by Lynne Truss
Maggie nodded reluctantly, horrified that Julia should discuss this with somebody else. Julia lowered her voice. ‘We think it’s probably to do with her father.’
Noel looked impressed by this discovery. ‘The father is so often the cause,’ he agreed. ‘And today that fear was projected on to me? Tch, I’m so sorry I hurt you that way, Margaret.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ insisted Maggie. ‘And it wasn’t anything to do with projecting. It’s just that you look exactly like the man I slept with last night. It was a case of mistaken identity, that’s all.’
‘I know,’ said Noel.
‘I know,’ echoed Julia, and automatically offered Maggie a packet of tissues from her bag. Likewise automatically, Maggie took one. She shoved it up the sleeve of her jumper.
‘You do,’ she insisted, and waggled her hands.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Noel, thoughtfully. ‘I’ll tell you what, Margaret. Can I call you Margaret?’
‘You already have.’
‘Well, Margaret.’ Noel rested his chin in his hands. ‘I’m struck by an idea here. It’s pretty revolutionary, I warn you. But why don’t we all work together on this? I happen to be an expert on therapeutic role-playing. For therapeutic purposes, and under the strictest ethical controls, I could take the role of this man, this – Leon?’
‘Yes, Leon.’
‘And – well, I’m just feeling my way here, of course – but I could be Leon and, um, well, recognize you. Why not take advantage of the fact that you see a resemblance? I could recognize you and respond to you, and make you feel better. Sometimes I wouldn’t recognize you, and you could hit me. Although only under the strictest ethical doo-dahs and whatsits, et cetera. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. To be honest, I was thinking of leaving therapy altogether.’
Noel and Julia both gasped.
‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘I spend so much time talking about my life, I feel I’m not actually living it.’
The therapists swapped glances.
‘All the more reason to continue with therapy, but step it up, add another dimension,’ Julia advised, quickly.
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes.’
They watched her as she wavered. Noel coughed. ‘I’ll come clean with you, Margaret. I think you have a very serious problem.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Ignoring this problem is simply not a choice you have. No, you can either solve this problem through years of analysing it, or you can confront it and blow it out of the water. Tease it out slowly, or blitz it. Well, I think I know you well enough to know which course you’d prefer.’
‘You don’t know me at all,’ Maggie pointed out, reasonably.
‘Margaret, your hostility and defensiveness are all part of your problem.’
‘That’s true,’ said Julia. ‘You resist intimacy, even with me.’
Maggie wanted to hit her. She wanted to hit him, too. The café would be closing at half past two, and she still hadn’t had her bacon sandwich.
‘Look. I’m sorry. But the point is, you’re the lady I pay to help me sort out a problem, and you’re a man who just happens to look exactly like the man I slept with last night. I didn’t like him, and to be honest, I’m not warming much to you, either.’
Julia shook her head and sighed.
‘No, it’s OK,’ Noel told her. ‘I can work with that. Let’s say I’m the man you slept with last night, Margaret. See? I’m Leon. Nyow-nyow, and here comes Michael Schumacher in the Renault. First things first. Was I any good in bed?’
‘You were terrible.’
‘OK,’ he said again, with slightly less enthusiasm. ‘I can work with that, too.’
‘No,’ she relented. ‘You were nice. I’m a bitch. I mean, he was nice. What am I saying?’
A man came to collect their cups. ‘Michael Schumacher drives a Ferrari,’ he observed. ‘As a point of fact.’
‘I didn’t say this was going to be easy,’ snapped Noel. ‘I just said it was the best way to stop this lovely young woman spiralling into madness.’
At which the man pronounced the Gemini closed.
Sitting here in the dark now, Maggie realized Miranda and Ariel were practising that special cat alarmed expression, which says, ‘Who the hell are you? Am I in the wrong house? My God, I’m getting out of here.’ It didn’t help. She got up and brushed them off her lap.
This is all bloody Leon’s fault, she thought. Bloody, bloody Leon.
