My phone rings just as I’m trying to chew a too-big mouthful of baguette. It’s Julie so I pull the big chunk of half chewed bread out of my mouth and put it on the wrapper on my lap so that I can speak to her. The woman on the bench opposite me gives me a disapproving look, but she’s got crumbs all over her chest so I don’t think I’ll bother getting too upset what she thinks about my manners.
“Are you all right?” Julie asks.
I wish people wouldn’t ask that question. No-one ever asks it when you actually are all right, just when they know that you’re not and then you feel obliged to tell them that you’re OK anyway.
“I’m OK.”
“So what happened?”
I tell her about the supermarket and bumping into Mandy and Guy and then bumping into the lorry driver and about how cross He was that I’d lied to Him and about how awful the evening at Mandy’s had been. I don’t tell her everything. I give her the abridged version and I can see Crumb Woman eavesdropping as I speak. Her bench would read ‘loved poking her nose into other people’s business.’
“But you’ve not really lied to him,” Julie says.
“Well I did,” I say. “I didn’t tell Him that I went round to yours for lunch or about getting the lift from the lorry driver, and I still haven’t told Him that we met up after swimming last week.”
“And do you normally account for all your movements?” she asks.
“No, of course not. No. But I suppose He usually knows where I am. I mean, I don’t normally go anywhere that I don’t normally go and He knows where I am, pretty much, most of the time.”
I wonder if what I’m saying makes any sense to her at all. I don’t want her to think I’m a complete saddo who does as she’s told all the time.
“Sounds like he keeps you on a pretty tight lead to me,” she says. “But he must be happy about us being friends if he’s letting you invite me round for dinner.”
I don’t know what to say now. I thought Julie would just know how it is. I thought she understood how He does things but clearly she doesn’t.
“Marion?” She’s waiting for me to go on. Crumb Woman is also waiting for me to go on.
“He’s not letting me invite you round for dinner, He’s making me. He’s making me invite you round so that He can spoil things.”
“How’s he going to do that?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what He wants to do. He doesn’t like me having friends. He likes to just keep things how they are.”
I can hear myself speaking and it sounds daft. Julie will think I’m paranoid, and Crumb Woman clearly already thinks I’m a bona fide nutcase.
“Marion,” Julie says, “I’m on your side. That’s all you have to remember on Saturday and all the days until Saturday, OK?”
“OK.”
“So I’ll see you after swimming tonight, same as last week and we’ll decide on a game plan for Saturday.”
“OK.”
“Great. See you then.”
I didn’t even tell her about the dog and Mandy’s baby but I can tell her later.
I look down at my lunch. I don’t feel like eating it any more. I don’t know why I get baguette sandwiches: so much effort involved and it’s just bread after all that chewing. It’s just to make it feel worth buying because it’s not what I’d have at home.
I throw it in the bin and put the Kit Kat in my pocket to put in Mandy’s desk drawer as a treat for when she comes back in tomorrow. Crumb Woman watches me as I walk out of the park.
The afternoon drags without Mandy, even though her not being there means I’m much busier than usual. At least three customers ask me where she is. I just tell them her grandma has died and we’re hoping she’ll be back in the office tomorrow. I hope Mandy hasn’t got a real granny that might die anytime soon. I kind of feel as if I’m tempting fate with my spurious bereavement story. I don’t want to be karmically responsible for killing her actual granny.
By the time I leave the office, all I can think about is my swim. I can’t wait to be weightless in that water, to feel the shock of coldness when I get in and find my rhythm as I work my way through the pool.
When I get home, He’s not there but the dog has made its presence felt. I put down newspapers all around the edge of the kitchen before I left the house this morning but the dog has managed to get into the living room and has peed up against the side of the chair and the settee and crapped in the middle of the carpet. This has got to be the most ill-conceived present in the history of the universe. Who thinks ‘ooh, she’s lost her baby so I’ll get her a puppy and she’ll be delighted’?
Given that it’s already done enough wees to last a fortnight, taking the poor animal out for a walk seems a bit futile, but I don’t want to start clearing up the mess until I’m sure he’s not going to make another one. And I feel sorry for the little fella. He’s probably missing his mum and just pissing for something to do.
So I take him to the park round the corner. It’s a big park: people drive here to walk their dogs. There’s a play area and a picnic area. There’s even a duck pond. There are tons of people out walking their dogs and they keep stopping and chatting to each other. Some of them even say hello to me as we pass. People I’ve never met before. It’s like having a dog with you makes you friends. You’re in the same club. They too have cleared crap up off their living room carpet. Except I haven’t... yet.
When I get back, He’s there.
“D’you know the dog’s crapped in the living room?” He says.
“Has he?”
“Yes he fucking has. And he’s peed on the settee!”
“Now that is naughty,” I say to the dog.
“I thought we were going to keep him in the kitchen during the day?”
“I thought we had,” I say, “He was in here when I got home.”
“That’s probably because he’d got fed up with his own stink in the other room,” He says, looking at me as though I’d encouraged the dog to make the mess. “Anyway, it needs cleaning up.”
