The Last Year of Being Single (15 page)

Karen—‘Sounds completely fucked up to me.’

Sarah—‘Well, a lot of people are fucked up these days. What’s normal? What’s abnormal? I don’t know. I remember as a little girl knowing children who had divorced parents and feeling very sorry for them, but that was the odd person. Now there must be a decent percentage in every nursery and school. What the fuck’s going on? I’m not tra
ditional or conventional by any stretch of the imagination—’ (perhaps at this point I should mention I’m sleeping with someone else…but I don’t) ‘—people don’t get married for life. You’ve got men marrying men, women marrying women. People not marrying at all. Children not knowing where the fuck they are. Emotionally, mentally or spiritually, not to mention physically sometimes. Divorce is being made easy, though I’m sure it’s actually in many ways much harder emotionally. Infidelity is OK sometimes, in some circumstances, and sometimes not in others. Everything’s OK and nothing’s OK. You get judged if you’re judgemental and judged if you’re too liberal. Women are accused of loving too much. Men not loving enough. Selfishness is in turn good and bad.’

I listened to what I was saying. Why couldn’t I take my own advice? What was I doing? I couldn’t marry Paul. I was sleeping with someone else. How can you agree to marry someone and sleep with someone else during the engagement? OK, if you’re going out with them and there’s no commitment and there’s no sex, then, hey, that’s understandable. But Paul’s proposed, so why have I started a relationship while I’m engaged to be married? What am I playing at? Is it the fun of it? The immorality? The fact that Paul doesn’t know about it because he’s so controlling and John’s my secret and he can’t change it or do anything about it and when Paul’s shitty with me I can deal with it because I can think of John and it’s all OK? And I know that someone will hold and kiss me and make love to me. And when John’s cold and shitty I have Paul who I know is like a rock and will hold and kiss me, and will perhaps make love to me. One day in the future.

Perhaps I should read one of Pierce’s books. They don’t seem to have helped him much. He seems to hate women, despite the fact he wants to fuck them so much. He says
it’s due to his mother being such an emotional bully, and I identify with that, but I told him that not all women should be judged like his mother and not to treat them the same way. He said that he was treated as an inconvenience when he was little and he’s sure his mother used to drug him to make him sleep longer. I identify with this. I felt my parents put me in a little box and brought me out only when it suited them and then, hey presto, back in the box again. I didn’t need a counsellor or spiritual healer or tarot card reader or feng shui expert to tell me that. It’s just a pity that I went from one emotional bully to another emotional bully and I’ve got stuck in the pattern. But perhaps I’m meant to break it. Perhaps I’ll break it with Paul. Perhaps.

Don’t need women’s magazines when you have friends you can sit round and chat to. Be sort-of honest with. No, I didn’t want to tell all about the Dark Prince. Well, I did, but I didn’t think it appropriate. Catherine and Anya knew about it. But I wanted to keep it simple. Too many people knowing wasn’t a good idea. Plus, they’d all start to give me their views. Their opinions on whether I should do it, why I was doing it, how I could have gone out with Paul for such a long time putting up with no sex, and him putting up with me. Loyalty or love?

Karen was a fervent believer in star signs. And feng shui. And tarot cards. And spiritual healing. She said that as I was a Gemini and he was a Taurus we were incompatible. That he was a home-lover and stubborn as a—well, bull, and I was an air sign and up with the butterflies and I couldn’t be caught. Bit like trying to catch a flame. You can’t. You just get your fingers burnt. She said our Chinese signs were also incompatible. I was a dragon, wood and fire. And he was a horse, fire and metal. Incompatible again. Well, almost. We got on okay. Better as friends than lovers or partners or
spouses. She said that when we moved here it meant that I would have lots of children—become very fertile, but that was all it would be good for. I told her this was complete bullocks. She said I should hang crystals in windows and keep goldfish and buy lots of mobiles.

