Not Married, Not Bothered

by Carol Clewlow

  I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry, Archie.’

  * He does mention in passing the possibility of it indicating a source of resentment or friction surrounding a relationship, something that might be worth considering if you do actually dream it the night before your wedding.

  † In the event of you being lured into Hocus Pocus by the ‘Dreams Told’ postcard in the window, it is worth noting that one of Magda’s grandmothers was married to a plumber in Acton while the other worked her entire life here in our Woolworths. Neither, to my certain knowledge, ever even saw the inside of a gypsy caravan.

  * Neither are bridesmaids entirely innocent in this respect. Veiled and dressed in the same manner as the bride, they were designed to confuse mercenaries sent by the bride’s family to rescue her. Yet another reason to be glad my bridesmaid days are over.

  X is for …

  So many things. A kiss, for a start, the one you put at the bottom of a letter, or a card, or in lieu of a signature on an e-mail. X is for the X chromosome, the eXtra one which we have as women, instead of the Y which makes a man a man, without which we’d be bachelor boys instead of spinsters, also for the X-factor which they’re bound to find hiding away somewhere in that bundle of DNA. X also marks the spot where the treasure is to be found, this in adventure tales (which surely this is). Through the Freudian forest, past the deserted mansion, along by the cave mouth where someone has scrawled, ‘Here Be Dragons’.

  X is what we put in the box. It marks our preference, the option we select, the choices we make.

  X stands for the decisions we take.

  I’ve never told Archie about seeing ‘David’ at the party.* I didn’t tell him sitting on the pub wall following my colourful collapse just after it had happened, and I’ve not told him in the six months since. There are a host of reasons for this. One is that I think there is nothing to be gained by it, that the vision, the experience, was mine and mine alone, not designed to be shared, you might say.* A second is that I did not want the whole thing – the vision, if you like – to to be misconstrued and I know how easy that would be. In short I didn’t want the whole thing to turn into one of those I always thought it was a boy scenes. I hate those scenes. I despise them when they turn up in books and plays and films. I find them sentimental, masochistic, full of self-indulgent misery, more often than not born of an agenda. More than any of these things, though, I just didn’t know how to explain what happened, how to describe it. I, who make my living with words this time didn’t seem to be able to find the right ones. And one thing was for sure, I didn’t want to use ones that were wrong.

  I was standing by the buffet table at the time, picking at the food, idly watching a group of teachers ebbing and flowing in the middle of the room, Fergie in their centre. They’d not long presented him with his farewell gifts – a cheque, a piece of carpentry equipment I couldn’t figure the use of, an engraved tankard, which he now clutched, full of Butcombe, to his chest, smiling amiably.

  Naturally enough, being teachers they were talking about pensions. The voice of Archie, standing next to Fergie, rose above the rest.

  ‘Don’t even want to think about it. Bloody stock market wiped forty thou off mine last year.’

  Fergie smiled in his customary amiable fashion. He said, ‘You can’t imagine how much better that makes me feel, Archie.’ And that’s when the group began to gently swirl apart, several people moving to the bar and the buffet. A gap opened up and the next moment I was looking clear across the room. And there he was. Talking to Jonah.

  Look, people talk about other realities, don’t they? About how they might be passing us by a mere hand’s grasp away but we never see them. All I can say is, that’s how it seemed – like I had broken through, like a curtain had been pulled back and now I was looking through into this other reality, into one of those endless other possible worlds, where everything was the same except in this one fundamental, all-encompassing respect, and this thanks to that X I put in the box, the decision that was taken. I felt a kind of tremor as I looked at him, something else too, something beneath my feet like the plates of the earth might be shifting.

  I knew immediately it was him and I would expect you to ask me how, and this is one of the hardest things to explain from the whole experience. Because I knew, that’s all, first because of the likeness in their faces, his and Jonah’s, something around the jaw and the lower part of their profiles, the easy way, too, that they leant against the pub wall together, which of all things tore my heart out, knowing that this was because, as boys, they’d been brought up so much together. Also I knew it was him from the long legs in the suit he wore (for, of course, he would have long legs, given his father), one of those vaguely fifties suits in a subdued weave now fashionable, a suit I knew I’d bought for him, and all this a completely different sort of knowing, not something unearthed, dug out of memory, not something that had to unfold inside me, but something there, like data, something that was a part of me, like I’d been reprogrammed, like I now possessed a different life, a completely different set of experiences.

  He looked so good in that suit as I stared at him across the room, that’s the thing. I felt my heart swell, another reason I guess I knew it was him. And it was all so clear, that’s the point, so real and natural, not like some vision, some piece of whimsy, but him there, in front of me, lounging against that wall, hair cut close to his head, fashionably close, dark against the whitewash of the wall, his skin pale as the faces of so many young man are fashionably pale these days, particularly if they’re kept from the light, which he would be … was … (where are the words, which are the right ones?) working in the basement office of a small TV company.

