A Perfect Life

by Raffaella Barker

  Nick is still paying, his back turned towards her.

  Muttering, ‘See you soon, Nick,’ she walks away through the frozen food section towards the exit. It would be better if she had bought something, but she can’t remember why she came into this shop, and she feels she might burst if she hangs around any longer. Beside the ice cream counter she almost steps on a woman’s toe. Recoiling, she recognises Jeannie Gildoff. Jeannie smiles. Angel sees alarm in her eyes change quickly to guarded friendliness as she rakes her fingers through her red hair. Why is she here? This is not her local town. Oh God. Like a curtain dropping, Angel watches Jeannie’s red hair swing across her face. She remembers the boys on the street in London. Telling her what she already must have known. Nick was kissing a redhead.

  Automatically Jeannie and Angel reach forward and kiss one another on the cheek, Angel half aware of how absurd it is to be embracing in a fucking grocery store and to be kissing her husband’s mistress. It is the missing piece, the part of Nick he had not told her existed. Jeannie is the one. And now she knows. Angel thinks all of this, and her instinct of self-preservation pulls her back from saying anything.

  Jeannie fills the silence. ‘Nick’s over there.’

  ‘Yes, I saw him.’ Angel wants to run. And she wants to go and buy mousetraps. But she stands quite still, asking Jeannie about her children, her mind shifting, fragmenting like a kaleidoscope.

  She says, ‘Has Heath finished his exams yet?’

  And she is thinking, Oh God. How can I get out of here as fast as possible? Jeannie is the redhead they saw him kissing. How long has it been going on? What is going on? Is this what Nick’s been doing?

  Nick is no longer in the shop, or so Angel assumes. He would certainly want to escape this scene. If he had seen them meet, he would have been quick to get out.

  ‘Yes, he’s working for Peter now.’

  ‘Good,’ says Angel. As if she gives a flying fuck.

  How on earth can she get out? How will this conversation that is about nothing ever end? The two women look at one another and questions tick and ricochet through their minds, while they make polite conversation.

  ‘The forecast is good for the weekend,’ says Jeannie.

  Is her stomach flat?

  Did he love her?

  ‘Oh good. I’m actually here buying mousetraps. We’re overrun,’ says Angel.

  Did they have sex last night?

  Does she still love him?

  ‘Oh, they are such a nuisance, aren’t they? But at least when you have mice they say you don’t get rats,’ says Jeannie.

  What does she look like naked?

  What does she look like naked?

  ‘Really? I wonder why that is?’ ponders Angel.

  Does she make him happy?

  Did she make him happy?

  ‘I don’t know. I think they each like their own kingdoms,’ replies Jeannie.

  Will they stay together?

  Why did she leave him?

  ‘Oh look at the time, I must dash,’ says Angel, waving her watch in front of her own face.

  Was this what was wrong with our marriage all the time?

  I’ve got him.

  I’ve got no one.

  ‘Yes, so must I. Very nice to see you, Angel.’ Jeannie leans forwards and kisses her. Again.

  I wonder who she’s sleeping with? Peter always found her very attractive.

  I miss sex. Even though we never had it, at least I had someone I could have had it with.

  ‘Bye, Jeannie. See you soon.’

  Does he love her?

  ‘Bye, Angel, take care.’

  Back in her car on the street, Angel hurls the mousetraps on to the passenger seat and sighs, trying to collect a million fragmented thoughts. And Nick appears again, walking along the pavement – well, shuffling really. He passes right next to the car; he must recognise it, but he is looking at his telephone, and he appears not to see Angel or their family car. Angel sits quite still, watching him pass by and walk away. In her rear-view mirror she sees him turn the corner into the car park. And that moment is sad and complete. The end of their time together. How strange that the real end should turn out to be so small.

