Divinity Road (25 page)

And so Nuala switches on the dishwasher, puts on a load of laundry while she’s at it, reluctantly makes her way up to bed. Tomorrow she has a day of child-ferrying, a shopping run and lesson preparation. She’s still not ready to sleep but knows she must try. She leaves the landing light on and undresses in the semi-darkness of her bedroom. Naked, she stares at herself in the full-length mirror, traces the outline of her face, the shadows where her eyes should be, below her breasts, between her legs.

She remembers years before, Greg’s one and only attempt to paint her nude one evening in the flat they’d first lived in. She’d been six months’ pregnant with Beth, heavy but voluptuous, her libido on overdrive, and after forty minutes she’d grown bored, had coaxed him away from his brushes and they’d ended up coupling on the sofa where she’d been posing. That was as far as he’d got with her painting – no more than a half-finished charcoal outline – but they’d had the sketch framed and it hung, an anonymous souvenir of sensual abandonment, next to the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom.

But in the darkness of her bedroom, she feels a different kind of abandonment. She climbs into bed and buries herself under her duvet. A few minutes’ later she gets up again and moves to the chest of drawers. She pulls open the bottom one that Greg had used for his clothes and takes out the green v-neck tee-shirt that he’d worn in bed on their last night together, the one he’d thrown on the floor in his hurry to be on his way.

With an almost guilty air, she carries it back to bed, slides back under the covers and puts her face to the cotton garment and breathes in deeply. Though his scent has faded, it’s still unmistakably of him. She takes in his musty odour, a slightly sour combination of sweat and soap and white spirit. It’s the most powerful reminder she has of him and sometimes, clutching it to her breasts, burying her face in it, it’s the only way she can get to sleep.

***

From the sixth month of Greg’s disappearance, Nuala hits a number of important milestones, the first of which is the memorial service. Friends and family, those who have accepted Greg’s demise, have been pushing for it for months. They dig out the usual clichés. It is a celebration of his life, a paying of respects, even that dreaded word, closure. So why does Nuala eventually agree?

Part of it, of course, is her vulnerable state, She’s caught at a weak moment and bows to the pressure. Those around her are pleased, see it as an important part of the grieving process – they call it acceptance – which began with denial.

Nuala doesn’t contradict them, but inside an illogical half-hope that the ritual of the service will somehow conjure up a miraculous return of the prodigal husband. In her more lucid moments she recognises the lunacy of her idea but keeps her thoughts locked up inside like a guilty secret.

In the end the service passes relatively painlessly. She immerses herself in the preparations, the on-the-day organisation, in dealing with the children, so the experience passes in a numbing fog. It’s an unreal day, and so easier to get through. It’s the other days, the ones before and after, where she has to live with her reality.

Another milestone, her return to the book club. It’s at Mary’s house, usually a place of refuge for Nuala, but tonight the atmosphere’s strained. Too much effort is made by the women to behave ‘normally’. Too much thought is given before speaking to avoid a ghastly faux pas. Nuala knows from Mary’s gossip that one member, Amanda, has only recently been told by her spouse that he is moving in with his lover, the inevitable younger work colleague. She is still distraught and in normal circumstances, much of the evening would be given over to her, the others listening while she vents her feelings. Tonight, though, there’s an understanding that even such a domestic upheaval as this cannot compare to Nuala’s ordeal. Aware of the story, watching her friends skirt around it, only adds to Nuala’s sense of isolation.

Another member of the group, Tamsin, has been single for over a year following the discovery of her husband’s adultery and her subsequent move for divorce. Part of book club nights are usually given over to the other members listening to Tamsin’s latest escapades. It’s a brief moment of vicarious excitement for the other middle-aged women, mostly settled into long-term partnerships or permanent single status.

One night she’ll be showing off her recently-acquired tattoo, a shooting star on her shoulder, another narrating a hilarious episode speed dating. Oiled with alcohol, she’ll describe her new life of liberation and danger – tales of dubious lovers and disastrous liaisons.

