Lakshmi's Love Shack

My ex-husband kept referring to him as a gardener during the divorce. I’ll have you know, he was so much more. A Landscape Visioneer he was, and he certainly changed mine! Lakshmi-Love, wherever you are now, I will always thank you for opening my eyes and hope you'll forgive me for finally sharing our story.

It all started one dreary Sunday in 2011. I was sat on our bed after a late morning shower examining my breasts. The year before, I’d undergone an operation to remove a cancerous lump and while I might have been completely cleared now, it’s not a thing you ever forget to check for once your partner in life has had to suffer the inconvenience of two weeks’ disruption to your working life and cash saving duties. And then, heaven forfend, there was the no small matter of those short people he’d found wandering around the house looking for num nums and something called a cuddle. I had to keep an eye out for them too.

So when he found me two years later sat on our bed, arm in the air, pawing at my soft tissues with a worried look on my face, it was just too much for any mere mortal to bear.

“What are you looking at now? For God’s sake, it’s coming up to Sunday lunchtime! What exactly are the kids doing in the garden? You know you can’t let Obie loose with tools unless he’s supervised.”

“It’s alright. I asked him to dig a hole for the tree we ordered, thought it might tire him out. I’ll be there now. Darling, I think I’ve got a lump on the other side now. What do you think?”

Without a flicker of concern, he surveyed me: “What do I think? I think… YOU need… to get your priorities straight. Bloody starving we all are! What’s Carly doing? Shouldn’t she be peeling something?”

I went downstairs to care of things, thoughts of having to go through all that hospital stuff again, no support, with just recriminations for company, shoved to the back of my mind. The last time the consultant had called me in to tell me I didn’t need any further treatment, instead of feeling relieved, I’d been almost disappointed. I’d wanted something to take me away, far away and permanently, an easy ticket out of this whole painful charade without ever having to confront my family and deal with the aftermath. Something that finally wasn’t all my fault,

But here it was, back again, the other breast to be sliced and diced this time, and these thoughts just kept returning to the front of my mind. If it was coming back so quickly, I probably didn’t have very long. It had probably spread to other parts I hadn’t seen, deep inside, silently creeping and choking. How had I not realised? Why was this happening to me?

I’d known for a while that the prospect of growing old with that man was the loneliest, most frightening fate to contemplate, that there would never be a kind, loving word, unsolicited hug or cup of tea to ease the inevitable strains of life. But serious illness? Was that the reward for killing myself working for years to protect the child in him that screamed out constantly for me to fish him out of trouble and hide him from a cruel world? I’d brought all this on myself, been given the lesson last time and ignored it.

How were the kids going to cope? They didn’t know why I was in hospital the last time; there’d been no point upsetting them with what turned out luckily to be unwarranted concerns. But this, now? I’d stick to the script, 'mum’s just having some therapy'. But all of that was probably a while away, I needed to enjoy them now.

Obie was fed up digging and was hungry. Carly wanted to go to the garden centre for a cappuccino and a bun. I started on the weeds that had shot up around the bamboo we’d planted for added privacy to keep their father feeling more secure. Bloody bindweed, it was everywhere, choking everything. The more I pulled at it, the more there was. It was never going to end. It was going to be here long after me.

The wind had picked up, and looking at the sky, I wondered how many more opportunities I had to hear that soothing rustling sound or feel it on my skin, or see a sunset with the kids and tell them all the stories they needed to know, all the advice I had for later in life when they might need to remember my voice. Some people only lasted three weeks from diagnosis, didn’t they?

I found myself taking them hand in hand for a walk to see Nan. She’d still never sorted out all the boxes of photographs into albums for us like she’d promised to do when they were born. I still don’t know who half those people are. “Come on,” I said, “let’s get some stories off her. She’ll cook some Sunday dinner, and we can have a nice time, maybe watch a lovely family film together.”

