Chapter 12

   

The one in which Neil Gates' man-centred philosophy of relationships forces Lizzie to contemplate her own version of polygamy...

 Driving Home - When I’d first got to know him I’d seen Kev’s hippyish credentials as colourful, amusing and presumably healthy. He’d liked outdoor work, the natural world, herbal remedies and people who were themselves. He’d hated dressing smart, didn’t know how to use a menu, didn’t drink much, didn’t smoke and could make love upwards of six times a night. Sex was a sacred thing, he would say, it was about feeling such a bond with someone that you just wanted to get as close as you could get and stay there. He’d seemed to be that elusive thing all we women are looking for - a pure, real man who wanted a pure, real woman to grow old alongside away from the messy superficiality of conventional society. The fact that he’d been married before didn’t seem to matter. He’d been young and foolish, he’d said, she’d been pregnant, there was pressure from his parents to ‘Do The Right Thing’ and it had been a mistake from the first – he was ill with totally-doing-the-wrong-thing stress on his wedding day. All this had been easy to believe. Kev had come across as soft hearted and unwilling to disappoint (particularly his parents). Add to this the fact that he’d been unwisely wed, and it was possible to see myself as the long-awaited great love of his life. The one that would last. Yes, I would say that our early relationship had felt like that longed-for meeting of souls which your heart tells you means you’re home and dry.

         Only slowly had he begun to describe what he knew of his parents’ relationship history and how it had shaped his family life. It had worried me a little – I had always considered an ‘open’ marriage to be a way of hanging on to scarce marital resources whilst getting third parties to supply one’s physical wants without feeling guilty. As far as I knew, it always began with a lack of attachment to one another and ended in disaster. I’d shared my feelings on the subject with Kev on several occasions and his reply had always been “Don’t worry, I’m nothing like my dad.” Could he have said the opposite of what he really meant so as not to dispel the fog?  Or had he tried very hard to be the man for me but, on the threshold of the second half of his life, lapsed, all his default settings re-asserting themselves, the template for manhood exemplified by his most influential role model causing his sense of identity to flicker like a weak satellite tv signal?

     I am completely mentally absent all the way home. Kev keeps asking “are you ok?” as if that kind of inquiry makes any sense at all. Of course I’m bloody not. He may have been genuinely trying to be helpful, but Neil Gates has severely rattled my cage.

     Now and again I steal a sideways glance at Kev, re-capping to myself some of the vast quantity of bilge he’s come out with lately and observing silently ‘that’s his father in him’. Fear prickles at the back of my neck. Have they talked, at length, about this situation? And, if they have, what, exactly, have they said? Does my Kev really believe his parents’morally shaky philosophy of personal validation through multiple sexual entaglements? And does he believe there’s something deficient about me that I reject it? Does Neil Gates believe himself? Does he really think that events such as this are natural way-points on my road to relationship wisdom, or did he read that look on my face this morning and kick himself for having reached so far in completely the wrong direction in an effort to help me?

    Understandably, the atmosphere between us once we reach home is one of renewed tension. Youngest, slowly becoming immune to long periods of being more-or-less ignored, fixes himself a glass of orange juice and retires to his room to wreck an Apple Mac leaving     Kev and I to stare confrontationally at each other across the kitchen table.

     “Sometimes you look at me as if you think I’m a monster,” he says, accusingly.
     I snort. “Yes! Sometimes that’s the way I feel about you.”
    “I’m sorry,” he says, but the words are sharp and dry.
 “So am I,” I tell him.
     The phone rings. It seems like he’s going to ignore it.
“We should answer it - could be customers,” I say. “Remember them?”
 The business has to be nose-diving, what with Kev suspecting he’s diabetic and only spending on work whatever time he has left over after he’s related to his bit on the side, and all the paperwork still undone because the Company Secretary is wrestling post-infidelity devastation. 

     He disappears into the whitewashed cell we call the office to take the call.

