I Won't Forgive What You Did (25 page)

I tried to call him when I got home, desperate to know the truth but, as usual, I couldn’t get an answer. I then called his old manager, Bernard, who I’d only ever spoken to on the phone, and arranged that I would go and meet him.

He expressed surprise when he saw me – couldn’t believe I was Joe’s wife – he’d always been under the impression that I was a ‘right piece of work’. As if that would have made Joe’s behaviour acceptable.

But Bernard spelled everything out. There had been no apple-picking. Joe had been sleeping with the wife of a pilot whenever her husband was away on long-haul flights. There had never been much taxi-driving either. He used to go to nightclubs to pick up girls. He mentioned the groom at the stables I’d known about – the girl Joe had left me for the first time. She’d been one of many; apparently the husband I’d trusted often picked up women at bus stops and chatted them up, hoping for sex.

Bernard told me how Joe had laughed when describing the various women who’d come to see me at the first house, how he boasted about ‘having both the mother and the daughter’. And so it went on, revelation after sordid revelation, plus the news that the reason Joe never earned very much was not because they were laying people off – that was just the lie Joe had asked Bernard to tell me – but because he rarely showed up for work.

I left Bernard stunned, but soon rationalized it the way I knew best. It was all my fault, every last bit of it. How could I have been so trusting, so naive?

But by now, for all my need to know the truth about the past, it was the present that was causing me the most pain. We hadn’t long settled into our new home, and Alfie into a new school, when he became seriously ill, with vomiting and diarrhoea. My brother and I rushed him to Casualty. He’d been sick for five days, and was now so dehydrated that they needed to keep him in. Various tests were carried out, but when all of them came back negative, they decided his illness must be stress-related. They suggested Alfie have a chat to a child psychiatrist. Stressed myself by now, both at his condition and by the guilt I felt for having caused it, I was even more stressed when the psychiatrist arrived and he was the same man who had seen me when I was a teenager. The same man who’d betrayed me to my mother. Before I could stop myself and regain some composure, I had already angrily blurted out how much I felt he’d betrayed me.

Taken aback by my outburst, he didn’t allow me the courtesy of finishing what I was saying. I was clearly a mad woman and a nuisance, and for someone who knew my past, as well as the current situation, I was – and still am – flabbergasted by his lack of compassion. My opinion was that he expressed complete indifference towards me, and acted as if there was no reason for my anger. He seemed to imply that unless I basically ‘shut up’, he wouldn’t treat my son. It was as stark a choice as that.

Which meant there was
no
choice. So I submitted to Alfie being assessed, and diagnosed, as suffering from the trauma of his stressful situation, with no treatment apparently available.

Feeling completely responsible, I carried on looking after him as best as I could, watching both his weight and health fading away. But as the weeks passed, I decided I could accept things no longer. I took him to my GP, who referred him to another hospital, to see if they could help him there. It was here, on an adult ward, that he was tested more and found to have severe Crohn’s disease.

Alfie would have to take pills for the rest of his life, but at least I now knew what had been wrong and was in a position to help him.

About my guilt, though, I could do nothing.

September 1979 saw me at rock bottom. Everything seemed to be going wrong. I had no money for bills, a messy house, upset children, and I couldn’t seem to see my way out of it. I’d got a job, working as a bookkeeper, but couldn’t concentrate, and was making mistakes all the time. As a consequence, they’d decided they had to let me go, plunging my self-esteem even lower. And now I had problems even thinking about a new job, as the childcare I’d arranged with a girl in the village, for Jennifer, hadn’t worked out either, since I’d heard reports that she would stand at the front gate of the girl’s mother’s house, crying out ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ for long periods.

I was supposed to be taking antidepressants still, but wasn’t, and was having to keep out of the way of my parents, as I was terrified of my father’s ‘whore’-based tirades. Nan had decided to have nothing more to do with me, unless she saw me in public with one of her friends, when she would deign to speak but only to say horrible things. I was twenty-four years old and I see-sawed between feeling like a ten-year-old, unloved and abandoned, and a bone-tired person of a hundred.

