Trouble

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Bangles, bracelets and of solid gold, Spicer? You are so extravagant—’ said Eleanor, ‘and only recently you were talking bin-ends and desperation.’

  ‘I went down to Bond Street this morning and bought them,’ said Spicer. ‘Between one meeting and the next. I wanted something very special for Annette, on this very special day.’

  ‘But what’s the gold chain for, Spicer?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘It’s an anklet chain,’ said Marion. ‘So pretty!’

  ‘Spicer, how glamorous, how thoughtful, just what I want. I simply love the bracelets,’ said Annette, ‘but the anklet will have to wait till after the baby. My ankles are so puffy! Look at them! I couldn’t bend down to get it on, let alone take it off, but I can put the bracelets on now. Just!’

  ‘Baby wrists,’ said Spicer. ‘I love them. Let me put them on. Not too tight?’

  ‘Just nicely firm,’ said Annette.

  ‘Now you look positively Indian!’ said Marion. ‘Properly docile. Not wild-eyed and academic at all. Ernie, will you buy me some bracelets?’

  ‘No, I will not,’ said Ernie. ‘I’ll give you some anti-New Age books to make you think.’

  ‘I’ll jangle wherever I go,’ said Annette, ‘from now on. And wherever I go I’ll think of you, Spicer. Thank you, my darling husband. I am so happy.’

  ‘Eat up your lobster,’ said Spicer.

  ‘Gilda?’

  ‘Hi, Annette,’ said Gilda. ‘I’m in the bath. Can you hear it? I have a phone in the bathroom now. Steve bought it for me, so you and I could talk more comfortably. Steve worries about you. So now I can lie in the warm water, which always relaxes me, and watch my tummy rippling. Ooh, there he goes. A foot or an elbow. Some people can tell which: I never can. The Clinic says he’ll be on time. You didn’t go again. They say the head’s engaged. I like being pregnant: I never thought I would. Being helpless is so sensuous. I don’t look forward to the birth one bit. How was the kiss-and-make-up lunch?’

  ‘I told Spicer I didn’t want lobster but he just went ahead and ordered it.’

  ‘I expect he just forgot.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annette. ‘I expect so. But now I have indigestion. And it wasn’t tête-à-tête at all. There were other people.’

  ‘Spicer’s sociable by nature,’ said Gilda. ‘We all know that.’

  ‘Why didn’t he ask you and Steve? He asked everyone else.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Gilda, after a little pause. ‘Do you think I’ve offended him in some way?’

  ‘It’s easy to do,’ said Annette. ‘Quite often nowadays it happens all by itself. It was my birthday and he gave me gold bracelets.’

  ‘Oh my God, I forgot your birthday!’ cried Gilda. ‘I’m so sorry, Annette.’

  ‘I forgot it too,’ said Annette, ‘what with one thing and another.’

  ‘That is just terrible!’

  ‘Spicer remembered,’ said Annette. ‘That was something. But I wish he hadn’t given me the bracelets.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel quite sorry for Spicer,’ said Gilda. ‘Not often, just sometimes. It does seem difficult for him to do anything right. It sounds a really nice present to me.’

  ‘If you remember,’ said Annette, ‘the therapy for the goddess Hera is bangles, bracelets and anklets. Turn to the relevant page and there’s another passage marked by Dr Rhea in the book on Theotherapy: it says Hera is endowed with all the positive characteristics of a good wife and mother, but is at the same time so prone to feelings of jealousy that she is prepared to sacrifice everything she believes in—even her own life, if need be—in an attempt to establish what she believes to be her own rights. Consequently, her married life tends to be dogged by ever-growing crisis.’

  ‘So?’ asked Gilda.

  ‘So, Gilda,’ said Annette, ‘having got nowhere with horoscopes, Dr Rhea is now attacking me with Theotherapy. She’s just near enough the truth to do me down in Spicer’s eyes. I’m not an unreasonably jealous person, am I?’

  ‘Not considering the way Spicer behaves, no,’ said Gilda.

  ‘But she will somehow persuade Spicer I am,’ said Annette. ‘She’s re-setting his tuning, as people do with radio sets. So all he hears is what she says he’ll hear. But why is she doing this to me? He’s not going to stop seeing her, not if he went out this morning and bought me bangles, bracelets and anklets. The bracelets are really tight round my wrist. The skin is already rubbing. It’s the curse of Dr Rhea Marks and I’m walking round with it on my body.’

