You burst into a laugh. He’s right.
So, just like that, you won’t have to hear his loud chewing for five days of the week; one of the many irritations among all the irritations but it’s never enough for any type of action. He is a good man. Who delights in preparing his sons’ lunch boxes, shoos you off on Saturday shopping treats, insists you take girly nights off for your sanity and will even, now, do the boys’ nit bath and clip his own head in solidarity – and practicality – because he likes hugging them so much and stray head lice won’t be stopping that. It says so much about him.
A kind man. To be cherished. Tol would have wanted it.
You cut your own hair and finally dye it, obscuring the grey sneaking in at your temples. Throw away the camel colours, the sand and the chalk, bolden yourself up. Fight the flint of the weather with exuberant colour, purples and greens and reds and pinks. A bit of dazzle on your eyes, a bit of sparkle on your cuffs. Who cares what people think – you are freeing yourself from that too. Seizing joy. Celebrating the wonder of everything around you, the crazy vivid glorious beauty of so much. Becoming that woman who revels in life; who seems like she has sex a lot, three times a day, whether she does or not.
It’s in the laugh.
Lesson 212
We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it
In the languidness, post-sex, of a lazy Saturday night Hugh is hearing all about Susan and rolling his eyes – women – a species he knows little of.
‘Why on earth are you still friends?’
A not unreasonable question.
‘I’m not so much. Anymore. We’ve drifted apart.’
You tell Hugh how you were forever commenting on the amazingness of her children, especially her daughter, because Susan’s conversation always cannily steered you into it.
‘She’s not malicious,’ you laugh. ‘She just has no idea. It would never occur to her that maybe I’ve always dreamt of a little girl. She’s just one of those people with a complete absence of empathy.’ And as you’re explaining you’re aware that envy isn’t hardening, actually; isn’t stewing and festering. It’s leaking away.
As you firm. As you realise the extent of your limitations. You’re never going to get that Prada dress and holiday house in the Luberon, the vintage Aston Martin and the princess with her bedroom of fairy wings and tutus. Ah, who cares. Life, as it should be, is a process of simplification. Tol taught you that.
‘Let’s make one.’
‘What?’
‘A girl.’
You laugh at the ridiculousness. ‘I’m far too old for that, mister.’ You’re on the cusp of menopause, you can feel it.
‘Let’s try.’
You slam the duvet over your head.
‘I need some sleep,’ you giggle. ‘It’s footy tomorrow. Your turn for a sleep-in. Nigh’ nigh’.’
Lesson 213
Whether great or small her talents, she has not let one of them rust for want of use
But he’s got you. Now, feverishly, Googling ‘gender selection/female/diet’. It’s extraordinary how much information comes up. What is repeated, again and again, is dairy: milk, eggs, ice cream. Yoghurt most of all. To change the lining of your vagina – its alkalinity – to make it a more conducive environment for the female sperm. To kill the male sperm off.
You go grocery shopping. Sunday afternoon. You have little hope.
But a girl. A woman of this new world.
Your mission already is to raise new men – who respect and value women, who are not afraid of them – and there is the great chuff of that. But then a girl. Imagine. The world at her feet, the confidence.
Lesson 214
Happy above all must be that marriage where neither husband nor wife ever had a friend so dear as one another
Hugh takes you to Paris. Is aware, after the Australia trip, that you don’t really need him – could live quite capably without him – alone with the kids, the old bush girl roaring back. The lack of need keeps him bound, freshly. It’s revived the relationship.
You stock up on magazines at St Pancras. An irrefutable sign of middle age: neither of you recognise the starlet on the cover of Vanity Fair. Good grief, it has come to this. The world galloping away from you, so soon, so fast.
You both gulp complete like an Indian summer that gleeful, child-free Paris weekend. The room service in bed in front of the telly. Matching bathrobes. The uninterrupted bath. The sleep-ins. The break from the intensity of three little men in your lives.
And in a creamy hotel that Louis Armstrong stayed in once, Hugh asks you what you want. He listens. He complies. You remember what happiness was. You teach him. Show him your vulnerability. The woman Tol wanted all along. Teaching him how to kiss, the last frontier, your way not his. Unlocking your body, and once again in thrall to it. What it can do. Touched into light, into life.
‘You like sexy sex,’ Hugh says in surprise, more to himself than to you.
You smile, he has so much to learn; knows nothing, all those hidden depths like an iceberg under the surface. You stroke his penis, it has returned to its milky velvety softness, so tender, so vulnerable, and you lay your cheek to its warmth in wonder. Because this is the first time in your life you have successfully taught a man. Shaped him. You have confidence now. That is Tol’s lesson, it is all coming to fruition. Finally. And it has taken until middle age to get to this point.
What you love about Hugh most of all: that you’re comfortable with him, in talk and in silence, and you were never completely comfortable like this with Tol. Affection is what binds you as much as anything, and that’s not to downplay the word. There’s such a warmth, a cherishing, a delight with your husband – and it’s deepening over the years and there’s an astonishment at that.
