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Now I can honestly say I wasn’t too bothered by any of this. I’m a worker by brain, not by brawn. At school I was no good at games and as a result I learnt to locate my masculinity elsewhere. The fact that I was constantly having to play Mr Bean to the other husband’s James Bond became a running gag. At least, I found it funny. Unfortunately, Caroline did not. She suffered from a syndrome that was so pronounced we actually came up with a name for it: emasculation by proxy. All the embarrassment and self-loathing I should have experienced every time I was beaten in some test of manliness by the Alpha Male was felt by her instead. She became deeply humiliated on my behalf.
She found this so unendurable — I was such a failure in her eyes — that I thought it would be prudent to part company with our friends. Consequently, we spent the last two days of our holiday at The Cornwall, a hotel spa and estate just outside St Austell. It was a good decision. The humongous swimming pool kept the kids happy while Caroline enjoyed the fact that she didn’t have to prepare six meals three times a day. We were so impressed we even considered buying one of the ‘woodland homes’ for sale on the estate — a snip at £250,000. Then we remembered we don’t have any money.
On the drive back home on Monday I thought I’d exorcised the ghost of the other husband (let’s call him Steve), but I hadn’t bargained for the fact that he’d made an indelible impression on my children. ‘Daddy,’ asked Ludo, my eldest boy, ‘why can’t you drive as fast as Steve?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Sasha, ‘he’s a really good driver.’ At one point in the maze of intersections where the A30 merges with the M5 I took a wrong turning and this produced a chorus of derision from the back seats: ‘Dad!’ The consensus was that Steve would never have made such a rudimentary error.
This brought it all back for Caroline and by the time we arrived in London — at midnight — she was blushing on my behalf once more. I felt obliged to get up with the kids at 6 a.m. on Tuesday in an attempt to rehabilitate myself, having gone to bed at 2.30 a.m., and am now completely shattered. So much for the ten-day holiday. Tomorrow morning, on what should be one of the best days of my life, I’m going to be a bleary-eyed wreck.
Ah well. Assuming I manage to get all my children into the West London Free School, they may revise their opinion of me. Perhaps not during their teenage years, but eventually. When I reflect on the fact that my father co-founded the Open University, Europe’s largest academic institution, I certainly feel proud of him. I just hope and pray Steve doesn’t decide to set up a free school of his own.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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