So I was both pleased and nervous when I walked in and recognized him already waiting at the bar. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date. Life before Ethan seems fuzzy and hard to imagine; less bruised, more hopeful, with fewer anxieties and more certainty. I was five years younger and ten pounds lighter. Spaghetti straps were still my friend. Ditto low-waisted jeans. Now it’s things I can tuck in and sleeves.
We greeted each other with a polite kiss on each cheek. He was a little shorter in real life than he’d looked in his photos, and his aftershave was a bit overpowering, but he gave me a big smile which immediately put me at ease.
It’s just –
I knew. I knew it the moment I walked into the bar and laid eyes on him: he wasn’t the one.
‘Hi – Nell?’
‘Hi, yes – nice to meet you.’
I pushed the feeling deep down inside me. I was determined to give him a chance. I hadn’t spent this long getting ready to turn around and go home again. Plus, perhaps I was wrong. I’d been wrong about a lot of things so far in my life. Trust your instincts, they tell you. Listen to your gut, they say. Except I’d listened to both and look where that had got me: sobbing my eyes out 30,000 feet above the Atlantic; overdrawn from a failed business venture; sharing a loo with a man I’m not sleeping with.
Standing in a bar in Soho on a Monday night, still looking for love in my forties, and wishing this trouser suit wasn’t so tight around the waist.
‘Drink?’
‘Yes, please. Glass of white wine, thanks.’
On the tube ride over, I’d decided it was time to finally use my head when it came to men. My whole life I’ve got into relationships for a variety of reasons, none of which has been particularly sensible. In fact, choice probably isn’t the correct word when it comes to my love life. It gives the impression of rational thought and deliberation, a weighing up of someone’s character and shared interests. Not a series of random, impulsive moments, often involving alcohol, where I leapt, and fell, and was swept away.
Nice eyes; a drunken snog at the office Christmas party; a nose ring that I knew would shock my mother. That’s my twenties gone right there. Poof. And don’t get me started on my thirties. I’ve spent more time reflecting on which sandwich filling to choose than I have on who I’m going to sign over my precious heart, soul, and years of my life to.
‘So, Nell, how are you finding the dating site?’
‘You’re my first date.’
‘I am? Wow. I’m honoured. An online-dating virgin!’
So what if there are no sparks or butterflies? Sparks and butterflies break your heart and drive you to the edge of insanity. They give you adrenaline-fuelled highs and desperate-on-the-kitchen-floor lows. I’ve never done heroin but often think it must be like that kind of love. It’s an addiction. A craving followed by a fix.
But it’s never enough. You’re never enough.
And I can’t do it any more. The highs just aren’t worth the lows. This heart of mine is so cracked and broken it’s barely holding together, a bit like my iPhone screen. One more blow and it will shatter forever.
‘So, Nell, tell me, what are you looking for?’
‘What, you mean, like in life, generally?’
‘No, as in a partner.’
‘Erm, I’m not sure . . . someone kind, funny . . . sane.’ I try to make a bit of a joke. It feels more like an interview than a date.
‘The same life goals are important, don’t you think?’
‘Oh yes, absolutely. Those too.’
I need to do away with these romantic teenage notions. Couples who have been together forty years don’t talk about passion and racing pulses. They talk about making compromises and common interests and security – I look at Nick and it hits me. Oh God, it’s happening. It’s time I gave up looking for chemistry and moved on to the next stage: companionship.
I used to always read about companionship in the advice columns of the magazines my mum reads. Middle-aged couples talking about how the spark has gone and how they don’t have sex any more, but how at least they’ve got someone to watch boxsets with and flush the central heating system.
It sounded dreadful. I used to gloss over those articles, like you gloss over adverts for stair lifts and natural-looking dentures, with a shudder and a sense of relief. I was far too young and far too busy having great sex to bother my head with boring things like companionship. That stuff happened to old people, even the tanned and silver-haired couple laughing with abandon on the winter cruise ad.
But now here I am, several hours later, in a restaurant, listening to Nick telling me all about his Fitbit, showing me how to measure my resting pulse and how many calories I’m burning; and part of me is thinking that at least he’d be someone to put out the recycling and go on a cruise with.
‘I can get you one if you’d like. I’ve got a fifty per cent off voucher code.’
‘Oh . . . thank you, that’s very generous, but I don’t think I’d use it.’
‘We could share our stats, keep track of how many steps we’re taking, set daily goals and challenge each other – just think! There’s so much we can do!’
I’m grateful for:
The Uber driver who finally came to my rescue.
WhatsApp, for allowing us to avoid any awkward phone calls and help keep things on good terms, as I’m able to politely message, ‘Thanks for a lovely evening, Nick. It was great to meet you, but I don’t think we’re a good match. I wish you all the best. Nell.’ Along with a smiley face emoji.
Nick’s reply, which pinged in a few seconds later: ‘Couldn’t agree more! You beat me to it. Have a nice life.’ With no smiley face emoji, just the voucher code.
My brave and foolish heart, for refusing to settle for anything less.
Being able to put out my own recycling.
