And it’s not pretty.
‘Annie, come on, love, you’re blowing this completely out of proportion. You know I’ve got to take the call,’ he says, seeing the state I’m in and instinctively moving into hug me. But I’m in no mood for yet more of his everlasting apologies and roughly shove him away.
‘Right then,’ he says, stepping back and looking wounded. ‘In that case, I’ll see you when I see you.’
And that’s all folks. His final, parting shot before he’s out the door and gone.
It takes a long, long time for me to collect my thoughts and for coolness to come over me, but eventually I somehow manage to compose myself and head back into the drawing room. As evenly as I can, I tell the others that Dan won’t be joining us for dinner after all, and their reactions still say it all.
Even Audrey, Dan’s champion and number one fan, looks back at me with her pale fishy eyes, a polite, frozen smile camouflaging the shock beneath, when she realises that it’s not an emergency call-out at all and that he mightn’t be back for hours.
If at all, this evening.
Jules is the only one who asks me if I’m OK. I can’t answer, so I just shrug. But you can always rely on the Countess Dracula to get her oar in.
‘Well, you know if you’ve got extra food going abegging, Annie, we’d love to stay and have a bite to eat with you. The kids are starving and the smell of food from the kitchen is starting to drive them mad. Don’t worry a bit about setting the extra places, I’ll take care of that for you.’
In my dull-witted state and before I even have time to register what she’s saying, as usual, she’s gone and steam-rolled right over me. A second later, she’s thrown open the drawing room door and shouted at the children who are running riot up and down the stairs, ‘So who’s hungry? Who’d like to stay and have dinner here at Auntie Annie’s?’
And I swear to God, the meal lasts longer than your average Wimbledon men’s singles final. Between Lisa’s moans about how Charlie would stagger home half-pissed later on and still expect there to be dinner for him and Audrey’s veiled whimpers every time the kids start screaming at each other, which is like a constant background noise…I’m not certain how much more I can take.
Audrey by the way, who normally has the appetite of a hump-back whale, only picks at her dinner, mainly because the kids are making such a God-awful racket involving a fork, a fistful of carrots and the last of the Brussels sprouts. Eventually she just shoves a half-eaten plate away from her, pleading a headache and warning us all that she feels one of her ‘little turns’ coming on.
Even Jules, my dependable ally, lets me down too. Normally, the girl is so laid-back, you could dot deck chairs around her and sail her through the Caribbean, but not today. She has a tendency to regress a bit when Audrey is around and throughout the whole miserable meal, what little energy she has is taken up with being irritated by her mother. She just sits there, chin cupped in her hand, occasionally mouthing at me whenever she catches my eye, ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here.’
And so the white hot tension round the table is broken only by Lisa harping on…I’m not joking, for a full hour…about how her wealthy sister is heading off skiing for New Year with her family, while she’s stuck at home with absolutely nothing to brighten up her entire Christmas holiday.
Meanwhile I just stare ahead, picking at dinner and only answering direct questions on automatic pilot, as she bleats on and on and on. Then ages later, I notice that Jules has finally started to wake up a bit and now looks like she’s only one vodka shot away from sniping across the table at Lisa, ‘Well, how about the obvious remedy? If money is such an issue for you, then go out and get a job locally, like Annie does and shut up your bloody whinging!’
And of course, Lisa won’t leave. Not when Audrey heads home to her TV movies and Jules scarpers off to her pal’s drink party. Not even when I pointedly tell her that I’m expecting a call from my mother in the States and that I’ll probably be on the phone for ages. Fine, she tells me. I’ll just sit by the fire with the kids and watch Toy Story on telly.
Worse, when Charlie calls her to see where she is, she just invites him over without even asking me if it’s OK. Then, to add insult to injury, she throws in, ‘And I’m sure you won’t mind if he has some of the Christmas dinner, will you, Annie? It’s such a shame to let all those leftovers go to waste and it would save me all the bother of having to cook when I get home.’
I just nod dully, with all the life and energy of a used tea bag, feeling utterly drained as I always do after more than a few hours of Lisa’s company. And, of course I let her have her own way. What the hell, my Christmas is ruined anyway, how much worse can it get with Charlie barging in on top of me as well?
One ray of light: Mum Skypes me, as she always does, on the dot of five pm, right after she’s come home from church, six thousand miles away. Curse Skype anyway – of course she can clearly see my blotchy eyes and hear the wobble in my voice. The giveaway is that my eyes keep wandering down to the bottom left-hand corner of the screen to check just how bad I look and of course, she’s straight onto me.
‘Are you sure you’re alright, Annie dear?’
‘I’m fine, fine. Really fine.’
‘One more “fine” and I won’t believe you.’
She has to ask me a couple of times before I eventually tell her what’s wrong, but then it all comes tumbling out. The full, unexpurgated story about the whole rotten, miserable day. The fact that I’m one plum pudding away from a Yuletide breakdown.
Even on the grainy computer screen I can see her re action when I tell her about how Dan disappeared off on Christmas Day and never came back.
Her face doesn’t change, but her lips actually go white.
