Enough so that we can live together and create the haven I believe is necessary for us all to flourish. It sounds dull, pathetic even, aiming for no more than ‘enough’, but having lived through recent times when my heart has been pulled out of my throat, my reserves are depleted, my very bones fragile, so I can say with certainty that to attain ‘enough’ would feel wonderful. I’ve given up on the dream that nothing less than forever would do – I gave up on that the moment he stood in front of me and confessed.
I’ve been going outside more. I was trying to get match fit before the kids came home, joining Hugo for his strolls around the harbour and now, when the mood takes me, I sit on the high front doorstep in the sunshine with a cup of coffee. I like to watch the world go by. I study other couples, surreptitiously of course. I stare at them through my sunglasses, either as we walk or I sit. I listen to the snippets of their conversations and it makes me smile to hear the gentle teasing, the idle chit-chat about supper plans, visiting friends, facts about their families, illness, worries, the weather. These fragments of other people’s lives help remind me that when a relationship works, it really is all about the small stuff: a good lunch, holding hands, lifts to the pub, the details of a shared life that bind you. Maybe golden was always too hard to maintain, maybe a small, adequate love will work.
God I hope so.
There’s one couple in particular who have caught my attention.
I don’t know their names, but I see them nearly every day. It seems they are outside more than they’re in. Always together, engrossed in one another, come rain or shine, as if the whole world exists just for them and whatever is going on around them is merely the backdrop to their love affair. I feel drawn to them, admiring of their apparent devotion and envious of it too. He has thick curly hair, a stocky man, kind eyes, handsome, and she’s petite, dark hair too, but straighter. She has big brown eyes and seems coy, smiling gently, as if her happiness is a precious thing, a secret that she carries close to her chest. They fascinate me. Forever arm in arm or hand in hand. If they slow or stop, she places her head on his shoulder. As if only this level of contact will do. They are like one person, split down the middle.
Golden . . .
My heart lifts when I spy them. I eavesdrop as we pass them on the quayside, or they pass us, or we walk slightly in front of or behind them. There are lots of us walking a familiar route along the harbour, back up past the fish and chip shop, around Capstone Hill and then doubling back to the seafront, up Mill Head and back to Fore Street. It’s a pleasant walk with enough places to stop and take in the setting sun or to admire the crash of foaming waves on the rocks or to do a double-take of the dark shapes that draw your eye out to sea. Shapes and activity that suggest dolphins and whales so we screw our eyes tight to see better.
This golden couple, they wave subtly, nod and smile in the way you do when faces become familiar but are not fullyacquainted, and I notice that they always keep walking, even when we are still, as if, while happy to see us, they have no intention of engaging, of diluting their perfect walk, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, like they have everything they need.
They laugh a lot, like teens, unabashed and doubled over.
Hugo was with me a couple of nights ago, sitting on the step at the front of Corner Cottage, taking in the night air, when they walked past, almost oblivious of our presence until I called hello, and only because it felt rude not to. They almost jumped, jarred from the bubble they’d created.
‘Hi!’ The woman smiled and nodded; her handsome man lifted his eyebrows in greeting.
Hugo and I watched them walk past and away down Fore Street and when they disappeared from view, he reached out and held my hand. It was almost visceral, instinctive and I let my hand rest inside his. It felt like a breakthrough, an action once so automatic, so commonplace that I didn’t used to notice it, or at least gave it no credence, but in the absence of so much of our closeness, it really felt like something.
I was reminded of the early days in our relationship when such a gesture could floor me with desire, could scramble my thoughts and fill me with a longing to sit like that forever, hand in hand while we planned our future, painted a picture of the life we wanted to lead, a life livedtogether: two children, nice house, safe jobs, all bound with unwavering love.
He leaned close to me and whispered in my ear, ‘I’m so sorry, H. I am so, so sorry.’
There was something in his tone, his manner and his thwarted expression that moved me greatly. This wasn’t the first apology he’d made, far from it, but it felt different, sincere. They weren’t just words, but instead suggested that he’d reached a point where he was ready to put it all behind us and move on, weary of the silent analysis, the personal dissection, the knife edge on which we teeter.
I think he’s right; the constant quiet stoking of the embers does neither of us any good. We came inside and we had sex. An act that’s been bubbling in the background like lava, too hot to touch, to consider – something to be feared. I’d imagined what it might be like, resuming our physical connection, as we did our best night after night not to stray from our sides of the bed, as if a river itself ran down the middle and to fall in would mean we drowned. My head full of all the hideous comparisons of his love affair, the physical union between him and someone who was not me, which still, despite admission and proof to the contrary, almost feels unbelievable.
Like many things in life that take on far greater significance in the pondering than the doing, it wasn’t the big deal I had imagined. The fact it’s been so long and I feel the need to write it down, sums up what a milestone it was. But the sex was quick, flat and average. But it’s a start, right? I chose notto tell Ellis about this in case it gave the impression that we are healed and we are not. We really aren’t.
In the immediate aftermath and ever since I’ve noticed a difference in Hugo.
It’s as if he’s had a mental checklist:
End things with Mrs Peterson
Confess all to Harriet
Pack up our home
Organise to rent it out
Find a new home
Move to the seaside
Apologise
Get the kids settled
Have sex
Carry on as if nothing ever happened ...
And as we rattle through his list, his confidence that we are going to be okay, that he is forgiven, grows.