Mum was pleased to see us, happy to get out the chest of photos and made us all a lovely cuppa. It all felt comforting, warm and golden, but was short-lived. I’d just sat down to enjoy it when a swarm black, flame-spitting wrecking ball came crashing in and knocked me to the ground. Its repeated requests for Sunday dinner spattered my face as he punctuated each exasperated word with an additional pick up and thrust to the ground.

Nobody said a word. Nobody even stopped what they were doing; they just carried on, looking at their phone, turning over the telly and putting the kettle back on, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

When he’d got it all out of his system, his long list of my faults, I rolled over, scrabbled to my feet and found myself walking straight out the front door. I had no idea where I was headed, but my feet just took me and completely numb, I hung on for the ride.

They took me as luck would have it, to the local Arts Centre and straight up to the bar where I ordered a large glass of bubbly rose and a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. I knew one thing, I wasn’t planning on going back for dinner.

My phone switched off, I sat and read the month’s cinema listings and reviews. How many films could I get to enjoy between now and… whatever? You hear stories, don't you, about people after events like the Wall Street crash, homeless, sleeping in cinemas between showings to stay safe and warm…

It was quite a healthy crowd for a Sunday afternoon; Yummy mummies sipped vanilla lattes with adoringly grateful in-laws, students slopped pints over their screenplay edits and sickeningly sated lovers dripped all over shared fries. The atmosphere brimmed with bohemian promise, another world, so near and yet so silver screen unattainable.

Flowing out from a crowded corner, lonesome chords plucked themselves free from a flamenco guitar and soared above the revellers, chased by the hoarse, rasping voice of a love-lorn toreador. How could anyone fail to be captivated by his plaintive cry?

I moved in for a closer glimpse. Lo and behold, it was the chap who’d come to sort out our garden the year before, one Lakshmi-Love Evans.

“Flamenco?” I beamed as he sidled up to the bar in the break. “Where’s your dancer?”

“Ah, that’s a long story… Where’s er, the family?”

“That’s a long story too…”

And thus commenced a journey into story sharing whenever and wherever we could. He was working in spare hours on restoring a vintage Vardo wagon he kept on a friend’s farm. An essential part of the act it would be. Could I come and give him my professional designer’s opinion?

Of course I was blown away by it; who wouldn’t be? Walking through the long grass to a gipsy caravan in the twilight, an ancient portal, purple, turquoise and gold, opened up to me, glistening between the trees in the dying of my light. Throwing back a rough tarpaulin cover, a strong manly arm helped me climb its rickety wooden steps. He proudly pointed out the intricately carved interior, and I marvelled at the rainbow lights thrown against it from glass trinkets hung in its tiny windows to catch the last rays of the sun. He suggested I take a breather, lie back and enjoy the display while he stoked up the embers of the dormant fire pit outside. I deserved a treat and a break from the rat race, even if for just five minutes. Wild foraged tea in the moonlight; how did that sound? There was to be a rare moon event later that magical evening too. A memory worth taking to the grave with me, eh?

It was a warm evening. The light show dwindled, and he slung various large multicoloured cushions into a heap near the fire so we could sit in the warm and listen for signs of wildlife between the popping and crackling of the sweet, rich smelling cedar tree he’d helped his friend fell on this very farm. Old knitted throws kept us insulated from the falling dew while the fire took, and we talked the night away. The hanging glass trinkets, he revealed, were made from the shards of bottles he’d find in his mother’s garden as a boy, locked out by various alcohol ridden stepfathers. Repurposing the past was a passion of his. He couldn’t save his mother, but maybe he could save me?

He smiled reassuringly and took the sooty old copper kettle off the fire, throwing six frozen fish fingers into a battered frying pan to accompany the other bottle of wine I’d brought as this was going down so splendidly well.

