Divinity Road

by Martin Pevsner

  Greg made up the fourth player, along with Nuala, Mary and Phil, for a regular Sunday afternoon tennis match. Now she will not contemplate the recruitment of a replacement.

  He used to take Sammy to the Sunday morning football matches, shouting out support from the touchline as the boy and his team mates fought for midfield supremacy on the pitch. This habit allowed Nuala time to take Beth off for two hours of swimming, followed by hot chocolate and cake and mother-daughter bonding. Now Nuala takes Sammy to football, determined that he should receive no less support than before. She switches Beth’s swimming to Thursday afternoons, while Sammy is at karate, but it’s not as relaxed and she knows that Beth is disappointed.

  In bed, when the kids are asleep, she misses his touch, the intimacy but, almost as painfully, the nightly attempt at the quick crossword. Since his disappearance, she hasn’t even bought a newspaper, let alone tried to resurrect the evening tradition.

  A piece of her jigsaw is missing.

  She feels her whole identity altered, her social status transformed. Greg’s disappearance teaches her how far she had gone in the journey from individual to team member. And now, returned to her original standing, it becomes clear very quickly which roles she took on in the team, and which ones, previously delegated to Greg, now leave her clueless.

  DIY work is the clearest example. Greg had always been a natural around the house – it was only his ability that had allowed them to buy the Divinity Road house in the first place and had given them the courage to take on the challenge of a complete modernisation on such a shoestring budget. It’d been her idea: buy something bigger than they could afford, but cheap because of its state of disrepair, then he’d do it up with his builder brother, Ian. They’d spent months house-hunting, determined to find the perfect balance between ruin and affordability. They had finally found it in the Divinity Road place, on the market after the death of the owner, a woman in her eighties who’d lived there alone for many years.

  It was a wreck. There was no central heating, the kitchen and bathrooms needed replacing, the roof was in poor condition, the exterior needed re-pointing, the plaster in many of the rooms had blown. There were problems with floorboards, skirting, insulation, damp-proofing.

  But underneath the neglect were some promising gems – original fireplaces, beautiful ceiling roses, an elegant staircase. It had taken five years of hard work, each stage postponed until they’d saved enough for the materials, the rental of the floor sander, the scaffolding hire, the new boiler. She’d done what she could, but it was superficial, her input limited to the initial design and later the painting and decorating. But the nitty-gritty was down to Greg.

  And now, in his absence, it starts with minor inconveniences – the towel rack comes off in the bathroom and the holes need filling, new screwholes drilled. She opens the door to the tool cupboard, aware that she’s never rummaged inside before and fumbles with drill bits and rawlplugs. Eventually she asks Phil to help and vows to buy herself a book on DIY.

  She sees the flaking paintwork on the outside of the windows and remembers that they’d agreed to get the exterior of the house repainted. In the past it was Greg who either carried out the work himself or identified firms, chased up quotes, made the final choice and supervised the work. It’s too daunting to contemplate for the moment, so she ignores the problem.

  More worryingly, there are numerous on-line accounts she needs access to – internet banking, insurance, road tax, something new every week – and she realises not only how much of their financial and administrative affairs Greg dealt with, but also how many of these dealings require passwords that only he knew. She recalls one or two of them, always the names of artists he admired. She’s forced to experiment each time a password is demanded, trial and error, hours spent punching in combinations of Kiefer, Raedecker, Freud, Magritte and Lautrec.

  So at every turn, there are reminders of her loss. Broken habits, new responsibilities, she meets each new problem unprepared, aware that she’s winging it, that she has no strategy to cope beyond day-to-day survival.

  Financially, Nuala finds that her head is still above water. There will be an eventual compensation package from the airline, a complicated insurance matter that Nuala leaves in the hands of her solicitor. In the meantime her own salary pays the mortgage and meets their basic needs. And she continues to receive the income from the occasional sale of Greg’s paintings, though she grows increasingly unwilling to lose a single one. She feels a need to keep them close to her, to cherish them.

