5.5 Waiting

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. See right for more information.

Wait. That was all I could do. Wait.
    I had an idea that a year was all it would take, that at the end of the year Sam would move on. After all, what was in it for her?
    But as the year wore on, I started to lose hope. The situation was almost more than I could bear. Not only did I have to share Frog with Sam one night a week, but the three of us went out together – to concerts, parties, pubs, on day trips - and Sam came on holiday with us for a week.

I found Sam difficult to get on with, not because she was a difficult person but because we were so different. We had no crossover points except for Frog. And I was wary of her too because of what I saw as my frivolity and lack of intelligence compared with her. I was always trying not to say something stupid.
    She was thoughtful though.

    I knew she'd had an AIDS test before taking up with Frog, which was not an easy thing to do, and I greatly appreciated it.  
    One Thursday night as Frog made ready to leave, wind began to shake the house. Sam rang and told Frog that because of the weather he ought to stay with me and make sure I was OK. So he did.
    Another time the three of us went to a concert and I was in the bar talking to a friend when Frog came out of the concert hall and dragged me off by the arm saying that the music was about to begin. Sam restrained him.
    ‘Oy,’ she said. ‘She was talking.’
    Frog looked slightly shamefaced.
    Sometimes I went over to Sam’s house on my own but that was uncomfortable because I presumed her housemates knew about Frog and her and me and I didn’t want their pity.

Frog and I smoked cannabis in the evenings – with Sam and her connections we had plenty of access to the stuff. We thought it would calm us down, lift some of my inhibitions. Which it did up to a point.
    But one night, when Frog was with Sam and I was in bed on my own, I woke to a vision of two men in the corner of the bedroom. They were plotting something very evil.

    I imagined it was some sort of crossed line (like you used to get with landlines and found you were listening in to a conversation that was nothing to do with you) and knew I had to stay very still and not be afraid because if they sensed my presence I would be in grave danger.

    So that’s what I did and they went away.

I was proud of myself.

Often I couldn’t eat, and weight fell off me.
    Even the postman noticed. He stopped as he passed me in his van one day when I was out walking in the lane and asked me if I was all right.
    ‘You look ghastly,’ said my mother. ‘You really ought to wear more makeup.’
    Frog brought me regular packets of Cadbury’s chocolate eggs to keep my strength up.

I fell in love with someone else and had feverish daydreams about our possible relationship - which of course came to nothing as I didn’t actually want it to.

Frog didn’t tell anyone what was going on, as far as I was aware, and the only people I told were my two sisters and a friend whom I used to meet for lunch once a week in Exeter. She listened to my outpourings with sympathy and kept them to herself. I don’t think she even told her husband.
    The story was complicated and people were so quick to lay blame. They thought in stereotypes, in tabloid headlines: one was the guilty party and one was the victim. But it wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t want people to think badly of Frog and I was ashamed of my failings which, in my opinion, had led to the situation. That was why I kept quiet.

I thought about leaving Frog, but again it was only a dream. Where would I go? What would I do? This was my life. I couldn’t envisage any other. And what about the blue-sky voice – the one that said Frog would interest me for the rest of my life?

One evening after Christmas, Frog arrived home in a whirl. Sam had taken up with one of her housemates and wanted to end her relationship with Frog. Without saying much to me he raced over to her house to persuade her differently.
    I knew I was in trouble. Was Sam laying down a challenge? Could I end up losing Frog completely?
    I abandoned all my scruples and rang Sam’s house at frequent intervals throughout the evening. Sometimes I managed to speak to Frog, sometimes I didn’t.
    I needed to make my feelings absolutely clear. I mattered. I didn’t want to lose him.
    He crawled back in the early hours of the morning.

    He’d lost. Sam was gone.

To be continued . . . 

5.4 Vengeance

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. See right for more information about it.

‘I can’t give her up,’ Frog said.
    He was very firm about that. Somehow, he’d taken the upper hand. Did it not occur to him that he might lose me?
    Well, actually, he wouldn’t. Like Mollie, I’d made my vows and wouldn’t go back on them. In any case, I was used to putting up with things. And now that everything was out in the open, the situation didn’t feel as bad as it had before.
    Except for the possibility of losing Frog.
    I was back on the precipice where I’d found myself when I first met him – albeit for a different reason.
    So I took control.
    ‘How about you spend one night a week with Sam?’
    To ask him to give Sam up would mean losing him as, even if he did so, he would never forgive me. And didn’t they say that if you loved someone you set them free?
    Well, I was setting Frog free. I deliberately stepped off the edge of the precipice.
    He looked surprised.
    ‘OK.’

