The Man Who Forgot His Wife (28 page)

Madeleine did not take the proprietor up on his charming offer. Instead she suggested that I should come and stay in the spare room at home, so that I didn’t wake up on my own and could be with the children in the morning.

In the front room that I now remembered us decorating and furnishing down the years, we stayed up for an hour or two, sharing a bottle of wine and talking about my dad. She told me of holidays when he had joined us down in Cornwall, and the enormous patience he had always shown with the children. There was no friction in the air; in fact, looking at her sitting opposite me on the sofa, her legs tucked up underneath her, I couldn’t understand how I had ever not been in love with her. Eventually I took a moment to visit the toilet and, looking at the family pictures on the wall in there, I recovered another memory. I was regaining
them
every day now, and this one was of a trip to central London with the kids when they were roughly the age they appeared in these photos.

We are in Madame Tussaud’s. There must have been an era when a visit here was a great family treat, but as far as our own kids are concerned, shuffling along in crowded rooms looking at waxy replicas of has-been celebrities has not been their idea of a thrilling day out. The display of the British Royal Family has singularly failed to compare with the excitement of the Nemesis ride at Alton Towers; in fact, I think it is actually a bonus for our kids that a couple of the figures have been removed for refurbishment. After a disappointing and increasingly fractious hour or so, we are close to abandoning the whole trip, when a little light goes on in my wife’s eye. I recognize that mischievous glint – I’d last seen it when the make-up lady in the department store asked her if she would like to try the coconut cream and a slightly demented-looking Maddy said okay and started eating it. Just as a group of tourists is about to join us in the room, Maddy steps over the velvet rope and strikes up a pose on the empty pedestal, where she maintains a suitably blank yet regal expression as she stares into the middle distance
.

Little Dillie and Jamie are already thrilled at her mischievousness, when some foreign tourists join me as I stare hard at the apparent wax model on the pedestal
.

‘Dad – who is this model of?’ says Dillie, pointedly, hoping we can make Mum start laughing
.

‘Oh, you recognize her, darling. That’s Princess Rita. Of Lakeside Thurrock …’

Maddy’s expression does not alter one iota, though I know she must be bursting inside
.

‘Excuse me, what relation would she be to the Queen?’ asks an American lady, who is now studying the impressively life-like figure in front of us
.

‘Princess Rita? Oh, well, she’s not actually related to the Queen.
Rita
is the bastard offspring of the Duke of Edinburgh and, um, Eleanor Rigby,’ I explain, as Jamie emits a strangulated coughing sound
.

‘Eleanor Rigby? Like the Beatles song?’

‘Yeah, that’s why she was so lonely – the Duke wouldn’t leave the Queen for her. He couldn’t afford the alimony.’

‘Oh, I never knew – that’s really interesting! Thank you.’

And then as they walk away their teenage daughter lets out a scream
.

‘Dad! Dad! Princess Rita just winked at me!’

‘No, honey – you’re imagining things.’

‘I swear it did! It just winked when I looked at it. It’s coming to life, Dad! The waxworks are coming to life!’

When I rejoined her in the kitchen, Maddy was putting the wine glasses in the dishwasher and turning off the downstairs lights.

‘When did you stop doing stupid stuff?’ I asked her.

‘Stupid stuff?’

‘You know – pretending to be a statue at Madame Tussaud’s. Making your own announcements on the train tannoy. You were always making us laugh with daft stunts like that, but somehow they just sort of petered out.’

‘Yeah, well …’ She shrugged. ‘People change, don’t they? I think life probably knocks the fun out of us all in the end.’

Ten minutes later I was lying in the dark in the poky spare room, reflecting on what she had said and thinking of the last time I had seen my father, still clinging on to life, but a shadow of the man I had seen in the photos. ‘Is that how people die?’ I wondered. ‘Incrementally?’ My father’s life may have ended that day, but he had gradually died over the course of the previous months. Madeleine’s spirit had diminished since our marriage had crashed; a part of us both must have died with every injury and disappointment.

