, they stayed out eating and touring the bars in the heart of the old town until after three in the morning, then meandered home, slightly too drunk, through the cobbled streets. When Pamela fell into her white bed in their shared white room, she closed her eyes and for the first time in months, sleep came straight away.

  But she woke up in the strange room from a dream so intense, she cried in the half-asleep moments when it was beginning to fade and she was waking up to realize it wasn’t true.

  She had dreamed absolutely vividly that she was Spanish, that she had smooth racehorse brown limbs, looked good in khaki, was making a leisurely four-course feast for a film-star-handsome husband and their three golden-brown children.

  That she too could twang her bikini in confidence on the beach, rinse off under the public showers, then change into an immaculate little white cotton outfit with crochet detailing. Comb through long brown hair with honey highlights. Be married to one of those men who looked good all summer, who suited pink and jade green polo shirts, who waxed and manicured his feet so they looked elegant in sandals, who carried a manbag and made it look suave.

  She knew why she was crying about this. It was regret, yearning, for her own family, for long, carefree summers, a sense of belonging, happiness. A bronzed Spanish family sitting round a supper table conveyed all the things she didn’t have. And desperately wanted. Only too late. That was how it felt. Too late.

  She got up, passed Alex sleeping soundly in a tangle of sheets and went to the bathroom to wash her face and shower.

  Under the warm water, she thought of Dave. Recently, the unthinkable was turning into a serious possibility: she and Dave could undo their marriage. She could leave him. She could box up all the things she’d carefully chosen for their married life and home together, dismantle the kitchen, sell the heavy wooden sleigh bed, divide out the cutlery, the crockery, neatly stack books into piles of his and hers. There weren’t many joint things to squabble over. There had never been too many things in their flat and she had bought most of them. Dave had been in charge of acquiring CDs, DVDs. He could have the telly, the stereo, the computer, she decided. The marital hardware.

  Maybe she would live in a tiny flat, like Alex, for a while, but really, she hoped she would find someone else, maybe a man with children of his own. A divorced dad, instant family. Maybe his wife could have died. No, too tragic. Left them to go abroad . . . never to be seen again. Oh for God’s sake. Too ridiculous, she acknowledged.

  In the back of Pamela’s mind was the thought that, if she could start over, a future without her own child wouldn’t be so bleak. Right now it felt that the worst thing in the world would be to have to stay with Dave and accept this childlessness. Live on and on with it and with him.

  And didn’t Alex have a point? That really, it was only children that held people together, over the long term?

  There in the shower, surrounded on three sides by glittering white tiles, fat chrome lever taps, drenched by the 12-inch-wide showerhead, she dared to think about single life. Being single again for the first time in twelve years . . . the chance to start at least a few things over.

  Only images of Dave on holiday came into her mind. He didn’t do summer well. He could still look good to her in a thick sweater or a suit, quality tailoring filling him out in all the right places, shoulder pads doing for him what his own posture never could. But in the heat, casually dressed, he was a disaster, all loose T-shirts and baggy shorts, thick factor 50 on his pale skin, and sandals revealing hairy feet. On holiday with him, she always felt ill at ease. As if she wasn’t with Dave at all, but an annoyingly embarrassing younger brother; someone who thought wearing a baseball cap backwards ‘to stop my neck getting burned’ was OK.

  The truth was, she had no energy for the big decision ahead. The ‘would she?’ or ‘wouldn’t she?’ stay with him. Even on the days when she t
hought she did want to leave, making the bed was too much, so how would she deal with unmaking a marriage? So every day, the decision remained unmade, all the arguments raging round her head.

  Probably she owed it to Dave to try therapy, couple counselling, but the thought of sharing all the agonizing, all the angry silences, the petty rows, was too hard.

  Everything felt too hard. She knew from the group that most of them had been through all these things too. But ‘working through it’, ‘talking it out’, ‘sharing’ – she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here, in this hotel, in this city for as long as possible. Escape, run away. Maybe she could just rent out a room and live here. Not have to go back and pack up her belongings or face Dave and tell him she didn’t want to do this any more. She could just phone him:

  ‘Hello, it’s me . . . Yes, I’m still in Barcelona. No . . . I’m not coming back. I’m going to stay.’

  Rinsing off the last of the conditioner and soap, Pamela closed the conversation with herself, decided to try and not think about it for a few hours and reached over for one of the hotel’s thick towels.

  Alex was still sound asleep when she went back into the room, so she decided to dress and go down to breakfast alone.

  She chose a big glass of orange juice along with coffee – hot, black and fully caffeinated – scrambled egg, toast and a fluffy croissant.

  The breakfast room had floor to ceiling windows which opened out onto the hotel’s lush green garden of a courtyard where some of the guests were seated. But it looked too bright for her out there, the tables, crockery and waiter’s shirt all glared far too white in the strong sunlight for someone with a trace of unaccustomed hangover.

  She was daydreaming, coffee cup in hand when she felt, like sunlight falling on her bare arm, the warmth of someone’s stare. She looked up and saw, several tables away, a very attractive Spaniard looking at her over his coffee. When her gaze met his, he smiled, raised his cup slightly, then picked up his paper, a little self-consciously, and began to study it.