by Tony Parsons
Then she faced me.
‘Kazumi—’
‘No more talk.’
Lit only by the moonlight and the lights of the waterfront, we struggled to undress while kissing each other at the same time. We were half dressed and grappling on the sofa like teenagers in heat when Eamon came home.
Kazumi heard the key in the door before I did, and she was off the sofa and into the bathroom before Eamon and his companion were even in the living room.
I recognised the woman – a TV producer who had once worked as a runner on The Marty Mann Show. Eamon waved from the doorway, and then they disappeared into his bedroom. I heard laughter and music from behind the closed door. It shouldn’t have mattered, but the spell had been broken. Kazumi came back from the bathroom fully dressed and ready to go.
‘Ah, not yet,’ I said. ‘Please, Kazumi. Come here. Nobody’s going to disturb us again. Look at the view.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not my view.’
I didn’t try to argue with her. I wearily did up the buttons of my shirt. We quietly let ourselves out of the flat.
‘It can’t go on like this,’ she said as I flagged down a taxi. ‘I mean it, Harry. It can’t go on.’
And it didn’t.
Because after dropping Kazumi off I went home, where my wife told me that she was leaving me.
twenty-five
I had been left before, of course.
But this time was different.
When Gina left me, she went in a fury – not caring what she took and what she left behind, just wanting to be out of our home, just wanting to be away from me and our life.
I remembered a half-shut suitcase spilling Pat’s socks, betrayed tears smudging her mascara and a throbbing pain just above my heart, where she had thrown my mobile phone at me.
Despite all of that, when Gina left there still felt like the faint chance that she would one day change her mind, that she would come back home, and that the rage would eventually pass.
It wasn’t like that with Cyd.
Cyd’s leaving was calm and methodical.
No tears, no raised voices, nothing done in haste. A grown-up, rational leaving, that somehow felt even worse. She wasn’t leaving tonight. She wasn’t leaving tomorrow. But she was leaving soon.
In our little guest room my wife had suitcases and overnight bags open on the single bed, and covering what looked like every spare square inch of the parquet floor. Some of the cases were almost empty. Others were already filling up with books, toys, CDs and winter clothes belonging to both her and Peggy. By the time the season changed, Cyd planned to be somewhere else.
With Gina I had felt that I still had a chance.
With Cyd there was no doubt at all.
She was never coming back.
‘Going somewhere?’
She turned to face me. ‘Sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.’ She turned back to the suitcase she was packing, stacking a pile of Peggy’s thick woollen sweaters, shaking her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘What is this?’ I said, coming slowly into the room.
‘What does it look like?’
‘Looks like you’re moving out.’
She nodded. ‘Like I said – sorry.’
‘Why?’
She turned and faced me, and I saw the hurt and anger under the calm. ‘Because you’ve left me already. I can feel it. I don’t know why you stay, Harry. And you know the sad thing? Neither do you. You can’t work out what you are doing with me. You can’t remember.’
I shook my head, although I knew every word was true. Somewhere along the line I had forgotten why we were together, and that’s why it had been so easy to fall for someone else.
‘I can’t mess around, Harry. I told you that from the start. It’s not just me. I’ve got a daughter. I have to think about her. And I know that, with things the way they are between us, sooner or later you’re going to meet some little fuck buddy.’
‘A fucky buddy?’
‘Fuck buddy. Someone you can have uncomplicated sex with – you’ll meet her sooner or later. Maybe you already have, I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know. Come on, Harry – we don’t even sleep in the same bed any more. There’s a fuck buddy out there with your name on.’
Blended families and fuck buddies. It was a whole new world out there. My father wouldn’t have recognised it. I didn’t recognise it myself.
‘Cyd, the last thing I’m looking for is a fuck buddy.’
She studied me for a bit. And perhaps she could see that this was true too.
‘Then you’ll find somebody you love, and that will be even messier. Not messier for you. But for me and my daughter. Remember her? And that’s who I have to worry about now. You’ll meet some young woman, and you’ll do what you always do, Harry – tell her that she is the greatest girl in the history of the world.’
‘Is that what I do?’
My wife nodded. ‘And you will believe every word of it, Harry. And so will she. Or maybe it’s happened already. Has it, Harry? Have you met the greatest girl in the history of the world? Or just the latest in a long line of them?’
I looked from Cyd to her open cases and back again. She had packed her photo albums. The ones of Peggy growing up. The one of our wedding day. The ones that recorded our holidays over the years. She had stored them all away.
‘Please don’t leave.’ I didn’t want it to end this way. Not any way. Something inside me recoiled from making the final, necessary break.
‘Why not? This isn’t working, Harry. Not for you. And not for me.’
‘Please…’
I made a move towards her, but she held up her hand like a traffic cop.
‘You’re not a bad guy, Harry. You’ve got a good heart. I really believe that. But we could waste our lives being kind to each other. Twenty years could go by, and we still wouldn’t know why we were together. I know you want what your parents had, Harry. I know you want a marriage like that. Well, guess what? You’re not the only one.’