And you know now there can be no sex more profound – more touched by grace – than that which attempts to create a child. The one type of sex Tol never talked about.
The most extraordinary of all.
And the most traditional.
Lesson 215
If man is without occupation, what a poor creature he becomes! – what a dawdling, moping, sitting-over-the-fire, thumb-twiddling, lazy, ill-tempered animal! And why? ‘Oh, poor fellow! ’Tis because he has got nothing to do!’ Yet this is precisely the condition of women for a third, a half, often the whole of their existence.
So, to writing. Not sure why, just need to now, it is time. Writing this book for Tol, yes, but for Hugh most of all.
For your husband, for all husbands. For your lover, for all lovers.
The anonymous, leather-bound manual beside you that you have carried with you your whole adult life. Joining the ranks, and wouldn’t she love that.
Hugh has never known what happened to you during your teenage years; has never twigged. Marriage took you away from that edged awareness but now you have found a way back to it. It is possible.
Galloping with your words.
Then commanding fuck me in a way you never have in your life.
Waiting on the bed for him. Pulsing, wet, exposed, stripped.
Lesson 216
A principal agent in middle age is a blessing which rarely comes till then – contentment
Is this, the early forties, the supreme moment of a woman’s life?
The secret, you think: letting go.
You have finally found the courage.
To fail.
Say no.
Be different.
Apologise.
Accept your faults.
Seize.
Admit you were wrong.
Be honest.
And then, and then, two blue stripes on the plastic stick.
Lesson 217
I can bear anything, except unkindness
A music assembly at the boys’ school. One by one the parents get up and leave as their child has played. You look around in horror at the diminishing audience, the consummate selfishness. Every child, always, wants t
o be seen as a success; yet so many of these parents cannot be bothered to give another twenty minutes of their time to a performer not their own. As the recital pushes on, the empty chairs increase. Of course, no one’s interested, really, in a child not their own, unless they’re relatives or close friends or Godparents – and sometimes not even then.
You have morning sickness, can feel the great engine inside you drawing on every ounce of your energy as it brews a baby and you grip the chair: you will not leave this.
Because of those tiny, aghast faces of the children, five and up, who have yet to shine. Your Jack included, his big moment – and to the middle child who can so easily be lost it means so much, of course. Piano is one of the last group of instruments left, and then violin. You know exactly who will leave and who won’t. Susan, of course, sweeping out with her domineering energy as soon as her precious boy has played his flute. Mel hangs on, God love her, and her child was only in the choir at the start. She catches your eye and winks her appreciation at Jack’s performance; you wink back, tears in your eyes that he can play anything at all, even if it’s the simplest of Bach. More parents leave, and more, until by the end just a handful of adults remain. You rub your belly and rub it, into calm. The last performer sitting on the stage, waiting, has a face that deepens its distress every time she clocks someone else leave, then someone else. She plays beautifully, from memory, the most talented child of the concert. To six parents. You sweep to your feet with wild applause at the end and the rest of the audience follows. What hope have these kids got?
In the chaos of afterwards you tell all your boys how wonderful they are, how loved, how they flood your life with happiness.
Parenting the opposite to your father. Not turning into your parent as you became one yourself; rebelling against him. You say to Jack how enormously thrilled you are by him, how amazing he was. Rexi does too. He’s much calmer now, the storm within has passed and you wonder at the great dips and troughs of all their childhoods – how they change so much. What they were at four they are resolutely not at eight; you think you have them down pat and then they slip off, into something else. Just like marriage. It’s constantly changing, fluid, dynamic. First one partner in the ascendant, then the other, learning from each other, it’s never still. The four of you walk away laughing from the school hall. Everything has firmed, everything.
Susan rings late that night to lock you into the face-painting stall at the school fair.
‘Wasn’t Emma amaaaaazing?’ she says, referring to a girl in Jack’s class who sang a solo; she’d never give a compliment to your own child, it’s a trick she’s pulled often before. ‘I cried, she was that good.’
You’re calm. ‘Actually, I cried at my own son.’ You smile strong. ‘He was amazing. I was so proud of him.’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘he was.’ Taken aback; she has suddenly realised something.
Lesson 218
A solid, useful, available happiness
Your little nugget of a secret at your writing desk in the attic.
Steadying your life like a keeled yacht.
Your manifesto, your instruction manual. It will be written with unflinching honesty; you’ve opened a door to a reckless, exhilarating new world and you work in a trance of liberation and defiance. You are stepping out of your normal self, becoming someone more brazen and confident, high on hormones and released. Rubbing your belly in glee. This will be anonymous, it is the only way to do it, with your little family so tight and so cherished around you. And when it is done you will walk away from it like a mother who’s adopted out a child, you will leave it to make its own way in the world and you will get on with your life.
And one day – you dream – Hugh will find it on his pillowslip.
No idea who it’s from. Any woman, and every woman.
But he will learn from it.
Oh yes.
