by Fay Weldon
‘Believe me, I understand that.’
‘As we arranged, Mrs Horrocks. Annette. So I’ll see you at three, as we planned.’
‘Yes, Dr Marks.’
At 2.52 Annette knocked on the door of the Doctors Marks, and was admitted by a woman in her mid-thirties. She had a sweet face and a gentle, welcoming smile. Her lashes were colourless, her eyes protruded, her face was without make-up, her clothes indeterminate dove-grey, and her mousy hair was pulled back in a bun. Her movements were graceful and her demeanour was peaceful.
‘I will show you into my husband’s surgery, Mrs Horrocks,’ said Dr Rhea Marks. ‘Although you are a few minutes early.’ Her voice was agreeably soft, low and tentative. ‘We do like patients to arrive at the appointed time.’
‘It is difficult to time one’s arrival to the dot,’ said Annette, ‘traffic being what it is, and random.’
‘Patients sometimes just park and sit in their cars outside and wait,’ said Dr Rhea Marks, ‘and take the opportunity to relax, or meditate if they are in touch with their inner being, until the proper time.’
‘I came by public transport,’ said Annette.
‘What a nuisance for you!’ said Dr Marks sympathetically.
Annette sat in the leather chair facing Dr Herman Marks’s desk. The Persian carpet was worn. The room was hot and the ceiling yellow from cigarette smoke. She fell asleep.
‘Oh, Dr Marks, you startled me!’
‘Do please call me Herman. Otherwise I might mistake myself for my wife and that would never do. Two Doctors Marks in one house! When I married, my wife was my student; the merest miss. Now she outstrips me in everything, including doctorates. You were asleep, my dear. How flattering. How at home you must feel!’
‘Well, I’m awake now, Dr Marks. If you don’t mind, I won’t call you Herman. It seems so informal.’
‘You are very nervous today, I can tell. In a very English mood,’ said Dr Herman.
‘I told you I was not feeling very well,’ said Annette.
‘And how does this mysterious “not well” affect you?’
‘I have a permanent headache,’ said Annette. ‘There seems to be a kind of space in my head where things aren’t connecting.’
‘You put it very well,’ said Dr Herman. ‘Things “not connecting”. Well, we will help if we can. Do you often get these headaches?’
‘No.’
‘But you have today. I wonder why?’
‘I’m not getting enough sleep,’ said Annette. ‘And when I do sleep I get dreams which wake me up. Or else it’s the baby kicking. I don’t know.’
‘And I figure in these dreams?’
‘Well, yes, come to think of it.’
‘In what way?’ asked Dr Herman. He bent towards her. The hairs in his nostrils were black, thick and curly. There was grey in his head hair but not in his nostrils.
‘Do we have to go into all this?’
‘I think perhaps we do,’ said Dr Herman. ‘And in some detail. You must learn to trust me; not to hold back. There is no blame in our sexual fantasies. You have already trusted me with many confidences. I really would prefer you to call me Herman. See me as a father: be a good daughter: call me what I ask.’
‘I could call you Doctor Herman,’ said Annette.
‘Thank you, Annette,’ said Dr Herman. ‘That is a satisfactory compromise. Many of your troubles stem from yourself as the daughter of a perhaps too loving father.’
‘That simply is not the case,’ said Annette. ‘He seemed to love me just about right. Still does.’
‘These memories are often buried,’ said Dr Herman. ‘It does not mean they are not there, simply that you have overlaid them. See what has just happened? I instructed you to call me Herman: at first you refuse: then you change your mind and obey, from which I deduce that you see me as the father, you oblige me with your obedience. You were unwilling; but how easily I am able to override you.’
‘I just wanted you to stop going on about it,’ said Annette.
‘You just wanted the father to stop,’ said Dr Herman. ‘How often do we not hear that story?’
‘Now hang on a minute,’ said Annette.
‘I think you protest too much, Annette. You identify me with your father; then you dream of me in intimate terms: now what are we to make of that? It was almost the first thing you told me. Practically bursting out of your lips.’
‘Actually, I’ve got too bad a headache to make much of anything, Dr Marks. Dr Herman. But I can promise you I was not the victim of child abuse at the hands of my father.’
