by Anna Maxted
‘Is it?’ I said.
‘Wonderful, but too much, too rich, leaves you feeling sick and bloated and not a very worthy sort of person.’
My God. Some women’s relationships with food were as complex as their relationships with men. I remembered watching Gabrielle one Friday night, painstakingly peeling off each layer of my mother’s lasagne, eating only the vegetables in between.
‘You’re right. You need decompressing. Where will you live?’ I said.
I prayed she wasn’t going back to my father. It was one thing to prefer him alive to dead, but even I wasn’t fool enough to prefer him with, rather than without, my mother. A week of those two under the same roof and he’d spring back to tyranny in no time. If she didn’t know, I certainly wasn’t about to tell her that Roger was pining. As I saw it, he’d pine for a while longer, then he’d get bored and stop.
‘Gabrielle has very kindly said I could stay with her and Ollie for a while. It won’t be for long. Just until I find a little place of my own. I’d like to get back into accounting, actually. Even if it means starting from scratch.’ She added, ‘I couldn’t bear to be a pain but Gabrielle said it suited her. She’s looking for a new part-time nanny. So, while I’m around, I can help out with Jude, until she finds one. She’s with, I think, fifteen agencies. There has to be someone.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘And the flat’s small but you could always stay at mine, if you need a change.’
‘That’s very sweet,’ said my mother. ‘But won’t I get in the way of you and—’
‘Nah.’
‘Oh no, why on earth not, for goodness’ sake!’
I felt quite cross. ‘As you yourself know, love stories don’t always end the way one would wish,’ I said. ‘People are too spoilt. What with the cinema.’
‘Well, that’s just too bad,’ said my mother, huffing in my ear.
I changed the subject; she could have ruined everything. I’d carefully lost myself in work, planning my ideal bathroom, and watching a string of backed-up episodes of Seinfeld, recorded for the time that I needed to wallow in someone else’s misery. If I zeroed Jack, I’d get by. So I’d erased him, pretended the last few months had never happened. I was like some tribe I’d read about, happy in their straw huts until they were introduced to television. A few weeks of lifestyle ads later, they saw what they were ‘missing’ and got depressed. I was taking it a step further, wiping that lifestyle ad named Jack Forrester from my mind. I was doing OK.
Chapter 51
Saturday night and I was eating a chicken dinner at Gab and Ollie’s house. My mother sat opposite, fiddling with the stem of her wine glass. We made a good show of it, but while our hosts disputed how much longer the rice had to cook, we allowed our social expressions time off. At my advanced age, I suppose I felt I should be up to something more thrilling and I guess my mother felt the same. Then I felt bad about feeling bad. These were people I adored, what better way to spend my time?
By the time the rice was done, my social expression was back on duty.
And they were happy. I’d gone out with Ollie that afternoon. We’d taken Jude to the playground while Gab did the food shopping. Ollie seemed more confident with his son, more focused. I also noticed that Gab hadn’t given my brother a million orders. She’d said, ‘Maybe scrambled egg for Squeal’s dinner?’ then let us get on with it.
‘Da-dee!’ said Jude. ‘Da-dee!’
‘Joo-ood!’ replied Ollie. ‘Joo-ood!’ This cracked Jude up. That kid had a weird sense of humour.
‘You look more relaxed,’ I said.
Ollie nodded. He said, ‘Things are going better.’
We left it at that.
Later, though, when Ollie and Angela were giving Jude his bath, Gab said a few words as she chopped vegetables. I felt outrageous, sitting there, stuffing my face with cashews, watching her sweat, so I said – a token gesture if there ever was – ‘You have so much to do, Gab, I should be cooking for you.’
