by Adele Parks
Michael took the picture from Martha. He was holding it upside down – but this wasn’t necessarily a reflection of his skills as a father; Mathew’s pictures were very much at a raw talent stage. ‘A circus, very good,’ muttered Michael.
‘A farmyard… we visited on Tuesday,’ murmured Martha.
The bread stuck in her throat. However much water she drank she couldn’t seem to swallow it down. She’d planned to be upbeat and dynamic. She’d wanted to discuss sensibly their position and, through rational debate, convince Michael to return home. She had everything on her side. He couldn’t possibly want to stay away, could he? Not Michael. Michael was kind and sensible. Michael was good and reliable. That’s why she’d chosen him to marry. He was the marrying kind of man. She’d backed the favourite, not the three-legged outsider, so how could she lose the race? He couldn’t really intend to leave her and the children. He couldn’t be that vicious, that cruel. He couldn’t be thinking of a divorce. Every time the word divorce fought its way into Martha’s consciousness it hit her like a stun gun. She was paralysed and left entirely devoid of upbeat or dynamic conversation. Instead she asked, ‘How’s work?’ – as she had asked every night for the last ten years.
‘Not too good.’ Michael winced at the memory of his day. ‘More culling, I’m afraid.’
Martha hated it when Michael referred to redundancies as ‘culls’. She thought it avoided the issue – human lives were being obliterated.
‘Is your job under threat? Is this what this is about? Michael, you know I don’t care about the Bridleway,’ surged Martha, hoping she’d alighted on a cause of his unhappiness and could therefore offer a swift solution. It was in Martha’s nature to fix things. If she saw a rip, she’d reach for her sewing box. If one of the children broke an ornament, she’d reach for the Superglue. If someone was unhappy, she’d buy flowers, send a card or bake a cake in an effort to cheer them up. Martha believed everything could be fixed. Except for death. Her marriage was not dead, she could mend it.
If only she knew what was wrong.
‘You do care about the Bridleway,’ Michael said, slowly.
‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, ‘but nowhere near as much as I care for you. Are we in debt? Have we over-extended ourselves? Is there something you feel you can’t tell me about?’
‘We’re not in debt, Martha. Well, other than the usual credit cards and mortgage.’ He didn’t offer her any more enlightenment. They fell silent and waited for the starter to arrive.
Michael chewed his calves’ liver. Martha played with her green leaf salad.
‘Is there another woman?’ Martha felt small having to ask. Miniscule.
‘For God’s sake, Martha, how could you think that of me?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’
Was he having a breakdown? Martha took a sneaky look at him. Oddly, she was a little afraid to meet his eyes. She didn’t know what she’d find. He was chewing ravenously. He looked fine. He looked well. He didn’t even look worried. Was he a cross-dresser or a closet homosexual? She thought about how much money, time and effort he spent on his wardrobe (entirely Armani, Paul Smith and Boss), and dismissed the idea of him being a cross-dresser. She couldn’t imagine him being attracted to Marks and Sparks nylon skirts and costume jewellery. His toe and fingernails were too filthy for him to be a homosexual. God, these thoughts were bizarre. Martha shook her head a tiny fraction, she wasn’t thinking clearly; she had to get more sleep.
For the rest of the meal they discussed the décor in the restaurant, the wine list and the other diners. At nine-fifteen they collected their coats and Michael drove Martha home. He pecked her on the cheek. Told her he’d call, although he didn’t specify when, and drove away.
From that moment, Martha’s initial optimism, that this was a silly spat that could be resolved with a bit of unclouded thought, began to recede. She didn’t want to admit it, even to herself, but it had been obvious from the word go that Michael didn’t want to be on the date. His reluctance had showed in every gesture, word, stance, even in the tiny muscles above his eyes. Michael didn’t want to be with Martha.
Martha cried all night. She didn’t understand whose life she was living. Certainly not her own.
Martha and Michael met to ‘date’ once a week. They went for a drink, or a meal, or to the cinema. On each occasion Martha would arrange the day and time, the venue and the babysitter. All Michael had to do was show up.
