“Firstly,” I said, sucking the froth off my cappuccino, “even if I do need a shag, I don’t need a man to do it with me out of pity, and anyway, I’d never sleep with Miles. It would be like sleeping with my brother, if I had a brother. Secondly, you’re just jealous because I’ll have a good-looking, single man to go out and play with.”
“That’s true,” said Lucy wistfully. She twiddled her wedding ring. “Maybe Miles is the man I should have an affair with?”
“You’re still thinking about that?” I said, vaguely aghast. I thought she’d gone off the idea. “Anyway Miles can’t stand needy women,” I carried on. Lucy shot me a look. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, but surely if it is your first affair, you’re going to crave a lot of attention.”
“Miles would be just the ticket then,” said Jess, rubbing her hands with glee. “He’ll have a lot of tricks up his sleeve, so to speak, having doubtless bedded half of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.”
“Oh, that would put me off.” Lucy shook her head. “I’d find myself comparing myself with the scores of sluts in his wake, thinking, ‘Did she do this better than me?’ or ‘Am I doing this right?’”
“I agree.” I nodded. “Sexy in the sack is men getting the balance right between knowing what they’re doing and not turning it into some well-worn porno routine where you sense their irritation if you deviate from their fantasy script. You want to know that your mere presence is enough.”
“God, you two are so unadventurous,” sniffed Jess. “There’s nothing wrong with wish fulfillment. You’ve just got to know what you want and ask for it. Simple as that.”
“Do you know,” said Lucy, “in over ten years of sleeping with Edward, I’ve never once said to him in bed, ‘Can you do it like this?’”
Jess nearly choked on her coffee. “I never had steady Eddie down as a bully.”
“Edward’s not a bully, he’s just so predictable. I can’t communicate with him when we’re naked anymore.”
“One of the most important aspects of oral sex is knowing how to talk in bed,” I said. “Asking ‘How was it for you?’ shows a dreary inability to feel your way around the situation.”
Lucy and Jess laughed. “So speaks Miss Daisy: celibate and hating every second,” Jess teased.
That was about the sum of it. “No sex is better than downgraded casual sex,” I said unconvincingly.
“So why has Miles bought a secondhand bookshop in Pimlico?” asked Lucy. “It’s not very hunter-gatherer, is it? I thought he’d come back to bag a wife.”
“Exactly. He thinks owning a secondhand bookshop has huge pulling power,” I said. “Women will fall for his erudite, sensitive side, apparently.”
“Why? Did he take an acting course in Hong Kong?” Jess pulled a face. “I mean, let’s face it, with a serial shagger like Miles, there’s not much touchy-feely, let’s snuggle down with a Wordsworth sonnet, is there?”
“Maybe he’s grown up,” said Lucy.
“Developed a conscience, more like,” said Jess. “You’ll have to leave your Mum’s and live in London now that you’re going to be a working girl. Do you want to share my flat while you get yourself sorted out?”
“Thanks, my friend,” I said. “I can get your place in neat-freak order in no time.”
“But will you be able to stand the steady stream of Jess’s conquests as they come and go?” asked Lucy dryly.
Jess looked a tad put out. But Luce had a point, even if she was being uncharacteristically caustic. “Well, maybe I’ll meet someone in the bookshop,” I said in a bid to diffuse tension. “Miles has said that I can run the Mind/Body/Spirit section.”
“Save me from the self-help addicts,” said Jess, getting up and blowing me a kiss good-bye. I noticed she didn’t acknowledge Lucy as she left.
That night, e-mailing Miles, my stomach flipped when I saw Julius’s name in the in-box:
D. Believe me, I am not marrying Alice with the same blithe blindness that sends a bungee jumper off a bridge. She is right for me for now because she is not going to challenge me. She is not the diversion that you are. You may believe that you are ready for me but I am not ready for you. The timing is not right. I’m sorry to disappoint you now but I promise you this: when we are old, I shall come for you. I shall buy a house somewhere warm and we shall sit in the sun and tell each other the story of our lives. Make it a good story and a good life. J. x
No, I thought, tears streaming down my face, if he loved me he wouldn’t make me wait.
I was so distraught following my e-mail from Julius that Jess called a girlie summit at Mum’s. It was a perfect spring weekend, and while Lucy stroked my back and Jess tickled my feet with a feather, I sat under a magnolia tree and groaned, “How am I ever going to feel this way about a man again?”
