A year later: Cait
- Items mislaid:
1) Reading glasses.
2) Book (it was by the bed).
3) Bottle of Ginkgo biloba (it’s supposed to improve memory but I can’t remember where I put that either).
4) Mobile phone.
- Chin hairs plucked: 4
‘Matt, Matt. Are you OK? Matt.’
No response. I’d just got home from work to find Matt, stretched out and snoring softly on the sofa in the sitting room. He’d taken off his suit jacket, tie and shoes and cast them onto the nearest chair. An empty bottle of red wine and glass were on the coffee table in front of him, together with an open dictionary. Something must have happened. Matt was never here on a weekday, he was in Bristol, working, usually back on the train which got in around 8.30 p.m. He wasn’t a big drinker, either.
Maybe I shouldn’t wake him, I thought. Should leave him to sleep it off. But … he’s never home in the day. What’s happened? I gave him a gentle shove, then a more persistent one, but he was dead to the world. I checked he was still breathing. He’d been snoring a moment ago – of course he was.
Reassured that Matt was still in the land of the living, I tiptoed out and into the kitchen to search for my mobile to see if it offered any clues. I’d forgotten to take it out with me, so didn’t know if he’d been trying to reach me. I found the phone in the fruit bowl and turned it on to see if there were any messages. There were four missed calls and one text. All from Matt. The text said: When r u back? Need 2 talk.
Two minutes later, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to my two closest friends, Lorna and Debs. They had said they’d drop in on their way back from a trip to the garden centre.
‘Spring flowers,’ said Debs, and handed me a bunch of white tulips.
‘Thanks, but shh, Matt’s home, asleep on the sofa,’ I said as I ushered them through the hall and into the kitchen diner, where I shut the door after them. They made an odd pair. Debs, a curvaceous bohemian, forty-seven years old, with a mop of dark hair piled on top of her head and kept in place with a chopstick, was wearing a kingfisher blue silk top, green harem trousers and a big emerald amulet fit for an Egyptian high priestess. Although British born and bred, with her olive skin and brown eyes she looked Spanish, a throwback to her Andalusian great-grandmother, she’d told us. Next to her, Lorna was small and slim, in her fifties, and was in jeans and a blue shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, her silver-white hair cut neatly to her shoulders. I was the oldest of the three of us, but often felt like the youngest, a twenty year old trapped in an old body. Matt called my friends the S and S, the silly and the sensible, Debs being the first, Lorna the latter; he said that each of them represented a different side of my nature. ‘There’s more to me than that,’ I’d told him. ‘I have many sides – I’m multifaceted, like a diamond.’ He’d laughed. Cheek.
‘Matt? What’s going on?’ asked Debs, and was about to go barging in to see him but I pulled her back.
‘I don’t know, but he’s clearly had a skinful. Best leave him for now.’
‘Not like him,’ said Lorna as she settled on a stool at the island.
‘Why don’t you wake him?’ asked Debs. ‘Find out?’
‘I thought I’d let him sleep whatever it is off first.’
‘Wise,’ said Lorna and stood up. ‘Should we go?’
‘I … maybe. In case … I don’t know, something’s clearly happened and, until I know what, I don’t … Probably best you’re not here to see him in whatever state he wakes up in.’
‘No clues at all?’ asked Debs.
‘No, apart from a dictionary on the table. He must have been working on something.’ He always had his nose in a book, researching something or other for his job as a TV programme developer.
Lorna handed me a pot; in it was a wild geranium, its white flowers tinged with the faintest pink blush. ‘It’s a Kashmir White. If you like it, we can get more,’ she said as she headed for the front door, where she pulled out a leaflet and handed it to me. ‘And this lists the gardening classes on locally. We could go together, but we can talk about that another time. Come on, Debs. Call us if you need.’
‘Call us anyway,’ said Debs.
‘I will,’ I said, and saw them back out. I was sorry to see them go. I’d been looking forward to an hour catching up with them with a bottle of rosé on the decking outside in the warm May sunshine, plus Lorna had promised to help me make a start on the long overdue task of designing the garden borders. ‘And thanks for the plant, Lorna. It’s lovely.’
Lorna stepped forward and hugged me. ‘Keep calm and carry on, as they say.’
‘Ditto,’ said Debs, and hugged me as well.
After they’d gone, I went back to the kitchen and put the kettle on. My mind had gone into overdrive. What’d happened? Need 2 talk? That wasn’t like Matt. Over the years, he’d become Mr Incommunicado. He never needed to talk, unless it was to discuss what to get from the farmers’ market for Sunday lunch, or to ensure I recorded some history or sci-fi programme for him while he was out.
I glanced at our wedding photo on the dresser. Thirty years ago. Matt, handsome in his wedding suit, was smiling at the camera, his brown hair worn longer back then. Although padded out around the middle now, with grey flecks through his hair, he looked younger than his sixty-three years. Beside him in the photo frame, I was two sizes smaller, my hair long and chestnut brown, worn straight and loose, and topped with a wreath of white gypsophila to complement a medieval-style ivory velvet dress. I’d wanted to look like one of the Pre-Raphaelite heroines; I was such a romantic back then. My bridesmaids, Angie and Eve, stood to my right. Both were in pale mint velvet: Eve, a waif with long Titian hair; Angie not much taller. She had short dark hair and looked uncomfortable in her dress, much preferring jeans and a T-shirt to anything remotely girlie. So much had changed, of course it had. My hair was now three shades of blonde and shoulder-length, and I was no longer a size ten. Angie had moved to New Zealand over twenty years ago and Eve was dead. I missed both of them sorely. And Matt and I … We looked so happy in the photograph: in love, full of hope for the future. It had been a great wedding, a sunny day in a picturesque church in Dorset, then sausage and mash at the local pub with close friends and family, followed by a honeymoon exploring the Cornish coast. We hadn’t had the money for exotic locations – not that we minded. We’d set off in Matt’s Golf convertible, top down all the way, stayed at B & B’s along the route, eaten chips on windy beaches, stuffed ourselves with cream teas in roadside cafés and relished every minute of it.
