Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘What do you mean arrangements?’ I followed him down the stairs and into the hallway, pushing past him and barring his way to the front door. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘You told me to.’

  I couldn’t help it but I raised my voice again.

  ‘You never bloody do what I tell you so why do you have to now?’

  He put his bag down and I closed my eyes with relief.

  ‘I’ve been wanting out for some time.’

  I snapped my eyes open.

  ‘What did you say?’

  He sighed.

  ‘I said I’ve been wanting out for some time.’ He glanced at his watch.

  ‘My God, you’re bored.’ And I sank down on the floor.

  How had this happened? The man who had once stood with me in front of the altar – in a morning suit that was slightly too large as if his mother had got it for him to grow into – swearing eternal love, the man who had looked at me as if I were a Ferrari gift-wrapped in a Playboy magazine was now watching me as I whimpered at his feet and he was bored.

  ‘I’ve met someone,’ he said. Then he smiled, smiled. ‘I’m in love.’

  I laboured to my feet like an old woman with arthritic knees.

  ‘You’ve met someone? You’re in love?’

  ‘Mandy is fun.’ He said her name as if it tasted of honey.

  ‘Mandy.’ To me it tasted of charcoal.

  He looked down at me and his smile was almost kind.

  ‘Do you remember fun, Leonora?’

  ‘I remember fun.’ I grabbed hold of his lapels. ‘I thought we were having fun.’

  He looked down at my hands still holding on to his jacket and his gaze held a hint of distaste.

  I dropped my hands.

  ‘I thought we had fun,’ I repeated, but my voice barely carried.

  ‘It might have been fun for you, Leonora, but not for me. In fact, it hasn’t been fun for a long time. Mandy’ – there was that faint pause again while he tasted each letter of her name – ‘she’s interested in everything. She’s interested in me. Think about it, Leonora, when was the last time you actually asked me about me?’ His voice had assumed a whiney note. ‘With you it’s either the kids or the hot-water tank or your mother or the bloody cats.’

  I looked up.

  ‘The kids? Of course I talk about the kids. They’re ours. They’re the most important thing we have. Don’t you like talking about them? Don’t you like coming home and being filled in on all the stuff that’s been happening in their lives?’

  ‘Of course I do. But not to the exclusion of everything else. When we first met you were a really interesting person to talk to. You were full of plans and enthusiasm for life, life outside our own tiny little world. But these days – God forbid I should suggest we go off on holiday, just the two of us. Even when I try to do something really nice, like for your fortieth, you manage to turn everything into a problem. You would have thought that a safari in Tanzania would be considered quite a treat but not for you, oh no. For weeks before we left you talked, not about what we might do and see on our trip but whether or not your mother really was capable of judging whether the twins were actually unwell or just faking it before double maths. And were we being mean not taking them, especially as Andrew was so keen on animals. God, you never bloody stopped.’ He arranged his face in a look I think he felt was mine and made his voice all mimsy: ‘“Maybe we should have booked separate flights? I mean if there’s an accident they’ve lost us both.” “Do you think Mother will remember to double-lock at night? What if we have an accident out there? What if we need a blood transfusion? We could get infected.” Jesus, Leonora, what happened to you?’

  Suddenly I felt angry and as I got angry I grew calmer.

  ‘What happened? Well, let me see. We decided to have children. We had Andrew and two years later we had the twins. You suggested I give up work as we were paying the nanny almost half our combined earnings. And I, silly trusting fool that I was, agreed although I was actually further on in my career than you were. I pushed prams and put plasters on scraped knees. I sewed in nametapes and grew increasingly proficient at maths as I helped them with their homework. I cooked and I cleaned and I cheered on the sidelines and put ribbons in glossy ponytails. I wrapped parcels and booked magicians, I walked in the park. I listened and I admonished and I praised. Yes, that’s what happened: I gave birth to your children and I looked after them.’

