We met in the foyer of Jamie’s office on a Wednesday evening at six and the first time I set eyes on him I didn’t feel a connection. I didn’t feel the relief that standing in front of me was the man I had been waiting for since I’d understood what a wedding was. I didn’t feel that I knew him better than myself. I didn’t feel as if my inner ache of loneliness was set to cease. I didn’t want to get up, slap him, shriek, “What the hell took you so long?” and fall sobbing and laughing into his arms. There was no lightning bolt. No moment of recognition. I felt . . . nothing. As he walked toward me, I did a quick inventory: nondescript black shoes; sexy long legs; badly cut navy suit; good Jermyn Street shirt with dreadful bulbous ceramic ladybird cufflinks; thick, brown floppy hair and great double-layered eyelashes. I remember thinking, “He’s okay.” He’s okay? Was my self-esteem in such free fall that I’d happily settle for okay? I wasn’t choosing a sandwich filling or a new towel rack, was I?
My inner voice was screaming that chemistry is instant and we instantly had none, but for some reason that still poleaxes me, I said to myself that this could be The One. Why? Because on paper he was box-tickingly good? Was I was so determined not to disappoint my parents that I’d break my own heart, then theirs by default, by setting out to marry a guy who didn’t touch the core of me but who did go to the right school? Yes, apparently I was that shallow.
“Jamie Prattlock,” he said, extending his arm. I stood up and he confidently pulled me toward him. “You must be Daisy?” He kissed me on both cheeks, then guffawed, “Well, I bloody well hope you are.”
He smelled of strong lemony soap. I noticed he had cut himself shaving and the dried nick of blood on his collar was endearing.
“Sorry that I kept you waiting. Afraid am on bit of a deadline. Mind awfully coming up to the orifice?”
I followed him up the escalators and through to a vast open plan office. For such hives of activity, it’s amazing that no one can ever enter an office unnoticed. Regardless of frantic deadlines, phones ringing off the hook, faxes jamming from overuse, people shouting, typing, and swigging coffee from plastic cups, every time anyone new walks past the jumble of desks, everything goes into momentary slo-mo as everyone automatically cops a look. I knew I was being clocked and so did Jamie. If anything, he moved with even more of a celebratory swagger.
“Piss off, Atkins, you common little creep,” he said, swatting an oily looking man who was sitting at his desk. “Clear off and get Mizz Dooley a cup of tea.”
Jamie gestured for me to sit in his place. “It’s so hard to get good help,” he said theatrically.
“Must file copy over here.” Did he always speak in this jaunty singsong way as if he was dictating a memo? “Why don’t you e-mail Candace first impressions?” He winked.
Jamie set me up with a blank e-mail to fill in. While he typed away nearby, his long, artistic fingers darting impressively across the keyboard, I scanned his e-mail address book. His friends all had names like Bunty and Joffy and Toadby and Fi-Fi and Wiggy and Minty, which should have been warning enough, but then I saw that we had a mutual friend, Mark Styles. Mark was a guy I’d known at university who was now working in New York. I quickly snuck into Jamie’s inbox and saw an e-mail from Mark with the subject: “Doing Dooley (Doggy!?)” I paused for a moment—was I better off not knowing? Naturally I opened it.
Jimmy, you sad fucker. Long time no hear. Yes, I do know Dooley. Snogged her once at a party but mercifully she was well pissed and is bound to have forgotten.
She’s quite intelligent and not bad company—but very highly strung. Barking mad—her mother breeds mutts so it’s no surprise—but she’s not a bad egg. She actually listens to what one says, which I find discombobulating.
If you want to shag her, mention you’re into the whole bag; family, kids, mortgage, etc.—she’s big on commitment.
Good luck mate, you’ll need it. See ya, Piles.
I wasn’t sure what shocked me more: how Mark Styles saw me or how Jamie and his mates corresponded. Discombobulate? Quite intelligent? And big on commitment? I knew the subtext—Listen mate, watch out. She’s past thirty and desperate to get hitched. I raked my fingers through my hair. Thing is, he was right. Mark blooming Styles, or Markie Piles, or whatever nifty nickname these men-boys delight in calling each other, was bang on the nose. I was just like every other thirty-something bird for whom life wasn’t hitting the spot. I was perceived to be successful enough with my trendy metropolitan job, respectable family, groovy friends, and studio flat in Shepherd’s Bush, and yet inside I felt this huge gaping hole because I didn’t Have It All. I didn’t even have it half—a better half or a worse half. I left every party and hailed a cab home alone. Worse, I believed those Cosmo cover lines that it was possible to have the handsome hub and cracking career, and for me, the race was on. Why was I in such a hurry? Why did I always have this fear that I was going to miss out on my own future? Why, instead of looking at Jamie Prattlock and running for my life, did I tap him on the shoulder and say, “I didn’t know you knew Mark Styles”?