So when Phillip suggested I go out with his friend, to ‘start over’, my principal reaction was one of gratitude that at least someone was looking out for me. But I was still so devastated about losing Joe, so in love with him still, so bewildered by what he’d done, that I felt there was nothing to go on living for, and the prospect of trying to start a relationship scared me. It was all I could do simply to function day to day, and to do the best I could for my children.

I had seen virtually nothing of Joe. Indeed, it would be two years before I did meet him again, and that meeting would distress me. In the meantime I reluctantly agreed with my brother’s suggestion that ‘starting over’ would be a good idea.

His friend was called Gary. He was fourteen years older than me, divorced with two adopted children, then three and five, and he was the ugliest man I’d ever met. Perversely, this pleased me – I was glad he was so ugly, because I was determined never to let any man close enough to hurt me again. I didn’t fancy him at all. In fact, physically, he made me feel sick, and his company, though intelligent and worldly-wise, was nothing like Joe’s. Joe had been exciting and, when he wasn’t behaving oddly, such fun. Gary, in contrast, seemed dull.

But also safe, which was crucial; an old-fashioned bastion of the community. He played football, cricket, golf and darts, chaired committees, ran sports teams, and was often called upon to make speeches at social events. Everyone liked and respected him. He was very popular in the local community, and was seen by many as a positive role model.

In the first few weeks, I processed all this information about him almost forensically – trying to weigh him up. I couldn’t begin to imagine why a man of such standing would be interested in me. Had I the wisdom I’d eventually acquire, in so many hard ways, his interest in me would have been all too obvious, but at the time all I could think of was the word ‘safe’. He must be safe or all those people wouldn’t look up to him, and he wouldn’t be asked to do the things he did. And, crucially, his presence in our lives would make my children safer around me.

Things hadn’t improved with the children. I still felt crippled by anxiety about looking after them, weighed down by fear whenever we were alone. If someone like Gary had a place in our lives, wouldn’t everything be so much better for my children?

I finally arranged for him to meet them, and though I was upset at how distant and unnatural he seemed around them, I told myself this was because he wasn’t used to them – when he got to know them better it would be fine. It had to be, because Gary was good for us, despite my continuing worry that, when he was around, Alfie really wasn’t himself. He always seemed aggressive and demonstrably anxious.

But it would be fine. As would sex, I kept hoping. I had to hope, because it took me straight back to the horrors of my teens, before Joe had chased the demons away. I felt nothing. Completely empty. Revolted. I had to go back to pretending, which made me wretched. But what should I
do
? This revulsion about sex was obviously my problem. Something
I
had to sort out. But I sometimes hated it so much that I felt physically sick, and would count the seconds till he left in the morning.

I also worried about his meanness. He was well aware how dire my circumstances were. When he stayed over I always felt I should give him a full breakfast, so entrenched was my belief that I must give, give, give, whether I had the means or not. I didn’t have the means and he knew it, yet he’d never offer to contribute, nor did he the first time he spent Christmas at my house, his only contribution being three leftover chipolatas and half a loaf of bread, as he was concerned they’d go off. So difficult were things money-wise that when on a Saturday, after football, he’d turn up, expecting dinner, I’d hide behind the sofa and pretend I was out, not only because of how queasy he made me feel about sex but also because I had nothing to feed him with.

There was a voice inside me too – a voice so quiet, I rarely heard it – telling me I shouldn’t let him bully me. He’d begun to seem all too sure of me, too soon. Too ready to take my acquiescence to his needs for granted.

The first time Gary took me to his flat, I felt overwhelmed. It was so posh, I felt completely out of place. I didn’t know if it really
was
posh, but it was certainly the poshest place
I
had ever been in. There was fitted white carpet throughout, even stuck onto the side of the bath. It had elegant patterned tiles on the kitchen and bathroom walls, and the main walls in both the living room and bedrooms were covered in beautiful, expensive-looking wallpaper with tiny flowers. I felt so poor when I compared my situation to his. Why would he want to be with me? I couldn’t work it out.

