The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  Twinset came back with the blouse in her hands. “You’re lucky sir. The last one…”

  “I know. Stocktaking. After Christmas.”

  “We do get very low.” She examined the ticket. “£45.50.”

  He stared at her.

  “The new stock will be more. Pure silk you see. Liberty silk.”

  It was too late to retreat. Already she was swaddling it in tissue, easing it into a carrier bag, writing a bill in O level copperplate.

  He wrote a cheque, deliberately scribbling ‘Liberty’ on the stub illegibly in case Karen should see. He felt increasingly steeped in crime.

  She turned the cheque all ways. “Could I have your address on the back, please sir?”

  He complied, and returned it to her.

  “Have you got a banker’s card?”

  He searched his pockets. You’d think he was buying the Tower of London instead of a blouse.

  He produced the card, which she took away. He felt exhausted.

  On the way out he lost himself again amongst wooden spoons and butcher’s aprons and then in jewellery. He almost cried with relief when he saw the revolving doors.

  “Aren’t they just cute, Elmer?” an American woman was asking her camel-coated husband, “the way they just keep going around and around and around?”

  While Marie-Céleste was in the bathroom he had a look in the neck of the brown-and-white striped silk shirt she had taken off. It said ‘Saint Laurent’. The size was forty. When she came out he was swinging the Liberty carrier by its string. “I brought you a present. I went to the wrong shop and it’s too small.”

  “I’m sure it’s lovely.” She squatted down and opened the carrier. He could see there was something not quite right about the shiny blue silk.

  She held it in front of her bare breast. “Did you think I was Marilyn Monroe? It’s enormous!”

  “It’s only a thirty-eight. It says forty inside yours. I just looked.”

  She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He could feel her laughing.

  “I can’t think what’s so funny.”

  “Forty is the French size; the same as an English thirty-four!”

  “You could have fooled me! I’m bloody hopeless in shops.”

  “You’re all right in bed; more important.”

  “I’ll take it back. It’s a rotten colour anyway. I thought blue was your thing. It doesn’t look right somehow.”

  “Navy blue. Bleu-marin. In France I stall teach you to shop. Englishmen, with the exception of Ernest, have very little idea. They have other qualities.”

  “You’re trying to soft soap me.” He flung the blouse on the floor. “I don’t ever want to see the bloody thing again. It’s quite revolting.”

  “Poor Oscar. I appreciate the thought. It must have been very expensive and I don’t want you to…”

  “But I want to. Don’t you realize that for the first time in my life I want to give…something…to somebody. To you. I’m a selfish bastard. Karen even chooses her own birthday presents from me; Christmas presents for the children. They say ‘love from Daddy’ but they know very well I didn’t spend the whole bloody afternoon in Hamley’s; it was all Karen. Rosy even buys the flowers on our anniversary. It all seemed so utterly trivial. But you…” he stroked her hair. “I want to do things for you. You’re so giving. Do you realize there’s nothing to which you’ve ever said no.”

  “You bring out the best in me.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with you. I didn’t intend to.”

  She got up abruptly, hiding her face in the blue blouse which she folded meticulously. “Did you wear the yellow sweater?” She wasn’t looking at him and her voice sounded unsteady.

  It had been quite extraordinary. The parcel had lain at the back of his cupboard for three days before he had plucked up courage to produce it. It was after dinner. Rosy and Daisy were struggling with homework and Top of the Pops at the same time. Karen was working out menus for the following week while ironing a grey school blouse with the steam iron.

  “The cuffs aren’t clean even now…”

  “Sshhh!” Daisy said. “It’s Number One.”

  “I don’t know what you do, Rosy! Spaghetti bolognese. There was a new recipe in the Telegraph. Sherry and tomato purée. The trouble with Bon Viveur is their tendency to wax lyrical over every complicated sauce which turns out in the end to be no more exciting than a dollop of ketchup.”

  “Is the plural of fish, fish or fishes?” Daisy said.

  “Shuttup!”

  “Rosy, I’ve told you about saying shut up.”

