Chapter 14
In which Kev's boats get burned leaving him without so much as a cheap, ineffective life-jacket to stay float with, while Lizzie takes the relationship helm. Eldest returns home to sort mum out and Lizzie, turning everything over in her mind like she is mentally kneading stubborn dough, frightens herself about a future shared with the kind of guy who can dump his latest flame by text message...
The journey home seems to take a lot longer than 35 minutes. Youngest is at an age where he enjoys honing his, as yet limited, conversational skills by unfolding his thoughts in the kind of long-winded manner that tends to paralyze the adult brain. He particularly likes to do this in the car which is why we keep a portable CD player and headphones on standby. Today, unfortunately, the CD player’s batteries are missing, probably removed to make up for a mysterious deficit which has developed in one of the remote controlled quad bikes. Mum and dad then, can’t have a conversation themselves, especially on the subject uppermost in both their minds. Dad is red-faced and traumatized and mum’s skeletal form is shrunk silently inside her sheepskin. I can tell Kev’s mind is only half on the road. It occurs to me I could really push it and tell him he shouldn’t be driving in this state, but I really don’t think I’d get a laugh. Not now. Not when he’s facing having to prove himself a liar to yet another woman.
When we finally pull up on the drive, youngest leaps out of the car in pursuit of Byron (who has registered his disgust at not having been fed this morning by gratuitously rupturing a bin bag and sicking up a fur-ball on the doorstep) and Kev announces: “I’m going to send her a text. I’ll need a few minutes to put something together and I think I need a crap before I do anything.”
Now I’m not made of stone. Yes, I am (justifiably) angry at the woman, I’m hurt and forgiveness won’t come easily if it comes at all, ever. But well, we’re all human aren’t we? We all get embroiled in situations which might turn out badly and we all rely on one another to at least understand. I can’t quite believe what Kev’s proposing to do. “What? You’re going to dump her by text?”
“What about the phone? You ought to at least speak to her on the phone, surely?”
“Lizzie, she’d just go on and on till my head exploded! Give me twenty minutes then you can see what I’m gonna send her…”
Standing numbly in the kitchen, burning Youngest a Tuna Mayo toastie, it dawns on me that I have to be at the airport in an hour to collect Eldest. I suppose it is the ‘right’ thing he’s doing up there but I can’t help feeling angry at him on a new, and slightly surprising, front. I don’t want to see the sick u r dumped message! Flicking Youngest his charred lunch onto a Peter Rabbit plate, I dash upstairs and knock gently on the bedroom door. “Kev, you ok?”
A big sniff followed by the suggestion of breathing difficulties. “Yeah! Yeah, but I haven’t finished yet…”
“Look, it’s ok. I don’t need to see it. I have to go to Dalcross now anyway – almost forgot. I’ll see you in a couple of hours, I guess.”
