Friday 12th January
Dear Jean, (though I do find it hard to call you ‘dear’, but how else can I start a letter, even if it’s as hard a one to write as this)
I am sending you this Green Jacket. It was Jim’s. It was his favourite jacket actually; which I found hard to understand when he left it behind. That was, as you know, thirty four years ago. Maybe the years have been kinder to you than to me. When I look in the mirror I hardly recognise the person I have become. I stare and stare, but barely recognise this strange woman frowning back at me. But then, as I look back at photos of our wedding or family holidays, I don’t recognise me either. I have become a stranger to myself – to the person I once was anyway.
But back to the jacket. As I said, it was Jim’s favourite. He used to wear it all the time. It is a genuine Harris tweed and cost a fortune back then. It has been hanging on one of the pegs in the hall all this time. Just where he left it. I still don’t know why he never took it. He took everything else, after all. And I mean everything. All his clothes, the car, the telly, his books and records, even some of the furniture. And he cleared out the joint account too. I came home to an almost empty house. If he could have taken that he would have I am sure, but he had put it in my name when we bought it. He said it was an insurance in case he died.
Well, I can tell you Jean; many’s the time I wish he had died. That would have been better than the years I spent waiting, hoping, praying even, that he would come back. But he never did, did he?
You see, Jean, you weren’t the first. He had left me before – oh, just for a week or so at a time. No, you weren’t the first, and for all I know you weren’t the last. He had other women before. Did he ever tell you that? Oh yes, at least three. That I knew of anyway; there could have been others – but yes, I knew about three. Why did I put up with it? You may well ask. My only excuse is that I loved him. He was my first love. The first and only man to have ever made love to me. I was a shy teenager. I had a quiet upbringing, and besides I was always a plain Jane, or that was how I saw myself. Though – comparing those wedding photos with how I look now, I wasn’t so bad looking after all. I am haggard now, I have deep lines and wrinkles, and bags under my eyes too – old before my time. And that’s what waiting and hoping does for you. Do you know, my heart used to jump every time I heard the front door click open. For the first few years anyway – but it was never him, just one of the kids or a neighbour – but never Jim.
He left this jacket behind, this green one. And I know you might find this pathetic, but I always imagined he might come back for it, and long after I had given up any hope of him coming back for me – I still hoped he would come back for the jacket. My kids, who of course, you know – Keith and Sarah – told me I was stupid. They said I should throw it in the bin, or take it down the charity shop. Sarah even said she would take it when she went to spend the weekend with you and him. But I was insistent. “No” I said, “Your father left that jacket here. He knows where it is, if he wants it he will come for it.”
But just like me, he had outgrown that jacket long ago, hadn’t he? I realise now how stupid I was hanging on to it; how even more stupid I was hanging on to the hope that he would eventually tire of you and come home – if not for me, at least for the jacket.
Do you know what it feels like to be deserted? Because he didn’t just leave me for you Jean. He deserted me – us, me and the kids. He left us alone with no money at all. He has never given us any money – and I have never asked for any. When he left I didn’t have a job even. I had never worked, I left school at seventeen and Jim and I were married before my eighteenth birthday. “I will look after you” he said “for ever and ever, you’ll never have to worry. I am here to do the worrying for you.” He always said.
But, still he left us. In debt too – the mortgage was three months behind. I didn’t even know who the mortgage was with, I was that dependent on him. I had to go to the Social Security and beg for money so I could feed the kids. Our kids. His kids. And then I got a job and scraped and saved to pay the mortgage every month.
But actually Jean, that was the easy part. Getting up at six every morning, making the kids lunch, getting them ready for school, and then running to catch the bus to work, and working through my lunch-hour for years so I could leave early to pick them up from school. Even that was easy. The hard part was being alone at night, and the wretched feeling that somehow it was all my fault. I couldn’t actually forgive myself for not being good enough for him. Do you know what that feels like? When your heart has been ripped out of your chest and there is a jagged bleeding hole there for the whole world to look through, when you ache with every bone in your body for someone who so obviously doesn’t love you anymore – and at the same time blaming yourself. For not being attractive enough, for not showing him enough respect, for crying when he hit me.
Oh yes, he used to hit me. A few slaps round the face and then the punches would follow. And I blamed myself for that too.
Did he ever hit you Jean? I hope not. I really hope not. It would give me no pleasure to discover he had treated you as badly as he treated me. And each time he promised he would never do it again, he would cry and say he was sorry. And here is the daft bit Jean, I believed him. I honestly believed that he wouldn’t hit me again; even as I powdered over the bruises I willed myself to believe that he still loved me, that it was because he loved me that he hit me. And I always blamed myself. If only I could please him properly, if I were a bit prettier for him, if I just learned how to read his moods.
We heard nothing from him for eight years and then he got in touch. But not with me. He wrote to the kids. They were teenagers by then and they missed him. I know that, even if Keith said he hated his father. I talked to them, I reasoned with them. I said that they needed a father, I told them I was okay with it. But each time they got on the train to London my heart bled a bit more. It was like breaking open the scabs as the train pulled out and I had to face up to what I had lost, time and time again. He had taken everything from me and now he was taking my kids.
You see, you had a big house, he had a good job by then, you took them on foreign holidays, you bought them expensive presents for Birthday and Christmas. I couldn’t compete with that. They would come home from a weekend with you and tell me of the theme parks you took them to, the Bentley he drove, the big telly you had, the restaurants you took them to. My kids. My bloody kids. I felt you were trying to take them from me too. You took them to posh restaurants when I would to be scouring the fridge for left-overs. You took them to Spain and Cyprus. Did it ever cross your minds that I never had a holiday with them? Oh, we rented a caravan at Clacton for a week once, and it rained every day. That just about sums up my life all those years doesn’t it? It rained every day – even when the sun was shining.
Anyway. It is over now. The waiting is over. Jim is never coming back now – for me, or for the jacket. So, I am returning it to you – just as he left it. It was the only thing he left. My love he trampled in the mud, my confidence he bashed out of me before I was twenty, my self-respect he tore apart when I realised I was too scared to even tell him I knew about the other women. All I had was this green jacket, and yes, some nights when the kids were safe in bed I would drape that jacket over me and breathe in deep, trying to capture a hint of his scent, a ghost of his warmth, some small reminder of him. I haven’t done that for some years now. They say that time is a healer, but I don’t feel healed; I am wounded too deeply for that. I am all scar tissue. And I am bitter and angry. Yes, angry, Jean. Angry and bitter. But not even angry with Jim if truth be told. I am angry with myself, my stupid, stupid self. For still waiting for him, for all the wasted years, for never even giving myself a chance to heal.
Well, the waiting is over. Jim is dead. I hope that you get over him better than I did. I have nothing else to say to you really. But I do feel better now. No more glancing at the coat hook every time I come in. No more green jacket hanging there to remind me of what I have lost.
We never met, did we Jean? Jim was always careful to keep us apart. Maybe, we might have become friends. I don’t have many friends. Never did have. But it is too late for that now. Do what you like with the jacket. it is yours now.
Please don’t reply – I couldn’t bear it.