So it began.
    Every Thursday morning I waved him off to work, knowing I wouldn’t see him again till Friday. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure if I would see him again at all. Every Thursday morning, I had to give him up. It took every ounce of my determination, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
    I busied myself during the day with work and walking – we had a dog now – and on the nights when I was alone I wrote in a notebook I’d started. It was my best friend.
    I started a new yoga class in Exeter on Friday mornings so that I had something to look forward to, something to help me stay strong. And after the class, if things were OK between us, I would drop in to see Frog in his workshop at the university, and hug him as if we’d been parted for weeks. He would hug me too as if relieved himself to be back.
    ‘I don’t fancy her half as much as I do you,’ he admitted to me slightly shamefully one night in bed. ‘Sometimes it’s difficult, you know.’
    I hugged that knowledge to myself.

‘ “Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord’ was a phrase I remembered from my religious education at school.
    It echoed round my head as I tramped the woods and fields with our beloved Brindle, the accidental offspring of one neighbour’s Springer spaniel and another’s black Labrador. She was striped brown, strong-willed and inclined to plumpness. When we went to see the litter, she sprawled on her back with her pink stomach sticking up, obviously the boss but looking like a piglet compared to the other puppies who were sleek and black. We’d had no choice however as all the others were spoken for.
    I’d hated being in charge of a young creature – which confirmed my decision not to have children - and bitterly regretted taking her on for a good year and a half, until she suddenly grew up and became bearable.
    Now, I enjoyed her company.
    I knew the phrase came from the Old Testament and that Jesus had come to free us from all that – as our teachers were, thankfully, at pains to point out. But I didn’t see it as meaning that God was cruel. I saw it as meaning that we didn’t have to take our own vengeance, that God would deal with it.
    Like Karma, part of yoga philosophy.
    So I didn’t have worry about getting my own back on either Sam or Frog. The universe would take care of it. In any case, wasn’t it my reward for my adultery with Brian?
    Sometimes, though, my anger did break out. Like one night when the three of us were in the sitting-room of Sam’s shared house.
    ‘I can’t understand how someone as intelligent as you, could do something so stupid,’ I blurted out (meaning something as stupid as stealing someone else’s husband).
    Goodness knows why I said that. It surprised me.
    Sam was intelligent. She’d done her degree at Oxford and was now working towards a doctorate. She lived with serious, political people, and I felt superficial and frivolous compared to her. Maybe that was why I said what I did.
    Sam shot off in her car and disappeared into the night. Frog was angrier that I’d ever seen him before and lay on the sofa without speaking to me. I sat uncomfortably on the edge of an armchair. We waited for several hours until Sam returned safely.
    That, I think, was when I came closest to losing him, so I never said anything like that again even though it didn’t seem quite fair that I couldn’t.
    I apologised to Sam but I couldn’t escape the thought that it was a valid question, even though I’d put it badly.

I got my own back in small ways. I stopped doing Frog’s washing. I stopped cleaning and tidying the house. I didn’t always cook supper.
    I realised that I’d been a bit of a doormat and in some ways it wasn’t surprising that Frog had taken up with Sam – so independent and interesting. I vowed never to be a doormat again.
    I joined the local Friends of the Earth Group and helped them out with stalls in Exeter City Centre. I even drove with them to an anti-road protest (which seemed ironic). We then drove home again having not seen any action except for an encounter with an angry local who wanted the road. I realised that protesting wasn’t for me but I continued to attend FoE meetings.
    I decided to expand my work into writing and through friends who’d started a publishing company wrote a small book about the folklore of Dartmoor.

I went to a party with Sam and a friend of hers, leaving Frog at home with a stomach bug – vomiting and diarrhoea.
    When I returned in the middle of the night Frog looked at me pathetically.
    ‘I passed out on the bathroom floor,’ he said.
    I didn’t feel in the least sympathetic.

