Larger Than Life

by Adele Parks

  ‘I went to the doctor’s today.’

  The pressure of my foot massage increases marginally.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you were going to the doctor’s. You’re OK, aren’t you?’ And all that he wants to hear is a simple, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I’d like to oblige.

  ‘Blooming,’ I sigh, not able to keep the drunken weariness out of my voice. Bull by the horns: ‘I’m pregnant.’ The comforting circular motion on my feet draws to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Pregnant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re having a baby?’

  ‘I don’t know any other type of pregnant.’ Unless you include the pregnant pause which follows. I watch him closely. But he’s too much of a professional to rashly betray any emotion.

  ‘How pregnant?’

  ‘Nine weeks.’ Which is something else that’s been bothering me. I have no idea how the doctor came up with this date. It seems that it’s nothing to do with when the deed was actually done. Apparently, it’s a scientific calculation taking into account the date of the first day of my last period, whether or not there was a full moon that night or an ‘r’ in the month, and if Hugh was wearing blue socks.

  ‘How?’

  That’s an original one. I bet the Treasury would like a pound for every time a man has asked a woman, ‘How could this happen?’ We’d probably clear our national debt.

  ‘I guess we played Russian roulette just once too often.’ I try to smile, but the muscles in my face are behaving treacherously and I’m sure I’m grimacing.

  ‘You said it was your safe time.’

  ‘I was wrong.’ I know it seems odd to him. It does to me, too. I’m thirty-two, hardly at my fertile prime. I started successfully repressing my reproductive organs over thirteen years ago. Besides which, sperm counts are supposed to be down – there are always articles saying as much, and what about the stuff they put in London water and the effects of pesticides on our food? I watch Hugh compute the information, consider it, balance it, and then finally react to it.

  ‘Well, that’s big news.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I never expected…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you want to keep it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The caution that we are both exuding stains the air. It’s a yellowish colour. I know what he’s thinking. He’s wondering whether we’ll be any good at it. Parenting, I mean. Obviously he’s at an advantage, he’s already had a crack at it, but Becca had never allowed Hugh too much active involvement. I’m sure she limits his access so that she has the opportunity to bemoan his lack of commitment. He’s nervous – what if the child is stupid, or ugly, or even beautiful and clever but depressed and a drug addict? And one child, more often than not, leads to another, doesn’t it? Pregnancy, and ultimately a small person, will restrict our freedom (dinners out, holidays, entertaining, gym visits, etc.). Ditto sex life. Ditto our relationship generally. Ditto our careers. Well, probably just my career. Hugh’s career will be unaffected by this, or possibly enhanced. Fertile men are still held in high esteem by their colleagues, visions of passing cigars around come to mind, as do conversations about golden bullets. A family man – however many families he has – is seen as stable and reputable. By contrast, a procreating woman is seen as unreliable, dizzy and a liability. He’s thinking about sickness (mine), fatness (mine), lank hair (mine), spots, piles, skin flaps, skin colouration, loose vagina, uncontrollable gases escaping from the body (all mine). He’s contemplating loss of sexual desire (both of ours!). He’s considering the indignity of maternity clothes and the possibility of the eradication of adult conversation and foods. And, finally, there’s the pain of labour (mine).

  ‘Marvellous! It’s marvellous news.’

  Oh, the relief.

  I thought that – well it seems stupid to even mention it now but I thought, no, not as strong as thought, but certainly feared that he’d… leave.

  That’s all I’ve thought about.

  He flings his arms around me, hugs me very tightly for over a minute, then pulls away, takes my cigarette out of my hand and stubs it out.

  ‘Well, that’s the last one of those you’re having. And of those.’ He pours the remaining wine from my glass into his, goes to the kitchen and returns with a large glass of milk. I am so stupid! How could I have worried about Hugh’s reaction? How unbalanced. How unnecessary. Of course Hugh’s delighted. He’s a wonderful man and he’s bound to be delighted to hear he’s having a child. What kind of man wouldn’t be delighted?

  What kind of woman?

