Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations

by Alexander McCall Smith

  They met the following week, and the week after that.

  At the second session, they touched on Michael’s problem, although it was still indirectly talked about. He noticed that the doctor picked up and used his own euphemisms and did not refer directly to what had really brought him to the therapist’s chair. There was talk of his “anxieties” and his “matrimonial difficulties” – never anything more specific.

  At the third meeting, though, it seemed to Michael as if something had changed between them. Dr Leberman appeared to be less interested in the generalities with which they had previously concerned themselves and started to ask questions which were more direct, more probing. He wanted to know how Michael felt about Anne – did he find her attractive? Did he look forward to her company when he was away from her? What did he expect of her in the marriage? Of course he had no answers to these questions, or, at least, no answers which appeared to satisfy Dr Leberman. Yes, he found her attractive, but even as he said that he realised that his reply lacked conviction.

  Dr Leberman noticed the hesitation and sat quietly, waiting for further elucidation.

  “She’s a very attractive woman. People have often said that. I’m lucky.” He hesitated; more seemed to be required. “She’s got a very good figure too. She’s in good shape.”

  “You find her sexually attractive too?”

  “Of course.” He was silent again. The doctor’s eyes, understanding, piercing, were fixed on him. They could tell, Michael knew, that he was lying.

  “And yet you can’t make love to her?”

  “No.” It was the second admission, but this time, unlike the occasion in the Headmaster’s study, it was not made in desperation. This was a completely flat acknowledgement, as a man admitting a failure.

  “And do you think that you could make love to any woman, to others?”

  Michael stood up. For a moment Dr Leberman looked concerned, thinking that his patient was going to storm out of the room, but it was only to move to the window. He stood there, looking down on the street below. They were five floors up, near the top of the building, and below them the wide sweep of the street ran die-straight to the brown edge of the city. His voice was almost inaudible, but loud enough for the doctor to hear.

  “No. Not really.”

  He told her that he was spending these afternoons in the library in town, that he was preparing new courses for the following year. She did not believe him; there was no sign of any notes or any explanation of what the new courses were. She knew that his interests were firmly unintellectual, that he was happiest as a physical education teacher and that he treated any other duties as a chore. She immediately assumed that what took him into Bulawayo was an affair, and that the passion he denied her was directed elsewhere. She imagined his afternoons in a hotel in the town, with some bored woman from one of the wealthy suburbs, perhaps a married woman, delighting in her handsome plaything.

  The sessions with Dr Leberman made no difference to his relationship with his wife. They were polite to one another, although he was clearly bored. They talked, but only at a superficial level, and their bed was as arid as ever. He offered no explanation and volunteered no tenderness; injured, she withdrew into a private world, avoiding the company of other women, spending her days in reading or listening to the radio, beginning, but rarely finishing, letters to school friends with whom she had long since lost touch.

  She began to feel that the cause of her unhappiness was herself, that she was to blame for his coolness. She studied her face in the bedroom mirror and scrutinised her unclothed body in the bathroom. What was wrong with her? Why could she not arouse him? She decided that she was plain and she raided the cosmetic counter of a large department store in town; she spent money on clothes; she did exercises on the bathroom floor in order to keep her weight down. But the odds seemed stacked against her. Her cheekbones were too low; her eyes were the wrong shape; her breasts were too small; the weather dried her skin.

  Slowly, as the notion of his developing affair grew in her mind, she started to think that her only hope of tearing him away from his lover in Bulawayo would be to make him jealous. She could find a lover herself. She could have an affair. She would let him guess at it, let him wonder, and then not bother to hide it. He would hate it; all men did. For Anne the thought of a lover had a further attraction. She was stung by the thought that she, a married woman, was still a virgin. If her inexperience were to blame for the asexuality of their marriage, then she could remedy that. She would gain experience which she would then use to lure him back to her.

  She had talked to nobody. It was a matter of pride first and foremost, even although she knew that it was not her fault. But others would think differently. If a husband did not make love to his wife that was usually because he didn’t find her attractive. It was the wife’s fault. She inhibited him; put him off; she was doing something that she shouldn’t be doing; whatever it was, it was the wife’s fault. That’s what people thought, and that’s what they would think in her case. And even if he was having an affair – which he probably was – they would think that he was seeing another woman because of something she had done. The marriage was too new for it to be anything but that.

  So she kept it to herself until she could no longer bear the burden. She had to speak about it, to confess it, to have reassurance that this was his problem, not hers. She turned to an old friend. She had gone through school with her and although she had seen little of her since the wedding, the friendship had always been close and relaxed. They had talked about boyfriends before; there was nothing they could not share.

  They met for lunch. Her friend, Susan, had chosen the restaurant from the tiny choice available – the top floor of the Hotel Victoria, a featureless brown building which was the best that the city could offer. They sat at a table near a window which gave them a view of the town and the plains beyond. Susan gushed, as she always did when they met up, and shot questions at her. How was the house? Had she bought the curtains yet? Had she taken any furniture from the farm? Was Michael enjoying his job? What were the other wives like?

