In Her Own Words

I was seven months pregnant with Alison. The car was at the body-shop, and he sent me by bus, alone, to fetch Ivor from my friend’s house, where he had been having a post-football match sleep-over, because he said, ironically, that riding on a bus made him queasy. He didn’t even think of calling a taxi; and I didn’t want to beg, or use any of the money I had been squirrelling away.

Oh, he was manipulative - just like his father, who could have stayed home and lived off his wife’s untold wealth. But he preferred to keep his office job, he used to say, because it gave him something to do.

And of course, he met people. He met me. The Perfect P.A. who fielded calls from people for whom he had no time, and cultivated networks that had something to give. Not because I was savvy and knew how to use people, but, because, as he said, I knew how to make the ‘secret’ in ‘secretary’, work.

And he thought I would make a decent, loving wife for his son. He engineered that meeting at the supermarket; neither of us realised we were pawns in his game.

I know, I know – it really had been ‘love at first sight’ for both of us. But when second sight, so to speak, kicked in, I knew that I had fallen in love with an illusion. I thought I would find in his family what I had lacked in mine.

I never knew my father because he’d left mum when she was “fat and ugly” - and pregnant with me. He would have remained, but upon one condition – that she aborted me. But to mum, any man who asked a woman to make such a choice was not worthy of being loved. So, he left – and promptly fathered a child with the woman who left her husband for him, but had not wanted to do so until he took the first step, himself.

I had never told him why my mother had been a single parent. However, I made it my secret reason why I wanted children – lots of them.

But his mother said that since we had a pigeon pair of kids, it was enough. And she insinuated, in my hearing, that a third child would well-nigh make it “impossible” for him to inherit loadsamoney. And so, he ‘obeyed’.

At first, it was subtle innuendos and oblique hints. Then it was looks and raised eyebrows. I finally put my finger on it – his mother thought I had been more than a P.A. to his father, and that I had married my husband to have access, not to an easy lifestyle (I was told it would be undignified to keep my job, so I resigned), but to my father-in-law.

It got so that I was scared to look at him, let alone be in the same room, alone, with him. 

When I was a child, living as I did in a tiny flat with my mum, I used to daydream about having a husband who adored me and who had blind faith in me – the stuff of romances – what my mum never had. I wanted someone who would be as enthralled with me as I was with him. I didn’t want money, or fame, or nice clothes, as most of my friends did.

So… I thought I’d become a lawyer… but the part-time and weekend secretarial job I took to help with expenses evolved into what it did. The Boss made me an offer I could not refuse – at the time, my mother had terminal cancer so a steady wage made perfect sense.

We had a couple of good years, and then the rot set in. It got so bad that sometimes I would wake up at night because he kneed me in the back or pushed me away when I tried to snuggle up, spoons style, in my sleep. He used to mutter that I didn’t deserve him, and that I could never hope to be as good as his mum, ever.

And then one of my friends told me that my husband’s ex-girlfriend was boasting that the week before, his mother had given her a diamond ring worth as much as a Harley Davidson “because she missed her”.

My mother-in-law insisted that my husband got one degree after another – just so she could show off with her siblings, and those of her husband, because none of my husband’s cousins could afford to study practically as a pastime, while drawing a wage, as he did.

And then came the Christmas that ended it all. A table groaning with food that was expensive and rich; but not food that was cooked with love as had been the impromptu feasts my mother and I would have when the mood struck us.

One Christmas, as I recall, we had drumsticks slathered in peanut butter and wrapped in bacon, chips, and a fresh tomato-and-onion salad. Priceless.

The table-talk turned to values. I have my own set of them, thank you very much. I would rather stick to them than adopt those of my husband’s family, which are elastic enough to accommodate circumstances of their own making, but never the needs of others, or the circumstances in which people find themselves through no fault of their own.

I was lucky, I was told… to have married into such a fine family – me, the archetypical girl from nowhere, who acquired a lifestyle I could only have fantasised about, had it not been for happenstance.

I bit my tongue. By this time, I was choosing my battles. So, I smiled sweetly, and said “Quite!” which was not the answer she was expecting… the shock on her face told me so. There, I had proof – there was one too many persons in my marriage.

I fought tooth and nail for our marriage to succeed. When he insisted the kids were not his, I told him we’d better take a DNA test to set his mind at rest; but he said I would bribe the laboratory. There was never anyone else for me, but him, so how could they be anyone else’s?

So, I made my plans. My demeanour would have earned me an Academy Award.

I was a dutiful wife, a charming daughter-in-law, an exemplary neighbour, a hard-working Chair of the school’s P.T.A.

But I was also the beloved soulmate of someone.

It began as a joke, really. He was a disc jockey on 9M7 Radio, and I sent him a private message on the Facebook page of his programme to ask him to play Elton John’s Blessed for someone who was feeling down, without telling him that it was for myself.

Although the lyrics of the song had nothing to do with my situation, he replied that he felt that I needed to hear the song to let the tears flow. He was right, because hearing that song always made me sob my heart out. It still does, albeit for other reasons, now.

One message led to another.

I had my Ophthalmic appointment at the Main Hospital. My husband dropped me off early, and said he was too busy to stay with me, and that I could either call him to collect me or return home by bus. I found him, pretending to read the newspaper, in the lobby outside the clinic. He looked up and winked.

It was a calculated risk. He knew I would be wise enough to pretend I did not know him, had I been accompanied by my husband, who would probably have recognised him anyway, since he was a ‘personality’.

It was the first time I had seen him in ‘real life’. We just couldn’t stop talking – and we didn’t even hear my name being called on the tannoy. It was only when the woman sitting down behind me poked my shoulder and repeated my name with a question mark at the end, that I picked up my bag and hurried into the consulting room.

He was still there, waiting for me, when I came out – and he gave me a lift home, but stopped two streets away, ‘just in case’. I kissed him on the cheek, and ran off.

And here I am today, ten years later, surrounded by my loving family; my son and his wife, my daughter and her husband, and their own children.

This is my new-born’s First Christmas – I am enthralled and amused that he has inherited the pale skin and long thumbs of my precious, beloved, soulmate.

This year, however hard she tried, my ex-mother-n-law couldn’t deprive me of my children. 

All of us have agreed that there will be no lavish gifts, in contrast to other times and other places.

Christmas dinner is nice and simple – a smooth carrot and pumpkin soup starter, stuffed pork and boulangère potatoes... but also drumsticks slathered in peanut butter and wrapped in bacon, and a fresh tomato-and-onion salad, in homage to my mother.

We are drinking freshly-squeezed oranges, and a couple of nice wines, and for dessert we will have ice-cream and nuts and cheeses.