Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
I could see why people had always been drawn out west
–
to the wild west. It was still wild in many ways. It still
called for a band of steel inside. It was such a jumble
of people’s longings. If someone wanted and could afford
a French chateau, they’d build one – perhaps beside a
scaled-down German schloss. Difference – variety – was everywhere. Now I understood the listlessness I sometimes
saw on people’s faces. There’s just so much information one
can process at one time.
‘A strong gust of wind would blow a lot of this down,’
joked Doug as we drove past the Mexican taco bars and Japanese sushi restaurants. And I knew what he meant. One
thing I didn’t feel in California was a sense of permanence.
It wasn’t what people went there for.
And of course the San Andreas Fault didn’t help.
I think I might have stayed on in California if it hadn’t
been for the earthquake. It happened shortly before Susan
and I left. It wasn’t a very big one – but it did wake
me up in the middle of the night with my bed knocking
vigorously against the wall. At first I wondered if I were
having feverish sex without my knowledge – then I heard
the water sloshing around in a neighbour’s pool and realised
what was going on.
‘Earthquake!’ I screamed at Susan who was in a bed
beside me. By the time she sat bolt upright the ground had
r
egained its composure, but neither of us did for the rest of
our stay.
I’m not sure if I can keep my composure now as
Jamie stares at me in his knowledgeable way. He knows me very well, does Jamie. He probably always will. He clearly
wants me to talk, but I have no idea what to say. At least
I’ve got some make-up on and am wearing my best coat. I
decide I won’t bring up the past. There’s just been so much
of it. To really cover the whole thing we’d need to book a conference room in a hotel and stay there for at least a week.
‘I rather like this car,’ I say eventually.
‘The Morris Minor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’m sure we can work out something.’
And we do. Jamie offers it to me at cost price, and I take
it. €750 – that’s all he’s charging. I know if I hesitate I’ll think of a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t do this, so I
write out the cheque there and then from the joint account
I share with Bruce. I haven’t used that account in months.
‘Can I come back and collect it next week?’ I ask.
‘Sure,’ he replies. He says the word in an American accent.
‘Why did you leave America?’ I ask.
‘I – we – wanted to bring the kids up here.’
‘Yeah. A lot of people come back for that.’
‘Did you come back for that?’ He’s looking at me curiously.
‘No. I never left.’
He wants to meet me for a drink sometime, but I say I’m
not sure. I’ll let him know, I say. Then I thank him for giving
me such a good deal on the car.
As I walk away I feel the heaviness of his eyes following
me, wanting me to turn back. Part of me wants to turn back
t
oo. Turn back time. I know now what he wanted me to know
back then. I understand.
But it’s too late.
I don’t feel full of anguish. I’d always thought I’d feel that
way if I met him again, but I don’t. I realise I don’t miss him
any more. But I do miss missing him. I do feel sad.
Unutterably sad, and unutterably relieved, that even love
is something you can get over.
Chapter
19
This morning I gave
my pine kitchen cupboards a good scrub. Bruce kept the place reasonably tidy, but husbands often don’t think of those kinds of details. As I did it I felt a kind of elation. This was surprising as I don’t normally enjoy domestic chores. Any slight sense of satisfaction I ever got from them was usually clouded by the realisation that sometime soon I would have to do the whole bloody thing again.
The floor tiles in the kitchen needed a good scrub too. You could see someone had pushed a mop over them in a half-hearted manner, but the gap between the cooker and the washing machine was filthy. It was full of bits of spaghetti and blobs of bolognese. I was tempted to just leave them there because they’ll somehow find their way back anyway. But I got down on my hands and knees and got them out. I wish a J Cloth could do the same thing with the other blobs and greasy patches in my life – but I suppose a clean space between the cooker and washing machine is a start.
I took the plastic cloth off the kitchen table and gave it a good scrub too. I used to teach my adult literacy students at that table. Bits of jam or mayonnaise always got onto their copy books however much I wiped it. The other two rooms downstairs were out of bounds for my teaching. Bruce didn’t like people to use his study, and Katie always seemed to have
MTV or
Neighbours
on in the sitting-room, so there was no
point bringing my pupils in there. Anyway, the kitchen was
nice and cosy and tea and biscuits were close to hand. My
classes tended to be very informal.
I painted the kitchen myself. It’s a nice light yellow that
gives the impression the sun just might be shining. I chose a cheerful colour because I sometimes felt deep despondency
in that room, especially as I took out the ironing board. I
eventually trained Bruce to iron his own shirts. This was not
brought about through discussion of gender roles or equality,
I simply stopped ironing them myself.
