by Mason, Carol
‘You know I was thinking about Wendy the other day,’ she holds her glass up to her face, scrutinizes it then rubs a lipstick mark off it. ‘You know the problem with Wendy? You never get any dirt off her, do you? Don’t you just sometimes wish she’d sit down, say life’s crap, Neil’s an arsehole, my kids should be set upon by Dingos….’
‘But her life’s not crap. Neil’s fantastic, and her lads are sweethearts. You’re just being a catty jealous cow.’
‘Oh I am. Haven’t the tips of my ears turned green?’ She lifts one of her funeral curtains.
‘Actually,’ I pretend to peer in there, ‘you’ve got a lot of wax in that one.’ Her face is transformed by her smile. ‘So have I cheered you up then, petals? You’re not going to go home and gash your jugular when Lawrence wants to have sex the moment you are in the door?’
‘Please,’ she says. ‘Don’t put that unpleasant thought in my head right now.’ She gawps at the offending lads who are now chatting up the two babies who look like they’ve forgotten to put their tops on. ‘Oh come on Jill, this place is making me gag. I don’t even know what we’re doing here. I feel like going home and scrubbing myself in a shower.’
I neglect to remind her that coming here was her idea.
We finish our drinks and leave. It’s refreshingly chilly, and spitting on to rain, a fine spray visible only under the blue of the streetlamps. I breathe in the oily Newcastle dampness, aware that my hearing has almost gone dim from all the loud music. I love this revamped part of the city, especially at night. The Blinking Eye bridge lit up with blue lights. The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, a converted flourmill, floodlit against the night sky. And the new Sage Centre for Music that reminds you of a stainless steel seashell, or a giant cream horn as my dad calls it. The new Newcastle that has lost its scent of coalmines and unemployment lines. A group of girls jig past us, linking arms, singing Kylie songs, and doing their drunken version of the Can-Can. Leigh and I walk without saying much, as lights from the Sage Centre bob a reflection on the river and cars drum noisily over the Tyne Bridge. She seems bleak again. I realise that sometimes the people I know the most are the ones I least understand. I listen to our heels clack on the wet cobblestones.
The lovely silver Mercedes SL 500, whose alarm I set off when I accidentally nudged it as I tried to squeeze my Jetta between it and a BMW X5, is still parked behind me. I’m about to get in my car when I notice something under my wiper. ‘What’s that?’ Leigh asks.
It doesn’t look like a parking ticket. I pull out the somewhat soggy piece of paper and read: I saw you scratch my car. So instead of compensation, how about a drink? And under that is the name Andrey and a phone number.
I am rather amazed and taken aback. My eyes dart from his very fancy car to the steamed-up window of Still Life, where, without looking obvious, I try to see if I can see a man who looks like an Andrey, not that I know what an Andrey would look like. But there’s just a lot of silhouettes planted against the glass. I stand there lost in a big smirk, staring at that car and biting the paper. I have to admit, this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me every day. I wonder if he’s gorgeous. Like he would be if my life were a movie.
‘What is it then?’ Leigh’s white face peers across the car roof, through a blue-lit rain.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to show her. And on better nights we’d have a chuckle and speculate whether he’d be good in bed, and she’d share some sordid story about a past hi-jinx with a man named Andrey. Then she’d wave me off at her door, and I’d sparkle all the way home—that fabulous after-effect of having a good night out with a great friend. But something tells me not to bother. So I slip the paper into my bag. ‘Oh nothing. Just a flyer.’
~ * * * ~
‘Leigh had a bit of a freak-out,’ I tell Rob when I slip under the duvet beside him, relieved to be home beside him. Rob always loves the stories of the girls’ nights out. Rob never has stories of his nights out. Rob thinks if he talks about anything other than sport with his pals, they’re all being gay or something.
He turns and lifts an arm for me to snuggle under, sniffs my hair. ‘You smell like an ashtray.’
‘Eau du Fags. It’s the new fragrance by Givenchy.’ I poke him in the ribs. ‘Anyway, what you doing in bed this early? Did your girlfriend just leave?’
‘Didn’t you pass her on the way in?’ I feel him smile against my cheek. ‘Why did Leigh throw a wobbler then?’
