MONUMENT TO THE MIDLIFE CRISIS
I’ve wasted years obsessing over that time of my life. Of course, there’s no easy way to break free, but I have no idea what was going through Robert’s mind when he chose to contaminate all the memories of our past. Was it a bridge-burning exercise? Or was it a subconscious attempt by Becky to obliterate Robert’s last touch of intimacy with me? One day our cleaner Maria suddenly blurted out that she had a secret that she could no longer contain. One Saturday while I’d been down in Sussex with the kids, she’d been to the London house to sort the laundry and had heard Robert and another women cavorting in our bed.
It was not only the bed that we’d conceived all our babies in, but the bed on which they’d taken their first breaths. Surrounded by family photographs and trinkets made by the kids in school, it had been a place of sanctuary during nightmares and sickness, a place of rough and tumble, of pillow fights and pillow talk.
Knowing about this creepy betrayal made me flip me from borderline-coping to borderline-insane; this casual violation seemed to me a deliberate attempt to destroy everything that we’d once held dear. Becky only lived around the corner and they could afford to stay in any bed in any hotel in the world, yet by using that particular bed they’d laid waste to a family dream.
When I later asked Robert why he’d done it, he said that men don’t think in the same way as women. I said OK, but pointed out that Becky was a woman. He shrugged his shoulders. What could he say?
There were times when I’d be thrown off balance by a wave of despair. How was I going to get through the next hour, let alone the next day? It was terrifying to realise that I was on a train that I had never intended to board and had no known destination. My head was filled with Rod Stewart singing, ‘Knowing that you lied straight-faced, while I cried, still I look to find a reason to believe.’ I was enraged at my inability to stop fixating on Robert and Becky, as if a lethal parasite was slowly devouring all the good within me, leaving only distrust, humiliation, paranoia, bitterness and shame. I rang our farm to arrange a time to pick up my things and the answering machine clicked on: ‘Robert and Becky aren’t in right now . . .’
I drove down there in a van with a friend and retrieved my clothes, the photo albums and some gifts the kids had made for me. On the kitchen windowsill, behind a pair of curtains that I’d made just months before, was a card that read, ‘Darling Becky, Happy Birthday! What a year you’ve had – new job, new house and a new man. Congratulations! Love Mum x’
I hated myself for being unable to lift myself out of that muddy well, where negative emotions oozed into every cell of my body. They seeped down my throat, filling my chest and restricting my breath. While doing the seemingly endless tiresome jobs that go hand-in-hand with raising a young family – scooping up dog poo in the garden, queuing in supermarkets, packing and unpacking bags, reciting times tables and emptying the dishwasher – I would fight the urge to imagine what they were up to. I imagined them together in our bed, their sweat seeping into the mattress. To think of anything constructive was an effort too far. I could just about get the kids up, off to school, fed, bathed and put back to bed again, but nothing more.
Noah, always so brave and grown-up, broke down only once, when his new goldfish, one that he kept in his bedroom and happened to have named Robert, had flipped out of its bowl.
‘Robert’s died, Robert’s died!’ he screamed down the stairs.
I rushed up wondering what on earth was going on, and there on the floor was Robert, so covered with the coir matting that had stuck to his scales while he flopped around that he was unrecognisable as a fish at all. I picked up the inanimate Robert and plopped him back in his bowl, willing him to start swimming again, but the strange, hairy creature rolled over onto its back. ‘Come on, Robert, live,’ I said.
It didn’t take Freud to know that Noah didn’t need this tragedy.
‘Live Robert, live,’ added Noah.
We stared at the stiff, floating fish and gave it one more chant. ‘Come on man! Come on Robert!’
And with that, first the tail and then a fin twitched, a gill pumped and the fish flipped over and swam free of its furry coat. Noah and I high-fived – all was going to be all right after all.
Louis’s pet rabbit, on the other hand, had just disappeared. Night after night, the poor boy would silently climb into bed, until his lights were turned off, when tears would overwhelm him.
