Julia Gets a Life (7 page)

            ‘With who? No, don’t tell me. No,
do
tell me. Who?’

            ‘Rhiannon De Laney.’

            ‘Rhiannon De Laney? Rhiannon
De Laney
!’

            Then, ‘RHIANNON DE LANEY!’ For the benefit of the lady plugging the leek potage
,
presumably.

            ‘Yes, her.’

            Moira’s frosted pink fingers rattle the trolley. ‘Great Saints alive! So you’ve split up? I should say so. SHR!’

            ‘SHR?’

            ‘Serves Him Right, my darling. You poor
child
(Moira is forty seven). How could he? And you so...so... Oh!’ She embraces me, heartily.  

            Of course, what I really wanted to get across was that the leaving, though Richard’s in a physical sense, was very much mine in a philosophical one. But I can’t keep going around saying I’ve left Richard because people keep getting confused. My GP actually reached for my notes last week and began scribbling across my address. On the other hand, I don’t want to say Richard’s left me, because then people think that he really
has
left me - which winds me up, obviously, because there is a whole world of difference between your husband having a quick one (
two
) and you kicking him out, and him leaving you for another woman. Which means I have to start putting them straight which confuses them further and...Pah! Why is life so complicated?

            TTD Monday. Find succinct grouping of words to accurately describe potential (actual?) breakdown of marriage, with clear reference to housing arrangements, without sounding like a pathetic, sad person on
Jerry Springer.

            Trouble is, every time I find myself explaining the circumstances of Richard’s departure to anyone I have this compelling urge to burst into tears regardless of whether I’m feeling happy at the time or not, which is both crazy and inconvenient, and will make people think I am just hanging-on-by-a-thread. And I cannot remonstrate with them about it because everyone knows that you only bang on about how you’re definitely holding it all together when you’re about as together as a half finished jumper with the knitting needle whipped out. And as soon as my face takes on that characteristic wrestling with itself appearance, people always want to clutch me to them and put their arms around me, which everybody also knows just makes it a zillion times worse. I feel a bit like an ear with a gobbet of wax in it. The more someone tries to gently tease bits out, the more it begins to hurt. Perhaps I (and my babes, of course)
should
leave the house. At least that way I won’t have to keep explaining things all the time. I blame pregnancy. Before I got pregnant I watched the whole of
Gone With The Wind
without so much of a sniff. Now I cry at Bernard Matthew’s chicken commercials. How low can you sink?

            On this occasion however, I was rescued from the sobering prospect of having my chin wobble in front of Moira Bugle - which would have involved me in being made to sit down on a bench, copious squeezing of my upper arm, and quite possibly some hapless sixth former part-time shelf-stacker being dispatched to the staff room to fetch hot sweet tea and a bourbon biscuit - by the timely arrival of Mr Bennett, the man who brings me door to door kitchen gadgets and the like, and who Richard always insists we make some sort of purchase from as he is trying, apparently, to eke out a living. Two things struck me on seeing him. One was the Jaguar key fob in his hand and the other was Richard’s clearly quite selective attachment to moral responsibility. Another note - TTD; mention my possible need to become a full time home based principal carer with special reference to burdens on state type stuff. That should put a cold atlantic current under his stiffy.

            Anyway, the arrival of Mr Bennett at least ensured that I was able to steer the conversation away from my marriage and on to the safer ground of my new plastic canapé maker.

            ‘Well! ‘ said Moira, at last. ‘That sounds like exactly the sort of thing I could use, wouldn’t you say?’ Moira is famous for her imaginative nibbles, but even Mr Bennett had shuffled away. Sales at any price? I think not.

            ‘Probably more use than I’m likely to be making of it for the forseeable future,’ I said.

            ‘Speaking of which,’ Moira rattled on seamlessly, patting at the chestnut coloured scupture that was her hair. ‘It’s actually rather fortuitous me bumping into you today. I was going to phone you...’ Oh, yeah? ‘To invite you over for dinner next weekend. Well, fair play, you
and
Richard, originally, but of course it would be just lovely if you could come along on your own. We don’t hold with any of that
couples
nonsense, round our way, do we?
Do
say you’re free.’

            I toyed with the idea of invoking the old ‘I don’t think I’d be very good company’ excuse but decided that as well as being untrue (of course I would - I am an item-of-interest) it would also sound pathetic. The least one can do in the face of such a blatant sympathy invitation, is to accept it graciously. Because, when all is said and done, what does it matter that Moira knows that I know that she had no more intention of inviting Richard and I over that swinging naked from her waxed pine victorian airer? It’s surely the thought that counts. And whatever criticisms one can (and should) level at her, her choice of pretending to have intended to is borne entirely out of a rigorously held belief that it would be embarrassing for me to be considered someone in need of sympathy and solace. Which is rather fine, when you think about it. So I said,

            ‘Yes, of course I am.’ And, ‘shall I bring some canapés, perhaps?’

            Well. In moments of (wine-enhanced) good cheer I have developed a new image for myself ; of someone scarred by experience but ultimately optimistic. And one of the things I am most optimistic about is the opportunity I now have to put myself about a bit, in a more wild and happening social scene than that centred around quiz nights and barn dances and dreary cocktail parties. And what do I have? I have an invitation to go to dinner with Moira and Derek Bugle; quite possibly the most staunchly conservative couple in Cardiff. To Moira, ‘wild’ equals a tit on the bird table. Mmmm. Can’t wait. Really
cannot
wait.

