William Walkers First Year of Marriage (17 page)

To Penge at the crack of dawn for the anger-management course where I initiate a long discussion about whether it is our anger that requires management at all. What if, I argue, our anger was perfectly justified and it was society’s consistent ineptitude that needed the managing? The same woman as before twitched slightly at this perfectly valid argument, but rather than respond with a sensible/erudite/enlightening answer, she just made more notes.

I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of becoming angry this time. I could beat her at her own game.

Got the third-from-last fast train home, with a wink from the platform assistant. In bed by 9.15 p.m.

A momentous decision. I am not going out ever again in London. I don’t care what anyone says, I refuse to socialise in the capital. I am too old. I am too tired. I don’t like drinking, I don’t like staying
up late, I don’t like hangovers or trains or hassle. Consider all engagements cancelled.

Isabel accepts this 8 a.m. pronouncement with enthusiasm. Anything, she says, to stop the whingeing. And she happily agrees to cancel everything too. We shall spend the next two weeks in out-of-town bliss, apart from, of course, having to commute in every day for work but that’s fine because I know how to beat that scarfed woman to my seat.

This is much better.

A lovely weekend of pubs and winter walks and fruit crumbles and mulled wine and lie-ins and sex and backgammon. Even the turnip mountain has been conquered.

Tonight, I picked my way through the early evening office-worker revelry, happy in the knowledge that I shall be tucked up in bed fast asleep in my village and that all these idiots will be missing trains and slipping on vomit and sleeping with strangers who will appear far less attractive in the morning.

Even a missed call from Saskia cannot dent my spirit. I just can’t understand why people who are already in relationships bother going out and getting drunk and chatting. There’s nothing in it. Just pointless conversation, unnecessary outgoings and a hangover.

Staying at home is the new going out. Home has all the advantages of a bar (alcohol, seating) with none of the disadvantages (other people, loud music). Plus you can still have sex.

We appear to have upped our average to just under once a day, which is a relief given the latest shock survey in the papers this
morning. The French say they do it nine times a week compared to the Germans who only do it four times. The English, more importantly, given that one must always judge oneself against one’s peers, do it just eleven times a month, so I’m ahead. By 0.12 intercourses per day.

I am in the upper quartile.

Isabel and I had a long conversation last night about how good marriage is, how lucky we are to have found each other, how the first few months were bound to be difficult because our lives were in a state of flux.

If I’m honest, which I wasn’t at the time, it was quite a boring conversation; one of the ones you have to have from time to time when you’re sitting on a sofa with your wife and it’s pesto pasta night and there’s nothing good on TV. My refusal to attend Christmas social events has been met with scorn at work—I cannot walk into a room without someone humming the theme from
Terry and June
—but I refuse to give up my comfortable, suburban, pedestrian, enjoyable existence.

Whole day in bed. No Primrose. No texts. No violent carol singers. Only the strokeable bedside lamps intrude on an otherwise perfect day. Isabel calls me a stud and this time she wasn’t even being ironic. I don’t think. You can never be sure.

It would appear that my thirty-day, money-back-guaranteed Viagra trial has begun. I know this because a box of little blue pills has arrived in the post addressed for ‘M. Walker’, which Isabel has opened. The company, based in Florida, has my credit-card details, which they have already used to withdraw an initial down-payment of US$240.

Isabel is speechless.

Well, she’s speechless for about twelve seconds before she asks why I think I need Viagra and whether it would have been sensible and appropriate to discuss this sort of thing with her, or perhaps a doctor, before signing up to some dodgy American therapy programme. And spending a large proportion of our marital budget on sex pills.

I had only been expecting a cup of tea (which, by the way, is now standard-issue goat’s milk
sans
sugar, which I have, as an adaptable husband, grown to quite like). Now I’m getting the Viagra Monologues.

Only when Isabel pauses for breath can I focus enough to point out that I know nothing about it.

Only after forty-five minutes of
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
do I find someone at my credit-card company willing to believe that I do not need Viagra.

