The Widow's Tale (5 page)

O
ne of the surprises, re the sudden onset of widowhood, is finding that one no longer has to consult one's husband on every last decision. Whether to move house, how much soy sauce to put in the dressing, and everything in between. A couple of months ago I had a bit of a late night over at Ginny's. We'd been drinking and talking and before we knew it, it was half past one. Ginny suggested I stay over and I was about to object on the grounds that any disruption or act of spontaneity would, as always, be met with prolonged husband-sulking, when I realised that the whole sulk thing no longer applied.

With John gone, life is now an endless succession of options, none of which has to be presented to the household committee before being acted upon. This sudden sense of liberty, it almost goes without saying, can be quite bewildering. One feels like some creature emerging, blinking, from the deep, dark cave of compromise into the blinding sunlight of … well, what exactly? The blinding sunlight of
choice
, the cross-party mantra of modern politics.

But if one welcomes all these new options, one must also come to terms with the fact that one can no longer define oneself and one's opinion simply by placing them in opposition to whatever opinion one's husband happens
to hold. You say the crime figures are up? Well, let's go and live in Sweden. (Q. What's that sound? A. The sound of no one listening/caring.) Well, dammit, if I'm not going to get a reaction, what the hell's the point in me being provocative?

My future, it seems, is frighteningly open to interpretation. On a bad day it is a bleak and empty desert stretching towards the distant horizon. On a good day it's the same desert, but with a couple of cacti to break things up a bit. Recently, a friend suggested I might get involved in the ‘voluntary services', as if I were some old neddy that should be put out to pasture, as opposed to being mercifully shot. Perhaps she thought I might have a future standing behind the counter of a local charity shop – you know, as a way of
getting out of the house
and actually
meeting people
. With the greatest respect, I would rather chew off my own arm. Being surrounded by all that crochet and bric-a-brac. Not to mention the rest of the planet's waifs and strays.

Apropos of nothing, there's a woman in a certain charity bookshop in north London who is prone to barking. She has what my mother used to refer to as a bit of a habit. The first time I heard it I was picking through the History section. I spun around. Her colleagues were all carrying on as if nothing had happened. But I quickly worked out which one was at it. It wasn't difficult. She had another little bark as she headed up the stairs.

She seems perfectly fine, except for the barking. Quite a well-to-do woman in her late sixties, I'd say. I've been back
two or three times when she's been on duty. The first bark, you suddenly remember. Then you sort of get used to it.

But now I feel guilty for having mocked her. And the good little angel on my left shoulder observes that whilst she might be prone to the occasional woof, on the inside she's probably the epitome of mental equilibrium. Whereas I rarely bark at all. But on the inside it's non-stop barking. In fact, I'm fairly howling at the moon.

It was only this morning that it occurred to me that, being up here where no one knows me from Adam, I could be just as adventurous with my past as my future. I could conjure up for myself a whole new identity.

I am, in fact, a famous photographer. Or a famous writer. But then people will only ask if they're likely to have come across any of my work. Unfortunately, I shall explain, most of my stuff's incredibly highbrow. Poems mainly. And all published abroad. I translate them myself. Except for the haikus, which I write in Japanese.

Of course, I needn't necessarily be famous. I could just be … interesting.

Actually, speaking of voluntary work, I quite fancy having a go at rebuilding some of those drystone walls. I must have seen someone at it on the telly, and was particularly impressed by the way they trimmed each piece of stone into the appropriate shape. The same way I once saw a bricklayer split a brick in half with a single clip from his trowel. I'd like to be able to do that. I'd like that very much. When I met a stranger and they asked
what I did, I'd like to be able to say, I'm a bricklayer. A layer of bricks.

Last night, as I entered the Lord Nelson I noticed how the barman had already picked a glass out and was reaching up towards the gin's optic before I'd even opened my mouth.

Actually, I said.

He stopped.

I cast my eyes up and down the counter. These beers, I said. Are any of them female-friendly?

He drew an inch or so from one pump into a shot glass and offered it to me. It was actually quite tasty. Not half as bitter as one might think.

I supposed aloud that women tended not to drink pints.

He said that I was mistaken. And that these days many a young lady enjoyed a pint. Especially the lagers. Besides, he reassured me, a couple of pints now and again is very nice. Adding how good it is, every once in a while, to feel properly filled-up.

I held his gaze with steely determination. I must not, I told myself, glance down at this man's midriff. I have sneaked a peek before and since. Suffice to say that it comes as no surprise that this is a man who advocates the pleasures of being filled right up. This fellow looks like he's been filled up with a hose.

So I sat at my usual table, with my crossword and a pint of Woodforde's Wherry before me. And when I lifted it I used both hands to make sure I did not spill a drop. It's rather lovely. And not too fizzy. I doubt that I could drink two or
three pints every night. I couldn't be doing with all that going to the bathroom. But it makes an interesting alternative to the old G & T. And my head wasn't at all fuggy this morning.

Perhaps I might develop a taste for it. Perhaps in six months or so I'll have the beginnings of my own lady's beergut. Nothing particularly imposing. Just a bump big enough to rest my pint glass on. As I hold forth on my day's bricklaying. And complain about the price of sand and cement.

