by Fiona Neill
I ponder on the impossible vagaries of relationships, whereby things that were once attractive evolve into negative qualities or become obsolete over time. For example, I used to love watching Tom roll cigarettes. He could do it with one hand, using his long fingers to deftly smooth tobacco into a cigarette paper, crumbling pieces of grass expertly into the mix, handing it to me with a smile. Then when he was thirty he suddenly gave up smoking, became a hypochondriac and berated me ever after for my inability to shake off this dirty little habit. Then there was the moment when Tom realised for the first time that far from being a good listener, as I gazed into his eyes and listened to his problems with one of his building projects, I was actually in a world of my own. None of us are what we seem.
‘Lucy, Lucy, stop doing that, you’re making the hole bigger,’ says Tom, interrupting my train of thought. I have absent-mindedly been picking at the hole in the side of the sofa, and suddenly the money that Sam has been collecting there shoots down on to the floor. I have won the jackpot.
Emma yawns loudly. ‘I’m so tired,’ she says.
‘Have you got a work crisis?’ Tom asks, hoping to return the conversation to safe territory and resisting the urge to tell her to take off her kitten-heel boots when she is lying on the sofa. If he can show self-restraint with her, why can’t he with me, I wonder?
‘No, actually I was up half the night having phone sex,’ she replies with her eyes shut.
‘I cannot imagine how anyone with a wife and four children has any time to spare for phone sex,’ I say.
‘He only does it when he’s away, or he’s working late, but that’s most of the time,’ she says.
‘How do you have phone sex? Do you put it on vibrate?’ I ask. Snorts of derision are interrupted by her phone beeping.
‘He’s insatiable,’ Emma says. ‘I’m going to ignore him. Boyfriends are so demanding.’ She opens the text message and throws me the phone.
‘I don’t know if technically you can call him a boyfriend if he’s married,’ I point out.
She ignores me.
‘Can I go and have a quick peek at the children, Lucy?’ she asks.
‘Of course,’ I tell her. I know better than anyone the regenerative powers of this pastime.
She disappears upstairs and I ponder the technological advances made since Tom and I started dating. Back then there was enough suspense involved in waiting for phone calls. Now there are BlackBerrys, mobile phones, satellite navigation. For the first time since Norfolk, I feel those waves of relief that I am married and read the message.
Want you in my office, bent over my desk, secretary in very short skirt about to walk in . . . I drop the phone in shock.
‘Whatever happened to foreplay?’ I ask. Cathy comes over and takes a look.
‘I hope he’s put the photo of his perfect family in the drawer before he starts this,’ I say.
Tom announces that he has decided to go to the pub to watch football and will be out for the rest of the evening.
‘There’s only so much I can take,’ he whispers in my ear as he leaves. ‘I might meet this man one day.’
I unthinkingly pick up Cathy’s phone and suddenly find myself composing a message back. How short exactly? I write, and before I know it some primeval urge has prompted me to send it back.
‘God, Lucy,’ says Cathy, reading the message over my shoulder, ‘since when have you learnt how to send texts?’
The phone beeps.
So short you can touch her arse, it reads. I’m completely out of my depth already.
‘Why does he write it all longhand?’ asks Cathy. ‘No wonder they’re up all night. It must take for ever to get to the end.’ Once upon a time, middle-aged men blew their cover by calling trousers slacks and referring to all women under sixty as girls now all it takes is writing a text message in long hand.
‘Do you do this text-sex thing, too?’ I ask Cathy in the manner of someone enquiring whether lavender bags are an appropriate way of ensuring sweet-smelling wardrobes, as I compose a message back to him.
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Although I prefer the real thing.’
Want your sexy wife to come in not secretary, it reads and I send it back.
‘Lucy, that is so naughty,’ says Cathy, just as Emma comes back into the room. Her phone beeps again and Emma strolls over to take it from me.
Keep my wife out of this, reads the message.
