Separation for beginners, p.20
Separation for Beginners, page 20
‘Realise what? Apart from the fact that I’m a git and I’m moving out and I’m not good enough for your daughter, blah blah, all of which I know. Realise what?’
‘That the way he treats you . . . it’s got to change.’
‘You think you telling him to fuck off will change him?’
I shake my head. ‘Again, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I love that you did that, I love that I didn’t have to see him.’
He looks at me, a bit too long for comfort. What’s more, he’s looking at my nipples, not at my face. What’s even more, he’s looking at them with a frown.
‘Wait there a minute,’ he says, jumping up and leaving the room.
He returns holding a plastic bag. ‘What time is Claire getting here?’ he asks, holding the bag out to me.
‘Any minute. You think I should suffocate myself before she does?’
‘Try that on.’
I take a T-shirt from the bag. It’s pale blue with a very cool, minimalist graphic on it: three vertical dark blue stripes down the right-hand side.
‘Susie gave it to me. It was a free sample at one of her internships. But it’s too small for me. It’s classy and it’s retro in a good way, not in a had-it-so-long-it’s-back-in-fashion way. It’s also something Claire won’t have seen you wearing.’
I put it on. Fits like a glove and looks markedly better than the clothes spread out on my bed. I nod at him. He gives me a once-over and nods back.
‘Yeah,’ he says, and leaves the room without being forced to.
When she’s not at work, Claire wears skinny jeans and cashmere jumpers, or just a shirt if it’s warm. She never wasted time deciding what to wear, always looked elegant and relaxed, always looked as if she could leap to her feet and run after her children or step straight into a meeting. Today, she is wearing a raspberry-coloured turtleneck sweater that softly engulfs her. I still love what she wears. I look similarly exquisite in Niall’s T-shirt, but I’m cold. I grab my cashmere cardigan from my room and put it on.
Claire teases me. ‘You putting that on just to be nice?’
‘I’m not nice. I love this cardi.’
She leans forward and peers at me. ‘It’s torn.’
‘Brambles,’ I say.
‘That was two hundred quid in Selfridges. You’re not meant to be gardening in it.’
‘Two hundred quid on a cardigan!’ I squeak.
‘I was feeling guilty for leaving you and all that.’
‘Two hundred quid for ending our marriage?’
She shrugs. ‘I let you keep the car.’
I weigh this up. ‘Hmmm, still . . .’
‘And supported you financially for the last two years of it.’
‘Well, if you’re going to obsess about detail.’
I make some tea and take the opportunity to stand back and relish the moment. Claire is sitting in my kitchen. She is slouched on the sofa and her legs stretch out into the room.
It’s wonderful.
When people meet her, many of them think of Sigourney Weaver. To those who mention it, Claire tends to mention the twenty-year age difference. They could settle instead for the simple fact that she is tall. Willowy. Elegant. Kind-hearted. Curious without end. Not merely fiercely intelligent but something much more: highly intelligent. Well read. Informed. A thinker.
She looks beautiful, content, as she cradles a mug of tea on her lap. She is not wearing her wedding ring. She’s not wearing any rings.
‘It’s crazy how long it is since we were just in the same room as each other,’ she says. ‘So surreal.’
But she can do this and leave, whereas my dread of her going means I can’t truly enjoy her being here.
‘Not really, we got divorced because you no longer wanted to be in the same room as me. Never being together follows on naturally.’
She lowers her head and stares at her tea. When she looks up there is a sadness in her eyes that I know I am responsible for. She whispers, ‘Don’t say things like that.’
I see how easy, how tempting it must be, for people to abandon reason and become hateful when they feel wronged. I’m not a creative man but I could write a whole new narrative for myself right now: I see it all laid out in front of me and it looks never-ending, self-fulfilling, even appealing in parts.
Once upon a time I was the victim of a sad thing (my wife left me) and I’ve been the victim ever since and poor me and she’s to blame and poor me. The End.
Except it never ends, that story, and in time it begins to revise your working life and your upbringing and your friendships, and in all these subplots you are also the casualty, a lovable person among people who let you down eventually. That’s an easy story to write and star in. It’s a cliché and clichés are effortless. They fit your purpose as perfectly as this T-shirt fits me.
