Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
‘Should I put some on the sides as well? I’ve got four,’ I
babble nervously.
‘No,’ says Susan.
‘Maybe I should put one on my back too – and my forehead. I could wear them all the time. Learner Woman,
that’s a good one isn’t it, Susan?’ I giggle semi-hysterically.
‘Get into the car,’ says Susan.
‘I’ve arranged insurance,’ I say as I clamber cautiously into the driving seat. I stare dully at the dashboard and moan, ‘Oh
God, I’ve forgotten how to start these things.’
‘No you haven’t,’ says Susan. ‘You’ve had at least forty
driving lessons over the years. You know exactly what to do.’
When Susan is in one of these moods there is really no point in arguing with her. ‘I love and approve of myself,’ I say to the
gearbox. ‘I am in the rhythm and flow of ever-changing life.’
‘What?’ asks Susan.
‘They’re just some affirmations,’ I reply. Then I put my head on the steering wheel. ‘Oh, Susan,’ I wail, ‘I’m not sure if I can do this!’
‘Stop blubbering,’ Susan barks. ‘Come on, we can’t stay here all day.’
Jamie has finished with his client now and is looking at us. He would be looking just now. I turn the key and the engine starts. I put my foot down on the clutch and move to first gear. I’m just about to release the clutch while pressing down on the accelerator when Susan yells, ‘Handbrake!’ I release the handbrake and Bunty snorts anxiously, hovering between movement and inaction like a horse in a starting stall.
‘Well done,’ says Susan as Bunty edges nervously towards the road.
‘Where do all these cars come from?’ I fret as I wait for a gap in the traffic. When I see a gap I panic and press down the accelerator too hard. Bunty stalls.
‘I told you. I told you,’ I tell Susan, but she remains impassive.
‘You’re doing fine. Start up again,’ she says.
I almost run over a Rottweiler as I pull out. We stall at least four more times on the way home, usually at traffic lights.
‘I’m keeping everyone waiting,’ I wail as I grapple with the gears. ‘I can see a man shaking his fist at me.’
‘Fuck him,’ says Susan, while at the same time turning round to give him a charming smile. ‘This is your car and you’ve every right to drive it.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ I say, suddenly emboldened by her words. I take off at the next traffic lights at quite a speed.
‘Steady on there, Jasmine,’ says Susan. ‘It’s best not to go from one extreme to the other.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, but as I grip the wheel with new resolve I am flooded with a strange exhilaration. I realise how pleasant it might be to press Bunty’s accelerator closer to the floor.
She’d enjoy that. I know she would. Suddenly it seems Bunty
and I may not be quite such a sedate team after all.
Bunty and I may run with the wolves.
Chapter
20
I stayed in bed
all day yesterday after hearing the news about
Cait Carmody. Susan called round last night with a Chinese
take-away, but I didn’t feel like eating. Now it’s morning
again. I don’t feel awake, but I must be. Reality hasn’t seemed
so problematical in ages – not since those philosophy evening
classes and Descartes and his table and the dishy lecturer who
became an organic gardener.
I look around and discern that I am in my own spare bedroom. I deduce from the mess of clothes in the corner
that I am not particularly tidy. Teddy has fallen out of bed and is crouching, face downwards, as though addressing
Mecca
. Pictures of Victoria and David Beckham’s charity barbecue, as featured in
Hello
magazine, lie on the floor.
Yet beneath this bewilderment, beneath this sense that I
have no past and no future, I can sense a personality formed and functioning. I know that if, for example, the phone rang now I’d say, ‘No, you didn’t wake me. I was just about to
have breakfast.’
And that is the strangest thing of all.
‘This is how newborn babies feel,’ I think. ‘Or it’s what
happens to people when they die. Floating through time and
space while the Marks and Spencer jumper and one pair of
Dunnes Stores’ thermal knickers wait in their laundry basket.
While two pound coins, four pennies and a note lie in
t
heir purse. The note that reads “I can explain everything.
Bruce.”’
I don’t get up, I rise. I rise and gather my cerise silk
kimono round myself – the one Katie found at a Salvation
Army jumble sale. I pad barefooted into the bathroom and
turn on the immersion. Soon I will be clean and warm, if nothing else. As I go into the sitting-room I get that feeling again. That feeling that someone is watching me. I go to the
window but I don’t see anyone.
‘Get a grip on yourself, woman,’ I say to myself sternly.
Then I turn my gaze to Bunty, who’s resting serenely in the
driveway. She’s a very pretty car, is Bunty. She’s navy blue.
I wouldn’t call her elegant, but she does have a certain
je ne
sais quoi
–
a curvaceous charm.