‘Lucy, what’s going on here?’ asks Emma, retracing the steps of this virtual conversation. She hectically types in another message but receives none back.
‘I can’t believe that you did that,’ she shoots me an annoyed look. ‘It really stresses him out thinking about his wife.’
‘Precisely,’ I say. ‘That is how it should be. Why should he have a guilt-free relationship with you?’
‘Some people have massages to wind down. He has me. Home is not a serene retreat from the world for him, it is a place where children clamour for attention and his wife makes unreasonable demands about holidays in the Caribbean and expense accounts at Joseph. Her monthly budget is more than my monthly salary.’
‘But of course his home is stressful, he’s got four children who all want attention from him because they don’t see him enough, because when he’s not at work he’s with you. Home is never serene once you have children. And of course she wants some compensation, that’s the deal with bankers, she’s had four children, now it’s payback time. Anyway, you should stop talking about yourself as though you are an aromatherapy treatment whose raison d’être is to soothe a man with a stressful job. You could have anyone you want, there must be loads of available men in your office. I think you’re addicted to the secrecy.’
‘Lucy, actually I am quite serious about this man. I want to get domestic with him.’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask incredulously.
‘You know, do the dishes in yellow rubber gloves while he dries, cook recipes from Nigella Lawson, iron his shirts in the morning.’
‘You are deluded. He’s married with four children. You’re just a diversion for him.’
‘Then why has he rented a flat for us in Clerkenwell with a six-month lease?’
Cathy and I stall, because that is not where we imagined this discussion was leading, and Emma lies back on the sofa with the satisfaction of someone who still manages to pull rabbits out of a hat.
Then I say, ‘Because it’s near his office? In fact, I can’t imagine why he would want to rent a flat in Clerkenwell when you already have a place of your own.’
‘Maybe he has old-fashioned views on having a mistress?’ suggests Cathy.
‘We’ve been together for over a year,’ says Emma. ‘He doesn’t like coming to Notting Hill in case he bumps into someone he knows, so I have decided to move east and sublet my flat. He’s going to pay the rent and we’ve already bought a bed together.’
For some reason, it is the last detail that impresses me most. Buying a bed together is more than a simple transaction. It is one of those subtle defining moments that present themselves when you are least expecting them. The width of the bed, always a bone of contention, usually entails some degree of speculation about whether the couple is planning to have children, dogs who sleep on beds, or, even more radical, sleepovers with third parties. The price defines the degree of commitment. The more expensive the bed, the longer the guarantee.
‘How much did it cost?’ I say.
‘Do you mean the rent?’ asks Emma.
‘The bed, was it expensive?’
‘Vi-sprung, 9,000 springs, 25-year guarantee, super-king, four figures with a three in front.’ Then I know he is in deep.
‘But wasn’t there a chance that someone might spot you in a bed shop? I thought bankers were all very risk averse,’ I ask, imagining them bouncing up and down on mattresses in the John Lewis bed department.
‘He did it over the phone,’ she says. Then I know he has bought exactly the same bed that he has at home with his wi
fe. I bet they lived in Clerkenwell before they moved to west London.
‘Look, I really want you all to meet him, then you’ll see what a lovely man he is. He’s trapped in this situation. His marriage was over long before he met me. It’s just a formality. They only had sex about twice a month.’
‘Twice a month,’ I splutter on the Little Bear crisps. ‘That’s not bad going with four children and a proper job.’
‘But it was something perfunctory, there was no meaning left in it. She would suddenly remember something she had forgotten to tell the housekeeper in the middle of it all and stop to write, “Book Coco the clown,” or something like that.’
I am about to admit that I have done that, but some things are best unsaid, even to close friends.
‘Anyway, Lucy, I think you are being a little hypocritical given your confession last time we were out.’
‘That is completely different,’ I say, putting my drink down rather too heavily on the table beside her. ‘I was playing to the gallery, trying to manufacture something tantalising to keep up with both of you.’