            I say this to Emma when I get home and she finds it amusing enough to tear her away from her
High School Musical
DVD. And it is good to see her laughing again. She is totally Bugle aware, of course; not just from the various forays our association with the PTA have led us to make into their circle over the years, but also because Damon Bugle (Why Damon? How Damon? So strange
.
So unaccountably
cool
), Moira’s youngest, is two years above Emma at High School. He is something of a minor celebrity in the Chess Club, apparently, and has brought honour to the school in the recent South Wales championships. He is, all agree, going to go a long way in Chess. Hastings, at least, where I think the nationals are held. He is also, Emma tells me, a complete geek, which I am trendy enough to appreciate is not a vote of confidence.

            ‘What a hoot,’ she says. ‘Won’t do much for your street cred, will it? Don’t worry Mum, I’ll keep it quiet for you.’

            Emma, having emerged, scathed but essentially positive since her father’s departure, has now restyled herself as a thoughtful and complex bronte-esque character (themed accessories financed mainly by the blood money she’s been wheedling out of him). She is anxious to turn me into as much of a sex goddess as can reasonably be achieved with someone so aged in order that I stay cool, and make Dad realise what a babe I really am. It seems not to matter to her that it was
I
that kicked
him
out, and that there is little doubt he’d be back like a shot given half a chance; it’s clearly the infidelity itself that counts.

            We have moved to a tangibly different place in our relationship. I have been scrupulously honest with her about why I asked her father to leave, and I think she respects me for being so. Also, I have allowed her to join me in using the word bitch (in the privacy of our own home, naturally) and I think she finds it as therapeutic as me. Having said
that,
I’ve recently been reading an interesting book called
Bonds
that bind us
(us, as in women, apparently) which I thought would make appropriate light reading for the cuckoldess about town (why?). It has instructed me in the dire consequences for womankind if we feeble girlies insist on displacing our fury at our husbands and partners(men) at the people (other women) with whom they’ve transgressed. Given (it prattles on) that those people (the other women) have no personal duty of fidelity to us, doing so can only be harmful to us (women generally) as a group, and hinder our progress toward sisterhood and a free and equal status in society. Far better (it thinks, huh!) to accept that we do not have an inalienable right to expect a respect for fidelity from those people (other women) who do not have any contractual responsibility (marriage or similar commitment) toward us, and instead, ensure that our feelings of anger and betrayal are directed exclusively at the husband or partner who has failed in his responsibility toward us.

            In other words, I should try not to instil in Emma any sense that it is Rhiannon who is at fault here. Simply that her father is a man and that men are pathetic souls with their forebrain just behind their foreskins and that it’s a fact of life that men put it about a bit. For the good of womankind - and eventual world domination, and men kept in stud farms and subject to selective breeding and so on, of course. I think I’ll throw
Bonds
away, actually.

            The children love Richard. And Richard loves them. On the other hand, Rhiannon’s a bitch.

What to wear, what to wear?

What to wear

Long black (tight/plunging/backless etc) dress

Short black (tight but high neck) dress

Black Bootleg trousers plus Carvela boots plus what top? (eating!!!)

Black jeans?

New outfit (what kind?) Think IMAGE

            The trouble with going somewhere like Moira Bugle’s is that you have to take a firm line with yourself about clothing. Either you go in regulation middle class stuff - gold shoes, cotton/linen mix jumpers (appliquéd, of course) from
Coast
or M and S, velvet skirt/devore shirt combos etc. and resign yourself to blending seamlessly into the blur of middle aged womanhood around you, or you don’t. In which case you must decide in advance not to mind having yourself and your attire described as interesting, arresting, the sort of thing one would really
love
to wear if only one had the courage, and definitely hearing the word ‘slapper’ uttered in a stage whisper when you go to the loo. No contest, really.

            Emma inspects my wardrobe (basically, as above, with knobs on) and decides that this is the time to make a definitive style statement. She eschews the ranks of standard civil engineering dinner dance frocks with a look that could frazzle a whole side of pig, and dismisses all my trendy bootleg and blouse combos as exactly what middle class married women
would
think are cutting edge. They think ergo they’re not, it seems.

            ‘There’s a PDSA bag downstairs,’ she says menacingly.

            ‘I cannot consign my entire wardrobe to the bin,’ I tell her loftily. ‘I’m not made of money, you know.’

            Grudgingly, she allows that I’ll still need my usual black staples to go to work in, though as a photographer, apparently, I should consider it my duty to dress in as bohemian a fashion as possible. And it would be, I accept, more accommodating of baby sick.

            ‘And I’ll lend you,’ she tells me, ‘a few thongs and bits.’

            ‘Thongs?’

            ‘Leather thongs.’

            ‘Leather thongs?’

            ‘For your neck, Mum. God!’

            But we agree, in the end, that an overall re-style is called for. Something younger, and snappier, more
Vogue
than
Family Circle
. But mainly, I suspect, something she could wear too.