Chapter 11

29^th December - It arrives in the discreet plain brown package with the equally discreet sender’s address that every Postal worker up and down the length and breadth of the Kingdom recognizes as the Ann Summers jiffy bag. 

     Postie stares momentarily as he hands it over then skips smartly away to his little red van suppressing a level of inappropriate amusement likely to become audible at any moment in the form of a dirty laugh.

     I am forced to nick some batteries from Youngest’s remote controlled quad bike, then I sit on the stairs and take a moment before tearing open the packaging. It’s cold and slightly tacky to the touch. It has coloured lights that go on and off to create a light show effect under the duvet and six different vibratory settings for its little ‘bunny ears’. Neat, clever, intriguing and quite nice to hold, it would qualify as a charming accessory for girls everywhere if not for it’s most outstanding feature - the outsize transparent penis with a ridge of imitation foreskin and a capacity for rotation (various speeds) like a restrained food mixer. Can’t visualize a range of these displayed on the shoe shelves in Monsoon. Nope. Not even with ethnic patterned carry-cases.

  

That night – I am slightly anxious because I still can’t use a video recorder. Am I going to be the only woman in the country who can’t use her vibrator properly? Will I end up having to confess, ‘well, yes, I did have one once but it did absolutely nothing for me so I gave it to Oxfam’?

     What a relief then, to find that the many and various techniques come quite naturally (excuse the pun). In fact, it is quite impossible not to come using the vibrator. I discover I can carry on a conversation about the car’s faulty ignition barrel and come whilst struggling to finish a particularly technical sentence. I also find I can laugh at the absurdity of its impressively large fake penis and come whilst laughing (triggering the sudden onset of quite serious cramp in my left calf). I can even demo the thing for Kev, holding it in place, slightly embarrassed, apologizing for my apparent lack of arousal, suddenly turning pink faced and cross-eyed and tipping over sideways, overwhelmed by synthetic (very intense) orgasm.

    Kev wants to hold it in place and play with it a bit – a kid with a new toy. Then I hold it in place and play with it while he watches. Then I use it again while he falls asleep exhausted beside me, hand protectively caressing sore, and now intimidated vitals. He probably feels there’s no way he can top that. Or maybe he’s just glad that, having been injured off the field, he doesn’t even have to try.

     Playtime over, I wash my fake penis gently with a Dove cream bar, dry it on a warm towel and climb back into bed. But I lie awake well into the night as usual, chewing over a piece of newly- realized intelligence. Though it will provide intense orgasms on demand, a vibrator will never replace a real, warm man prepared to give the absolutely necessary one hundred and ten percent. We women don’t actually want a man just because he can affect the mechanics of orgasm production. We can do that for ourselves. No, we need a man to meet with us somewhere special in our minds and feed the fire that keeps us a positive force in the world. Now that it’s the middle of the night and my clitoris is pulsating like a thrashed bagatelle ball, I am insightfully inclined to accept this may be a very tall order.

 

 

Family Traditions

New Year’s Eve - The Gates have house guests. Me, Kev and Youngest are some of them. The Rayburn’s on in the kitchen, red wine glugs into big glasses and someone’s made oxtail stew. I (quite correctly) feel like I haven’t slept in weeks, so I am wearing something saggy in brown to match the bags under my eyes.

     Having spent most of the evening avoiding awkward questions and wondering who amongst Kev’s relatives knows what about our ‘situation’, I am still listlessly pushing bovine vertebrae round my plate at five minutes to midnight. Awkward questions have included “How’s things?”, “Have you had a good Christmas?”, “What did Santa bring you?”, “How come you’ve lost so much weight?” and “What’ve you two been up to lately?”

    As the New Year approaches, the talk is of fireworks followed by deep fried Mars Bars. There are nine of us and we all shuffle out into the garden to watch Neil Gates launch his enormous rocket. Everyone giggles and jokes and two darkly fumbling figures flicker in torchlight, trying to put matches to touch-paper. Happy new year! Time to greet new opportunities, make a fresh start, shoot for the stars! And I’m just old, brown, badly nourished (apart from tonight’s ox bones) and terribly uncertain. Will our closeness in bed see me and Kev through? Or, once the rocket’s gone up, is there nowhere for the charred remains of a relationship to go except into a bucket of cold water?

