Chapter 3: Family values

I was tired and miserable and in agony, inside and out, lying in my hospital bed. I wondered what it would be like, going back to Mandy’s house for my recovery. I couldn’t bring myself to think of it as our home any more, it was definitely hers. Possibly, despite what she said, theirs, irrespective of whoever “they” were.

I started wondering then about the kids and how much their appearances must’ve changed in the last five years. Would I recognise them? Would they even recognise me? I was in conflict, did I really want to see them? I had cut them out of my life with just token one-way gifts at Christmas and birthdays. It was all too emotional for me to cope with and I started crying again. Me, a big grown fire fighter who feared nothing physical, crying quietly, tears streaming down my cheeks. It wasn’t just that I had missed five years of my kids, it was the thought that I’d tried to exist since I left them without any hope in my life. This was why I was never able to commit to Sally, I wasn’t able to take my life forward onto the next step until I faced up to where we had got to and what I had left behind.

Mandy reached across and held my big rough left hand in both her hands. Her tiny hands were warm and comforting but my mind was so full of contradictory thoughts. I looked her in the eyes and, although I tried to smile, I pulled my hand away from hers, saying gently,

“Sorry Mandy I can’t do this ... yet.” For yet, my mind was saying, never ever, but I didn’t have the strength to say as much.

Tears started in her eyes and she got up and went out of the ward. I was upset too, in agony, both physically and mentally, before finally relaxing into my pillows and closing my eyes. I think I must have dozed off until just before lunch came around, when the nurse woke me for my more-than-welcome medication.

Mandy was back by then and sitting in the chair reading a newspaper. She must have returned while I slept on undisturbed. Saturday was the first day the consultant hadn’t come round to see me and poke my injuries, I supposed they have to have the weekends off. I guessed that was fair enough. Maybe if I had earned enough money to have proper weekends to spend and rebuild my relationship with Mandy after Josh arrived, we wouldn’t be in the mess we had gotten ourselves into. My lunch followed and Mandy helped by cutting up my food so I could let my right wrist get the rest it needed.

The afternoon visiting time was interesting. The nurses seemed to regard Mandy as an auxiliary fixture so they let me have more than one additional visitor at a time. Firstly, a couple of mates from the garage turned up, although they seemed to spend more time chatting up Mandy than they did conversing with boring old me. They brought me an envelope containing some wages owed to me from the previous week, which was a nice surprise.

Then Station Officer Stafford turned up with my car keys, which he handed straight over to Mandy, with not a single reference to me. He was accompanied by my old mucker Brendan, who had fallen through the warehouse floor with me. He had been completely unhurt, other than shaken up, landing on a pile of pallets, all the beams and floorboards apparently went my way! Anyhow, the Service had given him a week off work to recover from the shock. We had a good chinwag and Brendan took the opportunity to take a lot of photos with his mobile phone. He took snaps of me alone, with the boss, with Mandy and the boss, with Mandy and me and then Mandy took one of us three firefighters together. We flicked through them on the screen, the one with the three of us together looked great, Mandy was a natural-born photographer, clearly.

Before they left, SO Stafford handed me a cheque, which the lads had collected from a whip-round among the lads. I had tears in my eyes at their generosity. Although I was on sick pay, which covered me on full pay for the first six months and half-pay for a further six, that didn’t anywhere near cover what I would lose from my usual Service overtime plus the cash-in-hand income I got from my second job. The collection went some way towards making up some of that loss over the next few weeks, though, so I was pretty grateful for their generosity.

While Mandy took her leave to drive my car over to the Murrays to pack and collect my stuff - there wasn’t much of value there to worry about, just my underwear drawer might be embarrassing - I checked the contents of the envelope from the garage. There was more than enough cash in there to cover what I would have paid into Mandy’s account for the month, so I could at least settle up with her without having to go to the bank. There was sufficient surplus to fill up my car’s fuel tank on her drive home on Sunday. The cheque from the fire crews would have to wait until I was mobile again and could get to a branch of my bank and pay it in.