  Angel wishes she were addicted to something as her compulsion to be destructive to herself is a flaming heat as she drives home. Unable to think of anything she can do, she turns up the music as loud as it will go and accelerates. Seeing Nick with someone else has broken the final link between the two of them. They are both free to spiral into nothing or to make new lives. It is sometimes difficult not to succumb to madness. When she gets home, Angel realises she has not bought any food. And she has a thousand other things to do now, but she can’t remember what any of them are. The garage on the main road will still be open. Angel sits in the kitchen making a list. On it she writes:

  Loo paper, coffee, milk

  Pick broad beans

  Water fucking sweet peas

  Tell children re divorce

  Call Mum

  Book dentist

  What is the worst thing about this list? Well, obviously that she has so little grasp of reality that she could put a time bomb in the middle of a shopping list. Staring at it, part of Angel wants to collapse in self-pity. But why? What good will it do to anyone? The will to survive and adapt kicks in, and Angel feels calm. This has happened, she is still alive and ultimately, so what? Life is full of lessons to learn and things to deal with. Angel has the list she has written to get through, and that is enough for now. She decides to start with the dentist and goes through to her study. The room has been shut too long and is bursting with heat. When Angel opens the door to the garden, fresh air wafts in, stirring the stuffy, hot atmosphere and changing it, like piano music pouring into silence. Angel turns on the computer and listens to the messages on her phone.

  ‘Hi, Angel, this is Jake Driver. I thought I’d let you know how things are going here. It would be nice to speak to you.’

  Angel hardly takes the message in at first, she is still staring at the list, but Jake’s voice filters into her head finally, and she hears, ‘I hope you’re having a good time this summer and you are not homesick for work. I think work might be missing you. Take care, and give me a call back sometime. Bye.’

  How nice of Jake. Angel smiles to herself, pleased and relieved to be taken out of her own loop by his call. She presses his number on her phone. Jake answers immediately.

  ‘Hello, Angel. How are you? I was just thinking about you. How have you been?’ His voice is cheerful and clean and uncomplicated. Angel has never been to his flat, but in her mind it is in a wharf or a warehouse and is full of tawny wood and hard clean steel. Sexy and empty. No clutter.

  ‘Hi, Jake, thanks for calling me. Are you still at the office or are you home?’

  Jake laughs. ‘I’m not that keen, you know – it’s nearly seven o’clock. I am at home, I’m just getting myself together to go out.’

  A jolt of desire courses through Angel. She swallows.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry to disturb you. In the kids’ holidays I get out of sync on what office hours are. I’ll talk to you at work sometime. I’ll let you go now.’

  But Jake is quick to pull her back into the conversation. ‘No, it’s fine. Like I said, I was thinking about you.’

  Another jolt – recognition that he wants her too.

  ‘Were you?’

  Loneliness, a longing to be wanted, a craving for physical connection – oh God, a thousand feelings keep Angel on the phone while sense is shouting in a microphone in her ear that she has enough to deal with right now without starting some idiotic affair with someone from the office.

  Nick has only been gone a couple of weeks, and here she is, a semi-married woman with four children, flirting on the telephone, coiling her legs around the chair leg, twisting her hair and making her voice a purr to say, ‘What were you thinking about me?’

  And Jake doesn’t answer immediately but Angel knows he is grinning and she is n
ot surprised when he says, ‘I don’t think I can tell you that.’ She is not surprised, she is delighted.

  ‘Oh good,’ she says, after another pause.

  Jem

  I was waiting for Mum to tell us. I realised that as soon as she did tell us, because it felt like a relief as well as like a fucking enormous kick in the guts. I don’t know why she told us all together at once, because that part of it was a nightmare. But I guess it was a nightmare anyway. I didn’t want to hear any of her crap so I came outside and lay on the lawn. I wonder how much I care, but it’s too difficult to work out. The window is open right behind me, so I got the rest of it like some really lame radio play, wafting out of the window through all the roses and contaminating the summer sky with everyone freaking out. Well, Coral isn’t exactly freaking out, she is angry.

  ‘Coral, please stop pacing around like that and talk to me.’ Mum’s pleading voice sounds desperate – she shouldn’t let everyone know how much things matter to her.

  ‘Mum, I am almost nineteen. You cannot tell me what to do.’

