His 'n' Hers (29 page)

‘Are you saying that most women aren’t? Because you’ll be on very dodgy ground there.’

‘I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that you were . . . balanced. That’s the way I’d describe you. Balanced. But the further we got into the relationship the more your defences came down. And that was good at first because it meant we weren’t playing games any more. We were equals with equal commitment to the relationship. The thing is, if at that point you were to have plotted a graph – with commitment on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal and my line in blue and yours pink—’

‘Pink!’ laughs Alison. ‘You’re making my line pink? I don’t even like pink. When have you seen me with pink anything? I can believe what a Neanderthal you’re being.’

‘What colour do you want?’

‘Green.’

‘Fine. You be green, then. The point is that at the beginning my line would’ve been high and yours would’ve been low, but as the relationship continued our two lines – blue and green – would’ve come together. They would’ve been on top of one another. In fact, they would’ve stayed that way for quite a while, but then suddenly while mine would have stayed the same, yours would have started going up sharply, like it was a rocket heading towards the moon or something. It was freaky. It was disconcerting.’

‘Not that I’m agreeing with a single word you’ve said, but why did that worry you?’

‘Because I felt like my line was in exactly the same place. It wasn’t going up and it wasn’t going down. It was the same.’

‘But by your admission in the beginning yours was high and mine was low, and you didn’t think that was such a bad thing, did you? In fact, you said that you “respected” me. So why, all of a sudden, did the rules change?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just . . . it’s just that . . . well . . . women don’t know anything about balance, do they? They’re so binary, it’s scary. They’re all so all-or-nothing, in or out, off or on, not at all interested in you or “I’m going to dedicate my life to you,” and while both are useful on occasions, too much of one or the other can drive a man insane.’

‘Face it, Jim, you’re like a living, breathing, eating, sleeping version of the biggest male cliché in the book. You want it when you can’t have it and when you’ve got it you don’t want it.’

‘No, you’re wrong. Yes, I wanted it when I couldn’t have it, but when I’d got it I just wanted you to pretend – not all the time, just every now and again – like sometimes you didn’t want it either.’

‘Why?’

‘To remind me.’

‘To remind you of what?’

‘To remind me . . . why I fell in love with you.’

‘I think a lot of our problems began when we moved in together,’ says Alison.

‘Yeah,’ I say, nodding. ‘It was weird how we fell into traditional male-female roles. I mean – put it this way – we’re both adults and we’d both lived on our own for quite a while. I can cook. I can clean a house without being told to. So can you, and you can even put together flat-pack furniture.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not sure how seeing as I never understand the instructions.’

‘Neither do I. But that’s not the point. The point is gradually I forgot these skills and somehow turned into my dad.’ I pause to sip my pint. ‘I never asked you to do this once but somewhere during the second year we lived together you started doing all the washing and ironing. And then I started doing all the things my dad used to do at home. Anything mechanical became my realm. Anything financial became my realm. Anything practical became my realm.’

‘Why does that disturb you so much?’

‘Because . . . I don’t know. Because I’d expected things to be different between us. I’d grown up in a world where women could do and be anything. The longest-serving prime minister in my lifetime was Margaret Thatcher. We were taught about sexual equality. We learned domestic science at school and the girls were allowed to do woodwork and metalwork. That was the world I was brought up in. And it was a little undermining to realise that . . . oh, I don’t know.’

‘I’d never have taken you for a feminist,’ says Alison, laughing. ‘I only did your washing and ironing because I loved you and wanted to do everything for you.’

‘I suppose I looked after all the blokey stuff for the same reason. But didn’t you find it a bit disappointing?’

‘Not in the beginning,’ she muses. ‘Well, okay, not all the time. I used to vacillate between doing it because I loved you, and feeling stupid and taken for granted. But back then I wanted to do everything for you. I wanted you to need me. There’s nothing in the world quite like that feeling of being needed by another human being.’

‘But that’s it. That’s what you did. You made yourself indispensable. You filled in all the gaps. For instance, I’m crap at remembering people’s birthdays and always forget the card. You have a sixth sense for remembering them so gradually you started buying them for me, then buying and writing them for me and getting me to sign them, then buying, writing and forging my signature. Gradually I – the unreliable variant in this – was completely erased from the process.’

‘I just got too annoyed by your uselessness sometimes. I know this sounds awful but I did it because it reflected badly on me. The worst thing is it got to the stage where I resented doing it so much and resented you so much that I used to go out deliberately and buy really ugly birthday cards just because I was annoyed. You didn’t even notice when I sent your mum an awful padded card with glitter on it.’

‘But if you resented it so much why did you do it?’

‘Because it wasn’t a choice between doing it and not doing it. It was a choice between me doing it and you doing it badly.’

‘But it was impossible to keep up with you. You used to buy Christmas cards in the middle of October. How was I supposed to compete with that? Christmas never used to get a look-in in my head until a few days before Christmas Eve.’

‘It sounds stupid saying it aloud but women really are so different,’ I explain to Alison. ‘Do you know, I’d always thought that men and women were pretty much the same under the skin – the thought processes and all that. And it’s not until you live with a woman that you realise just how – how not like men they are.’

