by Sonia Paige
‘“I’m coming, I’m coming,” said Tel, draining his glass.
‘“You don’t mind, do you?” Francine asked me, “He’ll be back soon.”
‘I waited in the pub for over an hour, and in the end I went home on my own. I got a migraine and was sick several times in the night.
‘The next morning Tel was late for work. When he came in he looked in an even worse state than me. His eyes were puffy and his face had a flushed look. He didn’t look at me straight. “I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “She gets these crises, it’s hard to explain.” I felt confused. With hindsight I would say it was a crisis that had been sorted out in bed, but I was innocent about such things at the time.
‘Tel didn’t suggest us going out for a while after that. Then one day at coffee break he told me, “Francine says she would like you to come round for a meal.” I was surprised, but the next Friday evening I turned up there as arranged to eat with them.
‘Francine was wearing an orange muslin skirt. It had fringes on the bottom and you could see her legs through the fabric. On the top she had a very low cut bodice, and she had woven ribbons into her hair. I felt plain in my button-up summer dress. The place was really one bedsitting room with a tiny kitchen off it. There was a shared bathroom on the landing. The room was above an optician’s and it had two windows looking out over the street. There was a monumental dark wood cupboard and a single bed with an ornate carved headboard. There were colourful ethnic fabrics hung on the walls, and a smell of oil paint. On top of everything and leaning on everything were canvases with pictures of landscapes and portraits and dragons and frames from comic books – a real mixture of themes, all in the process of being painted. I stared at them.
‘“My tutor thinks I’ve got an unusual talent,” she said.
‘I remember one that was a portrait of a seated man in a suit, he looked quite normal except for his teeth which were abnormally big. It was disturbing.
‘On the floor in a corner was a collection of small wooden carvings. A fox, a badger. A standing naked woman with thick long hair like Francine’s. A hedgehog. I found them beautiful. I picked up a horse to look at it.
‘“I got Tel doing those,” Francine said, taking it from me and putting it back with the others. “He spends hours on them, but it gives him an outlet.” She lent over and whispered in my ear, “It keeps him calm.”
‘She was very friendly to me and seemed to be ignoring Tel. There was a coffee table with a faded print of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers under a glass top. She brought two saucepans in from the kitchen and put them on it, and there was a bottle of wine. We ate with our plates perched on our laps, sitting in a row on an old cracked brown leather sofa. She sat in the middle, and we had to keep our elbows in because there wasn’t much room.
‘The meal was rice with a very hot vegetable curry. I found it too spicy and I struggled to get through it.
‘“I love Indian food,” Francine said, “It’s really far out. The different spices all have different healing properties, did you know that? I’m a Pisces, the fishes that swim both ways. Complex. I’m watery and intuitive. I need hot fiery food to balance it. For my creativity. Like Yin and Yang.” She knew about all these things that I had hardly heard of, and she seemed to find it so easy to talk. I sat there tonguetied. Tel was quiet too.
‘After the meal she turned to him and rumpled up his hair playfully. “Can you go out and get some more wine, lover, for Ant?” I tried to explain that I wasn’t drinking wine because of my migraines, but she insisted.
‘When he left she moved up closer to me on the sofa. She pulled her skirt up to show her knees and folded her legs up; I could see how slim and brown they were. She started, “I’m so glad to get the chance to talk to you. Tel’s told me so much about you. You’re really good for him.” Her eyes were fixed on mine and I didn’t feel able to look away. She lowered her voice. “He’s had a hard time recently and I’m helping him face up to things. You’re just the kind of person he needs in his life. Steady. Unlike me, I’m volatile. Artistic temperament, my mother used to call it. Tel’s isolated at the bank and he needs someone there. It’s such a crap place. Full of ultra straight people.” Although she was being nice, everything she said made me feel worse. She seemed to know everything about me and Tel and our relationship, as if she had arranged it all herself.
