My problem was that while I had an insistent longing for a child, it wasn’t the sort of deafening clarion call that consumed me. Even after my possible last chance for motherhood with Troy, I clearly wanted the man and then the baby (preferably in that order), not a baby at all costs, or I would have kept Troy’s. I knew that there were women of my generation—Jess, for example, who considered it demeaning to keep harping on about wanting a boyfriend like a moony teenager, and who, in the absence of a willing cock, would simply shrug their shoulders and adopt. Or pay a sperm donor. But I didn’t want to do any of it on my own; the idea of single motherhood was far, far worse than simply being single and alone.
Mum was right about one thing though: I wasn’t getting real about how stuck I was. But at what point do we finally accept that our dreams are just that—dreams—and press on with hard-edged reality? “What are you waiting for?” repeated Mum softly.
I wanted to scream, “Julius! I am waiting for the only man who has the ability to turn me inside out, the only man whom I felt I loved before I even met.” I couldn’t tell my mother that the imprint of Julius, who was married to someone else, was still embedded on my psyche, could I?
I stared out of the window at the fields flashing by. When we got home I put on my faded flannel pajamas, filled a hot water bottle, went to bed, and sobbed. The grief that spilled out across the pillows was almost a relief because it explained why I felt like an outsider in my own world. As if part of me was never present—yet how could I function when so much of me was numb with disappointment? Would I ever get over the fact that my marriage failed? It was a shock to discover how much pain I was still in. But the truth was that I wasn’t just mourning Jamie and the life we never had together. I was in turmoil over Julius and the life we would never have.
Three days later I met Julius for dinner. We sat in a minimalist sushi bar, full of sleek, figure-conscious types, and the way he ordered for me, knowing what delicacies I would enjoy—the lobster seviche and the scallop tempura—made me see everything with sudden clarity. Being with Julius felt like coming home but I couldn’t run from the truth a moment longer. It was like we were in a bubble of perfection but it wasn’t real. I didn’t want the certainty of the present time, however dreamy. I wanted the unknown of a future together. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said, sighing.
“What?” he said.
I gestured toward him. “This.”
“This?” he questioned, laughing. “How can there be any ‘this’ when you have a boyfriend?”
I looked at him blankly. “Miles?” he prompted.
“Miles is irrelevant to ‘this.’ Just as Alice is. You know that.”
He smiled at me.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “It’s not fair.” I cleared my throat. “You know, we fall in love for the major reasons but they manifest themselves in the minor things. Pretty soon, you can’t tell if you love the quirks because they’re his, or you love a man because of the quirks. All I know is that I love you, Julius. I love you because you drive sitting bolt upright and you lean forward when you overtake. I love you because of your impeccable manners. I love you because you loathe coriander and because you adore the scent of gardenias. I love you because we share a sense of the absurd and because you are the most attractive man when you laugh caught off guard. I love you because you are secretive and passionate about your butterflies and because breeding them must be the most tender hobby in the world. I love you because despite your vast wealth you’re nonmaterialistic, because to you it’s the priceless things that matter—the dew on morning grass, a delicious cup of coffee in a pavement café in the afternoon sun—and yet you have one of the most valuable objets d’art in the world, a Fabergé egg, sitting on your bedside table. I love you because you never bore me and because you always make me feel that any time we have together isn’t enough. I love you because you are you but I can’t go on like ‘this’ because not being with you is tearing me apart.”
I sat back and watched as Julius meticulously folded his napkin into a perfect square. When he looked up at me he said, “I didn’t think that amount of love was possible until I met you.”
“Well, it is,” I said. “You just have to have the courage to receive it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It doesn’t have to be this complicated either.” I stood up. “Why does it feel like I’m the only one getting hurt?”
“Don’t think that just because I don’t have the answer I’m not searching for it,” said Julius.
“Good-bye, my darling one,” I said, not wanting to leave but willing myself to.
“Don’t go,” he implored.
“No,” I said impatiently. “If you love me, let me go.”
He grabbed my hand. “First, hear what I have to say.”
I sat back down and leaned toward him, tapping my fingers nervously on the table. “So? What is it?”
Julius drew back his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Alice is pregnant.” Each word felt like a hammer blow to my body. I stared at him, stunned. “Alice is four months pregnant. She’s having my baby,” he repeated, his eyes locking with mine.
Inside I began chanting, “I must not cry, I must not cry,” yet the shock was so intense, I could feel tears welling from my very core. I kicked myself for not having left ten minutes earlier because then, at least, I would have walked away on high ground. Now he had pulled the earth from beneath my feet and it was all I could do not to buckle. Part of me considered that he must really hate me or why else would he torture me with this information when earlier I had confessed how much I loved him?
“She was up the duff when you married her?” I said, aware that my lips and legs were trembling.
“Elegantly put, but yes,” Julius replied. “It was a happy accident. I’ve told you, I would have married her anyway.”
I realized that it was pointless trying to be brave or pretend that I was pleased for him because I was completely broken by this. I lowered my head and watched the tears roll into my miso soup. Before long, my crying had developed into full-on, runny snot sobbing. “Don’t mind me,” I gasped, “I’m just having a breakdown.”
