by Adele Parks
‘That’s awful, love, I’m so sorry. When did this happen?’
So Martha told her tale. And it did help. It certainly did. The shop assistant offered uncomplicated, unconditional sympathy. On the back of that success Martha mentioned to the woman in the toyshop that she was living on her own at the moment, and the woman squeezed her hand. She had a soft, dry hand. The chap at the garden centre said he could deliver the heavy stuff, as she didn’t have a man to carry it for her.
These kindnesses went some way to soothing the agony. Martha was on a roll; she reasoned that if she told enough strangers, and received enough sympathetic smiles, enough warming hand squeezes, enough help with heavy bags, she would be able to bung the gap in her heart and life. So she talked and talked and talked. She started to tell everyone she met. She told them that it was a shock, that she couldn’t understand it, that she was devastated, and that she was going to wait for him to come home, because what else could she do? In this way she embarrassed shop assistants, hairdressers and poor old dears who sat on the bus worrying about their gas bills. Martha didn’t notice their embarrassment; she was swamped in her own self-pity.
‘How terrible,’ people said. They shook their heads, mostly saddened by the awful familiarity of Martha’s story.
‘Why did he leave?’ asked the lollipop lady.
Martha felt dense and desolate again. She couldn’t say. On top of everything, he’d left her dumbstruck. How stupid to have to answer, ‘I don’t know.’ How careless.
Martha tried to reason it through. I’m pretty and pleasant, I adore the children, and I’m a good cook. I keep the home immaculate. I don’t overspend self-indulgently. Well, at least I didn’t until recently.
And I love him.
Loved him?
‘Is there another woman?’ the helpful lollipop lady asked.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘There has to be,’ she asserted flatly.
Has there? Martha didn’t know and she should have known, shouldn’t she? She should have had some idea as to whether her husband was having an affair. Other women seemed to have a nose for that sort of thing. Sheila in the butcher’s thought that ‘he must be’. The receptionist at the doctors thought that ‘they’re all at it’. Even Eliza had hinted that she thought it was possible. But how could Martha believe it? How could she be expected to stop trusting and hoping in an instant? How was she supposed to think so badly of him after ten years of adoring him?
She didn’t know how.
Martha liked it best if the strangers patiently listened to her tale, not interrupting with anything more significant than a confused or horrified tut. She didn’t like the strangers that insisted on recounting their own stories of disillusionment or failure. And there was a multitude of these. But what help could it possibly be to her to know that everyone had a horror story to match her own? Everyone knew someone who had had exactly the same thing happen to them. How was that a comfort? So irresponsibility and philandering were widespread – great news.
‘My brother-in-law left my sister when she was pregnant with twins,’ said the woman in the dry cleaner’s.
‘My friend’s husband has just left her, and they’ve been married sixteen years. Turns out he’s been having an affair with his secretary all that time; he even slept with her – the secretary, that is – on their wedding night – my friend’s wedding night, that is.’
‘How awful,’ muttered Martha, and it was. It was.
But other people’s awfulness didn’t make Michael less awful. Other people’s pain didn’t alleviate hers; in fact their pain aggravated hers. It was as though a dense cloud of deceit had crept up on her and was now smothering her; when Martha looked around all she saw were grim closed faces, sad disappointed lives, broken dreams and smashed hearts. It didn’t help her at all that everyone thought that the only real tragedy about her story was the common-or-garden nature of it. Nobody cared that her marriage was over. They seemed to think it was OK just to dissolve that magic. Martha thought it was a bit like getting her hair cut: no one other than herself seemed to notice. She didn’t want to believe that broken promises were an accepted part of the world that she’d brought Mathew and Maisie into. She’d have preferred to believe that she was a freak.
