by Mavis Cheek
She removes the anxiety from her own little shoulders and places it firmly upon Derek's. Which feels much better. It is his fault. She then turns her attention to the magazine menus. Steak au poivre and pavlova, fish kebabs and mango ice-cream. Too exotic to contemplate. She closes the magazine, remembering that she is defrosting the cod steaks, and wonders if there is any cheese left to make a sauce. Derek won't mind. He's not fussy about his food. The man in the magazine photograph above the recipe is looking up with a loving smile of appreciation at the woman who is lighting the candles. She wonders if they have a smoke alarm. In their house Derek has fitted two. He points them out to people. It is proof that he cares.
She sighs and closes the magazine. Now the house is finished, they can start entertaining properly. At least, they thought it was finished, but this morning, looking around the bathroom while he was scrubbing those prominent teeth of his (she made sure that he gave them a thorough going-over, morning and night, so that at least when they came popping through his damp lips they were shiny bright), she had to admit to herself that the lilac walls had been a bit of a mistake. Perhaps a fresh coat of paint would be sensible. But nothing more than that. She is getting to the end of her tether with all their improvements. So noisy, so messy -she is forever wiping down the surfaces.
She decides to keep the recipe page for the time when the house is completely ready for entertaining (how she looks forward to showing it off when it is all absolutely perfect) and to read the article on orgasms quietly at home before Derek arrives. Maybe it will solve the problem, once and for all, of whether she has had one or not. She knows she ought to have had one because she is young, pretty and married . . . Correct in every detail . . . Very probably she has.
The Boss Masculine calls her in for dictation. She shuts the magazine away in her drawer and goes in, wondering as she seats herself opposite him why on earth his wife doesn't buy him Head & Shoulders like she buys Derek. She cannot, really, feel entirely sympathetic for his wife. The Little Blonde Secretary Bird feels that, in some way, the hysterectomy must be her fault. If a woman cannot look after her husband's dandruff, then she probably cannot look after her womb properly, either. She could just about tolerate the warts, but the dandruff.. .
Derek is on the telephone ordering a new bathroom suite. He will surprise his wife of six months by redoing the entire thing single-handed. It will keep him occupied and save them hundreds of pounds. He will put the money towards a loft extension too. There is mounting excitement as he states the catalogue numbers to the plumbers' merchants. The taps will be the crowning achievement. Won't she love those? French with ceramic handles.
Really nice. She likes nice things. He puts down the phone and rubs his hands. He just can't wait to get started.
*
Square Jaw is only marginally recovered from the repugnant sight of a staring fat woman untidily eating a ham sandwich on the tube. He was already feeling grim and angry, having yet again left his girlfriend in tears, propped up in bed and snuffling into the duvet cover. 'Sorry, sorry, sorry,' he said without actually meaning it. 'For Chrissake,' he had wanted to shout (but didn't), 'what's a bunch of flowers, anyway?' They'd been more or less living together for two years. Surely there came a time when such trifles were unimportant? And there she sat, making him feel guilty again with her indisputable argument, primly delivered as usual, about it being important to her and therefore important in its own right. Well, what about all the things he did do? ('Like what?' she said, the bitch, and he couldn't think of one at that moment.) Did she want him to be like Pavlov's dogs? See Melanie, think giftwrap? When he bought her things, he liked to do it spontaneously. It wasn't his fault that the spontaneity was rare — she'd wiped a lot of it out by being too demanding — but it was real when it came.
He walks very fast in the drizzle, his legs swiping viciously at the air, his shoes banging into the pavement angrily. One of his feet, which should have made contact with hard stone, plunges into a dip full of water. He is merely splashed, but a female leg is drenched. He looks up. A pretty girl, and pretty angry, under an umbrella. He apologizes, she glowers.
'I should bloody well think so,' she says.
Hmm. Very pretty. He smiles. 'Won't happen again.'
She smiles, too. Girlish. Knowing. Establishing her sex. And then she moves off.
He is cheered. He is fed up with Melanie and her miseries. And there are plenty more fish in the sea. After all, he is not unattractive - that girl's smile said so. He thinks he might turn around and rush after her, thrusting flowers into her hands like they do in that silly advert that Melanie thinks is so sweet. Might well have done, had not, had not - he stops, and then continues on his way - had not, he thought, the memory of the girl's first outburst come back to him. There was something altogether Melanieesque about her. 'I should bloody well think so.'
Ah, no. Stay safe with what you've got. At least the sex wasn't bad. And regular, got to give her that. He'd go over to Melanie's that night and offer to get a take-away. That was the sort of thing he did and never got praised for. He went out in the pouring rain to collect the stuff, he paid for it and quite often refused to let her go halves. Well, tonight that's what he would do, and pick up the bill for it. That'd show her he was making the effort. Bugger the flowers.