‘It’s been a tough time. With my mum, with our kids, with work.’
‘The tough times should bring us closer together. I wasn’t expecting nothing but fun-packed adventure. This is a marriage, not Club Med. Sticking together through the bad times, growing stronger and closer through them – that’s what it’s all about. But not our marriage, Harry. And not us.’
I knew I had no right to feel as bad as I felt. But I couldn’t help it. Seeing Cyd packing her bags seemed like the greatest failure of my life. And what pulled at the wound was that I knew she was right. She deserved more than she was getting in this marriage.
‘I’m leaving because you can’t, Harry. Because you’re not cruel enough to go. But don’t do me any favours, okay? Don’t stay because you pity me. Don’t stay because you feel guilty. Don’t stay just because you’re not strong enough to go.’
‘I stay because I care about you.’
She smiled gently, placing her hand on my face. ‘If you really care about me, you’ll help me get out of this thing.’
‘But where will you go?’
‘Back home. To Houston. To my mother and my sisters. There’s nothing for me here any more.’
‘When?’
‘After Jim’s wedding. Peggy is looking forward to being his bridesmaid. I’m not going to take that away from her.’
I picked up a leather photo album from the suitcase on the bed, opening it at a picture that felt like it was taken a lifetime ago. Pat’s fifth birthday party, in the back garden of my parents’ house. Pat fresh-faced and gorgeous. Peggy, that crucial bit older, grave and serious as she examined the strawberry jelly in front of her. And my mum and dad, healthy and grinning for the camera and relieved that the day was going well. And Cyd – smiling, waving a fish-paste sandwich at me as I took the picture. A tall, slim, beautiful woman, a single mother who had just realised that she was not only going to get through this ordeal – meeting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time – but
she was actually going to enjoy it. How young we all seemed.
‘Remember this? Remember Pat’s fifth birthday party?’
She laughed.
‘What I remember is your dad choking on a sausage roll when I told him my ex-husband was going out with a Thai stripper.’
I smiled at the memory. ‘A bit went down the wrong hole. That was one of my old man’s favourite expressions.’
I closed the photo album and placed it back in the suitcase. ‘I’m sorry too, Cyd. I’m sorry I didn’t make you happy.’
I meant it.
‘Come here,’ she said, and I went to her, and we held each other for the longest time.
‘Still friends then?’ I said.
‘Always friends, Harry.’ She gently released me and turned back to her packing. ‘But I’d rather get out while there’s still a little love left.’
My mum had taken to wearing her Dolly Parton wig.
Losing her hair during chemo was about the only indignity that she had been spared, but the big, golden wig was now seeing active service. It framed her still-pretty face as she let Pat and me into her home, and it glinted and glistened in the sunlight like a knight’s suit of armour.
‘But what happened to your head?’ Pat asked.
‘This is my Dolly Parton hair, darling.’
‘You’re okay, are you?’ I asked. ‘Your hair hasn’t started – you know.’
‘Not at all. Fifty pounds this was in Harrods. Shame to waste it. Besides, blondes have more fun. As Rod Stewart said.’
She actually looked terrific in her wig. But as Pat busied himself with the DVD player, I sat in the back garden with my mum while she told me that wearing it had nothing to do with wanting to be blonde.
‘I’m different now,’ she said. ‘People think you’re over it. But you’re never over it. Every ache, every pain – you wonder if it’s coming back, if this is it. You get a cold and you wonder if it’s the cancer. Listen to me. I sound so sorry for myself.’
‘No, you don’t, Mum.’
‘My Dolly Parton wig,’ she said, touching the spun-gold locks. ‘It’s a way of showing the world I’m not the same. I’m different now, okay? People say to me – back to normal, Liz?’ My mum shook her head. ‘I get so mad. I can’t pretend that this thing hasn’t happened to me. How can you tell them? How can you make them understand? Life will never be normal again. Normal has changed.’
I knew what she meant. At least, I think I did. Getting sick again was always going to be a possibility. And now it was going to be like this forever.
‘But I’m stronger too,’ my mum said. ‘Look at me in my big hair – I go down the shops and I don’t care who looks at me. What people say – that’s the least of our problems, isn’t it? I’m living for now. Trying to live life to the full. In my own quiet way. I don’t plan ten years ahead. If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster. Now I try to appreciate what I’ve got.’ She took my hand. ‘And appreciate how much I’m loved.’
‘You’re going to be around for years, Mum. You’ve beaten this thing. You’ll see Pat grow up.’
I really wanted to believe it.
‘It’s hard for people,’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard a word I had said. ‘I think your dad felt this way. When he came back from the war. Who could he talk to – really talk to – about what he’d been through? Only men who had been through the same thing. The ones who knew.’
She showed me a leaflet. It was one of those pink and purple breast cancer leaflets. But this was a new one.
‘You can get training,’ my mum said, opening the leaflet. ‘They train you to be a counsellor. So you can talk to women who are going through the same thing you went through. And I know now that’s what I want to do. I want to help women who are fighting breast cancer. See, Harry? I can actually say it now. I couldn’t even say it before. Cancer. As if I had something to be ashamed of, as if it was my fault. Do you remember a young blonde girl at the hospital? A pretty thing? A bit younger than you. Two little boys, she had. Little smashers. About Pat’s age.’