     The office has always been a bit of a sanctuary for Kev. Along with the phone, the computer, printer, fax machine etc, his guitar lives there and all those things he associates with his youth: favourite outdoor clothing, back catalogues relating to diving, driving, tree-surgery, ski-ing, vehicle-maintenance and motor bikes,  his tools, fixings, vast collection of electronic components, maps, tool bags, extension leads, tyres, empty boxes boasting ‘Safety Eyewear’ and ‘Head Protection Technology’, CDs, butane gas cylinders and multi-purpose, high-performance grease. It’s a difficult place for me to work in. Like a child trying to keep everyone out of his bedroom, he resents any presence other than his own. My remit has been to do an increasingly broad spectrum of supportive business tasks (and make a good job of doing them) without disrupting the character and ambience of his space. I once startled the cat (asleep on the office chair) with the vacuum cleaner. It leaped into the air in terror, landed on the computer keyboard and broke off the W. The fallout lasted for days and got to the point where I thought I might have to knock the poor animal on the head, skin him and nail his pelt to the office door to put things right. In the end it hadn’t come to that. At the eleventh hour Eldest had cleaned the Audi using a kitchen scourer and suddenly Byron was out of the woods. I had put such stresses down to too much work and the high-level demands of family life – now, I wonder, were they more than that? Did I unwittingly fail to manage the household/children/cat/cleaning equipment to such a degree that I became a liability in his proximity? 

He’s not gone long.

     “Who was it?” I ask.     “My dad.”

     “Yeah? What did he want?”
     “He says I’m not to bring you over looking like that again. He was shocked at the state of your eyes.”

     “So was I. Anything else?”
     “Er, let me see – yeah. He recommends Tantric sex and he thinks we should get married.”

     “In that order or…?”

     “God knows.”

      “Did he have a lot to drink last night?”
      “Dunno. Wish I’d had a bit more. You know, I sometimes look at the wine bottles on top of the cupboard there and think I could become an alcoholic. I sometimes fancy a drink first thing in the morning. Did you know that Lizzie?”
  “You’ve said it before but I always thought you were joking. I thought you didn’t drink much because you didn’t like it not because you were afraid it would take control of you. So what makes you want to drink even though you don’t really like it?”

     He shrugs. “Stress.”
    “What kind of stress? Work or something else?”
    “Work, definitely, but maybe there is something else, deep down. I don’t know what it is, I’m sorry.”
     “I feel stress, you know. Lately I’ve felt a tremendous amount of stress but I’ve never felt like leaning on alcohol. Or chocolate, or cigarettes, or caffeine, or Ibuprofen…” Some kind of courage-wave sweeps over me and I decide to be paint-strippingly honest. “ Kev, do you think you have problems? I only ask because…because a part of me feels that, if you left, a huge amount of stress would leave with you but that you’d feel more strung out than ever.”

   

He covers his face with his hands and swears.

     “Yes, it’s me. I’ve got some kind of problem, haven’t I? D’you think I’m going mad, Lizzie? I’m so mixed up.”
     “I don’t know for sure Kev. I honestly don’t know. I’ve begun to wonder whether I’m going mad – you know, whether I just completely misunderstand life and that this has all come about because I’ve been wandering about with my eyes closed. Is that the same as being mixed up?”

     He brightens, smiles. “I don’t know…” he says.
    “Well here’s something I do know!” I tell him. “I know I still love you. We’re going to have to get straightened out Kev.”
    “I’ll have to go back and see her.”
    Was that what I meant? No. I don’t think it was. “It’s not over, then?” I ask. “It’s not really over?”
    “No, I don’t think so… I’m sorry Lizzie. I’m so sorry.” He’s just an arm’s length away across the table but suddenly it feels like miles.
   “She still texts you all the time, doesn’t she?”  
   “Yes.”
   “What kind of texts?”
   He doesn’t reply so I prompt. “Friendly? Angry? Dirty? What?”
  He sighs. “Desperate.” and I can hear the guilt in his voice.
   Does he need to feel guilty? Guilt isn’t easy either to live with or cast off. Is he not just making this difficult for himself? Even if we recover from the infidelity, can he recover from the guilt?  