‘Tell me about it. What was the biggest surprise to you about living together?’ asks Alison.

‘For me it was your lack of priority.’

‘What lack of priority?’

‘Well, for instance, the fact that we didn’t have a proper TV for ages when we first moved in.’

‘You call that a lack of priority? We had a TV. In fact we had two.’

‘Yeah but mine was tiny and yours was black-and-white and you could only ever get three channels on it.’

‘So you’re having a go at me because we had two crap TVs.’

‘No, I’m having a go at you because you’d have put up with it for ages. When I first met you you had a videoplayer that was the size of a tank, you didn’t even get a CD player until you moved to London. All you had was millions of tapes that friends had given you. I’m not saying that any of this makes you a bad person. I’m just saying I didn’t understand how you could live like that.’

‘And you only noticed this when we moved in together? What about every other weekend that you came to stay?’

‘It was quaint then.’

‘Quaint?’

‘Relatively speaking.’

She pauses and then says, ‘I knew it. I always felt like you wanted to change me.’

‘Well, that’s interesting, because I always felt like you wanted to change me too.’

‘You weren’t overt about it or horrible, it was just small things that you picked up on, I suppose. I definitely think you thought I couldn’t survive without you. By that I mean you thought that my life before you moved in was the equivalent of some kind of third-world country and us living together was you bringing me into the modern era. I suppose if you want a metaphor I think you thought I was India under British occupation. You know how historians always go on about how Britain gave India the railways, as though the poor Indians should have been grateful that the country was being illegally occupied just because they could now get the nine fifteen to Calcutta? It was like that. I always felt like you thought you were making improvements in my life when what you were doing was putting in a railway I hadn’t asked for.’

‘Give me a bloody example of one of my so-called railways,’ I say laughing.

‘Okay, how about the way that you were always giving me books to read, CDs to listen to and films to watch as though you felt obliged to educate me. For instance, you bought me the
The Wild Bunch
on video one Christmas. I hate violent films
and
Westerns.’

‘I thought you’d like it.’

‘I think you thought I ought to like it. Just as I think you thought I ought to like Elmore Leonard novels,
The Simpsons, The Fast Show
, Stereolab, Northern Soul and whatever other bands, books, TV programmes, musical genres you thought I needed educating in.’ She laughs. ‘Still, if I’m being honest I have to admit I did try to change you too. For instance, do you remember those horrible cut-off jeans you wore on our first holiday together? Do you remember why you didn’t wear them on our holiday to New York?’

‘I could never find them. They got lost in the move to yours.’

‘Nope.’

‘You threw them away?’ I say, outraged.

She nods. ‘I threw a lot of your stuff away when we moved in together, and you never noticed. Your collection of 1970s TV annuals that you never looked at? Oxfam. All the shoes you hadn’t worn for years but wouldn’t throw away? Cancer Research. The acoustic guitar that had no strings on it? Jane’s thirteen-year-old niece. If I hadn’t got rid of half the rubbish you brought with you from Birmingham we’d have needed a mansion to house it all.’

‘I can’t believe how devious you were.’

‘Yes, I was devious but at least I was subtle. And it was always for your own good.’

‘Do you want another drink?’ I ask Alison.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to get you another?’

‘No, I’m fine with this one.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘What about peanuts?’ I ask. ‘Your packet’s empty.’

‘No, I’m fine. I don’t like to eat too many of those things.’

‘I know, but I like the way that whenever you get to the end of a packet you lick your finger and put it in the dust at the bottom. There’s something childlike about it. I always imagined that if we’d had a kid it would do that too.’ Alison laughs and looks at her watch. ‘I’d better be going.’

‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘Me too, I suppose.’

She smiles at me. ‘It was nice, though, eh?’

‘What?’

‘This afternoon?’

‘Yeah, it was.’

She stands up and puts on her coat while I drain the contents of my glass. And then we head for the exit. Once there, we realise it is raining.

‘One last question,’ I ask as we shelter in the doorway getting bearings. ‘Do you ever hear from Damon these days?’

Alison laughs. ‘Before I answer that question I have a confession. For a couple of years after he and I split up he used to send me Valentine cards swearing undying love.’

‘And you never told me?’

‘It was stupid, really. I didn’t want to upset you.’

‘But you kept them anyway.’

‘How do you know I kept them?’

‘You had them in an old shoebox marked “Household Bills”. I came across them in the flat one day while I was looking for – would you believe it? – household bills.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘What’s to say?’

‘Weren’t you jealous?’

‘Not in the slightest. I got the girl, didn’t I? I lost her, mind you. But I did have her for a while.’

Alison smiles awkwardly. ‘He used to swear undying love in those cards. But I think his love must have popped its clogs somewhere along the way because they petered out about 1998. I didn’t hear anything from him until last April when an invitation arrived at my parents’ house inviting me and a guest to celebrate the wedding of Damon Guest and Camilla Forsythe. I wondered why he’d invited me, especially as I hadn’t seen him since we split up, but curiosity got the better of me and Marcus and I went.’