The Widow's Tale (10 page)

P
opped into the letting agents this morning and basically told them I’d let them know when I was moving out. If anyone’s desperate to rent the place in the meantime, they can call round and we’ll take it from there.

At this rate I might as well just buy the place and have done with it.

There seem to be an awful lot of dead animals at the side of the road up here, which is pretty depressing. But I suppose dead rabbits, etc., are bound to be a bit more prevalent in rural Norfolk than NW3.

John had a theory regarding roadkill – or, more specifically, to do with the number of them one encounters in the country – the essence of it being that whilst it’s all very sad seeing the corpse of, say, a badger, one can at least take some comfort from the fact that this must be but a small proportion of the overall population and that the more flattened badgers one sees the more living, breathing variety there must be, out in the woods.

Another little theory he was fond of espousing when we were driving down country lanes had something to do with the number of dead insects hitting the car’s windscreen and how the lack or abundance of them related to the
local use of pesticides. It was only marginally different from the dead badger theory and I sometimes wheel it out to give people an idea what level of conversation I’ve had to put up with all these years. Anyway, the first one – the roadkill theory – came to mind when I was out in my new little car a couple of days ago and drove round a bend to find something flapping about in the middle of the road.

It took me a second to work out that it was a pheasant. Must have just been clipped by a passing car. Either one of its wings was broken, or it had taken a blow to the head, because it was making a terrible, bustling fuss. Now, anyone who’s observed a pheasant at close quarters will appreciate what an incredible void of intelligence is contained therein. I know strict vegetarians who can’t quite muster umbrage at the prospect of the poor buggers being shot at, despite the fact that the only reason they’re actually airborne long enough for someone to shoot them is because someone else has just chucked them up there the second before. But seeing it squawking and hobbling about the road made me feel quite ill. The poor thing was clearly in some distress.

There wasn’t enough room for me to drive around it, even if I’d wanted to. And it’s not as if I felt remotely qualified in approaching it, getting a hold of it, or any other thing. Luckily, a car coming the other way stopped – some chap jumped out and went striding over towards it. And in a flash he took the bird up in his arms and carried it over to the boot of his car. Then he jumped back in and
even waved at me as he went on his way.

Thank goodness, I thought. Thank goodness these country folk know what to do in such situations. But it was a good couple of minutes before I began to question the speed with which he’d managed to get the injured bird to calm down. And it slowly dawned on me that perhaps he wasn’t actually driving it off to pheasant hospital. That, in fact, when his back was turned to me, in all likelihood he just gave the bird’s neck a quick twist. And that he was now taking it home with the intention of hanging, cooking and eating the thing.

I
have this idea sometimes that John is alive and going about his business – in the next room, or a neighbouring town – quite oblivious. As if there’s been some administrative oversight or clerical error which has somehow kept us apart.

Quite often, when the phone goes my first thought is, ‘That’ll be him …’ Or, ‘I was wondering when he was going to call.’ Or I’ll just be pottering around the house and become aware that there’s someone I really must get in touch with. And for that first fraction of a second I’ll not know who it is I’m thinking of. Then, Oh yes. That man. That husband. The one I lived with for forty years.

Going home to John after that first little infidelity was, it transpired, to be no great stretch on my part. Which is to say that I was neither riddled with guilt nor seized by some overriding need to unburden myself and tell him what had gone on. All I did, in effect, was slip back into a role I’d been perfecting over the previous twenty-five years. Or, to put it another way, I drew around me the plain grey vestments of domesticity and disappeared from view.

When asked about the course, I reported that it had been fine, but that one of the tutors had not been quite as
rigorous as one might have expected. (True.) Asked if I’d made any friends, I talked at length about a woman with whom I had indeed been rather pally, but made her out to be a good deal smarter and more entertaining than the real-life version, so that her towering wit and personality eclipsed everything else.

My point, I suppose, is that no real subterfuge was necessary. If our marriage at that time could in any way have been considered a success it was in the fact that each of us gave the other sufficient leeway to get on with their life. Most days of the week we had breakfast and supper together and probably spent half of the week’s evenings in each other’s company. But we were hardly inseparable.

I’d arranged to ring Paul the following day and, in order to avoid having his number appear on any future phone bills, I walked over the Heath and popped into the phone box on Gilmour Street. I can’t remember very much about that first phone conversation, but I distinctly remember saying that I missed him, despite the fact that I’d only met him a day or two before. And I clearly recall that, along with every conversation that followed, we rarely, if ever, mentioned John. I’d told Paul that I was married within five minutes of our meeting. But after that it was barely referred to. We probably felt we had other, more important things to be discussing. Though, whatever they were and however important they seemed at the time, most of them have since just slipped away.

What is also crystal clear in my memory is how whenever I walked up over the Heath towards the phone
box I had that same knot of excitement in my stomach. I became increasingly light-headed. I became upset. Then I’d finally pull the door to behind me and dial his number – originally written on the back of an old till receipt, but memorised within days in case I happened to lose it – and Paul would pick up. And I’d practically be in tears, I was so happy. And we’d talk for half an hour or so. Then, at the end of each call, we’d arrange when I’d call him next, and for the days that followed that would be my whole life’s focus – the only thing that mattered to me.

