The Confusion of Karen Carpenter

by Jonathan Harvey

  ‘Oh, Sir Paul!’ I say, peeling myself off the futon and revealing myself naked to him. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  (NB The good thing about a seventy-two-year-old seeing you sans clothes, I decide, is that they’re so chuffed by your young(er) flesh that even if you have rolls of fat and a welcome mat on your back, they still think you’re hot.)

  We move into his main bedroom (in my fantasy he has a three-bedroom semi in suburbia. I can’t vouch this is 100 per cent accurate), and he lays me down on his black satin sheets, dims the lights, drops his Deputy Dawg pyjama bottoms to reveal his Mull of Kintyre and then aims his remote (that’s not a euphemism. The Mull of Kintyre was. This isn’t) at his Bose sound system and lowers himself onto me. ‘The Frog Chorus’ plays in the background as he starts to push himself against me in time to the song.

  OK, I’ve had enough of this. I wouldn’t do Paul McCartney, not to the strains of that song. I move on.

  It starts to rain and my heart sinks. Kevin and I are meant to be going for a walk in the countryside today. I really wanted the weather to hold up. I realize I’ve opened my bedroom window to air the room, so I reach up to shut it when I spot something out in the street. A man is sitting on the wall of the house opposite. He’s not looking up, but it strikes me as odd. There’s the light rain, and his Colditz-style coat is done up to fight off the elements, collar upturned. It’s Michael. I step cautiously back from the window, wondering what on earth he is doing here. This is not normal behaviour, surely. You don’t just go and sit outside your ex-girlfriend’s house unless you’re a stalker or you want something from her. If he wants to see me, why hasn’t he just rung the doorbell? And now he is sitting there in the rain. I peer between the wall and the curtain and see he is still there, still not looking over at the house, staring blankly at the pavement beneath him. He shakes his head suddenly, like he’s having a conversation with himself and disagrees with something.

  Oh God, I better go and speak to him.

  ‘What are you doing out here, Michael?’ I asked tentatively, not wanting him to snap. He snapped a lot these days. It was a blazing-hot day – there was no reason why he shouldn’t be sun-bathing. It was just odd that he chose to do so on the wall of the house opposite.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

  ‘Well, why are you thinking here?’

  He looked around himself, as if he was only then realizing the incongruity of his location.

  ‘I was coming back from the park. And I was thinking. And I was a bit knackered. So I thought I’d have a rest here.’

  I nodded, then squatted down and touched his hand.

  ‘Why don’t you come in with me?’

  There was a glazed look in his eyes. He was looking at me, but seeing something much, much further away at the same time. There’d been a gaping chasm between us for a long time now, and it didn’t take a genius to work out why. For a second I thought he was crying, but then I realized that the pearls of moisture under his eyes were sweat.

  ‘Come on, come inside.’

  He wrapped his thumb over my hand, keeping it there. It was the most he’d touched me in weeks. It sent a jolt of electricity through me and suddenly I wanted to kiss him. I’d not looked at him sexually in such a long time and it felt at once familiar and alien. My breathing deepened, and I scrunched up my hand, tightening my grip on him.

  I flicked my head back, towards our house. He breathed in, and without speaking, we stood up. I flitted my eyes down to his chest. He was wearing a thin grey T-shirt that clung to him in the heat. Lines of sweat had appeared beneath his pecs, and his nipples were jutting out above them. He’d worn this T-shirt a million times, but it had never had this effect on me before. Something animalistic took over and I knew I had to taste him. Something almost masculine flooded over me because I knew I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  He kept gripping my hand as we crossed the road, but as soon as we were inside the hall, I pushed the front door to, pinned him against the wall and started kissing him. He pushed back, clawing at me. We were aggressive, angry; our teeth clashed, and I bit his lip. I pulled up his T-shirt and took his nipple in my mouth and didn’t care, I had to bite into it. He squealed in pain, but I wouldn’t let go. He pushed me away, onto the stairs, face down. I sensed him jerk down his jogging bottoms. I felt my knickers being ragged off and before I knew it he was inside me. The force was a shock and I felt his fingernails dig into my waist, his bulk, his otherness on top of me. When he pulled out, my body missed him and I wanted him back, deeper. He threw his weight back down on me, and his tongue started exploring my neck as he bore deeper into me. I tried to look round to see his face. His hands were steadying himself on the stair now. I saw his eyes were twisted shut. He didn’t take long. He withdrew just in time and I felt him spurt onto my back. He stepped back, into the jumble of jogging bottoms and undies. I looked behind and saw he was attempting to kneel in the middle of the hall. He gave up and just collapsed back against the wall, spent. Which is when I saw he was crying.

