were in danger of getting beyond my control, I rang up Shirley’s father the following week and began a very, but very careful spiel I’d prepared in every detail: about Shirley being depressed because of the miserable flat we’d been in too long, about the landlady never wanting to decorate or replace anything, about the rental market being so hopeless these days with the ludicrously pro-tenant rules the Labour government had introduced and Margaret hadn’t as yet got round to repealing, about the price of property being so high it was unimaginable for two young people to buy a decent place on their own – and I asked him was there any chance, now I’d put a bit of money together myself, because I was saving about thirty per cent of my income – was there any chance that he could maybe chip in, rather massively actually, and . . .
He said: ‘Not till I’m sure just how the settlement’s going to go with Mary, I’m afraid.’
It was lunchtime and when I’d got the phone down I looked at the world map on the wall where tiny flags showed all the countries where my software was being used. From Panama to Portugal, it said on the brochure, Austria to Australia. Why is it, I wondered, that I am always to be excluded from the intimate affairs of the lives of people close to me? Why? Why do they keep me out? I was hurt, angry.
‘But why should you need to be told?’ Shirley retorted.
‘Because we’re married for Christ’s sake! Because we’re supposed to be sharing our lives. You complain I don’t understand you and then you don’t tell me what I need to know to have a chance. Obviously it’s been upsetting you. It explains everything. And I’ve been faffing about in the dark for months.’
She said perhaps I was right. Yes, probably I was right. But she just hadn’t felt like telling me. She hadn’t the heart to talk about it. It was so awful. Her parents had beensuch a fixed point in her life, she’d never even realised really.
She was on the brink of tears, and for once I was allowed to console her.
But over the next months, though it seemed impossible, and above all unnecessary, the tension heightened. Shirley would be sullen and moody on my arrival home and almost anything I said would cause a flare up. I might innocently ask what was for dinner and abruptly be told I could bloody well get my dinner myself. I might, despite office weariness, traffic weariness, a briefcase full of work, offer to go to the Indian shop, pick up some goodies, and immediately have to hear that since I was no good at doing the shopping and always brought home the wrong things there was no point in my going, was there?
Of course, from what one gathers from magazine articles, TV documentaries, radio plays while washing the car, etc., it did occur to me that Shirl might be suffering from some sort of physical/mental illness, or even stress, and that perhaps I should be feeling sorry for her, rather than the opposite. This I honestly tried to do. But then I also thought that if she was prone to suffering from, say, clinical depression (though she never had so suffered in the seven previous years I’d known her), then I personally didn’t want to be the one who carried the gloomy can for the rest of my life, did I? It was a serious problem.
I stroked the wispy hair at the fine nape of her neck as she sat on the floor, back to the sofa, watching TV. She shook my hand off.
Or at least scenes like this occurred. Why couldn’t we be cheerful?
I said: ‘Fancy a pint down the Torrington? Bound to meet somebody.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Bit of a tipple, pinch your nipple.’
Nothing. No response.
I phoned her brother Charles, met him in a pub in Kentish Town and over a couple of jars asked him what he thought.Had Shirley ever suffered from depression as a child? He smoked heavily from my pack of Rothmans, playing a fifty-p piece across pale knuckles. He said Shirley had always been the parents’ favourite, they had
He said: ‘Not till I’m sure just how the settlement’s going to go with Mary, I’m afraid.’
It was lunchtime and when I’d got the phone down I looked at the world map on the wall where tiny flags showed all the countries where my software was being used. From Panama to Portugal, it said on the brochure, Austria to Australia. Why is it, I wondered, that I am always to be excluded from the intimate affairs of the lives of people close to me? Why? Why do they keep me out? I was hurt, angry.
‘But why should you need to be told?’ Shirley retorted.
‘Because we’re married for Christ’s sake! Because we’re supposed to be sharing our lives. You complain I don’t understand you and then you don’t tell me what I need to know to have a chance. Obviously it’s been upsetting you. It explains everything. And I’ve been faffing about in the dark for months.’
She said perhaps I was right. Yes, probably I was right. But she just hadn’t felt like telling me. She hadn’t the heart to talk about it. It was so awful. Her parents had beensuch a fixed point in her life, she’d never even realised really.
She was on the brink of tears, and for once I was allowed to console her.
But over the next months, though it seemed impossible, and above all unnecessary, the tension heightened. Shirley would be sullen and moody on my arrival home and almost anything I said would cause a flare up. I might innocently ask what was for dinner and abruptly be told I could bloody well get my dinner myself. I might, despite office weariness, traffic weariness, a briefcase full of work, offer to go to the Indian shop, pick up some goodies, and immediately have to hear that since I was no good at doing the shopping and always brought home the wrong things there was no point in my going, was there?
Of course, from what one gathers from magazine articles, TV documentaries, radio plays while washing the car, etc., it did occur to me that Shirl might be suffering from some sort of physical/mental illness, or even stress, and that perhaps I should be feeling sorry for her, rather than the opposite. This I honestly tried to do. But then I also thought that if she was prone to suffering from, say, clinical depression (though she never had so suffered in the seven previous years I’d known her), then I personally didn’t want to be the one who carried the gloomy can for the rest of my life, did I? It was a serious problem.
I stroked the wispy hair at the fine nape of her neck as she sat on the floor, back to the sofa, watching TV. She shook my hand off.
Or at least scenes like this occurred. Why couldn’t we be cheerful?
I said: ‘Fancy a pint down the Torrington? Bound to meet somebody.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Bit of a tipple, pinch your nipple.’
Nothing. No response.
I phoned her brother Charles, met him in a pub in Kentish Town and over a couple of jars asked him what he thought.Had Shirley ever suffered from depression as a child? He smoked heavily from my pack of Rothmans, playing a fifty-p piece across pale knuckles. He said Shirley had always been the parents’ favourite, they had
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