Separation for beginners, p.22
Separation for Beginners, page 22
‘So,’ he says, ‘why are we talking about him?’
‘Because you asked about effects on others. Why did I pretend for so long that I understood what he was doing? Why didn’t I say earlier how I hated the way he treated his family?’
‘Maybe you’re too accommodating.’
‘Kicking you out would buck the trend.’
He double-takes. ‘What?’
Instinctively, in response to the threat to move him out, Niall gets up and starts preparing me a snack.
‘All I know,’ he says, ‘is that when things go wrong between people it’s often because they aren’t thinking about the effect they are having on the other person.’
‘Where did you read that?’
‘I don’t know, probably on a blackboard outside a coffee shop. Or on Instagram.’
‘So, when you moved your new girlfriend, my daughter, into your ex-wife’s flat—’
‘It’s a house, not a flat.’
‘You were really imagining what that was like from your ex-wife’s perspective?’
‘Exactly. Prime example. I wasn’t. Total failure, except that I knew I was messing up but simply didn’t have the mental strength to stop myself.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘The point is, what was Claire experiencing these last few years? What was it like for her being on the receiving end of you?’
‘Not that I’m getting into this with you, but I would say, without particularly getting into it, that I wanted to do everything with her, wanted to visit the children at college a lot and neither Claire nor the kids wanted that. I ran out of ideas and her mind is exploding with them. I thought that the kids growing up would mean I’d stop worrying about something happening to them, but it never does.’
And as I speak, I am aware that I am zoning out, drifting away from myself, talking on autopilot. These words are noise that I’ve produced before. The only interesting thing I’ve done lately is make Claire laugh, yesterday.
Niall gets the vodka from the freezer. He fills my glass and pours one for himself.
‘Na zdrowie.’
‘Cheers.’
‘No wonder she left you. But all you have to do is not be like that any more.’
‘Not be like me? That’s technically impossible.’
‘Change what you’re like.’
‘You change what you’re bloody like, there’s nothing wrong with me.’
Niall pulls a confused face. ‘Apart from everything you’ve just outlined.’
‘What, change and she’ll take me back?’
He shakes his head. ‘She’s not coming back.’
‘Then what’s the point?’
‘You are the point. Not Claire. You. Your own life, that, by the way, you are not living.’ He gets up.
‘Do not put the bottle away,’ I warn him.
I am aware, although I will never, ever, admit it to him, that Niall sees things I don’t. The bottle is not to lubricate his wisdom. He doesn’t need help. As a member of the there-are-no-words generation, he doesn’t blend. The bottle is to ease me into being able to admit that I am listening. The bottle is my preparation for insight.
But to the same extent that one should never underestimate Niall, one should never overestimate him either, for what he says to me as he pours our next shot of vodka is, ‘If Queer Eye was in England, and I nominated you, would you go on it?’
I knock back the shot and, given my lowish tolerance, begin to feel a bit drunk. The booze is mind-blowingly good but I don’t say so because I don’t want Niall going off on some long-winded lecture about Russian vodka and pure taste and whatever the hell else he’s got inside his hairy head.
‘Hypothetically?’ I ask.
‘Obviously.’
‘Not obviously. I have to check because if I thought there was any chance of you nominating me, I’d just say a straight “no” and not get into this conversation.’
‘But what with us not being in Texas, you’re not going to get queer-eyed.’
‘Yeah, but you’re so . . . I have to check.’
‘I’m so . . . what?’
‘You talk in tongues.’
‘You think anyone who doesn’t keep their conversation to “I’m fine” is talking in tongues. Would you go on Queer Eye to make a new start?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Why do I bother?’
‘Sorry, was that not the script? Tell me what to say so you can have the chat with me you’ve planned and cover all the points you want to.’
‘They’d help you move on, maybe have that first date, shake off the old.’
‘What, evict you?’
‘I’ll be gone way before the Fab Five get here.’
I stuff my knuckles in my mouth. ‘Oh, no! Please don’t go!’
Niall cocks his head to one side and looks at me, unimpressed. ‘They might make over your sense of humour.’
I get up and take control of the bottle myself. I clink Niall’s glass and we both throw another shot down our throats. I pour another for each of us and settle back.
‘No more shots. I just want to sip this one. It’s beautiful stuff and I’m getting too pissed.’
‘It’s bison grass vodka. They make it—’
‘Don’t care. I don’t want to understand the vodka, I just want to drink it. But you understand this, I don’t want to shake off the old. I don’t want to move too far on, because then I’ll really be lost. If I didn’t have losing Claire, I would have nothing. It won’t last for ever, but an entire lifetime doesn’t get washed out of your hair in a year. If this gets rushed, then one day I really will crash.’
He nods and, extraordinarily, says nothing.
I return to the remote control. I sit on one side of the sofa, leaving room for Niall if he wants it. I look at the freeze-frame of Maggie Thatcher and have no desire to press ‘play’. I know exactly what I want to watch: fantasy politics, not the real thing. It came to me a few minutes ago and I’m like a pig in shit at the thought of watching it for the first time in twenty years.
