by A. M. Castle
In the morning, Pete seemed a whole lot more at ease, and Mephisto couldn’t take all the credit. We were loved up, all right. His grin was so big it even lasted all the way through another cup of coffee. But I didn’t need telling twice. I needed to sort out the flat. It definitely needed some ‘feminine touches’, as I felt sure the women’s magazines would put it. And some sort of upgrade on the beverages front. Anything that would soften the effect of two-thousand-odd classics leering down at unsuspecting guests.
Learning on the hoof, you see. That was what I was good at. And self-flagellation. I gave myself a thorough kicking for not having tested out the flat first, just on a neighbour or maybe even kindly, motherly Jen. Then I could have rectified my mistakes. I had nearly put Pete off, and if I could lose someone so keen at the first hurdle, then maybe I didn’t deserve to be in this game.
I was now suddenly aware that most people would find my level of auto-didactism a serious turn-off. And that was so not the effect I was after.
True, Pete might be a special case, with some sort of an aversion to reading. He had the ability to talk about sport for hours on end, without seeming to notice that he wasn’t holding even a corner of my attention. TV would have been the stopgap but now he’d seen for himself that was a non-starter as far as I was concerned. Luckily, we were so smitten with each other that the gulfs between us didn’t show. To start with.
Chapter 17
Now
Louise
Being widowed is a sort of rebirth, or a sort of death. I went to bed the day before Patrick died as a wife and mother, and by the next night, I’d become something completely different. It would be much more convenient for most people if I’d died with him. It would save their embarrassment. Their inability to cope with two great taboos colliding – death, and single women of a certain age.
I sense both things. And people’s eyes at a distance, almost like I’m under surveillance. There’s an increasing reluctance to talk to me up close. Mums at the school gate are fed up already with having to ask me how it’s all going. Those hushed tones and sympathetic expressions have fast become wearied. Shouldn’t I have got over it by now? But if I show signs that I have, well, I know that will be punished even more.
Some have already forgotten, quite reasonably caught up in their own lives. They stumble with every accidental mention of husbands and fathers. Confusion in their eyes, tripping over their own tongues, almost apologising that their own other halves aren’t dead. I can’t say, that’s fine, yours can be alive while mine isn’t. It’s better if we all try and brush past Patrick’s inconvenient corpse, somehow pretend that my children were the products of immaculate conception and that those little tear-off sheets from the school asking for attendance at parents’ evenings and sports days are addressed to me only.
It’s fine. I don’t mind all the faux pas. Not too much anyway, because my focus, as ever, is the kids. The only thing that guts me is when their own friends say something that stabs. They often blunder onto that huge sore spot which is still only lightly camouflaged with smiles and jokes. Underneath, the ulcer of my children’s grief still weeps on.
A few of the well-meaning single mums tried to take me under their wing, get me to go out on their prosecco-and-innuendo nights. A kind thought, but too soon, I murmured, reminding everyone that I need special treatment. They are divorced, separated or alone by choice. I am widowed, and that’s a different calling.
One even nudged me, asked me when I was going to start dating. I don’t think she’ll ask me that again.
Chapter 18
Then
I’d begun to notice that people seemed to find intensity worrying. Whether it was a thirst for learning or a serious effort to reach certain goals, people would much rather you shut up about it and talked inconsequential nonsense instead. I wasn’t sure if it was a sexist thing. I was a girl therefore I was supposed to have nothing in my head but heel heights and lipstick shades. Or did they consider any sort of striving to be too try-hard, and therefore a bit suspect? As usual, other people’s thought processes were a complete mystery to me.
Why was it good to know the plot of Hollyoaks backwards but bad to be interested in Machiavelli’s The Prince? Most of this unthinking prejudice against knowledge was based on ignorance. Inevitably. There was an irony in being glued to the antics of some telly-based love rat manipulating everyone around him, and yet shunning the original work that told you how those levers of power operated. Still, it was their loss, and I wouldn’t have worried about it – except that my erudition was yet another secret I had to hide.
