Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

Did I consent?

Yes, of course I did. Yes. So I can’t blame him. I blame myself.

Yet you see, though I may have said a few moments ago that this was the thing that doomed our love – yet perhaps I’m wrong. For in many ways, this whole period was the best of our relationship. We were the perfect couple. I was happy. Relaxed. Fulfilled. We were funny, witty, we had great times, we talked about life and literature and politics, or at least he did, and I listened. And I couldn’t have been more happy – except for the fact that, once a day,

Slap.

So what’s so wrong with that? What No. Stop. It was wrong. Do you think I’m a moral imbecile? I know it was wrong. And eventually, I stood up to him, and I told him, I told him No, that never happened. I’d like to think that one day I woke up and realised that I was acting like a fool, that I did not deserve this treatment.

But it didn’t happen that way. No moral stand. No defiance. Instead, gradually, love corroded. How? Why? Why then, not earlier? I simply do not know.

All I know is that the time came when I found myself waking up each day with a taste like ash in my mouth. Everything was right; then nothing was right. I was happy; then I was not.

On the lake one day, while swimming, I was engulfed in a storm. Lightning ripped the sky and water poured down on me as I swam. Then a rainbow sprang through the air and spanned the gap between the mountains.

It was the most extraordinary moment of natural beauty I had ever experienced. I was cocooned in water, my face crushed by pouring rain, as the heavens themselves erupted in colour. It should have been the purest epiphany.

And yet I felt nothing. Just ash. And drabness.

Day followed day. Night followed night. My body trudged through it all. I had lost my ability to feel emotion. I concealed this skilfully, but Andrei could tell something was wrong. I stopped flattering him around about then I suppose. Or was it sooner? I have no record of it in my RAMs, which I appear to have a wiped, in a fit of dark depression. And I cannot, I literally cannot remember when the death-of-love took place. Or how many months went by with me inhabiting this grey non-life.

Then one day I found myself in London, in Brown’s Hotel. I have no recollection of how I got there. But I stayed. I threw away my mobile phone because it had Andrei’s number in it. I rented a flat for myself. I made no attempt to tell him where I was. Four weeks later he tracked me down, and asked me, pleadingly, if I was having an affair. I mocked him, taunted him. He stormed off, ranting, and I crowed at my triumph.

Then… I do not know. The missing months of my life. All RAM erased, no memories left.

Then my memories begin again, a few months later. I was living in a flat in Peckham. I was overweight, my hair had gone totally grey. The flat was bleak and the wallpaper was peeling. Maggots crawled in the sink, among the remains of an abandoned apple. And I realised I was missing Andrei badly. I ached for him with such intensity, it felt like I would die.

So I went back to him in the villa on Lake Como, apologetically, desperately, tail between my legs. But by then he’d changed the locks. He’d burned all my clothes on a bonfire. And he already had a new girlfriend, who was wearing my jewellery. And I was consumed with jealousy so strong it made my jaw ache.

I tried to hit him in fact, but he was too fast, too strong. Damn him. I left, weeping. The girlfriend looked scared.

Now, when I look back, I realise I was right to leave him. It was the beginning of my beginning. At the time, though, I cursed myself and hated myself. How could I have given up the love of my life? What kind of woman was I?

And I decided, in my blackest moment, I would never forgive myself. I flew to Australia. I became an actress, and failed in that career. I drank, I took drugs, I crashed two cars, I had a nervous breakdown. I wasted many many years. And I didn’t see Andrei again until he was almost a skeleton.

But I dreamed of him constantly. And I missed the slaps. I found myself yearning for them. I sometimes stared at myself in the mirror, stroking my cheek, imagining the slap. I went to the karate dojo and sparred and deliberately dropped my guard so that I would be punched or kicked in the face. Just to feel that joyous shock once again!

With time, the slap-yearning faded. I internalised my insanity. But it’s still there. I don’t need a therapist to tell me that my desire for Sex and Death and my longing for a strong man to strike me are signs of an dangerously unstable psychology. I know I am, deep down, all wrong. I just hide the signs.

I’m.

All.

Wrong.

Life begins at a hundred and forty…

… that’s what I always say.

After I broke up with Andrei, and after the drink and drugs years, I decided it was time to settle down, behave more sensibly. So I sobered up, detoxed, and forgave myself. I bought a whole new wardrobe, having decided to dress older. And I dyed my hair an attractive grey.

Then I went to university and did a BA in Maths, followed by a BA in History. I started a PhD in Marine Biology but abandoned it. Then I travelled a bit more. Then I became a schoolteacher for two decades, at a series of independent secondary schools in the UK. I taught history, and politics, and organised all the school trips. It was, in its own way, exhilarating and challenging. Then it got boring, the staffroom in-fighting started to piss me off, so I quit.

And I was old now, very old indeed. One hundred and forty-three years old. But though I now favoured a slightly mature-woman look, my joints were as supple as ever. I could run a mile in four and a half minutes. I could bench-press those two big weights, whatever they are, the biggest ones. I could swim for an hour. I could sleep with two different men on the same night, and satisfy both. Though that happened quite rarely and gave me little pleasure. I could read very small print without reading glasses. And I had surgically implanted memory chips to help me keep track of all my experiences.

I was no longer unique, or even unusual, however. This was a boom period in physical and mental rejuvenation. The cost was falling year by year; even middle-class people could now aspire to live for ever. Admittedly, I was among the oldest of the rejuves, but who’s counting?

But we rejuves were a revelation even to ourselves. We would snowboard, break limbs, and have them healed within months. We were optimistic, cheerful, and always willing to believe the best of others. We went for walks at night; we chatted to rebellious teens; we believed profoundly in giving criminals a second chance. The young were a bitter, listless generation, unable to outdo their elders in the most basic things. The old had no cellulite, no wrinkles, no saggy boobs, no creaky joints. The old were the new young; the young were simply callow.

Which serves those cocky bastards right…

After I gave up teaching, I spent about twenty years enjoying myself, in moderation. Then my conscience kicked in and I got a job working for Save the Children, for about nine years. Then I applied for a job as chief executive of a new charity called African Aid, and I got it. And after a few years of that, I got broody and I went to the baby bank and asked for my baby back. Peter was unfrozen and then born. I became a mother.

So there I was – with a baby, and a job, and a conscience, all at the same time. I was a devoted mum; and I was also Chief Executive of a major charity. Humanitarian. Liberal. Idealist. Workaholic-with-child.

My home was in Johannesburg. But I had offices around the world, so I had two live-in nannies to help me look after Peter. I breast-fed for a while, but got tired of leaking milk in meetings. So I paid the nannies to take lactating tablets and provide a regular supply of breast milk. I hated the idea of giving my baby formula milk, I always felt the natural way was so much better. I took great joy in passing Peter from one nanny to another, and I loved the smell and the look of these women’s ripe breasts as they suckled my child.