If Only They Could Talk

by Ian Walker

  “We are one of the wealthiest families in Chesterfield,” she replied. “Not only that but we’ve got two wages coming in. Okay, my salary isn’t much but you’re a director of your family’s business. You make it sound as if we can’t afford anything. I never realised you were so tight-fisted.”

  I wanted to tell her that we might have been asset rich, but we were definitely cash poor. In fact, we were getting poorer by the day thanks to her extravagant habits. Things at the brewery had improved since the war had ended, but we were barely making enough money to cover the repair bills to our pubs. But there was no point in continuing the argument. As far as Sarah was concerned, we may as well sell the brewery and spend the money on ourselves, without any concern for what might happen to our employees.

  I decided to confide in Sprout and talk to him about the problems I was having with my marriage. He was my best friend and he had never been happier since he’d married Carrot. If I were honest I’d always been closer to Sprout than I had been to Herman. In fact, Herman and I had drifted apart slightly since he’d married my sister. I still considered him to be my friend, but it was as if his rela­tionship with Rebecca had built a barrier between us. This meant that neither of us could be as open with each other as we’d once been.

  Sprout and I didn’t go for as many nights out as we once did. It wasn’t really surprising when you consider that we both had businesses to run. Well to be completely accurate, it was Sprout who was running a business. His father had retired and had passed the running of the chain of fruit and veg shops over to him and Carrot. In contrast I was still playing second fiddle to my father.

  Sprout’s father had founded the company that Sprout now ran when he’d lost his job as a welder during the Great Depression. He’d started with a fruit and veg stall on Chesterfield market before renting his first shop in 1938. By the early 1950s he owned six successful shops and both Sprout and Carrot were working in the business.

  Sprout’s father knew the value of a good education and he also knew when the right time had arrived to pass the business over to his son and daughter-in-law. He had been the person who’d paid for Sprout to go to the Grammar School and had agreed that he stay on until he was eighteen. He was also the person who had insisted that Carrot join the business as its bookkeeper. He might have been poor at choosing Christian names, but he was quick to spot that Sprout and Carrot would take the business further than he could. As a result, he stepped down from managing the business in 1953, taking early retirement aged only 58.

  The decision proved to be a good one as the number of shops in the chain increased to eleven over the next two years. They now stretched from South Yorkshire to North Nottinghamshire, as well as the six shops in North Derbyshire.

  Unfortunately, my father didn’t have the same level of confidence in me and, despite being 62, was still showing no signs of retiring. As a consequence, I was the only one out of the three of us who wasn’t in charge of the family business by the time I was 28.

  Sprout and Carrot now lived in the suburb of Walton and it was for this reason that we decided to meet in the Blue Stoops, one of our better pubs and close to Sprout’s house.

  “Sprout, you’re a man of the world,” I started off by saying.

  “I don’t know why you say that,” he replied, before taking a large gulp of his pint of Goodyear’s Pride.

  “For a start, you were the first person in our class to have sex.”

  “Ah, but I cannot claim to have had sex with lots of women. I was lucky, you see. I knew right from the start that Georgina was the right one for me. I was never like Prince Charming looking for the person who would fit Cinderella’s slipper. I managed to find the person who was the perfect fit for my nob at the first attempt.”

  A man who was sitting at the next table started choking on his beer. I was embarrassed that he had overheard our conversation and so I continued in a hushed voice.

  “You’re joking, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Of course I’m joking,” Sprout replied. “Believe me there’s nothing straightforward when it comes to the opposite sex. However, I’ll admit that I was lucky to find Georgina at my first attempt.”

  I lowered my voice even more. “Well, you know that I’ve known Sarah for as long as you’ve known Carrot.”

  Sprout gave me a disapproving look.

  “Sorry Sprout,” I said. “But I’ve been calling her Carrot for over ten years now. It’s difficult for me to get used to calling her by her proper name.

  “Anyway I’ve known Sarah for as long as you’ve known Georgina, longer in fact if you go back to when we first saw her over the school wall. But unlike you two, we didn’t have sex until we were married. It was the single thing that I wanted to do more than anything else in life. It was eight long years between our first date and getting married. Believe me, for eight years there wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t envisage what sex with her was going to be like. Then when it finally happened, well it was a big disappointment.”

  “That’s probably because you waited for eight years,” replied Sprout. “During that time you’d built up your hopes so high that reality could never live up to it.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But what about you and Georgina? You’ve been in a serious relationship for nearly eleven years. You’ve been married for eight years. You have two kids. Surely your sex life must have gone downhill?”

  “Not in the slightest. It’s just as good as the first time we made love. But believe me, a relationship is not just about sex. It’s about conversation and having things in common as much as it is about games of hide the sausage. That’s why it’s good that we also work together. Georgina would hate it if she were just sitting at home all day looking after the kids. It worked out really well for us when she trained as an accoun­tant. It meant she could do the bookkeeping from home whilst the children were little. However, now that both of them are at school she’s able to get into the office far more often than she used to.

