Husbands (13 page)

I arrive at the surgery before 9 a.m. and I am not churlish when I see that Sally, the colleague with whom I job-share, has once again left all the filing for me to do
and
I stay calm even though she has double-booked the first hour of appointments and the patients are all glaring at
me
. I work with unprecedented efficiency and pleasantness until lunchtime when I choose not to skulk around the pharmacy cupboard, eating my home-packed ham sandwich as usual, but I decide to get a breath of fresh air and wander along the high street. I might even treat myself to a sandwich from the little Italian café on the corner, Café Bianchi. It is a fabulously grubby, authentic Italian café run by an old couple and their innumerable, hot sons. They used to sell only cappuccino and espresso but a few months ago they branched out and started to serve panini. I could have a mozzarella and basil panini; the thought is exotic.

Shepherd’s Bush is buzzing. I spot a nun, builders, grandparents, new mothers, posers and a gaggle of smokers. I’m stunned by the size of the world. It’s so obvious, but it’s as though I’m just noticing, that people all around me are living lives. They are doing ordinary things, drinking coffee, chatting, buying stamps and rocking prams, feeling losses, concern, outrage, kindness, love, friendship, exhaustion and exhilaration and none of them are connected to Oscar or my heartache. The realization hits me like a brick but feels like a release. It excites me. Oscar and my heartache are not perennial.

When I was a teenager and just discovering my love of a good novel I used to visit bookshops and stare for hours at the rows and rows of books on the shelves. I’d feel an excitement that threatened to overwhelm me, but never quite did. I always left the bookstore with another ‘life’ tucked under my arm, something else to grapple with, to empathize or repudiate. Books nurtured my longing to travel as they showed me that there was so much living being done. People were living spectacular, enchanting and amusing lives. And when I left to travel the world I did exactly that for quite some time; I lived a full and curious life.

I hadn’t realized that heartbreak had scared me off and I’d started to live my life in tickover. Until now,
now
I feel that I might just be on the cusp of edging back up to full throttle. I feel as I did when I left Australia; excited, stretched and challenged. Shepherd’s Bush is not the most salubrious part of town but it’s interesting. There are shops, bars, cafés, hotels, even a trendy spa, a theatre, a gig venue. There is a green, a station, roadworks, skiving
kids, overly industrious traffic wardens and police horses. Is there always so much going on? Have I been asleep? I look at all the people hurrying about their day and I don’t feel passed by, superfluous or insignificant. The opposite. Because I am going about my day too. I am buying exotic sandwiches.

And sending flirty texts to Stevie.

Stevie is fun and reminds me that I am too. His witty, dry comments litter our conversations, as does his humming and singing. He listens. He seems to think everything I say is important or funny. Stevie, Eddie and I have enjoyed three glorious days together. I had no idea that the Science Museum was so fascinating. Obviously, there’s a lot to learn about Newton’s law, space travel, ecology etc. Fascinating, clearly. But I didn’t realize the Science Museum had so much to teach me about the ‘phwoar’ factor.

For example, the tiny hairs on Stevie’s forearms – under the blue light of one of the more spectacular foyers in the museum – look irresistible. It took every ounce of self-restraint not to reach out and stroke those hairs. The Science Museum taught me a lot about bone structure too, because while Stevie and Eddie spent an age looking at model rockets I gazed at Stevie’s jawline and cheekbones. Without the costume he doesn’t look much like Elvis. He wears his hair scruffy and longish, more like Noel Gallagher, and his jaw is much leaner than the King’s. When he’s Elvis he’s enigmatic. Stevie is more straightforward. As Elvis he is a performer. Stevie is one hundred per cent ‘what you see is what you get’, a square-shooter. And I like that.

On Sunday we drifted around the lock and market stalls at Camden. The arty-crafty objects – mostly useless, and often verging on tatty – took on a charming quality. Vases, pictures, furniture and jewellery gleamed in the sunshine and with Stevie holding my hand I was tempted into several impulse purchases that I couldn’t afford. I’m still trying to find a place in my kitchen for a large lavender-coloured wine rack. The candle (a sculptured couple pre-copulation) looks OK in the bathroom window. The thing is, being with Stevie makes me feel like I’m gleaming in sunshine too. A couple of celebratory impulse purchases doesn’t seem too wild, under the circumstances.

