by Adrian White
Like Woody Allen’s shark, she thought, and smiled. Or was that a cat? And that was relationships, not business – anyway, it was too early for details like that.
When the children were little, Margaret had worried and felt vulnerable; she didn’t want to be married to a chancer. She was as dependent on Mike as her young dependent children were on her, living in a city in a foreign country – whatever some might claim – away from her family and friends in Belfast. But things had gradually changed; the children grew, Manchester became her home and she knew now that, if needs be, she could manage on her own.
Margaret had recently taken again to playing a game that once had terrified her – the ‘what if Mike leaves tomorrow?’ game. It was a game she increasingly felt she could win, even if she upped the odds a little each time. What if she lost the house? What if it happened before she finished the training on her counselling course? It was a test to see how far as a woman she’d come from that Belfast girl. And now, of course, she knew that Mike would always be able to discover new ways of making money; it wasn’t this that should have worried her at all.
So what if this was the last cup of tea Mike ever brought her? What if this morning was Margaret’s last chance to see him, and she didn’t even open her eyes to say goodbye? She couldn’t blame Mike if he decided never to come back.
What if there was something more than business in Dublin for Mike?
What exactly were the secrets he’d been keeping from her all these years?
Well, Margaret had her secrets now too.
Was that what this was all about – because she didn’t know what Mike got up to, she had to get up to something herself?
Margaret closed her eyes again – the day wasn’t five minutes old and already the guilt was back, at her. She took a deep breath and took another sip of tea.
And what good had her own secrets done for her? She had less of an idea than ever what Mike might do with his days, and a greater reason than ever before to fear she might not be the centre of his world. She’d had to tell him anyway, tell him what she’d done, because she couldn’t stand the weight of her secret any longer. Mike asked her who it was.
“Don’t you want to know why?” she asked. “Isn’t why more important than who?”
“Oh right,” said Mike, “so there’s a league table, is there – a correct order in which I should be asking these things? You have rules for that as well now, do you?”
“What do you mean ‘rules for that as well’? What else do I have rules for?”
“Just tell me who it is, will you?”
“It’s not important,” said Margaret. “It’s more important you know why.”
“But it obviously is important to me,” said Mike.
Margaret sat there in silence.
“Jesus Christ, all right then – why?” said Mike.
But in the end Margaret didn’t tell him who or why. The reasons she used to justify to herself what she’d done sounded feeble when she saw the effect her words had on Mike. That he was never around? That even when Mike was home he never seemed fully there? That she’d felt redundant, useless now the kids were grown up? That she’d always feared he didn’t love her, that he loved someone else?
So she got in the first blow, just to protect herself.
Margaret could see Mike was devastated. She didn’t expect him to be overjoyed, but she was surprised at the extent of his upset. Part of her thought he had it coming – he’d forgotten what she meant to him, forgotten what she could do to him if she put her mind to it.
“Are you saying you’ve never been with another woman?” she shouted at Mike. Her aggressiveness came from her disgust at herself.
“Not since I’ve been with you,” he said.
“You haven’t been with another woman in over twenty years?”
“No!” said Mike. “Why – is this something you do all the time? Or just something you think I do all the time?”
“But you’re always away,” said Margaret. “You have plenty of opportunity.”
“And because I have the opportunity, it means I must take the opportunity?”
“I don’t believe you’ve never looked at another woman,” said Margaret.
“Of course I’ve looked at other women, and I’ve thought about it too – I’ve just never done anything about it.”
“Well you’re a saint then,” said Margaret, “or a liar.”
And so it went on, around and around, round after round, Margaret trying to justify what she’d done by something Mike had not.
“You just weren’t there,” she said one day.
“What do you mean?” asked Mike. “Of course I wasn’t there, otherwise you wouldn’t have done it. But where was I? Out earning money for you and our kids and our home, that’s where. That’s what I thought my role was – to provide. You certainly made that plain enough when we first got married. Where’s the money coming from Mike? What’s going to happen to the business Mike? Why do you have to change what you’re doing Mike? Jesus Christ! No one told me I had to stay at home all day so my wife could feel secure, and wouldn’t feel the need to go and fuck some other bloke. No one told me that was the deal.”
“I don’t mean you weren’t there physically,” said Margaret. “You were too distant, I wouldn’t know where your mind would be half the time – oh, I don’t know, I don’t know why I did it, okay?”
Over and over it went through Margaret’s head. She put the half-drunk cup of tea down on the bedside table and lay back in the bed. She couldn’t start every day in this way, couldn’t go through each day beating herself up like this. What she had done she had done, but this guilt was killing her. She turned on to her side and pulled the bedclothes over her head. She was a tiny figure in the huge bed, a tiny figure in a huge bed in a huge room; a beautiful room in a beautiful house; a family home with only Margaret inside.
