by Fiona Neill
This is hardly a logical extension of the approach made at the aquarium. I drop the phone in astonishment and it slides across the greasy floor towards my brother.
‘Just as well Mum didn’t serve this rice up to Petra,’ he says, bending down to pick up the phone. I rush over, but he is too fast. He can’t resist a peek at the screen and holds the phone high in the air, exploiting his height to advantage. Privacy is an alien concept to Mark. As a teenager, I had to hide my diary underneath the floorboards in the bedroom to prevent him from reading it.
The expression on his face immediately darkens. He squints at the message, reading it again to be sure that he hasn’t misunderstood. Then he fiddles with the phone to look at the identity of the sender.
‘Who the fuck is SDD?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I say weakly.
‘He’s on your contacts list, otherwise his name wouldn’t come up,’ says Mark, looking at me suspiciously.
‘If you must know, it stands for “Sexy Domesticated Dad”,’ I say defensively.
‘Is he from one of those cleaning services where the men come and tidy your house naked?’ Mark asks.
The idea is so preposterous that I start to laugh.
‘Is that what’s putting you off married life in the suburbs?’ I ask him, giggling so much that I have to cross my legs.
And then, because I am so nervous about the message and my brother’s discovery, I find it difficult to stop and each time I try to start a serious explanation of what is going on, I laugh even more. I suddenly feel very much like his younger sister again, a feeling that hasn’t occurred very often in our relationship since I became the one with the husband and children and he became the serial dater, unable to make up his mind about which girlfriend he should marry.
Then the phone rings and Mark drops it on the floor. We both stare at it and I pick it up to answer the call.
‘Lucy, it’s me,’ says Robert Bass. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, I meant to send those texts to my wife but I must have put in your number by mistake. I hope you didn’t think, er, that, er . . .’ he splutters.
Trying not to sound too relieved, I say, ‘To be honest I prefer a more subtle approach.’ More spluttering. ‘You must be on my mind,’ he laughs weakly. He’s right. I can’t help feeling a little flattered. Then the line goes quiet. ‘Hello, hello, are you there?’ I ask.
‘Who are you speaking to?’ I hear his wife ask. ‘Who is on your mind? You might as well tell me, because all I have to do is look at your phone.’ The line goes dead. I have little time to consider the implications of this interruption, because my brother is standing over me with his hands on his hips.
‘Are you having an affair?’ asks Mark.
When we were younger, my brother’s attitude to my boyfriends ranged from dismissive, when the flirtation was unrequited, to surreptitiously protective when I embarked on a new relationship. He basically operated on the assumption that all men were as indiscriminately promiscuous as he was.
‘It’s because my mother is a feminist and we had too many au pairs to sleep with. I’m engaged in a kind of Oedipal revenge,’ he used to say. ‘Just remember, Lucy, men might talk the talk, but that doesn’t mean we’ll walk the walk.’
And then, against all better judgement, I find myself clearing a space on the windowsill, moving empty jars of coffee and dirty old milk bottles, and sitting down to tell Mark in detail the saga of Robert Bass. The innocent flirtation that ended in a flat kind of pass being made on a school trip. I can hear how ridiculous it all sounds as I tell it from beginning to end. He doesn’t interrupt and looks at me intently.
‘It’s not really a big deal,’ I say. ‘Nothing has happened.’
‘Do you find him attractive?’ he asks.
‘Yes, in the abstract,’ I admit cautiously.
‘Then it is a big deal, because he obviously fancies you.’
‘Do you really think he does?’
‘Don’t be so naive, Lucy. To believe otherwise is to engage in self-deception on a grand scale. You are deluding yourself to allow a situation where an affair can flourish. Frankly, I’m really surprised.’
‘Do you think I’m having a mid-life crisis?’ I ask him. ‘I thought that was a male prerogative.’
No,’ he laughs. ‘You have disconnected from Tom and rather than mending that short circuit you are looking for a new connection with someone else. But the answers won’t be found with this man. They lie within you.’
