Mid-Life Ex-Wife Page 24

  So, what I needed was cheering up. Moaning to girlfriends wasn’t going to help, but I did it anyway, despite knowing that I’d become a heart-sinker around my pals with my constant tales of dating woe. They say that a problem shared is a problem halved, but sometimes a problem shared just gives everyone else the same problem. Chief Sensible Friend thought Edward might turn up again. “He’s a nerd, a geek, a Brainiac,” she said. “And he might not be great at communicating, and he might take a while to readjust.” I grunted at her. No, I said, it’s not that. “He might be thinking,” she added, “Wow, I really liked that woman, but I don’t think she felt any sort of attraction for me, and why should she, and so I should wait a few days before inquiring if she’d like to meet again because I don’t want to look like a prat by rushing at this like a bull at a gate.”

  But, obviously, it wasn’t that.

  In need of further cheering up, I checked in to the websites where I still had a presence, though I rarely instigated contact at any of them anymore. It had become a leave-the-door-open policy; you’re unlikely to find someone if you close all the doors they might walk through, and I had few enough doors available in my narrow and narrowing life. There were two messages waiting for me online. One was from a doctor in Paris (supposedly) asking if I’d like to take the Eurostar and have lunch with him. A French doctor, really? The English idiom was authentically slightly off (“Are you been visit in Paris?”), but would a Parisian obstetrician really use so many emoticons? Plus, he could turn out to be Kristin Scott Thomas’s ex-husband, which would be way too much pressure for subsequent women.

  “Perhaps I will,” I responded, “though I have to warn you that my French grammar is officially atrocious.”

  “You can wright [sic] to me in French,” he replied, “and I will correct you, but only your French *wink emoticon*. It is far, but why not, we can do it.”

  The other message was from a man called Alex, who lived in a pretty market town three hours away (too far), and had written one of the best profile pages I’d seen. We had a quick on-screen chat, in which I accused him of getting a female friend to write it, and he admitted that his younger sister did. I like men who have good relationships with their sisters. Alex’s pictures looked a bit like those done for an actor’s agency (though he was an engineer of some sort) and he wasn’t the handsomest in the world, but he had that something about him—intelligence and humor in the eyes and natural warmth—that reminded me of Steve Martin, and anything that reminds me of Steve Martin is generally a good thing. “It’s a pity we live too far apart to meet for a pizza and a film,” Alex wrote. I asked the French doctor why he didn’t come to me instead: he could catch the Eurostar and we’d have lunch. He didn’t reply to this invitation.

  Alex was one of the few men I came across who wanted to spend time establishing a friendship via email before meeting. Generally, as I’ve said already, it’s a thing that men complain women want. Alex, though, wanted to wait and form a bond, as if lunch were really sex and we shouldn’t rush into it. He’d found waiting worked for him. Combined with the fact that he was a fifty-one who looked forty-one in his profile picture, this was winningly charming. So we spent four days emailing, and he seemed . . . I was going to say a nice man, but that can come across as damning. (My mother has a tendency to say “He’s nice enough” of the widowers who woo her at tea dances and it’s plain there’s a great big BUT coming.) Alex had all the qualities that make men successful online. He was articulate, if a little earnest; he wanted to see the world, and do things and learn more; he was straightforward about his emotional life and needs, and frank about mistakes made in past relationships, and sensitive to my potential vulnerabilities—and I just didn’t fancy him at all. He wrote saying he wanted to grow and change, and I admit that my spoken response (to the dog) was “Yeah, I had a husband who wanted to grow, and he grew into someone who wanted a divorce.”

  My relationship with Alex, if you could call it that, took place over a week, virtually and in speeded-up time, like the birth and death of a flower in time-lapse photography. On day five I decided to ask if there was a reason he was shy about meeting women in person. He sent me a photograph of his dad. At least I assumed it was his dad, because it looked like Alex, but a lot older, and of course that was Alex. Alex wasn’t fifty-one, the sort of fifty-one that looks forty-one. Alex was sixty-three and looked older, and had serious health problems, and had no confidence.

