I’ve told David that in the circumstances I can’t treat him any more, and have suggested some other psychotherapists I think he would be able to work with when he comes back from his current trip away.
Once again, I’m devastated by this turn of events, which was beyond the control of any of us, just a result of us all living in the same London ‘village’. I’m very grateful for the way you’ve taken it, and if you would like me to suggest some therapists for you to see to help you through this difficult time, I would be very happy to do so.
With love and thanks,
Maxine xxx
P.S. And yes, I’d love to come back to yoga. Thank you! x
Polly read it through twice, before she could quite believe it. What an unsatisfying outcome. Unsatisfying and hurtful. David had rejected her offer with no discussion, and without allowing her any sense of – what was it they called it? Closure, that was it. Twenty-five years together and he just wanted to fob her off with a second-hand email?
It was all still so open-ended. While he wouldn’t take her help, or even talk to her about it, they were still married. How could she move on in any way, if he wouldn’t even discuss it with her?
Then she had an idea. Perhaps her polite inquiry via Maxine had been too restrained and a more concerted effort was required from her. She turned the ignition and headed for Holborn.
Polly felt nervous going up the stairs to the flat, even though she knew David wasn’t going to be there. It had been confirmed by Maureen – and Maxine – that he really had gone away this time, but she still felt anxious.
She let herself into the silent flat, wondering if she should call his name just in case, but she could tell there was no one there. In fact it was hard to believe that anyone had been there since her last visit; everything was exactly the same, perfectly neat and tidy. And it smelled the same, too.
Glancing into each room as she went, she noticed there were no towels on the rail in the bathroom now, which confirmed someone had actually been there, presumably David.
She went into the kitchen and put two packs of his favourite liquorice, old-fashioned Pontefract cakes on the counter. Then she went through to the sitting room and sat at the desk, picking up the yellow HB pencil that was sitting in perfect alignment with the A4 lined pad. All set out exactly as his desk at home was.
Then she gazed into space, wondering how to start.
She’d got as far as ‘Dear David’ when her phone bleeped to announce a text. Glad of the distraction, she pulled it out of her bag.
Shirlee. This time she looked at it.
Sorry Poll, I’ve been a pain. Guy has told me to back off. You know it’s only because I love ya, but I promise I’ll stop bugging you out until you get in touch with me. It might kill me but for you I’ll do it. S xxx
Polly couldn’t help smiling as she read it, hearing it all clearly in Shirlee’s voice. She looked down at the phone for a minute and then tapped on the message. Time to give Shirlee a call, and move on from this silly stand-off.
Her phone had rung a couple of times when Polly heard something that made her jump up from the chair. It was the unmistakable sound of a key in the lock.
Who the hell could it be? Should she try to hide under the desk and then sneak out when they went into the loo or something?
But she didn’t have time to do anything before she saw David’s so familiar frame in the doorway.
She dropped the phone in shock, just as Shirlee answered it. She could hear her voice saying ‘Pollster! Hey! What gives? Speak to me . . . what the fuck?’ and she fumbled around on the floor to pick it up and end the call.
David was still standing there. He’d said nothing. Then they spoke at the same time, as Polly came out from behind the desk and went towards him.
‘David!’ she said, feeling tears spring into her eyes.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said. His voice was tense and cold. He did not sound pleased to see her.
Polly stopped halfway across the room. She’d been going to throw her arms round him. Seeing him again, looking just as he’d always looked, ruggedly handsome in jeans, brown lace-up boots and his pea coat, she just wanted to hug him, to feel his body against hers again.
‘I just needed to . . .’
She started walking towards him again and he stepped back, away from her.
‘David?’ she said, bewildered. ‘We thought you were in Turkey. I just came to leave you a note. Please don’t run away from me again. We have to talk. I want to help you. Come home with me, let me and the kids look after you. You don’t have to suffer this alone. We love you.’
Tears started running down her cheeks, but when she took another step forward he turned away, going into the kitchen. Taking it as a positive sign that he hadn’t just bolted for the front door, Polly followed him in there. He was standing facing the wall, his arms stiff, holding onto the edge of the counter, his head down.
‘How dare you come here,’ he said, without looking round at her. ‘I suppose it was you who told Lucas where I was.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Polly. ‘He followed you here from work. That’s how desperate he was to see his father, to find out why you have rejected us all like this.’
‘Well, you know now, don’t you?’ he said turning round to face her, seeming more angry than Polly had ever seen him look. ‘Maxine has told you about my issues, so now you know, can you please do as I ask – as I asked her to tell you – and leave me alone? Did she not give you that message?’
‘She did,’ said Polly uncertainly. ‘But I just want to help you and so do the kids. We love you and we want to help you get through this.’
David laughed, a cruel, mocking sound.
‘Well, sorry, Mother Teresa, but there’s nothing you can do for me. I’m a sick fuck and I just want to be left alone to get on with it. I don’t need your do-gooder help. No number of Sun Salutations or pretty smells are going to cure me, Polly, so I would ask you to respect my wishes and leave me alone. Go and do some chanting and get over it.’
