Relationships are about compromise and no wonder so many of us come a cropper in this department when we don’t embrace this central truth. There is a man out there (using the term loosely) who would dutifully follow my orders to go to a fancy boutique during his trip to London and buy me an Ortigia liquid soap in Zagara fragrance, but that man is not the builder boyfriend.
All the time the BB has been away the spaniels have pined for him and been hypervigilant, barking at every sound
A few years ago, I forced him into a shop called Evie Loves Toast to buy me this posh hand wash for my birthday and he later told me he tackled the girl behind the counter. ‘Who is Evie and why does she love toast?’
I’m sure the girl explained as best she could. Naturally, Evie is going to be a child connected to the owner and she won’t have a particular relationship to toast, it’s just a lovely name for a lovely shop that appeals to lovely ladies. But the BB insisted on extracting an answer and declared himself unsatisfied with it.
Thereafter, for a long time he kept coming up with names for shops selling flowery dresses, candles and greeting cards. ‘What about Nora Likes Foreign Imports?’ This, and much ruder ones, amused him no end.
I told him he just didn’t get what makes ladies tick.
But he can leap on to a roof to fix a leaking gutter or fence six acres by driving 100 posts into the ground in one day without breaking a sweat.
And he knows how to hold me up when I’m having an emotional meltdown at what’s going on in the world. Sometimes this takes the form of telling me I’m ‘all over the place’. He’s right enough, but then we have a row because I don’t want to be told that. I want to be indulged.
The BB doesn’t do indulgence, particularly. But he does do moving all the furniture around the house because I’ve decided on a whim that I’m not happy with the sideboard here and the sofa table there. If it keeps me happy, he’ll pick a sideboard up on his own as I dance around him offering to help: ‘Stand clear!’ And up on its end the huge Georgian sideboard will go and, if I really don’t like it, onto a sack trolley he straps it and into the barn it gets wheeled and unloaded, because he reckons he can turn it into a sink unit for the annexe one day.
We have our moments. ‘I’m going to buy a double fridge tomorrow. Can you take me in the truck?’
‘Hmm. That’s nice.’
‘Oh this is typical, you’re not interested in anything I do.’
‘I’m trying to eat a bowl of cereal in peace.’ Because he’s just moved a stack of shavings bales.
‘Don’t put them in the hay store, there isn’t room with all the furniture in there. I want them in the disused stalls behind the horse barn.’
‘That’s a terrible idea.’
He said the same thing when I made him put the Jacuzzi bath into a back room, not yet renovated.
‘I want a special spa room. You know, like a Jacuzzi room. We can have a sauna as well.’
‘That’s worst idea you’ve ever had.’
‘You’re never interested in anything I come up with. You’re not even listening to my Jacuzzi room idea.’
‘That’s because it’s a terrible idea.’ Which it was.
Of course, the builder b didn’t go to a shop with a funny feminine name and buy me an expensive hand wash.
He came back from his trip to London with a £2 hand wash that you can buy in chemists anywhere.
But after getting relationships wrong for most of my life, I thank goodness I learned by the time he came along.
I arrived early to pick him up from Cork airport and sat in the sun on the grass opposite Arrivals, with the two dogs straining at their leashes.
All the time he’s been away, the spaniels have pined for him and been hypervigilant, barking at every sound.
I’ve enjoyed eating salad and having the bed to myself (apart from all the dogs and cats on it). I’ve weeded the driveway, because if he had been here he would not have let me do it: ‘You’ll hurt your hands. I’ll spray it,’ he had said protectively.
I felt useful bent double pulling weeds around the disused fountain, but when he came through the doors of Arrivals, it was wonderful to have him back with his in-built urge to protect me, and his dismissal of stupid ideas. You cannot separate the parts of a man out.
The next morning, as he slept in, I came down to make coffee. The kitchen was bathed in sunlight and it caught the pearly white hand wash he had put down for me on the counter.
I opened the cupboard under the sink and threw it in there. Then I took it back out. No, I thought, it is good enough.
Then I made his coffee, one sugar, and took it upstairs and placed it next to him.
Comments