The ABCs of Love (9 page)

O

objects

John told me that he went round his house last night looking at all the objects he and his wife had bought together. He said he was ticking things off in his mind.

If I go, I’ll take this, this, and this.

That, that, and that will stay.

It was a terrible thing to do, he said, because he realized that was all a marriage comes down to in the end. Objects. Even the children, he said. Even the children would be shared between him and Kate.

I held him close and told him that if I had him, I would never need anything else. We stayed like that, in each other’s arms, for a long time. We were silent because he was upset, and all I wanted to ask was whether he was going to take the painting of beach huts by the sea that we once took to be reframed together.

I have always liked that painting.

See also Houses; Money; Property; Questions

old

My heart is breaking. All I can see in front of me is a dark, black corridor with nothing making it worthwhile to come out the other side. John can’t bring himself to think about leaving Kate anymore. He says it would kill her. Apparently, she’s spent too much of her life relying on him, and he has to accept the responsibility. Plus, he’d feel so guilty that he’d taken the best years of her life. Maybe if they’d both been younger? Younger like me. He told me that I’d be all right, that I had my whole life ahead. I had to live well, to make him proud.

I felt numb. He was crying when he said all this, so I told him it was all right, that I understood, but the next day I was having a sandwich in a local coffee shop when I realized the woman sitting opposite me must be in her early forties, probably exactly the same age as Kate. I knew it wasn’t her, but I couldn’t stop staring at this woman. She was reading some papers, an important-looking document, so I felt I could stare all I wanted without her noticing me.

I was trying to see what it was like to be that old. She had all the usual imperfections, but when I looked closely, I saw some I hadn’t thought of before. The skin at the sides of her face was puckered round her ears, as if it needed stretching. Then when she turned round to pick her coat off the back of the chair, I saw she had lines at the back of the neck as thick and deep as the thin gold chain she was wearing. The areas around her eyes were black, not just underneath as you get sometimes from lack of sleep, but at the edges of her nose, right up to her eyebrows too, so her sockets looked sunken.

John told me once that what Kate hated most about getting old was the fact that she felt she was becoming invisible. John said that Kate was losing all her confidence and bounce. This was another thing that made him feel guilty.

I could see that the woman sitting opposite me at the table was nervous. She apologized when other people bumped into her, she kept giving me silly little smiles, she tried to make conversation with the man who came to clear away the table even though he wasn’t interested. When I saw her start to put her things away to go, I knocked over my coffee on purpose, willing the dark brown liquid to spill over her papers.

“I’m sorry,” I said as she whipped everything up quickly, trying to take care of the worst of the damage with a sodden paper napkin. “I just didn’t notice you there.”

The woman looked as if she was trying not to cry. The manager came rushing over. He was about twenty-five, as dark and handsome as an Italian film star. I smiled at him, and he stopped in his tracks for a moment, then smiled back. Together we watched the woman flutter her hands here and there until he remembered what he was there for and started to wipe the papers with the wet cloth in his hands.

“Don’t.” She was almost shouting. “These are important. They’re Work things.” That’s how she spoke. Gave
Work
a capital letter, as if that was all she had in her life. All she had left to her. After she’d gone, I watched the other people in the café give one another little smiles. I hoped she’d get into trouble when she got back to the office. I felt no guilt. Didn’t she know it was women her age who were ruining my life?

The next night John came round and said he was wrong. That he couldn’t let me go. That he’d see a way of making things all right. I made a point of lifting up my hair and asking him to kiss the back of my neck. I told him women loved that, because I guessed he sometimes tried out things we did with Kate. “Is it smooth?” I asked. “Are there any lines there?” He whispered into my skin that I was beautiful, flawless, a national treasure. I turned my head round so his mouth was against my cheek, just by my ear.

“I really couldn’t bear to be lined and ugly,” I said. “I’ll be perfect for you forever.”

He smiled, but something was wrong. It was the first time I’d been with John and felt guilty. He kept poking his tongue at my skin until I had to push him off.

See also Breasts; Endings; Mistaken Identity; Youth

omelet

My mother always used to say that it was impossible to make an omelet without breaking eggs. It seemed substantial at the time, like something I should listen to, but I can’t help wondering what it all meant now. Of course you need to break the eggs. It’s just common sense.

See also Elephant’s Egg; Endings; Old; Questions; Voices; X

omens

The world has become a more interesting place since I fell in love.

A magpie flying overhead used to be just a black-and-white bird. It is now a sign that today is going to be awful, so I have to spend the next hour searching for another to balance it out. Two birds flying together fills me with joy. It means that John really does love me. That we’re going to be happy together forever.

That black cat crossing the road . . . the chimney sweep . . . the four-leaf clover. If I go into a pub and count ten blond-haired men, if the sandwich I’ve picked with my eyes shut turns out to be chicken, if I can get to that shop without seeing a red car. . . .

If.

See also Horoscopes; Love Calculators; Telephone Boxes;
Utopia

only children

Sally and I are both only children. John is the youngest of three. He has two children of his own. There are bound to be things he can’t understand about me that Sally can.

There is a responsibility about being an only child. On the one hand, you are the most wanted person in the universe, the one who completes the family, the little plastic figure who makes living in the dollhouse worthwhile. On the other, you bear single-handedly the pressure of changing someone’s life beyond recognition. When things go wrong, it can be no one else’s fault but yours.

This is a lot for a child to have to cope with.

There was a psychological experiment once. They put a group of strangers in a room and forbade them to speak to one another. Then they asked them to circle round, just looking, until they found someone they wanted as their potential partner. They all chose, but remember they hadn’t spoken yet. When they finally got to talk to their partner, the vast majority found that they had paired up with someone who shared the same place in the family as they did. Youngest child with youngest child, older with older, middles with middles. I like to think the experiment finally ended when the only children were peeled off the outside walls and forced to join in with the rest. Maybe they would then have made cynical comments about the easy comradeship of the other people there, but more likely, they would have got into an argument as to who had the unhappiest childhood.

See also Ants; Blood; Captains; Daisies; Questions; Relatives;
Zzzz
oranges

I knew a girl once who used to say that if you ever wanted to pick anyone up, all you needed to do was to go on a train journey with a copy of Rebecca and a large apple. You would have hardly nibbled through the skin, or even reached Manderley, before a man approached you.

I tried it with John one evening, but all I had in the fruit bowl was oranges. John was watching football, and he didn’t even look at me, just passed me his hankie so I could mop the juices off my chin. He says it’s a compliment to how relaxed he feels with me that he can spend the little time we have together watching television.

Besides, it was an important match that he was supposed to be watching down at the pub with his friend Sam.

See also Endings