by Terry Tyler
D’you know, I thought she probably could. So I tried to hit hard, to make it less difficult for her. “Could you deal with him lashing out at you when he doesn’t want to take his medication? Oh, and there’s all the fun of incontinence to come, you know; Kirsty and I have read up on it. Decent care homes are shockingly expensive, and he is going to need one at some point down the line. For access to my grandfather’s money alone, I’m glad he stayed where he was. And,” I felt it my guys-standing-up-for-guys duty to remind her, “if you’d remained as his on-the-side girlfriend you wouldn’t have met your husband.”
“I know. That was why I stopped seeing Jim, because I couldn’t go on for years and years, a sad woman in a flat waiting for her married lover—”
“I know, sweetheart. Raine, you’ve got a long life to live, Dad hasn’t.” I didn’t want her to feel full of regret, I wanted her last moments with him to be happy, so I put my arm around her shoulders and led her back inside. Then I left them to say their goodbyes.
I waited in the car for at least twenty more minutes. Just when I was starting to think they’d sneaked out the back way and run away together, I saw them come out. I looked away; this time I really didn’t want to intrude.
Dad was deep in thought on the way home, quiet, but at least he smiled from time to time. When we got home Mum’s car was in the drive; he was in no hurry to get out.
“That was the best thing anyone’s ever done for me, Rob,” he said, turning round to smile at me and looking like my dad again. “She was just as I remembered her, and I still love her just as much as I did then.” He grinned, dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out a scrap of white lace; on closer inspection it turned out to be a woman’s thong. “She said I could keep this as a memento,” he said, and we both laughed, which was when I noticed he had a hickey on his neck, and that made us laugh even more.
“Better stick a polo neck jumper on,” I said, “and for goodness sake, hide the sexy drawers!”
The next day I had a long e-mail from Raine, thanking me again, and pouring her heart out in general. I agreed with her what a waste it all was; all that Dad had thought so important, none of it mattered now.
You have to take happiness while it’s there, she wrote. But what’s done is done, and I’m just glad we had that year together. Thank you so, so much for what you did for both of us yesterday. Jim doesn’t want me to see the illness take a hold; he’s adamant that I don’t visit when goes into a care home, but keep me posted, won’t you? I want to keep in touch even if he and I never see each other again (and who knows, we might). On that note, I’m posting you a few photos (yes, real ones you can pick up!); perhaps you could let him have them, but please make sure they’re kept somewhere safe.
She sent me four photos of her and Dad together, three in happier times and one of the day in Dana’s flat, and I did as she asked.
“I’ll keep them in my secret place,” he said, and put a finger to his lips, looking slightly bonkers as he did so.
A few months later I mentioned the afternoon with Raine to him, and he had no recollection of it. Other times, though, things he said made me think he thought of little else. It’s such a weird one, Alzheimer’s, because no one knows what goes on in the mind of a sufferer.
His deterioration accelerated after that day; I wondered if he’d been clutching onto normality until he’d seen her. Very occasionally, even when his Alzheimer’s self had taken over almost completely, he would sometimes beckon me over to him and whisper in my ear, “I’ve got a secret girlfriend. Don’t tell your mother.”
***
The word around all departments of the company, that spring, was that the only Lanchester fit to run the place was Erin. Not only had she taken it upon herself to oversee the estate agencies up and down the country, she also insisted on being kept abreast of everything that went on in Commercial and at HQ, too.
“She’s just like her dad, that one,” said some of the older chaps who remembered Harry when he was younger, “he was a powerhouse right from the word go, too.”
Yet although Erin wanted to be in the hot seat, she wouldn’t hear of Isabella being removed.
“It would finish her off,” she told me, as we sat outside the Ribs of Beef in Norwich one beautiful lunchtime in April. The River Wensum lapped gently beside us, and the light breeze lifted Erin’s shining locks from her shoulders as she stuffed down her prawn mayonnaise jacket potato in the manner of one who hadn’t eaten for a week. Erin always ate like that; she told me she saw food as something to be shoved into you as fuel so that you could get on with the important stuff. I loved that she wasn’t a ‘foodie’. She would never give me pan fried reindeer bollocks, with or without camel’s jizz. I smiled as I watched her, appreciating the spring sunshine; all was fresh and new.