‘At the hands of your father? Or something worse than hands?’
‘Do you have any aspirin?’ asked Annette.
‘Perhaps we should take your blood-pressure,’ said Dr Herman. ‘If you are having headaches. Just stand here beside me. There is no need to be nervous of physical contact. I am not your father in the real world, though in your dreams you fantasise that I am.’
‘I can go to my own doctor to have my blood-pressure taken. Really, I’d rather.’
‘But will you? Since you are avoiding treatment for both yourself and your baby?’
‘How do you know I’m avoiding treatment?’
‘You see! I am right. You are ambivalent about your baby. So others must look after it! Roll up your sleeve, please: I will wrap this black collar round your arm. The sleeve higher, please. It won’t roll up any further? Then I think you should take your blouse off altogether. When I have taken your blood-pressure, I will need to listen to your heart anyway. Don’t be prudish. I am a medical doctor. I have seen many a bare bosom in my time, even younger and prettier than yours—what are you ashamed of?’
‘Gilda,’ wept Annette, ‘please come and help me.’
‘Where are you? What’s the matter?’
‘I’m in a phone box at Finchley Road station.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Gilda, it’s terrible. Awful. I’m in such a state.’
‘Shall I get hold of Spicer?’
‘No, just you. Quickly, please.’
‘Oh, thank you, Gilda. You are so kind,’ said Annette.
‘Just lie and soak in the bath, Annette. It will stop you trembling. Are you hurt anywhere? He didn’t actually rape you?’
‘Oh no, no,’ said Annette. ‘Of course not. His wife was in the house.’
‘Well, what?’
‘First he made me stand there without anything at all on top—’
‘Not even your bra? Most doctors let you keep your bra on when they take your blood-pressure.’
‘He forgot about my blood-pressure as soon as my blouse was off. He kept saying he wanted to listen to my heart,’ said Annette.
‘Then he complained about the little wired metal rose in the centre of my bra: he said it was interfering with the electronics of his stethoscope, so would I take the bra off, and I felt stupid not wanting to, as if I was seeing sexual implications when there weren’t any. What made me think I was so attractive anyway: pregnant women aren’t exactly fanciable by all and sundry, are they? A breast’s a breast in a medical context. So I took the bra off, but then he said there was something wrong with his stethoscope after all, and I just had to stand there while he found another, not sure whether I was meant to put my bra back on. There comes a moment when modesty is almost more suggestive than anything else. Then he did listen to my heart, and to my back while I coughed. He said my heart was okay. So what else was new! Then he felt my nipples, and said they were very engorged, and not very attractive, and my husband could hardly like them in that state. Then he pinched them; first one, then the other; he told me to see if they’d retract—’
‘Why didn’t you just kick him in the balls and run?’
‘I was kind of paralysed. It was so hard to believe. I thought it might be genuine, some kind of middle-European nipple test. How was I to know? He told me he was just making sure they were healthy,’ said Annette. ‘That it was extra-oestrogen not malign
ancy which was smudging them.’
‘So you just stood there?’
‘I was so taken by surprise,’ said Annette. ‘He seemed to be suggesting the reason I had marital difficulties was because Spicer must find me unattractive.’
‘What marital difficulties?’ asked Gilda.
‘I have no idea. It was just somehow assumed I had them,’ said Annette. ‘And I thought perhaps he’s right. Perhaps Spicer doesn’t fancy me any more. Then I thought no, that’s absurd, the way Spicer’s been carrying on lately: if I’m tired it’s because of Spicer. So I fought back, Gilda. I said why are you trying to humiliate me? And do you know what he said? He said because the more I identified him with my father the better. He said he had to rework the trauma and then I’d be cured.’
‘Oh dear God,’ said Gilda.
