I nod, since we’d readily swapped stories of previous relationships at the start of our own.
‘There was nothing she loved more than to boss me about, issue orders, nag me to death the whole damned time to get her own way. She never showed me the slightest bit of respect or consideration. She was always so full of herself.’ The contempt in his voice tells me he feels no regret over their failed relationship, which is a comfort in a way, and yet disturbing too that he feels such venom towards her. I kiss his cheek.
‘You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.’
He pulls me close. ‘No, I want to. I want you to understand, darling. I never fought back or even tried to defend myself, but I can’t take it a second time, that’s the honest truth.‘
I smile at his little boy sulks, yet can’t help feeling sorry for him. Men are so pathetic. ‘Well, I’m hardly nagging you to death, am I?’ I know this is true because I weigh every word before I say it. I’m becoming adept at biting my tongue. ‘Anyway, you’re hardly the victim type. There are usually faults on both sides, so what did you do to make her behave in that way?’
He blinks in surprise, startled by the very idea. ‘Nothing. I did nothing to her at all. She blamed me for everything, quite unreasonably, when the fault was quite clearly hers. She accused me of having affairs, of not treating her right.’
‘And were you?’
‘What?’
‘Having an affair?’
‘Only after our relationship had completely broken down. She was involved with someone too by that time, I’m sure of it. We went our separate ways in the end, as I told you, but she hurt me badly. There was no pleasing her. And I’m sorry to say that you’re starting to nag and boss me in exactly the same way. Yet if I object and stand up for myself, or give you a taste of what you’re giving me, I’m labelled cruel and heartless. Women can do whatever they like but a man becomes a pariah, a bully. Women think they own the fucking world.’
I’m appalled that he should think this way, that he sees me as some sort of harridan, and can think of nothing to say in my own defence. Here’s me trying to persuade him to stop hurting me and the whole problem has been turned on its head, and now I’m apparently the one abusing him.
He gives me a pitying glance. ‘The fact is, Carly, just because we’re married doesn’t mean that you can mentally abuse me, selfishly force me to fit into your way of doing things, your plans.’
‘I – I don’t! Really, I don’t mean to.’ I can feel my fragile confidence starting to shatter. It doesn’t take much these days for me to start to doubt myself. I’m so concentrated on appeasing him I can’t seem to think clearly any more.
‘Yes, you do. You show me no respect at all. You’re perverse and rebellious, determined to make my life as difficult as possible.’
I look at him, perplexed and confused. He’s the one making all the rules, the one with the power doing all the bullying, not me, yet for some reason my courage is rapidly evaporating and I can’t bring myself to say this to him. But then everything I say is wrong and open to criticism. I’m worn out by this mind game he’s playing, these mental gymnastics. All I want is for the conversation to end, to give in, kiss and make up, find a little peace.
‘I’ll try not to nag you in future,’ I promise him. ‘Or ever get angry with you, and maybe you can promise me the same thing? We’ll make a pact, shall we, to try harder to be nice to each other?’
‘Married life is all about being nice to your husband and telling him you love him every day,’ he calmly reminds me, quoting my own mother to me. ‘If you remember to do that, Carly, I’d never need to get angry with you ever again, now would I?’
‘How are things in wonderland?’ Jo-Jo asks me over the phone. I respond with a heavy sigh at the tired joke. ‘Sorry, just teasing,’ she says, not sorry at all.
I ask her how she’s feeling, which is far more to the point as her pregnancy progresses. She tells me all about her latest checks and scans and then gets to the real reason for her call. ‘I saw Oliver in town the other evening. Did he mention it? Or perhaps he didn’t see me. I was in the car on my way back from visiting a friend when I spotted him. He appeared to be coming out of the Brewery Arts Centre. I didn’t see you, but I assume you were there too. Did you go to see a movie or something?’
I pause a second before answering, momentarily startled, wondering what indeed my husband was doing there when he was supposed to be at the quiz league. I’m determined not to allow Jo-Jo to sense my doubts. ‘What if he was coming out of the Arts Centre? I believe his firm is responsible for their accounts so why wouldn’t he be there one evening? And no, we hadn’t been to see a movie.’