And she was off like Chairman Miaow after a rat. ‘Are you joking, Hannah, you’re a dreadful cook. I like cooking. It’s relaxing. And I don’t feel so fraught, thank God. Ollie’s … in a good place right now, which makes a huge difference. He’s not so … separate. Maybe it has to do with Jude being a little older. We’re getting on, like, so great, we’re talking more, and sleeping more, and my work is going well, and his is improving, and Dr Patel said I, well, he said it sounded as if I’d had a depressive episode. He said it was a biological disturbance that had more or less run its course, and add that to the adjustments you have to make when raising a baby, how tiring and challenging it is, and how you feel cut off from the world, he said I was suffering from wear and tear. Dr Patel said I should stop trying to be so perfect. Basic management advice, really. He’s such a good doctor, I sent him a thank-you card. So I’m trying to calm down, not give myself a hard time. Ollie is being supportive, so of course, I’m about a ton nicer to him. It’s the opposite of a vicious circle! Oh, and I’ve got a couple of lovely friends from post-natal group with babies the same age as Jude. I’m making the effort to see them more often. They’re kind of a litmus test as to what’s normal. Clare is worse than me – she thinks every non-specific virus Sebastian has is cancer. I only think it’s meningitis. And Polly is brilliantly laid back. Her little girl, Octavia, is addicted to Teletubbies, and yet she’s such a bright little thing, it’s not done her any harm, and Polly kind of shows me that if I don’t happen to take Jude to the zoo or a farm or the opera every day, he isn’t going to suffer. If we go to the shops or just hang out at home, that’s fine. Also I interviewed a lovely nanny yesterday, and she’s fine with the hours I want, I just have to check her references, but the last reference said she bought building blocks for the little girl, and books. Out of her own money. You don’t know how rare that is. She sounds like the pink diamond of nannies. And Ollie and I went out for dinner the other night, to the most gorgeous Italian, Lolalilalilablabla – it’s got a Michelin star, have you heard of it? Angela baby-sat. It made a change to us going out in shifts. It was quite an occasion, sitting opposite him at a table with a lily on it, talking like adults. And this glamorous woman admired my Chloë dress. And I’ve joined a new gym with a crèche, so I’m having some time for myself. And I’ve made a half-day appointment with Michel – I’m going to have a beauty blitz. And I have a new cleaner, one who doesn’t empty my tampons from the pack and arrange them in glorious display in the marble bowl I bought for my cottonwool balls, or neatly fold all my dirty clothes and put them back in my wardrobe, and …’
The hell she’d had a depressive episode! There was nothing wrong with her, bar she was a total neurotic! I pull my dirty clothes out of the linen basket, and stick them straight on again! She should be so lucky to have them folded neatly and put back in her wardrobe!
‘Gab,’ I said, when she finally stopped melting my ear, ‘you cheer me right up.’
I hoped that she would keep talking for the rest of the night so that no one could ask me about Jack.
‘So,’ said Gabrielle, just as I was about to attack the chocolate cheesecake. ‘What’s going on with you and Jack?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘Who is this “Jack” you speak of?’
Everyone looked disbelieving and disapproving, so I added, ‘He’s embroiled in his own ancient misery, and I refuse to be part of it.’
No one’s expression changed. I was forced to recount the sorry tale of the willy end of Jason’s wedding.
‘Jason’s an idiot!’ shouted Gab, who was drinking the red wine like a dog laps water. ‘And Jack’s just scared. It’s only because he loves you too much!’
Ah, yes. The ‘I love you so much I can’t stand to be with you’ phenomenon.
Even Ollie said, ‘Why don’t you call him?’
My mother added, ‘Why don’t you write to him?’
‘Why don’t you?’ I said rudely. ‘I’ve made enough approaches, he knows the score. I will not d
emean myself further. Now can I please eat my cheesecake?’
If there was one place I thought I’d get a bit of rest, it was the office. But no.
I was at the door the following evening when Greg motioned me towards him with his porridge spoon. As I reluctantly neared the flying-oat weapon, he said, ‘You back with Jack yet?’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow!’
‘Halfwit,’ he called after me.
Was he referring to me or Jack?
I didn’t go straight to my car. I went and bought a coffee. There’s something special about drinking a coffee from a styrofoam cup with a lid on it. The handing over of £1.75 and receiving the gift of caffeine, it feels like a little occasion. It confers status. I see people walking along carrying their bought coffees and I think, ooh, lucky you, you must be so important! Christ, listen to me. I needed a hobby.
