The Art of Unpacking Your Life

by Shireen Jilla

  He changed his mind. He imagined an estate agent would try the same trick. Focusing on the land would mean one thing: the house was derelict. Alan would immediately ask and it would be a let down. He must show him the close up of the house first. The angle of the photo that Josephine had taken showing twin poplar trees planted far too close to the building. It meant Alan could guess at the marvels of the surrounding land.

  Dan mentally listed the house’s attractions: chimneys cornering the squat tower with arched windows offering spectacular views across the Tuscan countryside; the tiled roof ranging over the house, demonstrating its size and solidity; the deep wooden front door pointing to the weightiness of its history.

  He looked again. He sighed. Alan would see that 90 per cent of the outer plaster peeled back to the brick; the windows were mere holes without frames; the roof tiles were either missing or unstable and all coated in lichen. Dan would try to compare it to a Surrey cottage in need of urgent updating: rewiring, possibly a new roof, kitchen and bathroom, a wall knocking down to make it more open plan, even some re-plastering. Only this Tuscan house didn’t have electricity, or gas, possibly even a water supply. There probably weren’t any rooms, even floors, certainly no fixtures or fittings. Except damp, woodworm, rot, decay, neglect. It was a soggy shell. No more than a very expensive Tuscan statement. Their home.

  Given his obsession with home comforts, Alan wouldn’t consider camping overnight. How could Dan believe he was going to persuade Alan to sell their modern home, move out of his linguistic and cultural comfort zone, borrow a fortune and more, only to sink it without a trace into this quicksand?

  Dispirited, Dan was about to shut down his laptop when Alan appeared to find him. He bent down, coiling his arm about Dan’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. ‘Come on, you. I’m feeling horny. Let’s go back to the room.’

  Alan leant down further to kiss him, and Dan met his lips for a much-needed reality check.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ Alan was staring at the close up shot of the house. ‘Don’t tell me: Josephine is setting up some sort of artists’ squat. Ha, ha.’

  Dan’s mind was blank as they both looked at the photo. The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ beat into his brain and wouldn’t budge.

  Clearly Alan wasn’t interested, Dan saw. What was he thinking? Why had he become so madly optimistic, he asked himself. This was some sort of mid-life crisis. He had to shake out of it. Alan couldn’t hear the strumming in his head. He wanted to have sex, siesta and a slap up dinner, hopefully reduced down to the two of them, which was what they had done on holiday for the last ten years. Dan could easily enjoy every step of this three-stage plan. Happy holidays. Like Ibiza.

  Alan stretched, yawned and stood waiting for him to close up his laptop and come with him to the room. Dan dreaded this moment. He hated confrontation.

  ‘Josephine sent me that photo. It’s a house for sale near her village.’ He waited, but Alan wasn’t going to help him out. ‘It’s got a huge plot of land filled with olive trees.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ He pinged the string ties of his board shorts and then rubbed his balls.

  Dan breathed in. ‘I really want us to buy it.’ Oh God. How ridiculous. He cringed at his own lack of subtlety.

  ‘You are kidding me?’

  Dan remembered the vegetarian Moroccan couscous dish that he had made many times, and kept making because Alan had never told him he hated it. It was only a friend who had eventually told him. It had been the start, the hairline crack in the egg still in its box. Alan had told Michael that his vegetarian couscous was like gerbil food. Dan’s favourite meal, his Sunday-night supper, was only fit for a gerbil. Why had it mattered so much?

  ‘Oh my God, I’m not joking.’ Dan heard the acidic note in his voice. ‘I want to buy that house and land. It’s very important to me.’

  ‘How much is it?’

  ‘Seven hundred thousand pounds.’ As he said it, he realised how ludicrous it was.

  Alan’s face relaxed again. ‘Have you won the lottery, or something? We don’t have a million spare cash lying around, Sunshine, cos that is what it would cost to get that dump habitable.’

  Dan knew that he would regret this exact moment. It reminded him of the time he had purposefully smashed a crystal vase his mother had been given by her maid of honour. He had held it above their stone kitchen floor. His mother screamed, ‘Don’t you dare drop that, Daniel.’ And he let it go. Afterwards, he cried as much as she had. Something had been lost that he could never get back.

