The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  Even during pregnancy my anxiety levels rocketed again. I started obsessing about which toiletries and cleaning products were safest as well as nutrition, worrying that every element I touched or ingested could harm her development, and then when Clara arrived I obsessed about her routines, to the point that I’d panic if I was one minute late with her bottle, and when I weaned her I was convinced she was going to choke or would be poisoned by any purée that hadn’t been made by me that morning with organic ingredients less than an hour before she ingested it, and I made everyone use sterilizing hand gel before touching her or her things – I secretly hated letting strangers hold her… And yet I was constantly worrying I was parenting badly, and wanted Quentin’s reassurance. It was just my bizarre take on postnatal depression, looking back. But it coincided with Quentin launching himself into politics, which meant he was around even less, and I ended up more or less abandoning my own career, just as it was taking off.

  Quentin started to get outwardly impatient with me, to the point where I got too nervous to talk to him about anything much. He never encouraged me any more to go off to make more art like he used to, or to have time away from Clara, probably because he was too busy to look after her himself, when that was what I really needed, but I couldn’t admit to it because I felt like that would make me an even worse mother. And when Quentin was home, all he wanted to tell me about was his campaign, and in this lecturing way as if I were a dim constituent who needed to be educated. And hearing him orate on all these different issues made me realize, subconsciously at first, that it made me uncomfortable – that I actually didn’t agree with him on most things. I used to describe myself half-jokingly as apolitical. But now I started to realize that Dad’s socialism must have sunk in deeper than I’d thought. Before long, I dreaded even being in the same room as my husband, so one day I snapped – I told him I just couldn’t talk about his campaign, or politics, any more, until the election was over, which infuriated him, as I knew it would. But I stuck to it. At the same time I craved his support.

  Looking back, I realize Quentin had never actually been all that great at listening to me. A bit like Mum, his attitude was always that I should pull myself together – and making art, to him, was just a solution that didn’t have to involve him. It sometimes felt like I was a machine he’d paid a lot for, but was prone to malfunction, so he’d demand I be serviced promptly, but didn’t really care how, or even why I wasn’t working properly, as long as I came back fixed. And then he found himself a new machine anyway.

  When I found those blatant texts from Alice, I was devastated. He’d left his phone in the kitchen one morning while he had a shower, and one came through. My initial response was to panic inside, but act normal outside – I just put the phone back, watched him hunt for it, find it, and slip it nonchalantly in his pocket, and said goodbye to him as normal, then dropped Clara off at nursery. It was only once I got home again that I started to lose it. I thought about all the consequences for our daughter if we broke up, and how I could possibly manage on my own, and that fist inside me tightened, and my breathing went all shallow – I thought I was going to hyperventilate, or faint, or both…

  I called my ‘best friend’ Meg, but she was busy. I didn’t feel like calling any of my other friends yet, or Mum – especially since she and I had just had this big row over her employing the immigrant. So after a while of wandering around the house wailing at nobody, I texted Quentin to say he would have to pick up Clara that evening, as I was going to the studio for a long session; but I wasn’t really in a state to work, and instead I found myself heading for the Heath. Once I got there I just walked and walked, all afternoon, looping all the trails, barely noticing where I was going but just processing what had just happened and somehow absorbing the surroundings. That place always calms me down and makes me feel better – the wildness, the greenery, being above it all… but when the sun started setting, I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. And I couldn’t bring myself to go home yet. Meg’s phone was off, and the only place I could think of to go was Mum’s.

  And then she was out! Instead, there was this stranger. After I’d got over being scared, I was really spiky with him, but he didn’t react angrily, like he could have done – he just asked me if I was okay, and we started chatting, and soon we were sitting next to each other on the doorstep and I was telling him about my marriage and the affair – things I’d never even told Mum, or anyone! He turned out to be such a good listener. And he cracked a few jokes along the way too, which helped put me at ease. But also, somehow, I sensed that he really wanted to know how I felt, that he genuinely cared, even though he’d only just met me – and even though, in comparison to him, my problems were the tiniest molehill next to Everest. I mean, he’d been forced to leave his accommodation with no notice, had nowhere else to stay, no job, no family, no way of going back to his country without being tortured and imprisoned, again… And once I made the effort to listen in return, I was almost dumbfounded by how he’d been through all that, and yet still had the headspace – and the heartspace – to listen to me. It was like realizing I’d been looking at my own little world through a microscope for years, and I’d only just stepped away from the lens.

  So, even when he admitted that he wasn’t a refugee and he had been working in the UK illegally – which I’d blown up to being such a big issue in my head – I was surprised to find I didn’t care. Especially when he started to tell me about why he’d left Eritrea, being a dissident writer, and what had happened to him. He talked so evenly about these extraordinary experiences that I, bizarrely, felt almost comforted, at the same time as feeling I should offer comfort of some sort and not knowing how. He’s got a lovely, mellow tone of voice, too, I hadn’t heard an accent quite like his before, and he’s so striking to look at, from a purely artistic point of view, of course, that I found I was completely captivated by him – my own problems seemed to vanish, and I could have listened to him all night.