  Because I knew everything, that’s the point, everything from his name upwards. David. And let me repeat, lest you should think it, this in my defence, that I never once, in all the years, indulged myself in I always thought it was a boy scenes. The name was there, quite simply, among the rest of the data, the rest of the day-to-day minutiae – where he’d gone to university, for instance (Sussex), what he’d done (English first, then changed to Film Studies) how he hadn’t worked that first year, and how I’d called in his father: You’ll have to do something. Dammit, you are his father. How he had, too, done exactly the right thing, surprising me –

  Well, you would be surprised. You’re always surprised when I do something right, Riley – getting him into a film production company for a holiday job, so that by the time he left to go back to college he was crazy about getting into the film business and came out with a respectable second.

  I could replay all of this in my head, even including all the snide comments I’d made about his father.

  So is he still with Feeeeeonah from the events company?

  What do you care?

  You’re right. What do I care?

  I even had there in my data base, on my new hard drive, what had happened earlier that day, how for instance he’d sat on one of the stools at home (his home still, in my mind, despite the flat in London), how I was making him a cheese sandwich with lashing of Hellmann’s and lots of pepper the way he liked it, how he’d told me as I was doing it – and with a deliberate air – that he’d told Jonah he could stay with him before flying out to Thailand. How I’d rounded on him, the bread knife still in my hand.

  I told you before, I don’t want you to encourage him.

  He doesn’t need encouraging.

  He’s too young.

  And you weren’t.

  Times change. The world’s a more dangerous place.

  Safer too with e-mails. Mobile phones. You never had that when you were travelling.

  I knew I’d turned back to his sandwich, inwardly fuming, reaching for another slice, pressing it down, cutting the whole crossways the way he also liked it, that I was thinking of my next move when he said: It’s selfishness on your part.

  That’s not fair.

  Yes it is. You’re pretending you’re thinking of him but actu
ally you’re thinking of yourself. You don’t want the hassle of worrying about him, that’s all.

  And I knew then as now, that this was the truth of it.

  How did I know it was him? Because I’d been expecting him, why else? Because I’d been expecting him for twenty-six years. Just because I refused to do any of that always thought it was a boy stuff, doesn’t mean I took things lightly. I always knew there was chance it … he … might be up ahead waiting for me.

  I don’t know how long I stared at David. It seemed like aeons, as if whole ages might have passed away but I guess it wasn’t even a minute. I don’t know why I started to walk towards him either. I can only guess there were things I wanted to say. Maybe I wanted to defend myself:

  I knew the whole thing wasn’t for me, that’s all … I just knew it wouldn’t have worked. Look on the bright side. I’d have been one lousy, flaky mother.

  I’d taken only a few steps when I realised something was wrong. First of all I thought it was just my legs growing heavy, then I realised it was floor, no longer firm but slipping away beneath me.

  I might have been walking on the sea, that’s how it felt, a strange sea, with a glassy surface that gave way a little more with each succeeding footstep. It had begun to billow, rising in waves around me when I cried out his name and he turned from the wall and held out a hand to me.

  He held his wine glass in the other hand as he beckoned. He turned it upside down, laughing. Which is the way I remember him. Doing just that. What any son might do. Shaking the drops out of the upturned wineglass and laughing.

  The waves that closed over my head as he disappeared from my sight seemed composed not of water but of a sweet and terrible sadness.

  Down, down, down I went, knowing this was the first and last time I’d ever see ‘David’.

  According to Archie I was about halfway across the floor when I fainted.

  ‘You seemed to be waving to someone. You called a name.’

  ‘Did I?’ I said. ‘I can’t remember.’

  I let Archie lead me outside, using the excuse of needing some air. Actually I wanted to say sorry. I said, ‘I think I’ve wanted to say it for a long while. I’m sorry about the way things happened, that’s all.’ He said, ‘Yeah. I’m sorry too,’ but there was no warmth in his tone and his voice was flat and unresponsive.

  I took offence straight away. I said, ‘It’s not a mea culpa,’ but he bit right back. He said, ‘Don’t insult me. I never thought it was, Riley.’

  I said, ‘Sometimes you have to face the hardest thing in the world, Archie, the thing that kicks everything else into touch.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That something can hurt, something you did, but you can look back on something you did that hurts but still know it was the right decision.’

  He said, ‘Sounds good to me, Riley,’ but there was that same coldness in his tone. ‘Glad you got it all worked out, anyway.’

  I said, ‘Well …’ half rising from the wall, irritated that my olive branch had been rejected. He continued to stare down at the ground and appeared not to notice.

  He said, ‘Do you ever think what might have been?’

  ‘I’ve thought about it a bit.’ I made my voice deliberately brusque. It wasn’t the sort of question I wanted to answer. ‘You do think about these things, you know, when you get older.’ I made a dismissive gesture with my hand in the air. ‘It doesn’t blight my life or anything.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  The bitterness in his voice both shocked and offended me. I said, ‘Time to go, I think …’ but now he was holding out a hand in restraint, an olive branch of his own.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that it doesn’t make you feel good about yourself, Riley.’

  ‘What?’ I could see his eyes clamped hard on mine, shining out of the darkness.

  ‘Having a woman make it clear to you, you’re not worthy to be the father of the child she’s carrying.’

