What’s happening to me? Why are you allowing her to take me away?
I say, “See you later, Gaz,” hoping he’ll understand.
I find it difficult to concentrate at school and rush back at 4.30 to collect him. I sit and wait for ages in the waiting room. They know I’m here, but no one tells me anything and I begin to wonder if something dreadful has happened.
Then the door opens and out he comes, wagging and squirming – smiling, even. The nurse hands me the lead and says the vet will be out in a minute.
We wait patiently – I note the bare patch on his back where the lump was, with a small bandage covering the wound. “Come this way,” the vet says abruptly and we are once again ushered into his room.
“So … the good news is we’ve removed the tumour,” he says.
I wait for the bad news.
“I’m afraid it was cancerous, but we think we’ve got it all. You need to be vigilant now – to keep an eye on any possible recurrence. It’s very common in dogs like Gaz, I’m afraid.”
I feel sick, pleased, worried and relieved, all at the same time.
What would I do without him? He’s been my stalwart companion through all this … he doesn’t deserve cancer.
“So, do you mean he’s all right now, then?” I say, willing my eyes to dry up. I really don’t want to cry again – I understand how difficult it must be to be a vet. Not only are you dealing with animals in distress, but with their owners too. You have to be a scientist, surgeon, counsellor and friend, all in one.
“He should be fine … but there are no guarantees, I’m afraid. I’d like to see him again in a week, just to check the wound and if you have any concerns, bring him back any time. Because of where the excision is, we don’t have to worry about him biting his stitches, but keep an eye on it. He may try to roll …”
We say our goodbyes and I go to settle the bill at the little window in the waiting room. As much as I love Gaz, I do a double take when I look at the total. We’d never taken out pet insurance – David never considered it worth it. I think of sending him the bill with a snarky comment … but then I think, no, this is nothing to do with him any more.
Gaz is my dog … my friend, companion and I’ll deal with it.
When we get home, I give him a larger than normal amount of tea to try to compensate for his bad day. We snuggle down to watch Eastenders together on the sofa and I say, “Sorry, Gaz. What a horrible day you’ve had.” I grab his head, holding his silky ears in my hands and kiss him on the soft patch on the top of his head.
Steady on, old girl. You’re hurting my ears, but thanks for your concern. Not one of my better days.
Chapter Fourteen
We get two different estate agents round to value the house. We don’t let on that, in fact, they won’t be making any money on the deal, so they wander around, saying what a ‘charming’ property it is and how, with a bit of updating here and there, it will be lovely.
What a bloody cheek. One of them says the bathrooms are ‘a bit tired’ and the other one, that the kitchen would benefit from some ‘modernising’.
When they’ve gone, I appraise the house and try to look at it with objective eyes. I suppose they’re right … we’ve lived here for years and done very little to it. It’s funny how you don’t notice after a while; it’s just your home – you don’t notice the shabby tiles in the bathroom, the mould around the window panes, the threadbare carpet going up the stairs, the boring garden. I thank God that we’re not actually selling it – we really would have to tart it up. Everyone is so ‘into’ buying houses these days after watching too many programmes on TV – they expect Sarah Beeny to have personally designed the interior. Well, show home this is not …
The agents’ valuations are within £10,000 of each other, so David inevitably goes for the smaller valuation and I, for the larger one. But what’s a few thousand when you’re talking hundreds? We agree on a figure and I’m happy with it.
I start looking at Prime Location and Rightmove on the laptop more seriously now. It’s funny how quickly I find myself looking at properties completely out of my price range – I wonder if I could knock them down a couple of hundred thousand? Maybe if I win the lottery, I could afford this Edwardian mansion with eight bedrooms and twenty acres …
I swop between rented and for sale and can’t decide what to do. Renting is just money down the drain, isn’t it? Do I know enough about Bath to buy something there?
People in France don’t have this obsession with buying houses. Why is it we British feel it’s just not … well, British, to rent? Surely it would be better to move somewhere temporarily first and see if I like it?
This all twirls round my head as I click on hundreds of houses and apartments.
David has agreed that I don’t have to move until December (that’s big of him). He and Suzie have got to sort out the mortgage situation and I’ve actually got to find somewhere. It sounds a long way away, but I suddenly realise it’s only, in fact, two months. That’s eight weeks to the uninitiated and that’s not long at all.
*
I take myself off to Bath most Saturdays and wander around various areas, trying to get the ‘feel’ of the place. I decide I like the area known as Bathwick – if you’re going to be in Bath, you might as well be central, otherwise what’s the point?
I’ve decided renting is the way to go – I can reassess after my trip to Australia.
I find several rented properties that I like the look of, but they don’t allow pets. Gaz is turning out to be a stumbling block.
I turn out to be rather a troublesome potential tenant; it seems what I want is near impossible in Bath – two bedrooms, a garden, somewhere to park, all mod cons and it has to be pet-friendly. A lot of the agents I speak to, look at me as if I might be slightly insane, but bite their lips and go and look through their filing cabinets, sighing heavily as they do so.
After a few weeks of searching, both physically and online, an agent rings me on my mobile and says something has just come on that he thinks is perfect for me.