‘“I sent Tel for the wine so that we could talk,” she said, “Plus he’s so uptight at the moment, I thought it might help him relax. We’re having a battle of wills at the moment. I know he talks to you, he’ll have told you about it.” This seemed to be a question, but I didn’t know what to answer. She asked “You know what it is about?”
‘I shook my head.
‘“Oh, I thought he told you everything. He said you’re such a good listener. He thinks a lot of you, you know.”
‘I was feeling uncomfortable. I would rather Tel had told me this himself. I said “We’re good friends.”
‘She went on, “I know. I know. I know him better than anyone does. He can be a good friend. But as a lover, there are problems.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Jealousy. The struggle we’re having. It’s all about equality. Whether I can have my freedom as a woman. It’s a man’s world, you know. I went to a women’s group in college. It’s a new thing. We talked about it. The men want us to do everything for them, but when we want some freedom, they don’t like it.”
‘The way she was putting it made me think perhaps Tel was really in the wrong after all. I didn’t know what to think. We heard the front door shut downstairs. Francine leant towards me. “You’re a woman. You understand what I’ve been saying. Don’t tell him I talked to you about this. Our secret.”
‘When Tel came in with the bottle of wine, she stood up. “You took your time. Sit down and open it, then, for Ant. I’m going to wash up while you two have a chance to talk.” She stacked up the plates, wouldn’t let either of us get up, and staggered out with them to the little kitchen, it was in an alcove off the main room. Almost immediately there was the sound of breaking glass followed by a howled “Oh, fuck!!” I think she’d drunk rather a lot. She refused our offers of help, “No, you two relax and talk.” It wasn’t very relaxing. More bangs and crashes came out of the kitchen with some loud swear words, then a powerful rendering of “The Foggy Foggy Dew.” She had a good singing voice. It more or less drowned out anything Tel and I had to say, and we just sat there in silence. I felt estranged from him, and I left soon afterwards.
‘The next morning at work Tel seemed withdrawn. We didn’t speak for several days. I wanted to ask him what was going on but I didn’t have the confidence. Then one morning he asked me if I would like to go to the café with him at lunchtime. We sat down with our tea and bacon rolls by the window, I remember looking at the traffic passing outside and wondering why things suddenly seemed so formal between us.
‘He gave me back a book he had borrowed, The Bull from the Sea. His face looked troubled. I waited for him to speak. Eventually he said, “Francine thinks you’re good for me. But I think she needs me a lot at the moment. I don’t think it’s fair on her – or you – for us to go on seeing each other. What do you think?”
‘I ate my bacon roll like there were wild horses after me and kept my eyes on my plate.
‘“Anthea?” his voice was almost pleading.
‘A crumb got stuck in my throat and I started coughing ’till there were tears in my eyes. Some romantic farewell, I thought, I can’t even manage to end this gracefully. I tried to wash it down by draining my tea as fast as I could.
‘Tel said “Perhaps we should take a break from seeing each other?”
‘“Whatever you think. See you later.” I stood up, grabbed my handbag and the book and practically ran out of the café. I made a beeline for the park and slumped onto a bench clutching my stomach. I had terrible indigestion and dreaded going back to the bank after the lunch hour. I couldn’t understand what I’d done wrong, how I’d manag
ed to mess things up with Tel.’ Anthea paused.
‘Did it occur to you,’ asked Ren, ‘That it wasn’t you who had “messed things up?”’
‘Not really.’ Anthea took a tissue from the box on the low table and caught a sneeze in it. She mopped her nose.
‘The weeks after that were a bad time for me. Even my mum noticed. One evening she found me crying in front of the TV, I was watching a programme about Alexander the Great. I usually enjoyed that kind of thing.
‘“What’s the matter with you?” she said. “You’ve got a good job. I wish I could have had a job like that at your age. Or even now. Rather than twenty years of being a household skivvy, chasing round after you lot.”
‘“It’s not the job that’s the problem, Mum.”
‘“You’re an intelligent girl. You’ve got more opportunities than most.”
