Sixteen, Sixty-One

by Sixteen, Sixty-One- A Memoir (epub)

  Annabelle’s husband was just one of those shadowy figures of husbands you remember from playing in the garden while your mother gossiped with her friends on the patio, drinking cups of instant coffee. He must have been in the background and I must have known him, but the squiggly jigsaw pieces of his identity in my mind didn’t slot together until our conversation at his birthday party. From that moment, though, it was like someone flicked a switch and swapped the direction of the escalators in a department store. As Matthew became a fleshy figure, a father, mentor, Uncle and lover, and I spent more time with Annabelle, building the friendship I’d craved as a child, the haloed idol of my youth slipped away and was replaced by her altogether more self-assured husband.

  I didn’t, don’t and probably never will know what Annabelle knew about what was between Matthew and me, but she was my friend. I’d loved her in a childish way and still adored spending time with her, but I never felt guilty about sleeping with her husband. The larger difficulty was sneaking around. Matthew and I were conducting an affair in a small, gossipy town where privacy didn’t come easy. I had to sneak along the street, invent reasons to go into town, dart through his door when the coast was clear, tell my mother I checked my email five times a day because of school projects, leave notes under a plant by his door, pin myself to the wall until he’d drawn the curtains, worry about his aftershave on my coat and secretly wash my expensive lingerie in the bathroom sink.

  Communication was the most difficult: frequently I would arrive at his door expecting intimacy only to be greeted by a booming, ‘Oh look, it’s Nat, how unexpected. We haven’t seen you in ages! Barbara and Richard are here, do come in. Have you come to borrow that book?’ and have to endure an afternoon of personaed small talk instead. Or I’d wait all day to visit at the appointed time, but discover Annabelle had changed her plans and run her errands in the morning.

  Mothers and brothers and fathers and in-laws, neighbours and doctors, shopkeepers and postmen all thwarted our arrangements, left us tapping out frustrated messages from separate computers, compelling us to dream of a mythical time and place where we could be free to love in the open.

  Sometimes we’d plot elaborate Bunburys and, to our surprise, they’d come together: we’d escape for a night in my half-term holidays to return to Swindon, or I’d skip my Wednesday afternoon Psychology class to drive to Rye for a cream tea and a hunt through the second-hand bookshops. But more often than not, these secret passionate or plebeian encounters would be spoilt or at least dissipated by unlucky coincidences.

  A favourite free-period picnic spot was the Beachy Head car park in Warren Hill, where Matthew and I would share flasks of coffee and flaky pastries as well as more incriminating things. But two terrifying incidents marked an end to those visits. The first was Felicity Roberts, daughter of Mr and Mrs Roberts who lived next door to Matthew and Annabelle, passing our parked vehicle with her dog Bobby on the way to the footpath while Matthew and I were in the middle of one of those incriminatingly passionate things. I convinced myself she hadn’t seen or hadn’t recognised me and was persuaded to go back the following week, but returning from a lazy amble into Holywell, we found the passenger-side window of Matthew’s car had been smashed and my school-bag stolen. I had to sit in the back avoiding shards of glass on the way home and we developed a flat along a country lane, but none of that was as scary as having to explain to my parents how I’d lost my wallet, house keys, new glasses and a piece of coursework and why I didn’t want to try to claim them on the house insurance.

  Much safer options for seeing each other were under cover of larger groups, where we could steal glances and share knowing laughs. We arranged cinema trips with my mum where I sat in the middle and tentatively touched Matthew’s knee during dark scenes, group outings to the races where Matthew paced seriously, studying form and winking as he told me to put my allowance on a 30-1 outsider, and neighbourhood picnics at Pevensey Bay where I pranced in tiny bikinis only to notice my neighbour Bob ogling me as well as Matthew. But these half-moments together often left me missing the Matthew I knew even more than when we were apart.

  One Saturday in the spring, two weeks after Matthew’s birthday, four months since I lost my virginity and thirteen weeks until my AS exams, I followed Matthew into his study after a silent greeting. With his back to me, he took something from the desk, and then turned around to present a carrier bag.

  ‘I bought us phones,’ he grinned and waited for my response.

  ‘Huh?’ I managed after a pause and took the bag from his outstretched hand.

  ‘They’re on the same network, so as long as we put ten pounds on each month, we can text each other for free.’