We lay back and watched the new moon cross the sky in the old moon’s arms. If ever I felt lonely again, all I had to do was look up and remember this night. Finding your freedom is so much simpler than people imagine. He’d turned his back on all commitments years before and had never been happier. The bonds that tie us, you see, are all in the mind. Let yourself be free, he said, maybe that was my lesson in this incarnation…

We watched and named the stars playing between the clouds. He pointed out Venus, his wandering guide. Nowadays, Lakshmi-Love threw himself into his music and lived and worked only to return to the bosom of nature. I could come with him if I wanted and we could roam free together. Did I know any flamenco?

Did I know any flamenco? Did he know any Sevillanas? I jumped to my feet, and as he clapped and belted out a few Andalucian coplas, I pulled up my skirt, threw off my shoes and stamped to the raw pulse of the earth. Oh, to be admired and desired in the silvery embrace of Mother and Daughter Moon. We fell laughing and exhausted into each other’s arms. I vowed never again to lose that connection with the Goddess, my Goddess, whoever she was and whatever she'd been thinking when she put me here. Everything felt right and natural at that moment and I fell into the deepest sleep.

In the early hours, sipping freshly brewed groundsel and mint tea, cloaked by nothing more than the morning mist, I relished my newly appreciated nakedness, the idle tracing of the bones of my lower back by hard-working, calloused hands. The fibres of my tummy and lungs sparked for days after that night held in the arms of a man fresh from the woods.

Between intense and earnest journeys into all aspects of my being laid bare for examination and appreciation by an earthy vitality grounded in simple exchanges of affection without agenda, we discussed the cycles of nature, the delicate checks and balances of the environment and the debt we owe our beautiful planet. It breathed life back into my outlook. I wanted to live again. There was a point to it all and another way, somehow, to do everything. Anything was possible. I could turn back time!

I learnt a lot about our planet and Lakshmi-Love’s family over the next few weeks. His mother had named him for the Hindu Goddess of abundance who ‘leads you to your goal,’ after becoming simultaneously Buddhist and pregnant during her time in a cult in the sixties. Hours of group prayer and deep communication with starships every day can have that effect, but he loved her dearly and would always be grateful to her for allowing her lotus to open and blossom in such an extraordinary display of devotion to a cause outside herself. She was his guiding light in that respect.

I met her a few times, between hospitalisations, and was struck not so much by the glorious tresses of white hip length hair that frothed around her vacant metallic eyes, but by the waterfall of energy she seemed to drain from the space immediately around her, plunging it, one felt, directly into the earth beneath her feet. There was no point hiding my relationship status from her. You couldn’t ever imagine telling a lie to a lady like her; it would seem totally pointless, a worthless exercise, she had no substance to which it might hook. She was pure, clean zen, and so were her blessings, which she showered upon me abundantly when I bought and delivered all her food shopping week after week to help out and keep Lakshmi to his landscaping schedule, building a future.

Thankfully her son was a strong presence. His energy flowed conversely from the earth upwards, in plentiful and renewable measures, electrifying him to the tips of every treacle brown hair that covered his honey-toned body. He was a strong but gentle soul, never out of shorts and sandals with broad shoulders and a gait that weighed up the prevailing elements and settled them in his wake. He’d take me in his arms, stroke my fears away and tell me how he wanted to hold me to the end, the very end. I still like to remember that moment occasionally, the way you like to remember scenes from great movies, even though you know it’s all bollocks. Ah, Lakshmi, we soared too high, sailed too far, came too soon, but you’d set blaze to what became an unstoppable comet.

The day our Facebook messages were discovered, I was thrown into the back of the shrieking salt-sprinkled slug’s SUV and driven North in a random murder spree type trajectory. North was always his go-to direction in times of crisis. We stopped at a service station to get fuel, and I managed to sneak a message to Lakshmi-Love, meant as both a warning and a cry to be rescued. The reply came straight back: “I know, we’re still shaking! He came up here threatening to burn our house down! And... he called my wife ugly! Said it was little wonder I wanted you. What a bastard!”