I knew that such an emotional display would repulse Julius, yet what did I care now? I was completely taken aback when he looked at me tenderly and said, “No, you’re not. We’re having a breakthrough.”
“Yes, you and Alice,” I said bitterly. “Not me.”
“No,” said Julius. “Let me explain. Finding out that Alice is having my child has changed everything.”
“You said it,” I sighed.
“You don’t understand.” Julius was almost laughing. “Knowing that Alice is having my baby these past months has made me realize how much I love you.”
I looked at him through a haze of salty tears and smudged mascara.
“Actually I think you’re having the breakdown,” I said. “You’ve gone crazy.”
Julius shrugged. “Becoming a father does funny things to you, but when Alice told me she was pregnant, I was aware of only one feeling: of wishing I was having the baby with you. I tried to ignore it but it won’t go away.”
My heart seemed to rupture. “Oh Julius, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me but it’s too late,” I said. Not for the first time, he handed me his handkerchief. It felt cool and expensive as I held it to my face.
“It’s never too late,” he said.
I tried to stem the flow of my tears but it was useless. “Why is this happening to me?” I said, pressing my hand against my pounding forehead. “Why is our timing always out of kilter? You can’t abandon Alice now. It’s completely hopeless. We’ll never be together.”
“You’re right. I can’t divorce Alice, but Daisy, I still want to have a baby with you.”
“Are you completely insane?”
“Not at all. From the minute Alice told me the news I’ve thought of nothing else. I want you to be the mother of a child of mine be
cause what we have is special, Daise. Sure, things are messy, but it’s never been conventional between us. I love you more than anyone because you’re the only one who understands me.” He paused. “I love you, Daisy Dooley, because you adore green olives but you loathe black. I love you because you feel everything, all the time, and because you have to tell everyone, all the time, how you are feeling. I love you because you are the craziest girl I have ever met—because you are you and because you get me.”
I was crying so much, laughing in parts, that I wondered if the restaurant would be calling psychiatric backup at any minute. “Oh Julius,” I said. I held my hand against my chest as if I feared my heart might stop.
“I know that you’ll be a great mother,” Julius said, “because you were brought up to believe that you could do anything in life whereas I was made to feel that nothing I could do would ever be enough.”
“Don’t you think I haven’t prayed that one day we would have a child together?” I said. “But not like this. I didn’t dream of being a single mother, while you and Alice played happy family down the road.” Almost hyperventilating, I tried to steady my breath.
“I thought you loved me,” said Julius, crestfallen.
“I do but I can’t have a child under these circumstances.”
“You’ll want for nothing,” he said. “You’ll have everything.”
I looked at him. “No, Julius, I’ll have nothing because I won’t have you.”
I left Julius, my equilibrium shattered. My head was in such turmoil that I decided to walk back to Jess’s Battersea flat. The night air felt cool against my puffy, tear-scorched face. Any gust of wind was a relief.
As I walked by the river Thames, I thought of Virginia Woolf, who wrote of Turgenev’s fiction that the meaning of what he said went on long after the sound had stopped. Regardless of the decision I made, Julius’s offer would stay with me forever because it was life changing. If I did not choose to have his child, would I ever have a child with anyone else? Would I end up alone, pregnant with regret? If I did agree to let him father my baby, would I be signing up for a lifetime’s worth of heartbreak, similarly underpinned by regret? It was typical that in his Master of the Universe style, Julius saw nothing as beyond his reach. Just married a society beauty who’s pregnant? Why should that be any kind of barrier to having another child out of wedlock with your first and true love?
I sat down on a bench and stared at the reflection of the lights bouncing on the water. Why couldn’t I play my life safe like everyone else? It would have been so much easier if I could have stayed married to Jamie, had a couple of Prattlocks, and built a life on safe, solid rock, instead of running on porous pipe dreams.
“Daisy?” I felt a hand brush against my shoulder and jumped. I turned around to see Susie standing behind me. She gestured to the bench. “May I?” I nodded. She sat down.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’ve been better,” she said.
“Me too.”
We sat in amiable silence before she said, “I moved into a new flat last week.”
“God, I’m so sorry about Edward.”
“Yes,” she sighed. “But I think in the long run, it was for the best.”
“Did you think Edward was going to marry you?”
“I suppose I did,” she said. “I mean, when he put my name on the deeds of the flat, I thought that was a real commitment. I knew if we ended up together there would always be the specter of the ex-wife and kids, and while that wasn’t what I’d dreamed of, what situation is these days?” I let out a hollow laugh. “I used to think I wanted to get married more than anything,” continued Susie. “But Edward’s deceit has changed that. For some people, marriage means ‘You’re mine now.’ That can be the beginning of the failure of a relationship. Psychologically, something happens when a man says, ‘You’re my wife now. You can’t do this or that.’ It’s about ownership. That freedom of two people loving each other and wanting to be together—and being able to leave if anything is wrong—is gone. Ideally I’d like to have a child in a committed relationship but I don’t crave the ring and the register office anymore. Maybe something good has come out of this because I’ve moved on from that.”