  ‘I was thinking that we could sell the house.’

  Alan’s outrage was limited to his eyes, which darkened. ‘What? Sell our gorgeous home and move to Italy?’

  Alan walked round the corner table and towards the glass door leading to the brick path.

  The discussion, if it had ever been that, was over. Dan took one last look at the photo and shut his laptop. After what Julian had done to Connie, he should appreciate what he had. Alan would never ever cheat on him. He was a good, decent person. Dan was lucky. It was a crazy idea. It could be straight off one of those reality TV shows Dan watched incessantly.

  We moved from Esher to Casolare with no Italian, barely any previous trips to Italy, not enough cash, no job, less sense. Surprise, surprise, we got divorced in the process. Here we are to share the horror of our mad life change. You can feel happy and righteous staying right where you are. Here’s what we learned: you can take the boy out of east London, but you can’t take east London out of the boy.

  Dan didn’t embrace change for change’s sake. He relished stability. It was the truth.

  He wasn’t going to leave Alan.

  Chapter 22

  St Mary the Virgin church squats on the brow of Worldham hill in East Hampshire. It is an unexpected find down an ancient forest track, un-Tarmac-ed. Church Lane slips past a couple of Grade II listed cottages and on to the church. It was built in the early thirteenth century, probably on the ruins of a Saxon predecessor. The South Porch was a nineteenth-century addition, veiling a much-admired early English doorway, while the triple lancet windows inside were listed features in the church’s history pamphlet on the shelf inside. Connie loved the tower, reconstructed in 1864. It was one of those short, square structures with a wooden bell cote. A rural note rising from its roof. The bell cote was added to an earlier tower in 1660. It was typical of many Hampshire churches. And to her, it was a symbol not only of Hampshire, but home.

  Her dad had been a church warden at St Mary’s for thirty-eight years. And Julian had been as eager as she was to get married there. A historical setting with chic London guests, a beautiful, skinny bride in an Alistair Blair wedding dress, bridesmaids (Lizzie and Sara) in Tara Jamon lilac shifts, and a circular marquee with retro food designed by Admiral Crichton thrown in. Her parents’ vast English cottage-style garden was opened to the public once a year. It had been garlanded for the event. Connie’s friends had danced the Ceroc into a dawn, which had seen Julian’s awkward political types drunk enough to unknot their ties and stuff them into their jacket pockets, before flinging their sweaty bodies at her single girlfriends. Sara had ended up in bed with a colleague of Julian’s from Conservative Central Office, whom she completely disowned at breakfast. Connie couldn’t remember his name or face now.

  Connie was sitting in the back row of the vehicle on her own. Lizzie and Sara had taken the front seat. They spotted animals and chatted to Gus, but discreetly left her out of the conversation. She leaned forward and shouted over to Sara. ‘What was the name of that man you got together with at our wedding?’

  Lizzie groaned. ‘What a performance: you thumped against my wall all night. Do you remember?’

  ‘Please, ladies, don’t lower the tone,’ Sara sounded embarrassed as she glanced at Gus.

  ‘Come on, Sara, you must remember his name,’ Lizzie persisted. ‘How could you forget?’

  ‘How could I remember?’ Sara snapped. ‘Some wanker wannabe politic
ian.’

  Gus shot Sara a look. He looked appalled either by her attitude or language, or both. Connie saw her spot his reaction and blush.

  ‘Over there,’ Lizzie pointed at a dazzle of zebras showing off their wider, whiter backside stripes as they trotted away from the vehicle. ‘Great spot.’

  Connie slipped back into the past. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t stop thinking about their wedding. Their wedding photos shot outside the South Porch showed him smiling, charming, confident and in love with her. Maybe she was searching for clues. Should she have predicted what Julian would become? How he would disappoint her in the end?

  On their wedding day, Dad had given a careful, thoughtful speech, which highlighted Julian’s talents and charms. Though now she thought about it, he never said he was a good man. What use did she have for goodness in her twenties? She had her own happy, close family life, which was comfortably supported by stocks and shares. Her father cannily resigned as a Lloyds name a couple of years before the crash in 1992.