  I pulled a box the size of a Roget’s Thesaurus from the bag.

  I’d had a phone before. My best friend Alicia had been promised one for her fourteenth birthday in August and, with the insane jealousy known only to teenage girls, I’d begged my dad to beat her parents to it and get me one for mine in July. At the last minute, he’d acquiesced and bought me a pay-as-you-go Vodaphone brick that I’d diligently lugged around for three months, receiving approximately two phone calls per week, generally from my mum to see what time I’d be home, before conceding that I didn’t really have a use for it and kicking it under my bed along with the ancient Mega Drive and the broken personal CD player.

  This was a third of the size of my old phone, red plastic encasing the minuscule screen. It weighed less than my house keys and already had a screen-saver message saying, ‘Hello Kitten’.

  ‘Look, mine’s the same,’ continued Matthew, pulling an identical handset from his inside jacket pocket.

  I smiled.

  ‘To activate the SIM you’ll need to call this number,’ he pointed to a white sticker on the box. ‘I chose us the same PIN number: 1661.’

  ‘Okay,’ I murmured, concentrating on finding the Unlock button.

  ‘It’s our ages,’ Matthew chuckled. ‘Also the year Newton got into Cambridge.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ I drawled precociously and kissed him on the lips.

  Despite the precedents of Anna Karenina, Lady Chatterley and other pre-twenty-first-century literary examples, affairs and mobile phones go together like stockings and suspenders. Six months into ours we had passed the incidental lying-in-the-name-of-love period and were ready for the cold, premeditated deception-for-the-sake-of-debauchery stage. The jumble of plastic and circuits in my hand meant, without a doubt, Matthew was mine: my illicit lover, my shocking secret, my erotic exhilaration – my man.

  4

  My mum stopped eating when my dad left her. She told me later that a couple of times she went to bed with a carving knife. I was eleven at the time and we were close. We went swimming most days, and, driving along the dual carriageway with our costumes in the back and tears staining our cheeks, she’d tell me about the separation. She explained my father had found another girlfriend before he’d even told her he wanted out; described his shock that she’d changed the locks one morning when he returned from Katie’s to collect clean socks before work; and told me he wanted to keep the house, meaning we would have to move. She recounted the names he’d called her, sobbed about promises he’d broken and raged at how much she’d sacrificed for the relationship.

  Some would say I was too young to hear this and my mother must have contributed to the lousy relationship I had with my father through my teens, but I adored being told these things. Her confidence in me assured me I was her best friend and provided me my first taste of the contradictory pleasure of intense pain.

  When she told me my dad had suggested I live with her and he take James, I threw myself into hating the father who loved me less than my brother. When forced to spend the weekend with him, I would scream an explicit response to his, ‘Would you like to cut my lawn?’ and stomp back down the road into my mother’s arms.

  That kind of intense closeness with a parent is exhilarating, but exhausting. My mum’s friends would comment that I see
med insecure because I insisted on telling her I loved her a dozen times an hour. And when I was old enough to stay at other people’s houses, I’d feel guilty for breaking up our family unit for an evening.

  By the time my second life began, my mum and I were already clashing like any teen cliché. So, when, half a dozen months after my first Bunbury at Swindon, she screeched up the stairs, ‘WHY DON’T YOU GO AND LIVE WITH YOUR FATHER IF YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?’ I did. While she sobbed that she hadn’t meant it and couldn’t understand why I was doing this, I dragged suitcases across town and moved in with the man I’d hated for the past five years.

  Living with my dad proved convenient. He was out a lot and didn’t ask where I was going. Over months of microwaved rice and washing-up stand-offs, my dad and I began to rebuild the relationship I’d treasured as a little girl. However, my basic lack of respect for him as a parent meant conducting an affair under his nose was purely mathematical; uncomplicated by the guilt I’d felt when lying to my mother. My biggest shame, even now, out of everything I did and everyone I deceived, was allowing my mum to think I left because of her. My brother would update me on how many times a week he found her crying and how, for years afterwards, she would periodically tell him she still didn’t understand why I’d gone. After our initial anger had worn off, we tentatively made up, but our closeness was lost. We never spoke of me moving out and she told me she would be my friend from now on, but no longer my mother.

  At sixteen, I’d achieved what I’d set out to do and what most teenagers long for: I’d shed parental guidance and found autonomy. But it felt awful.

