A Tiny Bit Marvellous

by Dawn French

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Mo

  Everything is fractured. I’m not sure how to measure anything. All of my usual criteria are utterly skewed. I should have known that it would be difficult to behave normally around Husband. He is, after all, potentially the most directly affected. Ironically, he seems to be the most constant of all and is just being normal. Of course he’s being normal, Mo, you idiot, he doesn’t know anything is amiss. How doesn’t he know? Are we so disconnected that he can’t read the dilemma written so clearly just behind my eyes? If he looked a tiny bit deeper, wouldn’t he see?

  Mind you, I am continually avoiding eye contact with him, so he hasn’t really had a chance to read me. That in itself ought to be signal enough. I can’t believe he doesn’t sense anything is up. Nearly twenty-seven years of marriage. Might he not have learned to notice and evaluate my behaviour by now? I certainly feel as if I can judge his. Is this an example of one of those awful trite Men are from the North, Women are from the South arguments? Men are the Sun, Women are the Moon. Men are Red, Women are Blue. Men are Coffee, Women are Tea. Men Have Cocks … Women Don’t Have Cocks. What does it actually mean?! Of course men are different, but aren’t we supposed to be properly connected inside this marriage, and shouldn’t we be frequently tending and maintaining it, so that no weeds get the chance to grow?

  I thought we were quite good at that, vigilant even. Every wedding anniversary we sit together and assess what’s happening and how we feel about each other, our lives and it, the marriage. I have always thought we investigate it quite well. I have never felt restricted when it comes to airing any grievances. I have regularly done that, quite voraciously on occasion.

  In fact, I recall, with a certain amount of cringe, an anniversary trip to Paris, when I thought it might save time to list my complaints, as a sort of aide-mémoire, on a small card, which read something like:

  1) Sweaty gym towels left on bedroom floor

  2) Honking up phlegm whilst in shower

  3) Scratching of balls when in company

  4) Old, ill-fitting rugby shirts worn as regular shirts

  5) Overuse of term ‘wassup’ in silly growly voice

  6) Referring to me as ‘my first wife’ as a regular joke followed by guffaws of laughter

  7) Regularly waking up kids to kiss them goodnight

  8) Guinness-fuelled farting. Endless.

  He grabbed it from me and read the list aloud, adding comments such as, ‘I agree, appalling’ and ‘unacceptable behaviour’ and ‘Divorce this monster immediately’ after each complaint. Eventually he leaned across the table in the gorgeous restaurant in the Marais, and said, in a faux French accent, ‘Madame. I now see ze error of my evil ways. You must dump me immédiatement. You have not option. But be warned, if you do. I will immediately commence my irresistible seduction tactics on my all-time number-two favourite woman, ze divine Coleen Nolan. And I will succeed. Of zat zer is no doubt. Can you live wis zat?’ Silly man. Funny man. But silly man.

  Come to think of it, he doesn’t ever complain about me – or about anything. He listens and digests and always problem-solves, just like he would, but he doesn’t hurl any mud at me. He wouldn’t. I think he actually really loves me. Warts and all. Unquestionably. Always has.

  I remember he once said to me, in the middle of a Friday night shop in Sainsbury’s, ‘You see, this is what I love the most, this stuff, where we operate as a team. I know which pasta sauce you like and you know which ham I like. We both know what the kids like. We know when they don’t like that any more and like something else instead. We even know what it is we buy each week to make us feel healthier, but which we rarely eat. We know we just like seeing it in the fridge. It comforts us, that raw spinach, that melon, that low-fat no-fat fat. I love it. I love it all. The splendour is in the detail. The big is in the small. Spaghetti hoops? I think so! Salad cream? Bring it on! …’

  Yes, he loves me and he loves our family. We work well together, he’s right. We are a good team. I relish the organizing, the action, the busy forward motion, and he enjoys the hiccups, the difficult stuff, the stopping. He is unafraid of that, of the ugly and the tricky. Which is just as well, because I am fit to burst with both.

  I know I’m not thinking straight. I’m not properly thinking at all. I have no will of my own. Except I do, because if I am honest with myself, I am also choosing. Choosing not to stop. Choosing the chaos.