  ‘I think you’d better go and see her, Annette,’ said Gilda. ‘Not just for your sake, but for Susan and Jason and the baby too. You are getting really obsessive.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Annette. ‘I will. Now I’ve washed my hair, I feel stronger.’

  ‘By all means come and chat to me, Mrs Horrocks,’ said Dr Rhea on the phone. ‘Just you, or Spicer too?’

  ‘Just me,’ said Annette. ‘If you’re going to call Spicer Spicer perhaps you’d better call me Annette.’

  ‘Well, no, Mrs Horrocks. Spicer is my patient, and we believe in a degree of informality in treatment. You are the spouse, and formality is in order. These are the ethics of the situation. You are an interested but not primarily involved party to the counsellor-client relationship.’

  ‘I’m his wife,’ said Annette.

  ‘I am very well aware of that, Mrs Horrocks,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘Shall we say five on Friday week?’

  ‘I would rather come and see you today,’ said Annette.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘It would just be more convenient today,’ said Annette.

  ‘As it happens, I do have a cancellation,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘One today.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not any earlier, Mrs Horrocks,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘We still have the builders in and my husband is using his consulting room so there is no waiting room available. I’m sure you understand. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I get the message,’ said Annette.

  ‘No message is intended,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘I am simply stating that we have the builders in.’

  ‘One o’clock then, Dr Marks,’ said Annette.

  ‘I look forward to it,’ said Dr Rhea Marks.

  ‘Perhaps you would answer one or two questions, Dr Rhea,’ said Annette.

  ‘I would be happy to,’ said Dr Rhea, ‘so long as the answers don’t breach the confidentiality which exists between Spicer and myself.’

  ‘But he’s my husband,’ said Annette.

  ‘You keep saying that. Spouses don’t own one another. He is your husband. Very well. He is my patient. Likewise, very well. I am sorry you have seen fit to discontinue your treatment with my husband. It would have been very helpful to you, and indeed to Spicer, if you’d gone on with it. Spicer has had a lot to cope with lately.’

  ‘I know,’ said Annette. ‘So have I.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t realise to what extent Spicer is in crisis,’ said Dr Rhea, ‘or how your own matrimonial jealousies exacerbate the situation and exactly how important it is for you to see Dr Herman. I do suggest twice a week, at least.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to,’ said Annette, ‘and that’s that. I don’t have money to throw away. And what situation are you talking about?’

  ‘Both Lilith and Saturn eat their children,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘Now I put that very bluntly, in terms of the archetype, but I think you are intelligent enough to understand. In Spicer a malefic Saturn struggles to assert himself. It’s unwise to underestimate Saturn.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ said Annette.

  ‘The pull of Saturn is into deadness, inertia and unconsciousness. Into depression, in fact.’

  ‘Spicer isn’t depressed. He’s funny, clever, lively—or was till he came to see you.’

  ‘You protest too much, my dear,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘In any case we are talking about a creative depression, which contains within its core unbridled life energy, but which can be stultified if th
e shadow-side remains unrecognised. Then we have all the ingredients for a human tragedy.’

  ‘I think I’d rather you called me Mrs Horrocks than my dear,’ said Annette.

  ‘It’s quite natural for you to be angry with me,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘Believe me, I understand and sympathise, but it doesn’t alter the situation. The work against nature, against the endless mechanical cycle of reincarnation, is necessary work against Saturn and towards creativity. Every effort Spicer makes to escape his habitual nature, his conditioning, environment, habits, duties, parents, spouse is an effort to escape the devouring jaws of Saturn. And I, as his therapist, am duty-bound to help him. It is a perilous venture for both of us.’

  ‘So you are helping him escape me?’ asked Annette. ‘His spouse? Is that what you mean? I quite certainly heard you say that.’

  ‘Only in so far as you represent Lilith,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘And inevitably you must.’

  ‘And who the fuck is Lilith?’ enquired Annette.

  ‘Lilith is the Black Gall; she is under the rulership of Saturn; she is the melancholy of the deepest realm of death, poverty, darkness, tears, complaints and hunger. She is the screech owl. The destructive force that works against the flow of harmony that should exist between men and women.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ said Annette.

  ‘I don’t want to feel I am wasting my time here,’ said Dr Rhea.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘Spicer stands on the brink of a very great journey,’ said Dr Rhea.

