by Fay Weldon
‘Of course it’s okay, Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I suppose you can’t help it,’ said Spicer. ‘I think we’ll find you have a Mars/Pluto aspect which is at the root of your possessiveness. It certainly causes a lot of trouble. Shall we nudge the children out of their rooms and all play Monopoly? Try and have some kind of ordinary family life? There may be some areas of it left we can work on. Get back to normal somehow.’
‘You were late home tonight. I rang the office but it was on answerphone. I do need reassuring, Spicer. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I don’t want to weep onto the Monopoly board and upset everyone, or give away Mayfair by mistake.’
‘Darling Annette,’ said Spicer. ‘At least you can still make me laugh. I was selling bin-ends to Humphrey Watts and his wife Eleanor who live round the corner in the Mews. There are still some people left who don’t mind having less than six bottles of the same wine, just as there are still some who don’t mind mixing and matching the china at a dinner party, but in these days of recession a man has to seek them out. You have to go to them; they don’t come to you. Why, what did you think I was doing? Laying a lady astrologer at a propitious time? That’s better. You laugh too. I do love you, Annette.’
‘Hi, Gilda,’ said Annette. ‘I’m so tired, I can’t think why. We all played Monopoly last night and I lost. I had houses on all the wrong squares. Spicer had Mayfair and Park Lane. He always does. I went to bed early and fell asleep before Spicer came up. Did you notice the moon?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Gilda.
‘It was such a bright night last night. It shone through the window on to the bed. I held up my hand in the light and it shone right through my hand: it was blue and translucent. Spooky.’
‘Are you okay?’ asked Gilda.
‘I was only telling you because you’re a friend,’ said Annette.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I tell Steve that kind of thing,’ said Gilda, ‘but I suppose it’s not the kind of thing you’d tell Spicer.’
‘No,’ said Annette. ‘You can get very lonely being married. The word “corpse” came into my mind when I looked at my hand but I put it out again. It seemed unlucky.’
‘Annette,’ said Gilda, ‘we may be only just in time. I’ve found someone wonderful for you to see.’
‘See? You mean a therapist?’ asked Annette. ‘But I feel okay now. Honestly. I just get in a state with Spicer sometimes. It’s being pregnant. It’ll be over soon.’
‘You need some support, Annette,’ said Gilda. ‘Steve says you have a lot to cope with.’
‘I thought Spicer was the one having the trouble coping with me,’ said Annette.
‘On the other hand,’ said Gilda. ‘If you’re going for Spicer’s sake it might not work. You’re supposed to want therapy for yourself: that’s what Eleanor says. Do you know Humphrey and Eleanor Watts?’
‘I’ve met them once or twice,’ said Annette. ‘They live in the Mews. Spicer sells them bin-ends.’
‘Really? How odd. They always seem the kind to buy wine by the case. Anyway, Eleanor was on the phone this morning about the street party—how people do muscle in: it’s not going to be just us and a Bella Crescent party; now all the Bellas are going to be involved: Mews, Road, Street, Lane, as well as the Crescent. What was I saying?’
‘Therapists,’ said Annette.
‘I’m just rambling, sorry’ said Gilda. ‘I’m nervous. It seems such a responsibility recommending a therapist. Supposing they give you the wrong advice? It would all be my fault.’
‘Apparently they don’t exactly give advice. They resolve your inner problems,’ said Annette.
‘What inner problems?’
‘You were the one who suggested therapy, Gilda,’ said Annette.
‘And now even Spicer says it’s a good idea, so I suppose I must have these inner problems, whatever they are. How does Eleanor Watts come to know about therapists? She doesn’t seem the kind.’
‘It’s very fashionable, all of a sudden. Eleanor goes to one in Hampstead. They’re mostly in Hampstead: there’s a real shortage of them down here. Someone ought to fill in the gap in the market. Nice large houses, too big just for families, just right for clinics.’
‘This house is just right for my family. I love it,’ said Annette.
‘It isn’t too large at all.’
