Husband or cat?

Meet a stranger in a bar.
Wear a short skirt, stockings and high heeled boots.
Drink champagne.
Sit on a high stool.
Let him slide his hand between my thighs.
Is that the answer?
Another broken night.
I have to finish off my work today. If not, I will still be doing it tomorrow. Possibly Wednesday… And by next week, I’ll have to start thinking about all the things that need to be done in January…
What about the sort of job where you get paid just for turning up? Do those exist any more? Where it doesn’t matter how much you achieve or don’t achieve, you just have to be there, and a nice comfortable sum is deposited into your account at regular intervals. And in between, there are times when you don't have to be there, and your time's your own.
‘No one knows where the night is going,/And no one knows why the wine is flowing,/And oh, love, I need you, I need you, I need you…’
Leonard Cohen. Bad sign.
Actually this has been the year, among other things, when I’ve rediscovered Leonard Cohen. After years – decades even – of not even thinking about him or playing any of his songs. Rosemary lent me the double CD – but something must have happened before that, to trigger it, we must have been talking about him for some reason, she wouldn’t have just said out of the blue: ‘Oh, would you like to borrow my Leonard Cohen album?’
Perhaps it was something she saw in my face.
The year keeps stumbling remorselessly towards its bitter end – only to start another round, in the cold ashes of January. Round and round we go.
I’m sorry, I’m not very festive this morning. I’m so tired, there’s this great heavy block in my head, the dam that holds back sleep, that pushes me through the days, one after another. Decorating a tree. Writing cards. Making mince pies. All the forced enthusiasm for something which means less than nothing at the moment.
To have both the children here. That’s something to be happy about. Laura has to work on Christmas day, but she’ll come for dinner afterwards, and be here Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Happy families. Well, not exactly. But it will be good to have her around. At least she knows, but I try not to rely on her for comfort, she has her own worries to preoccupy her. Simon doesn’t know, of course. Not yet.
Hubby seems relaxed, happier than he has been for a while. And I have to change that. Because it’s not enough, it’s not good enough, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.
But I will keep saying something, and nothing, because this is the task I set myself, this challenge to write and keep writing, where is it all going, what is it all for? The novel is so far out of my mind, it seems like a poor joke, more implausible than Father Christmas or three wise men following a star. How will I ever again find a place where it could seem like a reality? All my words are here, they spew out onto this virtual… what? Virtual what? I can’t even think how to end that sentence. So even the words aren’t there any more, after all.

Another broken night, another lie in. This could be becoming a habit, though I mustn’t let it. At 5 I disabled the alarm, settled myself back down into bed, and told myself, if I was still awake at half past, I would get up. And woke up at quarter to eight. Despite lying in so late yesterday, I was still exhausted in the evening, and almost fell asleep on the sofa. This bug must be sapping my energy.
We bought the tree yesterday – perhaps the last thing we will buy together. At present it is standing, lop sided and rather forlorn, in the utility room. Hubby said it was a bit difficult to get it straight on his own. We’ll have to readjust it in situ. He got the decorations out of the loft, strung up the outside lights, had to remind me that we were going to buy it. He must be wondering why I’m showing so little enthusiasm. Or maybe not. Maybe he just isn’t thinking at all.
Unlike Lu, I will have to decorate it myself, alone, but I’ve done that for the last nine years. Since we’ve lived in this house, we’ve always had two trees, one in the sitting room which I decorate, and one in the living room for the children. But this year, Laura doesn’t have time to come round and decorate a tree, so we will just have the one.
I know when it’s done I won’t be happy with it, I never am. I just don’t have that sort of knack. I’m not great at practical aesthetics, though I can draw passably as long as I have something to copy from, and don’t have to create something from my imagination. My talent is verbal, not visual, I tell myself, words are my medium, though even that sounds a bit pretentious.
Simon came home yesterday. He rang about 4, just as he was leaving, to ask for directions. I passed him to his father, who proceeded to tell him the wrong junction number from the M25 to the A1 (he mentally counted the number of junctions from the M1, but forgot which direction the numbers go in and counted down, not up). Another phone call, a little later, which I didn’t answer this time, being in the throes of cooking dinner. He’d got off at junction 19 and was seeing signs for Aylesbury and Hemel Hempstead, and that’s not right, is it? ‘So you told him just to turn round at the next opportunity and go back to the M25?’ ‘Yes, but now he can’t start the car’. Great. He’d had to get a jump start from his housemates to get started in the first place, obviously the battery wasn’t just flat but knackered, as the drive from Guildford to Hemel hadn’t recharged it. ‘…so he’s waiting for the RAC. And he hasn’t got much charge left on his phone either’.
