Julia Gets a Life

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  I told her I was confused about why I felt so much fury at Rhiannon when I’m feeling so non-plussed at the idea of having Richard back and am, indeed, considering the prospect of having a boyfriend (or boyfriends?) with such relish.

  Rani thinks the one has nothing much to do with the other. She thinks Rhiannon is a bitch and a tart and that she probably got off lightly.

  ‘But ahh,’ she said, pointing a manicured talon. ‘How would you feel if you knew Richard was still seeing her?’

  I would be mortified, of course.

  Is that it, then? That I can cast Richard aside only on the understanding that he remains celibate at number 7 Malachite Street?

  I think perhaps it is.

  Or is it just that I cannot bear the thought of Rhiannon De Laney having him?

  Maybe.

  Or do I just hate her, period, because she slept with my husband – regardless of what the outcome of that act turned out to be i.e. not as bad as I thought, bordering on being rather good in places, as it happens?

  Perhaps.

  Or am I just kidding myself? Do I really, deep down, still love Richard and want him back and am I just operating on a knee jerk reaction level to the loss of pride engendered by becoming a victim, which is manifesting itself in a desire to have a sexual relationship with someone else? In short, an affair on the rebound?

  Could be. I try to remember what it felt like all those years ago on the day when we both said ‘I do.’ I wish I could capture it; pull it out and inspect it; try it on again and see if it still fits. I remember a tall young man standing beside me. A long roman nose, just a hint of some stubble. A grey suit – too big for him – a slightly skewed button hole, a faint sheen of sweat at the edge of his brow. I even remember his touch in the vestry, his whispered ‘we did it!’, his incredulous tone. I think I remember, too, how much I loved him. But that was then, wasn’t it? And all this is now.

  How do you untangle all the stuff in the middle and find your way back to the basic emotion? And, more to the point, should you even try? Aren’t the feelings you have when you’re older indivisible from the sum of the bits in between?

  God, I don’t know. I am so, so confused.

  What I probably need right now is a bottle of wine and a take away curry.

  By the time Dial-A-Dhal has my naan slapped against the side of the tandoor, I have begun to feel my equilibrium returning. I have forty two entrants, sixteen new family sittings booked, a pair of half-price Pingu slipper socks (plus discount) from the Planet Kid ‘Don’t Bin It!’ bin, and there is an EastEnders hour long special on the telly.

  And I have faced Rhiannon at last. The only way is up.

  Chapter 6

  Thnk I’ve finally absorbed some robust Celtic grit. Not quite to the extent of humming Men of Harlech in the bath or anything, but I can see some point to doing the lottery again. ‘Up’ is my new mission statement. Together with hackneyed but bracing couplets such as ‘onwards and upwards’ and ‘fight the good fight’ and ‘seize the day’ even. All well and good and to be thankful for.

  Trouble is, I seem to find that even the simplest of social exchanges involve me in being branded the sad, hapless victim, which doesn’t sit well with my thrusting new mind-set.

  I was standing in the anti-chamber of Sainsbury’s today – that part where you wipe the soft Welsh rain off your trolley, visit the ladies, or succumb to a tasting of whatever is currently being pushed (or more recently, and intriguingly, to telephone Sainsburys Bank [buy!buy before launching into the weekly shop)when I found myself face to face with the terrifying Moira Bugle, who, as we all know locally, is the style guru of the professional woman in resting phase. I suspect Moira Bugle has been ‘resting’ since before tank tops came out first time around, but that’s possibly why she’s so darn good at it. She is to the noughties what the hostess trolley and pyjama suit were to the seventies and her raison d’etre is the charity lunch. In short, she personifies the Lady of North Cardiff to whom we should all – in her opinion – aspire. But now that my status has so radically shifted, Moira Bugle doesn’t frighten me any more. So I’m liberated at least, if still misunderstood.

  ‘Julia, how are you, my lovely? It must be a couple of months since we saw you two in the Dog and Trouserleg.’ She forms her glossy mouth into puckered enquiry. It’s been three, in fact.

  ‘That’s because I’ve left Richard,’ I told her.

