The Younger Man (8 page)

W
eak and controlling. I’ve decided the bulk of the male population are either one or both, but usually both. I don’t base my analysis on cynicism or clinical research (although they are causes cited for most divorce petitions these days), but more gut feeling. My personal experience is based on hard fact. It is based on observing the words and actions of men and seeing how they differ, in most cases dramatically because (and they will offer a variety of reasons for this but the fundamental truth is) they are ‘weak and/or controlling’. Okay, you say, gut feeling, what’s the use of gut feeling? Listen to it and I think you can’t go wrong. Women over forty that I’ve met have always told me they trust their gut feeling more rather than less as they age. Me, well, I ignored it over and over again at my cost. I don’t think I’m alone. I know I’m not alone. I witness
women ignoring their gut feelings every day. Most women realise this feeling or instinct has more to do with common sense. More to do with nurturing a sense of reality and wisdom. And it leaves most women sad and wary of the opposite sex, because the one thing I hate to hear, actually any woman hates to hear, is the excuse ‘I was weak’. From anyone, but especially, especially, from their man.

That’s the excuse David, ex of five years, partner for twenty-one years and official partner for eighteen years, gave me when he walked out. I would say, looking back, with a more objective eye, he was both weak and controlling. If that’s possible. At the time, I didn’t think it was. After all, if someone’s weak, how can they be controlling? How can a woman, a strong woman like me, be controlled by a man who’s weak? Agh, you see, there’s the rub. I loved him. I was weak. Now I’m using it. I’m using that excuse. I was weak. Two weak people together. Disaster. My cousin Helen didn’t think he was weak. She just thought he was a wanker. She would tell me, ‘Hazel, Hazel, you are a wanker magnet. Any wanker from a mile off will smell you out and want to make you his own. They see your energy and they think aha (I always imagined some Terry Thomas-cum-Brad Pitt-like creation swooping down on me in black cloak and whisking me off to his castle tower when she said this. Not always altogether totally unpleasant thought depending if I was feeling horny or not at the time). They think aha, I will take you as my own, sap all your strength, totally confuse you and wham
bam, make you think all my guilt is your guilt, all my stuff is now your stuff, and what’s more, it’s your fault that I’m so weak and controlling. You bring it out in me. You bring the weakness out in me.’ And he said I brought out the worst in him. Yes, I would say, hand on heart, I definitely brought the very worst out in David.

David was my Terry Thomas/Brad Pitt creature, although he had none of the humour of Terry nor sexual charisma of Brad Pitt. I liked him because I thought he was cute. Now I think about it, if I find a man cute, I am highly suspicious of my own motives, and focus on the wisdom of knowing I just want to sleep with them. Ideally without getting emotionally involved, which of course is impossible, because I’m a woman. I’m weak. See, there it is again. That ruddy word. I’m weak. Sorry, I hit her, I’m weak. Sorry, I married her, and didn’t love her, because I didn’t want to hurt her, I’m weak. Sorry, I slept with him, the passion, the sexual energy was overpowering, I’m weak. I don’t think I have met a strong person in all my working or personal life. Certainly not a man. My friends, Doreen, Valerie, Fran, even downtrodden Carron, I think they’re strong. But David, David who I stayed with, had a child with and divorced very acrimoniously but financially well, is probably the weakest, most controlling man I ever and have ever met. I would let him decide how long I would speak to people at parties (half an hour to any man was far too long) and he has this pet phrase, ‘call me old-fashioned’, which translates as I’m a control freak. I know it does, that’s not gut instinct, that’s
based on personal as well as professional experience. All control freaks say it.