I remember the morning he discovered my change of heart
about ironing very clearly. I was in the kitchen making
porridge for breakfast – I liked to send Katie off to school
in winter with a hot meal inside her.
‘What have you done with my ironed shirts, Jasmine?’ Bruce
called out from the bedroom. ‘There don’t seem to be any
hanging up in the wardrobe.’ He related this with the blithe confidence of a small boy asking his mother to locate his
lunch-box.
‘Your shirts are in the kitchen,’ I yelled back.
Bruce descended the stairs two steps at a time, checking
his watch as he did so. He was due at a meeting that morning.
‘I think I’ll wear the denim blue one,’ he said as dashed into the room. He’s a fastidious, if casual, dresser.
‘Here it is.’ I delved into the basket of clean laundry.
Bruce stared at the shirt in horror. ‘But it isn’t ironed,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I replied and started to set the table.
‘But you always iron my shirts.’ He made it sound as
immutable as the Law of Gravity.
‘All rules have their exceptions, including this one,’ I r
eplied, glad to have remembered something from philosophy
night-classes.
‘Have you ironed any of the others?’ he demanded, in a
state now.
‘No,’ I said, and plugged in the kettle.
He stared at me, dumbstruck. ‘What am I going to do?’
he wailed.
‘I suppose you’ll just have to iron it yourself,’ I replied.
‘I’m in the middle of making breakfast.’
I don’t know why he was so surprised. I’d told him on
numerous occasions how much I disliked ironing his shirts. I
was also attending an extramural course on women’s studies
at the time, and was seething with indignation at the hidden
heroines of history.
Bruce stared at me again as though I’d grown two heads.
Then he snapped, ‘Where’s the ironing board?’ I knew he
expected me to find it and set it up for him, but I simply
pointed airily in the direction of a cupboard.
There was much clattering and fuming as he took it out,
parading his incompetence with it in an expert manner. He
set it up in the middle of the room to cause maximum
inconvenience. But since I didn’t comment on this he soon
got down to work, fretting and checking his watch while he did so.
‘I’ll be late for my meeting,’ he muttered. ‘I wish you’d
warned me.’
‘I have asked you to iron your own shirts on many
occasions,’ I answered. ‘Us women have to take a stand
sometimes.’
Bruce, who occasionally tries to delude himself into believ
ing he’s a New Man, did not reply.
I would have taken a stand about the rest of the housework
too, if I’d been in a full-time job myself. But it was a small
v
ictory that day I watched Bruce at the ironing board. I knew the sisters at my women’s studies class would be proud when
I told them.
When Bruce comes back from New York I’m going to insist
we make an agreement about housework. We’re going to
have to share it more equally – especially since I may well be
working or studying full-time myself. I never had to bargain
about housework with Charlie. If anything he did more of
it than I did. It was simply not an issue.
Oh, Charlie – I miss you, but I can’t be with you. I hope
you understand. Things are messy enough as it is. I keep
trying not to think of you, but I do. Often. They’re like
an ache, these thoughts of you. I don’t know what to do
with them. I keep trying to tidy you away – but you just won’t stay in your cupboard. I can go for days pretending
you’re not that important – that you’re just a friend. Then
you suddenly lunge at me from one of my furthest corners –
somewhere I hardly know myself. How did you get in
there? I’m always so glad to find you, and then so scared.
You make me feel like I’ve been grabbing
hors d’oeuvres
–
hoping they’ll make a meal. And they don’t, do they Charlie? We both know that. But I’ve got to find some
way through all this. I’ve got to see what can be salvaged.
So please stay in your cupboard, Charlie. It really is best for
both of us.
I keep coming across things I’d almost forgotten about
in the cupboards of my kitchen. The missing cassette from
‘Teach Yourself French’, for example, was hiding in a
casserole dish. And that Kaffe Fassett designer jumper I’d started to knit so enthusiastically had found its way into the box where we keep the tablemats. I liked the idea of that
jumper – it was to be a hedonistic swirl of colour. Now I
think I may turn it into a tea cosy.
I never knew Bruce liked Greek yogurt. There were at least four half-empty cartons in the fridge – the fridge that I am currently defrosting. Some old fried rice in a take-away tin was in there too. Apart from the mess beside the cooker and ground coffee and some muesli, I don’t see much evidence of attempts at self-nourishment. I suppose he must have eaten out a lot. I think he did quite a bit of drinking though. The drinks cabinet is full of almost empty bottles.