I rush over after work and he shows me round this ground floor, two bedroomed apartment with its own parking place and a communal garden. Pets are allowed (with restrictions like being kept on the lead in the garden etc, but that’s fine). The street is a bit busy but – hey – it’s central and I can walk to the shops and there’s a park, just up the road. It’s unfurnished, apart from the white goods in the kitchen, has gas central heating and it’s painted in neutral colours.
I feel a flush of real excitement as he shows me round. I can’t quite believe I can afford it, but I think I can, just. I can move in on 20th December, which is perfect. School will have finished and I will have finished with school.
I take it – sign all the papers and pay the deposit.
When I get home, I email David with the news – we hardly ever actually speak to each other any more. I find email can be wonderfully impersonal and cold.
David
I have found somewhere to live in Bath. I move on 20th December.
We need to discuss who has what, re contents.
Anna
I think that’s cold enough, don’t you?
*
I tell both the kids about my flat and send them links, via the internet. Both approve and Lisa comes with me one Saturday to go and have another look at it. We take the opportunity to have a wander round the shops and it begins to sink in that this soon will be my local area. I’ll be able to walk to the Bath Theatre Royal and the The Little Theatre Cinema – both places I love. I look forward to my future cultural forays.
Following on from my email, David and I exchange a chain of emails along these lines:
David,
As my mother gave us the canteen of cutlery and the cut glass wine glasses and decanter, I’ll take those. I’ll also have the double bed (you can have the beds in the kids’ rooms). I’m leaving all the white goods, as the flat has them. I haven’t got a dining room, so
you may as well have the dining table and chairs – but I’ll take the three piece suite. I’m taking the telly, as I’m sure you and Suzie already have one.
Anna
Anna
That’s all okay with me – I would dispute the glasses and decanter though – I’m pretty sure my parents gave us those. It would have been nice to keep the three piece suite – I always thought you didn’t really like it?
David
David
It was definitely my parents – they gave them to us when we first moved in. Re the sofa etc, what makes you think I don’t like it? You’ll be keeping the one in the kitchen, anyway. By the way, please don’t lay on some big ‘do’ for my leaving at school. I’d rather slip away unnoticed, given the circumstances. No doubt people will want to buy me something – get me a M and S voucher and then I can either get something for the flat or clothes. Literally, no fuss please.
Anna
So there we have it – that’s what our marriage has boiled down to – sharing out the spoils. In some ways, I would like to leave everything behind and make a completely new start, but I have to be practical and I can’t afford to buy everything new.
I try to imagine the stuff from our house in the apartment and work out where I will put things. I realise I’ll have to buy a small table and chairs to stick at the end of the sitting room; the kitchen’s too small for one – hardly room to swing a cat. Talking of cats, where is Gaz going to base himself? It’ll have to be the sitting room; the only other places are the rather narrow corridor or my bedroom. Perhaps I’ll let him choose.
*
As the end of term approaches, I get my removal company to deliver some boxes and I start slowly packing. This sends Gaz into a highly nervous state and he sits permanently at the front door or at the bottom of the stairs – that way, I can’t escape without him. His wound has now fully recovered and the trauma of his days at the vet are in the dim and distant past. I check him out for lumps but as yet, nothing. Long may it last. Our walks to the rec are now tinged with sadness as we both know that there won’t be many left.
How odd it will be to leave this house – our bolt hole, our haven and yes, our love nest, for so many years.
*
Do you remember when we brought Adam home, David? In those days, they kept me in hospital for four or five days – you’d been at home with Holly, waiting for the big day when I was allowed home with him. You’d surprised me – you’d painted the little room and hung up a Welcome Home banner across the top of the front door. The house was full of flowers and cards.
I remember you lifting him out of my arms, as if he was a Fabergé egg. I was sitting in the back seat with him (before the days of compulsory car seats) and you walked so proudly with him up the garden path. He was wrapped in one of those blue blankets with little holes all over it and you laid him down in his cot. We both stood there, gazing down at him, hardly believing he was ours, that we had made something so incredible, after years of trying. We thought we’d never have a second child.
He was calm and awake and staring up at us with his piercing eyes, his mop of black hair sticking up – so black against the white sheet. Holly put a little blue rabbit next to him that you and she had bought the day before.
I remember you saying to me, “Thank you,” and me saying, “What do you mean?” and you saying, “Thank you for giving me a son.”
You had tears in your eyes and we held onto each other, crying with joy.
Do you remember that?
*
The Tuesday before the end of term, everyone is summoned to the staffroom after school. I know what’s coming and I’m dreading it. I’m secretly interested, however, to see how much people have coughed up for the voucher – I know when other staff have left in the past, I’ve rather resented having to give money. It seems you’re always having to fork out for someone or something in that staffroom. I wonder how many people felt the same way about me and just chucked a fiver into the pot, without much thought.
Our deputy head quietens everyone down – David is standing to his left, looking embarrassed. I scan the room for Suzie and she’s keeping a low profile right at the back, head down. Thank goodness David isn’t going to do the little speech – that would have been excruciating.