I think I must’ve dozed off during the afternoon because when I awoke my afternoon cup of tea was stone cold to the touch. Mandy had virtually bounced into the room, arousing me from a deep slumber where I had dreamed of the peace and quiet of a shaded glade with the sound of droning bumble bees and a sighing breeze.

I spluttered on an injudicious mouthful of cold tea. Then she forced my ribs and shoulder to complain as I was encouraged to lean forward while she cheerfully plumped up my pillows for me. I blinked around the room where little appeared to have changed, although Mandy looked positively cheerful.

“Guess what I’ve got for you,” she beamed, then paused for effect, waiting for me to respond with a guess, for her amusement.

I groaned inwardly. What was she playing at now? We married each getting on for 15 years ago and for the last third of the time since we have been entirely estranged. Happily separated on my part if you regard being resigned to the situation as a synonym for reasonable contentment. I don’t think we had been all that happy when we were together, other than perhaps the first few years. Once she started working at the school with Gosford bloody Tanner we were finished as a couple and I’d had plenty of time to get used to that state of existence. It was something I had coped with well and had no problem with continuing.

Beautiful as she was, I would be happy if I never saw Mandy ever again, yet she was acting around me like we were still a loving couple.

“I don’t want to play happy families, Amanda,” I said firmly, “We are no longer friends, we are barely acquaintances any more, we have nothing going on between us except for the kids and that is not a strong enough reason for us to be anything other than civil during brief handovers between your time and mine with them. And that’s only if we ever manage to agree on sharing the kids at some future date. There is no ‘we’ only me on my own and you on whatever you want to be, anything except us. On that basis I have no intention of ever playing games with you.”

“You are a miserable spoilsport, honey, no wonder nobody wants to go out with you,” she retorted, with her self-satisfied smile still on her lips, “Annabel and I had a long talk about you over a pot of tea, when I was over there. So I know you’ve never mentioned having a girlfriend in the two years since you’ve been living there. You spend all your time at work or at your second job and mope around the place on your lonesome the rest of the time. So I know that there is no woman in your life.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, honey,” I snarled back, “I may have come to distrust women so much that I’ve gone completely the other way ... I may just not be ready to come out of the closet yet.”

I hoped that might take the smug smile off her face but I should have remembered it was never a fair contest arguing with Amanda Collins nee Wilson, that’s why she had stayed and I was the one that went. I gave up and left after the adultery with Gosford Tanner because I knew if I remained there, even if we’d had a spare room which we hadn’t, of course, she’d talk me into accepting my position and I knew I could never forget, I could never trust her ever again. I may not be a very happy person on my own but away from her I felt I would be a lot less miserable somehow.

“OK,” she folded her arms, maintaining her provocative smirk. I couldn’t see or hear her foot tapping under the bed but I could well imagine it. “Who’s the lucky buddy lover then?”

“If I am not ready to come out, then maybe my ‘special friend’ or even friends might not want to be known either.”

Hee hee, I thought, she may have a good service and return game but I can dink a few stop volleys over the net when I have to. I make that deuce. Mrs Collins-Wilson-bloody-Tanner-Wannabe to serve.

“I did notice Brendan hug you last night for a moment longer than social etiquette called for, honey.” she grinned, “And I also noticed that, compared to your physical condition, he’s a fine figure of a man.”

“He is,” I agreed, winking at her, “Very fine, I can vouch for that.”

“And he is so proud of his four children,” she grinned, “He showed me the pictures, his youngest is keeping him awake at night this week teething.”

Damn, I had no return shot in the locker. Advantage Mrs Collins-Wilson-bloody-Tanner. She looked at me beaming, her cheating face beautiful, instantly reminding me of her look of ecstasy while being served by Gosford bloody Tanner. I could still hear her words of encouragement to her lover back then echoing in my brain, words I had previously thought of exclusively as mine only. Out of it she said she was, but no, she knew exactly what she was doing, then and now.

