by Mary Loudon
Sinéad says, ‘I wouldn’t think anything. Don’t you worry.’
I ask her if she sees a lot of surfing injuries. She says, ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’
‘So, you’re like that guy with the clipboard in The Life of Brian.’
‘The crucifixion guy?’
‘That’s the one! “Crucifixion? First on the right. One cross each.” Dislocation? First on the right. One sling each.’
She laughs. ‘What is it with that film? My ex-boyfriend could quote every line. The tosser.’
‘So can Angus. So can I, come to that. Maybe that tosser ex-boyfriend of yours is actually me in disguise.’
‘Well, in that case, hello there, Gary. You’ve shaved off your beard.’
‘Thought I’d go for a softer look.’
‘Makes you look like a woman. By the way, you still owe me four hundred quid.’
‘God! Do I? Does he?’
‘Yep. Took my cash, and then my cat.’
‘No! Bastard!’
‘You said it, girl. I loved that cat, too. I’m looking for a nice one like yours, now. Man, not cat.’
‘Cat might be simpler.’
‘Oh yes?’ says Sinéad. ‘So says the woman with two. Men, not cats. Is your actual husband available by any chance? You’ve obviously got good taste in blokes.’
‘Oh.’ I falter.
Her face falls.
‘Oh no!’ she exclaims. ‘Oh Jesus! Really bad joke. Like, really, really bad joke! I’m sorry pet, I’m an eejit. I’m supposed to be looking after you, not upsetting you.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s just that my husband’s a good man. I don’t not love him. I’ve never not loved him. I still love him. I just love Angus as well. He’s a good man, too.’
‘Two good men,’ she says. ‘What’s not to like. I’d give my right arm.’
‘You wouldn’t if you had any sense, I promise you. But you can have my left one if you like. It bloody hurts.’
Sinéad chuckles and says, ‘You are seriously making my day.’ She slides a soft, black half tube along and under my raised arm, positions it carefully before securing Velcro straps across the top of it. She asks, ‘How does this feel? It should be nice and snug but not too tight.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘Good. We just need to attach this bit around your neck and then we’re all set.’ She clips the sling into place. ‘There we go.’
‘Thanks.’
She steps back and surveys me like the job well done that I am, for her.
‘What will you do now?’
‘We’re supposed to have another two days here but I just want to go home. I want my kids.’
‘Go home then, wee love,’ says Sinéad, quietly. ‘And see if you can’t sort it out from there.’
‘But they’re away with my husband, staying with friends. They’re not back until next Friday.’
Sinéad says, ‘Next Friday, then. Be home.’ On my good arm, she places her hand, which is warm and soft. I would dearly curl up in its palm and shut my eyes and stay there; for months, if need be. She says, ‘You take good care of yourself, Lucy. You’re a card and your man here’s a dreamboat. It’s going to hurt a hell of a lot more than your arm.’
When it came to it, I thought about lies and I thought about half-truths. I thought about them all the way during the journey back to London. I thought about options and compromises. I went around and around in circles but it was no use: I could not imagine settling back into a good life without Angus and I could not imagine Angus being part of a good, settled life. I thought about Einstein, who said that you cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created the problem in the first place; and I thought about the problem itself as I lay awake for the last time, on my back and in pain, in Verity’s warm hold.
I considered for the briefest of moments pouring cold water, scorn – anything – over all that Angus and I had in an attempt to quench the fire and belittle our love. I could not do it. I couldn’t tell Angus that I did not love him enough; that he was too old and I too young and we were thus unsuited. I could not argue that he was too set in his ways and I in mine; that my life was one shaped by the demands of youth while his was inclined toward autumn. I could not, would not, lie.
I could, however, tell him that he was the most beautiful man I had ever laid eyes on, and I did. He held his fingers to his lips, to silence me, but I continued. I told him that I am spoken for (whether or not my husband chooses to speak up); that my children need me more than he does, and that these are ties that bind me to a life defined by earlier promises. I told him that my love for him had not run its course and likely never would. It simply had nowhere to grow and could only deform in a space too small for it.