  She answered, as enthusiastically as she could. She described the house and what she had done to it, with Susan nodding her approval, and she passed on a few titbits about the other wives, which made Susan giggle conspiratorially.

  And then she stopped. The waiter had brought two plates of guinea fowl breast and they began the delicate task of separating the small pieces of dark meat from the tiny bones.

  She said: “I wanted to talk to you about something in particular. It’s a bit of a problem, really.”

  Susan looked up, noticing the change in tone.

  “You know you can talk to me. I’m listening.”

  She faltered, laying down her knife and fork, and told her, searching for the words to express the inexpressible.

  “Michael … Michael doesn’t pay much attention to me, you know. In fact, our marriage is a total failure in bed.”

  She watched her friend’s expression. Susan blushed, but composed herself. She was shocked, though; she could tell it.

  For a few moments neither said anything. Then, as between sisters: “Do you mean that he’s not much good at it? Is that it? You know, a lot of men are like that to begin with. Between ourselves, Guy is a bit quick most of the time, all the time in fact. They don’t understand … They can’t help themselves.”

  She shook her head. “He’s not even quick. He won’t.”

  Susan was not prepared for this information, and stared, almost open-mouthed at her friend.

  “He should see a doctor. Maybe he can’t manage …”

  “It’s not that. I know he can manage. You see …” She paused. “I suppose I should spell it out. Before we married we didn’t go the whole way, so to speak, but I know that he’s capable …”

  “So he doesn’t want to? Never?”

  “Never.”

  The topic broached, they talked about it freely. There were tears – she could
n’t help herself – but the diners at the neighbouring tables noticed nothing. A handkerchief was passed, and a few minutes later she was able to go on. Susan touched her lightly on the wrist, and then held her hand lightly as the relief of confession flooded over her.

  She explained that she could not talk to him about it, that he would leave the room if the subject came up, that he was just pretending that the problem did not exist. And as to whether she still loved him – yes, she did, although she felt frustrated and angry with him.

  Then they talked about his suspected affair. Susan said that in her view it was likely.

  “Men don’t go without sex,” she said. “They just don’t. They carry on somehow. He may well be seeing somebody. Find out who it is.”

  Anne said: “I don’t want to. I don’t want to go into any of that. I just want to get him to take notice of me.”

  “Take a lover yourself. Show him. Force him to choose.”

  She was relieved that her friend had come up with the same solution; she felt endorsed. And Susan could help. She could arrange for her to meet somebody suitable – she knew scores of men in Bulawayo, single men. She and her husband were members of a club that had hundreds of single members. They could help her.

  Dr Leberman said: “You know, you’re in a very difficult situation. It’s not simple to deal with a matter like this.”

  He looked at the doctor, momentarily irritated by his habit of passing his gold-topped pen from one hand to the other as he talked. They had drifted for over half an hour, he thought. And always the same, wandering discussions, the odd questions, the probing, the opaque hints.

  “But that’s what you’re supposed to be able to do, isn’t it?”

  He regretted the tone of the remark, the petulance, and began to apologise, but Dr Leberman waved the apology aside.

  “Don’t be embarrassed to speak. It’s far better that you do. No, what I meant is that it is a very complex matter dealing with feelings of this nature. They go very deep in your personal psychology. Some people feel they need years of analysis.”

  “And do I?”

  Dr Leberman smiled. “You might do, for all I know. I’m not a psychoanalyst, you see. I don’t accept the Diktat from Vienna. All I can do is perhaps locate the problem for you and see if you can confront it yourself. Or, I suppose, to see whether you can work out how to live with it.”

  “And could you?”

  The other looked up at his ceiling. He put down the pen. “I suspect that it would not be easy. You see, this is a matter of your psychosexual development, and those matters are very difficult to unravel. It’s probably something to do with the way in which you responded to your earliest sexual urgings. But we would really have to delve into that at great length and even then I might not be able to help you. By the way, do you want to make love to your wife?”

  It was not a question which had been asked before, and he found it difficult to answer. After the hesitation, though, the answer came out naturally.

  “No. I don’t.”

  It was against all his self-imposed rules, but Dr Leberman sighed.

  “There you are,” he said. “That’s it. I could ask you why you married her in the first place, but I won’t just yet. In the meantime, you should perhaps ask yourself whether you want me to do anything for you. I don’t know if I can get you to desire women, you know. I might be able to help you to understand why you don’t desire them – if it’s true that you don’t desire them – but I can’t necessarily change what your real drives are.”

  “I don’t seem to have any drives. Or at least, none of that sort.”

  “Are you sure? Everybody has drives, you know. They may just be suppressed.”

  He was silent, avoiding the doctor’s gaze.

  “I’m not aware of any. I don’t seem to …”

  Dr Leberman shook his head, almost angrily. “You are aware of them. You’re denying them, that’s all. You’re denying them to yourself, and to me, if it comes to that.” He paused, letting his words sink in. It was sometimes necessary to be frank, but one had to be careful. People were delicately constructed and you could pull the house of cards down if you weren’t sufficiently circumspect.

  “What are they then?”