Square Jaw's Melanie has finally got out of bed, bathed and put on her make-up. She surveys the puffiness of her eyes unhappily. Then she cheers up. He must have seen how much she would love him to give her a token now and then, a little romantic something just to say he had been thinking of her - even a tiny bunch of violets would be so touching. Of course he would now, now that he had seen her unnecessary misery, added it to all the other times of unnecessary misery. Such a token would reverse it all. He must understand . . . Anyway, she hops out of the bathroom feeling quite happy again. Anyway, the sex had been very good indeed last night. He couldn't forget that, could he? Good sex is a positive asset, a definite asset, but not - surely - something to take for granted? She gives sex ('Freely, freely,' she tells herself) in return for love, and he gives love in return for sex. Simple as that. Only she would like to see or hold some tangible evidence of it sometimes. That's all. Not much to ask, after all.. .
By the time she is dressed, she is absolutely positive that it will be all right. She will ask him over to her place this evening and cook something really nice — not one of those dreary take-aways again. She hums as she pulls his duvet straight, hangs up his jacket that lies crumpled on the floor, rinses out the mugs and wipes the ring from the bath. She leaves with the door of the flat making a familiar click behind her. She runs down the stairs and out into the morning street feeling much happier. This time, she decides, this time, it is all going to be just fine . . .
*
The vicar's wife from Cockermouth is in London for a conference on rural poverty. The vicar was told by the bishop that somebody had to attend, and the vicar thought that Alice might like the change. She was a grand helpmate, unwavering of sacrifice, and he just could not go, could not be in two places at once, though he did not really like the idea of her going back to London alone. She had never revisited it after their marriage and had never suggested that she wanted to, though when they first met there, Alice had loved the place, told him so, said, 'I could never leave it; London is my home.'
He was still astonished that, apparently, their love had changed her impassioned need for the capital, though when she first made that statement they were still only acquaintances. He had fallen for her straight away, keeping the secret to himself, certain that one so dashing and vital would never return such feelings for him, a mere underling on the baby slopes of Synod. She had been so pretty, so bright, so alive. Was still so pretty, but the sparkle, the joy, seemed to have gone out of her, just died overnight back in the London days, long before he declared himself and brought her to Cockermouth. Growing up, she had called it, Alice Grows Up. And it was sad to see how her dazzling eyes had grown dull.
&
nbsp; Perhaps she missed the high life? She never once said that she did. When they met, she was private secretary to a distinguished politician - travelling with him, entertaining for him, important. Cockermouth could hardly compete with that. Indeed, it was a source of some amazement to him that she had showed such alacrity, such eagerness, when he first nervously suggested they attend a concert together - she being so pretty with her red-gold hair and her merry blue eyes. He had thought himself far too dull compared with the exciting life she led within and without the House of Commons, but apparently he was not. And how proud he had been, despite his church's edicts on the subject of deadly sin number one, and humbled too, by her instant, almost desperate, attachment to him. Indeed, he had expected that a great deal of wooing would be required to win her, had consulted books on the subject stealthily at the library, but in the year of their courtship and the subsequent years of their marriage very little had been asked - in fact nothing had been asked - of him in that line at all. He rather wished it had. He rather liked that sort of thing, a little courtliness, a little gallantry, the tokens of love and desire.
Once she got quite upset when he brought her a small gift, a powder compact with her initials entwined; she said such things were unnecessary, that she had hardly expected it of him, that in future he really should not bother, for in the compass of their marriage such things meant very little, and she hoped she was above that kind of indulgence now. She did not need tokens, nor gifts that were useless. She did not contemplate using face-powder ever again.
Disappointed and confused, he said he thought the whole point was their being unnecessary, but he had complied — just bought slippers or secateurs or some such for Christmas and birthdays and turned away from the pleasing foolishness. He had chosen a good wife, he felt, and one who had thrown herself into the pastoral role quite as fully as he had. And if he sometimes wished that he could do something silly, like have champagne in bed with her or brush her glowing hair, he forbore. She had never denied him her body, their marriage was still real in that sense. Only sometimes, sometimes, he felt that in their lovemaking her body was all that she did yield to him, that there was another dimension, somewhere far away, denied . . .
He no longer sought it. It was likely that he was merely being romantic. She called him that. When he suggested brushing her hair or having champagne, she said, half smiling, that it would not be seemly for a vicar. He demurred, she mocked him playfully but with underlying rigidity, saying that he had better beware or she would insist on their only using the missionary position, which, she believed, was the correct and only way for God's intended. He laughed, acknowledged the superficial joke, registered the determined underpinning - and bought the secateurs. Then he bought lambswool slippers and moved tentatively on to records - she liked opera in the old days. Der Rosenkavalier, Turandot, Tosca pleased her but did not move her. Then he bought Faust, which had brought tears to those brilliant blue eyes. A puzzle. What was it that the ambitious anti-hero touched that those fluttery lovers and tragic heroines had not? No more operas, she had said, so he bought her a new bicycle, wishing it could have been a red sports car with white leather trim.