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5.3 The Truth at Last

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. See right for more information. 

Silently, in slow motion, Frog nodded.

    I stopped breathing.
    ‘Have you . . . ?’ I asked, my voice echoing in this strange new place we’d found ourselves.
    Frog nodded again.
    ‘Everything?’
    He nodded again, still with that mixture of pity, guilt and determination.
    Then I started to understand.
    ‘Was it . . . was it . . . Sam?’ I asked.

    He’d been talking about a woman called Sam ever since the summer, when she’d joined the student radio station wanting to present her own blues programme. A woman was a rarity at the station and none of those there were did any music presentation. Frog had trained her in the use of the ‘deck’ – a table-sized array of switches, buttons and levers.
    ‘Yes,’ he said.
    I’d been a fool. I hadn’t suspected anything. But now the whole of the last six months – the way our conversations had so often descended into arguments, Frog’s disappearances, my visions of someone standing beside me - was falling into place.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
    And I knew he was. He wasn’t trying to excuse himself or justify his actions. He was telling me the truth at last.
    A light switched on in my head. Everything was going to be all right. This was our chance – finally – to get things straight.

I quizzed Frog all through the night as we lay in bed. I had to know it all. I had to cancel out the lies. They were worse than the infidelity.
    ‘That time when . . . ?’ ‘When you said . . . ?’ ‘Where did you . . . ?’ ‘How did you . . . ?’
    He answered every question.
    ‘I want to meet her,’ I said.

The next day, after Frog went to work, I found I couldn’t get out of bed. My legs wouldn’t hold me up. I lay under the duvet, trying to adjust to this new reality. Nothing similar had ever happened to me before.

    Frog rang halfway through the morning.
    ‘How are you?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m a bit weak, I said.
    ‘You’re allowed to be weak,’ he said.
    There was a pause and then he spoke again.
    ‘She’ll come over this evening’,’ he said, ‘but she’s very frightened.’
    It was new to me to have someone frightened of me. It was usually me frightened of other people. It gave me a sense of power, but I knew I couldn’t misuse it. I risked losing everything if I did.

She wasn’t particularly pretty, which was a relief. And she was obviously just as shaken, even less sure how to proceed, than I was, which was another relief.
    I can’t remember what we talked about but I do remember that she was kind. She’d been learning about reflexology and gave me a foot massage. I found some vegetable pies in the freezer and made us all a supper of sorts.
    As she and Frog said a loving goodbye to each other out on the drive, I stood to one side feeling utterly desolate. No one cared about me any more. I was all alone in the world.
    Sam got into her car and started driving but as she passed me she wound down her window, reached out and took my hand.
    Instantly, everything changed. I wasn’t on my own after all. I was included. Sam was now my friend too.

‘I just needed someone to talk to,’ said Frog when we were back inside. ‘And then – well – one thing led to another. And I thought, I was telling her all our secrets anyway . . . And maybe she can help us.’
    I’d almost wished for this. Sometimes when we’d had yet another of our fights over my inability to enjoy sex, I’d almost wished for another woman to take over that part of the relationship between Frog and me. We loved each other too much. It was all too intense and we couldn’t help each other. Maybe we did need somebody else.
    ‘You come first,’ he said.
    That was all I needed. How would I survive otherwise?
    But I wasn’t safe yet. One false step and he would be gone.

The next day I went for a walk in a nearby wood. I climbed the footpath, thinking only of survival.
    If men’s sins were of commission, then women’s were of omission and I’d done plenty of that – not dealing with the legacy of Brian in London, not making up my mind as to whether I was on the side of my parents or the side of Frog.
    But I couldn’t afford to waste energy on guilt. What a useless emotion it was. I needed every ounce of my strength to make my way forward.
    I stopped to do some breathing exercises. I’d been going to yoga classes for several years and breathing was an important part of the practice. I closed my eyes and concentrated.
    Breathe in for a count of four, hold for four, breathe out for a count of four, hold for four. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
    When I opened my eyes again the air sparkled. I felt calm and almost happy.
    I could do this.

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PART FIVE. 2 The Accusation

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. (See the column to the right for more information.)
Click here for the previous instalment.
Click here for a complete list of instalments so far.