Men who are to blame for the failure of their marriages portraying themselves as the victim is one of the biggest clichés known to mediators and family courts, and they can be smelled a mile off. My divorce lawyer told me that. I sit next to my ex-wife and hold her hand. She presses her head against me. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Won’t do that again.’
She smells of bergamot.
I am uncouth in some ways – getting potty-mouthed in my bitter middle age, on the brink of getting stuck into the Tinder account the early man gifted me, no longer a total stranger to soft porn, and once got arrested at a football match in 1991 – but I know the smell of bergamot on Claire’s skin when it’s there and I still love it.
And suddenly, I find myself shaking and I am sure she is about to tell me she has met another man and I am listening for the infinitesimal sound of her lips moving to begin to tell me. And I want to be put out of my misery. I want to hear it and pile it on to everything else and get on with living with it. The anticipation is the worst bit.
‘Anything you need to talk about?’ I say.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That’s why I’m here. How are you? What you up to? How are you managing divorced life? Shall we talk about Susie and Erland? We should hang out. Be normal, even if it is hard and feels weird and sad.’
‘That’s all?’ I say.
‘That’s quite a lot.’
We sit shoulder to shoulder on the little sofa, both slouching, no longer touching. And I could gladly stay like this all day but the creaking of floorboards from my should-be-spare bedroom reminds me that there’s a third person in this flat and it is only a matter of time until I am not alone with Claire.
Fifteen seconds, to be exact. In the last few of which I ask Claire, ‘Have you already met Niall?’
‘Of course. Susie brought him round a couple of times.’
The door opens and a presentable, well-groomed, freshly shaved male resembling Niall enters.
‘Hi, Claire,’ it says.
‘You all right, Niall?’
‘Never better.’
‘Pete asked me if we’d met!’
Niall pulls a face that registers how stupid of me that was.
‘Mind you,’ he says, ‘not that often. You’re always working or going out with friends or off on some holiday.’
I smile bravely at this and rub my belly soothingly at the point where I felt the knife go in. Niall and Claire cheek-kiss like they’re at the Ambassador’s Ball. How does he appear instantly sophisticated? It baffles me. He’s even wearing shoes.
‘Given that you’re away so much,’ I say to Claire, ‘would you like Niall to be your lodger, keep an eye on the place?’
Niall’s face lights up.
‘Down, boy,’ Claire says to him. ‘Not gonna happen.’
Niall slumps and pulls a pouty face. It makes Claire laugh.
‘Can I make you both tea?’ he says.
‘Got one, thanks,’ says Claire.
‘Bye, Niall,’ I say.
‘I’ll just make myself one and be out of your way,’ he says, but that seems unlikely to me.
We all watch the kettle boil. Niall taps his fingers on the worktop and repositions the milk an inch nearer his mug. ‘Should I remove any sharp objects or vases?’ he says. ‘Or are you getting on fine?’
Claire smiles politely.
‘Perhaps you should,’ I say, ‘for your own safety.’
Niall pours hot water into his mug. ‘Only joshing, you two seem to get on so well. Never hear you tearing strips off each other on the phone like some exes.’
‘He never calls,’ Claire says.
‘We should argue more,’ I say. ‘Why don’t we?’
‘Because we never argued about small stuff and you’re a feminist, so there wasn’t any big stuff.’
‘How can two people who argue so little break up?’ Niall says.
‘Go away, Niall,’ I say.
‘’Cause I wanna argue,’ Claire says. ‘Look at the world, Niall. I’ve got issues with it and I want to slog it out. He doesn’t.’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Niall says.
‘Slog it out and be home in time for dinner,’ I say.
She turns to me. ‘Do something totally new, that you’ve never done before.’
‘Yeah,’ Niall says, stirring his teabag and smiling to himself in a way that ought, by now, to trigger alarm bells in me about what’s coming next. ‘Something totally new like going an entire day without mentioning your ex-wife.’