‘Don’t change the subject, Annette,’ said Gilda. ‘Eleanor’s man is called Dr Herman Marks. He’s very famous. He writes books on the power of touch. One of his patients has just left, so you’re in luck: he has space for another. But you’ll have to act fast. Eleanor says she’ll mention you to him. She seemed very keen for you to go, I don’t know why. Well, I do. Eleanor lives in the Mews. People in the Crescent have bigger houses than people in the Mews, so Eleanor sees a way of upgrading herself, if only by association. She wants you and her to share a therapist. That’s the way her mind works.’
‘Then this Dr Marks doesn’t seem to have done her much good,’ said Annette.
‘Think how much worse she might be without him,’ said Gilda.
‘So now Eleanor Watts knows I’m mad,’ said Annette. ‘Honestly, Gilda! Well, I suppose I’d better at least make an appointment. Eleanor buys our bin-ends, I see her therapist. That’s the way the world goes round. And at least it’s a man. It would be nice to talk to a man, not always women.’
‘Thank you very much, Annette!’
‘I didn’t mean you, Gilda, you know I didn’t. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘Spicer,’ said Annette, ‘I seem to have found a therapist. So don’t ask anyone else for names. I don’t want everyone knowing how nuts I am.’
‘You’re a bit late,’ said Spicer. ‘I asked your friend Ernie’s Marion to put forward a few names. She recommends anyone affiliated to the AAP, the Association of Astrological Psychotherapists.’
‘She would be into all that gobbledegook,’ said Annette. ‘I thought you said be careful of quacks?’
‘Don’t mock what you don’t know about,’ said Spicer. ‘The AAP is affiliated to AJAP, the Association of Jungian and Allied Psychotherapists, extremely serious people. Who have you found?’
‘A Dr Herman Marks in Hampstead,’ said Annette.
Spicer was silent for a little. Then he said, ‘If that’s the way the cookie crumbles, that’s the way it crumbles.’
‘There’s very little to say,’ said Annette, ‘and I’m sorry for wasting your time. I’m sure there are others far worse off than me. It’s just I’ve been happily married for ten years and now I’ve become pregnant I find myself catching my husband out in every little thing; I’m even beginning to think he might be having an affair. I know he isn’t, but the thought just somehow sticks around and he’s getting fed up with the way I behave.’ Dr Marks laughed: it was a gentle and surprisingly seductive laugh. Annette wondered what it would be like to be engulfed and enfolded by this man, and if there was a Mrs Marks, and what kind of person she would be.
‘Quite probably,’ said Dr Marks, ‘that is a simple matter of projection. You have had an affair, or two, or three, during the course of your relationship with Spicer: now you are pregnant and feel helpless, and your guilt, your unresolved shadow-side, comes back to persecute you.’
‘You can do something about me, then?’
‘My analysis makes sense to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I imagine a cure will easily be found. By cure I mean understanding, peace of mind. You are not a demonstrative person, I can see that. But then you are English: it is not surprising or in itself a cause for concern, as it would be, say, for a Mediterranean woman.’
‘How do you know I am not a demonstrative person? Other people think I am. My husband Spicer says I go round touching people far too much.’
‘You huddle away from me. Touch my hand. What does that make you feel?’
‘Trapped,’ she replied. ‘Well, you grabbed it. Please let go.
You’re hurting.’
‘Trapped,’ he repeated. ‘We will work with that, since it’s the best we can do.’
‘Well?’ asked Gilda. ‘How did it go? Is he attractive?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Annette. ‘He was like a great lump of granite, sitting in a winged chair by the fire. He overflowed its edges.’
‘That doesn’t sound like granite,’ said Gilda.
‘You asked what he was like. I’m doing my best. He was about sixty. His face was hairy, as if greenish grey shrubs were growing out of a mountain side. They came out all over his face; from his nostrils, his ears, over his eyes, out of his scalp where they at least pretended to be head hair, not foliage.’
‘You’re making this up,’ said Gilda.
‘I’m not,’ said Annette. ‘He’s just a man with a lot of facial hair. He has a fleshy nose and his mouth’s crooked. I thought perhaps he’d had a stroke. He spoke mid-European: the kind that’s designed to make you feel foolish. He had an old watch on a chain which he swung to and fro.’