“Marco Piles? Yah.” He swung around and glanced at the screen with the e-mail still up.
I looked at him, then let out a mad bark. He started to laugh and in between my manic “ruff ruffs,” and “woof, woofs,” I laughed too.
“It only dawned on me after the marriage license came through,” I explained to Troy, “that he hadn’t been laughing with me but at me. I thought we had bonded over a shared joke, but the joke was always on me. In that moment, the pattern was set.”
I paused to register Troy surveying me, his head tilted to one side. Although it vaguely crossed my mind that he might be viewing me with disgust, it was too late. I had developed a verbal dating dysfunction, like a nervous tick that I simply couldn’t control. I didn’t really try to rein myself back in even though I had an image of Jess, appalled, screaming, “For fuck’s sake, shut up now!” But nothing could have brought me to an emergency stop. I had hurtled down an icy highway of cringeable over-exposure. No detail had been too small or off beam to be overlooked.
I drained my glass. As the stunned silence enveloped us, I didn’t feel funny and vibrant anymore. I felt unbearably silly and sad. Suddenly I recognized the problem with the post-divorce date: you both told your story, as that was all you had in common, and then there was nothing left except the awkward emptiness of having told too much, too soon. Maybe Troy felt sorry for me because he said, not unkindly, “Sounds like you two were a strange match.”
“Yes. We brought out the worst in each other,” I said lamely. “Marrying Jamie didn’t make me like him more; it made me like myself less. He bored me and once you bore someone, you can never unbore them, can you?” I looked up, barely able to make eye contact, as I knew that I had blown it. Troy must have been bored rigid.
He refilled my glass. “I can’t imagine you boring anyone,” he said. “You’re so open, you need emotional contraceptive for protection.”
“It’s the only contraceptive I do need right now.” I laughed bitterly. “Men don’t like candor. They find it threatening.”
Troy held my gaze. “But I’m not most men.”
The minute Troy dropped me off at Jess’s without attempting to kiss me or suggesting seeing me again, I fancied him madly. Was it because he was much richer than me? (Why do women feel that they have to hide their desire for a wealthy man as if it’s demeaning to admit that actually, yes, we do get an erotic charge when he slaps his loaded Amex on the table because his ability to pay is part of his potency?) Or was it because Troy didn’t make a play for me that I suddenly wanted him to? Either way, his air of controlled knowing was thrilling. His glinting eyes seemed to say, “We both know I’ll have you if I want you.”
I wanted him to want me more than anything because, even though I was the one who had walked out, the fact that Jamie had let me go was a blistering rejection. That night, agonizing over my date with Troy, I lay in bed and reflected that you have left a marriage l
ong before you pick up your bag and walk out. Or, in my case, stagger down the stairs balancing an orchid, my wash bag, and a plastic bag full of clean (graying) knickers. I remember my legs were convulsing as I negotiated my way, not with nerves but from one too many sun salutations that morning. Did my body know before I did that I would return from a yoga class, eat a chicken sandwich, and then leave my husband? Is that why I had trembled in “downward facing dog” and collapsed on my head when trying to do a bridge, arms shaking like jelly?
Where was the high drama? Shouldn’t there have been shouting and sobbing? A few plates smashed and him on his knees, begging me not to go, not to crush the embers of our dream? But we both knew that the flame of hope was already extinguished and there was nothing real to fight for anymore. Even though I wanted him to, he wasn’t going to humiliate himself for me by lying on the floor and grabbing my calves like a child begging a parent not to go to the party. Not just because he was six foot two and could have dislocated my ankle had he tried, but because he didn’t care enough. That’s what tore me apart inside. That he didn’t come after me. Instead, he went into the kitchen and fried himself an egg.