‘I couldn’t tell her that as far as happiness was concerned I didn’t seem to have many opportunities at all.
‘I used to dread seeing Tel at work after we split up. I don’t think he found it easy either. Then this thing happened with Kledonas which jolted me out of my depression. Now I think of it, it was perhaps the very first of all the strange events I’ve experienced. I’d forgotten about it ’till that man from the pub today called me an angel.
‘It was that summer, 1971, after I’d split up with Tel. When I was away on a weekend archaeology course.’
‘An archaeology course?’
‘The work at the bank wasn’t satisfying, so this was a hobby in my spare time. Learning about archaeology. I’d booked to go on a study weekend called “Ancient Stones and Elements,” or something like that. You stay in a big house in the countryside and they give you food and lectures and take you out on field visits. I’d paid out of my wages and arranged time off work.
‘When it came to it, I nearly didn’t do the course. I was feeling low after the breakup with Tel. I couldn’t face going. It had been a miserable June, it hardly stopped raining. The day before, at work, I was standing in the kitchen out the back washing some tea cups. Looking at a thin shaft of sunlight coming into the dirty back yard and wondering when I would get to walk in the sun. Tel came out of the toilet and saw me there. He hesitated for a moment then came over to me:
“Are you OK, Ant? You seem very quiet these days.”
‘I couldn’t stop the tears. I looked away but he turned me round with his broad gentle fingers and looked in my face. Then he kissed me tentatively. Then not quite so tentatively. All the feeling between us was still there. Then his trademark, a French kiss. Then he said, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry,” and he turned and left. After that I felt worse than ever.
‘But come the next morning, Friday, I was on the train from Waterloo. There was a mini-bus waiting at the station to take us to the house. It was like an old mansion in its own grounds, with black beams. Imitation Tudor. In front it had neat lawns and hydrangea bushes with pink flowers, but round the side there were unkempt nooks and crannies, arbours overgrown with creepers and benches with peeling paint buried under thickets. It turned out that the people running the course weren’t actually archaeologists, but hippies who believed that it’s good to revive ancient rituals. They took us out to see earthworks, tumuli, and so on, and we were meant to meditate at the sites. It was all strange to me.
‘On that first afternoon the course leader, William, gave a seminar about the role of the four elements in prehistoric religion. He was a youngish man, in his 30s, with hair down to his shoulders, John Lennon glasses, and a rainbowstriped tank top. He focused on the significance of water and how ancient people used it in their spiritual practices. He talked about the chalice full of liquid representing love.’ Anthea stopped and looked up at Ren. ‘Do you think love is a chalice?’
Ren hesitated. ‘It’s one symbol. But any one symbol can be limiting. I think that love – whatever we mean by that – can be more dynamic. Changing as it goes, and actively affecting things. What about love that seeks, that reaches out, that makes leaps?’
‘He was into chalices,’ Anthea said. ‘He seemed a decent person, but I found it hard to get my head around everything he was saying. After supper we were sent to meditate beside a stream which ran down at the back of the house. We were meant to let go of our busy thoughts and allow any worries to flow away with the stream. Then open our minds and ask what the element of water could teach us about how we live our lives. To me it seemed weird.
‘The light was starting to fade very slightly by the time I found a place I liked, and I sat down wondering what I’d let myself in for. It had been raining a lot so the bank was overgrown with long grass, cow parsley and dandelions. I made a patch to sit down with columns of nettles on one side and a sprawl of pink wild geranium on the other. I was under an old elder tree, its trunk covered with ivy, and creamy-white scented blossoms hanging among the leaves above. It made a dark enclosed space, with just the first hint of cold air, a listless breeze at the end of the day. I had that slow empty feeling you get on long summer evenings. The water was clear and I could see little fish darting below. At one side a fallen log had made a pool where mosquitoes hovered.