  In the midst of this whirlwind, I am desperately trying to go about normal life, but I can see I am getting it very badly wrong. I thought by mirroring Husband’s calm but inquisitive demeanour, I might appear normal, like him. What a mistake. I am obviously not usually calm or inquisitive in quite this way. I’m obviously faking it quite badly – I seem to have disturbed them and rubbed them all up the wrong way. I simply asked how Dora’s exams were going, and she was instantly apoplectic with rage, claiming I was a ‘selfish, useless wonk who hasn’t bothered to notice that her own daughter had actually done her last exam and finished school for ever, thanks very much for no support whatsoever’. Husband looked away in embarrassed agreement. Oscar doesn’t want to communicate at all, claiming that I humiliated him in front of Noel. I had to, he was behaving abominably, using his sessions to fulfil his pathetic little fantasies. With Noel. Of all people. My Noel.

  On top of which, unbelievably, he has been nosing around in my files and has virtually sabotaged a very intimate and fragile trust I have with Luke Wilson and his mother. I am only just beginning to unravel this poor boy and Oscar has gone and clumped all over it in big concrete boots, the twit. He had to be reprimanded for that. It was totally unacceptable, and he knows it. Honestly, what a meddler. He is simultaneously so clever and so bloody thick. It’s terrifying. Both of my kids are terrifying at the moment. They are loose cannons, out of my reach. They have drifted off and I’m not sure I like either of them much. They certainly don’t like me.

  Dora marched off in a huff and is now in intense congress with Lottie in her bedroom. It’s their prom tomorrow night, another thing I am not included in. I haven’t even seen the dress she was so excited about only a few months ago. I can’t help finding the whole thing preposterous though. A prom? How ridiculous. We live in Pangbourne, not Ohio.

  I absolutely flatly refused the request for a ‘limo’ … !! To take her the half a mile it is to her school. Really. Dora is Dora. Dora is not Elton John. Or Mariah Carey. Or Madonna, or anyone else she is fantasizing about being. She’s a girl who is leaving school. That’s all. I know it’s a rite of passage and it’s important, blah blah … yes, I remember myself how liberated I felt … and that’s why I went to the pub for a pint of cider and blackcurrant. And I walked there on shanks’s pony, I did not get in a limo. I didn’t get one and you’re not having one. ’Cause it’s just not fair. You think you’re so special, Dora Battle. Well you’re not, you’re just a kid leaving school, just like everybody else. DEAL WITH IT! I’ve got more important stuff to sort out. Like my bloody mess of a life.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Dora

  Oh my God, I can’t believe it. Lottie is going to the prom with Sam. My Sam. Sam Tyler. I so can’t go now. How could she do this to me? She said he was a twat. She said he gave her the creeps. And now she’s like going out with him, he’s her bloody actual boyfriend. I bet I’m the only person in the world who didn’t know. I bet I’m the last one to find out. As usual.

  This is proper wrong. I actually feel actually sick. I thought we were going to have a great evening getting everything ready for the prom and everything. Instead, I’m well devastated. I can’t go. I can’t. I can’t believe Lottie would betray me like this. With him, of all people. Why can’t she go out with ANYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE BLOODY UNIVERSE?! Not him. I hate him. I hate her. I hate them.

  OMG. They are ‘them’. They’re together.

  Can’t stop crying. I am such a loser. Why does everything always go so wrong for me? Loser. Loser. Fugly loser.

  FIFTY-SEVENr />
  Oscar

  One must always get one’s priorities right. It is of paramount importance, vital, in fact, to have a surfeit of banoffee pie at a hellish time like this. I have fallen into a dolorous state of wretched misery. I know where I am bid at such a desolate juncture.

  Pamela responded magnificently to my plight and prepared quite the most splendid dish, her best yet. She encouraged me to sit and eat and talk and eat, until there were only crumbs remaining. The entire ten-inch-in-diameter pie lay deep in my stomach after meting out its culinary comfort with every bite. There could be no doubt that my purgatory was significantly alleviated by the very banana and cream and mushed-up deliciousness of it. The salve for my poor battered aching heart.