‘I want Hoppy,’ he would wail. ‘I want Hoppppy.’ Fully aware that Hoppy had probably become a fox’s supper, I was unsure how to console the grieving boy. One day a kind neighbour told Louis that he’d seen Hoppy frolicking with Mrs Hoppy and a family of baby rabbits in Holland Park. Louis didn’t cry for Hoppy after that, but he did cry. I should have asked him what was upsetting him but instead I made the error of just cuddling him and telling him that it would be all right. After weeks of anguish, he finally sat up and said, ‘Mummy, I know why Daddy’s gone and it’s all my fault.’
‘Oh my darling, Lou,’ I replied. ‘It’s not your fault.’ And then I finally asked a question. ‘Why do you think it’s because of you?’
‘He left because I can’t read and write,’ he said, burying his head in my lap.
It is impossible for anyone to hold a weeping six-year-old boy who’s blaming themselves for their parents’ divorce and not feel a surge of anger towards the woman who has taken their father from them. At this point, it was far easier to blame her than their father. I would have rather have not blamed anyone at all, but my mind clung to a narrative that gave our predicament some reason. The easiest one to grasp was that an ambitious twenty-six-year-old trollop, who had previous form, had offered midlife-crisis man who was overburdened with responsibilities an exit route, with plenty of ego-massaging and red leather-skirted sex – lots of it.
My friends, family and neighbours understood how close the children and I were to breaking down and became the rocks we clung to. We would regularly stay with Lindy and Robin and their boys for the weekend, as well as with Mark and Amanda Tandy and Richard and Joan. Their order and routine provided a framework around which we could function. Coming home on Sunday nights was never easy: I would park the car and carry the sleeping children up to their beds one at a time, worried about leaving the others in the car on a London street at night, but fearful of waking them in case they couldn’t get back to sleep.
Just as I was about to let self-pity overwhelm me, my neighbours Faith and Michael Gollner would ring. ‘Just checking that you’re all right, Ness,’ they would say.
‘I’m fine now that you’ve called,’ I would answer, before wandering around the house, preparing for the week ahead and locking all the doors. In truth, I’d never experienced such loneliness.
It was then that Bodley, our house guest who had never moved out, really started to earn his keep, patiently listening to me going over different scenarios, again and again. I knew I could pick up the phone and call any number of friends – the Bannisters, the Dewars, the Oultons and of course the de Klees – and whatever they were doing they would let me rant on. I’d call Sallie Ryle with a glass of wine on the go, not wanting to drink alone and knowing that she’d happily pour herself one too and talk for hours. Sometimes I’d call Clare and ask her if she would mind if I just cried, because crying on my own felt impossibly bleak.
Walking out around the neighbourhood became a trial, because I couldn’t bear to bump into anyone I knew. The humiliation of being left is all-encompassing, as is the gnawing agony of realising that you’ve failed as a wife and as a mother.
The previous year, Ronald and Sharon Cohen had invited Robert and me to a dinner with Tony and Cherie Blair; Tony’s charisma had charmed us and we’d made a hefty donation to the Labour Party in the run-up to the May 1997 election. As a result, we were invited to the Royal Festival Hall to celebrate Labour’s victory, and I went with Navin as my plus one. There was hysteria as Tony walked into the building at 2 a.m. – ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was booming out over the PA as we all whooped and cheered. We walked back along the Embankment, the brilliant sun rising over the river. ‘Things can only get better,’ Navin said, laughing.
In August, I took the children to Kensington Palace to add flowers to the growing carpet spilling down the front lawn after the death of Princess Diana. We were approaching the end of the millennium, the end of an era, the end of one life and the beginning of a fresh one – but how should we regain some dignity, some humour, some energy and some love?
Tracey Emin, her then-partner Mat Collishaw and I ended up drinking in the Colony Room Club in Soho one night, and I told Tracey of my inability to stop playing that grubby, scratched, self-pitying record.
