Good Day

by Vesna Main

  GOOD DAY?

  by

  Vesna Main

  SYNOPSIS

  In a world where we present our diverse selves through social media, chatbots and messaging, this dark novel listens in on intimate secrets, desires and adultery.

  This novel-within-a-novel charts the writing of a story about Richard and Anna, a middle-aged professional couple, who face the biggest crisis of their twenty-five-year marriage when he admits seeing prostitutes. The text unfolds through a dialogue between Anna, the writer, and her husband, Richard, the reader.

  As the story of Richard and Anna progresses, the tension between them increases and, on several occasions, they stop speaking to each other. The writer’s novel compels them to examine their own marriage.

  Gradually the differences between the characters in the novel on the one hand and the reader and the writer on the other appear to diminish to the point where we begin to wonder whether the reader, like Richard, pays for sex, and whether the writer, like her female protagonist, is coping with the situation by having several lovers.

  PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK

  ‘Vesna Main’s latest fiction offers proof that formal invention of the highest order may well go along with a fine gift for human interest and narrative power. Rarely can novelistic dialogue have managed to convey such complex nuances of meaning, motive and mood. A singular achievement.’ —CHRISTOPHER NORRIS

  PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK

  ‘In these beautifully observed stories, Main deftly explores love’s myriad forms.’ —EMILY RHODES, The Spectator

  ‘Lush Library Recommends: Anna James’ Books for 2018 Another collection of short stories … these look at ideas of loneliness, passion and obsession and the sometimes grey areas between them. In these experimental stories of different lengths and styles, her characters include a prostitute turned murderer, a self-destructive book collection and a perfectionist dinner party hostess.’ —ANNA JAMES

  ‘Main’s stories are vivid, strange, thrillingly brief and filled with sex, violence and the banal horror of daily life. They are unusual tales filled with often unlikeable characters. Temptation is for you if you like witty, sharp dialogue, experimental modernist fiction and stories which speak to the darkest corner of ourselves.’ —MEGAN KENNY, Disclaimer Magazine

  ‘Main is excellent at building suspense, which is very difficult to achieve effectively in a short story. The successful development and maintenance of suspense is the difference between plucking delicately on a string to set up a subtle, subliminal vibration of psychological discomfort, rather than sawing on it to create a jarring noise which just irritates. Main is a writer who works subliminal for all it’s worth.’ —ELAINE ALDRED, Strange Alliances

  Good Day?

  Vesna Main was born in Zagreb, Croatia. She studied comparative literature before obtaining a doctorate from the Shakespeare Institute in Birmingham. She has worked as a journalist, lecturer and teacher. Her two novels are A Woman With No Clothes On (Delancey Press, 2008) and The Reader the Writer (Mirador, 2015). The latter is written entirely in dialogue and one of the characters is a young prostitute who is also the protagonist of ‘Safe’. Recent short stories have appeared in Persimmon Tree and Winamop.

  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © Vesna Main, 2019

  The right of Vesna Main to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2019

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-78463-192-5 electronic

  for Peter

  §

  –Good day?

  –Fine, thanks. And you?

  –Not bad. What did Anna get up to today?

  –I thought you didn’t like her.

  –She’s a difficult woman.

  –There would be no point if she were perfect.

  –Perfect? I can hardly find anything to like about her.

  –She’s clever—

  –Academically clever, I give you that, but not in other ways.

  –You’re too harsh. She’s artistic—

  –So what?

  –She has a great figure, lots of friends.

  –Good for her.

  –She’s an excellent cook.

  –I’ll take your word for that.

  –She’s passionate about things that matter: love, art, books, friendships—

  –Because those are things that matter to you.

  –Aren’t they important to you?

  –Yes, but not in that order.

  –Okay, not in that order.

  –There is also kindness, social justice . . .

  –I hope so. One little difference between you and Anna.

  –You’re wrong.

  –Tell me.

  –I don’t know everything about her but I’m sure she would care about social justice.

  –She might try putting it into practice once in a while.

  –No snide remarks, please. She’s a warm person. Okay, if you asked her what she cared about, kindness wouldn’t necessarily be the first thing that came to her mind.

  –Evidently not.

  –I think I have to come up with something to make her less wonderful.

  –You must be joking. You mean apart from the fact that she’s opinionated, pretentious, controlling and that she has a temper.

  –Are you trying to justify what he did by making her out to be bad?

  –Not at all.