‘So, Mr Walker, you definitely didn’t give your details on any adult website?’

‘No.’

‘And there’s no way anyone using your computer in your house could have accessed an adult website, typed in all your personal details and signed up to some sort of eighteen-plus sex site?’

‘No.’

‘Because lots of people, when they get found out by their wives or girlfriends or cohabiting partners, claim this sort of thing is fraud rather than admit they have been on adult-content websites.’

‘Yes, okay.’

‘Yes, okay, as in, Yes, okay, you have been on adult-content websites?’

‘No, yes, okay as in, “Yes, okay, I understand but can we get on with this…I know nothing about this, I have not signed up for a Viagra trial and I don’t need a lecture. I just want you to find out what happened and get my money back.”’

‘Yes, okay.’

I am going to write a letter of complaint to my credit-card company.

Isabel apologetic today about Viagra misunderstanding. I forgive her quickly because we are blissfully, rurally in love until I realise why she’s being nice. Bloody Alex is coming to bloody Christmas bloody lunch at her bloody parents’ house.

‘What?’

‘Alex has been invited to join us for lunch. My parents only just mentioned it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because his family are in Montreal with his sister.’

‘What?’

‘He told them he’d be on his own for Christmas.’

‘How?’

‘When he spoke to them.’

‘When?’

‘On the phone a couple of days ago.’

‘Why?’

‘He still calls them every now and again. Just to keep them up to date.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I guess he just likes them.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, “Why?” Are you saying my parents are difficult to like?’

And so on.

So my first Christmas as a married man is ruined even before it’s begun.

Must buy Isabel present, despite Christmas being ruined. Missed last orders on Amazon. Went to John Lewis on Oxford Street and saw two women fighting over the last pair of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Y-fronts which was such an unfestive and depressing sight, I had to leave with nothing but a set of cheese knives for the in-laws. Liberty just seemed silly—£180 for a scarf? Unsure of myself in Agent Provocateur what with all the super-confident, super-buxom staff walking around in lingerie. Just gone too far in Ann Summers. Just as wrong but for all the opposite reasons in Dorothy Perkins. And she’s not going to appreciate anything from the Gadget Shop (not even the remote-control indoor helicopter I only just manage to convince myself not to offer as a novelty present).

Why can’t they have a shop selling things women want rather than lots of shops selling things men think women want? Why can’t I just give someone some money in return for an appropriate and preferably pre-wrapped present?

I decide to phone a friend—aka Johnson—who puts on Ali who tells me I’ve left it quite late before giving me a brief but instructive lesson on successful present-purchasing for women.

Men to guess miraculously, by some divine inspiration, the exact obscure thing they’ve been wanting all year even though they don’t even know what it is themselves.

Sexy but at the same time flattering but at the same time comfortable lingerie. Which, like the above, doesn’t exist. Tickets to something girly like the ballet or a musical, not a rugby match.

Someone else to take them away from all this.

A threesome.

An ironing board.

Sports biographies, iPods, laptops, remote-control helicopters or anything else that is clearly for the man, not the woman.

Slutty lingerie (e.g. crotchless and/or edible panties, nipple—revealing bras, suspenders), whips, handcuffs, French maid outfits or anything else that is clearly for the man’s benefit.

Ali then puts Johnson back on so I can tell him what she just told me. I like the way their marriage works. It’s practical.

To my parents for a sorry-we’re-spending-Christmas-with-my-wife’s-family-and-psycho-ex-not-you lunch. Mum is in denial. She has made roast turkey.

Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace, love and understanding. No such luck, through no fault of my own, for me.

Despite my best efforts, the present-giving went horribly wrong.

She went first and absolutely loved the thoughtful theatre-and-dinner tickets, the non-slutty lingerie and the wheelbarrow full of perennials I’d left wrapped with a bow in the garden. I went second and didn’t look suitably excited by the socks (labelled with the days of the week so I can pair them more easily) or the book (titled
It’s Not Easy Being a Man: 25 reasons why you really are always right and she really is always wrong
).