  Inhalation. ‘Left him?’

  ‘Well, thrown him out, really.’

  ‘Thrown him out?’

  ‘Well, he left, and I…’

  ‘Left you, my lovely? How could he?’ Hand on bosom. ‘But why?’

  ‘Because I told him to. Well, sort of. He..I…he slept with someone, and… well, we’ve split up, and…’

  ‘With who? No, don’t tell me. No, do tell me. Who?’

  ‘Rhiannon De Laney.’

  ‘Rhiannon De Laney? Rhiannon De Laney!’

  Then, ‘RHIANNON DE LANEY!’ For the benefit of the lady plugging the leek potage, presumably.

  ‘Yes, her.’

  Moira’s frosted pink fingers rattle the trolley. ‘Great Saints alive! So you’ve split up? I should say so. SHR!’

  ‘SHR?’

  ‘Serves Him Right, my darling. You poor child (Moira is forty seven). How could he? And you so…so… Oh!’ She embraces me, heartily.

  Of course, what I really wanted to get across was that the leaving, though Richard’s in a physical sense, was very much mine in a philosophical one. But I can’t keep going around saying I’ve left Richard because people keep getting confused. My GP actually reached for my notes last week and began scribbling across my address. On the other hand, I don’t want to say Richard’s left me, because then people think that he really has left me – which winds me up, obviously, because there is a whole world of difference between your husband having a quick one (two) and you kicking him out, and him leaving you for another woman. Which means I have to start putting them straight which confuses them further and…Pah! Why is life so complicated?

  TTD Monday. Find succinct grouping of words to accurately describe potential (actual?) breakdown of marriage, with clear reference to housing arrangements, without sounding like a pathetic, sad person on Jerry Springer.

  Trouble is, every time I find myself explaining the circumstances of Richard’s departure to anyone I have this compelling urge to burst into tears regardless of whether I’m feeling happy at the time or not, which is both crazy and inconvenient, and will make people think I am just hanging-on-by-a-thread. And I cannot remonstrate with them about it because everyone knows that you only bang on about how you’re definitely holding it all together when you’re about as together as a half finished jumper with the knitting needle whipped out. And as soon as my face takes on that characteristic wrestling with itself appearance, people always want to clutch me to them and put their arms around me, which everybody also knows just makes it a zillion times worse. I feel a bit like an ear with a gobbet of wax in it. The more someone tries to gently tease bits out, the more it begins to hurt. Perhaps I (and my babes, of course) should leave the house. At least that way I won’t have to keep explaining things all the time. I blame pregnancy. Before I got pregnant I watched the whole of Gone With The Wind without so much of a sniff. Now I cry at Bernard Matthew’s chicken commercials. How low can you sink?

  On this occasion however, I was rescued from the sobering prospect of having my chin wobble in front of Moira Bugle – which would have involved me in being made to sit down on a bench, copious squeezing of my upper arm, and quite possibly some hapless sixth former part-time shelf-stacker being dispatched to the staff room to fetch hot sweet tea and a bourbon biscuit – by the timely arrival of Mr Bennett, the man who brings me door to door kitchen gadgets and the like, and who Richard always insists we make some sort of purchase from as he is trying, apparently, to eke out a living. Two things struck me on seeing him. One was the
Jaguar key fob in his hand and the other was Richard’s clearly quite selective attachment to moral responsibility. Another note – TTD; mention my possible need to become a full time home based principal carer with special reference to burdens on state type stuff. That should put a cold atlantic current under his stiffy.

  Anyway, the arrival of Mr Bennett at least ensured that I was able to steer the conversation away from my marriage and on to the safer ground of my new plastic canapé maker.

  ‘Well! ‘ said Moira, at last. ‘That sounds like exactly the sort of thing I could use, wouldn’t you say?’ Moira is famous for her imaginative nibbles, but even Mr Bennett had shuffled away. Sales at any price? I think not.