Gary was well liked by the middle-class people in the village, and began taking me to parties where we were usually one of about ten couples, who got together regularly. They all had lovely homes too, and were all equally well connected. There was the chair of the local chamber of commerce, the chair of the parish council, a businessman, a TV artist, a local police officer. They were all very welcoming, but I felt an impostor among such successful people.

But this was as nothing to how I would soon feel. Early on, at the very first party I attended, I was asked to dance by a good-looking, interesting man, who I didn’t realize initially was married to a lady dancing with Gary across the room. Seeing my mistake, I became anxious. Wouldn’t Gary get cross? Or the man’s wife? But then I realized everyone was dancing with other people’s partners, and seemed not at all concerned.

Straight away I felt uncomfortable. Something just didn’t feel right, but I didn’t dare ask in case I seemed stupid – perhaps this was what all middle-class people did. It took a couple more parties before I noticed something else: that couples who weren’t couples would periodically disappear, only returning towards the end. Now I did question Gary, who explained patiently that these were swapping parties, that his ex-wife and he had always gone to them, and that they always slept with other people. It was fun, he said, mentioning that they’d swapped regularly with a local accountant and his wife. They would apparently put both couple’s children to bed, swap for the night, then make sure they went back to the right bedrooms before the children woke up. It had only ended, apparently, for technical reasons; his wife hadn’t fancied the accountant as much as Gary had fancied the accountant’s wife. I asked Gary if he’d hoped we might do likewise and he said yes, which meant I had to put him straight right away. The whole thing made me feel sick and dirty, and my negative feelings were increased when I heard, a few weeks later, that the man I had danced with at the first party was now dead. He had apparently committed suicide.

There was no way of knowing whether the two things were related, but everything about it felt horrible. Could it really be such fun if the people doing it were so unhappy? I didn’t think so. Even less so when Gary commented later that they had all laughed and joked together during the funeral service, as if that was perfectly okay.

I made a decision to end things with Gary. He was making me feel ill. I introduced him to another young mother I knew he fancied, and he started going out with her instead. Perhaps she’d be happier doing the ‘wife’ swapping with him. I found all of it revolting and unfathomable.

My decision wasn’t popular with my mother, of course, who made it very clear I was wrong; that the best thing for my children had been, and still was, for me to be with Gary. And perhaps, given that I still talked to him on the phone now and again, he knew he should bide his time and wait.

In the meantime life was getting worse. I met another man, called Malcolm, who reminded me of Joe, and who I immediately fell for, but in doing so made myself ill. Having feelings of such strength about another human being plunged me immediately into more anxiety; I was so stressed about losing him, I could barely function, and began binge-eating and taking laxatives again.

My mental ill-health impacted on everything. It was as if all my life I only knew one way of being; that I was on my own, unwanted, that no one would ever care about me.

I was also in debt, living hand to mouth, feeding the children on cheap jam or lemon curd sandwiches, living in terror of social services finding out and taking the children away. Paradoxically, at no point did it occur to me I had lived my whole childhood in far worse conditions and no one in authority had ever noticed.

Ironically, I came perilously close. When my younger sister, perhaps taking pity on me, offered to babysit one night, so I could go out with Malcolm, I jumped at the chance. While I was out, however, my sister and her friends decided to light a bonfire, and the blaze became so dangerously out of control the fire brigade had to be called.

Typically, my father came to hear about it. As soon as I walked into my parents’ house the following day, he started shouting. ‘You fucking cow, you fucking stupid little shit!’ he yelled. ‘What the hell did you think you were fucking doing?’ Unable to face the barrage, I stepped backwards down the steps, but he followed, his breath hot on my face. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s right. You fucking well walk off. Leave your fucking mess for everyone else to clear up. You’re nothing but a fucking whore!’