  “It’s great. We both have our individual interests, I like football and she likes singing in the local choir. We can both pursue our individual hobbies. But what we do have in common is the business and as a result there is always plenty for us to talk about.”

  “But don’t you ever fall out?” I asked.

  “Of course we do, about all sorts of things, especially with regards to work. I’m the one who’s always having new ideas about how to take the business forward. She’s the accountant who has to curb some of my excesses. She’s the main reason why our profits have consistently improved for the past five years. But don’t you dare tell her that I said that. Anyway, the arguments never last that long and they usually finish with some of the best sex we ever have. You know, sometimes I think that it’s worth starting an argu­ment with her just for the sex at the end.”

  “Sarah and I don’t have much in common,” I told him. “She likes shopping and I like my work. She’s got her teach­ing job, of course, but she’s never shown any desire to join the family firm.”

  “Okay, so what about children then?” asked Sprout. “The other thing that Georgina and I spend hours talking about are the kids. Have you and Sarah ever talked about having children?”

  “Well yes, although I told her that I wanted to wait until I was thirty before we started trying for one. After all, my father was 31 before he and my mother had Rupert.”

  “And Sarah was happy with that decision, was she?” asked Sprout.

  “Yes, of course she was. At least, I think she was.”

  “Ah, women are such complex creatures,” Sprout con­tinued. “I think you will discover that when she said that she was happy, what she really meant was that she was not happy at all.

  “You know I think that I have discovered the root cause of all your problems. If I were you I’d go home and tell her that you’ve had second thoughts about waiting until you are thirty and you want to start trying for a baby straight away. If nothing else, it means you’ll b
e able to have sex without using a French Letter. You know what they say, having sex with a condom on is a bit like taking a bath in a Macintosh.”

  I looked a little apprehensive about Sprout’s idea, but he either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it. After all, he was in full flow by now so he continued with his advice.

  “If I may ask, what position do you and Sarah usually adopt when making love?”

  The conversation had been difficult as it was. But this new question from Sprout took my embarrassment to a whole new level.

  “The missionary position, of course,” I replied trying not to go red.

  “There you have it,” said Sprout. “The missing piece of the jigsaw. That’s your other problem. There are far more positions for you to try and you will find that they can really spice up your sex life. I’ve got a book that can help you there. I’ll drop it off tomorrow.”

  I thanked Sprout and with that both of us finished off our beers. The next day Sprout dropped a parcel wrapped in plain brown paper at my office. I unwrapped it to discover that it contained a much-thumbed copy of the Kama Sutra.

  “Bloody hell,” I thought as I looked through the book. “I don’t think I could ever persuade Sarah to do that. As for that one, how on earth did they ever manage to get into that position? They must both be contortionists.”

  Chapter 14

  “What are we having for lunch today?” Nigel asked Molly as she put the kettle on.

  “I’ve just got us a Cornish pasty each. It’ll be a few min­utes yet as I want to heat them up in the oven. It would have been a lot easier if your uncle had owned a microwave, but he never really did embrace the modern age, did he?”

  “So what’s the plan for rest of the day?” she continued.

  “Hopefully, we can finish clearing the rooms upstairs this afternoon. We only have the third bedroom and the bathroom left and neither have anywhere near as much stuff in them as the first two rooms. It’s a good job really, since we are going to have to make more than one trip to the recycling centre when we’ve finished. Also I want to find out more about what the hospice shop will take. Obviously, we will have to come back tomorrow to clear downstairs and probably on Thursday as well. After everything we’ve discovered so far I’m not convinced that we will be able to clear out the rest of it tomorrow. We still have to empty the attic, the shed, the living room, and the dining room, as well as the study.”

  “You know that I can’t come back on Friday if we haven’t finished by then,” said Molly. “Don’t forget I’ve got a dentist appointment at ten o’clock.”

  “I know,” replied Nigel. “Even with the amount of junk that my uncle’s accumulated over the years we should be finished by then. Mind you, I say that, but we haven’t even looked in the attic yet. God only knows how much rubbish we will find up there.”

  The pasties were now ready so Nigel and Molly tucked in. After a second cup of tea they returned upstairs to finish clearing the remaining bedroom and bathroom.

  The third bedroom was far smaller than the other two and unlike them was virtually empty, with just a chest of drawers and a cot.

  “That’s a surprise,” said Nigel. “Aunty Sarah and Uncle Miles never had any children. So I wonder why there’s a cot in here?”

  *******

  I decided not to broach the subject of different positions to Sarah. I didn’t know how she would take to the idea. The Kama Sutra may have been all well and good for Indian contortionists, but not for a middle-class couple from Chesterfield. However, I did raise the subject of children with her and she seemed genuinely pleased by the idea.

  That night we made love for the first time without a condom and it was a better experience, just as Sprout had promised it would be. It still wasn’t earth shattering though and I began to wonder if I’d been right to forgo mentioning the Kama Sutra. After all Sprout had told me that the lack of variety was the other reason why our sex life wasn’t right. Perhaps if we tried the wheelbarrow position that might all change.

