Trouble

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Annette, you’re leaping ahead. Of course I don’t want us to part permanently. I’m only suggesting a temporary separation, while I sort things out. And how could there be a property settlement? There’s no property to settle.’

  ‘There’s the house,’ said Annette.

  ‘It’s in my name, sweetheart,’ Spicer said.

  ‘Don’t sweetheart me,’ said Annette.

  ‘If it upsets you so we won’t even contemplate it,’ said Spicer. ‘Don’t sob like that. Here, let me hold you close. I won’t leave you. I’ll never leave you.’

  ‘Oh Spicer, don’t frighten me so,’ she wept. ‘And how could you talk about our sex life to Rhea Marks? It’s so disloyal.’

  ‘So that’s what’s upsetting you,’ said Spicer. ‘You talked about it to Gilda, why shouldn’t I talk about it to Rhea?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call her Rhea. Kiss my eyes to stop me crying.’

  ‘There,’ said Spicer. ‘That’s your eyes. Now your ears.’

  ‘Please no,’ said Annette. ‘It makes me feel I’m going deaf.’

  ‘You can’t let go,’ said Spicer. ‘Why can’t you just let go? If you’d let go I wouldn’t be in the state I am.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Spicer. If only I knew what you meant,’ said Annette.

  ‘Do it to me,’ said Spicer. ‘Put your tongue in my ear.’

  ‘There might be wax in there,’ said Annette.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Spicer, ‘why did I marry so repressed a woman?’

  ‘It’s in your stars, I expect,’ said Annette. ‘No, Spicer, I don’t mean to make you angry. I’ll do whatever you like.’

  ‘But I want you to want it,’ said Spicer. ‘You’re not wearing your nightie.’

  ‘None of them fit any more,’ said Annette. ‘They’re uncomfortable.’

  ‘The bump’s grown,’ said Spicer. ‘I can’t get near you. Come on top of me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My breasts are swollen,’ said Annette. ‘You might feel overwhelmed: whatever it was you complained of to Dr Rhea. Your anima being taken over. Archetypes creeping out of my you know where. Swept away by floods. And my nipples are blotchy and you might see too much of them and go off me. Dr Herman hated the sight of them.’

  ‘I don’t mind. It’s only temporary. Isn’t it?’ asked Spicer.

  ‘I don’t know. They didn’t go like this with Susan,’ said Annette. ‘I worry dreadfully.’

  ‘Now you are putting me off. I shouldn’t really be doing this, anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need to be in control. I went to the spare room. You lured me out. Now you’ve got the better of me,’ said Spicer.

  ‘How do you mean I’ve got the better of you? How did I lure you?’

  ‘It’s so seductive. Giving in to needing you, you needing me. Eve with the apple. Sex,’ said Spicer.

  ‘It isn’t just sex, Spicer. It’s love. Isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a diversion from important things,’ said Spicer. ‘It’s a distraction.’

  ‘But I’m your wife, you’re meant to,’ said Annette. ‘I need you. Put your hand here.’

  ‘You’re so wonderful,’ said Spicer. ‘I can feel you needing me. Come on top of me.’

  ‘All right,’ said Annette. ‘But I’m such a funny shape.’

  ‘It’s the shape we made by doing this,’ said Spicer. ‘It’s our punishment and our justification.’

  ‘I’ve had my punishment and I don’t need any justification,’ said Annette.

  ‘Stop talking,’ said Spicer, so Annette did.

  ‘Now turn over,’ he said. ‘That’s enough of that.’

  ‘You won’t see her again, will you?’ Annette asked. ‘Please stop seeing Dr Rhea, please come back to me properly, all of you.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ said Spicer. ‘Not at the moment. Rhea’s unimportant. Lean your forehead against the pillow; then you’re at the proper angle. That’s wonderful. I’m not hurting the baby?’

  ‘No. Just gently, though.’

  ‘You don’t let me do this usually, from behind,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it lacks dignity,’ said Annette.

  ‘Sex isn’t dignified,’ said Spicer.

  ‘It ought to be,’ said Annette. ‘Since it produces children with souls.’

  ‘Rhea says we should try speaking less when making love,’ said Spicer. ‘Then it might work better.’

