Talking It Over (28 page)

Sending your ex-wife flowers two years after you’ve broken up. What’s that about?

When I was growing up, which seems to me a long time ago now, I had all the usual conversations. What did we want from a man, what were we looking for? Usually, with other girls, I’d just name film stars. But to myself I’d say that what I wanted was someone I could love, respect and fancy. I thought that was what one should be aiming for, if the thing were to last. And when I started with men it always seemed as difficult as getting three strawberries in a row on a fruit machine. You’d get one, and then you might get another, but by that time the first one had spun away. There was a button marked
HOLD
but it didn’t seem to work properly.

Love, respect, fancy. I thought I’d got all three with Stuart. I thought I’d got all three with Oliver. But maybe three’s not possible. Maybe the best you can get is two, and the
HOLD
button is always on the blink.

Mme Rives
He says he’s Canadian. Québécois he isn’t. He wanted a room at the front. He didn’t know how long he’d be staying. He told me again he was Canadian. So what? Money has no colour.

Gillian
There had to be rules. There had to be very firm rules, that’s obvious, isn’t it? You can’t just ‘be happy’; you have to manage happiness. That’s one of the things I know now. We came here, we were starting again, and properly this time. A new country, new jobs, the baby. Oliver would make
Speeches about the New Found Golden Land, and so forth. One day when Sophie had taken more out of me than usual, I interrupted him.

‘Look, Oliver, one of the rules is, no affairs.’

‘
Che?’

‘No affairs, Oliver.’

Perhaps I said it the wrong way, I don’t know, but he really flew off the handle. You can imagine the rhetoric. I don’t remember it all, because I’m afraid that when I’m tired I have a sort of filtering system for Ollie. I just take out what I need to keep the conversation going.

‘Oliver, all I’m saying … Given the circumstances in which we met … given that everyone thought we were having an affair and that’s why Stuart and I broke up … I just think, for our own sakes, we have to be careful.’

Now Oliver can be extremely sarcastic, as you may have noticed. He denies it, he says sarcasm is vulgar. ‘Playful irony
au maximum
,’ he claims. So maybe he was merely being playful and ironic when he pointed out to me that
if
he remembered correctly, the reason we didn’t have an affair while I was married to Stuart was because
he’d
declined
my
very pressing offer (various anatomical references at this point, which I’ll leave out), and so if anyone was to be suspected of having affairs it was
me
,
etc.
etc.
Which I suppose was a fair point to make, except that mothers with small babies who also work don’t on the whole have the energy to jump into bed with other people, and so on.

It was awful. It was a shouting match. I was just trying to be practical, trying to express something that I thought came out of my love for Oliver, and he got all jumpy and hostile.

These things don’t immediately go away, either. And the heat down here makes it worse. We were scratchy with one another all the following week. And guess what? That stupid old tank he drives because he thinks it’s stylish broke down three times. Three times! And the third time he mentioned the carburettor I must have looked a bit sceptical, because he turned on me.

‘Say it, then.’

‘What?’

‘Go on, say it.’

‘All right,’ I said, knowing that I shouldn’t. ‘What’s she called?’

He gave a sort of roar, as if he’d won by making me say it, and as I looked at him standing over me I knew – we both knew, I think – that he could easily hit me. If I’d gone on, he would have hit me.

He’d won, and we’d both lost. It hadn’t even been a real quarrel either, not
about
something, it was just made out of some senseless need to quarrel. I hadn’t succeeded in managing happiness.

Later I cried. And I thought:
SWEDE’S TURNIP’S SWEET POTATO’S CAULI’S COX’S SPROUT’S
.
No-one ever told that chap, no-one corrected him. Or they did, and he never listened.

No, this isn’t England. This is France, so I’ll give you a different comparison. I was talking to Monsieur Lagisquet the other day. He’s got a few hectares of vines outside the village, and he told me that in the old days they used to plant a rosebush at the end of each row of vines. Apparently a rose shows signs of disease first, so the bushes act as an early-warning system. He said that locally this tradition had now died out,
but they still do it in other parts of France.

I think people should plant rosebushes in real life. We need some sort of early-warning system.

