by Rudd, Matt
I suppose I should have been grateful. I was too pathetic to be honest and tell Elizabeth it was over. Saskia saved me the trouble. Without Saskia, I might never have met Isabel. In many ways, Isabel should be grateful.
Tuesday 21 June
Another flat viewing but the husband said he wouldn’t feel happy letting his wife walk home on her own at night. What an idiot. Arthur Arsehole said he’d explained about how the area was colourful rather than dangerous but they were going to look at smaller properties in Chiswick instead.
Wednesday 22 June
I was right. Isabel does think I’m having a nervous breakdown. She says she’s spoken to Astrid, her yoga teacher, and Astrid says men benefit from her type of yoga even more than women and that I should come to the next class. Which is tonight.
I’m just trying to choose the most appropriate form of dismissive laugh when Isabel says, ‘Please come, it would make me happy,’ which is blackmail.
In a small, sweaty room above a holistic healing shop in Holborn, nine women and one man, all in Lycra, spread their mats as Astrid spreads her crystals, while I bite my nails.
I don’t have a mat so I have to borrow one from a cupboard. The only place left to unroll my mat—which is pink and smells of sweat—is right behind the man in Lycra. The next hour seems like four or five. There are the boring positions (‘Put your arms in the air…stretch a bit…hold it…hold it…feel the energy…’), the impossible positions (‘Put your leg over your arm…put the other leg round the other arm…spread all your toes…hold it…hold it…keep breathing, William…’), and the disgusting positions—which are all of them when you have a man in Lycra blocking your view. A man who laughs happily every time he lets one off. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to blot out the downward-facing dog.
‘Thanks, guys. Great session. And remember, don’t walk on the Earth, walk with the Earth. See you all next week.’
No.
It gets worse. Message from Alex when we get back to the flat.
‘Hi, guys. Almost two months married. Hope it’s all sweetness and light over there.’
[Wanker.]
‘Look, I know this is a bit out of the blue but I’ve got a friend who does marketing for Ferrari. You know, the racing team.’
[Wanker.]
‘Anyway, he’s hosting a race day down at Brands Hatch on Saturday. You’re probably too blissfully married to spend a day apart but I wondered if William might be free? And perhaps Andy? For a bit of a race. Be good to hang out with my best mate’s new hubby.’
[Wanker—but it is Ferrari.]
Saturday 25 June
So let me just explain how it happened.
We arrived at Brands Hatch and it turned out they wouldn’t let us into the actual Formula One cars. We were in buggies, which was still cool. Andy had fallen for Alex’s pretend friendliness, hook, line and sinker. As we watched the safety demonstration, they were all jokey and matey and laughey.
But I was onto him. I could tell from his feigned interest in my week, from his relentlessly inquisitive chattiness, from his horrible chiselled jaw line, that today was all about humiliation. I got the girl so he had to show he was a better racing driver. Well, life doesn’t work like that, buster.
We had a few practice laps. Alex was being all encouraging and non-competitive when Andy was within earshot, but asked me if I always drive like a kerb crawler when he wasn’t. Divide and rule. Clever.
We did some quick laps individually. I was faster than Alex. He pretended to be pleased for me in an I’m-letting-you-win-at-the-moment kind of way.
Then, it was time to race. As we got ready, Alex came over to me and said, ‘Good luck, old boy,’ which he would later claim he said to everyone, just to get us in the spirit.
Six of us lined up, me and some marketing joker at the front, Alex and Andy in the second row, two other marketing jokers behind them.
I was ahead for the whole of the first lap, but on the second lap Andy and Alex overtook the marketing joker and began to challenge me for the lead. Then Andy, mistiming a corner, spun out, taking the marketing joker with him. At that point, Alex changed. When everyone was watching, he was the consummate gentleman driver. Now, out on our own, he was driving like a maniac. As we began the final lap, he drove up my inside and, rather than take the first corner, just sort of steered us wider and wider. I missed a head-on collision with three hundred tyres only by braking and going around the back of them.