‘And I was still puzzling over that when he began to palpate my breasts—you know how the nurse does it at the Clinic, checking for lumps so you don’t have to have the mammogram and be slammed up between those metal plates—by that time he was standing behind me. And I somehow came to, and said what are you doing: is that really necessary? He just snapped that it was, because pregnant women can get a galloping form of breast cancer, did I know that, so I had to be checked. I couldn’t work out whether he was a doctor, my father or this horrible man with black hairs coming out of his nostrils. Then those long, long arms were hugging me from behind: the way he’d done the week before, but now he was talking this junk about undoing the trauma; about how I had to love the touch of the father in adult life, as I had learned to loathe it in infancy, and this long, hard thing was pressing into my back, so I shrieked and turned round and hit his face, and grabbed my clothes and ran. I suppose that counts as an indecent assault but who’d ever believe me? He’d just deny it and say it was therapy. His wife was in the hall, arranging roses, can you believe? Dr Rhea Marks. The one Spicer so adores. I bet she’d been listening in. I pushed past her and let myself out of the front door, and she just stared after me. I had to stop to put on my shirt, can you believe it? In the street? Then I ran on down to the station and called you. I don’t think anyone saw me. Are my nipples really so horrible?’
‘They look quite ordinary to me,’ said Gilda, ‘though they have kind of spread, I suppose. Some women at the Clinic have far worse. Theirs are kind of chocolate brown, yours are coffee.’
‘That’s something,’ said Annette. ‘I suppose.’
‘You don’t think you imagined it?’ Gilda asked. ‘Women do fantasise about doctors.’
‘Of course I didn’t imagine it,’ said Annette. ‘Would I imagine phrases like the homeopathy of humiliation? The rebirth of response? I’d be ashamed even to make them up.’
‘I don’t know, Annette. It does seem unlikely, but then so does being assaulted by a therapist. The human brain is very strange, especially when it’s pregnant.’
‘Whose side are you on?’
‘Yours. I was just theorising,’ said Gilda. ‘For all we know, what Dr Herman Marks was doing is a perfectly accepted form of therapy. It sounds reasonable to me. Sexual rehabilitation via the therapist. A cure for child abuse trauma. Identify the therapist with the father, relive the original experience as an adult, and bingo.’
‘It sounds disgusting to me,’ said Annette, ‘especially as I wasn’t traumatised as a child.’
‘That’s what you say. But supposing this doctor is right, and you’ve buried the memory? And now he’s cured you anyway. You’d never know. Well, if it’s orgasms, orgasms, orgasms from now on in, I suppose you will. Are you going to tell Spicer?’
‘I don’t think he’s going to want to know,’ said Annette.
‘I can always tell Steve,’ said Gilda. ‘And Steve will go round and beat Dr Herman Marks up. He would if it happened to me.’
‘Spicer will only think I led the doctor on,’ said Annette. ‘Spicer will only blame me. Or he’ll say I was fantasising. Perhaps I was? But what was I doing at Finchley Road station trembling and my bra in my pocket if it didn’t happen?’
‘It’s a hot day,’ said Gilda. ‘Your bra might have got too tight and you just took it off.’
‘I’d never have taken off my bra just because it was hot,’ said Annette. ‘My breasts have got so big they bounced all the way down the hill. I hated that. Of course it really happened.’
‘I’ll bring you some champagne,’ said Gilda.
‘Well, just a glass. More would be bad for baby,’ said Annette.
‘What was your blood-pressure,’ asked Gilda, ‘as a matter of interest?’
‘He never got round to taking it,’ said Annette. ‘And the other reason I can’t tell Spicer is because you’re right: he’d be more anxious to protect Dr Rhea Marks than he would me. If he didn’t believe me he’d be angry because I was causing unpleasantness: if he did believe me he might decide to rescue Dr Rhea Marks from Dr Herman. She wasn’t exactly pretty: just sort of helpless, and she has a very little voice, with which she puts you in your place. And I can just see her gazing up at Spicer with her pale pop eyes, and flattering him by talking about his soul.’
‘I suppose not many people talk to wine merchants about their souls,’ said Gilda.
‘Probably not,’ said Annette. ‘I’d better get dry and go home, and face whatever happens next.’
‘Annette?’
‘Oh hi, Spicer.’
‘You were a long time answering,’ said Spicer on the phone. ‘Have you just come in?’
‘Yes,’ said Annette.
‘Where were you?’ asked Spicer. ‘Out gadding with your beloved Gilda? I had your friend Ernie on the phone. He was trying to get hold of you. You didn’t even put the answerphone on.’
