Trouble

by Fay Weldon

  ‘I must say,’ said Annette, ‘this is rather like being in bed with a stranger. I’ve never heard you talk like this.’

  ‘All the more exciting,’ said Spicer. ‘We have layer upon layer with which to encounter each other. You are so hot between your legs since you’ve been pregnant. It’s almost worth it.’

  ‘I suppose Dr Herman and Dr Rhea won’t get together to discuss our cases?’ asked Annette.

  ‘I wouldn’t think so,’ said Spicer. ‘It wouldn’t be ethical. Why, have you got something to hide?’

  ‘No,’ said Annette.

  ‘That’s just as well,’ said Spicer. ‘I’m coming in you now.’

  ‘Gilda?’

  ‘What is it, Annette? It’s very early to ring.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette. ‘But I have to tell someone.’

  ‘Could it possibly wait, Annette? Because I’m having breakfast with Steve, and he doesn’t like me on the phone when he’s in the house.’

  ‘Oh very well,’ said Annette. ‘Don’t worry. It can wait. It’s probably better if I don’t tell you. Spicer’s coming out of the bathroom now, anyway, so I can’t talk either. If you and me were earning more than peanuts and Steve and Spicer were house-husbands would we be the way they are about using the phone?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Gilda.

  ‘I don’t think so either,’ said Annette. ‘Bye.’

  ‘Is something the matter, Spicer?’ asked Annette.

  ‘For God’s sake, Annette,’ said Spicer. ‘I am sitting in my dressing gown, drinking orange juice and reading the morning paper like any other husband. What should be the matter?’

  ‘You don’t look at me, you don’t speak to me. You’re angry.’

  ‘I am not in the least angry. I will put down my paper. Speak to me, I will speak back.’

  ‘When you thought I was born in the evening, did I seem a nicer person?’ asked Annette.

  ‘Let us say you had fewer life problems,’ said Spicer. ‘And so did I. The evening sun was cuspate. But your morning sun remains firmly in Virgo; it hasn’t even begun to move over into Libra.’

  ‘I see,’ said Annette. ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘Nothing in astrology is bad in itself,’ said Spicer. ‘But Virgos have a problem with their sexuality. They hold back. Librans are more giving. They don’t have to fake.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Annette. ‘Who’d have thought it!’

  ‘Which of course is not a source of grief for the Virgo,’ said Spicer, ‘on the contrary, but can be to the Sun-Aquarian who marries her.’

  ‘I really wish,’ said Annette, ‘my mother had kept her legs closed a little longer, at least until evening.’

  ‘Try not to be so insensitive,’ said Spicer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette. ‘Besides the sun in the wrong place, what else?’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Spicer, ‘I’m trying to explain that nothing in astrology is “wrong”. No one is to blame. It is just useful to locate the problem areas. We now find your moon is square my Neptune, and my Neptune’s in my seventh house, which does suggest marital upsets.’

  ‘But you’re to blame as much as me if it’s your Neptune, not mine.’

  ‘You’re simply trying to provoke me, Annette. You are being stupid on purpose.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette. ‘I just don’t seem able to get my head round astrology.’

  ‘It’s not an easy subject. It took Rhea years to get her degree.’

  ‘Her degree?’ enquired Annette. ‘Who on earth gives degrees in astrology?’

  ‘There are very reputable associations in existence which supervise training and issue qualifications,’ said Spicer. ‘It’s a growing field.’

  ‘You’re telling me!’ said Annette. ‘Anyway, I’m put very firmly in my place. Tell me, if I’m so stupid and insensitive, how do I get to hold down a job of work and get a novel published?’

  ‘Your job of work,’ said Spicer, ‘brings in a little pin money. You do it in your spare time. It’s Gilda’s work anyway: you just do the overflow. As for you being the artistic and creative one in the family,’ said Spicer, ‘that’s another of your fantasies. Your idea of art is a novel called Lucifette Fallen, which you manage to get published by a dwarf who thinks he’ll get cheap wine from me in return.’

  ‘I never claimed to be artistic or creative, Spicer,’ said Annette.

  ‘I never even mentioned the words. I’m a researcher by nature. You’re the imaginative one. And the title was your idea, and I’m sure Ernie Gromback doesn’t want his wine cheap. Why should he? He’s rich enough.’

