Fandango in the Apse! Read online

  ‘I…I always get everything wrong,’ I hiccupped. ‘I’m useless.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he said, laughing. ‘Just young and in need of a little guidance. To be honest, Katie, I’m glad this happened. I’ve been trying to broach the subject of your clothes for a while.’ Oh thanks, I thought. Don’t bother wrapping it up and sticking a bow on top, will you?

  Suddenly Eddie jumped up from the sofa and smacked his hand on his forehead. ‘Why didn’t I think of this before?’

  His quick movement startled me. ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Move in with me… no, what the hell… marry me Katie!’

  I was gobsmacked. Marriage was not something I had thought about, but now the idea was in my head; its appeal was growing on me. To have someone else to pay the bills and shoulder the worry of day-to-day life seemed like a godsend. I would be able to move out of the bed-sit and into Eddie’s light and airy semi, and have house-keeping money and be ferried around in a car… or even a car of my own.

  Not ideal reasons for marrying somebody, are they? But at the time, all I craved was security, whether I loved Eddie or not didn’t enter my head.

  Chapter Five

  A month later and exactly six months after we met, Eddie and I tied the knot. It was a small registry office wedding with just two friends of his from the rugby club, and Jean and Arthur his parents, from whom I detected a less than happy welcome into the Roberts clan. Alison and Mark arrived at the last minute after their elderly car had broken down on the way.

  I think right from the start we were a disappointment to each other. He was nine years older than me and at twenty-seven, far more set in his ways than I realised. He was also a fastidious bugger, I had always known this, but it was more apparent when we were married.

  Everything had to be just so, he liked his eggs boiled for precisely four minutes and twenty seconds. His steak and kidney pie had to have a ratio of seventy-thirty, and I swear he could tell if one extra piece of kidney found its way under the pastry. His shirt cuffs could only have one crease and he liked me to polish the bath taps after cleaning them; something his mother always did, he informed me. Well, three cheers for Saint-bloody-Jean. He also liked to choose my clothes and fully expected me to look like I’d stepped out of a film set every day.

  Safe in the knowledge that he had someone to cater to his every whim, Eddie returned to his bachelor lifestyle with indecent haste. He still went on rugby weekends, beer nights with the boys and “men only” away matches. For me, the joys of marriage wore thin very quickly.

  A year in – right at the time I realised marriage wasn’t for me, I found out I was expecting my first child.

  ‘Well… what do you think?’ I asked Eddie, who seemed to be struck dumb by the prospect of fatherhood.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he managed eventually.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Weren’t you listening? I’ve just told you… I phoned the doctor this afternoon. He gave me the results; I don’t think they get things like this wrong, do you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so… Wow! I’m going to be a Dad.’

  ‘Yes and I’m going to be a mother.’ Eddie on his way to the fridge, presumably for a celebratory beer, stopped in his tracks to stare at me.

  ‘What’s the matter, you don’t seem pleased at the prospect?’

  Much to Eddie’s consternation, I burst into tears. He sat on the chair next to me and gathered me up to rest against his chest.

  ‘Shush Katie…’ he soothed. ‘Tell me, what’s the matter?’

  But I couldn’t – how could I tell him the thought of motherhood terrified me. I shook my head.

  ‘Come on sweetie, tell me what’s worrying you,’ he tried again. I shook my head a second time. The trouble was, patience was not one of Eddie’s virtues and when he asked a third time, and I still continued shredding a damp tissue, refusing to answer him, I pushed him too far.

  ‘For God’s sake, Katie…I haven’t got crystal bollocks. How am I supposed to know what’s wrong if you don’t tell me?’ he said, while pushing me away none too gently. ‘Am I supposed to guess? Is that…’

  ‘I’m scared I’ll turn into my mother.’

  ‘What?’

  I’m scared I’ll turn into my mother,’ I repeated. ‘What if I don’t love this baby…what if I hate it Eddie? What if it hates me?’

  ‘Is that what all this is about? Katie you will be a great mother and you will love this baby.’

