The Last Year Of Being Single

Paul had just split from his girlfriend, Gillian, who was still ‘hanging around’. He told me it wasn’t until he met me that he realised how unhappy he was with her. He said he’d continued to see her, but only for sex. Occasionally Paul would say something that would make me stop and think, That’s cruel or mean, but there were so many pluses, what of the negatives? Of the little snide comments about past girlfriends? How they had hurt him and weren’t quite up to his standards—which were high. I felt sorry for her. This pre-Sarah girlfriend called Gillian. She would stalk the house occasionally and ask to see him. He once returned to the house two hours later than he’d said. I’d cooked something simple. Steak. So it was about two hours overdone. And he explained that he had seen Gillian and that she had been very upset and wanted him back but that he had told her it was all over. That he had been very calm about it. That she had looked dreadful. Her nails were bitten and she had started to smoke, but he had moved on. This wasn’t for him. He then kissed me, told me he loved me, and allowed me to go down on him. Bless. And he wasn’t hungry—for food—so not to worry about the steak.

Sometimes Paul came out with lines—as in well-rehearsed verging on the corny ‘I need space/must move on’ variety. I felt somehow he had probably told Gillian the same story when he had dumped his previous girlfriend for her. I occasionally got the feeling he used the same lines, because they came out as sing-song. I knew this because most men I knew did it and most women I knew did it. But, hey, I was guilty of that too. And I felt he was genuine when he looked into my eyes and said he loved me and called me his angel and little pixie and that I was wonderful. And I thought he was wonderful and special because he loved me. And deep down I didn’t want to believe him. And I did.

We got on to the subject of past boy and girlfriends, as you do. And shouldn’t.

Paul—‘What were yours like?’

Sarah—‘I had one, really. David. Who kept buggering off to Saudi Arabia to find himself in the desert and always managed to find his way back home after a few months. But that was it. How about you?’

Paul—‘Well, before Gillian there was Eve, and before that there was Isabel and a girl called Tracy, but she didn’t count, really. I was embarrassed to be seen with her. I used her a bit. I liked Eve. She was short and plump. Sort of like a moped. Fun to ride but not for best. Gillian, who you know of—well, I just got tired of her coz she moaned a lot in the end and wanted to get married and I didn’t want that. And she did. Very mature for her age she was. So was Eve. Isabel was sort of a school romance. You’re breaking my criteria, really. You don’t have a chest, you’re not shorter than me—or really short, which is what I usually go for, for some reason, and you’re not the mature type.’

Sarah—‘Sounds as though you want someone to look up to you and want to fuck your mother.’

Think he was a bit shocked by me being so up-front, but, hey, I’d met the type before. In fact, methinks that most of the men I had met were hunting for their mums. They said they wanted independent-minded feisty women but bottom line is they didn’t. Not really. Problem with independent feisty women is that usually they also like their own space, want to move on and are capable of doing so—and don’t want to do anyone’s cooking, cleaning, ironing, washing. At a push, only their own.

Paul—‘No, I’m not looking to marry my mother. But you have broken the criteria. Most men have a wish-list. Just depends when they decide to break it. Sometimes it’s tried and tested. Sometimes it evolves. Mark, my brother, always goes for townies. Girls who work in London, good job, must be beautiful and have a brain and humour and conversation. Do you have a wish-list of things to look for in a man?’

Sarah—‘Kind, loving, intelligent, funny, nice hands, nice eyes, nice hair, over six foot. Handsome, if possible. Good dancer.’

Paul—‘Well, I’m most of those things. Just six foot, though. And I think you can ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you I’m not a cruel person. As for the rest. You decide. I like a woman with her own mind.’

Sarah—‘Really? Most men I know say that, but what they really mean is that as long as their opinions are the same as theirs, they’re welcome to have an opinion. If they’re not, well, they might as well not have one.’ Paul—‘I’m not like that.’