  We’d not had sex for ages. We’d certainly not had sex like that, where we seemed to be driven by need. I didn’t know what the need was. The need to prove we were alive? The need to prove which of us was in charge? In that respect I’m not sure who came off better. So it might have been disheartening in other circumstances that the first time we did it he ended in tears.

  His T-shirt was stretched out of shape from where I’d torn at it to bite him. The sleeve was rolled up in an affectation of trendiness, but what it revealed was a stark reminder of the reason for his tears. Tattooed on his bicep was a date. That date of the birth of Evie. Which was also the date of her death. Etched for ever on his skin. And I knew that was why he was crying. Because every time we made love, whatever you want to call it – though there hadn’t been much love today – it reminded us both of her. How we made her, and then lost her. I picked my knickers up off the floor, chucked them onto the stairs and crawled across to snuggle up to him. He put his arm round me as he cried his silent tears, and I clung on to his arm, but there was no connection between us. I was right there next to him, but really he was unreachable.

  ‘What are you doing, Michael?’

  He doesn’t look up. His hair’s soaked and looks like he’s wearing gel. The coat must be wet too, but close up the pattern is speckled, so it’s hard to tell. I may only be wearing leggings and a T-shirt, but I am bone dry because I have my leopard-skin umbrella up.

  ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘Is it still raining?’ he says in a monotone. I know what’s coming next. ‘I didn’t notice.’

  Still he doesn’t look up. It’s a line from the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. I loved it; he hated it. He especially hated that line. Andie MacDowell’s stood there in the rain with Huge Grant at the end of the movie in the pouring rain. Their love for each other is so all-consuming that she hasn’t even noticed it’s raining. Or something like that. Anyway, I always thought it was impossibly moving. Michael just found it nauseating. We had actually rowed about it to such an extent we were never able to watch it together again.

  ‘It’s a bit weird,’ I point out.

  ‘What’s weird? Me sitting on a wall? Nothing weird about that.’ His Liverpool accent sounds stronger. It gets stronger when he’s had a drink or when he’s angry. He doesn’t look particularly plastered, so I’m guessing it’s the latter. Either way, this doesn’t bode well.

  ‘Well, when you’re sitting opposite your ex-girlfriend’s house, some might say that’s a bit . . . stalkery.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s my house too.’

  ‘Then maybe you’d like to pay your half of the mortgage.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Er, your wages?’

  ‘You think I still work?’

  ‘You’ve given up work?’

  ‘I’ve told you. How many times have I told you
? And how many times have you not listened? I’m sick, Karen.’

  ‘Then get some help.’

  ‘I got some help. Fat lot of good that did.’

  I’m being sucked back in. I’m being sucked back in to his dramas and crises, and I’m assuming responsibility for them, as if I created them and can therefore make them better. When I can’t, and when really they should no longer be my concern. I see a curtain twitch in the window in front of me. The Polish One From Over the Road is peeking out, having a nose.

  ‘The Polish One’s looking at us.’

  ‘Let her.’