‘Vanessa, first you’ve got to get rid of your bed,’ she told me with utter conviction. ‘I’m going to write you a poem for your new bed – promise me you’ll use it.’ As I rode the night bus home in the early hours of the morning, I chuckled at the wonderful contrasts that life throws up – 3 a.m., with four young children to get ready for school that morning, having had an inspiring evening and the hint of many more to come. Things could only get better.
Less than a week later, I opened an envelope from Tracey containing two poems written in her distinctive sloping hand. I asked the furniture design duo Precious McBane to make a new bed for me, and they embroidered Tracey’s poems on the headboard:
Oh God you made me feel so beautiful
And then I wanted to feel it again and again.
And then the lines that expressed it all:
With myself, by myself
Never forgetting.
Next I visited Grayson Perry in his house in east London, thinking that a Grayson urn for my ashes on the mantelpiece would be a solid reminder of mortality.
‘So Vanessa, tell me, what’s going on in your life?’
‘Well Grayson, I don’t know really where to begin…’
A month later I picked up a giant pot of glorious playfulness. On the lid Grayson had crafted a ridiculous masturbating ape burnished in gold. Scratched into the pot were images of Prince Charles, his hat embossed with the word ‘tampon’, motor bikes, photos of alluring young women with pouting lips labelled ‘marriage wrecker’ and drawings of fat middle-aged men with drooping breasts and sagging scrotums. On the front of the pot was boldly written: ‘Homage to the Midlife Crisis’. Oh joy.
Walking into the Sadie Coles Gallery, I was confronted with a huge photo of Sarah Lucas, her naked bottom barely covered by a T-shirt with ‘COMPLETE ARSEHOLE’ scrawled on the back. As my depression began to lift, art was taking on meaning again.
Lawyers had told me I would be within my rights to restrict Robert’s access to the children to one night every other weekend, but I knew that would do no one any favours. Robert was a good father, and the kids needed him. Instead, he came to the house to take them to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, put them to bed on Wednesdays and had them to stay in Sussex every other weekend. We agreed to share the holidays.
Previously, except for the weekends when we’d gone to Morocco and Italy, I’d rarely spent time apart from the children – my world was bound up in their rhythms. The first weekend they went to Sussex, I tried to sound excited for them as I strapped Ivo into the baby-seat in the back of Robert’s Shogun, reassuring them that I was going to have a lovely weekend too, and waved enthusiastically until they were out of sight.
Then I walked back into the house, leaned against the front door and unable to deal with my misery, screamed so hard that I had a panic attack and collapsed on the floor. From then on, knowing that this was a faultline in my self-control, I set myself a routine: I’d wave them off, go back into the house, make myself a cup of tea and a plate of Marmite toast, take it up to my bedroom, light the fire, close the door and climb into bed to watch a DVD. Two hours later, I’d emerge, ready to face the weekend.
Generous friends offered me hospitality with open arms but, without my children I felt the urge to break free from family life – it was time for me to do things for myself. The problem was, I didn’t know how. The idea of lighting a candle in a room with only me in it seemed ridiculous. Selecting a film to watch on my own became a conundrum of significant proportions, though Simon from Video City on Notting Hill Gate patiently recommended film after film having witnessed me staring blankly at the brimming shelves. I’d never bought food with only myself in mind before and had never planned a weekend or gone to an exhibition without first consulting Robert, or family or friends. I’d barely ever slept in a house on my own, let alone spent a whole weekend alone.
On returning to London one weekend, I was appalled to see that a new neighbour had felled a magnificent, protected plane tree, which had screened out a block of flats and made our garden feel like an ancient wood. In London, if you cut a tree down without the permission of the borough council, you face a £20,000 fine – a drop in the ocean when you stand to make a couple of million pounds on the house you can build in its place. After the previous six months of deception, I’d become hypersensitive to anyone who wasn’t straightforward with me. I walked around and rang the front door, and my new neighbour answered. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘My name is Vanessa and I’m your neighbour.’
