Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘Nice arms,’ Hera mutters.

  ‘Well, this is he,’ Mother says, ‘John Sterling, our one-man divorce factory.’

  She clicks on the archive function and up pops a picture of our guy flanked by a couple of grinning females. The caption reads, ‘Landmark victory for ex-wives’. We move on to another picture with another grinning woman and this time it says, ‘Record settlement for stay-at-home wife.’

  Now you would have thought that Mother would be totally against that kind of activity. I mean this guy is doing serious damage to our cause. Instead she’s got this soppy look on her face and it hits me: the guy is a dead ringer for Adonis, or at least Adonis’s older brother who’s not slept for a while. The similarities are uncanny: same blond locks, same dark eyes and chiselled features, hell yes, this guy even has a dimple in his chin.

  This is not good. Adonis is the one guy Mother really cared about, I reckon. I remember the day they met. Mother must have been in a particularly good mood because we were playing catch in the fields, just larking around. I was standing still to catch my breath for a second and she bends down and grabs me from behind, playfully, putting her arms round me and that’s when the point of one of my arrows scratches her chest just above her heart. She pushes me away but the wound is quite deep and before it’s had time to heal completely she’s clamped eyes on him, Adonis, who was guarding his flock or whatever just a little distance away, and that was that. She goes completely la la; follows him everywhere, leaving home for like ages at a time, which was quite hard for me because although I’ve always been able to look after myself it felt weird not having her there at all. In fact, it was like she had forgotten all about me and all the stuff we always do together. For example, I sent her a message saying that Elizabeth Taylor was getting married – we always watch Elizabeth Taylor getting married together – and she didn’t even reply.

  Then the guy, Adonis, gets himself gored by a boar – who, some say, was actually Ares, which would not surprise me at all seeing he once got me banned from the summit for an entire decade completely out of spite as I did not, I repeat not, shoot an arrow at the wrong woman just so that he would be pursued all over the place by this total minger instead of her gorgeous sister – but anyway, Adonis lay there bleeding from this huge wound in his side and Mother freaked. She knelt by his side and raged at the Fates (which, as we all know, is completely pointless as those old biddies listen to nobody and I mean nobody!). Adonis kept bleeding and … well, it was horrible. Mother wept and wept and he bled and bled and with each drop falling to the ground a crimson rose grew.

  Mother lamented, ‘Stay, Adonis, stay, ill-fated Adonis, so I may hold you for the last time, embrace you and mingle my lips with yours. Awake, Adonis sweet love, for a little, kiss me one last time, kiss me as long as the kiss has life, till your spirit passes into my mouth and your breath flows into my liver …’ On and on she went and I just knew that there was nothing I could do to make it better.

  It would have been nice if there had been, but she said the best thing I could do right then would be to leave her alone, so I did, going back to my place, just hanging out, playing my lyre, waiting for when Mother would need me again. She didn’t for ages.

  In the end, of course, she did perk up, although she wasn’t really her old self. Still isn’t, actually, so when I see this other guy looking a bit like A and Mother taking a really close interest, you can’t blame me for getting worried.

  I make my voice all casual as I ask, ‘Does John Sterling remind you of anyone?’

  ‘No,’ she says but like too quickly.

  So Athene says, ‘You know, Eros is right – for once; your John Sterling does remind me a little of that boy you were so fond of, the one who got himself gored, what was his name? Adonis? Yes, that’s it, Adonis.’

  Mother makes a big show of peering at the screen and eventually she concedes.

  ‘Maybe a little. Still, what matters is uniting the two of them, John Sterling and Rebecca Finch, two people who have, and I say this with sadness rather than condemnation, turned out to be a great disappointment to me. Yet by having them love each other’ – she pauses as she turns to Athene and her eyes turn a brilliant green – ‘for the rest of their lives, I will again demonstrate the power of the great goddess of love …’

  ‘Where? Who?’ Ate makes a show of searching, including getting down on her hands and knees to look under the table – I mean how juvenile can you get?

  Mother wisely ignores her.

  ‘Thereby demonstrating the power and might of love.’

  ‘I give them five years,’ Athene says. ‘Tops.’

  Once we’re on our own Mother drops the act.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ she says.

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘Everything is so much more difficult these days when people don’t believe in one. Where to start, where to start?’ She paces the room and then she stops. ‘We need a link. Find the Amy person? Get her back in touch with Rebecca? Yes. I know – she should give another party inviting her cousin. Yes, yes, Eros, I’m buzzing with ideas …’

  I return and tell her the bad news.

  ‘Amy whatsit’s in New Zealand.’

  ‘Damn!’

  So I bring out my trump card.

  ‘I’ve got a link.’

  Mother looks at me, her eyes a heavenly blue.

  ‘Do you, Eros, do you really?’

  I nod and annoyingly my face turns bright pink.

  ‘Yup. He’s nuts. She’s nuts. They’re both nuts!’

  ‘Oh Eros, so what? Show me a mortal who isn’t.’

  ‘No, I mean really nuts. As in seeing a shrink. They both are.’

