Altar Ego (35 page)

Though the bathwater was getting cold and my fingers were papery, I was immobilized by contrition. Embracing remorse like a long-lost lover, I was thick-throated with sobs. But there was no catharsis, no release, no relief in it. Just gut-wrenching despair and self-hatred. I’d been annoyed with myself before, ticking off, chastising. But had never felt the poisonous, toxic fumes of ignominy.

When my crying finally modulated into low-level keening, I lay in the drained bathtub, a body washed to shore. I was the hypochondriac now, with a terminal disease called Life. It was time to join Social Lepers Anonymous.

I soaked a facecloth in cold water and pressed it into stinging eye sockets before leaving the bathroom and limping across the ward. The last rays of the sun lit my red hair, igniting me into a bonfire. The hair colour
was
mine, but the pyre was made up of my friends, my family, my future.

And so the monstrous night crowded in around me. Numb, I lay down on the most inhospitable bed in the world – the one I’d made myself.

40
For Sale. One Husband. Has Had Only One Careful Lady Owner

AT THIS STAGE
of my life I think it’s fair to say that opportunity had stopped knocking. I had no place to live except at my parent’s flat; my lover was consoling himself with groupies; I’d lost the baby I’d learnt too late to cherish; Anouska had been so devastated by events that she’d disappeared to have a lobotomy or join the Scientologists – her maid had forgotten which; I had been framed for possession of class-A drugs; and my best friend had run away with my husband. As we’d now been separated for the requisite year, a divorce petition alleging adultery plopped on to my parents’ doormat bearing Julian’s robust signature in brown ink – the colour, I noted desolately, of dried blood. A dismal little postscript requested speedy execution as he was planning to remarry as soon as possible.

A Decree Nisi takes six weeks … but the heartache goes on forever. The day I was half of one of thirty couples pronounced divorced at Somerset House in the Strand, I took to sitting around in my parents’ Islington flat in my wedding dress answering only to the name of Miss Havisham. I sent out un-wedding invitations. I baked un-wedding cake and sawed the plastic bride and groom decoration in half. I played Patsy Kline until my ear lobes fell off.

I tried to convince myself that mistakes are part of the dues I’d paid for an interesting life. I tried to convince myself that being single would be an adventure. It struck me that I’d never been without a man in my entire adult life. Living alone would mean never having to dash home from work to thaw the dinner in two minutes flat. It meant never being caught defrosting bread with the blow-dryer, a packet of icy lasagne wedged between my legs. It meant never having to listen to reminiscences about how some ex-defacto painstakingly mixed individual tabbouleh salads for his three pet guinea pigs. No snoring, no boring, no irritated wails of ‘What are you? Premenstrual?’ Living alone meant peace and quiet … But, quiet enough for what? … To hear myself crying, that’s what. Believe me, I needed wader boots.

Who was I trying to kid? The realization that I’d turned into my mother meant I was now carrying around so much emotional baggage I needed a skycap porter. I’d become the sort of person I would normally
flee
at parties. Sentiment would seize me unexpectedly; while ploughing my trolley through the hordes of conceited, happy couples in supermarkets; whilst eating mixed nuts and glancing down to see a cashew coiled in foetal position in my palm …

The weather matched my mood. All through October and November the sky was a grey catheter bag, leaking sour, sooty rain over London. It had been raining so hard and for so long that animals were starting to pair off and bleat for Noah.

It was at the YMCA on one of these dreary days when I looked up through the steam of the communal showers to see Kate’s freckled face studying me from behind her red-framed spectacles.

‘Oh!’ I felt winded. Water beat down my back for a full minute before I remembered some greeting was required. ‘Hi.’

‘G’day … Um … am I interrupting …?’

‘No, no. I’m just absent-mindedly pummelling my cellulite blobs.’

Kate removed her glasses, slung her towel over a hook and stepped on to the green plastic matting. ‘So … how are you?’

I shrugged a soapy shoulder. ‘Not good. I’ve been renting
Bridges of Madison County
and weeping all the way through it.’

‘Oh, you
are
ill.’

‘Basically, I’ve tried to commit suicide so many times I’ve nearly killed myself.’

‘Just as well you’ve been working out so much.’ Kate turned on the tap opposite me and stood under the corroded nozzle. ‘At least now you can commit suicide naked.’