  I’ve always been a bit mortified in front of the Polish One. During one of Michael’s episodes’ he took to playing loud music in the middle of the night. I always tried to turn it down, but he’d always snap it back up to full volume. The neighbours either side were reasonably understanding when I explained what was going on, though I did swear them to secrecy – Michael would have hit the roof if he’d known I was telling all and sundry what he was going through. Unfortunately the Polish One From Over the Road stuck a note through the letter box complaining vociferously. As English is not her first language, it was full of spelling and grammatical mistakes. Michael took a red pen, corrected them, then posted it back through her letter box. There’d been a stand-off ever since, and of course because I’m a teacher, I’m sure she assumed it was me who’d been so rude.

  ‘Did you follow me the other week?’

  He tuts. ‘No. Where?’

  ‘I went for a meal with . . . with a friend and you were looking in through the window.’

  He tuts again. He really is behaving like one of the kids. One of the kids when you’ve caught them out in a lie. ‘No. God, you’re obsessed.’

  The Polish One’s front door opens and she pops her head out.

  ‘Everything OK, Karen?’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ I say calmly. ‘Won’t be long.’

  Michael jumps up now and walks off down the road. She doesn’t look at him but keeps her eyes transfixed on me. I smile apologetically and then follow him. I hear her door shut.

  What am I doing? Why am I following him? I should be getting ready to go and meet Kevin, but instead I’m following my needy ex down the road and I have no idea why.

  ‘Michael! Wait!’

  A passing woman looks startled. I shoot her daggers.

  ‘What? Never heard anyone speak before?’

  She looks down the street, to where I was shouting, then looks back to me, confused.

  ‘Oh, piss off!’ I snap, then hurry on.

  I don’t even know why I’m so angry.

  ‘Michael, come back! Where you going?’

  He stops, looks back.

  ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t even be here. I buggered off. I’ve got no right coming back and messing with your head.’

  ‘You’d mess with my head a lot less if you just explained what was going on.’

  I’ve caught up with him now. I put the umbrella over his head too.

  ‘There’s nothing to explain. I’m a waste of space. I fuck up everything – everything. I fucked up my life. I fucked up my job. I fucked up our baby and I’ve fucked up you.’

  ‘God, it’s all about you, isn’t it?’ I half joke, trying to lighten the mood.

  ‘Well, haven’t I?’ he asks.

  Has he? Well, yes, but do I tell him that? What is the protocol here? How honest are you meant to be with depressed exes when they’re pushing for how you’re getting on now they’re gone (but have come back)? I notice his pupils. They’re not dilated. Usually when he’s taking his antidepressants, his pupils enlarge. It’s meant to make you look more sexy when your pupils enlarge, but because I knew the cause, I never could interpret it as exciting. Now, though, well, they just look normal. This too is not a good sign.

  ‘Are you not taking your pills?’

  He laughs and looks away. He speaks to the wall beside him. ‘Have you heard this?’ Then he looks back to me, his eyes now aflame with anger. ‘I don’t. . . need them anymore, you knobhead.’

  Right, that’s it.

  ‘Don’t call me names, Michael. I didn’t put up with it when we were together, and I won’t put up with it now.’

  Boy, do I really sound like a teacher now. I turn on my heel and head back towards the house. He makes no attempt to retort, or follow me. In the old days he could never let me have the last word. My mum used to advise me, ‘Never go to bed on a row,’ but that was hard if you’d not factored in Michael’s belligerence.

  I’m not going to look back. I’m not. I won’t give him the satisfaction. I am winning this. I have had the last word. I have stood up for myself and explained where I draw the line, and he will have to accept it, like he never did before.

  I hear him shouting, ‘You never called my mum!’

  I ignore it. At the front door I look back. Michael is standing exactly where I left him, but his demeanour has changed. His eyes are locked on me, and he looks – dare I say it? – hopeful. Excited. Almost as if he is proud of me for standing up to him, as if he’s achieved something by doing that. He shoots me a little smile, as if to say, ‘Well done.’ There is also an air of smugness in that smile. Like something went to plan. Hmm.