She’s a good story-teller, her timing sharp and punchy, her delivery usually inspiring a mixed reaction of hilarity and incredulity. The others will listen intently, their unspoken thoughts vacillating between pity and envy.

Then she’ll come to the end of an anecdote and somebody will mention their daughter’s request for a tummy piercing, a recent experience of hair removal laser treatment, a son’s disastrous school report, and they’ll shift back to safer territory – families, children, domestic conflict. But tonight it’s different. Stilted conversation, Nuala’s friends are desperate to avoid anything at either end of the emotional scale.

Nuala knows they mean well. They’ve all done their best over the past months. And she knows the atmosphere is partly her fault. She’s become increasingly aware how many of her social skills she’s lost since Before became After.

At the end of the evening, Mary asks Nuala to stay on.

You OK, love? she’d asked earlier on. Finding it hard?

A bit, she’d admitted. I’ll be alright.

Now Mary makes tea for Nuala and they sit on the sofa their mugs on the table amongst the shrapnel of cava corks and olive stones.

I’m sorry, says Nuala. I really killed the evening, didn’t I?

It’s not you, it was us. We were pussyfooting around. God it must have been awful for you. It was excruciating for me at times.

Yeah, well, says Nuala, smiling. It does things to her face muscles that feel very unfamiliar. I’m not much fun to be around.

But that’s your right, your privilege. You can act any bloody way you want. There are no rules for how to behave, you can make them up. Our culture’s so bound up in suppressing our feelings, avoiding outward displays of emotion. You look at other cultures, they don’t bottle things up.

Yeah, well, Nuala repeats.

Whatever you feel, say, do, it’s OK by us, Nuala. We know what you’re going through and we know what sort of person you are, however hard you’re finding it at the moment. Don’t forget, we’ve all known you for years. Everyone loves you, Nuala, we all admire you. You give so much, you never expect anything in return.

Oh for God’s sake...

No, let me finish. You’re in a hole at the moment so deep that you’ve forgotten what you’re really like. But we haven’t forgotten. If there’s a favour that you can do anyone, you jump at the chance. Nothing’s ever too much trouble. I don’t know whether it’s Catholic guilt, sweetheart genes or a damn good upbringing but you’ve always been that way. You don’t wait to be asked, you look for ways to help. You’re thoughtful, caring, loyal.

Please, Nuala protests.

When Tanya’s father had that fall and she had to go up to Scotland to sort him out, it was you who took her kids in for a fortnight while she was away.

Look...

No, hear me out. When Cassie had the gall bladder op, it was you who visited every day, looked after her dogs. Mary’s building up a head of steam now. Who makes the soup for the school winter fair every year? Who does the cash and carry runs for its summer fete? Nuala shrugs. Whenever there’s a birthday party for a child, it’s always you who offers to help with the food, the ferrying. And you’re always the last one to leave, mucking in with the cleaning up afterwards.

Everyone helps out.

Tell me, Nuala, how many kids are you godmother to?

Oh, come on...

No, it’s true. And that’s not all. You’re damn good fun, too. Remember all those girlie weekends we used to go on. Whenever we were planning them, the question we’d all be asking each other was always, ‘Will Nuala be coming?’. Why? Because your presence was a guarantee of a bloody good laugh.

You’re embarrassing me now, says Nuala.

It’s true. Remember Ingrid’s hen party? The boozy ferry crossing to Calais, the gourmet restaurant booked? An evening of fun with a dawn return crossing to recover? Remember what happened?

Nuala smiles ruefully.