  It was the tone of challenge he had heard earlier on, and this was a good sign. He could engage him. And yet, if he told him what he thought, he would flee from it. He would be angry, perhaps genuinely hurt.

  “I’d prefer you to think about them and tell me,” he said quietly. “If I tell you what I think at this stage, I might upset you. I might be wrong. And anyway, it’s better for you to reach an understanding of yourself by working through things on your own. I can perhaps guide you.”

  They had reached a temporary impasse. Dr Leberman looked at his watch, and Michael understood the signal. He rose to his feet.

  “You’ll want to see me next week.”

  Dr Leberman nodded, noting something in his diary.

  “Think over what we talked about today. See if it makes you want to tell me anything. Maybe it won’t. We’ll see.”

  He left the building quickly, as he always did, hurrying down the front steps, his head lowered, so that nobody would recognise him. There were other reasons for being in there, of course, other reasons than the seeing of a psychiatrist, but for him only one name stood out on the board of neatly-painted doctors’ names.

  It was almost lunchtime, on a Saturday, and the town was closing down for the weekend. He walked to his car and opened the door. A wall of heat came out to meet him, and he waited a few moments before he eased himself on to the driver’s seat. The steering wheel burned to the touch, but he would just have to tolerate that until he got moving.

  There were no weekend duties for him at school, and so he was free. He could drive home and watch one of the cricket matches, or he could stay in town. He could have lunch, see a film, do anything. He felt free; he had escaped from Dr Leberman and his inquisition for the time being, and his time was his own. He could follow his drives, as Dr Leberman called them. He could do what he wanted. Why not?

  He smiled at the thought. He would have lunch, go to the cinema, and then go to a bar. He could always find friends and have a drink with them afterwards. It could turn into an evening; he could stay in town.

  He chose a film. It was cool in the cinema, and he relished the nostalgic smell of buttered popcorn and velvet that seemed to hang in the air of such places. He liked the darkness, the privacy of it; the temporary suspension of time and reality.

  Then, afterwards, he left his car where he had parked it and walked up to the Selbourne Hotel. There was a bar there he went to occasionally and there were usually a few familiar faces. They were men he had nothing in common with; men who lived in suburban brick houses with mounted wooden propellers on the living room mantelpiece, the trophies of wartime service; real estate agents getting away from their families for an evening drink; divorced men with lines of care and disappointment around their eyes; bragging sportsmen. But there was an easy camaraderie amongst these men with their beer-bellies and their chain-smoking, and he found this comfortable. His background, and Cambridge, had taken him irretrievably beyond this, but this was the reality of Bulawayo.

  He drank several beers, which made him feel mellow, comfortable. Then he left, walked back to his car, and drove out towards the railway station. It was dark now, and the streets had lit up. There were people about though, people strolling aimlessly, a few whites window-shopping, with a trail of bored children behind them; Africans on bicycles; fat rural women from the bush, chewing sugar cane, chattering to one another, children strapped on to their backs with wound cloth.

  He slowed the car down, and then pulled into a parking place at the side. The street was unfamiliar to him, as it was away from the centre, and the shops here were for African trade. They sold blankets, bicycles, cheap cardboard suitcases. This was the land of the Indian traders, who stood at the doors chewing betel while their wives moved
around inside, sari-clad, watching for shoplifters and shrilly berating the black staff.

  He got out of the car and began to walk down the street, looking idly at the cheap goods. Then, suddenly, she was at his side. She had emerged from a doorway somewhere, and he had not noticed her.

  She said: “It’s a nice night, isn’t it?”

  He looked at her. She was a coloured woman, but mostly white, he thought. She spoke with the nasal lilt which those people always had, a curious up-and-down tone.

  He said: “It is. Yes.”

  She smiled at him. She had striking, handsome features, he noticed, but she had applied thick red lipstick, which spoiled the effect. They never knew where to stop; that was the trouble. There was too much flashiness.

  “Are you doing anything right now?” she said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  He stopped. It was so direct, unexpectedly so, but he asked himself what he thought they would say. This was a nice way of putting it; an invitation, but in the form of a social suggestion. One couldn’t take offence at this.

  He turned and stared at her.

  “I’m free,” he said. “Where is your place? Is it close-by?”

  She smiled encouragingly.

  “Not far. Just round the corner. Actually, it’s my sister’s place, you see, but she’s away. I look after it for her.”

  They walked in silence. He would have liked to have said something, but he was not sure what he should say. She seemed not to expect him to speak though, and there was already a rather curious warm intimacy between them.

  “Here we are. This is it.”

  It was exactly right. A low tin-roofed bungalow, with a strip of six feet for the garden to the front, a small frangipani tree, a verandah with two chipped iron chairs on it, a front door with a fly screen.

  They went in.

  “Sit in the lounge. I’ll get the kettle on.”

  She disappeared down a narrow corridor and he went into the room she had indicated. It was small, petty, with a pressed-tin ceiling and a red-stone floor. There was the smell of the floor polish that was used for such floors – a heavy, waxen smell that reminded him of the school dormitories.