The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  Two days later, when she was sitting up, merry as a cricket, surrounded by books and flowers and games and fruits and chocolates, thoroughly enjoying the importance of her indisposition and the fact that she had ‘nearly died’, Karen said: “I think Marie-Céleste has been wonderful. Really wonderful. She’s been here every day. When Daisy’s better we must ask them to dinner or something.”

  Oscar didn’t answer.

  “Don’t you think?”

  “Oh absolutely.”

  “She really has been an angel.”

  When Daisy came home wreathed in triumph and new acquisitions and bossing all and sundry they ensconced her in their large double bed with the television to save Karen running up and down the extra flight of stairs. Marie-Céleste visited three times, the last to remove the stitches. While she was in the house Oscar stayed in his study, purporting to work but listening for every sound, his ears strained to catch the sound of her voice.

  In the afternoons he went back to Dr Adler. They spoke again of his opposing feelings acquired in infancy towards his mother and his need to integrate them and not have to act them out as an adult. About his punishing conscience and the fear of retribution for every misdeed.

  After three weeks Karen took Daisy down to Grandma’s to recuperate with ‘Dr Brighton’ and returned to work. On her first day she came home bubbling with excitement.

  “Guess who came to consult Dr Boyd?”

  “The Prince of Wales.”

  “Oh shut up Oscar! Really; you’ll never guess who’s pregnant.”

  “Marilyn Monroe.”

  “She’s dead. One more guess. A sensible one.”

  “How the hell should I know?” He had been growing more and more irritable over the past weeks.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with you lately, Oscar. Marie-Céleste.”

  His head shot up.

  “I knew you’d be interested,” Karen said triumphantly.

  “Marie-Céleste what?”

  “Came to see Dr Boyd. She’s pregnant. Three months. Apparently they’ve been trying to for years. Boyd wrote ‘precious baby’ at the top of her notes. We always do that when people have been waiting ages or there’s some abnormality.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, is there?”

  “Nothing at all. Just that they’ve wanted one for ages. We had a long natter. She’s going to go on working. Ernest doesn’t want her to but she says she can’t stay at home twiddling her thumbs. I know how she feels. When shall we ask them to dinner? We said we were going to when Daisy was better; remember?”

  “Next month?”

  “Not before? I thought at the weekend.”

  “Too busy; book.”

  “You don’t have to cook the dinner. I thought while Daisy is at your mother’s…”

  “Have to concentrate just now.”

  “OK. Let me know.”

  He delayed it as long as possible, then Karen said he was just being awkward and anti-social and took the matter into her own hands and invited them.

  “Next Wednesday,” she told Oscar, “Marie-Céleste’s half-day. I thought duck with cherries. I’ve got some in the freezer from last year and ought to use them, or beef olives, depending on the weather really. The amandine cream usually goes down well or I could make a chocolate chestnut cake with the sponge fingers dipped in brandy…what do you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re hopeless, you really are.”

  For a whole week he was unable to work. While Karen fussed blithely over the menu he rehearsed a hundred times how the evening would be. He had the most incredible fantasies repeated dutifully to Dr Adler. Sometimes he turned into a cross between Machiavelli and Frankenstein and poured Ernest arsenic instead of wine, watching his death throes with equilibrium. Sometimes he attacked him with the carving knife with which he dismembered the duck. Once he made love to Marie-Céleste on the dining-table while Ernest watched, sipping sherry and never once losing his cool. He didn’t know what happened to Karen on that occasion but she didn’t seem to be around. Dr Adler said he’d killed her off. On the Monday he said he had a sore throat and he doubted if he’d be well enough. Karen said ‘rubbish’ and told him to gargle. On Tuesday he told Dr Adler he didn’t think he could go through with it, afraid of his murderous thoughts towards Ernest. He did not believe the interpretation that it was his father he was competing with, using Ernest merely as a scapegoat. It held no more truth for him than Dr Adler’s assurance that his feelings for Marie-Céleste were displaced ones belonging to an earlier love for his mother.

  On Wednesday he asked Karen to iron the yellow alpaca cardigan which he had kept screwed up in the back of his cupboard.

  “It must be spring,” she said, “you’ll match the daffodils!”

  The kitchen was transformed. Normally Karen had as ambivalent an attitude towards it as she had towards her clothes. For at least the first five years of their marriage she had not possessed a rolling pin. She was quite happy with the floured milk bottle until Oscar’s mother pointed out that she didn’t think it very attractive to have ‘United Dairies’ stamped across the apple pie, and sent them one. She also gave them a steak hammer which Karen used for crushing the ends of chrysanthemums and an icing set with which she had never yet managed to pipe Happy Birthday without it disappearing over the edges of the cake. When she put her mind to it however she had a touch of what Oscar called the ‘Robert Carriers’.

