The other two ignored me; rightly so, I supposed.
Geraldine said, ‘But I always envy you, Bridget. There’s something intensely romantic about a lasting love affair.’
‘I wouldn’t say that your cousin and I are in the throes of a love affair; I mean I can’t believe that anyone is after thirty years, other than in books.’ As she said ‘books’ she gave a perfunctory nod in my direction. ‘But we do get on very well; I mean I wouldn’t change him. OK, perhaps for George Clooney. No, we rub along very well, we really do. But … well, I suppose it would be a more unusual couple than Neil and I who could still surprise each other at this stage. So it’s predictable. We know the answers to each other. That’s comfortable and secure, but …’ Bridget’s voice trailed off.
‘… The problem is, it’s the questions that are so exciting,’ I said.
‘Are you working on a new book?’ Geraldine asked.
I nodded.
‘Trying to.’
‘Oh but you must hurry up and finish it. I’m such a fan. You know it’s partly through reading you that I plucked up the courage to get out of my first marriage. You feel very lonely when you’re unhappy, don’t you? And I was unhappy. Not because Charles was nasty, or a bully like your ex-boyfriend … no’ – she raised her hand to stop me from speaking – ‘you don’t have to say anything. As I said before, Bridget’s told me everything. No, Charles was, is, a nice man, and he’s the father of my children, but it wasn’t right. For a long time it wasn’t right. I felt such a lack at the very centre of my life, a big void where there should be warmth and comradeship and sex … and your books, well, they put into words what it was that was missing; it’s as simple as that.’
‘Oh my God,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It makes me feel responsible to think that someone made such an important decision based partly on my books.’
‘You put your stories out there in the public domain for people to read,’ Bridget said. ‘Of course you influence people.’
‘Proust influences people,’ I said.
Geraldine, who was a very pretty woman with her creamy complexion, black hair and bright blue eyes, beamed a smile at me.
‘I’m happy now, though.’ She grew serious. ‘But one must never forget how hard a divorce is for everyone involved, children in particular. My three have come out of it all in pretty good shape but there was a lot of heartache along the way. I have to ask myself if it’s been worth it, causing such pain and upheaval.’
Looking at the light in her eyes and the way her lips turned up at the corners even when she was serious, I said, ‘Do you, though, do you really ask yourself that?’ Charlotte Jessop had told me that being forthright was not the same as being rude. I wasn’t sure that this was true but I felt that paying a hundred pounds an hour to ignore someone’s advice was just plain foolish.
It seemed the therapist was right because Geraldine did not take offence, instead she thought for a moment before saying, ‘No, that’s the thing, I don’t. I am genuinely sorry for the pain I’ve caused and it’s been pretty hard for me too. In fact at times it’s been very hard, but if you asked me if I’d do it all again, I’m afraid the answer would be yes. Which, no doubt, means I’ll go to hell.’ Speaking of hell she turned to me. ‘What about you, Rebecca? Any regrets?’
The other day I had read an interview with a famous actress, who lived off the land at her huge ranch somewhere in the US. When she wasn’t cultivating her vegetable garden she rode, bareback, no doubt, through the wilderness or hiked the eight miles to the nearest small town. She had said, ‘Regret is a completely wasted emotion.’ I lived off takeouts and walked on tarmac and my life was definitely too short for all the regrets I was beginning to harbour.
‘Regrets,’ I said. ‘Now and then.’
Bridget went into her kitchen and fetched the main course.
While she was away I said to Geraldine, ‘Just after Zoe got engaged, I took her out for lunch and I’m afraid I upset her. She was worried about things, mainly about the chances of her marriage, actually any marriage, lasting more than a few years. She turned to me for reassurance, because of my books, and I let her down.’
Geraldine nodded.
‘I heard about that. But she’s a grown woman, who makes her own decisions, so you shouldn’t feel responsible.’