The cold steel rain, heavy now, scatters on the windows that flank our bed, and nestling under Rob’s arm is truly the closest thing to my heaven. ‘Oh, because some wasted three-year-old made eyes at me instead of her.’ I inch my legs over to the side of the bed that he’s warmed and tell him the story, lapping up the feeling of his thumb stroking my damp hair.
‘She’s bonkers,’ is his verdict. Rob’s deep like that.
Leigh does have issues. But could you blame her, given her upbringing? As she’ll often say, ‘You know my mam never once gave me a cuddle or told me I was beautiful.’ And I think that’s so sad. Because my mother was the opposite. My mother did that every day.
‘So were the flies out again?’ he asks. This is Rob’s little joke about men finding his wife attractive. ‘You’re like dung,’ he’ll say. ‘You attract all the flies.’
‘Oh, the odd bluebottle was buzzing around, you know…’ I think of that note for a moment, and realise it’s still in my bag. ‘So, did our very untrained puppy do another pile in the house?’ Rob bought me Kiefer, a Hound/Collie cross, for my birthday. Don’t ask me why. I’ve never expressed any desire for a dog, probably because I’ve never had any desire for a dog. So Kiefer’s spent the last three months teaching me how to love him—by crapping all over the house, shredding my nerve-ends with his bark, chewing his way through my every last shoe and piece of furniture, and stubbornly foisting himself in the middle of Rob and me whenever I try to steal a bit of affection.
‘Nah. Just that mound under your pillow.’
‘Very funny.’ I kiss the smooth cleft of his chin, smell toothpaste on his breath, sneak a hand under his T-shirt, and feel the easy familiarity of my marriage cloak me. Over the years Rob’s middle has turned a bit like a lukewarm hot water bottle, but since he’s rather mysteriously lost some weight recently, he’s got a pretty nice body on him again. He clutches my sore foot between both of his.
‘I missed you, you know.’ He plants a tender little kiss on my eyelid. ‘I always do when I come to bed and you’re not with me. I might fall asleep but I’ve always got one eye awake, waiting for you to come home.’
‘How do you keep an eye awake?’ I prop myself on an elbow and gaze at him. ‘Do you pin its lids back and squirt it with cold water? Or slap it around, or shout at it every two minutes? Shock its socks off?’
He pulls my head back down on his chest again. ‘Very droll, funny clogs.’
Strange, Rob’s been so mushy with me lately. Normally he’s not good with telling me he loves me. Instead, he’ll make up silly little songs, and, in his abysmally off-key voice, sing them to some familiar tune: My wife. I love her. She is beau-t-i-ful. I think of her all day. She makes me smile. All the while… she has cute little toes, and a turned up nose.
‘Argh, Rob,’ I plant a kiss in the centre of his chest. His skin smells newly-washed, of soap. It strikes me that I can’t remember the last time we had a spontaneous bout of clothes-ripping passion. Something that wasn’t part of a routine, or timed between two good shows on TV. I sometimes wonder if we escaped the seven-year itch only to fall into the ten-year ditch. I push these thoughts away, kiss a trail up his body, up his throat, run my lips along his stubbly jaw, wondering if some affection of the other sort might be in order. But Rob lies very still –a clear case of not-tonight-Josephine. So I stop, noncommittally, as though kissing his jaw was as far as I was going with the mission anyway. I try not to feel flattened, slighted, unfeminine.
‘What you want to do tomorrow then?’ I prod him. Since our
marriage seems to have withered on the vine lately, for reasons I’m not quite clear on, I made Rob make a pact with me. I said, let’s make Saturdays our ‘date’ days. Let’s pretend we’re courting again. To try to bring something back that I’m worrying we’ve lost.
Rob considers my question. ‘Anything you want to do, treasure.’ Rob will always leave everything up to me, even when it comes to what he wants to do. I never know whether he’s just being compliant for an easy life, or whether, over the years, he really has just merged his mind with my mind so that now he doesn’t have one of his own anymore. The first is sort of sweet and is sometimes a good thing anyway. The second irritates me.
‘We’ll think of something fun and brilliant in the morning, won’t we?’ I stress we.