‘Oh, so you weren’t with him?’
‘I’ve just said that I wasn’t. Oliver is a busy man with clients all over Kendal and the Lakes. So what point are you making exactly Jo-Jo?’ She surely isn’t harping back to that damn anonymous letter, I think, irritated. I refuse to give her the satisfaction of seeing my supposedly perfect life reduced to tatters. My sister is a gossip and a trouble-maker of the first order.
A small silence in which I hear Ed’s voice in the background, no doubt some crisis with the children. ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t trying to make any point, merely commenting that I saw him, that’s all.’ She rushes on to relate some anecdote about the children and the dentist, the position of the baby in her womb which is creating problems for her going to the loo, and I listen sympathetically, trying to take an interest.
I hear the front door open and Oliver walks in. I smile a welcome but his face instantly darkens as he sees me on the phone, no doubt half expecting me to jump up and give him a kiss the moment he walks through to door, as they do in those old Hollywood movies.
Jo-Jo is deep in some convoluted story about how she hopes to get a place for Ryan at a local play group and I signal to him that I won’t be a moment. He flaps an irritated hand back at me, mouthing that I should put the phone down now. I pull a teasing face and shake my head.
Without waiting for me to finish, he reaches down and pulls the plug out of the wall socket. I hear the phone go dead, my sister cut off in her prime.
I look at him in horror. ‘Why did you do that?’
Mouth tightening into a thin line, he icily enquires, ‘Dinner?’
I want to object to this draconian behaviour, to protest that I’ve every right to talk to my sister, or my friends, but I see that white line of tension etched above his top lip, forming into a familiar snarl, and all fight drains out of me.
‘Just coming,’ I agree with a sigh, and slip quickly into the kitchen, hoping the joint of pork hasn’t burned to a crisp while Jo-Jo and I were talking.
Sometimes I recklessly break Oliver’s rules and slip out for a quick drink with Emma without telling him, particularly on a Friday when I know he’s going to be late home. Sadly, there are curfews. Unless I’m home by ten he rings me on my mobile to check where I am, and to remind me of the time. He talks about ‘allowing’ me to call on my friends, but if they say or do something he doesn’t like, he stops me from seeing them altogether, as he did with Jane. It feels at times as if I’m a child again, as if he’s ‘allowing’ me privileges which he can withdraw at a moment’s notice if I overstep the line.
‘You should be grateful I give you as much freedom as I do. Most husbands wouldn’t.’
‘I’m not saying you aren’t good to me, most of the time,’ I hedge, ‘but Emma is my friend and business partner. Surely you’ve no objection to my having a drink with her occasionally, perhaps after a pretty rough day. We often have things to discuss and thrash out that can’t be done in the office, or while we’re cleaning bathrooms. You don’t mind?’
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ he tells me, kissing my nose and being all sweet and agreeable. ‘So long as you don’t overdo things, darling.’
The following week as Em and I are enjoying a half shandy in the John Peel pub, Oliver breezes in.
> ‘I thought I’d find you here.’ He kisses me on the cheek, giving Emma a perfunctory nod.
‘Oliver!’ I’m too embarrassed by his sudden appearance to think of anything sensible to say.
Emma is giving him one of her hard stares. ‘My goodness, you must be keen to come this far out of your way on your way home.’
‘I was passing anyway, so thought I’d pop in.’ He’s clearly lying, I can tell from his face. Besides, his office is in Kendal and Emma is quite right, he would actually need to drive past our house to reach Windermere, and further still to drive down into Bowness.
Emma smiles. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a beer and join us? We’re having a great time.’
‘Evidently,’ he coolly remarks. ‘But I don’t think so. You’ve had her all day. Surely it’s not unreasonable for me to want to spend some time alone with my wife?’ And before either of us has time to answer that one, he turns to me and says, ‘Finish your drink, darling, we’re going.’
Emma and I exchange a glance but I’ve no wish to cause a scene in front of my best friend so I do as he asks.
Later, I gently scold him for intruding upon our time together. ‘It was only a quick drink. I would have been leaving any minute. There was really no need for you to drive all those miles out of your way. Anyway, I thought we were supposed to be economising with petrol?’