Now I come to think of it, when we used to make love she was always quiet, so I never knew if what I was doing was agreeable to her or not. Clearly I wasn’t. I always assumed as we moved from childhood friends to courtship and marriage that like me we had always been exclusive. I know she was my only lover, I have never actually asked her if I was also her only lover up to that point. I guess I had always been fumbling around in the dark, with little encouragement other than a general impression of get on with it for goodness sake! I do remember very clearly though that under Gosford Tanner’s skilful attention she was screaming the bloody house down so everybody giggling to each other at that party knew what was going on and why I found their bedroom so easily. My eyes watered, she noticed.

“Are you in pain, honey?”

“I guess I am,” I replied, without giving her the satisfaction of knowing it wasn’t just the accident, I had been enduring the same agonising pain for pushing 60 months that the woman I had loved didn’t love me one little bit, it had all been a lie.

“We’ll soon have you home and getting you back on your feet,” she smiled absolutely clueless as to what thoughts and memories that I was suffering from, “Merv called back this afternoon and said he had good news for us. That’s the good news that I wanted to tell you.”

“Merv?” I asked, “Who’s Merv when he’s at home?”

She tut-tutted, “Mervyn Stafford, your station boss, dummy! He prefers Mervyn rather than Merv, but I got carried away calling him Merv in the excitement and he said he didn’t mind at all when I apologised. Merv’s managed to organise you a lift home!”

I was speechless. I didn’t even know Station Officer Stafford had a first name. I had never called him by anything other than “Sir” or “Station Officer Stafford” in the two years I’d known him and we certainly hadn’t exchanged mobile phone numbers. The lads all called him “Slinky”, because he used to creep about trying to catch us asleep or skiving on duty, but we never called him that to his face, of course.

Now Stafford was calling Mandy’s mobile and working in her bloody interest to get me to recuperate at her house. Whatever happened to bloody fire fighter solidarity of comrades under fire?

Game and first set to Mrs Collins-Wilson-bloody-Tanner, who now leads one set to love, new balls please. They were her new balls alright, while my old ones were shrivelling away to nothing, like a sad pair of drifting icebergs who found themselves in the Mediterranean in August.

How could I possibly get myself back in the game, let alone win against such odds?

The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully with me wishing my life away until Sunday when Mandy could drive home with all my bloody worldly goods in my car. That reminded me to give her the money received from the garage.

Mandy then told me that since she was teaching full-time and had been for three years, my regular contribution wasn’t so important to her anymore. In fact, for the last couple of years she had been splitting the money between our children’s three trust funds on a 45/35/20 basis to help towards their further education costs. She decided Josh needed more as his fund had less time left to grow.

It made sense to me. I said if that was the case, if she would give me their account numbers I could pay them in direct by standing order once I can get down to the bank. I volunteered the thought that if I had been aware it was going direct to the children I might have been prepared to pay in even more. She looked daggers at me but only agreed it was a good idea and she would look out the account numbers for me when she got home.

No visitors on Saturday night, so she fetched a game of Scrabble up from the hospital playroom. I know I had said I didn’t want to play games with her but I was just as bored by then as she was. The pair of us were sitting together for hours on end and barely exchanging a word. It was just like being married again, I thought cynically.

Anyway, as usual, she beat me hands down until it was time to pack up for my bed time. She hammered me on all the long words but I finished using up my tiles more often because I almost always managed to fit my last few letters in. I was just too far behind by then to catch up most of the time.

I slept quite well that night, though, surprisingly. Perhaps my mind needed to be as tired as my aching body in order to sleep.

Sunday was my most exiting day in hospital to date. Mandy turned up early in the morning, while I was still having my breakfast, I think she was looking forward to my daily bed bath, I suppose one of us had to. She brought up a bundle of newspapers and started reading them while sipping a mug of coffee she had brought with her. She knew by then what hospital coffee was like, it was worse than the tea and that was barely drinkable.

Suddenly, Mandy exclaimed, stood up and thrust one of the national newspapers in front of me. There on one of the inside pages was a half-page picture of me in my hospital bed with Stafford and Brendan sitting either side of me, all with our thumbs in the air. That was the photo that Mandy took of us on Brendan’s bloody mobile phone.