He put out his hand, a smile on his face. ‘I’m Igor,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Would you mind telling me what happened to the tree behind your house,’ I asked calmly.
‘Oh, that tree,’ Igor replied. ‘I’m afraid the builders cut the roots by accident and it died.’
I put my hands on either side of Igor’s face, grabbed his ears and shook his head with all my might. ‘Don’t you lie to me!’ I shouted as his head bobbed up and down. Then, not knowing what to do, I just let go of his ears and walked away. For years afterwards, before we eventually became friends, he would cross to the other side of the road if he saw me coming. My new sensitivity to dishonesty became a twitching antenna and was to get me into trouble more than once.
One night, my friend from New York, David Teiger, invited me to the Savoy for a glass of champagne before we went on to a grand dinner. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, and I smiled, knowing that this was always his opening line. ‘Now, tell me, Vanessa, how have you been?’
I had plenty to tell him, but found it hard to know where to begin. Years earlier, he had taken Fiona Whitney and me out for dinner in New York. We’d chatted away all evening and told him our impressions of America, two naïve girls throwing around superficial opinions with little respect for our cultured host. During coffee, he had written something on his paper napkin and pushed it quietly towards me. ‘Don’t Tell, Ask,’ it said.
Now, remembering the napkin, I responded, ‘David, you tell me your news first.’
‘I’ve been buying Sarah Lucas over Tracey Emin – her work seems to have more substance. What do you think?’
‘I find it hard to have a subjective opinion. I love Tracey’s straightforward honesty – she speaks to the crazy, vulnerable, hormone-driven side of all of us.’
‘Ah,’ said David, ‘so life’s not exactly on an even keel.’ He ordered a bottle of Krug and I filled him in on my latest sorry tales. As we stood up to leave for the dinner, I wobbled on my heels. ‘Steady, Vanessa – maybe you should eat something,’ he said.
Our taxi swept through the grand entrance gates to Number One, London, the Duke of Wellington’s London residence, and David steadied me as I negotiated the steps. The dinner was to celebrate the achievements of the Tiger Fund, an investment vehicle that had made colossal returns for a few chosen investors, largely as a result of the CEO’s relationships with world leaders and opinion-makers. David introduced me to our host, who then introduced us to Margaret Thatcher, who in turn simply ignored us. ‘One sip of wine before dinner won’t hurt,’ I thought as I grabbed a glass from a passing waiter.
I don’t remember much about dinner other than listening to the speech by Julian, the Tiger Fund CEO, as he detailed the fund’s mind-boggling success; the contented murmurs of the diners laughing at his self-effacing quips and the applause as he assured them that their fortunes were going to grow exponentially and all they had to do was take pleasure in spending the money.
I looked around at the crowd’s taut faces, sequins, perfect postures jutting clavicles and coiffed hair, and turned to the man sitting to my right. ‘Are you absolutely loaded, too?’ I asked. He looked a little surprised. ‘I mean, I know you must be if you’re here, but I just want to know – where does the growth come from? What makes all this money make 10–15 per cent per annum? The profits must be coming from somewhere – someone must be losing . . .’
The man still said nothing, but I couldn’t stop myself. For some reason I thought continuing would give him something to latch onto and he could explain. Then David was at my side, his hand firmly taking my elbow and raising me up.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure, but I fear we have to go.’ He smiled and the table all nodded to him, bidding us a relieved goodbye.
‘David, I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I tried the old “Don’t tell, ask” routine, but I just don’t get it. Something’s wrong – I just can’t stand half-truths or people who won’t face up to the truth. I let you down, I’m so sorry.’
David said very little but seemed amused. ‘Let’s talk about this in the cold light of day,’ he said, kissing me on the cheek and sending me towards the main door as he re-entered the banqueting room. My heels were far too high, my dress was too thin and it was raining.
‘I’m afraid there aren’t many taxis tonight, miss,’ said the doorman. Two other men were also leaving early, and their car swooped into the courtyard. ‘Please could you give this young lady a lift, sir?’