I had a vague memory of a pale young woman who was in my mother’s ward.
‘Well, she died,’ my mum said, her eyes suddenly welling up.
‘You’re not going to die.’
‘I want to talk to girls like that. Women, I mean. You have to call them women now, don’t you? Well, she was just a girl to me.’
Pat came into the garden, bored with the DVD. He hadn’t wanted to come to his grandmother’s house today. Bernie Cooper had asked him over to play. I felt guilty doing it, but I had persuaded my son that we had to be with his grandmother now. Because my mum was right. Normal had changed. And I had no way of knowing how long we had left.
‘My two beautiful boys,’ she said, throwing open her arms. ‘Hug me. The pair of you. Come on, I’m not going to break.’
So we hugged her, and we laughed as we buried our faces in that Dolly Parton wig, and we knew that at that moment we loved her more than anyone on the face of the earth.
Pat wandered back to the living room, and my mum smiled with sadness and happiness all at once, patting my shoulder.
‘Your dad would be proud of you.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘Because you’ve taken good care of me through all this. Because you love your son. Because you’re a good man. You always compare yourself to your dad and find yourself lacking. And you’re wrong, Harry. No matter how tall your father is, you still have to do your own growing.’
‘But how did you and Dad do it, Mum? How do you love someone for a lifetime? How do you make a marriage work for all that time?’
My mum didn’t even have to think about it.
‘You have to keep falling in love,’ she said. ‘You just have to keep falling in love with the same person.’
You always took your shoes off at Gina’s, so the moment Pat let us in with his own personal key, I saw them immediately – great big size tens forcing everything else off the WELCOME mat, a bit down at heel and in need of a good polish, more like landing craft than shoes.
A new boyfriend, I guessed. No surprise there. She was never going to be alone for very long. Not looking like that. Still.
And as I helped Pat out of his coat, I thought what I so often thought when I was around my ex-wife.
What about my boy?
If Gina starts seeing someone new, then what does that mean for Pat? Will the guy like my son? Or will he see him as an irritation?
Gina appeared by our side, looking red-faced and flustered. I felt a flash of irritation at my ex-wife. What the hell was she doing in there with that big-foot guy?
‘Granny’s got new hair,’ Pat told her.
‘That’s nice, darling,’ she said, not listening to him, looking at me looking at the landing craft.
‘It’s yellow,’ Pat said.
‘Lovely.’
Pat was out of his coat and kicking off his shoes.
‘You go inside. Someone in there wants to see you. I want to talk to your daddy.’
Pat ran up the stairs to the living area of the flat. I could hear a man’s baritone talking to him, and Pat responding with his sweet, high voice.
‘Richard,’ Gina said.
‘Richard?’
‘Looks like we’re going to have another crack at it.’
Upstairs I could hear Richard and Pat exchanging stilted small talk.
What about my boy?
‘You surprise me, Gina.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. What about the old cow theory?’
‘The old bull theory.’
‘Whatever it was. I thought that when you were finished with them, you were really finished with them.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe I was thinking of you, Harry.’
I took a breath, let it pass.
‘What happened?’
She shrugged. ‘I guess I felt isolated. And a little bit scared, maybe. You know what it’s like when you’re living
on your own with a child.’
‘Yes, I know what it’s like.’
‘You get lonesome. You do. No matter how much you love them, you get lonesome. And it’s hard to meet new people. It’s really hard, Harry. And I’m not even sure I want to go through all that crap. Dates – God, spare me from dates. Who’s got the energy for all that crap at our age?’
‘I bumped into Richard. Did he tell you?’
She nodded, but there was nothing in her eyes to indicate that she knew about Kazumi and me. So Richard had kept my secret. Or perhaps he truly didn’t care.
All he wanted was his wife back.
‘It wasn’t so bad between us,’ Gina said. ‘The move was tough. And trying for a baby and not getting one – that was even tougher. But we’re going to have a crack at IVF.’
‘Fertility treatment?’
She nodded. ‘They give me drugs to produce a large number of eggs. Richard has to – you know – masturbate.’
Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for Richard.
I stared at her. One minute she was finished with this guy, and the next minute her ovaries were working overtime to have his baby. I didn’t understand her at all. Is who we share our life with really so random? Is it so easily torn down, and then put back together?
Gina mistook my silence for doubts about fertility treatment.
‘It’s all the rage these days, Harry. In some fertility clinics, the really good ones, you have a better chance of conception with IVF than you have with regular old-fashioned shagging. It’s true.’
‘I don’t know, Gina. I heard IVF treatment is expensive. And doesn’t always work.’
‘Maybe going through it will make us stronger. Make us a real husband and wife. Isn’t that what we all want?’
‘But you don’t love him any more, Gina. You can’t just be with someone – be married to them, have a baby with them – because you’re feeling a bit lonesome.’