Ever the diplomat though, Mum doesn’t carp or criticise. In fact, never in my entire life do I think I’ve as much as heard her raise her hushed, soft spoken voice. And she doesn’t now either; just twirls the pearls around her elegant, willowy neck and says over and over again how surprised she is at Dan. And Mum, by the way likes him. The same way everyone does. But then not liking Dan is a bit like not liking The Beatles; completely impossible to imagine.
I tell her everything, no holds barred. That I feel and have felt for the longest time, that I’m the human solvent that’s holding my shaky marriage together and that I’m not sure how much more of it I can take. I’m little more than UHU glue and who wants that carved on their headstone anyway? My patience has been ground down to nothing and now I’m thinking the thought that dare not speak its name.
Does even the most impossible love come with a sell-by date?
Come to Washington, Mum says crisply and decisively. Book a flight and come over for New Year. Money’s no object, I’ll pay. You need the break and we can talk more freely here about what’s to be done.’
This instantly brightens me up a bit because what I want now more than anything is to get away, to see her, to be with her, to listen to her sage wisdom and calm, soothing words of advice. I agree and tell her I’ll call back in a day or two to arrange the details.
But by then the goalposts of my life have shifted irrevocably.
Because bright and early on the morning of the twenty seventh, I get a hysterical call from none other than Fag Ash Hil.
‘You better be sitting down for this!’ she screeches, coughing and spluttering with excitement. ‘Because guess what?’
My heart swells up at this, till it feels too big for my chest and starts beating in odd, jagged little jerks.
Then come the words that will change the whole course of my entire life.
‘You got the part!’
I feel a million things all at once…but the first thing is this.
Finally, finally, finally, I’m free.
Everyone’s reactions to my brand new job
Jules (Looking as pale as someone bleeding from an internal wound.)
‘So how exactly did you expect me to react to this news anyway, Anni
e? Did you think I was going to turn the oven on and stick my head into it? Well you’re quite wrong because as it happens, here’s my reaction to your selfishness in just fecking off on me. It’s not so much that I’m losing my sister-in-law, as gaining a pad in New York to crash out in. For a full year. And don’t for one second think that I won’t turn up on your doorstep, ’cos you know me, babe, I will. If I can cajole Dan into forking out for the flights, that is. And what’s more it’ll serve you right for being such a bad bloody bitch, deserting me and leaving me to put up with the Mothership and the Countess Dracula all on my own.’
Then, swishing one of her curly pigtails in my direction, she stomped upstairs to my home office-cum-skip and told me she was going to ‘Facebook her angst’.
Phew. One down, four to go.
Audrey (With a polite smile masking the frozen look of horror in her eyes.)
‘I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing, Annie. New York? For a year? Is it possible that you’re being serious? Do I have to remind you that you’re a married woman with responsibilities? And quite apart from that, who’s going to do all my little jobs for me when you’re gone? You know, come to think of it, I’m not feeling so well at the shock of this, I think I may have to have a lie down…’
Typical Audrey; she may not have said much more to my face, but by God, she really went to town on me behind my back. Neighbours in Stickens who she’d hardly spoken two words to since her husband died, were suddenly accosted in the street and asked if they’d heard the news? That I was abandoning poor hard-working Dan, for a full year no less? To go off and do a play! When at my age the only thing I should be thinking of producing was grandchildren! Utterly shameful, she sniffed in her frail, wispy little voice to anyone who would listen and imparted with all the shock and condemnation of the small town.
Like marriage is something that you can just take a gap year from as and when it suits you……etc, etc, repeat ad nauseam.
Liz (After all her screams of excitement had finally died down. Which, by the way, took a good twenty minutes.)
‘Oh Christ, Annie, this is the best news in the whole worldwide history of news! Do you realise the fun and the craic we’re going to have? Because by Jaysus, your Auntie Liz is going to show her secluded little countrified housewife pal the absolute time of her life in the Big Apple! I’m talking about you and me going out drinking and clubbing every night and I will NOT take no for an answer. I’ve even done my research, you know. Apparently there’s this really hip late night bar where all the Broadway actors go after shows, called Don’t Tell Mama and all the singers from the big musicals perform live, night after night, and it serves booze till well after dawn…it’s meant to be amazing! Oh, we are SO there…and best of all, you’ll be able to party all night long and not worry about running home to the back arse of Stickens…’
She chatted on about all the heavy-duty socialising she was planning for us and I laughed along with her, still on a high from my un-befecking-lievable news.
‘So have you told Dan yet?’ she asked me, before she hung up.
‘No, he’s at work. Tonight, when he gets back. Though God knows when that will be. And God knows how he’ll take this.’
‘Oh, he’ll be fine. For Feck’s sake, the guy worships the ground you walk on, Annie, and he wants you to be happy, doesn’t he?’
I said nothing to this.
‘Just tell him that a year is absolutely nothing and that it’ll go quicker than a Katie Price marriage.’
My mother
‘Oh darling, it’ll be so wonderful to have you so close to me after all this time! You know Washington is only a three-hour train ride from New York City? But I must say, I am a little worried. What does Dan think of all this? You could be gone for a full year, after all. If you really want to get back into acting work again, wouldn’t you be far better off waiting for a job to come along in Ireland?’
