Half-truths & White Lies (9 page)

When I discuss relationships with other people, they tell
me you never love the second or third time around as
passionately as you do the first. How, after being hurt,
you learn to put up defences, your own invisible force
field. Not consciously perhaps. Not even obviously. But
they are there, nonetheless. How would I know? I have
only ever been in love once. Although you may not
think that I was lucky in love, I know that I was
fortunate enough to fall in love with the right girl and
that my love lasted for the best part of forty years. How
many people can claim that?

I am currently working on a divorce case for an undeniably
beautiful client – let's call her Michelle. When
she walked into my book-lined office in a well-cut suit
and high heels, hair smoothed back tightly from her
face and a shade of pink lipstick just on the right side of
good taste, I thought she lit up the room. Then I began
to notice her hard edges. Gradually, I am beginning to
think she looks more and more like a stick-insect
in drag.

'Where do we start?' she asked, straight down to
business.

When I suggested that she told me everything she
thought was relevant, I got rather more than I bargained
for. She told me how in her teens she had been very
insecure and that this expressed itself as jealousy. She
imagined that her boyfriend – let's call him Brendan –
had a bit of a roving eye. She thought that when he was
with her, his eyes should have been on her only. In her
mind, he had already betrayed her. She did what she
thought every girl had to do to keep her man happy, and
a bit more besides. As she gave little pieces of herself
away, his confidence grew. She became the needy one,
looking for reassurance that he loved her at every
opportunity, but his replies were never enough. One
day, looking for a stronger reaction, she went as far as
accusing him of having the hots for another girl, a
friend of his family. A month later she sees them kissing.
He denies it. She won't let it rest. Two weeks down
the line she discovers them in bed together. Brendan
says, 'You drove me away. Before you mentioned her, I
didn't even know who she was.' Michelle is adamant.
She had always known that one day he would cheat on
her.

She goes out with another fellow to make Brendan
jealous. Let's call him Rob. Outwardly, she lavishes Rob
with affection. He adores her but knows there is
nothing behind her kisses. He wonders if he is supposed
to buy her love. This time she trades little pieces of herself
for an engagement ring. She parades it in front of
her friends. Rob comes to realize that she cares more for
the diamond than she does for him. One night after
drowning his sorrows, he finds himself entangled in the
arms of an uncomplicated girl who cares nothing for
jewellery. He feels something close to happiness.
Michelle feels completely justified when she tells everyone
that men are all the same.

She interrupted her flow to ask me, 'Are you getting
all this?'

It was only then that I realized I had stopped taking
notes and was sitting back in my chair staring at her. I
may even have had my mouth open.

'Oh, yes,' I replied, 'I'm definitely getting the picture.
Do go on.'

Michelle decides to take revenge on the cheating men
of this world by playing them at their own game. She
finds a man in a bar with a wedding ring on his finger
and asks him to buy her a drink. Several drinks later and
she agrees to go 'home' with him and he finds a hotel.
She wakes in the morning to find a twenty-pound note
on the bedside table. She decides not to share this little
story with her friends.

She has had enough. Never again will she be taken
advantage of. The next time, she assures herself, she
won't give any more of herself away until she walks
down the aisle. Unfortunately Michelle is too willing to
swap a bit of respectability for love. Once the wedding
and the honeymoon are over, she finds that she is
expected to give little pieces of herself away every night.
And not only in the bedroom, but when she has to play
the role of a dutiful wife with her in-laws and his work
colleagues. In those moments, she feels lonelier than
she ever has before. But she can't admit it, so she retreats
to a small place inside herself. Occasionally she looks in
the mirror and she can't even recognize the face in front
of her. She needs to escape so that she can remember
who it is that she used to be.

Unfortunately, her chosen escape route did not take
her far enough away from the prying eyes of a well-meaning
neighbour. Now her husband is divorcing her.
The bastard. She's going to take him to the cleaner's.

For a while, I had been sitting and nodding, waiting
for Michelle to give me something – anything – to work
with.

'For a man, you're a very good listener,' she told me
and I take it from this that she has run out of steam.

'It's my job,' I said, smiling, meaning that I listen by
the hour and that her story has cost her the best part of
£250. A counsellor might have been cheaper.