A third call, when we were a Scotch and two glasses of wine into dinner – he was sitting in slow moving traffic just past the tunnel under the Hatfield Galeria, hoping that it wasn’t going to stall. ‘I told him to just stick on the A1 and hope the traffic picks up, rather than trying to head across country. At least he knows his way from there’.
Don’t fuss. He’s an adult. Even though sometimes, for such an intelligent young man, he can be frustratingly clueless about practical things. Where does he get that from, I wonder?
It was good to have him back safely, around 8 ish. He hugged me spontaneously, I held him tightly, forgot to warn him about my germs. I reheated his dinner and sat with him in the kitchen while he ate it, talking about next year and what he’s going to do, he’s still thinking about a PhD, they don’t seem to have been given much career guidance, he needs to make an appointment with the careers office. He’s decided that he really prefers programming to building circuits, he’s better at that, but it’s mainly an electronics degree. I told him about my evening class, and how much I’m enjoying programming again after all these years. While his father sat in the living room in front of the telly.

Late today – very late. Terrible night. So I went back to bed with no alarm and woke at 8:15.
Sometimes it’s our bodies that do it to us, sometimes it’s our heads. And I could say ‘sometimes it’s our hearts’, figuratively speaking, because of course the heart isn’t the seat of the emotions, it’s just a pump that drives the blood around the body. Though lots of cultures seem to make that connection, I wonder why? Perhaps because we can feel it beating, and we notice how the speed of the beats changes when we respond emotionally to something. I never thought of that before, and I don’t think I’ve read it anywhere, but possibly I have. Makes sense, anyway, at least, it does to me.
So when I got up this morning, at 8:30, I went and got straight into the shower, rather than my usual routine of feed cats, meditation, blogging. I let the hot water pour over my befuddled, congested head. Sometimes it’s our bodies. I thought about this, about the body, mind and heart. And while I dried myself I remembered something else, I think it comes from Beowulf, about the soul’s journey being like a bird passing through the warmth and brightness of a chieftain’s hall, darkness before, darkness after, just this one brief passage in the light and colour of life, the moment of Camelot.
I got on the scales, checked my weight, might as well know where I stand before the Christmas splurge. Not too bad, half a stone lighter than the start of the year, anyway.
Used to check it every week, we would read the scales carefully for each other, in the days when we used to make love in the mornings at the weekend, when we would be naked in front of each other, and look, and touch, and speak, not like now, when we carefully pass each other by, and speak through the cats, or discus catering arrangements. But when I’ve finished this, we will go and buy a Christmas tree together. Our last, though he doesn’t know that. Or does he?
I sat in front of the dressing table drying my hair. I only wash it every two or three days, so I didn’t do it yesterday. It was so good to let the water run over my head this morning. I looked in the mirror, and despite the red I didn’t feel strong. Bodies let us down, heads let us down, hearts let us down. But we keep going.
Almost time for the solstice. I don’t know what date it will be exactly this year, of course, this was a leap year, so does that mean it would potentially be earlier or later? I should be able to work it out, if I think it through, but my head is full of mucous.
The dark of the year. But soon we will be moving back out into the light again. Just as long as this dark can be kept at bay for a little longer, the sun will return.

I went to the hairdresser’s yesterday, and to college, and to meditation. I warned everybody about my cold, but I went anyway.
‘I never catch colds, I’m too unhealthy’ said my hairdresser. ‘They don’t like the cigarettes and whisky !’
‘Is that the answer?’ I asked, ‘I must remember that one!’
My hair is red now, and I feel alive – or, I did, for a little while. I only do this once a year, usually just before Christmas, though three years ago it was a little earlier because I was going to Brussels. Not all over red, just a hint of fire, to wake me up and give an edge of Melinda to the dull Belinda days. In the summer, the sun seems to bring that warmth out naturally, but at this time of year, it needs a little chemical assistance.