  I turned to Matthew and Annabelle. Matthew was not only my lover, but my father and mother too. And eating roast dinners around their table or helping them do the crossword on a Saturday morning let me pretend I had a functioning family.

  However, when my dad took his campervan to raves or visited one of his girlfriends for the night, my functioning family became less Brady, more Bovary.

  I’d wait in the hall, peering through the glass front door. The transparency of my father’s bay-windowed house freaked me out when I was alone at night and I’d imagine faceless strangers standing on the lawns, watching as I climbed the stairs and walked in and out of uncurtained rooms. On nights like this I’d worry the couple in the manor house across the road could see everything I did. I’d turn off the lights.

  From the dark, I’d watch the curved front path bathed in orange streetlight. I’d jump at every shadow and tap my foot nervously when an old lady pulled her Fiat Punto to the other side of the street to stuff an envelope into the post-box.

  I’d be wearing the knee-length suede coat my dad had bought me as a reward for getting straight As in my GCSEs. I’d have on the one pair of heels I owned, purchased for a tenner from New Look, and, underneath the coat, an intricately detailed lace thong or a complicatedly clasped suspenders set.

  A black-coated figure would make his way up the path. He’d climb the porch steps and trigger the sensored light. We’d both panic. I’d let him in and shoo him away from the window. We’d go directly to my bedroom.

  The walls were a deep red that my grandmother had warned would look like the lining of a womb. With candles flickering shadows to the ceiling and Norah Jones lilting softly, I felt it had the appropriateness of a theatrical set. The bed flaunted itself in the middle of the room, not beside a wall or tucked into an alcove, but centre stage. Around it were no stuffed toys, stacks of board games or cheesy ‘Best Buds’ photo frames, as featured in my friends’ bedrooms, but instead: white canvas furniture; bookshelves divided into novels, poetry, reference and erotica; a leather armchair with Steppenwolf resting upon it; six or seven kohl pencils beside the mirror; and a bottle of baby oil on the bedside table.

  My silver-haired guest would unlace his shoes and place them together before neatly removing his clothes and folding them in a pile upon the chair. I’d keep my coat buttoned and he’d come to me. He’d coyly ask what I was hiding and I’d giggle.

  At some point, the coat would fall to the floor and he’d push me, still in my heels, onto the bed. It had posts, to which I was sometimes delicately laced with silk scarves or violently chained by handcuffs. Other nights, however much I gripped the bars and moaned that I wanted him to take control, he wouldn’t be in the mood.

  He’d direct his attentions beneath the lingerie, glancing at my face regularly to gauge his success, before methodically wetting himself with oil and spilling two drops on the beige carpet but not apologising. He’d manoeuvre my limbs as he wanted them, concentrating on his angle as he entered. He’d look at me briefly, searchingly, angrily, perhaps even accusingly, but eventually say, ‘I love you.’ I’d reply and the hardness in his eyes would return.

  ‘Do you?’ he’d demand as he twisted me over and pressed me to the sheets. I’d feel the weight of his wrinkled hand upon my back, but my crotch would respond and he’d split my thighs further with each thrust. I’d reach underneath to touch myself and, seeing me, he’d quicken his pace, clutching my hips to guide his strokes. I’d utter low, gravelly responses to his questions: did I like that? Could I feel him? Was he deep inside me? Was I bad? Did I need to be punished? Did I want to be fucked? He’d continue talking not looking for a response; my stifled cries enough. He was fucking me, he’d tell me, and he wasn’t going to stop, he was going to fuck me until I came, until my cunt was sore and I begged him to stop. I was a naughty little girl who needed to be taught a lesson, he’d growl. He had my legs split and was fucking me with his thick cock, he’d say, he was filling my hole, was right up inside me and wasn’t going to stop however much I wanted him to, was going to give me the best fucking of my life, was going to ruin me, was …

  The deep thrusts would melt into frantic and sloppy jerks as I felt a hot liquid smear between my legs and begin to trickle. For a moment, I’d stay in the same position, still locked to the bed though his hand had gone. I’d become aware of my arse waving in the air and shyly roll over, reaching for a tissue. He’d be lying down already, drifting into sleep. He’d reach out his arm for me and we’d lie stiffly, avoiding the wet patch, until he roused himself and said it was late, he should leave.