  ‘But you can’t be certain of that, neither of us can.’

  ‘I’m certain of one thing; you are nothing like your mother.’

  ‘Eddie, you don’t know my mother,’ I reminded him.

  ‘No, but I know you.’

  I can’t say the early months of my pregnancy were great, most of them were spent inspecting the u-bend at the bottom of our loo, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I still had my niggling fears about my mother passing on a defective gene. Then one Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in the garden watching Eddie destroy the weeds with military precision, when I felt a feathery-like touch in my belly. At first, I thought I had imagined it, but then it happened again, there was no mistaking it this time.

  ‘Eddie,’ I whispered. ‘Come here quick.’ He bounded over in three strides, scaring Jester, our hopelessly stupid, but much loved St Bernard, who had been sunning himself by my chair.

  ‘What’s up, are you OK? Why are you whispering?’ I had no idea why, so I used my normal voice next time.

  ‘Give me your hand, the baby is kicking.’

  ‘Really?’

  I placed his hand over the area where I’d felt the movement and waited. We were both staring into each other’s eyes expectantly.

  ‘There! Did you feel it?’ I exclaimed triumphantly.

  ‘Mmm…no.’

  ‘What do you mean no? It was as clear as day.’

  Sensing tantrum brewing, Eddie replaced his hand and we waited again.

  ‘Did you feel it that time?’ I asked, after another flutter.

  ‘Yes…wow, that’s amazing.’

  ‘You’re not pretending, are you? You really did feel it?

  ‘Of course I did,’ he answered, but I had a sneaking suspicion he was humouring me. I wasn’t really bothered though, because those tiny flutters had shown me one thing. I couldn’t wait to be a mother.

  Although Eddie was looking forward to being a father, the mechanics of the process left him cold. At around eight months, he broached the subject that had obviously played on his mind for some time. We were in the car on the way to his mother’s house. I was already cross, because Sunday tea with Jean and Arthur was not my idea of a good time.

  ‘I don’t think I want to be at the birth Katie.’

  ‘No, me neither, but it has to be done…there isn’t a lot of choice in these things you know.’

  Eddie gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white.

  ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘I mean I don’t want to be there.’

  ‘What? You’re joking right?’

  ‘Katie, I just think it will have a detrimental effect.’

  ‘A detrimental effect on what? For goodness sake Eddie…make sense, will you?’

  ‘Well you know… afterwards,’ he said, nodding his head in the direction of my lap. Jesus, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  ‘You know…’ his eyes pleaded. ‘It might not be the same, I might not feel the same.’

  Oh and what a huge difference that would make, I thought. It wasn’t as if we had a thriving sex life as it was. In fact, if I hadn’t been stone cold sober at the time, I would have assumed the baby had been an immaculate conception. I had to give full marks to the sperm for tenacity. It’d obviously thought it was then or never and had shot off hell for leather, in case it never got another chance.

  ‘You are a selfish bastard, Eddie.’

  I turned my head out to the passing scenery and refused to speak to him again.

  I was still fum
ing when I sat down to the usual bland ham salad and apple pie, that was the eternal Sunday tea at Jean’s house. I didn’t normally bother to voice an opinion during these visits, mainly because it was usually ignored, but on this occasion I felt sure that Jean would be on my side… after all she had given birth herself.

  ‘Eddie doesn’t want to be at the birth,’ I ventured, into a lull in the conversation.

  ‘Quite right too,’ Jean sniffed. ‘I would never have dreamed of subjecting Arthur to that…some things are best kept private you know. My mother would have been shocked to the core by what goes on these days.’

  I shut my mouth from there on in, and counted the minute hand on the brass carriage clock sitting on a lace doily on top of the television, until it was time to leave.

  ‘Well at least Mummy is on your side,’ I said nastily, once we were back in the car.

  Having gone through the agony of bringing his son into the world with only Alison and Mrs Bunn for company, the previous year, I was determined he would witness the second, when barely three months after Toby’s birth, I was pregnant again. I know I just mentioned the state of our non-existent sex life, but this was a one off quickie after the first full night’s sleep either of us had had for weeks.