‘Don’t you think I could just have a small affair and then leave it all behind?’ I ask him.
‘Women are useless at that,’ he says. ‘And I don’t mean that makes it a negative quality. Women’s inability to separate emotion from sex is not a weakness, it is a strength. It fosters connection and mutual understanding. I have never understood why women view one-night stands and an ability to binge-drink as a sign of social progress. Why is it positive to adopt traits more commonly associated with men? Men would do better to become more like women. I’m speaking as someone who has found that particularly elusive.’
‘So what should I do?’ I ask.
‘Tell Tom,’ he says. ‘By allowing other people into the fantasy, you will minimalise the possibility of turning it into reality. And if you don’t tell him, then I will. You might be chalk and cheese, but largely your relationship works, and life is about much more than short-term pleasure-seeking, especially now that you have children. That’s why we are all so miserable. We’re obsessed by the quick hit, a couple of lines of coke to improve a party, a dirty fuck with a married woman. But this separates us from who we are. It destroys our spirit rather than elevating it. Do you know the biggest growth area in my profession? Dealing with adolescent boys who have spent so much time surfing Internet porn that they are completely unable to relate to women sexually or emotionally. If you thought the men of your generation were fucked, then you should take a look at these kids. Being brought up on Playboy was an age of innocence.’
‘I don’t really see how this relates to me,’ I say tentatively. I am shocked at Mark’s outburst, not because of its content, but more because he generally tries to stay one step ahead of anything that might be construed as a belief system for fear of sounding like my mother. ‘Look, I’ll try and avoid him.’
‘What I am trying to say is that you need to be the author of your own destiny, Lucy. It is one of your worst traits, allowing things to happen around you as though you have no involvement in their outcome.’
‘That’s why I’m eating so much,’ I say. ‘The more I eat, the fatter I will get and then it will be impossible to have an affair with anyone.’
‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ he says. ‘But it could be interpreted as a small step in the right direction.’
My phone beeps again. He eyes it with renewed suspicion but this time it is a message from Emma, inviting Tom and me to dinner with her and Guy at her new home. She says that Guy finally agreed today because he felt so guilty about not being able to spend any time with her over Christmas.
‘It’s Emma,’ I say. ‘She wants us to meet her boyfriend.’ Mark looks interested.
‘A serious relationship?’ he asks dubiously. ‘I thought Emma’s speciality was keeping all emotions at arm’s length.’
‘They’ve moved in together,’ I say defensively.
‘But then why haven’t you met him before?’ he asks. Then he smiles knowingly. ‘He’s married, isn’t he? That was always going to be her fate, to find someone she couldn’t possibly have.’
‘I think he’s quite keen on her, actually,’ I say, then change tack, because Emma and my brother are an awkward subject. ‘Mum thinks I should go back to work.’
‘That’s no panacea for man’s condition,’ he says. ‘What good would it do your family if you go off to Iraq to chase a story?’
‘Or if I was stuck in London, jealously eyeing up my colleagues’ ability to go abroad at the drop of a hat. But perhaps I would be more involved w
ith the bigger picture.’
‘Human existence is the sum of our relationships. We all want to connect with people,’ he says. ‘And we never stop fancying people. Just consider Petra. She’s going to be having more sex than all of us, and she’s in her sixties, or “sexties”, as we say in the age of Viagra.’
‘Just don’t go there,’ I plead.
The door opens. Tom peers tentatively round the door.
‘It’s a shame to come all this way and then spend all your time in the larder,’ he says. ‘I’m looking for a couple of chickens. We’ve decided to abort the turkey and eat it tomorrow.’ I pick up the mobile phone from the windowsill and put it deep in my back pocket, making a mental note to delete those messages as soon as I have a moment.