  My sixth-form life was thus divided between sordid trysts and a desire to fit in. I’d ruined a relationship with my mum, my dad was out four nights a week and my friends at school were so alienated by my jumble of lies that there was a rumour going around that I’d made up an imaginary boyfriend that I actually believed in, meaning I was probably certifiably crazy. Instead of spotty boys and impossible algebra, my head was filled with poetry, Uncles and how I could next see the man who told me I was special.

  Every day after school, most weekends and all holidays I’d snake down the garden path and fall onto the street. I’d pace across town, and, hurrying past my mum’s house, I’d worry vaguely about the Grays and the Roberts as I darted through Matthew’s wrought-iron gate, noting whether Annabelle’s car rested beside his. I’d press the doorbell, plus bang the knocker if the chipped red door failed to open immediately, and my foot would tap anxiously before a face peeked from behind the draught-excluding curtain, checking over my shoulder for witnesses and whispering hurriedly about Annabelle’s mood or how long we had alone. Once inside, those familiar smells of incense and coffee, cat and perfume. The hallway full of Indian patterns, net curtains and antique lamps, stairs leading upwards and doors to my left and one to my right. If Annabelle was home, a quick shuffle to the right and softly close the study door. A kiss and an embrace between the solid fire-proof door and the light blue curtains, drawn above the leather chaise longue, banishing the street outside, separating Uncles from others; us from them. I’d lean back on the dark wood of the ancient desk, absently fingering the knob of the locked drawer where my diaries were kept. I’d smell the familiar scent of the books on the shelf, twisting with too much Jovan Musk in the air. My ancient lover would be clean-shaven, wearing a soft pink shirt, or stubbly and sick-looking, padding about in a
dressing gown and repulsing me with his weakness. The whiteboard would be scrawled with names like Southern Star, Kieren Fallon, Monty’s Pass and John Velazquez, and a picture of me from the previous summer was taped discreetly to the back of the door, along with a calendar dotted with the word ‘Baba’.

  Following prudent ‘hellos’, we’d venture back into the hall and seek out Annabelle. Though she rarely sat in there except to watch television in the evenings, I’d poke my head in the living room and survey the formal couches, the locked bookcase of first editions, the china cats guarding the wedding photograph on the faux-marble mantelpiece and the real feline, Juno, gazing at me from a cushion on the rocking chair in the bay window. I’d follow Matthew along the hall into the extended kitchen and wait for my eyes to adjust to the light pouring from the south-facing veranda windows. Through them I could see their long, overgrown garden, and the tips of the trees in the wood beyond.

  Annabelle would be sat at the chunky table twirling a pencil above a shopping list, or standing by the counter pouring water into the teapot, or kneeling by the boarded-up fireplace painting a mural. Or the kitchen would be empty and I’d wander to ‘my seat’ and grab a pack of cards from the bookshelf, begin shuffling while Matthew filled the kettle, glanced in the fridge and stepped onto the patio to check Annabelle was safely engrossed pulling weeds. He’d kiss me and we’d giggle naughtily about ‘doppelgänger’ and ‘kitten’ as we played cribbage and Matthew let me win. After a while, Annabelle would amble slowly up the garden path and we’d shuffle our chairs apart. We’d all discuss Mrs Roberts’s new decking, Lydia’s latest DIY dream or Hannah’s new boyfriend.

  After a cup of tea, Annabelle would say they needed bread for the morning and something to eat for dinner, so perhaps she’d drive down to Sainsbury’s. It’d be another half hour of desperate anticipatory glances between Matthew and me before she’d actually leave. We’d act nonchalant as she finished her list, hunted for a lost glove and telephoned her mother to see if she wanted anything picking up, but as soon as we heard the Yale click into place, we’d spring from our seats. Matthew would lead me back along the hall and up the staircase lined with laminated collages of cats and fairies. We’d sweep past the first landing, which always had two closed doors. As I always did when I passed through this floor, I’d try to imagine Annabelle’s bedroom, picturing a mass of ancient teddy bears piled on cotton sheets and books like Jane Eyre beneath a lamp. I never saw inside, though. The other door led to Annabelle’s equally mysterious office. For all that she welcomed me into their unit and was ‘kind’ to us by finding excuses to leave us alone, there was a tacit understanding that this floor was sacred; that I belonged in the attic. So I’d follow Matthew up another, steeper flight of stairs with nothing adorning the walls.