“I know. I know.” I blew him a kiss and turned for the door.
As I left he shouted out, “I’ll be here for you.” I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly so I turned around. He gave me a knowing nod. Did that mean physically “here” for me, in the bookshop, or “here” for me? Miles wasn’t seriously waiting in the wings, was he?
Julius took me to the bar at Blake’s Hotel. Although it was dark and sexy, all expensive lacquer and black orchids, it was where you met for a secret tryst, not for a no-holds-barred, let-me-turn-my-heart-inside-out, life-changing conversation. As he ordered champagne cocktails, I felt preempted and put out. He was clearly at home among the clientele: controlling men who couldn’t burn their money fast enough. The air was ripe with promiscuity. Women, flattered by the opulence, flicked their highlighted hair, thrust out their assets, and tittered. For me, none of it was a turn-on because it felt flat and dated. These people may be rolling in it but they were frauds because they were bankrupt, emotionally speaking. They didn’t yearn for a meaningful partnership, for souls to recognize each other and grow together. In fact, the mere concept of anything like that would make them gag on their gin and guffaw. They wanted to use each other. To them, all partners were replaceable. That was part of the fun. The danger and the diversity.
Julius sat close beside me and put his hand on my knee. Suddenly I didn’t want flirtatious gestures or coy asides. I wanted truth and authenticity and anything that would help me in my ultimate goal to feel whole. It was as if time was running out and I couldn’t waste another second on artifice.
“Why didn’t you want to marry me when we were in our twenties?” I asked.
He didn’t flinch. That’s what I always liked about him—his control. “We were too young. We didn’t know what we wanted.”
“I did. I wanted you. From the minute I set eyes on you, I loved you.” I tapped my heart with my fist. “From here. Really loved you. But you? You couldn’t trust your heart, could you?” He took an almost imperceptible intake of breath. But I heard it. His hesitancy. His shame. “You still can’t. Don’t you think I deserve that, Julius? To be loved?” Tears were welling and I willed them away.
“I think about you all the time, Daisy. I can’t get you out of my mind.”
“That’s just it,” I shouted. “I don’t want to be in your mind, I want to be in your life. Inside you. To be part of you.”
An overly made-up, miniskirted piece of totty in her twenties looked across and giggled. I shot her a look. Silly thing couldn’t begin to understand where I was coming from if she tried.
“That’s the problem,” said Julius, his voice low and grave. “You always want too much.”
I stood up and made my way out of the bar, up the stairs. I couldn’t stand that oppressive atmosphere a second longer. As soon as I reached the street, he was there, behind me. “All I ever wanted was for you to let me love you,” I shouted. “To make it real. Not just harbor some adolescent fantasy that lived up here.” I tapped my temples.
“Is this real?” He grabbed me and pulled me into his embrace. He tilted my face to his and kissed me.
“Don’t, don’t!” I tried to break free. “Please don’t do this.”
“Well, what do you want?” he roared, exasperated.
“I . . . I just want you to hold me.”
As he held me close, I wept into his suit lapel. I could feel myself unraveling. “Don’t cry,” he whispered into my hair. “Please don’t cry.”
“I can’t go on like this anymore,” I said.
And then I heard him say, “Neither can I.”
Before I knew it, Julius had whisked me into a lavish suite in the hotel. Not for anything untoward, he explained, but because we needed somewhere private to talk. In other words, he couldn’t stand the spectacle of me crying in the street. I went into the bathroom and pressed my head against the cool marble wall. Emotionally spun out, I wanted to get into the vast tub with all those expensive unguents and let it all wash away. I ran the bath and was trance-like as the water surged forth. Sitting on the side of the tub, my head in my hands, I closed my eyes and thought that the crucial life question is not, “Why are we here?” but as Camus put it, “Why shouldn’t we kill ourselves?” Clearly deranged, I found this unbelievably funny and started laughing.