Shaking my head at Youngest’s baffling request for seconds of Charred Thing, I prod him into the car. He’ll have to come with me, it just wouldn’t be safe to leave him at home. Kev’s mind is totally preoccupied with the potentially ugly denouement of an extra marital shag-fest. He won’t know where the hell is for some weeks yet. Dalcross Airport 12.55 pm – We meet Eldest at the baggage carousel. He’s struggling with the adjustment he has to make in order to flit between families like this, but he’s handling things well. The stage curtain he raises and lowers on his other life is slowly descending and Youngest and I are able to help with supportive hugs. “So how’s your dad?” I ask, while we watch the conveyor circulate. “And Amanda?” (the divorcee the ex Mr Lizzie Burns fell for on the production line) “The little ones?” (ex and Amanda’s children) “Well, Jake was a laugh but Millie’s still too small to do anything much…” “Uncle James?” (ex’s older brother who I always had more in common with) “Did you see the cousins?” (uncle James and auntie Helen’s children) “Only Charlotte. Imogen’s gone skiing. They’re both well though.” We heave two holdalls loaded with Christmas presents off the conveyor and Youngest, used to the fact that his older brother returns from Christmas down south with considerable amounts of top quality booty, let’s out a yelp of delight. Eldest allows himself to share the excitement and yelps too. I guess it’s easier for him. He’s been in the vivacious company of Other Young People on the plane and this always helps him over the post-visitation blues. I, on the other hand, have not enjoyed any such mood-enhancing experience and am standing at the baggage carousel bitter and twisted. I don’t believe a damn word of it! The ex and his lovely partner Amanda along with their two small children are deliriously happy, are they? Comfortable with their life choices, thriving, blossoming, seeing colours in their surroundings they never saw before? I think bloody not! I can’t believe any of these relationships begun in the shadow of unfinished business stand a cat-in-hell’s chance of surviving the average ten years before meltdown! Just listen to me! What am I if not a case in point? From hopeless long-haired-and-pregnant-and-living-in-a-house-with-no-drains-for-the-sake-of-the-man-I-love romantic to twisted cynic in the space of one completely crappy Christmas! Eldest knows we should, at this point, be heading for the revolving plate glass doors which are the exit. Instead, I am standing inappropriately close to a very elderly gentleman wearing a tam-o-shanter with a feather in it while he makes repeated, futile attempts to reach a rucksack from the belt as it flies past him, and I am staring blankly into space. “What? Oh, I’m fine! Just like Amanda and Auntie Helen and Jake and Millie and everybody else…” He expertly unfurls one of his incredibly long arms, reaches right over the vast suitcase impeding our elderly, tartan-clad friend’s retrieval of his luggage and plucks the rucksack off the conveyor. “So how’s it going with Kev?” he asks, while the elderly gent nods his thanks, takes his bag and totters away in the direction of the gents. “Great! Yes, great. Would you mind terribly if he was gone when you got back?” “Thanks. Thanks for that. D’you want me to catch one of your bags?” My eldest son and I are truly, mysteriously, 100 percent compatible. We’d get on like a house on fire whether we were mother and son, brother and sister, teacher and pupil, friends, colleagues or politically divergent statesmen. When things get rough between us, we get angry, say what we feel (sometimes very sharply), shout if moved to, and then we are overwhelmed by remorse at having behaved that way, so we apologize, explain and (best of all) laugh about what has transpired. This level of relaxed compatibility between two people is, I think, rare. It is especially rare between couples. What this means is that most of us dance quite happily hand in hand while the sex is new and exciting and then we dance on a while, enjoying the fruits of our combined efforts – comfortable home, reasonable income, new mutual friends, holidays, socializing as a pair etc. Yes, it is entirely possible for a couple to enjoy a high level of compatibility whilst at play but to find that this completely evaporates under pressure. And in any ordinary life there are certainly as many pressures as there are easily-picked fruits. What to spend the reasonable income on? How to deal with one another’s ‘other’ family (let’s be honest, sometimes there are several of these)? Who gets to do the most chores around the comfortable home and why? And then there’s the big one. The Mother of All Stresses. The Back-Breaker. Children. Even one will do it. By itself, an infant, before it can speak. Can a woman transform herself from an individual with interests, personal potential, friends, standards, style and a sex drive into the life support system of a twenty-four hour attention-demanding infant without feeling the loss of her identity so deeply she wants to bounce herself off the walls? Of course, we suppress it. We are proud and