I sat in my car, and started to drink the coffee, staring ahead. Four sips and my hands were shaking. The last thing I needed was a coffee. The pleasure was all in the transaction. I sighed, got out the car, chucked the coffee in the nearest bin. Every time I do something like this I envisage a landfill of all my crimes. Plastic bottles. Cardboard boxes. Those squeaky polystyrene chips that pad out cardboard boxes. Tubs of hair mousse, cans of anti-stretch shoe spray, the obligatory expenses incurred when you get a haircut, buy shoes and don’t feel brave enough to say ‘no’. If I really couldn’t be bothered, I wouldn’t recycle my wine bottles. I was a disgrace to the race.
I noticed there was an envelope tucked under my windscreen wiper. I was pretty slow that day. I’d only been staring through it for twenty minutes. Was it blackmail? I tore it open with mild interest (curious to see what terrible thing someone thought they had on me that everyone else didn’t know about), and a small scrap of paper fell out, a photograph, ripped from a glossy magazine. Wait a minute, that was my BATH. Well, it wasn’t my bath, it was a photograph of the sleek white £700 bath I lusted after every time I sat in my horrid green flaky one.
Jack had scrawled below it, ‘God, I’m a wanker. Can I buy your forgiveness?’
I pulled out my mobile and rang him.
‘Hello?’
‘Shit!’ I turned around. Jack was standing right behind me.
‘I’ve been standing here watching you for the last half-hour. What did you say you did for a living?’
I snapped shut my phone. ‘Fuck off fuck off fuck off.’
Jack took a step back. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I, er—’
‘I’m merely quoting the last words you said to me, after the wedding.’
‘Look, I—’
‘And no, you can’t buy my forgiveness. A large bribe does not compensate for what you think of me. You have to do the compensating. A bribe is an instead-of.’
‘No it’s not! I rang your mother to see what you most wanted in the world, and you make that into a negative. Don’t you see, Hannah, the bath is an extra, to show you that—’
‘You mean, my mother rang you.’
‘No. I rang her.’
‘Oh! Have you ordered the bath?’ (Immediately I hated myself, but there you go.)
‘Er, yes. Philippe Starck.’
‘You mean, Phil Stark, from the Starfish Bathrooms chain.’ (Why was I even having this conversation? I was so corruptible.)
‘The Starfish Bathrooms chain! I don’t think so, love! Your taste in baths isn’t exactly highstreet knock-off!’
‘You mean …’ He’d only gone and bought the real designer seven-thousand-quid bath. The berk! I smiled weakly. ‘My mother told you this was the bath I wanted?’
‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘She was most exact. Spelt out his name for me. And the price.’
That woman was becoming more outrageous daily.
And I was becoming cheaper. I fought my conscience. Assumed an intractable expression.
‘Here’s the thing, Jack,’ I said. ‘Your instinct is, you can’t trust me, and it all burst out at the wedding when you were provoked. This here now is lovely, but it’s planned. Say we get together again. It’ll be great until the minute I do something that you think is suspect, and it’s going to happen because you think I am suspect. You can’t help it. You just do. I’m fighting for us, Jack. But you have to fight for us too. And that takes more than cracking a few jokes and throwing cash about. My relationships are pretty straight these days. I can’t be bought. And I don’t think you see that yet.’
He stood there, open-mouthed. I half wished he’d say something, but I knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t deny the truth.
I put the photo of the bath back in its envelope, handed it to him.
‘Thanks, though,’ I said. ‘It was a nice thought.’
Chapter 52
When Jack and I divorced, he was coldly fair about everything. I developed murderous feelings towards his solicitor, whose every communication was hoity-toity for fuck you. I remember Martine suggesting that I throw a divorce party. ‘Like a hen night,’ she’d said. ‘Except inverted.’
‘Nice idea,’ I’d replied. ‘How about we also run three times anti-clockwise round a church at midnight reciting black masses.’