  In fact the publicity surrounding Greg’s demise (for that is how his disappearance is now perceived by the media) has only served to heighten interest in his work, that macabre phenomenon that equates death with popularity and success.

  His agent presses her to sell. She demurs at first but financial fears eventually hold sway and she sanctions the sale of three or four paintings, works that she knows Greg was not overly fond of.

  ***

  As Christmas looms, Nuala’s parents push for her to bring the children over to their farm for ten days over the festive period. She recognises the opportunity for a change of environment as a way of cheating the gloom that would inevitably descend if they spent it in their own house, however maniacally she tried to establish an atmosphere of jollity.

  They drive to Wales, catch the ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare, then it’s another couple of hours in the car to the farm. The days pass in a blur of farmyard games, drizzle and fog, steaming plates of mashed potato with stew or chops, endless cups of tea and cake. They make the tour of relatives, more tea and ham sandwiches, then sherry or whisky. They are taken to the pub, rounds of white wine for Nuala, red lemonade and crisps for the children. Nuala’s parents encourage the kids to get out of the house and explore the farm. There are hay barns and stables, an old smithy and a kitchen garden, meadows full of indolent cattle. But Nuala, overly anxious, worries about silage pits, kicking horses and unguarded machinery. She can only relax when the kids are in sight.

  When Nuala gets back to Oxford, she accepts that although she may need to drop routines that serve as the most painful reminders of the past, she will also need to create new ones to fill the void. She signs up for an evening course in Urdu, but she cannot concentrate away from the children and begins to skip classes. After the crash she had dropped her old yoga class but now finds a martial arts school offering two evening classes a week at one of the local secondary schools. Joan, her neighbour, agrees to babysit for one session. She pays a neighbour’s daughter to sit in for the other. The training is physically hard but she relishes the escape and the opportunity to vent her anger and frustration in acts of controlled aggression.

  Nuala’s over-protectiveness, her reluctance to let the children out of her sight, continues to be a problem. She has been vaguely aware of this irrational tendency since she learned of the crash, but her state of mental imbalance does not allow her to face it head on. She negotiates with her line manager to drop her teaching hours to three-and-a half days a week. She volunteers to help Sammy’s teacher in class every Thursday morning, signs up to accompany Beth’s class on all their school excursions.

  Sammy positively relishes the extra time spent in her company, but his older sister becomes increasingly exasperated by her omnipresence. Her natural desire for her own independence is growing, and this control begins to feel intolerable. When her mother insists that Debbie comes to their house for a sleepover, rather than the other way round, or when she offers to accompany Beth and Charlotte to the park, her daughter grinds her teeth and decides to cancel the arrangements rather than put up with her mother’s company. And at that stage still, Nuala remains oblivious, unable yet to pick up the signals, to recognise the scope of her own madness.

  ***

  A further change in Nuala’s behaviour since the tragedy is a growing introspection. She is unable to take part in group social events with the same ass
urance and enthusiasm as in the past.

  She’s not sure whether to put it down to a loss of confidence or whether she now simply finds such occasions trivial and tiresome.

  She remembers her monthly book club get-togethers in the past. Over cava, cheese, olives and French bread, the women would talk about their frustrations over errant or disobliging husbands, their worries about underperforming or wayward children, their commentaries on school admissions and house prices, on interior decoration and residents’ parking, on foreign holidays and frail parents, on irregular sex and disappointing after-school clubs. She remembers that she too would join in. But the events now appear alien. The Nuala who took part seems a remote stranger.

  It’s been six months. Tonight, the first Friday of the month, is supposed to be book group night, her first attendance back since Fran’s knock at the door. She’d thought she would go and had even organised Joan’s babysitting services, but had panicked at tea-time, a crisis of confidence. Instead, she has allowed both children to invite friends over for sleepovers. She turns a blind eye as they turn the lounge into a bombsite with pillow fights, crisps, sticky juice and popcorn.