The only fly in the ointment is Bella. She is sulking with me for not following her last Friday. That, or she’s at death’s door. I’m not sure which I’d prefer. I certainly don’t like to be on the receiving end of Bella’s strops. One of my biggest pleasures in life is calling her for a daily chat. Now, when I’m bursting at the seams with news, she’s not returning my calls. She cancelled our Monday coffee date. The silent treatment is like water torture. A week ago I’d have sat this out until she called me: I hadn’t the required confidence for confrontation. Now I decide to take action, even if it is only in the form of calling Amelie to see if she can throw any light on the situation. I reach for my mobile.

‘G’day, Amelie, it’s Laura.’

‘Hello, Laura,’ says Amelie, as ever her voice oozes warmth. ‘How are you?’

‘Sweet as. Things are as good as gold,’ I giggle.

‘Still getting on with Stevie, I take it?’

‘Too right.’ I force myself not to gush. ‘Have you heard from Bella, recently?’ I ask, hoping to sound nonchalant.

‘I haven’t seen her since Saturday.’

Bella had breakfasted with Amelie on Saturday morning but Stevie and I missed her when we collected Eddie. We must have missed her by a matter of moments because Eddie seemed to think she was still there. Ridiculous, of course, because there was no sign of her. She’d have had to be hiding in the shed.

‘She blew me out yesterday, with no explanation. She hasn’t returned my calls. Do you think she’s ill?’ I ask.

‘Possibly very sick,’ says Amelie but she doesn’t sound unduly concerned.

‘I wanted to tell her that Stevie isn’t a busker, he’s a teacher. She was so worried I was mixing with someone inappropriate. I just wanted to put her mind at rest.’

‘Leave it with me. You get back to work. I’ll call her and see if everything’s OK,’ says Amelie.

I thank Amelie and hang up. I’m happy to leave the situation with her. Without either of us having to say anything outright I sensed Amelie understood my belief that Bella has gone to ground because she’s never liked Elvis impersonators. And she seems to have an almost pathological dislike of Stevie Jones.

Thursday 27th May 2004

Bella

It was Amelie’s idea that we should all meet for lunch. I’m torn. It’s impossible to imagine ignoring Laura for the rest of my days, not least because she’s rung me about ten times since Friday night. Initially, I let the answering machine pick up. The messages were as I expected: garbled apologies because she didn’t follow me out of the pub and lots of giggling as she begged me to call her as she had ‘so much news’. I do feel a bit guilty that she’s sorry about Friday night, when it was me who did the runner, yet I could cheerfully wring her neck when I hear her schoolgirlish giggle. Doesn’t she understand that Stevie was put on this earth to make me feel schoolgirlish, not her, not anyone else? Oh God, I’m married to one man and jealous about another. Another who I’m married to. How can I pick up the phone?

Laura must have called Amelie because Amelie rang me to say it wasn’t fair to ignore Laura any longer, as she was beginning to imagine that I was ill.

‘Laura has done nothing wrong,’ said Amelie. She didn’t need to complete the sentence, pointing out who
has done something wrong. ‘You have to face this Bella; it’s not going to go away.’

But I want it to go away. Nothing material has changed. I am in exactly the same position I was in last week. Last week I was married to two men but I never gave it a thought. For years I have worked, with a steely determination, at ignoring this pertinent fact. It hasn’t been easy and it has required sacrifices but I’ve managed it this far.

I told Amelie that one day I’d got up and left Stevie, which is true. ‘One day’ was a very particular day: the day of the final of the Greatest European Tribute Artist Convention and Competition – allegedly. A competition that was held in Blackpool, which in my book cast doubts on the claims ‘greatest’ and ‘European’. As Stevie was born and bred there he was delighted with the idea of romping home to win the title of Greatest European Tribute Artist, King of Kings 1996.

In the months running up to that dreadful January evening Stevie had attended three qualifying heats in Britain. Attending the competitions had become a bone of contention between us. He qualified for the final with ease, and at the first event, so I didn’t understand why he insisted on attending the other heats. He said that it was to get the measure of the competition; I moaned that he needed to get a measure of our overdraft. I refused to attend any of the heats with him. I’d started my illustrious waitressing career in a dodgy bar in Leith by then; I couldn’t get Saturday nights off. Plus, we could barely afford coach fares for one, to Portsmouth, Saltburn and Newquay, let alone two.