  ‘Isn’t this working? It seems to be working for me.’

  ‘But it won’t for long enough,’ said Spicer. ‘We ought to be able to go on for hours.’

  ‘Who says?’ asked Annette. ‘Dr Rhea Marks?’

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ said Spicer. ‘Your voice is muffled by the pillow.’

  ‘It probably wasn’t important,’ said Annette.

  ‘If you can’t say anything nice,’ said Spicer, ‘don’t say anything at all.’

  ‘Let me turn over so I can see your eyes,’ said Annette, ‘and the shape of your lips when you talk.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Spicer. ‘I’d rather just move the pillow.’

  ‘If you want me to stop talking you could turn me over and kiss me,’ said Annette.

  ‘I don’t like kissing,’ said Spicer. ‘Mouths are for toothpaste and toothbrushes.’

  ‘I blame the dentists,’ said Annette. ‘They’re in our mouths, and the gynaecologists are in our cunts, and the epidemiologists are after our cocks—yours, that is—and the surgeons are after our hearts, and now the therapists are after our souls. I wish they’d leave us alone.’

  ‘How about the Pope?’ asked Spicer.

  ‘He just wants the human race to outbreed the professionals,’ said Annette, ‘so there are so many mouths, cunts, cocks, hearts and souls in the world no one can possibly decipher them, and they flow undiscussed to God. I’m on his side.’

  ‘And the TV people? The media?’

  ‘They’re looting our lives for narrative,’ said Annette. ‘Please be careful of the baby. It’s somewhere in there.’

  ‘It’s walls and walls away from me,’ said Spicer. ‘Nature looks after that, or I wouldn’t be doing this. The tendency would have been bred out. You’re very hot in there, though. Hotter than usual.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette.

  ‘I like it,’ said Spicer. ‘Let’s hot it up some more.’

  ‘Please not so hard,’ said Annette. ‘You’ve changed the angle somehow.’

  ‘So you told the Oprah Winfrey Show to bugger off?’ said Spicer.

  ‘I tried to, but Ernie Gromback put the pressure on so I said I’d do it.’

  ‘Bitch,’ said Spicer, and all the spirit went out of him.

  ‘Please come back inside me, Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘I miss you.’

  ‘How can I?’ asked Spicer. ‘See what you’ve done to me? I have a soft banana instead of a cock.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette. ‘I didn’t mean to. What’s wrong with Oprah Winfrey? It’s a special about literature and life, not the kind where husbands and wives appear together for everyone to jeer at.’

  ‘Bad enough having our lives looted for a novella,’ said Spicer, ‘without you talking about it on TV. For God’s sake don’t start crying. Sex for us always ends up like this. You crying, me incapable.’

  ‘But it doesn’t,’ said Annette. ‘It never has before. Or only once or twice in all our ten years. You remember everything wrongly.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you,’ said Spicer. ‘Why do you do it to me?’

  ‘Can’t we just go to sleep?’ said Annette.

  ‘I don’t feel like sleep,’ said Spicer. ‘You’ve made sure of that.’

  ‘But you need dreams to report to Rhea Marks,’ said Annette. ‘How can you dream if you don’t sleep?’

  ‘You’re so cunning,’ said Spicer. ‘You don’t like me seeing Dr Rhea Marks so you steal my poten
cy.’

  ‘You mean you’re Samson and I’m Delilah,’ said Annette, ‘and when I mention the Oprah Winfrey Show I’m cutting your hair?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Spicer. ‘But I’m not defeated yet, though you’d like me to be. Now I’m going to bring the temple down around your ears. Turn over onto your front.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Annette.

  ‘I have to find my shadow-side,’ said Spicer, ‘and confront it. See, I’m strong again.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Annette. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because I must find my anima within your animus. Because I need dark, difficult depths. Because you are the cleft in the hill and I am the tree. Because if this is the only way I can, this is the way I will.’

  ‘But Spicer, there it’s too small and it hurts and I hate it.’

  ‘Too bad. If it’s the only way it works for me, what else can we do? Now just shut up. You don’t want to wake the children. At least I hope you don’t. Dr Rhea isn’t too sure.’

  ‘Divorce him,’ said Gilda.

