Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers

by Marika Cobbold

  I tried to explain that I had missed the train anyway – which was true, and that the picture was practically a gift.

  ‘And I thought you’d be pleased: you’ve always liked my cartoons.’

  I tell you, she gave this complete pantomime-villain laugh, tossing her head and flashing her eyes.

  ‘Like them?! I can’t stand them. Never could. God, if you want to know what I really think, they’re a juvenile waste of space and money and if I had my way I’d get rid of every last one of them.’ With that she leapt forward and grabbed the picture from my hands, smashing it against the edge of the sink, breaking the glass and gashing the actual paper.

  I remember kneeling on the floor picking up the broken glass. Then I heard Eddie calling down to us, asking what was happening. The speed with which Vicky turned from gimlet-eyed harridan to soft mummy as she moved to the bottom of the stairs and called back that everything was fine, silly old Daddy had just dropped a glass was extraordinary. And I watched her, her broad back and low-slung arse in those goddamn awful corduroy trousers, and listened as she spilled out her convenient little lies. I thought, is that all she does, to all of us, lie? She turned back and walked right up to me, this triumphant little look on her face. I could count the flakes of dandruff at her temples, just where some grey was coming through. I took my picture and brought it with me up to the spare room.

  Of course we didn’t split over that. We muddled along for a while. Then I had an affair with a woman at work. It wasn’t that serious for either of us but Vicky found out. Some note of Sarah’s in the pocket of my suit jacket, the usual cliché. Vicky confronted me and I realised that she wasn’t actually that upset; if anything she seemed almost gratified. She stood there, arms folded across her chest, telling me what I was jeopardising: two fabulous boys, a great wife and mother, our beautiful home. Then she listed her conditions for forgiving me. I would make sure ‘the Trollop’ left the office. I would have to start playing a ‘proper part’ in family life and, when I pointed out that paying the mortgage and the school fees is playing quite a big part, she told me I was a bloody idiot if I thought that was what mattered in life. The list went on and I listened and then, when she’d finally finished, I went upstairs and packed my bags.

  Rebecca

  ‘I FEEL SO ROOTLESS,’ I said to Charlotte Jessop at our next session, ‘like a priest who’s lost his faith. The framework to my entire existence is crumbling and I barely know who I am.’ I brought out the printed version of the Internet interview and handed it to her. ‘I read this and I ask, who is this person?’

  Nick Fuller meets Rebecca Finch

  I don’t know what I had expected when I turned up for my interview with our new Queen of Romantic Fiction. A floaty Kate Bush, perhaps? Or a mature lady in florals reclining on a couch surrounded by yapping Pekes? But the woman greeting me at the door to her Central London flat looks as if she would be more at home in a Left Bank café worshipping at the feet of Jean-Paul Sartre. Rebecca Finch is tall and slender, dressed in black cigarette pants and a fitted black polo-neck. Her light-brown hair, lustrous and wavy, is pulled back into a careless plait and her hazel eyes, slanting slightly upwards at the outer corners, are emphasised by black eye-liner. I notice she is barefoot and that her toenails are painted a bright red to match her lips.

  Nor is her home what I had expected. Airy and large with huge, curtainless windows facing the river; there are no flowery chintzes in sight. Instead what I find is an eclectic mix of old and modern. The furnishing is sparse but there’s nothing minimalist about the colours, vibrant greens and cornflower-blues mixed with – yes, here we have it at last – some pink. When I comment on the colour she laughs – the fine mesh of lines around her almond-shaped eyes is the only giveaway that she has turned forty – and tells me pink is a colour that makes her happy ‘every time’.

  Over coffee by the fire in her book-lined study I ask her if she ever has writer’s block; her output is prodigious by anyone’s standards.

  Rebecca curls up in her large armchair and takes a sip of her coffee. She shakes her head and a glossy curl of soft brown hair escapes and falls across her pale face.

