Читать книгу When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis - Helen Bailey - Страница 25

If I’d been told in my teenage years that contrary to my conviction and heart’s desire I was not going to marry Donny Osmond, I would have been devastated. If I had then been told that I would in fact marry someone ten times better than Donny Osmond, but he would die and leave me a widow at fifty, I would have spent the whole of my married life terrified with this knowledge and every year of bliss would have been horribly marred. Thank goodness we don’t know what lies ahead. ~ Angela

Nowadays, my standard response to the question, ‘How are you doing?’ is a simple, ‘Oh, you know, plodding along.’

For a while I had a more comprehensive reply: ‘I’m doing whatever I can to get through the day to cope with what’s happened,’ but after trotting this out a few times, I realised that most people who ask you how you’re doing are terrified that you’ll tell them the unvarnished truth.

Imagine the scene, let’s say an encounter in a local shop, perhaps the chemist where I’ve gone to get a further supply of herbal Nytol to help me sleep.

Concerned person with tight smile and cocked head: ‘So, how are you doing?’

Moi, a red-eyed string bean with a sunken blotchy face: ‘Oh, you know, very little sleep, then waking up in floods of tears, anxiety vomming into the flower bed when I let The Hound out for his morning wee, going back to bed with my mobile and ringing the Samaritans, fantasising about getting my will up-to-date before climbing over the banister and strangling myself with the dog’s lead . . .’

Not really on, is it?

But equally, I feel a fraud if I give them a cheery, ‘Fine! OK!’ because I’m not fine much of the time, and I’m never really OK. ‘Plodding along,’ is a good compromise, plus, I like the word ‘plodding’. Not as much as I like the word ‘Chanel’, but still. Plod is an onomatopoeia: plod – plod – plod – the very word sounds like heavy footsteps moving slowly forward. And when I say I am plodding along, I can remind myself that although my progress might be slow and heavy, I am moving forward.

The problem is that I’m not a plodding-along sort of chick. I am more of a galloper.

Twenty-odd years ago, JS and I went to a beach in Dorset. He said much later that he knew he couldn’t live without me when he saw me clamber out of the car, dash to the sands and skip along the beach in the wind. I knew for certain that he was the man for me when in a nearby gift shop he bought me a large toy dachshund that we christened ‘Tuckton’, and seemed unfazed that I sat in a coffee shop and included the stuffed mutt in our conversation.

Years after the Dorset dash, I was on a course with a woman called Diane who gave me a blow-by-blow account of her menopausal symptoms, bred Irish setters and was heavily into alternative therapies. She claimed that there were broadly two sorts of people: racehorses and carthorses, and identified me as a perfect example of a racehorse. She wasn’t meaning that I had tremendously long legs, a muscle-packed butt and a glorious mane (though back then, perhaps I did), but that my energy came in wild hyperactive bursts. A carthorse type was more of a strong, steady plodder – just like my husband.

I raced home and told JS this equine-based theory, delighted to be thought of as a highly-strung fabulous filly. He dryly pointed out that at the slightest injury racehorses are shot because they can never recover, whereas a carthorse is patched up and on it slowly goes: plod – plod – plod.

I’m fed up of this grief stuff, of the tears, of the plans I make and break, of the face in the mirror haunted by the death I saw in front of me, of going to bed night after night with The Hound but without my husband, and the bleak mornings which arrive with depressing monotony. I want to gallop around like I once did, full of enthusiasm for life, even if such enthusiasm used to come in unpredictable bursts. Now, I have neither the energy nor the motivation to do anything other than plod – plod – plod.

Writing this, I realise that I not only miss my husband, I miss the girl on the beach in Dorset who careered about the sands – the racehorse with verve and energy and enthusiasm. A girl giddy with love not just for the man she was with, but for the life she was living.