  She stared at the dunes as they rose to welcome her. She couldn’t locate the root cause of Julian’s philandering. When she met him, Connie was probably more highly sexed than he was. He was the antithesis of Luke. Instead of getting it out of his system when he was young, he was too busy pushing to get a First.

  Julian had his first affair shortly after Lou was born. Connie discovered evidence of it a year later. She was looking for some cash to pay the window cleaner. There was a pornographic note folded neatly into his wallet. Of course, Connie believed that it was merely a woman’s fantasy about Julian. No more. She debated whether to mention it to him. Eventually she decided to hold it up, half a page of flimsy evidence, expecting him to roll his eyes and joke about it. His response shocked her more than the act itself.

  ‘Connie, darling, God, I was such a wretch. I hate myself for it. Please forgive me.’

  ‘Sorry?’ She distinctly remembered she was holding Lou at the time. ‘Did you sleep with this woman?’

  He dropped his gaze and then looked up at her penitently. ‘Darling Connie, can you ever forgive me? She meant nothing. Literally nothing.’

  Connie was terrified, not by the act he had committed, but by the enormity of what this might represent. ‘Why have you kept this?’ She dropped the note to the floor.

  ‘God knows. I probably put it there to get rid of it.’

  Connie was silent. She was conscious her reaction wasn’t typical. She should scream, thrust Lou into his arms, even though he was about to leave for work, and storm out. She didn’t.

  Julian dramatically swooped the note off their kitchen tiles. He tore it aggressively into tiny pieces, slammed his foot down on the pedal bin and scattered it down into its entrails. ‘All gone.’

  Without saying a word, Connie went upstairs to change Lou.

  Julian had undoubtedly changed. His ego grew with his career. When she became a mother, she changed. Their relationship was incomplete and in the gap they both left, Sally took possession of the vacant space. The space, in fairness, she allowed to become available.

  She thought about the consequences of Julian’s actions. The public humiliation would be viewed as a personal slight by her mother. Her friends read the Mail on Sunday. Her father was different. He was a thoroughly decent man. He was hurt and bewildered by his son-in-law, by the grief that he could carelessly inflict on his only daughter. Her dad understood that her public show of strength, her universal silence on the subject, was a brittle charade, waiting for this moment to be fully exposed. He was the only person she talked to about Julian’s affairs. She hadn’t called him. She couldn’t face his anguish.

  She closed her eyes. The wind washed her face. She wanted to drift off; she wanted to sleep. She didn’t want to think through the questions she needed to ask Julian and the conversation that they would inevitably have to have. She didn’t want to think about what she was going to do.

  They rounded a bend in the track, pulled off on to a small path leading to the sleep out deck. An elegant king-size bed dominated the raised decking. It was surrounded by three hundred and sixty degrees of reserve. The bed was piled high with gleaming white Egyptian cotton pillows on top of a gleaming white duvet. It looked more luxurious than their bed at the lodge, certainly than their bed at home. A weathered roof, supported by thin tree trunks, held up immaculately rolled protective blinds. The whole effect was imperial, like a royal litter.

  There were white towelling robes hanging from a dark hat stand at one end; three pairs of slippers were lined up parallel with the foot of the bed. At the front of the deck were a wooden table and chairs and a pile of large ochre-coloured floor cushions.

  ‘Serious glamping, Gus,’ Sara exclaimed.

  ‘I knew you’d love it.’

  They smiled at each other.

  Lizzie, who had already kicked off her cream Converse, was round the back, running down the narrow decked walkway. ‘Do you see what I think I see?’ She called out.

  Connie and Sara followed her. The path was lined with tiny black uplighters, and led to a steel shower with a vast head, stylish in any London bathroom. A white china loo was plumbed in beside it. The white basin was carved into a polished rock, which had been sculpted into a shelf for bath products, towels and a hand mirror. As Lizzie flushed the loo and Sara energetically ran the water in the basin to confirm it was plumbed in, Connie wandered back towards the deck. She sunk back on to the pillows and looked up at the sky. It was deepening in colour in preparation for sunset. It was going to be an extraordinary view of what her grandfather described as the Green Kalahari. This area in the south got more rain than the central Kalahari. Thousands of kilometres of flat dunes unfurling into the distance.