  ‘I don’t really understand writer’s block,’ she says. ‘I see myself as a jobbing writer; I have needed to write for so long now, needed it for my sanity as well as for my financial support. At the start of my career I’d turn my hand at pretty well anything: poetry, plays, short stories, articles, anything. It’s not that I find writing easy. It’s just that the alternative, i.e., not writing, is a lot harder. And there’s no mystique, no hanging around waiting for the muse. In my view she’s about as punctual as a Hollywood starlet. To quote George Bernard Shaw, the secret of inspiration is “applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of the chair”.

  ‘I’m usually up by seven and at my desk by eight after a breakfast of Cheerios with a sliced banana and a large mug of strong sweet milky tea. I stay there until lunch, which is a sandwich and some fruit juice, while I catch up on the news. I usually go for a brisk walk across the bridge to Battersea Park, or do some shopping along the King’s Road before being back at my desk, where I stay until I’ve reached my daily target of five printed pages.’

  I waited until Charlotte had finished reading and then I said, ‘That’s not me.’

  ‘It probably isn’t,’ the therapist said. ‘These kinds of interviews are famously misleading.’

  ‘No, I think, to be fair, I did say those things. I had to say something. I mean you can’t say yes to an interview and have some poor journalist and a photographer with all that equipment slog halfway across London and then sit there and say nothing. So I said the things I would have said back when I was my old self; I had to because I really don’t know who my new self is.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? To find out.’

  ‘You are quite sure I’m not mad, or say, psychotic?’

  Charlotte Jessop just kept looking at me with a bright and interested expression, her neat head a little to one side.

  Old shrink trick, Coco said. She’s waiting for you to incriminate yourself further.

  ‘I’m not am I, insane?’

  ‘You don’t need to ask me,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Yes, I do. I absolutely need to ask you. I need reassurance.’

  ‘If you already know that my reply will be reassuring then why do you need to ask the question?’

  Devilishly cunning, Coco said.

  I told him to remove his deerstalker hat. Anyway, you should be wearing a red curly wig.

  I hate those wigs, Coco said. They’re common.

  ‘Are you talking to Coco now?’

  ‘Not talking exactly.’

  Charlotte just nodded and made some notes in the file on her lap.

  ‘It’s not schizophrenia, is it?’

  ‘No. However, we have made huge advances in the treatment of that condition.’

  ‘But I’m not schizophrenic?’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m being very boring.’

  ‘You’re not here to entertain me. You have an exaggerated need to apologise and to please. We need to look at that.’

  ‘I think I’m getting better, though, or worse, depending on which way you look at it. Sorry, I’m being muddled. Do you think I might need some medication?’

  Coco’s face had been looming, disembodied like the Cheshire cat’s grin. At the word medication it shrank like a balloon when the air’s been let out, rocketing across the room and hitting the door, where it bounced, ending up on the floor, a flat wizened version of itself.

  ‘We should see how we get along without it,’ Charlotte Jessop said.

  In the corner of the room a small gloved hand rose and made a V for victory sign.

  While I waited to hear from Charlotte Jessop I decided to continue my search for happy couples myself. ‘Historical persons and hearsay don’t count,’ I explained to Bridget. ‘Perhaps I should advertise i
n the press: “Happily married? Call embittered romantic novelist on 0207 3526 ... etc etc.”’

  ‘I don’t think Zoe is going to be fussy as to whom you chose as your examples, as long as they’re real.’ Pulling a face a bit like Coco’s when he didn’t wish to admit to feeling sad, she added, ‘I don’t quite understand why she doesn’t feel that her father and I would do.’

  ‘Oh children,’ I said quickly. ‘Their worst fear is to emulate their parents.’

  ‘Do you think that’s all it is?’

  I nodded a bit too emphatically.

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘You could try Matilda.’

  ‘I don’t know if that particular story would impress Angel-face. I mean Matilda’s never made it a secret that she wasn’t in love with Chris when they married.’

  ‘I know. Leonora.’

