Worn Out Wife Seeks New Life

by Carmen Reid

  ‘The cast is off and the boot is on,’ Dave said. ‘Things are definitely improving. When are you coming to see us? Your mum will be back in another couple of weeks, are you going to come and see us then? Take a bit of time off? Loll around the garden in the sun. Drink a few beers with your old man?’

  It sounded nice… but it also sounded like an invitation back to a place in the past, which couldn’t possibly happen.

  ‘Well… I’ll take a look at my calendar and see what I can do,’ Alex said, ‘it would be great to catch up with everyone. When’s Natalie home?’

  ‘Not long after your mum, so we can have a big family get-together…’

  Alex tried to imagine it: the garden, sunshine, beers, Dad cooking on the barbeque, Mum in the kitchen fussing over salads and sauces… Natalie on the phone, and then asking if Soph and Ellie could come over, and Mum doing that disappointed face, because this was supposed to be family time. Natalie suggesting she eat then go to Soph or Ellie’s house… Mum looking practically tearful at the thought.

  Maybe they should all have gone on Mum’s big holiday, it occurred to Alex now. Then he could have said goodbye to them all properly.

  God, it was all so complicated… look at that garden with its plants and chimenea, and now tables and chairs. All the choosing and shopping and buying and planting and deciding and cooking and all the effort required for everything. Alex had stood in front of the bathroom mirror before this call deciding what to put on his face so he could shave. Did he need the squirty stuff from the aerosol can his mother had given him? With its promises of being alcohol free, sensitive, creamy and protective? Or did he just need to froth up this bar of soap between his hands? Everything about modern life just seemed so needlessly complex and overwhelming. It was so depressing and he could not be bothered with any of it any more.

  ‘Great to hear from you, Alex, but I think I may have to go now,’ his dad said. ‘River, the US lady, is approaching and she will be demanding my full attention. Why don’t I phone you after the party and I’ll tell you all about it?’

  ‘Good idea,’ Alex said brightly, ‘I really hope you have a great time.’

  ‘Thank you, I will give it my best shot. And what about you, Alex? Are you planning any good times?’

  ‘Yes, definitely…’

  ‘Good to hear.’

  ‘Dad?’ Alex could see that his father was about to hang up and he just wanted to hold his attention for a moment longer.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just… have a good time. Be happy.’

  ‘Yes! You too, buddy.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  35

  The drive to the beach was not straightforward. Tess had missed not just one freeway exit, but two. So there had been painful detours and double-backs and one incident where she had found herself having to cross a six-laned highway with about 100 yards to spare before her turnoff. This had involved a substantial amount of swearing at the implacable lady from Google Maps and the two over-excited dogs in the hatchback of the car.

  But now, according to her phone, ‘her destination was on the right’. So, she drove into one of the huge, virtually empty car parks they seemed to have all over the place in this part of the world and tried to sit quietly for a moment or two to recover from the stress of the journey. But Burton and Wilder sensed immediately that the destination had been reached and they were far too pleased to let her sit for long. There was so much yipping, yapping and panting that she knew she would have to get out and put them onto their leashes.

  Maybe it wasn’t just the stress of driving that was making her nervous. She was wound up today because this was the day that Dave and River were having a party in her home. Dave had mentioned it a few days ago, almost in passing, and when she’d questioned him, he’d tried to play it completely down, until question by question she’d established that about forty-five people were coming! Forty-five people? They were setting up rented tables and chairs on the lawn, they were putting up a barbeque on the patio, using her beloved Smeg range as a pizza oven and… she couldn’t help it, the whole thing was making her feel hugely annoyed and anxious. And what if something got damaged? Would it come out of River’s deposit? Or Dave and Tess’s home insurance? If it was a joint party, just what were the liabilities exactly? And even as she thought this, she had to tell herself: ‘Aren’t you the fun party girl!’

  And then there was the fact that she was meeting Nathan – that also felt stressful. She hadn’t mentioned this to Dave. ‘I’m going to the beach, walking the dogs,’ she’d told her husband when he’d asked what she would be doing while he and River were ruining the garden.