Entirely my own fault and it serves me right for confiding in her on Christmas Day and pouring out all my woes to her. Now that I’ve effectively been handed a ‘get out of love free’ card, I reckon poor Mum thinks I’ll end up in the divorce courts. And like I said, she likes Dan and always did.
No, for all that she’d be delighted to have me on the same continent as her, I can’t allow myself for a second to think that she’s dancing round the place at the news. Long-distance relationships are a nightmare, she reminded me, quoting a cautionary tale from decades ago. This was when she was still married to Dad and was suddenly posted out to Botswana, taking the five-year-old me with her. Dad stayed behind in Ireland, as he’d just started a new job here working for some IT firm and was either unable or unwilling to join her.
Worst time of her life, Mum said. The strain of being apart, plus the constant worrying about him eventually took its toll on the marriage and ultimately brought about their eventual break-up. Well, that and the fact that while she was abroad, Dad went and met someone else, now his new wife. Are you really sure, Mum gently probed, that this is absolutely the best thing for you both right now? Honest to God, even over the transatlantic phone line, I could clearly hear the sound of her worriedly twisting her pearls round and round again.
And so for the first time in I can’t remember how long I found myself disagreeing with my mother. Yes, I told her firmly, this is absolutely the right thing, not a doubt in my mind.
Because to me, after three long years of slow, silent suffocation, this is the Universe finally paying up. This is it. I feel like I’ve just pulled three lemons on the one-arm-bandit of life, and no power on earth is going to drag me from my winnings. Not after everything I’ve been through. Of course, a moralist like Mum disagrees and thinks everything in life, even a year on Broadway, comes with the most massive price tag attached, but I’m part-pagan and disagree.
I now fully believe in breakthrough bursts of astrological beneficence.
Sure, after this spectacular piece of good fortune, how could I not?
Dan
I told him as soon as he got home late that night; me, edgily sitting up on the bed in my nightie and him fresh out of a hot shower, having been out in sub-zero temperatures all night. I’d been dress-rehearsing this talk the whole day and by the time I finally nailed him down face-to-face, my nerves were raw and jangling with worry.
But if I thought he was going to asphyxiate at the news, I was quite wrong. He didn’t even look surprised when I told him, more resigned, like he knew this was coming all along. As if he suspected as much and had just been quietly expecting confirmation. He sat down on the bed beside me, huge and hulking, towelling off his wet hair and smelling of musky cedarwood shower gel. His taut, muscled body, still tanned, even in the depths of midwinter.
‘So you’d be in New York. For a full year?’ he asked me, but gently, his whole heart suddenly in his soft, black eyes.
‘Dan,’ I said, my tone pleading, ‘I know a year away sounds like a long time, but you have to understand…if I don’t go, I’ll always regret it. Opportunities like this never come along and I just feel that, what with you so busy all the time…what I’m trying to say is, you’re so rarely around these days. Is it so terrible of me to want to go so badly? Because when you think about it, twelve months isn’t really all that long, you know…and also, even though the show is slated in for a year, it might get ripped apart by the critics and close early, because that’s been known to happen too, in which case I’d be back a lot earlier, but then…it has had rave reviews here, all the American producers love it and they’re really confident that it’ll last the course…’
Here I go, I thought, vintage Annie. Whenever I’ve something important to say, an attack of Saint Vitus’s dance of the mouth inevitably strikes.
‘I know, I know all that,’ he nodded, staring ahead of him, miles away.
There was a silence but not an easy, comfortable one and I could feel an unwelcome knot of tension beginning to form in the pit of my stomach.
Bad burning feeling lik
e indigestion returned with a vengeance and perspiration slowly started to seep its way from my armpits to my ribs. We’d barely seen each other or even spoken since the Christmas Day row and now I landed this on him?
He broke the silence first.
‘Look, I can see that things aren’t easy for you…’
I didn’t give him any argument there. Utterly pointless being polite and plastering over cracks now.
‘…and I sometimes think that you’re unhappy here.’
Then he looked directly at me, his black eyes scanning mine, trying to get a read..
‘Annie, tell me the truth. Are you unhappy?’
And if ever there was a time for heartfelt, gut-wrenching openness, this was it.
‘I’ve been doing my best, I really have…but it can be hard going.’
‘I can see that…and you know how sorry I am for letting you down on Christmas Day…’
‘It’s not just that, Dan, it’s…out of the blue, this big chance comes along and it’s like…I can’t not take this job. I just can’t. I know it’s selfish, I know I’m putting a job ahead of us and that there’s all kinds of rules about that kind of thing if you’re married, but…if I don’t do this, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I had gone…and you know, if we had kids, I wouldn’t even be able to consider doing this, so when you think about it, this is probably the last chance I’ll ever get to grab an opportunity like this…’
Suddenly my thoughts became clear and detached. I had to be brutally honest here. After all, Dan put work ahead of me all the time, didn’t he?
In the long run, I knew it would be for the best.
‘It’s for my sanity, as much as anything else.’
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow Page 10