At what point had we given up on each other and settled for what we had now? A relationship where we muddled along, taking each other for granted and barely communicating beyond the mundane everyday necessities of what we were going to eat, who was picking up the dry cleaning or going to plant the spring bulbs. Was it after our two boys, Sam and Jed, had left home? Or later? A slow fading-away of passion, to the comfortable stagnancy of familiarity and death of desire. Although we’d been together a long time, ridden the rollercoaster of marriage with good and bad times, more recently we’d become like lodgers sharing the same house. We had two TVs (one in the living room, one in the bedroom), we had two bathrooms, two cars, and occasionally slept in separate beds because sometimes Matt snored like a bear with a blocked nose.
I glanced at the booklet Lorna had left me. Gardening classes – they would be good, but when would I fit them in? I found a piece of paper and pen and began to outline my week to see if I could find a space.
Monday
Day: Receptionist job at the local doctor’s (temporary). I am really a global, bestselling children’s author (undiscovered due to the fact I haven’t finished a book yet).
Evening: writing class (learning how to be global, bestselling author and how to get published).
Tuesday
Day: Writing. Yoga class.
Evening: Film club or book club (alternate weeks).
Wednesday
Day: Receptionist job again.
Evening: Choir.
Thursday
Day: Receptionist job.
Evening: Supper with friends Debs and Lorna or Zumba.
Friday
Day: Supermarket shop. Writing my bestselling children’s novel. (Hah, that’s a joke, I thought. So far I have several abandoned attempts in a drawer in the desk in my study, and have written Chapter One of a new book on my laptop. I mean the words, Chapter One, not the actual chapter one with sentences and the beginning of a plot line and all.)
Evening: Pilates then drink with the group.
Saturday
Household chores. Walk with walking group.
Sunday
Day: Visit Dad in Chippenham.
Evening: New Age therapy course with Debs (i.e., couple of hours of clearing chakras, waving crystals and acting like a pair of lunatics).
No space for gardening classes unless I let something go, I thought. Not wanting to disturb Matt, I began to outline his week too.
Monday–Friday: Work 8 a.m.–8.30 p.m.
Evenings: Home. Occasionally has a work-related dinner; otherwise home for supper and he watches the news, history channel, sci-fi or a war film.
Saturday
Day: Chores. Sometimes watches the rugby or football.
Evening: Sometimes pub with brother Duncan.
Sunday
Reads the papers, front to back. Catches up on emails and work. Dozes in front of the TV.
Hmm. I know what anyone reading this would conclude, I thought as I compared our weeks. Here is a couple who don’t spend a lot of time together. Exactly. We don’t. We co-exist. Not that we don’t spend some evenings with each other, of course we do. That’s when we watch box sets or whatever’s new on Netflix. We’d worked our way through The West Wing, The Wire, The Sopranos, Orange Is the New Black, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men and many more. We were polite to each other, kind even, but we don’t talk much beyond everyday necessities, not any more, not to each other. Who needs to talk when there’s a new series of House of Cards to watch? Our arrangement had worked, but lately I’d been wondering: was it enough?
I’m having an existential crisis, I thought. My friends, Debs and Lorna would say: Not again, Cait. You had one of those last year, and the year before, but this is different because of a few major things that have happened.
My mum died a year ago.
My oldest and best friend, Eve, died eight months ago.
Lorna’s husband, Alistair, died last year, a few weeks before Eve.
My youngest son, Jed, moved to Thailand.
My eldest son, Sam, moved to LA with his wife and my grandchildren.
All of this has made me very sad and has reminded me that no one knows what’s round the next corner, so I’ve taken the ‘seize the day’ attitude. I’ve been trying to make the most of life by filling my days with things to do, people to see, places to go. If I keep busy, busy, busy, I don’t have to think about loss and I can get by. However, the recent events have made me question many aspects of my life and my relationship.
Is this it?
Should I accept that my marriage has gone stale and carry on as we are?
What could change things?
Do I want to change things?
How would I change things?
Should I get some Wonderbrow paste to dye my grey eyebrows?
As I said, all existential stuff.
With those happy thoughts, I made tea and wondered again what Matt had to tell me. I mentally made a list of possibilities.
- An affair?
- He was ill?
- Someone had died?
I liked a list. Some women of my age are ladies who lunch. I am a lady who lists. It’s just the way my brain works, it makes an inventory of everything; lists always make me feel calmer. Debs said that’s because my star sign is Virgo and they like things to be ordered and in the right place. She also said I had Aquarius rising, which was at odds with the Virgo part and accounted for my slightly eccentric and split personality and tendency to surprise people by doing or saying something out of the blue.
When I was younger, my lists looked like this:
- Look for God.
- Find a way to change the world for the better and bring about world peace.
- Find my soul mate.
- Live happily ever after.
Now the lists looked like this:
- Check blood pressure.
- Buy supplement for arthritis.
- Google best anti-wrinkle cream.
- Buy over-the-counter sleep remedies.