by Kathy Lette
Now that the friendship with Hannah and Jazz had evaporated, I wondered how many of our conversations had gone by, casually, taken for granted, unembraced? How I ached for one of those light-hearted chats about boot-leg jeans and body waxing. Girlfriends share secret lagoons of knowledge about each other’s moods and dreams. One evening, unable to bear the empty skeletal coat hangers on Rory’s side of the cupboards, I began to fill his space with my possessions, and found a card Jazz had given me at teacher’s college.
Friends, you and me . . .
You brought another friend and then there were three.
We started our group. Our circle of friends.
And like a circle, there’s no beginning or end.
On any normal day, I would have rung the cliché police, but tonight instead, found myself blubbering.
In the dentist’s waiting room the next day, I picked up a mag and flicked to an article on health. It said that friendships between women not only fill the emotional gaps in our marriages, but also reduce the risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol. The receptionist called my name but I kept on reading, riveted. I could have been in a hospital casualty ward cradling my severed arm in a Waitrose bag and still wouldn’t have moved. It went on to say that not having a close friend was as detrimental to a woman’s health as heavy smoking.
Oh great. With so little time left to live, why bother with fillings and flossings? I got up and left the surgery, unseen.
For the first time ever in my life, work was no salvation, although I tried to maintain an aura of zeal for the sake of my class. Luckily, there was a super-bug running rampant in London schools, so constant vomit-mopping kept me busy.
I had my coat on to go home one afternoon when Scroope called an impromptu staff meeting to announce that the promotion was going to Perdita. I sensed my mouth twitch into what I hoped was a smile, but was more like a rictus. Actually, the smile felt as though some multi-legged tropical insect was climbing across my chin.
Perdita was so gobsmacked with surprise that she nearly dropped her acceptance speech. ‘Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. And today is a gift. That’s why it’s called “the present”. Thank you for my present, Mr Scroope. I look forward to working as Deputy to such an inspirational Headmaster . . . No hard feelings,’ Perdita effervesced as she passed me, her voice so sickly-sweet that I nearly slipped into a hyperglycaemic coma.
As the other staff members expressed their strong desire that Perdita made a success of her new job, I expressed my strong desire to anchor her with weights in a Jacuzzi with a school of piranhas.
Like a wayward schoolgirl I was once more summoned to Scroope’s office. He explained that the Board of Governors, having seen my three written warnings, had left my fate in his hands. But as I had made my hostility to his new Deputy Head so apparent, it was clear to all that it would be best for the school if I saw this as a lifestyle down-scaling opportunity. When I looked at him blankly he tried speaking in English and suggested that I move on. I thought the same thing. But where should I move to? Emigration to Mars looked attractive at this point.
As Scroope droned on about my shortcomings, I looked out of the window through the drizzle at the brutish traffic. There was too much acrimony and way, way too much orange acrylic carpet in this school for me. The uninspired aspidistra in the Principal’s office was dusty and wilting – and I knew just how it felt. As I watched the day dying through the wet window, I felt as though I was buckling from pressure – like trying to close a submarine hatch against a weight of water. As a primary school teacher, I had missed my calling. I was much more suited to a job in a Philosophy Department. ‘What is a grade? In fact, what is life? And is it really worth fucking living?’
An urgent, choking sob burst out of me and I was up, blundering from the office, down the corridor and out of the gate into the squelching world.
There is no doubt that the most satisfying sensation in the Universe is to bump into the woman your husband has left you for, in a bikini in a communal change room, while you’re still dressed and she’s naked, unwaxed and has gained 8 pounds. But needless to say, it never, ever happens this way. As I barrelled blindly on towards Camden, who did I run smack bang into? Rory and Bianca, of course. To say I wasn’t looking my best was to put it mildly. I was gasping and wheezing, my nose was streaming and my eyes were swollen into slits from weeping.
As I stood there dripping in the rain, they remained in an oasis of warmth and calm, cocooned beneath their huge brolly. I thought about smiling hello, but it was just a waste of facial muscles.