My mother had been waiting in the car outside. She gave me a brave nod of maternal reassurance. As I opened the boot of her mud-splattered station wagon,Donald and Dougie, her favorite long-haired dachshunds, jumped up barking. I let them exfoliate my face with their tongues as I wedged the orchid plant against a giant sack of dog biscuits. I got in the front seat beside my mum. The car smelled of damp dog, urine-stained straw, and dust. It was gag-inducingly familiar. I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say, “Sorry, Mum. You know that sixty grand you splashed out for the wedding of my dreams? Well, erm, there’s been a bit of a cock up. I forgot to marry the man of my dreams.” Instead, I said, “Shit. I’ve left my handbag in the flat.”
“I’ll go. You stay here.” As she got out, she knocked on the window of the boot. Donald and Dougie were staring motionless and wide-eyed with terror, as if certain they were never going to see her again, only the inside of a cage at Battersea Dogs Home.
“Wait here, my angels,” she said in a loud voice. “You keep Daisy company while Mummy pops out. Back in a sec.”
I took a deep breath. I felt sick. Not just a waft of nausea but a guttural, oh-my-God-I’ve-left-my-husband-what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-with-the-rest-of-my-life?, vomit-making panic. Could this really be happening? Was I actually sitting in grubby yoga pants sweating pure terror? And if I was going to walk out on Jamie Prattlock on a Sunday afternoon in late April, why couldn’t I at least look the part? Why couldn’t I be pinging with energy, all honed and toned beneath my Juicy Couture tracksuit à la J. Lo or Jennifer Aniston? Why do I always compare myself to some A-list celebrity, as if I’m living my life under public scrutiny? There were no paparazzi waiting to snap my tear-stained face, no famous friends carrying out my belongings, no chauffeurs whisking me to a mansion in obscurity where I could get a face-lift and face myself. It was the sudden realization that it was my very ordinariness, my absolute everyday ability to fuck up like everybody else that made me want to weep.
And then I heard her. It was the wild, protective roar of a lioness whose cub is wounded and she’s out for the kill.
“All I ever asked of you was to love Daisy and even that was to much for you.”
“Your daughter’s a bloody lunatic . . . Her problems make . . .” My mother and Jamie were shouting so loudly you could hear them halfway down the street.
“And your problem, young man, is that you never learned to give.”
“Who the hell do you think bought this flat?”
“Give of yourself. You haven’t a clue what real generosity means. Daisy left because she couldn’t stay, but she’s the most loving, decent girl around and you destroyed . . .”
The tears were coming so fast that I couldn’t hear anymore. My heart had split in two. Not because I had married a man who did not love me enough to fight for me, but because my mother did.
The morning after my first date with Troy, Jess and I met Lucy for cappuccinos and confession. I had given Jess a highly edited version of my conversation with Troy when I returned to her flat after my PDD. Yes, I had washed up at my friend’s door post-date, too defeated to face the trip back to the country and Mum. Thank God she’d been willing to kick out her latest conquest to make room for my pathetic, sniveling self. Lucy pointed at my red-rimmed eyes, the result of my earlier avalanche of tears, and began the questioning. “So you didn’t like him?”
No. I did. What I couldn’t stomach was being in teenage angst mode, strung out about a man again. At first I had relished the emotional drama of being in an unhappy marriage with Jamie. All the rows, hurt, deranged splitting of hairs, and then passionate making up were an antidote to my boredom. But then the drama became the most boring thing of all.
“But you don’t have to get emotionally involved with Troy,” Jess said.
I explained that even though it petrified me, I wanted to sleep with him. Actually I needed to sleep with him to eradicate Jamie from my system.
“A sexual sorbet.” We looked at Lucy blankly. Apparently, in Los Angeles this is how they refer to the first person you sleep with after a break up; someone who cleanses away the aftertaste of a bad relationship. Jess pointed out that you could still sleep with someone and not get emotionally involved. My inner jury is out on that one. I think it only works for angry men and mummy’s boys.
I whipped my latest self-help fix from my handbag. A best seller called The Phoenix Syndrome: Rising from the Dust of Divorce. Jess groaned. “If you’re going to start spouting psychobabble, I’m off.”
“It’s all about erotic intelligence,” I said.
“Speak English, please.” Jess banged her fist on the table.
“Hush, you might learn something,” said Lucy, adding, “I think I need a shot of this.” Jess raised an eyebrow. “There’s nothing like married sex to make you lose confidence in yourself,” Lucy shot back.
“Lucy, you and Edward are happily married so you don’t need to get up close and confident with anyone else again and I do.” Lucy shut up.
