The Man Who Forgot His Wife (20 page)

When the Honda was finally delivered back from the garage, I gave it a good clean in the street outside, prompting the raffish neighbour who had borrowed our hedge trimmer to wander across for an extended chat.

‘Hullo there, Vaughan. Giving the old motor a wash and set?’

‘Ha ha!’ I chuckled politely. ‘Yes … it wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher.’

The neighbour thought this was hilarious, and I was unsure about the etiquette of resuming washing the car before the laughter had died down. I did my best to navigate the treacherous line between normal good manners and actually encouraging this man’s friendship, but a moment’s lost concentration saw me offer
too
chatty a response with just a bit too much eye contact, and suddenly the neighbour pounced.

‘Anyway, Arabella was saying the other day that with Maddy away at the moment, you must bring the kids over for their tea one evening. She could cook them some fish fingers or something?’

Approaching behind him I spotted Jamie and Dillie, returning from the Common with the dog. The mime was unambiguous: the word ‘No!’ was mouthed over and over again, while the kids acted out shooting themselves in the head, hanging themselves and slashing their wrists.

‘Ah, well, that’s very kind,’ I said, appearing to suppress a cough or hiccup or something, ‘but I’ve already planned and bought their meals for the whole week, so another time perhaps?’

I had actually promised the kids home-delivered pizzas that evening, and was now forced to make an elaborate arrangement with the driver to meet me a hundred yards up the road so that the moped wasn’t spotted bringing our dinner to the door. But I grew more confident in the kitchen, cooking from recipe books and serving up the kids’ favourite dishes by special request. They were incredibly supportive, telling me exactly how it all used to work before. Apparently I always stacked the dishwasher immediately after dinner and they weren’t expected to do any clearing up at all, because Mum and I were always really insistent that they went and watched
Family Guy
‘while their food went down’.

And I knew that they were winding me up, but I let them watch television anyway on the grounds that they’d made me laugh. That was the rule: if their pleas or excuses were witty enough, they generally got their way. ‘Dad, I haven’t had my pocket money – have you got six pounds fifty?’

‘Six pounds fifty? Mum said you got a fiver.’

‘Yeah, but there’s a one pound fifty handling charge.’

I had originally said no to Dillie’s suggestion that the twins from her class came for a sleepover. But then she indignantly insisted that the twins couldn’t stay at home because the builders
had
just discovered their house was possessed by the Antichrist.

‘Oh really?’

‘It’s true,’ added Jamie. ‘The council are sending round an exorcist, but you have to wait six weeks unless you get a private one.’

And a few minutes later I was dragging the double mattress into Dillie’s room.

Dillie’s own bed was a masterpiece of creative carpentry. Angled steps at the rear, like on an old-fashioned London bus, led up to a cosy upper bunk, while underneath was a den that hid a pull-down desk featuring hand-built drawers and cubby holes and special places for books or soft toys. Car stereo speakers were built into either side of the headboard, which led to an iPod dock, radio and CD player. The audio books for which this had been conceived remained in their cellophane wrappers, while a selection of music CDs were scattered across a shelf with a special hole for a water beaker, which currently held a can of Dr Pepper.

‘Wow – fantastic bed!’ I said. ‘Where did you get that from?’

‘You built it!’ she said with pride.

I looked it over more carefully, beaming with pride at the craftsmanship, checking the strength of the joints, learning that I must have an instinctive flair for design and carpentry I had not realized I possessed.

‘And what about the clouds on the ceiling? Did I paint those?’

‘No, that was Mum. She said she got the idea from the boy’s bedroom in
Kramer vs. Kramer
.’

‘Right. That was a Dustin Hoffman film, wasn’t it? I think I remember it. They get back together at the end?’

‘No – they get divorced.’

This home was just another Victorian terrace like so many others in the surrounding streets, but on the inside our family’s character had been stamped on every room. I found myself staring at Maddy’s photographs for hours. Her signature creations featured elaborate digital collages made up of hundreds of tiny
thumbnail
photographs of interesting locations or people, which combined to make one huge image of an individual face. There was so much in them, and I was fascinated by the choices Maddy had made in these giant portraits. When I looked in the mirror I could see my own image, but still couldn’t make out all the hundreds of people and places that had made me. Yet having gone from sleeping in a hospital ward to camping in a baby’s nursery, I felt I’d finally found the place where I belonged.

