The Widow's Tale (4 page)

T
oday, it seems, is laundry day. The resident washing machine is practically Edwardian and whilst I’ve put most of my clothes through it, I don’t feel it’s to be trusted with one or two items. So I’ve been doing a little washing by hand.

There’s an extendable wire rack in the bathroom which pulls out from the wall. But the moment I touched it the bloody thing flung itself off into the bath. I carefully replaced it, but it’s clearly incapable of bearing the weight of a single sock. It was an hour later before it occurred to me that every visitor to this place has probably had exactly the same experience, but no one has had the balls to point it out to the agents for fear of losing their deposit.

I’m half inclined to take it out the back and set fire to it. The little bugger has left me with a blood blister right under my thumbnail, where it nipped me. And all the clothes are strewn over the backs of chairs and radiators. I feel like I’m a character in some kitchen-sink drama. I should be wearing a headscarf and moaning, in a Northern accent, about my having a bun in the oven and him blowing all the housekeeping on beer.

The other thrilling new development is that I’ve become a newspaper-buyer. I forgot to pick one up the day before
yesterday and it meant I had to sit in the pub and read a book, rather than do my precious crossword, which irritated me no end. At home we’ve always had them delivered and to be honest I’ve just never quite got round to cancelling them.

One of the articles I read today concerned some report into rocketing dentists’ charges. And how, as a consequence, more people are simply not bothering to go at all. It failed to mention how a fair proportion of the population aren’t particularly keen on going to the dentist in the first place and ready to latch onto any excuse which comes their way. The same report claimed that due to the hike in dentists’ prices we’re increasingly inclined to indulge in a bit of DIY dentistry, citing one character from somewhere like Leicester who’s extracted a dozen or more of his own teeth with a pair of pliers.

Now I think most people would agree that check-ups, at the very least, should be free to everyone, especially those who are short of cash. But it’s equally clear that the fellow to whom they referred is a certifiable nutcase. And that if he hadn’t been pulling out his teeth with a pair of pliers he’d’ve only got up to some other form of self-mutilation, like lopping off his toes with a pair of secateurs.

Anyway, the obsessive buying and/or reading of newspapers has always struck me as a peculiarly male trait. Along with hushing one’s wife in mid-conversation to listen to the news on the radio, as if this was all dreadfully important and the newsreader was addressing them personally.

I’m not entirely sure where it comes from – this rather inflated sense of self-importance regarding current affairs. It’s perfectly admirable, I’m sure, to try and keep abreast of what’s going on, both nationally and internationally. But at the very heart of it there is, I think, a delusion of mammoth proportions, which is that by keeping up with the news one is in control of it, and therefore in control of the whole wide world.

Perhaps it goes back to all that Evelyn Waugh/P. G. Wodehouse gentlemen’s clubs stuff. Perhaps, when men sit in their favourite armchair on a Sunday morning and plough through some impenetrable piece about what’s cooking in the Ukraine or Tanzania, they imagine themselves akin to some cabinet minister.

Whatever it is, it’s clearly in their chromosomes. When the health department of the local council has to break into some semi-derelict house because of the terrible smell and the fear of conflagration, is it ever a woman they find lost among the towers of rotting newspapers? No. Generally speaking, it is not.

I
once went on a retreat, when I was in my mid-twenties, to a convent somewhere out in the Welsh borders. Considering that this must have been during the late sixties and all the other sorts of retreats that would have been open to me, electing to hang out with a bunch of nuns seems like a terribly conservative choice. But given that most of the alternatives would probably have involved me sitting in a circle with dozens of other people, talking about their feelings and, no doubt, some beardy guru doing his best to try to get into your pants, I can still see why I made the decision I did.

I was never particularly religious, and there was never any danger of me signing up for full nun-dom (not that they would have wanted a young woman as soiled or worldly as me, I’m sure). But I was certainly curious – about a life reduced to such simplicity … mainly solitary, predominantly silent, and almost entirely spent in devotion to something outside of oneself. I can’t be the only person ever to wonder if there isn’t some solace to be had in such a life.