Yeah, I screwed up, forgot my passport. They wouldn’t let me off the boat at Calais. And what did we do? Bugger off to the posh nosh, the clubbing? No, we stayed on the boat with you, all sixteen of us, lost our deposits on the restaurant meal, spent the evening drinking in the ferry bar, lasagne and salad for all in the canteen, made our own bloody entertainment. Bloody fantastic, it was, too. Remember the dancing on that silly cabaret stage, the girl band routine we did with Carrie and Linda and Martina? And you know what? We didn’t stay out of pity for you, there wasn’t an ounce of resentment amongst the lot of us. We stayed because we knew damn well that you’d be the life and soul, the one to make the party as memorable as it was. We stayed because we loved you. And you were embarrassed out of your skin, kept saying Ingrid would never forgive you. Well, you know what? When you owned up about the passport, she was the first to suggest we bin the restaurant and stay on the boat.

Everyone else wanted to, but felt too awkward to propose it, not without Ingrid’s say-so. When she made the suggestion, we all felt such relief.

Nuala listens, starts to say something, but she’s welling up and her face crumples. Now there are tears for her loss, not only of Greg but of herself, of who she once was. And of who she will never again be. As she heaves great sobs, Mary shifts up to her, puts an arm round her shoulders.

There you go, says Mary. You have a bloody good cry. You do whatever you want. Remember, you make up the rules.

***

A further milestone. Nuala starts seeing a counsellor, a referral by her GP. She has her first experience of the professionalisation of death and bereavement. Dr Ahmad talks about the grief cycle, the mental and physical effects of bereavement.

It’s from him that she learns about ‘complicated’ or prolonged grief. A reaction to the loss of someone on whom the bereaved is particularly dependent for happiness or wellbeing such as a partner or, for a parent, one’s child. He explains that this more complex version of grief can also stem from a situation where there are other circumstantial factors (like no body to grieve for, no definite confirmation? Nuala wonders). In this version, according to Dr Ahmad, the bereaved becomes locked into the ordeal and cannot move through the cycle. The transient trauma becomes permanent.

From Dr Ahmad, too, she learns the formal names for the ‘symptoms’ she has been experiencing, the tell-tale signs of grief which, with his help, she can now skim through, apply to herself and wryly tick off. A sense of unreality? Check. Emotional anaesthesia? Check. Depersonalisation and withdrawal? Check. Feelings of anger, terror, resentment, jealousy and depression? Check, check, check, check, and fucking hellish check.

And then there are the physical symptoms that, once formalised by him, she can now identify. Since the initial shock of the crash, the first days of adrenalin overload, she has found herself overcome by periods of lassitude. Her nights are frozen in timeless insomnia. She develops palpitations, breathlessness, a chest so tight she would be at the doctor’s in a flash if she didn’t recognise in the back of her mind that what she was suffering from was mindfuck not body sickness. As Dr

Ahmad reassures her that these indicators are entirely normal, she feels a sweeping sense of relief. In one session, Dr Ahmad gives Nuala a writing task, to produce three texts about herself. The first one must describe a past pre-Greg event where Nuala felt strong and happy and powerful. The second is to describe a significant episode in Nuala’s life that occurred sometime around the beginning of her relationship with Greg. The final text has to describe a more recent episode involving Greg and herself, a time of intimacy.

For the first episode she writes about the second of her parachute jumps and fills two sides of A4. She tells the counsellor about her jump dream, finds herself describing the pleasure she now finds in her martial arts class as if the two activities are somehow connected.

For the second text she writes about the holiday she took to Tunisia some twelve years before, and in so doing notices that she’s attempting to re-discover her old self. The process sets off a stream of memories of those early days. She begins:

I’d planned the trip with a college friend, Liz, a chance to enjoy my independence, discover a new culture, kick back from the stresses of teaching and London. I’d met Greg three years before at an NGO conference in Nairobi, me an English language teacher in Eritrea, he an art teacher in Zimbabwe. At first I’d viewed Greg as a bit lightweight, an enjoyable holiday romance, but probably no more. But he’d been persistent in his attentions, producing a regular stream of letters from Zimbabwe, sent first to my Asmara home and then, when I left Africa a year after our Nairobi encounter, to the flat in London I’d shared with three other girls. That was my first job on the mainland, teaching English to French au pairs, Japanese teenagers and young Spanish business graduates at a north London college of further education.