My Mother My Mirror

by Andrea Kitt

  Then one evening in April, after an afternoon’s practice, we went to the Castle Inn in Totnes and played together – a few of his songs and a few of mine. In his car on the way home I had this huge, expansive feeling, as if I couldn’t contain all the energy in my body. I didn’t know what to do with myself: it was too much. I felt as if I was about to take off, as if I needed to breathe very long and slow – but I tried and it only made it worse. I was teetering on the edge of what I had always wanted, and I couldn’t quite handle it... Was it the creative expression – finally going out into the world and using my voice and being heard? – or was it my creative companion – finally finding someone to play with - another soul who had the same longing as me and who wanted to be my special friend?

  Half a mile from home I reached out and touched Mick’s hand and told him I loved him. He swerved into the next passing place, put on the brake, took my hand and looked into my eyes, saying, “I love you so much it hurts.” We held each other for a few moments, breathing and feeling the warmth and thrill of closeness. Approaching the end of my road, we both wished we could just keep on driving – anywhere – so long as we were together. But he dropped me off at the corner and drove home.

  That night I snuggled down with Tim and tried to give him all the love and affection I felt in my heart, because I did still love him, and more than anything I loved this safe haven that I could return to after my dangerous adventures in the outside world. But my body was deeply restless. I tossed and turned for hours, then eventually at four o’clock, with Tim snoring by my side, I crept out of bed and sat in the living-room, where I wrote a long and beautiful poem for Mick that began, “I hold you in my heart my love, I hope that you’re not crying – The miles that stretch between us are not real....” What was happening to me? Surely not another relationship! I had been round the houses too many times. I was weary, so weary. I had reached a plateau of peace and stability; the prospect of all that upheaval was unthinkable. I returned to bed for a short, fitful sleep.

  The strange thing was, I didn’t hide anything from Tim... well, maybe the swerve in the lane and the “I love you”s... but I was in such a state of confusion, and I was so used to sharing everything with him, that I carried on as usual, asking his advice on the whole matter. And the even stranger thing was that he was entirely supportive. One of the first things he said to me was, “Facilitating him loving you is a very honourable thing.” He could see that Mick had been starved of love and understood that meeting us had begun a whole process in which he was becoming aware of just how honest and nourishing a relationship could be.

  And for whatever reason, Tim’s basic philosophy was one of unconditional love. He believed in giving me the freedom to learn and discover whatever I needed to, in the faith that his promises to always be there for me and always love me would be by far the strongest and most enduring force, and that wherever my explorations might take me, I would always return to his loving arms. I believed this too, but in the meantime I was beginning to feel tugged two ways. A part of me wished he would just grab me by the hair and tell me I belonged to him and must never see Mick again; but a part of me yearned for freedom, and above all for a playmate with whom to be truly creative. And so we muddled on.

  A couple of days later I was still thinking about Mick a lot, so I phoned him at his house and told him how I felt, musing over how much of it was simply a longing for self-expression and how much was something more personal. Writing about it now, it seems plain as day which direction we were heading in, and I wish to God it hadn’t been such a long drawn out, agonising process.... But at the time I genuinely didn’t understand, so convinced was I that Tim and I were forever. I had even bought my wedding dress! Mick seemed a little reserved on the phone, but I felt better for talking to him. However, it turned out Penelope had been listening in on the other line, and from the moment he put the phone down all hell broke loose.

  The next morning she phoned me in a towering rage, telling me she and Mick had a good relationship, that he never wanted to speak to me again and I better never dare contact him. She put him on the line to confirm what she said, and in a rather stilted way, obviously with Penelope in the background, he told me it was best if we didn’t speak to each other anymore. I was devastated.

  47

  Falling in Love

  It was a Saturday, and I had arranged to go to Pennywell Farm with Lucia and her two boys, and William and Charlotte who had come down from Hertfordshire with their children and Granny Ann. I was so upset when I got to Lucia’s house that I blurted out a rather censored version of the story, telling them that Mick’s horrible partner had shouted at me on the phone and forbidden him to see me again, even though our relationship was entirely to do with music. Everyone was very sympathetic. William and Charlotte are both artists, and we talked about how incredibly important it is to find a creative outlet and how many people just don’t understand. I felt a little better and managed to enjoy a day of feeding lambs and cuddling piglets.

  But when I got home it hit me all over again. Tim was out. I drew the curtains, shut all the doors and windows, and howled. And sobbed and sobbed, and howled some more. Then I found some paper and poured out my feelings, hardly able to see the page for tears. Why did it hurt so much? What went wrong? Why did I feel so tugged in his direction? I felt so close to him, so recognized and understood, such a sense of the power and potential we had together, that the thought of never seeing him again was unbearable.

  The next morning Mick walked a mile to a phone box and called me, telling me he couldn’t bear to completely lose touch but it would be difficult: he would contact me when he could. In my world the sun came out and all was well again. He told me he and Penelope had been rowing all night, and he couldn’t stand it much longer but for now he must try to keep things as calm as possible, so we must no longer use the house phone. He suggested I email him. I didn’t have an internet connection at the time, but I said I would do my best.