“You thought you loved Jamie but you got over him,” said Jess matter-of-factly.
“No,” I said softly, fingering the waxy petals scattered on the grass, “I thought I loved Jamie but I know I am in love with Julius.” I sighed. “It’s a completely different feeling. Basically, the difference between being in love with someone and loving someone is the difference between kneeling on the ground and being a midget.”
Jess laughed. “What about a kneeling midget? What sort of love is that?”
“Obviously that’s the most real thing.”
Lucy stopped soothing my shoulders and sat beside me. “You are single now, Daisy, and God knows the minute you’re married with kids, I promise you, you’ll wish you had spent longer relishing being alone. I listen to my single girlfriends who spend their lives flitting from party to party, sleeping in until lunchtime the following day, jetting off to Europe for impromptu mini-breaks, snogging strangers, power brunching on weekends, reading novels and newspapers by the truckload, able to go to the cinema on a whim and not have to orchestrate a military-style maneuver of the babysitter, the kids’ supper, the bath-and-bed routine, let alone contemplate the hellish expense of it all, and I wonder why they moan about needing to settle down and breed? I’m sick of hearing that their pain is enormous when all I see is unlimited freedom and endless possibilities for uninterrupted sleep and pure self-indulgence.”
“I’ve been telling you that for years,” said Jess. “I never understand the women who come to my surgery and want children with the biological desperation that I feel when I want an emergency loo stop on the motorway.”
“Marriage isn’t an answer, it’s a riddle,” said Lucy sadly. “It’s a complete mystery about two people coming together and trying to make it work.”
“Isn’t marriage a defiant gesture of optimism?” I said hopefully.
“After a while marriage is like familiarity,” said Lucy bitterly. “It breeds children and contempt.”
“Are you that unhappy with Edward?” I asked.
“Not that unhappy,” said Lucy. “It’s not like I actively loathe our life together but I don’t totally love it either.”
“That’s a dangerous no man’s land because you get complacent,” cautioned Jess. She shook her head. “It’s the long but not happy marriage, like my parents had, that breaks my heart. Those who feel duty bound to remain handcuffed to a life sentence, serving marital time together, but lonely.”
Lucy and I stared at Jess. She hardly ever talked about her family and although we knew that this was why she ran shy of commitment, I rarely sensed that deep sadness. “Do you wish your parents had divorced?” I asked, keenly aware that however unhappy Mum and Dad might have been I still wished that they were together because of my selfish, bratty inner child.
“Course. I’ve told you that,” said Jess. “When Dad died of a heart attack in my early thirties, part of me was relieved. I thought that at least Mum could finally start to live her own life, but the saddest thing was that it was too late. She was in her early sixties yet she considered herself old. She didn’t see any other existence for herself because she’d been mentally chained to my father for so long. I’m quite
convinced that’s why she let her cancer eat her up. She wasn’t seventy when she died. All those years of emotional repression didn’t amount to anything in the end. What’s the point of that kind of marital duty?” Jess looked choked. “Lucy, don’t stay for the kids alone. Stay, by all means, but stay for you.”
“It’s easy for you to say that when you don’t have any responsibility,” Lucy said sullenly.
“But I can tell you that when they’re old enough to understand, they’ll feel your sacrifice as their own,” said Jess. “Sometimes my guilt is unbearable.”
I felt a stab of shame because I still craved the facade of marital unity and familial stability between my parents. I still wished that while Mum and I were gossiping around the kitchen table, there would be the rustle of the newspaper in the background or a surreptitious snort from Dad. Even though he never gave much input into our lives, it was reassuring that, however irritating we found him, he was there.
“There is the other side of it though. When your parents split up and your mother is on her own you feel a heightened sense of responsibility,” I said. “I long for Mum to meet someone because I want her to be happy.”
Suddenly Mum appeared with a tray of tea and a pile of sludge on a platter. “Here you are: Tetley’s finest and my molasses layer cake. You lot look like you need a shot of sugar—I love you girls dearly but honestly, you’re such neurotics. You must learn not to overanalyze and to just press on with life.” She put the tray down. “I’m off to group therapy now. See you later.”
Jess sat bolt upright, outraged. “I can’t believe it, Mrs. D. Daisy’s gone and gotten you into therapy.”
