Yet still I had to lie to them and learned to smile while my chest ached. I tried to concentrate on their needs but my mind was racing away. On the whole I managed to keep in control, but occasionally my guard slipped.
Mark and Amanda Tandy were bringing their boys to join us on the island. I popped the kids into a Canadian canoe, planning to cross the choppy waters to greet them, and we started paddling.
‘One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,’ we chanted, battling against the out-rushing tide and the in-rushing River Shiel.
We passed the castle as a heron flew overhead. And then Noah said, ‘I miss Daddy.’
‘So do I,’ I said. All five of us started crying uncontrollably. We just couldn’t stop. Ivo tried to climb over Louis to sit on my lap and then Louis wanted to join him. The weight of the two boys knocked me backwards off my narrow seat, and my paddle slipped away. We were terrified, a family at the mercy of the elements as the unstable canoe swirled in the conflicting currents.
Ian pulled up beside us in the rib, and Mark scooped us up from our rocking canoe. ‘I know what we’ll do, chaps,’ he said. ‘We’ll perform a play.’ Thanks to him and days of rehearsals, the party was entertained and distracted for the rest of the week.
Shortly afterwards, we went to visit Mum and Dad on holiday in Menorca. The children were convinced that my parents had excluded Robert from the trip because they didn’t approve of him – it was time to tell them the truth. The boys cried silently, while Flo became hysterical. ‘Is Daddy’s girlfriend prettier than me, Mummy?’ she wailed, and then sobbed herself to sleep in my arms. I’ll never forget the relief of holding each child’s chin, looking them in the eye and telling them that I would never lie to them again. It was one step in the right direction, though the agony continued.
Brian Eno and Anthea Norman-Taylor knew of my plight and invited me to join them for a week in St Petersburg, where they were living for six months. I stayed in a tiny flat overlooking the imposing Hermitage Museum and saw Anthea and then Brian on alternative nights, as they didn’t want to leave their girls alone with a babysitter. Their advice was considered, though from two very different perspectives; both were wise and insightful and I will always be grateful to them. Arriving back at Heathrow, I scanned the crowds, fantasising about Robert being there to meet me, holding a big bunch of flowers and saying it had all been a terrible mistake. He wasn’t.
I hung on the words of everyone I met, both wise friends and chance encounters. ‘Attempt an elegant disengagement,’ said my neighbour. ‘With every step, think where you want to be in five years’ time,’ said another. Books and films suddenly seemed to hold the keys to the locked doors ahead, and every conversation resonated with insights into human behaviour. I was told to do what was best for me, but how on earth could I separate that from what was best for my children?’
I know Robert would have given anything to return to a time when we could have assessed our lives and worked out a way of living that made us all happy. I believe even now that we were essentially a good couple and had the wherewithal needed to address our issues, but this is not possible when a third party is involved. Robert had left for a simpler life with less responsibility and a partner who could devote all her attention to him, with no need to face the layers of complex family relationships and historical hurts. To him, the answer was obvious – simply leave all that behind and start afresh with a new girlfriend, one who you had met just a few months previously.
‘Being separated isn’t going to be so bad,’ he said on one visit, and he went on to list the times he was going to see the children. ‘I can have them every other weekend, for half the school holidays, and can take them out mid-week, too.’ He smiled, oblivious to the fact that he was also listing the times he was going to take the children away from me, and them away from their mother.
***
Once again, Robert told me that he had ended his affair, and once again I found out that this wasn’t the case. With no basis of trust, the situation became completely unstable.
‘How dare you accuse me of lying,’ he said, even though the evidence was right before my eyes. I was a wreck and found it hard to be civilised when we spoke, yet yearned for him to come home. We would be twitchy with his comings and goings, the kids getting anxious when he came to the house and disappointed when he didn’t.
Then their father started climbing mountains. On the night before he went to Antarctica to climb Mount Vinson, Robert took Noah to see Into Thin Air, a film about the tragic 1996 Everest expedition when half the party froze to death. Noah became increasingly quiet as days passed without a word from his father, who had been holed up in a refuge after a snowstorm. I began to really resent him. Until then, I had been able to understand his conflict and could blame Becky, but now I wasn’t so sure.
