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Extended Work
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| Three accounts of events - part 16 (a) | |
| By teddy | ||||||||||
| 17 June 2007 | ||||||||||
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I thought this chapter would fit all in one part, but I got carried away again, too many unimportant details I'm sure, but somehow I can never overpass them. I’m on my way to Kent to pick up Vicky from Paul’s parents. My eyes are mechanically following the road unrolling in front of the wheels, but my mind finds it hard to stick to the route. I’m just hoping I won’t get lost. It’s early Sunday evening and the traffic is, thank God, quite slack. My phone keeps ringing every five minutes, but I can’t be bothered to look at its screen anymore. I know it’s Paul, looking for me. I don’t want to speak to him though, I don’t think I ever want to speak to him again actually. It’s strange how one minute your life seems to be getting all on the right track, and happiness doesn’t seem that far from your doorstep anymore, then the next minute something happens and before you know it everything goes pearshape again. For weeks after we came back from New York, I felt guilty for spoiling that holiday. Maybe Paul was right, maybe I was exaggerating things. He must’ve felt neglected, and I should’ve have blamed him for trying to spend more time with me. And Vicky needed to get to know her grandparents better, perhaps it wasn’t really such a bad idea if she stayed with them once in a while. So I decided to make it up to Paul, and last week I booked a weekend away in the Cotswolds just for the two of us. ‘Another holiday? Gosh, girl, you’re really spoiling yourself, aren’t you?’ Tina looked at me surprised when I asked her for the phone number of the agency she and Craig use when they want to get away from London. She was still at a loss of why we came back from New York two days earlier than planned, but I couldn’t really tell her, could I? Things between Paul and her were bad enough as they were and I didn’t really want to give her any reasons to dislike him even more. ‘Oh well, Paul’s been working really hard recently. He needs a break,’ I told her. ‘Has he gone bankrupt or something?’ she asked after she gave me the number. I made a face, intrigued. ‘No. Why?’ ‘Well, I would’ve thought he could afford something better than a self-catering cottage in Cotswolds,’ she laughed. ‘No, this is going to be my treat,’ I explained. ‘I can’t afford more than that. And … hold on, what’s wrong with the Cotswolds? You and Craig are going there every year.’ I put on an indignant face. ‘Nothing.’ She glimpsed at me peculiarly. ‘I think you’re going nuts.’ Paul seemed quite excited about my plans. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked, incredulously at first. ‘Yes. On one condition though, I’m paying.’ I don’t really know what I was trying to prove, perhaps that one doesn’t need a horse carriage stacked up with money to enjoy things in life? ‘No, Adi, I can’t let you do that,’ he opposed the idea. ‘Ok, then we’re staying at home.’ He had to give in in the end. I was a bit worried though, the one bedroom cottage somewhere in the middle of nowhere I had booked wasn’t exactly rising up to the five star accommodation he was used to. I had to tell him, just trying to prevent any unpleasant surprises really. ‘Are you going to be there?’ he asked, with a witty smile hanging on the corner of his mouth. ‘No,’ I joked, ‘I’m sending you there all on your own. Course I’ll be there, you silly.’ ‘Well then, do you really think I’d care about anything else?’ I loved him for that. ‘Aren’t you going to miss Vicky though?’ I knew he was concerned that the New York unfortunate events might reoccur. I tried to put his mind at rest. ‘Of course I will.’ I smiled. ‘But it’s only for three days. Plus, we won’t be that far.’ I moved closer and snuggled up to his chest. ‘We’re on then?’ ‘Of course.’ He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ Well, I thought he deserved it. Things had been going on much better after we had come back from New York. He’d been more patient with Vicky and tried to spend more time with her. And amazingly, she’d seemed to warm up to him. True, slowly, but well, there’d been a hope. As with me, he’d been tender and more understanding. Well ok, there had been few arguments, but not that many, and I’d managed to overcome them quite boldly I’d say. So, on Friday morning we dropped off Vicky to his parents and headed off for the Cotswolds. The weatherman had predicted a fine summery weekend and it looked like he had got it right this time; the day was copiously bursting with dazzling sunshine, moulding the views caught through the car window in alabaster contours. We were almost at the end of the journey, and as we were crossing a market town, I asked Paul to drive into the car park of a Sainsbury I had spotted on the other side of the road. ‘Why?’ he asked curious before taking the turn. I smirked at him. ‘Have you ever been food shopping before?’ ‘Hmmm, no, not really,’ he glanced at me. ‘Well, there you go, your chance to have a taste of it.’ I don’t think he’d ever stepped into an ordinary supermarket until then. He laughed. ‘Can’t we just eat out?’ ‘We will,’ I said, ‘tomorrow night. But we still need to feed ourselves until then.’ ‘This is beautiful, sweetheart,’ Paul said after another twenty minutes drive along country lanes swelling across hills dyed in countless shades of green, when we finally arrived at the cottage, an aged limestone building with smidgens of green ivy dribbling along small wooden framed windows. A faded dry stone wall was squatting along the outer side of the front garden, with a tarnished iron gate dangled in the opening marking the entrance. A rose bush pelted with gaping white flowers was guarding the downstairs window. The outside beauty wasn’t spoiled by the inside décor. Flagstone floors were stretching all across the downstairs rooms. In the living room the low ceiling was crossed by dark wooden beams, and two pale blue couches were sprawled around a wooden trunk used as a coffee table with a rustic patterned rug spread out underneath. In front of them an ancient wood burning stove was sheltered by the stone wall. ‘Wow! Look at this!’ Paul exclaimed when we took our inspection upstairs to the bedroom. The room was overwhelmed by a large Victorian bed covered in immaculately clean white sheets. ‘You should’ve told me what you were planning, sweetheart. I would’ve saved my energy last night,’ he sneered at me. As if! I thought. Paul’s sexual appetite had always amazed me and made me wonder about my own. Until I met him I always thought that men in their mid or late thirties could never perform more than a few times a week, but Paul had long made me reconsider my views. He’d been always so, how can I put it, insatiable? It was no different then. ‘Let’s try it on,’ he pulled me closer to him, cheekily groping my behind. I laughed, pushing him away. ‘Later, I’m feeling too hot, plus I’m starving.’ After we had a quick lunch and a shower, to his delight we spent most of the afternoon in the bedroom, and the rest, when we finally managed to drag ourselves out of bed, lazing around a bottle of wine in the garden. The sun had already started to fade behind the hills parading in the horizon when I decided to make a move to the kitchen. ‘I’m going to start dinner,’ I told Paul, stretching across the garden table and placing a quick kiss on his nose. He got up. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’ I had to laugh. ‘You can’t cook, Paul.’ ‘Yes, I can,’ he objected my allegation, trying his best to look deeply offended. ‘I can make toast.’ I knew he was teasing me, but he seemed determined to make his contribution towards the meal so I had to let him. ‘You can peel the potatoes,’ I told him while trying to find my way around the kitchen. ‘What are we having?’ he asked while washing his hands in the sink. ‘Pork chops with chunky chips and salad.’ After I got the pans out, gave them a quick wipe before placing them on the hob, and seasoned the meat, I turned around expecting to find Paul still struggling with the peeling and ready to give him a hand. Instead of that, I found myself staring at a pile of symmetrically cut hunks of potatoes that would’ve made Gordon Ramsey proud. ‘How did you manage that?’ I looked at him bemused. He smiled. ‘I’m an architect, sweetheart. I’m used to shapes and dimensions.’ Once dinner was over we took another bottle of wine to the living room. I can’t remember much after that, I must’ve fallen asleep on the sofa while watching TV, and I think Paul took me upstairs because I woke up in bed in the morning, wearing very little under the sheets, when he dawdled a stroke on my back. ‘Come on, lazy, time to get up.’ In the afternoon I asked Paul if he wanted to go for a walk. ‘Sure, sweetheart, everything you want.’ We wandered off towards the peel of woods whirling along the outskirts of the tiny village. The good weather was sticking with the day and the sun was perking at us through crooked branches of old oak trees. A mild gust of air was wheezing over and through the foliage attempting to harmonize with the birds’ twittering. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?’ I squeezed Paul’s hand. ‘It is indeed, sweetheart.’ He slid his arm around my shoulders and pressed me tenderly against him. ‘Let’s sit down for a bit,’ I told him when we got to a speck of clearing. I sat down on the grass, bending my legs and clasping my arms around my knees. Paul lay down on his side beside me. I sighed deeply filling my lungs with a big gulp of clean air. ‘I wish we could stop the clock and stay here forever.’ ‘If you had no means of measuring the time how would you know it’d be forever?’ Paul laughed. ‘Eternity is timeless, it’s an incommensurable entity,’ I argued. ‘I disagree,’ Paul said, ‘even though it has no limits, eternity is still a time related dimension.’ I let him get away with it. ‘If you stopped the clock ticking,’ he carried on, smiling, ‘we’d never get old and Vicky would always be a baby. Don’t you want to see her grow up?’ ‘Of course I do,’ I looked at him. ‘She’s growing so fast sometimes she scares me.’ I leant back and stretched out next to him, clasping my hands at the back of my head. ‘Paul?’ ‘Mmmm?’ His fingers started toying with a strand of hair straying across my temple. ‘You ever think about the feature?’ ‘Yes, I do sometimes.’ ‘Am I in it?’ ‘Of course you are.’ The back of his hand lingered down on my face. ‘You and Vicky, and another half a dozen of little Harolds sprouting around us.’ ‘Hmmm,’ I gave him a quick weak smile. Maybe I should’ve come clean then. ‘Are you happy, Adi?’ he asked moving his hand down until it stopped, fingers spread out, on top of my tummy. ‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded closing my eyes. ‘Do I make you happy?’ ‘Yes, you do.’ A glitter of sunlight dangling on my face made me squint when I tried to open my eyes again. ‘You look like a little kitten,’ Paul smiled letting his finger trace an invisible line down on my face. I giggled. ‘Dan used to say that.’ ‘Who’s Dan?’ he asked stopping his finger on my chin. ‘My first boyfriend.’ ‘How long had you been together?’ The finger was moving again. ‘I dunno,’ I blinked blinded by another shaft of light fired at my eyes, ‘about four years I guess.’ ‘And why did you split up?’ The bugger started shagging my best friend behind my back. I kept the thoughts to myself though. I shrugged. ‘I came here to live with Tina, I suppose the distance made us drift apart. We were just kids, it wouldn't have worked anyway.’ Paul rolled on his back joining his hands on top of his forehead. ‘Was he your first, Adi?’ I knew what he was asking. ‘Uh-huh.’ ‘How about you?’ I turned my head to him. ‘What about me?’ ‘Who was your first?’ I could only see the side of his face, but there was a streak of coldness in his voice when he answered. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He shifted upwards and got up. ‘Let’s make a move back. It’s getting late.’ He turned around and started walking fast across the meadow. I had no choice but to follow him. ‘Paul, please, wait for me,’ I begged while struggling to keep up with him. ‘Hurry up then,’ he said without turning around. I couldn’t understand what had got into him. I thought he was just pulling my leg, trying to stir my curiosity. ‘Oh come on, Paul, why don’t you want to tell me?’ I shouted trying to make him stop. ‘Ok,’ I laughed, ‘I know, it must’ve been your maths teacher, blonde, early thirties, good looking, am I right?’ He didn’t answer, just kept walking. ‘Don’t tell me I was the one.’ I teased him further. I bent over, picked up an acorn and threw it at him. I didn’t think it would reach him, he was quite few steps ahead, but the thing hit the back of his neck. He suddenly stopped and turned to me. ‘Will you stop going on about it?’ He sounded quite annoyed. He then turned around and carried on walking. I froze taken aback for a moment. What the hell was wrong with him? We had had such a good time until then. I didn’t want to spoil the day though so I quickly run to him, sliding myself underneath his arm and wrapping mine around his waist. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ He squeezed me against him. ‘It’s ok, sweetheart. Let’s go get something to eat, I’m starving. ‘ Later on that evening, when I was lying in bed in his arms, I thought about what he’d asked me earlier, if he was making me happy, and I knew I wasn’t lying when I said yes. That moment I really felt that nothing could ever spoil again what we had. This morning we headed back to London. We decided to go home first and pick up Vicky from Kent later this afternoon. I was downstairs in the laundry room, loading up the washing machine with the dirty clothes I had just emptied from our bags when I heard him calling me. ‘Adi, come here a second, will you?’ ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ I answered. ‘No, come here now.’ Now what does he want, I wondered. He knows I’m busy. ‘What’s this?’ he asked when I walked into the bedroom; he was holding a blister strip of tablets in the air. I knew straight away what they were. ‘My contraceptive pills,’ I said weakly. I wondered how he’d found them, I was sure I’d hidden them in my handbag. ‘When did you start taking them?’ He was squinting at me, little creases disturbing the skin on his forehead, a symptom I so well knew. ‘Quite a while ago.’ ‘How long exactly?’ I could sense the storm behind the icy calmness in his voice, and my heart shrunk. ‘I dunno,’ I shrugged, ‘quite long, after I gave birth to Vicky.’ I gulped anxiously. I think that was all the excuse he needed. ‘Don’t fucking lie to me,’ he exploded with anger. ‘You were pregnant when you had the accident. Do you think I’m fucking stupid? It was only three months ago when you were asking me to be careful, remember? Now why would you do that if you were already on the pill?’ He was right, I’d started taking them when I noticed he was quite careless when we were having sex. He just laughed when I mentioned it to him. But I don’t want another child, not yet anyway, so I had decided to take the matter in my own hands. This morning I told him. ‘No, no, Adi, that’s not the truth, is it?’ he shook his head bitterly. ‘It’s not that you don’t want anymore kids, you don’t want mines. You were quite happy to carry George’s.’ ‘But we’ve got Vicky. If you just let me explain….’ I tried to calm him down. ‘There’s nothing to explain. Ever since I met you,’ he pointed an angry finger at me, ‘you’ve always, always gone behind my back. How the fuck can I ever trust you?’ His arm swung backwards and forwards and my pills flew through the air hitting the wall opposite before plunging down to the floor. ‘Why do you always have to spoil everything I'm trying to give you?’ he shouted heading for the door. I made an attempt to stop him. ‘Paul, please…’ ‘Get out of my way,’ he eyed me coldly and I had no choice but to let him go. Few moments later I heard the entrance doors slammed heavily. He was gone. It took me ages before I managed to calm down. Was I really at fault? It was true, I didn’t tell him about the pills, but we had never talked properly about having another kid. And how could I have agreed with it when the bond between him and Vicky was still so fragile? I waited for him to come back, God knows how long, an hour or longer. When the second one passed I decided to call him. His parents were expecting us and I wanted to see my baby. But every time I rang the call went straight to his voicemail. For another hour I rumbled around the house like a lion trapped in a cage. It was nearly five o’clock when I thought I’d give it another try. If he doesn’t answer then stuff him, I thought, I’ll go to Kent on my own. Surprisingly this time the phone rang. ‘Hello, Paul’s phone,’ I heard a feminine voice picking up the call. I went silent for a moment. Who the hell is this? Has he gone to the office? But it’s Sunday, surely no one’s there. ‘Hi,’ I managed to say eventually. ‘Is Paul there?’ ‘I’m afraid not. Is that Adi?’ The voice sounded somehow familiar. ‘Yes, it is,’ I confirmed. ‘Oh, hi Adi. It’s Joanne. We met at Vicky’s birthday party if you remember.’ I felt my heart going cold and my hand gripping the phone. ‘Paul’s just having a shower. Is everything all right?’ ‘Yes, thank you.’ I had to pull all my strength to stay composed. ‘How are Vicky and George?’ ‘They’re fine, thank you.’ ‘Well, I’ll tell Paul you’ve rung,’ she said. ‘No,’ I grinned grimly at my reflection in the wardrobe door’s mirror, ‘don’t bother him. It’s nothing important. I’ll give him another call sometime next week.’ My hand was badly shaking when I put the phone down. Ten minutes on and I’ll be with my Vicky. I’ve got two bags packed with our stuff in the boot of my car. I’ll pick up the rest later on. I’ve already phoned up Tina and asked her if we could stay at theirs for a while. And of course she said yes. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Paul’s parents, but to be honest I don’t really care. All I want is to get my baby and go back to Tina’s. We have always felt safe and at home there.
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