  ‘Leonora Baxendale?’

  ‘Walters now. And yes, I saw her and her husband at a party last Christmas. She couldn’t stop telling me about her wonderful life.’

  ‘Won’t she think it a bit odd if I call up out of the blue? “Hi, remember me, your old schoolfriend? I heard that you were happily married – care to talk about it?”’

  ‘Don’t be silly. She’ll be delighted to hear from you. She asked very fondly after you. You have to understand that since you became successful people are a bit shy of you.’

  The thought was gratifying.

  ‘Do you reckon?’

  ‘Yes. Let me give you her number.’

  ‘You really haven’t changed much at all,’ Leonora said after we hugged each other hello.

  ‘Neither have you,’ I said, and it was a return nicety but a true one.

  Her face, although showing a few lines around the eyes and lips, was still round and pretty and her cheeks still turned bright pink at the slightest provocation. These days her wide green eyes were not hidden beneath glasses and her thick straight hair was streaked blonde and cut short. Maybe her strong little body was a stone or so heavier, but you would always have known her from the girl she had been twenty years before.

  ‘Sit down.’ Leonora gesticulated at the rose chintz sofa. ‘I’ll bring us some tea.’

  She returned with a tray and put it down on the coffee table before sitting down herself. She poured the tea and handed me a cup.

  Smiling at me she said, ‘I know about your writing. I read the first two and I must say I really enjoyed them.’

  Thanking her, I suppressed the urge to ask why, if she had enjoyed the first two so much, she had not read the others, saying instead, ‘Bridget didn’t tell me much about what you were doing other than that you were blissfully happy, which sounds pretty satisfactory.’ My voice trailed off as Leonora’s smiling face assumed a peculiar look. Had I said something wrong? Should I know what she did? Maybe Bridget had told me or maybe she was well known in her field. ‘I mean what better achievement than a happy marriage,’ I said. ‘I might have done OK professionally, but my personal life …’

  At this point Leonora burst into tears.

  ‘Is this some cruel joke? You were always a little different but never cruel.’ She fished out a tissue from a pocket and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I know I shouldn’t have told Lance Cooper that you were too intense for him but goodness, Rebecca, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Leonora had stopped sobbing and now she cleared her throat and poured herself some more tea.

  ‘Coming here after all these years, tormenting me about my “happy marriage”.’

  ‘What do you mean I’m tormenting you? It seemed like such a good idea: seeing you again after all this time and getting another recipe for Zoe’s book. Didn’t Bridget tell you?’

  ‘Bridget left a message on my answerphone saying you were doing research for your book and would call, that was all. She didn’t say anything about a cookery book.’

  I leant forward and took Leonora’s hands in mine. The right one still clutched the damp tissue.

  ‘We’d better start again. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ll make a fresh pot,’ Leonora got to her feet.

  Left on my own I looked around the room. I should have noticed right away how it bore obvious signs of upheaval. The large Chinese vase in the window alcove had been one of a pair; I remembered them from her childhood home. Above the upright piano a small watercolour landscape was trying in vain to fill the space left by a much larger frame, the outline of which could be clearly seen picked out in a paler shade of cream untouched by London grime. There were other such virgin spaces where only an empty picture hook was left in the pale expanse. Leonora had been sitting in what was, in fact, a desk chair, and the chair opposite looked like an upmarket deckchair. At first I had thought it simply a fashionable piece of furniture, I had seen something very like it at Liberty’s the other day, but on closer inspection I saw it really was just a garden chair.

  Leonora returned to see me studying the room.

  ‘Division of the spoils,’ she said. ‘It’s what happens at the end of a war and as in all wars everyone ends up the poorer.’

  Another Carefree Girl

  The worst thing, the thing I mind the most, is that I’ve lost my best friend. God, I feel so unoriginal; I mean my husband running off with his assistant. Trust Matthew and me to be conventional right until the bitter end.