One day I asked him how he could pursue his own happiness while causing such lasting emotional damage to his children. ‘It’s strange, Ness,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help thinking that having a broken childhood will make them into more interesting adults – more creative in some way.’ What the fuck!
Rob moved out but still spoke in the singular when he talked of trips he’d taken, always saying ‘I’m doing this’ or ‘I’m doing that,’ even though I guessed that Becky was hovering somewhere in the background. He’d rented a flat but continued to say it was just temporary, while I still harboured the belief that he simply needed time on his own to ‘sort himself out’.
Our friends were in a state of disarray, but still I felt the weight of history pulling us together. I felt programmed not to live apart from the person to whom I had committed my life and there was a large part of me that was still in love with Robert. Together we’d built an expansive life and one that was full of potential. And of course, the children’s well-being was paramount.
That autumn, Hamish, ever the restorer, encouraged Robert to take me to Ravello in Italy for a romantic weekend. The autumn weather was soft. We were silent and, I thought, at ease. We walked down to the sea and climbed back up the steep cliffs, and then wandered the narrow streets. One night, we were joined for dinner by Gore Vidal. While his partner Howard Austen was talking to Robert, I turned to Gore and said, ‘Tell me something, Gore. You’re one of the most insightful men in the world. What do you do when your husband is having a midlife crisis?’ The ageing writer took my hands in his and paused before sharing his wisdom. ‘Why darling,’ he said, as if it was obvious, ‘you seduce his lover.’
In the taxi to the airport, Robert talked about how grateful he was to Hamish for persuading him to give our relationship another chance. ‘I must give Hamish a painting as a thank you,’ he said, as we boarded the plane.
When we arrived home, I caught Noah’s eye and gave him a tentative thumbs-up. He clenched his fist and mouthed, ‘Yes!’
The following morning, Robert got up, dressed, helped make breakfast for the children and did the school run while I went to play tennis. A sixth sense sent a chill through my bones as I re-entered the silent house and went upstairs to my desk. An index card stared up at me. On it, in Robert’s usually illegible script, were two clear words: I’ve gone.
We’d taken advice about how to talk to children about our separation. Both parents must sit down and explain that Mummy and Daddy still love each other, even though they don’t want to live together anymore. However, this calm approach clearly wasn’t going to work in our case.
I was told that morning that asking children to write their feelings down is a good way to help them organise their thoughts. I dreaded hearing their voices as they come home from school. A number of kind friends, including Hamish, had come to the house to simply be there. First Noah came in; on seeing me, he also had a sixth sense and said nothing but opened his pencil case and started snapping his pencils in half, one by one. Next came Flo, then Louis, then Ivo. I told them one at a time. They were terrified and didn’t know whether to cry, to rage, to blame or to dissolve.
‘I know w
hat we’ll do,’ I said, remembering what I’d heard that morning. ‘Let’s all go upstairs and write a letter.’
We went to the study and I gave each of them a sheet of paper and a pencil. Ivo started to draw a house.
‘I’m going to write to Becky’s mother,’ said Noah. ‘She must be able to stop her daughter from taking Daddy away from us. It’s just not allowed.’
Flo chose to write a letter to her father, while Louis wanted to get straight to the point, and decided to write to Becky herself. ‘Mum,’ said our seven-year-old dyslexic son, chewing the end of his pencil as he grappled with his thoughts, ‘how do you spell “fucking”?’
Without a beat I replied, ‘f, u, curly c, kicking k, i, n, g.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said, deep in concentration. ‘Now, how do you spell “bitch”?’
