The Secrets of Married Women

by Mason, Carol

‘You take them. You go. The holiday was your idea.’

  ‘Well maybe I will,’ he said.

  ‘Or,’ I took a big breath. ‘We could both go. I mean, we could get separate rooms. But the point is we’d be there together, away from here, we could talk, maybe a change of scenery we could sort all this out—’

  ‘—Get serious,’ he said.

  I was being serious. And I didn’t mean forget it ever happened. ‘Well I don’t want the tickets so you do with them what you will,’ I said and hung up. I am getting truly sick and tired of this.

  I stare at this house now, the top window, which is the floor that’s available. It’s so weird sitting here looking at a room to rent as a single person when two minutes ago you were married and you owned your own home. I can’t go in.

  I go back to the bungalow, lie on the bed and stare at the same crack on the ceiling. Sometimes, like now, my memory of kissing Rob is so real that I have to stop what I’m doing and recover from the effect of it. Today I tell myself I’ll do this one more time then I have to stop thinking thoughts that will continue to buckle me.

  Wendy asks me if I want to borrow her Divorces for Dummies books. Strangely enough, I actually manage a smile. ‘Maybe you should become a divorce lawyer,’ I tell her. She screws up her face. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’d have an unreasonable urge to castrate the husbands.’

  On 25th September she has her ‘procedure’. I go with her and am the first face she sees when she comes wakes up. ‘No sex for two weeks. Doctor’s orders,’ she tells me, and she manages a pained laugh. I stay over a few nights at her house to help out. When the lads go to bed we sit up for hours nattering, she at one end of the sofa, me at the other. You’ll never hear Wendy saying anything self-pitying, but somewhere in the scheme of things she feels it was a cruel blow to have lost a child, a husband and now—if her op isn’t a success—a womb. ‘I’ve been dreaming about that strange experience I had when I was pregnant. Remember?’

  ‘I do.’ It always gives me the creeps. Wendy was about six months pregnant with Nina and she was in a yoga class doing a relaxation at the end. The instructor asked them to picture a scene—some personal place that gave them calm—be it a beach, a spot of sunlight cracking through trees. Wendy couldn’t think of one. But then something came to her. She saw as clear as if it were real. A dark, outdoor haven; and in the centre, risen earth. On the earth was a clutch of flowers. White flowers, she said. A bouquet. It took a while for her to realise that she was seeing a burial place. ‘That’s how I knew that something awful was going to happen,’ she told Leigh and me, after little Nina died.

  ‘Jill I keep dreaming of that feeling I had. When I felt there was something awful going to happen in my womb.’

  I squeeze her hand. ‘If you lose a womb Wendy, it’s only a very small part of you that’ll be taken away. It’s not your brain. It’s not your heart. It’s not the air in your lungs. It’s a small price to pay for still getting to have your life. And your dreams and ambitions.’ She nods.

  ‘You all thought I got pregnant with Nina by accident didn’t you?’ She looks at me with secrets blazing. ‘So did Neil. But I didn’t. I stopped taking the pill. I think part of me was scared my lads were growing up and motherhood was all I knew. And I’d vowed to myself that when they were older I probably would leave Neil. I think having another baby was my way of never having to put myself in that position.’

  The next night she says, ‘You know what bothers me the most when I think of them together?’ she whispers. ‘It’s not the sex. It’s the thought of them talking about me. You know, intimately. Discussing my body…’

  ‘You don’t know they will have—’

  ‘—Oh come on. She’ll have coaxed it out of him. I can imagine her wanting to know things about me. Very private things.’

  ‘No,’ I say. But I’m thinking, Yes. Because I can see a person with dodgy self-esteem behaving like that.

  ‘I’m angry,’ she says suddenly. ‘Oh Jill, I’m hopping mad about her.’ She gets up, clatters glasses and bottles in the drinks cabinet and pours us both a large something.

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be drinking, Wendy, with the pills…’

  She stands in the centre of her sitting room floor, drinks it quickly, then refills her glass. ‘Fuck the pills,’ she says; I have never heard her swear. ‘I’m angry Jill. I’m so angry I want to kill her. I have this inner rage. I want to critically harm her. Isn’t that awful?’ She bites the outer edge of her hand. ‘I want to ring her and call her a thin, ugly-hearted, tit-less, decrepit bitch.’

  ‘Do. Tit-less and decrepit would probably be enough to kill her. But not tonight. Not while you’re so mad. And not right after your op. It’ll do you no good. Come on,’ I pat the seat beside me. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Tit-less and decrepit,’ she chants again. Then she puts a hand on her lower stomach, winces. ‘Oh,’ she turns to look at me. ‘That hurt.’ Then she sinks into the sofa. And it comes out in a distraught whisper. ‘I loved him.’ She looks at me. I get the feeling this is the last time she’s ever going to say it. For one last time the room seems to fill with the ghosts of a bygone marriage.