Suddenly Julius was at the door shouting. Water was gushing all over the bathroom floor. With the high pressure, the bath had filled in a nanosecond and a gully of water was charging for the cream carpet outside. While I switched off the taps, he slammed the door shut and threw towels on the floor, kneeling on them to soak up the water. What I loved about Julius was that there was no hint of censure—no tight look that read, “You stupid broad, we could be liable for thousands if the ceiling gives downstairs,” and that wasn’t because the money was no big deal. It was because he, like me, had a glorious sense of the absurd. We fell about on the soggy towels, rocking with laughter. Soon, someone was at the door and every time they knocked, we collapsed again, helpless.
Later, when apologies and credit cards had been dispensed, we lay on the bed in toweling robes, waiting for our clothes to dry. Side by side, on our backs, we were close but not touching. He turned on his side and was about to speak when I said, “Don’t. It doesn’t matter because I know you don’t want to leave Alice and the baby.”
“Oh, I want to,” he said, his voice filled with longing, “but I can’t. Every day I have this battle. My head says, ‘You’ve got a wife and a child. You must be responsible. You must do the right thing.’ But my heart says, ‘I can’t. I love Daisy.’ So my head says, ‘You must, you must.’ Then my heart says, ‘But how can I go on for the next twenty years?’ And my head says, ‘You must.’”
As hard as it was to hear, because I loved Julius, I understood. “It’s not the courage to leave we need, it’s the courage to listen to our hearts,” I said softly.
Julius reached across and touched my arm. “I’m not sure I can live without you.”
“You’re going to have to,” I said firmly, “because it’ll destroy me to have to share you. I don’t want part-time love, I want a full-time partner. I want us to be able to go on holiday together, to plan out our lives, to fill each other’s stockings at Christmas. I’m so proud of the man you are, Julius, that I want to be able to openly claim you. To walk down the street freely, arms entwined. I can’t do the sneaking off, the lies, and the deceit. If it was just a short affair, it would be different. But this is the real thing and you can’t compromise with love. That’s the point.”
I started to get off the bed when Julius pulled me back.
“Bite me,” he said.
“Bite you?” I laughed, stunned.
“I want to have your imprint on me,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then let me bite you.” He lifted the toweling robe up my thigh. Before I could stop him he bit the side of my bottom. I let out a yelp of pain. His pressure was perfect; enough to bruise me but not enough to scar me. Was that like our love? We looked at the rising red welt and then at each other, speechless. In that moment, my heart had never felt more full.
“You can search the world but you’ll never meet anyone like me,” he said.
“And you’ll never meet another me.” I smiled.
Before I knew it we were devouring each other, seeking each other out. Kissing and clinging as if each moment might be our last. Julius was instantly inside me and while everything in me knew it was wrong, nothing had ever felt more right. We may have made love years before but this felt different because it meant so much more. So this is what real intimacy was; that feeling that had nothing to do with physical touch. Oh, he was touching me all right. Running his hands all over my body, openly claiming me. He kept whispering, “Daisy, we fit. We are the perfect match,” and when he looked into my eyes, I knew for the first time what it was to be completely united. In that moment, there was no one or nothing else in the entire world that mattered. We
came together and afterwards we lay in silence as he held me. After a while, with rising dread at the prospect of leaving and knowing that one night is never long enough for new—or in our case renewed—love, without saying a word, I went into the bathroom to dress.
As I stood by the door to leave, Julius said, “Why do you have to be so absolutist? We could have a life together, just not in the form you want. You think you’re kooky and rebellious, Daisy, but deep down, you’re so damn pedestrian and conventional.”
I didn’t have the energy for a fight and I knew he was lashing out because he was scared too. “I know,” I said. “It’s as much of a shock to me to find out that I want a stable, committed union with all the trappings after all.” I threw my hands in the air. “Look: you’re married. You’re never going to leave your wife. It is what it is,Julius.” I shrugged and walked swiftly away. As I stood in the lift, I felt myself recoil inside. Why did I have to make our parting shot so taut and unemotional? I sounded like a stressed accountant faced with a nasty spreadsheet when this was our Brief Encounter moment. Leaving that hotel was as poignant for me as Celia Johnson watching Trevor Howard’s train chug out of the station. Yet I had none of her dignity. Her heartrending aplomb. Oh, but we did share the same inner ache.