‘I do, though. But the other day I had an idea of how I could make things better. Instead of inventing stories about happily ever after, I would go out and find some real-life examples, talk to people who had made a really good go of it and write down their stories for Angel-face to read and be inspired by. Recipes for a Happy Marriage: A Small Book of Inspiration. Something like that. If it works I might even show it to my publisher.’
‘What a good idea.’ Bridget had reappeared with a laden dish. ‘No, I mean it. Almost everything you read these days that purports to be real life is unrelentingly miserable: miserable marriages, miserable childhoods. No, I really think it’s a wonderful idea and something that will be a real help and inspiration to Zoe.’
Basking in the approval (it had been a while), I helped myself to two lamb chops from the dish held out to me.
‘Now all I need to do is find some happy couples.’
I got my chance a few days later. I was being interviewed for an Internet book page and the journalist, Nick Fuller, was wearing a wedding band and looked old enough to have been married for a good ten years. He had a sleek, contented look about him and he referred to his children on a couple of occasions. We spent quite some time on the interview itself and as darkness fell outside and the street lights were reflected in the river I opened a bottle of wine.
‘I enjoyed your book,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I didn’t expect it to be my thing but I enjoyed it. It’s cheery.’
‘Off the record and all that,’ I said, ‘I haven’t really lived the way I preach. I told myself that I had, but I was deceiving myself, and others, including my newly engaged god-daughter. Not good. So I’ve set myself a task: I’m going to find ten happily married people whose stories I will write down and give to my god-daughter as a pre-wedding present to inspire and encourage her.’ I paused and glanced meaningfully at his wedding band. ‘You’re married.’
He gave a joyless bark of a laugh and twirled the ring.
‘Force of habit.’
‘No! You’re not serious? You’re meant to be my first selected-at-random happily married person.’
‘Sorry, no can do.’
‘Damn,’ I said, pouring us each another glass of wine. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nick Fuller said again.
I sighed.
‘What happened?’
‘God, I don’t know. Women, I suppose. It’s this chimera thing.’
I laughed.
‘Being a fire-breathing monster – part lion, part goat, part serpent? You’re sure you weren’t thinking of a chameleon?’
He grinned.
‘Probably. Whichever, it’s bloody confusing.’
There was a Lion, a Serpent and a Goat …
We met at work, a local paper in North London. Vicky was PA to the editor and I was a reporter. I was living with someone at the time but we weren’t happy. Vicky was bright and pretty and funny, up for anything from white-water rafting to antique-hunting. And she seemed to really get me. She even liked my collection of cartoons – I’m not talking comic books here but framed pictures. We laughed at the same jokes, liked the same books and films; it was as if we really had that soul-mate thing going on. We started talking about having kids, in the abstract at first, and she said she wanted them but not so much that it was a deal-breaker if I didn’t. So I told her I didn’t. I just don’t have the paternal gene, I guess, and I thought the responsible thing was to make that clear from the outset. And she was cool about it, saying how it was her idea of hell to spend her weekends picnicking in Battersea Park with a baby in a Baby Bjorn sling.
As our relationsh
ip developed she didn’t give any indication of having changed her mind about having kids; in fact if anything she seemed even more against the idea. There was one time we were in a country pub and suddenly there was braying and crashing and banging and this group arrived: daddies in Barbours and yummy bloody mummies clunking past our table with pushchairs and bottles and wellington boots shaped like frogs, the whole catastrophe, and within minutes a peaceful Sunday lunch had turned into open day at kindergarten. You know the kind of thing. Try saying something like, ‘Please could you tell the little guy that if he has to scream could he maybe do it a little less piercingly or else go outside?’ or, ‘Yes I do mind junior having his nappy changed on the table next to me while I’m trying to enjoy my mussels,’ and you might as well have been dining on hamster fritters the way they react. Vicky and I completely agreed that these people symbolised everything we didn’t want to be.
