Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [109]
The façade crumbled when we were in Rome, where Lori had another flat. One day she went out and left me on my own, and I started to poke around, which was not a great idea. I opened a cupboard and found a pile of photograph albums, which I took out and started looking through. They were full of pictures of Lori with famous men—footballers, actors, politicians, musicians, anyone with any kind of notoriety. I noticed that she struck the same pose in every photograph, wearing the sort of smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I went icy cold and my hair stood on end. In that moment I knew we were doomed.
However much I might have wanted to walk out at this point, I realized that I had already set in motion something that was out of control, particularly because of the conversation we had had about pregnancy. So I put this experience on file, as a reason why the relationship would never last, and started dissembling the whole thing, mentally and emotionally withdrawing. I stayed in Rome for a while, and then we both flew to London and stayed a couple of nights in the Connaught before moving into an apartment I had organized for us in Berkeley Square.
Filled with doubts as I was about my life, both the past and the future, it was a hard time for me. After years of living in the country, I also hated the noise and traffic of the city, so to distract myself I filled the apartment with recording equipment to enable myself to make demos for my next album. One of the songs I wrote while living there was called “Tearing Us Apart,” which was about “the committee,” the group of Pattie’s friends whom I now blamed for coming between us. “Your friends are tearing us apart,” I wrote. I could think of little else, so it’s not surprising that only two or three weeks after we moved in together, I told Lori that the relationship just wasn’t working for me anymore and that I had to go back to my wife. “That’s not good news at all,” she said, “because I’m pregnant.”
At that moment, I couldn’t really take this in. I remember getting into my car and driving down to Hurtwood to see Pattie, who had been living there since I had left. Somewhere in my alcoholic mind was the idea that she might be waiting for me. When I arrived it was nighttime, and there were lights on all over the house. I peered in through the kitchen window and saw Pattie and her boyfriend making dinner together. It was like I’d come home to someone else’s house. I knocked on the door and said, “I’m back, I’m home!” Pattie came to the door and said coldly, “You can’t come in here right now. This is not the right time.”
“But this is my home,” I said, to which she replied, “No, you can’t do this…” Suddenly my world was absolutely in tatters. I was disenchanted with my now pregnant mistress, and I’d lost my wife. I was in conflict and bewildered, and felt like I’d opened a vast door into an empty chasm. At some point during this period I decided that the only answer to my problems was suicide. I happened to have a full bottle of blue 5mg Valium tablets, and I downed them all, the whole bloody lot. I was convinced they would kill me, but astonishingly enough, I woke up ten hours later, stone cold sober and full of the realization of what a lucky escape I’d had.
As soon as Lori came to understand that she could never get me to commit to anything, she went back to Milan, where it was possible for her to make a living. I stayed in England and tried to clear up the mess I’d created by, first of all, telling Pattie about the pregnancy. Considering how much she had longed to have our own child, and her deep disappointment at her failure