I walked out of the hotel, too afraid to feel how frightened I was. I wandered aimlessly around South Kensington, not sure what to do or where to go next. You don’t realize how deeply you care about someone until you are faced with never feeling them touch you again. I held the image of Julius in my head as he stood by the door of our hotel room, looking suddenly older and knowingly sober. The way he hung his head to one side suggested that he, too, had had his dreams infected by the blight of unexpected events in life. There seemed to be a point in adulthood when you had to put your hand on your heart and admit that you never expected things to turn out like this. Maturity was about accepting and transforming disappointment, so was this my time to acquiesce with good grace?
I made my way back to Jess’s, praying that when I got there he would be waiting for me. The adolescent romantic in me just could not accept that he wasn’t going to turn up and surprise me. I kept looking at my mobile, waiting for that call or text that said, “I’m coming for you.” But there was no message. No text. Unable to face myself alone in Jess’s flat, I wandered to my local bookshop and fast-tracked to the self-help section like an addict on autopilot for her fix. I picked up a book, opened to a page at random, took a deep breath, and read: “When we listen with the ear of the soul, we hear stories that need forgiveness. When we listen from ego, we take these stories as truth.” So I couldn’t blame Julius for not fighting for me, could I? For not disrupting his whole world in the name of our love. It didn’t mean he didn’t care enough, it just meant that it wasn’t meant to be. Didn’t it? Well, that was the positive spin to put on it, I thought bitterly.
As I sat in a coffee shop, unable to even taste my coffee, I reflected on how being with Julius was like finding that your black-and-white life was suddenly in glorious technicolor and surround sound. How many men make you feel that vivid and alive? I watched people eating, drinking, laughing, and loving and thought how flat and gray my life felt. And yet, even as I was going through the well-worn “woe is me” routine, there was a part of me, like a tiny flame first ignited in kindling, that was alight. I was bored of twenty years of thrashing myself in mental self-flagellation, bemoaning the lengthy wait to meet my romantic match. I could no longer stomach my eternal fear of “whichever way you turn now, it’s a long journey to the oasis of happiness.” Now, on the cusp of forty, I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way. I was going to get out there and get my life right. I dug around in my wallet for Jennie Skipwith’s card. I would contact her at Insight Publications as I’d had an idea. Then I grabbed my phone and sent Julius a text: “Darling Julius, If not this lifetime, maybe the next? I wish it could have been you but I understand. Be good to yourself and find the courage to be happy. You deserve so much and more. D. x.”
12
Immaculate
Misconception
I wrote on the blackboard in stark, white chalk: “The suffering that results from betraying our soul’s call far surpasses any trite pain.” I sat back and sighed. It had been a couple of weeks since my last encounter with Julius and I didn’t know how I was going to live without him. But I did know that I would continue to be true to myself. It was my fortieth birthday in ten days’ time and I knew with complete conviction that I wasn’t going to settle ever again in life. Not for a mediocre job nor a half-baked bloke because I knew from experience that hard-edged compromise—not a gentle tugging here and a little relenting there—cuts to the quick. That is when the soul goes into revolt.
Miles came up. “Oh for goodness sake, Dooley, can’t you write something a little more upbeat? It’s December next week and we need some festive cheer. We want happy, extravagant shoppers, not depressed dead ringers for Scrooge.”
“Okay, tomorrow I’ll do a jolly ‘Ho ho ho, don’t mourn the end of the year, let Christmas be your new beginning. Give birth to your own miracle by believing in your dreams.’”
“On second thought maybe I prefer the grim moralizing.” He handed me the post and I started absentmindedly flicking through it. When I saw a letter from Insight Publications, my heart did a leap of excitement mixed with fear.
Hands trembling, I quickly ripped open the letter, skim read it, and let out a yelp of pleasure. I punched the air and shouted an orgasmic “Yes! Yes! YES!!”
