And I knew that they were winding me up, but I let them watch television anyway on the grounds that they’d made me laugh. That was the rule: if their pleas or excuses were witty enough, they generally got their way. ‘Dad, I haven’t had my pocket money – have you got six pounds fifty?’
‘Six pounds fifty? Mum said you got a fiver.’
‘Yeah, but there’s a one pound fifty handling charge.’
I had originally said no to Dillie’s suggestion that the twins from her class came for a sleepover. But then she indignantly insisted that the twins couldn’t stay at home because the builders had just discovered their house was possessed by the Antichrist.
‘Oh really?’
‘It’s true,’ added Jamie. ‘The council are sending round an exorcist, but you have to wait six weeks unless you get a private one.’
And a few minutes later I was dragging the double mattress into Dillie’s room.
Dillie’s own bed was a masterpiece of creative carpentry. Angled steps at the rear, like on an old-fashioned London bus, led up to a cosy upper bunk, while underneath was a den that hid a pull-down desk featuring hand-built drawers and cubby holes and special places for books or soft toys. Car stereo speakers were built into either side of the headboard, which led to an iPod dock, radio and CD player. The audio books for which this had been conceived remained in their cellophane wrappers, while a selection of music CDs were scattered across a shelf with a special hole for a water beaker, which currently held a can of Dr Pepper.
‘Wow – fantastic bed!’ I said. ‘Where did you get that from?’
‘You built it!’ she said with pride.
I looked it over more carefully, beaming with pride at the craftsmanship, checking the strength of the joints, learning that I must have an instinctive flair for design and carpentry I had not realized I possessed.
‘And what about the clouds on the ceiling? Did I paint those?’
‘No, that was Mum. She said she got the idea from the boy’s bedroom in Kramer vs. Kramer.’
‘Right. That was a Dustin Hoffman film, wasn’t it? I think I remember it. They get back together at the end?’
‘No – they get divorced.’
This home was just another Victorian terrace like so many others in the surrounding streets, but on the inside our family’s character had been stamped on every room. I found myself staring at Maddy’s photographs for hours. Her signature creations featured elaborate digital collages made up of hundreds of tiny thumbnail photographs of interesting locations or people, which combined to make one huge image of an individual face. There was so much in them, and I was fascinated by the choices Maddy had made in these giant portraits. When I looked in the mirror I could see my own image, but still couldn’t make out all the hundreds of people and places that had made me. Yet having gone from sleeping in a hospital ward to camping in a baby’s nursery, I felt I’d finally found the place where I belonged.
I learned that I had put a lot of effort into the renovations. It had been me who had done the refit of the kitchen, it was me who’d made the built-in wardrobes. I had even constructed the wooden summerhouse at the bottom of the garden, and the decking outside the kitchen doors. It was strange that I was able to feel a little abstract pride at these achievements. Unlike all those negative stories, which were nothing to do with the new Vaughan at all.
When this property came to be sold, the clouds would be painted over and my hand-built bed ripped out for something to the new owners’ taste. And what about the invisible handiwork that Maddy and I had done in raising our children? Soon they would be adolescents: how would they react to losing the security of their family home and shuttling between their estranged parents? Would all their sparkle and charm end up on the skip with everything else?
I was still consumed with the mystery of how this had become a ‘broken home’, as Jean insisted on calling it. That night, when the children were asleep, I closed the lounge door and furtively connected an old VHS player I had found under the stairs in order to watch some old home movies with promising titles like ‘Christmas 2007’. I felt guilty, but was sure that all men secretly watched films of themselves and their wives enjoying a healthy, happy marriage. Maybe there was even stronger stuff on the internet; maybe it was possible to download illicit images of Vaughan and Madeleine holding hands on the beach or running through fields of poppies together.
Baby Jamie had clearly been something of a superstar, playing the title role in countless thrilling-sounding movies such as ‘Jamie’s First Mashed Banana’ or ‘Jamie Sees the Sea!’ (an interesting interpretation by the lead, who chose to play the whole of this scene fast asleep). The second baby must have failed a screen test or something, because she barely made an appearance. Seeing them as toddlers was thrilling and heart-wrenching at the same time. It was like I was seeing our babies for the first time, but with the added bonus of knowing the people these infants would turn into.
There was more footage of them as they got a bit older; once they could be put down, the camcorder could be picked back up again. An angelic little Dillie sang a song in her Brownie uniform, though I can’t believe it was Brown Owl who had taught her ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. And Jamie was filmed running towards the finishing line at his infant school sports day. I was actually quite excited watching this, because Jamie was in the lead – my son was going to win the race! And then, a yard before the tape, he saw me filming and stopped and waved at the camera as all his classmates swept past him.
I took a break and got myself another couple of beers from the fridge before resuming the home-movie marathon. There was footage of my wife and kids at the seaside, our voices almost inaudible over the rumbling wind on the microphone. Woody was a puppy, scared but entranced by the water, barking at the waves and then running at manic full speed up the beach, falling over his own legs and running back down towards the water again. The children were younger and fantastically cute, yet I could see that they were essentially the same people as now. Their memories of this holiday would probably have been reconstructed by this film; their brains would have tricked them into thinking they remembered the day on the beach rather than the recording they had seen many times since.
