Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  Friday, 16 November 2007

  Call for help

  My daughter cried out the other night. She had not been well and I staggered out of bed and grabbed my dressing gown. My husband had only got to bed in the early hours because he was mired in a work crisis, and I had carefully left the bedroom door open because I figured she would wake up. It was indeed much easier to hear her with the door open. Only problem was I forgot it was there and walked straight into it. This has given me a large lump on my eyebrow and a cut lip which immediately swelled up, so that I looked like Marge Simpson, only without the blue hair. Naturally enough, as soon as I had whacked myself nearly insensible on the door she stopped crying. I crawled back into bed, having inspected the damage, and I lay there whimpering, thinking: ‘I am going to wake up in the morning and look like I have been walloped. People are going to say: ‘What on earth did you do?’ And I am going to say: ‘I walked into a door’ and they are going to think: ‘Yeah, right.’ But by the morning it had gone down. Now all I have left to show for it is a sore eyebrow and an ulcer on the inside of my lip from the cut.

  Friday, 23 November 2007

  Down and out

  I went down to London on Tuesday. I had a business meeting arranged for yesterday and thought I would go down early to see the Islington Beauty and get my hair cut. She has two boys only a little younger than mine, yet manages to stay slim and utterly lovely, unlike me at the moment. I admit I have been ‘letting myself go’ a little. I wash, obviously. But in the past year I have gone up a dress size and now my only question when I look at clothes is: ‘Will it keep me warm?’ My lackadaisical approach to appearance got so bad about a month ago that I cut my own hair. Not just my fringe. All of my hair. Not entirely off. Not like Britney, but a pretty thorough scissoring trim down both sides. Not long ago I would have cut off my own hand rather than do such a thing to myself. Anyway, I got the London haircut, which is a start at least, and have decided to make more of an effort.

  Despite the haircut, the trip was a vaguely uneasy one all told. I was supposed to spend both nights with the Islington Beauty. When I arrived on Tuesday, she was hideously stressed by a work deadline, a poorly child and the fact she was due to go away on holiday a couple of days later. She was so stressed it became blazingly apparent I could not stay there two nights or I would pitch her over into insanity. There was nothing I could do about the first night, so we had dinner and I said I would stay somewhere else on Wednesday. Morning comes around and I kiss her goodbye. She says: ‘Are you sure this is OK?’ I say: ‘Absolutely,’ and as the door to her Georgian townhouse closes behind me, I think: ‘That’s it. I’m homeless in London.’ I cannot go home a day early because I still have not had my meeting. I could ring London Diva or the Perfect Mother, either of whom will then feel like second best, or I could stay in a Travelodge. I seriously contemplate the Travelodge option but decide it would be so miserable I might throw first the white plastic kettle out of the window and then myself.

  I start heading for a tube station and it is at this exact moment I run into the Accountant, who is also down in London on business. I know the Evangelicals would think this was the work of Jesus. There I am, homeless in the Big City, and I run into my best friend from the country who happens to have a flat there. Do I tell him my problem? Of course not. I cannot possibly tell him I am homeless in London and do not know where I am going to sleep. It sounds as if I am so dull that the Islington Beauty has asked me to leave. It would also sound as if I am inviting him to a night of illicit passion. Instead of explaining my predicament, we drink coffee and eat French pastries at a pavement table of a chic café, discuss the relative merits of city and country, and I say ‘See ya’ and wave merrily as we part.

  I am very aware that my husband sent me down to London on the strict understanding I did not spend any money – aside from the haircut – because we have not paid our last set of bills from the builders. It is a very middle-class sort of broke – big house, no money sort of thing. Despite that, after the Accountant disappears into the London sunlight, I contemplate checking into a posh hotel in the centre of town. I only have a handbag with me. This is because I travel light when I do not have the children. The handbag has everything I need in it – purse, toothbrush, change of underwear, change of silk dress, lipstick, powder, mascara, novel, newspaper, notebook, pen, tube map and, astonishingly, a mobile phone which works. I wonder whether hotel staff would think I was a prostitute if I check in for the night with only a handbag. Would they presume it contained baby oil and handcuffs? I decide I am prepared to be considered a prostitute for the sake of knowing where I will sleep that night. I use the mobile phone to ring the posh hotel. The receptionist tells me it will cost £250 to stay the night. £250? I would have to take up prostitution to be able to afford £250 for a night in a hotel. Prostitution seems like too much trouble. I ring the London Diva. I say: ‘Hi, it’s me. I’m homeless.’ She listens to my story of scruples and inhibition. She laughs and says: ‘That’s fine. Come stay with the B team.’