Miles looked up. “Don’t tell me. Julius has sent you a copy of his decree nisi?”
“No, but this is second best,” I said, elated. I ran up to Miles and hugged him tightly. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for me. You’re going to have to find some new sucker you can pay a pittance to and bait all day long.”
“Why?” Miles asked, surprised.
“I’m leaving you,” I said. “I sent in a proposal for a book I want to write and they’ve commissioned it!”
I jumped up and down, ecstatic. “I’m going to write my own guide to surviving divorce. It’s going to be called Daisy Dooley Does Divorce.” Triumphantly I waved the letter under his nose.
Suddenly it was as if decades of backed-up grief, of wondering when my moment was going to come, came forward. The relief of feeling that I was finally going to be validated for something I had to offer, that a small talent, however quirky or offbeat, was being recognized, made all the past rejection seem poignant and almost worthwhile. It was no less painful but in a funny way, even this success hurt because it made me realize how long I’d trudged along wondering if I’d ever find my place in the sun. I’d lived the loneliness of the outsider being cold-shouldered for so long that I hadn’t realized until this moment what a strain it had been. Always being overlooked by the man you want or feeling that the creative fulfillment you crave eludes you numbs something vital inside. I had pins and needles and while it stung all over, I felt excited and alive.
I sat on the floor, slowly rereading the letter, overcome. Miles crouched down and said, “Of course it’ll hurt, leaving me and our happy little setup. You’ll never find a boss as easygoing and indulgent. Who else would actually encourage you to fiddle your expenses?” He paused, adding with genuine feeling, “And you’ll never find a boss who adores you more. Congrats, Daise, you may be disloyal for ditching me but I’m proud of you.”
“Really?”
“Really. You have no idea how loved you are, do you?”
I stared at him, nonplussed. “Just because Julius hasn’t turned up on some massive great steed waving a ring doesn’t mean nothing else counts for anything in your life,” he said, unusually serious. “But you’ve got friends who would kill for you, you’ve got a book deal, and for a batty, nearly menopausal broad, you’re in pretty good shape. I’d shag you, you know that?”
“Thanks!” I said, adding jokingly, “That means everything to me. Finally, I feel like a real woman at
last.”
Miles was partly right. Just because I wasn’t going to waltz up the aisle with Julius didn’t mean that the next phase of my life was devoid of meaning, did it? “I’m so used to rejection and feeling a failure,” I explained, “it’s as if I don’t know how to feel successful and happy anymore.”
“You’re gonna find out,” he said, “because Insight isn’t some rinky-dink outfit, they’re the real deal.”
That night Lucy and Jess joined us in the bookshop and we drank champagne and ate Chinese takeaway. Jess stood on a chair and made a toast: “To our darling Daisy, who’s finally found her vocation. She did it the emotionally punishing way, of course, as the only thing she overworked were her tear ducts, but her pain is now lucrative pain because she understands all the screwups out there looking for love who overdose on spirit-lit and therapylite! Please, my good friends and potential fuck buddy,” she said, eyeing Miles keenly, “raise your mugs of warm Moët to Miss Daisy Dooley, the only woman we know about to enter her fifth decade who still believes in guardian angels yet managed to make it to her honeymoon before it hit her that she’d married a prize turkey. To the only woman I know to defy medical fact by claiming she got pregnant while ‘having her period’ on the only one-night stand of her entire, sexually insignificant little life. Yet we must not forget that she did remember to use a condom with a man who’d had a vasectomy. To a woman who has kept us entertained for two decades with her will he/won’t he Julius saga and who has—thank you God or possibly her guardian angel, at last!—put him to bed by banging his brains out. And finally, because she believes in feeling every feeling, she’s a woman who cries when she’s happy and cries when she’s sad. She cries when she’s horny . . .”
“And she cries when she’s hungry,” cut in Lucy.
“Oh God, you’re not one of those awful chicks who cries when she comes, are you?” asked Miles.
Daisy Dooley Does Divorce Page 25