by Adele Parks
Martha felt distinctly uncomfortable; she hated unpleasant silences. Eliza knew this. Eliza hated not getting her own way. Martha knew this. It was just a matter of who broke first.
‘OK, then. Have you got a pen?’ asked Martha.
‘Here,’ beamed Eliza, waving a pen and a notebook in the air, her mood instantly brightening, reminding Martha of Mathew when he’d won some hard-fought victory such as not having to eat up his peas.
‘Right. Well, I want a man who will de-scale the kettle and change the water filter.’
‘That’s your top priority?’ asked Eliza in dismay.
‘Well, it’s symbolic. If he’ll do those ho-hum household jobs, he’ll definitely be the type to stick a pile of whites into the washing machine.’
‘So you’re looking for someone particularly effeminate?’
‘Ha ha. No. Actually, I want him to be hung like a donkey and to know how to use his equipment with indecent frequency,’ said Martha.
Eliza laughed. She liked this new funny, funky sister. She was so much more entertaining than the sister whose biggest concern had been that Flora had changed their packaging. ‘OK, what else?’
‘Well, obviously, he’d love me. All of me.’ Martha smiled at the thought. ‘You know when you’re really upset about something and you’re asked, “What’s wrong?” and you stubbornly reply “Nothing”?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you wait to be asked, “No, really, what is wrong?” because you want to be pushed. More, you want him to want to discover you.’
‘Yeah. But no man ever does that,’ sighed Eliza.
‘Well, my perfect man would push me. He’d peel me like, like…’ Martha hesitated, as she searched for the correct words. ‘Like an onion.’
‘Nice analogy.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Martha was ready for the striptease. She wanted to be known. Recently she’d started to believe that she was worth knowing and her ideal man would think so too.
‘Right,’ said Eliza, sighing. She thought it was a pity that Martha was such a romantic. Such a typical Virgo.
Martha was also thinking that her ideal man would love it when she took hold of him and wanked him so expertly that he came quickly, spilling over her body. She didn’t think this was the kind of thing she could share with Eliza or indeed anyone.
Other than Jack.
Martha was holding this conversation as she stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the back garden. Mathew and Maisie were feeding the sparrows; there was rarely anything more exotic in London gardens; occasionally a pigeon was spotted, but only if the tourists in Trafalgar Square were being particularly mean. A weak winter sun bounced on their smiling faces. January was normally such a bleak and grey month, full of tatty merchandise on sale racks, and offering nothing more exciting than a free membership to Weight Watchers, but this year January had seemed unseasonably illustrious.
‘Come on in and wash your hands, you two,’ called Martha. She didn’t really hold much hope of Mathew listening to her or Maisie understanding her. Without skipping a beat she turned back to Eliza and continued, ‘But besides that, he would really be worth knowing. He’d be strong. Physically, emotionally and morally.’
‘Phew, you’re not asking for much, are you?’
‘Yes, I am. I know that I am. But I give, too.’
Eliza thought how good it was to hear Martha value herself, really refreshing, it gave her a buzz just listening.
Of course she was utterly doomed.
This search for the perfect man was a non-starter.
Eliza attempted to redirect Martha towards something a little more conventional. ‘What about things like good with children, or earns a decent salary?’
‘That’s so last season,’ commented Martha. She winked and then more seriously added, ‘That’s husband criteria. I’m not looking for a husband. I’ve had one of those. I’m looking for excitement, and that definitely demands an entirely different wish list.’
‘Is that responsible?’
‘I’ve been responsible all my life and look where it got me. I think I’m overdue a bit of irresponsibility. You could lend me yours.’
‘Unfair! I’m trying to be really responsible right now. I have a desk tidy and I back up my PalmPilot every night. I’ve had my hair cut, bought a suit. I’m looking for a husband with a serious income and a serious wardrobe and a serious job.’
‘You honestly believe it was responsible to leave Greg, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Eliza firmly.
‘Amazing.’
Eliza scowled. ‘We’re talking about you here, not me.’