  I was deeply confused. I loved Tim; I had never felt so happy and settled in my life... What was going on? Was it really just my frustrated creativity? It was understandable that this would be hugely important, as it had been stifled for so long... years of repression as a child, then never quite managing to find my voice as an adult; watching performers and feeling wildly jealous. After all that, finding someone who was willing to be my creative partner was no small thing. My singing teacher told me she reckoned it was harder to find a partner in music than a husband. I talked a lot to Sally and she agreed: as a painter she knew how all-consuming the need to create could be.

  A little later I decided it must be to do with some neurotic romantic notion of mine: a lack in my early childhood that had caused me to idolize a certain sort of man. Mick probably had the same neurosis: he also had been sad and lonely as a child, and lived on hopes and dreams. Like my father, he was emotionally unavailable and also talented in self-expression, so probably I was drawn to him as an ideal, a fantasy. I recognized another lost soul; but how could two lost souls be anything but lost together? I found a book called, ‘The Psychology of Romantic Love’ and studied it avidly.

  It said that romantic love is a relatively recent phenomenon of the western world, a sort of substitute for religion, yet because another person is not immortal and perfect, if we expect them to be so it can cause a lot of suffering. Romantic attachment is in some ways the opposite of true love. Lovers say things like, “I would die for you: without you my life is not worth living,” and even worse, want the other person to be unhappy all the time they are not with them. True love involves warmth, companionship, loyalty and affection; romantic love is intrinsically selfish.

  I thought yes, this is a dangerous illusion that I still have the chance to extract myself from: I am imagining Mick to be something he is not, just because he is slightly out of reach. I am looking up to him, admiring him, projecting my frustrated fantasies in his direction. He’s just a bloke. I’ve done this so many times with p
eople and its a bad habit I must overcome.

  Meanwhile, Mick and I began to communicate by email. I managed to persuade the shopkeeper to let me use his computer for a few minutes after I had bought a pair of shoes; then I discovered I could have a free half hour a day at the library, so I popped in whenever I could and crammed the screen with thoughts and feelings. Mick was finding it increasingly difficult to do anything without Penelope glaring suspiciously over his shoulder, so he would generally write a few lines late at night, all the more desperate for their restriction, with headings such as ‘The Pain!’, ‘Longing!’ and, ‘I Want to be Free!’

  Then Mick rang me up and said he was on the way to an appointment, meeting up with some people to discuss a gig in the pub in Torbryan... would I like to meet him for a little while afterwards? I was in my car almost before I had put the phone down. I was so happy to see him again; we always had so much to talk about. There followed a series of clandestine meetings, mainly in pubs when Mick was on the way to a gig.

  His band, Linney Magic, was due to perform at the Carlton Theatre in Teignmouth in May, and Mick offered for them to play three of my songs, so Simon and I went along to rehearsals for a few weeks, then had the thrilling experience of standing up on stage and socking it to a nice big audience. When we’d done our bit I went back down and joined Tim, then had a good old dance to their excellent rock music, glancing up at my new friend as he poured his passion into his deep voice and thrashed at his sexy guitar.

  In June, after three incredibly stressful months, Mick left Penelope and went to live in a flat in Shaldon. When I visited him there we went for lovely walks along the estuary and up the cliffs. I was still convinced it was simply a good friendship and determined to enjoy making music together, but for some reason I was deeply disturbed by the whole thing. Time and again I would try not to see him, then become so miserable and depressed it seemed foolish to be depriving myself, then see him again and get so excited and agitated that I couldn’t sleep and it was all too much. I tried seeing a therapist a couple of times, but they didn’t do much more than just listen; then I started going to see a psychic healer lady called Therese, who was excellent at calming my body and reassuring me it was all going according to plan.

  We decided I must have a past life connection with Mick, but never really discovered what it was. We made plans and strategies: one week decided that I should only communicate by email, the next week that I should ration my meetings; then I tried not seeing him for two whole months in order to recover my health and integrity.

  I remember saying goodbye to him at the beginning of the two month stint. We were usually extremely virtuous and restrained, but on this occasion we allowed ourselves to linger just a little longer in our goodbye hug. I could smell his breath, and it smelt delicious: fresh, clean and warm. When I got home I wrote another song about him.

  I had given up work for a while, which really didn’t help, so all I had to occupy me was Tim and the bungalow, cooking and shopping... and even that was just for me, because we both had such fixed habits about what and when we wanted to eat that we ended up doing it separately. It took a while after I moved in to make it homely, but after that I was often at a loss for something meaningful to do.

  Tim seemed remarkably contented just to potter through his days, fiddling with his raspberry bushes, taking two hours to do a small pile of washing-up, endlessly wiping the yellow melamine surfaces in the kitchen, sometimes chatting to the neighbours or mending the car.

  I was restless, always dashing off somewhere or another, increasingly troubled, increasingly talking about Mick. At one point Tim told me he didn’t want to hear any more about him, so I tried to keep it all to myself; but so much of it was about me – so I shared those bits, and then slowly Mick got mentioned again, just not quite so much.