  She tried to put things into perspective: ‘They’re having some people round. You know what it’s like, forty-five people say they’ll come, twenty-five turn up; they’ll have a few drinks and a burger and head off again. It will all be very sedate and boring. And as for me, I’m meeting a nice professor on a sunny afternoon for a dog walk. Again, it’s all very sedate and boring. So shut up and calm down!’

  She opened the car boot and clipped the dogs’ leashes onto their harnesses. They each had a separate bungee cord lead that then clipped onto one leash for the walker to hold. This gave the dogs some space from one another, and prevented their leads from tangling, and it meant she couldn’t be pulled in two different directions by the dogs. But generally, although the dogs liked walking separately, they also accepted walking together and didn’t pull much. River must have done some careful training around that, because two chunky malamutes pulling against one walker would have been far too much struggle.

  It was breezy, more so than Tess had expected. As she took the first paces from the car with the dogs, she reassessed her beach outfit choices. She’d gone with a knee-length wrap skirt, plus vest top, a floppy straw hat, sunglasses and she had changed her driving shoes for flipflops. Was she going to be too cold, she wondered? No, surely it would be fine. They could pick a more sheltered beach route and walk out of the wind. Also, the cloud was clearing, most likely it was about to get very warm.

  She’d agreed to meet Nathan on the beachfront beside the ice cream shop, but she was a good fifteen minutes early. As she walked out of the car park, she saw there was a row of shops on the other side of the road, so she thought she would buy herself some juice. A nice chilly bottle of apple juice would boost the blood sugar and help with the nervy, almost fluttering feeling in her stomach.

  One hand on her hat against the breeze, she crossed the road with the dogs and came to the front of the little food and drink store. For a moment, she considered bringing the dogs inside, but the shop looked small and cramped and, as Tom had told her, Burton and Wilder took up a lot of doggie real estate. She looked around for something obvious to tie them to and decided on a sturdy-looking ice cream advertising flag with a weighty base. Then she went into the store and spent several minutes trying to work out which of the Snapple flavours she wanted from the fridge. She was at the counter paying when the sudden movement of the flag caught her eye. The window behind the cashier didn’t go all the way down, so she couldn’t see what the dogs were doing, but she had the immediate suspicion that they were on the move.

  ‘Oh! Oh no! Just a second!’ she exclaimed, dropping her drink and rushing for the door.

  No sooner had she stepped out than she could see the dogs were off. They were running down the broad sidewalk with the flag still attached to the lead, still upright, racing behind them. It looked as if the flag was terrifying the living daylights out of them as the more it clattered and bounced behind them, the faster they ran.

  Tess had already started running. Within several strides, she realised she had to lose the flipflops because otherwise, she was definitely going to lose the dogs and also, most likely several toes.

  ‘Burton! Wilder!’ she yelled. ‘Here, here! Good dogs!’

  She was clinging onto her hat and her sunglasses, while her skirt flapped like an open door in t
he wind. The dogs were going faster, so much faster than her. The gap between her and them was widening at every second.

  ‘Burton! Wilder!’

  The flag hit a kerbstone and fell over, which caused Burton to leap in panic into the road.

  ‘Jezzzzus Chrissssssst!’ Tess hissed.

  She relinquished her hold on the hat, then the sunglasses, letting them both be snatched from her head as she ploughed on after the dogs.

  A silver car made an abrupt tooting and screeching halt to avoid the dogs, then the flag, then Tess galloping in their wake, wrap skirt dangling.

  Was that astonished face on the other side of the windscreen Nathan’s? There was no time to check.

  Tess’s hips were burning in their sockets; the balls of her feet were stabbed by one hundred little stones and spikes as she ran and then the bloody skirt snagged on something poking from a railing and was yanked clean off. She didn’t even look round, losing a skirt barely registered compared with the horror of what the dogs might do on the beach… mow down grannies, maim a toddler, break the leg of a random passerby. She had to catch them.