His wife, bless her, texted me three times after my ex had taken great delight in sharing with her various selected and invented findings, excelling at the part of the distraught, hard done by victim, and her new best friend. She fell straight into the game and gave up all sorts of information that any self-respecting woman should protect herself and her family from revealing to anybody, let alone an unknown quantity. But to be fair, she was in a great deal of pain and very vulnerable to forces from both outside and inside her marriage. I felt like saying, ‘Join the club!’ but flippancy would have been in the worst possible taste. Her two children were several years younger than mine and had been looking forward to the free holiday promised by their daddy’s boss in the caravan Lakshmi-Love was restoring for him, the only holiday they’d ever been able to take, living hand to mouth as they were by dint of the welfare system.

In the first text, she wanted all four of us to meet up for a coffee and a nice little chit-chat about what they were going to do about me, her the betrayed wife, my ex, her new best buddy, and her poor hardworking lamb of a husband who she’d forgiven because I was a well-known bipolar tart (according to her one source), and the promise of all the work I was going to give him, well, what was he supposed to do? ‘He’s got kids to feed you know!’

Poor Geraint, who, in a gesture of supreme sacrifice had promised to give up the Lakshmi-Love stage persona, was still sending me angry, heartbroken texts. His body was suffering withdrawals of all kinds. The least I could do was see him. One last time…?

The imperious dictator, meanwhile, had a grin all over his face. Even when he took care to hide it, his eyes still sparkled with delight. I knew that look of victory from past conquests of his supposed enemies. He was no doubt repeatedly savouring the memories of our recent ‘second honeymoon’ up North. Memories of the meticulously timetabled, four times a day helping of all the bucket loads of fun I had ‘quite clearly been missing out on’. Did he not have it within his power to give me that if he thought for one minute, I deserved it? Did he not have the range of emotions, the sophistication, the imagination of any predatory gardener?

‘Try this, why don’t we?’ He’d say as he tried it 'angry' or 'lustful' or how about some role play? "Betrayed provider does scrubber wench"?

‘You need to get a bit lower, that’s it, face on the floor. Let’s get that earth connection going, shall we? Not enough, eh? Not quite doing it for you? Oh, you want to play hard to get? There then, you’ll enjoy this, but be careful, come on, submit. If you struggle, they’ll just get tighter...’

‘Aw, you still don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself. I see. Not quite man enough for a slut like you, am I? So that’s what it was all about! How about this mechanised solution, then? Come on, you can take it. I’ve read your messages over and over again. You know no husband should ever have to read filth like that. But I get it now. You want every part of you to be accepted unconditionally? If you learned anything on those expensive spirituality courses you keep going on, surely it’s all about give and take! If every part of you wants to be accepted, then every part of you must learn to accept! Let’s see what this does for your “delicate balance”!

‘Oh, come on, give us a smile! Are you not having enough fun? Let’s try some other place that might be feeling left out then. Come on, let me hear you enjoy it. I want to hear what he heard. I want to see what he saw because, let me tell you, I’m struggling to see what he saw in you other than a meal ticket, you silly cow. What did you think? That you were something special? You’ve got something special that I don’t know about? That you can afford to give away?

‘I know! What needs to happen is.. is that we take away all temptation isn’t it? Yes, that’s what needs to happen here. Yes. That’s it. I learned a thing or two in Africa. They know how to control their women. There now, you’re untied, go and get me my wash bag. And quick about it!

‘Why are you looking at me like that? Get back over here! I’m not the monster here! Think about his children and what you took away from them, what you’ve taken away from YOURS!

‘No! Don’t you dare start having a fit. Stop it! Stop shaking! We’re not having any of that again. Getting bloody doctors and your mum involved. We’ll have none of that! Do you hear me? Get up! Get up!

‘Get off the floor! Move yourself! Right then, I’m going to make this easier on you. Here drink this, come on, keep on drinking, it’ll be over in seconds. There, all down, good girl. This will all be soon behind us. We can move on. You’ve got pads with you, haven’t you? I’ve seen it done. Quick, and it’s all over. It only bleeds if you fight it. Where are they? Where are my scissors? Didn’t you pack them?’