  My house must feel like this, to Rob.

  I set the chenille throw over our legs again and sink the brandy she’s poured for me—and then the measure she’s poured for herself just to stop her having it. ‘You know what I could never get over about her?’ Wendy says calmly, sometime later, when our voices have become tired and a little tipsy. ‘Why she didn’t get those horrid little teeth fixed. I mean, she made all that money, she’d buy those bags and fancy watches, yet she’d live with those horrid little back teeth.’ It’s true. Leigh didn’t have great teeth. She claimed it was from taking asthma medication as a child. She often joked that she hoped her adopted identical twin had better teeth than her.

  I can’t help but have a small chuckle. I’ve never heard as much bitchiness come out of Wendy’s mouth, and I love her for it. ‘We’re talking about her as though she’s dead.’

  ‘No,’ she says, looking like she’s thinking on a straight line. ‘I wouldn’t want her to be dead. I think of what a good friend she was to me when I lost Nina. Both of you were.’ Then she looks at me. ‘Besides, death would be too kind. Let her have Neil. How long do you think it’ll be before he cheats again?’ She cocks an eyebrow. ‘Judging by how deliriously happy he is to be living with her, I’d say not long.’

  ‘And she once told me she could never, ever, be with a cheat. She said her self-esteem just couldn’t take it. It’d kill her. She said that’s why she’d married Lawrence, because he was a sure, safe bet.’

  ‘Oh well. Poetic justice. What a shame.’

  One night Wendy’s son Ben walks into the room just as Wendy is busy enlightening me on the fact that Neil didn’t have half as big a penis as Leigh made him out to have. Her lads have been fabulous through all this. They seemed more shocked that it was Leigh than anything else. Not because she was a friend, but because as their Paul said, ‘Gaw! I thought when married people have affairs they’re supposed to, you know, upgrade the model. Park the Peugeot in the back alley and take the Ferrari out for a spin.’ Then he told Wendy that she was far better looking than Leigh was. Any day.

  Neil will try to get custody, Wendy told them. But their Ben said, let him. There was no way they were going to live with him. And, as Wendy said, they’re big lads. Try making them.

  ‘Make way, make way,’ Ben says now, and he’s holding something at arm’s length, pulling a face. It’s a sock. Obviously one of Neil’s. We watch in disbelief as Ben walks over to the kitchen bin, puts his foot on the pedal, and drops it in there with a ‘right then.’ He dusts his hands off, nods to us, then goes back upstairs.

  ‘It’s all an act,’ she whispers. I think it’s so sweet how they keep taking turns making sure she takes her painkillers. ‘They hug me and ruffle my hair, want to watch videos of my choice. But I see it in the strained silences as we try to rearrange our simpl
e little routines—like who gets to drive whom where, now that we have to factor Neil—and a second car—out. I see it in their bitter little grunts about how they’re never getting married.’

  ‘They’ll be alright.’ I envy Wendy her lovely lads.

  ~ * * * ~

  On my last night there I get a surprise. Well, two. The first is that we’re watching the North East news with the sound down, and we suddenly see a gaggle of naked bodies outside a store. Wendy stumbles for the remote control. We just get it turned up to hear Mike Neville, the newscaster, talking about how two-hundred pound Madge from Cleveland was the first person over the threshold when the new Fatz store opened at the Gateshead Metro Centre. Madge, whose bare arse looks like curdled cake batter, pads like a pet elephant into the store to claim her prize. Wendy and I have a good chortle.

  Then… Over chicken pie and bagged salad, she generously offers for me to move in, as a temporary alternative to staying at my parents’. The lads say they’re all for it. For a minute it feels like I’m even being strong-armed. And for a minute it’s tempting. But a connectivity of adultery runs between our mutual circumstances. And as long as we’re together under the same roof, it’s all we talk about. And I’m sure that in the long run it’ll pull us down more than it’ll help us move forward.

  Speaking of….

  I manage—miraculously—to get my act together enough to actually go to work. I’ve got a temp secretarial job through an agency. It’s at the Newcastle job centre, which is, let me tell you, nothing like working for the football club. Instead of sexy footballers to gaze at, and glamorous girls to go for lunch with, there are bespectacled Nora Batty types with a meat-and potatoes sense of humour, and the parade of unemployed northerners coming to collect their pittance of a dole cheque. I didn’t think they existed since Newcastle became so upwardly mobile. But they do. In droves. The employment agency said they just want somebody short-term so that suits me fine, because I’m just taking life day by day at the moment. Since moving back in with my parents again, and not having Wendy to distract me, I’m not good again. But I go through the motions of filing claims until five o’clock, and have a little fun trying to lighten up the Noras. Strangely it helps. Then coming back to the bungalow pitches me back into despair. But I see it as a sort of halfway house. If I’m there, instead of in some flat I’ve signed a lease on, I am half way back to Rob.

