I stared at him for a moment, considering my position. His words seemed harsh, but his expression and his voice were calm. I felt tempted to justify myself, but in the end, there was something about his vaguely amused expression that just knocked the core out of my anger. “I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t realise I did that.”
“Well now you do.”
“It’s just how . . . how we worked. How we functioned. With Cliff, I mean.”
“Fair enough, but it won’t work with me.”
“OK,” I said.
“So what did you want to say to me?”
“Um. Well . . . Please don’t put your feet on the table, I suppose.”
“No problem,” James said. “I won’t. And if I forget, please remind me.”
“And please clean up after yourself when you’ve eaten, and please put your dishes in the dishwasher and switch it on when it’s full, and please put your dirty clothes in the washing basket in the bathroom rather than on the floor wherever you happen to be. Because all of these things set a bad example for Luke.”
James nodded and smiled broadly at me. “Right,” he said. “No worries. Anything else?”
I shook my head. “You’re impossible,” I replied, finally allowing my features to soften.
James shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “But at least I bloody say what I mean.”
James was harsh, and sometimes vulgar, but the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that he was in the right.
Over fifteen years, Cliff and I had grown together from youth into adulthood, and during that time we had evolved our own special way of functioning, a method that provided workarounds for all of our personal quirks. But faced with James’ shocking directness, his brutal honesty, I had no choice but to acknowledge that much of this was unhealthy and that, specifically, our methods of communication had become woolly if not actually dishonest.
But beyond my problems with honest communication, there were issues of actual intent: I started to notice just how often I said “no” to things.
Cliff was a great convincer. He knew the way I functioned and would take my refusals to go to the cinema or my lack of desire to attend a dinner invitation with a pinch of salt. He would accept on my behalf and then chivvy me along.
James, on the other hand, seemed abnormally determined to take every word at face value. And though, for the moment, I was happy to spend my time at home as long as James was there, I couldn’t help but notice how my life was contracting without Cliff to contradict me.
One sunny Sunday in October, I had a whole day to think about this, because when James asked me if I wanted to go for a long walk in the country, I said “no”. I had too much to do around the house, I told him. Plus, it looked a bit like rain.
James, unlike Cliff, simply nodded, pulled on his coat, and left on his own.
Once he had gone, I sat down and stared out of the front window and wondered what had just happened. I asked myself, for the first time ever, why I had done this. Because in truth there was nothing that needed doing so urgently that I couldn’t go for a walk. And in truth, what I really wanted was the exact opposite of what I had chosen.
Cliff would have offered to help with the tasks (thus revealing their non-existent nature) and then chivvied me out of the door, but whether James actually didn’t mind that much if I went with him or not, or whether he was consciously training me, I couldn’t tell. This thought led me to understand the first of the reasons for my strange behaviour: I wanted James to prove that he cared. I wanted him to show me that he wanted me there. I was also trying to make him aware of all that I did around the house.
As I thought about it further, I realised that deep down, I held a strange belief that accepting to do something frivolous too easily felt “wrong”, naughty perhaps. So my refusal had been influenced by that as well. And finally, it was also, I realised, just a habit – something I had done for as long as I could remember, something I had learned, quite possibly, from my mother.
James got home three hours later to find me still sitting on the sofa, still staring at the switched-off TV.
“Tell me about your walk,” I said, and he did just that, describing the barren fields and the leafless trees, a pheasant he had seen, a dog walker, and a group of inquisitive cows.
“And you?” he finally asked. “Did you get all your stuff done?”
I laughed sourly. “I didn’t have much to do, to be honest,” I told him. “I’ve been sitting here trying to work out why I didn’t come with you.”
James frowned. “Oh? And?”
“I have no idea,” I told him. “Well, I can think of a few reasons, but none of them makes any sense.”
“It’s a girl thing, I think,” James said. “Judy used to do the same thing. She liked to be persuaded.”
“Maybe. My mother did it too,” I said, shivering a little at the unusual mention of James’ dead wife. “But it’s very strange to suddenly realise that you can’t explain your own behaviour.”
“But you did want to come?”
“Yes. I think so. How stupid is that?”
James exhaled heavily. “Look, I know this is delicate,” he said, his tone suddenly sombre.
“Yes?”
“But while we’re doing the honesty thing . . .”
“Yes?”
“Have you gone off me?”
“Gone off you?”
“Yes.”
“No, of course not . . . why would you even think that?”
“Well, we’ve only done it a few times since we got back from France, Han’.”
I stared at him and thought about this and realised that it was true. “I haven’t gone off you at all,” I told him.
James sighed. “So why don’t you ever want to . . . ?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, if you don’t know, then I’m sure I don’t.”
“It’s partly this house, I think. The fact that the bed was ours.”
James nodded, then shrugged. “Sure. Well, I just thought I’d bring it up. I’m, um, gonna go make a drink.”
“Make me a coffee, would you?”
“Sure.”