  I don’t know what’s the matter with her anyway – he isn’t even her dad – she’s got another one. Somewhere. I suddenly think of the whole of the world being full of Mum’s discarded husbands – though I don’t think she was married to Coral’s dad – and them all being morose and alone without any of us, and Mum crying and it is all unspeakably sad for a minute.

  ‘Mummmeeee!!!! Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do. Where is Daddy going to live? When am I going to see him? I love Daddy, why can’t you just love him too? I am very upset, Mummy.’ Ruby is half crying but she is loud and clear.

  Mum says, ‘Are you all right, Foss?’ and this very small mumble only just makes it out of the window and he says, ‘Are you getting divorced because of when I got stuck in the mud and you lost me?’

  Bingo. The whole lot of them start crying and talking at once and in the end I have to get up and walk right down to the tree house and climb up it and put one of the cushions Ruby left there over my head so I cannot hear the sound of them. I have never got around to thinking whether or not I believed in God before, and I’m not thinking about it now, but I suddenly found I am praying with all my heart that someone will arrive to help us deal with this. From the shrieks curling like smoke out of the house I can tell that Mum is not handling it. It feels like an old comedy movie, because from where I am in the tree I see the house on three sides and three doors slam. Ruby comes out of one, running towards the gate – I don’t know where she is going. Out of another comes Foss, running as well, and he heads straight to the pond and sits down on the edge. Then the back door opens and Coral shoots out and she throws herself on the lawn like I did a few minutes ago. That leaves Mum, the black widow spider alone in her web, back in the house. Poor Mum. No – fuck that. Poor me. What the hell is going to happen to us now? Where is Dad, anyway? I don’t know what I feel about him right now. But I bet Mum decided it – I can’t believe Dad would do that. Maybe it’s because of Jeannie Gildoff. Jesus, what a waste. Oh my God, that means she’ll be our stepmother. I didn’t think I could cry but I am crying now and it’s all an angry fist in my chest to punch Jeannie stupid Gildoff with.

  Nick

  The call could not have come at a more opportune moment, which just goes to show that all the flannelling and polishing of acceptance of a Higher Power in the AA has a purpose. It’s time to get to a meeting.

  ‘Nick, hi there. This is Jake Driver.’

  ‘Oh. Hello. Um.’ Nick pauses in the street outside the office and leans against the glass wall of the building, confused for a moment as he is standing outside the office and Jake must be calling him from inside.

  ‘Hi, Jake. I’m actually just on my way in. Do you want to come and find me in my office?’

  ‘It’s not a work-related issue, Nick.’

  Oh, how dreary. Nick wishes he had the will-power not to answer his phone when he doesn’t recognise the number calling him. Jake Driver is nice but dull. Angel fancies him, Nick can’t see the point of him. Though he is good at his job. And friendly. There is no need to be unhelpful, after all.

  ‘Oh, OK, Jake, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, I was hoping you might be available to play cricket for the office team on Saturday. And Jem, if you and Angel are happy for him to play against adults.’ How nice. Nick is glad he took the call now; it pays not to be a dickhead sometimes.

  ‘Yes, I think Jem will do it too.’ Nick wonders what Angel will say. Actually, she won’t say anything. There is nothing challenging in this, it’s just cricket.

  ‘Yes, Jake, thanks, that would be nice. See you then.’

  Nothing special there, but the ordinariness of it is as welcome as a six-figure bonus right now. Where is his cricket kit? Will Jem play? Does Jake know he and Angel have split up? Does it matter? Will Angel let him back in the house to do some nets with the children? Will she come and help make the cricket tea? No, that is pushing it, even as a fantasy.

  The cricket pitch lies like an oval pool surrounded by oak trees in the midst of poppy-stained cornfields. A small pavilion painted pale green and cream stands to the side of the pitch, facing the church. Pads on, shades clamped to his nose, Nick squints through the sunlight watching Jem in bat. Jem had been very reluctant to play.