I am meeting ‘call me old-fashioned’ David today, because he has found some of my old stuff (actual rather than emotional, I hope) and needs to deliver it to me. It’s too big and heavy to send through the post. I’ve suggested he bins it, but he thinks there may be things I would like to keep. Old photos. Of us. I think perhaps Sarah would like to keep them. I tore the wedding album up on the morning after he stayed out all night with his girlfriend and failed to turn up to counselling. I told Fran it felt good at the time. She said it probably did but that it was a shame for Sarah. I said the whole ceremony had been made a sham and its hypocrisy reeked through every frame. God, I was angry then. Bloody difficult to tear those books. They bind them well. I’m only sorry for the pages with photos of my dad, and mum, who I like to remember. Neither of them lived long enough to witness the breakup, which is for the best. I felt at the time, they were looking down on me, in my loneliness, sobbing silently inside, they wanted to take all the pain from me. My father would always tell me he wished he could take my pain, so I wouldn’t have to bear it. He couldn’t of course, but I know, every time he said it, he meant it. He would always say the right words. My mother on the other hand had a habit of biting her lip (literally, she would make it bleed sometimes, I think it was some sort of nervous disorder), but failed to bite her lip and speak when she shouldn’t. She wouldn’t engage brain before opening
mouth. Ever. She would take on the sympathy rather than the pain. Think they call it transference, but whatever it was called, it pissed me off when she told me everyone felt sorry for her. Why should they feel sorry for her? So perhaps it was a good thing she wasn’t here to give advice during my time with David, because I would have probably topped myself on the basis of listening to her advice. Of course, I loved them both. Just I missed my dad so much more. So much more.

David arrives at ten in his blue convertible 3 series BMW with electric roof. He is wearing a black jumper and black chinos and attitude. Both of us look so much more attractive since we split up, we both look at each other these days, and rather than think what did I ever see in them, think why didn’t they look that good when I went out with them. Of course, we answer ourselves. We didn’t look this good because we were both dreadfully unhappy. And it showed. And I can always tell when I walk down a street now and look at couples, their body language, those who are genuinely happy and those who just pretend to be. I would say, a good ninety-five percent on any street on London are as miserable as sin according to my analysis. But I may be wrong. Perhaps it’s just that gut feeling again.

‘Right, there’s two boxes. I think stuff that Sarah would like.’

‘Fine, I’ll put them in the loft. See if she can find time to look through them, she’s so busy these days.’

‘Yes, well, college and all that (slight pause), how are you?’

So simple that, isn’t it, being asked ‘how are you?’ I would love to say I’m really well, I’m happy, have a potential new man in my life, am dancing about with joy inside (not that he’d really care or want to know that bit) and am altogether the happiest I’ve been in a long time and am looking forward to turning forty. I don’t. I don’t say any of these things because I know, I’ve come to know, that David still harbours anger and resentment and bitterness and it comes out when he learns or hears anything about me that remotely resembles contentment. For a start, I pissed him off something rotten when I did better at work after we split up. Our last remaining mutual friends told me so. It also annoyed him when I started dating men who were not only taller (not hard—he scrapes five foot eleven though he lies about his height), more handsome (he chose someone who was physically less attractive than me), and stronger, as he couldn’t intimidate them when we met. In fact, the reverse used to happen. But I didn’t want to make David cross, because when he was cross (I prefer the word cross to angry, it’s somehow less dark), he got nasty. Not in a childish, stamp feet, bang head against table sort of way. He got nasty in a very calculated way. He possessed a book of all my faux pas over the years—from the most insignificant ‘didn’t cook pasta right’ to the more seminal ‘had an affair with a photographer’. I know he does, because when Sarah was fifteen, he showed it to her. She cried a lot, returned from that particular weekend and it was horrible for about a month, but when I spoke to her about the hows and whys,
without damning her father (God I worked hard on my mantra ‘may he be happy may he be well’ that month), she said she understood that it must have been intolerable for both of us, and I said, yes it was, and that I still loved her father, and I never alas kept such a book about him. It would have been a library—but I didn’t tell her that bit.

He also used to gently suggest to Sarah every time he saw her that she would be happier living with him and his girlfriend than with me. He knew that the courts wouldn’t allow it, and so thought if he could work on her, that she would make the decision, but I always allowed Sarah to meet her dad when she wanted to, speak to him when she wanted to, and tried to be the best mother I could be, not only because I love Sarah, and wanted her to grow up happy and healthy and balanced, but because I knew David and his parents (bless their little Irish Catholic hypocritical socks) would fight for custody and use anything to prove I was an unfit mother. He once told me, very quietly after dropping Sarah off, and asking for a quick chat, he whispered, ‘You know, Hazel, I don’t wish you dead. I know you think I do, but I don’t. I wish you a long life, so I can see how miserable I can make you for the rest of your life. I take great pleasure from that knowledge’. He whispered this, and smiled at me, handed me a CD of
Madame Butterfly
with a Post-it attached saying
think about it,
and turned and went and I felt quite sick. I think I threw up. I couldn’t even cry that time. I didn’t tell anyone about it for a long time. I just
put it in the back of my mind, binned the CD and tried to forget it. It came out when I spoke to Angie one time and she said over time the ‘wrong’ voices would disappear. Both my mother’s and David’s.