  A couple of months later Sarah seemed very excited. She told me that she had missed her period the previous month and that she thought she was pregnant. Only it proved to be a false alarm.

  Three months after that though she was definitely preg­nant. Our doctor had confirmed it. But two weeks later she had a miscarriage.

  Sarah was inconsolable.

  “Never mind,” I said to her. “We’ll just have to keep on trying.”

  “Never mind. What the hell do you mean, never mind,” she screamed back at me.

  “It isn’t you who’s lost the child. It’s me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her or how to comfort her. I remembered what Sprout had told me, how making love to Carrot was best after they had had a row. But I soon put these thoughts out of my mind and it was another six weeks before we had sex again.

  By then it was the summer of 1956 and we had agreed that she would give up her teaching job whilst we continued to try for a child.

  A few weeks later, Sarah announced that she was preg­nant again. She was extremely nervous and so was I. Neither of us wanted to get our hopes up too high in case she had another miscarriage.

  The two of us didn’t speak that much over the coming months as her stomach got larger and larger. Looking back on it I guess we were both worried about jinxing the pregnancy.

  When she got to six months, we both started to relax a bit and the situation improved further when she got to seven months. After all, the baby could survive if it was born pre­maturely at that stage of the pregnancy.

  Sarah was far happier than I’d seen her in a long time and we agreed to go out shopping to buy things for the new baby. We bought a new top of the range cot for the nursery and lots of baby clothes. Most of these were in green or yellow as we had no way of knowing whether we were going to have a boy or a girl.

  Everything was going perfectly and the baby was due on March 27th 1957. Then four weeks before the due date, Sarah came to me with her eyes full of tears.

  “I can’t feel the baby move anymore,” she sobbed.

  “Perhaps he’s asleep,” I replied hopefully.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I haven’t felt the baby move for three days now.”

  I rushed her to the maternity unit at Scarsdale Hospital where they confirmed our worst fears. The baby had died in her womb.

  The next 24 hours were a blur. Both of us were heartbro­ken and Sarah was in floods of tears. I will always remember going to her bedside after she had given birth. She was fast asleep and she looked so lovely and peaceful lying there. I had forgotten what attracted her to me all those years ago and I started crying.

  “How have we ever ended up like this?” I pleaded.

  That was when the doctor came into the room and broke the really bad news to me. They had to give Sarah an emer­gency hysterectomy. The two of us were destined never to have children and neither of us was even thirty years old yet.

  “What sex was the baby?” I asked the doctor whilst trying to hold back the tears.

  “It was a baby boy,” he replied.

  If he’d lived, he would have been the next Goodyear to run the family business. But now there would never be a next generation of Goodyears. The family name was des­tined to die with me.

  This time there was no screaming or tears from Sarah. She took the whole thing far better than I did. At least I thought she did. But a few days later, she had emptied the chest of draw­ers in the nursery and burnt all the clothes we had bought in the back garden. She probably would have burnt the cot as well if it hadn’t been too heavy for her to move by herself.

  That night Sarah moved into the spare room. Her excuse was that my snoring was keeping her awake, but in reality it was because she no longer wanted to have sex with me if she couldn’t have a child.

  “Where do we go from here?” I thought as I got into bed by myself for the first time in four years.

  Chapter 15

  “Well that’s th
e first piece of good luck that we’ve had since we started clearing this house,” said Nigel as he discovered that the chest of drawers was completely empty.

  The second bedroom may have taken all morning to clear, but the fact that the third bedroom contained only a cot and an empty chest of drawers meant that he and Molly could progress straight on to clearing out the bathroom.

  “Perhaps I was a little bit pessimistic,” commented Molly as the two of them made a start on the bathroom cabinet. “We’ll probably be able to clear out one of the downstairs rooms this afternoon after all.”

  “As long as we crack on,” added Nigel.

  Miles may have been a hoarder as well as a little untidy, but he was extremely well organised where his toiletries were concerned. He had a spare one of everything: spare toothpaste, spare soap, spare razors and shaving foam, spare shampoo and conditioner, as well as spare bathroom cleaner and numerous spare toilet rolls. In fact, he could have been snowed in for weeks without ever running out of deodorant or aftershave. It was quite sad really as he would never use any of the items he had bought.

  “We can use most of these,” said Molly as she put some of the toiletries into a box.

  All the rest of the stuff went into a black bag destined for the recycling centre except for some of the towels, which Nigel and Molly considered good enough to take to the hos­pice shop.

  Pretty soon the bathroom was cleared out. After taking down the pictures on the landing and a series of Royal Doulton plates from the walls of the staircase, Nigel and Molly moved downstairs to the dining room.

  It was a room dominated by a large oak table and chairs.

  “I think mum told me that this was originally in my grandparents’ house,” said Nigel, “and now we have a deci­sion to make. Do we take it to auction or do we give it to charity?”

  Until that point, the things they’d decided to take to the auction house were all relatively small items. These would all fit into the car. But a dining table and a set of chairs would have to be collected by the auction house.