  ‘Everyone wants their wine cheap. When I said call the bloody book Lucifette Fallen I was joking. You took me seriously and went ahead with it. I could hardly believe it.’

  ‘You were being ironic? And you let me go ahead? Laughing at me?’ wept Annette.

  ‘One thing I have learned from Rhea Marks,’ said Spicer, ‘is that it is best to allow people to take the consequences of their actions. For one spouse to intervene to protect the other is in the long run counterproductive. Marriage doesn’t mean that life learning stops. Though Sun-Virgoans do all they can to make it so.’

  Annette went upstairs to the bathroom and vomited. Spicer followed her.

  ‘Are you okay, Annette?’ he asked. ‘It’s important for us to get these feelings out into the open: we have to speak the truth to each other. It is one of the things that Dr Rhea stresses.’

  ‘Please go away and let me be ill in peace,’ said Annette.

  ‘Now why does that sound so familiar? Of course, Aileen! How a man does repeat the same mistake! Aileen was a Virgo too.’

  ‘Please don’t compare me with Aileen,’ said Annette. ‘I keep getting a terrible headache, Spicer. Something’s going wrong with the baby.’

  ‘I’m the one who’s ill,’ said Spicer. ‘But Virgoans do love to compete. If there was anything wrong with you they’d have picked it up at the Clinic. That’s why you go.’

  ‘I haven’t been to the Clinic for three Tuesdays in a row.’

  ‘You pretend to care about this baby,’ said Spicer, ‘but at best you’re ambivalent. That’s why you don’t go to the Clinic. I feel quite drained after my conversations with you. Rhea says this is because you represent the suffocated and suffocating mother. First Aileen, now you.’

  ‘Spicer,’ said Annette, ‘I am doing my best to make this relationship work.’

  ‘Are you?’ asked Spicer. ‘I really wonder. Your problems conceiving? An unconscious rejection of the baby: hatred of the husband? That’s what it feels like to me.’

  ‘I’m going back to bed,’ said Annette. ‘I feel really ill.’

  ‘And I’m going to work,’ said Spicer. ‘Present you with a little truth, Annette, and your reaction is to sulk. It’s the children I’m sorry for. But not having had the experience of a happy childhood, how can you hope to recreate it for your own children? At least you’re in therapy: there may be some hope for the rest of us: otherwise God help us.’

  ‘Oh God, Gilda.’

  ‘Now what’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve just had a very strange dream,’ said Annette.

  ‘But it’s the middle of the morning,’ said Gilda.

  ‘The morning sickness was so bad I was exhausted and went back to bed,’ said Annette.

  ‘You’ve hardly been morning sick at all so far,’ said Gilda, ‘and it’s far too late to start now.’

  ‘Well, I had a row with Spicer and I was. Not exactly a row: just home-truth time. He’s seeing a therapist: she’s the one who’s been turning him on to astrology.’

  ‘So that’s it,’ said Gilda. ‘At least it’s not a mistress. They do say treatment stirs things up. That’s why he’s been so moody.’

  ‘She’s also a homeopath. She’s mending his mind, casting his star chart, and mine, and giving him drops for high blood-pressure.’

  ‘Steve said something about Spicer’s blood-pre
ssure,’ said Gilda. ‘I expect it’s all all right. But it can’t be nice having another woman helping out in quite so many respects.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Annette.

  ‘Are the drops working?’ asked Gilda.

  ‘Spicer says so,’ said Annette.

  ‘That’s something,’ said Gilda. ‘But you have to be careful, Annette. Therapists tends to think all illness is caused by stress, and stress is caused by the spouse, so to cure the patient get rid of the spouse.’

  ‘I think you’re rather over-simplifying matters,’ said Annette.

  ‘I’d never let Steve go to a therapist,’ said Gilda. ‘For therapist read the rapist. The rapist of dreams and weddings.’

  ‘Spicer does what he wants,’ said Annette.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Gilda. ‘What was your dream?’

  ‘I dreamt I was having a row with Spicer and he bit me on the shoulder.’

  ‘Like a vampire?’ asked Gilda.

  ‘More like a love bite,’ said Annette. ‘It hurt and I woke up. Oh, how extraordinary!’

  ‘What’s extraordinary?’ asked Gilda.