‘Only if she doesn’t mind going via Claridge’s,’ came a curt, American-accented reply.
The younger of the two men jumped into the front seat and I got into the back with the other as the doorman leant through the rear window. ‘Goodnight, Vice President Gore,’ he said.
I tried to pull my little red dress down towards my knees. ‘What an incredible evening,’ I said to break the ice.
‘The food didn’t agree with my stomach,’ Al replied.
I thought I’d try to entertain him – and for some reason chose to share the story of my recent dinner with Gore Vidal. David’s ‘Don’t tell, ask!’ was screaming caution, but still I launched in. ‘A few weeks ago I had dinner in Ravello with Gore Vidal…’ The vice president didn’t encourage me to continue. ‘Sorry, the story only makes sense if I give you some background.’
I could see we were approaching our destination, so I talked even faster. ‘The thing is, my husband had been seeing a young trollop and was agonising about whether to run off with her or stay with me and our four kids. We were in Ravello to rekindle some romance.’ The young man on the front seat sat rigid and Al stared straight ahead as the limo stopped at a red light. Should I open the door now and quietly slip out? No, I had to finish the story.
‘Anyway,’ I pushed on, ending with Gore Vidal’s advice that ‘you seduce his lover’, just as we pulled up to the hotel entrance. I looked towards him, waiting for a little vice presidential chuckle, but instead he and his preppy intern leapt from the car with a swift ‘Good evening’ and almost fell over each other as they pushed through the revolving door.
I wanted to call someone to gleefully share in my humiliation. ‘It’s a shame I can’t call Robert,’ I thought, as the limo swept away under the dripping Bayswater plane trees. ‘He would have loved it.’
***
A major benefit of not having a partner was becoming apparent: a single person has so much more time to nurture old friendships and embark on new ones. I often went to stay with Shelagh and Matthew Bannister, and Shelagh and I tended to speak daily, either in person or on the phone.
In 1996 they experienced the agony of giving birth to a baby boy, Gabriel, who had died two weeks before he was due to take his first breath. I watched as they carried their son’s tiny white coffin to his resting place in Redford Cemetery, while crows cawed plaintively overhead. On holiday a month later, we were on the beach and Shelagh mentioned that her breasts were bleeding. The doctors had said it was due to her milk drying up after the stillbirth, but she was clearly worried.
She had every right to be – on our return she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy, but unfortunately the cancer had spread to her lymph system. The doctors were cautiously optimistic but recommended chemotherapy. Shelagh never complained or panicked. She was disciplined with her diet, exercise routines, cold caps and alternative therapies. She didn’t want her illness to define her – she was determined to keep it on a parallel track and not take over her life.
My God, she was brave. Her silent suffering made me love her completely. She’d call me with the results of her three-monthly check-ups; when they became six-monthly, it seemed that her disciplined approach was working. However, a dark cloud still hovered and we began to mark every occasion as if it was our last. Shelagh’s heightened state of being gave us permission to buy not just any old plonk but good-quality wine and treat ourselves to the odd fancy frock, and when it came to booking holidays, she didn’t want to waste time going anywhere less than perfect.
A year after Robert left us, I was still struggling, and I defy anyone else not to. The children were so young – Ivo was just two – and it made my heart ache to see them making such an effort to control their sadness. I was facing the first summer holiday without them – two full weeks. We flew from Necker to Miami; Mum and Dad were taking the children back to the UK to meet up with Robert, and I was going on to LA to meet up with Fiona. At Miami Airport, as I was waving them all off at the international departure gate, Louis took fright and refused to leave me. He lay on the floor, clinging onto my ankle and wailing uncontrollably. My parents tried to pry him off. Then the other children began to cry, while Mum bit her bottom lip.
‘Come on, little chap,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll take care of you. Come on, little chap.’ Then, finding the emotion too much, my usually restrained father stood up and said under his breath, ‘That fucking man – how could he do this to his children?’
Eventually the exhausted party left hand in hand, and I made it to my flight just in time.
Fiona picked me up from the airport. ‘My God, Ness, you look absolutely dreadful!’ she said as I walked into Arrivals. ‘Brown, but skinny as anything.’ Driving along the highway she continued. ‘What you need is a nice little boob job!’
‘Fiona, don’t be so ridiculous,’ I replied. ‘It’s the last thing I need.’
‘Don’t be such a prude, Ness. Everyone does it here.’
‘That might be so,’ I said, ‘but I’m completely against plastic surgery. It’s superficial and everything I don’t believe in about the consumerist society. And anyway, I’m rather fond of my boobs – they’re just a bit deflated because I’m so thin.’
Fi was focused on her goal. ‘I know this brilliant surgeon in Beverly Hills. He does all the stars. Honestly, Ness, he’s brilliant.’
‘Fi,’ I replied, already feeling somewhat worn down, ‘I’m honestly not interested.’
The next day we were sat in Dr No’s office. I was slightly taken aback by the fact that he was wearing cowboy boots, and before I knew what was happening, he was drawing dotted lines around my bosoms with a Magic Marker.
‘Vanessa is more interested in the Meg Ryan than the Dolly Parton’, I heard Fi saying.
‘Please, I’m really not sure,’ I said lamely.
He took us past a number of curtained cubicles where ladies lay on their backs after Botox treatments, dabbing bloody tissues at their foreheads.
‘Lydia,’ said Dr No to one of the women, ‘would you mind showing your breasts to these two prospective patients please?’
Still lying down, Lydia raised her T-shirt with one hand, exposing two of the most perfect, soft, nut-brown mounds of flesh I’d ever seen.
‘See how great these little puppies look?’ the doctor said gleefully. ‘I use this special technique and go in under the muscle. You see? There’s no line, and the breasts feel completely natural.’
With that, he walked up to Lydia and began to knead her exposed breasts. ‘Come and have a feel,’ he barked. I put out a rather tentative hand and felt a bosom while trying to look serious. Only in LA.
In the car on the way back to Hancock Park, Fiona banged on. ‘Come on Ness. He said he would give us a two-for-the-price-of-one offer, or four for the price of two. That way, I sneak in free!’ Now I felt under pressure. ‘What’s more,’ she said, ‘he has a cancellation tomorrow morning.’
I took my tapestry into the clinic, thinking that when I came around from the procedure I could do some sewing. I went in first. After an hour or two in the theatre, the doctor went to check with Fiona what size implants I’d asked for. ‘Ness asked for Meg Ryans,’ she told him. Apparently he went ashen and rushed out. It appeared he had made an error and implanted some Monroes in there. The pain I felt on regaining consciousness was indescribable. My chest was in spasm, my blood pressure began to drop alarmingly and I was losing the ability to speak. ‘I think I’m going to die, Fi,’ I whispered.
Dr No didn’t want to lose a patient, and nor did he want to be seen to be having an emergency. Paramedics jammed me in the service elevator and wheeled me out of a back entrance to the ambulance. All I can remember is the pain.
In intensive care in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, I blew up to such an extent that a nurse had to cut off my rings and my plastic hospital wristband. My liver was struggling, along with my kidneys. Dr No came to visit and defensively explained that my post-op collapse was my fault for not telling him how much I’d been drinking. A few years later he would lose his licence to practise medicine. Fiona visited me somewhat sheepishly and I couldn’t stop looking at her breasts. She hadn’t intended to go for the full Dolly but due to some miscommunication, the full Dolly she had. Her magnificent new appendages were going to get her into all sorts of trouble over the years – once a little too close to home for comfort – but what are friends for if not to challenge us?
Do I regret the episode? Well, it would have been a bloody silly way to die. Apart from that minor detail, to regret anything, for too long, is a mistake. There is no going back and I also learned a great deal. It’s true that, if I hadn’t been in that vulnerable emotional state, I would never have elected to do something so invasive, but I have to admit just one thing.
My new little puppies knock Lydia’s into a cocked hat.