Separate Lives (24 page)
And now I was here in my own home, over two decades later but dancing like a twenty-year-old and surrounded by people I'd forgotten I knew and people I never had known, with my teenage son not yet quite so horrified by it all that he'd packed his bags and left. I could scarcely believe I was again enjoying myself on NYE without recourse to Jools Holland. I pondered that fact as I refilled my glass and a wobbly-looking Lisa sidled up to me, grinning, and, half conspiratorially, half plain pissed (and apparently wholly apropos nothing), whispered: “Look, Alex has been asking after you, so Guy told him you're seeing someone. And Alex
asked who, and Guy said it was a rugby player mate of his. And y'know he just made that up to, like, protect you both from each other? So don't have a go at him, OK? And anyway, if you did want to start seeing a rugby player I think you might be spoilt for choice tonight.”
And with that she winked and wobbled off back upstairs in her Choos. And I thought, in as much as I was capable of coherent thought at all: “Uh-oh. Alex . . .”
And sometime after that, Hal retreated to his room with his mates to play on the Wii and, for all I knew, conduct terrible drink-mixing experiments with horrific stomach-pumping consequences. The thought of this alarmed me for a moment, until I remembered that after imbibing dangerous amounts of cider sometime circa 1982 I had once vomited all the way from the top to the bottom deck of a Routemaster bus and that the sheer horror of it all had ensured I never drank cider ever again in my life. And then I wondered, drunkenly, if Hal had ever even been on a bus. I couldn't think of an occasion when he might have been.
“Do you know what?” I said to the tall, broad-shouldered and hoveringly attentive man standing next to me, whose name I couldn't recall but who was nonetheless kindly refilling my glass for the zillionth time, “I don't think my son's ever been on a bus! Isn't that appalling?”
“Appalling,” he agreed. “Now where's the best place to kiss you?”
“I find lips are a good place to start.”
So he did.
The next morning didn't really exist. The afternoon, however, hove into view like a desert mirage, promising more than it could ever deliver. Hal, meanwhile, was fabulous. He and Dom (the irony of Hal and Dom rekindling their
friendship just as Hal was about to depart for Somerset wasn't lost on any of us) sweetly if ineffectually started to tidy up, while I had a long shower and attempted to recall various fleeting memories from the night before, such as wondering who the Mickey Rourke-alike (if Mickey Rourke hadn't had Stallone-alike plastic surgery, that is) might have been. And when and where had he gone, precisely? And I was still wondering this when I'd emerged from the shower and was suitably dressed for stuffing bin-bags, and Hal said, casually: “So, Mum, did you end up, like, kissing
Richard Woodhead
?”
“What?”
“I think you did. How cool is that.”
“Is it?”
“Dur. Yeah. Eighty-six caps and fifty tries for England. He was staring at you, like, all night.”
“OK. And eighty-six caps and fifty triesâthat's good, is it?”
“Mum, it's the record.”
“Well, good for him.”
“More like good for you.”
At which point the doorbell rang. It was Guy. And a man who looked disconcertingly familiar.
“OK, Pippa, Lisa's asleep, the twins are watching
Finding Nemo
on the sofa with Martaâwhom we have to hope isn't asleepâand we are at your disposal for an hour or so, to do any manly disposing-of-things you may require.”
“Hi,” said Richard Woodhead. “I slept over in Guy and Lisa's spare room and I felt bad about having plied you with so much of your own alcohol and then leaving you behind to take out the empties, so . . . I hope you don't mind?”
“Wow, that is kind. OK, come in.”
Even though I really wished I'd had a bit of advance notice so that I wasn't wearing a six-year-old Juicy Couture tracksuit and my hair in a scrunchie.
“She doesn't mind,” said a voice behind me.
“Richard, this is my son, Hal. Hal, this is Richard.”
“I know. Eighty-six caps and fifty tries for England.”
“You play rugby, Hal? Maybe it's time to try buses?”
And while Hal looked more star-struck than he did bemused, Richard made up for his slightly cheap shot by asking what position Hal played. At which point Guy winked at me, and I wondered if it was remotely appropriate to sneak off and slip into something less comfortable. And I also found a tiny multi-tasking moment in which to wonder:
a) Whether Richard Woodhead was going to turn out to be this century's Johnny Stone?