  At this point, I noted with passing interest, I seemed to have stopped being a person who wanted a lot of email wooing before meeting. I seemed at last to be learning Lesson Two (email relationships aren’t relationships). I seemed to be in transition. I wanted to skip the detailed preamble and the fifty messages and meet people. So I decided Alex and I should meet, on the basis that you really never know. What I’d do was surprise him. I was on my way to stay with my mother for the weekend, because it was my birthday (I turned fifty-two and was Eeyorish about it), and as it happened Alex lived not far away from her. So I messaged him: “Surprise! I’m half an hour away from you; why don’t we have lunch? It’d be great to meet you.” Alex’s reaction, I’m fairly confident in telling you, was to freak out. He went into silent mode, pretending he hadn’t read the message until it was already too late, something that’s a classic avoidance gambit. There’s often an over-long and overly detailed list of reasons a message is “missed.” I’m so sorry, my internet went down, and then a dog ate my cable and I’ve been in a coma and now my fingers are broken. Once I’d left my mother’s house on a train and had returned to a safe distance Alex popped up again, saying how busy he’d been. I replied, apologizing for the impulsive gesture. I might have got a bit ahead of myself, I admitted; I do that sometimes. He responded immediately, saying it was okay to do that sometimes, as long as it was only sometimes. I caught a strong whiff of habitual critique. I told him I hoped to hear from him when he was less busy, but realized afterward that I didn’t hope for that. Perhaps, I thought, I should take the hint and give up this search, properly give it up instead of talking about doing it. There’s nothing wrong with being a radiant spinster, too busy with her fulfilling life to miss having a partner. There’s a lot that’s right about it. It just wasn’t what I wanted.

  Then Edward texted. Was I free for a drink on Friday? Should we go to the pub? It was such a brisk inquiry that I wasn’t sure whether he was suggesting a second date or whether he wanted to tell me in person why my application had failed. But yes. I said yes.

  The wood-floored traditional alehouse that Edward invited me to was in a quiet nook in an unfashionable part of town. It had a random assortment of drinkers, most of them men. Probably he chose it because he thought it would be quiet and we’d be able to get a table (or—and I couldn’t help having these thoughts—he wasn’t known there and his wife wouldn’t see us) but it was packed, and so we had to stand at the bar. He looked uncomfortable about this, glancing around the room as if it were something he felt he ought to fix. Finally, people left and we swooped. A small brass table had become free, sandwiched between geezers talking about football on one side, and two women discussing their divorce travails on the other (oh joy). The stools were uncomfortable and the lighting glaring.

  I had an attack of paralyzing second date nerves and couldn’t think what to say to him (partly, of course, because I was unsure what this was). He, too, seemed edgy and out of sorts. We had one of those dull chats that people have when they’re too tired to socialize and would rather be at home with mugs of cocoa and the Netflix powered up. We talked about our days, our working weeks; we even talked about the weather. He told me a long story about a work problem and how it was solved. I knew that my eyes were genuinely glazing over this time—I was too tired to be able to stop myself from looking bored—and became aware that he’d noticed. His nervous reaction was to provide even more detail about the solution to the work issue.

  The question is, I asked myself when I went to the Ladies’ Room, why did he invite
me if he didn’t want to see me again, and why was he so ill at ease? After all, the man had been brisk, monosyllabic, absent, since last we met. He had my email address and hadn’t used it. He had my number and hadn’t called. (Not that the businesslike “So can we have sex on Friday?” text that a friend received after a first date would have been preferable, but still.) The evening wasn’t a great success, and we both wanted to cut it short: that much was clear. It wasn’t even that it went badly. We both tried; there were no awkward silences, but honestly (I thought, somewhat peeved about the sense of obligation I perceived flowing out of him) if there doesn’t seem to be a natural flow to the chat on the third beer on a second date, there might be something amiss. In the bathroom I gave myself a pep talk. Was it me? My eye makeup was uneven and had descended at the sides, and my lipstick had greased off, leaving only an outer line of red. That was easily sorted out, but the pep question wasn’t so easy. Why had my social pep deserted me? “Cinema, books, TV, nature, human nature, politics,” I said to my reflection, reminding myself there were topics I could instigate. A woman came out of a stall and smiled at me. Perhaps she’d had the same problem, one in which her head emptied abruptly of all thoughts, during a second date that might be a mercy date.

