The Trouble with Single Women

by Yvonne Roberts

  A boy of seventeen or so, paintbrush in hand, stuck his head out of the window. He had blond hair, olive skin and was tall like his mother.

  ‘It’s Fee. You remember Fee? If you’re terribly nice to her, she might even buy one of your paintings.’

  Daniel grinned and retreated back into the room.

  ‘Is that his studio?’ Alan asked politely.

  ‘Good God, no,’ Anna laughed heartily again. ‘Property’s far too valuable for that. It was the shop’s storeroom but Dan’s redecorating it so we’ve got more space to sell books. People come from all over. Bloodthirsty sorts of people . . . What time is it?’

  ‘Three thirty,’ Will replied obligingly.

  ‘Jolly good.’ She smiled. ‘Just about time for a drink. Hop in the car and I’ll show you where we live.’

  As Anna climbed into the back seat, her three guests exchanged slightly dazed smiles. This was undoubtedly a woman who could convince anyone that they were having a thoroughly good time. To resist might prove even more exhausting.

  The house was five minutes from the bookshop, down a lane and hidden by a small orchard. A large, almost wild garden with a gazebo and a hammock came into sight first. The house itself sprawled in an L-shape and was covered in lilac and ivy. The ground floor of the front of the house was dominated by three sets of French windows. A large table and chairs took up space under an old oak tree in the garden. Another held a tree house.

  At the rear, where Alan parked, there was a chicken coop and two barns. Two mongrels were introduced as Spick and Span. Only a jaunty air of neglect and chaos prevented the three outsiders from deciding that what they saw before them was a portrait of rural perfection.

  ‘You men sit there,’ Anna ordered, pointing to the hammock and chairs in the front garden. ‘We’ll sort out the drinks. Fee, follow me.’

  They went through into a low-beamed sitting room. It had three sofas in front of an open fireplace, and an assortment of armchairs from different periods in British history. Multicoloured rugs, many-hued cushions and throws vied for attention with the walls, on which there were a number of powerful abstracts in oil.

  Books, candles and flowers were in abundance. The overall effect was one of surprising tranquillity; the room was vibrant but far from jarring.

  ‘I’ve made Pimms,’ said Anna in the kitchen. ‘We’ll have a glass or two here and let the men drink theirs in the garden. You mentioned B. & B. but I wouldn’t dream of it. We’ve got far too much space. It would be indecent. And besides, you and I have got a lot of catching up to do—’

  ‘What about the shop?’ Fee asked.

  ‘Oh, if anyone turns up, Dan will give me a bell. We do most of our trade at the weekends anyway. But that’s not what pays the bills; my own books do.’ She nodded towards a bookcase crammed with paperbacks.

  ‘But don’t attempt to read a page of those,’ she added, as she picked up a tray of drinks and went towards the kitchen door, ‘unless your Japanese is up to scratch and your stomach is strong. Back in a tick.’

  Fee examined the books. There were over thirty paperbacks, some in Japanese, some in what she guessed to be Swedish or Danish. If the covers were any guide, the plots were not of the type that sent nice girls to sleep smiling. The author named on each was A. F. Clarke.

  Anna returned and began to explain the origins of her relatively new craft. ‘A year after Neil and I divorced, he moved in with a twenty-three-year-old aerobics instructor. I didn’t give a damn about that. But what I did mind deeply was that he took every weekend off to be with her. She’d managed what I’d failed to do in all those years we were together. In that time, he barely took five minutes away from his job to be with me or the boys, never mind two whole days.

  ‘It was totally irrational but I could have quartered Neil alive, parboiled him and buried his living remains in maggots. But I realized that might not be best for the boys.’ Anna gave a dry chuckle.

  ‘So, instead, I sat down and wrote a novel of revenge. It was so violent, so lacking in taste, so gruesome and unacceptably disgusting, certainly from a woman, that it was rejected by fifteen British publishers. Finally, as a last shot, I sent it to an international agent who specializes in selling horror abroad. I also reverted to using my initials.

  ‘Now, I’m a star in Japan. Except, of course, they believe that I’m a male recluse who has locked himself away on an island to protect others from his evil impulses. It’s a load of old bull, but if it helps sales, who needs personal fame as well?’