But the thing that most annoyed David was that he couldn’t control me any more. Well, he could in some ways. With money he would delay payments so I had to contact everyone to let them know the payment would be delayed on that month’s instalment and he would always pay just before court proceedings were issued which meant unnecessary expense and worry which he again, always whispered to me, that he enjoyed. Then of course, he tried to get to me emotionally via Sarah, but I wasn’t one of his possessions any more and he regarded everything he, as he put it, ‘paid for’, as his possession. Of course, all his friends, who were our friends when we were together (but were all bankers so were ultimately neither of our friends) thought he was lovely. He has, I admit, many lovely ways, but they don’t make up for the dark side. He’s not so much Terry Thomas and Brad Pitt, more Darth Vader meets Uriah Heep. But to any layman on first meeting he comes across as so charming, so balanced, so sane, and he’s not. He’s a nutter and while I was married to him, I think he started to make me doubt my own sanity. So when this English Psycho asks me how I am, I say, ‘Fine.’

And leave it at that. Not because I’m not friendly, or bitter, or afraid, or angry. Just because it’s the only safe thing to say to someone who’s this messed up and calculatedly malicious.

Unfortunately, David wants to talk. I know this because he lingers when I want to close the door.

‘You’re turning forty this year, aren’t you?’

What do I say to this? If I say yes, it’s too open. It allows him to say something else, but how can I close it. If I say no, it’s next year, he may have asked Sarah, and will put my memory loss down to insanity and note this in his book, using it as evidence that I’m an unfit mother (I’m not paranoid honestly, I know David would do this because he said he would three years ago if I ever forgot how old I was. Yes, really). If I say maybe, then it suggests it is something I would prefer to forget (I don’t) and so any comment would fall on deaf ears. So I say, ‘Maybe.’

He looks amused.

‘Any man on the scene then?’

I don’t have to think on this one. I know how he’ll react to any possibility of yes or maybe (more comments to Sarah, bringing up memories of separation bullying), so I’m hardly likely to talk about Joe, younger, taller, brighter, more handsome, (I hope) kinder.

‘No.’

He smiles again. ‘Oh well, shit happens.’

I say nothing. I don’t wish him well or say goodbye or anything that might be misinterpreted as conversation. I close the door quietly as he turns and think if Joe ever, but ever says to me ‘call me old-fashioned’ or ‘I’m weak’ I will run a mile.

I leave the boxes in the hallway for a few hours before I decide to look through and see what the important stuff
is that David thinks I should keep for Sarah. I make some tea, then coffee, play The Cure and Jim Morrison, and then pick up the first box and nest in front of the mock Adams-style fireplace and sift. When David and I split, I destroyed all of the photos of him and me together I could find. Those with him and Sarah I gave to him, and I have the ones of Sarah and me together. I do not have one single memento or photo or memory of David in the house. Apart from Sarah that is, which is the best thing we ever did for each other. I lie, I have a necklace with a single pearl, rubies and diamonds that David presented to me when I gave birth to Sarah. It’s exquisite and I keep it because I want to pass it on to Sarah one day. Not necessarily if and when she gets married, just one day. When I feel it’s appropriate.

I don’t recognise myself in the photos I see before me. He must have taken some of me when he took those of Sarah and himself. I expect he threw darts at them but, inspecting them closely, I can’t see any pin marks. Perhaps he did the voodoo thing with the doll and strands of hair, but I’m still in one piece at the moment. So perhaps not. My hairstyle looks so weird. Tight and bobbed and heavily highlighted. More like a bad block colour of dandelion blond, but I have the same round face and smile. Although the smile looks forced. I don’t smile like that these days. The eyes in the photos are sad. The mouth smiles. The eyes are sad, or perhaps I just see something in them that isn’t there. Perhaps. And at least I don’t wear light blue eye makeup that many of my friends wore in
those days. I’m wearing suits and ill-fitting blouses and no bra (because I didn’t think I needed one, but I did), and I look very uncomfortable. In all the photos it’s as though I’m not staring at myself from another time, it’s another person. I’m not this person any more. This is someone pretending to be me. A much weaker, insecure, vulnerable and unsure girl, who’s yet to form as a person. Not someone my friends or Joe would recognise. Not me. Not me at all.