Wife in the North Read online

  Judith O’Reilly

  * * *

  WIFE IN THE NORTH

  Contents

  Wife in the North

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  WIFE IN THE NORTH

  Judith O’Reilly is a former journalist with the Sunday Times, ITN and the BBC. She now works freelance. She is married with three children.

  For Alastair and the children

  Tuesday, 23 August 2005

  Road rage

  As we drove out of the city’s fabulous sprawl last night, I wondered whether I could kill my husband and plead insanity. I knew it would be slightly unfair – I had agreed to the move, although I had not meant it. ‘Hormones ate my brain, Your Honour.’ Might work. Or I could try: ‘He beat me for years, Your Honour, but it entirely slipped my mind. I suddenly remembered in the car and snapped.’ In truth, the only abuse I have ever suffered is his music collection and the fact he can only cook two meals – fish pasta, and bacon and leek pasta. I am not sure that would be considered adequate grounds for murder. Particularly if the jury insisted on sampling them, because they are really rather nice.

  We have been married so long, and it turns out that after all these years he wants something entirely different from what I want. He wants to live in the country. Cor blimey. What possessed me to agree to such a ridiculous idea? If my cousin the priest had said: ‘Do you, Wifey, take him over there in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, up in the North and down in the South,’ I would have said: ‘Hang on a minute, a poverty-stricken invalid’s one thing …’ I never, ever thought he would pack us all up and carry us away with him. I did not think he had it in him to make me leave London, still less for the northern wastelands. Who wants to live up north? Northerners. But not me – I stopped being a northerner a long time ago. I love London – it is where I want to be. He suffered it; he thinks we will move to Northumberland and life will be perfect. Life is never perfect.

  Outside, it was all speeding cars and sodium lights strung along the highway; inside my head, a blur of resentment and tail lights. I rested my hands on my pregnant belly and turned my head away from him. I stared at the fake diamond of my engagement ring, nestled next to my wedding ring, which is missing a diamond chip. I thought: ‘If I kill him, how will I explain it to the children? “Boys, the good news is we are going back to London; the bad news is your father is staying here. In this lay-by, just under that bush. Look, we’ll tie a bunch of flowers to the fence. Wave bye-bye to Daddy now.” ’

  The bloody A1 did not help my mood. There are signs along it. Signs like ‘168 casualties, 3 years’ and ‘Next 7 miles 42 casualties, 3 years’. Presumably they are there to make you think when you arrive: ‘It could be worse: I could be dead.’ It is true to say that I have never liked road movies – the endless journeying, the deep and witty conversations en route to the wherever place the hero is headed, the quirky destination itself – and it was something of a shock to find myself in one. I felt like abandoning my popcorn and going to watch something else entirely – possibly something with graphic sex and hard-core violence in it; definitely not a romantic comedy where two goofy nobodies ended up married. ‘Maybe I should try Star Wars now the two-year-old and four-year-old have fallen asleep,’ I thought. Then again, I did not want to watch anything where a hero fulfils his destiny. I was feeling like a bit player in my own life – that could not be good and the pay would be terrible.

  Awkwardly I reached through the gap between our seats to turn off my boys’ DVD players blazing intergalactic war, and as the silence introduced itself to darkness, my husband glanced across and gave me a sweet and joyful smile. It reminded me that I loved him and he did not even have to speak. I thought: ‘I hate it when you do that.’ My life was in a removal lorry with a man in overalls and an interest in martial arts. I was a fat woman in a car heading nowhere I wanted to go with a husband, two small boys, a foetus and a cat. ‘Repeat: I am not fat, I am pregnant.’ If I had not been pregnant I would never have agreed to this ridiculous experiment in country living. I sincerely hope I do not resent this baby – it might get in the way of my resenting my husband.