  The next day in work something terrifying happens. The manager of Claims, Bill Crushing—an intense, overly affable chap who’s on Prozac—asks me out. His wife left him for another man. He’s not bad looking for a middle-aged civil servant, but nobody you’d set your sights on. I wouldn’t care, I’ve not even been looking nice lately. I know I still look exhausted because my dad will keep gawping at me like I’m the Bride of Frankenstein, and when I glower at him he quickly pretends he wasn’t doing it. And unlike at the football club which was a bit of a daily fashion parade amongst the girls, I’ve not been wearing my good clothes to come here for fear the punters might think I have it too good.

  If only they knew.

  But he must have sniffed out my situation, this Bill, and he wants a kindred soul in misery. He hovers at the side of my partitioned cubicle. I stop him mid-sentence, tell him, nicely, that I’ve only been separated a short time; that I’m nowhere ready to date again. Voicing the ‘separated’ word freaks me out. He looks mildly embarrassed. I go and hide in the toilets. Am I’m back on the dating scene, after thirteen years? Will I have to dodge predatory divorcees on the happy pills? Is this the type that’s going to set its cap at me? That I’ll somehow end up being grateful for? I’ll have to tell them won’t I? That I cheated. Then the nice guys won’t want me. I’ll become, in their minds, somebody who I am not in my own.

  All I can say is I’m pleased I told them I’m going away on holiday for two weeks. Even if I’m not.

  Friday night, I’m pacing the bungalow manically twirling my hair because tomorrow’s the day that I have to decide whether I am going to use the ticket. I mailed Rob his, telling him that I was going to go and I still believed that he should join me. ‘Get on that plane regardless, if he doesn’t come,’ Wendy told me. ‘Have a holiday,’ she said. ‘Go away. Relax. Come back afresh, maybe seeing things a little differently.’

  ‘It’s a nice thought,’ I said. But it’s not.

  Our flight is at ten a.m. I go out by the dustbin to get a bit of privacy and make an impassioned, pride-swallowing call to Rob’s mobile. Of course he’s not answering because he probably sees my number, so I leave a message. ‘Look Rob, I don’t for a minute think this is really going to do any good... only I have to try, this one last time.’

  I take a deep breath. I have vowed I’ll not cry or be ‘a drama queen’ as he sometimes calls me. But what happens? What do I say? I say ‘Rob…. Oh Rob, my life is not going on without you! It’s not, Rob. I’m so sad I can’t function.’ I squeak then turn it into a fully-fledged bawl. ‘Rob, every day we don’t talk is a day I feel I’m giving you to get over me. And I can’t let you. I can’t let you get over me…’ My voice cracks now with a jagged ache. ‘Rob,’ I say, after I’ve faked a big coughing fit to disguise the state of me. ‘I’m so, so sorry for what I’ve done. I’ve said this so many times that it’s starting to sound like I don’t mean it.’ I pause and snivel. ‘Well anyway, without grovelling, which I know you wouldn’t respect, I’m just going to say this one last time. Rob, please forgive me. Or at least give me another chance—for the happy couple that we were for ten years, not the people we became for a few months.’ I get a blast of cheery strength in my bones. ‘Rob,’ I wag a finger at the dustbin. ‘I for one am going to be at that airport tomorrow, and I….’

  I what? I beg you, I want you, I need you…?

  ‘I hope you’ll be there too. Let’s go on our holiday, and let’s see if, away from all this we can talk better and maybe give ourselves a chance to work this out. And if we can’t, and you can’t forgive me, I promise I will accept that, and I’ll leave you alone and you will never hear from me again.’ I grimace and bite my lip. Please God don’t hold me to that, or I’ll never get into heaven. Not that I hold out much hope of getting in, in any case. I’m sure there’s a separate loading dock for cheaters and there’s probably a big bin they throw them into first, and it’s full of boiling tar and feathers, and they even feather your eyeballs. ‘Right then,’ I draw breath. ‘I’ve said my piece. I’ll leave it at that. Like I’ve said, I’ll be there tomorrow. At eight. In the morning. Eight a.m. I’ll be waiting for you. So I’m hoping that you will come.’

  Somewhere in there towards the end I’m convinced I’ve heard a beep and I’ve been cut off. So I ring him up again and leave the message all over again, this time at break-neck speed.