She didn’t mention the divorce party again. Considering I’d entered into the marriage with all the gravitas of a teenager entering a pub, I was surprised I felt so lousy about its demise. The colossal bore of becoming officially single again, the paperwork, the endless trips to the post office, the sympathy that seeped from people, the fascinated disdain, as if I had syphilis (I suppose divorce is a sexually transmitted disease), it was nothing compared to the hollow feeling of seeing myself referred to in print as ‘the respondent’. This was all I was to Jack now, and his disgust could not be any clearer had he spat in my face.
Eventually, though, I’d coped by blocking myself off. It was a fabulous ploy that worked admirably. I didn’t cry, ever. I depressed every ugly sensation, sweeping it down, deeper, away from the surface, until it disappeared. It wasn’t difficult. In fact, it was involuntary. After a while I didn’t feel able to cry, even if, intellectually, I understood it to be appropriate to the situation. It was as if I was an alien who did not experience sadness like a human being. ‘Boo hoo hoo waaaaah!’ I’d try, inside. Nope. Nothing. Eyes as dry as chalk. I ought to react to this, I’d think, but I couldn’t. I felt like a hovering ghost, watching every shot fail to pierce my bulletproof skin.
It was a shock to realise, after Jack approached me with his bath offer, that this long-taken-for-granted talent of mine had slipped away. Like Aretha Franklin awaking one morning, and not knowing how to sing. Habit is different from routine. Routine is for neurotics. It gives you the illusion of control. I’m not that bothered by routine. The ceiling is just as likely to fall on your head if you drink your morning coffee at eight fifteen precisely, as if you play fast and loose with fate, and drink it whenever the hell you like. Whereas routine is something you impose, a habit grows on you. Habit is born of sloth – not having to trouble your mind for the tiniest thought because at last it’s instinct. It is about carving the easiest, most uncluttered path through life.
When I tried to zero Jack and it didn’t work, I was incredulous. This was what I did, this was my area of expertise! I thought of Bewitched, a programme I dimly recalled from childhood. What was it the girl’s mother did to work magic – blinked? Twitched? Wrinkled her nose? I was like the actress, off-set, blinking, twitching: nada.
Every minute of every day pointed to what I was missing. I had the honeymoon postcard from Lucy. (She’d written it, Jason had signed it, his barely decipherable name squeezed in a tiny corner, dwarfed by Lucy’s unfettered scrawl. From the size of each word she’d been taught English by a Great Dane.) The holiday so far sounded like a forced march, no cultural stone left unturned. I liked it that my hell could be someone else’s heaven. Waste not, want not. But it made me pale that my heaven was out there, loose, when doubtless he was many other people’s heaven too.
I saw Angela,
obsessed with her mobile, not entirely hearing what people said to her. She put off calling estate agents. Every second sentence began, ‘A friend of mine …’ I didn’t think it would be too long before my mother overcame her fear of being consumed by another man. I felt I might hold my breath until she and Jonathan got back together, maybe in a new, bigger flat, so that Angela could have a room, a space that was only hers. I felt that my mother was boldly acting out all the impulses that I kept a grip on. I refused to mouth the luscious words, ‘A friend of mine’, because every time she said it, I thought ‘JONATHAN!!!’. I couldn’t bear a newsflash above everyone’s head reading ‘JACK!!!’.
And I saw Ollie, with Gab. I saw their ways with each other soften. And I thought, people do change, a little, sometimes, if they see that it’s worth it, if they want something, someone, badly enough.
Maybe Gab sensed my despair, because one day she said, ‘I want to tell you something. Before I had Jude, there were two miscarriages. And, when we conceived the second and third time, people encouraged me to … think of the foetus as “just a few cells”, because it was too painful to commit to something that, as the doctors put it, might not be “viable”. But I couldn’t. I thought of it as “Baby”. Even though, when I miscarried the second time, the agony was excruciating, it would have been worse to think that I hadn’t given it encouragement by loving it. At some point, Hannah, you have to have faith.’
I considered the best approach.
Would I turn up at his house and say, ‘Jack, I love you, but before I put this emotion into practice, I must insist: you really mustn’t take your rage at your parents out on me’?
Or would I write and say, ‘Jack, I adore you, but before I commit, I need to know that you’ve worked through all your issues’?
No.
I would ring him at home, and say, ‘I love you.’ It was that simple.