Sticks and Stones 1

July 2005

The last time I was in England, due to relationship-failure with my family in France for the trillionth time, I was walking past Oxfam from the pub when a yellow-covered book winked at me from a box that had obviously been placed in front of its door for me and not them. I went up to it and plucked it out from the box.
It was by Hanif Kureishi, entitled ‘Intimacy’.
I wandered off as aimlessly as possible, quietly cancelling out the chances of someone tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to put it back.
I found ‘Intimacy’ in Woking, so I dipped into a pub and started reading.
The opening line hit me like a brick in the face.
‘It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back,’ it said.
How many times had I said that to myself over the past two years?
I looked further down the page for a name to add gas to the flames of coincidence, and there it was.
‘Dear Susan, I am not coming back,’ it said.
I laughed out loud, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Good book, is it?’ the barmaid asked, without looking up from Kylie with cancer in Cosmo.
‘Looks like it might be,’ I replied.
That day, I read a good half of the book and went back to my mother’s flat, where I was holing up.
I couldn’t help calling home. I call every day when I’m away.
‘I found this book today outside Oxfam,’ I said to Suzie after I’d spoken to the children.
‘You mean you took a book from outside Oxfam,’ she corrected me. I hate it when she does that.
‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘I nicked it. Anyway, moving on...I opened it to the first page and what did it say?’
But she was already bored and had other things on her mind, like torn emotions and the hurt my constant leaving causes the children, which I am now becoming more aware of, largely thanks to Intimacy.
I repeated the first line, told her the name of the fictitious woman and described how poignant a book it was for me to stumble upon.
‘It just shone out at me so I picked it up. Strange, huh? You can read it after me.’
Suzie was pleased for me, she said, which sounded patronising. This wasn’t the response I wanted to hear, but I could understand her disinterest as she relayed her daily routine without me, piling on the guilt with each duty performed; the constant school runs, Clara’s Power Ranger energy-levels, homework, cooking, cleaning, washing, the animals, things going wrong in the house, new bills, you name it.
Where would she get the time to read her star sign during a normal day, let alone a novel?
‘Minxy’s had her kittens,’ she said, which interested me only to know if she’d eaten them, being a wild cat that Maddy and I had found in a hole in a sixteenth-century wall over a year ago.
‘Has she eaten any yet?’ I enquired, fully aware that there was still a part of Suzie that loved my black humour, even if the comedy was shortlived and left traces of its malaise.
‘Course not. She only leaves them to feed, then she’s straight back in there. She’s an amazing mother,’ she replied. I was sure she would be, deep down, because Suzie is such an amazing mother herself.
‘That’s nice,’ I said, hoping to move on in subject matter.
‘Don’t you want to know how many?’ she asked.
‘How many what, Suze?’ I asked, completely unaware.
‘Kittens, for goodness sake.’
There was a silence in which a quarrel could easily have ensued.
‘Well, go on then,’ I said with a short sigh, aware that she could hear the boredom in my voice. ‘How many kittens did she have?’
‘Four,’ she replied, but she was angry now. I’d fluffed my lines and now I’d pay for not going by the book. ‘Minxy had four beautiful kittens.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, aware of the pain I’d caused her for being so uncaring in almost every way.
That ‘Sorry’ proved to be a Godsend because we moved on to other topics on a relatively even keel.
‘The mouse doesn’t work, and the downstairs loo’s leaking again,’ she said.
‘I’ll fix it when I get back,’ I said, realising that I’d fallen into one of her traps without thinking.
‘But you said you’d never come back again. You can’t keep changing your mind, Jim. It’s too much for Clara. She wakes up looking for you and goes to bed asking for you. I’m sick of lying to her.’
I could hear the tears welling in her eyes, her voice a broken tool that needed fixing along with everything else in the house.
‘Well, don’t lie to her,’ I said, trying to reassure her. ‘Tell her the truth, that I’ve had to go away because I’m not strong or mature enough to go through with family life, that I’m trying to become a better father. Besides, I’m here to work. You know, to bring home the bacon.’
‘You can’t become a better father by running away,’ she butted in.
And that’s usually where the trouble starts, when I go into denial and she tries her hardest to point out my failings. She condemns, I deflect, by condemning her, and so she deflects against my condemnation…
‘I’m not running away, Suzie,’ I said firmly. ‘You kicked me out again. Remember?’
‘You know I can’t take being called the names you call me. It hurts too much.’
‘Don’t you think I’m hurting now? Every time I hear a youngster’s voice, I think it’s Clara.’
‘But you always do this. You run to your mother, get drunk for a week, think things through and then come back with your tail between your legs.’
‘I come back to my mother’s house because it’s the only place I can stay without paying rent. Besides, I might have a job tomorrow, and you know damn well that I’m here to earn money to come back with.’ We were broke, as usual.
Suzie, being the loving, hopeful partner, always calms down when I mention the possibility of work. She knows that the money will come back with me for the family because I love them more than life itself. She also knows that she stands a good chance of me squeezing a few presents for the children into my bag to soften the blow.
‘A job?’ she said. ‘That was quick. Who found you that? Gina or your Mum?’
There was no point in lying. I could sense that Suzie would take me back in an instant, given with the smallest bait.
‘Mum did,’ I replied, huffing the contempt I felt for my pathetic reliance on family. ‘It’s for the lady upstairs from her flat. It’s only six hundred but I might get another one in before I finish it.’
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘You’re better when you’re working.’
‘I know,’ I replied, but I had other more important things on my mind. ‘Listen, how about I book myself a flight for a week’s time, earn as much as I can and we’ll give it another try? How about that?’
But in the silence, I could picture the tears leaving her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, hoping against hope.
‘How many times have you said that, Jim? I’m not sure I can stand the name-calling any more.’
‘Sticks and stones, Suze,’ I replied. ‘That’s all they are. Little sticks and bits of gravel. Sometimes they go in your eye and you cry. Besides, you goad me into it. Do you know what it feels like being told to leave the house every week in front of the kids? You scream and shout at me like you’re possessed, and you swear and put me down. What do you expect? For me to walk away and go and do something spiritual in the bar while you calm down?’
‘It’s when you call me names like cunt, bitch, twat, useless waste of space. I just can’t take it any more.’
At this time, I hoped that the children were well asleep, that they couldn’t hear their mother swear, even if it was on my behalf.
‘Suze, you can lay into me for whole days on end without swearing but it doesn’t mean that your words don’t hurt, because they do, and when I’ve had enough, I fire swear words at you for about thirty seconds, just to show you I still have feelings, so you kick me out in a rage, or make it impossible for me to be there, and so I go. Can’t you see that?’
There was a silence, then I could hear half an ounce of nasal mucus being blown into a tissue.
She sniffed. Deep inside her, she knew that something had to give here.
‘No name-calling. OK?’ she said finally.
‘No name-calling. Guaranteed,’ I replied obediently, already contemplating how hard it would be to stop the rot between us.
Suzie’s completely aware that eighty percent of my days are spent running around after the children (shopping, chauffeuring, tidying, mending, reorganising, cooking), but when I announce that, once the day is done, I’m going out for a drink, she flips her lid, telling me that all I care about is ‘those losers down the bar’. It’s certainly not the way I want to leave the house for an innocent pint, and she knows I’m almost always back before Clara goes to sleep.
That’s life chez nous. Gruelling and insipid with sprinkles of love thrown in to keep us going.