While James made the drinks, I sat and thought about this new challenge. Because James was right – since we had got back, I had reverted to an old habit of saying “no” to sex. And now that I tried to think about why that might be, the only explanation I could come up with was that on top of my insecurities about my body – which hadn’t, let’s face it, held me back in France – saying “yes” made me feel embarrassed. It made the sexual act seem premeditated and for some stupid reason, that seemed wrong. I had always believed that sex should somehow just “happen”.
Cliff had learned to ignore my protests and cuddle and coax me until I caved in, and again, that confirmation of desire reassured me. But there was no reason that James could know this, and no reason I could think of why he should have to put up with such strange behaviour on my part.
When he returned, he handed me my mug of coffee and asked, “Are you OK? You look a bit strange.”
I laughed. “I’m just realising at thirty-eight that I don’t know myself that well,” I said.
“But you do still fancy me then?”
I looked at him now, masculine and farmer-like in a denim shirt and jeans over his worn suede boots. “Yes,” I said. “How could I not? But do you fancy me?”
“Like crazy.”
“Really?”
“You’re beautiful, Hannah,” James said.
“I worry about . . . things . . . My body. I’m not twenty anymore.”
“Neither am I, Han’. But I still fancy the hell out of you.”
I blushed and looked down at myself, but broke into a smile all the same.
“So,” James said with a wink. “D’you fancy a bit of how’s-your-father before Luke gets home?”
I laughed.
“We have the whole place to shag in,” James sa
id.
And though it was one of the hardest things I had ever done, I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, let’s have a bit of how’s-your-father.”
FOUR
Cliff
I found myself working late almost every day. Though it was true that my workload was heavy, the real reason I stayed so late was to avoid the yawning emptiness of the flat. When I did find myself alone in the apartment – and from time to time, it was unavoidable – I left the television on. Sometimes, when I woke up from a snooze, I momentarily believed that the noises surrounding me were the dulcet tones of family life. On these occasions, the reality revealed when I opened my eyes felt like an ice pack closing around my heart.
As soon as Luke reappeared, every other weekend and most Wednesdays, everything was fine. We would feed the lizard – a boring beast that barely moved – and go to the cinema; we would shop for must-have Adidas trainers and hang out in technology stores to play with the latest slick devices from Apple and Samsung. Surprisingly, my separation from my wife had created a space within which my relationship with my son – previously so stale – could blossom.
I realised that I was becoming increasingly dependant on Luke, and that this might not be entirely healthy for a man in his forties. But for now Luke was all I had, and so I let myself cling to him, spoiling the boy rotten to ensure his enduring love. There was only one threat to this relationship that I could identify, and that was the slowly forming storm cloud of blame over our separation. Hannah had already phoned me twice, spitting nails over her perception that I had been painting her as the bad guy in all of this. “If you don’t share the blame fairly then I will tell him about you,” she threatened. “I’ll tell him what really happened in France. And then we’ll see how much time he wants to spend in your bachelor pad.” But the truth was that I hadn’t said a word against her. Despite getting pretty much everything she wanted, she was so uptight that she was driving Luke away herself.
So far I had been able to manage the relationship with my estranged wife by, essentially, giving in to her every demand. So far, true to our word, we had not become those divorcees, but I feared that it was only a matter of time. With James in the middle of our lives stirring things up, I somehow couldn’t imagine any way out that would avoid all-out war, because that was, and always had been, his way. And not for the first time, I wished that he had never existed.
On the Thursday of my second week in the flat, the landline rang. As this was the first time it had done so, and because the ring was both loud and unfamiliar, it made me jolt in shock.
The caller was Glen, the husband of Hannah’s close friend Jennifer, but by default, being a man, Glen was officially my mate, not Hannah’s.
“Hey,” Glen said. “So how’s life in the heart of the city? I hear you have one groovy little pad down there.”
“It’s fine,” I replied, wondering who could have told Glen this. Hannah, after all, had never even seen the place. “You managed to find the number OK then?”
“Jennifer got it from Hannah for me,” Glen said. “I was thinking that I might be able to finally convince you to go on that fishing trip. Dad says I can borrow his camper van. What do you reckon?”
I was shocked. The famous fishing trip. How long had we been talking about this? Nine years? Ten? Why had it never happened? And why bring it up now? What had Hannah told Jennifer? What had Jennifer told Glen?
“Cliff?” Glen prompted.
“Yes, um . . .” I stumbled. “Yes, I’m still here.”
“I thought the line had gone dead.”
“No, I . . . I was just thinking about dates. I have Luke this weekend, that’s all.”
“Maybe the weekend after,” Glen said. “Bringing the kids isn’t really the point, is it?”
The trip tentatively organised, and the phone call over, I sat and stared at the muted TV screen and wondered what the point really was.
The fishing trip had first been mooted ten years before.
Jennifer had decided that Glen and I needed to spend more time together. We both suspected that what she really meant was that she and Hannah wanted more time alone, but whatever the reason, we complied by agreeing to take Luke, just two, and Charlotte, three, to the park.