“Good grief no.” Mum smiled. “It is my FOCDA meeting.”
“Fockder?” Lucy inquired gingerly.
“Haven’t you heard?” I said. “It’s the latest twelve-step meeting sweeping the home counties. Families of Canine Disorders Anonymous. It only attracts the truly barking. A load of batty toffs sit in damp village halls and share their torment over Blackie, who chews his paws, or Fido, who barks incessantly when his owner plays Rachmaninoff badly on the piano.”
“And why are you going, Mrs. D.?” asked Lucy.
“Dougie has a new anxiety condition called Canine Compulsive Disorder,” said my mother gravely. “It affects two percent of all dogs, according to a veterinary professor in Indiana.”
“Why, what does he do?”
“He’s rubbed his eyebrows off on the coconut matting in the back hall,” said Mum.
“He should learn to press on with life,” I said, “and you should stop overanalyzing your animals.” Mum waved at Dougie, who was barking at the kitchen window, and dashed down the lawn. “Poor demented Mum— I mean mutt,” I said.
I don’t know if we hit a sugar high but we fell about laughing. A bottle of wine or two later and I was tempted to drink-and-dial. “Don’t you dare,” screamed Jess, grabbing the phone. “You must not contact Julius again. He’ll think you’re stalking him.”
“Communicating is not stalking,” I reasoned. “Anyway, I’m not ringing Julius, I’m ringing Miles. He’s coming to lunch tomorrow.”
“Great,” beamed Lucy, “my flirting is awfully rusty.”
Miles, Lucy, Jess, and I were sitting in the garden drinking after an epic Sunday lunch. The lawn was awash with crumpled Sunday supplements and empty bottles of plonk. When I went inside for a tray of coffee, Lucy followed and collared me. “I’d forgotten that Miles is so goddamn sexy,” she said breathlessly. “Even hungover he’s completely gorgeous.”
I stared at him from the kitchen window. He had been regaling us with anecdotes of his conquest the night before and suddenly Jess threw back her head in hysterical glee—no doubt at the eye-wateringly awful, tawdry details.
Lucy was right. For a fleeting moment, when I first saw Miles grinning at the door, I considered him for myself. No doubt about it, he was one hell of a catch, and while I fancied him, I also knew that the frisson of physical attraction breathed life into our friendship; that the “will we or won’t we?” possibility loitered in the ether and gave our alliance an enduring, edgy quality. While it was fun to fantasize about getting down and dirty with Miles, the rational part of me knew that it would never work between us. What did work was being best mates with a guy I found attractive—after all, what male-female friendship is ever one hundred percent, bone-dry platonic?
Lucy put her hands to her flushed cheeks. “Do you think Miles could find me attractive?”
“Well, he was harping on about wanting to bang a yummy mummy,” I said. “Look at you, Lucy. You’re beautiful with a stunning figure. You’ve got exactly the sort of bullet body that Miles goes for. Why wouldn’t he want you?”
Lucy bit her lip. “Oh Jess, you’ve no idea how years of married going-through-the-motions sex with a man who doesn’t even notice if you’ve cut your hair, let alone had a bikini wax, erodes your self-esteem. I look at Miles, who’s so full of life and vigor, and I feel stale and shy and boring in comparison.”
“But is the answer to have an affair? Do you really think that cheating on Edward will make you feel better about yourself? Yes, you may get away with it and Edward may never know but you’ll know. How will you live with it up here?” I asked, gently tapping her forehead. “Is there really no way you and Edward can reignite things?”
Lucy slumped into a chair by the kitchen table. “Daisy, you know as well as I do that there is no greater loneliness than being in a marriage with someone who can no longer fulfill you.”
I nodded. “I do,” I said. “The worst is when you wake up, look at the man lying next to you, and realize that you have outgrown him. When your dreams and aspirations are no longer compatible, it is like sleeping with a sibling.”
“When I got engaged to Edward, I felt as if I had won some sort of life competition. Now I know to my cost that the point is not winning, it is knowing and being known. Edward doesn’t begin to know who I am anymore.”
“But do you know him? Perhaps he’s as lonely and unfulfilled as you.”
“How can you say that when you left Jamie?” said Lucy, getting huffy. “You know what it’s like not to be able to reach the man you married.”