Anyway, I recall turning up and a certain disappointment that instead of being given a cell with a bare floor on which to sleep I was shown into a fair-sized room, with a large desk and a sink in the corner and a single bed, complete with mattress and sheets and everything.

I don’t believe it was an order with a strict vow of silence, but personal contact was so minimal and there was so little to say on the few occasions I did encounter anyone else that I’m sure I mustn’t have uttered more than a handful of words the whole time I was there.

When you’ve finished your breakfast and you’re back in your room by six-thirty there can suddenly seem to be a great many hours in the day. But I would just sit at my desk and slowly pick away at my poems or short stories that I was still convinced would one day make my name.

Once or twice a day I’d go for a walk around the grounds, and stand and stare meaningfully off towards the Black Mountains or sit on a bench and breathe in the scented air. And after lunch I would curl up on my narrow bed and have a little nap for half an hour. I don’t recall ever going into the village, even though it was no more than a couple of miles away. Perhaps I felt that being among such philistines might have threatened to corrupt my newfound purity.

There were various services throughout the day and I remember one of the sisters inviting me to take part in them. I declined. I would have felt such a fraud. But I did go along to the chapel on one or two occasions and sat at the back, just to hear the singing. I remember how much that moved me. As I’m sure it would have moved any mortal who didn’t have a heart of stone.

I’m not entirely sure what the nuns got up to the rest of the day. Mainly praying, I imagine. With perhaps a bit of gardening or cooking thrown in, just to break things up. The
other presiding memory of my visit is of someone locking the main door at nine o’clock in the evening, which made me rather anxious. I’ve always been slightly claustrophobic. But I found that by leaning out of my window and following the maze of drainpipes down to the ground I could reassure myself that, if absolutely necessary, I could shimmy down to safety, and this helped calm me down. Then I would lie in my bed, with my hands held stiffly at my sides, to keep them out of trouble. And with every passing day I could feel myself become a little more immaculate.

Each morning at about five-thirty I’d be woken by a light tapping at my door. And one of the sisters would pop her head into the room and I’d hear her whisper, ‘Are you with us, dear?’

It was an odd thing to hear first thing, before you were properly awake. But each time I’d hear myself whispering, ‘Yes,’ back into the darkness. ‘Yes, I am.’

Then the door would close and I’d be left wondering what exactly I’d consented to. And if, by some chance, I really had managed to consign myself to a life of prayer and the occasional bit of gardening, whether that might not be such a bad thing after all.

I mention all the above because only an hour or two ago I noticed how I’d set out the table, with the paper and pens I bought in Holt all neatly arranged, and it occurred to me that one way or another, and what with the cutting of the TV cable, I have recreated that same desk where I wrote my poetry when I went on retreat the best part of forty years ago.

T
his place is so God-damned
cold
. You’d think a house so small, with walls so thick, might actually keep the heat in. But it’s as if all the misery endured by the fisherman and his fisher-wife and all their fishy children has somehow impregnated the walls. And my little widow’s fire isn’t about to make much of a dent in it.

But I am undaunted and first thing every morning now I clear away the previous day’s ash, just like a trillion put-upon women back through history. And, as often as not, I usually manage to find a few red embers, and arrange a few bits of kindling around them. And before you know it, hey presto, we’re in business again.

There are, I’m sure, worse ways to come around in the morning than by staring into the flames of a fire as it begins to take hold. As I sit and stare I do my best not to think about what I’m going to do with the day ahead of me. I try and put that off till lunchtime. By then I’ve only got the afternoon to worry about. The evenings are beginning to take care of themselves – namely, a trip to the pub, then back home for a bit of eating, more drinking and another hour or two of staring into the fire.