The situation exasperates me to the point where I could run into the middle of the road and stand there screaming till flattened by a juggernaut.

  

“She’s desperate,” I repeat the word flatly. “Well, you don’t say. Getting divorced, facing having to move out of the marital home, having to get a job to support herself and her daughter, having to learn to live alone after all those years of being part of a couple. I’m not surprised she harbours feelings of desperation, but for Goodness Sake Kev! She must have looked at you and seen a complete push-over! A big, stupid bloke she could make do anything if she offered him her nether-regions, claimed she’d never had a good shag in her life (“I’m forty but you see I’m still practically a virgin…”) and then told him he was magnificent.!”

     “Look, look I know. You’re probably right. It just doesn’t make a difference.”

     “Does it not make a difference if you’re just being used? If you’re going to lose everything you’ve lived and worked for for the last ten years? You mean you don’t care to work out whether or not this thing you’ve got going on is worth the losing of everything else significant in your life? Because, if you push it, you know that’s where it will lead.”

    He pushes his chair back from the table, stands, walks over to the breakfast bar and leans on it on his elbows. His head is turned away from me.

     “I don’t know!” he says, talking to the garden beyond the window. “It’s like an addiction. Forbidden fruit or something! I just don’t know. Lizzie.”

     “Well nevermind about what you don’t know – let me ask you again, do you know that you love me Kev? I mean properly love me?”

     He turns to face me across the kitchen and yes, it’s hard not to see him as some dysfunctional monster of a man, part unrepentant woman-abuser, part self-obsessed drama queen.

    “You know I do!” he says, affronted.

"No, no I don’t! How do I know it’s not the other kind of love Juliet was talking about? The kind you might feel for your granny?”

     “I don’t shag my granny, do I? Look Lizzie, I just have to find a way to put her out of my mind that’s all! I know there’s no future in it and I know you love me and I certainly love you but I have all this stuff I need to put away in a box and it’s not easy…”

     So tired and so drained and so locked in a struggle with his belief that infidelity is a ‘normal’ part of a relationship, I can’t summon the necessary nervous energy to explain to him that this stuff is not my problem. If he loves me enough to want to stay and make things right, his struggles he ought to keep to himself. What I need to know are important little things like can I trust him again? Has he really broken off with her? Is here where he wants to be? Do we still have a viable future together?    

     Half of me burns to react from the gut, with tears and shouting and an unleashing of anger, the other half is looking down from above, treating this like it’s any other business problem, complex, challenging but ultimately manageable. It’s almost as if some quietly blossoming confidence takes me over and repeats gently but firmly that my position is one I can hold if I only keep my head.

      I subside slightly in my chair and roll my sunken eyes at the ceiling.

     “So what are we saying?” I sigh. “You think you can get your ‘stuff’ put in a box if you go talk to her again?”

    “You’ve said that already. Don’t turn into a stuck record Kev.”

     “Well, I’m warning you. I’ve had a bloody awful Christmas thanks and I’m very, very near the edge. This has got to be it. Go see her and settle it! Tell her to stop texting you or we are over – you know that don’t you?”

     He nods silently. “I’m so sorry Lizzie,” he repeats. “I don’t know what happened to us…”

     I don’t say anything, except to myself. Nothing very unusual happened to us. It happens to everyone. After ten years you get tired of putting the effort in. If, at that point, you meet a woman you’re attracted to who’s so desperate for a future she’ll bend over backwards, forwards or sideways, with one leg in the air or both knees straddling the ceramic hob, just to nail herself a man, what’s going to happen?

