Mr Khan knocked at my door on Monday afternoon. His knock is distinctive in that it lasts for about thirty seconds. I was looking rather glamorous, if I may say so, as I had put some make-up on and been walking round the house trying to take a portrait photo of myself in the right light, that is to say light that does not reveal the true extent of my chinnage and which takes ten years off me. Judging by the Facebook likes, it worked. Though people walking past me in the street who had seen it would probably not recognise me.
I had the strangest feeling that he'd been standing outside my house watching me lean backwards into my living room curtains, trying to smile seductively while the impact of holding my laptop aloft for the last twenty minutes was taking its toll on my biceps. There was a little something lurking in his expression, perhaps in the angle of his eyebrows. Something softer than usual in his face. Which is, incidentally, rather lovely. He has a very attractive skin colour and because he is bald this leaps out at you, in all its shiny mainly-smooth but also a bit weathered completeness. He touches his head a lot, rubbing and slapping and it's kind of sensuous I suppose. It draws attention to it if nothing else. I've always liked men without much hair which is ironic given the heady mop that OH possesses. I think Khan must be around fifty. Or sixty. I don't know, I've never been any good at judging age. (I still think of myself as 18 and if I'm asked off the cuff what the date is I'll usually be two weeks, several months and a few decades out.) His eyes are bright and there's a kindness in them, even when he's starting to shout, that I feel I connect with. Hells bells - perhaps he is where the next exciting instalment of my life is heading!
I opened the door. I was trying to make my face say nothing as I didn't know what was coming. Which despite years of practice, I find challenging. Making my face say nothing, I mean. I find it hard to hide what I'm thinking. Which these days, quite often, is 'prick!'.
'You are good woman good woman, I respect you,' he said.
'I know,' I answered.
'But this brother he drive me crazy he drive me crazy I had enough I had enough!' he shouted. Slapping. He came here to tell ME this? I thought, inwardly starting to sigh again.
'I am so sorry about that, Mr Khan,' I replied.
'He have two key for two room for one week now,' he said. 'He lie to me he say he going to move stuff but he not move stuff he creep back late last night I see him he not move stuff he think I not see him you tell your husband he pay for two room now I had enough I had enough other man he give me six hundred quid he want room I not give him room this man this brother in my both rooms.'
I started to speak and my eyes starting crying in a quiet runny way. I was tired and hormonal. And to be honest, I do cry rather easily at times.
'Mr Khan, I am so sorry,' I said. 'You are right. He should not be occupying both rooms. I will call my husband right now and tell him to tell him.'
'You tell him I want money both rooms now,' he whispered, stepping forward and lifting his fist in what, if you were in a pantomime, would probably be described as a menacing way. The tears became more obvious I suppose, as they hit the incline of my cheeks and he took a step backwards.
'This brother is working long hours,' I said. 'At the weekend too. I know he asked my husband to help him move something on Saturday and he said he'd help him on Sunday instead, but then he was working again all day and he couldn't. But he must know that he can't have both rooms. I agree with you, Mr Khan. This is not right.'
'You tell your husband,' he whispered - this time, I think, because he presumed it was less aggressive than shouting - 'He now pay two rooms.'
'I will,' I said, aware that my voice, which I had been keeping steady, was rising. 'And I will also tell him that you and I have both had enough of his stupid bloody brother! He's a stupid bloody bastard! They are both stupid bloody bastards! I've had enough, Mr Khan, enough! My husband can come and live with you and his stupid bloody bastard brother. I've had enough! Finished! It's over! I don't want him anymore. You can have him!' (Do I emulate John Cleese sometimes? Yes, I do.)
'NO!' he shouted and then lowered his voice to continue. If this had been an audition we would both have got great parts. 'Your husband good man, I swear to God your husband good man. Brother, yes, stupid idiot but your husband good man.' He closes his eyes and rests his right hand briefly on his eyelids when he is swearing to God. I have noticed relatives of OH's in Albania do the same. Usually when they are bullshitting. But anyway.
'Mr Khan,' I said. 'You can see my situation is unhappy and ridiculous. I've had enough. I can't do this any more. I don't want to have to keep dealing with my stupid husband's stupid brother's problems.'
'But your man good man and you have children,' he said. 'You keep him,' he said. Backing away and I noticed he was wearing flip-flops. It was freezing.
'I'll call him,' I said. And we waved goodbye. And then I did.
There is no reason to transcribe the conversation here. It was actually brief, to the point and my tone was ice-cold and detached. Mainly because I'd done my ranting the night before and all that was left was excess emotion that was leaking out where it could. Clearly I was not crying in front of Mr Khan because DBrother is in possession of more than his fair share of his key collection. As long as he stays living there I couldn't give less of a shit about what happens within those four walls. No. I was crying because something had clicked within me the day before, a Sunday afternoon, when I got back from a meditation course (using the indefinite article there makes it sound as though I casually attend a variety of courses when in fact I rarely do anything for myself that costs money) and found the house in complete and total disarray. So much chaos and mess that if I didn't know better I'd have thought it had been done on purpose.