  –You’re supporting the man by rubbishing the woman.

  –I think it would help the novel if the reader liked her, cared—

  –I don’t think in such terms. That’s not what novels are about.

  –Of course they are. Even a serial murderer has to have something to make the reader care.

  –I think the reader would like Anna.

  –You like her because she’s similar to you.

  –She is not me.

  –I’m not sure of that.

  –I see. Are you trying to say you don’t like me?

  –Don’t be silly. I’m talking about Anna. People wouldn’t think much of her.

  –But why? What’s wrong with her? Give me a specific example.

  –The way she reacts is completely over the top.

  –What’s over the top when something like that happens?

  –What she does is over the top.

  –Someone else might have killed him, certainly thrown him out.

  –Possibly, but the way she goes on and on, she might just as well have done.

  –She can’t simply forget it. It’s not a broken plate, or even a crashed car.

  –After a while she should draw a line. Move on. Make an effort.

  –Make an effort, like he did. Lots of effort over eight years.

  –Sometimes you sound like her: harping on about the same thing. And like he
r, you’re looking back, always looking back. That’s what’s so irritating about her—

  –You’re talking about me.

  –No. I’m saying that she always wants to blame. She’s not interested in finding a solution.

  –It’s a big thing. The most tragic event in her life. She can’t help looking back.

  –Come on. People getting cancer, losing a loved one, that’s tragic, not what Richard—

  –You can always find someone worse off.

  –You ought to see that Anna is an unsympathetic character.

  –I disagree.

  –You have made her too much in your own image.

  –That’s what I said: You think Anna is like me and you don’t like Anna.

  –No, I didn’t mean that. I was making two different points. Anyway, she isn’t quite like you but she has some of your faults.

  –Some? You mean I have more than her?

  –I didn’t say that. Look, don’t take it personally.

  –It’s frustrating when you take a male position.

  –What else can I do?

  –See how she feels.

  –Like you see how he feels?

  –I do. But he’s the guilty party.

  –It’s not that simple. She’s not the easiest of people—

  –So, what he did is her fault?

  –I didn’t say that.

  –But you implied it.

  –I’m trying to be helpful. Didn’t even Sarah find Anna’s reaction over the top?

  –No, but she disapproves of what Anna does later.

  –Obviously. Why can’t you see it? Proves my point: even the few sympathetic readers would abandon her when she won’t let go.

  –I want the reader to understand how difficult it is for Anna. She knows what she is doing and she hates herself for that.

  –Really?

  –Yes, she understands that she is compromising her feminist politics.

  –That’s crap. She obviously never really felt that; she’s just posing.

  –Not at all. She was forced into that position. All because of him. She hates him for doing that to her.

  –Self-indulgence.

  –She’s feeling low. She’s been rejected.

  –She hasn’t. At no point does Richard reject her.

  –That’s what it feels like.

  –But he never walked out on her. He never stopped loving her.

  –Maybe not but the way she feels, she needs to seek approbation. Male approbation.

  –She gets it from her first blind date—

  –Not really. A boring, unattractive lawyer pontificating about wine is hardly going to make her feel desired.

  –Why does she agree to meet him in a hotel then?

  –It’s her first blind date. Her first ever. Doesn’t know how to let him down.

  –She doesn’t strike me as unassertive.

  –True but she’s sensitive as well. She tries to help when he loses his erection. When it doesn’t work, she thinks he doesn’t find her attractive. In a different way, she feels rejected again.

  –Well, she could have had that builder from Time Out: twenty-five, ‘with a big one’. Didn’t he promise her she wouldn’t be disappointed?

  –What a male mind you have.

  –What else am I supposed to have?

  –You know what I mean. Women don’t think like that. A big one. Rubbish. What she needs is to be desired, desired as a woman.

  –Except by a builder. And he even rang her back. And again. When do you get a builder who does that? Ring you back.

  –Not often.

  –But Anna’s a snob. She wouldn’t meet him because she didn’t think he’d read Beckett. Didn’t she make some comment about being worried what they would talk about? Talk about? They would fuck.

  –Don’t be so crude. Anna needs more than that.

  –What? Five men on the go?

  –They complement one another.

  –She’s hypocritical. She claims to worry about what she’s doing to their marriages, allegedly being all feminist and sisterly but carrying on anyway.

  –She’s trying to help herself. He destroyed her confidence as a woman.

  –Helping herself at the expense of other women?

  –That bothers her, I’ve just told you.