‘You will. My faith in you knows no limits.’ He kisses my cheek then gently pushes me away and turns over.
What did I read the other day in a magazine? That trust, communication, and a little touch of lust are the three ingredients that make a marriage stand the test of time.
Help.
Chapter Two
‘Rob can only keep it up for about thirty seconds,’ I tell Wendy on the phone while I sit at my desk at work. (I’m personal assistant to the Head of Finance for Newcastle Football Club.) The girls who sit across from me nearly fall off their chairs.
‘You and your dirty minds!’ I scold them. ‘I’m talking about running! Rob and I are training to run 10K.’ It’s the new ‘us’. It’s healthy, it’s bonding, it’s the perfect way to exercise the dog.
‘Glad you clarified that Jill girl,’ Leanne says to me. ‘Otherwise that would account for a lot about you, wouldn’t it?’
I grin then scowl. ‘Really?’ I cover the mouthpiece with a hand, ‘Like what?’ I hear Wendy chuckle then I try to tune back into her. Wendy is my running guru. She’s also about the fittest person I know, even though ironically—as she will always grumble—she’s not the thinnest.
‘Well Jill,’ she tells me, ‘it takes time to build up your endurance. Your heart’s a muscle too, so you have to work at it to make it strong. That’s not something you can do overnight.’
‘The hardest part, I find, is putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going,’ I tell her. ‘I’m still trying to work that part out. But we did it exactly like you told us to. We followed the programme.’ With our own variation. The first day we started off walking for one minute, then running for two—we did this ten times—sort of. The next day we had to run two and walk for one, and do this twelve times. By day four we had our numbers in a knot and ran for one and walked for about ten and had a good old chatter along the way, and did this three times. Then by the end of the week I had a sore foot and Rob had a pain in his coccyx. ‘We’re really loving it though, just like you said we would. And we’re certainly going to stick with it.’ Once we pick it up again in the winter. As Rob said, it’s getting too warm now to be doing all this extra sweating; it’ll be better when it’s cold. And preferably dark, so the neighbours can’t see us. Besides, Rob said, running isn’t good for bigger puppies; it can displace their hips. I gave my husband’s head a good hard rub, ‘Argh, Robby my big puppy! I wouldn’t want you getting your hip displaced now would I?’ Apparently he was talking about the dog.
I see my boss coming and duck into my shoulders. ‘Gotta go,’ I whisper to Wendy. ‘Adolf’s doing the goose-step, two-step.’
‘I’ll see you in Yoga tonight, right?’
Oh, it’s exhausting this business of trying to age gracefully! ‘Now Wend, what would I do without a friend like you, driving me to be a better person?’
‘I’ll loan you my large bum then you’ll have no problem finding the motivation.’
I’m just about to knuckle back down to work when my phone rings. I recognize the anguished draw of breath and my spirits hit the floor. ‘Dad!’
‘Jill!’ he says. I don’t know how one word can say so much. ‘It’s your mam. I turned my back for one second…. the front door was open… She’s gone!’
Isn’t this just what happened last week? My mam has vascular dementia and my dad can’t cope. He’s becoming more and more helpless but he won’t admit it because northern men were bred to be stronger than anyone else, and he’s afraid someone is going to suggest she goes in a home. ‘Oh Dad!’ My work friends all send me sympathetic looks.
‘She’s still in her dressing gown. I couldn’t get her to get dressed this morning. Oh…’ his voice wobbles; he starts to sniffle.
Hearing my dad cry makes a big lump rise up in my throat. ‘Dad, you know somebody’s going to find her and bring her home! Just like last time.’ Silksworth is small. You couldn’t run away if you wanted to. ‘But, I’m coming. I’ll be there as fast as I can.’ But it won’t be fast. Not in rush hour traffic. An hour probably, at least. ‘Hang on in there.’
‘I’m hanging,’ he says, pitifully.
I ring off, throw my phone and cardigan into my bag. I’m forgetting something… I used to have a very understanding boss, until he dropped down dead before our very eyes about a month ago. But this new guy, Arnold Swinburn, is a different story altogether. He goes around like he’s got a large, splintery plank up his bottom, and he’s always watching me with eyeballs the size of small planets when he walks past my desk in his slip-on tan shoes with leather tassels that have all us girls giggling. I tap on his door. When I go in, he gives me that preparing-to-not-be-amused look over the top of his glasses, and I’ve not even said anything yet. ‘I’m afraid… I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to leave early. I have a family emergency.’