This little room where I now lay had once been Dillie and Jamie’s nursery and the smell took me right back to when my children were tiny. Little luminous stars still glowed on the ceiling from where they had long ago been stuck by a younger, optimistic father. I stared at the random constellations, thinking how many years it had taken for the light from those stars to reach me here and now; the centuries that seemed to have passed in between me putting up the stickers for my newborn baby and this lonely moment in the visitor’s bed in my own house, watching their glow slowly fade.

I recalled how delighted Maddy was when she saw what I’d done for our new baby, how I’d proudly pointed out the little crescent moons and tiny spaceships. And how we both laughed as I confessed to having started trying to re-create famous constellations, and then had given up and just stuck them up at random. ‘Those stars there are in the shape of the Plough. Not the constellation, but the pub on Wandsworth Road.’

I remembered, a few years later, how thrilled and entranced Dillie was when I’d shown her the luminous stars one winter’s night, and we both just lay on our backs in the dark, whispering and pointing at the magic of the tiny lights on the ceiling.

Now I was surprised to feel an emotional geyser building up inside me. I felt the tightening of my throat, the surprisingly autonomous flush of moisture across my eyeballs. So much had been lost, so many moments gone for ever. I pictured the old man I had got to know on the hospital bed, misty-eyed, with his saggy lizard neck. And I thought of Dillie and Jamie visiting him, and that final hug they gave him, understanding that he would soon be dead.

Now I wept out loud at the simple sadness of it all – at the hollow sense of loss: disappearing childhoods, irrecoverable decades; a family I had taken for granted but one that I now understood could not be there for ever. I checked myself, wiping my face on the pillow case. Then another wave came over me and I cried again, turning my face to the wall as if ashamed of myself.
And
when at last I was quiet, I could hear Maddy crying on the other side of the bedroom wall.

In the morning I hugged my daughter long and hard as she wept for the loss of her grandfather. Dillie wore her emotions on her sleeve, quite literally, judging by the amount of snivel she had wiped on to her cardigan. Her brother, on the other hand, attempted to play the stoic young male, but he too crumbled when I asked him for a hug. Maddy herself could not help but break down as she watched them standing there in the middle of the big kitchen where they had learned to crawl and walk and talk and read and, now, mourn. Then the group hug was joined by the excited dog, who jumped up and wrapped his front paws around my jeans and started to hump my leg.

‘Ah, that’s so thoughtful of you, Woody,’ I said, as the children pulled away. ‘You could sense that what Dad really needed now was to have his leg humped by a golden retriever.’ Their crying turned into laughter. ‘Perhaps you could come to the funeral and do that to some of Granddad’s old RAF colleagues?’

The kids switched from grieving for their grandfather to eating their cornflakes in front of the television, and Maddy and I tidied up in the kitchen. It was strange how all the ordinary things still had to be done. Maddy’s mobile phone got a text with a slightly too comical ringtone, considering the message was about a bereavement.

‘Ah – okay.’

‘What is?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter …’

‘Ralph?’

‘Yes. But – he was just saying he was sorry to hear about your father.’

‘Okay.’

‘He said he lost his own dad a few years back so he knows what you’re going through.’

‘I doubt that very much.’

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

I wiped down the surfaces, perhaps a little too vigorously.

‘You know, it’s okay. I don’t expect you to like him.’

‘No, he was fine.’ I pouted.

‘I really don’t mind if you have an issue with him.’

‘Okay. I just thought he wasn’t very “can do”, that’s all.’

‘He wasn’t very “can do”? What are you talking about?’

‘He just came across as one of those people who sees the problems first.’

A moment’s puzzled bemusement was followed by the penny dropping and then Maddy laughed out loud. ‘Because he foresaw difficulties in building some massive dam? He’s not very “can do” because he thought it might be difficult to get Italy and Israel and France and Russia and everyone else to agree to Vaughan’s pet project?’

‘Russia wouldn’t be involved,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t have a Mediterranean coastline.’

‘Well, maybe it will after global warming …’

‘You see, you’re on my side! You’re already thinking big. Ralph’s the one with the negative attitude.’