“I’ll murder him when I see him again,” I thought out loud, “His four kids and missus’ll be wearing black as soon as I get on my feet!”

I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror since the incident and I looked a mess in that blown-up photo, with four days’ beard growth, a gash on my forehead, surrounded by bruises, both eyes blackened, the left one puffy and a quarter closed, one cheek was tinged with purple-blue the other bright mustard yellow, with a number of scratches on my cheek and jaw. The only thing surprisingly untouched was my nose. I don’t think even my mother would’ve recognised me unless someone insisted she take a second look.

Mandy snatched the paper back and started reading the text.

“Merv is quoted here as saying that you are the best and bravest fire fighter on his team, says you’ve received three bravery commendations,” read Mandy, then looking up and adding, “When Josh searched on-line he found you mentioned in the local paper several times, rescuing people.”

“It’s all exaggerated, Mandy,” I said quietly, “I was just a member of a team that’s all.”

“But Merv says-”

“Stafford is a bloody idiot, a paper pusher, he was last a proper fire fighter over twenty years ago. OK, I did get one commendation but the other two were just special mentions, which is nowhere near the same thing and I was never on my own, I was always with buddies who put their lives on the line every single day they go out there not knowing what they are going to have to tackle. Most of it though is just routine.”

“So what was the one commendation for?”

“I threw three very young kids out of a front bedroom window to my guys below,” I admitted, “There was no real danger from fire, just smoke. I had a respirator if I needed it myself and I’d given each of the kids a breath each when I got to them. The local paper printed a still photo of me, which appeared on the front page. It looked very dramatic with smoke billowing out the window that I had just smashed and showed me just releasing the last kid. There were no flames, our lives were not in danger, the fire was in the living room and my mates were busy tackling that. I just wanted to get the kids out of the smoke and there was no way I could carry the three kids down the stairs in one go, and I wasn’t considering leaving one behind. Someone living in a house opposite had recorded the scene on his video camera and put it up on YouTube. My nameplate on my chest stood out in the shot so the station was bombarded with calls and Stafford was forced against his better judgement to commend me. If I’d thrown those kids out of the back bloody bedroom window no-one would’ve been any the wiser and I wouldn’t have had to put up with any of the fuss and bother.”

Mandy squeezed my hand, “Well, I still think you’re a hero.”

I think I scowled.

Bed-bath time was fun, well it was for Mandy and the young nurse that helped, definitely not for me, but at least I insisted on getting my first shave for about a week. It was really starting to get scratchy and the picture in the paper made me want the shave even more. Yes, I did get an embarrassing reaction “downstairs”, thank you very much, and I apologised profusely to the young nurse. Wilma must’ve been on a different shift that morning. The nurse laughed and barely batted an eyelid, I guess they get used to that sort of thing very quickly.

I could’ve wound Mandy up about it, blaming the young nurse for the reaction, which was in stark contrast to the previous day, but to be honest I was all out of cheap shots.

They had to change the bed sheets as well which led to some really painful manhandling and made me ache for hours afterwards. Mandy had also taken over the bedpan duties as well by now, which was really playing strange mind games with my head. I don’t know what it was doing for her but I guess she felt she needed to get used to doing it for when I was in her charge. I hoped by then I would be able to use crutches and take care of these functions myself.

Lunch followed very quietly, with Mandy attentive but restrained, although with the smallest trace of a smile playing on her face, which I found was mildly annoying. I imagined both of us were thinking thoughts that neither of us were prepared to voice. We were dancing around each other, although she had all the moves, naturally I was pretty well immobile.

It was afternoon visiting time that the symbolic fan turned a distinct shade of brown.

There was this sudden shriek of “Jimmy!” from the doorway and a bundle of boundless energy bounded across the room and thrust her arms around me fit to squeeze out what life I had left in me. All I could see was red hair over my eyes and felt wet tears mixed with the kisses that rained down on my cheeks and neck and lips.