Except I’m not sure I said it as clearly as that.
I said, ‘I love you, and I will always love you, as I have never loved anyone else.’
When I reached for him, he declined. He turned his head backwards and sideways, as a baby does when refusing from a proffered spoon the food it does not want.
He said, ‘Oh my God, is this it?’
‘I think it is.’
He faced me squarely, staring, as if I had just struck him.
‘Oh God.’
Then he pulled me to his chest, hard, and wretchedly, so that my bad arm wrenched and I flinched, banging my leg into the coffee table sharply enough that for some time afterwards a coin-sized bruise prospered colourfully on my shin. I ignored the pain, as I had ignored it on occasion in bed when a limb became stuck or a joint strained, when my hair caught accidentally beneath Angus’s palm, or a pinch of skin was trapped under his thumb as he moved against me, greedy, heavy, happy.
He said, ‘Oh, nutcase,’ and he began suddenly and violently to shudder. It was as if, right there and then, his body went to war, vibrating from within as though preparing itself for battle with information it could not bear.
And then, he howled. He howled in such pain and fury that for days afterwards, I couldn’t get the sound of his sorrow out of my head. It replayed itself, a persistent intercession and unwelcome – just one of many forms of torture that were to follow. And as he did so, with a jolt I remembered hearing a lion declare himself in the night, when I was travelling in Africa with Mark years earlier; and just as the basso profundo snarl that woke us in our tent induced immediate, catatonic, terror, so Angus’s distress did the same. It filled and then obscured the space between us, saturating the room, the boat, even the view of the river; dumbing down the outlines of the buildings on the other side of the water.
Afterwards, he sank back into the sofa, spent and disbursed, and taking my hands in his, he said – with no less desperation but quietly now, as if reminding me all over again of his range and contrasts – ‘Tell me at least that I will see you.’ I shook my head and he said, ‘I know you’re right. I understand. I do. We always knew this could happen. I promise I won’t make it harder than it is.’ He was shaking just as he had with the fever that time – when he juddered in my arms like a pneumatic drill and pleaded, childlike, ‘Why am I so cold?’ – and I realized he was in shock.
I collected a rug from the basket and with difficulty I wrapped it around him, and he wrapped his arms around me. We wept a good while.
He said, ‘But what about your things?’
I said, ‘I can probably get them into a couple of large bags.’
He said, ‘But your arm.’
I said, ‘I’ll manage.’
‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘No.’
He said, ‘I wanted it to be for ever.’
There was only one thing left to do after that. Away from Verity, along the gangplanks and on to the Embankment I walked. I hailed a cab and in its overheated interior keeled sideways like a widow newly apprised of her state.
The early afternoons are the worst. I walk around my house, putting things away. Just as my relationships with the people who live in it have changed, so my rapport with the house it
self is less easy. We do not connect as we once did. In the shower, I am surprised when the spray hits me at an angle I do not expect. Angus’s fridge door opens right to left, ours, left to right, yet I find myself trying to open ours the wrong way, tugging at the hinge side only to remember that I am at home, my proper home, the one I helped to create. I reach into the cereal cupboard for a box of muesli that differs from the one I eat with Angus. ‘What are you doing here?’ I want to ask. ‘I’d forgotten about you. You are not the one I want.’
Sometimes I wake seeking a familiar pool of light from a window to my left. But it’s not there because the window to my left is on Verity. I would expect to realize immediately, then, where I am. But the confusion is immense. It no longer occurs to me straight away that I am waking at home, in the bed I have slept in for so many years: these days, I am so stupefied with grief it takes time for the penny to drop, and when it does, there is no relief. My brain is rewiring itself. Now, my mind is a jumble of opposing cutlery drawers and hot taps and light switches. I need to remind myself when I go out, of the code for our burglar alarm. I anticipate shadows where there are none. I am no longer certain how much light to expect, or from which direction it will come.