Only once, as I remember, was the phone box occupied when I arrived at it. Some old girl who, when she happened to see me waiting, turned away to shield herself from me. I doubt I had to wait more than a couple of minutes. But it was long enough for me to half lose my mind. As if that phone only connected to one particular house in Norfolk, or Paul would not be prepared to wait an extra minute or two. So that when the old trout finally surrendered the phone box and I dialled Paul’s number and it rang for a little longer than usual I honestly thought that the only good thing in my life had been snatched away from me.

We would’ve met up again a good deal sooner but John and I were booked in to visit some friends out in New England and, barring me faking an aneurysm, there wasn’t much I could do to wriggle out of it.

I must have thought to myself a hundred times that week, ‘Christ, but these people are so
dull
… their jokes
so
lame
,’ etc. When I look back now my behaviour is not much different from a moody teenager – albeit one entombed in the body of a middle-aged woman. Our hosts would suggest a drive up into the mountains.
Boring
. Or a trip down to the lake.
You’re kidding me
. I’m only surprised that someone didn’t take it upon themselves to try and slap some sense into me. And all the time I kept thinking, None of this matters. Because in another week or two I’ll be with someone who truly understands me. And that allowed me to rise above the dreariness of my dull, dull husband and our dull American friends.

Unfortunately, on one occasion I managed to make an absolute fool of myself when Jay, one half of the couple with whom we were staying, made some little joke at John’s expense. He was just ribbing him about something or other – about him getting old or how scruffily he was dressed. And I suddenly went storming in to John’s defence, and gave Jay a terrible ear-bashing. When I finally stopped, to catch my breath, I remember looking round and seeing all three of them staring at me, open-mouthed, as if I was a complete bloody lunatic.

I don’t know how long it took me to work out that, in fact, the object of my wrath was a little closer to home. Because whatever Jay had said in jest I had obviously been considering a good deal more seriously. On two or three occasions I’d already found myself sneaking a peek at John out of the corner of my eye while we were watching telly – noticing how his hair was becoming
thin and fibrous. Or the little network of broken blood vessels on his cheeks. If I’d noticed them before they’d never particularly bothered me. But now I had someone to compare John to. And making comparisons like that, without the person knowing, is a mean little trick to play.

I
've never had that many friends. I guess I'm just not a people person. If that's the case, I have to say it doesn't bother me. To be honest, I'm deeply suspicious of anyone who claims to have hundreds of chums and whose every utterance begins with, ‘
My friend Sally
…' this or ‘
My
friend Caspar
…' that. As if the only reason for these poor souls' existence is to be considered in relation to this one exceptional individual, like tiny planets orbiting some mighty sun.

I could count on the fingers of one hand those people I consider to be my real friends, i.e. women with whom I have an absolute affinity and whom I wouldn't think twice about calling up in the middle of the night (a theory I've recently put to the test). Beyond that, I suppose, there exists a light scattering of acquaintances – people whose paths will occasionally cross my own – who are perfectly pleasant, but I wouldn't for a minute consider play a significant role in my life.

I'll sometimes find myself in mid-conversation, having agreed to go round to someone's house for a coffee, and think to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing sitting here listening to this drivel?' And it's all I can do not to get up and say, ‘I'm sorry, I've made a terrible mistake,' and head for the door. But, of course, one just sits there, enduring
and even perpetuating what must qualify as one of the world's most tedious conversations, knowing that you're not actually about to do a runner, which only makes things worse.

It's not quite the same I know, but once or twice lately I've been politely chatting with someone and have had this peculiar impulse to do something quite drastic, even violent. There's this old dear who has lived on our road since the Iron Age and knows everybody for miles around. She's not a gossip. In fact, I doubt there's a malign bone in her body. But I bumped into her in a local teashop and she was being so sweet, and I was being so sweet back to her, and after a couple of minutes of this I had a powerful urge to just punch her on the nose.

Of course, this is a little different from people not being sufficiently interesting. In fact, I suspect that it's bordering on clinical psychosis, which rather worries me. If I was being super-rational I might say that perhaps it's me wanting to show that despite the calm little scene that we've created there's actually all this rage and chaos bursting to get out. And that everything is very far from being all right. But I know that if I did actually sweep all the crockery off the table, or grab the old dear by her hair and start swinging her around the place, then in no time at all I'd be carted off to some remote institution, and that wouldn't agree with me at all.

Years ago, when I was still in my twenties, I was on a train heading up towards the Lake District and this young French girl got on and sat down opposite me, and we got
chatting and she told me about this amazing trip she was having, right the way across Europe, long before such a thing became quite common, let alone for a young girl on her own. Anyway, she really was quite charming and at some point she produced this little notebook with an elastic band round it which was crammed with bits of paper. And she told me how it contained the names and addresses of all the wonderful people she'd met on her travels, which meant that she could pitch up in just about any city in Europe and know that she'd have a place to stay.