  Now the children have been asleep for hours, she’s been dozing in front of the TV, but she stirs and gets to her feet. She surveys the wreckage of her lounge and begins piling up the dirty plates onto a tray, collecting the half-empty bowls of snacks, gathering the empty juice cartons for the recycling bin. She checks on the children in their bedrooms for the umpteenth time that evening, then returns to the kitchen to stack cutlery and crockery into the dishwasher. The oven clock tells her that it’s one o’clock but sleep still feels out of reach, so she takes out the hoover to run over the rug in the lounge.

  It’s been a difficult day to get through. That afternoon, a long conversation with the police liaison officer to bring her up to date with the latest investigations. As usual, little new to report. The officer is honest and direct, which Nuala appreciates. A final confirmation that DNA testing on all human remains has been completed and there are now only a couple of passengers unaccounted for. It is thought most likely that they’ve either been vaporised in the explosion or carried off by wild animals. Highly unlikely, but still considered a faint possibility, is that they’ve survived and left the crash site under their own steam. However, the question then arises: why have they not re-appeared in the interval? No, this seems almost beyond belief. The official position is that there are no survivors. Of course, for Nuala, without a body to mourn, beyond belief lies the limbo of doubt. Despite the officer’s candour and conviction, Nuala feels as if she’s been left marooned on an island of uncertainty.

  And so Nuala switches on the dishwasher, puts on a load of laundry while she’s at it, reluctantly makes her way up to bed. Tomorrow she has a day of child-ferrying, a shopping run and lesson preparation. She’s still not ready to sleep but knows she must try. She leaves the landing light on and undresses in the semi-darkness of her bedroom. Naked, she stares at herself in the full-length mirror, traces the outline of her face, the shadows where her eyes should be, below her breasts, between her legs.

  She remembers years before, Greg’s one and only attempt to paint her nude one evening in the flat they’d first lived in. She’d been six months’ pregnant with Beth, heavy but voluptuous, her libido on overdrive, and after forty minutes she’d grown bored, had coaxed him away from his brushes and they’d ended up coupling on the sofa where she’d been posing. That was as far as he’d got with her painting – no more than a half-finished charcoal outline – but they’d had the sketch framed and it hung, an anonymous souvenir of sensual abandonment, next to the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom.

  But in the darkness of her bedroom, she feels a different kind of abandonment. She climbs into bed and buries herself under her duvet. A few minutes’ later she gets up again and moves to the chest of drawers. She pulls open the bottom one that Greg had used for his clothes and takes out the green v-neck tee-shirt that he’d worn in bed on their last night together, the one he’d thrown on the floor in his hurry to be on his way.

  With an almost guilty air, she carries it back to bed, slides back under the covers and puts her face to the cotton garment and breathes in deeply. Though his scent has faded, it’s still unmistakably of him. She takes in his musty odour, a slightly sour combination of sweat and soap and white spirit. It’s the most powerful reminder she has of him and sometimes, clutching it to her breasts, burying her face in it, it’s the only way she can get to sleep.

  ***

  From the sixth month of Greg’s disappearance, Nuala hits a number of important milestones, the first of which is the memorial service. Friends and family, those who have accepted Greg’s demise, have been pushing for it for months. They dig out the usual clichés. It is a celebration of his life, a paying of respects, even that dreaded word, closure. So why does Nuala eventually agree?

  Part of it, of course, is her vulnerable state, She’s caught at a weak moment and bows to the pressure. Those around her are pleased, see it as an important part of the grieving process – they call it acceptance – which began with denial.

  Nuala doesn’t contradict them, but inside an illogical half-hope that the ritual of the service will somehow conjure up a miraculous return of the prodigal husband. In her more lucid moments she recognises the lunacy of her idea but keeps her thoughts locked up inside like a guilty secret.