  ‘I hate fucking cricket and I hate playing with a bunch of old wrecks,’ was his unsatisfactory response to the invitation. Angel was no sodding help either; she just crossed her arms and said coldly it was up to Jem who he played cricket with. Anyway, here he is, and frankly Nick feels a bit aggrieved that after all his begging to get his reluctant son to come and play, Jem is above him in the batting – in fact, Jem is number three. And he, Nick, is in at seven. Matt, Coral’s boyfriend, is playing too, and he is batting at four. There’s no accounting for it, but it stings, Nick has to admit that. Not that Jem seems to notice – he just grunted when Nick told him the batting order.

  Angel arrives, driving up to the pavilion with unnecessary flamboyance and one of her God-awful country and western CDs blaring misery. You would think that cowboys had written the book on the agony of the human condition from their endless moaning. Nick is a rock and roll man through and through. For him there is nothing Jimi Hendrix can’t say that is worth saying in terms of music.

  Anyway, Alan Wilson from accounts is padded up next to him and adjusting his helmet now to walk on to the pitch as Matt, only in for an over, hits a fulsome catch right into the hands of the bowler.

  ‘Good luck!’ urges Nick, a pulse drumming in his neck. The game suddenly matters so much to him that he wants to cry. Jem has found a patch of excellent form, and Nick’s focus on him is intense. His son hits two fours in quick succession.

  ‘He’s a good player. Look at how fluid he is.’ Jake squats next to Nick, chewing a blade of grass, his cap pushed back giving him a boyish appearance. Against his better judgement, Nick finds he likes him. Jem is facing again. Angel comes out of the pavilion, and smiles sympathetically at Matt as he walks in.

  ‘You did well,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks.’ Matt grins. ‘I’m not in Jem’s league though, sadly.’ And he puts his arm around Coral and walks over towards his car with her. Janet, Nick’s secretary, joins Angel on the veranda.

  ‘Wow!’ she says involuntarily as the opposition bowls a blisteringly fast ball and smashes Alan’s stumps.

  Jake groans. ‘You’re in, Nick. I hope you do better than him – he’s out for a duck. At this rate the game will be over by teatime.’

  Jake moves over to Angel. Janet has begun talking to someone else, and her voice floats across to Nick as he walks out to the wicket: ‘Oh God, Nick’s in. And Jake Driver is next. Well, this could be fun, don’t you think?’

  Angel, laughing at something Jake has just whispered to her, doesn’t hear, or pretends she doesn’t. Nick wedges his helmet on and twirls his bat. Every fibre in his body creaks with the strain of wanting not to be out for a golden duck.
And more than that, but more difficult to acknowledge, he wants to stay in longer than Jem.

  He tries to unclench his jaw, but it is set as if in stone. This is probably what having dentures feels like, he finds himself thinking.

  The afternoon sun filters the light, yellow and nostalgic. David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ suddenly fills Nick’s head, the denture sensation slides away down his throat and he has a moment of rare joy. He hardly ever admits, even to himself, that there are things he enjoys. Life is to be endured, sensations and emotions are strictly mood-altering, and enjoyment is something he doesn’t even know he is missing. A huge grin spreads across his face, partly hidden by the helmet, because right now he really loves cricket, and he is happy.

  In a very peaceful surrounding, the absence of white noise allows the tiniest of sounds to amplify, and around Nick the trees rustle, a blackbird flutes some sort of natural love song and he hears Jem whisper, ‘OK, Dad.’ The bowler’s feet thud down the turf towards him and yes – the best sound possible, the thwack of willow on leather as his bat makes contact with the ball and he and Jem run, or, in his case, waddle to the other end. Christ, running in pads is hard work, is Nick’s first thought on reaching the opposite wicket, closely followed by, Thank God I am not facing the bowler this time, and At least I’m not out for a golden duck.

  Jem hits another four – his fourth of the match, and a small spattering of applause wafts across from the pavilion. Nick’s heart cracks, and fatherly love flows through him. Jem, who seems to have grown about six inches since coming on the cricket field, has also acquired a nonchalant confidence and grace. Or maybe he always had them, and it is just Nick’s perception that has shifted. This is certainly the first time he has ever been aware that when he looks into Jem’s eyes they are level with his own.