  I retold the entire sorry Noel episode to Pamela in great detail. We spoke in low and hushed tones. She was compelled, I suspect, to show respect for what had thus far been the greatest love of my life. She said that she understood the momentous and dramatic effect of first love, and she appreciated that this cruel rejection has knocked the stuffing out of me. She also reminded me, quite rightly, that I am a fellow of great fortitude and courage and that I would eventually prevail.

  I agreed that, with time, I could possibly imagine healing somewhat, but as of this moment, I live on echoes, I appear to have very little music of my own. I am an empty bagpipe. A dried-up, spent and useless old scrotum of a chap, with the heaviest of hearts. I explained that my colossal love for the Kiwi dreamboat had been so achingly spurned that I wasn’t sure I could climb out of my lonely and bleak pit of despair. We who toil in the heated quarries of life, we who feel and taste and sense and smell so very much more than the average mortal are in real peril at emotionally raw times like these.

  Pamela, who it transpires, has a streak of the schoolmarm in her, then suggested that I might, ‘Butch up a bit, Master Oscar, come on. This fellow obviously didn’t get it, didn’t want it. You did. He didn’t. He’s an idiot with no taste and it’s his loss, but you can’t force someone to fancy you. Unless you’re Donald Trump.’

  I didn’t warm to the cut of her jib initially but I knew she had a point. I suppose I ought to think about the difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion. Was it possible that Noel could have been a mere fancy? A whim? A crush? I must confess to a seismic withdrawal of my affections during my supposed ‘therapy’, wherein he proved himself to be the most amateur and misguided of quacks, relentlessly barking up someone else’s tree. He really couldn’t have misjudged me more if he’d been a misjudger at the county misjudging fair. In fact, his diagnosis was hopelessly awry. What a serious fellow he proved himself to be, so very grave. As I always say, seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow, and I suspect Master Noel might never ever ever splash about in the deep end of life, so to speak.

  ‘What of my future?’ I lamented to Pamela. ‘How shall I move forward carrying this heavy burden of my savaged feelings?’

  To which Pamela replied, ‘Perhaps, love, you might stop being a selfish wuss for a sec and think about someone else? Isn’t there a certain someone else near by who would relish the chance of having his heart broken by you?’

  I knew instantly to whom she was referring. I had indeed overlooked a chance at real happiness. I had leapfrogged it entirely. What was I thinking? Perhaps this was to be the year of hope and enlightenment after all. Perhaps I have been seeking my sugar in the wrong sweetie jar altogether.

  It is at seminal moments like these, moments of epiphany, that one is helpless to do nothing but that which one’s conscience dictates.

  I had no hesitation in kissing Pamela full on the lips with gratitude. She may be frightfully dowdy, yes, she may be awash with uncultivated taste, no doubt. She may have an unhealthy addiction to all things viscose, and true, her closet is a tragedy of bad shoes, but she’s as sharp as a Pointer dog for directing one to the right path. The old crone has an uncanny nose for it.

  I am utterly and completely over Noel. Just like that. So it ends.

  Pucker up, Wilson, I’m comin’ atcha!

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Dora

  It’s all laid out on the bed, and I can’t bring myself to put it on. The purple dress is gorgeous. I know it looks better on the bed than it does on me though. Even after all the bloody endless white food I’ve been scoffing, I haven’t like lost a single gram. That diet is pants. What I really can’t believe is that I haven’t lost any weight through crying, coz I haven’t stopped for twenty-four hours and that is like so much water and water usually weighs a lot. Not my water apparently. It’s the only part of me that doesn’t weigh a lot.

  It’s all there. Dress, bag, shoes, tights, everything. Dad knocked on my door and handed me a box of Mum’s jewellery, some of her really best stuff – I bet she doesn’t know – but what’s the point? It will be so awful. Bloody bloody awful. I’d have to walk in on my own and everyone will know that my best friend has chosen my ex over me.

