Comfort and Joy (26 page)

‘I don’t know,’ says Sam a little bit sadly. ‘Or maybe I do. Patterns. The past. Not doing things differently. They all find
it remarkable that you and I still talk. Let’s not go there. Anyway – what about your dad?’

‘My dead dad or my live ex-step-one?’

‘Your dead one.’

‘Well, he died, as you know,’ I say, heaving a sigh. ‘Not long after I had that conversation with Kate about him last Christmas.’

‘Yes, I know
that
– I mean, where does it leave you?’

‘It leaves me being half an orphan,’ I say. ‘Which is weird. I don’t want to go on about it because it makes me feel a bit
fraudulent. It was such a strange situation – us not actually knowing each other. Obviously it would be a million times worse
if we had. But I still felt … a bit churned up. Half my DNA, you know? My genetic material. Half of what made me, gone. Never
to return. We were destined never to run towards each other in slow motion, weeping with emotion.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know. Thanks. Kate has this stuff – paperwork, something to do with probate coming through – that she’s been trying to
show me for a few weeks. But I don’t know that I have the stomach for it. Every time I start thinking about it I feel angry
and sad all at the same time.’

‘With Kate?’

‘Not so much any more. Just with things generally. With him, I suppose, for never wanting to even meet me for a drink. With
myself, for thinking it didn’t matter.’

‘Perhaps it doesn’t,’ says Robert, who’s swapped places with Pat.

‘I didn’t think it did,’ I say, ‘but I liked the idea of having my options open in case I changed my mind.’

‘Doesn’t work, at our age,’ says Robert.

‘How do you mean?’

‘We’re too old to keep our options open,’ says Robert. ‘We need to
act
.’

‘Rob! We’re in our early forties. We’re in our
prime
. What’s got into you?’

‘Yeah. Like I said, too old. We’re at the age where you seriously have to seize the day. Carpe diem and all that. People think
it’s a young person’s motto, but they’re wrong. This – now – is when people die, buses knock you over, people get ill, parents
go gaga, things go wrong …’

‘Happy Christmas,’ says Sam.

‘Yes, happy Christmas, cheery-chops,’ I say. ‘Have some more food. Have a drink. Quieten your Voice of Doom.’

‘I’m being factual. There is absolutely no point in “wait and see” or “I might do it some day” any more. As you’ve just discovered
in relation to your own dear papa.’

‘God, how depressing. Do you really think so?’

‘I really do, Clara. If I want to do something, I do it. If I don’t, I don’t. Same thing with people: if I want to see them,
I see them. If I don’t, I disappear. And I only see radiators these days – you know, people who give out heat and warmth.
Might make me a selfish cunt, but I’m much happier. No more procrastination. It’s too late.’

‘Blimey. What brought this on?’

‘Oh, the usual. I cocked up a love affair. It was my fault. I thought I’d bide my time because I wasn’t sure. And then of
course, something – or more accurately somebody – else turned up in the picture, and that was that. I know you’re going to
say it can happen at any age, but my powers of recovery aren’t what they were. Plus,’ he adds, sounding more like his usual
self, ‘I suddenly know too many ill people, and it’s freaking me out. Cancer and stuff. Headaches that turn out to be tumours.
Bits being hacked off them. Remember Rosie from our art department? She got breast cancer. She had a mastectomy. We’re not
as young as we used to be. Listen to your Uncle Robert, for he is wise.’

‘No, I am listening,’ I say. ‘I always listen when you talk like a normal person. And I suppose you’re right. Is Rosie okay?’

‘She will be in about six months’ time, I hope. But, you know – she’s our age. Couple of years younger, actually. She’d prefer
to have her own hair and her old face back.’

‘Oh God. I’m so sorry,’ I say.

‘My point is: no point in delaying anything at this stage. No
procrastination. Life’s too short. Anyway. I’ve finished now. I’m depressing myself,’ says Robert. ‘Let’s have some more wine.
What’s up with you, Clara?’

‘I’m in Marrakesh. It’s Christmas Eve. I went to buy herbal Viagra with my ex-husband earlier. He is you.’

‘How hilarious you are. I meant generally. In your little life.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I don’t really know.’

‘Do you mean “
pas devant les Sams
”?’

‘Oi,’ says Sam. ‘I’m not, like, deaf. Or an idiot.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I mean, I don’t really know. Everything’s fine. Work’s good. Children are good. You know. It’s all fine.’

‘Oh,’ says Robert. ‘I see. Has your future third husband vanished before you could drag him up the aisle? Done a runner? Met
the folks, perhaps?’