  ‘It isn’t as bad as that,’ said Annette.

  ‘It sounds like marital rape to me,’ said Gilda. ‘Sodomy without consent.’

  ‘You could get to like it,’ said Annette. ‘You could be trained to like it. But you wouldn’t like yourself for liking it, if it wasn’t your idea in the first place.’

  ‘Take him to court, prosecute.’

  ‘Gilda, what’s the matter with you? Yesterday you were telling me to lie back and enjoy it. Poor Spicer. He’s upset about me doing Oprah Winfrey. It was my fault. I just wasn’t tactful.’

  ‘You mean upsetting and hurting you is what turns him on?’

  ‘It isn’t like that, Gilda. I think it was because I wouldn’t let him do what he wanted that he went to see Dr Rhea Marks in the first place. The blood-pressure’s just an excuse. If he was really ill he’d go and see a proper doctor.’

  ‘So him seeing Dr Rhea is your fault too? You drove him to it?’

  ‘No one’s talking about fault,’ said Annette. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘If Spicer’s talking about your sex life to another woman,’ said Gilda, ‘then it’s all up for grabs.’

  ‘A therapist doesn’t count as another woman,’ said Annette.

  ‘You reckon not?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s sleeping with her,’ said Annette.

  ‘But it’s occurred to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annette, ‘of course. But she’s much too holy, much too prissy. And Spicer would keep her existence secret if he was. Wouldn’t he?’

  ‘You reckon?’ asked Gilda.

  ‘I just don’t know,’ said Annette. ‘If she was, she wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask to see me. She’d be too guilty.’

  ‘In the name of healing, people do extraordinary things,’ said Gilda. ‘Perhaps she wanted to take a look at the opposition. And therapists don’t feel guilt. They justify everything.’

  ‘Anyway she’d be struck off,’ said Annette. ‘It wouldn’t be ethical.’

  ‘Struck off from what?’ asked Gilda. ‘Some association which formed itself last year? Which invented its own ethics the week before last?’

  ‘Gilda, what’s the matter with you? You sound really upset.’

  ‘Steve’s joined a group called Fathers As Equal Parents,’ said Gilda.

  ‘They have a card up on the board at the Clinic. What’s the matter with it? I wish Spicer joined things like that.’

  ‘He wants me to have the baby the Leboyer way, in water, and I don’t want to: I’d be frightened the baby would drown, and I say to Steve surely what I want goes, but he says no, why should it if he’s going to be an equal parent, so we’re arguing all the time.’

  ‘Oh Gilda, I’m sorry. I was relying on you to be happy so I could be unhappy at you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gilda, ‘it’s not as hard as all that and at least I’m not married to a monster.’

  ‘Spicer isn’t a monster,’ said Annette. ‘He’s Spicer my beloved husband; it’s just he’s in therapy and the therapist’s got it in for me.’

  ‘Is he seeing her today?’ asked Gilda. ‘How often do you think he sees her?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said four times a week while the crisis lasts. But perhaps the crisis is over? At least this morning he left the house happy and friendly. I can hardly walk but he’s okay.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gilda, ‘we all have our ways of fighting back. I must go now. I’m meeting Steve for lunch.’

  ‘I have Mr Horrocks on the phone for you,’ said Wendy. It was three o’clock. Annette had her feet up on the sofa. ‘Or I will have in a moment. He’s just signing some papers in the other office. Could you try persuading him to let us have our coffee machine back? It made dreadful coffee but at least it was coffee. Now he keeps trying to get us to drink herbal teas. Mr Horrocks can do as he likes, but why should he impose his views on us? If we want to kill ourselves with caffeine that’s our business, not his. Here he is.’

  ‘Hello, Annette,’ said Spicer.

  ‘Hello, Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘Wendy sounds very lively.’

  ‘We’re all in a good mood today,’ said Spicer. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I have my feet up on the sofa. I’m sewing proper name-tags on all Jason’s sports gear. It keeps going astray at school.’

  ‘I love thinking of you sitting there at home, being domestic. I thought we could go and see a show tonight. Kids and all—’

  ‘Oh Spicer, how wonderful!’

  ‘I’ve had Wendy check it out. We can get tickets for Buddy.’