  ‘You are going to be there Eddie and I don’t care what you or your bloody mother thinks. You didn’t complain at the conception, so you needn’t flippin’ well complain now.’

  ‘I’d really rather not, Katie… childbirth by all accounts is a messy business.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock… give the man a medal for observation.’

  ‘You know how queasy I get, even road kill makes me want to throw up,’ Eddie whined.

  ‘Oh, would you just listen to yourself? It’s a birth, Eddie… not a murder scene.’

  On and on the argument went until finally, and definitely under duress, he caved in. Actually, as it turned out this was not the victory I had imagined it to be. I went into labour in the early hours of the morning and at seven, I decided it was time to go into hospital. After dropping Toby off with Jean and Arthur, we made slow progress through the morning rush hour traffic. Eddie made one last ditch attempt at wriggling out of his fatherly duty and very nearly got a smack in his mouth for his trouble. However, after a couple of hours on the ward, I was reconsidering my decision to insist on his presence. He was as much use as a fairy’s fart.

  Any woman reading this who has given birth will understand what I mean. Picture the scene… me in a hospital bed in the last stages of labour. Husband, white faced, asking me if it would be possible not to scream so loudly because I was giving him a headache. Jesus, I know men are insensitive, but that beat all as far as I was concerned. I looked at Eddie with all the contempt he deserved.

  ‘OK, I tell you what, Eddie,’ I said, through teeth gritted against the pain. ‘The next time you try silently shitting a pineapple, spiky end first, is the next time you can tell me to be quiet, you got that?’ It didn’t go down well with anybody in the room, but I was rather proud of my spontaneity, given the circumstances.

  Being the mother of two small babies has a way of wiping your mind clear of anything, other than dirty nappies, middle of the night feeds and the savage determination to get at least three consecutive hours of sleep a night. My dissatisfaction with my marriage paled into insignificance amongst the Everest height mountain of washing and ironing. Having time to clean the house from top to bottom back then seemed a luxury, not that I ever did clean from top to bottom. I’ve only ever done what was necessary, if I found a cobweb I got rid of it, but I never went looking for them. I derived great pleasure from not having my mother’s anal obsession with cleanliness.

  Eddie’s assurance that he was fully prepared to help now we had two children, lasted about five minutes. His first dirty nappy had him running for cover. OK, it was a bad one. Sam had obviously decided it would be fun to store up and then evacuate his bowels in one fell swoop. The resultant mess was a shock to Eddie’s system.

  ‘Are they supposed to do that much?’ he asked, while holding his nose as I was cleaning poo from halfway up Sam’s back.

  ‘Well it’s a natural bodily function, so I would assume so.’ I was getting really fed up with Eddie’s lily-livered approach to fatherhood.

  That set the pattern for Eddie’s interaction with the kids. So long as I had them pre-washed, pre-packed and ready to go, he was fine. The merest hint of a “jobby” (his word), would cause his migration to his study until the coast was clear.

  I, on the other hand, embraced motherhood with gusto. If any of the drawbacks became anything more than a passing thought, I found I only had to watch the babies in their cots at night to set my world to rights. Their soft pink faces relaxed in sleep could evoke a completely ungovernable strength of emotion that often had me close to tears. Toby’s chubby fists tucked under his chin or Sam’s gentle sucking sounds as he slept never failed to touch me on a spiritual level. To me, their sleeping beauty had an ethereal quality. Not so during daylight hours though. Yellow poo, green snot and tantrums, tended to spoil things a bit.

  When Toby was three, it became glaring obvious that my hastily patched over marriage was in crisis. I was sure Eddie (the bastard), was having an affair. Can you believe it? OK, I have to accept some of the blame – I think. While enjoying the joys of motherhood, it would be fair to say I took my eyes off the prize. Do this at your peril people – you need to stroke men’s egos, bodies and balding heads on a regular basis to keep them both focused and faithful. If you fail in this fundamental rule, I’m afraid you, like me, will have no one to blame but yourselves.