  My best friend disses me so much – hates me, she must do, why else would she do this to me? I thought we were forevers. That’s what we said. I meant it. She didn’t. She lied. You shouldn’t lie about love. That is like so wrong. If you say you love someone you should so mean it or just don’t bloody say it. Sam, Lottie, Mum, bloody all of them are big fat liars. I’ve got no one. No one.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Mo

  I was supposed to spend the evening writing. The first draft of the book is due in this month. Why the hell did I agree to such a stupidly early deadline? I agreed because I didn’t know I would be upside down. By now I should have slogged away steadily at it and have a decent handle on the first draft. I should be editing and tweaking at this point, instead of faffing about with a superfluous chapter about how to ask your teen open questions in order to elicit answers. Who bloody cares?

  What I ought to write is a chapter about how to refuse to speak to them until they can find it in themselves to address you with some civility. About how we didn’t have to be ‘negotiated with’ when I was a teen, we got a clip round the ear and no sweets on Saturday if we were rude. And even if we were rude, we weren’t that rude. Pamela used to give me a thwack simply for mumbling or eating in the street. I wouldn’t have dreamed of open retaliation, that would have been unthinkable and it would have meant certain death as a punishment.

  Dora has retreated to her room in a foul mood, refusing to speak to anyone. She yelled in my face, ‘Don’t even look at me! Every time you do, I see how disappointed you are with your minging sket of a daughter. Go to Lottie’s house and look at her instead, she’s much more your type, you’re both liars. The two of you belong together! In hell!!’ Then she slammed the door so hard it broke the handle, which caused her to utter a stream of obscenities a Marine would be proud of. I’m assuming she has had some sort of fall-out with Lottie, which is a shame. Lottie is Dora’s only friend. Dora must have done something spectacularly stupid to scupper it. I won’t know, of course, because I am not informed, not in the loop.

  I would like to have helped out with the prom outfit, not least because I suspect it is massively sluttish, far too revealing, and I might have been able to sew her into it so that she doesn’t flop out. In less war-torn times, when the battles were fewer, I have enjoyed being part of the chummy business of her getting ready. However old she is, it’s still dress-up and I am, after all, a woman. I used to love it when she asked my opinion.

  Which shoes?

  Which bag?

  I might be much older but the joys of girlish pleasures still live in me, are not yet extinct. In fact, they were substantially reignited when a daughter, when Dora, came along. She was my chance to revisit pink and net and angels’ wings in a way it is hard to admit to liking when you are a grown-up. There is a latent fairy in all women, but look how carefully we have to secrete her in order to be taken seriously. And fairies come in all shapes, colours, sizes and types, they don’t have to be fluffy. They can be demanding and furious if they like. They do, however, have
to wear a tiara. That much is compulsory. I even have one in a box somewhere in the wardrobe. I would love to have given it to Dora for this evening but we are hunkering down in our separate bunkers at present and the journey across no woman’s land to deliver it is a potentially fatal one. She can have it for her eighteenth instead. If we are speaking by then.

  Funny how women are ashamed to own up to their inner fairy whereas men are forever proudly displaying their inner cowboy or fireman. They’re not even slightly inner, they are outer. There’s Oscar, of course, who has always unashamedly furnished us with his fairy, from the word go. What a fabulous boy.

  Anyway, I can’t write. I can’t write because I can’t think. I don’t want to write. I hate writing this bloody book. It’s like an albatross around my neck. It’s all stuff I know perfectly well, it’s not difficult. Maybe that’s the problem. I should be trying to write something more challenging, something I am less certain about. I know about teenagers, I know how to communicate with them and I understand them. I should write instead about women on the cusp of their fifties and on the verge of insanity. However, if I were to write that book, I would have to do it whilst being spun around wildly in one of those giant tea cups because that’s how I am experiencing it.

  I have the most precarious hold on reality at the moment. Reason and logic, two familiar friends, have deserted me and left me with frivolity and lunacy as my trusted guides. It’s as if I have mercury instead of a brain. Madness mercury, which repeatedly rises and falls continuously, depending on the extent of my instability.

  One moment I am grounded and the next I am floating.

  One moment it’s all ridiculous then it’s all destiny.

  It’s simple, it’s complex.

  It’s right, it’s wrong.

  It’s right.

  He’s a magnet. I am bafflingly helpless to resist. I don’t stop thinking about him. I am exhilarated. I am alive. I am desired and alive.