  –If she wanted to help herself, she should have stayed with the therapist. Or wasn’t that as much fun?

  –The sessions were unhelpful.

  –She couldn’t face the therapist saying that in relationships things are never one-sided and that she—

  –Don’t tell me again that she drove him to—

  –She bears some responsibility for what happened.

  –No. He chose to act as he did. It had nothing to do with her.

  –Yes. She chose to act as she did. It had nothing to do with him.

  –That’s disingenuous.

  –In relationships it’s never only one to blame.

  –It is in this case.

  –It wasn’t easy for him.

  –What do you mean? Living with an intelligent, attractive woman, good at organising suppers with friends.

  –That supper, my goodness, really shows her—

  –As a great host, a kind friend, an articulate woman.

  –She only organises the dinner to control everybody.

  –I know what goes on in her mind, not you.

  –I do too; I’ve read the chapter. You forget it’s all an internal monologue; it’s easy to know what she thinks.

  –When you invite friends around, you want everything to go smoothly; you want everyone to enjoy themselves.

  –Not Anna. She just wants to pull the strings. They’re all her puppets. Do you remember how she objects when Mark moves the candlestick from one part of the table to another; she worries that he has made it too symmetric.

  –She cares what things look like; she doesn’t like symmetry. But she doesn’t tell him off.

  –Well, she moves the candlestick back. Probably ostentatiously, making a point. And her thoughts on where the flowers should be, the glasses, the cutlery, and goodness knows what else.

  –You’re terribly unfair.

  –She’s preoccupied with her own obsessions; doesn’t give a toss about anyone else.

  –You have no visual sense; you can’t understand how she feels. To some of us, such things matter. Anna is particular about details: laying the table for her guests is one of them.

  –A nice moment of irony in that chapter.

  –?

  –When you make her think that Richard cares about the way the table is laid and that he insists on doing it himself and when he’s late and she has to do it, she worries that he would complain. He couldn’t care less. Shows how little she knows him after twenty-five years of marriage.

  –Not her fault; he’s never told her. Richard’s not the most outspoken person.

  –Difficult to get a word in with a woman like that.

  –For you, everything wrong with him is her fault. She’s a lovely person.

  –Is that the same person who thinks all those disparaging thoughts about people she invited to dinner and who is critical of anyone who isn’t like her? As Richard says—

  –Are you quoting him?

  –Why not? I agree with him when he says some people are more relaxed and let things happen at parties. Anna doesn’t. You don’t. But the world is different. The two of you can’t take it.

  –Don’t make it personal. It’s not about me.

  –She invites her friends and then shows no empathy. It’s as if they’re all there for her indulgence. And Sarah – by the way, why did you call her Sarah? – she’s right to say that Anna is playing Mrs Dalloway.

  –Well, at th
at point, Sarah—

  –Why did you call her Sarah?

  –A tribute to my best friend. Sarah doesn’t mind.

  –I’m surprised. As for Anna, there’s also that time in the kitchen, when they’re getting the dessert out and Mark talks about his depression and inability to paint and all she can say is ‘paint black’.

  –Good advice.

  –Shows her complete lack of understanding. For all her visual sense, she doesn’t have much sympathy for a painter who can’t paint any more.

  –Mark’s lazy; all his talk about his muse departing. You don’t wait around for inspiration. Sit down and get on with it.

  –Maybe. It doesn’t surprise me that Anna first has that shouting match with her best friend and then with Richard.

  –Sarah lets her down, makes a decision without consulting her—

  –You don’t scream at your best friend when you have invited her to dinner, and others in the lounge hearing it. Anna wants to control everyone but she can’t control herself.

  –She’s not perfect.

  –I bet Richard bears the full brunt of her anger.

  –He was late—

  –Okay, but she managed without him and to shout at him, to me that was all about control. Control and her temper.

  –That’s you speaking now.

  –As a reader, I can only speak as me. You told me that.

  –Other people don’t have such paranoid fears. You see control everywhere. If I ask you to tidy the newspaper, you complain that I’m controlling. If I ask you to put away the jumper you’re not wearing, you complain about my control. I’m simply being practical. We both like a tidy house. If you don’t put your things away, I have to do it.

  –That’s where Anna gets it from.

  –And that’s why you think she’s not a nice character. Because you don’t like me.

  –Don’t go away. I love you.

  * * *

  –Good day?

  –Okay. Yours?

  –All right. What’s Anna been up to?