grateful that little Bonzo has all his fingers and toes and enough upstairs to require our full attention throughout his childhood, youth and, let’s face it, probably beyond (though we can hand him over to the professionals eventually, if necessary). In exchange for the suppression of our real feelings we expect the world to treat us with respect if not downright reverence. And the men, our husbands, partners, mates must pretend we have theirs. But we don’t. They’re just glad we have to do the crappy work. They’ll tell us we look great in washed out t-shirts and baby sick, that the extra flab left over from pregnancy we can’t shift is just what all mummies have, that they understand perfectly why our sex-drive has plummeted (it really doesn’t bother them) and that seeing a baby force itself out of our horribly distended birth canal while we screamed in agony hasn’t scarred them so badly they may never be able to shake the mental picture. But they lie – it’s what’s expected of them. And then the thing responsible for all the undesirable changes goes on to totally dominate every aspect of existence till our behaviour is altered as though we’ve had microchips inserted in our brains. And how compatible do we look now? Don’t the small things we gave up to be together look like major, unsustainable sacrifices? Why doesn’t Saturday shopping with the girls happen anymore? Why shouldn’t he spend all weekend building a land-yacht if he wants to? Why, in the prime of life, are we tied to the unbreakable schedule required by responsible parenting and wage-earning? And whose fault is it anyway? Is it any wonder we all start to hanker after an experience to make us feel real again? And if we manage to do the decent thing, demonstrate the necessary resilience and make a go of family life, are we just deferring the inevitable crisis, damming ourselves up on the inside so that when something finally happens to initiate a crack up, the pressures take the walls down catastrophically, in a oner? Jesus! I’m doing 75 on approach to the Tesco roundabout. Eldest sucks in his breath sharply and I apply the brakes with more than a hint of panic. “How have your dreams been lately, mum?” he asks, in a voice a little higher pitched than usual, as we curl round the roundabout straddling two lanes at once, listening helplessly to Youngest’s pitiful efforts to fight off the luggage mountain collapsing in his direction. “Have you managed to shake off the being held back feeling?” I wait till we’re toddling along at a respectable (not to mention controllable) 60 in the direction of the bridge before replying with a fudge. “It’s difficult you know? If you know people depend on you, even if they seem like they don’t, then…” “Mum, shut up!” This is shocking. Eldest hardly ever loses his patience. His flight must have been taxing. “You need to just do something! Get on a plane and go, or get a different job, or buy your own house or something! Go on!” I laugh weakly in his direction though I know fine well he isn’t trying to be funny. Unable to think of anything else to say for the rest of the journey, my mind goes into overdrive. Fifteen years ago when he was white and gangly I held this person in my arms and knew that for the foreseeable future his needs would come a long way before my own. Today, right now, he’s sitting next to me telling me I have to move on. Not only that, he’s telling me that perhaps my current relationship is not doing me any good. He knows who I am, who I really am, and this causes my past life to flash before my eyes. Plainly, it’s in the twenties it all starts to go wrong. As though something tells us growing up is about becoming ‘respectable’. A metaphorical lightening bolt strikes the car as we take yet another roundabout quite badly and I realize without a shadow of a doubt that I probably don’t do respectable very well. Married at 22. Started baking. Volunteered for the Gloucestershire Trust for Nature Conservation. Went to church. Drove a Saab. Had a baby and got on the playgroup Committee. IT NEARLY DROVE ME INSANE. There’s a completely different side to me, one that needs to be given some room. Exiting the Munlochy junction I bang the steering wheel with my fist and shout ‘fuck it all!’ Eldest raises an eyebrow and smiles. “Now that’s better!” he says. Kev’s outside loading logs into the back of the pick-up when we roll up. He looks a bit calmer. In my absence, he’s moved both his bowels and his life on a bit, the weather’s warmed very slightly, and light drizzle is falling on the array of vehicles and heavy machinery in the yard. The boys rush inside to look over Eldest’s Christmas haul. I take a deep breath and walk over to Kev feeling awkward, as though I’m intruding into his private life. He doesn’t smile when he sees me, but stops what he’s doing and fishes out his phone. “I just thought in the interests of being completely honest with each other from now on…” “Well that’s good – thanks. But I don’t think I need to see it. As long as you’ve burned your boats.” “I have. Do you want to see what she replied?” This is different. I’m torn. It doesn’t feel, well, appropriate for some reason. But