Robert and I haven’t lived together for nearly a decade, but he retains the fantastically irritating ability to read me quite
well.

‘I don’t know that, either,’ I say. ‘He hasn’t been in touch for two weeks, which seems a bit weird. I mean, it was always
an elastic and sporadic arrangement – there was no aisle, it was more –’

‘Fuck buddies,’ says Robert matter-of-factly. ‘You said on the phone.’

‘Well,’ says Sam. ‘Isn’t that nice.’

‘Well, no, it wasn’t quite fuck buddies by the end. I mean, it’s been going on for a year and a bit, on and off. It wasn’t
Aisle but it wasn’t just Fuck, either. Not strictly just Fuck.’

‘Fuck Plus,’ says Robert.

‘Yes, I suppose so. Fuck Plus Plus.’

‘Lovely,’ says Sam. ‘How
gorgeous
.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t think it was Aisle?’

‘Positive.’

‘Clara!’ says Robert. ‘Come on. If it wasn’t Aisle, why are you looking so bothered by it?’

‘It wasn’t Aisle! Why do you want me to say it was Aisle, you weirdo? No more Aisle for me, thanks. But … Maybe it was Fuck
Plus with Like Squared.’

‘You know TMI, too much information?’ says Sam. ‘Well, that. Happening right here, right now.’ He points both index fingers
at himself. ‘In this chair. Live and direct.’

‘You don’t have to listen,’ I say. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.
You
culled
me
, remember? And if you do listen, you don’t have to sit there twitching like an old nan. Go and talk to Max.’

‘Oh God, I can’t,’ says Sam. ‘Don’t make me. He’s so posh that I literally don’t understand what he’s saying. Maybe one word
in five. It’s like radio waves – you have to be English, I think, to be able to tune in.’

‘Max doesn’t need anyone to talk to,’ Robert says. ‘He just likes watching us and smiling to himself. He treats it all like
a trip to the circus. And anyway, he’s got his BlackBerry and Kate next to him – he’s fine.’

‘And don’t call me an old nan,’ says Sam. ‘Fuck’s sake, Clara.’

‘I’m sorry for you, if it was Fuck Plus with Like Squared,’ says Robert. ‘You should have seized the day. I’m never wrong.
You’ll know for next time. Pass the aubergine, would you?’

At times like these, sitting around and getting on and loving the children you have together, you sometimes wonder whether
the hassle of separation was worth it. I know: it’s an outré thought. Nobody’s supposed to think, ‘I wonder if we made a terrible
mistake’: you’re supposed to carry on instead, onwards and upwards and saying to yourself, ‘Phew, I’m glad that’s over.’ Which
I broadly do.

Not that I had much choice in the matter, separation-wise: Sam huffed out. I’m guessing, though, that he merely precipitated
the inevitable: I was feeling intolerably huffy myself by that point, and I expect I’d have huffed if he hadn’t helpfully
taken the huffing initiative (annoying, though, to be out-huffed). Was this the right decision, to huff? This is my constant
question, and I don’t mean merely in relation to Sam: is it worth putting up with stuff you really don’t go a bundle on in
exchange for a superficially easy life? Is it somehow
spoiled
to stamp your foot and say, ‘Ew, I’m really not liking it’ – is it something you’re supposed to stop doing in your twenties?
Is it folly to assume that beyond a certain point things can’t be fixed? People fix the most seemingly unfixable things, after
all – addiction, chronic illness, serial infidelity. In that context, you think maybe it’s a bit silly to huff out because
you look at the face next to yours on the pillow and think, ‘Oh. It’s you. Well, whoop-de-do.’

To me, the idea of hanging in there having a miserable time is a monstrous one, but then I can’t take my own word for it,
boringly, given that I have some difficulties with this whole kind of thing anyway. Towards the end of my relationship with
Sam, I started waking up in the night spluttering, unable to breathe, desperately gasping for air, as though I were being
choked. Sam and I both decided that I had – weirdly and out of the blue – suddenly developed asthma. I went to the doctor
– it was becoming a nightly occurrence, and debilitating – who ran tests and said, ‘No asthma here.’ I never believed I had
asthma in the first place. Call me Clara Freud and have a stroke of my beard, but I knew exactly what it was: I was metaphorically
suffocating, and my refusal to confront it in my waking life made me literally suffocate in my sleep. (To add insult to injury,
I used to have to gulp down huge, dramatic breaths of air in between chokes when it happened, so that I didn’t actually pass
out. When the choking was more or less over, I would then burp – buuuuuurp – like the burpiest freak in the history of burping.
Sexy, eh? Pure fucking sizzling, that. Marriage-mendingly hot. And because I was embarrassed by the burpage – I’ve
never gone a bundle on the companionable sharing of parp-honk bodily functions – I’d start laughing before I’d got my breath
back fully, which of course would made me choke again. One night Sam turned over and said, ‘I think the mystique’s died, babe.’
That made me laugh too, and then want to punch him. I mean,
he
was the one causing me to choke in the first place.)