  On the train back north after Thursday’s three-hour business meeting, I decide it is OK to have lunch in the restaurant car. I have a table. I do some work. I drink some wine. I sit there till Durham, then move back to my original seat in the buffet car. When I get back, I find a man sitting there who looks vaguely bemused as I ransack his coat and go through his newspapers searching for the Waterstone’s bag I left behind to mark my place. The bag has vanished. I search the floor and the overhead compartment and the luggage storage behind the seat, but it has disappeared. It has my favourite brown hat in it from Germany and nine new notebooks. I curse. I had been searching for exactly these notebooks for three months, and despite my husband’s strictures about money I had bought them.

  I go back down the carriage to look for the guard. The guard is not there. I tell the steward who is leaning against the bar chatting to his colleague that my bag has disappeared and he asks me when I checked on it last. I tell him about three hours ago. He is not impressed with such a cavalier approach to my belongings. He says: ‘Things get stolen every day on the train.’ I say: ‘Right.’ He says: ‘There are 400 people on a train. Would you trust these 400 people with your stuff?’ Patently, yes. He asks me whether I still want to talk to the guard. I say: ‘No. Not if that’s GNER’s reaction to something getting stolen – there’s not a lot of point, is there?’ The steward says: ‘Well, if you tell me what I can do about it, I’ll do it.’ My opinion of him by this point is not a lot higher than my opinion of whoever took the bag. I start walking up and down the train trying to spot it. I even check the toilets. I see a Waterstone’s bag on an overhead shelf of a luggage compartment and immediately rifle it. A mildly irate middle-aged man tells me: ‘That’s not yours.’ He obviously thinks I am trying to steal it. I tell him my bag has gone missing, but I am not convinced he believes me. I do indeed look as if I am reconnoitring things to steal as I walk slowly past everybody’s tables, my eye snagging on their mobile phones and shiny laptops. I am thinking: ‘Why would anyone want my notebooks and hat when they could have your stuff?’ The steward pushes his tea trolley past me and as he sees what I am doing, he says he will keep a look out for me. I think: ‘It’s a shame you didn’t volunteer to do that in the first place.’

  I decide to risk the guard’s scorn and report the bag missing. The guard is called Terry and does not pour scorn on me. He says things do get stolen but not every day. He is genuinely concerned. He is sorry that my bag has been swiped. He tells me the Darlington to Durham and the Durham to Newcastle stretches of the journey are particular hotspots because they are such short journeys. He says a thief can come on, steal something and be off again with his swag within minutes. Sometimes they stand on the platform, duck in, take the nearest item and are off again without even the price of a ticket. I say pathetically: ‘I know you can’t do anything.’ He says: ‘I’ll have a good look for you,’ and he takes my number and says whatever happens he will call when the
train gets to Edinburgh. When his first call comes in later that night, he has found nothing. About an hour later, he finds the bag as the train starts its journey down the line again. I do not know who is more pleased him or me. He tells me the bag was near the kitchen. We wonder if someone has picked it up mistakenly thinking it was theirs – this seems unlikely. Or whether a thief had hoped for a bag of expensive hardback autobiographies for Christmas and got a bagful of blank notebooks and a funny hat and dumped them. Terry asks me which station I want the bag left at. He even rings me a third time to say he handed the bag over to station staff and they will keep it for me. I decide my adventures in London have a happy ending: I do not slide into prostitution, I get my bag back; the thief, as yet, has to buy his Christmas presents; and Terry travelled back down the line knowing he made a difference.

  Monday, 26 November 2007

  Heads or tails?

  I did the silliest thing yesterday morning – fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom. I believe my lambskin slippers must be haunted. I had just started to walk down the stairs and suddenly my feet flew up in the air, I crashed down on to my backside, thought ‘Bugger’ then continued to travel, bump, bump, bump, down the entire length of the stairs. My head slamming on to every stair as I careered down, screaming. When I reached the bottom, I lay there sobbing. Luckily my husband was in the kitchen so he ran through and held me while I wept into his chest and drooled all over his shirt.