  ‘And what about Neil? How do you feel about him how?’ Fee asked.

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’ Anna’s smile broadened. ‘He often comes to stay to see the boys. I’m quite fond of him in some ways but it’s also always a special pleasure when he decides it’s time to go. All in all, I’m quite surprised to find that I’ve never felt healthier or saner in my life.

  ‘I write horror for pleasure. It’s a great release. Matter of feet,’ she added, pouring the Pimms and lighting up another cigarette, ‘I do an awful lot of things for my own pleasure now. And about bloody time too.’

  Fee raised her glass in a toast. ‘Well, here’s to you,’ she said.

  ‘To us both,’ Anna corrected.

  Later, Fee walked with Anna to the bookshop to lock up. Dan was sitting outside with a man. He had a large moustache, a shock of dark brown hair, which circled a small bald patch, and he wore a large and well-worn jumper, jeans and sneakers. Anna enthusiastically threw her arms around his neck.

  ‘Tom, my old lover, what are you doing distracting my son from a decent day’s work?’

  Tom smiled. Fee noticed that his face had lit up with pleasure when Anna came into view.

  ‘I was trying to persuade him to come fishing tomorrow, but he says he’s promised to give them a hand setting up for the barbecue and pig race.’

  The man looked enquiringly at Fee. Anna excused her bad manners. ‘Fee, I want you to meet the man who at one stage improved my Saturday nights no end.’

  ‘Mum,’ Dan remonstrated.

  ‘Tom Lewis, this is an old and dear friend, Fee Travers. She has come here to have a good time. So what decent men do you know? Bring them to supper tonight. Is Tilly coming with you?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘She’s off to stay with her sister in Cardiff for the weekend. They’ve got some mischief planned no doubt. See you,’ he waved cheerily.

  Later, as Anna checked locks and bolts at the shop, she explained her relationship with Tom Lewis. He was fifty-five and had been widowed for eight years. His wife had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. Tilly, Matilda, the youngest of his two daughters, was now nineteen, and at university in Aberystwyth. His older daughter, Megan, twenty-two, was an assistant chef in a restaurant in Cardiff.

  ‘She cooks like an angel and wants to have her own place eventually—’

  ‘What about Tom? He seems a lovely man,’ Fee asked.

  ‘He writes children’s books. Very good ones, too. A couple have been turned into television. He came to live just up the road from us about three years ago. He decided he’d fulfil a lifelong ambition and become a rural hermit.’

  Anna burst out laughing. ‘The only drawback is that he’s not cut out for the job. He’s the most naturally gregarious man I’ve met.’

  She grew serious. ‘Until about a year ago, he used to spend two or three nights at my place or I’d go to his, and that suited me – and all our kids – perfectly—

  ‘Then he suggested that we live together. I tried to explain that, for the first time in my life, I’d got control over what I did. Twenty-four-hour contact with Tom – or anyone else for that matter – might have eroded what I’d only just won for myself.’ She shrugged.

  ‘I tried to explain to Tom that what I wanted was the pleasure of his company. I didn’t want to wash his socks, or administer to his few neuroses or put up with the friends of his that I didn’t like—

  ‘In other words, selfishly I suppose, I’ve outgrown living t
ogether, marriage. It’s no longer such a massive thrill to know that somebody else is dependent upon you.’

  ‘How does Tom feel about it?’ Fee asked.

  ‘He says I’m trying to have my cake and eat it. We both agreed to go back to being just friends. And that seems to be working out fine. Some day, he’ll find someone who appreciates him properly.’

  She laughed wryly. ‘He tells me that I’m too bloody self-reliant for my own good. And how about you?’ She gave Fee a curious look. ‘Are you as self-reliant as you seem? Or is there some dark dungeon of dependency that you’re about to reveal?’

  Fee was glad that Dan’s reappearance meant she didn’t have to give an answer.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  ANNA COOKED the first two courses for supper – stuffed mushrooms, followed by fish casserole. Will helped with the vegetables, Alan made chocolate mousse. Fee was delegated to provide the bread, so she drove to the nearest town and bought bread, cheese, olives and wine. By eleven, the table was scattered with an assortment of empty bottles, as well as dying and newly lit candles and a couple of boxes of chocolates brought by guests.