‘It was perfectly reasonable for me to be concerned that you weren’t home. It was past six o’clock.’
‘So?’
But I can see by the closed expression on his face that if I push it any further, there’ll be trouble, so I quickly change the subject and ask him what he would like to do for the evening. We watch football on TV, as per normal.
‘Can you believe it, she put the phone down on me?’ Jo-Jo was telling her mother the story of the latest conversation with her sister in a tone of total disbelief. ‘Who the hell does she think she is? I just rang for a friendly chat and she was so prickly, so couldn’t give a toss. It was her I-really-don’t-have-time-for-this attitude. Then bang, gone! No doubt his majesty had arrived home so I was no longer of any importance. She only ever rings me in an evening when she’s feeling lonely and short of someone to talk to. I’m a convenience, nothing more.’
‘Isn’t that what sisters are for, to pick up and put down at will?’ Viv said, not taking her elder daughter too seriously.
‘Hell, no! Why can’t we have a proper relationship? Why can’t she pop over and see me occasionally, help with the kids, talk to me? If I suggest it, all I get is excuses. Mainly she ignores me. She’ll do anything to avoid coming over, presumably because I’m not good enough for her any more.’
Viv frowned. ‘She doesn’t pop in here as often as she used to either, but then they haven’t been married all that long. I’m sure she has much more interesting things to do with her time than visit old folk and boring relatives.’
‘Huh!’ Jo-Jo grabbed Ryan who was about to de-head a dahlia flower in her mother’s precious garden, and tried to stuff him back into his buggy. The small boy vigorously protested by stiffening his body and refusing to bend his knees, squealing loudly in outrage. ‘The trouble is, that little madam doesn’t know how lucky she is. Wait till she’s got four kids, see how her perfect life stands up to that sort of disruption. Not that it’ll ever happen. If she even has one baby it’ll no doubt be by immaculate conception and delivered by caesarean. Too posh to push, that one.’
‘How are you feeling?’ her mother asked, judiciously changing the subject as she persuaded her grandson to buckle up in his baby buggy.
‘Lousy. Exhausted. Like a wrung-out dish mop. Fat! This is absolutely the last. I shall get them to sterilise me or send Ed for the snip. Never again!’
Viv laughed. ‘You’re probably wise, considering how easily you conceive, but we wouldn’t be without one of them, would we, little one?’ she said, tickling Ryan under his chin and making him giggle. ‘Quickly, get the strap fastened now. There’s a good boy.’
‘Thank heaven. Now I’ve got to dash and collect the girls. At least Gran and Gramps seem full of beans at the moment. Has Carly been over to see them lately?’
‘Not for a week or two, but I know she’s been busy at the agency. Maybe I’ll invite her and Oliver over for lunch one Sunday. You should too. Make an effort to be friends.’ Straightening up, Viv helped her daughter ease the buggy on to the path, then for no apparent reason, asked, ‘You don’t think there’s a problem, do you?’
‘Problem? What sort of problem?’ Ryan had kicked off his shoe by way of protest and Jo-Jo was struggling to put it back on.
‘With Carly and Oliver.’
‘How could there be with Mr Wonderful?’
‘I’m not sure, but what you said about her only ringing you of an evening when she’s alone. Does that happen often? I mean, surely Oliver doesn’t go out much, does he?’
‘Of course it doesn’t happen often,’ Jo-Jo snapped, too wrapped up in her own problems to even remember the reason she rang in the first place, that she’d seen Oliver coming out of the Brewery Arts Centre, but then Ed had told her off for gossiping again, so perhaps it was a selective memory loss. ‘That’s what I’m saying. I might as well not have a sister for all I see of her, and if she puts the phone down on me one more time, that’s it. We’re finished.’
Smiling, Viv gave her daughter and grandson a goodbye kiss, then went back into the house to make tea for her parents-in-law and didn’t give the matter another thought.
