Bittersweetness

Bittersweetness is an emotion that always gets me when I come across it. The scene in a Buffy episode where Buffy shares a last dance with Angel at her prom (to the aching 'Wild Horses' by The Sundays, of all songs), even though they have already broken up, makes me bawl like a baby every time. And bittersweetness is my own little holy grail in my writing - something I've always wanted, but I think never quite managed, to capture. In life itself, it's an emotion that's not that common.

Last night I was all weepy and fragile. Certainly it was partly about-to-have-a-baby nerves, but yesterday was also special for a reason I'm glad I realised early in the day. Yesterday was the last day of term for Jerry - as of today he's on holiday for two weeks. Since I'm due on Tuesday it can be assumed that I will have our baby at some point in those two weeks. That means that yesterday was my last day alone with Poldy.

Of course, I know that I will spend days alone with him in the future, but it will never be the same again. I will be different, he will be different, our lives will be different. This, that we have now - we will never get it back. I'm a big believer that change in life - apart from being inevitable - is a Good, and don't get me wrong: having another child is a Wonderful. I'm sure Poldy and Jerry and I will all change for the better. But change is also a loss, or at least an ending. The two years, ten months and three days that Poldy has been in my life have been some of the hardest I've lived, but they have certainly been the most precious and the most full of love. The boundaries of my self have expanded, as I'm sure they will again when the Little One arrives. And the minute those labour pains start, that particular chapter will be at a close.

Needless to say, Poldy himself is oblivious to the more complex layers of meaning in the events to come. He told me the other day he was 'very excited on the baby coming'. Adding an extra kick to the bittersweetness, he's unlikely to even remember any of these years when it was just us. But I marked the day with a special just-him-and-me trip to the Museum (his request), where I let him navigate (he 'read' the visitor map for us and everything) and he let me hold his hand sometimes. Then last night when I went in to kiss him goodnight as he was sleeping, I felt like I was never going to see him again - not that version of him, anyway - and I cried. I don't think it's wrong to allow myself to be both happy and sad at the same time. And there it was, a moment harder and more beautiful than art could ever achieve.

Letter #1

Dear little one,

I know they say it's never too early to start gymnastics training, but in utero might be taking it a bit far, don't you think?

All my love,

your mum

PS. Please, carry on.

Thomas, there's no end to you, is there?

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

My only knowledge of Thomas Cromwell when I started this book was a dim memory of the bad guy from Robert Bolt's play, A Man For All Seasons. Perhaps because of this vague preconception, I was all the more besotted by the witty, cunning and humane character at the centre of Wolf Hall.

Wolf Hall details the seemingly unstoppable rise of Cromwell, a blacksmith’s son (at least in Mantel's imagining) who became the closest advisor of King Henry VIII. The novel opens with a glimpse of Cromwell’s childhood under the tyranny of his brutal father before leaping across his formative years as a soldier, accountant and cloth merchant in Europe to his period in the service of the powerful but doomed Cardinal Wolsey. To Wolsey, and later the king, Cromwell becomes an indispensable right-hand man due to his unique talent: he is a man who knows the worth of everything, from a bolt of cloth to a choice of words. This talent translates into the sort of political genius Henry needs to extricate himself from his marriage to Katherine of Aragon – who was unable to bear him a male heir – and marry Anne Boleyn.

Cromwell is a moral conundrum: a man of unflinching loyalty, and full of mercy, yet each morally laudable action he takes seems only to advance his own personal gain. Was he a man of inherent kindness, or just a brilliant gambler? In this decidedly sympathetic portrait of a man over whose motives and character historians are still at odds, Mantel gives one the impression that he could easily be both.

Mantel's characters are tangibly human where authors of historical fiction are sometimes overwhelmed by the figures they are portraying. In her easy, elegant prose she deftly uses humour and everyday detail to help the characters live and breathe in a 21st century imagination. Cromwell, seemingly single-handedly, engineers massive change in affairs of state, yet it is the moments of tenderness and vulnerability with his wife Liz and two daughters that linger in my mind.

The year that Grace was an angel, she had wings made of peacock feathers. He himself had contrived it. The other girls were dowdy goose creatures...[but] Grace stood glittering, her hair entwined with silver threads; her shoulders were trussed with a spreading, shivering glory, and the rustling air was perfumed as she breathed. Lizzie said, Thomas, there’s no end to you, is there?

Although the span falls across the crucial period of the Reformation, in which England cuts its ties with the church in Rome, this is not a novel of events or racing plot. Its cast of characters is so vast it requires a five-page list at the start of the book to assist the reader in keeping them straight. Yet it is the very bulk of this one man’s character that fills Wolf Hall’s 650-odd pages, and makes it one of the most compulsive, impressive and satisfying novels I have read for a long time.