The plastic bottle farted as she squeezed herbal shampoo into her hand. I watched as she lathered her hair into a stiff meringue before I blurted – ‘What you said in the hospital …? Well, it was all true. The trouble is, all my life I’ve been so flip; a walking chat show, paying the host
and
the guests.

Kate peered myopically through the steam. ‘Would you quit putting yourself down, you big dag? You’re going to wreck the fun for the rest of us.’

‘You have every right to hate me,’ I replied, despondently. ‘I took advantage of you at work. I lied. I put Nair hair-removal cream on your panty liners, for God’s sake! Running two lovers at once … Jesus! I was acting just like a man. Not a nice man, either. A Neanderthal. I …’

Kate put her hand up like a cop stopping traffic. ‘You think you own the copyright on self-loathing? I was wearing false eyelashes. In
public
, for Christ’s sake …’

‘You did … change a little, yes,’ I said tactfully.

‘but now I’ve changed back … To tell you the truth,’ she admitted, lifting an arm to reveal a reassuringly hirsute pit, ‘I was finding all that bloody optimism a bit tiring. Cheerful people underestimate the complexity of problems. Einstein said that he was in a
really
sad mood the day he came up with the theory of relativity, did you know that?’

‘It’s good to have you back, Kate.’ Though naked and slippery with soap, we tentatively hugged.

‘Actually, it was always your life. I was only keeping it warm for you …’

‘How is Julian?

We pulled apart from our reorientating hug-fest. ‘I was about to ask
you
.’

‘Me?’ I exclaimed. ‘I’m in a holding pattern, man-wise … But you two are back together, right?’

‘Good God, no. I’ve sworn off men. I’m still looking for a man who can excite me as much as a crème brûlée.’

This information amazed. ‘You’re not marrying him then?’

‘Me? I thought
you
were.’

‘I haven’t seen him since the hospital.’

‘Neither have I.’ We turned off our taps, the plumbing wheezing emphysemically, and looked at each other in a state of Advanced Disbelief. ‘At least he’s being scrupulously bloody impartial in his anomie,’ she said, Julian-like.

I towelled dry, absorbing at the same time this perplexing news. ‘Personally, I’m pleased,’ I bluffed. ‘I’m so relieved not to be in any kind of relationship that I could just wake up each morning and …
applaud
.’

‘Me too,’ Kate agreed glumly, climbing into her customary flame-retardant clothing. We regarded each
other
with the animation of a couple of taxidermied trout.

An hour in a pizza bar in Leicester Square where you can eat all you want for £2.85 and our love for humanity, not to mention each other, was somewhat restored. Whilst reassured that while it would be nice to find True Love, at least we would always have each other, there was a dirigible-sized question hanging over us both – if neither of
us
was marrying Julian, then who the hell was?

‘Vivian,’ Kate conjectured, three pizzas down. ‘It has to be Vivian. I mean in the piety stakes the bloody woman is hovering somewhere between Florence Nightingale and Mother bloody Teresa.’

‘It can’t be Vivian!’ I bellowed. ‘The woman wears culottes!’

‘Doesn’t Julian always go on about her being so perfect? And isn’t she vulnerable right now? And needy? And victimized by a bastard husband …?’

‘Kate, the woman buys her sex aids from a surgical supply shop!’

‘Think about it! They’re both lawyers, they’re both family orientated. Christ Almighty! She’s probably expecting his child …’

‘To do what?’ I interrupted cynically.

‘They’re homebodies … They both love cooking. They’re probably having a bit of light banter in the heavy-appliances section of John Lewis
as we speak
. You know how bloody desperate Julian is now for
Rings
and Strings …’ She waggled her wedding finger in the air. ‘We’ve got to find out.’

Kate, commando-like, listed the paraphernalia she needed – a microphone powerful enough to hear the mould spores multiplying in his salad crisper; a camera strong enough to photograph the plaque on his teeth. Meanwhile, I took the simpler option of ringing his office. His secretary told me that he was meeting ‘Ms de Kock’ for a fitting in Tatters, the bridal-wear section of Harrods, at one p.m. There was no time to lose: Vivian had already reverted to her maiden name. We hailed a taxi, and a few moments after our arrival, amidst the cumulus formations of fluffy white frocks, my life took the kind of dramatic turn that causes whiplash.