“So, we’re all gathered here today, to say goodbye to one of our best-loved members of staff – (certainly not best loved by your headmaster, I add) – one who will be sorely missed by both her pupils and her colleagues. She has been at the school for many years and her commitment and dedication has been second to none. Not only has she got hundreds of pupils successfully through hundreds of exams, but she has attended many extra-curricular activities and counselled girls and boys through times of trouble. She has been a truly wonderful teacher and I for one, will miss her …” Pause for applause. Everyone does indeed clap and there are a few muted ‘here, here’s’.
I hate this sort of thing, and I’m standing there, looking as embarrassed as David.
“As you all may know, Anna is taking early retirement and we wish her all the luck in the world with her future. Rather than giving her a traditional clock to stare at from her bath chair – (loud titters all round) – we have all clubbed together to buy you a voucher from M and S – we hope you will buy something either beautiful or practical, which will remind you of your time here with us all. Hip, hip … hooray. Hip, hip … hooray.”
Everyone cheers, as I come forward to accept the envelope and then we all stand around wondering when we can escape.
After enough time has elapsed, people start to drift off, some of them coming up to me and either hugging me or rubbing my back, saying things like, “Good Luck” or “Enjoy!”. (Why have people adopted that annoying expression?)
Some of the wittier ones try comments like, “You’re only as young as the man you feel” (which under the circumstance is rather inappropriate) or “Life begins at 55”; the head of French, whom I’ve hardly ever spoken to, says, “In the words of Groucho Marx, ‘There’s one thing I always wanted to do before I quit…retire!’” and with that, he gives me a big, slobbery kiss on the lips.
Quite honestly, I just want to bolt through the door; David is already heading that way, without a word, or a look. I’m beginning to feel slightly tearful. I’m not sad about leaving the school, not one bit, but I’m sad at what this day means: that I’m old enough to retire, that my life has fallen apart, that I live on my own and … yes, I will miss this. The routine of it, the chaos of it, the noise of it, the smell of it, the life of it.
Have I made a terrible mistake?
Soon, Lisa rescues me and we go and sink a few drinks in the local pub. Some of the younger ones come too and it turns into a bit of a drunken do. I drink far too much and get slightly morose, so Lisa drives me home.
I fall into the house and lurch into the sitting room. I look around, my eyes only just focussing.
One more day at school, three more days in this house.
I flop onto the sofa and Gaz comes to join me and licks my hands, which are salty from the copious amount of crisps I’ve consumed. Through my somewhat tipsy haze, I realise I haven’t, as yet, opened the card with the voucher in it. I tear it open. The card says We’re so sorry you’re leaving (oh yeah?) and there are signatures all over it. The voucher is for £300 which, on the face of it, is quite good, but then I work out there over a hundred staff and it doesn’t seem so great, after all. £3 average per member of staff – the price of a lifetime of teaching. God, they must have had to actually find change – surely it would have been easier to chuck in a fiver?
There’s something else – a voucher for the Theatre Royal, for two tickets. Nice – shame David won’t be coming with me. Shame I’ve got no one to go with.
I throw both vouchers on the floor and reach for the remote. Have I got News for You is on – the audience finds everything Ian Hislop and Paul Merton says, hilarious. I’m afraid I don’t – I’m too drunk to understand the jokes,
anyway. I flick through about twenty channels: cookery programmes, Top Gear, dating programmes, My Great Big Fat Stupid Horrendous Gypsy Wedding … has the world gone completely MAD?
I switch it off and throw the remote on the floor, too. I sit back and close my eyes … the room spins gently round; when I get to the top of the circle, I open my eyes quickly, with a lurch. I feel sick. I also feel desperately sorry for myself.
Gaz tells me I should be more grateful.
You’ve got me, you know. Would you like to join me on the sofa for the whole night?
I lie down and put my arms around him; he breathes loudly in my left ear and I close my eyes, enjoying the comfort of his warm skin. This time, I drift slowly, slowly … I should be grateful, shouldn’t I? I’ve got a roof over my head … sort of … two beautiful children, who are hundreds of miles away … no job … All those with a job, step forward. Why are you moving Anna McCarthy?
Laugh out loud …
You’ve got a big, black, hairy, friend, mouths Gaz into my ear.
Tomorrow … is another day.
That’s true, Gaz. That’s true. I fall asleep.
Chapter Fifteen
The final day at school goes by in a blur – some of the kids seem genuinely sad to see me go; I get lots of cards and little presents from them.
When it comes to actually leaving, I feel as if I’m in a dream, leading someone else’s life. I’m there, but I can see myself, as if from above, walking down the corridor and going through the doors at the front of the school, for the final time. I wait for some kind of emotion – either a lift of my spirits or a sadness … or something … but nothing comes. I feel numb.
I was half expecting David to come and say something to me or wave me off the premises, but he keeps well clear. I can’t say I blame him.
When I get home, I don’t let myself dwell on it and start packing, in earnest. I make a point of taking all the family photos with me – I wrap all the frames lovingly in newspaper and it feels symbolic – as if I’m finally packing away my past. That phase of my life has gone and all I have left of it, is a few photographs.
Love Is a State of Mind: Nobody's Life is Perfect Page 12