‘OK, I’d also want all the usual stuff, you know. Good-looking, nice smile, good teeth, dark hair, preferably green eyes, no body odour, no dandruff, someone who ferociously loathes football – I simply cannot go through another World Cup and be expected to keep my sanity – wide shoulders, tight butt, single, no baggage, GSOH.’
Eliza reread the list of criteria. ‘Jesus, Martha, I thought you said I was the demanding one. This list is totally unrealistic. This man is beyond fantasy. You’re looking for a single, stunning, sensitive, smiley Sex God who is prepared to don washing-up gloves. This man doesn’t exist.’
‘He does,’ smiled Martha. She leaned back against the kitchen counter, wearing an indecently smug smile and she thought, Jack’s all of these things. He is.
32
They’d decided to manage the divorce without the intervention of solicitors. Martha thought this was the route that was most likely to fall in with her mantra of behaving with elegance, charity and generosity, although Eliza thought Martha was mad.
‘I don’t need a solicitor, I trust Michael. He’d never leave me without money for the children.’
‘Martha, a couple of months ago you thought he’d never leave you, period.’
Period? Oh, another Americanism. God, sometimes Martha despised Eliza’s straight-talking. It was as though she were pulling out toenails.
‘Why are you doing it this way, Martha?’
‘Which way?’
‘This über-sensible, let’s-all-be-friends way. Don’t you ever want to fling crockery about, or cut the crotch out of all his suits?’
Frequently.
Martha, who was, after all, only human, had thought of pouring sugar into the petrol tank of his Boxster. She’d considered emailing embarrassing photos to his work colleagues; she had a selection to choose from. There was the one of him wearing a basque and suspenders. OK, he was going to a Rocky Horror Show party, but his colleagues wouldn’t know that. There were the ones of him on his stag weekend, and not just the ones of him in the commando suit, which were silly in Martha’s opinion (but she knew that other men wouldn’t think so). But there was the one his best man had taken when Michael had passed out after drinking the obligatory twelve pints. They’d shaved his entire body except for his eyebrows. Martha had been furious. The regrowth proved more than uncomfortable for both of them during their honeymoon, but she was grateful they’d left his eyebrows alone – at least the ambush hadn’t ruined the wedding photos.
Not that it mattered now how either of them looked in their wedding photos. Their wedding photos were being slowly removed from a number of sideboards and walls up and down the country.
Such petty acts of revenge were inane, insane. Small gestures that wouldn’t, couldn’t, counter the hurt Martha felt; therefore they seemed pointless.
‘What would be the sense in my going out of my way to be nasty?’ Martha was annoyed at herself for lapsing into fury; she hated the rows with Michael, although sometimes she really couldn’t seem to stop herself. She certainly didn’t need to go and look for aggro. ‘What would it achieve?’
‘Peace of mind.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You’d feel better,’ asserted Eliza.
‘Actually, I’m not sure I would.’
Managing the divorce yourself involved buying petitions f
or £2.50 from a particular stationer’s on Chancery Lane. Martha knew this because there was an extremely useful Internet site that guided people like her through the divorce procedure.
Handy, the things you find on the Net.
Martha had limited experience of Chancery Lane, even though she’d lived in London all her adult life. There were no shops, no supermarkets, few restaurants – in short, nothing to induce her to visit there at all. She did know that Chancery Lane was near the Strand, where she would find the Royal Courts of Justice; she knew that because she watched the six o’clock news and there were often TV cameras gathered outside trying to capture the comments of the latest acquitted defendant, or at least of their lawyers.
Martha pushed open the door to the stationer’s and a loud bell chimed, announcing her presence. This was completely cringe-making; she’d rather hoped to creep in to buy the petition and then creep out again, without attracting anyone’s attention. She milled around the shelves, looking at the selection of hole punches and various-size packets of Blu-Tack. Martha was astounded to note that you couldn’t even purchase a lever-arch file for the price of a divorce petition. A lever-arch file cost £2.75, unless you bought them in bulk. The whole process was cheap and sickeningly undignified. After moseying around the shop for what seemed like a month, Martha realized she was unlikely to find the documentation she required without asking for assistance.