Later that night, I lie in bed beside Tom, filled with good intentions to tell him what I said to Mark earlier in the day. We sit there reading books that we gave each other for Christmas. For him: Alain de Botton on architecture. For her: a biography of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes. And guess what. It turns out that Mrs Beeton was as much of a domestic fraud as I am. I wish I had given this to Petra.
It is so cold that I have done up the top button of my tartan pyjamas. We are both dressed in thick fleeces and Tom is wearing hand-knitted socks made by his mother. He has cleverly raised the back legs of the bed on piles of books purloined from my bookshelf. For the first time we are looking down rather than up at our feet.
The children are in their bedroom, asleep in their nest of duvets in the middle of their room, favourite presents scattered around them. Joe is hugging his finger-printing kit. I turn to Tom and take a deep breath, but he puts up a hand to indicate that he wants to say something first. He carefully marks his place with a bookmark and then puts it in the middle of the bedside table, fiddling around until he is sure that it is exactly in the centre. I rest mine face down on my knees, making him wince.
‘You’ll break the spine,’ he says gently, taking Mrs Beeton from me and carefully placing the flap inside the cover to mark the end of the second chapter.
‘I know what you are going to say,’ he says. ‘And I blame myself. I have been totally preoccupied by my library. Obsessed even. I forget that looking after the children is even harder work because you aren’t permitted the luxury of focusing on one subject. I also know that my compulsion for tidiness and order is irritating, but when I am around my mother I know that there is no hope that I will be able to change. It is my genetic destiny. Your brother says that there is no distinction between the personality of my buildings and the inside of my mind. Mind you, it would have been worse to be married to John Pawson.’
‘But you have always been the same. Even during your loft-conversion period, you were always absorbed by what you were doing. You are the same man that I married, the problem must lie with me,’ I say.
‘We just need more time on our own together,’ he says. ‘It’s difficult not to be possessed by this library. It is the most prestigious project that I have been involved with, and it’s taken over my life. I have been resentful of anything that has distracted me from it.’
Then I realise that he doesn’t really know anything. Tom thinks that it is all about him, a noble sentiment in the sense that he is not trying to shirk responsibility for the situation. Nor is he trying to blame me. But he isn’t looking outside of himself for answers and I find myself resenting this. He is just skimming the surface, giving the problem a light sand, when I need someone to plane back my emotions, to peel back every layer until the core is exposed.
Before I have a chance to explain that he is wrong, that I have lost my equilibrium, that I can see where I have come from but can’t see where I’m going, and that I need him to help me recover my balance, he reaches under his pillow, pulls out a present and hands it to me, smiling. I adopt what I hope is an expression of delighted surprise and open it up, expecting to see the necklace. Instead, there is a pair of Spanx pants. I unfold them. They are the colour and texture of a sausage skin and probably perform a similar function. There is a large hole around the crotch for peeing.
‘I got them in Milan,’ he says proudly. ‘The woman in the shop said even Gwyneth Paltrow wears them. They iron out every lump and bump.’
I groan loudly and sink under the duvet.
‘I got you something else too,’ he says, peering underneath to hand me a familiar cream box. ‘I was looking for the right moment to give it to you. I had it made while I was in Milan.’
I open the box and then quickly hug him, because it is a strain maintaining the pretence that I have never seen the necklace before. We are so thickly layered that we grasp on to each other, holding only layers of fleece between our fingers. The force of this movement causes the bed to fall off its books and we hit the floor with a loud bump. It would be good to have sex. But sometimes it is just too cold. Tomorrow we will eat turkey. Tomorrow I will wear my new necklace. Tomorrow I will tell Tom about Robert Bass.
13
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’
BACK IN LONDON, New Year comes and goes. Drifting by. I find that there is never much to cling to at this time of year and make a few resolutions to give some structure to the uncertainty that stretches before me. I can never understand why people want to celebrate the beginning of another year. How can they be so sure that what lies ahead will be better than what has passed? Beyond the age of thirty, it takes some bravado to assume that the future holds more promise than the past. Surely there is more that can go wrong than can go right? By the end of the year, there will be more global warming. More chance of a bird flu pandemic. More dead in Iraq. More chance that I will have an affair with Robert Bass, thus irrevocably harming my marriage and giving my children a lifetime of blame and therapists’ bills to heap on me.