“What about the dinner?”
“Sod the dinner, you need to clean the mess up. That’s what it’s like having a dog, isn’t it? You clean up the dog’s mess and I’ll take him to the chippy with me and get us some fish and chips.”
So here I am again, on my hands and knees with rubber gloves and a bucket full of disinfectant. The living room will smell of fresh pine and not-so-natural lavender for weeks after I’ve finished with it. Still, it’s not all bad: at least I don’t have to cook before swimming.
The plates are on the table waiting by the time He gets back from the chippy; there’s tea in the pot and salt and vinegar and ketchup sitting waiting. The dog runs in ahead of Him so it’s dog, smell of chips and then Him. Chippy tea is still a treat. It takes me right back to when my dad used to get us chippy dinner every now and then, once in a blue moon, and it tasted like the best thing I could imagine. I had so many lovely dinners that my mum poured her love into as she cooked them, but nothing ever tasted of love and happiness as much as a surprise chippy dinner from my dad. I almost expect to see my dad walk in with the paper bundle.
“Some kid at the chippy has just asked me what the dog was called,” He says, unwrapping the fish and chips and plonking mine on my plate. “You’ve not even given it a name. What are you going to call it?”
I say the first thing that comes into my head. “Geoff”
“Geoff?”
“Yeah. Like my dad.”
“Geoff? Nobody calls a dog Geoff. Nobody calls their dog after their dad. Choose something else.”
I don’t see why people don’t call their dog after their dad, but never mind.
“OK then, how about ‘Chips’?”
“Chips, is that the best you can do? There you go Chips,” and he gives the dog a chip. “It’s a bloody good job we didn’
t get pizza instead, you could have found yourself called Pepperoni.” He laughs loudly at his own joke and I laugh too. Fish and chips and a dog pissing on the furniture bring out the best in us. Maybe we should run our own takeaway and keep a menagerie in the back.
It’s nearly eight by the time I screw up what’s left of my chips in their wrapper and take his from Him to throw in the bin too.
“Have you seen the time? I’d better get ready for swimming.”
“Surely you’re not going tonight?”
“Why not?”
“What about the dog?”
“The dog’s fine.”
“The dog needs settling in properly. You’re the one that’s cleaned the shit up off the carpet, surely you want to make sure he doesn’t feel the need to do that again?”
“But you’re here.”
“Pub quiz again,” He says. “It’s a grudge match, don’t forget. Second last week. We’re going for the winners’ prize this time round. It’s only one swim, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ll be able to go next week, little Chips will have settled in properly by then, won’t you Chips? Here, give me those wrappers if you like, I’ll put them in the outside bin on my way out.”
So I hand Him the chip wrappers and off He goes, leaving me with the dog and the lingering smell of disinfectant.
25
As a teenager I travelled the world having romantic adventures in all the most picturesque locations with the most chivalrous of men. I rationed myself, stopping the daydream at critical points so that I could re-start it the next day, with a bit of a recap over the best moments. I left out the boring bits. I skipped past the bits that were difficult to explain and I never got past the bit where he asked me to marry him and we skipped off happily into the sunset together to lead a life of wedded bliss. It was all very chaste and respectable. It was all absolutely nothing like real life turned out to be.
By the time I met Him I wasn’t expecting a tall, Swedish archaeologist any more, or a surfer from the South of France or even an Italian aristocrat whose family had long since lost its fortune but retained its title. Reality had set in by the time I was twenty, and by the time I was thirty reality had really started to bite. But I remember all those handsome suitors and the way they wooed me and the way, after playing pretty damned hard to get it has to be said, I’d finally cave, only to have to overcome numerous obstacles that I put in our way so that we could be reconciled again and again. I’d take things as far down the line as choosing a dress for the big day but never far enough that I’d ever have to wash his dirty socks or scrape his discarded half-eaten dinner into the bin.
I don’t dream of those boys any more. I don’t think they’d recognise me now. But I still daydream. I’m making the dinner – spaghetti Bolognese – and imagining that there’s a knock at the door. I’m busy folding the clean washing upstairs and pairing up socks so I don’t answer it straight away, I’ve got my hands full, and while I’m coming down the stairs the doorbell rings again. And then again. And I wonder who on earth it can be that’s so keen for me to open the door. When I open it there are two police officers – a man and a woman – and I can see their car behind them.
“Hello”, says the lady police officer, “is it Marion?”
“Yes,” I say. “Is everything all right?”
“Can we come in Marion?” she says.
“Yes. Is everything all right?”
They come in to my living room and ask me would I like a cup of tea. It’s my living room, surely I’m the one that’s supposed to offer the cup of tea.
“I’ve just had one, thanks,” I say. Or sometimes, just to string it out a bit longer I might say “How rude of me not to offer it. I won’t be a minute.” And I head off to make a cup of tea for each of us and come back with it all on a tray with biscuits on a plate and a sugar bowl and spoons like I never would normally.
“Sit down love,” says the policeman.
I sit down.