The dates were predestined to be unmitigated disasters. All Martha wanted was an explanation. Michael thought he’d already given one.
He was no longer in love with her.
A potent mix of cowardliness and kindness forced Michael to agree to the dates. He felt he had little choice; Martha harped on and on, pretty much demanded it. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. He wanted to tell her that for months now he’d found himself looking at other women in the street, in the office, in bars. They’d looked back, too. Not many of them were as pretty as Martha, but he wondered if any one of them would love him more than she loved her children. Would any of them nag him any less about his late nights in the office, resist controlling his every movement and still give blow jobs? Would any of them appreciate just how stressful his work was? He thought one of them might; the odds were in his favour. He was sure someone out there could make him happier than he was now. He thought he might already have met her. He knew this wasn’t what Martha wanted to hear but he had nothing else to say. He found himself chatting about banalities such as the weather and the journey from work. He adopted a tone of neutrality: cool, polite, firm.
Martha was humiliated by his dispassion and rejection. Invariably she would be unable to hide her pain and confusion; she’d cry, which would embarrass him, or shout, which would repel him. She knew that she had to make herself more attractive to him, not less, but Martha had always been more of a ‘stand by your man’ than a ‘win back your man’ type, so she had no idea how to turn herself into a Venus flytrap.
She took her guidance from anyone who offered it – Eliza, her mother, magazines, old movies, morning chat shows on TV. Initially, Martha tried buying new clothes for the nights out. Her strategy was to be bright and breezy – because it worked for Dusty Springfield’s heroines. She bought a beautiful, clingy cashmere dress because she vaguely remembered reading somewhere that getting a man to want to touch you was half the battle, and surely everyone wanted to touch cashmere. Eliza thought the theory (and practice) was bollocks but, because she was a devoted sister, she supported Martha – although she did suggest that a modern take on the theory might be more successful. She suggested Martha buy sexy leather pants.
‘Pants?’ asked Martha aghast. ‘I’ve never been into an Ann Summers shop. I don’t know if I’d have the nerve, and anyway, we’re not in the type of relationship where he’d get to see my pants at the moment.’
‘Trousers,’ Eliza clarified.
‘You’ve never been the same since you visited California,’ sighed Martha. But she was persuaded, despite the price tag. She’d try anything. Martha rarely spent serious money on her own clothes but as she was rapidly losing weight, she justified the lavish purchases as necessary rather than indulgent.
It didn’t matter: Michael didn’t notice her new clothes or new figure.
‘How do I look?’ Martha asked at the beginning of their dates. She hated herself for fishing for compliments, but the days when they were spontaneously given were fast fading into history. She twirled around in front of him, hoping that he believed in her faked vivacity.
‘Nice,’ he’d say, as he’d always said when he’d paid her a compliment in the past. Martha tried to appreciate his answer, but in all truthfulness she’d never really liked being described as ‘nice’. She’d always wanted him to describe her as ‘stunning’ or ‘beautiful’ or ‘drop dead’.
‘Shall we eat?’ he asked, picking up the menu and dropping his gaze, without waiting for her to agree.
On each date the
y tried to be ‘nice’ to each other. But trying was trying. Martha arrived late and tired. She always intended to be ready in plenty of time. But, just as she was setting off, one of the children would wake and need resettling, or she’d remember that it was rubbish collection the next day and she’d have to wheel the bins out to the front gate (not easy in kitten heels). It was tricky appearing – what was it that Eliza had suggested – ‘confident and indifferent’ when your whole world had been washed away like an ephemeral sandcastle. It was hard to appear beguiling and bewitching (as suggested by Doris Day, in a film she’d caught a snatch of on Channel 5 the other afternoon) when you felt belittled and bewildered. It was virtually impossible to be interesting and stimulating when your estranged husband’s idea of a conversation was muttering monosyllabic replies (often, ‘No’ or ‘I don’t know’) to all your deep and probing questions.