  “Well, I’m trying to listen. It’s come up from Number Twelve.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “Nobody likes spaghetti anyway. This iron’s getting gunged up again. Ask Daddy.”

  He stood there in his yellow sweater.

  “That’s nice,” Karen said. “Think of something for next week. I’m stuck at spaghetti bolognese…”

  “I thought for France…red one too hot…besides…”

  “About time you had a new one,” Karen said. “I know, lamb casserole with apricots, that’s easy.” She put down the iron and wrote ‘Lamb cas. Tues.’ “It must be fish. You don’t say ‘I’m going to feed the goldfish’! Daisy, what on earth are you crying for?”

  “Prudence ate them!”

  “That was a year ago!”

  “Do you think they’re still in heaven?”

  “Prudence’s tummy more likely,” Rosy said.

  “Oh, shuttup!”

  “I’ve told you…” Karen said wearily.

  “Do you like it, Rosy, Daisy?” Oscar said, demonstrating the sweater.

  “Mmm.”

  “Like the red one better.”

  Neither had taken her eyes from the television.

  “I wish one didn’t have to think of food. That it just appeared,” Karen said.

  He went upstairs slowly. He could honestly not believe…but then, why shouldn’t he buy himself a sweater…it was just that he never had…

  “Don’t you feel guilty,” he said to Marie-Céleste, “when you are in bed at night with Ernest?”

  “Yes.”

  “So do I. I feel it’s written all over my face.”

  “You want to give me up!”

  “Don’t say such terrible, terrible things.”

  There were afternoons when they didn’t make love. One day they drove into the country for tea. They had scones and stale butterfly cakes served by a waitress in a miniskirt. It was out of season. They were terrified of meeting someone they knew. They thought matinées safe; coach parties, au pairs and maiden aunts. Once he had to take Karen to a play he had already seen. He had to watch himself like a hawk removing ticket stubs from his pockets, listening attentively as she read him reviews of films he had seen with Marie-Céleste. He took to wearing aftershave permanently to drown the lingering shades of Marie-Céleste’s Miss Dior which managed to transfer itself to his skin. He had allowed her to persuade him to have his hair styled at a West End hairdresser’s for more than he paid Mr Snead in six months. He felt stupid in a blue-and-white striped pinny with a blonde shampooing the hair he usually washed with Lifebuoy in the bath. He went to M & S and bought more socks and underwear, pants in blue and mauve and orange instead of his customary white.

  “Daddy’s getting quite ‘with it’,” Rosy said.

  Karen said: “About time. It’s his age. It used to be Phyllosan for the over-forties. Now it’s fancy pants!”

  She was laughing. He had an enormous urge to tell her about Marie-Céleste, to share with her as he had till now everything. The enormity of the urge horrified him.

  “I like you to look nice,” she said. “Dr Adler has achieved in three years what I’ve been trying to do for fifteen!”

  It suddenly became clear. Her acceptance of his minute changes in habit and appearance. She ascribed them to the influence of Dr Adler. Now there’s a joke! It was weeks now sinc
e he had pounded the Hampstead pavements. Often he had a desperate urge to go; an almost intolerable need for absolution, confession. His need for Marie-Céleste proved always to be greater. There were other problems. His work was suffering. He still sat at his desk in the mornings unable to get started, but no longer read the advertisements or availed himself of the telephone services. Sometimes, tired out from the sexual excesses of the previous afternoon, he crept back to bed when Karen had gone and slept. At other times he sat there simply thinking of Marie-Céleste. He had taken to telephoning her at the surgery. They were circumspect but he no longer cared what the receptionist thought. He was unable to survive twenty-four hours without hearing her voice. Sometimes he said outrageous things, knowing she had a patient in the room with her and could not reply. Sometimes he outlined some horrific complaint and he would hear her trying not to laugh as she told him to go to bed and she would visit him in the afternoon.

