You know that mmm well... I... Suppose
it is that umm... well we all have a Jeanette or a Jimmy in our lives don’t we.
I mean like depending on which side of the coin, team you bat for and even
which side of the fence you sit on, will depend on how you will interpret,
experience and appreciate things maybe. This could be oh... Maybe all of our
stories, as we find similarities from our own lives. Number one daughter well
the only one that I knew about anyway Allessandra, had been nagging me to put
pen to paper for what seemed an age, as she was the only living soul who knew
about my earlier life. Now when I say she was nagging, I mean the full on
jibber jabber treatment, going on and on and on. Like driving on a long journey
with kids in the back kicking and screaming and being tormented by the
ubiquitous “Are we nearly there yet?”You know, kind of like a broken record
or...Long nails scratching down a blackboard slowly annoying. We had one of
those very rare and treasured father daughter moments. The type that has any
man who has female offspring heading for the trenches, manning the barricades,
calling dodgy Dave from the pub or running to lock up the credit card.
Allessandra had given up a rather promising career in the British armed forces;
in fact to be fair she had well kind of run away, no..she went and cocked it
right up and did a very good job about it, then she did a runner, leaving
destruction in her wake and a bloody expensive mess for me to clear up, which
was kind of the norm for her. I had to call in a few favours to keep things out
of the local rag. She’d only been having a fling with somebody she shouldn’t
have been and I think that bonking your married platoon commander senseless,
rates pretty much high up there in the c**k up charts maybe as bad as moaning
somebody else’s name whilst having nuptials with your partner. When it all went
tits up, like these things generally very often do and the first that I knew of
it was when, I had the distressed call from her mother, to say distressed is
quite a very much loose use of vernacular and the Queens English, she was like
a fecking banshee on acid, shouting, swearing and blaming me I had the she
takes after you line, she’s her father’s daughter!! Allessandra had disappeared
on her escape and evasion exercise. Nobody knew where she was. She had everyone
out looking for her and the MOD were finding events just a little embarrassing.
She certainly passed that part of her training didn’t she? So I did what every
dad does I suppose, dropped everything and went off to find her in the middle
of the night. I didn’t really have to look very hard though, I knew she would
be in the cottage up on the banks of Lomond it was our little chill out escape
hidey hole, I certainly wasn’t going to hand her over to that snotty little oik
of an officer that came round to Cassandra’s house flanked by two burly
military policemen I say men very loosely, the gorilla that was in a barrack
skirt couldn’t pass for a woman at all, she had a moustache, no wonder she held
the rank of sergeant major I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to meet her on the
parade square let alone in a dark alley no way no how, maybe that’s a psychological
tactic the army have, use ugly poor excuses for women and ones with marble
columns let alone chips on their shoulders. After a very long night and all my
best whiskey, gin and brandy, bloody hell that girl had learnt one thing from
the forces and that was how to drink, Christ she wouldn’t be a cheap date that
one. She told me all about it, what she had gotten herself into. She went into
toe curling details that no father should ever have to hear but she was in
confessional mode and she had to get it out in the open, so she could find a
way to deal with it and move on. she called me an emotional retard if I didn’t
nod in the right places or cringed at certain details , a typical man who
hadn’t a clue about feelings, amongst other things much to rude to repeat. You
know the old you don’t understand line. She was the only person in the world
who had ever fallen in love blah de blah and I even had the... I have to tell
you because mother wouldn’t understand me. In that respect no my love your
mother would.... she was an expert in that kind of thing in fact she wrote the
manual.
Well it all kind of exploded out about
Jeanette and by the end she knew all I was prepared to tell her. Thinking about
it now though what a crafty little mare she was weedling it out of me!! I
handed her back to her barracks after a couple of days and told her to do what
she thought best, stay and face the music do time in jail and probably get
posted to the north pole or somewhere so remote where she couldn’t cause any
further embarrassment. Or knock it all on the head after a spell in the
glasshouse followed by quite possibly by a dishonourable discharge. Whatever...