  ‘But that’s rock and roll. You’ll hate it.’

  ‘The kids will love it. That’s the main thing. I can’t impose my tastes on others all the time.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll give the staff back their coffee machine?’

  ‘Probably. It’s only gone for cleaning. But it does them good to live in suspense a little. Keeps them on their toes.’

  ‘I see,’ said Annette.

  ‘How are you feeling, sweetheart?’ asked Spicer, settling in to talk.

  ‘I’m just fine, Spicer.’

  ‘I knew you would be. I’m glad we got all that out of our systems. We’re going to make a go of things, aren’t we, Annette.’

  ‘Of course, Spicer. I never doubted it.’

  ‘Dr Rhea has been a great help to me. It upset me when you got so paranoid about her. It made me feel you didn’t really love me.’

  ‘I do love you, Spicer.’

  ‘Dr Rhea really liked you, Annette. She says if it helps to get you back in balance, and I can handle it, then I can postpone treatment for a month or so, until after the baby’s born. But you would need to go back to Dr Herman: one of us has to be working towards equilibrium.’

  ‘But I thought Dr Herman was away?’

  ‘He came back unexpectedly. Rhea can make the appointment.’

  ‘The trouble is, Spicer, I think it was seeing Dr Herman which so upset my equilibrium.’

  ‘Rhea thinks it will be difficult for you to go through the parturition process unless you come to terms with your own tendency to sexual fantasy. That was quite an episode to which you subjected us all.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. Did you see Dr Rhea this morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Spicer.

  ‘Did you tell her about last night?’

  ‘Annette, don’t begin again. Please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Spicer,’ said Annette.

  ‘So, what do you say about Dr Herman?’ asked Spicer.

  ‘I would rather wait to see him until after the baby’s born, Spicer. But I promise to see him after.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Spicer. ‘It’s a deal. We’ll both give the therapists a rest. Just you and me; the mountain and the tree. It’s an early show tonight. We’ll be back by nine. I’ll bring back some champagne. Shall we have one of our special suppers, to celebrate?’

  ‘What are we celebrati
ng, Spicer?’

  ‘Oh God, darling, everything.’

  ‘My book?’

  ‘Annette, don’t provoke.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry. We’ll leave the book out of it. An accidental outcrop on the mountain, not true female creativity: not proper soil for the tree.’

  ‘You’re learning, my sweetheart. I really liked your analogy to Samson and Delilah. It quite turned me on. I think Wendy’s coming back. We’ll have to stop now. Tell you what, Annette—’

  ‘What, Spicer?’

  ‘Steak would be going too far, but we could have lamb cutlets for supper.’

  ‘Red meat, Spicer! How wicked—how wonderful—’

  ‘Bye, my sweetheart,’ said Spicer.

  ‘Is that you, Annette?’

  ‘Yes. Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s Marion. You know, Ernie’s Marion. That’s how people know me, I don’t understand why. Perhaps it’s because I’m so much younger than him. No one takes me seriously. I have a crystal which is supposed to help with that kind of thing. A rose crystal. It increases self-esteem.’

  ‘Does it really?’

  ‘It’s meant to, but you’re supposed to leave crystals overnight in running water in the full moon if they’re really going to work, and whenever I remember the full moon’s always been and gone. I used to wash them in the little lead fountain in Queen Elizabeth’s Rose Garden, but because there’s an official drought they’ve had to shut it down, and I don’t think tap water works. Anyway, my self-esteem isn’t up to much at the moment.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Marion.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m calling, though. It’s just I was doing your Tarot cards and they came up with all these frightful things. First the Tower—all that red and black, with all those bodies falling from it; then that awful card with the man lying flat on his front with seven swords skewering him through; and then I turned up Death, though everyone says that really means life; I can’t think why. So I just thought I’d call and say please be careful, Annette: stepping out into traffic, that kind of thing. None of it means anything: just do be careful.’

  ‘Marion, why on earth were you doing my Tarot cards?’

  ‘Well, Ernie and I had a row, and he told me he’d had affairs with all his lady authors under forty and I asked if that included you and he said yes, and after that he denied it, so I didn’t know what to think. You’re supposed to be able to find out the truth from the cards, so I consulted them. One has a right to the truth.’