  At the front of the deck, Gus was unloading the khaki canvas holdall. One was piled high with cheese and bread, the other one had an array of miniature desserts: chocolate mousse, tiramisu, panna cotta, lemon mousse, blueberry cheesecake.

  Gus glanced over to her. ‘Sara thought you were done with big meals. Wouldn’t want a chef here fussing away with a three-course meal, eh? He laughed.

  ‘Girls love to snack, Gus.’

  ‘Sara’s lovely, you know,’ Connie insisted lightly. ‘A good and loyal friend.’

  Gus murmured, ‘Soft as Kalahari honey underneath all that carbon fibre.’

  Connie unlaced her safari boots and released her feet.

  ‘Gus, glad to see you followed instructions,’ Sara breezed up, bending over the holdall to search for a bottle opener.

  ‘Sara, I’ll do it,’ Gus insisted, crouching on the other side of the bag.

  She stood up and over him. ‘Gus, we can’t have a qualified zoologist acting barman to three over-privileged, maturing London ladies.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’ Lizzie landed heavily on the cushion beside Connie, who moved up to make room for her.

  ‘We are going one way, Lizzie dear. Ageing isn’t personal.’

  ‘How can you say that when I haven’t even got a boyfriend? Nor have you for that matter.’ Lizzie looked at her slyly.

  Sara paused. The subject of men had a habit of making Sara pause, before she doubled her defences. ‘Christ, Lizzie, today of all days, give it a break. Don’t you ever stop thinking about men? They are either A-list fuckers, I’m sorry to say, like our dear friend’s erstwhile husband. Or domestic pets you need to put on a lead to take outside.’

  Connie automatically leaned forward. ‘She doesn’t mean it, Gus.’

  Sara gave him an impatient wave of the corkscrew. ‘Gus, I’m obviously not talking about you.’

  ‘Great. What am I, the safari eunuch?’

  ‘That was funny. Very funny, actually.’ Sara gave him a curious look. ‘Gus, women of the Empire open their own bottles.’

  Connie smiled. ‘I would quickly escape, before you throw the corkscrew at her.’

  Sara was squeezing the bottle wedged between her thighs, as she grunted to no avail. ‘Gus, this corkscrew is useless.’<
br />
  ‘Zoologists don’t pack the kit, Sara,’ Gus chipped in.

  Sara laughed. ‘Okay. Two–one to you, Gus.’

  ‘Which point did you win?’ He bounced back.

  Sara’s mouth softened. He seemed to have won her over somehow.

  Gus coughed. ‘If you are nervous, eh, your guide can sleep in the game vehicle round the back.’ He looked embarrassed, doubtless preparing for Sara’s visceral wit. ‘Or I can come back at dawn with breakfast.’

  ‘Are you planning to gawp at us in our underwear, Gus? I didn’t put you down as a peeper.’

  Sara spoke automatically and Connie sensed that she instantly regretted it. Gus blushed hard.

  ‘Sorry, Gus, that was childish. Forgive me.’

  ‘Ignore her, Gus, she has no manners,’ insisted Lizzie. ‘She’s going to die a lonely lesbian in an old people’s home in Florida.’

  Gus started to walk away without saying goodbye. Connie moved after him. ‘Gus, I apologise on Sara’s behalf.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Do you know, I’ve had a hell of a day and I would be reassured if you were here overnight, in case.’

  ‘Sure, Connie.’

  ‘Why don’t you join us?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll come back later.’

  Connie went back to the others.

  ‘Why do you give him such a hard time? He is our guide, you should treat him with respect.’ Lizzie prodded Sara, before pronouncing, ‘You fancy him.’

  Connie winced.

  ‘Lizzie, don’t be preposterous. Christ, I’m not some pubescent schoolgirl,’ Sara said angrily. ‘I’d rather shag a buffalo.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Lizzie pronounced as she spooned another mound of chocolate mousse. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Connie, I’m on holiday and the food is delicious.’

  ‘Podgy people eat puddings,’ Connie said without thinking.

  Sara laughed loudly. ‘Don’t tell me, Connie, you’ve got that saying on a fridge magnet?’

  ‘You can’t say things like that, Connie,’ said Lizzie, ‘It’s fatist. God you would get eaten alive at Channel 4.’