‘If any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, may you speak now or forever hold your peace.’
I heard Daniel shuffle at the back of the church, and I closed my eyes to be kissed. We stood outside for pictures on the grass, ducking here and there to avoid including the gravestones. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, leaning against the church wall wearing jeans. In some of the photos he was there in the background in a T-shirt, stubble on his chin, just watching himself stand next to my father in a suit like it was on TV. I axed the photos from the album; I didn’t ask where the other parts of him had been.
It was a few years till we got the spade out again. It was Daniel’s idea. He could work more, pay my loan off, since it was clear no one was hiring philosophers. He lined himself up against the garage wall. I swiped the spade through him like a credit card.
My husband worked in engineering, and he worked as a draughtsman at his firm. He drove a taxi, and he drove lorries of toilet rolls to Wales. He worked in a place that sold scuba gear, and he did the odd night on the door in swanky bars in town. He lived at the gym, and only lifted the remote. Some colleagues called him Daniel, some Dan, Danny, Danny Boy, one of the guys at the gym called him The D-man for no reason I could understand. I never knew how much of him would be home any night because of his hours. It was hard to keep track. The important thing was we got by, and he was with me, mostly.
‘Do you still love me?’ I said.
Daniel looked around as if waiting for someone to walk through the door and answer for him. ‘Of course, I do,’ he said.
On our wedding anniversary I called a meeting, a sort of regrouping I suppose. I steamed mussels, baked bread and bought wine. Most of my husband came. He was away making a delivery, and he was at the bar, but the rest of him was home. We sat around the kitchen table. I looked at him and saw him — tall, toned and tanned, and I saw his belly, his slight stoop, his total focus and his distraction. He was unable to take anything seriously and was totally annoyed by everything on the news. He looked at himself watering down his wine, and cracked open a beer.
‘My job isn’t me,’ he said, rubbing his belly.
I think he meant driving a taxi, but I wasn’t sure. Parts of him were dead ringers for others, but some were so different they were like what twins would be if one grew up in a burger joint and the other on a farm. Daniel opened crisps and watched himself not listen. He didn’t say another word. Later, in bed, I nestled into him, trying to make something better, but I wasn’t really sure if I had the right part of him in my arms.
I discovered my husband was cheating a few weeks before Christmas. We were shopping near the market, Daniel carrying the bags. And I saw him grab the hand of a frizzy blonde woman with a dog in her handbag, not far from the bar where he worked. Daniel stared at himself ducking into a doorway, hands all over the woman, unruly, urgent, kissing like he was fourteen and would explode if he didn’t. I made my way through the crowds. I lost them between buggies and indecisive shoppers sampling chutneys at the farmers’ stall. I stood looking around, shoppers everywhere, door after door. Daniel stared at the empty doorway where part of him had dragged the woman for kisses that wouldn’t wait. He stood still on the street. It was hard to pull him away.
‘How could you do that?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘I wish I knew,’ he said.
I wasn’t enough for my husband. I realised it shortly after our sixth married Christmas. I cooked turkey. Daniel ate the drumstick, and wanted only the lean meat. He opened a can of beer at lunchtime, watched TV, and had the odd sip of wine while helping me peel the sprouts. We sat at the table. Something was missing. Part of him was driving a taxi all over town.
‘Think of the money. Most of me will be there,’ he had said, running his hand over his bristly shaved head.
I wanted to protest, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about what was missing. He was here, crashed out in front of the Queen’s Speech, and helping me do the dishes. He gave me a gold necklace and kissed me next to the tree, then went to the bathroom to text the woman with the dog in her bag. He gave me underwear that didn’t fit, and he found me an antique desk. He bought a new TV instead of doing presents, and he wrapped up a new roasting tray, a bar of chocolate and socks. It was a typical Christmas, but I kept thinking of him in his taxi. When he came home at about two and crashed, I slipped out of the crowded king-sized bed and sifted through the pockets of his jeans on the bathroom floor. There was no money in them, tips in clear bags awaiting the bank, just his phone. I opened it like a book I didn’t really want to read. I stared at photos of a chubby woman in a ponytail. She was wearing pink sweat pants and a paper hat, holding up a baby dressed like a reindeer. There were photos of the reindeer baby and another child, a boy of maybe three or four, grinning, holding a big yellow cab in a box up to the camera. I looked closely at the cluttered room with a cheap carpet, the same clock on the mantelpiece that we gave to the charity shop last year. I put the phone down. Part of Daniel had a whole other family, part of him didn’t want kids. He’d say that fireplace behind the reindeer baby was tacky. Everything about the room was so ordinary; he hoped for more. He liked everything clean. He wanted to do something extraordinary in life, to be going somewhere, but sometimes tacky and ordinary were enough.
I went out to the yard and picked up the spade, wanting to slice myself in two, but I didn’t think it would work. I was always here, completely. I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I took the spade up the stairs and stood by the bed, watching Daniel sleep, the hair he’d grown into a ponytail again spread on the pillow, wax from his business-savvy haircut on the pillowcase next to it, his shaved head nestling into the sheets. I nudged the taxi-driving bit of him with the edge of the spade. It sliced through, a knife through the butter of his belly, though I barely touched him. He woke suddenly, four eyes opened wide. The rest stayed asleep.
‘I found the photos,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you happy with me?’
He looked at himself snoring. Then he looked back at me.
‘Most of me is; then there’s that little bit that thinks: what would my life be like with someone else? Who would I be?’
He got out of bed. He got out of bed. Both halves stood, packed one case between them and left without looking back at himself.
I’m still married. I have a husband with a little pot belly, a stoop to his shoulders and a funny belly button. He never leaves my side. Sometimes, other parts of Daniel come home, a slightly taller guy with flowers who looks, to me, no different than he did the day we met, though he is older, squishier and tougher-skinned. The rest of him is elsewhere, living in a quayside apartment with a woman with a dog with a fancy haircut, or working around the clock to make ends meet and put food on the table for three kids. He is rich, and he is poor. He is tired, and loves skiing in Italy. He is ambitious, and has given in. We are happy, and bored. Sometimes I miss him. I see him look out of the window, wondering where part of him went. I stand beside him, handing him tea. And I wonder if someone somewhere is doing the same, looking out of windows, longing for the part of him that’s with me.
Conceptual
We lived as conceptual artists. It’s what we were. If anyone wanted to know who we were, they had only to look. On special occasions, my family cut their clothes from paintings. Mum wore Botticelli. My sister wore Ophelia’s drowning dress, and Dad was the king some woman in a medieval painting swept around. I wore a smock from a haystack. Kids called me Yoko Weirdo.