Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
I suppose I’d miss my marital home more if I hadn’t owned a
house already. I bought this little cottage in my late twenties,
before house prices became astronomical. I couldn’t afford to buy
it now. Even though it only has one bedroom and the orange sofa
takes up a lot of the sitting-room, it’s beside the sea and fairly
c
lose to central Dublin. When Diarmuid and I got married, we
decided it was a good idea to keep my cottage and rent it out. We
couldn’t have shared it, because it’s so ‘cosy’ – as the estate agents
put it – that two people can barely fit in the kitchen.
When I left my marital home with my large cream suitcase, I think part of me must have been aware that the current tenants were due to leave in three weeks, though I didn’t know I was being quite so practical. I stayed with my friend Erika until the cottage was free again. She’s a good person to be sad with. We watched loads of DVDs and ate chocolate biscuits, and I took very long baths.
The kindest way to describe this cottage would be ‘shabby but sweet’. The outside is painted Mediterranean blue, and it has big
twinkly windows that overlook the sea. That’s why I bought it: I
wanted to look out at the sea and see it change colour. I wanted
that vastness, that unbuilt space. It’s a bit like living next to a golf
course, only nicer.
I look out the window at the sea while I try to decide whether
to encourage readers to ‘experiment’ and personally decorate
some of their bathroom tiles. It’s a sunny, blustery May
afternoon; the sea is bouncing around, and the foliage on one of Dublin’s sturdy palm trees is waving in the breeze beside the beach. My neighbour’s wind-chimes are tinkling, and this is the
sort of moment when I wish I owned a cat. I could pick it up and
cuddle it and find the favourite spot behind its ears.
Tea. I need a cup of Earl Grey. I get up and pad, shoeless – I
am wearing a pair of thick, soft pink socks – to the kitchen. When
the tea is made and in my favourite wide-rimmed cream cup – a
present from my extremely successful friend Fiona, who regularly
visits Paris to discuss software – I decide to phone Aunt Marie. I
want to ask her about DeeDee.
After I have told Marie that April won’t be flying back from California to feel uncomfortable in her front room, I say, with studied nonchalance, ‘Marie, you know Great-Aunt DeeDee…’
This is met with silence: a strange, hissing silence. I feel like I
have lifted a seashell to my ear. ‘Hello?’ I say, wondering if she’s
still on the line.
‘What do you want to know about her?’ Marie says brusquely.
‘Well, I was just… just wondering if anyone knows what happened to her.’
‘Of course they don’t,’ Marie replies, as if this is a blatantly idiotic question.
‘Has anyone tried to find out?’ I persist.
I hear a deep intake of breath. Then Marie says, ‘Sorry, Sally, I
have to go. I have a lasagne in the oven.’
‘But –’
Marie sighs sharply. ‘I don’t know what happened to DeeDee.
No one does. We don’t talk about her any more.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s no point. She’s gone,’ Marie says flatly. ‘Thanks for your call, dear. Bye.’ She hangs up the phone.
This is unusual. Marie is far from perfect, but she’s not usually
rude. What on earth happened to DeeDee? And why doesn’t Marie share my curiosity? Perhaps DeeDee was just a feckless, uncaring, horrible person. Maybe that’s why no one misses her.
I go to the kitchen and fetch a chocolate biscuit, then head reluctantly back to my article about bathroom accessories. It seems that DeeDee will remain a mystery – for the moment,
anyway. I’ll have to ask Mum about her. Perhaps she’ll be more
forthcoming.
I start to type frantically, because someone might pop by for tea at any moment. My friend Erika says I should have been a geisha. Even Diarmuid regularly drops in for Earl Grey and
almond cookies. We never mention the mice, naturally. When he’s
sitting on our sofa – it is still
our
sofa, since we bought it together
– I can’t help noticing that he’s a handsome man with great biceps a
nd lovely broad shoulders. And his stomach is so flat and toned.
I know I’m describing him as though he were a horse or
something, but one of Diarmuid’s attractions is that he has a great body, and he’s very good in bed. Come to think of it, I really miss
that too.
He’s not tall – about five foot ten – and he’s kind of stocky, but in a nice way; it’s muscle, not fat. His bum is firm and looks great
in jeans. His face is well proportioned, and he has a strong
jawline and thick black eyebrows to go with his wavy dark hair.
His eyes always seem a bit distant, but maybe it’s because deep down he’s quite shy. When he gets up to leave, I always feel a
pang of regret. Just for a moment I forget how lonely I was with
him; all our differences seem so small, compared to his big strong
arms around me.
When Diarmuid leaves, I always want someone to phone or
drop by and show me I’m happy to be single, but they never do.
It’s suddenly like a desert. Of course, at times like this you know
you could ring someone yourself, but you also know they’ll probably be in the middle of something – they’ll be in the supermarket or a meeting, or changing a nappy, or really preoccupied and unusually abrupt. That’s the weird thing about life: sometimes you can hardly get a moment to yourself, and sometimes you’re forgotten. When you ache with all your heart for a certain person to call you – when that call would make all the difference – they probably won’t phone till three days later,
when you have five people in the sitting-room and the neighbour’s
cat has just pooped on the carpet. It’s just something you have to
get used to. Tough titties, as my friend Fiona would say.