As each date passed Michael found it harder and harder to hold eye contact with his wife. Why did she insist on wearing her pathetic pain like a shroud? Why did she insist her life was so difficult? Christ, how hard was it to get to a restaurant on time? He was sure she deliberately arrived late to give her the opportunity to moan about how difficult her life was, her life without him. She would not make him feel guilty, which was clearly what she was trying to do. She was trying to manipulate him. Martha’s stare soused Michael in a strange cocktail of emotions. He felt ashamed and ignoble, which he didn’t like, so he became indignant and resentful in her company. She was no fun. And fun was what he wanted. Didn’t she see that? Well fuck her; others saw it. Sleeping in a hotel room wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs, nor was sleeping in his mate’s spare room but Michael could, quite clearly, see a time when beds would be fun again. Michael never mentioned his new friends to Martha.
Martha felt that Michael had performed open-heart surgery on her, in boxing gloves, and he had forgotten to sew her back up. She even imagined she was still under anaesthetic because her life had a strange nightmarish unreality to it. She was embarrassed and pained by her open wound and tried to hide it behind excited chatter about the children and her day-to-day life. But her day-today life was the children; she had nothing else to talk about. Michael had been her only other topic of conversation. If he’d asked after Eliza or her parents, which he didn’t anyway, she wouldn’t have been able to be honest with him. Martha hated being dishonest, but she couldn’t tell him that they were burning his effigy and stabbing the private parts of a voodoo doll. After she’d told Michael that the man from Majestic Wine had called to tell him that he’d received a case of a rather special vintage Michael might be interested in, she had nothing left to say.
Martha realized she was boring him.
At the beginning of each date, Martha would leave the house looking pretty and expectant. She would return looking flattened and woeful. As she put her key in the lock she would muster her resources and manage a smile for Eliza. It was a brave but pointless gesture. Eliza was always watching and waiting for her sister’s return, monitoring the progress – or rather lack of progress – as keenly as Martha. As Eliza heard a car draw up, she’d run to the window. She’d watch as Michael planted his cold kisses on Martha’s cheek. What sort of date was it when the guy didn’t try to plunge his hands inside your knickers? It was hardly polite. She’d note Martha’s hunched shoulders and tight mouth as she walked down the garden path. Therefore Eliza was never convinced by the wide smile that Martha tried to pass off as genuine when she walked through the door.
The debrief was an intrinsic part of the date routine, but this was generally as intense and disappointing as the actual date.
Typically, it went something like this. As Martha pushed open the front door Eliza handed her a glass of wine and demanded, ‘So what the fuck has the Guru had to say for himself tonight?’
Eliza had taken to calling Michael ‘the Guru’ since he had explained to Martha that he was ‘going through some sort of crisis and needed to find some answers about himself’. ‘No kidding, we bloody knew that already,’ Eliza had shouted when Martha had related the comment. Martha always regretted telling Eliza what Michael had said. Eliza invariably trivialized it. Perhaps something was lost in the retelling because, when Michael had said as much to Martha, Martha had thought he’d initiated a very positive breakthrough.
‘Please don’t swear so much in front of the children.’
‘They’re in bed.’
‘Well, in front of me then,’ Martha had urged.
‘I can’t help it, Martha, he makes me mad. You can’t just up and off, after ten years, and give no reason for it.’
‘He has given a reason: he said he was unhappy.’
‘And why is he unhappy? When did he realize he was unhappy?’
These were, of course, questions Martha had asked herself – more or less constantly – since Michael left. She was no closer to stumbling on any answers.
Eliza fumed. What was all this talk about being happy, for God’s sake? He was married, wasn’t he? He couldn’t expect to be happy all the time. Didn’t he know anything about the real world? And to add insult to injury, since he’d walked away from his wife and children, there was the way he handled the subsequent situation. Or, rather, the fact that he entirely ignored the situation. Martha’s every moment was consumed by thinking about their relationship, trying to understand it, rationalize it, excuse it and fix it. Whilst Michael claimed that he was too busy at work to give his floundering marriage any real thought.