  ‘I do have a love bite on my shoulder and it is hurting. Spicer must have done it last night. Sorry, Gilda.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Gilda. ‘Any time. But is quite so much sex good for the baby? See you at the Clinic tonight. Now do you mind if I get on with buttering my toast?’

  ‘Hello, Annette.’

  ‘Hello, Mum.’

  ‘All well?’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘What did they say at the Clinic?’

  ‘Everything’s running to plan.’

  ‘Because I thought on Monday your wrists were a little puffy. Did they say anything about that?’

  ‘They picked it up,’ lied Annette. ‘They’re very careful. They decided any puffiness was well within normal limits. Now don’t worry, Mum: everything will be just fine.’

  ‘And how’s Susan? Are you spending enough time with her? She isn’t still sulking in her room? You should take her out and about. No reason why mothers and daughters shouldn’t be friends. You don’t want her to feel neglected even before the new baby comes along.’

  ‘I’m very conscious of the danger, Mum. But Susan’s a very self-sustaining girl. And she has a lot of friends up and down the Crescent.’

  ‘And Jason? I mustn’t forget little Jason. He does tend to keep himself to himself rather, I’ve noticed. Not the most sociable little chap.’

  ‘He has a new friend, Tommy by name. They shut themselves in his room and play video games.’

  ‘Tommy? What sort of boy?’

  ‘Really nice,’ said Annette. ‘Peaceful.’

  ‘It all sounds a little convenient, Annette. It isn’t good to let these intense one-to-one relations develop between children.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s all that intense,’ said Annette.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked her mother. ‘If the pair of them shut themselves into his room? And do you check the games? They can be really unpleasant, I hear. But it’s the fashionable way to bring up children, I suppose. The hands-off method. How’s dear Spicer? He did seem a little stressed last time I saw him—you shouldn’t let him be so rude to you. But he did ring me up in the afternoon, and was sweet to me. Really affectionate. He’s a good man, Annette. I hope you value him properly. A good husband’s hard to find.’

  ‘I know that, Mum.’

  ‘Because men can get a little stressed when their wives are pregnant. When I was carrying you your father had an affair.’

  ‘Yes, I know that too, Mum.’

  ‘Our marriage limped along after that: we managed but things were never really the same. Of course you children never got to know. Your father and myself were careful to present a united front. And I wouldn’t bring any of this up, Annette, except I do worry for you and Spicer, and I wouldn’t want to happen to you what happened to me.’

  ‘Honestly, Mum, Monday lunch was just a fluke,’ said Annette.

  ‘You can’t expect Spicer to be the life and soul of the party all the time. It was really stupid of me to forget he doesn’t drink coffee any more.’

  ‘You shouldn’t drink coffee either, Annette,’ said her mother. ‘It’s bad for the baby. It isn’t good of you. Sometimes you surprise me by your selfishness. But you were like that even as a child: what Annette wants, Annette has to have. If Spicer’s stopped drinking coffee, it’s probably to set you an example.’

  ‘I expect that’s what it is, Mum,’ agreed Annette. ‘Honestly, we’re just fine. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Annette, why haven’t you called me?’

  ‘Oh hello, Gilda. I’ve been busy, I expect.’

  ‘Because you weren’t at the Clinic,’ said Gilda.

  ‘I know,’ said Annette. ‘I felt kind of depleted. I didn’t want to be somehow examined and found wanting.’

  ‘You sound really low.’

  ‘I’m just fine.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Gilda. ‘I can tell from your voice.’

  ‘Gilda, you won’t tell anyone what I told you last time? You do understand it’s confidential?’

  ‘Of course I fucking understand it’s fucking confidential. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Don’t be so emotional,’ said Annette.

  ‘You are so English,’ said Gilda.

  ‘You’re English too.’

  ‘But I don’t feel it,’ said Gilda. ‘I was born an outsider. You always want to be an insider. You like to be accepted.’

  ‘Gilda, I don’t know why I didn’t ring you before. It’s a great relief talking to you. You make me laugh. I just kind of get muddled in my head all the time.’

  ‘That’s being pregnant,’ said Gilda. ‘It will get better.’