In order to combat all this, I have decided that this must be the year in which I finally inspire gravitas. This will help me overcome the feelings that possess me and impose order upon my life. By the end of the year, credit card debt, mould in the car, and anything else that speaks of domestic sluttery will be a distant memory.
When I woke at five o’clock this morning, despite all my good intentions, I felt heady with the anticipation of seeing Robert Bass again, after the three-week hiatus over the Christmas holidays. I ran through what I might wear on the school run, a catwalk involving jeans with tops in various shades, knowing that I would inevitably end up dressed in the same outfit that I had on yesterday, because a wardrobe crisis is an impossible luxury on a school morning.
I indulged in a couple of my favourite fantasies, involving mostly clothed fumbles against walls on dark streets somewhere close to Greek Street, promising that this would be the last time I allowed my mind to wander so far, and justifying my intemperance with the thought that it will soon be too light in the evening for anything like this to actually happen. In the interests of gravitas, I also forced myself to think up neutral subjects for conversation, should the need arise, starting with the disappearance of Greenland and ending with the relative benefits of Polish au pairs over other nationalities. Not that we have room for an au pair, but it is a good subject to master.
Then when Tom woke up, he offered to take the children to school. I fought hard to hide my disappointment.
‘I thought you would be really pleased,’ he said.
‘That’s great, a real help,’ I said unconvincingly.
‘Honestly, sometimes women are incomprehensible,’ he said, pulling himself out of bed, eyeing the piles of clothes on the floor suspiciously. ‘Dressing up for the school run?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Are you turning into a yummy mummy? Or is there someone you’re trying to impress?’
‘I am becoming a mother with gravitas,’ I said.
‘Please don’t go neurotic on me,’ he pleaded.
I still have not confessed to Tom about my infatuation, although I have told Mark that I have, which makes me feel as though I have almost done it. I don’t like to think I am lying to my
brother, more that the truth hasn’t yet caught up with itself, as though he is living in a different time zone, some hours ahead of my own. After all, he never comes to me with a problem unless he has harvested all of its pleasures first. I resolve to tell Tom later this week.
I wonder whether Alpha Mum would allow herself to indulge in such wild abandon. She would undoubtedly have the self-discipline to contain the fantasy, to shut it firmly in a small box in one of those tidy kitchen drawers, alongside the one marked ‘cards for all occasions’. It is easy to imagine some women having sex with lots of people. Take Yummy Mummy No. 1, for example. Even though I have never met her husband, I can imagine her entwined with her personal trainer, meeting the challenge of sexual positions that require the athleticism of a twenty-two-year-old with dedicated enthusiasm. I can even imagine her entwined with her nanny or, for that matter, with Tom. Alpha Mum is a more elusive case. An obsession with germs, cleanliness and orderliness being less earthy preoccupations.
I rein myself in to remind myself of my New Year’s resolutions: 1) to become one of those mothers who gets asked advice on matters educational (specialist subject schools in north London), 2) to never forget details like picking my children up from school and 3) to regularly depilate with an emphasis on eyebrow plucking and dyeing.
Tom welcomed the first two resolutions when I unveiled my strategy last night but was less sure about the latter.
‘I don’t see how that will make a difference,’ he said. I presented him with a picture of Fiona Bruce torn from a magazine to show him.
‘It’s all in the eyebrows,’ I told him. ‘If I looked like that then people would take me really seriously. And I would take myself more seriously.’
He looked doubtful. I kept quiet about resolution number 4: to stop having inappropriate thoughts about Robert Bass (already broken) and to avoid ever being alone with him.
I decide that my initial focus must be on the third resolution, and to that end buy a rudimentary eyebrow dyeing kit from a chemist after I drop Fred at his nursery.