Alex should have been well gone. But he wasn’t. He was waiting for me to catch up again. As we went through the back of the course I tried to overtake but he charged me again. I ended up ahead but he started ramming me from behind.
I looked back and saw only the dead eyes of a psychotic maniac.
Into the final corner, I had the edge. I can’t remember exactly what happened, except that I crossed the line first.
Andy, on his way back to the pits, saw it all. He claimed I rammed Alex off the road. I remember Alex trying to ram me but losing control. Either way, I only noticed he had rolled his buggy once I’d crossed the line.
Sunday 26 June
Back so soon at Alex’s horrible maisonette, dropping off some grapes.
‘Sorry about the arm, Alex,’ I offer warmly.
‘Don’t worry, William. It was an accident. And it’s only a fracture,’ he replies. You would think he might apologise himself for trying to kill me, but then everyone else in the room might actually believe me.
‘William is like a toddler, Alex. He can’t just play nicely,’ says Isabel unhelpfully.
‘Great day though, mate. Thanks again,’ says Andy, traitorously.
Andy thinks Alex is great. Isabel thinks Alex is brave. I know Alex is a psycho. I know he probably has a rocking chair and a wig hidden somewhere around the flat.
At least tomorrow is the start of another day.
Monday 27 June
Start of another day already ruined by half eight in the morning when Arthur Arsehole calls. A lot of interest in the flat. Sixteen hits on the website alone. But it’s a bad time for the market. Tells me to keep my pecker up, Willy. I tell him I’ll smash his face in if he ever calls me Willy ever again ever or makes any reference to my pecker whatsoever. But only after he’s hung up.
Tuesday 28 June
Andy has been around to Alex’s again to help make him dinner. ‘What’s the point in arguing? Alex is a nice guy,’ he tells me. ‘You’re a ridiculous hippy,’ I reply. Of course, he always has been a ridiculous hippy. The first time we met, in Freshers’ Week at university, his hair was down to his shoulders, his trousers were stripy and he smelt. Since then, he has learned to wash, bought new clothes and cut his hair, but the hippy still lurks within.
And you can never rely on a hippy to understand that an evil maniac is trying to ruin your marriage.
Wednesday 29 June
The only reason I went back to Astrid’s sweaty room in Holborn is because of the whole Alex buggy-crash debacle. I suspect Alex, with his broken arm, is winning the charm offensive. I need to be seen in Lycra again, just so Isabel will stop giving me that look every time anyone mentions the race.
It is just as sweaty as last week but I make sure we get there early and that I bagsy a place right at the front. This means I get told off by Astrid for yawning but sweaty Lycra guy has to spend the whole lesson staring at my clenched buttocks and not vice versa.
I think he likes it.
Thursday 30 June
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Isabel sent straight from doctor’s appointment to hospital. Something gynaecological. Something about an operation…
She called me from the hospital, sounded very shaky. Couldn’t talk because mobiles are banned and she’d run out of coins. Just starting to explain what was wrong when the beeps started. Cut off saying, ‘Hopefully the doctor will…’ beep, beep, beep.
Took ages to get from work to the hospital because of the sodding Northern Line. Absolutely the worst hou
r of my life. I love her so much. Realised by King’s Cross that if I lost her I would never recover. Wouldn’t want to. Realised by Camden Town that I even loved her for her goat’s milk and her ridiculous yoga. Promised by Archway I would never argue with her again.
Three a.m. now. She has a Bartholin’s cyst, which means her bits, or more specifically one bit, has swollen like an orang-utan’s bottom. They wheeled her away an hour ago just like they do in Casualty, which was dreadful. Wanted to follow her through the flappy doors but the big, scary nurse-bitch wouldn’t let me. Nice little nurse has let me stay in the ward with the groaning old ladies. One is on morphine, in and out of consciousness, muttering wildly.
Will buy Isabel an enormous bunch of flowers tomorrow.