‘I got as comfortable as I could and tried to concentrate, but it was difficult. The mosquitoes started biting me straight away. I gave one on my arm a big whack and realized I had an image in my mind of Francine. Her eyes boring into me. I tried to shake it off. “Let the preoccupations flow away with the stream,” the course leader William had said. I struggled to prise my unhappiness off me and let it float away, but it seemed to get stuck in the stagnant pool.
‘I couldn’t seem to do what we were meant to, but I stared into the running water and watched the way the ripples moved round a big stone, and it made me feel a bit better. I put my fingers into the water and felt the current pressing against my skin. The pattern of the ripples changed. I think my mind must have cleared without my noticing because then I had an image of a blue sea, still as glass, deep as the sky. Then suddenly there was a picture of Francine’s face again. I must have sighed quite loudly because I was surprised by a woman’s voice coming from the undergrowth. “Having problems?”
‘Someone was sitting in the bushes on the other side of the stream, half hidden behind a nettle patch.
‘“Sorry, did I give you a shock?” She stood up and I recognised her from the course, a skinny vivacious woman with short straight black hair. “Did it work for you?” she asked. “That tree should have helped, did you know elders are magic?”
‘“It’s all new to me,” I mumbled.
‘She jumped over the stream and sat down on a log facing me. “You look troubled,” she said, “Boy, do you look troubled.”
‘That was the beginning of getting to know Crystal. Unusual name. She said she’d chosen it for herself, her real name was Wendy. Over the weekend we got talking. She was very different from me. She wore a crystal on a silver chain round her neck, she said it helped her “second sight”. She could understand everything William was talking about, elemental energies and stuff. “Have you been to Avebury?” she asked me, “The power there is amazing…”
‘But she was practical too. She fixed the toilet next to our dormitory when it got blocked. One of the men had smelly feet, and she got him to wash them. No nonsense about that, and she didn’t suffer fools gladly. At the same time she was interested in things like the I-Ching and soul journeys. I told her about the books I was reading on Greece. She told me about courses she was doing in dream interpretation and self-defence. She told me she was working as a dental nurse. “But I think my future lies in meditation and healing,” she said.
‘The next day, Saturday, the course was focused on the element of earth. We went to the earthwork at Maiden Castle, and to the Dorchester Museum to study how people lived in it. Then we each had to fill a small tray with earth from the garden to put underneath our bed that night and let it influence our dreams. I thought it was a waste of time because those days I never drea
mt and I told Crystal so. She laughed and said, “Everybody dreams every night. It’s just that you don’t remember them. Perhaps there’s something in your dreams which you don’t want brought to your consciousness.”
‘By Saturday evening she was beginning to feel like a friend, and when she asked me again what was the matter, I told her. It was a relief to get it off my chest, I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. We were sitting on our own in the dining room after the others had left for a drumming session in the lounge. They had the French windows open and a couple of them had spilled out and were dancing on the lawn. We could see them from our open window, one of them was trying to spin like a whirling dervish. I told her the whole story about Tel and Francine. When I got near the end and told her about the last evening in the pub, Crystal burst out “The bitch!” Then she said, “Sorry, go on with your story.” I carried on right through to telling her about Tel and me splitting up. When I finished she left a silence, then she said, “That woman really fucked you over.” I was surprised to see her so vehement.
‘“Negative energy,” she was saying. “And he’s not much better. He’s not a bad person but he doesn’t have the eyes to see what she’s doing or the strength to fight it.” She rubbed her hands together in a businesslike way. “Now let’s get to the bottom of what was going on. What’s she like, this woman?”
‘I told her it was difficult to give a clear description, because she changed each time I saw her. Like a chameleon.
‘Crystal said, “Tell me your impressions when you first met her. We notice more about people than we realize.”
‘I told Crystal about when Francine first came up to my till at the counter in the bank. At that time I didn’t know she had anything to do with Tel. She was pretty, but that wasn’t what you noticed most. It was the way she filled the space. It was her long black curls and her multi-coloured headband and her dangly earrings and her bracelets and the way they all wriggled and shimmered as she gazed into my face.