Oliver’s different out here. Actually, I mean the opposite of that. Oliver’s exactly the same as he’s always been and always will be, it’s just that he comes across differently. The French don’t really read him. It never struck me before we moved down here, but Oliver is one of those people who makes more sense in a context. He seemed terribly exotic when I first met him; now he seems less colourful. It’s not just the effect of time and familiarity, either. It’s that here the only English person he’s got to set him off is me, and that’s not really enough. He needed someone like Stuart around. It’s the same as colour theory. When you put two colours side by side, that affects the way you see each of them. It’s exactly the same principle.

Stuart
I took three weeks’ leave. I went to London. I thought I’d be able to handle it better than I did. I wasn’t stupid, I didn’t try going back to places I’d been with Gill. I just felt angry and sad at the same time. People say angry-sad is an improvement on sad-sad, but I’m not so sure. If you’re sad-sad people are nice to you. But if you’re angry-sad you just want to go to the middle of Trafalgar Square and scream at people. IT’S NOT MY FAULT. LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO ME. WHY DID THIS HAPPEN? IT ISN’T FAIR. People who are angry-sad aren’t really working it through; they’re the ones who go mad. I’m that person you see on the Underground talking to himself just a bit too loudly, the sort of person you keep out of the way of. Don’t go too near him, he might be
a jumper or a pusher. He might suddenly leap in front of the train – or he might knock you under it.

So I went to see Mme Wyatt. She gave me their address. I said I wanted to write because the last time we’d met they’d tried to be friends and I’d shoved them away. I’m not sure Mme Wyatt believed me. She’s a good reader of people. So I changed the subject and asked her about her new lover.

‘My old lover,’ she replied.

‘Oh,’ I said, imagining some elderly gentleman with a rug over his lap. ‘You didn’t tell me how old he was.’

‘No, I mean to say, my former lover.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It was just … a passage.
Faut bien que le corps exulte.’

‘Yes.’ You know, that’s not a word I’d have thought of using. Does the body
exult
in English? The body has a jolly good time, I think, but I don’t know if it exactly exults. Or perhaps that’s just me.

When it was time to go Mme Wyatt said, ‘Stuart, I think it’s a bit early.’

‘What is?’ I thought she meant I hadn’t stayed long enough.

‘To get in touch. Give it time.’

‘But they asked me …’

‘No, not for them. For you.’

I thought it over, then bought a map. The nearest airport seemed to be Toulouse, but I didn’t fly to Toulouse. I flew to Montpellier. I could be going somewhere else, you see. I did at first. I drove in the opposite direction. Then I thought, this is stupid, and I looked at the map again.

I drove through the village twice without stopping. The
first time I was nervous and so I was going a bit too fast. Some damn dog ran out and almost went under my wheels; I had to swerve. The second time I went more slowly and saw the hotel.

I came back after dark and asked for a room. There wasn’t any difficulty. It looks a pleasant enough village, but it’s not exactly a tourist trap.

I didn’t want them to say, ‘Oh, we have some English people in the village,’ so I told Madame I was Canadian, and just to make sure I checked in under a false name.

I asked for a room at the front. I stand at the window. I watch.

Gillian
I don’t have premonitions, I’m not psychic. I’m not one of those people who say, ‘I had this feeling in my bones.’ But when I was told, I knew.

To be honest, I haven’t thought much about Stuart since we moved down here. Sophie occupies most of my time. She changes so fast, she comes into a fresh focus all the time, I need every moment. Then there’s Oliver, and my work as well.

I’ve only thought of Stuart at bad times. That sounds unfair, but it’s true. For instance the first occasion you realise you can’t, or at any rate you aren’t going to, tell the man you’ve married everything. I had that with Oliver as I had it with Stuart. I don’t mean lying, exactly, I just mean adjusting things, economising a bit with the truth. The second time round it comes as less of a surprise, though it does make you remember the first time.

