by Deb Hunt
‘Your landlord,’ said my lecturer, not bothering to reach for his trousers.
I even asked my doctor out one day. I was in my early twenties and he was a young registrar, filling in for a few weeks. He seemed like a nice young man, for once almost the right age for me, so I rang the surgery and asked to speak to him.
‘Are you allowed to see patients socially?’ I asked. ‘Because if you are maybe we could have dinner?’ I added, not waiting for a reply to the first question.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m afraid that’s not ethical.’
Two weeks later I was forced to go back and see him about a pimple under my arm that had developed into a festering boil. By the time I plucked up the courage to do something about it I was nursing a raging fever and the boil was the size of a lemon.
‘That looks angry,’ he said, as I lay on the examination table with my arm above my head.
‘I hope you’re not.’
He shook his head. ‘No hard feelings,’ he said, reaching for a scalpel.
‘I suppose this is divine retribution?’ I said, trying to make light of the situation.
‘I’m not divine,’ he replied.
I disagreed, oh how I disagreed, but somehow it didn’t seem the right time to tell him. We both focused our attention on my sweaty armpit and I watched pus drain from the boil he’d just lanced.
After a dwindling number of depressingly similar encounters in my twenties and early thirties I punished myself for all that meaningless sex and gave up on men altogether. I’d given up on a few jobs by then as well, from librarianship to event management and public relations. I was a quitter.
‘Give sorrow words’, isn’t that what Shakespeare once said? ‘The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.’ How true. I’d kept my feelings hidden for so long I couldn’t speak of anything that involved emotion without my throat constricting. An overflow of emotion, like a body of water pressing against the sides of a dam, would push at the back of my throat and tears would quickly follow. I could cry at the drop of a hat onstage; offstage I battened down the hatches, tightened the screws and let no one in. Intimacy was a foreign concept.
Five shrivelling years of celibacy followed and I aged into the original Miss Prissy Knickers, in sensible shoes, big pants and no make-up. Sex became a dirty word. My favourite word was no. Don’t, won’t, can’t, shan’t and mustn’t were all up there, but nothing beat the simplicity of no; the absoluteness of it; the sound of a door slammed in your face.
Eventually I plucked up the courage to start again, at the beginning of the alphabet.
chapter two
The party was at Margaret’s flat, in a housing estate in South East London. A was stretched out on the floor, a self-confident bear of a man in his mid-thirties, with Nordic features and a clipped beard. He lay there, claiming the carpet, his rugby player thighs encased in child-like dungarees while he absent-mindedly stroked a girl’s ankle. I knew Jenny wasn’t his girlfriend; we were both anxiously single. She looked at me as if to say, ‘Is this guy for real?’ I watched him caress her ankle, much as you might fondly stroke a dog’s head when your attention is focused elsewhere, and I listened to him talk about live theatre in Prague and the plays of Václav Havel (a playwright I’d never heard of). What hands, what thighs, what ideas! Later that evening I stood on the brick-covered balcony with Jenny and we talked about A.
‘He looks keen on you,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Not interested, not my type. What about you?’
‘No.’
We were both lying.
A was casting a production of A Christmas Carol, destined for a short European tour, and he wanted performers who could sing. Jenny had the voice of an angel, as effortless and clear as sunlight shining on water.
Since I couldn’t sing I helped at the audition. Jenny was cast. She was an obvious choice. The surprise came later, when I went to the pub with A to discuss the auditions. We talked, we laughed and (this was the clincher) he cried. I’ve always been a sucker for a sad puppy. Weakness in a man melts my heart, not strength. Two pints of lager and a single unexpected kiss later my long drought was over. A was relaxed, easygoing, good company and the best kisser. But was he the right man for me? Would he measure up to the exacting standards set by Miss Prissy Knickers?
On an early date at a pub on Waterloo Road, after a teenage overdose of lip-smackingly good kissing, Miss Prissy Knickers took the floor.
