Woman of a Certain Rage

by Georgie Hall

  ‘I hated them,’ Summer reassures me as I sweep them up with a dustpan and brush, mourning my lost child of swan princesses and unicorns.

  Downstairs, the doorbell is ringing, an unfamiliar solo with no dog bark accompaniment. It still gives me a sharp pinch.

  Paddy and Edward have, predictably, vanished like smoke.

  I hurry down, dustpan in hand.

  It’s the new neighbour, minus baby on hip. ‘I’m here to talk about the car situation. We’ve taken legal advice.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, but we’re going out and I must change. Maybe we can get together to talk about it over the weekend?’

  ‘We’re at our cottage.’ She flashes a bleached smile. ‘I’m just giving you the heads up that you’ll be getting a letter from our solicitor. Personal friend and shit hot on this sort of thing. So I suggest you get advice.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m dining with two barristers and a judge tonight, so I’ll ask them.’

  She laughs. ‘Like, yeah!’

  ‘Google Peter Finch.’

  I hate, hate, hate myself for this. I’m in my sixth decade, still scared of mean girls and still bandying Dad’s name about like he’s a superhero or something.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ She’s looking in my dustpan at a lump of cat poo.

  Much as I’d like to ask her what she thinks it is and thrust it under her nose to examine more closely, I say a wimpy ‘must go’ and close the door on her. Slightly slammily.

  When I turn back I find Paddy has witnessed my shameful dustpan-waving namedrop. His face says it all, eyes flinty and reproving. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘I might have parked on their bit a couple of times,’ I admit.

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Maybe five?’ Double that.

  ‘And you think your Dad is going to help how exactly?’

  ‘Let’s talk about this later, shall we?’ I say it like he’s one of the kids because I’m embarrassed. ‘We need to get ready and I must have a bath.’

  ‘I want a shower.’

  ‘I’m first.’

  ‘Well, be quick.’

  ‘Fine.’ I hand him the dustpan to deal with and flounce back upstairs.

  Nobody can call it an armistice.

  2

  Me Time

  ‘Are you nearly done in there?’

  Naturally Paddy doesn’t specify what I might be done with: armpit-shaving, pumicing, cutting my wrists, masturbating, a little voodoo, maybe?

  Boringly, all I’ve done is put shampoo in my hair.

  ‘Not much longer!’ I promise, moulding the lather into a mohawk.

  The bathroom, last bastion of privacy in a long marriage. I love my baths. Lowering myself in just now was absolution, only slightly marred by my husband’s arrival on the landing moments later.

  I can hear him pacing around outside the door. ‘We need to leave in quarter on an hour. Elz?’

  It took ten minutes to run this water. I’ve been in it less than two. Sinking beneath the surface, I listen to my blood rushing in my ears as I ride out the familiar spike of resentment.

  In my early twenties, I smoked Camel Lights in the bath and read self-help books until my toes wrinkled. How I indulged my body, its sex and psyche, a present perfect I only recognise in the past tense. While my bathing ritual now includes a brisk but careful self-examination to check for tumorous invasion, back then I was exploring new worlds of self-pleasure every time I washed. Occasionally, I’d share my watery domain with lovers, latterly offering this exclusively to Paddy. We regularly soaked the flat below. God, but I loved him.

  *

  I resurface, too hot, skin stinging, and realise he’s still talking. ‘… have to pick everyone up, don’t forget.’

  We’re going to the Royal Shakespeare Company no less. Middle-aged, middle-class Midlanders unite. Or Southerners in the case of Julia and Reece, here from London for the weekend to celebrate Dad’s eightieth. Our lateness always stresses my sister. More accurately, her control freak husband loathes being made late, as opposed to arriving deliberately late if I’m performing on stage which Reece finds empowering. Our power struggle is in its third decade.

  Regretfully, I’m not cast in tonight’s As You Like It. Dream on, Eliza. But we are all on show: pre-theatre drinks at Mum and Dad’s followed by the undignified cram of six adults into an elderly Picasso Grand Tourer (Paddy has vacuumed the car specially), rhubarbing in the foyer then the play proper, late dinner and back into the Picasso. A full five acts plus after-show talk entre nous. Undercurrents will seethe while we all pretend that Mum and Dad aren’t on borrowed time, that being married to Reece isn’t making Julia miserable and that our little brother Miles hasn’t been living a lie most of his life. Then there’s the running joke of the actress and the carpenter. Happy families. No wonder poor Paddy has been dreading it for weeks.