  Mother brightens.

  ‘The same one?’

  I pull a face.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh Eros, how is that going to help us then?’

  I kick at a boulder. It curses: I’d forgotten about Prometheus.

  ‘I don’t know how it’s going to help, all right? I just thought it was a start.’

  PART TWO

  John

  JOHN HAD BEGUN THERAPY at the behest of his girlfriend, Melanie Ingram, who had informed him, as they were cooking supper one evening, that he was ‘an emotionally stunted workaholic commitment-phobe’.

  ‘Is that all?’ he had replied, causing Melanie to throw a loaf of sliced bread at him.

  As he picked the slices of organic wholemeal off his shoulders John realised that he was no longer in love. Yet he was tired of running. And maybe he asked too much of relationships? Maybe this, what he had with Melanie, was as good as it got? She wasn’t always angry, and when she wasn’t she was great fun. She was certainly pretty with her pert jogging body, clear blue eyes that looked confidently straight at you, her glossy blonde bob and her wide smile. She was bright too, and energetic. It was the energy that had first attracted him to her. John did not discount the possibility that she was right to be angry with him, yet part of him felt hard done by. Take work, for example; when they first met he had told her that he was aware that one of the problems he had when it came to maintaining a relationship was that between his work and seeing his daughter there was not a lot of time left for anything or anyone else.

  Melanie had looked him in the eyes with that straight, earnest gaze of hers and said, ‘I couldn’t be with a man who wasn’t absorbed by his work. It’s a sign of passion, isn’t it?’ Her voice had gone down a note as she said the word ‘passion’ but her gaze had remained fixed on his. ‘I have friends who never stop complaining about their husbands or boyfriends coming home late or working weekends or whatever. I mean have they no lives of their own? I’m probably too independent but honestly I couldn’t cope with a guy who hung around all the time.’ As for him spending time with Susannah, Melanie had told him she thought there was nothing sexier than a man who was a good father.

  John had spoken in earnest. He had assumed that Melanie had been equally candid. Yet these days when
she sulked because he never seemed to get home from Chambers before nine or because he couldn’t join her to visit friends at the weekend because he was working or because Susannah was coming to stay and he reminded her of those early-day conversations she would stare at him, seemingly exasperated at his denseness.

  ‘For God’s sake, John, can’t you see that things were different then?’

  When he told her that he did not feel that to be in any way a satisfactory reply, she rolled her eyes and said, ‘John, at least try to be human: we’re not in court now and I’m not some witness for you to cross-examine.’ Then she suggested therapy.

  John wanted very much to be human. The suggestion that he was somehow not had been made a few too many times by his mother, his ex-wife, opponents in court and now Melanie for him not to consider that they might have a point. Maybe therapy would help. Maybe it would give him the missing part, the part that would stop women looking at him, at first with adoration and then with increasing frustration, before telling him he was not quite human.

  Melanie thought he should see Rupert Daly. Rupert, she said, had worked with several of her friends, and everyone spoke highly of him. John had told her he would prefer to do some research and to find someone himself, but he had ended up submerged in a case so seeing Rupert Daly had seemed the simplest way forward. At the first session John had explained that what really concerned him when it came to relationships was that the women he had loved, and who had professed to love him, all seemed to end up disappointed.

  ‘So you have been left many times?’

  ‘No. They don’t leave, they stay and complain.’

  ‘I sense some anger here.’

  ‘Anger? No, I don’t think I’m angry.’

  Rupert Daly did not pursue the point; instead, while scribbling on his notes, he said, ‘So you leave them?’

  ‘Sometimes parting is a mutual decision.’

  ‘But often it is you who instigates the parting?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘In fact you have a habit of running away from conflict.’

  John gave a dry laugh.

  ‘Hardly, I’m a barrister.’

  Rupert Daly looked up from his writing.

  ‘I’m not talking about your work but about your private life. You find it hard to handle disappointment and anger at a personal level so instead you leave.’

  ‘I terminate …’ He paused, realising how clinical, inhuman you might say, that word sounded in the context. He tried again.

  ‘I end a relationship if I feel that the benefits are outweighed by the problems.’ That did not sound much better. ‘I don’t think I’m one of these men who change once I’m secure in a relationship. I don’t take people for granted or stop making an effort. I even shower at the weekends.’ He smiled and got a small smile back. ‘I am aware of my faults. I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not. I explain that my work often does come first and that I’m single-minded. I tell them that when I’m working up to a big case I shut off from everything else; I have to, in order to do my job properly. I admit that I’m useless at the romantic stuff … gosh, the list is endless … and they appear to listen, only to feel angry and let down when what I always told them turns out to be so.’

  ‘And how does that make you feel?’

  ‘Puzzled.’

  ‘I mean emotionally.’

  John searched for clues in the therapist’s face but finding none he tried again.

  ‘Confused?’

  Following this somewhat unpromising start the therapy sessions had begun to have a use beyond keeping Melanie happy. Halfway through their second meeting John had made a jokey reference to being obsessive.

  Rupert Daly had not laughed.