  Death on the Riviera was getting nowhere. He could not afford to let his output drop. Although Marie-Céleste had more money than she knew what to do with he would not allow her to pay for the extra expenses their affair incurred. She respected his pride, except in the matter of presents. After the fiasco of the blue Liberty silk blouse he had given up, admitting defeat in his ability to cater for the exclusive and expensive simplicity of her tastes. She gave him a gold Parker biro which he told Karen he had found in Hyde Park, insisted he have a suit made by a tailor in Sackville Street whom he upset by refusing to have a label stitched in the pocket so that he could tell Karen he had bought it at C & A.

  He yearned to buy her a tiger’s-eye bracelet from Kutchinsky, a scarf from Gucci – she was educating his taste. She allowed him only to give her a ‘Bond Street’ lunch at Fortnum’s Fountain Restaurant where he was terrified they would be discovered.

  With Karen he pretended not to be interested in the fleshpots. Together they had laughed, sometimes a little scornfully, at the wealthy friends, fur-coated, servanted, Jaguared and country-housed, who adopted them because of his small fame. They had each other, enough to eat, Rosy and Daisy, what more did they need? With Marie-Céleste he was beginning to discover another side to himself. He liked the feel of Ernest’s silk sheets, the thick towels clean every day in the bathroom, the jewelled colours of the Manets, the Degas and the Pissarros.

  When Karen came home with a long black cardigan from British Home Stores she thought would keep her warm at work, he longed to buy her a fine Italian knit from Brown’s.

  One night she said: “Look, don’t take things too seriously.”

  He stopped breathing. “What?”

  “Your book. You seem to be troubled lately. I think you’re trying too hard. Why don’t you put it away until you’ve had your break?”

  He released his breath.

  “I’m all right. There’s always a sticky patch. I have to get over it.”

  “It’s too much; the book and Dr Adler; emotionally wearing. You’ve been shouting at Rosy and Daisy.”

  “Have I? I didn’t know.”

  “You aren’t depressed?”

  “No.”

  She put her arms round him. He felt like a snake in the grass. “Just take it easy.”

  “You’re too good to me.”

  “Oh no! I’m always so busy.”

  “I’m sorry you have to work so hard. One day when I go ‘over the top’…”

  “I wasn’t complaining. I enjoy working. I’d go crazy if I lived like a slug like some of the patients who heave themselves up the stairs in their Gucci and Pucci.”

  A few months ago he wouldn’t have known what she was talking about, let alone where Gucci was.

  She undid the button of his pyjama trousers. They fell to the floor. “Would you like me to cheer you up?”

  He yawned ostentatiously and picked up the trousers.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “It seems ages…”

  “Perhaps I’m impotent.”

  “Does Dr Adler think so?”

  “F— Dr Adler.”

  “That would be a waste of good potential.” She got into bed. “Sometimes I wonder if we should have another child.” She felt him freeze.

  “Daisy’s nine!”

  “Well? Another two then. Keep each other company.”

  “Couldn’t possibly afford it.”

  “We couldn’t afford Rosy and Daisy, remember? I think I’d like a little boy. I’d call him Sebastian.”

  “It’s anti-social to have more than two. Besides which you don’t really want to start with prams and carrycots and plastic pants and bottles and nappies and up in the night again, do you?”

  “When you put it like that, no. I just adore being pregnant. It’s so…so voluptuous!”

  “You can’t spend your life in a permanent state of pregnancy.”

  “Pity. I look at the patients. They’re like cats who’ve been at the cream. Self-satisfied. Then afterwards; that giant orgasm.”

  “You must be crazy.”

  “I know. It was just a thought.”

  “Well unthink it. I thought women were supposed to be practical.”

  “Correction. They have to be. Secretly we are all Sophia Lorens and Elizabeth Taylors.”

  “Seriously?” He couldn’t believe it of Karen. Practical Karen with hair she managed herself and party skirts run up in an evening.

  “Seriously.”

  He didn’t believe her.

  “You’ve been watching too many oldies.”

  “Probably. It’s the Scarlett O’ Hara in me.”

  “Well put yourself entirely in the hands of Rhett Butler and go to sleep.”