We’ll see, I thought. But as the weeks rolled on he proved himself to be kind and considerate and generous and loving, and occasionally boorish but a very good dancer and very sexy—in and out of bed. I remember him looking at me one evening and calling me his angel with tears in his eyes and me thinking, Hey, I would love to be your angel. Just yours. Just the two of us. As he would say to me, ‘Two of us against the world.’ I never really got that bit. I never thought the world was against me. I always felt I had to make it work for me. Somehow I had to work with this gritty, nasty world rather than against it. I had to be kind to it, and it would be kind to me. But Paul had other qualities which more than made up for some of his reasoning.

For a start, he was romantic without trying. He never sent Valentine cards. Which miffed me as friends received bouquets and dinners at the Ivy or Samling in Windermere. Instead, on one February fourteenth, he wrote a card …

Dear Sarah

As you know, I don’t believe in celebrating Valentine’s Day. It always seems a pity that people need something as commercialised as VD to show each other they need each other. However, it would appear that you feel you need reminding.

Well, let me take this opportunity to make sure you realise that you are the most important thing in my life. You cause such extremes of emotion. I love you so much sometimes I need to come up to the surface to breathe before I can dive again to be surrounded by your love.

My feelings for you go beyond just affection. I think about everything that affects you. Sometimes you catch me just staring at you—it’s as though I don’t even have to touch you. Just looking at you I feel our love. You are the only person I have ever met who in the same minute can drag me to the edge of despair and desperation and as I’m about to fall grab me and hold me close. You should always know that even when I’m not with you you are in my thoughts and that I can’t experience love unless I’m in your presence, because only then do you release my heart from the prison you’ve built for it, to let me really feel what love is.

You must never doubt me—because through all that has happened to us in the last two and a half years I’ve never really doubted you.

Together, Sarah, we will be something very special. Like everything that’s good in life it has to be worth waiting for. Trust in me as I’ve trusted you. Let me into your world as I’ve let you into my heart. Words can only say so much. Just believe.

Love, your Paul. xxxxx

I desperately wanted to believe. At the beginning we would write notes to each other—at least three a week. My feelings would inspire poetry. Sounds naff, but I sent love poems and letters. Do people do that any more? The old–fashioned way. Handwritten in cards. I was always getting the length wrong and having to use the back cover to complete my work. E-mail and text messaging are so deletable and lazy and quick. Not as clever. Writing takes longer. Means more. Mistakes, smudged by tears, crossings-out and all.

To Paul …

Your name means strength and valour You come from noble stock You’ll travel like your father To find what others mock

You’re a leader and a driver Leaving passengers behind You act when others wonder How quickly works your mind

You understand the Game of Life As though you’ve played it all before Aching as each new morning breaks To improve upon your score

You have few faults in my eyes But my eyes are blind to see All the faults and contradictions That you often find in me.

I’ve never felt this hurt before I’ve never known this joy Echoing through my heart and mind Becoming as fragile as a toy.

Love Sarah xxx

First Christmas I wanted to spend with him. But his father didn’t think it right.

‘You haven’t known this girl long.’

‘I’ve known her for four months.’

‘Not long enough. Just our family should be here, Paul. Can’t she go with her own family?’

‘She doesn’t want to.’

I didn’t want to. Mum was driving me nuts. So I didn’t spend Christmas Day with my love. I spent it with my ex. With David.

David had returned from one of his Saudi I-will-find–my-focus trips, to discover his long-suffering girlfriend had found a focus of her own and he wasn’t in it. After taking all his furniture from the flat we’d shared (i.e. three-quarters of it) when I was away and leaving me with minimalist decor—which had up sides (less to clean and I didn’t like his stuff anyway)—he calmed down. Realised he was a prat. And asked to see me. To have dinner. I declined. But he called after Paul told me we wouldn’t be spending Christmas together. I said I was fine. David said I couldn’t spend it by myself. He said he’d take me out to dinner.

He took me to Paris. By Eurostar. First Class. Montmartre and Sacre Coeur on Christmas Eve and top of Eiffel Tower on Christmas Day. At the top he proposed.

David—‘Sarah, I have something to ask you.’

