‘I don’t think you should leave me.’
I spoke for some time about all we had been through. I had been thinking a great deal about where things had gone wrong, and how they might change in the future. Perhaps we might move back to London, or at least find a little place there, and spend the weekends in the city. Move to a smaller house, in the proper countryside. Go out more. Travel further afield. We talked about fresh starts and we talked about our shared past, nearly twenty-five years of it, about our daughter and our son, how we had got through all of that together and how close it had made us. Inseparable, I said, because I found the idea of life without her quite unthinkable, unthinkable in the truest sense; I could not picture a future without her by my side, and I passionately believed that we could and would be happier together than apart. I wanted us to grow old together. The idea of doing so alone, and of dying alone, it was — well, that word again — it was unthinkable, and not just unthinkable, monstrous, frightening. I’d had a glimpse of it and had felt such terror. ‘So I don’t think you should leave. Things will be better. There are only good things ahead of us from now on, and I will make you happy again, I swear.’
Despite the chill of the evening, we lay down in the long grass on the side of the hill. Connie kissed me, and laid her head on my shoulder and we stayed like this for quite some time, the sound of the M40 a little way off. ‘We’ll see,’ she said after a while. ‘There’s no rush. We’ll see. Let’s wait and see how things turn out.’
When we’d set out on our journey I had vowed that I would win her back. But it seemed that I could not fulfil my vow and despite, or perhaps because of my best efforts, I could not make her happy again, or as happy as she wanted to be. The following January, two weeks shy of twenty-five years together, we embraced and said goodbye and began our lives apart.
part nine
ENGLAND, AGAIN
Here is the same story as you might have heard it, told from alternative points of view.
A young boy grows up with a mother whom he idolises and a father he can barely believe is his own. They argue a great deal, and when not arguing they are often silent. While good-intentioned, the father lacks imagination, emotional intelligence or empathy or some such stuff. Consequently the parents’ marriage is full of tension and unspoken resentment, and the boy longs to escape. Like many teenagers, he is a little pretentious and irresponsible, and is keen to get on with life and find out who he really is. But first he must endure a long, dull holiday walking around various dusty old museums, watching his parents bickering, then making peace, then bickering again. He meets a girl, a rebel who has run away from home, and who shares his views on Art! Politics! Life! When his father insults him publicly, the boy runs away with the girl, ignoring his parents’ anxious calls and living on the money they make from busking. But the adventure sours. The girl has feelings for him that he is unable to reciprocate despite his best efforts. A question he has carried in the back of his mind for years now demands to be answered and so he flees to a city where he knows no one and asks: just who the hell am I? His father, guilt-ridden, tracks him down. An uneasy truce is established, and made firm when he manages to save his father’s life — actually save his life — in a Barcelona hotel room. Having completed this rite of passage, the charismatic, complex and unconventional young man leaves his grateful parents and sets off on his own. Who knows what adventures will come his way on this road through, etc., etc., etc.
I believe such stories are called coming-of-age stories. I can see the appeal of that mixture of idealism, cynicism, narcissism and self-righteousness, with some sex and drugs thrown in. It’s not really my thing, perhaps because I’ve never understood that ‘who am I?’ question. Even as a teenager I always knew who I was, even if I didn’t much care for the answer. But I can see that Albie’s concerns were somewhat greater than my own. I can see how that story might have been of interest to some.
If not, how about this one?
A young artist — beautiful, witty, a little insecure — leads a wild and irresponsible life with her temperamental but talented boyfriend. They argue violently and break up for the last time and soon after, at a party, she meets another man, a scientist this time, passably attractive, a little conventional perhaps, but nice enough, and they begin a relationship. This man is reliable, intelligent and clearly adores her, and they fall in love. But when he asks her to marry him she hesitates. What about her work, what about the passion and unpredictability of her earlier life? Pushing these doubts aside, she says yes. They marry and for a while they are happy. But their first child dies and their second child is a source of tension. Questions arise in her mind. What about her ambitions as a painter? What about her old life? Her husband is loyal and decent and loves her very much, but her days are now provincial and dull and when the time is right, she summons up all her courage, wakes him in the night and announces her intention to leave. He is heartbroken, of course, and his heartbreak causes her some sadness too. Life alone is difficult for both of them. He asks her to return and she is tempted.
But despite its occasional loneliness there is something thrilling about her new life in a little London flat, about starting to paint again. She resists her husband’s pleas. He gets to keep the dog. She is fifty-two years old, uncertain of the future but happy to be alone.
But then — and here comes the late twist — one night at an old friend’s party in London she meets her former lover. He is not the wild, arrogant artist that he used to be. Now he makes an erratic living as a car mechanic, living out on the North Yorkshire moors, still painting brilliantly in his spare time but chastened by his past, the boozing and sleeping around, and full of regret and humility.
But despite the paunch and thinning hair, the artist is still handsome and charismatic. The mutual attraction is still there, even with her thicker waist, the grey in her hair. That same night they fall into bed with each other and, soon after, fall back in love. The woman finds happiness again, and just in time.
This was what I found so hard at first, that Connie and Angelo’s story was so much better than my own. I imagine them telling it to people at the kind of parties that they go to now. ‘How did you two meet?’ the strangers ask, noting the intensity with which they cling to each other, how they still kiss and hold hands like lovers half their age, and they take it in turns to tell how they met thirty years ago, how they married other people but returned like comets on a long trajectory or some such silly-arsed nonsense ‘Oh,’ the listeners sigh, ‘what a lovely story, how romantic,’ and meanwhile all those intervening years, all that we went through together, our marriage, is contained within parentheses.