  “You are the most beautiful mother in the whole school,” Rosy said from the bed where, with her Start-rite lace-ups on the pink-and-white duvet cover, she was curled up contemplating Karen. “All the others have crumpled-up faces.”

  “One day mine will be crumpled up.”

  “No. It isn’t that kind of face.”

  “You are a darling. Shall I be the belle of the ball?” She was zipping up the dress she had made for Laura’s dance. The pattern was from French Vogue and the material scarlet crêpe.

  “You can see your titties.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Can you pull it up a bit?”

  “I’m not ashamed of them.” She turned round and screwed her head back to the mirror in order to examine the rear view.

  “The trouble with this clingy material is that everything shows. There’s the line of my pants.”

  “Take them off.”

  “I shall have to.” She did so. The crêpe flowed smoothly over her hips.

  Oscar came in in black socks and dress shirt, sleeves dangling.

  “Mummy hasn’t got any pants on,” Rosy said.

  Oscar ran a hand over her bottom. “Neither has she.”

  “You can see her titties too.”

  “Shouldn’t you have? I mean pants?”

  “They show. Since when have you been so fussy? Do you like it?” She pirouetted. Brown skin, no jewellery, dead simple, in and out in the right places. At one time…

  “It’s great.”

  “Considering I made it… You don’t think it’s too low. In the front…?”

  “No. Not at all. Beaumont will have a splendid time looking down your front. I suppose you haven’t seen my cufflinks?”

  “Yes. No… In the usual place?”

  “Looked.”

  “Sock drawer?”

  “Looked.”

  “Petty cash tin?”

  “Looked.” Oscar sighed. Ernest kept his in a tooled leather box which said ‘cufflinks’, each pair in a separate little compartment.

  “Finish dressing,” Karen said, “and perhaps I shall have inspiration.”

  “I can’t. I have to have the little studs for the front of the blasted shirt. Blast Laura and her bloody fancy dress parties.”

  “You’ll look very nice,” Rosy said. “At least you will when you’
ve got your trousers on. Like a waiter.”

  “Find my cufflinks, there’s a good girl.”

  He was nervous. Should have cancelled the whole thing. Had a cold or a slipped disc or something. He doubted his ability to cope with Marie-Céleste in public, yet on the other hand was looking forward to the delicious irony of the whole occasion. He had asked Karen casually if she knew who was going to be there. Laura had said nothing except that it was to be an ‘entertaining table’.

  He found his cufflinks in the drawer where he kept his old bottles of anti-depressants. He breathed on the links and polished them up with his shirt tail. They had been an engagement present from Karen and had his initials on – ‘OJ’. They were gold, his only pair. Ernest had onyx and jade and gold and white gold and diamond and…he couldn’t get them through the starch of the cuffs. Rosy helped him. He couldn’t find the red velvet bow tie Daisy had given him the Christmas before last.

  “You always wear a black one,” Karen said, producing it.

  “They aren’t fashionable any more. Nor are these winkle-pickers.” He looked at the shoes Karen had polished for him.

  “Didn’t think it worried you.”

  “Men over forty take a renewed interest in their appearance,” Rosy said.

  “If you don’t stop buying her that damned woman’s weekly…”

  “It’s Mrs Hubble,” Karen said. “She stuffs them to the ears with rubbish. Incidentally, it’s almost seven. Where is she?”

  “They get in a panic because they think nobody loves them any more.”

  “Who do?”

  “Men. Over forty.”

  “Mrs Hubble is a mine of useless and inaccurate information. If you paid half as much attention to your school work…”

  “It’s not nearly so interesting. I think I might be a marriage guidance counsellor and people would send me bunches of flowers and things from their second honeymoons. They think they’re losing their sex appeal.”

  “Who do… All right, I know, men of forty! What about women of forty?”

  “Mrs Hubble didn’t say.”

  “That’s a relief. There is something she doesn’t know.”

  “Oh, I expect she knows. She just hasn’t told us. I can ask her.”

  “No, don’t bother. Just find my dress trousers, there’s a good girl.”