I tried blonde highlights once, twice, about 12-15 years ago. And it was disastrous, like my experiments with perming ten years earlier. It looked as though I’d gone suddenly grey. It made me feel: ‘you’re getting old, don’t even think about it, no one wants you any more, and why should they?’
Yet now, I feel younger than I did then. Sometimes. And although the grey is creeping in, it hasn’t taken a hold yet.
I was so pleased with it when I got back yesterday, that I wanted to post a photo. But as usual with taking photos of myself, the results were awful. I’m just too self conscious, as I said last week. The one where I was wearing the least stupid expression was the one where the colour didn’t really show. So you’ll have to take my word for it.
I posted the last of my UK cards yesterday. It’s all been a bit perfunctory this year, get them written and out of the way, no time for letters or even a few words about: ‘How have you been, how’s things?’ Partly because I can’t actually tell anybody how I’ve been, or how I am. Most people with whom I’m on Christmas-card-terms, anyway. People I spend real time with, or complete strangers on the far side of the broadband, are a different matter.
So what will I do, with my new red glow? Will it make me smile more? Maybe that should be: ‘help me to smile more.’ I’m trying. I’ve learnt how transforming a smile can be. I’ve seen the evidence, in pictures that friends have taken when I was happy to be with them. After years of staring at mirrors, searching for what they saw, now I have seen it with my own eyes, I understand a little better than I did. But I need a reason to find it.
‘Looking for happiness isn’t selfish’ Mary said to me, ‘because when you’re happy you make other people happy. Remember what Chris said: “don’t be happy for yourself, be happy for us.” It hurts us too to see you suffering. Probably it hurts your husband, although he might not admit it, even to himself. You’re not doing him any favours any more than yourself’.
Once those words would have driven me deeper into guilt and self loathing. Now, they feel hopeful.
I warned everyone last night about my germs. I told them I wouldn’t hug them, but I wished them all a happy Christmas.
I can’t believe how lucky I am to have such good friends.

One week to Christmas. I got most of my remaining cards written and in the post yesterday lunchtime. I could feel myself getting croaky throughout the day, and now I’ve lost my voice, got a sore throat, usual crap.
I’ve got a hairdresser’s appointment this morning, my annual red highlights, then a catch-up session at college at 6 and mediation at 7:30. Should I cancel them all, or any of them? I don’t want to, for myself, but I wonder about passing my germs on to other people, is that fair? Perhaps the public spirited thing to do would be to shut myself away, keep out of everyone’s way.
I have one more phone interview to do, with a woman in Baton Rouge. I keep calling and getting her secretary, nice woman. But how can I talk to her when I've got no voice? I finally managed to get hold of the one in Ottawa yesterday. There are two others outstanding, one in Winnipeg who wouldn’t talk to me and just said I could get the stuff from their website (which I actually haven’t done yet), and one, ironically, in Tower Hamlets, whose contact details I just can’t track down because there always seems to be a problem on the website. It would be good to get it all finished off before Christmas, so if I can’t get it done today and tomorrow I will have to work next week too. But I probably will anyway because I’ve got, at last count, two and a half sets of minutes to do, letters to write, and various other stuff to sort out. Then there’s loads of stuff that needs to be done in January that I should really crack on with.
Well, that’s life.
Life is still happening to me, laughing at my attempts to make any kind of plans, so why bother? It grabs you and drags you along, whether you want to go or not. Or it throws you into the mud and you feel yourself being sucked down and have to struggle your way out again. It goes on and on, as somebody said about history, one damn thing after another. Who has time to stop and look at the patterns?
Patterns are what I like, patterns and connections, order and symmetry, though you’d never think that if you saw the state of my study. Oh yes, filing, I should get that done before the end of the year as well, sort everything out.
And what if I do move in the new year? Christ, just the thought of having to sort out all my stuff, having to pack it up... I can’t bear to think about it. It’s all too messy, too complicated. And I don’t feel well.
If I stopped, how would that be? Just stopped, let everything slide. Then it would just get worse and worse. It happens sometimes, I find that time passes and I get nothing done, and it all piles up accusingly and stares at me, waggling its finger, like the mess in the study, or the rest of the house come to that. It won’t leave me alone. There is no escape.