Sometimes I’d watch my contemporaries float down the street and wonder if they knew how lucky they were. It was always worst in summer, when a girl my age, from the proper background and with the right level of education, could just prance around the place in a pretty summer dress and wait for someone to come along and marry her. So easy. Whereas for me, it was a dance of the seven veils, whatever I was actually wearing. Hide my hardscrabble background. Disguise my awful accent. Soften my ambition. Pretend total ignorance. Never show how hard I was working to better myself. It was exhausting. Winter was much easier. Everyone was muffled up against the British climate. There was a solidarity in our layers of wool. And no one looked happy.
But, for the moment, I actually was. Things were jogging along so nicely with Pete. I got quite addicted to doing all the couple things. Big brunches on a Sunday. Wandering around hand in hand. Going to the movies. He liked scary films. It was a macho thing; he enjoyed pretending he was really tough. And of course, he loved it if he thought I was frightened. I’d cling to him obligingly. But I felt him jump at stuff that didn’t even make my pulse flicker. I’d seen worse.
I always wondered if I’d bump into someone from my old life out on the streets. In the normal run of things, I kept to my flat and to the office, and the occasional posh bar with Jen, and was pretty sure no worlds would collide there. But wandering around the town as I now was, hand in hand with Pete, the chances had to be good that I’d see someone from before. Whether they’d recognise me was another question.
I would have loved to have seen the girls from my class, who’d shunned me so thoroughly back then. If they could see me doing all this happy stuff, surely they’d have felt bad, for the way they’d treated me? But I was probably over-estimating the impact I’d made on them. A pathetic little misfit like the girl I’d been would have faded from their memories many moons ago.
As time wore on, Pete showed himself to be excellent boyfriend material, if you could overlook the obsession with football. But I had a feeling that was a universal failing anyway. Occasionally, as we drifted around the town, his arm round my waist, he’d linger in front of a homewares shop or one of those sofa places. At first, I wondered what on earth was going on. But never slow on the uptake, I realised he was giving me gentle hints, trying to make my flat less grim. I don’t think it was even because he hated sitting on that rock-hard bench. He genuinely wanted to make the place nicer, for me.
Of course I took the project on, as I do. Bought books on the principles of design, became an expert on interiors through the ages. I still loved the clean lines of my place, but I could now see that no one else in their right minds would. The first time I sidled into a cushion shop, I was blushing. Wooden owls wearing spectacles fashioned out of wire, what were they even for? Signs saying Live, Laugh, Love in curly writing. Surely other people just did that stuff naturally, they didn’t need orders. Or did they? Rugs that Mephisto would take great pleasure in shredding or moulting all over. But I bumbled around, trying to work it all out. I must have looked so ill at ease that two assistants came up to ask me if I needed help. Terrified, I insisted I didn’t, though I did, and then I bolted. I had to return the next week to pick up a couple of cushions, though I still shied away from the owl and signs.
Gradually, I got there. I moved the bench into the tiny kitchen, got a small sofa. It was so much more comfortable that I wondered why
it hadn’t occurred to me before. Then I realised. The disgusting old couch at home had been the place from which my mother held court. Upright, when things were going well, but more often prostrate, and with a hand or leg hanging off lifelessly on a bad day. I’d hated walking past, in case a vice-like claw darted out and grabbed me, or in case she or a boyfriend tried to trip me up for laughs. Sitting on my own sofa, with Mephisto or Pete, or both my boys, took the sting out of the memories. I felt silly for having been scared of soft furnishings, when it was people – some of them – who deserved my dread.
Once the cushions were in, a trickle of small changes followed. Cheerful mugs and plates picked up cheaply in the market where I’d once bought my tatty jewels. They added something to the place, I could see it now. Colours that had been so wrong in my cheap skirts and nails could actually work in the flat.
And, as usual, I enjoyed making myself an expert, and leaving the drab world I’d been born into even further behind.