  *

  I so longed to make Paddy love me when we first got together that I put on this terrific performance of what I wanted him to think of me: witty, sexy, kind Eliza with her long legs and fawn eyes, all fierce good humour and apologies for having had life so easy thus far. It took him years to see through it. He says I’ve changed, but I think I’ve only just figured out how much an idyllic childhood screws you up. Especially when, half a century later, it’s obvious that childhood is finally coming to an end.

  *

  The weather app on Paddy’s phone is being consulted religiously. ‘Eighty per cent precipitation. We’ll need to take coats. Hurry up, Elz!’

  Last night’s row runs through my head again. Why do I say such bad things in vino veritas? No matter how hard I scrub my skin, the stain won’t wash off. ‘Use the shower in the other bathroom.’

  ‘Summer’s live streaming in there.’

  ‘In the shower?’

  ‘Fully clothed. Vanity unit. Five-minute fan bulletin, she said.’ I sense him smiling and try to share the vibe, although the idea of our daughter having a fanbase still alarms me. Who are these people? Can they be trusted?

  The hours Summer devotes to shaping her brows like Nike logos are not lonely ones; it’s an artform she shares with a growing legion of Instagram followers and vlog subscribers, along with eyelash curling, up-dos and don’ts, life hacks and every minutiae of life in a teenage boudoir. They message her all the time, these younger girls from all over the world of whom she’s sweetly protective. She’s no doubt breaking the shock news that tonight, while babysitting her younger cousins, @Summer_Time will be offline – Grandpa and Granna’s cottage sits in a signal and broadband blackspot that is so not #instagood.

  Here at home where our web of worldwide action spins around the clock, the smile in Paddy’s voice has gone. ‘Google says the traffic is bad. Eliza, are you deliberately trying to wind me up?’

  ‘No.’ I apply a luxury conditioning treatment I rarely use because it must be left in for five minutes, lie back and tell myself I own these five minutes. I’m live-steaming in here.

  ‘As you’re taking forever, I might as well have a bloody drink!’ From which we can deduce he expects me to drive even though it’s his turn.

  I quickly fib, ‘I’m just finishing a huge gin, sorry!’

  ‘Liar.’ He knows it.

  I can hear him lingering. We’re at a pivot point. This could go either way. I let Paddy lead because he’s kinder than me. That familiar note of pacification in his voice as he nobly offers to fix me the drink I don’t have. We need me to be on fire tonight, the Eliza Finch talk show. And yes, I could murder a stiff G and T right now. But his need is greater. Besides, the door’s locked and I want to be alone.

  ‘You go ahead, love,’ I urge. ‘I’ll be chauffeur.’

  I listen for the outbreath of relief, the same sound Edward made when he realised that he’d be sharing a sleepover with his cousins this evening, not coming to watch the play. It saddens me how reluctant they all are to get a dose of culture. Even Summer – studying A levels in English and Drama �
� has plumped for nine quid an hour over the most loved-up of all Shakespearean comedies.

  We oldies are dining out afterwards at Russo’s on Sheep Street. My parents have eaten post-theatre supper there for fifteen years. Restaurateur Antonio and my dad are the ultimate double act at these feasts, our host oozing with old-school Italian charm, beckoning the prettiest of his yawning waitresses and telling them to look after Signor Finch and his family, that we are his favourite clients. Much wine will flow. Paddy prefers beer, but my father will convince him to neck chianti like water and try a pudding wine. My family still scare Paddy into behaving badly, even after more than two decades of marriage.

  *

  Let’s quickly get up to speed on Peter and Fiona Finch, living out their years in ‘splendid retirement in the prettiest cottage in Warwickshire’, to quote Mum’s Christmas round robin. When the fun-loving Finches moved up here from Bucks fifteen years ago to ‘be closer to the grandchildren’, Joe and Summer were just four and two, and my parents bought a house with a large annexe, fully anticipating that I’d pack up the kids, abandon my marriage and join them soon afterwards. Whilst my little brother has taken advantage of this option more than once, I’m not so easily defeated.