He hoped, he said, that she would be safe in London. She reminded him, tardy, that she used to live there — and in a flat on her own near the House of Commons, too. So he was reassured. Since they never talked about the past, he tended to forget the glamour of her life before him.
At the station she told him not to wait about in the wet to wave her off, so he said goodbye at the entrance, pecking her cheek and thinking in his heart what he could not say aloud, which was, How pretty you look, and hurry back, I shall miss you. He would have liked to give her some token — a buttonhole from the garden, perhaps - and say something lovely like, 'Be home before this fades . ..' But he knew better. Instead, he handed her his new copy of the Church Times, which, since he had had not yet read one line of it, was a genuine sacrifice of love.
On the tube the vicar's wife from Cockermouth eases her pleats again now that the fat woman next to her has gone and feels that she is doing quite well at being a Christian. After all, she has managed to sit in that particular vacant seat when there were others, and the obese woman eating was clearly some kind of.. . er . . . eccentric. It was precisely the sort of act for a good Christian. Alice spends most of her life doing penance like this.
She hates gardening, so she gardens. She hates children, so she runs the Sunday school. The smell of the Community Hall tea-urn and its incessant dripping makes her feel sick, so she takes charge of it whenever the opportunity comes. It makes her feel better, atones. The old blacksmith in a nearby village once told her that to deal with his arthritis he would thrust his arms into a bed of nettles. It did not cure, but it gave a new, more immediate pain to think about. The garden, the children, the disgusting tea-urn are her nettles and she will not let Arthur soften them with loving tokens. There was a price to be paid, and for twelve years she has been paying it.
Twelve years since she has been back to London.
The train rocks on through its newly refurbished stations. The Church Times slips from her lap. She forgets the unpleasant image of fat woman eating and lets the rhythm of the carriage unwind her like a massage. She strokes a small hand over the smoothness of her chignon and her eyes are alight with a view of the past. She looks at her watch: she could make the first half of the conference and the lunch and then get someone else to cover for her this afternoon. She would like to see him again, just once, and she could get to the House for Prime Minister's Question Time. He would be there, on the front bench, supporting his leader. To see him in the flesh again would be . . . would be . . . She touches the pleats of her skirt nervously. Even a newspaper photograph or his sudden appearance on the television screen still makes her heart beat faster, her brain go to water. Pushed to the back of her dressing-table drawer, wrapped in yellowing tissue-paper, she keeps the few things, the few tokens, the gewgaws from that time — removed from their love nest on the day his appointment as junior minister was announced. (She took them out this morning, looked at them, the compact, the trinkets. Did she put them back? Did it really matter?) A minister's women, it transpired, like Caesar's wife, must be above suspicion. His wife was, that sour-faced madonna. Alice was not. A junior minister's secretary could be clever and personable. A junior minister's secretary must not also be desirable and a lover. What had once excited him, kept him for so long, was her willingness to be an instrument for his pleasure, a receptacle for his romantic notions - roses, perfume, silk. And suddenly those very things were undesirable, dangerous to his progress. Ambition had been made of sterner stuff. Fool that she was, she had not seen that it was all a game to him, and real only to her. How well, how very well, he had played the lover's role. Unreal, detached, amused, while she . . . she had -she reaches down to retrieve the paper, scrumpling it in her fists -she had believed, fuck it, believed. . .
Her face burns, her mouth is dry, her heart beats with delirious ferocity. She begins to smooth the paper out again. To return it to him in that condition would be too cruel.
*
Janice Gentle enters the lift of her apartment building with a sigh of relief. Home again. In her head she repeats the tide, Phoenix Rising, Phoenix Rising . . . Sylvia has suggested quite firmly that a one-word title would be a good idea — they were, apparently, fashionable - but, says Janice to herself, Phoenix Rising is two and I can't make it any less. Sylvia Perth will just have to see that for a change. Janice feels a dim little surge of something. Irritation? She couldn't be sure what - as much to do with that man in the corner shop who had gone on for ages before she had managed to escape him as to do with anything else. Nevertheless, she does feel irritated. Sylvia would look at her and wait, and Janice knew she would eventually comply and the tide would be singular as suggested. But Phoenix Rising felt so very right. Why couldn't she stick out for it just this once? Sylvia was wonderful, supportive, kind, always interested. Opposing her wishes w
ould make Janice feel extremely guilty, but all the same, all the same, it was irritating, irritating, irritating.
Again the tiny flame niggled at her placid inner calm. This was disturbing, disturbing and very unusual, since her relations with Sylvia Perth were always of a cordial nature, not to say a little apprehensive, and always respectful. Sylvia was, after all, the person who knew. And if Janice knew anything, it was that she was nothing without Sylvia Perth.