I’m a worrier. In fifty different ways I worry. About how fucked-up I am. About how fucked-up my future’s
looking. About all the extra pain that’s waiting for me there. I have created for myself my own little … what am I saying,
little
? … my own
monumental
vortex of sickness and anxiety. And who on earth would deny me that?

My worries come in a whole host of shapes and sizes. There are days – an alarming number of days, let me tell you – when I feel like a stranger on earth. I have problems with reality (my number one problem with reality being that it is all too terrifyingly real). I feel raw. I feel alienated. Sometimes just getting from one moment to the next is an effort. And speaking of time. I think its gears are slipping. I’m not sure it knows which way is up.

Other than that, I’m doing just fine.

A friend of mine, who has had her own little difficulties over the years, passed onto me some little nugget of wisdom she’d picked up somewhere, quite possibly from a professional, which put great emphasis on acknowledging those occasional moments each day when you’re not actually one hundred per cent depressed or desperate. When you take a sip of coffee, for example, or take a breath of cold, fresh air. Or you find yourself laughing, albeit involuntarily, at something on the radio.

The theory is, I suppose, that you begin to accept that such moments exist. Then perhaps start to knit these teeny pockets of hope together and focus on the good stuff, if only to give yourself some respite from all the crap. And slowly convince yourself that one’s life is not, in fact, a wall-to-wall horror show.

Well, like I say, it’s a theory.

I have enough objectivity, at least, to see that some of my little episodes are self-inflicted – in that I start niggling away at something until I find that I can’t stop. I wind myself up into a sort of neurotic frenzy and make myself quite nauseous. Whereas other attacks just seem to land on me, like a meteorite. It’s as if I smell something in the air – or briefly experience a strange metallic taste at the back of my throat – and before I know it … WHAM … I’m struck down in my tracks.

I have begun to use the phrase ‘panic attack’ in certain instances. I do now know that whilst it might feel as if I’m falling, I am not actually falling. And that even if I were actually falling, I will not, in fact, fall forevermore. I’ve had all of this pointed out to me. But, contrary to popular opinion, the successful identification of such a thing does not necessarily nullify it. Does not make it go up in a puff of smoke. So, I can be wheeling my trolley down the aisle of the supermarket and, without knowing why, feel the fear begin to creep up on me. And suddenly I’m off, slipping and sliding down my own terrible helter-skelter, until I think I’m going to pass out, and fall head first into the nearest freezer, among the pizzas. To be found, months later, by some despondent shelf-stacker, like one of those frozen corpses they chip out of glaciers. And what will the archaeologists make of me, I wonder? Will all their carbon-dating equipment and fancy micrometers successfully tell them what my story was?

Oddly enough, one fragment of my myriad anxieties is bumping into people. I’m not half as panicky up here.
Maybe it’s because there are fewer people. Or maybe I’m just afraid of those people who might actually know me – who’ll gravely enquire how I’m doing, whilst examining me to see precisely how screwed-up I am today.

Ah well. I’ll just have to hide away out here in the sticks the rest of my life. And buy an old black bike to push my shopping back from the Spar.

One thing I really do worry about is that without John around to rein me in I’ll slowly grow into some eccentric individual. Not eccentric, as in quaint and charming. Eccentric, as in just plain weird. Our marriage was far from perfect, but one way or another we used to contain each other’s excesses. And now that he’s gone I worry that I’ll become wild and odd. Like that horrible fig tree we had in our back garden – the one which was so thoroughly strange and alien that I had to get someone to chop it down.

L
osing one's husband really is a complete bummer. But let's look on the bright side. I've actually lost a little weight. Oh, there's loss of all sorts going on around here. Mind you, I wasn't particularly chunky to begin with. And unfortunately, after a certain age, when you lose a few pounds you don't look any younger. Just pinched and scrawny. And those mad, staring eyes don't help.