‘I forgot,’ said Annette.
‘If you forget, there’s very little point in owning one, wouldn’t you think?’
‘I was out seeing my therapist,’ said Annette. ‘I got nervy.’
‘“My therapist”! I knew it would happen,’ said Spicer. ‘You have joined the ranks of the ladies-in-treatment. Now at last my Annette can hold her head up in the cafes and coffee shops! She will be equal in the beauty parlours and the hair salons. Oh to be a lady of leisure and the doors of the soul held open wide.’
‘You’re very lyrical, Spicer, considering it was your idea I went in the first place.’
‘I think you misremember it, Annette. You misremember so much.’
‘Anyway, Spicer, you go to a therapist too.’
‘It’s hardly the same,’ said Spicer.
‘I don’t understand why not,’ said Annette. ‘Unless it’s different for men.’
‘You’re very sharp and edgy today, Annette,’ said Spicer. ‘Let me put it like this: men, unlike women, seldom seek therapy for trivial reasons. Rhea Marks is a Jungian: a transcendentalism Herman Marks, her husband, is an eclectic: a behaviourist. I am seeking treatment from the first, you from the second. How did you get on with him this time?’
‘Not very well, actually,’ said Annette. ‘I don’t think I like him very much. In fact I think I’ll stop seeing him.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Spicer. ‘Oh, the whims and fancies. First I will, then I won’t. You do find it difficult to persist in anything, Annette. Not even our baby’s welfare has done anything to steady you down.’
‘For God’s sake, Spicer—’
‘If you’re going to be unpleasant there’s very little point in ringing you.’
The phone buzzed. Spicer had cut her off. Annette switched the yellow button over to save the battery. She sat down. She could see her ankles: they were indeed puffy. She took off her shoes.
The phone rang again.
‘Spicer?’
‘No, Mrs Horrocks,’ said Wendy. ‘It’s me. Mr Horrocks said to say he’s sorry he had to go and asked me to tell you to call Mr Gromback at once. Apparently Oprah Winfrey are interested and Mr Gromback needs a yes or no from you as soon as possible.’
‘Oprah Winfrey? You mean the TV
show?’
‘Yes. She’s over here doing a series on literary women worldwide.’
‘But that’s extraordinary. Why should they want me?’
‘I don’t know why, Mrs Horrocks. Mr Horrocks just asked you to call Mr Gromback. Isn’t it exciting!’
‘I suppose so. Can I speak to Spicer?’
‘He’s in a meeting. I always watch Oprah Winfrey if ever I’m ill which is hardly ever. Mr Horrocks says he doesn’t know who in God’s name she is, but I bet he does. Well, everyone does. Must go!’
‘Ernie?’
‘Thank God you called back, Annette,’ said Ernie Gromback. ‘Where have you been? Where do you housewives get to? I was worried. You’re meant to be resting.’
‘As it happens,’ said Annette, ‘I was out being indecently assaulted by a mad therapist.’
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ said Ernie Gromback. ‘Anyone can do a weekend course and set up in business. Or not even bother with the course. Marion’s thinking of setting herself up as a counsellor.’
‘She’s not!’
‘She threatens to,’ said Ernie. ‘But enough about Marion, are you okay?’
‘Just about,’ said Annette.
‘Not traumatised?’
‘No,’ said Annette. ‘I don’t think so. It was a long way this side of rape.’
‘Spicer didn’t say anything about it,’ said Ernie, suspiciously.
‘Spicer doesn’t know.’
‘Funny kind of relationship you and Spicer have,’ said Ernie Gromback.
‘It’s a very good relationship,’ said Annette, automatically. ‘We’re very close and we love each other very much.’
‘Now that’s settled,’ said Ernie, after a short pause, ‘Oprah Winfrey wants you to be on her show next week. Literary schmiterary, but she’ll shift a book or two.’
‘But, Ernie—’
‘Look, publishing’s hit hard times. This is a first novel. You turn down Oprah Winfrey, you do Gromback Partners a bad turn. And yourself. I have a feeling you need all the good turns you can get.’