  When we came out onto the street, Edward and I waited at the same bus stop—he lived on my route but further along the line. I wrapped my wide scarf so that it covered my mouth (no points, Mr. Freud) and buried my hands deep in the pockets of my coat, and looked doggedly in the direction in which double-decker rescue would come. Edward got out his phone and texted, and I couldn’t help wondering if he was telling his wife that he was on the way home. We had to stand, once we boarded the bus, and were separated by a pair of giggling girls who got on after us and settled in the space before we could close it. “Well, bye then,” I said, as I got off at my stop. Just look at him, I thought, as I did so. He’s so tall, so striking-looking; he has such melancholic, expressive eyes, and there’s something there; possibly loneliness. When he looked back at me, it seemed to be with regret of some sort. There might have been something imploring in his expression. I felt attraction for the first time, but I was sure it was too late for that. He’d shown no signs whatsoever of reciprocating. He’d seemed to me, all evening, like a man who didn’t really want to be there. “Bye,” he’d mouthed, raising his hand as the bus rumbled away.

  I got out my phone and looked at it. It occurred to me that it might have been me he was texting, saying something his mouth couldn’t. “Well that was a weird evening. We both seemed tired, off our game, but should we go to the cinema or something next week?” There was no message. So that’s that, I thought; I won’t hear from him again. Or . . . perhaps this is all happening in extreme slow motion and I will, but not for a while. At the risk of posing a Carrie Bradshaw–type question: was he behaving in a strange fashion for a man who wasn’t interested (I mean, why ask to meet again?), or was a drink every two weeks—with no communication in between—his equally strange way of courting a woman?

  The evening after the second date, not having heard from him, I grumped round the kitchen engaged in deeply unconvincing rationalizing. The dishwasher was unloaded with excessive energy, resulting in the cutlery box spewing arrows across the room. The retrieval of knives and forks was accompanied by a rant of determined disregard. “And so, Edward, you’re not keen, but that’s all right, that’s all right, because I’m even less keen,” I announced to plates as they were stacked with crashes into the cupboard. “It’s fine,” I told the dog. “Sometimes you have two dates with someone and recognize that the conversation has come to an end. It’s fairly vital to be able to keep talking, after all. If there’s not much to say, nor a burning desire to rip each other’s trousers off—”

  My phone buzzed, and my first thought was, It’s Edward, wanting a third date, and I take it all back. It wasn’t Edward. It was a dating site message from a man called Gavin. I recognized Gavin. I remembered the dating site conversation we’d had the year before. We’d been larkish pals for two or three days, mischievously sparring and insulting one another before the banter ran dry. Gavin was fifty-nine and had written on his profile page that it was best to be straightforward, because his picture would speak for itself. According to him he looked like Frankenstein’s monster. He was one of the ugliest men in the world, he’d written (this wasn’t remotely true, though he did have a very large chin, and hair that stood up on end), but on the other hand had an interesting life as an artist. He stood out among the sea of the bland, and that’s how we got talking. He’d referred to me as the “Water Buffalo,” insisting that I had the exact determined expression of one, and a little bit of the sturdiness too (and I’d be the first to agree). Now he wanted to take me to lunch at a rather swanky hotel, and—thinking this would be fun, that we’d revisit our bantering brief chat of a year ago—I agreed.

  “You’re not going to back out, are you?” he asked nervously. “You’re definitely coming, aren’t you?”

  “I’m definitely coming,” I said. “Definitely.”