  He has never let me get the last word in before. And now he has. And it’s like he did it on purpose. But why?

  He sees that his smile confused me, and immediately he scowls, shoves his hands in his pockets and angrily walks away. As he disappears round the corner, I am left feeling slightly disturbed by the encounter. I put my brolly down, shake off the beads of rain that are clinging to it, head inside and shut the door.

  NINETEEN

  The smugness of Michael ignites a fierce determination in me. I am going to meet Kevin as planned, and I am going to have a fantastic time with him and not feel guilty about attempting to move on from Michael. There – I’ve said it. If he thinks he can come back here and mess with my head and try and see if I’ve still got feelings for him, then he’s got another thing coming.

  Kevin has come up with the idea of a magical mystery tour. All I know is I have to turn up at Waterloo station at 11 a.m. and wear sensible shoes.

  Oh God. Sensible shoes. I want to look all sexy, sophisticated and alluring. How is this possible when you’re wearing T-bar sandals? They’re sensible.

  I did email him and ask him to clarify what ‘sensible shoes’ means and he replied that there might me some ‘country-style walking’. This immediately conjures up images of middle-aged people with fat legs in hiking shorts, chunky fisherman socks and burly boots traipsing, bow-legged, up a hillside with the aid of a stick whittled from the branch of a favourite elm. I find little that is sexy about that, but then I think that Kevin is no country bumpkin, and my hunch is that he’ll wear his Caterpillar boots, so I plump for my retro brogues, which I team with skinny jeans. (Wendy once said they make my bum look ‘cute’. Cuteness is good, I hope. Mind you, she did say this after a heavy night on the sauce.) I team the jeans with a floaty grey blouse, some noisy jewellery and a matching grey cardy, and stick a cagoule in my bag. Functional but funky is what I’m hoping for. Freaky and frizzy is what I’m trying to avoid. So, in case it rains – and it seems to have done nothing but this year – I pop a grey woolly hat on too. Bad hat hair is probably preferable to the pan-fried curls I get when the do gets wet.

  Kevin is indeed wearing his Caterpillar boots when we meet as planned outside Marks & Spencer on the station concourse. They’re still remarkably unscuffed. I like the fact that I am getting to know him and so was able to predict something about how he’d look. It’s like I know enough to claim some understanding of him, and it breeds familiarity – no contempt. He’s wearing jeans (baggy again) and this time a flapping green mod coat that brings me up short because it’s the sort of coat Michael used to wear. Well, the sort he wore before he went all Colditz on me. He’s laden down with WHSmith bags, so as he throws his arms around me,
the bags ricochet round and nearly wind me in the back, which makes us laugh. He tells me he’s already got our tickets and we need to hurry. We slide said tickets through the computerized barrier, the gates jerk open, and minutes later we are sitting in the first-class carriage of a train heading for Weymouth. I don’t really know where Weymouth is. Kevin informs me we’re going to be travelling for about an hour and a half and so to make myself comfortable.

  He up-ends the carrier bags onto our table and it’s now I discover he has literally bought every Sunday newspaper known to man. I can’t believe he has gone to all this trouble, but he shushes me and says you can travel quite cheaply on a Sunday in first class – he just needs to buy an upgrade off the guard when he comes round. As the train pulls out of the cat’s cradle of platforms and lines, we settle down with papers and cartons of orange juice, and begin a ninety-minute journey of reading funny stories aloud to each other, pointing out interesting pictures and so on from the various magazines and papers. It feels good. It feels right. It feels like we’ve known each other for years.

  Sometimes I look up over the top of my paper to watch him reading. He bites his bottom lip in concentration and I wonder what it would be like to kiss those lips. Sensing me looking, he flits up his eyes and catches me. And smiles. And I smile back, and we both return to reading our rags. Sometimes I catch him doing it, which gives me butterflies. I have not felt like this in ages. The air is heavy with anticipation, with promise, and I am light-headed, giddy.