Assuming I can get to the flower shop, what with the dead leg that won’t go away. Apparently, I was asleep for a whole two hours in the metal chair by Isabel’s bed. Couldn’t feel my leg at all when I woke up. Actually thought I might have permanently paralysed myself, it took so long to recover. Is that possible? Will check on Wikipedia.
Isabel was very worried. ‘Poor you,’ she said when I woke. ‘You look so tired.’
She’s amazing. Not even Florence Nightingale would have been worrying about my dead leg if her private parts looked like a monkey’s arse.
JULY
‘The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to
bear them, and sometimes three.’
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
Friday 1 July
She’s alive! Operation was a success. Important stuff intact. Not counting the dead-leg chair-nap, I haven’t slept a wink. Went home for a couple of hours to change pants and so forth. Tried to rest but had nightmares about being attacked by a gang of inflamed orangutans. Whoever said all men’s dreams were about sex was lying.
Isabel releases herself mid-afternoon (like in soaps when the patient ill-advisedly tears out her own tubes and storms out of the ward), and we get home just in time for one of the idiots upstairs to start practising his new set of drums.
I am in no mood for drums.
As I ring the upstairs doorbell, I am a creature of crimson terror, a brooding, fearsome primeval ape-man from the dawn of time: hideous, malevolent, aggressive, coiled. I am the Incredible Hulk in shirt-splitting mid-transition. I am King Kong with hunger anger.
The door is opened by one of the idiots.
‘My wife has just had a major operation on her labia,’ I roar-whisper, the way an unpredictable serial killer would. ‘She has just spent a whole night being operated on and then a whole day in an NHS ward full of moaning grannies and superbugs. She could well have MBNA. She has survived an ordeal and I. Am. Her. HUSBAND.’
Pause for effect. I exude boiling, molten rage.
‘Do you mean MRSA?’
The idiot shifts his cool, slouchy weight from one foot to the other.
‘It doesn’t matter what I mean. What are you going to do about it?’
More boiling moltenness but he doesn’t look as threatened or apologetic as I had hoped. He looks a little sleepy.
‘Do about what?’
‘THE DRUMS. THE BLOODY DRUMS. Would you mind not playing your drums today?’
Another pause. More boiling.
‘Or for the rest of the week?…Or, in fact, for-fucking-ever?’
He looks at me nonchalantly. I look at him as if I’m a stick of dynamite.
‘I don’t have any drums,’ he says with a cool, calm shrug. ‘That’s why you can still hear drumming even though I’m here talking to you. It’s the flat next door.’
For the rest of the day, I’m in full hand-and-foot waiting mode.
Initially, this is an immense pleasure. My poor recovering wife needs me. I have a role. I am a man with a role. I am protecting the womenfolk. I will silence drummers and top up hot-water bottles. It is the north London equivalent of forming a defensive ring of prairie wagons, then fending off Red Indians with Smith & Wessons.
‘Can I have some Marmite toast?’ Of course, darling, coming right up.
‘Oh, can you cut it into soldiers?’ No problem, sweetie.
‘Can I have another cup of tea?’ That’s fine, sugar.
‘Oh, you’ve just sat down but I need another cushion from the bedroom. Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Your wish is my command, buttercup.
Gradually, the novelty of being needed wears off. Yes, I’ll get your magazine, your book, your bed socks, your smelly candle. But do you really want chicken soup, dearest? We’ve got vegetable soup. Nice organic vegetable soup. It’s your favourite. No? Okay, I’ll go back to the shops where I’ve just been to buy your Purdey’s and get some chicken soup.
By eight, it is clear that I am being exploited.
‘Darling, I’m sorry. Can you get my face cream, my lip balm, my hair band and some Shreddies with double cream?’ For someone who is allegedly unwell, she rattles off the list with surprising sprightliness. And she’s got a lot more colour in her cheeks. I sigh like an overworked, underpaid NHS nurse at the end of another grinding shift and go about my duties.