  Anyway, then Mum finally arrived back home from her book group, and we both ended up staying over. In different rooms, of course! After he’d gone to bed, I apologized to Mum, and then told her about the affair. I tried to sound together, but I couldn’t stop the tears erupting, and then I could see her start to panic as she foresaw yet another anxiety phase, and how she would now going to be expected to pick up the pieces around me, when she thought her son-in-law had finally taken over that mantle. I mean, her immediate response was: ‘Oh, how could he, I never liked him – but don’t rush into anything, single parenting is hard, Nina, believe me; how would you cope?’ Honestly, she managed to convey in one sentence that she’d always disapproved of my choice of mate, and yet she also thought I was so pathetic because of my anxiety that I would fall apart without him, and implied I would therefore be causing irrevocable harm to her granddaughter! So I told her I didn’t want to talk about it any more, and went to bed.

  It was great having Yonas there the next morning, actually, because Mum and I were forced to be nice to one another while we all ate breakfast, and everything from the night before was defused. I gave Yonas the phone numbers I’d looked up, and then I knew I should get ready to leave and head home for the inevitable confrontation, but that would mean I’d have to decide what to do, and also I really wanted to see more of him… So I made an impromptu suggestion that he come with me to the Portrait Gallery.

  It felt like such a treat to introduce it to someone who’d never been – not just there but to any gallery in the UK! Made me remember what riches we have on our doorstep, especially in London. Conversation flowed about the pictures and other things – he has a good friend who’s an artist – and we walked all the way back to Mum’s afterwards. I’d been having such a nice time that, again, I’d almost forgotten about my own little apocalypse.

  But I had to deal with it in the end. So I drove back home, picked up Clara, smiled and asked the normal questions about how her day was, gave her supper, and put her to bed…
and then the panic started sweeping through me again.

  It was hours later that Quentin finally walked in. He wasn’t due to be back so late, and I bet I knew where he’d been. He didn’t seem to think it odd that I was just sitting there in the kitchen in the dark, or even ask how I was, or why I’d stayed over at Mum’s. Instead he switched the light on, started preparing himself a snack and telling me about all the meetings he’d had that day. So, for once, I told him to shut up.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he said.

  I felt a little glow, then. I wished I’d had the guts to say that to him before. ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Know what?’ he said.

  ‘You know what.’

  ‘I don’t know what.’

  ‘You really want me to spell what out?’ Apparently he really did. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I know about you and Alice: that’s what.’ I expected him to break down and apologize, maybe even kneel at my feet and plead – but he denied it! I made him get his phone out to prove it. And then, he accepted the texts were there, and looked embarrassed, at least, but insisted it was all one-sided on Alice’s part and claimed he never sent flirty texts back and demanded I look at his sent message folder. And I said, well I have looked at it and you might have been careful enough of your own career not to be obvious about it, but you hardly made efforts to put her off, did you? He claimed he had in fact asked her to behave more professionally a few times but he didn’t want to ‘dent her enthusiasm’ as she put in a lot of hours and was doing a great job for the campaign and they had a good ‘working relationship’.

  ‘Don’t give me that!’ I said. ‘You must at least have led her on for her to send repeated texts to her boss full of kisses and gushing about what an “amazing time” she’s had with you, sent as late as midnight on days when you’d put in our calendar that you were working late, like a clutch of teenage love letters that you chose to preserve. You cannot expect me to believe that nothing’s happened after reading all that. Just admit it!’ But he still wouldn’t – claimed that if he’d had anything to hide, he’d have deleted it. So we had a massive row, and of course poor Clara woke up.

  So then there was a stand-off in the house for a few days, where I refused to speak to Quentin or argue in front of our child again until he admitted it. Which he still refused to do. I told Meg and asked her for advice, and she sounded suitably affronted on my part, but just said I should leave him immediately, as if it were obvious. She had no real empathy with the quandary of being a mother in that situation. And, do you know, I think the only way I stayed strong was the memory of my secret encounter with Yonas – that new feeling it had given me that I wasn’t alone, that somebody would listen to me and not judge. And also that I wasn’t the most unlucky person in the world, by any stretch! If he could stay balanced in his situation, so could I in mine.

  But then Meg, knowing how upset I was, went and gave me another wonderful surprise by publishing an article in the paper saying that Mum was employing an illegal immigrant, and accusing Quentin of being a hypocrite! So, while I’d been reaching out to her for help, she’d been planning to expose my family behind my back. Quentin accused me of masterminding it to get back at him for the affair that he still said was non-existent. He lost the plot, and started shouting in my face, saying he couldn’t believe I’d deliberately sabotaged his campaign, called me a ‘psycho’, said my anxiety had ‘spun out of control’ and he’d ‘had it up to here’ and he should just ‘take me to get psychiatric help’. It got really nasty. I was still reeling, after he’d finally left for work, when I remembered I was supposed to meet Yonas again that day. But before I could work out how to explain Meg’s article to him, Yonas called me to say he’d already found it in the paper. And then hung up. Didn’t respond to my messages. Just disappeared off the map.