'I mean business.' She uncrossed her legs and leaned
forward slowly. 'I want him to pay.'

'Just so I'm completely clear, what do you want him
to pay for?' I asked, thinking of her insecurities and the
other men in her life.

'I want the house, all of the furniture and the car,' she
said without hesitating.

'Well, at least we have our starting point. Now, we
need to focus on your husband a little more. What sort
of a man is he?'

Family law is a depressing line of business. I meet the
Michelles of this world more than you might imagine,
ceaselessly looking for the next escape route.

But is it any easier if you have loved just the one
person? Where can I go looking now that I need to
remember who I am? I start by visiting my old haunts.
A young family is living in my parents' house. I can't
see them, but the front door is ajar. Somewhere inside
a mother is swearing at a child, and the child is
shouting back. No one has explained the house rules to
them: self-control, self-discipline, self-preservation.
Never show your emotions, never answer back. Is it
better to grow up in a house where people say exactly
what they think? Once things have been aired there
is no taking them back, no matter how much you try
to forget.

I walk past the double glazing and the paved-over
front gardens to the place where I expected to find St
Winifred's. In its place is a large block of newly built
flats with little personality. An advertising board
describes them as 'luxurious accommodation sitting
within the footprint of a prestigious school'. A second
block sits where I used to play marbles in the playground
and a third and fourth where the football pitch
and playing fields were. I feel as if something else has
been stolen from me. Is it possible to mourn the loss of
a building as you would a person? Or is it simply that St
Winifred's was the shell that I stored so many of my
memories in? How is it that my old school was torn
apart and I didn't feel a physical wrench?

Taking Betty's advice, I decide to go looking for my
Uncle Jonathan again and drive to the beach where I
once thought I saw him: the relative I feel closest to and
yet never actually met. Sitting on a low wall, I take off
my shoes and socks, tuck the socks inside the shoes, tie
the laces together and hang them around my neck. I
breathe in the air, smelling salt and seaweed and wet
dog. It is a bright day with a good breeze taking the edge
off the warmth of the sun, and clouds of the large,
white, solid-looking type, fit to take the weight of any
god of the Old Testament variety. A day to cheer the
spirits. The dog-walkers and bucket-and-spade brigade
are out in force, if not the sun-seekers. Mucky kids in
sun hats and undies run shrieking from the shock of the
icy water. Everyone seems to be with someone, doing
something, smiling. Excluded from the world of happy
families, I bypass them, walking for what seems like
miles, until I have left the roads and crowds with their
litter and pandemonium behind.

Walking purposefully but without any particular
destination, I watch as the sun sets and the waters turn
from blue to grey to golden to obsidian black, and then
I walk some more. At a place where the sands meet the
cliffs, I toy with an abandoned Diet Coke bottle. With
no one to see me, I whisper, 'I miss you,' into it, screw
the lid on tightly, and set it afloat on the water. Then I
cry the sea-salty tears of someone who is not certain
what they have to go back to. An overweight, balding,
middle-aged man, weeping over the loss of a love that
was never his, the loss of a friend he was willing to
betray, the loss of a favourite uncle he never actually
met, the loss of a father he never told how he felt, the
loss of a name he might have grown to live up to, and
the loss of a son who might one day have looked up to
him. You couldn't do it by daylight.

There were any number of times when I could have
asked Laura out or told her that I loved her before Tom
Fellows arrived on the scene, but there always seemed to
be something stopping me. We were too young. I was
shy. I didn't think that I was good-looking enough. I
valued our friendship too much. There would be plenty
of time. It wasn't fair on her when I was going to be
leaving for university. Besides, she must have known
how I felt, surely?

I didn't feel particularly threatened by her other
boyfriends once I realized that they would come and go
with surprising regularity. A week, two weeks, three at
the most. I made an effort to appear to get to know
those that lasted slightly longer. I tried my hardest not
to appear to be too jealous of them and I secretly
enjoyed their jealousy about my relationship with
Laura.

'This is Peter Churcher,' she would explain perfectly
naturally, and I would offer my hand. This ritual of
Laura's became the test of who was going to make the
grade as a boyfriend. Some would look cautiously from
one of our faces to the other, waiting for her to expand
on the introduction. I listed the possibilities in my
head.