  ‘Wiiiiilder! Here!’ She hurled at the generally slightly more obedient one of the dogs, as they raced down a wooden staircase, flag rattling behind them, towards the beach. And there at the bottom of the stairs, they finally met their stop sign. An impossibly handsome guy in a short neoprene suit, a yellow-and-turquoise-clad Adonis with wet, curly blonde hair, caught hold of the flag base and finally yanked the dogs to a halt.

  ‘Oh my God! Thank you! Thank you so much. Oh… God…’ Tess could hardly get the words out, she was panting and sweating so much. She wasn’t sure she’d run so far and so fast since her final appearance in the mothers’ race at Natalie’s primary school sports day.

  Although she was now dressed only in a short vest top and some clean and white but fairly mumsy pants – pants UK not pants US – she was only registering the remains of her outfit in some small side-room of her brain, because mainly she was just completely traumatised… and completely relieved.

  The dogs, now that they had come to a halt, were panting heavily too. Just like Tess, they were a bit chubby and unfit for this level of activity. Neoprene guy, maybe to stop having to look at her pants, was untangling the flag from the lead. When he’d managed this, he handed her the lead, told her he’d take the flag back to the store and then with her delayed thanks ringing in his ears, he headed up the wooden stairs.

  Tess considered, for a moment, going back up onto the road to look for her skirt, glasses and hat – how she’d managed to keep the basket with her purse and car key tucked under her arm through the escapade, she had no idea. But she was too tired and suddenly it all felt incredibly humiliating. So instead, she sat down in the sand and as soon as she did that, the dogs also sat down beside her.

  ‘Let’s just take a moment,’ she told them, patting the nearest one on the head, ‘let’s just sit here and gather our thoughts. Poor dogs,’ she added, ‘thank goodness Nathan didn’t run his car into you. That would not have been a good start to this…’ she realised she was about to say date.

  But this really wasn’t a date.

  ‘Meeting,’ she said instead.

  She glanced down at the pants. Where they met the tops of her lily-white, English legs, several small curly hairs poked out from a deeply neglected bikini line.

  ‘Tess! Tess! Is that you?’

  She knew without turning round that Nathan was coming down the stairs. Putting her hands into her lap and wondering if it was too late to tuck any of those offending hairs away, she decided that it might be better to remain sitting in the sand. Within moments, Nathan, a picture of the preppie summer gent in a pale blue polo shirt, chino shorts and not the ubiquitous pair of trainers, but classy-looking leather sandals, was standing in front of her. She even liked the smart white cap he’d picked to protect his hairless head from the sun. He was doing what it was best to do in the absence of head hair: wear feature glasses, curate the stubble beard and maintain a fit physique. Stanley Tucci, she thought all of a sudden, the dapper American actor, that’s who he reminded her of.

  ‘Tess, hi, are you okay?’ he asked. ‘I had to slam on the brakes to avoid you and the dogs.’

  ‘Oh! That was you! I’m so sorry…’

  ‘Did they get away from you?’ he asked.

  ‘Well… yes!’ Surely that much was obvious?

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked again, then extending his hand added: ‘Do you want me to help you get up?’

  ‘Nathan… I’ve lost my skirt,’ she cast her eyes down at her bare legs, paler than the sand, ‘not to mention my hat, glasses and shoes.’

  ‘Oh, my…’ then from the crook of his arm, he took the creamy cotton cable cardigan she’d not even noticed until now. ‘Could this help you?’ he asked. ‘Then we could go back out to the road and look for them.’

  She opened up the cardigan’s buttons, then stood up and wrapped it round her waist, tying it in place with the thick sleeves. It was a very nice cardigan. She wondered if his ex-wife had bought it for him, pre-divorce, or if he’d been talked into it by a helpful sales assistant.

  He looked a little concerned for her, pushing up his horn-rimmed specs and running a hand over his chin.

  ‘Let me take the dogs,’ he offered, so she handed over the lead and they went up the wooden stairs and out onto the sidewalk there.