‘Have you been married? Have you got any children? How do you earn a living?’
He scraped through those questions so Miss PK brought out the big guns.
‘How old are you?’
‘Seven.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Seven is the perfect age. I never want to be older than seven.’
Miss PK processed this alarming news, passing information back to the troops, never taking her eyes off the target. Did you hear that? He thinks he’s seven years old. How irresponsible is that? How can a seven-year-old be relied on? That’s not even legal.
She went in for the kill. ‘Are you looking for a fling or a full-time commitment?’
‘A fling.’
‘Do you believe in monogamy?’
‘No. I want to go through life having as many sexual partners as I can.’
The possibility that he might have been teasing in response to the barrage of questions didn’t occur to Miss Prissy Knickers.
OK, that’s it, get your coat, we’re leaving.
What about the kissing? I murmured, even as Miss Prissy Knickers bundled me out the door.
At thirty-five, after a lifetime of failed relationships, I wasn’t interested in having fun; I was looking for long-term commitment. I wanted to cut to the chase and get married before it was too late. Based on those parameters, A could have no place in my life. Never mind the intense attraction, never mind the laughter, the tears and the shared interests, my life was all about moral certitude, answers rather than questions. There was no place for ambiguity. Convinced we had no future, I told A we couldn’t get involved. He promptly took up with Jenny. Now that, dear reader, was the point when I should have walked away and wished them well; I should have stuck to my moral guns and looked elsewhere. I didn’t. Jealousy got the better of me (the kissing was hard to resist as well) and over the next two years Jenny and I engaged in an ugly tug of war that could have no winners.
At one point A dumped Jenny, definitively and decisively, and he moved in with me. He was tender, loving and emotionally open. I was suspicious, wary and in control. He did his best to defrost the block of ice that encased my heart but Miss PK could only be persuaded to take a back seat for a limited time (weeks, not months). Pretty soon she was back to worrying about his lack of a steady job, his childlike approach to life and his sexual proclivities. It was obvious there was no future for us. Walking along the seafront at Dover one afternoon with A, on a dull drizzle of a day with not much conversation and even less kissing, we passed a buoy with the name Jolene etched on it. That line from Dolly Parton, about not taking some guy just because you can, played in my head all afternoon.
That is precisely what I had done.
I believe in retribution and, after that sorry episode, I deserved a bucket-load. My comeuppance wasn’t long coming. On a brief visit to Australia, during a lull in the tug of war with Jenny over A1, I met A2. The two men couldn’t have been more different. A2 was a dependable, professional family man with two young children. He owned a house, drove a convertible sports car and sailed a yacht. His wife had recently left him and his suffering and vulnerability were deeply attractive. He also offered financial security and a ready-made family that saved me the bother of having to create one of my own. I should have been ashamed of myself but I lacked the self-awareness for that. I still hadn’t worked out that the instant fix of fairytales, when lo
vers meet and what happens next takes care of itself, was just that – a fairytale. A friend suggested we go to the theatre one night and that first date was followed two nights later by dinner and a moonlit sail on Sydney Harbour. It didn’t take much for me to convince myself that A2 was the one. I went back to England, disentangled myself from the sad mess with A1 and set my sights on A2.
Over the next three years I used all my savings travelling back and forth to Australia. A2 liked me, that much was clear from his letters and phone calls, but I craved certainty. I was looking for a passionate outpouring to reassure me we had a future together. Distance sharpened my desire. I sent notes and gifts to his children; I ordered flowers and sent him poetry. He sent the poems to his ex-wife in an attempt to win her back but I didn’t care – understanding flowed through me in a river of compassion; we were meant for each other, he was simply pining for what he could no longer have. He’d get over it and, in the end, as long as I was nice, he’d be mine. In the months that followed I tried in vain to read some kind of commitment into his letters. I refused to see that he was blatantly still in love with his ex-wife.
