Chapter 8

From the airport to a traumatic phone conversation with the OW - caffeine-fuelled, despair-drenched, crushed, speechless and all in a highland blizzard...

 

11.30 am. Back home – Youngest’s in the living room beside the fire with Harry Potter and I’m in the kitchen drinking strong coffee gathering my thoughts.

Kev is out. He’s working presumably (though I can’t be certain). I had a text message from him saying something sweet but it’s possible he just sent it to the wrong number.

     I decide to bring a barrowful of logs to the back door before the snow storm gets too severe. The Cat barges its way through my legs as I struggle in with an armful of well-seasoned Beech, and proceeds to curl up in the kindling box next to the stove (acting like he’s invisible even though he’s the size of a Bedlington Terrier and sheds clouds of fluff wherever he goes, especially if he goes there quickly.) I can’t blame the poor thing for wanting to be by the fire in this weather, so I’ll play along and pretend I haven’t noticed.

    Having packed the stove with hardwood, I then sit staring blankly at it while it roars. Outside the flakes are increasing steadily in size and the wind’s dropped so they’re beginning to fall like goose down in that sort of meteorological silence you always get beneath dense snow cloud. These sorts of weather conditions always make the stove draw magnificently.

   When the phone rings it’s startling, causing one of the cat’s eyelids to flutter briefly, but neither of us can be bothered to move. We let the answer machine kick in and an elderly voice grumbles neurotically about ‘unsafe’ trees that are ‘bending in the wind’. “They all bend in the wind,” I tell the cat. “It’s the ones that can’t because they’re too brittle you have to watch out for.” Yes, bending is good. And, while I think of it, I have some of my own to do. The caffeine hit is just about kicking in, so I nip smartly into the office and pick up the phone.

  Three rings.

    “Hello?”

    “Hello? Juliet?”

    “Hello.”

    “It’s Elizabeth Burns, you know, Kevin’s…”

    “I know.”

    Silence. She has what I think of as a pretentious upper-class English accent, cold, self-consciously proper but with a child-like softness to suggest vulnerability. A flavour of Princess Di -  someone who, secretly, plans what she’s going to say very carefully. My heart skips a beat. What the hell am I doing this for? I’m really, really scared now!

     “Well, so what is it you want to ask me?” she asks, impatient and abrupt, because I’ve frozen.

      Fuck I don’t know! I mean, how do I know? I really don’t know. I should’ve given this some thought, shouldn’t I? I really should’ve done some goddam prep.

      My answer is feeble. “Er, I don’t think I have any questions, I just thought maybe I ought to give you a ring and tell you about me and Kev.”

      “Alright.”

      “Alright,” I echo.

      “So what do you want to say?”
     “Well, you know, I didn’t have a clue this was going on. It was a big shock to…”

     She cuts me short. “You’ve been married before, haven’t you?” It’s more of an accusation than an inquiry.    

    “Yes. Yes, I was. For ten years.”

     “He left you, didn’t he?”

     “Well, in the end he fell for a divorcee on the production line at work but…”

     “So this is just the same thing happening all over again, isn’t it?”

      This is very confusing. Am I being cross-examined? And if so, why?

     “I don’t know what you mean. No. No, of course it’s not the same. My ex-husband and I …well, it wasn’t the same and that’s all you need to know. Are you trying to make what Kev’s done my fault? You know, you need to know that Kev and I, we love each other…” This appears to rile her and she cuts in once again like the Public Prosecutor.

     “So why is he sleeping with another woman, Lizzie?”

     A great big lump swells in my throat. “I don’t know! I was hoping…”

     “What about this conversation he had with you about his not desiring you any more?”

      Multiple hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Lump in my throat is now the size of a Satsuma. “What?” I say, weakly. “What conversation?”

     

“He’s told you he doesn’t desire you anymore, hasn’t he?”

      As if ! “No,” I respond flatly. “No, he hasn’t. I… actually I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

     “Is he a liar then?”

      Is he a liar? Well, of course he is! He’s a snivelling little cheat, why does she need to ask? The bloody woman knew what he was before I did! I am pretty much speechless.

 Eventually I find my voice again, though I hardly know how.

     “Look Juliet, after ten years of a relationship if you still just, well, love each other then you have more than most people. Maybe the sex isn’t as red hot as it used to be but we do still love each other.”

    She’s like a bull terrier scenting a rabbit. I’m not used to feeling like a rabbit  - I’m a ram, or a tiger or a dragon, or…“But perhaps there are different kinds of love Lizzie?” Bull terrier growls. “Perhaps there’s the one you’re talking about and then there’s desire…”

   Now I get it! But I can’t quite believe she’s recounting to me the pathetic attempts at sophistry Kev’s thrown her way to convince her there’s a justification for leaving a woman you love at home, deceived, while you use another for fantasy sex.

     “Oh come on, I don’t think that’s true Juliet…”

     “So then why is he sleeping with another woman?”

     “I don’t know…but you’re divorcing, aren’t you? Your husband found someone else. What’s your story?”

     She’s instantly defensive. “Oh that didn’t happen till after I left his bed! I wanted another baby. He said no so I stopped sleeping with him. He had an affair with my best friend and now he’s found someone else. We’re still good friends…” Somehow I seriously doubt that. She senses my scepticism and adds, “We can still share a bottle of wine…”

    It’s my turn to interrupt her. “Well it’s not like that for us. We still love each other. We still share a bed. We still make love.”

     Oddly, this shocks her. “But he’s sleeping with someone else!” she exclaims. “Don’t you think that’s a bit unnatural?”