And:
b) Did I actually have any bin-bags?
So far, I liked the look of 2010. I particularly enjoyed the novelty of the next hour and a half, in which men did bloke stuff in my house while I made tea. I really liked that. And I also liked it when Hal, who had more than done his bit, said:
“OK if I go round to Dom's now, Mum? I'm sleeping over, remember?”
And quick as a flash, Guy said: “OK if I go round to Lisa's now, Pip? I'm sleeping over there too.”
And while I laughed, Richard said: “But is it OK if I stay right here for a bit longer? Unless you'd rather I went, of course?”
To which my response was: “No, I'd much rather you stayed. But I'd also love it if I could get out of this tracksuit.”
Fortunately I was the only one who heard his sotto-voce reply: “I'd love it too.”
On January 3rd, I was still busy embracing New Year indolence until I realized it had been a week since I'd done any yoga and at least two weeks since I'd been anywhere near the hospice, all of which made me feel pretty guilty until I started to feel annoyed by my perpetual and predictable default-to-feeling-guilty, which in turn ended up outweighing the guilt.
On the 4th I was back in the January swing, no booze and a detox underway, ninety minutes of Ashtanga under my belt and fresh flowers in the lobby of the hospice in Highgate where Auntie Pam had spent her last few weeks.
Meanwhile, Hal was particularly chipper. In five days he'd be starting his new school and in the meantime he seemed to have developed a fetish for packing and re-packing his cool new camouflage-embossed trunk. He was also asking a lot of questions about Richard.
“Is Richard your boyfriend, Mum?”
“Um, no, I think I'm a bit too old for boyfriends. And Richard is definitely a bit too old to be one.”
“You know what I mean.”
“OK, yes, I know what you mean. I don't know yet. Too early to say. Maybe?”
“Maybe by half-term?”
“Who knows? Now go away and do some more folding, like the thirteen-year-old of my dreams.”
“You make me sound like a girl.”
“I'm liking your feminine side.”
“Stop it, Mum!”
We were in a collective good mood. I had had a couple of texts from Richard, who since retiring from rugby fifteen years previously, had returned to his first loveâflying. A former pilot, he had (rather thrillingly) flown Concorde
for BA and now combined training new pilots with a line in after-dinner and motivational speaking and some charity work and all-in-all would have been living the perfect life of a National Sporting Hero (retd) if his wife hadn't left him six months ago for some TV chef, a situation that had apparently entirely underwhelmed their grown-up kids, a son of twenty-two and a daughter of twenty. There seemed to be something of an abandonment theme among the middle-aged men I was meeting. One more case study and I'd probably have a thesis.
So maybe I shouldn't have been too surprised when I got that call from Alex the following evening. After years of waiting, men were suddenly arriving at my door like the buses my son had never caught.
It was late, after 11 p.m. At first I thought it could be Richard, but we weren't really in a phoning-after-11 p.m. sort of situation. Not yet. So when I saw the caller ID “Alex,” I was surprised, even though I knew I'd been on his mind because Lisa had told me at the party. And of course there was the amusingly ironic fact that he had thought I was seeing a rugby player at a time when I wasn't, but now I was actually seeing an ex-rugby player. In truth it was the perfect time for Alex to call me because I was in the proverbial “good place.” My heart wasn't lurching; sufficient time had elapsed. I was fine. I'd moved on. I still had Alex's old iPhone upstairs in a box in my cupboard, granted, but no skeletons other than that.
“Alex Fox. Pleasant surprise, stranger, if a little late in the day.”
“I know. I'm sorry it's so late. I hope it's OK? I've just had a drink with my brothers and . . . they've gone home and I was thinking I could either catch the 11:15 from Charing Cross, or talk to you for a few minutes and catch the 11:45. Or . . .”
“Or what, Alex?”
“Or. I dunno, Pippa. How are you? How have you been? Are you happy? Did you have a good new year?”
He was slurring a bit, but not so much that a conversation was pointless, so . . .
“Yeah, I'm good, Alex. I've been . . . fine. I'm pretty happy, yes. I had a lovely New Year. Usually I hate them but I threw a party, which isn't a very âme' thing to do but it was fun. And you? How are you? You live by the seaside now, I hear.”