I don’t know where the voice came from. It wasn’t me, it was someone else bursting out from one of my many unloved places, who wrenched open my fitting jaw and uttered:

‘I’m not… a goat.’

‘What’s that you say? Did you open your mouth?’ he said, preparing to go out and search the car.

‘That's what they shag over there, isn’t it? Cos she has to remain pure but not the men, yeah? Is that what you learned?' My new voice continued, 'Or was it little boys they shagged instead, where you went?’

That was the first time I’d ever seen him recoil mid temper. But I knew better though than to push it any further, letting him know I’d seen the kind of porn he liked when he’d passed out pissed, laptop open.

I reined in the new voice and curled up, waiting for the blows to subside. But nothing happened. The fitting had also stopped in its tracks, and I haven’t experienced it since.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ he relented. ‘I was just making a point about pain. Don’t you know how lucky you are? You should appreciate me. But instead, look what you’re making me feel! I just wanted you to know the pain I’m in! I wanted you to think about the pain you’re going to make me feel every time I have to look at you for the rest of my life. You’d better hope for your sake it’s a short one!

‘Goats indeed. What kind of sick imagination comes up with that? You never make any sense! It’s been obvious, at home, at work, all going to pot. Mark me, it’s been noticed, but I can tell them now, it’s all sorted. Everyone can stop worrying about you. Opportunity, that’s the problem! Opportunities to wander off with that imagination of yours. You’re not engaged enough in solid down to earth work. We’ll sort that Monday, no worries. By the time I’ve finished sorting you out, there’ll be nothing left of you to give away to any predator coming to take what’s mine. You’ll thank me for this, in time, you’ll see. It’s better this way, simpler for all of us. You’re the weak link in this family, always have been. But don’t worry, I’m not giving up on you.’

I'm at a loss to know what Mrs Geraint Evans had hoped to achieve with her invitation, but I declined to answer.

The second time she texted me was to ask me for help. She couldn’t understand why her new best friend had turned on her. She was the real victim here. Why didn’t he understand? What’s more, hackers had destroyed her husband’s landscaping business and her dance school from website to emails to banking. Evil trolls had even plagued their children. They had nothing left. It was so bad, they had to move to another part of the country for a fresh start. I’m proud to say I resisted the temptation to point out to her that my husband hadn’t needed the help of any hackers. She didn’t need that guilt trip on top of the shit storm I’d brought to her doorstep.

The third time she texted me, and the rest of my family, work colleagues, and anyone I was friends with on Facebook, was a year or so later to inform us she’d had a cervical smear recall. Apparently, any life-threatening disease she was facing was also my fault entirely. She just thought we should all know.

My grandmother used to tell the cautionary tale of the time she worked in a sweet shop for pocket money. Her boss, a little old lady of ninety-two, had come in one day and found her sucking a gobstopper she’d helped herself to, unable to resist, coming as she did, from a household where they ate once a day if they were lucky. Her father fed them from whatever was in the garden before leaving for the night shift at the asylum. Other than that, they blagged or stole the odd crust of bread from the nuns at school who beat them for their own good if they were too bold or caught helping themselves. The old lady made her eat sweet after sweet until she was sick. It taught her never to indulge.

I don’t know, Nan, but you might have had a point. All this certainly put me off sweeties for a long time though I still get the occasional unwelcome third party booty call from Geraint, would you believe?

It was only years later I came to understand that poor lady wife of his, and my nan and my mother, bless them all. I really had no understanding of betrayal until it happened to me, even with a monster much worse than the man-children they’d married, that I give thanks every day for having escaped. Despite everything, it still hurt more than swallowing poison to read messages to him from other women. Victims or not, I wanted them all to meet horrible ends at the time, irrational as that may seem.

For what I did to you, sweet lady, I can only offer my most humble and heartfelt apologies and most sincere regrets.

Oh, and the details of a great divorce lawyer for when you’re ready.