There are times when I miss Angus so badly I think I will be sick. Constantly, I feel weak. My body is flimsy, my movements uncertain. Food is painful to swallow. Cooking meals, answering texts, going outside – it all seems impossible to contemplate. I walk to school and back twice daily but in the playground I meet no eyes, say no hellos: I take to wearing sunglasses, even in grey weather. The aim is for no one to speak to me and on the whole, they don’t. If I sense amity, I avoid it.
At home, I revert to easy dishes. Beds remain unmade. A revelation: most things, it seems, can wait. My aims are rudimentary. If the children are fed and clean, and warm enough at night, then that is enough. Ça suffit. I am doing well. We will all survive another day. But I am not doing well at all. There is something primitive about all of this that is not remotely assuaging. This is not some cheerless bad-weather assignment, it is meltdown.
New low points are surpassed all the time. Whilst my children eat boil-in-the-bag fish and frozen peas for supper (these precious children for whom, when they were toddlers, I mashed organic salmon with unsalted butter and pesticide-free broccoli), I am remembering Angus whisking eggs for a perfect cheese soufflé, which he served with asparagus and we ate on the sofa, watching Antiques Roadshow. And it strikes me that if people think it is sex that matters most in extramarital affairs, and someone else’s bed is where the rights and wrongs are located, they should consider how easily ruined you can be by the gift of a lovingly made supper – or the failure to prepare one. So just at the moment when it seems no self-reproach could be more potent than the remembrance of Angus’s mouth on my belly in the middle of a school morning, his cheese soufflé comes to mind whilst I feed my children rectangles of plastic-encased cod, and I feel – rightly – condemned.
‘Mummy,’ Miranda enquires, ‘why aren’t you eating, too?’
Occasionally, very simple things can nourish.
I sew some buttons on to a cardigan for Miranda, a garment that has been a long time in the mending pile, and if I don’t mend it now, she will grow out of it, giving me something else with which I may berate myself. I repair a torn sleeve on a school sweatshirt of Mel’s. I patch a pair of Mark’s jeans as well, with a square of denim cut from an old pair of mine. I survey my work afterwards, feel some small sense of accomplishment. The feeling is short-lived. That it should come to this – a couple of shell buttons and a penitential patch. I would patch over my heart if I could. Sew it into itself, with double stitches.
I lie on the sofa. Angus’s was softer than ours is. Bigger, too. I think about the work I am not doing, the clients who want photographs of their children and dogs, and who are starting to lose faith in me – just a little, perhaps, but enough that it is slightly perilous to my reputation, which until now has been comfortably reliable. I wait for time to pass or to overtake me, I neither know nor care which. The house is silent without Mark in it and with the children at school. My ears are buzzing gently. The windows we installed at such expense when we first moved in are effective. There is no sound from inside the house and none from without, not a whoosh from the wind and nothing from the birds. Mark’s world.
I can’t listen to music.
There are a million things to do. A lot of people say that: ‘I’ve got a million things to do.’ But maybe I do now, so long have they been undone. I don’t know where to begin. There are emails marked ‘Unread’ in my inbox, calls to return. There is laundry and piles of clobber around the place. There are mud-caked boots in the porch and yet another bin-bag of outgrown clothes destined for Oxfam, an affront every time we come and go. It might take fifteen minutes to clean the boots, one car journey to remove the bag. I never do either. We are out of green vegetables. There are carrots, but carrots are not a proper substitute. Really, I need to buy Melanie some new school shoes. She’s harder on footwear than her sister is; she drives holes into her soles and grinds down the backs of heels. That means a trip into town.
Yet still I lie here, pathetic, noticing vaguely the crackle of the sofa cushion beneath my head as I glance from a recumbent position out of the window at the garden. It is, I observe, the garden of a depressed custodian. Like unkempt hair, the honeysuckle has become sharp and straggling, its flowers long gone. I should have cut it back months ago. The thick stalks of summer geraniums in large terracotta pots became woody and desiccated long since. Now, left out too long in damp weather, they are sodden. The trees are grey and shiny with the perspiration of rimy weather and the grass everywhere too long. It will remain too wet now, either with rain, or frost, to cut until the spring. It occurs to me that flowers and colour would make little difference to my life. There is no improvement to my mood when the sun shines. When it does, I feel vaguely offended.