“Yeah, I do. And you know I do, because you sent me a text telling me you did, a couple of days before Christmas.”
“Right! Well, yes, but . . .”
“I pretended I didn't know who it was from. Pretended I'd deleted your number. I thought it was the best idea, at the time. Then I started regretting it.”
“Oh, OK. Well that makes sense. I was in Random-on-Sea for the first time in over thirty years, as it happens. My mum's mumâNanaâlived there, and I spent a lot of time there as a kid before she died. Nice place for you . . . for you as a family. Good for kids. And stuff.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Look, Pip, I can't tell you how tempted I was to call you and persuade you to meet me in Randomâassuming you were still there when you sent it.”
“But you didn't.”
“No, I didn't. But I'm doing it now. I really would love to see you again, Pippa. Not like that . . . not like before. Just . . . just
because
.”
My head crowded with so many thoughts and I could feel myself stepping off firm dry land into something that looked suspiciously like quicksand. I could suddenly feel everything that had been safe and sure and certain starting
to sink and slide and I felt wrong-footed. Even slightly scared. But I felt excited, too. So shoot me.
“So come on then. Come and see me. You remember my address.”
And without waiting for an answer, because I knew what the answer was, I touched “End Call” and walked slowly downstairs andâscrew the detoxâpicked out a nice bottle of Merlot and uncorked it. Then the Merlot and I stood very still and let ourselves breathe.
Sorry, Mum.
Pip xxx
Alex
Wednesday June 23, 2010
From: [email protected]
Hey Mate,
As I write you're in Bali on your honeymoon. I just went on the Amanusa website and . . . well, I think you'll probably just about manage to struggle through your fortnight, especially if you've got one of those suites with your own pool. You deserve it.
Your wedding was a cracking day. Bad startâfor me, anywayâbut we made it, and you two made it and the weather was perfect and you both got your vowsâand each other's namesâin the right order, which was a relief because, let's face it, Lisa could so easily have ended up married to me. Unfortunately she got you, but all of life is compromise, right?
She looked beautiful. We all know she's beautiful but she looked above-and-beyond . . . and so fucking happy, even though she obviously picked the wrong brother. When you had the first dance (Van Morrison?! Who knew!) I thought I'd never seen anyone look as happy as you two did. It
was a day that (and forgive the uncharacteristic lapse into sentimentality) oozed love and optimism and it kind of gave me hope, even as it made me realize that Susie and I would never be able to feel like that togetherâprobably never had. And (on a parental note!) I was proud of Lula. She'd been so upset when Susie and Chuck had bailed at the service station and I worried about her all day, but she's a great kid, growing up fast and she did us all proud. I'm only sorry that Chuck wasn't there to share it. But Susie? Frankly I couldn't give a shit. Anyway, thanks for the loan of the house. Lula and I have left it just as we found it (OK, apart from the pizza boxes) and Marta has the keys. At least I think she does . . . (joke!)
I've often wondered why Susie and I didn't marry. I asked her (again and again) and she sort of said yes, so we “announced” our “engagement” (you remember? Mum asking me a bit too loudly if I'd really made the right decision and Susie ending up in the loo in tears?), but then she'd change her mind and say no and eventually I just gave up. We had the kids, we had the scary mortgage, we had the whole quasi-marital shebang going on so what difference was a bit of paper ever going to make? I don't know why I felt like I wanted it so badly, but maybe it's a bloke thing? Maybe the more she said no, the more entrenched I became, the more I wanted her to change her mind? But don't think it hasn't also occurred to me that if she'd said yes and we'd gone ahead and done the deed eight years ago we'd probably be divorced by now.
I know this isn't the kind of thing you want to flag up to a newlywed, much less your blissfully-happy-in-Bali newlywed brother, but I genuinely don't know how people sustain long relationships anymore. I look at the folks and I look around at our generation and I wonder how many of “us” (and of course you can count me out) will ever celebrate golden weddings? You and Lisa will have to live to your nineties, for starters.