  Around the table, apart from Anna, Dan, Charlie and Tom, were Henry Stathers, a divorced farmer, obediently brought by Tom and Leatrice Fitzgerald, a retired dentist in her sixties who, Anna had told Fee, spent her winters working as a volunteer in a children’s hospital in India.

  ‘Lea was the first person I met when I moved here,’ she had added. ‘You’ll love her.’

  Much to Fee’s embarrassment, Henry and Lea had watched The Perfumed Pound. Henry said he believed that women were biologically programmed to nest. ‘I know,’ he added as if that concluded the argument. ‘I see it on the farm, all day, every day.’

  ‘What do you think, Lea?’ Alan asked. Lea gave a throaty laugh. She was short and stout with almost a child’s round face. Her hair was white, short. She wore a navy blue crepe-de-Chine trouser suit and striking Indian silver ear-rings.

  Lea shrugged. ‘On love,’ she said smiling ‘nobody listens to anybody. But my personal view is that it’s a lot healthier if it comes from more than one source.’

  ‘How many sources have you got?’ Will asked cheekily.

  Before Lea could reply, Anna broke in. ‘She believes that it’s almost impossible for a woman to have a relationship with a man in which she doesn’t lose more than she gains. Go on, tell them, Lea—’

  Lea smiled. ‘It’s the old cliché, a relationship works best when the man is a little more in love with the woman, but how often does that happen? So my view is, if I can’t have a relationship on terms that are attractive to me, then I won’t bother at all.’ She gazed around at the other guests and smiled mischievously. ‘Now, do I look as if I’m suffering?’

  The men agreed to clear the table and wash up. Anna made herself comfortable in the sitting room; Lea and Fee sat outside on the garden steps. Once settled, Fee probed until Lea revealed a little more of her background. She explained that her parents had both been doctors – and the house had always been filled to overflowing with relatives, patients, friends and siblings.

  ‘My parents were obsessed with each other, to the emotional exclusion of everyone else. We children – five of us – always knew we mattered less.

  ‘The trouble with obsessive love is that one or the other person is bound to disappoint – constantly,’ Lea chuckled. ‘The rows we witnessed as young ones were something shocking. It made me think that true love must be the most terrible affliction that could befall anyone. And it was best to steer clear at all costs.’

  ‘Have you had any regrets about being on your own?’ Fee asked.

  Lea shook her head. ‘No, not seriously. In my thirties, I lived with a couple of men, but I didn’t consider either relationship a long-term set-up. I’ve always assumed that I was responsible for my own happiness.’ She looked at Fee keenly.

  ‘Each and every one of us is different of course. What suits me may not suit you. It’s best to keep an open mind—’

  Moving back into the house, she linked arms with Fee. ‘I forgot to mention one of the perks of being an old maid,’ she said. ‘Once people realize that I’ve genuinely chosen to live alone, that I might even be enjoying myself, you should see how quickly the pity turns to alarm.

  ‘Suddenly, I’m a threat . . . I’m dangerous. Watching that change still gives me a bit of a buzz.’

  Late on Saturday morning, Fee could no longer keep her problem to herself. She and Alan and Will had been helping Dan and Charlie to rebuild the stone wall that kept the pigs enclosed. She and Will were left alone, while the other three had driven to the rear garden of the bookshop to collect more stones from a disused outbuilding.

  ‘You can’t possibly be serious?’ Will had said, sitting down heavily on the half-rebuilt wall.

  She had expected sympathy; she had assumed he would half listen, allow her to talk; then say something appropriately noncommittal, such as, ‘It’s a really difficult choice.’ Then she would feel a lot better, not least because she would have made her affection for Clem Thomas just a fraction public.

  Instead, when Fee had blurted out her secret, Will’s mood had turned thunderous. Now he was angry, almost raging.

  ‘Fee, I’m flabbergasted.’ Her face turned crimson. ‘I can’t believe you’d behave in such an appalling way. What about all that bollocks you spouted on telly?

  ‘And you had the bloody cheek to lecture me on my behaviour with Hannah! Jesus Christ, and you’ve turned out to be the bloody Mata Hari of Maida Vale—

  ‘How could you creep into bed with that jerk when your best friend is practically crawling towards Heaven’s door in hospital?’