‘It sounds a nightmare,’ said Gilda.
‘Every now and then he scratched his chin and flakes of skin scattered on to his trousers. The trousers were tweed, so you couldn’t see the flakes when they landed.’
‘And you took this person seriously?’ asked Gilda.
‘He asked me to touch his hand and I did. He twisted it and grabbed my wrist. His hands had liver spots and were horribly strong. I still have marks: I reckon they’ll be bruises tomorrow.’
‘Was he helpful?’
‘How do I know? I might be in a worse state if I hadn’t been to see him. He doesn’t seem to have a gender: he’s too foreign. Sometimes I think he’s making a pass: at other times I think how stupid and vulgar of me to think any such thing: there is a kind of attraction but it’s not a male-female thing. He is just a very powerful person.’
‘But he did make you feel better?’
‘I think so. I did some confessing. And that was only the first session. It was rather like lancing a boil.’
‘Confessions? What about?’
‘Well, you know. Various things. A person.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m not going to tell you who, Gilda. It’s all over now.’
‘While you were married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you have a fling with Ernie Gromback?’
‘Of course I didn’t, Gilda. You’re insane. Far too close to home.’
‘I just wondered.’
‘Nobody you know and nobody you’ll ever know,’ said Annette. ‘It was in the summer, when Spicer was away in France and everything was just stupid. You know how I hated Spicer going away without me: you know how I miss him: how lonely and edgy I get. Sex grounds me, that’s all. It wasn’t love, anything like that: it was just sex.’
‘In the first place,’ said Gilda, ‘I don’t know how you had the nerve. And in the second place I don’t know how you were stupid enough to tell Dr Herman Marks. Supposing he tells Eleanor Watts and she tells her husband and he tells Spicer over a drunken bin-end?’
‘But what you tell a therapist is completely confidential,’ said Annette. ‘They’re like priests.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Gilda.
‘Anyway,’ said Annette, ‘I could always just deny everything.’
‘Is this Dr Marks married?’ asked Gilda.
‘I think so. There were two brass plates on the door: Dr Herman Marks and Dr Rhea Marks. She had so many letters after her name! MBBS, MRC, AJAP, AHTN. I remember those. My father had the first two. I used to polish the brass plate outside our door. Dr Rhea had far more letters than Dr Herman did. I wondered if that made him jealous, and then I thought, no, they’re therapists. They’ll have been so analysed-out themselves, they wouldn’t have an unreasonable emotion left in them. I expect they’re blissfully happy. Except he does do rather a lot of hugging and touching. I wouldn’t like it if I were her. When he stood up he was at least six foot five, and his arms were like a gorilla’s. He put them round me.’
‘Wasn’t that horrible?’
‘No. It was like being embraced by a cross between a father and a bear. It makes you feel safe and drowsy. When he’s hugged all the air out of you he lets you go. But thank God he didn’t mention astrology. Gilda, do you know anyone who’s into astrology?’
‘Ernie Gromback’s Marion talks about star signs non-stop.’
‘Ah.’
‘But I don’t think Spicer’s having an affair with Marion,’ said Gilda.
‘Neither do I,’ said Annette. ‘He loves me too much. I’ve made a real effort not to be paranoid, and I reckon I’m succeeding.’
‘Annette,’ said Spicer that night, ‘the fact is that I do not want to hear about Dr Herman Marks: what he said to you, or you said to him. You have to keep some areas of yourself apart from me, the way I do with you. We are separate people. You just descend upon me hook, line and sinker: you squash me into the ground.’
‘It’s true,’ said Annette, as lightly as she could, ‘that I’ve put on a lot of weight lately, but most of it is the baby. Our baby.’ But it was Tuesday night. Spicer had returned at 7.02 and was not in the mood for jokes. ‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘I thought marriage was about togetherness.’
‘Your vocabulary,’ said Spicer, ‘comes straight out of a woman’s magazine. Togetherness!’
‘You know what I mean,’ said Annette.
‘I don’t,’ said Spicer. ‘Explain it to me.’
