by Wade, Calvin
My opinion of you, only really started to change once I found out I had cancer. I obviously didn’t have any intention of crying on your shoulder, but that’s exactly what I did when I literally bumped into you in Ormskirk. You were a whole host of things that I did not expect you to be, warm, caring, comforting, emotional, passionate, tactile and understanding. My opinion of you tilted into positive territory for the first ever time, but then it was only after Kelly ran off and you were arrested that I began to understand you. I saw that you would go to the ends of the earth and back to support the only person you really loved. In Kelly’s absence, I got to know you better and the more I knew you, the more impressed I became. Against my better judgement, I found myself falling in love with you. The physical side of our relationship came later, but that was not what made me love you, the lovemaking was just a reflection of how intense we had come to feel about each other.
The intensity of what I felt for you did not waiver, it just grew and grew relentlessly. We got married. We had kids. Both of us love Melissa and Jamie with all our hearts, that fact is not debatable, but as time passed, it began to feel that there was not enough love to go around. It wasn’t just the sex that dwindled away, it was that sense of togetherness. We would do everything for the kids and nothing for each other. We just got by and one thing I felt having cancer had taught me was not to just get by, to live each healthy day as if it is a bonus. Jemma, I’ve stopped doing that. I understand our parameters are more constrained now because of the age of our children, but we are not making the most of every opportunity. We definitely aren’t.
Last week, out of the blue, when I was going through some of my old things at Mum and Dad’s house, I came across some bills and letters of Dad’s from four years ago. It turns out, Dad had some financial problems and had hidden these bills away, but had also unknowingly hidden a letter from Kelly addressed to me. I opened it and pretty much told me that she was back living in London, working in a book store but through all her years of travelling around, Kelly had never found her true love. She started to ask herself whether this was because she was destined to be with me. Kelly suggested we should meet up, over on Clieves Hill, at midday on the 4th July, at the place we used to call our ‘Sunny Road’. So, despite being four years late and despite being married, I felt inquisitive. I thought maybe she had a point. I played around with the thought that maybe I wasn’t feeling as happy as I should be feeling with a partner I had chosen to spend the rest of my life with. I wanted to feel more loved, more inspired, less inadequate and I thought maybe the reason I was not feeling as happy as I wanted to feel, was because I was married to the wrong sister. I decided I would go to the ‘Sunny Road’ at midday on the 4th July just to see if Kelly was there and despite being four years late, to my astonishment, she was there waiting for me.”
This was painful listening for me. Part of me wanted to put my suffering to an end by jumping in, but I said I would listen and I intended to do just that. At that stage, I could still see no future for our marriage, but I needed to hear everything, so I managed to hold my tongue and let Richie continue.
“The thing is Jemma, when I saw Kelly standing there, my heart did not skip a beat, I did not feel like this was my date with destiny, I just felt like a complete fool. Kelly isn’t my one true love, the person I want to be buried next to, or at least have my tombstone next to, to signify who I shared my life with. You are Jemma. Meeting Kelly just underlined that fact and I just chatted with her, often about us, more than anything to get a neutral perspective. It was a daft thing to do and perhaps my original intentions were not as honourable as they should have been, but all I wanted to do whilst I was there and all I have ever wanted to do really, is to get things right with you again.”
“Does Kelly know who you are married to?”
“No, she knows I’m married but not who to.”
“Why did you not tell her?”
“As I said, I wanted a neutral perspective on our relationship and if I’d have mentioned that I was married to you, I wasn’t sure how she would react and what sort of perspective she would have given me.”
I thought Richie was trying to cover his tracks. As far as I was concerned, he did not tell her because he thought there would be no opportunity of getting into her knickers if he let that one slip out.
“Did you kiss her?”
“No, I did not kiss her and before you ask, she did not kiss me either. I think both of us had briefly played with the idea that meeting up could be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but once we arrived, all we discovered was wet grass.”
“Am I allowed to speak now?”
“Say everything you need to say.”
“You said a lot of the right things then, Richie, but I still feel pissed off. Sometimes you annoy me, Richie, in fact sometimes you drive me bloody potty, but not once have I ever thought anyone else was my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow except you. Once you read Kelly’s letter, you should have popped it in the bin and come back to reality where you have three people who you mean everything to. I cannot believe you were prepared to jeopardise the future happiness of your children on the basis that some teenage romance might lead to a few more shags than you are getting now. OK, the children aren’t always perfect, especially Jamie, but their love for you is totally unconditional, as is mine, I don’t go out looking for a handsome prince because you’ve left socks on the landing, boxer shorts on the bedroom floor and used tea bags in the sink. I believe you when you say that nothing happened, but the fact that you even bothered to turn up in the first place to see Kelly, still means that you are not the man I thought you were.”
Arguments are ultimately futile if all parties to the argument are not going to see things any differently once the argument ends. If you put a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian and an atheist, in a room together, they will enter the room and leave the room with the same deep rooted views they had already formed. This argument was similar in a way, as I felt Richie had crossed the line by so much that he could barely see the line in the distance behind him. Richie, however, felt he had been wrong to consider crossing the line, but had ultimately sat on it for a while before jumping off it in the right direction. We could debate the point for the rest of our lives and our opinions would not change so ultimately you could say the debate was futile. Sometimes though it just feels good to vent your spleen.