When Jago returned from the office at nine that evening, he said nothing about Stefan being a clone. He just brought home with him five books by Laurie Spink, four by Steve Jones and two by Richard Dawkins. It was clear that his efforts to absorb and enjoy these books had defeated him. He looked tired and miserable, as though he’d been wrestling feebly with a muscular opponent who’d not only held him by the wrists but had laughed at him. The minute he was indoors he made a tall pile of the books in the hall and kicked them against a door. Viv heard the noise and rushed in. ‘Special supplement on genetics,’ he explained, waving a hand at the scattered, broken-backed volumes. He wore a wounded expression. ‘Do you think Melvyn Bragg really understands any of this?’ he cried. ‘Because I’m fucked if I do.’
Viv watched sympathetically as he retrieved the books and showed them to her, one by one. He was almost in tears. ‘Look at this. “Winner of the Easy-peasy Book Prize”,’ he pretended to read from the cover of one. ‘“Best popular science book of 1995, a million copies sold to babes in arms”,’ he snarled. ‘Pah! Look. “I couldn’t put it down – Sooty”.’
Viv wondered whether he was going to confide his theory about Stefan, but it looked as if he wasn’t. Since she could hardly explain how she happened to know already, she would just have to wait until he told her, and then act surprised.
‘Why don’t you phone Stefan if you want to know about genetics?’ she said, therefore. ‘He knows all about it.’
‘Oh yeah, very funny,’ snapped Jago.
‘Why?’
Caught out, Jago bit his lip and thought fast. ‘Someone from the letters desk said Richard Branson is the Antichrist today. Can you believe that? The things people will say.’
‘Mm,’ said Viv. As they made their way to the kitchen, she hoped she was better at lying than her husband was. Jago was not only sweaty and jumpy but an obituary of Stefan was sticking out of his pocket, and he’d brought home a copy of a sensational American weekly paper, opened at the page ‘Ten Ways to Tell if Your Grandparent is a Clone’.
‘I think Linda’s defected,’ said Viv.
‘Shame,’ said Jago, who didn’t care. He had poured himself a drink. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘“Ten ways to tell if your grandparent is a clone. One. Sleeps fewer hours than you do. Two. Sometimes gets confused about things that happened relatively recently, yet claims to have personal memories of the Second World War. Three—” Do you think this is on the level?’
‘I was talking about Linda,’ insisted Viv. ‘She said she’d still come on Thursday, but I feel she’s gone. So you need to know the consequences.’
Jago nodded. He wasn’t listening.
‘Ten ways to tell that your wife is inconsolably upset,’ Viv persisted. ‘One. She doesn’t speak to her oldest friend Belinda ever again. Two. She resigns her job at the hospital.’
‘Three?’ he said automatically, then looked up. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You resigned your job?’
‘I rang them today. I’ve resigned. I’m not going back.’
‘Don’t you think that’s a little extreme? We could replace Linda, for heaven’s sake.’
Viv laughed. ‘I doubt it.’
Jago put down his weekly paper and coughed. ‘Viv, I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said. ‘I came home one day when Linda was supposed to be here, and I saw you putting the washing out when you should have been at work.’
‘So?’
‘So, I never thought Linda really did much, and I’m
glad she’s gone. I think she had some kind of a hold over you.’
Viv was stricken. It was true. Life had been much simpler before Linda came along and streamlined it. But she felt no duty to tell Jago the full story, because Jago had cheerfully never absorbed a full story in his life. Even at undergraduate level, he was only really interested in headlines. ‘Blind Puritan Pens Mega Poem’ was his level, mostly. ‘Queen Is Faerie Shock.’ When she’d first needed to tell him she was pregnant, she’d left him a note with ‘Wife Up Duff Blunder’ on it. And when Stefan announced his engagement to Belinda, she’d wrestled for hours with variants of ‘Norwegian Wooed’ before admitting to herself it would never quite come right.
‘“Char In Mystery Job Whammy”,’ she said, for his benefit, now. ‘“‘I Never Knew,’ Says Husband.”’
At ten thirty, as Belinda and Stefan snuggled on the sofa, the phone rang. It was Virginia. Stefan answered it and came back.