  The first time Mum and Dad met Paddy, they didn’t even try to hide their disappointment. They had admittedly just sat through Cat’s Pyjamas’ Theatre Company’s terrible off-fringe production of Mother Courage in open-mouthed shock (nudity and raw fish were involved as I recall, although I can’t remember why). Aware that I was smitten with our ‘set designer’ – although unaware that he had been sharing my bed for three weeks – they quizzed Paddy about Bertolt Brecht afterwards. I’m not sure if they were more put out by him asking which team he played for or me laughing uproariously. It was totally sexual at that stage, I’ll admit.

  Later, Dad took me aside after we announced our engagement and tried to talk me out of it. I could tell Mum had put him up to it; he was using all her turns of phrase and called me ‘darling girl’ twice. He even offered to help me buy my own flat. They really didn’t want me to go through with it.

  The awful thing is, I had been having second thoughts pretty much right from the moment Paddy slipped the Coke pull on my finger. We had very little in common, as Dad reiterated that day in his courtroom summing-up voice; we were from different backgrounds, had different interests, wanted different things out of life.

  All we had was love. In As You Like It, Rosalind calls it ‘a madness’. I was mad at my parents for questioning my love and the man with whom I shared it. I was mad about the man.

  That lecture made up my mind. I was bloody well marrying Paddy.

  *

  Paddy’s footsteps have retreated and I relax. I wish I’d remembered to bring in the radio. And my robe, an elegant Norma Desmond number still hanging on the back of the bedroom door. I’m hopelessly sieve-brained at the moment. Early Alzheimer’s?

  I stare at my toes poking up from the bubbles, their painted nails heralding summer, a pretty touch above the spider veins lacing my ankles, which this paranoid hypochondriac has already identified as an early sign of heart disease, not to mention hideously unattractive with a kitten-heeled sling-back.

  Keep staring at the nails, Eliza. Ageing is such a boring self-obsession. The whinging tone of a woman past her prime is like chalk on blackboard, which let’s face it is a sound only we over forties remember. We’re time-travelling comrades battling the centrifugal force of a world that revolves around youth. Ironic to reflect that in the days it revolved around my youth, I hated my body far more than I do now even though it was exquisite for all its small-boobed, knobbly-kneed, too-tall imperfections. How many of us wish we could go back simply to shake our younger self and tell her to enjoy what she has? Not just her desirability and gravity-defying, cake-defying resilience, but the blissful ignorance of all the things that might end her days? At twenty-five, I felt immortal. Now I’m double that age, I’m ever more alert.

  I’ve had a low, dull ache in my side since the row with Paddy, which I’ve already Googled and based on my lifestyle choices is most likely to be ovarian cancer, liver failure, diverticulosis, a hernia or IBS. Not long ago, I’d have put it down to period pain, but that no longer features on my list.

  I now settle upon liver failure and think of the consequences: Paddy struggling to cope without me; Summer forced to take a motherly role when her life is just opening out; Joe’s mental health deteriorating again; Edward falling through the gaps in SEN provision; the harsh Daily Mail style judgement raining down from all quarters (‘Eliza was always a dipso’). These ten red-tipped toes will soon be pushing up daisies.

  Think positive, woman. You can turn this thing around, stop drinking so much cheap Aldi red, buy yourself a few more seasons of The Crown. What a relief that you’re designated driver. No matter that you make this promise to yourself at least once a month, this time it’s happening. Your children need their mother.

  *

  In our child-free London years, Paddy would mix us both killer gin and tonics and sit on the flipped-down loo seat to talk through our days. Ours was a bright third-floor one-bed Victorian conversion near Alexandra Palace; traffic whizzing past outside, fluffy towels rolled up on wobbly Ikea shelves, Diptych scented candles; his and hers toothbrushes; extractor fan that sounded like the opening of Apocalypse Now.