“Jemma, why do you think that people have affairs?”
“As someone who has not even considered having an affair, that is a hard question for me to answer. How about you tell me, Richie?”
“No, humour me. You tell me.”
“Opportunity, desire, an escape from the daily grind…there’s a whole host of reasons.”
“I agree. Ultimately though, it is about wanting more than they have already got. Wanting someone better looking or more exciting or more intelligent….someone who makes them feel better about themselves. No-one has made me feel better about myself than you, Jemma. I want something and someone I’ve already got. I just think we need to recharge our batteries, not swap them for new ones. This has never been more obvious than today”
“Richie, I can’t help feeling how I feel about this. You keep saying that meeting Kelly was a good thing, it wasn’t!”
“Look Jemma, I am not perfect, I am not saying I am, but don’t be trying to send me on a guilt trip over meeting up with Kelly because I’m too busy having a guilt trip about being in a car crash where two people are dead and from what you’ve said, one more, your sister, could still die. I am not saying meeting up with Kelly was a good thing, how can it be when it played its part in that crash and those deaths, but if you take the subsequent crash out the equation, when I met with Kelly, I felt good because all it showed me was how I feel about you.
If I’d have spent the last six months having secret trysts with Kelly and had been tasting the juices of her desire, then I’d deserve all the shit you cared to throw at me, but being totally frank, I do n
ot have an ounce of guilt about this. Not one! Now, if you want to make a big deal about me meeting for a chat with your sister, be my guest, but let’s get one thing straight here, I love you more than anyone else ever has or ever will and any frustrations I have are because the woman I adore does not want to go anywhere near me.”
I sighed again.
“Richie, you’re doing it again, trying to push the blame for your actions on to me.”
“No, I’m just saying Jemma, that in my simple mind there’s a couple of issues but it doesn’t seem to be the most difficult riddle to solve. It just seems that there’s a river that’s run between us, so I’m left on one river bank and you are on the other, we just need to build a bridge that meets in the middle. Now if you think you’re doing everything you can already to make this marriage work then fair enough, but I think we could both be doing more.”
“No, I agree with you. It’s just….”
“Just what, Jemma?”
“It’s just the whole Kelly thing. If she dies, her last moments were spent with you and if she doesn’t there’s this messy love triangle thing that needs sorting out.”
“No, there isn’t! I don’t love Kelly, I just love you.”
“I know that, but I love you and Kelly, Kelly loves you and me and she doesn’t know we’re married. I just hope it’s a problem that all three of us get to sort out.”
Richie took hold of my hand in his.
“Jemma, Kelly does not love me. If you’d have seen her today, you would understand that.”
“Richie, I might not have seen her for ten years, but I know her well enough to know that if I tell Kelly that you and I are married, to Kelly that will be the greatest act of betrayal I could have ever committed.”
“Given everything that’s happened, she has no right to say that.”
“She’ll say it though. God willing, she’ll say it.”
Roddy
Kelly’s accident was the biggest ordeal I had ever had to face in my life and for the first twenty four hours after the crash, I was her solitary visitor. The following day, the nurses told me in the morning, that Kelly’s sister, Jemma was due to visit late in the afternoon, so I was caught off guard when a familiar faced visitor arrived unannounced shortly after lunch. Richie’s wife was not a visitor I had been expecting and as she pulled up a chair to sit on one side of Kelly’s bed, whilst I sat on the other, I had no idea where our conversation would go or how I would handle it. I did not have the slightest idea what she knew or didn’t know, but had an uneasy feeling that somehow I was going to put my foot in it.
“How is she?” Richie’s wife asked sounding genuinely concerned.
“Still not good.” I said as we watched Kelly breathe through a ventilator,
“They have induced this coma on her as the Doctor’s are concerned about the swelling on her brain. It’s too early to tell apparently, how well she is going to come through this, or even if she is going to come through it. I need her to come through though. Kelly, if you can hear me, keep fighting, do you hear me, you have got to keep fighting!”
I blew my nose again. I was not being as tough as I felt I should be. My eyes were redder than a hayfever sufferers when chopping onions in a field of freshly cut grass. I made an effort to compose myself with Richie’s wife present, as it felt wrong to be tearful in front of her.
“How’s your husband?”
“My husband?”
She seemed taken aback that I knew she had a husband.
“Yes, I saw you visiting yesterday, with your family, your little boy and girl. You’re a very eyecatching family. How is Richie?”
“He’s fine. Pretty much. Do you know Richie? Do you know why he’s in hospital?”
“I know of Richie, but I don’t really know him. I know why he’s in hospital though.”
“And sorry you are?”