5
MONUMENT TO THE MIDLIFE CRISIS
I’ve wasted years obsessing over that time of my life. Of course, there’s no easy way to break free, but I have no idea what was going through Robert’s mind when he chose to contaminate all the memories of our past. Was it a bridge-burning exercise? Or was it a subconscious attempt by Becky to obliterate Robert’s last touch of intimacy with me? One day our cleaner Maria suddenly blurted out that she had a secret that she could no longer contain. One Saturday while I’d been down in Sussex with the kids, she’d been to the London house to sort the laundry and had heard Robert and another women cavorting in our bed.
It was not only the bed that we’d conceived all our babies in, but the bed on which they’d taken their first breaths. Surrounded by family photographs and trinkets made by the kids in school, it had been a place of sanctuary during nightmares and sickness, a place of rough and tumble, of pillow fights and pillow talk.
Knowing about this creepy betrayal made me flip me from borderline-coping to borderline-insane; this casual violation seemed to me a deliberate attempt to destroy everything that we’d once held dear. Becky only lived around the corner and they could afford to stay in any bed in any hotel in the world, yet by using that particular bed they’d laid waste to a family dream.
When I later asked Robert why he’d done it, he said that men don’t think in the same way as women. I said OK, but pointed out that Becky was a woman. He shrugged his shoulders. What could he say?
There were times when I’d be thrown off balance by a wave of despair. How was I going to get through the next hour, let alone the next day? It was terrifying to realise that I was on a train that I had never intended to board and had no known destination. My head was filled with Rod Stewart singing, ‘Knowing that you lied straight-faced, while I cried, still I look to find a reason to believe.’ I was enraged at my inability to stop fixating on Robert and Becky, as if a lethal parasite was slowly devouring all the good within me, leaving only distrust, humiliation, paranoia, bitterness and shame. I rang our farm to arrange a time to pick up my things and the answering machine clicked on: ‘Robert and Becky aren’t in right now . . .’
I drove down there in a van with a friend and retrieved my clothes, the photo albums and some gifts the kids had made for me. On the kitchen windowsill, behind a pair of curtains that I’d made just months before, was a card that read, ‘Darling Becky, Happy Birthday! What a year you’ve had – new job, new house and a new man. Congratulations! Love Mum x’
I hated myself for being unable to lift myself out of that muddy well, where negative emotions oozed into every cell of my body. They seeped down my throat, filling my chest and restricting my breath. While doing the seemingly endless tiresome jobs that go hand-in-hand with raising a young family – scooping up dog poo in the garden, queuing in supermarkets, packing and unpacking bags, reciting times tables and emptying the dishwasher – I would fight the urge to imagine what they were up to. I imagined them together in our bed, their sweat seeping into the mattress. To think of anything constructive was an effort too far. I could just about get the kids up, off to school, fed, bathed and put back to bed again, but nothing more.
Noah, always so brave and grown-up, broke down only once, when his new goldfish, one that he kept in his bedroom and happened to have named Robert, had flipped out of its bowl.
‘Robert’s died, Robert’s died!’ he screamed down the stairs.
I rushed up wondering what on earth was going on, and there on the floor was Robert, so covered with the coir matting that had stuck to his scales while he flopped around that he was unrecognisable as a fish at all. I picked up the inanimate Robert and plopped him back in his bowl, willing him to start swimming again, but the strange, hairy creature rolled over onto its back. ‘Come on, Robert, live,’ I said.
It didn’t take Freud to know that Noah didn’t need this tragedy.
‘Live Robert, live,’ added Noah.
We stared at the stiff, floating fish and gave it one more chant. ‘Come on man! Come on Robert!’
And with that, first the tail and then a fin twitched, a gill pumped and the fish flipped over and swam free of its furry coat. Noah and I high-fived – all was going to be all right after all.
Louis’s pet rabbit, on the other hand, had just disappeared. Night after night, the poor boy would silently climb into bed, until his lights were turned off, when tears would overwhelm him.
‘I want Hoppy,’ he would wail. ‘I want Hoppppy.’ Fully aware that Hoppy had probably become a fox’s supper, I was unsure how to console the grieving boy. One day a kind neighbour told Louis that he’d seen Hoppy frolicking with Mrs Hoppy and a family of baby rabbits in Holland Park. Louis didn’t cry for Hoppy after that, but he did cry. I should have asked him what was upsetting him but instead I made the error of just cuddling him and telling him that it would be all right. After weeks of anguish, he finally sat up and said, ‘Mummy, I know why Daddy’s gone and it’s all my fault.’