“The whole gig with erotic intelligence is that it empowers you to emerge from a juicy encounter with your dignity intact. If you have low EI, you’re so grateful to be fancied, you would do anything. Behind your back, or worse, to your face, it is clear your date thinks you are easy or ugly—or both—and he would never take you to meet his mates or his mother. A high EI is about maintaining steely self-esteem in the face of attraction. It is the Oxbridge of flirting; a Double First in seduction. Obviously, after last night’s fiasco of getting hammered with Troy and verbally unpacking all my emotional baggage pronto, I scored perilously low.”
“You didn’t even kiss him, so how can you bang on about any erotic encounter?” snapped Jess.
I argued that the subtext of a first date is desire. What is left unsaid is what matters. You need to be wired to that invisible current of sexual tension to the point where you long to be touched.
“Well, he’s obviously got high EI.” Jess got up to leave. “He’s got you exactly where he wants you.”
“Where, exactly?”
“On standby for his call. Ready to put out the minute he’s ready to put you out of your misery. Gain some erotic advantage. Make him wait.”
Later, on the train going home back to Mum’s, I was beside myself that I had bared my soul with Troy. He hadn’t wanted to kiss me because I hadn’t stopped mouthing off about myself and my marital mayhem long enough to let him. Had my instinct for verbal honesty become a dating disability? I used to give good date but now that I had Divorcée Despair tattooed on my forehead, I couldn’t maintain an iota of feminine mystique. A few drinks and I became every man’s confessional, not minx or mistress material.
Would I have been similarly wound up if Troy had been a road sweeper? Was I lusting after him or his lifestyle? I dipped into my Little
Book of Dating Dharma. “Don’t measure your self-worth against someone else’s net worth.” Spot on. My mobile rang. Troy? No. It was just Mum wondering when I’d be back. I reassured her that I was on my way and hung up. With Mum, I realized I would never have to worry about my net worth—it was more a question of measuring up to her pet worth.
It’s not just being unsettled in life that wakes me early at Mum’s, it’s also the incessant yapping of dogs in the kennels. Mum’s well known in the dog-breeding business because Diana Dooley’s dachshunds have a certain cachet. They certainly project arrogance like no other dogs I’ve ever seen. It’s incredible how fat, stunted sausage dogs—melodramatic little logs of fur—can look at you with haughty superiority as if raising a wiry eyebrow and curling a long snout in disgust. They just know that they are distinguished. Not just because they get fullpage write-ups in Dachshund Daily, which, presumably, they can’t read, but because they never let Mum down. The inference being: unlike your dad.
So Dougie and Donald and Dominic and Doughnut and Des and Deborah and Desdemona and Diandra and Dennis and Dusty and Daniel and Damon and Denny and Delia and Delphinium Desiree (an award-winning bitch—literally) and all the other bloody Dooley Dachshunds will never let my mother down. They can piss up against the beds and stain the valances, crap on her Aubusson rugs in the drawing room, dig up her favorite peonies, throw up acid-green grass-filled bile on the sofa, and chew the few decent pairs of shoes she has to mulch, but they will never let her down. Emotionally these wire-haired, smooth-haired, and long-haired beasts are rock solid.
My scientist father, Derek, however, is not. Nearly two decades ago, when emptying his pockets to take his jacket to the cleaners, Mum discovered that Dad was being unfaithful. When she asked him if he was having an affair, at least he had the decency not to lie. He was sitting at the kitchen table when she dangled two “French Letters” (as she calls them) in front of him. He slowly looked up from his ploughman’s lunch, betraying no alarm. When she asked, “Can you give her up?” he paused. Probably only for a few seconds but for my mother it was an eternity. He wasn’t fighting for her. He wasn’t stumbling over his words because he couldn’t get them out fast enough to tell her that he loved her. That it was all a hideous mistake. No, in his very male, measured, academic way, he took his time. And in those few precious moments he broke her heart. I think she could have gotten over the infidelity but it was during that hesitation before his reply where he lost her. When he finally answered, “With difficulty,” their marriage of twenty-two years ended. Mum simply picked up her handbag and walked out of the house. She didn’t return until Dad had packed his bags and left us and our family home. She carried on walking in court shoes (she never seems to have the right shoes at the right time—she once went to a wedding in an evening gown and Wellington boots) for over two miles until she got to a phone box and rang a girlfriend. My parents never spent another night under the same roof again.
Daisy Dooley Does Divorce Page 2