Besides, the whole idea bored me.

Stevie, by contrast, was fired up with an enthusiasm I hadn’t seen since the days he recited poetry to me in my childhood bedroom. He came home from each heat bursting with excitement as he assured me that Larry King had a good voice but terrible costume, Mike King wore a fantastic garb but was weak when singing the ballads, Kevin King was too short, Gary King too nervous. In brief, Stevie felt sure that he was in with a serious chance. He could be Europe’s Number One. He could walk the golden mile in Elvis’s blue suede shoes. Well, not Elvis’s actual shoes, obviously, because they are sat in some museum in Vegas, but in a replica pair.

I used to stare at him amazed, and not in a positive sense. I’d make snide comments that it was a real coincidence that all the guys in the tribute acts shared a surname. Patiently, Stevie would explain to me that these weren’t their real names, they were stage names, because he didn’t credit me with anything as low as sarcasm.

The prize was a thousand pounds. No small sum, especially then. But I was sure we’d already spent hundreds on hotels, costumes and travel. When I pointed out as much to Stevie he would assure me that if, no when, he won the competition he could make a serious living on the bookings that he was bound to attract. Perhaps as much as thirty thousand a year.

‘You also win a thirteen-hundred-dollar gift certificate for a red pinwheel suit and gold belt to be shipped in from the States,’ he told me with a grin. I was nonplussed. ‘Other colours are available,’ he assured me. ‘Elvis had the suit in three colours, you know.’

Fascinating.

Yet, Stevie is nothing if not persuasive. After months of listening to him rehearse in the bathroom and chat excitedly about the cool vibe at the competitions, I was curious enough to agree to attend the final. We’d been arguing bitterly and I saw the competition as a way of stemming the tide of fury that was washing between us. I told myself that it was important to
show
support, if not willing, and at least appear to be encouraging my husband in his chosen career – however ludicrous I thought the career was. I told myself that Blackpool would be a mini-break, a bit of fun. I imagined us holding hands while strolling up and down the prom, romping barefoot on the beach. We’d see the famous illuminations and laugh at people wearing kiss-me-quick hats. Stevie and I had been married for three years and we hadn’t had a holiday in that time. Perhaps, this was what we needed. Perhaps, Stevie was right, his career as an Elvis tribute act might lead to great and glamorous things.
And
I’d get to see Stevie’s hometown, few girls can resist a peek at their man’s past. In the run-up to the competition, I told myself – over and over – that the weekend might be the best of my life.

The weekend was the worst of my life.

Part of Stevie’s attraction was that he was from somewhere other than my hometown. I knew nothing about Blackpool, but had imagined it as far more elegant, sophisticated and promising than Kirkspey. My home, where I’d never felt at home. When we got off the coach at Blackpool and walked along the seafront in search of our B&B, I began to understand why Stevie fitted into Kirkspey so well: Blackpool was just the same.

Kirkspey was cold, dark, cruel and credulous, full of men who were too keen to hit the bottle and then each other just to ease the boredom. Headbutting was a finessed sport and hangovers were competitive. Slurred threats, irrational recriminations and unseemly brawls were celebrated. It was a poor and destructive place. Blackpool seemed the same but with more flashing lights and topless entertainers. I saw countless groups of men with bad teeth – all gold caps and spaces – modern-day pirates, they hung out on street corners and stared warily at one another, exuding loss and despair.

The B&B was miles out of town, no doubt that was why it was within our budget, so we caught a tram. It was bitterly cold outside, so the tram was crammed full. I hadn’t considered the season in my fantasy version of our mini-break. Although it was only the afternoon many of the passengers were drunk. In Kirkspey most people were drunk most of the time too, that and/or pregnant, what else was there to do? Beer fumes and condensation blurred my vision. I’ve always hated condensation. To me, it signifies despair – used breath, used life. By the time we arrived at the B&B I knew that my fantasies of a happy mini-break were way off mark. I looked out of the bedroom window towards the cold and bleak coastline, another cold and bleak coastline, different but the same.

‘Are the windows frosted?’ asked Stevie.