‘Oh . . . I’ve been meaning to call . . .’ Rory stammered. His tone was one of pained geniality.
‘Oh, don’t worry. My life’s been so busy, what with the sale at Asda and the dishwasher filter needing changing and all. ’
I wanted to cling to my husband, like Robinson Crusoe clinging to his life-raft. Rory’s eyes were bright and he swallowed hard several times. The muscles in his throat tensed and knotted, which made me feel that he too was fighting off an emotion he did not want witnessed.
Bianca gave me a chilly smile. ‘Cassandra, that coat! I’m sure there’s a homeless person in Romania who would just love it. Although, actually, on second viewing, I think even a homeless Romanian would send it back!’ she chortled appreciatively at her own wit.
Bianca, of course, was looking delicate and expensive in fur-trimmed cashmere. ‘Well, your coat looks very pretty anyway,’ I said, wondering if Rory had bought it for her.
‘Oh, but it’s such a burden you know, being pretty. Especially when you want people to take you seriously. I’ve always thought I’d gain more intellectual respect if I had a broken nose or a scar or something.’
‘Really? Well, would you like me to smash your face in right now?’ I offered.
Rory quickly stifled a laugh. Bianca, on the other hand, looked shocked and a little frightened before sighing condescendingly. ‘You just make it clearer and clearer why your husband left you. Come along, Rory.’
Emotions scudded like weather across Rory’s face. He hesitated – a pooch pulling on his leash. ‘I’m taking the kids tonight, Cass. To the cinema. And then they’re sleeping over. You didn’t forget, did you?’
I had forgotten, in fact. With no job, no friends, no husband, Mum busy burning down Dad’s shed, and now not even my children for company, I was adrift with no shore nor rescue in sight.
‘Yeah, I must be going too,’ I said. ‘I’m sooo busy . . . I need to get home urgently to clean the neck of my tomato sauce bottle.’
And I turned on my heel to walk in the other direction. With my head bent against the rain, I must have looked like a dark question mark in the headlights of passing cars. And the question I was proposing was this – what the fuck had happened to my life?
I followed my feet, crisp packets scuttling and skittering in the windy gutters. It was 5 p.m. and already dark. I should have gone back to school for my books, but I just walked on, not caring about getting lost. It was an emotional map I needed. A life-compass.
There is a despondent grandeur to London’s architecture, reminiscent of an old lady wearing a fur coat she’s had since her thirties. I veered past the terraced houses of Primrose Hill and on into Regents Park. Trees thrashed in the wind. Towards Euston, the streets disintegrated into flimsy tower blocks which had spread like an architectural carcinoma after the Blitz.
On and on I walked. London in the winter is as grey as a parking garage; the monochrome colours matched my mood. The smell after rain was tart, and the air chilly. As I got closer to the City, giant hypodermic buildings needled the sky. The beacon atop Canary Wharf resembled a push button on a toilet. One touch and London, with all its stench and chaos and rotting history, would just be flushed away. Cars clattered by, but down on the river, between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower of London, it was dark and deserted.
I stood on the lip of the Thames, watching the wind whip the crests of
the waves into cruel smiles. I don’t know exactly how long I stood there on the riverbank, but Big Ben marked the hours with sepulchrally deep chimes. As the tide turned, the grey and white ripples became the colour of a gloomy tweed. Circumstances closed in around me like the sides of a coffin. I felt as if a great lid was being screwed down on me. Even though it was shadowy and murky beneath the bridges, so many long-hidden home truths were suddenly brought into the blinding light. I had undermined my own marriage. My fault. My fault. In the rear-view mirror of marriage guidance, every infringement, every flouted rule, every scrape, every emotional hit and run, is examined in minute detail, magnifying the problems. My fault. My fault. I had been unhappy, yes. But not as unhappy as I was now. Recklessly, I began to climb over the railing of the wharf on the East Thames path and teetered above the fast-flowing current. I was overcome with a desire to reinvent myself; to leave my clothes on a beach and fake suicide, emerging with a new identity as an hotel heiress say . . . or a beautiful, flame-haired sex therapist.