This was her sixth day out alone, and the sense that she’d forgotten something vital (i.e. the children) was beginning to recede. After her first outing of intensive retail therapy, Martha used the free time to do things that she could, if ever given the opportunity, talk to Michael about. (Although she doubted that there was currently much scope for general conversation – not so soon after the wine-throwing fiasco.) The previous Wednesday she’d been to the gym and after her workout she’d read through the Financial Times. Yesterday she’d been to the South Bank Centre to listen to a lecture by a war correspondent, who’d spent several very interesting years watching people kill each other. Today she was visiting a small gallery just off the Caledonian Road. The exhibition was very modern and had been given great write-ups in all the Sunday papers. It was entitled Obliteration. Perhaps Martha would have been wiser choosing something different, but Michael loved modern art.
Martha wasn’t sure if she did.
She had a sneaky suspicion that a lot of it was Emperor’s new clothes. A white canvas hung on a white wall? She appreciated the symbolism but… to pay £50,000 for an installation when needy kids in countless countries could have their sight saved for seven pounds a throw didn’t seem right. How could she be moved by anything so fake?
There weren’t many people in the gallery. The big galleries in town attracted tourists every day of the week, but something as specialist as this couldn’t hope for, and probably didn’t crave, tourist crowds. The gallery curator took his exhibition far too seriously to actually want to meet the masses and gain their approval. Martha wondered if she was missing something (besides her husband). Was she missing something culturally? The three or four other people in the gallery seemed to be entirely engrossed in the exhibition. Maybe she was a philistine. One man had been standing in front of that black canvas (Gone) for over twelve minutes – Martha had been timing him. What did he find so fascinating? Why did people slow down when they walked through a gallery? Were they captivated? Was it a sign of respect?
Or had the tedium finally worn down their reserves of energy and they dawdled because their spirits were dampened?
Maybe that man’s wife had left him too? If that were the case, then Martha could understand why he appeared to be immobilized by a painting called Gone.
God, what a depressing exhibition.
The door of the gallery swung wide open, allowing a whiff of autumnal sunshine to frisk the stuffy room. The traffic and pedestrians zoomed past the gallery, a low oblivious drone of the culturally depraved. How Martha wished she were outside with them, enjoying the sunshine, rather than wading through the dull catalogue detailing the significance of various forms of obliteration. Suddenly, Martha envied the people outside the gallery for their blissful indifference.
What was she doing here? It was Michael who liked modern art, not her. She had four more canvases to see in this room, and a further three in the smaller room next door.
She could just walk out.
Leave.
Join the culturally depraved, happy people on the street. The thought struck Martha as heresy; but at the same time made her smile. She had never left a cinema during a film, although she had sat through some absolute trash – it seemed judgemental on those who were enjoying the film. She had never started reading a book and failed to complete it, however poorly written it was – it seemed rude to the author. If she left the gallery now she’d run the risk of offending the staff and incurring their disapproval. But it did look lovely outside, and Martha really wasn’t enjoying the exhibition.
Suddenly Martha found herself striding down the street. The bright autumn sunshine danced on her skin as the coolish breeze played with her hair and caused her long coat to flap
about, to dance like the magic clothes in the Disney videos that Mathew was addicted to. His favourite was Cinderella; Martha had never told Michael this: somehow she didn’t think he’d approve.
Martha found a coffee shop and bought a caffè latte and a large blueberry muffin. She could eat anything she liked at the moment and not put on any weight. She might as well make the most of it. Not that she had eaten that much over the last few weeks. She’d prepared plenty of meals with the intention of tucking in, but every time she took a bite her stomach knotted with stress. Something about deserting the gallery had made her hungry; she ate the entire muffin. Then licked a finger and dabbed at the plate to pick up the crumbs. When she’d finished, she went to find a telephone box.
It was about half past four and the roads were busy. So much life. Such a hullabaloo. So much happening. Face after face. Life after life. People. Martha thought it odd that life insisted on continuing around her as though nothing had happened. So many people firmly declaring that there had not been a cosmic disaster, declaring it brazenly by waiting for buses, eating McDonald’s, allowing their dogs to foul the pavement.