  So, my biggest worry at that point was obviously Clara. But I also found, to my surprise, that I cared more about Yonas believing that I’d exploited him and cutting me off than I did about the likely collapse of Quentin’s election campaign. And even our relationship. I was worried for Mum too, of course, in case the police got onto her, and I was livid with Meg. I mean, we’d been friends for twenty years, and to her that apparently meant nothing, if she could just use me for blatant career gain like that. So I phoned her and told her our friendship was over, and then sobbed – I’d never imagined having that conversation with her, of all people.

  I had to tell Mum about the article, then. Poor Mum – she was so confused and hurt. She said that Meg had spoken to her, but never mentioned she intended to publish anything. She also pointed out that I must have told Meg about her employing Joe in the first place, because nobody else knew, and said she would ‘just have to hope the police didn’t follow up’, just as I’d ‘threatened’, and while she was ‘sorry my marriage was going awry’, this was ‘no way to deal with it’.

  I hung up. I really didn’t know what to do. I felt utterly alone. Even though I was furious with Quentin, I couldn’t help feeling guilty that it was me who’d unintentionally caused this hand grenade to hit his campaign by talking to Meg, and generally by being over-anxious, and I couldn’t bring myself to walk out of our marriage yet, which would mean taking Clara away from her father. So I decided to stay on at home, and maintain an external illusion of a normal family life until the election was over, on the condition that we slept in separate rooms. Then I’d decide.

  So for a few weeks I concentrated on looking after Clara, getting through the daily routine, never speaking to my friends, or Mum, never taking calls or checking my email, not letting on to anyone else what had happened. Unbelievably, Meg wrote a second article about Quentin, this time publicizing his affair, and had the gall to email me, suggesting I should be grateful. I didn’t reply. I ignored the reporters loitering outside our house, and pretended they weren’t there, until I absolutely had to leave to take Clara out; then I’d open the door feeling so shaky and tight-chested I could hardly breathe. ‘Mrs Lambourne, tell us your side,’ they’d shout at me, and I wouldn’t look at them, and insisted Clara didn’t either. I told her they were just some nasty people who wanted to make her daddy’s life difficult and it was all part of a nasty political game run by boys and they would go away soon. And they did. They got bored, and drifted away like flies from a dried-up apple core.

  I got used to going to bed before Quentin got home – which was invariably late in the final days of the campaign – and walking around him when we happened to coincide in the kitchen early in the morning as if he were a ghost. And I thought a lot about Yonas, hiding out somewhere too. How, in a different way, he must also be having to go out and face the world every day, concealing so much. (I didn’t realize how much, then.) But I figured I would never see him again. I mean, if you’re illegal and you think the police are onto you, you’re likely to go on the run, and you’re definitely going to cut off the person you think shopped you, right?

  But the timing felt like such a shame, because I’d researched an immigration lawyer who sounded great and, after some initial caution, Yonas had agreed he would see her. Meg’s article had probably spooked him into giving up on the idea. I sent him lots of texts trying to explain, and encouraging him to go, but he never replied.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about him though. I’d barely met him, really, and I told myself it must just be my imagination going into overdrive – you know, everything else in my life was a mess, and I was constructing Yonas into this unlikely saint who’d parachuted in and pulled me out of my despair, and appeared to be the absolute polar opposite to Quentin in so many ways, which somehow added to the justifications I needed to leave my marriage! I reminded myself I hardly knew him at all. But I just felt deep down as if I did.

  So, one day, Mum called, and she told me that the police had come round to question her, but she’d told them in no uncertain terms that her student was just her student, and that she was frankly indignant at how she had been treated for doing charity work like a conscientious citizen
. ‘And can you believe,’ she said, ‘they actually apologized to me, and assured me they’d drop it?’

  I almost laughed with relief! ‘Well done, Mum,’ I said, ‘that’s brilliant!’ I apologized again for my unwitting leak, and this time she said it was her fault for employing Joe in the first place, that she should have listened to my advice after all. ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘please don’t blame yourself! I shouldn’t have made such a big deal of it. And I guess neither of us should have trusted Meg.’ Mum said she was sorry I’d lost a friend, but I said I was probably better off, only wishing I meant it – I was still missing Meg, despite what she’d done. And then I asked Mum if Clara and I could please move in with her if I decided to leave Quentin.

  There was a long silence. Then she said she didn’t think that was a good idea. I felt a bit sick. I had to plead with her, and tell her how Quentin had shouted at me and said awful things, and how I was worried about Clara… until she finally conceded. Which didn’t fill me with joy about moving back home, even for a short time. But it was still a relief to know that I could.

  Quentin did get elected, of course. Despite the article. And I was glad, purely because he would get the job and status boost he wanted, and wouldn’t then feel like he’d lost everything when I moved out with Clara. Because I’d finally made up my mind by then. Still, I didn’t have the courage to tell him we were leaving – gutless, I know – I just waited until he was out at a celebration lunch the following day, then packed up a suitcase and left him a note.