  All right, I admit unreservedly, my wifely allure was definitely on an unchecked downward trajectory. In fact, I was barely keeping my head above apathetic extinction; I had in all areas, barring motherhood, withdrawn from life. Without me noticing, work and the women therein, had become Eddie’s panacea for the shortcomings of our life together.

  In the end, I locked myself in the dining room and phoned Alison. She and Mark had married two years previously after the birth of their son, Luke, and we remained as close as ever.

  ‘How fucking dare he, Alison?’ I ranted. ‘I mean does it really matter that I’ve given up trying to squeeze my size twelve arse into my size ten jeans?’

  ‘No of course…’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I wear comfy clothes round the house…well not just round the house, I do tend to wear them most of the time now, but so what?

  ‘Exactly Katie, so…’

  ‘I mean for God’s sake Alison, is it a crime punishable by adultery to prefer flip-flops to four inch heels? I think not!’

  ‘I agree, but Eddie obviously has other ideas, do you know who she is?’ said Alison.

  ‘Not a clue, but I will find out.’

  ‘Right, well keep me posted, I’ll have to go Luke is howling for his bottle, but you know where I am if you need me.’

  ‘Thanks Alison, I’m sorry to drop all this in your lap, but I had to speak to someone.’

  ‘No probs, hun, what are friends for?’

  I had tried to put Eddie’s possible infidelity to the back of my mind and very nearly succeeded, until something happened a few weeks after I had spoken to Alison. It all came to light after a party. There’s nothing like a party to illuminate the gaping holes in a relationship, don’t you think? Eddie, after a recurring knee injury had given up playing rugby the previous year. In an effort to ward off his thickening waist and rounding chops, and on the recommendation of a work “colleague”, he had joined the golf club.

  The yearly sycophantic, mutual pat on the back, prize-giving ceremony was one usually attended by spouses according to Eddie, (although he preferred to called it presentation night), when he mentioned it two days before the event, after apparently “forgetting” all about it.

  ‘If you really would prefer not to go, I suppose I’ll manage. Anyway, I don’t suppose you’d have time to go shopping for a dress now, will you?’ he said hopefull
y.

  Getting a distinct whiff of his reluctance for my company, I perversely decided I would go.

  ‘No it’s OK , I’ll come. I’ll nip into town tomorrow, I’m sure your mother will have the boys for an hour. I’ll ask her if she’ll babysit too if you like, it’ll save you the bother?’

  Mistake or not? I’ll let you decide.

  It all kicked off admirably in the beginning. A new hair-do, carefully applied make-up, combined with a new frock went a long way towards my feelings of rehabilitation into the land of the grown-ups. I looked good, I felt good. In fact, I felt renewed. This feeling stayed with me right up to the point of meeting Heidi Marshall.

  You know when you meet a person, who with just a raise of an eyebrow or a hint of a smirk can immediately make you feel gauche or inferior – that was Heidi Marshall. Unused as I was to the social whirl, I was doing my best to hold my own in a conversation with half a dozen demigods of the golfing fraternity, when I first caught sight of her.

  A honey-blonde (aren’t they always?), with great legs, she had an assurance of someone used to being admired. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she made a beeline for the bar and Eddie – who was supposed to be getting my fourth brandy incidentally. Ten minutes later, all out of conversation and nursing an empty glass, I headed over to them.

  ‘Ah Katie… there you are. I was just about to come and look for you,” Eddie said in an odd voice. He had the appearance of someone who was up to no good.

  ‘Well you wouldn’t have had to look far; I was exactly where you left me.’ I accompanied my words with a smile in order to cover the slightly acidic tone I’d used and regretted instantly. I wasn’t going to give willowy blonde-haired person, the impression I was in any way miffed at Eddie’s desertion in her favour.

  ‘Heidi, let me introduce my wife, Katie, Katie this is a colleague from work Heidi Marshall.’

  ‘Hi there, Katie, great to meet you at last,’ she said, as she held out a perfectly manicured hand. ‘You’re looking very…nice.’