  In the end the service passes relatively painlessly. She immerses herself in the preparations, the on-the-day organisation, in dealing with the children, so the experience passes in a numbing fog. It’s an unreal day, and so easier to get through. It’s the other days, the ones before and after, where she has to live with her reality.

  Another milestone, her return to the book club. It’s at Mary’s house, usually a place of refuge for Nuala, but tonight the atmosphere’s strained. Too much effort is made by the women to behave ‘normally’. Too much thought is given before speaking to avoid a ghastly faux pas. Nuala knows from Mary’s gossip that one member, Amanda, has only recently been told by her spouse that he is moving in with his lover, the inevitable younger work colleague. She is still distraught and in normal circumstances, much of the evening would be given over to her, the others listening while she vents her feelings. Tonight, though, there’s an understanding that even such a domestic upheaval as this cannot compare to Nuala’s ordeal. Aware of the story, watching her friends skirt around it, only adds to Nuala’s sense of isolation.

  Another member of the group, Tamsin, has been single for over a year following the discovery of her husband’s adultery and her subsequent move for divorce. Part of book club nights are usually given over to the other members listening to Tamsin’s latest escapades. It’s a brief moment of vicarious excitement for the other middle-aged women, mostly settled into long-term partnerships or permanent single status.

  One night she’ll be showing off her recently-acquired tattoo, a shooting star on her shoulder, another narrating a hilarious episode speed dating. Oiled with alcohol, she’ll describe her new life of liberation and danger – tales of dubious lovers and disastrous liaisons.

  She’s a good story-teller, her timing sharp and punchy, her delivery usually inspiring a mixed reaction of hilarity and incredulity. The others will listen intently, their unspoken thoughts vacillating between pity and envy.

  Then she’ll come to the end of an anecdote and somebody will mention their daughter’s request for a tummy piercing, a recent experience of hair removal laser treatment, a son’s disastrous school report, and they’ll shift back to safer territory – families, children, domestic conflict. But tonight it’s different. Stilted conversation, Nuala’s friends are desperate to avoid anything at either end of the emotional scale.

  Nuala knows they mean well. They’ve all done their best over the past months. And she knows the atmosphere is partly her fault. She’s become increasingly aware how many of
her social skills she’s lost since Before became After.

  At the end of the evening, Mary asks Nuala to stay on.

  You OK, love? she’d asked earlier on. Finding it hard?

  A bit, she’d admitted. I’ll be alright.

  Now Mary makes tea for Nuala and they sit on the sofa their mugs on the table amongst the shrapnel of cava corks and olive stones.

  I’m sorry, says Nuala. I really killed the evening, didn’t I?

  It’s not you, it was us. We were pussyfooting around. God it must have been awful for you. It was excruciating for me at times.

  Yeah, well, says Nuala, smiling. It does things to her face muscles that feel very unfamiliar. I’m not much fun to be around.

  But that’s your right, your privilege. You can act any bloody way you want. There are no rules for how to behave, you can make them up. Our culture’s so bound up in suppressing our feelings, avoiding outward displays of emotion. You look at other cultures, they don’t bottle things up.

  Yeah, well, Nuala repeats.

  Whatever you feel, say, do, it’s OK by us, Nuala. We know what you’re going through and we know what sort of person you are, however hard you’re finding it at the moment. Don’t forget, we’ve all known you for years. Everyone loves you, Nuala, we all admire you. You give so much, you never expect anything in return.

  Oh for God’s sake...

  No, let me finish. You’re in a hole at the moment so deep that you’ve forgotten what you’re really like. But we haven’t forgotten. If there’s a favour that you can do anyone, you jump at the chance. Nothing’s ever too much trouble. I don’t know whether it’s Catholic guilt, sweetheart genes or a damn good upbringing but you’ve always been that way. You don’t wait to be asked, you look for ways to help. You’re thoughtful, caring, loyal.