Failing
So, I’m listening to this podcast about how it’s important to fail. Every week a well-known personality is interviewed on what their failures taught them about how to succeed better. I love this show; failing is something I appear to be very good at. It’s like discovering a talent I never knew I had, like being able to play the piano or speak fluent Spanish.
Well, sort of.
It’s the succeeding part I’m having a little more trouble with. A job writing obituaries and one online date is not turning my life around. And it’s May already! Still, no point panicking. I once watched a documentary about ships, and how they can’t just change direction sharply otherwise they’ll tip over, but you have to steer them around gradually. Maybe I should think of my life as a big ship that needs to turn around slowly. Maybe I’m like a cruise liner.*
I’m grateful for:
Failing at my career, otherwise I wouldn’t have met the wonderful Cricket.
Failing at homeownership, otherwise I wouldn’t have met my beloved Arthur.
Failing at my relationship, otherwise I wouldn’t be enjoying the fun of online dating.
My sense of irony.
The Raincoat
Life is all about timing. Its very creation is dependent on the egg being released at just the right time for it to be fertilized by the sperm. In love, timing is everything. You can meet the right person at the wrong time and the wrong person at the right time. Even in death, timing is of great significance.
So when Cricket calls me up at the weekend and says, ‘I’m ready to clear out Monty’s clothes,’ I drop everything and go over to her house.
Because it’s not just important for those who have died, but for those left behind.
She greets me at the door, but instead of her usual brisk handshake she gives me an uncharacteristic hug, then leads me up the large central staircase, with its brass stair rods and timeworn carpet, to the first floor.
‘It’s time,’ she says, pushing open a door and walking into a bedroom. ‘And I need you to help me.’
For months now, she’d left them. Whenever anyone had gently tried to broach the subj
ect, she would cut them off. What was the rush? Privately to me, she’d admitted to finding great comfort in seeing his shirts hanging in the wardrobe, his coat on the rack in the hall. ‘I’m not ready yet,’ was always her response whenever I offered to help. ‘I like having him around.’
‘Are you sure?’ I pause in the doorway.
‘Absolutely,’ she nods. ‘I woke up this morning and I just knew. I miss Monty terribly, but keeping his clothes isn’t going to bring him back.’
She opens the large wardrobe in the corner of the room. It’s stuffed to the gills with a rainbow array of shirts and jackets, all jostling for space.
‘Monty wasn’t organized; he never liked to throw anything away.’
I join her in the bedroom and we look at its contents, both slightly paralysed by the task ahead. Shirts, three to each mahogany hanger, bump shoulders with empty wire hangers, still with their dry-cleaning plastic attached.
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Listen to me,’ she says simply. ‘No one listens to me any more. Everyone likes to tell me what to do. They think they’re looking after me but I feel like they’re suffocating me.’
So that’s what I do. I go and sit on the edge of the bed. And I listen.
‘I kept all his things on hangers because it made me feel like he was coming back. Opening his wardrobe door and seeing them hanging there, being able to touch them and smell them, it’s like he was here, it’s like he was going to come in at any minute and ask “What shirt should I wear?” or “What tie goes with the blue suit, Cricket?”’
She pauses.
‘Does that make me sound ridiculous?’
I shake my head. ‘When my first boyfriend went away to university, I kept his sweaty T-shirt. I didn’t wash it and every night I would sleep with it on my pillow.’
‘Now that is ridiculous,’ she says, and we both smile. ‘You know, Monty was always going away with his work. He would often tour with the play and he would be gone for weeks . . . months. Sometimes I would go with him. In the early days we were hardly ever at home. We were always on the road, touring different theatres and playhouses around the country—’
She breaks off, her attention caught by a framed theatre poster from thirty years ago, hanging on the wall above the chest of drawers.
‘I used to think it all sounded very glamorous, but the reality was quite different. That’s the magic of theatre: you don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes; the draughty dressing rooms and motorway service stations, the bed and breakfasts with no hot water.’ She gives a little shake of her head. ‘Of course, in his later years it was all very different. Monty always said his success and awards didn’t change anything, apart from not having to travel further than the West End for opening night.’
‘I wish I could have met Monty.’
‘Oh, you would have loved him. And he would have loved you.’
Turning back to the wardrobe, she runs her fingertips along the sleeves of the jackets, like fingers on the keyboard of a piano, but it’s a tune that only she can hear.
‘When he first died, it was almost like the early days all over again. As if he was just away touring with a play and he’d be coming back . . . I almost convinced myself . . . But he’s not coming back, is he?’
She turns to me now, full on, and I see her expression. She’s so sad and trying to be so brave.
‘No. He’s not,’ I say softly.
She nods, her body stiffening, and for the first time since I’ve met Cricket, I see her eyes well with tears.
‘One thing I’ve learned through this bloody awful time is that grief isn’t linear. You can be doing all right, then it will suddenly come out of nowhere. It’s the silly little things that remind you . . . Only yesterday I was at the supermarket and found myself in the biscuit aisle, standing in front of his favourites. Monty used to love these toffee wafers. I never cared for them, but he could eat them by the packet . . . and I burst into tears. It just hit me. I was never going to buy those biscuits for him again.’