  He looked back to the road, checked his mirrors, pressed lightly on the indicator and pulled out into the fast lane. I felt the car pick up speed as we drove alongside and then left behind an Eddie Stobart lorry, its headlights blazing. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. My stomach muscles were in spasm; my feet had pins and needles and I could not reach them to rub; I had been crying on and off since we left. I scrupulously folded up my ancient black silk jacket to make a pillow, rested my head against it and closed my eyes.

  Twenty-odd years ago, my husband and I were in the same American Politics seminar group at university. I remember him because he would tilt and balance on the back two legs of his chair and never knew the answer to a question. He has no memory of me as I sat four-square and eager to impress. Studies over, we met again in Newcastle, where I trained as a journalist on a regional morning paper. I cannot remember enjoying a day out in Northumberland – unlike my husband, who loved the North-East from the start. As soon as I could, I went down to London and, love-struck, he followed.

  I do not care that much for holidays, all that expectation and dislocation, but he does. Every year we would take a cottage in Northumberland for a week. On one of those holidays, nearly five years ago, he saw an advert in the paper: ‘Cottage for Sale’. A farm had been bought by a farmer who also owned the local castle. This King of the Castle wanted the cropped fields around the farm and the great barn behind it. He was keeping Number 1, a tenanted cottage which was still home to the former farm manager and his wife, but selling the empty cottage adjoining theirs. It was a rain-sodden day in December, grey clouds papering the endless skies. The slate-roofed cottages, built of whinstone and sandstone, stood in a row of eight, on a slight rise overlooking hedged fields. To the left, a dark bank of trees protected them from the north winds, while an access road in front separated the houses from bunched coal sheds and gardens beyond.

  The former farm manager gave us the key to look around. There was no view from the sitting-room window other than of the coal sheds, but from the bedrooms there was glory: land and sea and sky stretching to for ever. We stood together in the empty master bedroom, looking out into the twilight and towards the striped, blue-grey horizon. My husband said: ‘Let’s do it. After everything we’ve been through, let’s just do it. We promised ourselves we’d do things differently.’

  The light had gone from the day by the time we went back into their house to return the keys. The sitting room was dark and snug, watchful with china birds and photographs of grandchildren hanging on the walls. His little old lady wife made us tea and we ate fruit cake in front of their coal fire. My husband was lying back into their sofa, his long legs splayed out, his knees pushing against their coffee table, laughing at a story the man was telling. They looked like they had known each other for years. ‘Is it all right if we try and buy next door and come up here on holidays?’ I asked. ‘We wouldn’t be here all the time.’ He smiled at us. ‘That’s the way of things,’ he said. It turned out that only the retired couple and one other woman lived in the row: the other cottages were all second homes.

  Buying the cottage stretched us; it meant we could not afford a bigger house in London. I agreed to it because it made him happy. I was pregnant then, too. My brain must shrink to the size of a walnut when I am pregnant. I remember the exact words my husband used. He wrapped his arms around me and said: ‘Don’t worry. This is not the thin end of the wedge. I’m not going to ask you to live here.’ Hah.

  Sometimes when you are drunk, you comment on the lives of friends. You would n
ever want them to hear you; if they did, they would not want to be your friend any more. You predict who will divorce, who will stay together. Smug. You include yourself in the ranks of the gloriously and utterly committed and you can feel foolish if the game runs its course and leaves you in an altogether different category. There are variations on the game: ‘Whose Children are Monsters?’, ‘Who Earns the Most?’, ‘Who Among Us Will Die First?’ You play the last one when you are old enough to care. But I always thought the least interesting game to play was ‘Who Will Move to the Country?’. Even worse, we just lost that round.

  We used to go to a therapist in London. I would go in; my husband would sit outside in the car and sleep. I would come out. Cry sometimes. We would drive to an East End café for large yellow cups of coffee, warm ciabatta and sweet berry jams baked in the oven. That would make me feel better. My husband would say: ‘I can’t believe you pay someone to make you cry’ and ‘If you didn’t go for therapy, you wouldn’t need to make yourself feel better after it.’ I would laugh. I would feel better because he made me laugh, not really because I liked the oven jams. Though they were good.