That was what this whole experience was teaching me: that memories are continually revised, that people re-script past conversations and change the order of events. The view from the divorce courts would have pushed Maddy’s negative memories to the fore; she needed her version of our years together to be a distorted, Fox News version of events. I sifted through the films, looking for more positive evidence for the Counsel for the Defence. And there I was – perhaps just a couple of years ago, judging by the age of the children – in the back garden of this house, tending a barbecue while Jamie filmed and gave his account of what was going on from behind the lens.
‘I could always cook the meat in the oven first? And then you could put it on the barbecue to finish it off?’ suggested Maddy, as the raw chicken legs failed to look even vaguely warm and the wisps of white smoke from the briquettes gradually petered out.
‘No, it’s getting there,’ insisted the chef, despite all evidence to the contrary. Jamie’s cheeky commentary on my failed barbecue became less sardonic and increasingly hungry every time filming resumed, and by the end there was an edge of desperate starvation in the boy’s voice. With the light of the midsummer evening fading, Dillie did a spoof appeal into the camera lens on behalf of the starving children of South London and then Maddy came into shot with a grill pan to transfer the meat to her own domain, where it would be ready in twenty minutes’ time.
Then the atmosphere suddenly turned. ‘Just let me fucking do it for once, will you?’ I snapped, as I took the chicken back. ‘I said I’d do a barbecue and I’m doing it.’
Jamie then lowered the camera, and to the blurred footage of my son’s shuffling feet, I heard Maddy and me shouting at one another.
‘Why do you have to be such a bloody control freak?’
‘I’m not a control freak. I’m just making sure the kids get something to eat.’
‘So dinner is a bit later than usual – so what? You moan that I don’t cook enough and then when I do, you march in and take over.’
‘What cooking? There’s no heat! The chicken is completely raw two hours after you started. I suggested you got the barbecue going hours earlier and you told me to keep my nose out of it.’
The footage of the floor gradually moved indoors as Jamie crept away from the scene and the bad radio play of domestic rancour faded into the background until the camcorder was finally turned off. But the argument had got increasingly personal and bitter, moving from the specific to general character flaws in the other partner, lines that were not designed to prove a point, merely to wound the other person.
I watched the tape a couple more times, noticing that I’d had a beer bottle in my hand, and that there were a few empties on the table nearby. As the camera swung down at the exact moment that the atmosphere turned sour, it caught Dillie’s depressed expression. Her nine-year-old face had a resigned sadness to it, as if she had witnessed scenes like this before. I had no memory of ruining a summer barbecue and, despite the incontrovertible evidence before me, found it hard to believe that that really was me.
Then I lined the tape up to the end of Dillie’s comic appeal and pressed ‘Record’ on the VHS player. The last five minutes of this story would now be wiped clear; the downbeat ending had got a negative response in the test screenings, so the studio ordered the ending be re-cut.
‘Do you remember that lovely summer’s evening when we had a barbecue and the coals wouldn’t light and Jamie did a sarcastic commentary on the cooking?’ I imagined Maddy fondly reminiscing.
‘Oh yeah – and Dillie did that mock charity appeal to camera?’
‘That was a funny evening, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah …’
When I returned to the kitchen, I noticed the recycling bin brimming with empty lager bottles. I stared at the six pack of beer on the sideboard. I took the first can, tugged on the ring pull and then poured the contents down the sink. I opened the next one, and smelt the hoppy aroma as it fizzed around the plug hole. I pulled open the third. It was thirsty work this, and it did seem rather profligate. Buying beer and pouring it down the sink – that’s not very green, is it? So by the end of the evening, I did dispose of all the beer, but in the less wasteful manner of drinking it all.
And then I noticed Ralph’s business card in the kitchen and, even though it was the middle of the night, I dialled 141 followed by his mobile number.
‘Hi, this is Ralph,’ said the recording. ‘I’m in Venice at the moment. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you in the New Year.’ He didn’t have to boast about it.
I watched the re-edited videos again with the children on New Year’s Eve, and they were thrilled and delighted to see the way we used to be. Then Dillie ran and fetched a box of photos and the two of them narrated me through the blurred cast of relations and family friends that had not been obscured by my fat thumb half-covering the camera lens.
‘That’s Great-uncle Simon, Granny’s brother who moved to Australia—’
‘Understandable.’
‘Dad!’
‘Look at Mum in that one – she looks so cool!’
Oval stickers had been placed on some of the poorer-quality photos. Subject out of focus. Cause: lens may not have been correctly adjusted. Subject too dark. Cause: flash may have failed. Subject cannot be recognized. Picture-taker may have suffered dissociative fugue and wiped all personal memories.
‘Who’s that lady?’ I asked, looking at a very old picture of a woman standing alone in some tropical location.