  ‘It was nothing to do with you, Archie. It was just bad timing.’

  The band had started up again. A jangling version of ‘Hi-Ho Silver Lining’, with singing and shouting and stamping, came out, like the sound of some other world, through the pub window.

  I said, ‘It happened at the wrong time, Archie, that’s all. If it had happened some other time, later say, who knows … ? We just got unlucky.’

  ‘Unlucky?’

  ‘Yeah. Unlucky.’ I was getting angry now. I raised my voice over the sound of the music. ‘That’s it. OK. Just the way it fell. But if you want to look at it different, Archie, if you want to wallow in it and feel bad about yourself, well, that’s fine by me. Be my guest. Only don’t expect me to feel sorry for you. And you know why? Because life’s too short. Because it’s now that counts and not something that happened twenty-six years ago.’

  He said, ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ stuck his hands in his pockets as he got up from the wall. He gave a small sigh. ‘Well …’ he said, ‘maybe it all worked out in another reality,’ this with a small crooked smile.

  I said, ‘Yeah, maybe,’ but it wasn’t a line of enquiry I wanted to pursue any further.

  We walked back towards the pub door in what would probably pass, and this for the first time in our lives, as companionable silence.

  He said, ‘All I want is to be friends, Riley.’

  I said, ‘Me, too, Archie.’

  I’d had enough of the party by then. I needed to go home, to be on my own. I needed that solitude.

  I said, ‘Hey, do me favour, Archie. I’m going home. Tell Fergie I’ve gone He won’t mind.’ I laughed. I said, ‘He knows I overdose easily on teachers.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said. He was reaching into his pocket. I heard the clink of his keys. ‘I’ll drive you.’

  ‘No. It’s OK. I want to walk.’

  ‘Come on.’ It was like I’d never spoken. He clinked the keys in his hand.

  ‘No. Really. I want to walk. I like walking. I like walking through the town at night.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you, then.’

  ‘No. Thanks. But I’d rather be on my own. I like to think when I walk.’

  ‘Not a good idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Walking. Not after fainting and everything. Besides, it’s too late to be out on your own. This way.’ In the half-light the keys glinted in his hand as he pointed them towards the car.

  ‘NO!’

  I wouldn’t be surprised if they heard that shout right through ‘Glad All Over’ which was the exercise in sixties nostalgia now coming out through the pub window. I even stamped my foot. At the same time I’d also like to report that the phrase ‘spoken through gritted teeth’ is by no means mere poetic licence.

  ‘Archie. Just in case you missed it, or I haven’t made myself clear, I’m going to repeat everything v-er-y sl-ow-ly. I want to walk home alone. I like walking home alone. Now … is there a problem here? Am I speaking in a foreign language? Is there something you need translated?’

  ‘OK … OK …’

  He’d put his hand up. But you know me, folks. I’m a tanker when the dander is up. It takes me six miles to stop. I crash on rocks. I can pollute entire continents.

  ‘I want to walk home. That is to say, I wish and desire it. In fact, at this particular moment, in the light of this conversation, I’d say I pine, thirst and yearn for it. I want to be on my own. I want to have time to think. It is not long past eleven. I am a grown woman. Now. Anything else you want to know, Archie?’

  But he was standing quite still now, his arms crossed, and while I dislike the word intensely, feeling it to be the sort of word that turns up like ‘gritted teeth’ in the worse sort of prose, I’m forced to say he was grinning.

  ‘Imagine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d forgotten.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How easily you come to the boil.’

  By now I was stalking away from him but with his long legs he was able to lollop l
anguidly along beside me.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Riley.’

  ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘You think you’re so eeeeeasy and lackadaisical but actually you’re strung as tight as a piano wire.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe I have to be.’ I’d stopped abruptly, rounded on him.

  ‘Oh, really, why?’

  ‘Because I’m a single woman. Because I have to run my own life. Because it can be hard and most of all because in my experience it’s positively peppered with patronising arseholes like you.’

  ‘Oh. Gooood alliteration.’

  He was leaning against the boot of the car with his arms crossed and even in the half-light I could see the previously mentioned grin was turning to that old Archie look of lascivious pleasure.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d forgotten.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just how much it turns me on when you insult me, Riley.’

  I enjoyed that walk back through the town that night. God knows I have a fraught relationship with my home town, still there’s nothing like a late night stroll through its old streets, and on an early spring night with the smell of woodsmoke still in the air. On the way home I did what I always did on such a walk, which is to stop for a while, sit on the seat opposite the abbey, ponder its delicate fingers of ruins pointing upwards like a warning.

  I thought a lot about ‘David’ as I sat there that night, and what I saw was the truth of the thing and of all such fond imaginings of other possible/impossible worlds and realities, that ‘David’ was a mere fabrication, no more than a model put together from the evidence available – an abstraction the poet calls it,* not one pinned down by the realities, let loose on the slips and slides of the world, those terrible slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that we read about in the papers, that happen to other people’s children, the ones that cause that intake of breath coupled with that instinctive, unstoppable, grateful prayer of selfish thanks: Not my child. Thank God …