Carol Clewlow - Not Married, Not Bothered

‘I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for him over the years.’ Her grey eyes were innocent, open wide. Challenging disagreement. ‘I’ve been nothing but a wife and mother.’

That was when it occurred to me that something seriously sinister might be happening, that maybe Fleur had been the subject of some spooky personality transplant, a kind of Stepford Wife reversal, or maybe – this would work – maybe it wasn’t Fleur at all . Maybe she’d been substituted overnight by a lookalike, possibly as part of a plot involving an alien species.

‘I’m going to do all the things I’ve never done, all the things I’ve never had time to do.’ There was something severe, dedicated, nun-like in her face. She was staring into the distance. I swear to God she was pledging .

‘Like what?’

‘I’m not sure yet. There’s so many things. I thought I might take art classes, perhaps even do a foundation course. Or there again,’ and here she paused and there was a small gleam of something that might have been spite,’ I thought I might do what you do – write some kids’ stories.’ Her arms were crossed against her chest in a self-satisfied fashion as we stood on the landing and below us the lift began clunking upwards.

‘The children have been on at me for years to do it.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. I always told them stories, you know. When they were young. They loved it.’

I was musing on the horror of this when suddenly her face was right there beside me.

‘I’m going to tell you something now.’

Her voice had changed. It was girly, confidential, which is when I thought: oh God, no. Please, God, no. Not one of those horrible marital secrets.

She said, ‘In the whole of my married life …’ and I thought, no, no. Please, no. Nothing personal. Nothing horribly intimate like she never had an orgasm with Martin, or he wanted to wear her shoes or he would only have sex with her in the back of the Volvo. Please, God, nothing that’s going to flash up over Martin’s head next time I bump into him in the High Street.

But all she said was, ‘Do you know, in the whole of my married life I’ve never even seen a gas bill.’

She pronounced the words with wonder, laying her crossed hands upon the upper part of her chest. There was about her a palpable mixture of excitement and self-satisfaction.

And while in my work I attempt at all times to follow Elmore Leonard’s Fourth Rule of Good Writing, the one which states an adverb should never be used to modify a verb, still on this occasion I find myself forced to transgress it.

‘Life’s going to be one big adventure,’ I said. And I have to admit that I said the words drily.

*Actually there’s some truth in what Fleur says. The question of whether Death should be at the top of the Death, Divorce and Moving House triumvirate is definitely up for debate. In essence, it depends upon precisely who the rating applies to. The definition of trauma, after all, is ‘a powerful shock with long-lasting effects’. Thus, while death can certainly be judged to be traumatic for those loved ones left behind, the question has to be asked whether death, i. e., the act of slipping into oblivion, into that bourn from which no traveller returns, can in any logical sense be judged to be traumatic for the person who’s died. To me, the answer would seem to be absolutely not.

‘Really?’ Magda’s voice was decidedly chilly when I made the mistake of discussing it with her. ‘Well,’ she said (distinctly offended). ‘All I can say is, you get buried alive as a vestal virgin and then get woken up fifteen hundred years later only to be burnt as a witch, see how you like it. See if you don’t think death is bloody traumatic.’

It’s a strange thing to come from where the sea should be. I have this theory that it leaves you with an odd sense of impermanence, nothing between you and the ocean but a dozen or so miles of moorland and the few hunks of Ham stone that make up the sea defences. I have this recurring dream. I think it might be racial memory. I’m standing on a shingle beach with the sea piling up in a high grey wall and dropping down dead in front of me.

I’m bred to the bone in this town. My mother’s family goes back six generations. I’ve lived most of my life here. Still I’m convinced most of the time the place doesn’t suit me, in particular the moors, which are just too damn low, too damn brooding . As a kid I’d be scared, waking up to a lake where the fields used to be with just the tops of the gates poking up and the spiky willow branches like clutches of drowning fingers. I dislike the rhines too (pronounce them reens); distrust them. They may look harmless enough, just innocent ditches with their covering of irises and marsh orchids, but they can swallow a car whole. One did, when I was a kid, taking with it a mother and her two children.

They unsettle me, the moors that surround my home town, that’s the truth of it. I always think that, walking to the office window, looking out at them. I feel the weight of history from those old trackways, the featherlight dust of the bones of a thousand dead Monmouth rebels, the more so driving across them. I don’t care for the low roads. I feel like I’m always looking over my shoulder, expecting the sea to come back, just to take a notion one day to crash through those paltry sea defences, or the river to suddenly breach, bursting through the banks that rise higher than the car roof, pouring down on top of me.

‘This place. It’s just so damn ancient , that’s the trouble,’ I said to Sophie one day, staring out through her cottage window. ‘I mean, when you think about it, prehistoric creatures once roamed those moors.’

‘Well, you should know,’ she said. ‘You went out with most of them.’

A word about Sophie now.

Sometimes people I haven’t seen for a long time or who don’t really know me will say, ‘Are you still friends with Sophie?’ and I won’t know what to say. It’s like the words don’t make sense to me. Like they’ve got their syntax wrong or they’re speaking a foreign language.

I mumble something usually. ‘Sure … yes … of course. Naturally …’

What I really want to say is: Am I still standing here? Am I still breathing?

Sophie Aitchison and I met over the old green baize desks in the newsroom of the Free Press , our local weekly newspaper. Until I left at twenty-two to travel – hence her knowledge of my prehistoric sex life – we also shared a flat together.

As with so many things in my life – jobs, affairs – I fell into journalism. I’m an aspiration-less bastard, if you want to know the truth of it. In addition I’m lazy, bone idle. I see myself as a sort of Friday afternoon person, juddering along that old Assembly Line of Life. Suddenly someone calls out and the Angel Assistant turns. And, hey presto, there I go, juddering on past and out into the world minus that vital component of ambition.

Unlike Cass, whose name, even to this day, is emblazoned in gold in the hall of the distinguished old girls’ grammar school we both attended, I failed miserably at everything, exiting with barely an O level. In the local careers office they went through a thick book of career options from nuclear physicist at the front (not enough O levels) to Stand and Tan assistant at the back. (I lie. Stand and Tan had yet to be invented.) They said, ‘Is there nothing you want to do?’ and I didn’t feel it was appropriate to say that was exactly it, that the only thing I really wanted to do was nothing. Luckily butterflies were even at that moment beating their wings. Not on the other side of the world either but slap-bang outside my father’s garage.