In the kitchen I try to open a carton of milk and some spills
onto the table. I go to the sink and try to fish out a J Cloth that
smells the way J Cloths smell when they’ve been curled up in
a stagnant ball underneath the washing up. As I reach for a
tea bag I catch a glimpse of myself in the small mirror beside
the wine rack. I look a mess. I’ve gone to seed, that’s what
I’ve done. I always knew it might happen. Even small things,
such as brushing my teeth, seem to require great effort.
I gave birth again last night. I was in labour for some time.
Bruce was there, holding my hand. My face was puce from
pushing and I strained and wailed and sweated just like you’re supposed to. ‘Congratulations Jasmine!’ the nurse
said when it was over. Then she handed me my newborn in a pink towel.
The towel contained a puppy. A Labrador it looked like.
I must have been watching too many toilet paper commer
cials. And of course the theme of birth is not without its
relevance.
Cait Carmody is pregnant.
Susan told me this the other night after I’d driven home
in Bunty. She suspected it some months ago when she saw Cait looking serenely plump and coming out of Mothercare.
Then, last week, she met a mutual acquaintance who said the
baby is due any day now.
Any day now.
It may be Bruce’s child apparently. It could also be her new
boyfriend’s. The man she left Bruce for. The man she’s fallen
madly in love with. Bruce didn’t leave Cait. Cait left him.
Bruce, of course, did not tell me this. He just said the affair
was over and that he’d been foolish to start it in the first place.
Somehow I assumed he’d made the final break. I can see now
that he encouraged me to believe this, without saying it in so
many words. So this new bombshell puts an entirely different
complexion on things.
My own complexion needs some attention. I go into the
bathroom and put on a mud face mask to unclog my pores.
I’m glad that you can’t laugh or cry with a face mask on. You just have to wait for it to draw out all the grime while it dries.
This will force me to be stoical for at least ten minutes.
I go into the sitting-room and put the phone back on the
hook. I took it off the hook and switched off my mobile after I’d phoned Bruce in New
York
to tell him I knew. That’s why he sent me the Email
saying ‘I can explain everything.’ And I’m sure he can. The
thing is, I’m not interested any more. It’s completely left me,
this wish to understand him, this wish to somehow patch
things up. I feel so betrayed I just want to curl into a little ball and whimper for at least five months. I don’t want to
have to deal with anything practical – but I know I must.
All indecision about my marriage has gone. It’s as though
I’ve been picked up and shaken very hard, and all the loose
stuff has just fallen away.
My fury this time goes so deep it’s burned out its own h
ysterics. Now it’s demanding a toughness I didn’t know I
was capable of feeling. It’s demanding that I stay on in this
house and tell Bruce to leave. It’s demanding that I call a
solicitor to commence my divorce.
My fury is a feisty lady. She wants to kick ass. She’s telling
me life is happening here, now. It’s not waiting while I waste
time. And as I sit with her and listen I see she’s not just my
fury. She’s the part of me that’s always been there, waiting
for the moment when I would listen fully and not just grab
half-sentences.
She was there at my wedding, screaming in the back
ground. She was in America, urging me along that open
highway. The other night, when I was driving Bunty, she
was there too. In fact she’s been around quite a lot lately, in one way or another.
Susan says we have to accept the different parts of ourselves
to become whole. She says every part, every voice, has its own
message. ‘Why have black and white,’ she says, ‘when you
can have Technicolor?’
The thing is I quite like black and white sometimes – e
specially in old romantic movies. The classic ones. They
have a kind of gritty truth to them you don’t often find in
films these days. However much modern heroes and heroines
claim to be in love, there’s a sense that a recalcitrant pet
poodle could, for example, already be causing a reappraisal
of mutual commitment as the credits roll. But I never get that feeling with Tracy and Hepburn. There’s a conviction
to their love, their animosity, that goes much deeper than
mere romance.
I decided long ago that I wouldn’t leave Bruce just because
I no longer felt ‘in love’ with him. I always knew falling in
love might one day lead to falling in something else
–
and I just hoped it wasn’t something one often finds on pavements
a
nd has to grimly scrape off one’s shoe. Another kind of love
is what I expected. A deeper, more restful, cosy kind. One
that could accommodate routine and even boredom. A love
one could settle back into, like an armchair. A place to dream
from. And return to.
Because we need our dreams, don’t we? We need to believe
there’s another side of the mountain where none of this
applies. A place where our first hopes, our first feelings, are
kept pristine and pure. Why else would a book about a man who turns up on a woman’s doorstep while photographing
bridges have turned into such a bestseller?