I was sitting in front of my computer yesterday when I heard a strange noise. Musical – or at least Muzakal – and vaguely familiar, it grew increasingly insistent, but where the hell was it coming from? It took a while for me to realise that it was being made by my portable alarm clock/bedtime reminder/falling-asleep-on-the-sofa-in-the-evening-preventer/text messaging device. So seldom does anyone ever call me on it, that I forget that it can also be used as a telephone, and if it ever does go off, it always induces a sense of panic.
‘Hello???’ very cautiously. I’m never too sure which button I’m supposed to press.
‘Is that Linda?’
Not a number it recognises, a young male voice
‘Speaking…????’
‘This is … from … recruitment. Just checking in to see how you are and introduce myself’.
Recruitment? It’s the agency I had an interview with about a month ago. Maybe they’ve found me something!
‘Oh, hello!’ why the hell did he call my mobile? Lucky it was switched on and in the same room.
‘I know you met Melanie when you came in, but I’m having a look at your details now to see what we can do to help you’.
I spent ages going through it all with Melanie, In the end, I thought she had a good grasp of what my situation is, what I’m capable of and interested in, what’s going in, even to the extent of knowing that I’m looking for something more regular and permanent because I want to leave my husband. And she helped me sort out my CV to make it clearer and more convincing about what I’ve got to offer – or so I thought.
‘Have you had any interviews since you saw us?’
‘Yes, one’.
‘What was that about then?
‘Research Fellowship’. How to explain that? Didn’t sound as though he would have much of a clue. ‘It was a bit specialised, a bit of a one off’. Fortunately he didn’t seem too interested.
‘So you’re doing this City and Guilds website design. Is that what you want to do then?’
‘Well, I’m interested in that, yes, but anything really, anything to do with using computers. Desk top publishing, websites, data analysis, admin, book keeping, database management… I can pick up most kinds of software’. I went through this with Melanie, and she made it sound quite good.
‘So, will that give you a qualification? Will it help you get a job as a website designer?’
‘Yes, a City and Guilds’. You’re the recruitment agent mate, you tell me.
‘So, what were you doing for the …?’
‘It’s a quarterly magazine – well, more of a newsletter really, just 12 pages, but laid out like a magazine. I do the desk top publishing.’
‘It says designer and publisher’.
‘Yes,’ he’s obviously expecting a bit more detail. ‘They send me the copy and I do the page layouts, a bit of editing, putting the thing together, designing it, liasing with the printers…’ what else is there to say?
‘Sounds like that was right up your street. So why did you leave it then?’
‘I didn’t, it’s only four times a year, it’s quarterly. It’s not a full time job’.
‘Oh. And what about the Parish Clerk?’ He prounced it ‘Clurk’, like someone from an old American film.
‘That’s part time too. I do two of those, two different villages’.
‘And the school governors’ clurk?’
‘Same thing. I do two of those too. But it’s all part time’. My heart is somewhere in my son’s bedroom, on the floor below. He hasn’t got a clue, has he?
‘So what are you after then?’
‘Something a bit more reliable’. That pays enough to live on..
‘Full time?’
‘Not necessarily, maybe three days a week. Anything really. Anything that would be a bit more regular than what I’m doing now’.
Oh Jesus, I spent hours on that bloody CV, hours explaining it to Melanie, and she made me feel quite hopeful. But this…
‘Well, we’ll see what we can do, it’s a bit slow at this time of year though. I’m just looking at your geocities website.
‘Oh, right! I need to update that a bit!’
‘I didn’t even know you could get a profile like this!’
It’s not a ‘profile’, it’s a website. I created the bloody thing from scratch.
‘What’s a “haykoo” then?’
‘It’s a haiku. A sort of poem.’
‘Oh, right, well, all the best then, have a good Christmas, and I’ll be back in touch in January’.
‘Thanks’.
I switch off the phone.
God help me.

Looked at the clock – 3:50.
There’s a cat sitting on top of me, and I can hear Hubby snoring, coughing in his sleep.
I shake off the cat, try and settle myself down.
I’ll get up soon, go and sit downstairs, read. Soon. Lying here is no good, I know that. It doesn’t help anything. I’ll go soon.