   Seems my door is always open - and Kev’s always walking out of it with a tear-stained face. I shut it behind him smiling weakly and, as he drives away, feel an enormous weight lift from my shoulders. It could be like this all the time. I could off-load that weight completely, for good, give it to her to haul about with her and get eye bags. If I could only get that horrible, spiky, nagging thing out of my head that insists I carry on and unpick this situation. I have to know, I really have to know. Has it all gone? And, if so, at what point did that happen? Is it her fault, mine, our parents, the television’s, society’s or the fault of Western Capitalism for polluting our drinking water with hormones? Do I really have to deliver Youngest the worst news in the world? Does the business really have to be reduced to a pile of used notes and divvied up? Does a future exist in which he doesn’t eat my pie?

     I am now lying face down on grubby laminate flooring talking to myself. “I’m crazy! I’m out of my mind! I need help!” but despair is not permitted to mothers. Youngest tries to run me over with a remote-controlled Aston Martin.

 

Ten Minutes Later -  I am drinking tea with lemon whilst recovering my equilibrium. Youngest wants me to lie down again. He has other vehicles he wants to try out.

Two Hours Later – It feels like it’s been dark for hours. Scratching the itchy stubble on my  pubes, I climb the stairs. He’ll do me the courtesy of coming home sooner rather than later, I know he will. He’d damn well better! Still, I intend to go to bed early. We are scheduled for a second bout of counselling in the morning and, in the afternoon, Eldest (who’ll bring his own issues back with him) will need collecting from the airport.

     Youngest agrees to a bath in Per Una bath foam and I spend a good half- hour tidying the bedroom -  changing bedding, polishing maple drawers, looking out old Mother’s Day cards (‘To A Mum No Words Can Explain…’) and generally making the place my own. I am a little disturbed at how good this feels!  

     Youngest is finally tucked in at 10pm. He’s been an absolute angel, and now smells like one too, so I treat him to a pre-sleep horror story, horror being his favourite genre. This one involves a boy who sees his own scarred face in a mirror, premonition of an up-coming train crash in which he will be horribly killed. Suitably silenced by fear, he goes out like a light and, hoping for the same, I take three herbal sleeping pills before climbing into a freshly made bed.

     He’s only been gone a relatively short while but my feelings are already settling like the snow outside. The faint whiff of the inner peace I might enjoy without him in my life is a heady experience. No looking at him and wondering what’s on his mind, no constant reminder that he respected our relationship so little he was able to take off all those very boring clothes and put his naked body next to someone else’s. Does he know how far away I move from him when he goes to her like this? Probably not. Most likely his early family experiences tell him that this will always be home, there’ll always be love here, he can always come back. It sounds beautiful in a way, and parts of it may even be true, but for it to become a reality, he will have to prove he knows the difference between the transgressions it is possible to go out into the world and commit, and be forgiven, and the transgressions which, quite rightly, completely finish relationships. I think I may have to help him work this one out.

     Turn over and bury my hot face in the pillow. They’ve got a lot to answer for those Gates. Probably, at the time, they thought they were the most radical and enlightened parents ever born. They were young. They had no idea how much children assimilate just from being around their parents’ lives. And here am I wanting serenity, peace of mind, support, loyalty and trust out of my relationship with their emotionally confused son. The roots of my hair begin to tingle as I realize these may not be the sorts of things my Kevin Gates can ever offer me. Maybe his first divorce was just the beginning of a long, dysfunctional history? Maybe I’m just chapter two?

    My pillow gets moaned into. If I really thought that were true I’d have to run a mile and I’d set out right now. After a moment, the thought actually makes me smile. Imagine it -  he gets home having finally achieved ‘closure’ to find I’ve decided to finish everything because I have absolutely no faith in his ability to pull himself together. Oh God, what a mess! Still, he’s been gone a few hours. Perhaps there’s a chance he won’t come home at all? What if I lock the back door and stick his clothes in the shed? If he does come home but his belongings are in the shed will he just take the hint and disappear again without troubling me further?

     “Don’t be ridiculous Lizzie!” I tell myself out loud. “That would be so very, very childish…”