  She had removed Rosy’s bicycle, the blackened tennis balls, school projects in rough and non-functioning biros that customarily littered the counter tops, and Mrs Hubble had been in to give the kitchen a thorough ‘do’. The orange casseroles and matching oven gloves gave colour to the pine cupboards. She’d put a brown hessian cloth on the table together with their oatmeal stoneware. The daffodils were the centrepiece.

  “You are a clever girl,” Oscar told Karen, inspecting the sauce on the cooker. “You can make nothing look like something in a minute.”

  Karen stirred the cherries in port wine. “I’m enjoying myself. It’s ages since we had anyone to dinner. We should do it more often.”

  He wondered what she would wear. Karen changed into a flower-sprigged skirt with a black silk shirt. Rosy was spending the evening with Araminta.

  When the bell rang Karen called out “Answer the door, darling.” He let them in and shook hands formally. Karen came rushing out of the kitchen and kissed both Marie-Céleste and Ernest. He wished he had done the same, not Ernest of course.

  There was something different about her. She had lost the gaunt, too thin look of early pregnancy. Her face had filled out, her eyes shone and beneath her nervousness he could see that she radiated an air of wellbeing, an inner joy which communicated itself. She wore a long, pale yellow dress, loose but not exactly maternity, matching Oscar’s cardigan and the daffodils. He felt it was important.

  Over drinks they talked of people they had in common, Laura and Ashley Beaumont; and Daisy.

  Karen told Ernest how absolutely marvellous Marie-Céleste had been while Daisy was in hospital.

  “Visited her every day,” she said. “We’re frightfully grateful, aren’t we, Oscar?”

  He dwelled once more, briefly, on the obsessional rumination which was never far away. The afternoon in Marie-Céleste flat, the marabou-trimmed negligee and the telephone which rang and rang and rang and rang while he…

  “Oscar? I was saying how much we owe to Marie-Céleste.”

  “Of course. She was marvellous; absolutely marvellous.”

  Ernest smiled enigmatically. He was wearing a navy blue chalk-striped suit which must have cost more than Oscar spent on clothes in two years, an impeccable white shirt (white was coming back into fashion again after all the colours) and a navy silk tie patterned with white diamonds. His shoes were polished, long toed and elegant and his fine silk socks had not come from Marks and Spencers. He held his whisky and ginger ale in manicured hands. To Oscar he always looked not quite real; like an
advert for something. He couldn’t imagine him ever looking a mess, unshaven, losing his temper, making love…anything but an impeccable product of Eton, Oxford and the Household Brigade.

  He looked at Marie-Céleste.

  “Why don’t you tell them our news, darling?”

  Three out of the four of them froze.

  “You tell them.”

  “Shy? Silly. We’re going to have a baby, I mean Marie-Céleste, of course.”

  Oscar grinned fatuously, Marie-Céleste stared into her Dubonnet, Karen said: “How absolutely fantastic!” As if she hadn’t two weeks ago led Marie-Céleste up the gracious wrought iron staircase to consult Alan Boyd.

  “The end of summer,” Ernest said. “Of course I’m a bit old to be a Papa for the first time but think I’ll still manage to kick the old football…”

  “It might be a girl,” Oscar said feeling Marie-Céleste glare at him.

  “Doubt it.”

  “Shouldn’t we drink to it? The baby?” Karen said, giving Oscar a kick. He refilled his glasses, giving Ernest not too much whisky with a goodly dollop of the ginger ale.

  Karen raised her glass.

  “To the baby!”

  “The baby,” Oscar said. My baby.

  Karen had decided upon the duck. They had six bottles of Château Mouton Cadet from the case his father had sent him for Christmas. He hadn’t wanted to waste it on the silly bugger but didn’t want to nullify Karen’s culinary effort with wine of less importance.

  They started with trout vinaigrette with thin brown bread and butter. Marie-Céleste admired the table décor. He helped Karen clear the plates and put the cherries in the port wine and the sauce she had spent the whole of last evening making on the table; also the tiny, parsley-sprinkled new potatoes and the green salad. Watching Karen chop the parsley Araminta, who had come in at tea-time to supervise proceedings, informed them that in the big hotels if they wanted chopped parsley in a hurry they chewed it up and spat it out over the finished dishes.

  He wrapped a napkin round the wine bottle which had been breathing for the past hour. He stood behind Ernest who was about to attack his portion of duck.