What do I think about? So many things, I can’t even begin to tell you. Or the same things, over and over. Things I read yesterday, fellow bloggers, different perspectives. Hubby lying beside me. He never tries to close the gulf, why should I? Why should I keep trying when I know it’s not what I want any more? I tried it for so many years, tried telling myself that that was the way it was supposed to be and that if I only kept on trying, made that bit more effort, I could make myself happy with him. How long can you keep lying to yourself? It’s as though I stepped back and thought, right, what happens if I don’t make the effort? Let him come to me for a change. And I’m still waiting. And I don’t even want him to any more. Why should I? Did I ever even want him to in the first place, did it ever make me happy, or was it just what I had to do because that’s the way it’s supposed to be, and anyway, what options were there, nobody else wanted me, and how could I be on my own? And it must have been all my fault. So, stick with what you’ve got, look for little things to make you happy. Except, of course, that they don’t, not really, not for long, you always end up here in the middle of the night listening to him snoring and staring at that bloody clock.
4:40.
OK, I should get up now. I can read for twenty minutes, then come back at 5 and play my mp3 and that way I might get another half an hour or so’s sleep before the alarm goes off.
Yes, I’ll do that. Soon.
Stop thinking. Focus on the here and now, you’re warm, you’re safe. I think about the past, the future, what might be, what might not be, I wonder, I worry, I fantasise, I masturbate. Well, not last night, not that last one. Sometimes I do, lying there in the dark, wondering if he knows what I’m doing, but then, I’ve done it for years and he’s never shown any indication that he did. It doesn’t help me sleep, it doesn’t make me feel any better, but at least it passes the time. And sometimes it takes a long, long time to reach a half way satisfactory conclusion, rubbing and rubbing in the dark, my eyes filling with tears.
It must be getting late now. Probably gone 5. Not worth getting up. I’ll just go to the loo, come back and play the mp3. And maybe I’ll be able to drop off for a little more sleep.
Sometimes the thought of sex takes me over, dominates my thoughts. Is that really all I need? Someone to give me a shag? I expect I could find it if I really went looking for it. Would that help? Well, I wonder, I think, ‘It couldn’t hurt’.
Look at the clock again. 5:33. Shit, well, there’s no point in even trying to go to sleep now. Might as well get up.

I haven’t had a mince pie yet. I think that’s probably a record, for me. I made some yesterday – well, made as in made the pastry and filled them but didn’t bake them, put them in the freezer until they’re needed. I haven’t really done anything Chrstmassy at all. Well, I started writing cards yesterday afternoon and then I went carol singing, but that’s it. I only made it to one bell ringing practice, and now it looks as though they/we won’t be going round the village after all because there aren’t enough people available on any evening.
I actually wasn’t planning on making any mince pies at all, but I decided to make them to take to the meditation group do on Thursday. It’s just that on the last one before Christmas, we all take something to share. The recipe is from the M&S freezer Cookbook, from the 70s, it’s really the only recipe I still use from that book, but they are nice and it’s convenient because you just keep them in the freezer and cook as many as you want when you want them.
I put ‘vegetarian mincemeat’ on the shopping list, and Hubby came back with a large jar. ‘Didn’t they have any small jars?’ ‘I didn’t know how much you wanted.’ ‘I’m only going to make a dozen.’ ‘Oh well, it keeps’.
Yes, it keeps – but I’m the only one who eats them – and next year...?
I usually make gingerbread for the meditation group, but this year I thought I’d do mince pies and chewy butterscotch apple brownies. I made the pastry, put it in the fridge to chill, made the apple cake, put it in the oven, got the pastry out and started to roll it. But it stuck to the board, I guess I hadn’t put enough flour on it. I could feel the stress building up as I scraped up the dough, mashed it back into a ball, started again. Why the hell am I doing this?
‘Something will turn up, something will happen, it will all be fine, it will work out’.
Will it? Won’t it? Nobody knows.
Do I believe that? Don’t I? There is a visceral belief in us all, I guess, that there is some meaning to life, a wish to see the patterns make sense. But logically, rationally... things happen. Shit happens. Cause and effect, yes that makes sense. Events have consequences, they lead on to other events, the strands twirl and twist around each other after their own pattern. But... 'something will turn up, something will happen, all will be well?’ Those are the patterns we impose ourselves, there’s nothing intrinsic about them. Maybe we cause them, maybe they happen in spite of us, maybe we are able to exploit them to our own benefit, maybe they pass us by. Then we can look back and say, ‘Oh yes, it came out of the blue, but it all worked out in the end, it must have been fate!’