  4

  After our one night of passion back in 1987, Hugh went back to Becca and I settled for becoming Hugh’s best friend, or at least posing as such whilst disguising my more lascivious motives for wanting to spend every waking moment with him. Whenever he and Becca had a spat, he’d pop by my hall of residence and tell me all about it. Then we’d have a terrific time, eating garlic bread in cheap Italian restaurants, standing freezing and cheering on the sidelines as Sam played hockey, and drinking countless cups of coffee and eating countless slices of buttery toast in our bedrooms or the communal kitchens. The best times I had at university were definitely those times we spent together, and I treasure every single wonderful memory.

  The more time I spent with Hugh, the more intensely, insanely, incurably I fell in love with him. It wasn’t just his stomach-churning good looks, it was the fact that, by quite some way, he was the most vibrant, alive person I’d ever met. He had a sort of animal energy and a phenomenal curiosity in everything and everyone around him. His mind was a labyrinth and appeared insatiable. He was good at sport. He played the guitar and wrote his own songs. He could drink anyone who dared to challenge him under the table. He had a big dick. Becca obviously wasn’t impervious to his charms either because she would always turn up a couple of days after their rows, all red-eyed and penitent, and I’d watch as with nauseating inevitability they kissed and made up.

  Actually, those memories don’t rank amongst my fondest.

  Throughout my time at college Hugh was polite and friendly towards me. But then he was also polite and friendly towards Sam, and all of the hockey team, the first and second eights, all the reps on the student union, the librarians, the entire end-of-term ball committee and every female fresher – amongst others. He is just a polite and friendly sort of guy. Polite and friendly as in no flirting, no accidental touching of hands across the table or banging of knees underneath, no shrouded references to our night of hot sex. Hugh seemed to find me as gender specific as a teddy bear. And quite a lot less appealing.

  I quickly came to realize that Becca was a better proposition than I was. Tragic but true. She was prettier, sportier, cleverer, more interesting and interested. She could leave half a Mars bar uneaten for months. But, I argued, I didn’t owe Becca any loyalty. OK, so she saw him first and said bagsie, but that hardly seemed reason enough for me to throw in the towel. My undergraduate self reasoned that Hugh was still up for grabs until Becca had a ring on her finger. And the answer to wetting his whistle was that I’d have to become the better proposition.

  Come on, I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, woman to try a homespun, crash-course, Pygmalion-like transmogrification with the aim of netting something delectable in the staminate department. Haven’t you ever dyed your hair just to see if blondes do have a better ride? Haven’t you ever pretended you’ve read a book that you’d only looked at the cover of – just to appear more interesting and informed? Do you honestly like football?

  I began to read newspapers and I joined the debating society. I went out of my way to meet as wide and varied a group of people as possible. Naturally, this meant I squan dered numerous evenings with bores and weirdos, but slowly I also began to build a base of knowledge on issues cultural, financial, historical, economic. I didn’t waste any more of my vacations slouching around my parents’ home, but instead visited a kibbutz in Israel, restoration projects in Naples, holiday
camps for socially deprived children in the Bronx. And, whilst up until meeting Hugh I’d viewed studying as something to do when the bar closed and attending lectures simply as a means of checking out my mates’ new clobber, I suddenly started to take my degree seriously. I worked hard. Very hard. I was able to quote Keynes, Einstein and Euclid at the drop of a hat; even now I can tell you anything you want to know about Benazir Bhutto, Manuel Noriega, the poll tax or De Klerk. Go on, test me.

  I did all that walking-up-the-stairs-instead-of-taking-the-lift thing. I cut the fat off my ham when I made ham sandwiches, but I didn’t melt away into a pre-pubescent nymph, so I cut out ham altogether, and other meats, too, pretty soon after. In fact, nothing ever passed my lips unless it was nutritionally valuable and had been interrogated in terms of fat and calorie content. I obliterated my couch-potato persona and reinvented myself as a fitness freak and, most particularly, as Very outdoorsy’. The illusion I created has been so effective that I have subsequently found myself on skiing holidays in the winter and sailing holidays in the summer. The free time in between has been punctuated by hikes, treks, Saturday and Sunday afternoons standing on the touchlines of rugby and football pitches, crossing the London Marathon finish line – twice – jogging, swimming, serving, volleying, batting, running, biking, on one occasion kick-boxing, and the undisputed low point, pot-holing. Hell. Undoubtedly that’s what hell is. A cold, damp hell, as opposed to the more traditional fiery hell. But hell. I suppose, sooner or later, I should tell Hugh that the only type of sweating, panting and grunting I want to do in front of him is, in fact, under him, and even going on top is more athletic than I’d ideally opt for.