As coincidence would have it, the shop assistants came to exactly the same conclusion at exactly the same time. ‘Can I help you?’ asked the younger of the two available (male) assistants.
And it shouldn’t have mattered that he was a man, but it did. In Martha’s bleaker moments, she found herself believing (illogically) that they were ‘all in cahoots’. They were all deserters and philanderers and they all had an inability to keep promises, especially promises they made in church whilst wearing a suit hired from Moss Bros. It hurt her to think this, but not as much as it hurt to admit that actually she’d simply made a duff choice.
The assistant was plump and scruffy, and he looked vaguely dusty like an elderly academic, but Martha guessed that he was only in his late twenties. His stomach folded over his trousers, completely hiding his belt. Martha wouldn’t normally notice this kind of thing, but she was having difficulty dragging her eyes up from waist level – she didn’t really want to meet his stare. When she finally managed to do so, she didn’t like what she saw. Somehow this man had guessed what she needed and he was enjoying it, she was sure. He was actively taking pleasure from her obvious pain and embarrassment.
‘I’d like a copy of a divorce petition, please,’ said Martha. She pronounced every word carefully, as though elocution could protect her.
‘Is either of the parties an adulterer?’ asked the chubby shop assistant.
Martha noticed that he bit his nails and his fingers looked like sausages. She bet he wore nylon trousers, although she couldn’t quite see because his legs were behind the counter. She didn’t like him at all. ‘No,’ she said, trying her best to sound like the queen. She’d like to have replied, ‘Yes, my husband is sleeping with your wife – how do you feel about that?’ But perhaps she was getting things a little out of proportion. Martha was divorcing Michael on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, and she had to cite three examples. Just three.
‘Silly me, it doesn’t matter now, it’s the same form anyway,’ smirked the assistant.
Martha would have liked to say he smiled but it was definitely a smirk. She suspected that he got off on asking women like her if she, or her husband, was having it away with a cute third party, but she had no proof. All she could do was hand over her £2.50, and try and ignore his damp, sweaty paw.
Martha was about to leave the shop when she thought again. ‘I’d better take two,’ she said. She was notoriously bad at filling out forms, she was bound to make a mistake.
‘Bigamy is a crime, you know,’ laughed the assistant. He had no idea how criminal it was that four lives that had been inextricably woven together had been hacked apart. Martha treated him to a steely glare and left the shop.
The next stage was filling out the blasted form. She was required to give examples of Michael’s unreasonable behaviour. Apparently ‘He doesn’t love me’ didn’t count. They quietly agreed the words between them, settling on inoffensive, bloodless reasons for a divorce. Martha found that insulting too. Surely the reasons for a divorce ought to be great and dramatic.
Next, she went to the post office and made lots of photocopies of the petition and of their wedding certificate. Then she sent the package to the austere Courts of Justice, remembering to use registered post. She understood that the whole process could take as little as twelve weeks. It had taken her longer to choose the table decorations for her wedding reception.
It ought to have been grander, more serious, thought Martha as she negotiated Maisie’s stroller through the narrow post-office doorway and out on to the street. She looked around. There wasn’t a hat in sight, nor even the smallest handful of confetti.
Martha thought this was a good day to take her rings off. She wasn’t sure why she’d kept them on for so long. Sentimentality? To show the world that she’d been respectably married before she conceived her two children? Ha. Jack didn’t like her wearing her engagement and wedding rings. He hadn’t actually said, ‘I don’t like you wearing your rings,’ but he had asked her why she continued wearing them in a way that implied ‘I don’t like you wearing your rings.’ It was a fair question, to which the reply – ‘habit’ – seemed inadequate. There was something sweet and old-fashioned, if not a bit inconsistent, in the fact that Jack would happily bed a married woman, but not one who was wearing her rings.
Martha didn’t feel like a married woman. She felt like a single girl, so the rings had to go. She wasn’t even deceiving herself any more. Her fingers were so skinny at the moment that the rings swung helplessly around; it was easy to slip them off.