But when we’re standing here, at this place, and looking forward, it’s impossible to see how this situation is ever going to be resolved, what the options and opportunities might be or might not be, or if life is just going to keep on stumbling through as it always has, while we keep ‘waiting for the miracle… for the miracle to come’.
And making mince pies.

Hope is usually regarded as a Good Thing. But what about the kind of hope that keeps us stuck in a situation which is never going to be satisfactory, never going to give us what we need? We can all recognise it in our friends, that yearning after something or somebody who has hurt them or let them down in the past, but about whom we/they think, well, maybe this time it will be different, and he/she will realise what was staring them in the face all along, that the times we had together were so great, of course they must want it to happen again. And, after all, maybe they WILL change, or you have to pretend to yourself that they might, and that it can be different this time, because if you don’t, if you turn your back on them, maybe this will be the time when it would have worked out after all, but you’ll never know it because you pushed them away…
Take it from the voice of experience, that sort of hope is just self-delusion, or, as Springsteen says in The River: ‘Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true,/Or is it something worse?’
After blogging all that stuff yesterday, I guess it was inevitable that I would suffer a backlash. Yesterday evening was hard and lonely. You can tell yourself that you’re moving on, but feelings have a sneaky habit of creeping up behind you again when you least expect them to.
Of course, it can work the other way too. When someone wants you to be a certain way, the person they have in their head, it can be hard to get them to see that actually, you’re not that person, and you never were, that person didn’t exist, it was just a picture in their mind, and you don’t want to conform to that picture any more, you want to be yourself, whoever that might be.
‘I’ve started out for god knows where,/But I guess I’ll know when I get there’ (Tom Petty, Learning to fly).
Cold today. I woke up at 5, but it’s so hard to get out of a warm bed into a cold room, and it’s surprising how quickly an hour can pass just lying there not doing anything, just thinking…
Well, after a quiet day yesterday, I’m going to be quite busy today. Apart from the usual Sunday housework, I’ll be making mince pies and apple cake this morning, for the meditation group Christmas do on Thursday. Then this afternoon I’m going carol singing at a pub in town, to raise money for our up-coming production of ‘Carousel’. Should be fun.
I’ve decided to sign up for the Flash evening class when my web design course finishes, at the end of January. It will be on Mondays, instead of Tuesdays, just for 8 weeks. But it should be fun, and at least it will keep me going a little longer.

Start with the first thing, get it out of the way.
Yesterday the letter came, telling me that I hadn’t got the job.
Then the second thing. I texted Himself – Simon. His name is Simon. Now that I have accepted that it’s over, I will open a little, very gently and carefully, and let you see some more of me. His name is Simon, the same as my son.
I texted Simon, I texted and emailed a few, very few, friends who matter to me. And told them. They all responded, with kindness, with sympathy. Except for Simon. And that was when I knew, that I had pinned too many hopes to him, that I had let myself care too much. And for the rest of the day I kept thinking about him, his sense of humour, how easy we were together, his kisses. But what is that worth if he doesn’t answer my texts?
I got a text a couple of weeks ago: ‘Mary and pals invite you to join them for a pre-Christmas drink in the Gordon Arms on Friday 12th Decmeber, 8:00 onwards. Just turn up’.
I saw her on Thursday, and she said: ‘Stay over afterwards at mine’ and I thought, why not?
But yesterday evening, it was the last thing I felt like doing, as my eyes kept filling with tears. They are now, as I type, just from remembering. As I tried to put my makeup on, looking in the mirror I could see them coming again, why bother to put eye shadow on, when it’s going to be washed away any moment?
But, I persevere. Perfume, the one I bought at the airport, ‘Envy Me’, just a squirt. What else? Boots, scarf, where’s my jacket? Where’s my gloves? Must be in the car. Get the car out. No, they’re not in the car, must be in the house. In the tea box, brought home from meditation.
Right, off we go, an evening with a bunch of people I don’t really know. How fun will that be? Come on, it’ll be OK.