  Never confront a man with the truth; it makes him run for cover,

  ‘I don’t need to listen to this,’ he said, picking up his bag and pushing past me to the door. ‘I’ll come round at the weekend to get some more stuff.’

  My husband walked out on me and on the way he trampled our past underfoot. I stood there wondering how I could have got it so wrong. All those years I had believed that we were pulling in the same direction: building a home, creating a family. Of course we had had our bad patches, what married couples don’t? But mostly it had been good, had it not? And fun. But the fun he was talking about was not the same. He meant free-and-easy fun. Nappy-free fun. The kind of fun you can have when you don’t have to express milk every time you go out together for more than two hours, the kind that does not involve being back in time to take the babysitter home. The kind when you can get pissed on Saturday night and lie in on Sunday and then make hangover love. The kind of fun you had when you did not give a damn about anyone or anything but yourselves.

  How could he? How could he ignore the happy times? The twins’ first day of school, the two of them in their uniforms. They were so filled with the importance of the occasion they might have been taking mass. Christmas morning being woken by excited voices shout-whispering, telling each other to be quiet. Teaching them all to ski. Taking them to dinner in a proper restaurant for the first time. Had that not been fun? The greatest fun. Apparently not, not for him.

  That was six months ago, just after I saw Bridget and prattled on about how happy I was. He’s still with Mandy. She’s pregnant and, I’m told, about to go on maternity leave. I almost feel sorry for her now. She has yet to learn that this is what men do: they fall in love with a carefree girl with killer heels and red lipstick, a girl who loves fun and change and adventure. They marry her and tell her they like her best when she’s in her jeans and her face is scrubbed clean of make-up. They make her pregnant. And then, when this woman, a little frayed now at the edges with her not quite flat stomach and her bare face marked by too many sleepless nights, has been forced to grow up and be a good mother, they leave her for another carefree girl.

  Rebecca

  I WAS STILL TRYING to finish my novel but by now I was finding it impossible to work. Every sentence of love and hope became punctuated by the memory of Nick Fuller’s bitter resignation or Leonora’s hands twisting and untwisting a sodden hanky. When I tried to bring about the happy ending Dominic appeared before me, scowling, shouting, turning virtue into sin, upending his dreams and mine. My mind was filled, not with sweet dreams, but with accusations and counter-accusations, betrayal and wounded, bewildered children.

  ‘To think that it takes my husband leaving me for us to get back in touch,’ Leonora had said as we had dinner out together a couple of days after my visit.

  There was no need for me to add anything; we both knew it was a poor swap.

  I told the new therapist. Charlotte Jessop had left suddenly with just a letter saying she had got engaged: ‘All very sudden, I know’ (three coy dots and an implied giggle) ‘But as my new fiancé’s work is in Australia I have agreed to move there to be with him. Dr Angie Bliss will be taking over my practice and I have no doubt that she will be more than able to fill my shoes.’

  In fact, I had taken an instant dislike to Charlotte Jessop’s replacement, mainly because she was younger than I, beautiful and supremely confident. Yet by the time she had complimented me on my jacket, which was new and rather pretty, told me she could not believe I was forty-two and that she had read every one of
my books and could not for the life of her understand why the reviewers had not picked up on the Brontësque sensibilities and the Austinesque wit of the last one my opinion of her was considerably higher.

  We had just been discussing my recent contribution to a radio debate with a vicar, a rabbi, an imam and a newspaper columnist known for her forthright views on life in general and the ills of modern society in particular. The subject we were discussing was the disintegration of the family. The vicar, the rabbi and the imam had all agreed that society’s fixation with sex and Hollywood-style romance, coupled with the emphasis on the individual’s right to fulfilment at whatever cost, was part of the problem. The columnist had nodded, adding that, although she was of course a great supporter of her own sex, feminism had a lot to answer for, telling women it was acceptable to be promiscuous, have affairs, break up families and generally behave like men.