There were countless mothers shoving their way with strollers through the cluttered streets, negotiating the too-narrow, too-heavy shop doors. Recently Martha had started checking the left hands of women pushing strollers. Were they married? Martha was the only single mum out of all of her friends. Not that she was really a single mum – she was certain that her position was only temporary – but say she did become a single mum, for real, well then, she’d be the only one she knew. It wasn’t a comforting thought. Firstly, Martha didn’t like doing anything out of the ordinary. She liked to fit in. Secondly, and this was the big one, why couldn’t they make it if everyone else could? What was it about her that Michael had found so repulsive, so impossible? Martha shuddered. The last time she had found herself looking at the left hands of women she came into contact with was when she was in her early twenties and wanted to get engaged. Then, like now, everyone seemed to be sporting a ring. She looked at her own rings, beautiful and classic. A plain gold band and a diamond cluster. They still shone brightly, tauntingly.
Deceitfully.
Martha looked closer. Without exception, the mothers still looked harassed. Busy and anxious. So the rings didn’t protect them from that, or alleviate their exhaustion. Martha nodded and half-smiled at one or two of them. They took a second out from worrying about what to buy for tea to hurriedly smile back.
Since Michael had left, Martha had failed to lend any import to what she or the children would be eating for tea. Suddenly Martha wanted to climb back inside this world of trivia; she’d always insisted that life was lived through details. Details such as finding the correct Teletubbies plastic cup for Mathew to drink his juice from (Laa-Laa). The small stuff was something she set a lot of store by, and Michael had set none. Martha wondered if she’d ever have the energy to truly engage again. She hoped so. She took a deep breath. The air did smell good. Sharp and blue. She made a conscious effort to relax her shoulders, which she had worn hunched around her ears recently.
She watched one young mum and her little girl choose a pumpkin. Martha ought to buy one. She could cut out a face, nothing too scary, perhaps a cat’s face. Maisie was a little young for a monster pumpkin, it might frighten her. If she bought a pumpkin she could carve it out tonight, it would be something to do. Martha handed over her money for a hefty pumpkin and felt a faint sense of involvement, of belonging. The loneliness, that had more or less permanently engulfed her since Michael had left, receded slightly.
Could she belong to something other than Michael?
Besides the women with the strollers, there were countless groups of schoolchildren hanging around the street, delaying the inevitable moment when they would have to go home and be nagged about homework. Did they all have mothers and fathers who lived together? They couldn’t have, not when one considered the statistics, reasoned Martha. Martha thought of Dawn, one of her oldest and best friends. Dawn was a mother of three, including twins, and was one of the warmest, funniest, most grounded women Martha knew. Dawn’s parents had divorced when she was young. She might give Dawn a call tonight and, well, update her.
And thinking about her post-natal group, who were a great bunch of women, three of them came from a family where there had been a divorce. Martha was sure that if she called any one of them and admitted to her situation, they’d be supportive. She might be the first of her contemporaries to be getting divorced, but she certainly wasn’t the first person ever. It didn’t follow that parents who were separated were worse parents than those who stayed together, or that the children were more likely to turn out dysfunctional. Martha knew lots of emotionally crippled, dysfunctional psychotics who came from families where parents had stayed together. Michael was a clear example.
Not that Martha was going to end up divorced.
But, say, if she did.
Martha remembered she was looking for a phone box and asked one young boy for directions to the nearest one. From his scrawny size, Martha imagined he was about twelve; he was smoking and he had a pierced ear. He seemed to think it a little bit odd that this posh bint was asking for his help, but in polite, grammatically incorrect, embarrassed stutters he gave her directions. He only said ‘shit’ once.
Martha scrabbled around in her bag. She always carried a purse full of change for phone boxes, meters and tips. First she rang her mother to check if the children were OK – naturally they were fine.
In fact, Mrs Evergreen didn’t seem to want to talk about the children much at all. ‘We’re having so much fun here,’ she reassured Martha, ‘no need for you to worry about rushing home. Your dad and I will give them their tea and bath them. We can stay until late if you want. Why don’t you call someone and meet up for a drink? Now, have you bought anything nice?’
‘A blueberry muffin.’