Silence falls upon us. I glare at Niall but he’s not looking. Claire smiles to herself.
‘Enjoying this conversation?’ she says, digging me gently in the ribs.
I sigh and pull a face. ‘His tea has to finish brewing some time.’
We sit in silence some more.
‘Watching much porn?’ Claire asks. It’s an old family joke, it’s how we used to break awkward silences or end arguments. Susie was the first to use it, to Erland when he grew a bum-fluff moustache and got acne in his mid-teens. ‘Off for a wank?’ she once said to her brother when he left the living room, in front of me and Claire. She was thirteen. No wonder my son lives in New Zealand.
I scrunch up my face and shake my head. ‘No. You?’
‘A bit.’
‘What!’
‘You should be pleased.’
It takes me a moment to work this out, and she waits patiently.
‘Oh, yeah,’ I smile. ‘Yeah, well, me too.’
Niall uses his spoon to catapult his teabag into the bin. He stirs his tea but doesn’t yet show signs of picking it up and heading for the door.
‘Susie mention me at all when you were in Stockholm?’ he asks Claire.
Claire looks at Niall warmly and waits a beat, like a true pro. ‘Nope.’ Emphasis on the ‘p’.
Makes me want her.
‘Did you see much of Mark? I heard you didn’t.’
‘No, didn’t see him, wasn’t around.’
‘Really?’ Niall likes this and gets that energetic, balls-of-his-feetness about him. ‘But presumably,’ he ploughs blindly on, ‘when you went back to your hotel at night Susie went round to his place or he came round or whatever?’
‘No. I stayed with Susie, in her bed with her. I would have noticed if she and Mark were having sex.’
Niall’s eyes light up. ‘A whole week and you didn’t see Mark.’
‘Not once . . .’ Claire says.
Niall looks at me and raises his eyebrows excitedly, as if we are together in a Machiavellian pact to eradicate Mark.
‘Mark was on the Aeolian Islands looking at buying a villa, probably on Salina,’ Claire says.
I smirk. Niall’s face drops.
Claire rubs my arm and says, confidingly, ‘It’s in Italy.’
I ignore this at first, because there is goading-of-Niall to be done, but then decide to kill two birds.
‘Lucky Susie,’ I say. ‘Boyfriend with a villa on Salina, very nice. An exquisite place to go for weekends with your gentleman lover and a great location for a wedding, one day. Salina, the second biggest of the Aeolian Islands and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Flights to Catania, Calabria and Palermo offer connection to the islands by helicopter, hydrofoil and ferry.’
Niall looks crestfallen. ‘Bollocks,’ he says.
Claire and I laugh at Niall, proper belly laughter. There is no better sound than Claire laughing like this, right next to me.
‘Niall,’ Claire says softly. ‘Mark was in Denmark on some boring management training course. He wasn’t there but he’s still on the scene.’
Niall looks bemused. ‘Not buying a villa on an island?’
Claire shakes her head. Niall beams at me. My face drops.
‘So, what, wait a minute,’ I say, ‘no free holidays on Salina for me then?’
Niall laughs, and says, ‘Nerr nerr ner-ner nerr.’
‘Bollocks,’ I say. ‘I nearly felt really happy for a moment there.’
Claire looks down her nose (lovely nose) at me. ‘If you go to that travel agent on the high street, you could get them to book you a holiday to Salina and go there anyway.’
‘That would mean leaving the house, though, Pete,’ Niall says.
‘It’s a flat, not a house,’ Claire says.
‘Sod off, Niall,’ I say.
‘He’ll miss me when I’m gone,’ Niall mutters.
‘Why are you moving out?’ Claire asks.
‘What do you mean, why?’ I say. ‘Why is he still here, more like?’
Niall laughs disdainfully. ‘Why am I still here? Er . . . probably because you rely on me making it impossible for the estate agent to sell the flat upstairs so that your ex-wife can’t fully move on because you’re, er . . . jealous and stuck in a rut.’
I stare at him, speechless.
Claire looks at me accusingly. She shakes her head and says beneath her breath, ‘Jesus! That’s probably true.’
