some children and their children

Mentor: I think I know the allusion.

Man: You would of course. Anyway, more on Eveline anon. Finally there's Zelda's third child, Christopher, the last of the brace of three from her first marriage. When I moved in, Zelda had not long returned from a cheapie trip to Europe - to get away from her family, as she described it. I'm not sure what the arrangement was with Lola, who would've been rather young to be left alone. I didn't want to inquire too deeply into all that. Now, I'm sorry to introduce so many names here, but there are more. Zelda not only had four kids but also two grandkids when I first met her, to which have been added an extra five since my advent. Esther, the Christian, had a six year old child, Andrew, out of a disastrous relationship. The father chose to deny paternity, and when it was proven in the usual way, he disappeared, never to be seen again. When I arrived on the scene, Esther was in a relationship with an odd handsome wannabe writer, excruciatingly untalented. He'd had a book self-published at some expense, and its awfulness made him a laughing-stock. As someone about to have my own book published, in more traditional and 'legitimate' fashion, I naturally kept him at arm's length, which was easy enough given my solitary disposition. Their relationship was very volatile, due to both characters' characters. No doubt it would've died the death, but Esther fell pregnant again. Actually, this may have been the event that doomed the relationship or brought it to a quicker conclusion, for the handsome bad writer insisted that Esther had deliberately fallen pregnant [and others in the family, most notably Eveline, had their strong suspicions]. I tell you all this as a taste of the dramas I’d dropped myself into, through Zelda, the mother hen as she called herself. It was all very fascinating. I tried to keep out of the various controversies, but with the Esther case, yes I had my own suspicions, as Esther was the traditionalist of the family, after getting over her youthful flights. Christianity was clearly part of that tradition which also involved marriage, family, home ownership, the whole shebang. She was very much into catching her man. It might have seemed manipulative, but it was also sad in its desperation. In any case, if she'd wanted to entrap, it didn't work, and Esther was soon left, single and struggling, with a hyperactive seven-year-old and a baby girl, and a perennially precarious housing situation. 

And then there was Eveline, also a single mum when I arrived, with a daughter of six or seven months. This little girl, Sophie, was the product of a liaison between Eveline and a Greek medical student who turned out to have severe psychological problems. The relationship had already foundered by the time I came along, though they still used each other for sex on a semi-regular basis. Eveline worked casually as a nurse, struggling to make ends meet, and like her older sister, moving from house to house in the rental market. 

Mentor: But she wasn't a Christian.           

introducing zelda and eveline

Mentor: So, you're in a period of readjustment.

Man: Well, that's for sure. You see, my wife became my best friend. Or rather, she became my best friend, then my wife, then my best friend again, but she wanted still to be my wife, but it was too painful for her I suppose. And there was a lot to complicate matters. Like, her daughter.

Mentor: Her daughter.

Man: Yes, her daughter is key. My wife has three daughters in fact. And one son. By two previous marriages. I don't know if you can imagine a single forty-year old man, rather detached and isolated in the world, an avoider of other people largely, completely estranged from his family, suddenly finding himself in a relationship with a woman almost a decade his senior, with three children in their twenties and a youngest daughter around fourteen, a teenage runaway whose vacant room I'd moved into. And these children all popping in and out regularly, with their friends and boyfriends and domestic dramas and pregnancies and sibling spats. It was instant storyville. My journal was working overtime. And perhaps I was more enamoured of this new environment than I was of my new partner, though she was the eye of the storm, if you will. The initial generator of all this family activity. 

Mentor: So you took an interest in one the daughters?

Man: Well, yes I did, but it's a long story. Okay, there I was, having moved into this house as just an ordinary tenant, a lodger. Anxious from the start because I knew my landlady, a friend of a friend, had a romantic interest in me. An attractive older woman whose sullen youngest daughter resembled Lolita, and was even halfnicknamed such by her amused elders. But I was no Humbert Humbert and my future wife was certainly no Charlotte Haze. No, at the beginning my sexual focus was very much on Charlotte - I mean, sorry on my future wife. Let's call her Zelda. That's the name of my grandmother, actually. Who died in childbirth at twenty-six. Besides, Zelda’s youngest, whom I’ll call Lola, wasn’t much in the picture. She only turned up now and again to collect something and flounce off again. Her bust bustin out all over. Zelda’s eldest child, a troubled soul upon whom I shall bestow a pleasant biblical name, Esther, was when I first met her a still newly minted Christian, though she has since confided to me that she always felt the spirit move within her. She too had been a teenage runaway, lost for some years in the ways of wickedness, but in recent times she has managed to support her youngest sister in returning to the right path and accepting the lord into her heart. But I mean not to mock her nor anyone, she is as complex and unfathomable as we all are, and she has a good heart, a liberal nature and all her mother's pragmatism. Zelda's second child is the daughter in question. Let us call her - not Bertha, nor Beryl, nor Bridget. No, I shall call her Eveline. I doubt she'll like that, nor know the allusion.  

reality bites

Man: Yes, I suppose I wanted someone like myself, only smarter, though not too much smarter, and more beautiful - they could be infinitely more beautiful, I didn't mind that at all - and more outgoing, someone who could drag me outside of myself and bring me to the party. Someone who could draw out my best features, because of course inside my shy self was a brilliant wit and raconteur, a genius of language, an incisive, streetwise analyst, all that stuff. Someone who wasn't possessive either - I imagined us, this couple, to be great friends at the heart of a whole host of great friends, and we wouldn't be monogamous but we would be loyal to each other...

Mentor: You had this fantasy as a kid?

Man: By my teen years, yes. It was ridiculously far from my life as it was at the time. In fact I've never really come close to it. The closest I came, and it was still far, was around the time my first and only book came out, eleven years ago. The launch party, that was the closest to a taste of what might have been. Not that anything dramatic happened, just a lot of friendly, smart, happy people with myself and my wife at the centre. 

Mentor: So what happened? Why weren't you able to build on that?

Man: Well, I wasn't able to get my second book published, that was the first problem. But there were so many other things. My wife, who was several years older than myself, and a constant sufferer from chronic fatigue syndrome, and a woman of great practical knowledge and common sense and wit and sensitivity, was not, for all that, anything like the fantasy figure I'd too long contemplated - she was fundamentally monogamous for one thing, and I felt kind of trapped, and guilty. I knew she felt more strongly toward me than I felt toward her, but what we all fall for in another is never quite that other, but some version of ourselves that we want that other to be. I think that's why she fell for me, and to tell the truth I never really fell for her, I just drifted into acquiescing in the relationship, with a mixture of strong affection and guilt. Even marriage - I never wanted to marry, but I new she wanted it, she asked me to marry her but I refused. Then I asked her to marry me, to please her, because she'd been so kind and supportive to me, and my sexual relationship with her had been gentle and healing, after so many years in the sexual desert. It wasn't the great fantasy I'd yearned for but it was so so much better than nothing.

Mentor: And how is that relationship now?

Man: Well, we separated some years ago, but up until recently we maintained a close friendship. Then a few weeks ago she told me she wanted to see much less of me, and she informed various people by email that she was reverting to her maiden name - which I don't think she should ever have given up.