But the upshot of all of this is that Susie and I are splitting up. It's been on the cards for a while, to be honest, but her behavior on Saturday was the proverbial last straw. I think moving to Random was a last-ditch attempt by both of us to save something that was already under threat of collapse. I think (I know) I sought some kind of sanctuary with Pippa . . . and maybe I'll
carry on seeking it. Pippa wasn't the causeâshe's totally not to blame. The problems between me and Susie were already there but I thinkâOK, I knowâthat losing my job hit me harder than I'd actually realized. With redundancy it's not so much the day-to-day doing of the job that you miss, or even the money (no, really!), it's the sense of belonging to something. Unlike Susie I was never cut out to be freelance or entrepreneurial. I'm your dyed-in-the-wool traditional company bloke. If I'd been born a few decades earlier I'd've signed up at twenty-one to, I dunno, J. Walter Thompson or IBM or some other Sixties icon-of-whatever and by now I'd have been promoted to a corner office and be looking forward to the full-salary pension while commuting in to Kings X from a 1930s detached-and-thatched in Hertfordshire.
I was never meant to be a risk-taker. I'm not like you. I hate putting my neck on the line. I like taking care of business and keeping things rolling along. I'm the proverbial safe pair of hands. So it's pretty ironic that I lost my job in a recession, a time when you'd think that keeping me would be the easiest thing to do. It's not like I fucked up. At least I'm pretty sure I didn't fuck up; after all it's not me that's responsible for print journalism being a dying trade. But they said I didn't seem “sufficiently committed to the future of multi-platform.” Bollocks to that. But maybe I am “old school” already, at forty-five? I suppose I must be because they only went and hired a thirty-year-old to do my job.
One of the problems with Susie and me is that she always saw me as an Alpha. I'm not, I just do a good impression of one because if you're six-foot-whatever and have your own teeth and hair, peopleâwomen especiallyâassume you're King of the fucking Jungle. In Dad's case and your case and Will's case, they'd be absolutely right; they'd even be right in Isobel's case, and Susie's, too, come to that. But I'm a fucking sheep in wolf's clothing. I don't want to “Play up! Play up! And play the fucking game!” anymore. I don't want to have to compete in the “King-Kong Chest-Beating” and “Loudest Tarzan Roar” competitions. I don't want to have to endlessly strategize my head off during company “away days” and then run across hot coals in my bare feet shouting, “Because I'm Worth It!” I'm forty-five. I
just want to do eight hours' work and get home to see the kids and have a nice dinner with the missus and sink half a bottle of wine and fall asleep in front of
Question Time
. What's so fucking wrong with that, eh?
But now, somehow, I'm an unemployed ex-magazine publisher living in a rundown seaside town that's too far from London to commute and is stuffed with, so far as I can tell, nutters. Honest, mateâit's heaving with people who are all running away from something (and I'd include me and Susie in that, for sure, even if the only thing we were running away from was ourselves). They're escaping from old partners, old jobs, old drug habits, old unrealized hopes and all-too-real fears. There's a real sadness about itâand for all the summery cheerfulness and big houses and having the sea at the end of the road, you should see it in February. It's the Last Fucking Resort.
Anyway, I'm digressing. Suddenly there seems to be so much I want to get off my chest. I don't suppose I'll send you this email because I think in the end it's more for me than it is for you. It's the closest I'll ever get to therapy, believe me.
So me and Susie are calling it a day. We had a row on the phone when the slow dances were underway. Since then we've been maintaining frosty businesslike relations. I'm in the spare room, of course, and I've told her that I'm not leaving the house, so fuck knows how that's going to work because I'll have to buy her half out. I've earned this fucking house and I'm not going anywhereâno way. So . . . That's about it, mate. I'm an unemployed forty-five-year-old who is splitting up with the mother of his children. As mid-life clichés go, I'm only a few million dollars and a couple of dozen prostitutes short of being Charlie fucking Sheen.
Love to the missus. Love to the kids. Love to you.
A X
[Entourage will place this message in the “drafts” folder until you send it]
Thursday June 24, 2010
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
PLEASE call/text/email me asap. Dad's in hospital in Faroâhe's had a heart attack. Mum's with him and I'm on my way to Stansted nowâthere's an EasyJet flight at lunchtime. Hope you can get here Guy. Fingers crossed. W