Lesson 219
Deafened with ever-sounding trills of delicious laughter all day, and lying down at night with a soft sleepy thing breathing at his side, or wakened of a morning with two little arms tight around his neck, smotheringly expressing a wealth of love that kingdoms could not buy
What is healed: the great open wound you have carried all through your life. For a while there in adulthood you thought the searing hurt of your father’s withdrawal was getting worse, you had no defences for the pain of his sloppiness; it was increasing, in fact, as you reached middle age. But finally, after so long, it is cauterised. And you know now what the greatest chasm is between two people, out of all the chasms that can widen and swallow and swamp.
Love withheld, by a parent.
If you want to hurt the most, do the most damage – try that. If you want to see a miraculous healing, try the opposite. Love withheld can lock up a life. Lock up confidence, esteem, strength.
Your father will never say he loves you anymore, never say how proud he is of you, will never ring you on your birthday or send a present for Christmas despite you ringing him every one of his own birthdays and each December 25th. He will never do any of these things, but he did something for you once.
And it is enough.
Lesson 220
We have lived just long enough to trace the apparent plot and purpose of our own life and that of others sufficiently to make us content to sit still and see the play played out
Six p.m. Hugh has commanded you disappear. Have a bath, read a magazine, rub lavender oil into your tummy, do all that women stuff.
‘Leave the boys to their men’s business, pizza boxes and beer cans,’ he announces with a cheeky grin, rubbing his hands in glee and flurrying the boys right up. You retreat upstairs, smiling as you hear the squeals and thumps and roars rising below you. A footy’s being kicked, you don’t mind; all you want, all you ever want, is their happiness.
You slip out your little manual with its depth charges threaded through it. Settle your bare feet on the creaky coffin-lid floor.
It feels like you are painstakingly sewing a quilt up here, in your little hidden space, a blanket of warmth and comfort, beauty and secrets – for all women, any women – pouring into it all the wisdom and the heartbreak, all the ridiculousness and the ugliness, all the vulnerability and want and exhilaration and truth.
It’s all you’ve got.
A voice.
And as it’s firmed, the world around you is beauty-ing up. The snow outside your window is ragged, undisciplined, dancing in the air in big, blowsy drops and the restless river churns below you in a beautiful ceaseless rush, somersaulting its foam over the rocks. The wind tugs at the tiny attic window that holds firm but protesting on its latch and the roar in the trees sounds like distant surf but the cosiness of your teapot of a house enfolds you strong in its embrace. It is all ravishing, deeply comforting; and right now, enough.
You are finally stepping into the happiness you’ve spent years backing away from. You didn’t deserve it, that is how you always felt; you couldn’t possibly just lie back in it and bask. But now.
All surrender.
The laughter tripping through you. As you do exactly what you want.
Lesson 221
Real marriage, with all its sanctity, beauty and glory
That night you feign sleep, face to face with Pip, to try and drop him into slumber. He puts his face so close to yours that you can feel his warm breath and then he touches, wondrously, learning. He touches your eyelids and tries to make them open, your lips, nose, cheeks, then he plants a huge, slightly askew smack of a kiss on your lips.
You want this to go on forever.
Later it is the man who curls around you. Hugh’s arm locks in yours, seat belt, he calls it, cupping his child in your belly. Firm in his grip you fall into sleep, nourished. Because what you have with Hugh is evenness, you always know his love, do not doubt it as he does not yours; it is a great constant.
What you have, now, is the seductiveness of shared sleep.
Perhaps it is happiness, perhaps removal, but
you rarely think of Tol anymore. Is it a travesty, what you have become, from that girl you once were?
No. Biology took over. Your body insisted you go on this path.
Your breasts ache. Filling, once again, with milk. And this one feels different within you – you are spilling out, widening in a way you never did in the past, a regular Venus of Willendorf, good grief.
Lesson 222
Look up to that region of blue calm which is never long invisible to the pure of heart – this is the blessedest possession that any woman can have
You begin to bleed.
It begins on a Thursday afternoon. During a huge day of ferrying kids to swimming and piano and play dates, one of those running days where you’re constantly trying to catch up. But you carry on. Need to have the kids sorted before you can get to this.
‘It might just be one of those pregnancy bleeds,’ Hugh says on the phone. ‘Rest. Alright?’
By Friday afternoon you are driving yourself to A and E. Are told to go home, put your feet up. The blood is spilling over the soaked pad between your legs, streaking down your legs; the volume is frightening. You wake up on the Saturday after a despairing, hoping, praying night with a sinking heart. So much blood. You wanted this child – this daughter, you just know it – so vastly. Don’t fall out!
Back to A and E. The doctor tells you your blood/hormone reading is 13,000 – which means it’s still there. Beautiful, radiant, soaring hope. The baby has somehow, miraculously, gripped on while everything around it is falling away. Inside, still, is a ferociously beating heart. Despite despairing clumps of tissue and blood coming out and at one point, on the toilet, a soft rolling ‘pop’ of a something but the water in the bowl is too murky to get a proper look, and you can’t, quite.
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 46