Without realizing it, we were unloading the dishwasher in tandem, Maddy doing the glasses, me doing the cutlery as I had always done. I cleared away the breakfast things, instinctively knowing that the leftover cereal went in the dog’s bowl and the tea bags went in the compost bin. Madeleine could have been angered by my criticism of Ralph, but to my annoyance she actually found it quite amusing. Still, the subject of her new partner hung in the air and I felt the need to show a little humility.

‘I posted the settlement, by the way.’

‘Yeah, you said. Blimey! Since when did you pick the little bits of food out of the plughole?’

‘What? Oh, I got a memory back that you hated it that I never did that, so now I try and do it even if I’m on my own.’ I was
pleased
that she had noticed. ‘So, is Ralph going to move in here?’ I said, while I could get away with asking. ‘I mean, have you got a timetable in your head for it or anything?’

Maddy let out a long sigh. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I think it would have been so much easier to be a lesbian …’

‘What does that mean? Ralph’s not a lady-boy as well, is he?’

‘No, it’s just that … It doesn’t matter …’

I hoped that I was coming across as a good listener, when in fact I was just being nosey. ‘It’s okay, you can tell me. I was married to you for fifteen years.’

‘All right, I’ll say it. We had a big fight. He’s filled his gallery with these awful abstract things by this new painter. And, well, I think it’s just because he fancies her.’

‘Oh dear,’ I lied.

‘Maybe I was never meant to be with anyone. I’ll be one of those old ladies with seventeen cats and an injunction from the council about the smell coming out of my kitchen.’

Inside I was surprised to feel as if I wanted to punch the air in triumph, but I remained determined just to carry on as normal, finishing the routine cleaning up around the sink like any modern, house-trained man.

‘Vaughan, it’s okay – you don’t have to sort the bits from the sink into compost and recycling …’

She told the kids to get dressed once
Friends
had finished, unaware that on this channel that meant some time later in the week, and I announced that I should be on my way. I thanked her for letting me stay the night so I could tell the kids the sad news myself, and added that it had been good to have someone to talk to. Maddy avoided eye contact, busying herself with wiping some glasses. She was slightly embarrassed that she had revealed more than she had intended, and wanted to leave me with a clear signal that we both had to move on.

‘You know what you need, Vaughan? You need a girlfriend.’

Even though I had my coat on, I began stacking the dirty plates into the dishwasher.

‘Hmm … I don’t think I could handle the emotional involvement. Maybe I could house-train some of those cats you’re going to get and work up from there.’

‘It doesn’t have to be Miss Right straight away. Just someone to have a fling with, someone to make you realize that there are plenty of other women out there.’

‘What – you’d actually like me to have a fling?’

‘Well, it’s nothing to do with me, is it? But I think it might help you move on.’

I think I must have been enjoying the attention, because now I could not resist sharing my secret with her.

‘Actually, there was this woman from school …’

‘What woman?’

‘Suzanne. She’s a dance teacher, Australian.’

‘What? And you fancy her?’

‘Actually, in the cold light of day, I can’t say I do, really …’

She had stopped the housework and just stood there looking at me.

‘But I had a one-night stand with her. Like you said – just to try to help myself move on.’

‘Oh.’

Suddenly it seemed her eyes didn’t know where to look.

‘It was last week. It was just a one-off.’

‘A dance teacher? Skinny, is she?’

‘Yeah, not really my type.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It doesn’t mean anything – I just don’t much care for that particular look, that’s all.’

‘Oh, well, that’s … there’s some news, then. That I didn’t know.’

The dirty mugs were being placed in the dishwasher with more force than was strictly necessary.

‘I mean, I wasn’t seeking it or anything. Suzy just happened to come along.’

‘Oh, she’s called “Suzy”? It’s all right –
I
’m stacking the dishwasher. It doesn’t take two of us.’ And we both pretended not to notice that she had just chipped Kate Middleton’s face on the Royal Wedding mug.

Walking towards the bus stop my breath steamed and the wind felt cold on my cheeks, but it was a crisp, clear day and the rest of the busy world seemed not to have noticed that my father had died or that Maddy’s demeanour towards me had changed. Above everything else, I was still consumed by a sense of resigned sadness for the death of the old man I had got to know in the hospital. It was almost as if, during our talks together, this old man had become something of a father figure to me.