  I think I realised something was seriously wrong when he used the sat nav to drive back home from my mother’s. I was talking to him, and he put his finger out – I noticed how, well, sausagey his fingers had become lately – and he pressed the button and punched in the route. That ridiculous computer voice came on: ‘Your route of twelve miles will take you on main roads and local roads. Turn left …’

  ‘Why do you need that thing?’ I asked him. ‘You know where you’re going. You’ve done this route a thousand times, at least.’

  And he turned to me and I’ll never forget the expression in his eyes; he looked like that vile little boy Giles Hardy when he dangled my gerbil over the balcony rail.

  ‘Because she is more interesting than you,’ he said. ‘She can navigate and she shuts up when she’s got nothing to say.’

  Mercifully the children were plugged into their iPods. Matthew and I had always prided ourselves on keeping a civil tone between us at all times. We had our disagreements of course, but we didn’t ever see the need to descend into insults and rudeness. Well, not until then anyway.

  Supper was awful. I felt a real sense of doom as I went through the motions of serving up, telling the children off for squabbling and making normal-seeming conversation. Once they were in bed I confronted him. I told him, in a calm and grown-up way, how hurt I was by his behaviour and that, now we were talking about it, I felt he had been rather off with me for some time. I reminded him of how much value we both placed on respect and good manners. I even told him, which I had sworn I wouldn’t, that two of my girlfriends had said that they felt he’d been picking on me lately.

  While I spoke he just sat there, leaning back in his chair looking at me as if I were a snail about to attack his hostas.

  ‘Have you nothing to say to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But we’re talking.’

  ‘You’re talking. I’m waiting for you to finish so I can go and watch the news.’

  I felt as if I were dreaming: you know, one of those quiet nightmares; no blood and guts, no being chased or beheaded, but the kind where at first everything is quite normal and then slowly your world begins to shift and change until friends have turned into enemies, your dog bites and the plants on your kitchen windowsill have all withered and died.

  That’s when I started to cry and the pathetic thing was that I still expected him to come over to me and put his arms round me. But he just sat there looking bored, glancing sideways at the newspaper next to him on the sofa. By now I knew I was getting hysterical; I was crying so hard I couldn’t see. Then, at last, I heard him get up. I covered my
face with my hands, embarrassed by what I knew I must be looking like, all puffy and snotty, with make-up running down my cheeks. Some women manage to cry prettily but I was never one of them. I waited for his touch on my shoulders, his voice saying something kind but there was nothing. He’d got up to fetch the remote. Next I heard the television being switched on for the ten o’clock news.

  That was too much for me. I ran up to him, screaming I don’t know what, until my throat hurt. And he just sat there looking bored and then turned the sound up. If you had looked in from outside you would have thought you’d caught us in different time zones. There I was, crying, yelling, waving my arms around. And there he was, reclining on the sofa watching the news.

  I felt like a wasp in a jar.

  ‘Get out, do you hear?’ I screamed. ‘Go. Leave.’

  He stood up in this really leisurely way and switched off the TV.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I shall.’

  I followed him up to the bedroom and, when he pulled his duffel bag down from the top of the wardrobe, I started to beg. I said I was sorry and that I didn’t want him to leave. He just got on with his packing, getting out his boxers and socks, things I had picked out for him, things I had washed and put away neatly in his drawers, and then he paused in front of the wardrobe as if pondering which shirts to pack. I stopped begging and crying then. Instead I sat down on the bed, quite calm all of a sudden, thinking, how can I get this runaway train to stop? No more games, I told myself. This is deadly serious.

  ‘You can’t go,’ I said finally, as he zipped up his bag, the sound like the very fabric of my life ripping.

  ‘Yes, I can.’ He picked up the bag, slinging it over his shoulders like a boy off on an adventure.

  ‘Wait.’

  He paused in the doorway.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What about the children? What shall I tell them?’

  He thought for a moment before saying, ‘Tell them I’ve had to go away for a few days. That’ll do until we’ve had a chance to work out the arrangements.’