  I am definitely concussed. I was left with the most terrible headache. I went to bed early and this morning my husband said: ‘I woke you up every two hours to make sure you weren’t dead.’ I think he expected me to say thank you – I was too exhausted. I also feel periodically nauseous. Forget the concussion – what is wrong with me? Can you get late-onset dyspraxia? I have turned into a klutz. In the past three weeks, I have sprained my ankle, walked into a door and now fallen down the stairs (for the second time this year). Perhaps I need to try doing one thing at a time. When I jumped off the fence, I was thinking about history; when I walked into the door, I was thinking about the screaming baby; and when I was coming down the stairs, I was thinking about my six-year-old’s reluctance to do homework and whether he would go to university in twelve years’ time.

  I would not mind but I have one of those phone interviews with insurance companies later this afternoon where they try to figure out if you are a safe bet to insure. I have had one before, and aside from asking you a variety of highly personal medical questions which immediately make you feel like you are about to die from some horrible disease, they have a whole section on dangerous pursuits – do you rock climb … scuba-dive … rally drive?’ I hope they do not ask ‘Can you walk and chew gum?’

  Thursday, 29 November 2007

  Still in La La Land

  Went to the doctor’s yesterday as I still felt so poxy after the fall downstairs. Nauseous, headachey and zip brain activity. He peered into my eyes with a torch, which always makes me want to shriek with terror, then made me walk in a straight line, which I can never do anyway – drunk, sober, concussed or entirely sane. As a finale, he peered down the back of my pants. Usually I would quite like that, but I knew it was black and blue down there. He said the body needed time to recover and to rest after traumatizing it. On the way out of the surgery I picked up some accident prevention leaflets aimed at the elderly – then again, who would pick them up if they said ‘For klutzes of all ages’? Apparently you spend forty years trying to minimize your cellulite, then you hit sixty-five and have to climb into a ‘hip protector’, which is a giant pair of knickers with concrete pads along each side. According to the leaflet: ‘Hip protector underwear cuts down the risk of a fracture if you fall’ and you are advised to wear it ‘day and night’. I am not sure how my husband would feel if I started wearing it at night, although I quite like the idea. I got home and said to Girl Friday: ‘I am thinking of getting hip protector underwear.’ She said: ‘Why don’t you just wear a cycle helmet whenever you’re at home?’ One pratfall and suddenly everyone’s a comedian.

  Thursday, 13 December 2007

  Postcard from London

  Spent a few days in Frankfurt visiting my friend who is recovering from an operation. I flew back into London rather than Edinburgh so that I could go to a Christmas party last night.

  My husband met me at City airport. We were to do a very daring thing – leave the children with Girl Friday and have a night away without them. This was the first night we have spent together and away from the children for three and a half years. My husband said: ‘We don’t need a cab. We’ll walk.’ I did not think that boded well. He took my laptop and I pulled my little case on wheels along the narrow pavements, past the parked cars captive behind metal railings and underneath a flyover for the Docklands Light Railway. My husband pointed to a neon-lit sign some way ahead – ‘Travelodge’. I stopped to consider our journey’s destination. I said: ‘So we are staying at the Travelodge?’ He said: ‘Yes, you said you wanted somewhere convenient and it’s only £70.’ I tugged my wheely case off the pavement and towards the brightly lit entrance. I said: ‘We’ve been together for nineteen years and sometimes I don’t think you know me at all.’ He said: ‘Well, this is what I do when I come to London.’ I said: ‘And whose fault is that?’

  He checked us in; I walked across to the vending machine in the foyer, put in a pound coin and a diet coke slammed into the drawer. I thought: ‘I think I need more than a diet coke.’ We took the lift up to the room and pushed open the door as a plane taxied past the window. I heard a roaring noise. I think it was a plane. There is a chance it was the blood in my ears. I put down the case on the floor beside the wardrobe and my handbag on the table in front of the mirror and cracked open the diet coke. It did not make me feel better. I put the kettle on and made a cup of tea. It did not make me feel better. I pulled the pillow lengthways so that I could lean against it, and sank into the bed. My husband lay down next to me. The weight of his body tipping me into him. I thought: ‘Could the bed be made of sponge, I wonder?’ I thought: ‘It is not so much the wallow in the mattress or the sound of planes or the fact its location seems so desolate – it is more that he thinks that this is what I am worth, what I deserve.’ I said: ‘This is our first night away together in three and a half years and you have brought me to City airport’s Travelodge. The thing I want to do most of all right now is cry.’