Chapter 19
Now
Louise
The Victorians had a system for mourning, and I thoroughly admire them for it. For about four years after a husband’s death – or forever if you felt like it, like Queen Victoria – a widow would wear her grief on her back; mourning clothes. At least the first year, preferably two, would be in full black, head to toe. Then half-mourning kicked in; the gradual reintroduction of colour, moving from lavender to grey and then lilac. Anything less hinted at a flightiness, a willingness to entice the opposite sex with bright plumage that was most unseemly. You were a walking symbol of your sorrow.
I have chosen black as my talisman. To be honest, I wore it plenty before that day. Who doesn’t? Goes with everything, looks slimming, or so they say. Perfect with blonde hair. And since my days with Jen, my colour palette had always been fiercely restricted anyway. What could be more elegant than black, white and maybe an occasional hit of sizzling hot pink? But I’m not making a style statement anymore. I’m retreating into black’s all-encompassing lack. The flatness. The deadness. It suits my halfway state, between Patrick and my children.
Nowadays, I shun reds, for obvious reasons. Lilac seems much too frivolous. Lavender, I’m growing fonder of. Grey, I can see myself in, given time.
I like the codification of my state, the reminder of my condition. It’s not that cheery, granted. But I sometimes think people need a visual prompt.
Of course, I don’t extend the scheme to the kids. In fact, I’d be happy if they wore brighter colours. If I could see my Em in a sugary dress, my heart would skip a beat. But I’m more likely to see a flock of piglets flying past our chimney pots. Giles is happiest in sludge, khaki or browns, like a suburban guerrilla blending in with the back gardens. Boys’ clothing is as dull as ditchwater anyway. Even his dad only managed the odd flash of colour, a periwinkle shirt, a jaunty stripe.
I remember with a sudden jolt that I once bought him a lavender polo shirt. It was destined to lie unworn in his cupboard, a sartorial step too far for a man who didn’t mind jumping over lots of other lines.
My eyes fill with tears as I wind a lavender scarf round my throat.
Chapter 20
Then
While all this brunching, loving and remodelling had been going on with Pete, what, you may ask, had been happening with Patrick in the office? Well, some would have said a big fat nothing. Although I’d scaled down my expectations and had pretty much accepted it was hopeless, I did still automatically keep a carefully calibrated mental tally of our interactions. Some days, when he’d twinkled really heavily at me, were marked in my memory with a gold star. Others, when he’d brushed past, intent on the day’s work or an evening doing heaven-knew-what, were black dates, where I would have plunged into despair without Pete.
But I’d been right. The distraction of having a real-life boyfriend had made my reactions to Patrick a lot more controllable when he sauntered past me twice a day. The breathlessness, the wild flushes that used to sweep up from my toes and suffuse my entire body with embarrassing scarlet heat, had subsided. I met his eyes coolly these days. And, sometimes, I didn’t even look up.
This was my masterstroke. No one as cocksure as Patrick likes to think they’re losing it, whatever ‘it’ may be. A sale, a contract, or, in this case, the potential of an easy lay. OK, so Patrick had never bothered to avail himself of all that I was offering, but we both knew for a while back then I’d been his for the asking, and not worth the dirt beneath his feet. Until suddenly, I was playing him at his own indifferent game.
I’d sowed the seed, of course. I knew that Patrick’s curiosity would eventually be piqued. He’d ask around. So I’d cultivated Trish, one of the secretaries in his part of the firm. Despite all my attempts to better myself, my bid to move floors still hadn’t found favour with the powers that be. Fully staffed, so they kept on saying, though I suspected in my darker moments that they just didn’t think I could cut it. So if I couldn’t be there, I needed someone else to keep a bit of an eye on Patrick for me. Just for old times’ sake.
Trish was a lovely bit of posh. One of those plump blondes born with a pony between her thighs. She had it all: the accent, heavy as a bag of gold coins, even the casual contempt for her mum and dad, the milk and honey of her upbringing.