Listening to Cricket, I feel a sudden sense of shame. All this time I’ve been mistaking her strength and composure for a lack of sentiment and vulnerability. She’s been so busy and industrious I’ve assumed she was coping just fine. She seemed so strong, I thought she was made of sterner stuff than the rest of us, and that somehow she was unaffected by his loss.
I had no idea that behind the brave face and stiff upper lip she was suffering this much inside. Her stoicism seemed to belong to another era, of picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and just getting on with it, but now I realize it doesn’t mean she’s any less heartbroken. She just hides it better.
‘Fancy crying over a packet of biscuits. Goodness knows what the other shoppers must have thought of me.’ She sniffs sharply and throws back her shoulders. ‘Right then. Best crack on.’ And, pulling out a fistful of hangers, she begins laying them on the bed.
Clearing out someone’s possessions is like going through a scrapbook of their life. Everything has a story or a memory attached.
Red silk tie: ‘He wore this one year to his club’s Christmas ball. It was black tie, so of course Monty wore a red one. That was Monty. If you told him to turn left, he would turn right.’
Pistachio linen suit: ‘We were in Venice, for the film festival. On the way to our hotel we got lost down a side street, and he happened to see this in a shop window and thought it was marvellous. So very Italian. He bought it to wear at the festival, but it wasn’t hemmed in time. Afterwards we went to Forte dei Marmi, and he insisted on wearing it to the beach, rolling up the trousers so he could paddle. Monty never learned to swim, you know. He used to say drowning in his emotions was quite enough.’
Pair of hand-stitched leather brogues: ‘He had a shoemaker in the East End. Monty had polio as a child and suffered terribly with his feet, but he swore they could make “a silk purse out of a pig’s ear”. He went there for over fifty years. They even have his shoe last.’
Raincoat: ‘He found it in a cafe in Paris. He was in his early twenties, long before we ever met, but I remember him telling me the story. Apparently someone had left it on the back of a chair and he asked the waiters if they would keep it, in case its owner returned, but they never did, so he claimed it instead. It was a little too big for him in those days, but being a poor playwright, he was thrilled. In later years it became much too small for him, but he could never bring himself to give it away. I think it reminded him of his youth. Of those rainy days in Paris in the 1950s, when he would smoke Gauloises, and sit in cafes scribbling in his notebooks and pretending he was Hemingway.’
Several hours later the wardrobe is empty.
‘Do you have bin liners? I’ll take all these clothes to the charity shop.’
‘Not bin liners.’ Cricket shakes her head firmly. ‘That herringbone suit was cut by one of the finest tailors on Savile Row and worn to the Viennese Opera. It can’t ever see the inside of a bin liner, even if it’s only temporary. Monty would never forgive me.’
So in the end we pack everything neatly away in suitcases – four large ones, the old-fashioned type with leather handles and no wheels – plus two large trunks from his army days. Afterwards we call a minicab, but instead of the usual Ford Galaxy, a large, shiny black Mercedes arrives. ‘Don’t worry, it’s the same price, I was the first car free,’ says the driver, helping me load everything into the giant boot and onto the back seat.
I go to say goodbye to Cricket. It’s been a long, emotional day.
‘Just one more thing,’ she says after we hug. ‘Will you take them to a charity shop in a different neighbourhood? I know it sounds silly, but I don’t think I could bear bumping into strangers wearing his clothes.’
‘Of course, there’s lots near my house. I’ll bring the luggage back later.’
‘There’s no rush.’
The driver opens the car door for me, and I climb into the passenger seat.
‘You know, it was a
big thing you did today,’ I say to her. ‘You were very brave. Monty would be proud.’
Cricket smiles. ‘Well, he’d certainly be pleased.’ She hands me the final piece of luggage, which I balance on my knees, then steps back on the pavement as the driver indicates to pull out. ‘Even in death, he gets to travel in style with an attractive woman half his age.’
I’m grateful for:
Learning that listening can be more powerful than talking.
The privilege of spending the afternoon with Monty.
Timing, which has brought Cricket and me together when we need each other the most.
It’s Complicated
Tonight I watched the News at Ten. It should be renamed the Bad News at Ten. It was one horrible headline after another. All around, the world is in chaos. There is so much suffering. So much terror and injustice. The refugee crisis, our oceans filled with plastic, climate change, animal cruelty, gun and knife crime . . . the list is endless. But it’s not just the news headlines. I watched David Attenborough’s new documentary the other night and it’s hard not to despair.
As a human being, when I see these things I suffer the expected emotions – horror, fear, sadness – but also a sense of shame. And not just shame at how we are treating the inhabitants of our planet, but shame that my own problems are completely insignificant when held in context.
How can I wake up with The Fear when I’m lying in bed, safe and warm, and there are people out there without food or shelter? How can I look in the mirror and feel gloomy about my saggy knees when women younger than me are dying of cancer and it’s a privilege to age? How can I feel sad about not finding my happy ever after when so much of our planet is being destroyed? And how can I even concern myself with my faltering career and failed love life when we have Brexit and Trump?
Confessions of a Forty Something F##k Up Page 14