  I started getting ready for the party and he slipped out. I thought: ‘Maybe I’m tired from travelling. Maybe it’s all right. I’ll get drunk at the party and when I get back, it won’t seem so bad.’ My husband came back into the bedroom, his phone in his hand. He said: ‘OK, I’ve booked the Savoy. Shall we go now?’

  Friday, 14 December 2007

  Some kinda dame

  The Savoy is due for a refurbishment and is auctioning its furnishings next week. Staying there on Wednesday night felt slightly strange. Perhaps it was the fact I should, by rights, have been at the Travelodge, or perhaps it was the sales tags hanging from the furniture in the room. We were in Room 662. It felt entirely authentic, as if you had ratcheted back in time. I looked out of the window, half-expecting London to be in black and white. I thought: ‘Any minute now, a man in a fedora is going to come in with a gun in his hand and a crooked smile. He is going to make me hate him. Then he is going to make me love him. Finally, he is going to walk away into the shadows and never look back, even though his heart is breaking.’ I threw myself on the bed (Lot 2117, a pollard oak and ebonized bedroom suite in the Art Deco style, comprising a double bed with headboard, a bedside cabinet and a dressing table 196cm wide: £800–£1,200) to wait for him. I got up again and went across to Lot 2119 – a pollard oak circular occasional table in the Art Deco style, 60cm diameter and 65cm high (£100–£150). I slid a cigarette from a silver case, pursed lips any man would be happy to call home, and sat down in Lot 2120 (a grey upholstered tub chair: £100–£150). I crossed my long slim legs, the silk making the kind of noise silk
makes, thought ‘Daiquiri’ and got up again. I sashayed across to Lot 2118 (a pollard oak and ebonized cabinet in the Art Deco style, 80cm wide × 60cm deep × 171cm high: £300–£500). I opened the lacquered door and a fat man’s body toppled out. I screamed. My husband came in from the bathroom, tousled and slightly damp. He was not wearing a fedora. He did not notice the bullet-ridden body on the floor or the writhing cigarette smoke between us. He said: ‘Happy, darling?’

  Saturday, 15 December 2007

  ‘How lovely are your branches’

  In London, we used to go to a flower market, buy bagels, drink coffee and pay a nice coster man for a six-foot tree ‘guaranteed not to drop its needles eva’. Last year, we drove out to a farm and looked round a barn where dozens of trees dangled from the rafters and all I could think of were hanged men swaying gently in the breeze. Quite took the edge off the festive jollity. Today, my husband went in the Saab with the four-year-old and I went in the Volvo with the six-year-old, the baby girl and a neighbour; we drove alongside hoar-frosted fields to a forest, where we stumbled around avoiding savage animals and looking for the perfect tree. I was slightly worried we might all freeze to death or get eaten while my husband decided which one he was willing to take home with him. (Choosing a tree is one of those things he takes an inordinate amount of time over. Rapt, he will burble endlessly about size and symmetry and the straightness of the trunk – it must be a male thing.) With a whole forest to choose from, I thought that if the weather and animals did not kill us first, we risked being there till Easter. Time for decisiveness.

  ‘That one looks lovely,’ I said, pointing to a tree. (It was a tree – how different can one be from the next?) My husband eyed it with some scepticism but it was straight and true and did not run away. We took turns to saw it down with a handy jagged-toothed hacksaw and, in between, sang carols. I could not hear other families singing carols, but I thought I could add it to the collection of Christmas memories I am determined my children should have. Memories like ‘Do you remember how you always used to embarrass us by singing carols when we chopped down the Christmas tree? By the way, why couldn’t we just buy a tree like normal people?’ We dragged it back to the car, paid £15 to a chilly-looking man in a metal container who bagged it up for us in a large net before strapping it to the car with twine. It was dark by the time we had done. We broke down on the way home – I swear to God we are going fibre-optic next year.