“How many children did you have at the time?” Trish, my counsellor, asked.
“Two. Greg and Caroline.”
“What happened then?”
“A week or so later, and despite the best efforts of both
sets of parents, and mine of course, Liz said she was leaving me. It was weird,
because she said she would leave at the end of the week and we made love every
night that week as if we were on honeymoon. I found it very confusing. Before she left, we talked about what to
do about the house and we agreed that since it didn’t look likely there would ever be a reconciliation, I should put the house on the market. She went to live with her
parents, and I went to live with mine. From then on, I didn’t see her or the
children for four months.”
“Did you make contact with Harriett?”
“Yes, I did. I was being punished for something I hadn’t
done, so why not?”
“Did you meet her again?”
“Yes, she came to England for a week. We stayed in the Lake
District together.”
“And did anything happen while she was in England?”
“No, she insisted on having her own room.”
“Did she still want to marry you?”
“She said she did. She even asked me to go to Finland to
meet her parents. And they were very nice people. They owned a farm near
Helsinki.”
“Did anything happen while you were in Finland?”
“Not beyond kissing and cuddling.”
“Why not?”
“You’d have to ask her. She made the running.”
“How did you get back with Liz?”
“That was a long hard battle. I soon began to realise it was
Liz I loved and I was missing her and the children terribly. But when I called
her parents' house to try and speak to her she refused to come to the phone.
Finally, my father had a word with her father and he persuaded her to see me. I
went to her parents’ house and the meeting was an absolute disaster. She didn’t
want anything to do with me. Her brother threatened me with a baseball bat. I
think he would have hit me with it if his father hadn’t stopped him. He still
hasn’t forgiven me. I doubt he ever will.”
“How did you persuade her to come back?”
“I had to court her all over again. It took a year, and it
was probably the most difficult year of my life. She was like a complete
stranger.”
“You’d hurt her.”
“I know.”
“How was it when you started living together again.”
“It was awful. For a while, I was convinced I’d made a
mistake. She didn’t trust me. And even up to her getting sick in Florida ten
years ago, she’s shown a tendency to be jealous, almost insanely so at times.
And there’s never been anything for her to be jealous about.”
“So the reason you haven’t looked for female company is
because of what happened back then.”
“Yes, it is. I made her a promise and I’ve stuck to it. And
I certainly couldn’t contemplate breaking my promise with her in her
condition.”
“So you’re left with the problem of being desperately short
of affection and not knowing what you can do about it.”
“That’s the long and short of it. It’s been driving me nuts
trying to figure out what to do.”
“Have you ever thought of seeing a prostitute?”
“No thank you,” I said. “I’ve never paid for sex, and I
don’t propose to start now.”
Extract from my book WILL YOU TELL HER, OR SHALL I? A true
story. My story. The story of how I lived with the ten-year terminal illness of
my wife. Available on www.booksthepublishersmissed.com
Twitter: Maximillian19
FB: facebook.com/Booksthepublishersmissedcom
No comments:
Post a Comment