I learned that I had put a lot of effort into the renovations. It had been me who had done the refit of the kitchen, it was me who’d made the built-in wardrobes. I had even constructed the wooden summerhouse at the bottom of the garden, and the decking outside the kitchen doors. It was strange that I was able to feel a little abstract pride at these achievements. Unlike all those negative stories, which were nothing to do with the new Vaughan at all.

When this property came to be sold, the clouds would be painted over and my hand-built bed ripped out for something to the new owners’ taste. And what about the invisible handiwork that Maddy and I had done in raising our children? Soon they would be adolescents: how would they react to losing the security of their family home and shuttling between their estranged parents? Would all their sparkle and charm end up on the skip with everything else?

I was still consumed with the mystery of how this had become a ‘broken home’, as Jean insisted on calling it. That night, when the children were asleep, I closed the lounge door and furtively connected an old VHS player I had found under the stairs in order to watch some old home movies with promising titles like ‘Christmas 2007’. I felt guilty, but was sure that all men secretly watched films of themselves and their wives enjoying a healthy, happy marriage. Maybe there was even stronger stuff on the internet; maybe it was possible to download illicit images of Vaughan and Madeleine holding hands on the
beach
or running through fields of poppies together.

Baby Jamie had clearly been something of a superstar, playing the title role in countless thrilling-sounding movies such as ‘Jamie’s First Mashed Banana’ or ‘Jamie Sees the Sea!’ (an interesting interpretation by the lead, who chose to play the whole of this scene fast asleep). The second baby must have failed a screen test or something, because she barely made an appearance. Seeing them as toddlers was thrilling and heart-wrenching at the same time. It was like I was seeing our babies for the first time, but with the added bonus of knowing the people these infants would turn into.

There was more footage of them as they got a bit older; once they could be put down, the camcorder could be picked back up again. An angelic little Dillie sang a song in her Brownie uniform, though I can’t believe it was Brown Owl who had taught her ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. And Jamie was filmed running towards the finishing line at his infant school sports day. I was actually quite excited watching this, because Jamie was in the lead – my son was going to win the race! And then, a yard before the tape, he saw me filming and stopped and waved at the camera as all his classmates swept past him.

I took a break and got myself another couple of beers from the fridge before resuming the home-movie marathon. There was footage of my wife and kids at the seaside, our voices almost inaudible over the rumbling wind on the microphone. Woody was a puppy, scared but entranced by the water, barking at the waves and then running at manic full speed up the beach, falling over his own legs and running back down towards the water again. The children were younger and fantastically cute, yet I could see that they were essentially the same people as now. Their memories of this holiday would probably have been reconstructed by this film; their brains would have tricked them into thinking they remembered the day on the beach rather than the recording they had seen many times since.

That was what this whole experience was teaching me: that memories are continually revised, that people re-script past conversations and change the order of events. The view from the divorce courts would have pushed Maddy’s negative memories to the fore; she needed her version of our years together to be a distorted, Fox News version of events. I sifted through the films, looking for more positive evidence for the Counsel for the Defence. And there I was – perhaps just a couple of years ago, judging by the age of the children – in the back garden of this house, tending a barbecue while Jamie filmed and gave his account of what was going on from behind the lens.

‘I could always cook the meat in the oven first? And then you could put it on the barbecue to finish it off?’ suggested Maddy, as the raw chicken legs failed to look even vaguely warm and the wisps of white smoke from the briquettes gradually petered out.

‘No, it’s getting there,’ insisted the chef, despite all evidence to the contrary. Jamie’s cheeky commentary on my failed barbecue became less sardonic and increasingly hungry every time filming resumed, and by the end there was an edge of desperate starvation in the boy’s voice. With the light of the midsummer evening fading, Dillie did a spoof appeal into the camera lens on behalf of the starving children of South London and then Maddy came into shot with a grill pan to transfer the meat to her own domain, where it would be ready in twenty minutes’ time.