‘If this had happened to me there wouldn’t be any of this “talking it through” bollocks. It would be straight down to the Citizens Advice Bureau for the name of a good family solicitor,’ shouted Eliza.
‘But we’re not alike, and it didn’t happen to you, and you aren’t me,’ argued Martha.
Thank God, muttered Eliza to herself. She took a deep breath and tried to be sympathetic. ‘OK, so tell me what was said tonight.’
‘Actually, I’m much closer to understanding why he is unhappy.’
‘And why is that?’ (Gritted teeth.)
‘Our constant rowing and my being a nag distresses him. Also, he doesn’t see enough of his friends.’ (Brave, bogus smile.)
Eliza was momentarily speechless, and then she resorted to her favoured form of expression. ‘Jesus, what fucking bullshit, Martha.’
‘Eliza.’ Martha pointed frantically to the ceiling. Eliza’s profane outburst was surely enough to make their grandparents spin in their graves, so it was certainly more than enough to rouse the curiosity of a light-sleeping toddler.
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
‘Well, we have argued a lot recently.’ Martha was in the habit of agreeing with Michael. She’d done so for a long time.
‘You argued because he was always out, and you’d been left on your own to manage the children, and Mathew has been a handful, and Maisie has had colic, and Michael has insisted you get down the gym in order to achieve the perfect figure, and he sent you around estate agents to find the perfect dream home, and it’s all been too much for you.’ Each ‘and’ was delivered in an ever shriller tone of mounting indignation.
‘Maybe, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like my rowing and complaining. That’s why he’s been going out so much.’
‘Didn’t it cross his mind to stay in and help you?’
‘No.’
‘And what’s that nonsense about not seeing enough of his friends? He wouldn’t see anything of his friends if it weren’t for you. You’re the one that invites people over for dinner, you plan picnics at the weekend, you arrange trips to the cinema, you remember your friends’ birthdays and the names of their children.’
‘I know, but he wants to see more of his male friends on his own. He does work very hard, terribly long hours.’
‘Yeah, most of them in restaurants.’
‘It’s progress,’ insisted Martha.
‘Oh whoopee do,’ sighed Eliza.
Martha looked hurt and Eliza regret
ted her flippancy.
‘I need to fight for him,’ Martha insisted.
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s my husband and that’s what people do. They fight for their husbands.’ Although she doubted Eliza would be able to understand. She’d never been married. Surely she was right, as his wife and the mother of his children, surely she should do absolutely anything, anything at all to try to save her marriage. Even if it sometimes felt that she was the only person in the world old-fashioned enough to believe this.
She loved him.
Whilst hating him.
Loved or hated him? It was almost impossible to know.
Eliza was so frustrated. Frustrated with Michael, primarily, for being such a weak, disappointing bastard, and frustrated with her sister for pandering to his behaviour. Eliza hadn’t been aware that she resented Michael’s lifestyle so much. It had occasionally crossed her mind that her sister had somehow been transported back to the 1950s, but she hadn’t questioned Martha’s role – in fact she’d sometimes coveted it. Certainly select bits of it. Not having to work had its advantages. Eliza envied Martha for not having to worry about the moods of a premenstrual boss, not having to battle with commuters every morning and evening, not having to raise pesky purchase orders that never tallied with the subsequent invoices. In comparison, pottering around with the children in the park, painting pictures, baking cakes, it all seemed a doddle. Besides which, Martha had always appeared happy. Eliza hadn’t wanted, or needed, to interfere. After all, what did Eliza know about marriage, especially someone else’s?
But even a blind, deaf, mute alien could now see what her sister apparently couldn’t. Michael was now being an unreasonable, irresponsible, arrogant twat.
Oh, she felt better for saying that, even though she’d said it only in her head.
On an almost daily basis, Eliza encouraged Martha to change tack. She argued that Martha had tried being bright and beautiful, rational and reserved, tolerant and stoical, but Michael hadn’t responded. So why not try something more confident and seize back some control? (By which Eliza meant Martha must stop acting like a doormat, though she managed to resist saying as much.)