  The next morning, working away, absolutely not thinking about Edward, I had a sudden thought about Edward. I looked back at the messages I’d sent him and saw that they were the under-eager communications of a woman determined not to be hurt. “Oh God,” I said aloud, looking at my phone. “Edward doesn’t think I’m interested.” There was every reason why he wouldn’t. There it was in black-and-white. I’d sabotaged it. After the first date I’d said, with terrible, fatal politeness, that “I had a nice time” and that had set the tone. I’d sent a message saying “It was lovely to meet you,” a self-protective phrase that positively reeks of non-keenness. He thought it was a kiss-off. (Remember Miles? I’d written this, after Miles told me how nice it had been to meet me: I’m sorry to say that this “nice to have met you” routine is almost always a kiss-off.) Edward thought our second date was a mercy date. He might not even be debating asking for a third. I was aloof and fearful and he’d interpreted that as indifference, and was self-protectively out-aloofing and out-fearfulling me. Nothing could really be more British. So I decided that I’d text him. I was going to have to use a deadlock-breaking phrase. There was really nothing to lose at this point.

  “Look—Edward—do you want to meet again? It’s okay if you don’t. Just say. But I’d like to.”

  I couldn’t let Gavin down, so I had lunch with a man who wasn’t a day under seventy, a man who rolled his own and had tobacco-yellow fingernails. He tried to play footsie under the table, and grab my hand. He’d brought me a present, a painting done in acrylic of Pan playing his pipe, and he wanted to know my exact time of birth so he could do my chart. It was your basic blind-date nightmare. This may sound a little snotty and I’m sorry if it does because Gavin is in many ways a great guy and heaps of fun; bear in mind that I’m trying to entertain you. But having said that—notwithstanding his great guy status—I don’t think it’s really on to ambush people at the revolving door of a hotel on a first date. There probably shouldn’t be what we used to call “French kissing” during an ambush, either. Gavin caught me off guard and lunged at me without warning, and his tongue tasted of bacon, even though we’d eaten fish. He texted me later asking if I would be his girl. It was awful to have to confess that I’d met someone else. “What, since lunchtime?” he said.

  There were three women of about sixty standing behind me at the coffee shop when I answered this message. They were well-groomed, silvery women with a look of quiet affluence, so similar in size and shape and style that they might have been sisters, though probably it was just some sort of conformity-provoking friendship set. I realized with a jolt that they were talking about the online dating one of them was engaged in. She’d had first sex with someone the weekend before, I gathered, listening harder—they were whispering by now. “He said he was sixty-two but I swear parts of him were older,” she whispered, sending them all into giggles.

  That’s where I was standing (in the coffee
queue) when Edward responded to the deadlock-buster. Of course he wanted to see me again, he wrote. He’d just wondered if I’d be interested in that. He’d thought perhaps I wouldn’t. HE’D THOUGHT PERHAPS I WOULDN’T. Friday, he suggested—what about Friday? Another drink, at a different pub, somewhere nicer? “That’d be lovely,” I replied. “I’m looking forward to it.” My mind traveled over and over our exchanges, after this was arranged, and I had another look at my cucumber-cool messages. Edward hadn’t taken the lead either, not assertively, but perhaps there were reasons for that. What I’d taken to be diffidence, a lack of interest: perhaps it was just a manifestation of seriously low expectations. Perhaps he doubted that he’d have another romantic chance in life. I understood this, because I’d had identical doubts, though mine had manifested in very different ways. We were both playing it so safe that we almost didn’t meet again. Perhaps there needs to be another lesson inserted here. Lesson Nine: use positive language and be unambiguous if you feel positively about someone. No self-protective hedging! The road of indecision is paved with flat squirrels.

  Andrew was there, at the coffee shop, talking to a young blond woman. He was in full performance mode and said, “Oh, hi there,” when I caught his eye. I got the coffee, and then—because I could do this now without gibbering or palpitating—I stood by his table waiting to say a proper hello. He didn’t break off or look at me, and I began to feel as if I were waiting to talk to a teacher talking to another teacher, and walked away in the end. He thought I was still in pursuit, I assume. (I was not. I was cured.) As I passed the window of the café I saw that he was still in full flow. He thought he had a fish on the line and was patiently reeling her in.