They moved here soon after Jack was born, Margaret heavily pregnant with their second child – another boy, who they called Mike. They took the large front bedroom for themselves and decided the size of the room demanded a statement of a bed, a big heavy wooden bed that people could be born in and people could die in. And mothers could lie with their children in, as Margaret had and yes, that was the happiest time of her life. She finally felt safe and secure, in her huge bed with her children around her, her husband out at work, earning the money to pay for their beautiful home.
So when had it stopped being enough? When had Margaret started wanting more? When did she first notice the void? Where had it come from and what had been there to fill it before? She was happy; it was tough enough at first but she was happy. Once the kids were all at school, though, she knew she had to find something new. She was a young woman still – she’d only been an adult for as long as she’d been a child. Margaret could simplify her life since school into four easy decisions: nursing, marrying Mike, moving to Manchester and having the children. She didn’t regret any of them. But she was still only just turned thirty – what the hell would she do next?
Margaret had returned to nursing, encouraged by Mike and supported by Jack and Mike junior, who loved her in her uniform (as did Mike senior, but that was a different story – would it work for him now, she wondered?). It wasn’t the sudden exposure to the workplace that had changed Margaret. She knew her way around the ward and she fitted right in; she was too good a nurse not to. There was no great awakening of her consciousness, no sudden dissatisfaction with her lot in life. In fact, it had very little to do with her at all and much more to do with Mike – who the hell was this person, and why had he chosen to be with her? They’d been married for over ten years before Margaret began to realise that she didn’t really know Mike at all.
And now another ten years have gone by, thought Margaret.
Their house backed on to Longford Park, one of a terrace of large properties with long gardens that reached all the way to the perimeter of the park. Margaret listened to the early morning sound of birds sing
ing, about the only time of day when they weren’t drowned out by the sound of traffic. She still couldn’t recognise the individual songs of particular birds. As a child she’d asked her mother to teach her, but her mother didn’t know and Belfast wasn’t the place to listen to birdsong on a regular basis. Margaret had wanted to know for when she had children of her own but – just like her mother before her – it was unlikely now that she’d ever learn. Not that the children ever asked her, but it would have been nice to be able to tell them.
The house had served its purpose as their family home but what was to become of it now, Margaret didn’t know. Jack was settled in Leeds, if you could call working in a pub settled. And while Mike junior might occasionally turn up for a few days at a time, you wouldn’t want to base your life around it; he’d inherited his father’s restlessness and was currently working as a boat painter down in Cornwall. This was not a house then for a woman to be alone in; Margaret may not have known what happened to the years as her children were growing up, but she was well aware of what was going on now. She snuggled deeper down into the bed, trying not to listen to the silence of the large empty house. Her children were gone, her husband was gone; she was alone.
They were so right to leave Belfast when they did. Margaret was surprised when Mike considered staying for a while once he’d finished his degree in Manchester – although Mike’s Belfast was always very different to Margaret’s. He seemed to need a few months to decide what to do next and spent it with his parents up in Hollywood, detached from reality as Margaret saw it. She didn’t understand why he hadn’t taken the job with the investment bank that had sponsored him through college, but she presumed he must have his reasons. She didn’t mind waiting but that was because she knew she was on her way out of there regardless. Belfast, post hunger strikes, was a nasty little town and getting worse. She was leaving with or without Mike. There was nothing to be done with the place but to walk away.
English people were so funny when she first met them – they couldn’t conceive of living in a place like Belfast, or what it must do to your head.
“It must make you very hard,” was the phrase they used, but Margaret thought that if anything it was the leaving of Belfast that had made her so – hard in the sense that she prevented her emotions from getting the better of her. What could you do, how could you reason through what they’d allowed to happen? And why were those deaths any worse than any others? The only thing to do was to shut down your mind.
That autumn Mike suggested they get married and go to live in Manchester. Margaret agreed. She loved him and she believed that he loved her – he’d just taken his time to realise it – and there was no way she was staying in the North after marrying Mike. Her own family were reasonable enough, but Margaret knew what she was doing; she knew she’d rarely see them again. They didn’t shun her; it was just that everybody understood the choice she was taking. This was her way out and this was the price she would pay.
On a personal level Margaret had taken a gamble on Mike and placed herself in a vulnerable position in a foreign city. Although she was a fully trained nurse, she was pregnant in Manchester before she could find a job. Mike didn’t seem to know what he was doing – forever dreaming up new schemes, talking of computers and other crazy ideas he knew little about. So yes, that made her hard too. But she also changed politically; viewing the North from a distance was not like having to live there. The indifference in Britain, the ignorance of what was happening in a part of what they called the United Kingdom. That stupid, heartless fucking bitch Thatcher – Margaret hated sharing her name, and watched as Thatcher moved on from one confrontation to the next. The miners must have been easy after standing by to watch ten men die on hunger strike – but then, they were only miners, they were only common criminals. Margaret saw a lot of things on television and heard a lot of things on the radio – you do when you’re stuck in the house with a young baby and another on the way.