Fiona isn’t very sentimental, even though she’s sensitive – and
not just about herself. My friend Erika, however, is sentimental.
She is also a floating secretary. This doesn’t mean she spends her
time decorously poised above Dublin with a shorthand notepad;
it means that, when various large corporations need temporary help for a variety of reasons, she’s one of the people they call
upon. And they call upon her a lot – which is just as well, because
she doesn’t make much money from her papier-mâché cats. She
loves making and painting them – each one has his or her very own personality – but they take quite a while to get ‘just right’, and people don’t pay all that much for them. In an ideal world,
Erika could stay at home with her mashed-paper animals and not
have to find her way intrepidly to her desk. Sometimes she makes
it sounds like Arctic exploration. Apparently the floors in many modern office blocks are almost identical and devoid of
distinguishing features; her landmarks are things like red storage-
boxes and water-coolers and photocopiers. Sometimes she even leaves little ‘You are here’ notes for herself.
Erika is small and blonde and has a sweet, turned-up nose and
a slightly dazed expression, which is extremely attractive to men.
Especially to someone called Alex. Alex is why Erika is on the phone right now. I was just typing, ‘These zebra-patterned soap dishes are available from…’ when she called.
‘Alex said he doesn’t want to leave his wife,’ she says. ‘Not yet,
anyway. Because she may leave him first, and that would be so much easier.’
‘Oh.’
‘His wife is getting very friendly with her yoga teacher. They
even go out for herbal tea after classes.’
‘I see.’
‘He told me yesterday. We only met for half an hour because
Alex had to collect his daughter from her tai chi class.’
‘
Oh, dear.’
‘I didn’t mind.’ Erika suddenly sounds brave and adamant. ‘I
had things to do myself. I… I had two marmalade-coloured cats to
finish – a bride and groom. I’m making them as a wedding
present for Fiona’s cousin.’
‘Oh. Good.’ And it is good. Erika adores making bride and groom cats; she loves painting on the tuxedos and long white
dresses. The thing is, hardly any shops seem to want them. Most
of them are sold to people she knows.
‘I’ve just read an article about how important it is to have your own life,’ Erika says. ‘Even if you meet your soulmate, you need
to have your own life.’
‘Yes,’ I say, knowing that at any minute she is going to try to
quote Kahlil Gibran.
‘As Kahlil Gibran wrote, “The olive and the… the… ”’ There is
a long pause. ‘I’ve forgotten what exactly, but anyway, they don’t
grow in each other’s shade.’ Erika hasn’t got a great memory for quotations and jokes; when she’s telling one of the five jokes she
knows, she usually gets to the punch line way before she’s
mentioned any of the details that would make it funny. Diarmuid thinks she is a bit daft, but in a nice way that he doesn’t quite get
but can tolerate. And Erika has never really told me what she
thinks of Diarmuid, which probably means she isn’t that keen
on him.
She is certainly very keen on Alex. I saw him once. He was in a bookshop, signing copies of his latest self-help offering. At this
point I should probably mention that Alex writes hugely popular
books about having healthy relationships. He was very tanned
and earnest-looking and fairly muscular around the shoulders; his blue-grey eyes seemed kind and tired, but you could see how they
might blaze with raw passion. I didn’t buy the book. I just looked at him sniffily and walked by. I wanted him to see I knew he was a fraud – just like I am. He writes books about having wonderful
relationships, and I write articles about having a wonderful home.
‘I feel such a fraud!’ Is Erika telepathic? ‘I keep telling Alex I
don’t mind waiting. I keep telling him that I understand, that I
want almost nothing from him. But I do! I… I want us to go to the
supermarket together. I want to watch DVDs with him and… and
eat crisps. I… I want to
kiss his eyelashes.’
I don’t know what to say to this. Even though I’ve had quite a sobering romantic career, this is not a longing I have had to deal
with. Maybe I should have wanted to kiss Diarmuid’s eyelashes.
Maybe that’s what is missing.
‘Oh, Sally, I’m sorry.’ Erika sighs forlornly. ‘I shouldn’t be going on like this. I should be asking you about Diarmuid.’
‘I’m very glad you’re not,’ I say. ‘If you did, I wouldn’t know
what to say.’
There is a long pause. Then Erika says, ‘Alex said something else. He said he loved me but he thought it might be best if we didn’t meet again. Ever.’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘Alex says he thinks we’re all heated up, and if we get together
we’ll burst into flames and that will be it.’ Erika’s voice sounds distant and lonely, as though it’s coming from the bottom of the
sea. ‘I said I understood.’ She is sobbing now. ‘I said he was right.
And… and then Alex said he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe we both need the combustion. Maybe we both need our lives to be totally different.’
I hold my breath.
Totally different.
The words seem to tug at
my heart.
‘So then I had to be the one who was strong, and I said that
lives don’t become totally different just like that. It takes patience
and planning and probably years of therapy.’
I suddenly want to disagree, but I don’t. I suddenly think that
maybe you can reach a point of desperation when things have to
change; that maybe you
can
take a big leap and end up
somewhere different, even if you’re not quite sure how you got there.
‘So how did you leave it, then?’