“Baby, baby,” the new arrival sobbed, “I thought I’d lost you forever and then Mum pointed you out in this morning’s papers.” She stopped kissing me and lifted her head to regard me, frowning, running light fingertips over my scabbed cuts, stitches and bruises. I wiped the tears away from her eyes and cheeks with my left hand.

“Sal,” I said, “I’m OK, really I’m fine, they are looking after me in here really well. I’ll be right as rain in a few months.”

Sally kissed me on the lips once more, locking down firm and passionately on them.

Oh my! I remembered those kisses from when we were courting. My lips were always so bruised the guys at the ducting company reckoned I looked as though I was having regular Botox injections. Sally was a tiny bundle of energetic lovemaking. Redhead, with a frizzy natural perm, her hair out almost to the width of her shoulders, she really stood out of a crowd. She was shorter than Mandy by an inch or so, barely five foot high but with big breasts and hips and a narrow waist. She was loud and brash and very funny, she always made me laugh. Passionate? Oh yes, she was passionate alright, with knobs on!

Trouble was she was very young, far too young for me if truth be known. When we parted, after about 18 months of dating, I was 31 and she was only 21. She had this half-formed notion to settle down at the time. She suggested that we get a place together, get married eventually and raise a big family.

When we first started going out she was only 19 and worked at the ducting company in the office administration department. I never thought our relationship would last more than a couple of dates, so I never told her anything about my existing family. Those first couple of dates turned into a handful over the first twelve months and then stretched into a sequence and soon we were making out seriously.

After a month or so of going steady the subject of sex came up, OK Sally brought it up, I didn’t. She was keen, I was reluctant. Damn, my body didn’t have any reservations but my conscience was screaming out no way! Sally couldn’t understand what was wrong with me and I couldn’t explain why or even why I had kept mum about my wife and kids. The story of my life so far, not able to communicate with the women in my life, even my Mum had no idea what was going through my head. In the end, about fourteen months into the relationship, she just jumped me one night after a few drinks and I gave in. No willpower, me.

“Mmmm,” Sally moaned as she kissed me, her left hand behind my head and her right hand roaming around my body, until it eventually brushed against the tent which had miraculously appeared in my thin sheet covering me. She broke off the kiss, smiling broadly, and we both looked down. There was no doubt about it, Sally could get me going like no other woman I knew until then, which was a very select club at the time, with a membership of just two.

Which reminded me that Mandy...

Sally grinned at me and cooed, “Is that all for me, baby?” She looked up around her, saying “Can we close these curtains-”

Then she froze when her eyes locked onto Mandy’s eyes, who was looking at her with cold blue steel eyes, now standing up from the chair on the other side of the bed.

Sally’s green eyes flashed back at me, “Who’s this, baby? A volunteer visitor?”

Oh, boy! It’s definitely hit the fan now, war was about to be declared and I was in no-man’s-land without a single friendly stretcher-bearer in sight. Hell, I’d’ve accepted being carted off by one of the enemy!

“Er, this is Mandy,” I said, “Mandy, this is Sally.”

Did I think that a perfunctory introduction would suffice? No, I’m pretty dumb and uneducated but I’m not totally stupid. It was more a delaying tactic, putting off the inevitable storm, of course, but what would you have done in the circumstances? Be honest now!

Mandy spoke up first. “And, honey, Sally is... ?” directing her question at me with raised eyebrows. I imagined her hackles were up to as high a level as they get before exploding.

At “honey”, Sally turned to me, her green eyes moist and shiny, “Baby?” she asked and that meant I was busted by both women.

“Sally, I would like you to meet Amanda Collins, my estranged wife and mother of my three children, ... Mandy, I would like you to meet Sally O’Sullivan, the woman I ... love.”

Mandy sat back down in the chair with a bump at that. Sally shrieked again and virtually suffocated me with another passionate bout of kisses.

“Baby, baby, do you really love me?”

“I do sweetheart, with all my heart.”

“Oh, baby,” she breathed, “Me too! I missed you so much, Jimmy.”