then hang on - I really ought to have a look at this in case a situation has developed which might result in my being gunned down in the Eastgate Centre car park. After a moment’s hesitation, I take the phone. It seems she’s sent several texts. Heart begins to race, mind flashing back to the telephone conversation from hell. Click on first text she sent in response to Kev’s finishing it. “I’m devastated,” it reads. “Goodbye forever.” No mention of any shock at being so impersonally dumped (which I find surprising) and forever doesn’t last very long – this message is followed by several more getting progressively lengthier. She refers to me as ‘L’ and suggests Kev ignore my pleas that I can’t manage on my own because she knows I can. I stop reading at a line which says “The phone call I had with L was all good.” “Did you tell her you were breaking it off because I couldn’t manage without you?” I ask, affronted, as I hand him back the phone. “Because you know, I can manage without you. It just isn’t a problem.” He’s quick to defend himself. “No! No, I didn’t tell her that! She’s just in denial or something…” “She says the phone call she had with me was ‘good’? How do you maintain any tender feelings for someone who had a good time trying to tear me apart?” “I told her I didn’t like that! Look, I think it was a turning point Lizzie. She showed her true colours…” Now’s not the right time to remind him he’s also shown me his. Instead I move towards him and put my arms around his soggy-fleeced form. “She’ll stop texting, won’t she Kev? Even bad things being batted back and forth – that’s still a relationship of sorts. It has to stop.” “Well I don’t intend to reply so yes, I guess she’ll get bored pretty soon and that’ll be it. But where does that leave us?” I have to think for a moment, then it comes to me. “If it’s completely over, maybe we can start again? Try and get to know each other again, you know? Just begin exploring the possibilities for a long-term relationship?” He nods thoughtfully. “I think I know what you mean.” The drizzle’s turned to steady rain and we’re standing in it holding onto each other like there’s absolutely nowhere else to be. “Lizzie?” he asks. “If you were starting again, would you really pick me?” Maybe he can’t see it, but for me, the answer’s obvious. “Well, the thing is, I suppose I’d end up picking someone very similar to you,” I tell him, trying to look up into his face but getting rain in my eyes. “Except, of course, he’d be over his mid-life crisis. He’d tell me his sorry tale but I’d be able to love him in spite of everything because it wasn’t actually me he hurt. I would trust he’d learned his lesson, or gotten to know himself better or something and that, now, he wanted a secure long-term relationship with someone who could offer him the same.” He interrupts, pushing his face into my neck. “Don’t go finding anybody else, will you?” he asks urgently. “You’ve been incredible.” “I know it sounds unfair but I couldn’t cope with it. I’ve done it but you can’t.” “Well I think that’s alright because I don’t want to do it and I can’t do things just to cause you grief or try and boost my self image.” It’s true what I tell him. But at the same time, having to make a reply such as this (and I do have to make a reply such as this) throws into sharp relief the next hurdle on the infidelity assault course. He went out behind my back to sleep with someone else. He talked down our life together to keep his conscience at bay and to keep her coming back for more. He brought her to our home when I was away and demonstrated such lack of respect himself that, when she finally talked to me on the phone, she saw no necessity to offer any herself. He called me brave and went out to sleep with her again, bringing me back yoghurt as a consolation prize. We had a love story and he trashed it because he was bored and middle age was staring him in the face in a way that I wasn’t. Now he’s asked my forgiveness and burnt his boats with her. How vulnerable must he feel? I’ve every right to do to him what he did to me and, more than that, my self-esteem has taken such a battering that an affair might even be a really good idea. How can he possibly be to me what he was before all this? And does that inevitably mean there’s room for someone else to come into my life, someone more reliable, someone fresh and promising? His phone trills again with another in-coming text message. Will we ever be able to trust each other again? I manage to look him sadly in the eyes despite the rain. I know I can try but I can’t know how successful I’ll be – especially while there’s still another woman in his pocket determined to claw back her own feelings of self-worth by taking me down. Kev delves deeper into his mid-life crisis while Lizzie is troubled by the appearance of nipple-free Sindy - are they breaking up, breaking away, breaking down or just breaking the mould? Hazard a guess of your own after Chapter 15...
Maybe it’s hardly surprising then, that because we’re all feeling the same, those of us who’ve cracked turn to one another to let off steam in the most obvious way a man and woman can?