“Are you listening to me?” she said, wiping mayonnaise from her supremely kissable mouth with a paper napkin.
“Of course I am, my sweet,” I said. “I was just imagining my tongue was that paper napkin.”
She pointed a fork at me. “You can pack that smutty talk in for a start, man,” she said, in a diabolical impression of Dad’s accent.
“What was that meant to be? Jamaican or Welsh?”
She laughed, and flicked a prawn my way. “As I was just saying, which I’m sure you missed entirely, Izzy’s refusing to go to her sessions with the shrink. Says there’s nothing wrong with her that her husband being at home and getting pregnant won’t cure.”
“Ah—so he’s still going AWOL, is he?”
“Yup. Keeps nipping over to Rotterdam to see his parents. Jane and I think he’s got a bird over there.”
“Poor old Iz.”
“She’s in a right state. So, I went home at the weekend, thinking that I could just pop in and out, you know, because I wanted to see my mates, too, but I couldn’t leave her. Pat said she’d been like it all week, because he’s been away since Monday with no real explanation as to why. Jane’s over in Spain with her boyfriend, and she was on her own. Just sitting there, drinking wine.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yeah, well I tried to get her to put on something other than jogging bottoms and a wine-stained t-shirt, and said why don’t we go out somewhere, and she went ape-shit at me. Started screaming ‘I should be spending the weekend with my husband, not going out with my sister like some pathetic abandoned woman.’ So I said, Izzy, he’s only gone to stay with his parents, but then it struck me that she never goes with him. I asked her why not, and she said he says there’s no room on the barge. He sleeps on a single pull-down bed. Allegedly. He probably sleeps in the canal-front apartment of some girl called—oh, I dunno. Gerta or Brunhilda.”
“I think Brunhilda’s German.”
“Is it?” She giggled. “Something with double As and lots of Js and Ks, then, anyway. Maaarta.”
“That sounds more like it. Maartje Van der Clogs of number twenty-one, Land Reclamation Cottages. She grows tulips and wears her Dutch cap in bed.”
She giggled again. I loved making her laugh. “What about his little dalliances at HQ?” I asked.
She shrugged her neat little shoulders. “Oh, I hear he throws one into Suzy in Archives now and again, and Layla, she’s the one in General Accounts, I think she’s ongoing.”
“Ah yes, Layla. Famous for having given Brett in IT the best blow job of his life in the stationery room one Christmas.”
“The very same.”
“Why don’t you tell her?”
“Why didn’t you tell your mum about your dad and Raine? Okay—yes, I know, very different circumstances, but I honestly don’t think she could take it. Anyway, she was ranting about never being able to get pregnant if he’s not there, which is a fair concern. Then she started weeping, I mean uncontrollably. Honestly, Robert, stroppy I can deal with, but distraught—I just feel so helpless. I daren’t tell her the truth, it’d break her completely. All I can do is pretend that he’ll be back soon and still loves her. She kept wailing and saying she can’t liv
e without him.”
“Is she turning up at work?”
“Yes, to oversee the redundancies. But she’s distracted, and nips off at a moment’s notice, doesn’t show any interest in anything else. Will and Cecilia are running the place. It’s a mess.”
“Some people think it’s your duty to take over,” I said, carefully. “That’s what your dad’s will stipulated, isn’t it? That Izzy could take over if Jaz couldn’t handle the pressure, and you could do so if Izzy couldn’t.”
“I know, but as I said, I can’t do that to her. I can’t allow a motion of no confidence, not yet—it would be too much. I’ve asked Will and Cecilia to dissuade anyone who seriously puts the idea forward.”
“Shame.”