Sometimes I'd just be grateful if I could sit still for five minutes at a time without wanting to jump out of the window. I've seen a counsellor once or twice and, at Ginny's insistence, a whole host of hippie healer-types. I've been acupunctured, cranially manipulated, have had my feet and earlobes squeezed. And when, five minutes into whatever session I'm having, I begin to sigh or quietly sob I can detect a definite aura of smugness in my practitioner. They're thinking, Well, it didn't take me long to crack
this
one. All I'll say is, they overestimate their achievement. These days it doesn't take much to get me going – a lost cat/dog poster, sellotaped to a lamppost … daytime telly … about four bars of Rachmaninov … pretty much anything.

It's not that my healers' vanity particularly offends me. At worst, I've paid someone forty quid to rub my feet or knead my shoulders. If they want to imagine that, along
the way, they've tweaked my crystals or realigned my chakras, well let 'em. I can think of a lot of worse ways of spending my cash.

Ten years ago – maybe more – I went along to a couple of evening classes in which we received solemn instruction in the art of sitting and breathing, etc. There was the odd minute or two in the midst of all that Omming when, if nothing else, the steady resonance in my skull was so sonically pleasing and all-pervading that any coherent thoughts were simply shaken off the shelf.

I've had another crack at it lately just as a way of trying to calm myself down. But, pleasant though it is, I have the feeling that I contain within me such vast reservoirs of pain and anguish that I could Omm non-stop from now till Christmas and I still wouldn't have drained off more than a tiny fraction of the stuff.

Probably the only point in my life when I've actually sat still for any length of time and felt quite happy, and perhaps come closest to a meditative state, was a year or two in my early twenties when I did a bit of life modelling for a friend of a friend. Simply writing that down seems, frankly, ridiculous. Like recording that I once did a stint as a secret agent or trained to be an astronaut. Life modelling now seems impossibly bohemian. The truth is I was terribly strait-laced – a rather serious young woman. And my entire family would have felt obliged to commit hara-kiri if they'd thought I'd been paid to do so much as remove a sandal. Which was perhaps the point.

A girlfriend of mine had been posing for this particular
painter but had to give it up as she was leaving town and asked if I fancied taking over. I went in to meet her – the painter, whose name was Annie – just for a cup of tea in the first instance, to see how we got along, and presumably for her to give me a quick once-over. But I remember my first proper session and climbing those narrow wooden stairs up to her studio above a shop and her leading me over to a screen for me to change.

I'd taken a dressing gown, as instructed. I undressed and put it on. Then I crept out and we chatted for another couple of minutes. Then Annie said something like, ‘Right. Shall we get on?'

She showed me where she wanted me to stand and turned and went over to her canvas. And I understood that these few moments, while she busied herself with her paints and brushes, were there for me to disrobe. I was quite petrified. But I also remember feeling … well, rather excited. Not sexually, necessarily. Just a little thrill, in doing something so utterly unlike everything else in my humdrum life.

For the first couple of sessions I must have been terribly self-conscious, and found it hard just to sit still for half an hour at a time. But you begin to know quite instinctively when a particular pose is going to be unsustainable and Annie was perfectly accommodating. And once you're settled you get into the habit of just drifting off into your own little world. It might take five or ten minutes, but sooner or later I'd start thinking about books I'd read or planned to read, or little ideas of my own. I used to
religiously carry a little notebook around with me, so that I could jot things down in it, and the moment Annie suggested we take a break I'd scoot over to my clothes and pick out my notebook and try and get down all the things I'd been desperately trying to keep in my head. Just little thoughts and observations, which seemed so important at the time.

But now it's the stillness I remember. That incredible stillness and my being comfortable in it. And as the afternoon wore on, feeling the rest of the world outside that room slowly fall away.

Even now, the merest whiff of turpentine takes me right back there. I remember the splattered paint, two inches thick, on the bare floor below the wall where she worked. The paint on the door handles, the electric kettle – everywhere. And I think what I wouldn't give to be back there, forty years younger, with my life spread out before me, when I could happily sit for hours at a time and all I really cared about was the next line of some half-formed poem. And what it was I had to say.