Her hand would feel bare, and for weeks afterwards she would keep rubbing her thumb against her fourth finger where her rings used to be. Every time she did so, it surprised her to find that her finger was bare. She was once so proud of her rings. The engagement ring was her favourite. She remembered the first time she’d made love as an engaged woman. She’d thought that she’d never make love to any other man again. She’d thought she was safe, complete. But that was a long time ago. Now her finger was nude.
Michael came to move out the rest of his clothes and possessions. It was as she had promised herself it would be – all very civilized.
At least until the part where she sobbed and howled like a banshee, ‘The worst of this, Michael, is that in years to come, when Mathew and Maisie ask why we aren’t a family, I’ll have to confess that I don’t know.’ He held her tightly and remained silent.
Michael had hired a white van for the day; he’d rung her a week in advance to say that he’d arrive at about 11 a.m. and expected to leave at about 4.30 p.m. Martha, in her wisdom and superior position as the person who’d managed their lives for the last ten years, knew that this would not be enough time for Michael to pack up his belongings and shift them. Michael didn’t know this because Martha had always done the lion’s share of that kind of thing as they’d moved from flat to flat, and eventually to this house. Their home. Martha found it hard to break a habit of a lifetime, and so helpfully packed up Michael’s suits, jumpers, shirts, T-shirts, pants, socks and shoes. She even packed up his navy towelling dressing gown that was the same as hers. She washed it before she did so, because there was nothing nicer than a clean, fluffy towelling dressing gown.
Except perhaps two clean, fluffy, towelling dressing gowns hanging side by side on the back of the bathroom door.
Martha carefully packed all Michael’s books, videos and DVDs. She gave him Billy Elliot even though she loved the film, because, strictly speaking, it was his. Mathew and Maisie had ‘bought’ it for him for Father’s Day. The gaps on the bookshelves and video rack re
minded Martha of the gaps the tooth fairy leaves in a seven-year-old’s mouth. They divided up the furniture, the crockery, the cutlery and the bedding. He took the shoe polish, the non-stick frying pan, the mountain bike. There were gaps everywhere. Physical, emotional, historical and moral. They separated their lives. They were separating.
‘How’d it go, Little Miss E.?’ asked Jack when he phoned later that afternoon.
‘OK,’ said Martha. She’d never lied to Jack, and she didn’t want to start now, not even with a white lie, so she added, ‘Considering.’
‘Must be a bitch.’
‘Yes.’ Martha stared around her home. It looked ravaged, incomplete. It didn’t look like her home. It didn’t look like a home at all. ‘I keep going to get things and realizing they’re not here any more, that they went with Michael.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Tupperware boxes.’
‘What?’
Martha could hear the astonishment in Jack’s voice. She was glad he wasn’t in the room; he’d be able to see she was crying and he’d probably think it was odd to cry over Tupperware boxes.
‘Tupperware boxes,’ she repeated down the phone.
‘What are they?’
‘You know, plastic boxes, air-tight lids; I put the kids’ food in them. I cleared up after their tea today, went to put the ham in a Tupperware box and realized that I don’t have any Tupperware boxes any more.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Jack, making out that he was horrified.
Martha thought about the conversation and started to smile to herself. ‘I wrapped the ham in tinfoil.’ Martha was now in serious danger of laughing.
‘Good thinking, Dude. That saved the day,’ said Jack, then he added, ‘Should I come round?’
Jack arrived at Martha’s house thirty minutes later. He brought dinner, his smile and his sex appeal. She opened the door to him but he didn’t bother with small talk. There was nothing he could say to comfort her. Instead he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. Really kissed her. His hands enveloped her head. She was almost scared that she might drown in his hands. She opened her eyes to see that he hadn’t closed his, he was watching her as though she was important. Vital. He nibbled her ear, which sent an electrical storm directly down her spine, through her buttocks, under, and up into her. He inched his hand down from her chin to rest flat on her breast, he firmly but gently massaged her nipple between his finger and thumb.