Sarah—‘What?’

David—taking little black box from his pocket—‘Will you …?’

Sarah—realising what little black box contained and thinking on feet—‘Stop. No. Don’t. I’m not right for you. You know I’m not.’

David—looking shocked and dejected—‘I understand.’ (He didn’t)

Long hug. Saying nothing. Him in tears. Me trying to be.

I said no. I said I was saving him from himself and myself and that in years to come he would thank me. He looked crestfallen, but I was adamant. Plus I didn’t love him. Not that way. We ate at the restaurant in Gare de Lyon. Ornate and grand and value for money—a rare combination. We then returned home, still friends. He dropped me at the bottom of Paul’s parents’ road. I walked up to be greeted by Paul and family as though I was one of them. Although obviously not on Christmas Day.

Looking back, my relationship with Paul in those first years was innocent and special and wonderful and naïve and I wish it could have lasted for ever. But, like the ink on the cards and letters, over time it faded leaving only the impression of happiness rather than the reality of it.

I keep a box of the letters and cards. They stopped about the fourth year. The last note I wrote was a contract of love. I’d applied to so many jobs over the years, I thought I could work the format. A request for a full-time position in his life.

Dear Mr O’Brian

RE: POSITION AS LIVE-IN SPOUSE

I’m writing to express my interest in the position of best friend, lover, occasional domestic, gardener, sexual arouser, hostess, intelligent wit and sleeping partner to Mr Paul O’Brian. My relevant experience and learning points to date include:

• How to balance precariously on knees without using hands, and bending over at an angle. The only thing stopping me from toppling over is will-power.

• How to prove Paul wrong about women drivers.

• How to prove Paul wrong.

• How to sexually arouse myself.

• How to sexually arouse myself keeping Paul guessing as to whether I know he’s watching me.

• How to ring the same person over three times a day, having just seen them in the morning and about to see them that night, and still feel you miss the sound of their voice.

• How lucky I am to be as supple as I am.

• How lucky Paul is to have someone who is as supple as I am.

• How cuddles take on a new dimension when you’re with someone you love.

• How everything takes on a new dimension when you’re with someone you love.

• How I hate electric guitars and never knew it.

• How I must never speak after ten o’clock when I’m in bed with a very tired man who has been working hard all day and needs his rest, unless he’s feeling randy, in which case I’ll have my mouth full anyway.

• How I have a cute arse.

• How Paul thinks I have a cute arse.

• How other people probably think I have a cute arse but Paul won’t tell me.

• How although Paul likes my chest he would like it to be bigger.

• How although I like my chest—I would like it to be bigger.

• How I can watch TV, play records and have a meaningful conversation at the same time.

• How I have a meaningful relationship with little black dresses.

• How having fun and being loyal are not incompatible.

• How I love you …

I would be grateful if you would consider my application in your loyal and gentle care, and hope this temporary position will one day evolve into a permanent one.

Yours sincerely …

See. Sounds naff. But at the time, writing it, it was funny and wonderful and just right. I would keep the letters and cards in a little red box and occasionally look through it on quiet Sunday afternoons if Paul was out with friends. Reading it back, somehow it made me feel just sad and very lonely.

The letters and poems and cards grew less frequent as the months progressed, until the only cards sent were for birthday and Christmas. And, on the fifth year, he sent a Valentine.

Five years in, the romance had faded. We’d forgotten to respect each other and do what agony aunts enthusiastically call ‘working at it’. There was almost a laziness in his attitude towards me. We both, perhaps arrogantly, thought that relationships if they were meant to be didn’t need to be worked at. The agony pages were for other couples who had problems. We didn’t. We were intelligent and sensitive and in tune with our emotions and other people’s.

Well, we did have some problems. I had been through an abortion after going out for nine months, to which he had agreed and paid for. We had planned a long weekend in Suffolk at the Angel Hotel. I had forgotten to take the Pill. Well, I had taken it, but I’d been ill and it hadn’t worked. Obviously, because two months later I’d discovered I was pregnant. I didn’t know if I should tell him. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, don’t you think? In hindsight I wouldn’t have told him. In hindsight I wouldn’t have told him a lot of things. But I didn’t have the benefit of that, so I told him.