  In those days, dialling up the internet to search for things on Netscape Navigator was a rarity, and our ‘the future’s Orange’ mobiles were switched off when we got home from work to devote ourselves to coupledom.

  Paddy would take over my bath water while I started cooking. The bathtub was pear-drop pink vintage when we moved in. In hindsight, it was much more practical for small babies than the reclaimed roll-top we replaced it with. That deep, cast-iron slipper became the pregnancy chariot in which I first stared down at the strange silver-threaded hummock where my flat stomach had been, unable to apprehend how quickly life was about to change. Soon after the bump turned into small, starfish-handed Joe, a photo of the roll-top starred in our local estate agent’s window, and we traded London for the mid-shires to become a two-bath, two-car household, settling on a tall Victorian doer-upper opposite a riverside park. Right here.

  I was thirty-three when I first lay in this upcycled, re-enamelled tub, heavily pregnant with Summer. Smaller than the family bath a floor below and tucked under an awkward eave, the attic conversion was a hard-won haven after all the planning, builders and DIY. Our own en suite! No plastic dolphin toys, bath crayons or baby shampoo up here: Cowshed, the six-thirty radio comedy slot and – when breastfeeding duties were at an end – ice-cold white wine. Paddy would wander in and out, nappies in hand, laughing as Dead Ringers took off George W and Tony Blair while I applied Bio Oil to my stretch marks and felt more exhausted and contented than I’d ever felt in my life.

  Fast forward five years and the stretch marks were being stretched again; I was even more exhausted and a bit less contented.

  My waters broke in this bath. Two weeks before due date, Edward arrived so quickly that Paddy was still on his way back from the workshop. He’d been making a cradle shaped like a canal barge, the most exquisite thing imaginable. He’d made cradles for both the others – Joe got a steam train and Summer a carriage (rock on, gender stereotyping!) – but that narrowboat was special. That boat represented Paddy’s childhood and the dad he’d lost.

  *

  My five minutes is up, but Paddy has abandoned his sentry post, so I let my hair float around me, gazing up at the ceiling. Silence. I’m profoundly grateful for this moment.

  While Paddy has several man caves – his workshop, our much-extended garden shed, the cellar and his dad’s boat – I just have this bathroom.

  I can’t remember when I started locking the door. Was it the kids I wanted to keep out, or Paddy? Perhaps it was the truth about me I wanted to keep in.

  *

  I stopped having baths altogether for a period in my early fo
rties. Instead I cried briskly through early-morning showers as I weathered first my career crisis, and then Paddy’s, mopping away my tears in less time than it took me to shave my legs. No wallowing allowed. I’d look across at this bath, knowing that if I paused to think more deeply into why I was really crying, I might drown in self-doubt.

  At its peak, I learned to assuage the pain by inflicting it. I’d pinch my skin as I washed, take the razor too close to bone. It helped at the time, and hiding the cuts and bruises became the secret power of shame.

  When I read about young girls self-harming, I feel an aching motherly pity and deep remorse at my actions. Middle-aged women like me should be old enough to know better than to turn our pain in on ourselves. It stopped when Paddy’s mother died, and I knew I had to survive.

  Bath time became my favourite private ritual after that, the door locked, my thoughts under close guard, an emboldening routine that softens the brittle shell enough to stop it cracking. This is my sanctuary; I might not be able to wash off what life throws at me, but I can absorb it. When Joe’s teenage sorrows threatened to overwhelm him, I retreated here to plan a strategy, and when Edward’s autism diagnosis was followed by Mum’s cancer one, I was toughing it out in the Heavenly Gingerlily big time. Me time.

  *

  Paddy’s back on door duty. ‘We’ll be at your parents’ place no more than five minutes at this rate.’

  That, I reflect silently, is the point. I’m going to make us late because I love you. Because every minute that I’m in here, you’re not suffering there.

  Paddy struggles at Finch family soirees, still uncomfortable with the small talk and big egos. He visibly shudders when Reece slaps him on the back and asks how the carpentry world is bearing up, finds it hard not to talk to my sister’s boobs and is a shag-magnet for the elderly Jack Russell. Meanwhile, Dad talks down to him, Miles winds him up, Mum butters him up and the volume on Radio Three is never lowered.