A
couple of months ago I did a bit of cursory Googling and tripped over some startling statistic, regarding how many women lose their husbands each day of the year. I’ve forgotten the actual number, but it was many more than one might have imagined. I have this picture in my head of a hundred newly minted widows popping up across the country the very same day I burst onto the scene. And every last one of us with that same stunned expression on our face.

Sadly, the fact that I’m not alone in losing my husband is of no comfort to me. I have no desire to get all sisterly about it. I feel not the slightest need to hold hands with all the other widows and make one great big daisy chain of grief. Suffering, I’m inclined to think, is a solitary business. And, I could be wrong, but I suspect that a fair proportion of the other widows feel the same.

I can’t help but notice the continuing proliferation of roadside floral tributes. Either they’re actually on the increase or I just tend to notice them more these last few months. I passed one earlier this week, just down the road from here. Some sorry-looking, garage-bought bouquet, still in its cellophane wrapper, slowly turning to dust.

Do the people who lay these flowers imagine they’re
performing some public service? That their sad little posies are going to prick people’s conscience and improve road safety? Or are they just hoping to provoke in all the passing motorists a few brief moments of empathetic sadness? Either way, they’re deluded. Perhaps, suspecting that no one else actually gives much of a monkey’s about their ‘loss’, they have gone out of their way to draw attention to it. As if, by spelling out their loved one’s name in petals, they could make the world sit up and take notice, and that this might somehow siphon off some of the pain.

The first floral tribute I remember seeing was out near Barnes, a good thirty years ago now. A few flowers tied to a tree on the common. I hadn’t a clue what they were doing there until some friend explained that the previous year some pop star had been killed in a car crash at that particular spot. It was just some teeny-boppers laying flowers at the site of the death of their idol. I’m sure they were very upset, and that they thought they loved him. But I mean really.

I imagine it’s the same misguided instinct that was at work after the death of Princess Diana. When half of central London seemed to be carpeted with flowers. I can’t be alone in thinking that that public outpouring of emotion was quite obscene in its magnitude. At the time, no doubt, there was much talk of some shared sense of sadness, but I thought then and still think that whilst there might have been the veneer of unanimity, beneath it simmered something almost sinisterly self-involved.

But at what point did the whole flower-laying concept shift from being something one did for famous people to something one did for one’s own brother or daughter or son? I must have missed it. Although, if people are laying wreaths for complete bloody strangers it’s only reasonable that genuine mourners be allowed to create a shrine for their own flesh and blood.

But now everyone’s bloody well at it. A teenage boy is shot dead in some faceless city and before the police have finished cordoning off the area there’s a gaggle of girls hugging one another and clutching single roses and grieving for the cameras. The body’s barely cold and they’re already mumbling their cretinous testimonials, about Darren’s love of life and Darren’s generous spirit. I think to myself, I bet you were never this kind to Darren when he was breathing. I bet you made Darren’s life a living hell.

Call me old-fashioned, but, personally, I think floral tributes should be confined to the graveyard. Or the homes of the mourners. I think the front-room curtains should be drawn, according to custom, to signify loss, but also a desire for privacy. This is
my
grief. And my pain is
not
your pain. Go and get some pain of your own.

Everyone seems to want in on the emotional action. All I can say is, Give it time. Before you know it you’ll have more grief than you know what to do with. And not the self-conscious, superficial variety for some TV princess you never got within a mile of. Or the boy from the year below. But the sort that takes a hold of you and
inhabits you, like a sickness. That possesses a body so comprehensively that you’ll feel yourself obliterated. And so profoundly, utterly peculiar, that you’ll want to keep it to yourself.

I
've decided to sell the house in France. These last couple of years we hardly used it. And when we did, we'd just follow the same deadly routine – a drink here, a walk there, etc. We knew a few people in the nearest village. But neither of us really liked them. And taking friends down with us was too much responsibility. That sounds dreadfully mean, I know, but the mind-numbing effort of being Mine Host for a full week just made me miserable. And late at night, after a glass or two too many we'd just end up having the same petty disagreements we'd had a dozen times before, guests or no guests.

Five or six years ago, when there was still work to be done on the place, that fact would give us a little motivation. Some shared purpose. And we'd talk about how, once it was all finally completed, we'd be able to sit back and appreciate it, but it was quite the opposite. We just realised how bloody boring it was down there. And when I lifted the toilet seat last year and found a rat skittering about in the bowl, that just about did it. I screamed and slammed the seat back down. Let's be honest, if you can't scream when you find a rat in your lav, when exactly are you meant to scream? John came huffing and puffing up the stairs, assessed the situation,
then disappeared. And came back up the stairs a couple of minutes later, carrying his tool box.

What exactly, I asked, was he planning to do to the rat? Dismantle it? I don't think he knew himself. Anyway, not surprisingly, after that little incident I could never fully relax whilst visiting the bathroom. And the house's days were probably numbered.