“We’ve got some bad news I’m afraid,” he says. And then he tells me that my husband has been killed in a car crash or has been murdered on his way home from work or died in a gas explosion at the office. I can change the story however I like. I can even make Him survive temporarily if I like and then die later in hospital. But He always dies at some point.
And the lady police officer comes and sits next to me on the settee and puts her arm round me and says, “I’m sorry love,” and hands me a cup of tea with sugar in.
And then I have to try and look upset. They’d think I wasn’t normal if I wasn’t upset and things always get interrupted because I can’t really imagine just how I would feel. I try to work out if I would cry or not. I just don’t know.
It doesn’t matter anyway. If I cry she just hands me a tissue and if I don’t she just puts it down to the shock and tells me it will take a while to sink in.
And then I have to go and identify the body. And it’s always a dark room and there’s always plinky-plonky music playing as though we’re in a spa or something. The man pulls the sheet back to reveal his face and He’s grinning at me. I try to make Him look battered or miserable or nondescript, even, but He’s always bloody grinning and I have to go back to the start.
“How’s the dog been?”
He comes straight up behind me, pinches my bum, kisses me on the back of my neck and makes me jump out of my skin.
“Fine,” I say, “fine. I think he’s settling in now.”
I don’t tell Him that I’ve had to disinfect the carpet for the fourth night running. I don’t tell Him that I went out at lunchtime today to buy more disinfectant in anticipation of the dog pee that would be all over the house when I got home from work. Luckily it was less than it has been. We have turned a corner. I hope.
Last night, He was threatening to send Chips back if he doesn’t stop peeing on the carpet. He was fine about it on Tuesday night because He was still in a good mood after his pub quiz triumph on Monday. But last night He yelled at the dog and then yelled at me. It wasn’t my idea to bring a dog into the house but He seems to have forgotten that. The dog was his gift to me and is therefore my responsibility. Fine. I missed my swim but I will get back to swimming and now I have something else too: dog walking. I can use the dog’s calls of nature to go for a walk whenever I want and He can’t find an objection strong enough to stand a chance against the possibility of shit on the living room floor.
I have lived less than five minutes walk from a park for almost five years and in all that time I’ve probably been there about three times. Until this week that is, when I’ve spent more time there than I’ve spent at home, more or less. I never knew what a lovely park it was and I never knew how many people spent so much time there, walking their dogs or their kids or their girlfriends. And I have found out one important piece of information known only to dog owners: all dog owners are automatically friends with all other dog owners.
In the past four days I’ve had more complete strangers say a friendly hello to me than I’ve ever had in my life. As a kid, I was always embarrassed by my mum’s ability to strike up a conversation with complete strangers in bus queues or changing rooms or supermarkets, but with a dog by my side I’ve lost all of those inhibitions and it seems completely normal to chat to people that you’ve never seen before in your life – providing they also have a dog.
I’m now on first name terms with a golden retriever, two mongrels and an enormously fat and slow dog whose owner claims it’s a Doberman but in Doberman circles it’s probably ostracised for looking as far removed from vicious as it’s possible to be without being a cuddly toy. The golden retriever is called Diana and is walked by a lovely old lady who lets the dog off its lead and sits reading on a bench while it goes off to do its business. The mongrels are Sam and Fido. Sam has a hassled housewife owner, who tell me that it’s the kids’ dog because they mithered for it but she’s the only one who ever f
eeds it, walks it or cleans up its sick when it’s been out eating all kinds of crap it’s found lying around (which it frequently does, apparently). Fido is owned by a student type with a goatee and a pierced eyebrow. He’s a lovely dog that gets very excited when he sees Chips. Not that Chips is bothered, he’s far too interested in pissing up every tree he can find. And finally, the Doberman is called Jupiter and walks around incredibly slowly with an old fella who doesn’t smoke a pipe but looks like he should. He seems quite friendly with golden retriever lady and I suspect there might be a little bit of a dog walker’s romance there. Unrequited maybe. Perhaps they’ve both been married for fifty years or so and have had enough of their other halves but can’t bring themselves to break free and start again at their age. Perhaps that’s how I’ll end up, traipsing round parks with a dog having polite conversations with people whose name I don’t even know and feeling like we have something in common just because we know the names of each other’s dogs.
Chips is settling in and I’m settling into being a dog owner. It seems ridiculous to say it but having a dog has given me a whole other life. A life where I’m walking not to get anywhere, but just to walk. A life where it’s OK to talk to strangers and they become less like strangers by the day. It’s not like the swimming pool where people see each other week after week but never say a word, never even nod at each other. In the park we don’t have the embarrassment of being almost naked in front of people we don’t know or having to shower side by side with someone we’ve never even said hello to. In the park we’re all fully dressed and we have a prop with us as an icebreaker for conversation. The etiquette has shifted: in the pool it would be weird to suddenly start talking to a fellow swimmer; in the park, if you don’t pass the time of day with your fellow dog walkers you’re the weirdo.
The SECRET TO NOT DROWNING Page 17