Sitting at home in England I grew impatient for an outcome, convinced that if only we were together I could heal A2’s broken heart. One Saturday afternoon I closed the curtains, switched off Lighthouse Family and settled down at the kitchen table, a deck of Tarot cards in front of me. I found it so much easier to consult a deck of cards than attempt the messy business of speaking directly to someone. When you live through dreams and fantasies, as I did, you do anything to avoid conflict and reality. I shuffled the pack, spread the cards face down on the kitchen table and selected ten, mentally asking what would happen if I moved to Australia.
The reading was inconclusive, with conflicting cards that made no sense, so I picked up the deck and reshuffled. Why waste time on a full reading? I decided to pick a single card, one solitary image that would decide my destiny. I spread the deck out, scanned the cards and picked one. The Hanged Man: wrong card. I was looking for The Lovers or the Ace of Cups, something that signified love and new beginnings, not a card that suggested I might have to let go of something unattainable.
I slowed my breathing, collected the cards and reshuffled, eyes closed this time. Show me a sign, I whispered, just one card that will decide my fate and future with A2 if I move to Australia. I ran my fingers along the pack, waited until it felt right then picked another card. The Hanged Man stared back at me. When it happened a third time I packed the cards away, sold my flat in London and applied for permanent residency in Australia.
I rang A2 when I arrived. ‘Surprise!’ A short time later I was dumped in favour of someone more stable. ‘If any part of your decision to come back to Australia involved the hope that you and I might one day be together (he did have a lovely turn of phrase) you must now let go of that. I have met and fallen in love with someone else.’ (Any part? It was the only reason!) The comeuppance I so richly deserved was sharpened in two exquisitely painful ways. I was dumped by email and the ‘someone’ was a friend I had confided in.
I took anti-depressants and invested in wailing therapy sessions. ‘Of course you’re upset, you gave up everything, moved to the other side of the world and the man you love dumped you. And your friend betrayed you. Your reaction is perfectly normal. Anyone in your position would be upset.’ The therapist was a kind soul who didn’t want to see me waste what little money I had.
I stayed in Australia, hoping A2 would change his mind (the fact that I had nowhere else to go played no small part in my decision). I had staked my future on A2. I had sold a beautiful Edwardian ground-floor flat in West London that had a flourishing garden and was within walking distance of the tube and squandered most of the proceeds flying back and forth to Australia. The end result was a small rented apartment in Leichhardt, on the top floor of a building that imprisoned the sticky Sydney heat under a flat roof, trapping it inside with me. I ate TV dinners from a badly chipped formica-topped table, my bare legs glued to a sweaty plastic sofa marooned in the centre of a shag-pile carpet. Planes on final approach to Mascot lined up with a beacon at the end of the street; every fifteen minutes they would roar overhead, rattling the windows and sending the six-metre span of vertical blinds into a tangled spin. I felt much the same way.
I lived on a diet of gin, chocolate and cigarettes, bursting into tears on the bus during the day and howling at the moon at night. It was like a rerun of my teenage years, only now I was forty-one. Life is so unfair, I wailed, grieving for the happiness that had been so cruelly snatched from my grasp – it would have been perfect if only it had worked. The irony was lost on me.
Eventually I stopped crying. I gave up smoking, found freelance work as a journalist with Australian House & Garden magazine, lost weight, saved money, even thought about putting a deposit on a small flat in Balmain. Then one fine day, about four years later, I was sent on a travel assignment to Canada. It was the kind of assignment most journalists dream of. In return for writing an article on eco-tourism, I got to spend a week at an exclusive resort on Vancouver Island. That was where I met A3.
A3 was a university lecturer from England. He was spending a week of his summer break teaching environmental studies to the group of committed eco-warriors who’d all signed up to spend a week in the wilderness. When he got up to speak on the first morning his voice wobbled uncontrollably. That show of nerves was enough for me to experience a rush of sympathy.