Susie seemed so wise and centered that I couldn’t help blurting out everything that happened during my dinner with Julius. After she had digested it, she said, “It’s tempting because you love him and I suspect part of you is drawn to the romance of the unconventional, but it sounds to me like you want the man more than the baby and that’s not what’s on offer here.” I swallowed hard. Susie had nailed it. “You’d always be connected to him through a child but it would be a mistake to think that he’s indirectly dangling the carrot of commitment in front of you because he isn’t, any more than Edward was to me when he bought that flat. I suspect that he doesn’t want to lose you from his life but he isn’t brave enough to wholeheartedly claim you either.”
“You’re right.” I nodded, fighting tears. “I needed to hear this. Thank you.”
She hugged me tightly. “Ditch the man-child, then everything becomes clear.”
“I’m so tired,” I said, pulling away.
Susie studied her watch. “Christ, yes, it is late.”
“No, tired of having to save myself because I’ve realized that maybe the guy on the white charger ain’t gonna show.”
Although I knew I had made the right decision not to have a child with Julius, it was torture trying to get him out of my head. I was like a junkie; my thoughts about him exploded in spasms of need and desire. Since I had read that the underlying suffering of all addiction is self-centeredness, I decided to focus on someone else who was trying to navigate the moral speed bumps of life. I went to visit Lucy, who had taken her daughters to stay with her parents in Dorset for the beginning of the summer holidays. While her girls frolicked on the beach with their grandparents, Lucy and I lay morosely in the garden.
“Do you know what Edward said when I challenged him about his affair with Susie?” said Lucy, applying sunblock to her face. “When I said, ‘Why Susie?’ he said ‘There wasn’t anything that special about her but she listened and she was interested in me. That made me feel special.’ I was so furious, I said ‘Yes, Edward, we all want to feel like we matter to somebody.’”
“I think Edward is quite wrong about Susie. You may not want to hear this, Luce, but Susie is kind and perceptive. She deserved far better than Edward, just as you did. Anyway, you know it’s over between them?”
Lucy nodded. “Yes. Susie wrote me the most decent letter apologizing and explaining that she had no idea that Edward’s marriage was intact when she slept with him.”
“What are you going to do?” I refilled our glasses with chilled rosé.
“I’m going back to him,” said Lucy, twiddling her wedding ring.
I felt a jolt of outrage. “Why?” I cried out plaintively.
“Because I haven’t got the strength or the courage to start all over again. Plus I have two little girls who need their father.”
I managed to remain silent while Lucy continued. “I’ve spent the last weeks combing through the ashes of our marriage, wondering if there was anything to salvage. I realized that the idea of marriage to Edward didn’t repel me. Edward and I had a long talk last weekend,” said Lucy. “I tried to practice empathetic listening, to see if I could understand him.” She groaned. “God, it was torture. Half the time I wanted to reach out and throttle him.”
“There’s a Buddhist principle that says to ask yourself before you say anything, Is it kind? Is it true? Is it useful?” I laughed ruefully. “It’s a good idea but if I applied that, I’d never be able to speak again.”
Lucy giggled and rolled on to her side. “The weirdest thing was that I had no idea that I made Edward feel inadequate. I was far too busy feeling inferior myself.”
“Yup, it’s a mistake to buy into the supermasculine myth,” I said, thinking of Julius. “Up close, men are just as scr
ewed up and complex as we are.”
“Edward told me that when a man feels lousy, he thinks his partner purposely tries to make him feel bad,” explained Lucy. “For example, if you say, ‘You cut yourself shaving,’ it’s as if you’ve said ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re such a loser. A real man would know how to shave.’”
“So when are you returning to the fragile male ego, the tiny hairs in the sink, the piles of coins and crumpled receipts?” I asked gently.
“Soon. I’m only here because I’ve got to be somewhere. The problem is that it’s taking me so long to get past my rage.”
“Give yourself time. Buddhists say that the longest journey you will make in your life is dropping from your head to your heart. For this to work you’ve got to stop thinking about what Edward did and concentrate on feeling forgiveness and rebuilding trust.”
“I don’t have many expectations now,” said Lucy emptily. “I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that lifelong marriage means shared disappointment, boredom, and endless compromise.”
“That’s not marriage, that’s settling,” I said.
“But you didn’t settle and you’re still on your own,” said Lucy. “Is that any better?”
“Infinitely,” I said, half believing it myself. “Because I still live in hope that I won’t be alone forever.”
7
Mr. Knightly-in-
Shining-Armor?
Miles postponed the opening of his bookshop due to the discovery of woodworm in the bookshelves, so I had a week to myself before I began work in the Mind/Body/Spirit section. I went to visit my mother with a hefty sack of self-help books in tow. On the train I got busy with the highlighter pen. “If you feel incomplete, you alone must fill yourself with love in all your empty shattered spaces.” It was true—my heart was like Miles’s shelves, gnawed and splintered with emotional woodworm. I read on: “The difference between a little life and a big life is trust. Trust is the midwife of a big life. People only choose little lives because they don’t trust and they want to control.” That’s the most difficult thing in life, I thought, getting the balance right between not giving up on your dreams and yet having enough faith in their fruition to let them go.
Daisy Dooley Does Divorce Page 14