I was standing by the fish-van on Wednesday morning. In
England everyone would form a queue. Here you just huddle near the van, and people know who’s next, and if you’re next but not in a hurry you just let someone else go first.
Suis pas pressée
. After you. Mme Rives was next to me and asked me if the English liked trout.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘I’ve got an Englishman at the moment.
Sont fous, les Anghis
.’ She laughed as she said it, to let me know I wasn’t included in the generalisation.

This particular Englishman had arrived three days ago and stayed in his room all the time. Except for once or twice, late at night, when he’d slipped out. He said he was a Canadian but he had an English passport, and the name on it was different from the one he had given when he arrived.

When I was told, I knew. I
knew
.

‘Does he have a Canadian name?’ I asked casually.

‘What’s a Canadian name? I can’t tell the difference. He’s called “Uges” or something. Is that Canadian?’

Uges
. No, that’s not particularly Canadian. It’s the name of my first husband. I used to be Mme Stuart Uges, except that I never took his name. He thought I did, but I didn’t really. I haven’t taken Oliver’s name either.

Oliver
I’m being good. I am aping the
fons et origo
of domestic virtue. If we had twins I’d call them Lares and Penates. Do I not phone whenever Toulousain tardiness threatens? Do I not rise nocturnally to trade in the besmirched swaddling of little Sal and make with the cleansing cotton wool? Am I not the proud tender of an incipient vegetable garden, and do not
my scarlet runners strain even now to corkscrew their trembling way up my bamboo wigwams?

The fact is, Gill’s a bit off sex at the moment. Like trying to ease a parking meter into an oyster shell. It happens, it happens. According to the mildewed myth handed down by
les blanchisseuses d’antan
, it is an established verity that the lactating
moglie
cannot get pregnant. At last I am now in a position to locate the swerving mercury-ball of truth which gives this myth its specific gravity (excuse the chemistry). The fact of the matter is that the lactating
moglie
not infrequently declines the impress of the ardent gene-pool she married:
niente
horizontal jogging. No wonder she doesn’t get pregnant.

Which is a tad tough when little Sal was her idea in the first place. I was all for trundling along as we were.

Stuart
I told myself I didn’t have a plan but I did. I pretended I was coming to London on the off-chance. That I was flying to Montpellier just for something to do. That I happened to be driving through the village and what a coincidence …

I came here to confront them. I came here in order to stand in the middle of Trafalgar Square and bellow. I would know what to do when I got here. I would know what to say when I got here. IT WASN’T MY FAULT. LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO ME. WHY DID YOU DO IT TO ME? Or rather, I wouldn’t confront
them
, I would confront
her
. It was her doing. Finally, she was the one who said yes.

I was going to wait until Oliver had set off for the crappy little school in Toulouse where he teaches. Mme Wyatt made
it sound quite nice but I expect she was exaggerating loyally. I bet it’s a dump. I was going to wait until he’d gone and then call on Gillian. I would have found the words, some words.

But I can’t now. I looked out of the window and saw her. She seemed exactly the same, in a green shirt I remembered too well. She’s had her hair cut short, which gave me a jolt, but there was something that gave me a much bigger jolt. She was holding a baby. Her baby. Their baby. Bloody Oliver’s baby.

Why didn’t you warn me, Mme Wyatt?

It’s thrown me. It’s reminded me of the future I never got to have. Of everything that was stolen. I’m not sure I can handle this.

Do you think they were fucking all the time? You never told me your opinion, did you? I used to think they were, then I calmed down about it and thought they weren’t, now I think they were again. All the time. What a disgusting memory to get stuck with. I can’t even look back on that little stretch of my life and call it happy. They’ve poisoned the only good bit of my past.

Oliver’s lucky. People like me don’t kill other people. I wouldn’t know how to saw through the brakes of his car. I once got drunk and head-butted him, but it didn’t give me a taste for that sort of thing.

I wish I could beat Oliver in argument. I wish we could have some debate and I’d prove to him what a shit he’s been and how none of it was my fault and how Gill would have been happy with me. But it wouldn’t work. Oliver would enjoy it too much for a start, and it would all turn out to be about him not me, and how
interesting
, how
complicated
he was. And I’d
end up saying SHUT UP YOU’RE WRONG FUCK OFF and that wouldn’t be very satisfactory either.