A3 was childlike in his enthusiasm for mushroom hunting in the forest, beach combing and hiking in the woods. ‘Nature’s a wonderful thing; isn’t it marvellous?’ he gushed, grabbing my hand to point out a patch of moss.
‘Did you two know each other before you came here?’ asked one of the participants as we sat peeling garlic for lentil salad at lunch one day. A3 was standing at the sink, chopping onions and shedding mock tears.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Everyone seems to think you’re an item.’
In less than a week we became inseparable. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live here,’ he said one afternoon as we sat beside the clear spring that circled the camp. ‘You could build a hut in the forest, grow vegetables, make your own wine.’
‘That would be my idea of heaven,’ I said.
On the last night he opened up.
‘It won’t last,’ he said, gloomily.
‘What won’t?’
‘I’ve got a girlfriend, back in England. It’s bound to fail eventually. We argue all the time. I wish I didn’t have to go. I wish I could stay here.’
Nothing much happened – Miss PK saw to that – but I held his soft hand as we listened to the sound of horses gently sighing in the darkness, and believe it or not (even I find it hard to believe when I look back on it) that was all the encouragement I needed to start making plans.
Once again I had set my sights on an impossible dream, an unattainable fantasy of life elsewhere. We can make this happen, I thought. I can rescue you from a relationship that’s not working and we can create the perfect life together, we just have to work out a way of making it happen. The challenge and the distance spurred me on. If I’d shared such bizarre thinking with any of my girlfriends they would have (quite rightly) told me to stop being such a crazy fool, so naturally I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell A3 what I was planning either since anyone with an ounce of sense would have seen that he had simply enjoyed a wonderful holiday and he wasn’t looking forward to going home. I had no such sense and I was a long way from learning my lesson.
We stayed in touch by email and it wasn’t long before I decided it was time to move back to the other side of the world.
My good friend Kate, a touchstone since university days and happily married to James with two young children, spotted the pattern long before I did.
‘You’re not moving back to England because of that guy you met?’
‘What guy?’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Oh you mean the guy in Vancouver? Hah! No.’
‘Because that would be a big mistake, wouldn’t it?’
‘The biggest!’
‘You’ve got a good job here, and you love living in Sydney.’
‘I know, I know!’ I lowered my voice an octave. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I just want to reconnect with family, that’s all.’
I was lying, as usual.
I gave up the best job I’d ever had and moved to Framley Coddrington, back to the village where I’d grown up. When A3 learnt what I’d done we met for dinner.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said, bouncing on his feet like a small child as we hugged hello. ‘Wasn’t that a great holiday?’
‘The best,’ I said. ‘How’s life?’
He pulled a face. ‘Not good. White or red?’
I drank enough to silence Miss PK and later that evening, with his girlfriend conveniently away, we ended up at his flat in Hammersmith. I woke up the next morning elated, convinced this was the start of a new life for us both. He woke up with a hangover. ‘What have we done?’ he groaned.
Over the months that followed we saw each other a few times. Each time he told me how bad things were with his girlfriend before insisting he couldn’t possibly break up with her. Eventually, to his credit, he said it would have to stop. By now I was hooked. What is it about something you can’t have that makes it so attractive?
I feigned friendship and developed an interest in caving, his main hobby. I joined the local Frenchay and Region Troglodyte Society, bought a hard hat with FART written across the front of it and went caving in the Mendips. I sent him newspaper cuttings on underground caving expeditions and joined a group of singers performing in Cheddar Gorge. None of it made a jot of difference.
A3 tried patiently, and frequently, to explain that the fling we’d had was just that – a fling – and would I please stop being silly; he valued my friendship but he didn’t want anything more. I didn’t believe him. If I’d been worried about time running out in my thirties, now, in my late forties, I was desperate – desperate enough to convince myself we had a future; if only he would leave Melanie, his ‘she’s part-time for heaven’s sake’ girlfriend, and fall into my outstretched arms, all would be well.