Annette declined, saying she would wait until Spicer was better; Spicer said there was nothing wrong with him, only with her; her demands were unreasonable, but she was so afflicted in the seventh house it was not surprising. She had had an unhappy childhood and was taking it out on Spicer.
‘But, Spicer darling—’ said Annette.
‘Don’t call me darling: it rings false.’
‘But, Spicer, your childhood was far unhappier than mine.’
‘This is not a competition, Annette. And it is no laughing matter.’
‘If I’m laughing it’s because this is silly,’ said Annette. ‘In the childhood-tragedy stakes you win hands down, Spicer. I still have both my parents: you lost your father when you were four and your mother went insane and rushed round screaming till they shut her up.’
‘Annette,’ said Spicer, ‘sometimes your insensitivity takes my breath away.’
‘I’m sorry, Spicer. I was trying not to be too heavy about it, that’s all.’
‘Your mother is still most certainly around,’ said Spicer, ‘and hasn’t yet done you the favour of dying. How you hate her, poor woman.’
‘What is the matter with you?’ asked Annette. ‘I don’t hate my mother at all.’
‘I’ve heard you say so many a time, Annette.’
‘Sometimes she annoys me in the way mothers do, Spicer,’ said Annette, ‘and I may have said things against her—and confided them in you because you are my husband—but I love my mother, I don’t hate her.’
‘I don’t think you know what you say or how you feel,’ said Spicer. ‘Your Neptune is afflicted by Pluto and you live in a state of perpetual confusion. We have found out a great deal about you in the last few weeks. Now we have the correct time of your birth, all kinds of things become clear,’ and he went into the study to read.
‘Dad! Is everything all right?’
‘Just fine, Annette. A friendly call. How’re things with you?’
‘Fine. Any changes back home?’
‘Everything much as usual,’ said Giles Thomas, Annette’s father.
‘Your mother wants new carpets. Do you think we need new carpets? They are getting shabby.’
‘If it was me I’d take away the carpets and polish the floorboards, and have rugs.’
‘Wouldn’t that create dust?’
‘Yes, it would, Dad,’ said Annette. ‘But you could take Mum away for a week while it settled.’
‘I couldn’t afford that
if we had new carpets. Interest rates are down again. People rejoice when interest rates go down: they don’t think what it’s like for retired people who live on fixed incomes.’
‘But you’re managing?’
‘Of course we’re managing, sweetheart. Don’t worry about us. How’s the baby?’
‘Flourishing,’ said Annette. ‘So am I.’
‘Spicer?’
‘Just fine. Reading at the moment, in the study.’
‘So what are you doing?’ asked her father.
‘Trying to focus on the Europa Myth. This producer friend of Gilda’s is trying to link the failure of the GATT talks with Europa’s rape by Jupiter in the form of a bull; the bull being the US.’
‘Does it work?’
‘I’m doing my best to make the connection. It’s just that being pregnant makes you keep falling asleep. Dad, what was I like when I was a little girl?’
‘You were the sweetest thing, Annette. The light of all our lives. Bright as a button, chattered all day. You were an only child and a late one; you were worth waiting for. Why? What’s the matter? Is Spicer being difficult?’
‘Of course not,’ said Annette. ‘It’s just sometimes nice to hear, and I know you’ll always say it.’
‘Because men can react strangely when their wives are pregnant,’ said Giles Thomas. ‘I loved your mother dearly, but even I—’
‘Yes, I know about that, Dad,’ said Annette.
‘So keep an eye on him,’ said Giles Thomas. ‘Boys will be boys, but there are limits.’
Annette went into the study.
‘Spicer,’ she said. ‘We have been together for ten years. I would have thought you’d have known what I was like by now. Why do you need an astrological chart to tell you? And who is this “we” you keep talking about which is not you and me?’
‘None of it is anything to do with you,’ said Spicer.
‘But it is,’ said Annette. ‘Is this other person a woman?’
‘The gender of the other person is immaterial,’ said Spicer, ‘since they are a skilled professional. You’re a feminist; you should be the first to agree.’