‘You ever watched The West Wing?’ I ask the hairy one.
‘Nope.’
‘My plan is to watch four or five hours of it right now, with vodka, giving way to a cleansing lager later and then, probably, takeaway pizza. You are welcome to join me. No more talking, though.’
Niall smiles and seems genuinely moved by the invitation. He takes the bottle of vodka by the neck and sits next to me.
‘There’s one thing I want to negotiate,’ he says.
Like taking candy from a baby . . .
‘Sure . . .’ I say.
‘Later, when it’s time, let me knock some food up, instead of the pizza.’
I press ‘play’ and take a sip. ‘If you insist.’
I fall asleep during the third episode and wake up with a sleepy aeroplane erection (it’s a thing, don’t pretend it’s not, chaps) that is only encouraged by the sight of Allison Janney.
Allison – Sigourney – Zoe – Claire. It’s an axis. A tall one.
I am sleepy, drunk and aroused.
‘Niall, go and sit somewhere else.’
‘No!’
‘Seriously, get a chair and sit over there. You can’t sit next to me right now.’
I lie out on the sofa and kick him off. He jumps up.
‘I was really comfy,’ he whines.
I write a text for Claire. It flows, which should always be a danger sign. I hesitate before sending it, aware that feeling drunk and horny creates unfavourable conditions for divorce-text. I reread it. It still seems humorous to me. And it still appears to me that there is a 0.0001 per cent chance of what I am suggesting being granted, which is more than no chance. Beyond the maths, deep down beneath the swaying of the bison grass, I do doubt the wisdom of this text. Here, my thinking on it slides into uncertainty, a lack of clarity inevitable given the cocktail of drinking, sleep and general not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-happening in my life on a daily basis. As my finger hovers over the ‘send’ arrow the bison leans close and whispers in my ear, ‘You’ve nothing to lose.’
I send, just on the off chance Claire has taken the day off work and been drinking since lunchtime too.
Zoe, vis-à-vis putting myself first after years of self-sacrifice, I wondered if you’d like to pop round for one-off meaningless sex. Or I could come to you. It might seem like an outrageous idea, but truth be told, for most of my marriage when I was in bed with my wife, I was thinking of you anyway, so for me it would be business-as-usual. Pxx
Claire replies a few minutes later, minutes during which time I have imagined her thinking, What the heck, a shag would be nice and he’s so funny, and getting her coat.
That will never be funny. C
And that is not the accidental ‘C’ of someone meaning to send a kiss and fat-fingering a ‘C’. That is ‘C’ for Claire. Zoe is off the table. But I plough on, because it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good bottle of vodka is a comedy genius.
Then maybe you’re not the gal for me cos I am wetting myself.
I’m not the gal for you. We’re divorced.
That will never be funny. P
Two further episodes of West Wing later, I am drifting in and out of sleep again and the kitchen is filling with the smell of something delicious. I go to the bathroom and take a shower and when I’m ready to get out I follow the advice of some Scandinavian lunatic I heard on the radio yesterday by turning the shower to cold. I scream, repeatedly, but stick with it and keep myself under the ice-cold water for a couple of minutes. It must be good for me because it’s a miserable experience, and a sobering one.
I dress and am being led by my nose towards the kitchen when I hear noise from the flat upstairs. Too nervous to venture up there, I go into the back garden and look up.
I call out, ‘Is that you, Matthew?’
A window opens and Dennis appears. ‘Hi, Pete.’
‘Dennis . . . everything okay?’
‘Yeah, just helping Claire put some bits of furniture in.’
Another window opens. Claire appears. ‘Hello.’ She winks at me mischievously. I smile back defensively.
‘Thought the place might need something in it to soften it up. Such a mystery it’s not had an offer.’
‘Cool,’ I say.
Dennis disappears. Claire smiles at me again and I feel a foreboding that she’s about to win at a game I have no idea we’re playing.
‘Well, better get on,’ she says.
Phew.
‘See you,’ I say nonchalantly.
‘By the way . . .’ she says.
‘Yeah?’ Here’s my 0.0001 per cent chance. She does fancy a shag. She is desperate.
‘Alan Rickman . . .’ she says.
‘What about him, God rest his soul?’ Love that man. Love Severus Snape.
‘That’s who I thought about.’
‘When we were having sex?’
She shrugs. ‘Yeah, then, and . . . often.’
‘Fair enough,’ I say, as she shuts the window.
I go inside. A minute later the doorbell rings and Claire stands on the front step in her coat, with her bag slung across her shoulder.
‘You can go upstairs and help Dennis with flat-pack furniture or take me for a drink.’
‘Sounds good,’ I say. ‘Be nice to spend some time with Dennis.’
‘Buy me a pint, you cock.’
I get my coat and we head for the Pelham, a five-minute walk we’ve done hundreds of times: after making love, before the cinema, on summer evenings with the children. They would run back and forth between the swings in the garden and their crisp packets on the trestle tables.