They look at me bemusedly.
‘Actually, we’re becoming friends,’ I insist.
‘So, in the interests of friendship, tell us what this Sexy Domesticated Dad is like?’ asks Cathy. Emma lethargically pulls herself into a sitting position and leans against some cushions in anticipation, and I decide that, given her efforts, she deserves something a little spicier than the rather bland reality of our exchanges so far.
‘Well, he has none of the bloated self-satisfaction of men whose self-esteem is defined by their annual bonuses, he’s not bald, and there’s not a hint of Crew clothing about him,’ I start.
‘Don’t tell us what he isn’t, tell us what he is,’ insists Emma.
‘Tallish, darkish, definitely brooding, as long as he doesn’t speak, because then he ruins it by saying something like, “Brown granary bread is infinitely preferable for a child’s lunch box, don’t you think?” and obviously, even with a lot of imagination, it’s difficult to misconstrue something like that.’
They are unmoved.
‘Have you talked to him more?’ presses Cathy.
‘He thinks that I should stand as class rep and says he’ll help me,’ I say.
‘I don’t think you can read too much into that,’ says Cathy, ‘although I suppose it would give you lots of excuses to spend time together.’
‘He asked me out for coffee on the first day of term,’ I say. Emma makes an effort to sit up on the edge of the sofa.
‘On your own?’ asks Emma. I nod in assent, enjoying the rapt expression on their faces.
‘You never told us that,’ she says.
‘That’s because it didn’t happen,’ I say mysteriously.
‘You mean you turned him down,’ asks Cathy.
‘No, it was more complicated than that,’ I say.
‘God, Lucy, I don’t know how you could keep quiet about all this,’ says Emma, holding her hand over her mouth.
‘What happened, every detail, now,’ says Cathy.
‘When he saw I was wearing pyjamas under my coat he withdrew the invitation, not indefinitely, but temporarily, and there has been no mention of it since.’
‘Lucy, that is so lame,’ Cathy laughs. ‘No one can get away with wearing pyjamas outside the house, unless they are over seventy or have locked themselves out.’
‘Well, he shouldn’t have been looking,’ I say. ‘Anyway, desperate times call for desperate measures. You can’t imagine what it is like getting to school on time in the morning, day in, day out. Have you ever tried getting a stroppy almost-three-year-old dressed? It’s like trying to play football with a jellyfish. I’d rather be grilled by John Humphreys or forced to wear a bikini to go to Sainsbury’s or have an affair with David Blunkett or . . .’
‘We get the picture, it can’t be that bad,’ says Emma, pausing for a moment. ‘Perhaps you should think about putting Fred to bed already dressed.’
And I smile to myself because this reminds me of an evening a decade ago, when I came home from work late one night to find Tom fully dressed in bed. Caught in the raptures of a deep sleep, he lay on his back, with his white shirt and the buttons of his jeans completely open. I ran my hand from his neck down to an area below his belly button, still tanned from the summer, and then down inside his jeans. This was back in the days when there was no need to stoke the fires of passion with anything more than a lingering glance. Even in his sleep the quality of his breathing changed. I tried to work out whether he had fallen asleep with his clothes on or whether he was dressed, ready to catch an early train to Edinburgh the following morning for a site visit.
Then I saw a note on the pillow on my side of the bed telling me that he had found my credit card in the fridge. This was a period of our relationship when there was a gratifying harmony between my losses and Tom’s searches, as though it was a sign of our essential compatibility.
But I knew that I had examined the fridge thoroughly for my credit card before I went to work in the morning and it hadn’t been there. I wondered momentarily whether he was hiding things so that he could please me by finding them, so I went to the kitchen to investigate. The fridge was a little fuller than when I left it that morning, but on its own, on a shelf at the bottom, was a large plump chocolate cake. It looked handmade. I got it out of the fridge, and when I switched on the kitchen light saw that in the middle there was a silver ring with four tiny stones in different colours. And beside the ring a message written in icing that said, ‘wake me up if the answer is yes.’ I licked the ring free of chocolate, put it on, and it fitted perfectly.