     “No, of course it’s not unnatural. It would be unnatural for us to separate. We’ve been together for ten years, we’ve got a son, we’ve gotten over a lot of hurdles to be together, successfully built up a business…” .

     “So what? My husband and I bought houses together.”

    “It’s not the same…”

    “Lizzie, do you think he just can’t bring himself to tell you the truth?”

    The truth – as if she would know what that was if it ran up and slapped her in the face just like I want to.

  “No. No, I don’t think that’s it at all. He’s always told me everything in the past. He’s most uncomfortable about lying. Seems to have had a stab at it lately of course but, well, that goes with the territory I suppose! I can only tell you we do love each other, that I’m certain of, and all this is very, very…”

    “But he loves me! At the beginning of each day I never know whether he’s going to phone or not. I just wait. He’s the passionate one! He’s made all the running! I told him it wasn’t a good idea for him to tell you about us just before Christmas because you’d be upset. I suggested we just carry on with the affair. Why d’you think he told you just now?”

     “That’s easy! Because he couldn’t go on doing what he was doing. He’d begun to realize it was a very bad idea.”

    “Well I don’t know about that! I had a very warm text message from him this morning.”

     “So I think we’ll just have to wait for him to make up his mind.” Here she giggles. The sound of it, her amusement, makes me angry as hell. She’s enjoying trying to manipulate us and Kev is so, so stupid if he can’t see that. He’s been playing his own little game, stringing her along, letting her believe she’s important, convincing himself in his own very fucked up, brought-up-in-an-infidelity-friendly-household kind of way that it’s alright to differentiate between kinds of ‘love’ if it gets you off the hook and keeps a desperate housewife holding both her front door and her legs wide open.

     “Look, he’s behaving like a little boy with his hand in the biscuit barrel and, believe me Juliet, he’ll be making up his mind today! I have to put an end to this. The only thing I want right now is a clean break. So what d’you want? Can he come live with you?”

     “Ok. I’ll tell him that’s what he should do. He can move out and commute over here to the workshop for as long as…”
     “No, no, no. That won’t do! You’ll still be in the family home. He’ll find it difficult.”

    “What? Ok then. He can move the business equipment over to your place. I think you’ve got the space?”

     “Then I really can’t see what the solution is Juliet! Whatever happens to me and Kev we have a son and we have a business to at least wrap up. We’d have to go on talking whatever… look – you do realize that what’s going on here is all about me and Kev? It just isn’t possible for it to be anything else.”

     “Well if that’s so Lizzie, why is he sleeping with another woman?”

     Good God in heaven! She’s so far up herself I’m surprised there was room for him! How can anyone be so self-lovingly dim as to believe that the kind of exploitative attention Kev’s been giving her amounts to anything more than opportunist shagging-on-the-side?

     “I’ll tell you why Juliet – it probably has something to do with the fact that you put it on a plate for him!” Hear her nervous laugh again. I have nothing more to say. “Thanks for being able to talk to me,” I blurt. “Goodbye.”

 

I have to lie on the office floor for several minutes while the anger to subside. The glossy JCB twelve-month planner loses a drawing pin from one corner and swings down the wall in a half-hearted salute.

     Kick the desk in anguish. This woman is so not a lovable object! She’s arch and cold and downright mean and she’s calculated how best to hurt me, worked out exactly where to aim her vicious insults for maximum destructive effect! Kick the desk again and curse out loud. Now, let me just remind myself – what was it he said to me? “Be gentle with her.” What does he think she is? Some sad little fragile thing so needful of a man, so desperate for a dose of his especially potent masculinity he can allow himself the liberty, no, the fantasy of believing it’s ok to spread himself between the two of us? Does he think we’re both going to be grateful?  

     Pick up the phone again, my hand trembling with rage. He’s working not too far from her – between us we form some bizarre geographical triangle-of-betrayal, telephonically connected. Well, I no longer want to be a co-ordinate on the layout.

     “Listen Kev, I just got off the phone to Juliet Sanders. For God’s sake, tell me what you’re doing mixed up with a woman like that? I always thought of you as an honest, hard-working kind of ordinary man! What on earth are you thinking of? You told me to be gentle with her – she just about annihilated me! She wanted my insides on a plate and I don’t understand why! What conversation did we ever have in which you told me you didn’t desire me anymore? And how much exactly have you been telling her about me? I mean, who I am, my history, my marriage, my feelings for you? She wants to fight me, gloves off, and I’m not up for it, ok? I’m not interested in a fight. Any guy who wants to be with me has to live his life like that’s what he wants, otherwise he’s free to go. I think you should come home right now and have the last conversation with me you’ll ever have. She says you can stay with her – come home and pack your things!”

     Deafening silence, then: “I don’t want to.”

     “What do you mean, you don’t want to? You’ve got to!”

     “Lizzie, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to live with her. I want to stay with you.”

     Her stuck-up voice rings in my head and I know for sure that my oil-stained, machinery-obsessed, can’t-get-out-of-bed-in-the-mornings Kevin Gates could never find happiness with pretentious, self-absorbed  Juliet Sanders. He knows it too. His IBS will be telling him.

     But what about me? What do I want? The blood thudding relentlessly in my ears tells me he has to go. Rage, hurt and sheer incredulity tell me he has to go. Weight loss, insomnia and the ‘Women Who Love Too Much’ self-help book tell me he has to go. Today has to be the last day he misleads me into misery. It can’t be anything but over.  

     On the other end of the phone, he thinks he’s had it.

     “Lizzie? You still there? Speak to me Lizzie! Listen, there’s not much more to do here - I’ll be back real soon, please don’t pack anything. Don’t wreck my guitar. I love you, ok? I love you…”