‘Your mother wanted to let us know she’d had a rattling good time at the opera with Linda,’ he reported, pouring his wife the last of the wine. ‘She said Linda was very appreciative and attentive and didn’t keep telling her what to think of it, like some people she could mention.’
‘Oh,’ said Belinda. ‘Well, that’s good.’
‘She also said it was nice to go out with someone who didn’t keep squirming in their seat.’
‘That’s my mother.’
Stefan looked at her. ‘You don’t mind?’
Belinda laughed. ‘Mind what?’
‘Being compared like that? Are you sure? As sure as eggs is eggs?’
‘Why would I want to spend an evening with Mother when I could be here with you? Thank you very much, Linda. That’s what I say. What a star.’
They snuggled together again.
‘Some people would be jealous, that’s all. Ingrid was a jealous person. And you are jealous of Viv sometimes, I think.’
‘I’ll tell you the only time I feel really jealous,’ said Belinda, putting her hand under Stefan’s shirt and stroking his skin. ‘It’s when I think of Ingrid. Or when you look at Maggie, or Maggie looks at you. I saw her whisper to you last night and I got hot and raw and murderous, and I felt sick. That’s when I feel jealous.’
Like most people, Stefan was both pleased and apprehensive at the idea that his loving partner would kill to keep him true.
‘That was a dandy meal Linda made. Sea bass. It’s a crying shame you couldn’t have it. You will have to tell her you think fish is strictly for the birds.’
‘Yes. But anyone who does what she does – well, you’ve got to make a few allowances. Did you hear about next door’s cat?’
‘I did.’
‘She’s going to be amazing. She’s having lunch with Jorkin for me tomorrow.’
‘You know about that?’
‘I overheard.’
‘You don’t mind about that either?’
‘Oh, Stefan, why should I mind? I loathe Jorkin, he never has any decent ideas, and the extra time not having lunch with him means I can get on with the masterwork. I think it’s marvellous.’
‘I would lay down the law, if it were me. And stop the rot.’
‘Mm.’ Belinda shrugged.
‘I mean, who is this Linda? Was she born under a gooseberry bush? You entrust her to run our lives, and bake my dressing-gown in the airing cupboard, and question me about my moose-hat, and make sea bass without asking – and all I know is that she tell me she’s like Nature, she abhors a vacuum.’
‘Is that what she said?’ said Belinda, evidently pleased by the idea. ‘Honestly, Stefan, don’t take it so seriously. It’s all in a good cause. The way I see it, if she really does abhor a vacuum, that’s marvellous news.’
‘And she can always use a dustpan and brush,’ said Stefan, solemnly, before breaking into a proud grin. ‘Which is a good yoke, I think.’
Belinda kissed him. ‘What is it you used to call me?’ she asked, teasingly.
‘I used to call you, um, “Come to bed, Miss Patch”.’
‘I can’t believe I let you get away with that.’
‘No. Sometimes neither can I.’
Five
Life without Neville turned out to be exhilarating for Belinda. For yes, as she soon recognized with a pang, the rats had taken one look at Linda, packed their trapeze equipment and gone. Only a whiff of sawdust remained, and the echo of a drum-rolled ‘Hup!’ Belinda wondered whether she should break the good news to Stefan; but since he’d never subscribed to the Flying Vermin Brothers in the first place, decided to let this important Linda achievement pass unmarked.
Besides, banishing imaginary rats from her employer’s alimentary canal was only one of Linda’s more rudimentary accomplishments. For, returning next day from lunch with Jorkin, she bit her lip for a minute and then admitted that she’d sacked him.
‘I’m so sorry, but the thing is, he had no ideas and no belief,’ she told an astonished Belinda, as she tied an apron over a rather smart, pale pink skirt she’d worn for the meeting. She climbed a little set of steps and started methodically sorting a kitchen cupboard and, without the least fuss or bother, slipping most of its appalling contents into an open bin-liner.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked, disposing of an ancient lolly-making set. ‘Sacking your agent?’
‘Not at all,’ said Belinda, almost choking with bewildered excitement. Linda had worked here for less than twenty-four hours and had already jettisoned Jorkin!