Anyway, we got married and no more than six months later I had the first intimation of what was to come. It was Sunday afternoon in London: July, warm but not hot, hazy sunshine, lazy side-streets and all the residents at the pub or in the country. We’d had lunch at this French fish restaurant around the corner from where we lived and we were walking back home, my arm round her shoulders. I was thinking sex.
She snapped to a halt then retreated a couple of steps, pulling me with her.
‘Oh look, how cute. Isn’t that just totally adorable?’ She was pointing at a shop window filled with baby clothes.
‘Very nice,’ I said. I reckoned there was some godchild or niece having a birthday but that wasn’t it at all.
She just stood in front of that shop window looking straight at it but with a faraway look in her eyes. When finally she decided to walk on she was really quiet. We’d had a fair amount to drink and white wine in particular could make her weepy or a bit aggressive so I decided that was all it was.
We got home and I tried to jolly her up.
Then I said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’
And she turned on me. Suddenly I’m a sex addict, juvenile, irresponsible, refusing to grow up. I didn’t make things better by saying that what she needed was a good fuck. I know that that makes me sound like the stereotypical crass insensitive male but usually she liked that kind of banter. It was one of the really good things between us: she liked that side of things as much as I did. Or she said she did. Now I wonder if that was all an act too.
Anyway, she calmed down, looking at me in this superior pitying way as if I’m a scruffy schoolboy she’s found with his hand down his trousers.
‘Have you ever thought, even for a moment, about what the sex act is all about?’
‘Well, there’s a question,’ I said, as I reckoned that whatever answer I gave would be the wrong one.
‘Procreation,’ she says. ‘It’s for making babies.’
A year later Eddie was born. And I was happy. It wasn’t what I had planned but when he arrived of course I loved him. And Vicky was really happy, as if this, having Eddie, was what she had been waiting for all her life. So for a year or so everything was good. And I’m not one of these pathetic guys who gets jealous when his wife’s attention goes to the kid. I mean obviously the baby has to come first. But with Vicky it was as if she was becoming a different woman. This new Vicky lived on Planet Baby and there was room for Eddie and Eddie’s little friends and their mothers and her mother and the whole bloody playschool parent committee but not for me or for any of the things we used to like to do together. If I suggested we get her mother to look after the baby while we had an evening out or, dare I say, went away for a few days, just the two of us, she would look at me as if I had asked her if we could have a threesome with her best friend.
My mother told me it was natural: Eddie was still a baby after all and Vicky would get back to normal eventually. And I didn’t need anyone else to tell me she was a great mother. So when she suggested another baby I thought we might as well get that stage over with in one go, more or less. And obviously it would be great for Eddie to have a little brother or sister. Ben was born and I spent more time with Eddie because Vicky was busy with the new baby, so we bonded and I really enjoyed the whole experience. And this time I knew what to expect so I just got into the whole family thing and if I wanted to do something else, like catch an exhibition or something, I did it on my own.
For our fifth wedding anniversary I booked a trip to Paris. Not very original but we’d never actually been to Paris together. And it was not too far so we could be away for just a couple of days. I had it all organised, the boys staying with my mother, the neighbour feeding the cat, so that there could be no suggestion that I assumed she could just drop everything and take off.
When I told her she seemed pleased. We got on the plane and she started asking me if I had told my mother how Eddie had no road sense and that Ben could only eat the white of the egg and so on. I told her we had written the list of instructions together and that last time I checked my mother could both read and write, quite apart from the fact that she had brought up three healthy, well-adjusted children. But Vicky just pursed her lips and I noticed this little double chin she’d developed. And before you say anything, I’m not that shallow. I accept that a woman’s body changes with childbirth and I had no problems with the stretch marks and the varicose veins or the weight gain; I realise she went through all of that for the two of us. Of course a busy mother doesn’t have time to look like a centrefold but couldn’t she just make an effort now and then, for me? A bit of lipstick, a skirt and some heels, just to show I was maybe worth it.
