by Anna Maxted
But, if I had to pinpoint the single factor that drove me to Stuart, it was the Febreze. As Claudia and Nige hummed about me, murmuring, ‘Go on, Holly, oh please, it’ll be fun, etc’, I thought of Nick, too lazy to shower, spraying his stinky feet with Febreze (‘Safely eliminates odours on fabrics and kills the bacteria that cause them’). And then a ripple of hard-done-by billowed airily through me and I thought, ‘Ah, why not? What harm can it do?’
How long have you got?
Chapter 2
I THOUGHT I was good at reading people. Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t think they’re good at reading people? I shouldn’t have trusted myself. My judgment had already proved faulty with Nick. Why did I presume to know Stuart? The truth is, I’d painted my life into a corner. Instead of freeing me, every choice I’d made hemmed me in. It’s a pity to regret, but I did. I needed an escape. And if you’re dying in a desert, you’ll see hope in air and dust.
I refuse though, to begin with Stuart. He’d love that, if I began with him. The best way to gall people who wish you ill is not to give them space in your head. There’s a great put down in Casablanca, where Peter Lorre says to Humphrey Bogart, ‘You despise me, don’t you?’ He replies, ‘Well, if I gave it any thought I probably would.’ I think that’s funny. So, I’ll start with me and Nick. Five years ago, when I met Nick, he was helping a duck.
I was driving through one of the quainter parts of London and I saw this duck waddling along the pavement. A thin young man with a cigarette hanging out his mouth sauntered behind at a respectful distance from madam’s tailfeathers, ushering her away from the road. Everyone was ignoring them. Londoners are good at this. We can ignore anything. That disappoints me. I get a kick when I say hello to the ticket guy at my tube stop, and he says, ‘All right, darlin’,’ and gives me a high five. It turns my city into a village.
Anyhow, I got the urge to offer the man and the duck a lift. I decided there was no way this guy was a lunatic, as he was helping a duck. So I swerved across the traffic and buzzed down my window. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, launching into one of the silliest sentences I’ve ever spoken, ‘do you and the duck need a lift anywhere?’ Then it struck me that the duck might be his pet. He could be taking her for a walk, and I’d just busybodied in there. In the smarter parts of town you can act like a complete nut and get away with it, so long as you own the matching bag.
So I was grateful when the man took the cigarette out of his mouth and smiled. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ he said, ‘but I think being in a Golf might scare her. I wouldn’t want her getting in, you know, a flap.’ He giggled at this bad joke, which made me smile, he then looked at me again. ‘But you could always leave the car and help me get her back to the pond.’ I parked on a double yellow, and together we directed Jemima towards her pond. We got as far as the Chinese restaurant when, very sensibly, she decided to fly the rest of the way. We returned to a parking ticket.
‘You might as well make the most of it,’ said Nick. ‘Do you want to get an ice cream?’
Our relationship was not about being adult. Some couples race to become less liberal clones of their parents. Nick’s best pal Manjit chose Bo, a woman who clamps down on fun like it’s illegal. When Nick showed Manjit a new purchase – a shirt with a design of a cat, a cockerel, a donkey, a bird and a beaver on its back, plus the beautifully embroidered words, ‘pussy, cock, ass, tit, beaver’ – Manjit said mournfully, ‘I wouldn’t be allowed that.’ Same when he saw the two electric love hearts dangling from the Golf’s rear-view mirror. Tacky.
I felt sorry for Manjit, although privately I wondered what Bo could actually do to him if he bought a shirt like Nick’s. Tear it off his back? Ignore him for a month? Refuse to leave the house with him? Stop hauling him to classical concerts and her school reunions? Manjit, buy the shirt. (He didn’t, so I could only presume that in some way, he enjoyed the childish relief of relinquishing free will, one of the few advantages of shacking up with a dictator.)
Maybe Nick and I weren’t so different after all. We gave each other permission to behave like babies. On the face of it, that was good. In any romantic movie, the universal code for ‘these people are meant to be together’ is a shot of the guy sitting opposite the girl in a diner gazing at her adoringly, as she stuffs down a burger, talks nonsense with her mouth open, oozing gunk, her cheeks bulging with bun, mustard dribbling down her chin – i.e., the precise opposite of how a woman eats on a date. The point is: it’s okay to act like you’re five, you are officially in paradise.
