Gooseberry

One evening earlier this week, while we dined at a beachside taverna watching the sun sink into the sea off Corfu, I was regaling Adele with tales of madness from my now not so recent marriage. I was ten years in that relationship and am happily ten years out of it, if that makes sense, though some of what went on still perplexes me.

You probably realise that I'm quite a private individual and don't often share insights of a personal nature in these blogs, but I'm going to make an exception today for the given theme of gooseberry, the relevance of which will eventually become apparent.

I'm reproducing below a letter I wrote to my then wife at the end of February 2012, after a most turbulent month in our relationship. Why a letter? Because for weeks she had been refusing to talk about what happened or what lay at the root of what happened at the beginning of that month. Read it and draw your own conclusions. I have anonymised individual names and I've added some brief explanations in square parentheses [thus]: 

                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                            February 29th 2012

Dear A__,

I've tried to start several conversations regarding the events leading up to and including the fiasco that was my birthday week-end, but given all the hurt those events have engendered - and as we still don’t have any resolution to the bad feeling that has now lasted for a month - I thought setting the facts down in black and white might be a step in the right direction.

You and I agreed in discussion in mid-January that we would meet up with K and L [my daughters] in London on the afternoon of Saturday 4th February for lunch and a movie, as we had done the previous year. K would need to be at the British Museum by 5pm as she was working, but you and I would do something in town in the evening, like go to a gig.

I emailed all three of you on 24th January with suggestions for movies – My Week With Marilyn being the favourite.

On Sunday 29th January you got a text from your sister informing that C [niece ] had come home early from France and you said it might be an idea to invite her as well. I said that would be fine, just let me know because it would impact how many cinema tickets I needed to book and would probably determine whether you and I went to a gig in the evening or not. You phoned her later that day and then told me that C wouldn’t be coming with us. Consequently, that evening I booked two tickets for us to see Thea Gilmore's band in Camden on Saturday night.

Then on the evening of Monday 30th you asked me if I wouldn’t rather meet up with my daughters on my own and I said categorically not. Later that evening you told me that you didn’t want to spend the whole day in London, or couldn’t afford the time, (I don’t remember the exact words you used) but would happily join me for  the gig, as it was booked. Naturally I was surprised and disappointed that you wouldn’t be there for lunch and cinema, but I respected your wishes and was pleased we would at least have a nice evening out together.

On Tuesday 31st, just before I drove up to Blackpool for the night game, I managed to find a cinema in Islington that was showing My Week With Marilyn at a time that suited, so I booked tickets for K, L and myself.

On Wednesday 1st February, I let my daughters know the time of the cinema on Saturday and fixed a place to meet for lunch beforehand. That same evening (the first time we'd spoken since Monday) you asked me what time I was going into London on Saturday and when I told you what I’d arranged, you became really angry and started shouting and swearing at me. Your stated grounds for being so upset?

- Firstly that I’d told K and L of the cinema arrangements before I mentioned them to you. The thing is, you had told me just two days earlier that you wouldn’t be coming, so the arrangements didn’t really concern you.

- Secondly that I hadn’t re-checked with you before buying the cinema tickets, in case you’d had a change of mind. Well, sorry, but you were quite definite on the subject on the Monday night, so I took that as your final answer.

- Thirdly that you hadn’t known what film I proposed booking for. That’s just not true. I had told you on Sunday, a propos of inviting your niece, that I would book for My Week With Marilyn if possible.

- Fourthly that I hadn’t extended the lunch and cinema invitation to R and S [my stepsons]. I explained that I knew that R would be working all day Saturday and Sunday (he’d already had the previous week-end off, when he, you, K and I had been to see War Horse in London), and he wouldn’t be able to get two free Saturdays in a row; I also knew that S was on call on Saturday and wouldn’t be able to go into London. And I'd discussed with R and S that the four of us (your boys, you and I) could go out for a birthday meal on Sunday evening.

- Fifthly that I should have invited K and L out to Hemel Hempstead at the week-end so we could all do something together. Again, I pointed out that R was working on both days, S was on call, that K had to be at the BM from 5pm Saturday until 1pm Sunday and that having my daughters come out from London on Sunday night for a couple of hours didn’t seem like the best plan given that everybody (yourself in particular) likes to spend part of Sunday night getting ready for the week ahead…and I reminded you that we had discussed and agreed a week before that we would go into London on my birthday, the Saturday.

Your response to the points I made was to launch into another foul and abusive tirade followed by a succession of most unpleasant text messages. 

I told you several times over the next few days, in fact right up to the morning of my birthday, that I would love you to come to the lunch and cinema, and I was sure it would be possible to get another ticket, (as indeed it would have been, for the seat next to me was free and the cinema was two-thirds empty). You told me there was no way you were going into London at all  and certainly not as an afterthought “or a gooseberry!”

In the end, I had the unhappiest of birthdays. You refused to go the gig (and no, I didn't take somebody else instead); you decided not to give me the presents you had bought me; and you told people I had chosen to spend my birthday with my daughters rather than with you! You only grudgingly came to the meal on Sunday evening because (as you were at pains to point out) R had asked you to…and you told me that you want me to have nothing to do with your own birthday next month, when you will arrange something and I won’t be invited.

In conclusion, I feel totally beaten up over something which you precipitated. Why did any of it have to be like that? And why won't you talk to me about it? I am still mystified and miserable about the whole thing.

Steve x

Just as background, we had been together for eight years at the time. Her two sons and my two daughters had been the witnesses at our wedding, and we had socialised collectively on many occasions. Although she was given to green jealousies (she was very cool towards my female work colleagues, got very uptight when I has perfectly innocent conversations with other women at parties or gigs), I don't know why she threw what I can only characterise now as a massive wobbler over those birthday arrangements. She never did explain and never apologised for all the bad stuff she said, which included the following (I kept the text messages): 

“I wish you’d stop living.”
“I hate you and I hate your family.”
“You don’t love me enough.”
“I wish your precious daughters would die.”
“Go and live with your fucking daughters." [who didn't live together, by the way].

 "When I said I loved you I must have been lying. Fuck off out of my life."

By the time her birthday did come around in March, normal relations had been resumed and she acted as if none of the events and exchanged related above had ever happened. It was all quite extraordinary, the idea that she should be jealous of my relationship with my daughters or consider herself to be "a gooseberry" in any of this.

I don't have a poem on theme this week, though I have a concept of a plan (as Donald Trump might put it) and a title - Did I Roll My Eyes Out Loud?  - so something gooseberry-related will gell eventually. I was planning on sharing Simon Armitage's excellent 'Gooseberry Season' with you, but I note that both the other dead good blogs this week have quoted it. So I will go with something by the wonderful Ruth Padel instead, not the whole of her poem 'Writing To Onegin' (for it is very long), but the stanza that mentions the fruit...and reminds us that not all gooseberries are green.

(from) Writing To Onegin

So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl

Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's come!") 

Under fat red gooseberries, glimmering hairy stars: 

The old, rude bushes she has hide-and-seeked in all 

 Her life, where mother commands the serfs to sing 

While picking, so they can't hurl 

The odd gog into their mouths.
No one could spy 

Her here, not even the sun in its burn-time.
Her cheeks 

Are simmering fire...

                                                         Ruth Padel, 1999

 

  

  

Thanks for reading, S ;-)