It was her life and I was proud of her regardless, although I did try my best
not to hide my disappointment, she had a wonderful career ahead of her and it
was far cheaper for me too! Else she would be laying about watching daytime TV
and withdrawing heavily from the bank of dad. Her mother wife part 1... Now
then..well what can I say I have been quite a very successful chappie, if I may
say so myself in that department over the years, I have got no idea where this
luck came from, but all of a sudden I turned a certain age and boom I had the
Midas touch and it was remarkably beautiful women who were queuing around the
block, all my ex wives can attest to the lady magic that was , all three or is
it five of them? She had tried her best to destroy me had the first wife and
she very nearly almost did. The others did try their luck but were not in
Cassy’s league and I had learnt from my earlier mistakes, good legal advice and
prenups can save you an absolute bomb, a quadruple heart bypass, three months
in therapy, grey hairs and a receding hairline. She took the house and all its
contents, the cars, the cat, cleaned out the account oh and this little
beauty.. Only went and stole my best, closest and oldest friend. All she left
me was my ripped up clothing in bin bags oh and twenty pence to give someone
who gave a f**k a call, a real comedienne she was I think not. I actually think
I may have got the best end of the stick after all, I saw them at a charity
bash a year ago or so, his bald head, heavily wrinkled brow and subservient
demeanour said it all. They weren’t together as a couple; she had bled him dry
within 2 years. His vast family fortune frittered away on the finer things in
life, but he still hunkered after her traipsing around her like a lost puppy
with big droopy eyes. What man wouldn’t though? Cassy had an amazing power over
men she was the original goodtime girl, fabulously attractive with a mind to go
with it she knew what makes a man really tick and it’s not just sex believe it or
not, maybe football, cars, beer, f**s, the chase. Cassy loved men and the finer
things in life she knew what images would grab a bloke and she played the men
in her life like a virtuoso on the violin a real Nigel Kennedy she was. The day
that I found myself homeless she’d written me a long letter explaining things
from her perspective. A real Dear John letter. Complete surprise to me mind
you, one minute I was a successful MD of an import export company turning over
at least 3.2 million in after tax profits, come to think of it I did do rather
well all of a sudden over a fairly short space of time, a very meteoric rise as
they say, two homes one in the city in Belgravia a four story Georgian town
house and the other a country estate in a quiet part of the West Country,
holidays in the Med and Monaco, ski trips to Aspen and the Alps the next it’s
all gone and so was my buddy Mitch I think that was what hurt me the most.
betrayal with us blokes is that when you’re mates, you would do anything for
each other and a lady will never come between you or at least shouldn’t. She
allowed me the cottage at least she hated Scotland it was too cold for her; she
thought that the Scots were uncouth and rude; she didn’t get their politics or
anything Scottishness to be fair. She was a nightmare to be around, an
embarrassment really when we chatted to the locals she was a bit of a bigot
really. I am sure that when we ordered food and drink from the local cafe she
got a little extra free particularly in her coffee. I can see them now hawking
up a goober and spitting in her coffee, serve her right. Everything else she
had, all the property except my business, apparently of all her men now this
little gem I learned up at Lomond, she loved me the best and the most, but she
couldn’t compete with a ghost. That woman makes me piss really she does. What
an excuse she didn’t know about Jeanette no one did it was buried deep in my
past dead and buried. It’s like the “it’s not you it’s me” line, pile of dog
s**t that you hear from time to time, that must rate up in the top five of all
time bad breakup lines it just tells you that they have been seeing other
people. What Cassy was really saying to me was “you aint got anything I want
anymore.” And she was right on that account I didn’t. We did however keep in
touch though for the sake of Allessandra and we were fairly grown up about it.
the other 2 wives didn’t stay long enough to have children with, it was the
fickle circles I moved in, a flighty and rich lifestyle with all the trimmings,
hobnobbing with film stars, actresses, models and endless parties, where
getting married was a career move generally followed by a public slanging match
and a lengthy divorce with lots of press attention. I had prenups in place
Cassy taught me that one. Really I was just an ordinary kind of bloke who liked
my home comforts, I was all partied out as Cassy and I had burned Madame
Tussauds at both ends let alone the candle, the wedding party itself lasted 6
weeks and took place over 3 different continents. That was followed by a year’s
honeymoon in Paris, Milan, Venice and Rome. They were heady days that were full
of happiness we were caught up in the whole lovey dovey thing or so I thought.
Looking back on it the only strange thing was that we kept on bumping into her
family members in the most oddest places. Every time we did we had to have a
big get together often she was too tired for the nuptials that should have
followed there was always an excuse not to and I think that I have heard them
all such as headache etc. She didn’t use that one much after I gave her 2
paracetomol one night she looked at me curiously so I said for your headache.
She replied she didn’t have one but just as I was about to ravish her she
cottoned on and said “No my head is better but Jimmy...I have aweful stomach
cramps”. She would always smile and tell me no not yet and to be patient. I
don’t think that we actually consummated our marriage until we returned home,
which was pretty much frustrating.
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