‘Oh my darling, Lou,’ I replied. ‘It’s not your fault.’ And then I finally asked a question. ‘Why do you think it’s because of you?’
‘He left because I can’t read and write,’ he said, burying his head in my lap.
It is impossible for anyone to hold a weeping six-year-old boy who’s blaming themselves for their parents’ divorce and not feel a surge of anger towards the woman who has taken their father from them. At this point, it was far easier to blame her than their father. I would have rather have not blamed anyone at all, but my mind clung to a narrative that gave our predicament some reason. The easiest one to grasp was that an ambitious twenty-six-year-old trollop, who had previous form, had offered midlife-crisis man who was overburdened with responsibilities an exit route, with plenty of ego-massaging and red leather-skirted sex – lots of it.
My friends, family and neighbours understood how close the children and I were to breaking down and became the rocks we clung to. We would regularly stay with Lindy and Robin and their boys for the weekend, as well as with Mark and Amanda Tandy and Richard and Joan. Their order and routine provided a framework around which we could function. Coming home on Sunday nights was never easy: I would park the car and carry the sleeping children up to their beds one at a time, worried about leaving the others in the car on a London street at night, but fearful of waking them in case they couldn’t get back to sleep.
Just as I was about to let self-pity overwhelm me, my neighbours Faith and Michael Gollner would ring. ‘Just checking that you’re all right, Ness,’ they would say.
‘I’m fine now that you’ve called,’ I would answer, before wandering around the house, preparing for the week ahead and locking all the doors. In truth, I’d never experienced such loneliness.
It was then that Bodley, our house guest who had never moved out, really started to earn his keep, patiently listening to me going over different scenarios, again and again. I knew I could pick up the phone and call any number of friends – the Bannisters, the Dewars, the Oultons and of course the de Klees – and whatever they were doing they would let me rant on. I’d call Sallie Ryle with a glass of wine on the go, not wanting to
drink alone and knowing that she’d happily pour herself one too and talk for hours. Sometimes I’d call Clare and ask her if she would mind if I just cried, because crying on my own felt impossibly bleak.
Walking out around the neighbourhood became a trial, because I couldn’t bear to bump into anyone I knew. The humiliation of being left is all-encompassing, as is the gnawing agony of realising that you’ve failed as a wife and as a mother.
The previous year, Ronald and Sharon Cohen had invited Robert and me to a dinner with Tony and Cherie Blair; Tony’s charisma had charmed us and we’d made a hefty donation to the Labour Party in the run-up to the May 1997 election. As a result, we were invited to the Royal Festival Hall to celebrate Labour’s victory, and I went with Navin as my plus one. There was hysteria as Tony walked into the building at 2 a.m. – ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was booming out over the PA as we all whooped and cheered. We walked back along the Embankment, the brilliant sun rising over the river. ‘Things can only get better,’ Navin said, laughing.
In August, I took the children to Kensington Palace to add flowers to the growing carpet spilling down the front lawn after the death of Princess Diana. We were approaching the end of the millennium, the end of an era, the end of one life and the beginning of a fresh one – but how should we regain some dignity, some humour, some energy and some love?
Tracey Emin, her then-partner Mat Collishaw and I ended up drinking in the Colony Room Club in Soho one night, and I told Tracey of my inability to stop playing that grubby, scratched, self-pitying record.
‘Vanessa, first you’ve got to get rid of your bed,’ she told me with utter conviction. ‘I’m going to write you a poem for your new bed – promise me you’ll use it.’ As I rode the night bus home in the early hours of the morning, I chuckled at the wonderful contrasts that life throws up – 3 a.m., with four young children to get ready for school that morning, having had an inspiring evening and the hint of many more to come. Things could only get better.
One Hundred Summers Page 25