(NB I have published this instalment before and then removed it, so some of you may remember it.)

Please be kind. This series is me baring secrets, things I've never dared mention up until now. I stopped publishing the series in April after a couple of upsetting comments, but I’ve since discovered that I can’t write it properly without you.
Without you I write for publishers, agents and critics which results in stodge.
With you I write, I hope, for something that somebody real might want to read.

New Year's Day, 1990

As we’d arrived back late in the evening, and as we'd been eating well for days, I made a simple supper of baked beans on toast.
    I brought the plates into the sitting room on two trays which I placed on the coffee table, before sitting on the sofa and placing my tray (with the smaller helping) on my lap.
    Frog was already on the sofa but he hadn’t turned the television on and he didn’t reach for his tray. He didn’t look at me either, or say anything.

After spending Christmas together at home we’d done a tour of the parents, staying first with John T who was managing just fine. He’d joined a dating agency and, being that rare thing, an older single man, had received countless replies from women who wanted to get to know him. He was working his way through them and Frog was disgusted.
    ‘It’s an insult to Ma,’ he said.
    John T had cleared the house of all Mollie’s things and piled them into the garage. He wanted Frog to deal with them but he refused.
    ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
    The house itself was now pristine and characterless, empty without Mollie’s presence.

Things were no better at my parents’ house, even if the house was bigger and easier to get lost in. No better for me anyway.  I carried on pretending to my parents that I was different from what I really was. It was an awful strain.

    In a strange way, however, my parents were warming to Frog, or at least they’d found a language in which they could communicate with him. What's more, he was still around, whereas the relationships of both my sisters had ended. Not that my parents said anything to me about their changing opinion, of course.

    The landmark was Christmas Eve a few years earlier when the dishwasher failed as sixteen people were expected for the Christmas meal and more on Boxing Day. Frog had spent all morning lying on the kitchen’s stone floor repairing it.

    Ever since then my mother had greeted Frog with a list of practical jobs she needed help with. My father wasn't practical. His speciality was numbers. I remembered my childhood as a catalogue of crises, with the car not starting, the television going 'on the blink', electricity failing or things leaking. I too loved having Frog around to deal with practicalities. 

     Frog was happy to help. It gave him a role in my family. He’d always done the same for his own mother and one of his missions in life, after spreading good music, was rescuing damsels in distress (not that my mother was a damsel).
    Another Christmas my father took Frog out to show him a chain-saw he’d bought for chopping logs but been too nervous to use. My father and Frog had spent a happy day working together, my father fetching and carrying and Frog chain-sawing. Ever since then, chain-sawing had been another of Frog’s jobs and whenever he didn’t know what else to do he would be outside adding to the log-pile.
  
During the visit Frog had done another of his disappearing acts saying he was going up to London. He loved shopping, unlike me, so I presumed he was off to some specialist music shop and didn't question him. In any case, I was afraid to say anything these days.

    He’d arrived back at 7pm, explaining that he’d waited for the (cheaper) off-peak train - which sounded a bit odd as he'd never done that before and, anyway, I hadn't asked for an explanation. I’d been watching out for him since 5pm and had raced out to the hall to hug him, just pleased to see him back. My mother, who was skulking in the kitchen doorway, gave us a funny look.

I paused with a spoonful of beans halfway to my mouth. My throat and stomach had locked. I felt as if I couldn’t carry on - with anything.
    ‘There’s someone else, isn’t there,’ I blurted out.
    It was one of those occasions when the words appeared before the thought. It had never occurred to me that something like that might be going on. I trusted Frog, and I was making the accusation as a challenge, expecting him to deny it vigorously.
    He looked at me with a strange expression on his face – a mixture of pity, guilt and determination.

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Note about the Autobiographical Series

I’m still writing this, but not publishing instalments for the moment.

This is because I’m into sensitive areas and I don’t want things to be taken out of context and misunderstood: the story needs to be read as a whole.

I may in due course publish chunks – ie several instalments in one go.

Or I may keep going till the end and then decide when/if/how I publish.

Whatever I decide, I’ll try and keep you informed.

Thank you for reading up to now. I appreciate every page view and comment.

And if you haven't read any of the series yet, click on the picture to the right and you'll find a full list of published instalments with links.