  ‘Dr Herman Marks says I’m very English. I always thought it was a compliment, but apparently in a woman it means cut off, repressed. I had the oddest dream about him: we were waiting for a whole lot of vague people to leave his consulting room so we could make love. But we never quite got there. You know how these dreams are. I’m not really in therapy, either: I’ve only been to see him once. All the touching and hugging somehow got him into my head: but he’s disgusting, really.’

  ‘When are you going again?’ asked Gilda.

  ‘This afternoon. Gilda, I shouldn’t tell you. I meant not to. Everything gets so gossipy.’

  ‘Thanks a million, Annette.’

  ‘I don’t mean you gossip—oh God, everything with you gets so involved.’

  ‘Steve says that too. He says it’s my lesbian past. He is quite convinced I have a lesbian past, and I expect he has told Spicer. That kind of thing quite turns men on. All I did when I was fifteen was share a bed with a prefect who touched me all over, most beautifully, and I won’t say I didn’t like it because I did. Okay? Shall we now forget my being over-emotional, etcetera, etcetera?’

  ‘Sometimes I’m glad I’m a repressed English woman, Gilda,’ said Annette. ‘And you won’t tell Steve what I said about you know what, because what’s happened, which I didn’t mean to tell you, is that that therapist Spicer has been going to see is Herman Marks’s wife, a Dr Rhea Marks, the one with all the letters after her name. They share consulting rooms.’

  ‘Oh my God, Annette,’ said Gilda.

  ‘You don’t think this phone is bugged?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I saw a TV programme about private detectives,’ said Annette, ‘and it’s the easiest thing in the world to bug telephones.’

  ‘Who would want to do such a thing?’ asked Gilda.

  ‘Spicer, of course,’ said Annette.

  ‘Annette, Spicer is right, you’ve gone nuts.’

  ‘You mean Spicer told Steve I’d gone nuts?’ asked Annette.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Gilda.

  ‘It’s as if I’m not standing on the proper ground,’ said Annette, ‘but on a rug, and people keep snatching it from under my f
eet.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Annette. Shall I come round?’

  ‘No, you’d better not,’ said Annette.

  ‘Why not? Wouldn’t Spicer like it, because of my lesbian past?’

  ‘I’m so muddled, Gilda,’ said Annette.

  ‘I can tell. What time are you seeing this Dr Herman Marks again? Because the sooner the better.’

  ‘It just seems so peculiar,’ said Annette, ‘that I’m going to the husband, and Spicer’s going to the wife. And Spicer knowing but doing nothing to stop me. Is it ethical?’

  ‘I don’t see much wrong with it,’ said Gilda.

  ‘Not in itself,’ said Annette. ‘But wouldn’t they be tempted to talk to one another about their patients?’

  ‘It does happen,’ said Gilda gloomily. ‘All London knows about Ernie Gromback’s herpes because a gossip columnist happened to be sitting in a restaurant at the next table to a group of therapists discussing case histories, with names. But I’m sure the Doctors Marks aren’t like that. They’re original Hampstead types, from the sound of them, and old-fashionedly professional. So no one except themselves would understand the jargon they spoke. What do you think she looks like?’

  ‘She didn’t seem to make much impression on Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘It doesn’t sound exactly sexy: a New Age homeopathic therapist astrologer. But I suppose one never knows. What I can’t stand is Spicer being so gullible. He never used to be. I hold Dr Rhea Marks responsible for sapping his intellect.’

  ‘Annette,’ said Gilda, ‘if you take my advice, you won’t speak against his therapist, or he’ll side with her against you.’

  ‘But I’m his wife.’

  ‘For a man to be close to his therapist might be worse than his having a mistress. An affair without sex. A meeting of minds. What could you do about it? Nothing. There are no laws against it; nobody to socially disapprove; nobody to cut dead in the street.’

  ‘I do see,’ said Annette, ‘that I might have a real problem.’

  ‘Is that Dr Herman Marks?’ said Annette over the phone. ‘This is Mrs Horrocks speaking. I have an appointment with you this afternoon but if you don’t mind I think I’ll cancel. I’m not feeling very well.’

  ‘All the more reason to come and see me,’ said Dr Herman Marks. ‘A young woman in the full flood of pregnancy should be the happiest, healthiest creature in the world. If such a person is ill, the distress seeps out from the mind, not the body. I will see you at three this afternoon. I went to some trouble making space for you, as you will understand. There are many calls upon my time from people in serious need.’