“Well, I think my job is to try and help her cope, not steal the company from under her. She imagines conspiracies all the time. She even thinks Pat and Hannah are plotting against her. About what, I can’t imagine. Trying to tempt her with a diet of something other than anti-depressants, coffee, wine and sleeping pills, perhaps. I just wish I could get her to go to the psychotherapist, but she won’t admit that anything’s wrong.”
I managed to get Erin off the subject of her barmy sister, a bit depressing for lunch with the woman I loved on such a glorious day, and asked her if she’d managed to drop in on my parents on the way home, as she’d said she would.
“Uh-huh,” she said, “your mum looked at me as if she didn’t know quite what I was doing there, and your dad was asleep with his mouth open, so I didn’t stay long. I had a bit of a natter with Kirsty, though. I wish I could go back and see Izzy this weekend, but I promised I’ll go down to Essex to see Caitlin and the baby.”
Back to Isabella, then. Oh, well.
I was struck by the irony of life as we walked through the pub on our way out. All those women giving me the eye as I went past, but my only interest lay in the one I was with, who was probably the only one out of all of them that I couldn’t have.
Love, it’s a frustrating little bugger at times, isn’t it?
Amy
Summer 2013
I wait, and I wait, and I wait.
My whole life is taken up with waiting, waiting, waiting for Robbie.
I’ve been waiting for him since the night we met at that party nearly four years ago. He seemed so taken with me that I was sure he would phone the next day, but I still had to wait half the week. Every time my phone went I jumped out of my skin, but inevitably it was either Simone or Beth saying ‘has he rung yet?’
He was the sort of man all girls hope they’ll meet when they go to a party. He had the great job, his family were well off, he was confident and charming and (the most important thing, really), he was the best looking guy who’d ever showed an interest in me.
Robbie Dudley. My handsome prince! I felt like a different person the first night he took me out, in his super flash car. I was so nervous I could hardly talk, though that was also because I had nothing to say. I was only nineteen and all I’d done was go to school, get two ‘A’ levels and then potter about in one of my father’s offices. My only experience of travelling was family holidays where we mostly just sat on the beach; I’d never fancied back-packing like some of my friends, so I had no funny tales to tell. I don’t go to watch bands, I don’t know anything about history or politics and I wasn’t much of a one for books and films, apart from chick lit and romcoms. My hobbies are cookery and homemaking but men don’t want to hear about that.
After a few dates, though, I relaxed. He seemed to like me for who I was.
Mum’s often said, “Well, girls like us, we just want to find a decent husband and be a good wife and mother, don’t we?” It was true, that was all I wanted. Robbie said that was just fine, and that being a good wife and mother was severely underrated, so I stopped worrying about being old-fashioned.
He did all the talking, and introduced me to lots of different music and films. He educated me. We used to have 1960s film sessions, we’d lie in bed and listen to the old blues music he loved and I grew to love it, too. He took me to smart restaurants in London because he knew I’d be interested in comparing their cuisine with my own. We went to galleries and exhibitions, and I even felt I was learning something about art.
That was when we were really happy together, at first.
I fell in love with him straight away, but I had to wait for him to fall in love with me, and then to propose. Once we were engaged I had to wait for him to finally, finally decide it was time to get married. I waited for him to come home from Calais, and now he’s back in England, at last, I’m still sitting here watching the clock every evening, because he either works late or stops off for a drink on the way.
He rarely comes home without having at least one pint in the village pub. He says it’s just to unwind after a day at work, but why can’t he come home and unwind with me?
When he was in Calais I was living with Mum and Dad so I wasn’t lonely, and the separation was enforced because of his work, but now he’s back you’d think he’d be looking forward to coming home each night to the lovely home I’ve made for him, wouldn’t you?
There’s one other thing I am always, always waiting for, too, and that’s for him to stop fancying Erin Lanchester.
I knew they went out together before I was on the scene. He told me it didn’t last because she wasn’t ‘the marrying type’, by which I thought he meant that she wasn’t the sort of girl men married, maybe because she was a career girl and a bit wild. I even felt quite smug; Mum told me that women like us, we were the girls men married when they’d had their fun running around with the tarts, flirts and ladettes.