“I’m Roddy. A friend of Kelly’s.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
We extended arms over the bed and over Kelly’s unconscious body and shook hands. I could feel my throat drying. It suddenly dawned on me that the only possible reason that Richie’s wife could be visiting Kelly was because she wanted to know what her husband was doing in a car with her. Given Kelly was unconscious, the only way Richie’s wife could acquire any answers would be by interrogating me.
“How do you know of Richie then, Roddy?”
There was no point in me lying. Richie was conscious after all and had no doubt offered an explanation to his wife already, she was obviously trying to establish whether his story was true. I could be a good liar when it came to playing a practical joke, but in these circumstances, I decided any questions Richie’s wife asked me, I would answer honestly. I might spare her some of the grisly details, but I would be honest.
“I know him through what Kelly has told me about him. Also, I was over on the other side of Aughton with Kelly when your husband arrived to meet her yesterday. I didn’t speak to him or nothing, but I saw him. I left him with her and then I saw him with you yesterday, when you and your kids were visiting.”
“But you don’t know who I am?”
This struck me as a strange thing for her to ask. I used to be mates with a lad called Garry Barrons, a great little footballer, who joined Crystal Palace as a schoolboy. He made his way through the ranks and when he was sixteen, he signed as a “YTS” player, then when he was eighteen, he turned professional and must have played about twenty games for Palace reserves. If I ever went clubbing with him or even down the pub, that would be his line,
‘Do you know who I am?”
Garry Barrons was a nearly man. That’s who he turned out to be, he just didn’t know his own answer when he asked the question. Anyway, Richie’s wife asking the same question, was a bit weird.
“Look”, I said bluntly, “to be honest with you, I don’t really know who you are and I don’t really care who you are. I know you are Richie’s wife, or at least the mother of his kids…”
“Wife,” she stated.
“Ok, wife. Anyway, I know you’re his wife, but if you’re someone famous, I can honestly say I don’t know you. I don’t watch soap operas, I don’t watch the news, I only really watch sports with men in, if I’m honest, so whoever you are, doesn’t really mean much to me.
I’m sorry that your husband has been in a crash, but he’s the lucky one. Kelly’s not been anywhere near as lucky, so my thoughts are just about her right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad your husband is not in the same mess as Kelly, but you need to talk things through with your husband really, not with me.”
“I know. I understand that. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Good. I’m not being funny, it’s good of you to take the time to come and visit Kelly, but if you want to find out what she was doing with your husband, he needs to be the one to tell you.”
“I know that. I just needed to see Kelly. See how she was.”
A nurse came in, her name was Lucy, I had spoken to her before on this shift and on her previous one. She had done the late shift the night before and the early one that morning, so it seemed she was constantly working. Lucy pottered around, checking charts, traces and figures, signed some forms and then struck up a polite conversation with Richie’s wife and I.
“She’s a fighter, isn’t she?” Lucy observed.
“She is,” I replied.
“Can I get either of you a drink? Mrs. Billingham?”
“No, thanks!”
“What about you, Roddy?”
I needed something for my dry throat.
“I’d love a drink, Lucy!”
“What would you like?”
“I’d love a cup of tea.”
“No problem. How do you have it?”
“Milky. Two sugars.”
“Fine. I’ll pop that back in to you in a few minutes.”
“Wonderful! Thanks Lucy!”
As soon as I said Lucy I began to doubt whether I had her name right, then convinced
myself I was 99% sure she was called Lucy. The nurse whose name was probably Lucy, left.
“You work with Kelly, then?” Mrs. Billingham asked after a momentary silence. I figured that Kelly must have told Richie that she had travelled up with me and he must have told his Mrs. I felt quite flattered that I had been discussed.
“I do. We’re best mates at work. Best mates full stop really. I love the bones of her and I’d say she loves the bones of me too, just a little differently.”
I seemed to reveal the lovesick puppy to anyone who asked really. Random strangers in pubs and at bus stops had heard me pour my heart out before about Kelly, now I was doing the same to a random stranger in hospital intensive care unit.
“So you’d like to be more than friends, but Kelly wouldn’t?”
“In a nutshell. I think I’d be a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but how does she know whether she’d like it or not if she doesn’t buy a ticket?”
“Maybe if Kelly gets better, she’ll appreciate how you’ve been there for her through a difficult time. Women like that. As teenage girls, we are stupid, we go for the bad boys, but the older we get, the more we come to realise that reliability is a good thing. Women like men who keep the faith through thick and thin. They like men who will fix the leak in a sinking boat rather than just abandoning ship.”
I guessed Mrs. Billingham was talking more about her own situation than about mine. Kelly and I didn’t have a leaky boat, we’d never even set sail.
“There would be nothing I would like more, Mrs. Billingham, but I can’t see it happening. I ain’t all that bothered right now though, priority number one is just to see Kelly better again. I want her to outlive me. If I had one wish, that’s what it’d be, for Kelly to outlive me. Whether or not Kelly and I ever get together is immaterial, we will always be friends, no matter what, so I do not want to live my life with a huge void in it, which there would be if Kelly died. I suppose it’s a selfish wish really, but I think Kelly could cope better without me than I could without her.”