Karen—‘Are you OK? You seem somewhere else, Sarah?’

Sarah—‘I’m fine. Lots on my mind at the moment. Plans and all that.’

Karen—pause, staring at me, looking through me—‘You sure you’re doing the right thing?’

Sarah—longer pause, staring down—‘Yes, Karen. Think so. Sure as can ever be.’

Karen—‘Mmm. Still think he’s not the one for you. He’s a bit too conventional. You’re not conventional, Sarah. Not saying you’re a boho chick or a complete free spirit and up with the fairies, but he’s quite, well, square, and he might make you go more one way and you’ll make him get more set in his ways. That’s all I’m saying. I saw it with my parents. You know mine are divorced? I was three when they divorced, and they said it was a good age for me and that I would get over it. They said it would be better that they’d divorced at that age than when I was older. I say they shouldn’t have got married in the first place or should have stuck it out and worked at it. It did affect me. Don’t care what the counsellors and books say.

‘I went all through this, Sarah. It’s bloody horrible and scary and weird and I didn’t really understand what was happening. Everyone was listening to me. You know, that active listening to everything you say bit, and it’s disconcerting when no one’s ever done that before. You sort of get used to it in the end, and start to speak as though you’re full of the Holy Spirit and know everything there is to know about relationships and try to act how you’re supposed to react in situations like this. I got the full works
when I was eight and started to rebel, and they thought it was because of this, but it wasn’t. It was just my age.’

Karen pauses, then looks at me again.

Karen—‘What I’m saying is that if you’re not sure, Sarah, don’t do it. Coz if you have a child you don’t want to put that child through it, do you? It’s not fair. It’s not fair on the child, nor on Paul—though I don’t like the git—and nor on you. Think about it.’

Someone knocked on the door. Catherine with bottle of Sauvignon from Tesco. New Zealand.

Catherine—‘Hi there, sweetie. How you?’

Sarah—‘Me fine. Karen’s just telling me I shouldn’t get married.’

Catherine—‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘Paul’s lovely, Sarah. You know that. You love him.’

Sarah—‘I know I do. I know I do. But you know the situation.’

Catherine—‘I know. But I still think it’s the last fling, excitement, illicit thing. It’s not real. It’s not the real thing. You have the real thing with Paul.’

Sarah—‘Perhaps I don’t want it, Catherine. Perhaps I’m not ready to have it. And Karen made a point about children.’

Catherine—‘You don’t want children, do you?’(Catherine didn’t want children. She wasn’t child-catcher-I-hate-children material, but she didn’t like the idea of having to look after more children as well as her husband. Strong believer that all men are babies or at least toddlers and that looking after them was enough.)

Sarah—‘I don’t mind. I know Paul would love children, and I think I will one day, and I think he would make a great dad and I would make an unconventional mum, but a good one, and hopefully my kids will think I’m fun and I’ll be there for them. May forget to feed
them, but never forget to tell them they’re fabulous and love them to bits.’

Maternal instinct surprised me as much as it did Catherine. But we went in as we’d been gabbing on the doorstep and Karen was wondering where we were.

DVD.
Moulin Rouge.
Nicole Kidman dying of consumption. Torn between duty and genuine passion and love. Horny music. Made me think of both Paul and John in turn. Paul was a wonderful dancer. John was better horizontal. We sat and drank and got slowly merry. Text from Paul:

Eyes glazed over at the right time. Nicole was just dying. The other girls thought they understood.

This is different, all right? Women dream about changing men from womanisers into lap dogs and supposedly it seemed I’d done it when I’d had no intention nor wanting to do it. It was extremely inconvenient. As the credits rolled we had a pissy conversation about love. With a capital L.

Karen—‘Do you think the only important thing is to learn how to love and be loved in return?’

Sarah—‘Yes. I think it’s one of those phrases that gets misquoted a lot. You know, like Chaucer’s “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Lot of people say “money is the root of all evil”. Then they go on to say but who creates money? Therefore Man is the root of all evil. But that wasn’t the original quote. It’s desiring it that’s wrong, not having it.’