People can re-sit driving tests, so why can’t we re-sit our lives when we fail? At that moment, the urge to kill myself off, like a character in a soap opera whose plots have got stale, was incredibly strong. I was shocked that such a thought could occur to me. There was no history of insanity in my family, except that my father did give up a job as a musician to become an accountant.
But what abruptly changed my mind about ‘ending it all’, was that just at that moment, I overbalanced. The eternity between losing my foothold and realizing that I was really going to fall to my watery death brought about a whole host of revelations, chief amongst these being that I no longer wanted to slowly sink, crippled by the terrible inertia of depression. It was such a relief to know for the first time in months that I was no longer in danger from this emotion. Anchored by my love for my children, negative feelings could no longer wash me out to sea.
But of course, the fucking river could.
As the scream ripped from my throat, I hit the cold with such force that it left me winded. I flailed out wildly, waiting for the surging water to pull me under . . . but there was no surging. In fact, there was no under. I groped about, plunging my hands into freezing . . . gloop. In the dark, I hadn’t noticed how far out the tide had receded. Realizing that I had merely plopped onto my arse into the crud and mud, I laughed raucously. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. The laughing and the frantic rush of the indifferent river out beyond me, seagulls gossiping casually overhead, helped put me back in my place.
Just because a relationship has ended doesn’t mean it’s a failure. The real failure is the marriage that has long worn out but which drags itself along in boredom and bitterness. Like two astronauts crammed into a space capsule, the loveless couple go hurtling through space together, starving each other of oxygen.
And so it was, on this bleak December night, sitting on the mudflats of the Thames with a bruised bottom, that I came to the conclusion that I didn’t need my husband. In truth, I had always run the family single-handedly. Like most wives, I was a married single mum. Since the separation, the children had been cowed into obedience. Sympathy for me had calmed their behaviour and increased their consideration. And without Rory – well, in reality, it just meant that there was just one less child to look after.
To see the whole picture, sometimes you have to step out of the frame. I climbed back behind the railings. My hands were frozen, lips numb, coat porcupined in mud icicles as I hailed a taxi to take me home.
I had been a pushover for way, way too long. I was the type who would look both ways before crossing my arms. Obviously my sole purpose in life was to act as a warning to others. I couldn’t blame Jazz, because the inequalities she’d pointed out in my marriage were real. And I had been guilty of a self-annihilating compliance. My friends, my family, the staff at school, my husband – they had all treated me like a slave. I did everything but peel them grapes and fan them with lotus leaves. Enough of my old life. I was reborn! I could now win the Shirley MacLaine Previous Life Achievement Award. As soon as I got home I would take drastic measures. I would sack Jazz, Hannah and Rory from my Friends and Family list with British Telecom. That would show them!
And then I would get a dog. Rory had been right about that, at least. Dogs are loyal, always happy to see you and are rarely stolen by another woman.
I felt the stirrings of a fledgling hope. I couldn’t believe I’d stood on the precipice like that. But like getting dumped in big surf, sometimes you have to touch bottom in order to know which way is up.
24. The Comeuppance
I awoke feeling big, bouncy and bumptious. (Take advantage while stocks last.) Not even my impending unemployment was enough to capsize my spirits. Scroope had decided to keep me on until Christmas, but he made me pay for his leniency by assigning me Late Duty every bloody day.
It was the last day of term, a wet Thursday afternoon and I was waiting in the bleak pre-fab building designated as the ‘late room’ with one child whose working mother had called an hour and a half ago to sob hysterically that she was stuck in traffic. Been there; been driven mad by that. Because I didn’t want the kid to be in trouble or the mother to be blacklisted, I went to the office and signed out, called goodbye to my hideous Headmaster, loudly and firmly – then sneaked back down the hall to wait with the little boy, on the sly, in the quiet of the sick bay. Once he’d been dispatched home, out through a side gate and into the arms of his harassed parent, the atmosphere grew eerie. There was usually one caretaker holed up in the basement, smoking, but he too had left for Christmas. The school, all shut up and locked, seemed to be holding its breath.