  “Spanish Burgundy?”

  Ernest’s back stiffened visibly.

  Karen glared at him from the side where she was serving the duck. “Oscar!”

  He half-filled Ernest’s glass. When they were all poured he sat down and raised his glass.

  “To the patter of tiny feet!” he said. “May all your troubles be little ones.”

  Ernest held his glass to his lips nervously.

  “It’s all right,” Karen said. “Oscar’s being funny.”

  Ernest looked slightly relieved, but was unable to restrain himself from turning towards the wine bottle which Oscar had left with its face to the wall. You would think he was a non-swimmer about to dive into the deep end of the pool. He took a sip and looked somewhat relieved.

  “Not bad; not at all bad.”

  What do you expect, six quid a bottle, silly c—.

  The duck was exceptional.

  Marie-Céleste said so.

  “We only get decent food when people come to dinner,” Oscar said, filling the glasses for the fourth time. “Puts her mind to it. Cod balls night after night, alternated with your odd baked bean, gets on your nerves. Go down to the pub sometimes for a sandwich.”

  The perfect guest, Ernest said politely: “I once had a sandwich in a pub. Very good it was too. Marie-Céleste was in the south of France visiting her aunt, she lives in…”

  Oscar stood petrified, bottle in hand, he saw Marie-Céleste remove some meat from her duck bone assiduously. “I’m writing a book about the south of France,” he interrupted rudely. “Did you know, my dear fellow,” he put a hand on Ernest’s Saville Row shoulder, “that Lord Brougham discovered the little fishing village of Cannes just over a hundred years ago? He planned to stay there for three weeks and remained for thirty years!”

  “Ernest was about to tell us about Marie-Céleste’s aunt,” Karen said.

  “I’m sure they’d much rather hear about Death on the Riviera. Not many people in such a privileged position. Even my publishers haven’t read it yet. Quite an ingenious little plot I think, although I sez it myself. Anyway you can judge for yourselves.”

  By the time he had finished relating it they were all heartily sick of the Riviera and it was time for the chocolate chestnut cake which Karen took from the ice-box. She had decorated it with brandy flavoured cream and marrons.

  Ernest and Marie-Céleste came back for more and both declared it delicious. Ernest was telling them about Hong Kong, his next business trip which he made every year.

  “How long will you spend there?” Oscar asked, interested suddenly in the loathsome object.

  “Three weeks, roughly. It depends whether I do mainland China and Macao. I usually need Macao after two or three weeks in Hong Kong. Getting a bit on the hot side. Step out of the shower, no sooner get to the street corner than you’re dripping wet.”

  “Absolutely fascinating, I can see I shall have to do a Death in Hong Kong, what do you think of that Karen? When do you go?” He held his breath.

  “Monday actually.”

  He sensed Marie-Céleste’s stillness.

  “Shan’t stay any longer than absolutely necessary. Not this year.” He looked at Marie-Céleste.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t want to miss one minute of it. Not every day one becomes a father. Not me at any rate. Have to look after my delicate plant.”

  Oscar wondered if he knew he was quoting Shelley.

  “Why don’t you take Ernest and Marie-Céleste into the living-room while I make some coffee?” Karen said.

  “Absolutely splendid dinner,” Ernest said, laying down his napkin. “I must congratulate you, absolutely splendid.” He stood behind Marie-Céleste’s chair, his hands on her shoulders. Oscar had to restrain himself from hitting him.

  “Wasn’t it splendid?”

  “Very good indeed,” Marie-Céleste said. “I can’t even boil an egg.”

  “How lucky you are,” Karen said.

  Ernest helped his wife up solicitously.

  “Can I help?” Marie-Céleste said, indicating the dishes.

  “No, please…”

  “I shall do it when you’ve gone,” Oscar said, “I should be finished some time in the small hours…”

  “Oscar!”

  Ernest came as far as the living-room. He looked uncomfortable.

  “Upstairs, first on the right,” Oscar said, leaving him to his own devices. He shut the door.

  Marie-Céleste faced him for the first time. “Why did you ask me?” she hissed.

  “Why did you accept?”

  “I can’t stand it much more.”

  “It is a bit farcical.”

  “If I were your wife I’d…”

  They heard Ernest come down the stairs.

  “I’ll be round on Monday,” Oscar said. “Usual time. I still love you.” He opened the door for Ernest. “More.”

  “More what?” Ernest said.