‘That’s Granny Vaughan. That’s … your mum …’
I held the faded colour photo in my hand for a moment. She was smiling directly at me – a modest introductory hello from another universe. She had on a wide-brimmed hat and was wearing a smart two-piece and clutching a leather handbag over her arm; a formal pose in front of some important former colonial building. I dearly wished I could have reported experiencing some sort of instant love or bond, but instead I was only aware of a powerful vacuum where sentiment and longing were supposed to be.
‘Are you okay, Dad?’ said Dillie.
‘It must be a bit weird,’ added Jamie.
‘Yeah – I’m fine. It’s just … she looks nice.’
‘Yeah, she was,’ said Jamie. ‘She always gave us chocolate and pound coins and said, “Don’t tell your dad!”’
‘What else did she say?’
And my children allowed me to stay up late as they told me all about the times I couldn’t remember, and we found more photos of my mum and dad and of me as a child, and they made me laugh with family stories and tales from the olden days.
‘Happy New Year, Dad!’
‘Happy New Year.’
The next day I took Jamie and Dillie to see their grandfather and I felt an enormous pride in them being so valiant and mature, so affectionate towards him, unembarrassed at showing that they cared. His face looked slightly yellow, and there was long white stubble in the wrong places, but Dillie didn’t hesitate to lean in and kiss him. She had brought a hand-made card as always and Jamie even lent his grandfather his iPod; he had cleared his own music collection to fill it up with audiobooks he had downloaded himself.
‘That button is “Play”,’ Jamie explained. ‘That’s if you want to skip to the next chapter,’ he continued, and even though I doubted whether his grandfather would have the energy to listen to an audiobook, the vision of my teenage son taking this much trouble brought me close to tears.
‘You are so kind,’ said my father. The children told him all about their Christmas, and reported what presents they had got and all the places we had been. And when it was time to go, they instinctively knew to hug him long and hard.
‘Goodbye, Granddad,’ said Dillie.
‘Goodbye, dear.’
‘See you, Granddad,’ said Jamie, leaning in.
‘What lovely grandchildren! Thank you for coming. You must have more important things to do.’
‘No,’ said his grandson, firmly, suddenly seeming twenty-five years old. ‘Not more important than you.’
The week passed far too quickly. On the final day I cleaned the house from top to bottom, prepared a dinner and packed my bags ready to move back out. Maddy arrived alone at the front door and embraced the excited children as I hovered in the hallway. She had presents for them and pictures to show of cute dogs in Italian ladies’ handbags, and an inscrutable smile and a hello for me.
‘Wow, it all looks very clean everywhere. We should send photos to my mum!’
I had invited myself to stay for dinner by cooking a big casserole, and afterwards Maddy and I had the chance to talk on our own.
‘So how was your holiday?’
‘Oh, you know … One minute I was travelling in great comfort in a gondola, the next moment I was travelling in extreme discomfort with a budget airline. They sort of cancel each other out.’
‘Well, it was great being here with the kids. They’re so funny and clever and interesting and everything …’
‘Yeah, they get that from their mother.’
‘Though I don’t understand how they can prefer The Simpsons to All-Star Mr & Mrs.’
‘Listen – I’ve been thinking,’ she announced. ‘What you said in the courtroom … We don’t actually have to get legally divorced, if you really don’t want to.’
I stood up and gently pushed the kitchen door closed.
‘You’re so much easier to talk to since your amnesia that I wondered if we could just work something out like adults? If we didn’t spend so much on lawyers, we might just be able to hang on to the house.’
‘For you and the kids to live in without me?’ I had started stroking the dog, but now I could feel my fingertips digging quite hard into his fur.
‘Well – th
is is my proposal. The kids live here all the time, keep their rooms, keep Woody, keep walking to school with their friends. But you and I split the cost of a little flat somewhere cheap, and take turns to live in that when it’s not our turn to be here with the kids.’
The dog grunted in pleasure at the rigour of fingers digging into his mane.
‘What about the summerhouse? I could live in there. Or the spare room?’
‘I’m just trying to find a way to protect the children, so that their lives are not disrupted. Once they have grown up and left home we can sell the house and work out how to split the proceeds. But just for the next seven or eight years, we could both have the same second home …’
Privately I had to concede that this seemed like a constructive and mature suggestion. I’d get to have every weekend in this house with the children. Dillie would still have her lovely bedroom and Jamie could still do his schoolwork in that summerhouse with Woody lying at his feet.
‘So part of the time you’d be here,’ she said with a smile, ‘and the rest of the time it would be me and Ralph.’
‘What?’
The dog turned round, indignant that he was no longer being stroked.
‘So this is Ralph’s idea, is it?’ I said, feeling my face heating up. The neglected dog let out a bark. ‘No, Woody, shut up!’
‘No, not exactly … I only meant eventually, if Ralph and I decide we want to live together. The kids would have to be cool with it, of course – they’ll always come first.’
‘So your great plan is, we don’t have to legally get divorced to save money so that Vaughan lives in a shoebox in the slums, while Ralph moves into my half of the double bed here?’
‘No – that’s not it at all …’
The dog barked again.
‘No, shut up! Bad dog, do you hear me?’ and I pushed him away. ‘You’re very bad and I don’t want to hear it any more.’
The Man Who Forgot His Wife Page 16