Chapter Seven
Oliver seems to be in complete denial over the way he tries to control and manipulate me, over his behaviour in general. If I complain that he’s hurt or abused me, or keeps me on too tight a rein, he absolutely rejects the idea. He retaliates by reminding me how good he is to me, how kind and attentive, reciting a litany of the times he’s taken me out, or bought me flowers. It’s as if he has it all on file.
‘How much do you want from me, woman? I can surely defend my rights,’ he’ll yell, furious I should dare to criticise him. Then his temper will flare, the danger signals flash and I’ll feel the ice beneath my feet beginning to crack.
On these occasions it takes all my skills to calm him down, and I’m rarely successful. It’s far easier to agree with his every whim, accept his opinion and keep my own to myself. It feels like collusion but really it’s self-preservation. It’s the way I’m trying to resolve this issue, the way I survive. Better to concede defeat over less important matters than later be accused of deliberately starting an argument which he then takes it upon himself to win. I only get hurt more that way. I’m rapidly learning not to challenge anything unless it’s absolutely necessary.
It’s also important that I keep well out of his way when I see the tension mounting. It builds inside him like a volcano gathering pressure, then for no apparent reason he’ll erupt and become this totally different person. He’s always sorry afterwards, devastated by where his temper has led him. He’ll nurse me better, swear that it won’t happen again, but sadly it always does. Some silly thing will annoy him and like a spark to a fuse the path of his anger will run its course to its inevitable, violent conclusion.
‘Look, it’s not important,’ I’ll say, but for some reason it is, to him at least.
I do my utmost to tease him out of these black moods, but if I could just understand what it is I do that upsets him so much, then perhaps I could stop things from degenerating quite so badly.
And if sometimes I feel I’m losing my identity, I remind myself that marriage is about learning to co-exist with another person, which isn’t always easy. I believe that if I love him enough, if I get things right, he’ll eventually stop being so uptight and aggressive, resolve whatever problems are screwing up his head, and relations between us will gradually become easier. That old girl friend of his, Julie, obviously has a lot to answer for. But surely with a bit of give and take on both sides, a little time and patience, we can work things out.
The trouble
is Oliver seems short on both, and I warn myself not to expect too much. I shouldn’t simply assume that this will be the kind of idyllic marriage my parents have enjoyed, although I certainly intend to do my utmost to be a better wife to him. This is what I wanted after all, isn’t it?
I can’t even remember what started the row today. Oh, yes, I do. I opened his bank statement, by mistake, and he caught me reading it. He reads mine every month and I don’t object. He reads my letters, my emails, even listens in to my phone calls.
‘Where’s the harm, I’m your husband,’ Oliver will say, if he sees me frowning at him. But his attitude is entirely different now I’m doing the same to him, albeit if it is by accident. I try to make a joke of it, offer to pay his credit card bill if he likes, but he isn’t amused.
Making light of whatever has annoyed him, teasing and joking, attempting to laugh him out of his growing rage before it takes proper hold never seems to work. My good humour only serves to irritate and inflame his temper all the more. But then nothing I do seems able to prevent the devastating spiral of violence once it starts. Telling him that he’s got no right to hit me doesn’t work either. Oliver hates me to cry and will hit me, and keep on hitting me, until the tears dry up out of fear. Yet if I remain silent, try to be calm and brave and reason with him, he’ll go on and on at me, calling me terrible names, hitting or kicking me till I can stand no more and I’m screaming at him, or cowering on the floor begging for him to stop, or really am sobbing by that time. He’s the one who laughs then, saying he has every right to bring me into line. He’s entitled! He’s my husband.
Today, I decide on a different approach. I hit him back.
It proves to be a terrible mistake. I’m not quite five foot three. Oliver is six foot two, and wears a size twelve in shoes. I know that because I’ve felt the imprint of them on my back and thighs many, many times in the past few months. There’s no way I can ever win.
His answer to my show of rebellion on this occasion is to pick me up bodily and throw me over the sofa. I crash to the ground, knocking my head hard on the cedar wood floor boards, jarring my shoulder. The sofa is set in the middle of the room in full view of the window, and after he’s stormed off I lie there for some time in a crumpled heap, sobbing, in total shock. After a short while I hear a knock at the door.
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