  ‘He is a very special person: a profound artist: destined for spiritual greatness. Only Saturn and Lilith hold him back from his appointed task. Once he’s free of these principles, once he has faced and incorporated his shadow-self—I have never met one so strong, Mrs Horrocks—Spicer will shake free from the material world. He will cut the ties that bind. You understand what in your culture you describe as someone who is a mystic, I take it?’

  ‘It’s your culture as well, Dr Rhea, but tell me more.’

  ‘The Buddha, in the blunt Christian term, is a mystic. A great spiritual leader. The Buddha left wife and family behind when he had grown out of them, could see beyond them, and set off on his mission in the world.’

  ‘And that’s what Spicer’s going to do?’ asked Annette. ‘If you have your way? If I don’t see your husband and somehow stop it? Be a Buddha?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with what I want,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘It’s there in Spicer’s chart. I am just the instrument of his liberation from the material world.’

  ‘I hope you can stand up and say this in a court of law,’ said Annette. ‘It may well end up there.’

  ‘I think basic Jungian thought is now well accepted in most courts,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘Certainly the counsellors and social workers are acquainted with the language of the archetype: many are trained in astrology, too. The ASAP is affiliated to the ATCCT.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Association for the Training of Court Counsellors and Therapists.’

  ‘You have wormed yourself in everywhere with all your nuttiness,’ said Annette. ‘And seem to be dragging the whole world along with you. You’ll be ducking witches next: pricking people to find out if they’re child abusers.’

  ‘Interesting that you should say that,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘That child abuse is what comes to your mind.’

  ‘What you’re really saying to me,’ said Annette, ‘is that if I don’t have therapy from your husband you’ll break up my marriage. You’re blackmailing me.’

  ‘Poor Spicer,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘I thought he exaggerated, but he doesn’t. Lilith is very, very strong in you. But Spicer is strong too. He’s breaking free.’

  ‘Spicer took me out to lunch yesterday,’ said Annette. ‘We had lobster and champagne. He didn’t seem all that spiritual to me. I think he lays a lot of it on for your benefit. It’s how he entertains himself.’

  ‘I think he only took a little of the fish, Mrs Horrocks, and sipped the champagne, to keep you in countenance. Strange you forgot your own birthday. Or perhaps you wanted to. Fight against fate all you want, Mrs Horrocks, be as rude to me as you like, really it makes no difference: the spiritual change has begun in Spicer and will continue in spite of all your efforts to hold him back. You’ll have noticed the change in his diet. His body now rejects red meat, alcohol, craves natural foods. It’s a sure sign of spirituality. You’ll find stops and starts in Spicer’s progress. Of course you will. He’ll suffer from what I like to call the hot flushes of the soul. His sexuality may become suddenly more intense, alternating with periods of abstinence, melancholy. He will turn himself back for a time into a family man, or someone preoccupied with business, but the process towards oneness, once begun, is inexorable. Spicer is leaving you, Mrs Horrocks, and the material world.’

  ‘Dr Rhea,’ said Annette, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn at all. As you say, it’s natural for me to be angry. This all comes as rather a shock. But please, for my sake, the family’s sake, could you stop encouraging Spicer in all this? Not flatter him by talking about his spirituality, his creativity? He’s just a wine merchant, with a wife and two children and a baby on the way: no one special, just himself, which has always been good enough for me, and him. The consequences of his breaking up the home are so terrible for so many people. Couldn’t you somehow include all them in the area of your responsibility? Because we’re all going to suffer terribly if Spicer goes on like this. Please search your conscience, to see if you can’t find a way within it not to break up this marriage. Not tell lies to Spicer, not as strong as that—just stay quiet about his spiritual destiny, as you see it?’

  Dr Marks thought for a little.

  ‘In all conscience,’ she said, ‘I can’t. My responsibility is to my patient, not to his family and associates. As I say, these are the ethics of my profession. Your husband approached me for help of his own free will, and I must give it to him. That, and only that, is my duty.’

  ‘Even if helping him actively makes so many people unhappy?’

  ‘In my experience families adjust very quickly,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘Sometimes material details can be a problem, but in this case they’re minor. I have encouraged Spicer to talk to you about them, but I’m afraid he keeps putting it off. The Lilith in you is so quickly aroused. I think Spicer finds it quite frightening: you frequently alarm him, Mrs Horrocks, with what he sees as sexual insatiability.’