‘Niall . . .’ I say.
‘What?’
‘It just pours out of your mouth, doesn’t it?’
‘What does?’
‘Just . . . just . . .’ I splutter.
‘The truth does,’ Claire says.
‘Brilliant! Anything else you’d like to say, Niall, in the name of fucking truth?’
He shrugs. ‘Sorry.’
I sigh, already regretting swearing and using that tone with him.
He shrugs again. ‘Just . . . I guess, that you’re still in love with her, I suppose.’
I throw my head back. Turns out saying ‘sorry’ was a holding tactic, whilst he racked his brains for more truth.
‘You know what he’s like,’ Niall says to her. For which, he’ll later be killed slowly.
‘I do,’ Claire says softly.
I cross my arms and stare at the floor. ‘I’m not like anything,’ I mutter.
Niall smiles knowingly at Claire. She does the same in return and he leaves the room. Except, being Niall, he doesn’t simply leave the room. He goes to the door, which is enough to raise my hopes that he is finally going to fuck off, but then, inevitably, he stops and decides that what this moment needs is more Niall.
‘He’s kind and loving and he believes love is for ever, no matter what,’ he tells Claire. Presumably he’s talking about me, the bloke sitting right there, a generation older than him who’d love not to be patronised by him in front of his ex-wife. ‘That’s what I admire about him.’
And he leaves, finally, two minutes too late.
‘Me too,’ Claire says.
I don’t look at her. If you admire that about me, then love me too. Don’t say sweet things to me and leave.
This atmosphere needs changing before I look my ex-wife, who admires me, in the eye.
‘NIALL!’ I yell.
He returns, peering around the door.
‘What’s for lunch?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘What is for lunch?’
‘What?!’ Again, that annoying high-pitched thing just when I want to sound like Darth Vader. ‘You knew Claire was coming for lunch.’
‘Why should he cook lunch?’ Claire asks.
‘He makes the food when humans visit.’
Claire frowns at me. ‘Peter Smith, you have to learn to cook again, you lazy sod. You are a perfectly adequate cook.’
‘You’re right, Claire,’ Niall says, ‘he can cook.’
‘I know I can! I cooked for my family for twenty years.’
‘At times,’ Claire says. ‘On occasions. I mean, I wouldn’t say that when searching for you the first place I would look would be by the oven.’
Niall nods his agreement.
‘No, it would be at Erland’s football or swimming, or at Susie’s swimming or gymnastics, or decorating the house or gradually replacing all the rotten wood on the windows one window at a time because the fifteen-grand bill to have them done professionally was beyond us.’
‘Yes . . .’ Claire says affectionately. ‘All true.’
‘You can do all that?’ Niall says. ‘Why did it take you a year to put a lock on a door?’
‘Because I don’t fucking care now,’ I say sulkily.
I’m not angry when I say it, and I don’t say it angrily, but when I hear myself, I realise how true this is. Niall and Claire are both quiet and looking at me. I open the bi-fold doors, to avoid them and have something to do. Claire steps out gratefully into the garden. I follow her. She makes a couple of comments about how good the garden looks and leaves open the possibility that I could be responsible for it.
Then, she says with a sigh, ‘Look . . .’
Oh, God. That tone of voice. This is news. And I don’t want Claire to have news. It can only mean terminal or sexual. Oh, God, no. Oh, God, oh, God.
‘There is something I wanted to say . . .’
It’s too soon. You can’t be in love, there can’t be a man you’re loving and laughing with and introducing to my children. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
‘This isn’t going to go down well but please don’t react.’
I walk inside, into the kitchen. I stand by the oven and stare at it. Claire comes in too and stands a few feet from me, arms folded.
‘Pete. I want to help you out, with your business, with money.’
I turn and look at her. We both fall silent. My brain is rewinding and playing what she just said, like Gene Hackman in The Conversation, and equally insane. As I replay her words, my brain (if I can call it that) searches for the words ‘met someone’, ‘man’, ‘love’, ‘moving in’, ‘huge penis’. But nothing comes up, apart from the undeniable fact that I am, indeed, a huge penis.