Not the kind of mess that comes of OH having made dens and done lego and built steam ships out of paper and had fun with the boys, but the kind of mess that had come of him doing what he thought he needed to to keep them happy so that he could sleep on the sofa all afternoon - kinder egg chocolate and wrappers everywhere, evidence of more new toys having been bought despite our agreement to stick to a new budget and to stop spoiling the kids, fast food wrappers in the kitchen - which is fine, but that very morning I had been accused of never cooking the boys 'good food' - and having spent £35 on getting them into the zoo in the morning he had left with them after an hour because he hadn't bothered to pick up drinks and snacks for them as I'd suggested and he didn't want to pay for them to have lunch there and by that time they were of course hungry. All lights, heaters and electrical appliances that can be turned on, on. Babe1 clearly having been allowed to play on the Wii for hours. Babe2 sitting on the stairs singing him to himself tearing up a piece of paper into tiny shreds.
This is pretty much the kind of mess that I come back to every time I have an evening meeting, even when I have begged OH to get the boys into bed so that I won't have to on my return which is too late for them still to be up on a school night. It is the kind of mess that if I complain about I am called a nagging control freak.
I don't know if it was the contrast with the relaxed places I'd reached during some guided mediation during the day that set me off, but whatever it was, something inside me snapped when I got home. I don't know if it is the years of constant criticism and feeling disempowered by me (if that is what has happened; I try and reflect fairly on things) that turns OH into this disconnected passive-agressive lunatic who does everything he can to drive me insane so that he can then wave his arms and point at how insane I am. I don't know whether it was residual resentment on my part that he had jumped out of bed at the crack of dawn on the Saturday to drive his bloody brother to work and then refused to come anywhere with us in the sunshine for the rest of the day. I don't know if it's what I suspect are pre-menopausal hormones rocking my system and making me hypersensitive - CRASHBANGWHALLOPBEINGAWOMANCANBETOUGHNOTOFCOURSETHATIWOULDCHANGEITBECAUSEGIVINGBIRTHTOBABE1WASTHEMOSTINCREDIBLEEXPERIENCEOFMYLIFE
- all I know is that a roaring voice was welling within me saying that I deserve more and that I can't cope with any more shouting and conflict and abuse, which I deal as much of as I receive. Clearly something here is NOT RIGHT.
I won't draw you, dear readers, into any more detail. But you can see that I am in a devil of a pickle.
***
By Tuesday night Babe2 had shoved a huge peanut up each nostril that resulted in an evening and a morning in A&E, narrowly avoiding a general anaesthetic but not so a terrible load of screaming and several very unpleasant episodes of having to hold him down while different methods of removal were attempted. I should have kept the buggers - the nuts I mean - and framed them or put them in one of my memorabilia boxes but they ended up on the floor somewhere. Which is where I threw them, as soon as they were ejected, to ensure they could not be sucked back in. No-one else had a free hand. I was lying on my son, my legs doing most of the work. Yes, some of you will be wondering how it is that I didn't crush him.
The worst part was being asked to perform a 'mother's kiss' to try and remove the nuts. 'All you have to do is open your mouth wide, mum, and get your lips over his, and get a really good seal and then breathe really hard and get those nuts out. Nine times out of ten, this works. Oh, and do it when he's not expecting it.' Three utterly humiliating attempts and all I did was scratch him with my teeth, get snot and saliva everywhere and completely and horribly upset him. I then called OH in to give it a try - this was by now quite late at night and the nurse agreed it would be better to try that the go for a GA (for some reason they were not letting on at this point that they had a range of instruments other than the ones they'd already tried at their disposal.)
Thanks to a friend who jumped out of the bath and down the road to mind Babe1, OH was able to drive into town and to the hospital. Full of manly bluster, 'I've done this a hundred times before', we were taken to a bed with a curtain around it in a large ward full of people. And the nurse who'd watched me fail sat on the bed to observe. After about five minutes of shuffling and moving our son around on his lap and blatantly swearing his arse off at me in Greek, he shot snot and saliva all over his face, too. My fault, of course. Everything always is. On our way back to the waiting room he heard the doctor from Ears, nose and throat (or whatever they're called) telling the nurse he'd be calling us back in the morning for a GA, so he then insisted on going straight home with our son instead of waiting an hour or so to be told this via the official process. Which I kind of understood but since I am a bit of a stickler for aforementioned process we argued and he swore at me and then stormed off and I was left alone.
I mention this only because I wanted to talk about love here, as well as all the crap I've been banging on about above. Perhaps friends who knew the peanut episode was happening wondered if this trauma would bring OH and I together. Shared glances of affection and appreciation between two pairs of eyes brimming with love and tears above the little ginger nut playing with the books on the floor of the emergency waiting room. Etc.
Far from it. The next day we agreed that although OH would take the day off work he would not come to the hospital with us because we were both very stressed and knew that we might argue and disagree and could not be relied on to behave appropriately in public. Bottom line, we found that we could not help one another through distress, because we were not in control of our anger.
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