‘It’s just a joke.’

‘Hahahahaha. A joke book and another nag about how I never pair my socks. Thanks.’

‘Well, we did say we weren’t going to do big presents this year, what with the house move.’

‘Yes, I know, but we always say that. You’re not supposed to take it seriously.’

‘Well, it’s silly to spend a fortune on presents we don’t need…’

‘Please don’t say “…what with the starving Africans.”’

‘…What with the starving Africans.’

‘Okay, I’ll send the pants and the theatre tickets to Africa.’

‘That’s not funny.’

‘Well.’

‘And I thought you’d like the socks. You can walk around with Monday on one foot and Thursday on the other. You like being a rebel.’

Alex is already there when we arrive, hogging the sofa next to Isabel’s mum who is showing him a photo album.

‘Hi William, Merry Christmas. Come over here and look at these amazing pictures of your very glamorous parents-in-law.’

I approach warily and before I can run screaming from the room, the house, the village, the whole goddamn planet, I find myself looking at porn.

‘You really were very striking when you were younger, Mrs B,’ says Alex as we look at a picture of Isabel’s parents clutching each other, pendulous breasts and swollen pudendum on show for all to see.

‘Thank you, darlink,’ she replies. ‘Look how firm Henry was back then.’ I fight back the sudden urge to die in a pool of my own vomit and acute embarrassment.

‘Oh Mum, not that album again, it’s disgusting,’ says Isabel, but doesn’t do any more in the way of coming to my rescue.

‘Don’t be silly, darlink. Stop being so conservative.’

Over the next twenty pages, I am subjected to a barrage of images that would shock the most liberal of thinkers. It’s art, apparently: a wedding gift from some Sixties photographer friend of theirs.

Why wasn’t I warned?

Consecutive turkey lunches are hard work in any circumstances but with the added parental nudity, I have no hope of finishing my meal. Isabel’s father—who I can now only picture naked and ecstatic under a younger, firmer version of Isabel’s mother—is, of course, highly disapproving.

Alex has also bought Isabel’s parents a set of cheese knives for Christmas. Except mine came from John Lewis and his came from Fortnum’s. Mine are accompanied by nothing (‘Because,’ said Isabel, ‘my parents don’t like ostentation’). His are accompanied by a whole wheel of Stilton from Neal’s Yard. And a book on great cheeses of the world. And some chutney he made himself. Six bottles, each a different level of spiciness.

‘Because I know you like it spicier than Mr B, Mrs B.’ The two of them laugh conspiratorially. I’ve never laughed conspiratorially with my mother-in-law. I’ve never called her Mrs B either.

Mr and Mrs B love ostentation. They hug him and say you shouldn’t have, marvel at how he managed to find time to make chutney, then unwrap my shitty cheese knives and everyone looks blank. Eventually, there are muted thanks, suggestions of perhaps taking one set back (I wonder which), then me saying I’ve still got the receipt, then Alex saying what a silly coincidence, then me replying, yes, cheese knives are like buses, and then no one laughing.

They use Alex’s knives to cut Alex’s Stilton. I use mine to cut him into tiny little cheesy pieces and serve him on cocktail sticks with pineapple. Until someone spoils my fantasy by asking me to pass the chutney.

‘I’ll try number five. Number four was good but I’m ready for the hard stuff.’

Someone kill me.

You really would have thought that that was enough for one season of glad tidings but then, on the miserable post-lunch walk through high winds and sleeting rain, I find myself stuck at the back with Alex. The real Alex, the bastard who’s in love with my wife.

‘Shame about the cheese knives,’ he begins, a big grin on his stupid face.

‘Yes, devastating,’ I retort rather pathetically.

Stony silence.

‘How are the lamps, by the way?’

‘Great, really great.’

‘Really? Isabel didn’t give me that impression. Sounded like they were more up her street than yours.’