  Tears welled up in Fee’s eyes.

  ‘I haven’t been to bed with him. I haven’t been anywhere near him, not physically. I thought you’d—’

  Will was goading her now. ‘You thought I’d what? Tell you to do whatever you felt like, and bugger the consequences? Come to that, what about Alan?’ Will asked. ‘He’s a bloody nice bloke. Too nice to be treated like this—’

  Fee was bewildered. ‘What do you mean? He and I agreed right from our first meeting that we’d be friends and nothing more—’

  ‘Oh, so that makes it all right, does it?’ Will asked sarcastically.

  Fee’s guilt began to recede, fury taking its place.

  ‘Now just hold on a minute, Will Evans,’ she heard herself shouting. ‘Absolutely nothing has happened between Clem and me. Nothing. Nor will it. I’d hoped you’d give me advice, not act like bloody Oliver Cromwell.

  ‘Besides,’ she added sarcastically, ‘I thought you were the love ‘em and leave ‘em, what’s a little lie between friends specialist? The who cares about principles and honour and honesty, that’s very passé?’

  Fee’s face and hair were streaked with dirt, her hands were filthy, every bone in her body ached from the unaccustomed exercise, and now she had to face this emotional barrage from a totally unexpected quarter. Annoyed, she realized that her voice was quivering.

  ‘Christ.’ Will panicked. ‘I can’t stand tears. Please don’t cry, Fee.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she corrected him huffily.

  ‘Hey, you lot,’ Alan Munsen shouted cheerfully from the kitchen door. He was waving two cans of cold lager.

  ‘Coffee break. You two look as if you need it.’

  On Saturday afternoon, every shop in the high street was putting up shutters. The road had been blocked to traffic and detour signs put in place. A modest fair had taken up residence on the village green, the beer tent was already doing business – and a brass band was playing with gusto. At 6 p.m., the annual pig race would be run, if the four pickets protesting against cruelty to pigs could be persuaded to remove themselves from where the start line was normally organized, outside Roberts the chemist.

  Charlie, Anna’s youngest son, was entering Jezebel, as he had done every year since the Clarkes had arrived in the village.

  ‘I h
ope she can maintain her unbeaten record,’ Anna grinned.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Alan, who had enjoyed himself hugely giving a hand here and there.

  ‘She always comes last,’ Charlie replied with not a little pride.

  At 5.55 p.m., the protesters were tempted away with the promise that the pig race would be discussed at the next parish meeting. At 6 p.m., at the sound of a whistle, eight pigs bolted in various directions, but more or less down the high street. Jezebel opted not to move at all, until Charlie tempted her to follow him at a sedate pace by flaunting her favourite treat, a packet of cheese and onion crisps.

  ‘Do you think this is cruel?’ Fee asked, as she watched while the winner, a monstrous black and white sow, happily peed all over her owner’s shoes. ‘I mean to the pigs, not to the owners?’

  ‘Not as cruel as women can sometimes be,’ Will retorted pointedly.

  Later, as the others made their way to the village barbecue, he pulled Fee to one side.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologized. ‘I’m sorry I was so cross. I’m sorry I’ve reacted so badly. I’ve done some thinking since this morning, and I realize I’ve made a complete and utter tosser of myself.’

  Fee couldn’t help herself. She laughed. She laughed both because Will appeared so abject and because she had no doubt that he would boomerang out of this trough of despondency quicker than she could say, ‘It was nothing.’

  Will didn’t smile. Instead, after a number of false starts and several minor detours, he explained that his feelings for Fee had changed since she’d moved into the flat below his.

  ‘I’m fond of you, Fee. Very, very fond. Too fond actually,’ he floundered.

  ‘Why do you think I keep popping in for a drink? And suggesting I make you a nightcap?’

  He had lied to her about Hannah Jaspan’s attack on Fee’s Fiat. ‘She didn’t think it was mine; she knew it belonged to you. She was jealous. When she jumped me in your hall, she was trying to get at you.

  ‘That’s why she left in the end.’ He allowed himself a small smile. ‘She said that she’d given it a good go but she wouldn’t carry on playing second fiddle to you—’