We started off just having a coffee in the canteen on one of my breaks. By this stage, I’d been allocated a junior, Sal, who sat at the desk with me, on sufferance I might add. The idea was that I was training her up, now that everyone was working flat out on new contracts. I think it was a sop to me, too, to compensate me for not getting promoted to Patrick’s golden uplands.
I didn’t show it, but I was pretty grumpy about this, as I’d seen how this played out before. Jen and me, at the beginning, right? I’d come along, Jen had fashioned me into her own image, and then she was out, on her elegant behind. The last thing I wanted was a repeat performance. I loved this job. And though I now had Pete, I would have been devastated to leave. That would have been giving up on Patrick for good.
So Sal was getting a minimalist induction into the ways of the firm, and doing what she did best, sitting around, pouting, studying her pimples in a tiny hand mirror and allowing me finally to grab the odd five minutes away from the desk. Though I didn’t love the way she’d been foisted on me, I was happy enough to have the freedom. It gave me more scope to see how the land lay. Posh Trish was my open sesame.
One day, Trish and I were sitting nursing the dregs of our drinks up on the third floor. Everyone called it the canteen with a bit of a sneer in their voices, but for me it was still one of the swankiest cafés I’d ever been to. The tables were buffed to levels of spotlessness that even I, with my eagle eye, could find no fault with. Hot dishes, salads and snacks were served at great long shiny counters, and the staff were courteous, wearing strange little white puffy hats with apparent pleasure. OK, it was a tiny bit like a school canteen, except that here everything was pristine and edible, and no one despised me.
People complained non-stop about the food, but I loved it. I had to concentrate hard to do as the others did, make airy conversation while eating, lift my eyes and my fork from my plate, and not jam my elbows out to the side and scarf the lot before someone else did. I would have been entitled to free meals at school, if my mother had got her shit together for long enough to fill in the forms. That was the way authority so often outmanoeuvred people like her. Benefits were there, for the taking, but you had to have the concentration and the application to jump through a few hoops. Jump? She couldn’t get off that couch most days.
People did laugh about my addiction to ketchup – I even had a good blob with the salads – but that was passed off as a cute little foible, not the mindless addiction of the guttersnipe I actually was. You could choke down a lot with ketchup. And even now that I didn’t need to, I couldn’t help myself. They always had proper Heinz, and I loved that salty-sweet fizz on my tongue.
As usual with Trish, I was listening, she was talking.
I’d got the reputation for being quite shy – enough to make me snort with laughter, frankly. No one seemed to realise I was quiet only because I was taking things in. I wasn’t diffident. I was just biding my time, and happy to do so. You never knew when someone would let slip something useful. If you’re brought up without any template for normal human behaviour, you either resign yourself to being an oddity, or you try to make up for what’s been lost, copy what you can. You can’t do that by being the one to talk.
Besides, if I let my mouth run off, I found myself saying things that I thought were run of the mill, but that others found deeply odd. I could tell by their expressions, but by that stage it would be too late, my careless words couldn’t be recalled. I didn’t want to reveal all the crevasses inside me that were empty. I wanted my shameful secrets to stay just that – secret. Every now and then, I’d let something slip despite myself, though. And then I’d bitterly regret it. Like that time with Jen in the bar.
She’d been saying how unrealistic some cop drama or other was, how all the lead character had done was fiddle under the dash for a second to get the car going, how it couldn’t possibly be as easy as that in real life. I just said my piece, and her jaw hit the table. ‘Come on then,’ she said, trying to drag me out. She only wanted me to demonstrate on her own cute little runabout. I had to reel back in, pretend it had been the drink talking. She didn’t understand that hot-wiring involves ripping up the transmission. It does only take seconds, but once I’d yanked those wires out into the light of day, her Mini would never have been the same again. When you think about it, no one who starts a car that way is bothered about popping to the supermarket in it tomorrow, picking up their granny the day after for a prayer meeting. It’s a one-time only deal, and probably the only useful bit of information I ever got from one of Mum’s lowlife men.