To be honest, I'm half tempted to sell the house in London. It was too big when it was just the two of us. Although God knows where I'd go. A part of me thinks I should buy some little pad in Clerkenwell. Or on the river. Then at least I could walk to the cinema or the theatre or a restaurant. If you're living in a city, the argument goes, then actually live right in the heart of it. But then I'm sure I'd have young people pissing on my doorstep, or puking, or fornicating. Or whatever it is young people do these days.

The fact is I freaked out and had to leap into my car in NW3, so how the hell would I cope living even deeper in the city? Perhaps I could have a speedboat tied up on the river, with its engine gently ticking over. If I felt a bit queasy I could just jump into it and head for Kent.

I have no aching desire to raise chickens and grow my own potatoes, wherever one goes to do that sort of thing. And, apparently, I have my doubts about living in London. Looks like I'll just have to stay here in my bijou cottage until I decide where on earth I might feel comfortable.

Actually, I don't know why I'm talking about the theatre as if it's some major foundation of my cultural existence.
And that without it I'd, you know, simply go to bits. Twenty years ago I used to trot into town pretty regularly, to the West End and the South Bank. But I think half the time I was just fooling myself.

You do indeed have to kiss a lot of frogs. These days I find I just don't have the stamina. I had a little epiphany maybe four or five years ago, when I was penned in in the middle of an auditorium as some endless bloody Russian play creaked and groaned along. The maid was meant to be completely ditsy, which for some reason I found rather offensive – or just plain lazy – and each time she jiggled her boobs about or one of the other characters made some dreadful pun, everyone around me launched into this ridiculous guffawing, as if they'd just heard the funniest joke ever. I was thinking, This isn't remotely funny, you idiots. Why the hell are you laughing? And the only answer I've ever really come up with is that they'd paid good money for their tickets and they just wanted to show the rest of the audience that they were at least intelligent enough to get the joke. Or perhaps they just thought that over-the-top guffawing at dreadful puns is what you do in such a place.

Anyway, I found myself sitting there thinking of all the other, more rewarding ways I could be spending my time, like lying in bed or watching telly or doing the washing-up. And when the interval finally hove around I got to my feet and left the theatre and never really looked back.

Life's too short to pretend to enjoy something when it's clearly pigswill. At least at the pictures if the film's
complete twaddle you can walk out without feeling like you've wasted more than a couple of quid.

These days it's so rare for something to genuinely surprise me at the theatre. Without it being deliberately, self-consciously shocking. And frankly when you've seen one troupe of naked, shaven-headed eastern Europeans rolling round the stage in some controversial new production of
Hamlet
you've kind of seen them all.

I'm getting old. I've seen too much. I'm unshockable. Well, perhaps the first of those three statements is true. I used to be quite pally with this woman who was a few years older than me. I remember going to her sixtieth birthday party, when I was probably still in my early forties. I arrived, gave her a little hug and asked how she was doing.

As she embraced me she whispered, ‘If anyone ever tries to convince you of the joys of getting old, they're lying. Being sixty is bloody awful.'

I guess she'd started drinking a little while before I got there. If I remember rightly she had her head down the toilet by eleven o'clock. But unshockable as I might now claim to be, I found that little aside decidedly unsettling. It didn't so much shock me as make me plain depressed. And now that I'm in my sixties myself I find I'm inclined to agree with her. Why spare the younger people? Why not just tell them the truth?

Actually, I once witnessed something which really did shock me – if not at the theatre, then at a graduation
ceremony, which is just theatre by another name.

The son of some friends of ours was graduating at Oxford, so his parents and John and I drove up and went along to the ceremony before spending a few days in a cottage out in the Cotswolds somewhere.

Well, talk about tedious. Those must've been the most boring couple of hours of my life, which is saying something. It was in the Sheldonian – the building with what appears to be a selection of severed heads on the tops of columns all around the outside – and the whole ceremony, I kid you not, was in Latin, and consisted of nothing but an endless stream of students, in their gowns and mortarboards, shuffling through the place.

All we could do to try and stay awake was look out for our friends' son in that great black tide below us and to listen out for his name in the never-ending Latinate drone. Then, right at the end of the ceremony, when everyone got to their feet and started heading towards the exits there was a bit of a kerfuffle and I looked round and saw this woman on the gallery opposite us, who must have tripped and fallen. And somehow managed to go clattering down a couple of steps and bounce right under the railings. So that suddenly everyone in the building was watching this poor woman as she clung onto some post, with her skirt up round her backside and her little legs threshing about.

It was a good forty-foot drop below her. If she'd fallen, without doubt, she'd've broken her neck, and possibly taken out half a dozen graduates.

It was like the final scene of
North by Northwest
, where they hang off Mount Rushmore. Anyway, the people around her managed to grab a hold of her and slowly dragged her back up onto the gallery. It was only later that it occurred to me that somewhere below, in that great throng, was her son (it's funny, I never think of it being her daughter) watching, horrified. Which meant that from that day forward, whenever his degree came up in conversation the entire family would be quietly mortified, as they remembered poor Mum hanging off the railings and showing her knickers and flailing her legs about.

Anyway, that's quite enough writing (and drinking) for one day. I'm off to my (widow's) bed.