  The vicar, the rabbi and the imam added that in their view the solution was a return to the adherence of the founding principles of the great religions.

  No surprises there then.

  At that point they had all turned to look at me, the purveyor of false expectations. Keen on the principle that if you have nothing new to say you should say it with conviction, I had replied that the sooner people realised that they were not put on this earth to be happy the better off we’d all be. The columnist had agreed and the vicar, the rabbi and the imam said that, although that was indeed so, true happiness was attainable through selflessness and helping others.

  I began to ask them if that meant that, in their view, we were actually put on this earth to be happy and it was just that we had to achieve this aim in a certain prescribed way, which seemed to involve thinking only of other people’s happiness, in which case the ensuing selfless acts could be deemed self-serving as they were the sure-fire way to achieve personal happiness. At which point my microphone was turned off.

  ‘I thought you were the one person speaking sense,’ Angie Bliss said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘To love others you must first love yourself.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Although people wrapped up in themselves make very small parcels.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘The world needs happy people. Life is a terminal condition that can be managed but not cured.’

  ‘That’s very true,’ I said. And I wished life really could be that simple. Looking at Angie Bliss’s candy-coloured tweed suit, I thought I could understand how she could afford Chanel. Certainties these days were in short supply and high demand; no wonder the price was astronomical.

  Coco took the opportunity to point out that I could most probably get twenty clowns for the price of one therapist.

  I asked him who in their right mind would want twenty clowns.

  ‘While we postpone, life hurries by,’ the therapist said, raising her voice as if she had noticed my attention was elsewhere.

  ‘Isn’t that Seneca?’

  The therapist shrugged.

  ‘Might be; he does say an awful lot.’ She leant forward in her chair and looked deep into my eyes. ‘Are you paying attention?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s this clown thing. It’s in my notes.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. You’re paying me, remember. It’s part of the problem, I think, you being so nice.’

  ‘I’m not really nice,’ I said.

  ‘No, of course you’re not. You know that and I know that. I should have said you appearing to be so nice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We both know that you’re nothing like as nice as you pretend to be, even to yourself.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’d better work on that.’

  ‘Just work on your lovely books.’

  ‘But that’s why I’m here. Because I don’t seem to be able to any more. Charlotte was particularly interested in working with creative people, which is why I went to see her in the first place. I hoped she would help me back to writing.’

  ‘And I’m just like her,’ Angie Bliss said, her voice soft and low. ‘I shall help you reclaim your creative flame. You just have to trust me.’

  I looked at her and it seemed as if her eyes were changing colour. As I stared I realised that she might be right and that maybe she would be able to help.

  I dabbed at my own everyday eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s all been a bit of a strain. I don’t know what I’d do if I thought I had lost the ability to write for good.’ I fished a tissue from my handbag and blew my nose. ‘However, I’m beginning to accept that I won’t be writing any more love stories.’

  ‘Why?’ The therapist’s voice was sharp.

  ‘I’ve changed. I don’t believe in those things any more.’

  ‘Those things? You don’t believe in love? How can you say such a thing?’

  ‘Of course I believe in love. But romantic love … Yes, it is delicious, a delicious madness that cannot, indeed should not, last. Yet people enter into lifelong commitments like marriage and co-parenting on the basis of it, which is about as sensible as buying a house because you liked the pretty flowers in the hall. I’ve come to the conclusion that my books begin with a misconception and end in an impossibility. So what’s the point?’

  The therapist had listened with her lips pursed and her arms folded across her chest.

  Now she said, ‘The point, Ms Finch, is that in order to have a dream come true you have to have a dream.’

  I thought that was quite profound then I remembered it was from a song in South Pacific.

  I said, ‘Well, I stand by what I’m saying. I tell you, that little bastard Cupid and his arrows of mass-destruction have a lot to answer for.’

  ‘Eros, his name is Eros. Cupid is a vulgar Roman invention.’

  I was a little taken aback by how seriously she took her classics.