‘I just felt that the book should come first. I mean, that’s right, isn’t it? So all I said to him was that we needed an income from the Patsy Sullivan stories that wasn’t dependent on so many new titles. In other words, a push on merchandising, serialization and foreign sales. I thought that’s what you’d have said if you’d been there. I mean, it’s obvious to anybody.’
Belinda, who had never had such a smart idea in her life, agreed readily. ‘Merchandising. Obvious. Anybody.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought you’d think.’ Linda tossed a bag of old paper napkins, a cracked wooden tray and some baby-blue birthday candles into the sack. A lot of this stuff had come with the house, and Belinda had never even looked at it.
‘So you don’t mind?’
‘Far from it. I just—’
‘He didn’t see it at all. He was very obstructive. But it seems obvious to me. Verity dolls, Verity bedspreads, tiny mucking-out sets, little bales of straw at ten pounds each, curry-combs the size of your fingernail. I read a couple of the Verity books last night, just to get the feel of them, and I have to say, I think they’re very good.’
‘Do you?’ Belinda, who loved praise, wanted to ask which ones her new friend had read, but stopped herself. Despite her high-flown literary pretensions, she was exceptionally proud of the second book, A Big Day for Verity.
‘It just makes me mad that your agent can’t see we’re sitting on a gold mine.’
‘He’s quite literary,’ Belinda apologized. ‘More of a Faber poets kind of chap. There’s not much call for Christopher Isherwood mucking-out sets. I don’t suppose Jorkin has ever met anyone like you before. Who did you tell him you were, by the way?’
‘Oh, well, I hope you don’t mind,’ Linda said, ‘I sort of implied I was you.’
The shock made Belinda blink and swallow for a couple of seconds, but she managed to keep smiling. A silver cake-stand she’d received as a wedding present was tipped into the bag.
‘Didn’t Jorkin remember what I looked like?’ she ventured, at last.
‘I suppose he can’t have done.’ Linda was now mopping and dusting in the empty cupboard, turning her back. ‘Although he did say he was expecting someone in blue stockings, and was pleasantly surprised. You don’t wear blue stockings, surely, Mrs Johansson?’
‘I expect he was being unpleasantly metaphorical.’
‘Oh, I see. Anyway, what do you think?’
Belinda looked up to see the effect of Linda’s work. She f
elt gooey with admiration.
‘Actually, there’s something else,’ Linda continued. ‘On the subject of real stockings, he tried to put his hand on my knee, so I’m afraid to say I struck him.’
Belinda yelped. ‘You struck him?’
‘Just on the head. Only enough to knock him down. He was able to get up again and finish his spotted dick.’
‘Where were you?’
‘The club he belongs to. Begins with a G.’
‘The Garrick?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Jesus,’ said Belinda, with feeling. ‘Any people around?’
‘Yes. The place was quite full.’
‘And you said you were me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my God.’
Neatly, Linda stepped off her little ladder, which Belinda now realized she’d never seen before. More of a surprise, however, was that the cleaning lady appeared to have tears in her eyes. What was happening?
‘I only did what I thought you’d do, Mrs Johansson,’ she protested. ‘It was all for you. But if I was wrong—’ She dabbed her eyes with a tissue, and gave Belinda a soulful look reminiscent of a chastened puppy on a biscuit-tin lid. She slumped as if her backbone had been removed.
Belinda felt stricken. Had she really sounded so disapproving? She’d only said, ‘Oh my God,’ and suddenly Linda had turned from a white tornado into a tepid drizzle.
‘You’ve already been so nice to me,’ Linda faltered. ‘So have your husband and your mother. If you want me to leave—’
As Linda sank to a chair, Belinda suddenly remembered in a wave of panic what Viv had told her: that Linda needed reassurance. Was this what she meant?
‘Don’t upset yourself, please,’ interrupted Belinda. ‘I think you’re wonderful. I’ve been thinking about how to put this without sounding drippy, but I can’t. Basically, if you were a girl at school and I were a girl at school, I’d worship you.’
‘You’re not just saying that?’ Linda’s eyes, sparkling with tears, were of the purest indigo.