We sat there on the plane, not talking, and I hated her. I hated her smug complacency, the single black hair that grew from a mole on her neck that she always forgot to pluck, hated her wash-and-go crop and the fact that she thought baggy brown cords and a sweater with sheep on was a nice outfit to go to Paris in. Some men might think all that’s great: a woman who doesn’t waste hours in the bathroom or hundreds of pounds on clothes and shoes and stuff. But you see, I wouldn’t have minded that. I’ve always had a soft spot for high-maintenance women. Vicky was one of those when we first met. It probably makes me a complete Neanderthal but part of me always fancied being that guy in a 1950s comedy, shaking his head in mock exasperation as his wife comes home looking cute and guilty with her arms full of bags and boxes. Just so I can take her in my arms and tell her she deserves it all and that I love her looking so pretty.
Then I felt guilty so I was extra nice and she cheered up a bit until the pilot announced that we were about to land. She started crying and when I asked her what the matter was she said she missed the boys. And I sympathised, but I have to admit I was pretty hurt as well. Sometimes I think women believe they have a monopoly on feelings. Anyway, we arrived at our hotel, which was bijou and romantic, and we had an OK evening and an OK day the next day but it was obvious she was fretting so we changed our flights and came back home a day early.
Life went on as before. Vicky agreed that two kids were enough, especially as we wanted to educate them privately. So when both boys were at school full-time I suggested she might like to go back to work. It’d be a great help. And she got really angry. What kind of father was I? Did I want our children to be latch-key kids? And all the time she had this aura, like she was the sacred keeper of the offspring. I argued that she could work part-time or we could get an au pair and she accused me of being obsessed with money. I told her too right I was, with an eighty per cent mortgage and school fees to pay for.
I felt I had gone along with pretty well everything. The kids, the estate car, the move out of London and the commute – but still I was the bad guy.
It all came to a head one evening. She was always telling me I should be home in time to read the boys a story. I could make that on a Friday but the rest of the time it was not an option. While we were living in London, which incidentally is where I had wanted us to remain, I could be home by seven-thirty most of the time but with an hour and a half commute it just wasn’t pos
sible. Anyway, I had received an invitation to the preview of this really interesting exhibition and of course I hadn’t been able to make it, rushing to catch the early train instead.
But this evening, at the end of a really tough week, I walked past the gallery and saw that it was the last day. I decided to go in. I just thought, why the hell shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I spend some time on something just for me, nothing to do with work or Vicky or even the kids but just for me? I mean Vicky had ‘me’ time every Wednesday night but apparently my ‘me’ time was all day every day at work.
OK, so I’m getting whingey, but that’s how I felt: hard done by and put-upon.
Anyway, this exhibition … one of the artists was actually there and we got talking and it turned out we both liked these two really obscure French cartoonists. I was really enjoying myself talking to this guy. I told him about my collection and he asked if I had any of his; I told him they were a little out of my league. Before I know it he’s gone off to have a word with the gallery owner and then they come out and offer me one that I had been admiring for what amounted to half-price.
The train was packed, the carriage smelling of the usual mix of BO and cheese-and-onion Pringles but, as I stood there with this small package under my arm, I actually felt happy.
I continued to feel good right through the saga of how the boys were getting naughty, probably in protest at not seeing their father enough, and how the tumble dryer had broken down again, which was just perfect, wasn’t it, with the weather being the way it was and Ben having started to wet the bed again, and did I have any idea how tough it could be being at home all day with young kids and no adult conversation or outside stimulants?
I did sympathise, I really did, which is partly why I had suggested she go back to work.
Anyway, we were about to eat and I brought in the picture to show her, and she lost it. How could I tell her to go back to work because we needed the money and then go and spend a fortune on a bloody cartoon? And how come I had time to mooch around galleries but couldn’t make it home in time to say goodnight to my own children?
Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers Page 12