    The Gates rocket crackles a bit, spits, vacates its position in the middle of the lawn with a breathtaking amount of horizontal velocity, skims the garden wall, crosses the road and sails like a blue-flamed exocet into the shadowy portals of the property opposite. While hands get pressed to faces and breath is sucked, I raise my glass. Here’s to shooting off in a completely unexpected direction! Here’s to taking people’s breath away! And, oh yes, here’s to another night under the candy-striped fucking duvet.

That Night - Kev spends the night trying to play mind games with me and failing. It all kicks off with him saying it’s difficult for him to switch off his ‘feelings’ and that he doesn’t think he’ll be sorted out this time next year. This leaves me musing to myself (during the sleepless hours we call night-time) that he hasn’t seemed to find it difficult to turn off ten years of feelings in order to sleep with someone else.

     Eventually (round about 4am), I find myself phrasing a question on the issue.
“Kev?”
“Uh?”
“You know you say that you love me?”
“Yes.” Pause. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Well, possibly not. Can it be true that someone can do what you did while professing to love their partner?”
     He’s quiet for a long moment, thinking, sweating, thinking some more.
     “I suppose you could say that maybe, right at the beginning there, when it happened, I sort of lost sight of the fact that I love you.”
“You lost sight?”
“Yes.”
“And have you got your sight back now?”
“Yes. But I can’t undo what’s been done. I’d like to – I wish I’d never done it – but I can’t.”
“You’re an arse.”
“I know.”
     Here the silence lasts approximately fifteen minutes. We lie stiff as ironing boards about a foot apart the whole time. Then: “But how does that work? How could you go on having sex with her, sneaking about behind my back, if you loved me?”

     He emits one of his signature sighs. “I dunno. My brain just… I dunno. But I do love you. I’ve always loved you, even when I was doing what I did…”

     It’s the middle of the night and I’ve had too much red wine along with probably one too many deep fried Mars Bars. I can’t easily tell whether sleep deprivation, stress, a lethal concoction of fat and sugar and copious quantities of alcohol are making me overly pessimistic or just ruthlessly logical, but I rather think the latter.

  
“You know Kev, I have to tell you, that doesn’t sound like love to me. It sounds a bit like, well, the rationale of the abuser. Hit a dog then stroke it, hit it then stroke it. I find it a bit disturbing.”

     “Then I don’t know what to say to you. I’ve told you, it all just felt like love to me.”
Pause.
“Kev, am I in an abusive relationship?”
 “I don’t think so but, at the end of the day, you’re the only one who can decide that. Listen Lizzie, I’m gonna have to stop talking about this right now, it really messes up my guts! And I can’t roll over there to cuddle you – you wouldn’t thank me for it. Haven’t stopped farting since we came to bed.”

     “It’s what happens when you eat Mars bars with batter on.”

     So is it not abusive then, to tell someone you love them whilst harbouring lustful inclinations towards someone else which you’re fully prepared to act upon in a deceitful and manipulative manner? Surely it is. Surely there’s no way he can disagree with me on that one? Unless he really is mixed up, of course. Unless, somewhere along the line, he got a powerful sense that conducting one’s relationships in such a manner was acceptable. Can this have happened? And, if so, does Kev really think he can recruit me to that (warped) point of view? Here, in the ‘alternative’ heart of the Gates’s family, can I retain my own perspective and not find myself outcast? And if I am outcast for my counter-alternative beliefs, will I be disappointed, or just enormously relieved?  

Next Morning (New Year’s Day) – Staring in the bathroom mirror at the crack of eleven thirty. The physical effects of Kev’s nightime evasions are all too apparent – gaunt cheeks, one eye looking like it might be inflamed, hair turning flat on top with stress-grease. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I have never suffered from greasy hair in my life! I was always fly-away! Can this be borne? Can I really allow any man to turn my hair greasy with first degree dishonesty and the slimy twists and turns he thinks will make me accept an on-going relationship with him despite the obvious shortcomings of his character?

     I enter the kitchen, round – shouldered and puffy-eyed, wearing a washed out cream sweater with over-long sleeves and very baggy cords, and feeling like an old dog shambling out of its basket towards its food bowl.

     After allowing me time to seat and compose myself, Trisha offers some healthy sugar-free muesli (probably a good idea given my lack of condition). Youngest is at the piano approximating the James Bond theme in a very low register using mainly black keys and the pain behind my eyes is almost unbearable. Almost everyone has gone for a walk - except for one guest who’s retired to bed with an illness (possibly feigned), and our hosts, who sit calmly at their kitchen table, freshly laundered, beautiful and blameless.