  After almost a year I arranged to go back to work, and felt much better for a while. It was so good to get out of the house: to have some structure to my life, to earn money and feel needed. When I left Torbryan I had left my home and my daughter, and so lost a lot of my sense of purpose. I was now an agency worker, being sent to lots of different hospitals and care-homes. Sometimes it felt like a party: every day meeting new people, hearing about their lives and being able to share some loving kindness. I loved the fact that I knew how to get close to people quickly, to touch their hearts, sometimes offer a little wisdom. It was humbling to see all the suffering out there, and it put my problems into a better perspective.

  Often I was working with people with dementia, and I found I could enjoy a good communication with them in spite of their deteriorating brains. In many cases their spirit was still strong and their heart was even more open than before, unhampered by worry and social convention, so that we had rich and sometimes hilarious conversations, and lovely moments of dancing or singing.

  It went well for a few months, then I began to get very tired and it became a struggle. Sometimes I was so exhausted I would wake after a short night, trembling and sick. I remember kneeling on the carpet for over an hour with a bowl in front of me, convinced I was about to throw up, then somehow pulling through and doing a day’s work. This was yet another of umpteen points at which I told myself, “Enough is enough: your body is telling you loud and clear that you must not see Mick anymore.” So I didn’t for a week or so, then I just had to get in touch, and it began all over again.

  The meetings we had were always special. Always I would think, “This has been so right, so healthy and nourishing and good: now I shall go home and sleep soundly.” But I never did: my sleep got worse and worse. There were so many precious moments. I remember meeting one warm summer evening and slipping arms round each others’ waists as we walked down a track between flowery hedgerows. We loved each others’ height and slimness; we felt just right together. Then we went back to the pub and looked at each other, and felt we were falling into a deep pool of love.

  Another evening we lay together on a cliff-top at sunset; but this time I was weeping, telling him I was afraid, that I needed above all to feel safe, but my foundations were wobbling and I didn’t know what to do. Sometimes we would just meet in some in-between place and sit in his car for an hour or so, talking; then as time went on I would sit on his knee and put my arm round his shoulders or we would hold hands.

  Mick liked to have a little sleep in the afternoon and once or twice I lay down beside him while he slept, so we joked that he had slept with me but I hadn’t slept with him. Sometimes our bodies felt like powerful magnets, pulling us towards the brink of a chasm where we peered over the edge into each others eyes at something vast and glorious, and utterly terrifying.

  When I wasn’t seeing him, I was often listening to his voice. I had a copy of his CD in the car and I played it whenever I went anywhere, or sometimes I drove through the lanes simply so I could listen to it and sing with him. I felt every word, every note. It was the cry of a person who longed for love and had made something beautiful out of his longing; it was passionate and heart-rending, beautiful and strong. Mick was a man who could cry; I loved that. I clung to his words: “No one can take your dreams away from you...” I believed him, yet it seemed as if two of my dreams had collided and I couldn’t make them both work at once.

  48

  Adrenal Crash

  It all came to a head for me the following spring, over a year after our first meeting. Tim, as full as ever of detached advice and wisdom, had often said that Mick and I should take a short holiday together, just to deflate the fantasy and reduce things to an ordinary level. I had an uncomfortable feeling that it could go the other way, and in any case Mick was madly busy trying to build a new life for himself and didn’t have time for such things.

  But on this occasion Tim had, uncharacteristically, decided to go on a four day silent retreat in the nearby Buddhist Centre. He hardly ever went away, but now that he was planning to, of course the first thing I thought of was that at last I had the opportunity to spend some extended time with Mic
k. I harboured these thoughts for a few days, watching myself get more and more excited; then Tim said something along the same lines, and I said, “Perhaps I could spend the night there.” Tim vacillated from encouraging me to feeling a little hurt and rejected, but on this occasion he seemed to think that would be fine.

  By the time a week had passed and Tim had packed his bags, I was feeling really ill. Just thinking about the following weekend had caused me a week of sleepless nights, and I couldn’t afford any more insomnia: my reserve barrels were flashing on empty. I felt very wobbly and had pains in my chest. By now I was no longer working, because I knew I couldn’t handle a whole day on my feet.

  I decided if I had any chance of sleeping at Mick’s flat I would have to take some of my own bedding, because his bed was too hard and his covers too thick to be comfortable for me, so I rolled up a mattress topper and thin quilt and blanket along with my small pillow, tied them round the middle and stuffed them in bin-bags. I kept having to stop to get my breath back, and put them down every few feet on the way to the car, but I managed it in the end, made myself look as nice as I could and set off for Shaldon.

  It was lovely to see him: it always was. He brought my stuff up from the car and we made a fine little nest with it. We talked and laughed and felt closer than ever. We didn’t sing, because I no longer had the energy for that. Then we got into bed and had little dry kisses and above-the-waist strokes and held each other, and then I asked if we could go back-to-back. Mick fell asleep but I lay there for an hour or so, trying not to wriggle. In the end he spent the rest of the night on a thin mattress in the room next door. I slept for about three hours, then we got up and had toast and tea, and he sang me a love song and cried. I think he went for a short walk, but I was too tired; then he had things to do so I drove home.