Then the atmosphere suddenly turned. ‘Just let me fucking do it for once, will you?’ I snapped, as I took the chicken back. ‘I said I’d do a barbecue and I’m doing it.’

Jamie then lowered the camera, and to the blurred footage of my son’s shuffling feet, I heard Maddy and me shouting at one another.

‘Why do you have to be such a bloody control freak?’

‘I’m not a control freak. I’m just making sure the kids get something to eat.’

‘So dinner is a bit later than usual – so what? You moan that I
don’t
cook enough and then when I do, you march in and take over.’

‘What cooking? There’s no heat! The chicken is completely raw two hours after you started. I suggested you got the barbecue going hours earlier and you told me to keep my nose out of it.’

The footage of the floor gradually moved indoors as Jamie crept away from the scene and the bad radio play of domestic rancour faded into the background until the camcorder was finally turned off. But the argument had got increasingly personal and bitter, moving from the specific to general character flaws in the other partner, lines that were not designed to prove a point, merely to wound the other person.

I watched the tape a couple more times, noticing that I’d had a beer bottle in my hand, and that there were a few empties on the table nearby. As the camera swung down at the exact moment that the atmosphere turned sour, it caught Dillie’s depressed expression. Her nine-year-old face had a resigned sadness to it, as if she had witnessed scenes like this before. I had no memory of ruining a summer barbecue and, despite the incontrovertible evidence before me, found it hard to believe that that really was me.

Then I lined the tape up to the end of Dillie’s comic appeal and pressed ‘Record’ on the VHS player. The last five minutes of this story would now be wiped clear; the downbeat ending had got a negative response in the test screenings, so the studio ordered the ending be re-cut.

‘Do you remember that lovely summer’s evening when we had a barbecue and the coals wouldn’t light and Jamie did a sarcastic commentary on the cooking?’ I imagined Maddy fondly reminiscing.

‘Oh yeah – and Dillie did that mock charity appeal to camera?’

‘That was a funny evening, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah …’

When I returned to the kitchen, I noticed the recycling bin
brimming
with empty lager bottles. I stared at the six pack of beer on the sideboard. I took the first can, tugged on the ring pull and then poured the contents down the sink. I opened the next one, and smelt the hoppy aroma as it fizzed around the plug hole. I pulled open the third. It was thirsty work this, and it did seem rather profligate. Buying beer and pouring it down the sink – that’s not very green, is it? So by the end of the evening, I did dispose of all the beer, but in the less wasteful manner of drinking it all.

And then I noticed Ralph’s business card in the kitchen and, even though it was the middle of the night, I dialled 141 followed by his mobile number.

‘Hi, this is Ralph,’ said the recording. ‘I’m in Venice at the moment. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you in the New Year.’ He didn’t have to boast about it.

I watched the re-edited videos again with the children on New Year’s Eve, and they were thrilled and delighted to see the way we used to be. Then Dillie ran and fetched a box of photos and the two of them narrated me through the blurred cast of relations and family friends that had not been obscured by my fat thumb half-covering the camera lens.

‘That’s Great-uncle Simon, Granny’s brother who moved to Australia—’

‘Understandable.’

‘Dad!’

‘Look at Mum in that one – she looks so cool!’

Oval stickers had been placed on some of the poorer-quality photos.
Subject out of focus. Cause: lens may not have been correctly adjusted. Subject too dark. Cause: flash may have failed. Subject cannot be recognized. Picture-taker may have suffered dissociative fugue and wiped all personal memories
.

‘Who’s that lady?’ I asked, looking at a very old picture of a woman standing alone in some tropical location.

‘That’s Granny Vaughan. That’s … your mum …’

I held the faded colour photo in my hand for a moment. She was smiling directly at me – a modest introductory hello from another universe. She had on a wide-brimmed hat and was wearing a smart two-piece and clutching a leather handbag over her arm; a formal pose in front of some important former colonial building. I dearly wished I could have reported experiencing some sort of instant love or bond, but instead I was only aware of a powerful vacuum where sentiment and longing were supposed to be.