     The three of us sit around the circular table with spotlights beaming down like contestants in some twisted game show. But there’s no real contest. My life’s latest turn has taken its toll. The things that trouble me are wrinkling my face, destroying my peace of mind and making my joie de vive retract like a frightened snail. I am the weakest link.

   
“He says it’s over with her, he says he wants to stay, he says he loves me,” I tell them, past the chopped date sticking to the roof of my mouth. “But how do I know whether I can believe him? I want a normal life – a life where I can go out to work and not have to worry where he is! Maybe you understand better than I do how this works? If it’s over, why doesn’t he tell her to stop texting him, or get a new number or throw the phone in the bloody Firth?”
     Trisha does her best. “Is he texting back?”
“He says not.”
 “Well then I think she’ll just give up after a while, won’t she?”
 “I think she says things about me – bad things.”
 “That ought to work in your favour. I’m sure it will.”
  I understand what she’s trying to say to me but the trouble is, I don’t feel this should be happening to me at all. If he wants me, doesn’t he have to stand up for me? You can’t tell someone you love them and then lie about the fact you’re having a competing relationship with someone else. Can you?

     Sipping Trish’s particularly good Yorkshire Blend, I eventually pluck up the courage to hone my enquiries.

     “So how do you get over something like this?” I ask bluntly. “How did you two do it? How do you get over the hurt and the lies and the betrayal?”

     Neil leans back in his chair, closes his newspaper, lowers his heavily-lidded eyes and says something so unexpected it causes me to choke on my rolled oats.

     “You know, there are different reasons people lie,” he says sagely. “Sometimes we lie to protect the people we love, to prevent them getting hurt.”

        Whilst I attempt to clear my throat, memories present themselves like fanned playing cards – telling a friend she looked good in a pair of jeans just a shade too tight (because she was worried about her weight), telling Youngest his Lego building was just as good as his brother’s (because he looked so discouraged), not telling Kev he hadn’t given me an orgasm in weeks (because he was tired and overworked and he’d just un-clogged the drains). Somehow none of it comes close to what Kev’s been doing and the kind of lies he’s had to tell. A sudden pain in the region of my heart (unrelated to muesli ingestion) tells me none of this is right. Can Neil Gates really be trying to justify his son’s behaviour? Excuse it? I don’t have time to answer myself. Having stopped me in my tracks, he now delivers a single blow to my chin and fells me to the ground.  

   “You know Lizzie, it is possible to love more than one person in your life. Think about polygamous marriage for instance…”

     I stare at him and carry on staring, stress-grease pouring out of my sebaceous glands. My eyes would be like saucers if they weren’t so sleep deprived. Polygamous marriage? Isn’t that known these days as female exploitation? Isn’t it illegal in every civilized country? Sure, it’s possible to love more than one person – but not simultaneously? And what about platonic love? You can get and give love from as many friends as you like, as long as you’re not having sex with them. Do I look like someone who will nod my head at him and say: “Too right, Neil! You guys are just meant to have tons of women, all living in a big herd, looking forward to a pork-scratching’s worth of your ‘love’ when and if the mood is upon you…”?

     I swallow my shock and disappointment along with an under-masticated mouthful of my breakfast and start to cough. I had thought an alternative way of love would be something that tried to transcend marriage, just like I had tried to by not wanting to repeat my past mistake and marry Kev. But this is not like that. It’s not like that at all. Looking over at Neil Gates, and whether he intended it or not, it’s suddenly possible to see old fashioned, entrenched male chauvinism, a lack of respect for women as people and sexual incontinence disguised as a different kind of ‘loving’.

     “So what happens if I meet a really nice guy who listens to my story, calls Kev the worst kind of bastard and offers to make me happy?” I ask.

     Neil starts to say something but Trisha speaks over the top of him.

     “Just keep it quiet,” she says firmly. “Keep it quiet, and keep it away from the children…”

 Can Lizzie halt her unwilling descent into the sordid regions of the 'free love' universe?
Are one's principles worth hanging onto if they mean you lose your family?
Would a plateful of bacon and eggs with people banging the table and shouting 'sling him out!' do her more good?
You might get a handle on some answers if you tackle chapter 12...