  The skirt was lying in a heap just a short distance away, so Tess picked it up and shook it out. It had escaped lightly, with only a slight tear at the front where it had snagged. Further investigation uncovered the sunglasses at the side of the road, but they had been run over by a car and could only be put in the bin. The hat must have caught the wind and blown free, because a thorough search and even a request or two into the roadside shops didn’t unearth it. And Tess did not like the smirk on the face of the girl in the chic little realtor office, who had clearly seen her running after the dogs and was still amused.

  The flipflops were relocated, not far from the shop where all the trouble had begun, and it was a big relief for Tess to brush off her dirty feet and restore them to some kind of flipflop dignity.

  ‘Can I buy you an ice cream? Or a coffee?’ Nathan offered. ‘Or maybe a brandy? And do you still want to walk along the beach, or have you had quite enough exercise for the day?’

  There was just the tiniest little hint of mischief to this comment.

  ‘Have I had enough exercise?’ Tess repeated, with her own note of mischief. ‘I’m guessing I looked pretty ridiculous sprinting across that road.’

  Allowing himself just the smallest of laughs, Nathan said gallantly, ‘I’m just glad you and the dogs are okay. It looked a little scary there for a few minutes.’

  They did walk along the beach… for several hours in fact, headlong into the warm wind, with soft sand underfoot and the crash and toss of the sea beside them. It was beginning to feel like a real holiday at last, being somewhere so beautiful. She and Nathan walked and talked for mile after mile. They talked about their work and about their families. They covered the trivial stuff – shows they liked and favourite films – as well as more serious things too: worries about their children’s career paths, their own career paths, politics, the future… It was a long walk, and a long, intense conversation, so when they were back at the wooden stairs, they were both tired and hungry.

  ‘You know, about a mile from here, there’s a nice beach restaurant, where we can get something to eat and drink, for ourselves and the dogs,’ Nathan suggested. ‘Would you like to do that?’

  It turned out that Tess would, so she followed Nathan’s car to the restaurant, where there was a table out on the terrace that allowed dogs.

  ‘Seafood salad…’ she told him, as she looked through the menu. ‘I don’t know if I have ever seen seafood salad on a menu in England, but over here it is the only thing I want.’

  ‘Shall we ask them to give us each a small glass of wine?’ Nathan wondered. �
��I’ve discussed this in depth with my Biology colleagues and I’m assured that a healthy adult can process about one unit of alcohol per hour.’

  So small glasses of fruity, icy-cold wine were supplied and the food, drink and conversation happened against a backdrop of the golden-pink sunset over the beach.

  Marriages… the conversation took a turn for the extremely personal and Tess found herself wanting to know more about how Nathan and his wife, Lynda, divorced.

  ‘Did you see it coming?’ she wondered. ‘Did things go wrong quite quickly… or did it take a long time to reach the conclusion… sorry,’ she added, ‘if you don’t want to talk about this, I’ll totally understand.’

  ‘No… it’s okay. I’ve thought about it so much, it’s kind of a relief to talk through all the things I’ve considered,’ Nathan told her, ‘you know, we did couples’ counselling for six months. We did all the things you’re supposed to do. We raked up every single old grievance and explained it fully, without interruption, with “active listening” techniques, so we could fully understand each other’s pain and apologise for it.

  ‘We set a date and agreed that it would be a fresh start, a symbolic new beginning, and from there on, we wouldn’t refer to the old arguments and old resentments, we would let them go. We tried to rekindle some of the physical side… err…’

  Nathan made his slightly flushed embarrassed face and Tess quickly nodded and added: ‘I’ve got you.’

  ‘But really…’ he clasped his hands together and tucked them under his chin, ‘when I look back and think about all that now… it’s like when you have a beloved, elderly family dog that you know is dying. But you do the expensive surgery that the vet says has only a slim chance of success because you’ll do anything to keep that dog alive. But… the dog dies anyway. That’s not to say it wasn’t the right thing to try with all the therapy and everything, but our dog died.’