  I followed a strict regime of cleanse, tone and moisturize with exclusive La Prairie products, even though the products cost a term’s rent. I had my hair cut every six weeks, and coloured every twelve. I used toothpaste that bleached my teeth. I paid to have six of them capped, and I wore a brace for several months and – this might sound extreme – I had a boob job. Why not make the best of yourself? If you have the money. Actually, I didn’t have the money but I took out a loan.

  Everything I read, I read to impress Hugh. Everywhere I visited I stored up stories to repeat to Hugh. Every purchase I made, I made with him in mind. I didn’t stop to wonder whether any other man would do instead. I knew, simply knew, as clearly as I knew my own name, no other one would. All other men were grey. They seemed finite and unreliable.

  For three long years I was always ‘there’ for Hugh. Helping with essay crises, his election campaign as president of the student union, being a shoulder to cry on when his parents divorced, running out to buy hangover cures after very heavy nights. Well, isn’t this what best friends do for one another? In fact, it is because I did so much research for his milk-round interviews in advertising – studying every IPA paper and scrutinizing every issue of Campaign, the advertising industry’s weekly bible, memorizing the business performance league tables and the names and faces of all the players – that I didn’t have time to think about another career, one for myself, so we both interviewed. We were both accepted on a graduate trainee course with Saatchi and Saatchi, and I got a place with Q&A and JWT as well. Which was a bit freaky; I think the industry was discriminating positively in favour of women that year – why else would Hugh get only one place and I get three? I chose Q&A because they offered a four-month training course in New York and Hugh said I’d be mad to turn down that opportunity. I’m still with them almost eleven years on, although Hugh has worked at Saatchi and Saatchi, Leo Burnett, Lowe Lintas and now Rartle, Roguel and Spirity.

  So I went to New York for no other reason than the fairly ignoble one that it would impress Hugh. And whilst I was there the worst thing that could happen did happen – as usually is the way. Becca and Hugh got engaged.

  The news scalded my ears and tore at my heart. I ached. Every fibre of my body revolted as pain bounced from my kitten heels to the tips of my Paul Mitchell-conditioned hair. I felt as though my bloodstream were infected and polluted with grief, as my hopes, dreams and plans collapsed like a straw house, defeated by the breath of the huffing and puffing big, bad wolf. I bobbed like a bottle at sea, vacuous, without bearing. And the hardest part of all was admitting that I wasn’t even surprised that Hugh chose Becca. I knew that despite my superficial reconstruction I wasn’t good enough for him. Elevens marry elevens; they don’t marry five and a halves masquerading as eights. That would be against the natural order of things. Darwin probably wrote a paragraph or so about this exact subject.

  What can I say? It is not better to have loved and lost, as anyone who has ever lost will confirm. I felt raw and exposed. I missed him, or at least the chance of him, with a breath-taking, ferocious intensity. For a time I tried alcohol, drugs and pizzas – none of them soothed the agony. But after several weeks the wretchedness did dull to a quiet (although persistent) ache and I pulled myself together sufficiently to try a new line in survival.

  I didn’t go back to London in January as planned, or indeed for another five years after that. I couldn’t. It represented all that I had lost. I persuaded Q&A to give me a full-time position in New York. I threw myself into my work, vowing to put Hugh out of my mind for good. I concentrated on gaining a reputation for dedication and professionalism. I also dated, constantly and unsatisfactorily, but often rather glamorously (my conquest list included several up-and-coming politicians, minor actors and one of the Kennedy cousins – distant). It was the ultimate frustration that so many other men believed in my reinvention whilst Hugh had not. Which just proved that Hugh was more discerning, more sagacious, more judicious. By rejecting me he showed himself the better man and became even more attractive to me. I dressed in designer labels, worked my ass off both in the gym and in the office, I holidayed on the West Coast, learnt to scuba-dive and to drive a Harley Davidson. Slowly I built up the reputation I longed for: I became a serious professional with great tits.