  One day in February, I came out from my appointment to find him drawing pictures. Large pencil pictures of his dream house: our Northumberland holiday cottage knocked through to the one next door to make a family home. My husband had heaven on his mind. I thought: ‘Bollocks.’ I stood on a dirty North London street, the large Edwardian terraces stretching either side of us, thinking what I would do, what I would say. I looked in through the open window to see the sketch resting against the steering wheel, my husband so intent on scribbling in a bathroom that he had not heard me trip-trap up to the car. I knew what he was sketching out – his dream and my future.

  We drove to the café and sat in the back, warming ourselves over the coffee. A budding yellow rose on the pressed aluminium table gritty from a legacy of a stranger’s sugar. Trendy, haggard mothers let toddlers wander while they jolt-started their day among other trendy, haggard mothers. A few weeks before, my husband had said to me: ‘The good thing about our relationship is that we always put the other person first.’ I had thought to myself: ‘You do. I don’t,’ then shrugged away the guilt. I sipped at my cappuccino: ‘Talk me through this house then.’ When we got married after ten years together I did not think marriage would make a difference. I was wrong. Marriage, the everyday everything of family life, melted us one into the other – no one warned me that was the way of it. My husband looked up from stirring his coffee, the black water crashing into the suddenly still spoon. ‘Let’s do it,’ I said. I thought: ‘I am tired of standing on your dreams.’ I thought: ‘Don’t expect me to like you while I’m doing this.’ He did not say anything at all. He put the spoon carrying a tiny pool of coffee in its bowl safely down on to his saucer. He reached for my hand and held it.

  Wednesday, 24 August 2005

  Holiday home

  We arrived in the early hours of Tuesday, unloaded the boys into their small bedroom, let the cat out of her box in the kitchen, carefully shut the door behind us and crawled up to our room. I did not expect to sleep. I never do when I am pregnant. Too hormonal, uncomfortable and stressed. I surf sleep instead, taste it then spit it out again; I was not helped then or last night by the fact the curtains need a blackout lining. We are two miles from the sea across fields, and every twenty seconds the light from a lighthouse on the Farne Islands raps against the window then sweeps round, back and away again to sea.

  The cottage is nearly 350 miles away from London. So far away that although the removal van set off on Monday, it only arrived yesterday as we were clearing away the breakfast. The gaffer climbed down from the cab and came in from the sheeting rain; he wiped his boots on the mat and poked his head into the small sitting room. ‘You’ve already got furniture in here then?’ he said. We all looked into the small room at the three-piece suite, oak table and two chairs, pine dresser and TV. ‘This was our holiday cottage.’ I could hear his mate outside swinging open the metal doors and fixing the steep ramp between the van and the threshold. The gaffer rubbed his large, calloused hands together. I think he was looking for a place to put things. There was no place. Being a removal man must put you at risk of a hernia and too much insight into the human condition. People move up the property ladder or slide down it. Full of newly married hope or divorced despair; keen to impress each other and their neighbours, at the start of new lives. Convincing themselves that the sun will shine brighter, their wife love them more; that they can be happier in this house than they were before. I wondered what they thought of us. Then I thought: ‘I don’t want to know.’ ‘Kids, let’s get you dressed,’ I said. ‘We’re going out.’

  Friday, 26 August 2005

  His dream, my future

  Unpacked so far: knickers; cat (about as relaxed as I am); the feeling I have made the biggest mistake of my life; thirty-four black bags (thirty-three of them belonging to the children); twelve plastic boxes of toys (not so much ‘unpacked’ as put on a shelf so the children can’t get them – who needs more mess?); maternity notes (in case of emergency; already lost); Gaggia coffee-maker (a going-away present from London friends who doubt Northumberland café society); Colombian coffee (similar); wine glasses; a packet of photographs tied with a narrow black ribbon; my address book with all my friends’ phone numbers (if I lose this book, my life ends); mobile phone (no signal: so much for the address book); digital radio (no signal: good grief).