‘Another one?’ he says, as though I get them every day.
I have worked here for five years and have an immaculate record of attendance, punctuality, efficiency. So this attitude does not sit well with me. ‘I’ll make the time up,’ I tell him.
‘You bet you will.’
I feel like I’ve been called before the headmaster and am about to receive the strap. ‘You know, I don’t have children. If I did, I am sure there’d be all kinds of days when I’d have to skip out an hour from work or maybe not even make it in...’ I am talking to the top of his head. I put my best monotone voice on, my polite way of making it known that he needn’t think I’d put this job—any job, or any thing for that matter—before my parents’ well-being, so he really will have to sod off and deal with his disgruntlement, won’t he. ‘My mother is an old lady. She suffers from dementia. She ran away from the house and she won’t know where she is, or where she’s going. She probably won’t even know who she is, for that matter, if it’s a bad day for her. Then there are the days where she does remember, but she knows that something is not quite the same in her head, that there’s this hideous confusion, and there’s nothing she can do to make it go away.’ The top of his bald head has broken a fine sweat. ‘That’s what happens with this illness, and it could happen to any one of us.’ Including you. I chant a few more things silently in my mind that I wish I could say but can’t.
‘See you on Monday,’ he says.
As I creep out of there, I feel his disapproving eyes bore into my back.
Admittedly it didn’t help that I was late in this morning and I missed a Manager’s meeting because that hound Kiefer tried to take our neighbour’s bunny rabbit for a ride around our garden in his mouth. I had to streak around the lawn in my underwear trying to catch him, but he just thought we were playing a game. By the time he took my threats to kill him seriously and I got the bunny back in its hut and got dressed, I knew I didn’t have a rabbit in hell’s chance of being on time for the meeting. So it’s two nails in my coffin in one day. But using that same line to Arnie about my dog is only a puppy… he barely knows his own name…let’s face it, being a puppy could happen to any one of us doesn’t work quite the same.
Of course because I’m in such a hurry to get through to Sunderland there has to be an accident on the Tyne bridge. As I sit there in a frazzle, the passenger of an A1 Windows and Doors va
n that’s idling beside me catches my eye and winks. Next, his buddy is leaning over and doing the same thing, as though they’ve got a prolapsus of the eye muscles. I fix my attention straight ahead of me and do my utmost to tune them out. She’s going to be fine, I tell myself, because I think you have intuition for bad things happening and my gut tells me it’s not going to be this time. But still I worry because I am a worrier by nature. Even when I have little to worry about, I worry. I worry that they’re sleeping, eating, going to the toilet. That they’re warm, get fresh air, turn the oven off, close their windows at night, and don’t answer the door to strangers. ‘What you think we are?’ my dad will say. ‘A couple of stool pigeons?’
‘I think you mean sitting ducks,’ I'll grin at him, and he'll wheeze a laugh, his chest making a melody like a distant orchestra tuning up.
My mother has had this condition for going on three years now. At first it was little things: she’d put milk in the china cabinet, ask questions we’d just given her the answer to. Then came the big one—she forgot it was Christmas Day. Now she gets it into her head that my dad is her brother who is molesting her. Dementia can have you perceiving things in extreme opposites.
Somebody toots a horn. I register that traffic ahead is moving again. The two men in the van pull argh-she’s-leaving-us faces and wave like a couple of half-wits. I give them my women-are-the-superior-sex eye-roll then shift into gear. On the way, I ring Rob and sound off about how I’m really going to have to intervene and do something about my parents, and he comforts me and promises me we’ll think of something together.
My mobile rings as I’m pulling up at their front door. ‘We found her! Jenny Barton found her in the bus shelter. You needn’t bother coming, we’re fine now!’ There’s a pause. ‘Where are you anyway, chucka?’
He always calls me chucka.
‘Look out the window,’ I tell him.
The curtain twitches. My dad’s eyes meet mine. ‘Oh,’ he says.