Karen—‘So learning to love. What is love?’

Sarah—‘Million-dollar question, that. I think most people say it’s when you feel more pain being apart from them
than you do being with them, and that you can’t bear to live without them.’

Catherine—‘Yeah, I would say that’s true. But what’s the difference with lust and love?’

Sarah—‘Don’t know. I loved Paul when I first met him. Knew instinctively he was the one for me. Just wanted to be with him. Around him. Wanted only him. Was totally and completely in love with him. Just wanted to be there for him. Be what he wanted me to be. But perhaps that was just lust. Because lust is fleeting. Love’s eternal, or should be. Dunno. I think both of them are like diseases. Like viruses. Uncontrollable. Inconvenient.’ (I was thinking of John.) ‘Happen when you don’t want them to or least expect them to.’ (Definitely thinking of John.)

Karen—‘Think it’s different for men. When I’m in love or lust I can’t focus on anything other than wanting to be with them. Near them. Thinking of them.’

Catherine—‘Most of the men I know say when they’re in love or lust they do better at work, have better focus and achieve more. It’s like their love is more selfish. Perhaps it’s true that men love in a different way to women. Hey, I don’t know. Don’t know on that one.’

Sarah—‘There are sooo many books and sonnets and films on love. I’m deep-down romantic. English teacher said I was romantic coz I used to turn up in flowing flirty dresses in the sixth form and think I was a bit sort of boho chick even then. Flowers in the hair. Loved Keats. Learnt most of the
Odes
by heart. Bloody difficult. Got them all mixed up. Use to start off with
Ode to a Nightingale
, move onto
Autumn
somewhere and end up with the
Grecian Urn
. He was a miserable bugger, though. He wrote reams on the bloody stuff. Most of it bloody depressing.

‘There’s this poem about this lover who cuts his girlfriend’s head off—after she’s dead, of course. Can’t re
member what she dies of, but think it’s to do with another guy or unrequited love or something. Anyway—’(slurping more Sauvignon) ‘—for some reason he puts it in a pot and the pot sprouts a tree. And the tree grows big and strong. Think it was a basil pot or something. Now I can never buy basil without thinking about this bloody woman’s head. And as Paul sometimes forsakes parma ham and melon and goes for mozzarella and tomato salad with fresh basil I often have this subconscious urge to throw up. And then the other guy finds out that the tree sprouted from this girl’s head—and cuts the tree down. And I always visualise the tree sprouting from her head and wonder if it sprouted from her neck or her hair—and think of that film
The Thing
, where there was that alien that takes over and kills people in this camp one by one and the hand—or was it a head that had legs? and I think it destroyed the whole beauty of the poem for me at the time.’

Catherine—‘Think I remember that poem. Was it
Lamia
?’

Sarah—‘No, that was about the girl that was a snake, or something, and turned into a girl. Or was it the other way round? But that was a long one too. Wasn’t it?’

Catherine—‘No, no. It was called—think it was called two things,
The Pot of Basil
. And
Isabella
. That was it.
Isabella
. Remember there was this line in it which read…oh, bugger. Forgotten. May have the book somewhere.’

Sarah—‘I don’t think I’ve got it. I loved Keats. I remember there’s this line which when I’m feeling really shitty just about sums up how I feel. “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk”. Real sort of slit-wrist time, that. And there’s this other line. What is it now? Oh, yeah. “Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death”. Forgotten the rest. But anyway, it’s very good to say out loud
when you really want to have a good wail and total emotional meltdown. Keats knew how to be miserable.’

Catherine—‘Don’t you think most poets and creative types are miserable? I remember my English teacher telling me T S Eliot produced his best work when he was having a horrible time in his personal life. And then he married his secretary or something, and got all happy, and couldn’t write a bloody word after that.’