  “I was talking to your wife. More…more like winter than spring, don’t you think? Getting a bit nippy in here, I’ll switch the fire on. What about a spot of brandy, old boy? Regular or a dose of the old Fundador? Bought it back from Torremolinos; two weeks for a hundred and forty-five quid the two; fish and chips for every meal and a proper cuppa tea. Great; really great!”

  When they’d gone Karen burst into tears.

  “I think you’re foul; absolutely foul. I take all that trouble preparing the food and making everything nice and you ruin it. You couldn’t have been more insulting if you’d tried.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If you didn’t want them to come you should have said so.”

  “I did.”

  “I didn’t think you were serious. They’re my friends. What’s wrong with them?”

  “Ernest gets up my nose.”

&nbs
p; “He is a bit precious, I agree, but he’s not a bad chap and Marie-Céleste is absolutely sweet. You made her feel most uncomfortable.”

  “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry.”

  “You’re being most difficult. I don’t know what’s got into you. Can’t Dr Adler do anything?”

  “I’m quite capable of looking after myself and you don’t have to bring Dr Adler into everything.”

  “Are you depressed or something?”

  “No.”

  “Well I don’t know what’s wrong. Only that you’re absolutely impossible and you jolly well can do the dishes into the ‘small hours’. I’m tired and I’m going to bed. I have to go to work in the morning.”

  “The dinner was lovely.”

  “Thanks. What’s it to be tomorrow, cod balls or a pub sandwich?”

  “It was only a joke.”

  “I don’t find your jokes terribly funny. Not when I try every day to give you something you like for dinner, go to no end of trouble…”

  “I feel bad enough,” Oscar shouted. “Don’t go on and on and on and on…”

  Karen stopped.

  “You said you were all right…?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “I sometimes wonder whether Dr Adler makes you better or worse.”

  Sometimes he wondered himself, and whether he would ever be able to function without the comforting knowledge of Dr Adler in the background. Often he speculated what would happen if he died. There were other analysts, of course, but one could hardly start…not after all this time. Sometimes he thought Dr Adler deliberately encouraged his dependence in order to fulfil some kind of mixed-up need in himself.

  Over the dishes he finished the rest of the Mouton Cadet. His life was a mess. He was unkind to Karen, an inadequate father to Rosy and Daisy, a mediocre writer, and had now embroiled Marie-Céleste in the mud of his own existence. He wondered if he should open another bottle. They would all be better off without him. They needed a bigger dishwasher. There were a lot of things they could have done with if he had a bit more money. Not that it seemed to make anyone any happier. He thought of the Rolls Royce that came after him to Dr Adler. It enabled you, so they said, to be miserable in comfort; that it was the sixth sense giving you freedom to enjoy the other five. He opened another bottle; what the hell! He laughed to himself at the memory of Ernest’s horror when he’d told him it was Spanish Burgundy. He was a member of the Wine Society, Marie-Céleste had told him. Silly prick. Should have given him a Niersteiner Klostergarten, Sylvaner Beerenauslese 1971, Estate Winzergenossenschaft Nierstein, that would have shaken him, taken the smell from under his nose. He sat down and picked up the carcase of the duck. It came to pieces easily and he sucked the bones. It was even better cold. There was quite a bit left on it, meaty, succulent. He’d run the hot water on the dishes in the sink and squirted half a bottle of Fairy Liquid into it. Better to let them soak. He’d never seen Marie-Céleste so nervous. In her yellow dress she’d been like a shining light in the kitchen; never looked more beautiful; had difficulty in restraining himself, particularly when he stood behind her pouring the wine, the Miss Dior floating upwards into his nostrils. It was funny how quickly the wine went down. He held it up to the light. Nothing much in a bottle really and it was very light, like lemonade; little alcoholic content. It was going to be difficult to wait until Monday. Had to make it Monday though, very convenient Ernest going to Hong Kong, he wondered whether she would have told him if Ernest hadn’t, and knew she would not. Tomorrow was Dr Adler. He’d brought up a childhood memory at the end of the last session and had to go through with it. In the evening they were going to Rosy’s dancing display. On Friday to Brighton for the weekend to see his parents and to collect Daisy. He wondered whether to leave a glassful in the bottle for his lunch tomorrow. Hardly worth it; probably go sour; anyway the dustmen came in the morning so he could throw the bottle away together with the others, neatly. Karen liked him to be tidy. His mother had always tidied up after him as she did after his father who just dropped his clothes on the floor in case he had to go out in the night the tap was dripping and the sink full to the brim with suds he supposed they would flow over into the other bowl…that last glass had made him feel a bit sick and terribly tired…he moved the daffodils carefully and laying his head on his arm fell asleep.