  When I hang up I lean back into the wall and sigh looking from the dustbin now to the stars where I make an impassioned plea to God, my new best friend, to deliver Rob to the airport tomorrow morning. Mrs Parker next-door—nosy parker more like—is peering around a sheet on the washing line, gawping at me, mid-peg. She must have heard every word. Now the whole of the neighbourhood will know and my dad will never dare show his face in the pub again.

  Saturday morning I barrel out of bed, and throw on the cargo pants and navy tank top I laid out the night before. It feels, ridiculously, like going on a blind date—only blind as in he may not be there. What am I doing? He’s not going to come is he? I mean it’s mad even thinking it. Going there hoping he might is like admitting I don’t really know the man I was married to for ten years. But maybe there are such things as miracles. So I have a quick cuppa, brush my teeth, tell my puzzled dad that I may or may not be going away on two weeks’ holiday.

  ‘When like?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘What d’you mean now?’

  ‘Now like, as in, I’m leaving for the airport in three minutes.’

  ‘Eh? Hang on a minute. A holiday? This morning. You might be going but you might not?’

&n
bsp; My dad’s thin comb-over is practically airborne. I lick my hand and pat it down and he goes ‘Ergh, get off!’ and flaps my hand away.

  ‘That’s right Dad.’

  He looks at me with those red, watery eyes that used to be a vivid young-blood blue. ‘Are you alright chucka?’

  ‘Wouldn’t go that far. I feel okay.’

  ‘No,’ he knocks on his temple. ‘I don’t mean in your body. I mean, in your head.’

  I wrap him in a big cuddle that he can’t extract himself from no matter how he tries. ‘Oh dad, I probably never was, from birth. But there’s not much I can do about it now.’

  ‘Be good,’ he tells me, with a big grin on his face, as I venture outside into the autumn air.

  ~ * * * ~

  I get to the airport early, three hours in advance. Now that I’m actually here, I know for sure that Rob is not going to come. I imagine him sitting at home thinking Is she really sat there at the airport waiting for me? But still, I pass my ticket over the counter and go through the motions. If he doesn’t come, I know I won’t board.

  I go to buy a Costa’s coffee hoping the caffeine will pep my flagging adrenalin. I take it to a bench that faces the revolving door and watch the bustle of the holidaymakers. It always fascinates me what passionate places airports are. The good-bye kisses that make the disenchanted-and-trying-not-to-be-cynical among us roll our eyes. The Orange People coming from the arrivals level, fresh from two weeks’ of roasting their you-know-what’s off on a beach in the Algarve. I get carried away watching a couple my age with their little boy in the check-in line. The blonde wife is toned and lovely with her belly-ring and blond and black streaks and her little cropped tank top. She’s having a disagreement with her sexy hunk of a hubby about whether little Nathan should take his big coat on the plane or not. Deciding not, she bends over and shoves the coat in the luggage, and her hubby’s hand instinctively touches her bum when she stands up. She gives him that smile and a quick, promising kiss. It’s lovely. They are. And I wish I could just lop their heads off and stick Rob’s and mine onto their bodies and their lives. For some strange reason I think about that time when Leigh, Wendy and I, and the hubbies and kids went on a trip together. Leigh was pregnant with Molly. We rented one of those honking great caravans in St. Ives. Imagine all of us in a caravan, no matter how big. Oh it was hell. Rob got gastric flu on the way down, and by the end of our first day there, so had Wendy’s lads and Lawrence. Then the toilet in the caravan backed up, so Lawrence, who was the last to fall ill, had to tread across a great big field to use the site’s facilities. In the middle of the night he was crawling his way back clutching his poor gurgling belly when he realized he’d left the door key in the loos but he didn’t have the strength to go back for it. He didn’t want to wake us all up by knocking, so he peeked in the window where he thought Leigh’s bed was. Only he had mistaken some other caravan for ours. What he saw was not his sleeping wife, or a sleeping any of us for that matter, but a man and his wife having sex. Oh, it was like a Carry On film. The moment he saw them, they saw him—the woman, to be precise, who was on top—and then oh dear. The husband ran out of there stark naked, jumped on Lawrence and gave him a bare-backed hiding. We all woke up with the commotion, hearing somebody calling somebody a Fucking Peeping Tom. Rob tried to pull the husband off Lawrence, but it was Neil who eventually split it up. Poor Lawrence ended up in a police holding cell! Neil had to use his influence. Lawrence spent the rest of the trip in the caravan manically locking doors and peeking around curtains and doing his business in a bucket. We laughed about it for years. Even Lawrence eventually saw the funny side.