  ‘Probably more use than I’m likely to be making of it for the forseeable future,’ I said.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Moira rattled on seamlessly, patting at the chestnut coloured scupture that was her hair. ‘It’s actually rather fortuitous me bumping into you today. I was going to phone you…’ Oh, yeah? ‘To invite you over for dinner next weekend. Well, fair play, you and Richard, originally, but of course it would be just lovely if you could come along on your own. We don’t hold with any of that couples nonsense, round our way, do we? Do say you’re free.’

  I toyed with the idea of invoking the old ‘I don’t think I’d be very good company’ excuse but decided that as well as being untrue (of course I would – I am an item-of-interest) it would also sound pathetic. The least one can do in the face of such a blatant sympathy invitation, is to accept it graciously. Because, when all is said and done, what does it matter that Moira knows that I know that she had no more intention of inviting Richard and I over that swinging naked from her waxed pine victorian airer? It’s surely the thought that counts. And whatever criticisms one can (and should) level at her, her choice of pretending to have intended to is borne entirely out of a rigorously held belief that it would be embarrassing for me to be considered someone in need of sympathy and solace. Which is rather fine, when you think about it. So I said,

  ‘Yes, of course I am.’ And, ‘shall I bring some canapés, perhaps?’

  Well. In moments of (wine-enhanced) good cheer I have developed a new image for myself ; of someone scarred by experience but ultimately optimistic. And one of the things I am most optimistic about is the opportunity I now have to put myself about a bit, in a more wild and happening social scene than that centred around quiz nights and barn dances and dreary cocktail parties. And what do I have? I have an invitation to go to dinner with Moira and Derek Bugle; quite possibly the most staunchly conservative couple in Cardiff. To Moira, ‘wild’ equals a tit on the bird table. Mmmm. Can’t wait. Really cannot wait.

  I say this to Emma when I get home and she finds it amusing enough to tear her away from her High School Musical DVD. And it is good to see her laughing again. She is totally Bugle aware, of course; not just from the various forays our association with the PTA have led us to make into their circle over the years, but also because Damon Bugle (Why Damon? How Damon? So strange. So unaccountably cool), Moira’s youngest, is two years above Emma at High School. He is something of a minor celebrity in the Chess Club, apparently, and has brought honour to the school in the recent South Wales championships. He is, all agree, going to go a long way in Chess. Hastings, at least, where I think the nationals are held. He is also, Emma tells me, a complete geek, which I am trendy enough to appreciate is not a vote of confidence.

  ‘What a hoot,’ she says. ‘Won’t do much for your street cred, will it? Don’t worry Mum, I’ll keep it quiet for you.’

  Emma, having emerged, scathed but essentially positive since her father’s departure, has now restyled herself as a thoughtful and complex bronte-esque character (themed accessories financed mainly by the blood money she’s been wheedling out of him). She is anxious to turn me into as much of a sex goddess as can reasonably be achieved with someone so aged in order that I stay cool, and make Dad realise what a babe I really am. It seems not to matter to her that it was I that kicked him out, and that there is little doubt he’d be back like a shot given half a chance; it’s clearly the infidelity itself that counts.

  We have moved to a tangibly different place in our relationship. I have been scrupulously honest with her about why I asked her father to leave, and I think she respects me for being so. Also, I have allowed her to join me in using the word bitch (in the privacy of our own home, naturally) and I think she finds it as therapeutic as me. Having said that, I’ve recently been reading an interesting book called Bonds that bind us (us, as in women, apparently) which I thought would make appropriate light reading for the cuckoldess about town (why?). It has instructed me in the dire consequences for womankind if we feeble girlies insist on displacing our fury at our husbands and partners(men) at the people (other women) with whom they’ve transgressed. Given (it prattles on) that those people (the other women) have no personal duty of fidelity to us, doing so can only be harmful to us (women generally) as a group, and hinder our progress toward sisterhood and a free and equal status in society. Far better (it thinks, huh!) to accept that we do not have an inalienable right to expect a respect for fidelity from those people (other women) who do not have any contractual responsibility (marriage or similar commitment) toward us, and instead, ensure that our feelings of anger and betrayal are directed exclusively at the husband or partner who has failed in his responsibility toward us.