  Sunday, 28 August 2005

  Thin end of the wedge

  I had to get away from the chaos for half an hour. I drove along the road which borders the dunes, parked up, then climbed carefully down through the marram grass to the beach. I sat on a rock and watched the shivering sea and the islands that litter it. My bones felt cold. If Northumberland does not work out for us, if it is not a ‘fit’, the deal is this: we go back to London, go back home. D-day is 31 December 2007, when we make our decision to stay or go. I said out loud: ‘I am never going to get out of here. He is never going to let me leave.’ He must have slipped some date-rape drug into my latte, but he did not want to remove my panties, he wanted to remove my life. The problem is, he loves Northumberland and I do not. He thinks it is his spiritual home while I think it beautiful but bleak and chill and nowhere that I want to be. And yet I love him and he wants this chance so badly – for all of us to make a life away from noise and city strife, the smell of dirty streets and hostile strangers. I told myself: ‘This is what marriage is – a question of loving, honouring and compromise.’ I am compromising right now on where I want to be. I do not know how good I am at compromise. I thought I heard a child laugh behind me – there was no one there. The beach was all but empty: a few walkers, a man throwing a hard rubber ball into the waves for his dog to fetch. No laughing child and no escape route.

  If you close your eyes, then open the green one on the left and squint a bit, in a dim light my husband looks like a Hollywood star. The kind who wears a Smith & Wesson slung round snake hips, sports a woollen poncho and chews a cigarillo. The kind that spits in the dust then kills you. There are all sorts of red-rose reasons he deserves his shot at happiness, not just the cowboy charm and spurs. Every other month, he will say something to make me laugh so hard I fall off a kitchen chair. I am not sure who else could make me laugh like that now Benny Hill is dead. In any case, the boys look like him, so I could not forget the man, and I have grown to love the sad, plastic-wrapped garage flowers he rescues from the forecourt buckets of petrol stations and which he carries in with care. To which I say ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’ll put these lovely turquoise chrysanthemums in a vase.’ Then drop them in a bin.

  Monday, 29 August 2005

  Sick and tired

  One day you wrap, in acid-free tissue layers, the daughter in you. You admire it as you put away its girlish chiffon colours, you mourn its passing as you stand on tiptoe to store it on the very highest shelf. From a hanger, you take off and shake out the sensible
navy role of mother and slip it on. Mother not only to your children but to your own mother. I am at that moment.

  My mother was very sick this summer. I thought she would die when she was suddenly struck down by rheumatoid arthritis. One of those diseases which leaves you in so much pain, you close your eyes and rest your head upon the pillow. Still. You take a moment. You ask yourself: ‘Shall I go on?’ Another breath. ‘Can I go on?’ She is over the immediate crisis but still infinitely frail. In my head, she is a pretty forty-two; in reality, she is still pretty but cannot manage stairs. One of my part-time neighbours came up for a couple of days and popped in to see how I was getting on. She is a hospital consultant. She sat down in a rocker by the door and gave me a warm smile. ‘How are you?’ she asked. I am enormously pregnant, cumbersome, shattered, old, tired beyond belief. I have abandoned the city of my heart. We have cleared the sitting room; it now has a single bed against the back wall which I have made up so that it is ready for my mother, who is arriving tomorrow. My dad is going in the cottage next door. I am sitting on the single bed because there is nowhere else to sit. My husband is about to leave to go back to work in London. He has not yet left and I am already as lonely as I have ever been. I cry. Loudly. I cannot find the words. The Consultant comes over and sits next to me on the bed. I think: ‘I am ridiculous.’ I think: ‘I am not ridiculous’ and cry some more. There is a sympathy between women which does not need to hear the words to feel another’s hurt, to try to ease the pain as best they can. She rubs my back, says: ‘There, there.’ And I feel better.