It was a warm summer’s day – August, perhaps – and the park was busy with people walking, picnicking and attempting to fly kites in the insufficient breeze.
“Well this is weird,” Glen commented.
“It is a bit,” I agreed. It felt strangely modern – a bit new man – to be the only two men with pushchairs. “So what do you think the ladies are getting up to in our absence?”
Glenn shrugged. “Drinking coffee and yacking about you and me, I expect.”
“They’ll run out of matter pretty quickly if they’re talking about us.”
“I don’t know,” Glen said. “I listen to Jennifer on the phone sometimes, and she can talk for hours – literally hours – without saying anything at all.
“Hannah too,” I agreed. And it was true.
Once we had lapped the park – with the exception of a brief conversation about motorbikes, in silence – I glanced at my watch. “Too early to head back yet.”
Glenn nodded at the green where a group of women were picnicking. “Let’s go sit over there. At least the view is better.”
Thirty yards from the women we pulled out a blanket and sat cross-legged. Luke was still sleeping so I left him in the pushchair. Charlotte, as ever, was awake but gurgling happily. Glenn lifted her onto the blanket so that she could crawl around. A worryingly late bloomer, she was walking, just, but only if forced.
A ginger, bearded guy in jeans and a red and white checked shirt started to cross the green towards the women and I watched him stride purposely across the grass, crouch down to talk, and then stand, stretch and leave.
As he walked away, Glen said, “Five women in various states of undress and you’re watching Clint Eastwood. What gives, dude?”
It was only once he had said this that I realised that I had been quite attentively tracking him. In an initial attempt at an honest reply, I tried to examine my motives. Why had I been watching him?
It was something about his gait, something about the way he walked, his bandy legs, his stride which had been purposeful and manly. Was I simply feeling jealous? Perhaps.
He had been wearing cowboy boots, and I had been thinking that in Farnham, on a Saturday afternoon in August, that somehow seemed brave. I had wondered if the pointy, heeled boots were as uncomfortable as they looked. I had pondered whether the boots were the thing that made him walk in such a determined, self-assured way. I even wondered what Hannah would say if I turned up at home in a pair. Would I look sexy, or absurd? Would I suddenly have groups of attractive scantily clad women to wander over to, or would it be one of those pointless purchases that Hannah so excelled in, one of those worse-than-pointless purchases where the second you put them on, you simply realise that you aren’t that person, and that no amount of clothes shopping will ever make you into that person.
All of these thoughts drifted through my mind on that drowsy summer’s day, but because not being sure if I wanted to dress more like the cowboy, or be the cowboy, or perhaps, just, be friends with the cowboy, all seemed a bit gay, I lied. “He’s the spitting image of a friend I was at college with,” I said, “that’s all.”
“I didn’t know you had any friends,” Glen said, “except for me.”
I laughed. “I don’t have a lot. Always been more about quality than quantity, me. Never been one for the big crowd.”
Glen winked at me. “We should go fishing,” he said. “Make a weekend of it. Just you, me and a camp stove.”
I frowned as I tried to work out how that thought had linked to this one. Was there some subtext that I was missing here? “Yeah, maybe,” I said, and an image of Glen and me dressed as cowboys around a camp fire came to mind, and I wondered if Glen had the same mental image, and if such manly camaraderie wasn’t what
I was truly craving.
The woman the guy had spoken to – an attractively curvy redhead – was now standing and pulling on her cardigan. As she crossed the green, following in the footsteps of the booted-guy, I tracked her departure. It was a conscious act to cover my tracks, to demonstrate that, “I’m just people watching, here, that’s all.” Once she had vanished from view, I glanced back at Glen and raised one eyebrow in a man-to-man kind of way.
“I wouldn’t mind being her boyfriend tonight,” he said, and I thought, No, neither would I. I wondered if it was for the same reasons.
“Watching these girls drinking beer is making me thirsty,” Glen said. “Shall we go grab a pint before we have to take these monsters back?”
“Sure,” I said, and as I stood I imagined wearing boots and wondered again, if I could get away with it.
* * *
Two weeks after the phone call, with Luke at Hannah’s for the weekend, the camping trip finally happened. I threw my bag in the side door, and then climbed into the cabin of the camper van. It was far bigger than I thought. I had been expecting a funky VW van, but this was more like a small house on wheels.
As I buckled my seatbelt, I tried to ignore the fact that Glen was staring at me, pulling a face. After a few seconds of silence I turned to look at him and asked, “What?”
“Well those are a bit Brokeback Mountain, aren’t they?” Glen said.
I looked down at my boots, still hideously shiny, conspicuously new. It hadn’t been easy to find cowboy boots in Farnham. “These?” I asked, and from the heat I suddenly felt, I suspected that I was blushing.
“Yes.”
“I never saw Brokeback,” I told him, and it was true. “So I wouldn’t know. I thought it might be muddy up there, that’s all.”
“It will be, which is why I brought wellies.” Glen nodded over his shoulder to indicate the location of said wellies. “Big, green, rubber wellies.”
Other Halves Page 5