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘Eros it is.’

  ‘And he’s not that bad: lazy, yes, sloppy in his work, yes, and come to think of it a bastard, yes, but he’s a good boy really.’

  ‘Right,’ I said again.

  ‘Are you worried about your age? Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘No. I mean obviously I don’t particularly like getting older, who does? And there are times when I ask myself if I might one day regret not having had children. Forty-two is hardly ancient, of course, it’s not impossible for me to have them, but to find a man I care for enough, and in time, well, it seems rather less likely.’

  While I spoke, Angie Bliss had been reading a file on her lap. When someone you’re addressing obviously isn’t paying attention you have two options, as far as I can see. One is to stop talking and the other is to go on in an increasingly loud voice until they do pay attention. When I was younger and full of pride and confidence I had favoured the latter. Now I just shut up.

  Five minutes later the therapist looked up.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘If I recall,’ I said pointedly, ‘I was saying that forty-two is hardly ancient.’

  ‘Getting there,’ she said. ‘There’s certainly no time for complacency. Cosmetic surgery and Botox can get you so far but it can’t restore that youthful bloom. The bloom is important.’

  ‘I thought therapy was about making one feel good about oneself.’

  ‘Did you?’

  There followed another silence. This time the therapist wasn’t even reading but was simply staring in front of her. I began to shift in my chair. I felt uncomfortable, as if I had committed some social faux pas, which was obviously ridiculous because, as Angie Bliss herself had pointed out a little earlier, she was paid a great deal to be bored. It was the same at dinner parties, not the paying, obviously: the table would fall silent and I would feel compelled to speak, to say anything, however inconsequential, to break that silence.

  ‘Why do I always feel as if the world might tumble from its axis if I’m not there to prop it up?’ I asked.

  If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand tim
es … Coco replied. It’s because you’re self-obsessed and neurotic.

  I wasn’t asking you.

  Angie Bliss said, ‘Because you think of yourself as the centre of everything.’

  I felt depressed. If my therapist was in agreement with my inner demons, what hope was there?

  ‘But you’re not alone in that.’ Angie Bliss gave me a kindly look. ‘Most humans feel the same, one way or the other. No doubt because it’s too cruel to live fully in the knowledge of your total insignificance.’

  ‘Are you as sure about everything as you seem to be?’

  ‘While I feel what I feel I’m sure I’m feeling that way,’ she said. ‘But it happens that I sometimes change my mind. Anyway, as I said to you before, loving oneself is essential.’ She stretched and did a little wiggle in her chair. ‘I love myself.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I love myself very much or, in fact, if I even like myself. I’m aware though that those thoughts are self-centred, whereas your matter-of-fact acceptance and love of yourself must mean that you’re not plagued by time-consuming insecurities. So, does that mean that someone who loves herself and is therefore really pleased with herself is actually less self-centred than someone who doesn’t like herself very much at all?’

  ‘Very possibly,’ Angie Bliss said. ‘Then again, maybe not. Now I trust that by the time of our next appointment you will be telling me that you’re working again.’ Her face brightened. ‘I have just thought of something that might help you to unblock your block. Where are you in the novel?’

  ‘Stuck where the heroine is about to realise that she’s in love with the hero. All I want to say is don’t bother, which won’t really get me very far in a romantic novel.’

  ‘Unless she gets over such cynical and fruitless doubts.’

  ‘Well, she won’t.’ I had spoken more sharply than I’d intended but I just didn’t think that Angie Bliss was that helpful when it came to writing.

  ‘So, start another book. Start afresh, that was my idea. Show us a woman who is going through a divorce. Don’t spare us the details about how wrong and disastrous divorces are. Vent all your bitterness and spleen, then – and this is where the genius of my suggestion comes in – let her fall in love with her divorce lawyer; you can vent some more spleen when you describe his work and then you can get down to describing the touching and deep love that develops between the two, yes?’