Polly stood and stared at him for a moment. He looked the same as the man she’d been married to all these years, but he was so different. He wasn’t the same person. Her David could be tricky at times, with his strange little ways, but he was never nasty like this.
Her tears dried up and she felt she ought to say something, but she couldn’t think what. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling. He was being so horrible it was hurtful and shocking – but she didn’t feel angry. She remembered too clearly what Maxine had told her, that he was in the grip of a devastating illness. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t him who was being like this, it was the illness. He was like a puppet in its grasp. She had to be strong.
‘David,’ she said, ‘do you think I could have a glass of water?’
He poured her one and she sat down at the kitchen table with it, playing for time, trying to think what to do.
‘Please sit down and talk to me, just for a moment,’ she said, after taking a long drink and putting the glass on the table. ‘Then I’ll go. But there are some things I have to say to you first.’
He sat opposite her, stony-faced.
‘We thought you were in Turkey,’ she said, trying to break the ice in any way she could.
‘I came back,’ he said.
Polly decided to launch in.
‘I’m so sorry that you have this horrible condition,’ she said, speaking slowly and quietly, the way she spoke to Digger when she wanted to reassure him. ‘From what Maxine told me, it sounds like a living hell. Like having a Hieronymus Bosch painting in your head. I was also desperately sad to learn that you’ve lived with this torture throughout our marriage and haven’t felt you could tell me, but I understand that it’s nothing to do with me and I’m not going to take it personally. It is what it is.’
She paused, taking another slow drink of water, while she gathered her thoughts again. David looked at her blankly.
‘I still love you, David,’ she cont
inued. ‘How can I not? You are the father of my children and I have loved you for more than half my life, I can’t just turn it off like a tap. But the last few months have been very difficult for me, as I’m sure you understand, not knowing where you were, or what was wrong.’
David nodded, closing his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s OK,’ said Polly, reaching over and touching his hand. He snatched it away.
Polly paused to take a breath, shocked by his reaction.
‘So the thing is,’ she said. ‘I have to say this to you one last time. The kids and I want you to come home, so we can support you through this. Or maybe you need to go to a residential unit for a while – Maxine mentioned that – and then come home. Or perhaps you want to stay living here for a while, but be in regular touch with us and come home for visits, with the aim that one day you will move back permanently and we will be a family again. Whatever it takes, we’ll be there for you.’
David started to say something, but she raised her hand to ask him to wait.
‘That offer is still there,’ she said, ‘but I can’t go on in this limbo, so I’m going to have to give you an ultimatum. I know you’re ill, I know you’re not in control of your thoughts, let alone your emotions, but you have to make this one decision. You don’t have to give me an answer right now – take some time to think about it. Twenty-four hours? A week? Two? It’s your call, but we have to reach an agreed conclusion. I can’t go on in this half-life.’
As she said it, she was surprised how clearly and calmly it came out, because she hadn’t known exactly what she was going to say until she heard herself saying it.
David was still eyeballing her with that steady, cold gaze, so different from the way he used to look at her.
‘I don’t need twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘I’ve already made my decision. It’s very sweet of you to say you still love me – if rather childish, because how can you love someone you don’t even know any more? But no, thank you, I won’t be coming home. I don’t want to live with you, or the kids, or anyone, I just want to be left alone to get on with my work. It’s the only way I can live.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Polly.
‘Well, I was hoping not to have to say this to you,’ he said, standing up and looking down at her, ‘but as you’ve insisted on ignoring my request to be left in peace, you’ve forced me into it. The thing is, I don’t love you any more, Polly. I haven’t for quite a while now. You had an innocent dizzy charm I adored when we were young – and you were beautiful-looking then, of course, so I was in lust as well as in love with you – but I don’t love you now. It was great while it lasted, but the kids are grown up, so what’s the point of playing pretend happy families? You’re old and faded and I’m bored with you. The end.’
Polly looked at him in puzzled astonishment, hardly able to process what he was saying. It was so cruel.
‘I think you need to leave now,’ said David, starting to pull the back of her chair away from the table.
Polly got to her feet, feeling something new that it took her a moment to recognise.
That detached way he was looking at her, the horrible things he was saying. She was afraid of him.
She stumbled out of the kitchen and David went into the sitting room and brought her coat and bag out to the hall, handing them to her without meeting her eye, and going straight over to the door.
‘One thing before you go,’ he said, as she came over. ‘I want those keys. I had no idea you still had them or I would have had the locks changed.’
Not quite sure what she was doing, Polly took them out of her pocket and handed them to him.
‘What shall I tell the kids?’ she whispered hoarsely.
David looked down with an exasperated expression, as though the question was an inconvenience.
‘I’ll write to them,’ he said, ‘and explain I want a divorce. Of course I’ll see them if they want to see me, as long as it’s not too often. I have to protect myself. And if you’re wondering about all the property stuff, you can keep the house. I don’t want anything. Just not to be bothered by any of you.’