Then, the TV premiere of The Bourne Identity clashes with a two-hour documentary about Rudolf Nureyev.
‘Aren’t you tired, darling?’ I ask hopefully.
No.
‘The doctor did say you should rest as much as possible in the first forty-eight hours.’
No.
‘Wouldn’t you rather watch something less taxing than a documentary? The Bourne Identity, for example, is on at exactly the same time as Nureyev: the Man, the Ballerina, and it’s supposed to be great fun. Very light.’
No.
SOME OF THE THINGS I NOW KNOW ABOUT RUDOLF NUREYEV
He was born on a train going to Vladivostok, where his father served in the army.
At ballet school, he was incredibly stroppy, perhaps because of an internal conflict over his sexuality.
He didn’t like non-celebrities.
He might have slept with Anthony Perkins.
Saturday 2 July
Alex came around early and unannounced, gushing concern like he would gush blood out of a deep arterial wound if I took an axe to him: ‘I didn’t know, I hadn’t heard, oh my God, babes, are you okay? You poor, poor thing.’
Despite his allegedly broken arm, he has carted a bunch of flowers the size of a small tree with him, which he picked and arranged himself. And some organic chicken soup.
‘I know how you love chicken soup when you’re under the weather, babes. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.’
After an interminable chat about how wonderful last night’s Nureyev documentary was, he leaves, wincing a bit to remind us of his injury as he goes. He has bought last-minute tickets to the matinee at Sadler’s Wells, a surprise for his Moroccan girlfriend, who also loved the Nureyev documentary. What a guy.
Monday 4 July
Quite relieved to get out of the flat. I offered to stay at home and continue being Florence Nightingale, but Isabel is almost back to normal now. Or else she’s quite keen to get me out of the flat.
The usual frustrations of the day seem harder to deal with today, possibly because I am suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome by proxy. No one ever looks after the carer.
Frustration one
It’s the start of the week and I still appear to be no closer to ever escaping Finsbury Park. I manage to get a seat on the Tube. A fellow citizen of my ‘hood, a gangsta rappa with headphones the size of grapefruit, manages to get the seat next to me. The music is so loud I can hear the vocals: ‘I don’t know what you heard about me; But a bitch can’t get a dollar out of me; No Cadillac, no perms, you can’t see; That I’m a motherfucking P-I-M-P.’ I ask him to turn it down. He says: ‘Interrupt my train of thought again, bitch, and I’ll cut you.’ Then the Tube stops mid-tunnel: someone in another train in another tunnel has pulled the emergency cord. I have to spend the next thirty-five stationary minutes sitting with a man who just threatened to knife me.
Frustration two
A woman with a loud voice has just got a job in the book department of Life & Times, which involves her sitting two desks away from me. After an alarmingly short I’m-in-a-new-job-so-must-be-on-best-behaviour honeymoon period (five days), she has settled in and revealed her true colours: she is a phoner of friends and a sorter-outer of home administration at work. This is dreadful news.
Last week (her first in the office), she booked a holiday to the Maldives (‘I just need to get away from it all for a while’), arranged for a quote on a garden spa bath (‘how much more are those underwater speakers? It wouldn’t be proper without a bit of Courtney Pine bubbling away,’ snort, guffaw, snort) and had a two-hour argument with her daughter about the pros and cons of Gordon Brown.
This morning, I arrive late because of my one-to-one face time with the knife-man and she’s already mid-conversation with an unspecified friend.
Johnson is making slit-throat mimes but I don’t know why he’s complaining—he sits seven desks away and, because he likes rock and roll, he can’t hear properly anyway.
‘My BUPA insurance has always reimbursed me. Mmm, mmm, mmm, so why’s she taken him off the diet if the stools are only grey? Mmm, mmm. I suppose all I would say is that there is probably a psychological aspect to it, in that she’s a bit of a hypochondriac. Mmm, mmm, mmm. But if they were green…mmm, mmm.’