“Men like women to behave like women, not men,” she said.
It was only about two years later, when the wedding ring was finally on my finger and I thought all that waiting was over at last, that I realised what he’d meant by Erin not being ‘the marrying type’.
He meant that it was she who hadn’t wanted to marry him.
His sister, Kirsty, told me by mistake.
“I’m so glad you two met; I was scared he’d be bitter after Erin knocked him back, but, thank goodness, he just dealt with it and moved on.” Then she beamed at me, as if I was supposed to be pleased about that. “To you!” she said.
Until then, I thought we’d just met, fallen in love and got married, the way normal people do. I thought we’d chosen each other. But that day I had my eyes opened. Erin Lanchester wasn’t just someone he’d had an extended fling with before he met me. She was the one he’d wanted to marry. I was just a substitute for the one he’d really wanted.
“Knocked him back?”
It was a devastating discovery. My whole world turned on its head in that one moment, when Kirsty said, “oh, sorry, I thought you knew. Typical bloke, I suppose he lied to preserve his image. Yes, it was Erin who said no. More than once, I think, too. They were on and off for ages.”
I asked him about it, and he acted like it was nothing.
“What does it matter?” he said. “I didn’t marry her, I married you. What’s the biggie?”
“The biggie,” I said, “is that when I asked you why you didn’t marry her, you said it was because she wasn’t the marrying type. By which I thought you meant that she wasn’t the type of woman a man would marry.”
“Well, I didn’t. Your mistake, not mine. So what?”
“So I misunderstood you. You let me go on thinking that, like an idiot, when the truth is that if she’d said yes, she’d be your wife, not me!”
“Yes, but she isn’t, though, is she?” He was actually grinning. He looked both amused and bewildered. We were getting undressed for bed at the time; he sat down on the bed, pulled his socks off and said, “You should thank her; if she’d said yes, we’d never have met. I think you’re making something out of nothing.”
“No I’m not! Why won’t you understand? You’re only married to me because she said no. I’m second best!”
He got into bed next to me. “Fa
te took me off in a different direction, that’s all. It’s all circumstantial,” he said, and I felt silly because I didn’t know how to answer that, so I didn’t say anything. I suppose Erin Lanchester would have known what to say. After all, she ran a whole load of estate agencies and whizzed around going to high-powered meetings, so she had to know exactly what to say to everyone about everything. I bet he found her fascinating.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“Look, Erin was right for me at that stage in my life, or I thought she was, and you’re right for me in this one. It’s that simple.”
That made me feel better for about a millisecond, after which something else sprang into my thoughts. What if he went through another stage? Or went back to the stage when Erin was right for him? I turned my back on him. He nuzzled up to me because he wanted sex, so I went along with it, even though I knew that I would never, ever, be able to lie there again without wondering if all the time he was doing it to me he was wishing I was her.
Lanchester Estates changed management that summer before our wedding, because of Jasper having a horrible accident, which meant that Robbie and his father’s plans about building hotels and becoming partners with the Lanchesters went up in smoke. I was very glad about this, and suggested that now might be the time for a new direction, especially as our married life would begin in only ten months. Robbie and his dad didn’t get on with Erin’s older sister, who was now in charge; when Jim left I presumed Robbie would too. I was excited about it, because I presumed he’d slip thankfully into a job at Sydestone and the family would be all together, but the next thing I knew he was working at Lanchester Commercial in Norwich. I was so disappointed. Daddy had a management position all ready for him, too, even though I never told him. He was going to be in charge of the arable land, I think. Something like that, anyway.
Still, at least he was home. Daddy wanted to build us a house to our own specifications on a piece of land near our family home, but Robbie and I both liked old places, and when we saw that Stenfield Lodge was on the market I knew it was the one. The plan was that we’d start trying for a baby after two years, when I’d got the house exactly as I wanted it. I thought Robbie said yes to this suggestion because he agreed with it, but when I found out about him being knocked back by Erin I wondered if it was because he didn’t much care either way.