The pub is crowded, but we’re a very small group. I perch on a stool at the edge of the table, people standing at the bar behind me. ‘What would you like?’ ‘Red wine please’ ‘What sort? Large or small – Merlot, or?’ ‘Merlot’s fine, please. And large’ I would have liked mulled wine, but it’s not on offer.
I feel in the way, constantly trying not to block the way past the sitters at the bar. ‘Scuse me! Sorry!’ I try to pull myself in to the table, move my bag out of the way. I feel someone’s hands on my shoulders. I turn and look, watch him as he moves off into the other side of the pub. Young, way, way too young, but… oh my god… I turn and catch Mary’s eye, see her smiling at me, smile back. Honestly, what am I like???
The group in the comfy chairs by the window leave eventually, we move in and I can relax back in comfort. Now it’s Mary, me, Mary’s brother Paul and Thea (pronounced ‘tie’), his Nigerian wife, Dawn, Kevin, back to me again.
Paul is drinking the Merlot too.
‘What we need with this’ he says ‘is some crackers and brie!’
‘Now you’re talking!’ I agree.
‘I haven’t got any brie, but I’ve got some edam’ says Mary, ‘not really the same, is it?’
‘Hardly!’ I laugh.
‘I could try the One-stop, across the road, they’re still open’.
‘I don’t think they’ll have brie! And the Cheese Kitchen wil be shut. I don’t believe it, you live round the corner from the best cheese shop in town, and all you’ve got is edam!’
Why did we start talking about freedom?
‘Freedom’s just some people talking’ says Paul.
I stare at him.
‘It’s an Eagles song’.
‘Yes, I know, I’m just trying to remember which one – is it Desperado?’
Of course it is.
‘Your prison is walking through this world all alone.’
‘Now look what you’ve done, you’ve set her off!’
Mary says:
‘I’m going over to the One-Stop’.
‘You don’t need to, sit down, it’s OK’.
‘No, I’m going’.
Paul gets out his baccy tin and makes a roll up, two.
‘I’m off out for a smoke.
He’s wearing a tee shirt. Thea hands him his coat.
‘I’ll be OK!’
‘No you won’t, you’ll freeze!’
Thea is quiet, young, lovely and delicate. She looks exhausted. She’s drinking Appletize. She has to drive back to Cambridge tonight.
‘How are you?’ I ask. ‘Are you OK?’
She smiles.
‘I’m OK. I never drink anyway. I don’t mind. But I have to go to work tomorrow.’
Dawn gets up. ‘I’m off. Nice to see you. Have a good Christmas all, if I don’t see you before. Take care.’
Her glass of chardonnay is almost full, but she won’t stay.
Mary and Paul return.
‘I’ve got bacon and eggs!’ she announces. ‘And cheddar. But no brie’.
Why do we get on to talking about good ways to go? That was Kevin, but why? I don’t remember.
‘That reminds me of another song’ I say, ‘the way I’d like to go…’ despite the Merlot, I’m a little self-conscious.
‘Life in the Fast Lane?’ asks Paul.
‘No, not the Eagles…’
‘This is another Eagles song’ he points to his tee shirt: ‘Tequila Sunrise’ it says.
‘No, no, it’s… ‘they’re all waiting for me…
‘”I wanna die with you baby on the streets tonight, in an ever-lasting kiss.” An everlasting kiss. That’s how I’d like to go’.
‘Ohhhh, Springsteen, NOW you’re talking, the Boss!’
‘Dawn left her chardonnay. Who’s going to finish it off?’
‘Well… I’ll share it with you. Can’t let it go to waste. Even if it IS chardonnay!’
Paul pours half of it into his glass. I drink the rest.
‘Right, bacon and eggs!’
‘I’m for home’ says Kevin. I have to go back to the car for my bag. Mary gives Paul the key, and walks with me. When we get to the house, Thea lets us in. The kettle’s on. Mary goes into the kitchen.
Paul is eating chocolate, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. He offers it round.
Not if I’m having bacon and eggs, I think.
Cups of tea, crackers, butter cheddar.
‘I’m not cooking bacon and eggs now’
Fair enough.
We sit, and talk, and eat cheese, and drink tea.
‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’. I say.
Paul screws up his face, closes his eyes.