‘Becky! Kate! Oh, hiya, dolls,’ Anouska squeaked, three octaves above a coloratura. ‘Listen, Beck, thanks for helping me that night,’ she stammered. ‘I’ll do the same thing for you … if you ever stick tampons up your husband’s nostrils and he suffocates, that is …’

‘Hi.’ The hug I gave her was only half reciprocated. ‘Your maid said you were out of town?’ I probed.

‘Oh well, I’m back …’ Sitting down, she knotted one waxed leg around the other, over and over and over until they were plaited.

‘I know. For your sister’s wedding …’

‘Oh.’ She nervously picked mascara clumps off her eyelashes. ‘You know about the wedding?’ Her eyes roved anxiously towards the escalators. She was
wearing
a nervous grin, the one reserved for announcements preceding the words ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

‘Is that why you’ve been avoiding us?’ I insisted. ‘Because of Vivian and Julian?’

Before she could answer, the shop assistant pootled into the changing area, an acreage of creaking satin in her arms. She smiled the wide, convulsive smile – all mouth, no eyes – of a car salesman. ‘Miss de Kock, or should that be Mrs Julian Blake-Bovington-Smythe?
Your wedding dress!
’

A catastrophe is a furnace in whose heat identities buckle into entirely new shapes. When I wheeled around to confront my friend, her face was so hard and her eyes so cold that she was a stranger to me.

‘But … she’s … You’re …’ The room tilted. ‘This woman’s already married!’ I informed the Convulsive Smile, once the crashing in my ears had subsided.

‘Annulled.’ Anouska unwound her spaghetti legs and snatched up the taffeta veil from the chair. It rustled like a snake in the grass. ‘Darius is now happily playing house with Norbett the South African towel attendant.’

‘Annulled?’

‘A decree of nullity,’ elaborated Kate, ‘because of wilful refusal to consummate. Prima facie grounds for …’

‘I know what it means!’ Pain I thought blunted, pierced my solar plexus. ‘You’re marrying Julian
… without
even ringing me for a reference?’

‘Listen, doll.
You’re
the one who told me to stop being nice all the time.’ She gave me a scalding look. ‘
You’re
the one who said that being nice had got women absolutely nowhere.
You’re
the one who said that being nice all the time is best left to Moonies or monarchs …’

‘You’re obviously running late for your Dysfunctional Friend Support Group,
doll
,’ Kate said facetiously, towering over her.

‘
You
can talk … I’m sick of you two telling me what to do all the time. Julian is perfect Husband Material. For all your book reading and big words, you were just too stupid to see it,’ Anouska said, a treasonous curl to her painted lips.

I shook her by the shoulders. ‘You are
not
Anouska de Kock. You’re an evil pod person. The real Annie is Out There Somewhere, isn’t she?’

She brushed me aside. ‘Plus he’s a brilliant lawyer. Julian got my marriage to Darius tippexed out of legal history. Meaning no palimony. And all those awful motoring convictions quashed. Besides, silly me! I’ve been barking up the wrong family trees! New Labour are going to abolish hereditary peers. But with all Julian’s donations to the party …’ she said with cold-blooded complacency, running a pink tongue over a picket fence of perfectly capped teeth, ‘and work with torture victims, I’m sure he’ll be rewarded … A life Baronetcy at the very least!’

I gave a bitter laugh – the sort of laugh Rhett Butler gave when he realized his beloved South had been barbecued and his wife was a bimbo. In the cold light of logic, it was obvious. As far as an ‘It Girl’ is concerned, marriage is like a horse; you have to get straight back on after a fall. She was also man-hungry. Believe me, Anouska made cannibals look vegetarian. The woman’s love letters were addressed ‘to whom it may concern’. Julian, the Hypochondria King, was desperate to marry and so lower his risk of heart disease. He would have been weak before her Hair-Flicking Offensive. The Mountie had got her man again.

I looked at her sadly, all the fight knocked out of me. ‘It must be so tiring having to put make-up on two faces every day,’ was all I managed.

‘Oh, go throw yourself into a vat of Clarins de-aging cream, lizard-neck,’ Anouska spat.

The one thing I’d learnt of late is that dealing with loss and heartache doesn’t make you stronger. It only makes people think you are. As Anouska pivoted past me, shimmying into the inner sanctum of the luxurious fitting rooms, I barely recognized myself in the giant gilt-edged mirror. The face belonged to a prior incarnation – a life from which I was now removed by whole galaxies of grief. If they were making a TV programme about me, it wouldn’t be
This Is Your Life
but
This
is Your
Life
?