Tom was standing by the kitchen door, watching my face. ‘It took a lot of willpower to resist you upstairs,’ he said.
‘Lucy, Lucy, you’ve gone all dreamy again,’ Cathy says, nudging Emma. ‘She must be thinking about Sexy Domesticated Dad.’
‘Oh no, I was thinking about when Tom asked me to marry him,’ I explain.
‘That’s good,’ says Cathy. ‘I was reading just the other day that the lines that define infidelity have become much more blurred, and that even having a flirty friendship with another man constitutes betrayal. Anyway, you and Tom are the most solid couple that I know, and this is the most comforting household. It’s like visiting my parents. There can’t be anything wrong, otherwise I would notice. What would we do if you split up or even went through a bad patch?’
But shouldn’t it be about me? I think to myself.
‘Well, there’s been no impropriety,’ I say imperiously. ‘It’s just a harmless thing going on in my head. A welcome distraction. He clearly adores his wife anyway.’
‘How do you know that?’ asks Emma
‘Because he had told her about the pyjama thing and the knickers thing.’
‘What’s the knickers thing?’ So I give the abbreviated version and they laugh so much that any tension is diffused.
‘You’ll probably end up being really good friends,’ says Cathy.
She is interrupted by the beeping of my own mobile phone. I eye it suspiciously, because receiving a text is still somewhat of a novelty for me. But before I can open it, Cathy has picked it up and is reading the message. It’s from Sexy Domesticated Dad. He must have got my mobile phone number from the class list. Class rep election next Monday evening, it reads. She punches in a few letters, holds it up for me to read, but before I can protest, presses send. And then what? she has written. Within minutes the phone beeps again. This time I grab it quickly. How about a drink? Sexy Domesticated Dad writes back. I switch off the phone in awe.
‘Cathy, what have you done?’ says Emma.
6
‘Nothing is certain but death and taxes’
WE ARE ABOUT to go out for dinner in Islington with Cathy and an architect from Tom’s office, for, having made the promise to set Cathy up less than a week ago, Tom has identified an appropriate single man from his office and arranged for the four of us to meet with
barely any consultation.
It is unusually peaceful for the time of day, because the babysitter arrived early and offered to put the children to bed, so I am lying in our room, watching in wonder as Tom packs his suitcase, even though it is another three days until he leaves for Milan.
He carefully counts pairs of pants, socks, shirts, pyjamas and trousers, placing them in neat little piles. Then underneath he lines up a toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, deodorant and a razor, each equidistant from the next. I know that when he arrives at the Hotel Central (he has already given me the details) they will be taken out and arranged on the glass shelf in the bathroom in exactly the same order.
We no longer share toothpaste, after a run-in over how exactly a tube should be squeezed. I prefer a more freestyle technique. Years ago, I adopted the tall upstanding containers to avoid further debate, the subject, to my mind, having been exhausted. But Tom persists in buying tubes and squeezing the toothpaste from the far end, carefully rolling them up from the bottom to ensure that none is wasted and occasionally worrying about what he will do when the tubes are finally declared obsolete. He whistles through his teeth with contentment as he stands back, hands on hips, satisfied with the job in hand. I admire an expert at work, wishing I could find similar gratification from such activities.
There might be big changes in the world by Monday morning, but Tom knows exactly what colour pants he will be wearing to embrace them. He is, after all, a constant man. Until recently, I considered myself to be someone largely constant in my inconsistencies. I can be relied upon to lose my credit card on average six times a year; to leave crumbs of toast between the keys of the computer keyboard whenever I look at my emails; and to reduce the price of any clothes that I buy by a quarter when Tom asks how much they cost. These days I am more uncertain in my uncertainty, which on reflection is probably even worse than being certain about it.