  In other words, I should try not to instil in Emma any sense that it is Rhiannon who is at fault here. Simply that her father is a man and that men are pathetic souls with their forebrain just behind their foreskins and that it’s a fact of life that men put it about a bit. For the good of womankind – and eventual world domination, and men kept in stud farms and subject to selective breeding and so on, of course. I think I’ll throw Bonds away, actually.

  The children love Richard. And Richard loves them. On the other hand, Rhiannon’s a bitch.

  What to wear, what to wear?

  What to wear

  Long black (tight/plunging/backless etc) dress

  Short black (tight but high neck) dress

  Black Bootleg trousers plus Carvela boots plus what top? (eating!!!)

  Black jeans?

  New outfit (what kind?) Think IMAGE

  The trouble with going somewhere like Moira Bugle’s is that you have to take a firm line with yourself about clothing. Either you go in regulation middle class stuff – gold shoes, cotton/linen mix jumpers (appliquéd, of course) from Coast or M and S, velvet skirt/devore shirt combos etc. and resign yourself to blending seamlessly into the blur of middle aged womanhood around you, or you don’t. In which case you must decide in advance not to mind having yourself and your attire described as interesting, arresting, the sort of thing one would really love to wear if only one had the courage, and definitely hearing the word ‘slapper’ uttered in a stage whisper when you go to the loo. No contest, really.

  Emma inspects my wardrobe (basically, as above, with knobs on) and decides that this is the time to make a definitive style statement. She eschews the ranks of standard civil engineering dinner dance frocks with a look that could frazzle a whole side of pig, and dismisses all my trendy bootleg and blouse combos as exactly what middle class married women would think are cutting edge. They think ergo they’re not, it seems.

  ‘There’s a PDSA bag downstairs,’ she says menacingly.

  ‘I cannot consign my entire wardrobe to the bin,’ I tell her loftily. ‘I’m not made of money, you know.’

  Grudgingly, she allows that I’ll still need my usual black staples to go to work in, though as a photographer, apparently, I should consider it my duty to dress in as bohemian a fashion as possible. And it would be, I accept, more accommodating of baby sick.

  ‘And I’ll lend you,’ she tells me, ‘a few thongs and bits.’

  ‘Thongs?’

  ‘Leather thongs.’

  ‘Leather thongs?’

  ‘For your neck
, Mum. God!’

  But we agree, in the end, that an overall re-style is called for. Something younger, and snappier, more Vogue than Family Circle. But mainly, I suspect, something she could wear too.

  Chapter 7

  I am going to reinvent myself. Not the essential core of my being, of course; it’s taken a bit of a pummelling of late, but I feel the essence of my inner self is basically sound and intact. Which is good to know, because someone at the school gate told me the other day that when her husband went off with an audio typist she felt like a used tea bag for months. (Less encouraging is the fact that people I hardly know feel impelled to come up and discuss relationship crises with me at all. But I am sure I’ll find a reassuring chapter about it in one of my books.)

  No, it’s more of a packaging thing, really. My packaging has become the grooming equivalent of a tin of Sainsbury’s low sugar baked beans. And I was at school this afternoon and it struck me that almost everybody of my acquaintance has highlights in their hair. Eeeek! I have highlights! All my friends have highlights! The headmistress has highlights! Even the caretaker has highlights, and he’s a man. I bet if I were to compile a list of all the people I know who have highlights it would run to several A4 sheets. But, (and it’s a significant but) Rhiannon doesn’t have highlights. Rhiannon has a slippery, tumbling, tumultuous cascade of coppery auburn curls. The bitch.

  Unsuitable (no longer suitable) Accessories

  Highlights

  Fake Tan (Note; Moira is orange)

  Jumpers with nautical motifs (unless on boat)

  Whatever Christmas evening wear they are selling in M and S this autumn

  Gold shoes

  I have also made an appointment at Snip Sutton’s Style Shack and added Hair Monthly to my Sainsburys list. In actual fact Snip is really a bloke called Nigel Sutton who used to have the local OAP shampoo and set market covered. Until he came out. He doesn’t have highlights. That must mean something.