She hadn’t changed much in the two years since I had seen her last. Hair looked a little longer, shoulder-length frizzy red hair and all over the place quite frankly. Her face pale, she stayed out of the sun if she could, with brown freckles on her pink nose and cheeks, a tiny ruby stud decorating her left nostril. I had felt the resident tongue stud when she kissed me earlier, bringing back delicious memories which had definitely manifested itself in a physical reaction, noticed by both the women in my life.

Now was definitely not the time to bring up any nagging doubts in my head. Sally and I had stopped going out about a month before I received my lay-off notice at the ducting company, which was over two years ago now. She had wanted us to move onto the next logical step in our relationship. Sally was fed up with making love in the back of my car or hotel rooms on holiday and we couldn’t do anything at my digs or her mother’s house. She was looking at apartment rentals in the local newspaper and I was trying to discourage her but found myself unable to explain to her the reasons why. I don’t even know why I was reluctant to tell her about my other family. Shame that I had resorted to running away rather than stay and battle to keep my wife. I think.

Sally became upset over the lack of development in our relationship and she cooled towards me almost immediately. We stopped talking, we stopped going out and after a month of silence between us I was also given my career-altering marching orders and left the ducting company we both worked at with immediate effect.

The Job Centre suggested the Fire Service. They were looking for suitable people, I was looking for anything suitable, so they put us together. I heard from mates at the ducting company that they had seen Sally going out with someone else and they wondered what happened to us guys. I told them that we were both free agents again. When I finished basic training, I moved 60 miles away to Cleethorpes and Sally and I never made contact again. When I next upgraded my mobile phone I cleared away the redundant numbers and Sally’s mobile and Sally’s Mum’s landline numbers were included in the cull.

When Mandy was out of the way I would have to ask Sally about who she was or had been going out with? In the meantime I wasn’t above using her as a tool against Mandy.

As for announcing that Sally was the woman I loved, I really didn’t know where that crazy thought came from. I hadn’t planned on saying anything like that, it just popped out. I was very fond of her, but in the same way I regarded Mandy, I had trust issues that would have to be throughly addressed before going forward with any thoughts of a serious relationship in the future. I was just not equipped to handle those particular concerns at this juncture.

All this flashed through my thick head as Sally buried her moist hot tongue once more into my dry mouth, trying her best to whip my tonsils into mush with her silver stud. When we surfaced, Sally looked flushed, her freckles looked enlarged to the size of pennies and Mandy appeared decidedly pale and pissed at the pair of us, sitting with her arms folded. She was probably wondering where the hell this rival, this very attractive and much younger woman, had emerged from, when she had been led to believe there was no other woman in my life.

“Mandy, you wouldn’t mind giving us some ... privacy, would you?” I asked in as neutral a voice as I could manage, “While I catch up with my ... girlfriend?”

Mandy got up and started towards the door, turned back momentarily as an afterthought and picked up her shoulder bag and coat. Then, with a final look up at the pair of us, she went out without a word.

“She’s frosty,” commented Sally, almost but not quite as soon as we were alone, “And she’s old, no wonder you dumped her, baby.”

“Hold on Sally,” I said, disentangling her arms from around my neck, a difficult thing to do when you only have one hand and she seemed very determined to stay put. “Although Mandy and I have been apart for five years, that doesn’t give you license to slag her off. For a start, she’s exactly the same age as me.”

“Maybe,” she grinned, still rubbing her hands over my shoulders and chest, eluding my limited attempts with my left hand to stop her, “You’re buff! Been workin’ out, baby?”

I shook my head and laughed. “Well, you are not exactly seeing me at my best right now, but I do put in a lot more exercise and gym work as a fire fighter than I ever did making metal boxes!”

“It shows, baby, it shows!” Her hands wandered down to my nether regions again, which seemed to have this veritable flagpole permanently marking the spot.

“Behave, Sal,” I warned, “We are not in private and besides, if you remember we split up over two years ago and haven’t been in contact all that time, so you can’t expect to simply pick up where we left off.”

“I know baby,” Sally said, disconsolately, “I know. I was wrong to push the issue with you at the time. But I am here for you now.”