With Nick I acted more like I was five than when I was five. I was quite a serious kid. It took me until I met Nick to realise I’d passed up on half my childhood. Nick would say, ‘Remember the episode of Fawlty Towers when Basil attacks the Mini?’ and I’d blush and say, ‘No.’ He’d recall the time he bet Manjit that he could eat three tins of golden syrup, won the bet, but alas, puffed up and spent three days in hospital. Or when he and Manjit went exploring on their bikes and found a dead bullet by the stream. High on good citizenship, they’d sped it to the local police station, where officers had to practically stuff their hands in their mouths to keep from laughing.
To me, this was idyllic, a marvellous adventure tale, Tom Sawyer meets The Secret Garden. My upbringing was fine, nothing wrong with it. Just a little more cautious, conservative. Our TV was black and white, toaster-sized and kept in a cupboard. I was a bookworm. Whereas Nick lived the dream, I read about it. My parents are wonderful people, old-fashioned in their innocence, never expecting much. The first time we went on holiday to Portugal, I remember my father blinking in pleasure because the hotel had a pool. My mother looked cowed at her good fortune. It hurt me to see it in their eyes, what have we done to deserve this?
While they were keen to give us – me, Claudia and our big sister Isabella – whatever we wanted, it never occurred to them that we could want more than we were given. Which was, books. Visits to stately homes. Museum trips. Two thousand piece jigsaws of English country gardens. Love. My parents never wanted more than they were given. My mother would have bitten off her tongue before she complained about anything. Her old friend Leila once gave her a cotton tissue-holder for Christmas. It must have cost 5p. A garage wouldn’t dare give it you free with your petrol. Mum had bought Leila a painting by a local artist she admired.
It was painful to see my mother wriggle to excuse Leila. She didn’t give a damn about the meanness; it was the lack of respect that got her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘money’s tight for Leila. And you know Leila, she’s a batty old thing.’ Even though we both knew that ‘batty’ didn’t cut it. Unless you’re clinically insane, you know Tissue Holder As Gift is unacceptable. But I kept quiet. It’s easier to forgive than to confront. If you’ve been slapped in the face, you don’t need people saying, ‘Gosh, you’ve been slapped in the face’. ‘Why didn’t she just give you a pooh wrapped up in a hankerchief?’ cried Nick.
Yea, behold the miracle. My parents adored Nick. He could say, do anything, cheeky as you like; they were in awe, treated him like a prince. That meant a lot. I’m uncool, parental approval matters to me. In fact, any parental approval matters to me, probably to the extent of weirdness. Once, Nick and I saw a brilliant new band play their first big gig, and the frontman kept saying, in a croak of disbelief, ‘This is incredible for us, thank you so much for coming.’ All I could think was, ‘His parents must be so proud.’ That’s my first thought, every time I see talented people on stage, ‘Their parents must be so proud’. (My second thought is, I wish I could do that.)
The mindset, I suppose, of a woman resisting adulthood. I fell in love with Nick and his parents. I cherished the fact that he came from a glamorous family. His mother and father, Lavinia and Michael Mortimer, were a revelation. Rich, sparkly, magical, mysterious, like the parents in Peter Pan. They travelled endlessly, collecting art. They campaigned for their favourite charities. They owned a villa in Italy, which they’d renovated from ruin a decade before Umbria became fashi
onable. They both spoke fluent Italian. I was so bedazzled, the first time I went there, that when Nick’s mother offered me a dish of olives I went blind with fright. I reached for the brightest item on the plate, and she said kindly, ‘No dear, that’s a lemon.’
Nick’s parents indulged him, like we all did. He entertained us. The first two years of our relationship I had a blast. I’d never been naughty – I was content, I hadn’t felt the need. But it was liberating, to play. I thought it wild that I had a boyfriend whose job was to dress as Mr Elephant at children’s parties. It endeared me that his small Islington flat was a shrine to grime, and that when his mother visited she would sigh, in her silvery voice, ‘Oh Nick.’ I didn’t comment. If my man chose to live on hygiene’s edge, I wouldn’t interfere. I was proud of not trying to change him. So very modern of me. Nick and I spent a great many months in his king-sized bed screwing, drinking vodka, or both. Only twice was I bitten by a flea.