‘Paul. I’m pregnant.’

‘Is it mine?’

‘Of course it’s yours.’

I didn’t expect that question.

He came over to me and hugged me. I think he wanted to be hugged more than hug. I think he was dazed.

Then, ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I don’t think we should have the child. We love each other but we’ve only been going out for nine months. It’s too soon. We want to do so much. Achieve so much. I think if I had the child you would resent me and it and I would resent you and it. That’s not fair on either of us or the child. Will you tell your parents?’

Paul—‘No, of course not. They’re Catholics. They don’t even know you’re living with me, or we’re having sex. This would break their hearts. They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t get it. Couldn’t comprehend it. So it’s not worth going there, Sarah. Will you tell your parents?’

I was bemused by the fact he thought his parents were naïve enough not to realise we were sleeping with each other, but, hey, like so many things Paul increasingly said, let it pass for now.

Sarah—‘No. Likewise. They’re not interested. They have their life to lead. They are busy and my mother doesn’t want to know what will or could hurt her. So I tell her nothing. My dad’s not well. He thinks of me as his little girl. I don’t want to spoil the illusion. My mum wouldn’t forgive me if I did.’

Paul—‘So we tell no one?’

Sarah—‘We tell no one.’

One week later. Local clinic. Paul drove. Seven a.m. No traffic on the M25. Leafy lanes. Pre-warned there might be demonstrators outside. Anti-abortion. There weren’t. It would take a morning. I could work the next day. They were very kind. Efficient. At twenty-five I was the oldest in a ward of ten women. It was quick. Physically and emotionally numbing. Offered Rich Tea biscuits and sweet tea when I woke from the deepest sleep. Feeling relieved and relief. The other women in the ward were still sleeping. One was awake. She was crying. She’d had a local anaesthetic and she told me she’d seen the baby.

‘I saw the baby. It looked like a proper little baby. I didn’t think it would look like a baby, but you could tell. You could tell it was a baby when it came out. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect something like that. I expected a little cell and I don’t think I would have had a local if I’d known. I don’t think I would. I don’t think I could go through that again.

That will haunt me, that will. That will haunt me. Wish I hadn’t seen it. Wish I hadn’t.’

I hadn’t seen the baby. I hadn’t seen what had come out of me at twelve weeks. I had been asleep. And I closed my mind to it and just thought it was a joint decision and something that both of us, Paul and I, had decided together and agreed upon. And that it was a dreadful decision to make, but it was the most practical decision, and it would have been unfair on Paul who was just starting out on his career and me who was trying to start one. And there would be plenty of time to have children and we loved each other so it wasn’t a case of that. And we loved each other. And we loved each other. I kept saying that over and over in my head because it made me feel better. Not good. Just better. Reassured.

And I cried, just a little bit.

We drove home in silence. Two hours of it. He cried and went to Confession. Alone, I stayed in the two-up and two-down in Chelmsford and made tea. My mother phoned on the mobile to ask how I was, but really to tell me what she had been doing with Dad that weekend. She asked me if I was OK. I said fine and that I was. She didn’t wait for me to finish and said she had so much to do and had to look after my dad and there was a dinner party they had to go to and she had to get ready and get my dad ready. And she did. I didn’t tell my mother. She was not the sort to listen or offer calming advice. She was the sort to scream and consider every bad thing that happened to me an affront to her ability as a mother, and every good thing something she could either credit to her own influence or, in some cases, feel jealous that she hadn’t done herself. In her youth. Even the good things that happened in my life I think potentially hurt her. I would often think, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her and she can’t hurt me by reacting to things the way she does. Pity. I would have liked a mum. I spent my life in search of surrogate mums.

Paul returned from Confession an hour later, having confessed nothing.

Paul—‘I couldn’t tell the priest anything. I felt ashamed.’