‘Is that all? No clothes or LPs?’ Her mother would never get used to CDs.
‘No, you’re not talking to Eliza, you know.’
‘You haven’t always been so different,’ said Mrs Evergreen. ‘When you were girls, teenagers, you both liked the same things – admittedly, you always approached things a little more quietly, but you both used to buy records and clothes.’
‘Did we?’ Martha couldn’t really remember being a teenager. She didn’t remember much before Michael. Thinking about it now, she had a vague recollection of having a pleasant time. Having fun.
‘Oh yes. You both loved loud pop music, clothes, make-up, boys.’ Mrs Evergreen tried to sound disapproving but she wasn’t. In truth, some of the happiest years of her life had been watching her girls on the brink of womanhood. They’d been so spirited, so full of gossip and fun and chat and hope. It was harder to watch them as they got older: Martha so disappointed and Eliza so restless. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Not really, not clearly,’ admitted Martha.
‘All three of us used to go shopping every Saturday to buy both of you something new for your dates that evening.’
‘We did, didn’t we?’
Suddenly Martha could remember the hours she and Eliza had dragged their mother in and out of endless, tiny changing rooms.
‘How do I look?’ they’d demanded.
‘Gorgeous,’ Mrs Evergreen had always gushed (and believed).
‘No, I don’t, my stomach looks fat!’
‘This makes my legs look short!’
‘It’s molly!’ (That had been the ultimate censure.)
‘God, we were horrible,’ sighed Martha, remembering how ungrateful they were.
‘No, you were just normal teenagers. You were often a lot of fun.’
They had laughed a great deal in those days. Laughed at the recounting of awful dates, laughed at new dance routines, laughed at determined teenage pursuers, laughed at puffball skirts, leg warmers.
Martha let the thoughts drift away and came back to her more miserable present. ‘Don’t forget tha
t Maisie needs –’
‘Chest rub after her bath. No, I won’t forget.’
‘And Mathew can be very picky. There’s a chicken leg in the fridge, but he’ll only eat it if you take the skin off and cut it up into very small pieces.’
‘Oh no, Martha, you would have smiled this lunchtime. Mathew tucked into the leg with your dad. He ate it all up, skin included, straight off the bone. He loves playing the little man. The chicken’s gone, I’m planning on doing them pasta for tea.’
‘And Maisie?’
‘Pasta for Maisie too, I’ll chop it up. Don’t worry. I’ve done this before, you know,’ added Mrs Evergreen cheerfully. She was clearly in her element. She adored spending time with her grandchildren, but more than that, which perhaps Martha hadn’t quite tuned into, Mrs Evergreen was desperate to help her daughter, to give her a break.
Martha insisted that she would be home for bath-time and then hung up. She looked through the dirty window of the telephone box. The school kids had dispersed, and she couldn’t see any young mums either – although now there were dozens of smiling couples striding down the street. It wasn’t actual hatred Martha felt for them, but it was something close. There were also lots of tired-looking pensioners pottering about. Martha noted that pensioners tended to carry large shopping bags, but they only ever seemed to purchase one or two products at a time. A tin of cat food, a quarter of ham, a very small cauliflower. This way they’d have to come out again the next day and buy something else. It was something to do, she supposed.
Oh God, who would she grow old with?
She called Eliza. ‘Eliza, it’s me.’
‘Hi Me, what are you up to?’
‘Nothing much. You know Mum and Dad are looking after the children today.’
‘So you’re young, free and single, you lucky thing.’
The happy words had bounced out of Eliza’s mouth before she’d had a chance to really think them through. The problem was that Martha had called her right in the middle of a very important meeting about tonality and treatment of a very important vid. Eliza couldn’t be expected to put Martha’s disintegrating marriage at the top of her agenda 24/7, could she? Of course Martha didn’t want to be young, free and single, and therefore she didn’t feel in the least bit lucky. Eliza wanted to grab the words back, but she couldn’t. Martha was exhaustingly sensitive nowadays. Eliza missed the calm, reliable Martha of old.