  By the time I returned to London in late 1995, Becca and Hugh were married and living in Highgate, whilst Sam was only in the infancy of her search for the love of her life.

  They all came to meet me off the plane at Heathrow. I had planned my emergence from behind the sliding doors for weeks, and to every last detail. I had neatly stacked my Prada luggage on a trolley (anything that wouldn’t conveniently fit into these suitcases had been sent on ahead so as not to ruin the effect). I was wearing a black, halter-neck catsuit, which made my legs look longer than the reality, and exposed my now ferociously toned, muscular arms. My hair was immaculately styled and, despite the transatlantic flight, still hung in the sleek drop it was newly trained to; my Gucci sunglasses sat jauntily on top of my head. I wanted to look carefree. I wanted to prove, not least to myself, that I was over Hugh, that he’d been nothing more than a crush, escalated in my head by eight years of longing, which had surely been adolescent. As the doors swept back the gang let up a cheer and waved flowers and a ludicrous cuddly toy. I took one look at Hugh and knew that my self-imposed exile had been pointless. Far from diving, dating and dealing him out of my system, I loved him more.

  My post-graduate self reasoned that Hugh was still up for grabs despite the ring on Becca’s finger.

  In 1996 Becca gave birth to Kate, and eighteen months later she gave birth to Tom. Six months after that I became Hugh’s mistress. It’s ugly, I know. I wish I could make it, the situation, or, more honestly, me in particular, sound more noble or at least less ignoble, but the fact is that in 1998 I became his mistress. And even if I tell you that she didn’t appreciate him, that she’s never worked since they married and has depended on him entirely for an income (whilst professing to disapprove of his career choice)… Even if I explain that she didn’t like him going to the gym and she nagged him about the fact that he played rugby once a week and trained another evening… And she grumbled because she didn’t think he did enough for the children and that she said he didn’t pull his weight around the house… If I divulge that there
is a serious probability that she had an affair with her tennis coach… Or if I elucidate by saying that she never read the books he read, she never laughed at his jokes, or noticed when he’d had his hair cut, or asked how his day had gone… It would be pointless; none of this would alter the fact that being a mistress is not a very heroic position, whichever way you look at it. I can’t justify it. I can’t make it seem right. I am still a mistress. Still, because technically he’s still married to Becca, although he moved in with me eight months ago. Annoying, isn’t it? One of life’s little irritants. Colossal irritants, actually, because I am so tired of being apologetic. The truth is nice people (me) do not very nice things from time to time (sleep with other women’s husbands, for example).

  He should have been mine right from the beginning, he really should have.

  But he wasn’t, and when some things go wrong you can never, ever put them right.

  5

  There are lots of unwritten rules in the advertising profession; besides what to wear, eat and drive, you have to know how to conduct yourself from day to day. It is of paramount importance to be perky and productive at all times; no one wants to network with a dormouse. Getting from reception to desk in the mornings should be a social occasion. Smile at all times. Wide, toothy smiles.

  ‘Watcha Georgie, you’re looking gorgeous.’

  Karl hasn’t looked at me. He says the same thing every morning, to everybody. He’s a very popular man. If he had looked at me, he might have noticed that the jacket of my Armani suit is swinging open, as opposed to fastened as is usual, and the top button of my trousers is also undone. Although I am now only nine weeks pregnant, I’m already struggling to find clothes that fit. It’s not that I am fatter (I am, but it’s not that); as unbelievable as it seems, my hips have widened. They’ve been aching for days, and now I can hardly fit any of my trousers over my hips, not even my emergency-fat-period trousers. Hips widening! I can only assume it is to make way for the baby’s head, giving me a tiny insight into the torture which is ahead of me. And my ribcage has moved. No one tells you that; indeed it’s probably better that they don’t, otherwise I’m pretty certain the human race would die out.