  ‘What about my baby, who according to you must do without a father?’

  ‘Every child has a father,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘I’m sorry you seem so out of sympathy with your husband. Don’t you care about his welfare at all? I don’t think you’ve ever grasped how ill he was until he came to see me: how unhappy his childhood was.’

  ‘We all have unhappy childhoods. So what? Didn’t you?’

  Annette saw Dr Rhea Marks’s face flicker: the colourless lashes lowered over the pale, prominent eyes.

  ‘I was the child of an unsupported mother,’ said Dr Rhea Marks.

  ‘Is this your plan for all newborn babies?’ said Annette. ‘That, like you, they’ll end up with no father?’

  ‘Try not to be so excitable,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘It’s bad for the baby. I understand your ambivalence towards your coming child but try to control it.’

  ‘Do your patients often set out on this journey of theirs,’ asked Annette, ‘and leave their spouses behind?’

  ‘Quite often, Mrs Horrocks, yes,’ said Dr Rhea.

  ‘That doesn’t seem strange to you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘Men who stand on the brink of spiritual revelation do naturally gravitate towards me. We like to call it synchronicity.’

  ‘You don’t put it into their heads?’ asked Annette. ‘This leaving of spouses? You don’t have your own agenda, hidden or otherwise?’

  ‘This is bizarre,’ said Dr Rhea Marks. She rose from her chair and went to the window and contemplated the trees. The legs that
emerged from the long skirt were slim and her ankles were pretty.

  ‘And perhaps your plan for all pregnant women,’ said Annette, ‘is that they’ll end up alone, and repeat your mother’s story? You’re not so much helping the men as attacking the women, and have found an ideal way of doing it. Power mad, like the teachers and the doctors. Now the therapists too. I think you just want other women to end up lonely.’

  ‘We don’t talk about loneliness,’ said Dr Rhea, smugly. ‘We prefer to talk about aloneness.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ said Annette. ‘But you’re all right, aren’t you? You’re safe enough. Not much chance of your old man going on a spiritual journey. He’s too busy palpating breasts, the disgusting old pervert, and sticking his cock into his female patients, and you collude. You even procure. I expect he prefers the pregnant.’

  Dr Marks picked up the internal phone and dialled.

  ‘Herman, could you come in a minute? I have Mrs Horrocks in my surgery. She’s being abusive.’

  ‘Gilda, thank God you waited,’ said Annette. ‘Get me away from here quickly. I can’t get the seat belt on; I’m sorry. Is there some way you can turn the alarm off? Hang on, I’ll try and move the seat forward. No, that’s hopeless. I can’t fold myself in half any more. You have such a neat little bump: I’m just overall, all-purpose vast. No, I’m okay. Really. Not even particularly upset; I expect that will come later. I was in there with her for ages, wasn’t I? It felt like it. Things were shapeless; what she said was random; the conversation was without form: like me, pregnant all over the place: what she’s about to give birth to is some great lump of evil. It doesn’t mean Dr Rhea’s necessarily bad: she may just be rather stupid and likes to have power, and has found a way of using it; I suppose that could add up to evil. But no, I don’t think so. Evil is something which attaches from outside: you can’t use it as a description; it’s a thing in itself and she’s going to give birth to it. Did you know that Rhea was Saturn’s wife? I wonder if she was born that; more likely it was Doris Legge. Can’t you turn that alarm off? Take out a fuse or something, Gilda. Wedge a match in there. Bloody Volvos, always doing things you don’t want for your own good: if it’s not the lights, it’s the fasten-seat belt buzz. Thanks, that’s better. No, I don’t want coffee. Let’s go straight home. Those lights were red, Gilda. God, you’re an awful driver. It’s just as well we’re in a Volvo, the four of us. Gilda and baby Henry, Annette and baby Gillian. These bangles are beginning to cut into my wrist. My hands have got so puffy. Do you think they’d cut bangles off at the Fire Station? Shall we go there? Rhea Marks has entered into this marriage as a third party. She’s half-way between a mistress and a voyeur. Perhaps Spicer just has this appetite for threesomes. Spicer and me and baby makes three. I was never absolutely certain I wanted this baby; Spicer and Aileen plus Jason never made it. You start off anti the first wife, don’t you: you think she didn’t understand him: you think she was cold, heartless, stupid, faithless: she must have been. In the end you see she was just another woman, trying to cope.