Sarah—‘Isn’t that what the confessional is for? To relieve the guilt? To relieve the sin?’

Paul—‘You’re not Catholic. You don’t understand. Don’t even try to understand what I’m going through. Don’t talk about it any more. Don’t mention it. Ever.’

Paul didn’t tell anyone. I told my friend Helen and my friend Steve. Helen, an old schoolfriend, had had an abortion herself and was wise beyond her years. Steve was matter-of-fact, straight and honest, and I wanted and needed a man’s perspective. Paul didn’t want to talk about his perspective. So we didn’t talk about it again. The abortion was never mentioned. The baby was never mentioned. The weekend in Suffolk was never mentioned. It was a black hole of time we lost. And into it went our innocence.

I locked it away. We weren’t as intimate. We got up at ten a.m. on Sunday mornings and always met friends and had lunch out. Paul stopped going to church.

As an Irish Catholic, he had felt an impact on him greater than he or I could have imagined. The relationship strained under the weight of guilt and reprehension.

Paul—‘You should have told me you weren’t on the Pill.’

Sarah—‘I was on the Pill. I was just unwell and it obviously didn’t work.’

Paul—‘The Pill always works. Now I’ve got to live with it as well.’

Sarah—‘Are you honestly telling me you wouldn’t have had sex with me that weekend if I’d told you there was a chance the Pill might not work? It was a lovely weekend and I didn’t want to spoil it.’

Paul—‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’

Sarah—‘It was a shared responsibility.’

Paul—‘You didn’t give me the option to share it.’

Sarah—‘I didn’t think there was danger.’

Paul—‘You knew there might be.’

Sarah—‘You’ve slept with girls who weren’t on the Pill before.’

Paul—‘That was different.’

Sarah—‘How different?’

Paul—‘I knew about the risk and I took it. I was given no option here.’

Sarah—‘That’s not fair, Paul. Give me a break.’

Paul—‘Why should I? You didn’t give me one.’

Tears. Both of us.

Within the next six months the sex died. I quietly mourned. In silent desperation I would get up and go to work and come back home and go for a workout and organise birthday parties and Christmas drinks and dinner parties and be the devoted girlfriend and feel very lonely. And I knew he felt lonely too but I couldn’t reach him any more and somehow he didn’t want to be told I loved him any more. I loved this man in a spiritual as well as emotional sense. Paul had only a single bed, and we would snuggle up, spoon-like, so close all night. Somehow we managed to sleep and it was fine. We would ring and text each other every day. E-mails were long awaited.

Paul—message received Thanks for a lovely evening. I love spending time with you. I wish we could have spent more time together but there will be other times I know. xx

Sarah—sent You are a wonderful human being. Think of me in lacy black knickers. Nothing else. That’s how I’ll be when you meet me at the door 6pm tonight. Maybe … xx

After dinners out or the cinema the last message would always read something like:

Paul—message received Night beautiful. You are very special to me. Thanx for putting the sun into my summer. And I wish you were here with me in my bed. Lots of love. xx

After work lunches or meetings he would always remember and send:

Paul—message received Hi gorgeous one. Hope lunch went well. Wish I’d been there. You are fabulous. Thinking of u. xxx

We’d go to weddings and listen to the vows. I never caught the bouquet, but friends would always ask in their subtle-as-a-brick sort of way ‘So, when are you two getting married?’ It was a naff cliché and we both ignored it, but as years progressed it started to bug. Breeding insecurity and resentment and cutting communication of how I felt, because I knew it might open the wounds of the abortion again. Which he never talked about. Even when others opened a conversation at one of the many dinner parties we went to and were talked at.

He had been my white knight in his Golf GTI. He had helped me to gain confidence about my body and sexuality. And then he had taken it away. He didn’t feel it was right any more and so we didn’t have sex any more. We hugged naked. We occasionally, in drunken stupors, made love or had sex, but he was always slightly irritable in the morning—as though I had made him to do it against his will. I had tempted him against his better self.