'Who has loved me for as long as he has known me.'

'Whom I will compare you to.'

'My best friend.'

'Who will accompany us on some of our dates and
will make you feel like a lemon.'

'Whom I tell all of my secrets to.'

'Whose shoulder I will cry on when we break up.'

She never provided an explanation. That was part of
her test. The handshake was my own test. I have always
read handshakes in the way that some people analyse
handwriting.

'Call me Pete,' I would say, looking them in the eye.

I almost felt sorry for one or two of the poor confused
souls who fell at the first hurdle and actually asked her
to explain. To them, she said very graciously, 'I'm sorry.
I don't think this is going to work out.'

The first time she did it, I said, 'That wasn't very fair
on him.'

'Oh, Pete,' she replied, 'if he's like that now, what
would he have been like a week from now when he asks
me out and I have to say no because we're already going
to the pictures? Anyway, if I said you were a friend, do
you think he'd have been happy with that?'

I should have said it then. 'Laura, what if we were
more than friends?' Or, 'Seeing as you're short of a date,
how about it?'

If they could prove that they didn't look like the
jealous type, she would sometimes reward them
with, 'You're going to get to know each other quite
well.'

Later, when we were alone, she would dig me in the
ribs, her head on one side, and ask, 'Well?'

'Well what?' I pretended that I didn't know what she
was talking about.

'What do you think of him?'

'Reasonably firm grip. Good eye contact. He's housetrained.
Worth a second chance.'

'That's what I thought.' She hugged herself.

'Not sure if he'll pass the Mrs Albury test.' I couldn't
resist leaving her with some doubt. Sunday lunch at the
Alburys was the ultimate test. Mrs Albury could tell a lot
from the way that a man held his knife and fork and
what he did with his elbows while he was at the table.

'You don't think so?'

I shrugged. It was always best not to say too much.
Not when Mrs Albury wouldn't be able to resist giving
her daughter the benefit of her years of experience.

Of course, I was happiest when there was no one else
on the scene. People often assumed that Laura and I
were together and it must have put many a prospective
admirer off. What is the difference between a male
friend and a boyfriend anyway? When Laura complained
about a boyfriend, it was always me that she
compared them to.

'We never find the need to argue, do we? So why do
they feel they have to?' she would say, or 'When you buy
me an ice cream, you're not thinking about what you're
going to get in return.'

Laura liked to look good for herself and lapped up
any attention, but she didn't enjoy the feeling of being
on display or of being ogled. She liked to be tactile, but
she didn't like to be groped or feel that someone had an
arm around her as a sign of possession. She liked to
receive gifts, but only when there was no expectation of
what would be given in return. She liked to be walked
home, but only when she was not going to feel
pressurized.

'When do you and I talk about words like "compromise"?'
She would occasionally get angry. 'When is it
necessary for us to sit down and "talk about it"? When
do we ever discuss who's going to pay for what?'

Why didn't I ever say, 'We're obviously the perfect
couple. Why don't we just go out with each other?'

The thing was we did go out with each other. All of
the time. I didn't understand how to move things on to
the next level, short of jumping on her or declaring
undying love. For every time that I told myself I had
nothing to lose, there was a part of me that knew that I
had everything to lose. I didn't want to turn into one of
those boys she complained about. And she must have
known how I felt about her. Surely, the whole point was
that we never discussed it?

Ironically, Laura would tell everyone how I broke
her heart the day I told her I was going away to
university.

'I'll be home every few weeks to see you.'

'It won't be the same. Why can't you just go to college
here?'

In a way, I was delighted that my announcement had
had such an effect on her. Who doesn't want to hear
that they will be missed?

Why didn't I tell her then? I love you. I've always
loved you. I'm always going to love you. This is four
short years and then I can earn enough money to make
us both happy.

'I'll be able to get a better job if I go to one of the top
five universities. It's a really good opportunity for me.'

In fact, I have only ever worked for the one practice
and they wouldn't have given a hoot which tin-pot
college my degree came from. The senior partner knew
my uncle Jonathan during the war and that was the only
reference I ever needed.