Mike pulled through with the help of his friend Eugene from college.
He was right about computers after all, and he and Eugene went into business together as training consultants. There were a lot of companies out there, keen to implement the new technology, but without a clue as to how to go about it. Mike understood very little of what actually went on inside a computer – he had Eugene for that – but his ignorance helped him win over customers. He was also very good at seeing potential uses for the innovations Eugene enthused about; Eugene thought something was wonderful in itself, while Mike thought something was wonderful because of what it could do. They were the saving of each other – Mike made enough money to support his family, and Eugene enjoyed playing the boffin to Mike’s salesman.
Margaret knew that Mike kept at least an eye on the financial markets and that he earned a certain amount from the investments he’d made, but she was surprised that he didn’t make more. Mike missed for example the huge amounts of money to be made on IBM and Apple, despite having Eugene as an ear to the ground when it came to computing. When the stock values crashed in these companies, it was strange to Margaret that Mike hadn’t made a fortune and got out in time – that would have been the Mike of old. When she asked him about it, he just said you had to be at it full-time to stay ahead of the markets. Besides, everybody was into the stock market now that Thatcher was offering shares in every nationalised industry she could sell off.
Mike did accurately predict when Thatcher would go.
“The men in grey suits have had enough of her,” he said.
Margaret couldn’t understand how they could just get rid of Thatcher – couldn’t picture life without her actually.
“She is still the Prime Minister,” she said. “She won’t let go that easily.”
“You just watch,” said Mike. “She’s only had the power because they allowed her the power, and now she’s become a liability.”
Mike was so confident of his prediction that he broke a promise to himself and placed a bet on Thatcher being gone by a certain date. He didn’t win that much money, but he enjoyed being right. One of Margaret’s happiest memories was of the three of them – herself, Mike and Eugene – quietly cracking open a bottle of champagne to celebrate Thatcher’s defeat. The children were upstairs in bed and Margaret had told Mike that evening that she was going to return to work within the next year. She felt good about her decision and it was somehow tied in to the fact that Thatcher was finally gone. She stood huddled together with Mike and Eugene in the corner of the living room. Mike had rolled a joint and they passed it one to the other, three friends together, smoking and drinking the champagne. Eugene had set up a video loop of Thatcher’s tears, and it was playing over and over on the television screen. Eugene had told them he had a girlfriend he was seeing – Eugene! Even though they had the whole of the room to themselves, it seemed important to be so close and that they should have their arms around each other. Margaret kissed first Mike and then Eugene.
That was a good day.
So, would Mike leave her? Margaret thought not, on the whole.
In the past year or so, Margaret had noticed a change in Mike, and she knew he’d decided to try again. Of the two of them, it was Mike who was trying the hardest to move on and to get over what had happened. She watched as he eventually got a hold on his early anger and rage, and suspected this was his reason for working away from Manchester more frequently than in the past – to avoid her, and to avoid going off on another rant. They both hated losing control, especially when the children were around to pick up a vibe, and when it hit Mike, it hit him hard. Margaret knew that absenting himself from the family home was just about Mike’s only defence mechanism
She told Mike once that she’d never have done it if she’d known he’d take it so badly.
“How the fuck did you think I would take it?” asked Mike. “That I would understand?”
“I didn’t think you were that bothered,” said Margaret.
Of course, Mike’s screaming years didn’t do
much to help Margaret’s guilt, and now he’d changed it seemed too late. She listened as he told her that the only solution he could see was to simply love her again. He was sorry for everything that had happened, and he was sorry if it was because of something he had done – or hadn’t done. He hoped things never got that bad between them again.
But in the five years since Margaret had been unfaithful – five years, half a decade, gone by just like that – she still couldn’t forgive herself. She just felt so guilty, all the time, all day, every day, every place she went and everything she tried to do. She just felt sick when Mike came on to her. They’d be getting along fine, things almost like normal – whatever that might be – and Mike would go to put his arms around her, or kiss her on the lips, and Margaret would just freeze and the moment would be lost. And then Mike would be angry again, and a few more months would go by. If Margaret couldn’t get over what she’d done, there was little hope that Mike could do it alone. They had to move on together; if not, then perhaps Mike would have to leave after all.
Margaret dreaded Mike talking to her about it, dreaded being on her own with him because it was all he ever talked about, and so she gradually just shut herself down. She hated being this way and she could see what she was doing was making Mike pay, in a way, all over again, for something she had done in the first place. She knew what he was saying – loving each other was the only way out of this mess – but she couldn’t give herself to him in that way any more. She might in the future, she didn’t know, but right now, she hated herself too much, hated her body too much and hated the thought of intimacy more than anything. Or perhaps it was just her age and a physical thing she was going through?