‘Errrr…. Kriss Kristoffersen!’
‘That’s right! I thought you were going to say Janis Joplin!’
‘Why, did she write it?’ asks Mary.
‘No, Kristoffersen wrote it, but she sang it’ I say.
‘We should go’ says Thea. ‘I have to work…’
‘Take care’.
We make more tea.
‘I’ve got Green & Black’s organic cocoa. Would you like some of that?’
‘No thanks, tea’s fine.’ When I’ve had enough of the cheese and crackers, I’m planning to start on that chocolate.
We talk, we talk about my life, her life, other people’s lives. About meditation, and Buddhism, and the journey, and people’s expectations, and the pursuit of happiness, or the lack of it. About change. I tell her about Simon, about the baby, about my childhood. How I try to remember a time when I felt loved and wanted, and how I mostly give up the struggle.
‘You need to seek out those little bits of happiness, they must be in there somewhere. To make yourself a treasure box in your head to put them in. Then that’s what you can go back to when you need to. Like, when you finally got your PhD, or when your son got into university…’
‘Or when he was born?’
‘Yes, as long as you don’t then start saying: “oh, but after that, it all went horrible…”’.
‘No, I know. And can I put the other Simon in there?’
‘If you want to, it’s up to you what you put in there, just as long as…’.
No, I know, I know.
At some point, after 2 o’clock, we make cocoa, we take it upstairs. The room is warm, the bed is warm. I drink my cocoa, play a little of my sleep track on the mp3, fall asleep, wake briefly, fall back into it. When I wake properly, I can see it’s light, I can hear Mary moving around. I find my watch, glasses, switch on the light. It’s 10 past 8.
She’s in the kitchen.
‘Cup of tea?’
‘Coffee please’.
‘I’ve got porridge and toast, but I’m not cooking bacon and eggs!’
‘Can I cook it? Can I have scrambled eggs and bacon?’
‘Yes, of course. That sounds good. Can I have some too?’
She shows me where everything is, and I cook while she’s in the shower. I won’t ask permission, or apologise, or worry about whether this is the ‘right’ way or the ‘wrong’ way, I just get on and do it. I find the cafetiere and the ground coffee, I make more tea for Mary.
‘Dawn will be round here at half past nine. I promised to help her with this Christmas fair. She’s very precise, it’s like a form of Asperger’s’. This is a statement, not a joke. ‘If she says she’ll be there at 6, she’ll be there at 6, not 5 to or 5 past.’
This morning’s conversation blends into last night’s. I tell her about my spa fantasy.
‘Well why don’t you do it?’
‘Can’t afford it’. I say.
‘Well, can you think of how you could do some of it? You could come here. The place on the corner, they do massages. And you could come back here, stay here. Why don’t you do that? I’m going to be away for 10 days over Christmas. I’ll give you a key, and you can come any time you like’.
‘When are you going to France?’ She has a flat somewhere in the Pyrenees. I asked her once if she wanted a caretaker, and she said, ‘Come as a guest, next time I go, in the new year’.
‘I don’t know, some time in January. Do you want to come? How long can you come for? After Christmas, we’ll check out the flights, on line. I can’t promise it’ll be warm, but you can get a massage there, if you like! It’ll be cheaper than Champney’s!’
‘Even with the flight’ I agree.
The door bell rings. Its 9:30.
‘We’re just finishing off breakfast. I’ll see you down there.’ Dawn goes away.
‘I’d better go, I’m getting the train down to the south coast to see my son later today, but I’ll be back for Thursday. Look, have the spare key, all I ask is that you get another one cut so I can have it back again. Any time you need a place, just come round.’
She goes. I wash up the pans, empty the dishwasher, put away what I can and leave the rest on the counter. Stack it again with the breakfast things.
I think about what she said.
‘Don’t expect to find it in a man. I think that’s still what’s at the back of your mind’.
‘No, I know. Just sometimes I think... but I know it’s not the answer'.
And:
‘Start gently. Just tell him you don’t want to sleep with him any more. Make yourself a room, a space. It doesn’t have to be any more drastic than that, to start with. See how it goes.’
When I leave, closing the front door, checking that it’s locked. I remember how close it is to the park, the river, the town, the shops.
A bolt hole. A space.