“I do,” I said softly. “Jamie had this brick wall protecting his emotions that I tried to sandblast down with probing affection, but I just exhausted myself and he remained as blocked off as ever. All I am saying, Luce, is that you know when a relationship is truly over. You reach this ghostly dead zone, with its permanent chill, where you can’t raise any passion and you kill each other with phoney politeness. It’s all, ‘Do you want to use the bathroom first?’ ‘No, really, it’s okay, after you.’ As soon as you find yourself putting a towel around you when he catches you naked, you know it’s finished. I’m just not convinced that you and Edward are there yet.”
“You just don’t want me to sleep with Miles,” laughed Lucy.
“You’re probably right. More though, I don’t want you to get hurt. Miles is still into casual encounters. He’s forever gorging on McSex, fast-food coupling that leaves you feeling empty and slightly nauseous.”
Lucy got up and peered through the window at Miles, who was stretched out across the grass, his shirt buttons undone. “Oh, but a bit of a binge on something that’s bad for you can hit the spot sometimes. Can’t it?”
Although it was some time before I would start work in Miles’s bookshop, I turned myself immediately to researching books for the Mind/Body/Spirit section that I was going to run. I had moved some of my stuff into Jess’s spare room. It could have been a drunken disaster, us living together semipermanently, but instead of our going out and having lots of giggly girly nights, I did hours of soul surfing, getting spiritual on the Web. Jess couldn’t believe it the first time she came home from work and I was still hunched over my laptop. Despite her best efforts I refused a trip to the local wine bar. “No thanks. I prefer to expand my consciousness, not my waistline, tonight,” I said. “I’ll get high on
happy thoughts instead.”
“Your brain is already addled by all that crap,” she said, lighting a fag.
I batted the smoke away. “Actually I’ve just been reading about Sattva: the power of beingness. You should try and access some sattvic strength. It’s all about the inner integrity that let Buddha sit under the Bodhi tree until he became enlightened. It’s the same sort of power you feel in cathedrals and in forests.”
“And in looney bins?” she retorted.
Suddenly the doorbell rang. It was Lucy. All my sattvic calm drained away and I felt a flood of panic. Lucy looked like a gargoyle; her face was completely distorted with pain. Mascara streaked down her cheeks and her usually sleek hair appeared to have chunks hacked out of it. Before we could speak she threw herself on the floor and coiled up in a fetal position. Rocking back and forth, she emitted a guttural roar of agony.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” said Jess. “Stay calm, keep breathing. You’ve probably got a burst appendix.”
Lucy started beating the carpet with her fists. “I wish I had.” I gently took her hand. Jess poured her a brandy. When Lucy’s manic sobbing had subsided, she shouted, “The bastard! The complete, cowardly, fucking shit.”
“Who? Miles?” I said, thinking: “Here we go. He did ’n’ dumped her.”
“Not Miles. Edward.” Lucy flopped forward and started grabbing at her hair, trying to pull it from her head.
Jess eased her arms away. “Lucy, whatever is it? Here, sip some brandy and tell us what happened.”
Lucy took a swig, then a deep, steadying breath and began. “It was just past eight. Edward always leaves the house at six to be in the office when the markets open. Sometimes he rings while the girls are eating breakfast to say hello to them, but more often to bark some errand for me to run. I’d just come out of the shower and I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hi, darling, what do you want?’ and there was this strange pause. Then a woman’s voice said, ‘Is this Mrs. Primfold?’ She sounded decent and above board, so I assumed it was one of the mothers on the school run whom I hadn’t met yet. So I said cheerily, ‘Yes, this is Lucy Primfold, how can I help you?’ I wasn’t really concentrating, as I was sitting on the edge of my bed, still in my towel, rubbing in hand cream that I found on my bedside table. Then this voice said, ‘I’m really sorry to call you like this,’ and I suddenly got this ghastly feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s so strange how our instincts prepare us a second before the body blow. I knew then that this wasn’t a stressed mother looking for a favor. So I said, ‘Who is this?’ and again there was this long pause. My heart was racing. Eventually she said, ‘My name is Susie, and Edward and I have been seeing each other for two years.’ ‘Seeing each other?’ I asked lamely and she simply said, ‘We love each other. Look, I’m sorry to say this but it’s time to let him go.’”
Daisy Dooley Does Divorce Page 11