We bought a candyfloss maker from the Shopping Channel and ate pink candyfloss for breakfast. We got drunk and ran along the road swapping people’s doormats and then, because I felt bad about it, we ran along the road swapping them back. We bought twenty squirty bottles of chocolate sauce and had a food fight in the garden until we and the grass were brown. I was thinking to myself, ‘This is what couples do in films.’ Then Nick stood up and said, ‘I don’t like this. It’s like we’re covered in pooh.’
I thought I was a secure person till I met Nick. Then I saw what it was to be heart and soul at peace with yourself. I do believe that people treat you as you present yourself, and Nick presented as a gift from God. Luck followed him around like a puppy. Nick’s parents owned a big white boat, and Nick blew it up.
He’d filled it with fuel after a day on the river, turned on the ignition and BANG! The wooden deck splintered under his feet, flames shooting high everywhere. He grabbed my hand, and we jumped into the Thames. The boat sank. Or, as Nick told his father on the phone, ‘Was lying low in the water.’ A pipe had come loose and fuel had slopped into the engine. The firefighters said we could have had fifty foot flames. We were lucky it didn’t explode. Lucky Nick.
It was his idea to buy a house together.
I was flattered. I don’t mean that in a gee, lil ole me kind of way. I mean that I loved Nick so fiercely I wanted to eat him up. If I could have crawled inside his skin, I would have. I could almost understand the cannibalistic lust of Jeffrey Dahmer, my desire was so violent – some nights I’d sob aloud because one day we’d die and then what would I do if we weren’t together for eternity? He felt the same about me. ‘I worship you,’ he said. ‘Marry me.’
We found a house and bought it with less thought than some people buy a newspaper. (Islington flats, even small dirty ones, scrub up well and sell for silly money. Even my non-Islington flat, bought four years earlier when property was affordable, had in those four years earned more than I had.)
It was a riot, flying by the seat of our pants, cheating death. When you live apart, and meet for the good times, you can pretty much edit out the worst bits of yourself. The cold slap of joint property ownership put an end to that. Often, Nick would lie in bed till midday. He ignored bills, claiming an allergy to paperwork. He left a trail of crap behind him like a snail. I’d considered myself easy-going. Now, to my embarrassment, I found I wasn’t.
‘Let Nick face the consequences of his actions,’ bossed my sister Isabella, a psychologist. ‘If he doesn’t water the plants, let them die. He’ll learn.’
I didn’t let the plants die. You don’t nurture something, then let it die. Anyhow, I knew they’d die and he wouldn’t notice. I consoled myself that Isabella counselled couples on how to argue effectively – be specific in your complaint, employ the pronoun ‘I’ not ‘you’, keep your voice calm and level – but when I enquired how she argued effectively with her husband Frank, she replied, ‘I scream at him.’
I screamed at Nick. What next, cutting out recipes? Before I’d been proud that I didn’t want to change him. Now I did, I discovered that I couldn’t.
It hit me with a shock, that Nick wasn’t playing hard before he embarked on forty years of working hard. This was it, for him. He’d continue to live like a student till he was sixty-five. There was no grand plan, no passion to make a success of his life. His idea of making a success of his life was to live in the moment, be happy. But, I thought, you need things to be happy. We didn’t set a date for the wedding.
I was ambitious. I wasn’t going to end up like my parents – meek, humble, grateful for crumbs. Nick, it struck me, was like them in that he accepted whatever happened to him. His fatality bordered on Australian. He had an end of the rainbow approach to finances. He was pleased for me to earn the cash. My career became a sanctuary. At the office I could blank out the rage that pulsed through me when my metal hairpins jabbed my scalp because Nick had absent-mindedly picked off their smooth plastic ends. Because he refused to behave even the teeniest bit like an adult, I was forced to grow up and I resented it.