‘To be a hundred per cent honest,’ I say, as we walk these familiar pavements, ’cause we’ve always been big on truth, ‘the only time I ever fantasised about getting with Zoe Ball was when having the perfectly natural, standard, run-of-the-mill fantasy of being abandoned by you to raise the children on my own and many women seeing me as dad-of-the-century despite my heartbreak and them all wanting to sleep with me.’
‘Including Zoe?’
‘I bump into her in the supermarket and we get talking. She believes I’m a standout human being who needs to be left alone to his heroic parenting but deserves no-strings physical happiness and can’t believe what a tiger I am between the sheets, able to go at it until the early hours bringing her pleasure she never knew possible, and yet when she wakes each morning with a lusty satisfied smile on her face, she finds me up and dressed and good-looking and giving my kids breakfast.’
‘Not that you ever thought about it.’
‘Not when you and I were making love, I didn’t.’
‘Anything else?’
‘That’s it.’
The Pelham Arms was my and Claire’s local for a quarter of a century. I have hardly stepped inside since my divorce. I hold the door open for Claire and we go to the bar. The landlord beams at seeing us together.
‘Hello, you two!’
I cast him the it’s-not-what-you-think look.
‘Pint of Stella and a pint of Tim Taylor, please, Mark,’ Claire says, without conferring with me. Which I love.
We sit down. I elect for side by side rather than opposite and it feels wrong the moment I’ve done it.
‘You do know we are not going to bed with each other?’ she asks, shuffling a few inches away from me.
‘Hundred per cent,’ I say, which is 99.999 per cent true.
‘Cheers,’ she says, and gets stuck into her pint.
‘There is one other detail, seeing as you were asking,’ I say. Well, I’ve nothing to lose now. ‘Zoe is clubbing and DJing with all her mates from that side of her life but finds it no longer has meaning or brings her pleasure, compared to being with me, so she gives all that up to be with me as much as possible, as and when I can fit her in.’
‘Zoe Ball gives up music because of you?’
‘Yup.’
‘That would be very you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Wasn’t a compliment. And does she give up her children too?’
‘Has she got children?’
‘Yup.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, she leaves them, just like you left yours at the start of this fantasy.’
She reaches for her drink and her fingers tap the table as she thinks. ‘Pete,’ she says, ‘Peter darling, you need to be much busier.’
We fall silent for a few moments.
‘The thing is,’ I say, ‘I’m just not up for being given advice by the person who ruined my happiness.’
‘How can I possibly argue with that? I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t owe me an apology. But you can’t fix me.’
‘Okay.’ She nods. ‘Thanks for not killing me off in your fantasy, like most men do.’
‘I could never do that.’
‘You’re a good man.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Then I tell her, randomly, that I burst into tears listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Boxer’ yesterday.
She thinks about this and nods. ‘That makes sense,’ she says. ‘Great song.’
‘Great song.’
After that we enjoy being together but we don’t speak much, until I guide us to the conversational safety zone of Erland and Susie.
‘We’re so lucky with those two,’ I say. ‘And how well they get on. They’re nice adults and they were wonderful kids.’
‘They were wonderful, you’re right . . .’ Claire says.
‘I miss them,’ I say. ‘So much.’
‘. . . but they were also absolute arseholes at times. Erland was a total dickhead from the age of nine to thirteen, if you remember. He was actually nicer when he became a teenager, which tells you something.’
‘I don’t remember any of that.’
She looks at me and, for a fraction of a second, digs her elbow into me. ‘I miss them desperately, but I prefer not to think about it too much.’
I nod and I hope it conveys how much I admire the way she faces up to things. We walk back home and say goodnight to each other on my doorstep. She kisses me on the cheek.
‘Thanks for the drink,’ she says.
‘Thanks for ruining Alan Rickman for me, for ever,’ I say.
She goes upstairs and soon she leaves and I hear her, but I don’t rush to my bedroom window to watch her go and I don’t miss her like hell after not doing so.
Lie-la-lie
[Boom]
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
[Boom]
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-la-lie, la-la-la-lie . . .
Chapter 18
My shoes leave prints in the dew on the golf course as I walk towards Pyrford. A golf ball bounces near to me. I turn and see an elderly man raising his arm, and wave back. I continue on but as the man crosses the tracks I have left, I turn and watch him take a club from his bag, quickly address the ball, hit it, swear and march off. He seems to be playing alone, furiously. He takes a call on his mobile and his voice lights up, ‘Morning, darling! You having breakfast? Lovely! No, I’m being totally shit as usual!’ and he laughs.
I watch him go, take in the view. It’s a beautiful morning and I text Claire.
Going back to school, wish me luck
Whatty whatty what what?
Got an interview about being a governor at a primary school
An interview!!! They should be begging you to help them out x
That’s nice.
I’ll mention that to them x
Be sure to.
Then she sends another.
Great thing to be doing. Best dad in the world should make a great governor x
You’d think x
Thanks to my ex-wife, I head to the school with a smile on my face and an ounce or two of self-belief. And, as I wait in reception, I get one last text from her:
