‘Hiya!’
I force myself to call out when I hear Ian come in, soon after six. It feels like jumping over a wall, the energy needed to get my voice out of my mouth, to sound like a person whose man has just come home, a person with energy to welcome and care. It’s only lately I’ve begun to manage this at all.
‘Hi.’ Ian drops his bag in the hall. As I make myself go to greet him, he straightens up from taking off his work boots. Every day, for years and years, he has done the same thing. All through the years of working his way up. The stint at Kwik Fit, starting his own business in Moseley – four lads there, one promoted to manager now, pick-up service, the lot. And now he’s set up the second workshop here, only a mile away.
Every day, door, bag, boots. I used to be so happy to see him. Now, always, there is pain, swirled like mould through each of us. Our faces have forgotten how to smile. In the old days our arms would be round each other, we’d be laughing: these days he stands back, forbidding, not looking into my eyes. Our greetings are like waves that never break but just move on past.
‘All right?’ I fold my arms, leaning against the side of the staircase. The house is warm and I have cooked sausage and onions, jacket spuds, comforting smells to greet him. But I surfaced from my trance on the floor full of wanting. I want something – even just one small thing – to be how it was, to be alive between us. The jokes, the affection. My eyes are begging, Look at me!
‘Yeah.’ Ian pats his pockets. His overalls make him look even stockier. He is taller than me by two or three inches and strong, like his father, according to Dorrie. ‘Yeah – it’s going OK. I’ll just go and change.’
He leaps up the first few steps, then slows, as if realizing how tired he is. I follow him to the foot of the stairs and watch him from behind. His brown hair, cut neatly at the back, is still surprisingly dark, though there is a slight thinning at the top. When he reaches the landing and turns to go to the bedroom, I almost can’t bear him disappearing. For a moment I wonder about going after him up to the bedroom, holding out my arms to him. But I can’t do it. Which of us has shut the other out, decreeing that their way to grieve was the only way?
He’ll be down soon. Perhaps then.
I wander into the kitchen to check on the spuds, then forget to do it and stand leaning against the counter.
For a moment I’ve managed to spark enough in myself to reach out to him, but it was as if he was here, yet not here. We are like bodies going through the motions with nothing left to radiate to another person.
I put my hands over my face and draw in a long breath. It’s as if he did not even see me and I know I have done the same to him, over and over again. Two lost people who cannot meet each other’s gaze. Absent, missing in action, since the night of 22 October 2012.
‘I found the cushions,’ I say.
We sit opposite each other at the white table in the kitchen, which is pushed against the wall to make sure that there is only enough room for two people. White plates, sausages in gravy with a dab of mustard, potatoes, frozen peas. Ian knifes butter on to his potato. I have already asked about his day, which apparently was, ‘Fine. Good, yeah.’
‘And the DVD player turned up as well.’
‘Great,’ he says, mouth full. ‘You got on all right then?’
‘Yeah.’ I won’t tell him about the two hours spent crouched on the floor. ‘I’ll finish off tomorrow. Mom and Dad said they were coming over this afternoon but Mom phoned to say they had to look after Amy today, all of a sudden.’
Ian looks up and for a second there’s a connection, a glimmer of sympathy between us. My mom and dad live in Redditch. Their life revolves round my brother Mark and his wife Lisa and their girls, Emma and Clare. Emma, the eldest, is thirty and is off being a busy career-girl dentist. Clare, the younger, stayed close, married Matt her school boyfriend and had Amy a year ago. What with the caravan and a great-grandchild, Mom and Dad are run off their feet. They like things to be local, to look after their own; relations mean blood relations, not incomers like Paul. Once again, thank heaven for Dorrie.
‘Mom all right?’ Ian’s thoughts seem to have travelled in the same direction.
‘Yeah. She is . . .’
His eyebrows lift at the reservation in my voice. At last our eyes meet for a second. ‘I mean, she is. But she’s frailer, isn’t she? Shaky. It was a job for her just holding her mug today. It’s a good thing we’re nearer – specially as I’m not at work at the moment.’
‘Yeah.’ Ian puts down his knife and fork, the plate cleared, picks up his can of lager. ‘It’s a godsend, that is. You do a lot for her.’
‘She’s more than worth it,’ I say.
He gives me a quick, nervous smile, then looks away.
Now we are in the new house, things are supposed to ease, to click into something different.
Our old pine bed came with us but I bought a new duvet cover, patterned with spring meadow flowers in green and yellow. I felt guilty going shopping, as if I was being trivial and letting Paul down – again. The top of the chest of drawers in the corner looks unnaturally tidy without the normal piles of bits and pieces that never quite get cleared away.
When I come out of the ensuite bathroom, already in my nightshirt, Ian’s sitting on the side of the bed, bare to the waist, staring ahead of him as if he’s forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. I stop in the doorway and he doesn’t seem to hear me. The sight of him catches my breath. Ian. My husband. He doesn’t usually just sit like this and it’s as if I haven’t seen him, not looked at him, for years and years.
We’re middle-aged, I realize suddenly. We know in theory, of course. Both of us are on the wrong side of fifty-five – though me only by a few months. Ian’s fifty-eight now. During these two hellish years, we have noticed nothing, forgotten ourselves, each other.
Now in front of me I see a fleshy man, sallow-skinned, with good muscle tone. Yet in both his face and body I can see a look of such extreme weariness, a sort of inner exhaustion, that I start to panic. Is he ill?
He senses me looking and turns his head. So many times when we were young, those eyes used to fix on me full of Ian’s mischief, his desire. ‘A pair of brown eyes,’ I used to sing to him, tumbling into his arms. Now he doesn’t seem to see me, as if he’s staring straight through me. Just for a second he focuses, then, as if looking into a light that’s too bright, he closes down again, warily. I feel so alone, more alone than if he wasn’t here.
‘Ian?’ My voice comes out high, begging almost.
Our eyes meet for several seconds before he looks down. It feels as though we have both been pushed right out to the edges of ourselves, away from each other, as if we are moving round a vortex that has opened in the ground between us. We exist day to day, apart. But now he seems so afraid of me and I feel terribly guilty, until I realize how frightened I feel as well.
I force myself forward, barefoot, towards this stranger. It seems to take great effort, like pushing through some opposing force. I stop in front of him, just beyond the V of his legs. He looks up at me and I try to fix him, to keep him with me.
‘I’m sorry.’
Pain fills his face. For a moment I think he is going to cry, but instead he just wipes his hand across his forehead. ‘Yeah. Me too.’
Even now, his voice is flat. I feel flat as well. Neither of us can reach our feelings. What I want, I realize, desperately want, is for us to make love. It’s hardly happened, since Paul. I can barely remember when we last did anything physical – so few times in the past two years. Isn’t this somewhere where we can find each other again, be close, lose the terrible barriers between us?
I step closer, between his thighs. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I start to stroke him, his neck, his strong, straight hair, clean after his shower earlier. I can see his scalp showing through where the hair has thinned on top. There are only a few white hairs among the dark brown even now. Ian closes his eyes. All at once his arms are round me, pulling me to him so he can rest his cheek against my belly. My hands move down his back, stroking, soothing, myself as much as him. Gradually I slide down until I’m kneeling in his embrace, adjusting my arms under his so I can hold him and his arms tighten round my shoulders.
‘D’you mean it?’ he whispers. He’s frightened to give in to it. We’ve both switched off the physical part of ourselves for so long and now it’s hard to trust it.
‘Yes,’ I say, trying to, wanting comfort and closeness and release.
‘It’s just . . . It’s been so long. I hope I can . . .’
We start to tip back on the bed, trying to find echoes of our old rhythms, awkward. I push up on one arm, looking down at him, bend to kiss his cheek, then his lips, deeply, as if breathing life into him. But he is passive, not like my old Ian, as if something in him is frozen and he can’t allow himself to trust or let go.
Tears sting my eyes. I have to break through this somehow, have to save us. Reaching out my hand I start to caress his thigh, very slowly, circling my hand, keeping my eyes fixed on his.
We make love, but I do not cry and do not come. Ian, at first seeming to hold back, suddenly lets go in a frantic way, moving almost roughly in me as if he has to prove something. Afterwards we lie silently in each other’s arms for a while. It’s sad and I still feel alone – none of the talking or laughter of closeness that we used to have. But it is warm and I have to seize my mind and stop it going down that frozen track where everything is about loss.
We are both still here, we have each other’s warmth – it’s something.