I was an imposter. Do adults think, ‘This book I’m reading matches my pyjamas’? Blush when a shop assistant calls them ‘Madam’? Feel heartless when trading in their rusty old car for a new shiny one? Fold a black and white checked dishcloth onto the cat’s head and proclaim her Yasser Alleycat? Eat all the chocolate off a KitKat first? Lie on the floor and wish they lived on the ceiling? Stroke their childhood toy (not that Fluffy is real, but just in case)? Jab a knife into the toaster while it’s still on? No? Well then. I was an adult at work, taking care of others, but I refused to be that at home. Inside, I was still a little girl. Because you’re not truly grown up until you’re what, fifty?
Our relationship dropped sheer off a cliff. I kept more and more of me to myself. Nick didn’t offer to make me a coffee, so why should I leave him any cherries? He never wrote down my phone messages, so why should I tell him he was missing Larry Sanders? I was a hypocrite. I had endless goodwill for the world and none for Nick. I’d watch the RSPCA’s TV appeal and phone them £500 to repent for the human race. Same for the NSPCC, guilt by association. But I’d spit and boil when Nick begged a fiver. So much for our eternal love. It couldn’t survive a broken dishwasher.
Yet, when I thought about ending our engagement, I felt panicked, sodden with dread, my insides heavier than I could carry. But then I didn’t want to be fifty-eight, married, miserable and marooned, looking back on a shadow of a life. Girl Meets Boy was a joy for me, but I needed something separate, outside it. I didn’t blame Nick wholesale. He hadn’t changed, I had. He was the love of my life. But he was also, undeniably, the catalyst that turned me into a person I didn’t much like.
I told him it was over on what must have been the prettiest night of the summer. A fat moon lay low, heavy and golden, in the sky. Earlier, the setting sun had tinted the streets and houses pink. I chose to take all this as a cosmic sign: it’s not the end of the world. But, fuck, it felt like it.
Chapter 3
I FELT THAT my resolve might snap like a bread stick. I was always a breath away from begging him to stay. I had to chant in my head, over and over, he doesn’t love you enough, you don’t love him enough or I’d weaken. Our families were aghast and distraught, which made it even harder. And when Nick wept, I wanted to wail my remorse at his feet. It would have been easy to be nice to him, now. So I focused on his flaws, I magnified them ten times over. He didn’t want me, he just objected to rejection on principle. I made myself despise him for not having the honesty to walk away.
Scratch what I said earlier, about the Febreze leading me to Stuart. I could pretend Nick and his smelly feet drove me to it – to that stupid juvenile plan to humiliate him via some stranger plucked from a pile. I could maintain that Claudia and Nige were so persuasive that I had no choice. But no. Even if my colleague made the call, I made the decision. I’ll stand up and say it. It was my fault.
When – two months after I’d told him it was over – Nick discovered I had a date
with some guy from Girl Meets Boy, he went bananas. As he slammed the kitchen door, again, it occurred to me that our grand plan wasn’t foolproof. My date with Stuart Marshall – who’d swallowed the bait, as Nige said, ‘like a carp biting on a maggot’ – was as likely to make Nick want me more, as less. I told myself this had nothing to do with me as a person. Nick would battle Stuart over a cardboard box. Which made it easier to tell him just what I thought of his behaviour. When you’re angry at yourself, there’s always the option of taking it out on a loved one.
‘Nick,’ I said. ‘This doesn’t endear you to me. Stop acting like a three-year-old. As of two months ago, it’s none of your business who I see. I’m going out with this guy tomorrow and if you can’t deal with that it’s your problem. And stop banging doors. You’re frightening Emily. Look. Her ears are flattened to the back of her head. And her tail’s gone like a toilet brush.’
I heard myself make this righteous little speech and knew I’d made the right decision. See? This man turned me into someone I disliked even when we were no longer a couple.
Nick swivelled round from the side, where he was making himself a cheese sandwich, and glanced guiltily at the cat. To be divorcey about it, Emily is technically his – he was passing the vet surgery and saw a notice in the window about ‘the most affectionate’ ten-year-old cat who was to be ‘PTS’ (put to sleep) unless she was found a new home, because she had diabetes and her owner ‘couldn’t cope emotionally’. Nick yup yup yupped the vet’s warning about commitment and returned to the flat a hero, with a handful of syringes and a small black furrball. A month later, I was giving Emily her insulin injections.