On the wall of the barn, across the yard, I can see Mark’s bright orange safety jacket, the one he wears when chainsawing with me. It is hanging on a large wooden peg that he carved for himself some years earlier on a beautiful midsummer evening. I had given him a sharp, curved knife for his birthday. He had been very pleased at the time but it had lain unused on his workbench for a while, until that evening.
I was in the garden. I remember he called to me from the open front door, ‘I’ve made some tea. And what if I bring out that nice cheese we bought? Do you fancy some?’
In the honeyed early-evening sunshine, Mark sat on a tree stump and carved. The wood was ash, easy to work through. I donned my heaviest gardening gloves and pulled a few obstinate weeds. I noted the flowers and silently gave thanks for my life: foxgloves, meadowsweet, violets, wild orchids. Miranda, Melanie, Mark.
By the time the light was almost gone and the birds had retreated to their high perches in the beech trees, Mark had fashioned a large peg.
‘Nice, isn’t it,’ he said, passing it to me to examine. It was soft and smooth to roll around the palm of the hand. I said, ‘It feels like velvet.’
He made a couple more things after that; a shoehorn, shaped from a conveniently curved piece of sycamore, and a rough-hewn bowl for the girls to put things in. Currently, it holds some jigsaw pieces that have become separated from their neighbours, and a few stray hair slides.
It was lovely, that evening.
We have had a lot of them over the years, Mark and I; lovely evenings.
Now, if I see or hear Mark coming over to the house from the barn, I get up from the sofa and busy myself with something. But if I don’t make it in time and he finds me there still, he never exploits the opportunity I have given him, increasingly to consider me contemptible. He is only ever kind.
I have not seen Angus for two months. We have agreed not to text or email one another. Once only, he phones me, and leaves a message. He says, ‘I just wanted to hear your voice.’
I hear his, constantly.
‘I�
��m jealous of your kids.’
‘Silly old thing.’
‘They get you all cosy after supper. They get you at breakfast-time.’
‘Breakfast is a scrum.’
‘You make hot chocolate for the twins at night.’
‘Only occasionally.’
‘I’d like hot chocolate, too.’
‘I make it for you when I’m here.’
‘I wish you were here all the time.’
Now, he is here all the time.
I never brought him to my home, but he has managed successfully to be anywhere I look and every place I go.
It’s my own fault. We saw each other too seldom for our liking and I made up for it in any way I could. In an ongoing virtual tour of my life, I took him everywhere possible, texts and emails bearing the details of my life at home, with others.
Fucking mobile phones.
Because of them we were rarely out of touch for more than half a day, wherever we were, whatever we were doing. Which means that wherever I am and whatever I am doing now, the memory of Angus is here – in every room, in every way. In the kitchen. In the bathroom (my back is against the towel rail, warm, but the recollections produce a chill: ‘How’s my darling today? xxx’ ‘Just out of the shower, missing mine. xxx’). He is even in the bedroom, in the bed itself – Mark asleep beside me – where too often and ashamed (but not enough), I would respond to the ping of a text. At six in the morning, three in the afternoon, noon, midnight, lunchtime, bath-time, story-time, any time, any minute, any second that a twenty-four-hour day has ever produced, Angus has been available to me and I to him, only a keyboard away, with absolutely no regard for geography, business or circumstance. In the supermarket, in the car, alone and not alone; at lunch with my parents, or from bedrooms, various, in which Mark and I were billeted on occasional visits to friends. It never mattered where: the trick was to stay in touch. On the hill above Jay and Lisa’s house, which lies in a dip without phone reception, in a screaming gale on New Year’s Eve at 23.37, I emailed Angus my photo so as to catch him before we kissed the cheeks of other people, at separate parties where – freshly in love with one another, our relationship barely begun – we longed already only to be together. He entered my life and I absorbed him. He teased and provoked, gave and received, every single day and every single night for ten months since the evening we met. And now, the evidence of love is driven hard, hard, hard, in kilobytes, megabytes, words, photos, playlists and emojis – of winking suns and piano keys.