  Instead he had looked John deep in his eyes and said, ‘I was wondering when we would come to that.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow …’

  ‘I was wondering when we would come to the real reason you’re here. Do you feel that your obsessive-compulsive disorder is the main obstacle to your attempts at achieving a lasting loving partnership?’

  ‘I’m familiar with the condition to which you’re referring,’ John said sitting back, an easy smile on his lips, though his fingers gripped the arms of his chair. ‘Howard Hughes, Dr Johnson … however, I really don’t think I can be accused of suffering from a full-blown mental illness.’

  ‘And I would never accuse anyone of suffering from any kind of illness.’

  ‘All right, I get your point. Still, as I mentioned last time, none of the women I’ve been with have had a problem expressing their concerns and being obsessive has only come up as a point of conflict in relation to my work. I of course would always make the point that I was merely being thorough.’

  ‘That’s a good little speech.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘But actually I’m not interested in whether or not OCD is a problem for other people but whether it is a problem for you.’

  John had been about to say that he still did not accept that he suffered from OCD when he found himself saying instead, slowly as if each word had to be fetched from a place far away, ‘Yes, it is. It’s a terrible problem.’

  John did not find it easy to fit in the regular appointments but he managed, most of the time. In between he tried to apply the techniques shown to him by the therapist.

  ‘Don’t engage in a dialogue with your obsessions. Don’t carry out the rituals. Resist, resist, resist. You will feel uncomfortable, panicked even, but the more you don’t give in the fainter the discomfort. Think of it as going cold turkey. OCD is a form of addictive behaviour and should be treated as such. Now, if you were to find the time to join my six-week intensive programme ... all right, I can see you can’t, but if you were to, you would find recovering alcoholics, sex addicts, drug addicts, food addicts, as well as people with OCD. Now I know this is a somewhat controversial take on the subject, but I have achieved some truly excellent results.’

  But progress was slow and John was growing impatient. He was pan-frying some sea bass in the kitchen of his two-up two-down in Primrose Hill, a house that seemed to have received all the makeovers his girlfriends would have loved to give him. (Right now the interior of the house was a tranquil space of dark wood and soft creams and whites, or, as his ex-wife called it, a triumph of beige over imagination.)

  As he tipped the fillets on to the pre-heated plates he said, ‘I don’t know, darling. I really feel as if I’ve gone as far as I can with the therapy.’ As Melanie’s eyes narrowed and her mouth moved to speak, he added quickly, ‘Of course it’s taught me a lot, but that’s just it.’ He brightened. ‘I feel I’ve got the … the coping mechanisms now to manage myself.’ Then he made the mistake of adding, ‘And I really can’t keep going off in the middle of the afternoon like that.’

  ‘Five o’clock is hardly the middle of the afternoon. In fact, it’s at the end of most normal people’s working day.’

  ‘Well, it’s not at the end of mine.’

  ‘And that’s exactly why you need to go on seeing Rupert. You won’t tell me what the two of you discuss but I can’t believe that he hasn’t identified your total obsession with work as a serious obstacle to any kind of a normal, happy home life.’

  John sighed. His working day had started at six, at ten he had gone into court, remaining there for most of the day, and then there had been a tricky conference with a new client. He had driven home hopeful that this evening Melanie might be a little less angry, a little less unhappy and resentful and that he would be able to sit down with a drink and relax, chat without having to search each word as if it might contain explosives.

  ‘I don’t think our home life is unhappy or especially abnormal,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that just shows how removed you are from reality.’

  He slammed his fork down on his plate.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Melanie, we’ve been through this a million times. You knew when we met that I worked long hours. What r
eally gets me is that at the time you positively approved.’

  ‘Don’t raise your voice at me.’

  ‘I wasn’t …’ He stopped as, to his horror, she started crying. He wanted to go across to her and hold her and say he was sorry he’d upset her. But instead he just sat there looking over her shoulder at the fridge door as if his lines were written on the brushed-steel door.

  ‘You always bring that up,’ Melanie sobbed. ‘Why don’t you try to understand how I feel now, and respect those feelings instead of trying to … well, I don’t know … out-argue me. I mean don’t you want us to spend more time together?’

  ‘Well, of course I do. And that’s another reason why I want to stop these sessions: to give me more time.’

  Melanie blew her nose noisily, looking at him over the tissue with moist, mascara-smudged eyes.

  ‘That’s just stupid. As if you’d spend that time with me rather than staying on in Chambers!’

  John reached across the table and took her hands in his.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry on with the sessions if it means so much to you.’

  She pulled free.

  ‘Don’t do me any favours.’

  He quelled an impulse to snap at her, saying instead in his mildest voice, ‘I know it’s for my own sake and I’m grateful to you for pushing me to do it. You’re very good for me.’

  ‘What do you mean I’m good for you? How bloody patronising can you get?’

  He met her angry gaze with a small smile and an expression of polite interest.

  ‘A lot more, I assure you.’

  Her eyes overflowed once again and, pushing the plate with the uneaten sea bass away, she told him that he was hopeless and that their relationship was hopeless too.