I started sleeping like a baby the night Sam left – a sad baby at first, waking up and crying a lot, though cleverly managing
to remain fully continent. I was sleeping blissfully through the night within a couple of months. I’ve never had a repeat
of the choking weirdness since. That’s got to mean something, surely? On the other hand, look at us. The fathers of my children
are my two greatest friends, the people I can talk to in shorthand, the people whom I can guarantee I won’t bore if my conversation
turns to the domestic, to my children’s school reports, to the question of pocket money, to the dodgy boiler (maybe not so
much with Robert, re. the dodgy boiler. If I try to share the pain of white goods malfunction with him, he literally yawns
in my face with his mouth wide open. It was ever thus). Maybe we should all live together in a kind of commune.

We are not troubled by oppressive, throbbing, promise-heavy waves of sexual tension, I’ll grant you. But then, who is, as
the years go by? Most couples have a sex life, a good sex life even, but I don’t know anyone so overcome with lust that they
drag their husband or wife of several decades into the undergrowth for an impromptu quickie any more. Does this matter? The
undergrowth plays havoc with your hair and there might be dog poos lurking, or the weirder bugs. And you don’t need undergrowth
for ecstatic rumpo, obviously (Flo, I noticed earlier, has taken to calling sex ‘riding the Ninky Nonk’, after
In the Night Garden
. Small children will do that to you).

I don’t know the answers to any of this. There are few more
depressing things than not being desired any more, I would say, but perhaps that’s not the universal view. I mean, the old
people who make me cry in supermarkets have presumably not pottered out to buy snacks to fortify themselves before their next
epic, bed-breaking shagathon. Have they? Maybe they have. I don’t know. It’s awful to get to middle age and know so little.

The thing I’d really like to know is whether everybody thinks this, or whether it’s just me. Also, I’d like to know if I’ve
got some terrible rogue gene that disables me from contemplating long-term domesticity with anything other than horror and
panic (maybe it’s genetic. Maybe I got it from Felix, like my ear. Or from Kate. Or from both my bolting parents, yay). Or
perhaps everyone has the rogue gene and they just butch it out, crash through the horror, leap over the panic and end their
days buying ham together, all happy and content. It’s complicated by the fact that in my case the horror and panic co-exist
with a subsumed longing for things not to change, a deep love of routine and an overdeveloped domestic streak. Part of me
wants to cook supper for the same person for ever, and part of me wants to whack myself in the face with a frying pan at the
very idea. It’s unhelpfully schizoid.

But then, look at the alternative. The man from the Connaught, say. I like the man from the Connaught, whom I’ve now been
‘seeing’ on and off for just over a year. The man from the Connaught and I have a very good time. I really liked the idea
of the man from the Connaught existing in the background and then materializing every now and then, and then retreating. It
was romantic and sexy and it kept one on one’s toes. But, woe. The man from the Connaught has vanished – I’ve no idea why
or how – in the past fortnight. There is radio silence, and now I’m annoyed. Where
is
the man from the Connaught? I’m too old for people to vanish for no rhyme or reason. I mean, what if the man from the Connaught
is
dead
?
It’s possible, if not probable. I wouldn’t really like him to be dead. Maybe he’s had both arms amputated and hasn’t trained
himself to text using his nose yet. I’d forgive him, but I can’t contact him to find out, because when you’re forty-two you
don’t send plaintive little texts to people who have, for whatever reason, vanished into thin air. So that’s very trying too,
the alternative to wedded bliss. It’s not as easy as it looks. I could always find another man from the Connaught (don’t believe
anyone who tells you men from the Connaught are thin on the ground if you’re over thirty and not a size four. In my wilder
moments, I sometimes think it’s a lie designed to keep women in their place, unhappy but grateful for the company). But what
if the original rises again, like Jesus, and then I have
two
men from the Connaught to worry about? You see? It’s complicated. It’s more complicated than I really have the time or the
emotional energy for.