Unnerved by the silence, and suppressing my sadness at having to leave my job, I snatched up my bag and tiptoed back past the Headmaster’s office towards the staff car park. I was nearly out of the door, when I heard the strangest noise. The muffled thuds and moans emanating from the Head’s office made me think he was definitely still in there and possibly having a heart attack. Except, of course, he didn’t have a heart. With the stealth that comes from years of maternal spying, I squeezed open the door to Scroope’s inner sanctum.
The look on my face must have registered more surprise than the congregation at Michael Jackson’s wedding. Because there was my Headmaster with his trousers around his knees, spanking a bare-buttocked Perdita who was lying across his desk, skirt up, panties down. As the ruler swished across her porcelain buttocks she whimpered, ‘I won’t let other boys touch me again. Only you, sir.’
It was torture not to erupt into hysterical guffawing but I didn’t want to alert them to my presence. Not until I had savoured the delicious piquancy of the moment – and videoed it for posterity on my mobile phone camera.
Their whacking and whimpering was so loud that I got a good minute of footage before Scroope caught sight of me standing there, filming. He then looked like a hippopotamus having an epileptic fit. His Adams apple zoomed up and down his oesophagus like a mouse on amphetamines.
‘Gee, I’m not sure this complies with Health and Safety regulations, are you, Mr Scroope?’ I said loudly. ‘Did you fill in the Risk Assessment form? Hmmm, let me think. What would fucking a member of staff on your desk rate? A medium, low or high-risk category? I would say high, wouldn’t you? I mean, let’s just think about the perceived risks and possible outcomes, shall we? Are you wearing a condom? No. Well, that would make it a high risk then. Oh. And what about a splinter or a paper cut – on a very private part of your anatomy. Not good Health and Safety is it, hmmm? Then there’s the possible risk of me reporting you to the Board of Governors.’ His ginger eyes, under fizzing brows, skittered around the room. ‘Would you say that counts as a low, medium or high risk? I would say high, very high, you asshole. Unless I get reinstated. Possible outcomes if I don’t? Let’s see . . . accusations of corruption, public disgrace and humiliation – oh, and of course, divorce. Risk assessment of me calling your wife right now and forwarding her this video footage I’ve just t
aken on my mobile phone? Oh, high. Very, very, very, fucking high actually!’
‘But . . . but . . .’ Scroope gurgled in the quicksands of moral justifications for a while before he went under. ‘My marriage has been sexless for so long. But this has nothing to do with Perdie – with Mrs Pendal getting the promotion. It was a very hard decision.’
‘Yeah. That’s what it looks like in the video.’
Perdita was scrambling back into her panties. ‘I didn’t mean to borrow your ideas Cassandra. It’s just I do suffer from this terrible inferiority complex, and—’
‘Its not that you have an inferiority complex. You’re just inferior, Perdie.’
‘Have some compassion,’ she begged. ‘Some teacherly loyalty. Some sisterly solidarity.’
‘Gee, I don’t know,’ I said, then parroted her response when she’d caught me sneaking into school after the Science Museum excursion. ‘Duty before friendship.’
‘What do you want?’ Scroope asked bluntly.
It was then it came to my attention that I might not be as nice a person as I’d always thought I was. ‘The promotion.’
‘What?’ Perdita’s gasp was louder than her faked orgasm.
‘Yes. I think this is just the excuse I need for you to promote me.’ I mimicked his line to me. ‘In fact, as you have made your hostility to your new Deputy Head i.e. moi, so apparent, it seems clear that it would be best for the school if perhaps you saw this as a lifestyle down-scaling opportunity and moved on, Mr Scroope,’ I paraphrased.
‘You little bitch,’ Scroope spat. ‘Get out of my school.’
‘Okay then.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps we should just meet with the Board of Governors where you can discuss your um . . . extremely close working relationship with a member of staff whom you’ve just promoted?’