Polly stared at him, feeling almost dizzy with shock.
She was just about to walk out of the door on some kind of autopilot when something occurred to her, something she really wanted to know the answer to.
‘That time you came to the house,’ she said, ‘while I was having lunch with Clemmie. You burned something in the wood burner. What was it?’
David thought for a moment and then a smile passed over his face. Not a nice one. A cruel smirk.
‘It was several drafts of a letter to you,’ he said, ‘saying all this, but I thought better of it. At that point I couldn’t be bothered with all the bullshit mentioning divorce would bring with it, so I burned it. So now you know. My solicitor will write to you.’
Polly walked through the doorway and turned round to say one last goodbye to him, but he already had shut the door.
FragrantCloud.net
The scent of . . . an ending
Sometimes things that seem like they’re at the very centre of your life come to an abrupt end. It’s an inevitable part of life. As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, ‘The only constant in life is change.’
So you’d think we’d all be better at dealing with it!
In the worst cases it comes as a horrible sudden shock that can take a long time to recover from, but in others it takes a reality check to make you see that the change in question has been coming along for a while and you just hadn’t realised it. Or wanted to.
I’ve just experienced a big change like that in my life. It was quite a trauma when the reality of it was suddenly forced upon me, but very quickly I understood that deep down inside I’d known it was going to happen for a long time and just hadn’t wanted to face up to it.
The way I explain it to myself is by picturing it as something I knew was happening just on the other side of a curtain, but I couldn’t summon up the courage to pull that curtain back and actually look at what was behind it.
In the end someone did that for me, wrenching it open – and while it felt like an almost physical blow to be confronted with it so brutally, in a funny way, the harshness of the revelation has made it easier for me to come to terms with it. There’s no ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe’ in the picture.
Boom.
Of course, like all big changes, it will lead to a lot of unavoidable smaller changes – the pond-ripple effect – but I’m not allowing myself to think about them at all. Every time one of them pops up as a ‘But what will I do about the . . .?’ anxiety, I bat it away. Each new challenge, big and small, will come along in its own time and I’ll deal with it then.
So that’s how I’m living right now, moment to moment, and embracing this big change, rather than lamenting it. Acknowledging feelings of loss and sadness when they come over me, but not dwelling on them.
Above all, seeing it not as an ending, but as a new beginning. And if that sounds like a dopey affirmation, so be it. It works for me!
So, you might be wondering: how can an emotional shift like this have a smell? Well, all I can say is that in my world everything has a smell, even the intangibles. It’s how I navigate my way through life, and analysing the aromas I associate with this big life event is really helping me through it.
My smells for this change first acknowledge what I’m leaving behind: the naphtha of boot polish, the petroleum reek of coal tar soap, the fresh wood of just-sharpened pencils, strong black coffee, lanolin, and the very particular sweet aniseed of liquorice.
Then there is my current reality, the smells that are constants in my life: lemon slices and fresh ginger, the sharp tannin and milky contrast of builder’s tea, and the slightly sickly green scent of freshly cut flower stems. And not forgetting the classic ingredients of the chypre base of so many of my favourite perfumes – bergamot, oakmoss, patchouli and labdanum (rock rose) – which I’m fin
ding so reassuring in this time of transition.
Other comforts are my dog, yoga and my children – not necessarily in that order, ha ha – which can be summed up in the olfactory shorthand of wet grass, honeysuckle, sweat, sticking plasters, cheap biscuits, new wool and roasting nuts.
Quite a mixture, all that, but complicated feelings inspire a complex scent-scape.
My scents for change are (and there’s a lot of them, because there’s a lot going on for me at the moment!):
Pour Homme by Yamamoto
On the Road by Timothy Han
Santal Blanc by Serge Lutens
Oud Wood by Tom Ford
Dear Polly by Vilhelm
La Flâneuse by Lucien Lechêne
PM by the Great Eastern Fragrance Company
Je t’aime Jane by Bella Freud
No. 9 Benjoin by Prada
Shalimar by Guerlain
Original by Eight & Bob
COMMENTS
LuxuryGal: This post is such a coincidence! We’ve had a big change too. We’ve had a new kitchen put in. It’s really beautiful.
AgathaF: Change can be good, but it can also be unsettling. Good luck.
LeichhardtLori: Hang on in there, gf xxxxxxx
PerfumedWorld: This is great. I love Bella Freud’s perfumes too.
Ros: This is beautiful. Thank you.
JayneAgain: This brought a tear to my eye.
WhirlyShirlee: You go girl. We’ve got your back.
ClemmieMedic:
EastLondonNostrils: You know I always have champagne at the ready for you, darling xxx
Saturday, 9 April
Polly was in her bedroom with Shirlee, packing David’s clothes into two large suitcases.
‘I don’t know why you don’t just stuff it all in bin bags,’ said Shirlee, rolling up T-shirts while Polly carefully folded. ‘That way we’ll get it all in, with no rolling or folding, and it’ll send him a message too. “Here’s your junk, shithead. Enjoy!”’
The Scent of You Page 41