A little while later she went off to the toilet and I was left staring at this precious book on the table before me. And I had this dreadful compulsion to get a hold of it and fling it out of the window. Really, I had an awful struggle. I mean, she must have spent a good five minutes saying how she'd simply die if anything happened to this book, then went off and left it right in front of me, as if I'd been set some great moral test.

Of course, I didn't actually fling it out into the fields of Warwickshire or whichever county we happened to be travelling through. But that strange urge certainly unsettled me. And I've sometimes been inclined to think that it was because she was living the bohemian life that I coveted for myself, and that I simply wanted to punish her for that, and for being so condescending. But the truth is she wasn't remotely condescending, and the only possible explanation is because I knew it was exactly what I was not meant to do.

B
y the time we got back from New England I was quite beside myself and desperate to see Paul again. The actual flight seemed to take forever. Took so long, in fact, that I had a rather odd little episode when I became convinced that I was going to be stuck up in the sky indefinitely, somehow caught between time zones, and had to put my head between my knees to calm myself down.

I finally caught up with Paul the following Tuesday, in Cambridge. John was away for the day, at a meeting at the other end of the country, and wasn't due back till last thing at night. So the moment he was out of the house I jumped in the car and hammered up the M11 and must've been there by ten or eleven o'clock.

It seems a little tawdry now to talk about hotel rooms, and paying in cash, and our deliberations regarding whose name and address to write in the register, etc. But at the time it didn't feel remotely tawdry. They were just the means necessary to avoid any complications which could make life difficult for us in the future. If the woman behind the desk had happened to raise an eyebrow, or even picked up on some disparity in our ages, then I didn't notice. And even if I had it wouldn't have troubled me one jot.

I just wanted to get Paul upstairs and into bed. Not because I was some terrible whore, but because I felt so passionately about him. What he felt for me I'll never know. No one ever really knows what someone else is feeling, no matter how honestly that person might try to articulate it. Quite often I find that, years after the event, I interpret my own motivations quite differently anyway. So if you can't say with any certainty what's going on inside yourself, how can you expect anyone else to know?

Well, we bundled ourselves up into our room, pulled back all that clean white linen and ripped each other's clothes off. After we screwed we lay in the bath and talked for half an hour. Then screwed some more. And, having worked up a bit of an appetite, we dressed and ate at that Italian place in the corner of the open market.

Paul knew Cambridge a good deal better than I did so he led the way down by the colleges, and out into a sort of meadow, with all these cows wandering up and down. And we walked along in that wonderful stretch of wild land, less than half a mile from the city's spires.

If I ever feel the need to torment myself with how incredibly happy I once was – and it's a habit I seem surprisingly fond of – then it's that little scene that I tend to return to. The two of us just walking along in the autumn sunshine, with a chill in the shadows, which just makes you appreciate the heat all the more. I felt so good and things seemed so light and bright and full of possibilities that when I look back now I'm almost embarrassed. Actually, to be fair, it's not that I'm embarrassed. I just
sort of cringe at my blind optimism, which one might easily excuse in a schoolgirl, but not a woman just shy of fifty years old.

I left it as late as possible before heading back to London. Which meant that I ended up haring down the motorway almost as madly as I'd hared up it twelve hours before. I was flying along at God knows what sort of speed and still some way short of the M25 when the driver of the car in front of me suddenly slammed his brakes on and I came within a whisker of going smack-bang into the back of him.

It was one of those moments that as soon as it's over you almost pass out from all the adrenalin. And as the traffic slowly started moving again I had this vision of me having to explain how I'd come to have a crash halfway up the M11 when I'd claimed to be meeting some friends in town.

The only other thing of note we did that first full day together was drive out to the American Military Cemetery, at Paul's suggestion. I remember thinking that a cemetery didn't sound particularly romantic. But Paul insisted that I was going to love it. So there – he must've wanted to impress me. To show me something that was important to him.

The American Cemetery is on top of a hill a couple of miles west of the city, with the same acres of crosses and headstones as most other military cemeteries. The same shocking uniformity. It's the chapel that sets it apart. Just a large rectangular room – quite monolithic-looking from
the outside – with a high ceiling. But light and modern. I wouldn't know when it was created. The 1950s, I suppose. Inside, cut into one wall, is a vast map of Europe, with all these metal planes fixed to steel rods radiating out from East Anglia across the continent. In the windows opposite are all the emblems of the different US states, in stained glass. But it's when you look up that it really hits you. The mosaic across the ceiling is a combination of angels, with their arms raised above their heads, flying in formation, alongside bombers.

It sounds quite crass, the way I've described it. In fact, there is something almost naive at work, which helps make it so moving. And it struck me then, just as it struck me when I visited the cathedral of St John the Divine in Manhattan, where tiny baseball players are incorporated into the stained glass, that we would never dare do such a thing in England. Not in a holy building. Except at a place like the Military Cemetery out at Madingley, which is, after all, just a small corner of the United States in Cambridgeshire. And as I stood there looking up and all around me I thought to myself, John would never be able to appreciate the beauty in this. Not in a million years.