Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘Your storyline suggestion. And of course it was very kind of John Sterling to offer to help, but I feel that, at the moment, all I would do is waste his time.’

  ‘You never know what might get the creative juices flowing,’ Angie Bliss said, using an expression I did not like. She leant towards me, fixing me with an azure-blue gaze. ‘Humour me,’ she said. She lowered her voice. ‘Between you and me, I think he could do with the diversion.’ She sat back again. ‘And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. Patient confidentiality, you know.’

  I did know and I thought she was already in danger of having breached it.

  ‘You don’t speak about me to your other clients, do you?’ I gave a little laugh to make it sound less of an accusation.

  ‘Of course not. I only mentioned this about John Sterling because it isn’t part of his treatment.’

  I wanted to ask, what is? But our time was up.

  I met up with John Sterling in a wine bar in Primrose Hill. I had insisted on coming to his part of town; it was the polite thing to do, I thought, seeing as he was giving up his evening to advise me.

  I was already seated at a small table by the window when a tall, fair-haired man appeared. He looked round until his gaze fell on me.

  ‘Are you, by any chance, Rebecca Finch?’

  There was something familiar about John Sterling and as we ordered drinks and he began to tell me about his work, it came to me where I had seen him.

  ‘Have you by any chance been in the papers recently? I mean it’s probably not you, but you do look familiar. Something about record settlements for abandoned wives?’

  ‘We’ve had some very satisfactory outcomes, yes.’

  I made a mental note of the rather formal, somewhat pedantic manner in which he expressed himself. His work required absolute precision in speech and thought and he carried that over with him into his private life.

  ‘I have to be honest and tell you that I don’t know how much of this research I will actually use,’ I explained to him. ‘I hope I won’t end up having wasted your time.’

  He was a friendly, helpful man, I thought, as he immediately protested that he was always happy for an excuse to talk about ‘life at the Bar.’

  I made another mental note to make my barrister, if indeed I created one, use pompous little expressions like that. This together with the general earnestness of his conversation made an interesting contrast, I thought, to his looks and comparative youth. Angie Bliss had told me that I would recognise him because he would be easily ‘the best-looking creature in the room’.

  He asked me about my work. I was hesitant at first; men in particular seemed to ask out of politeness rather than because they genuinely wanted to know, but John Sterling was so focused in his listening and looked at me with such warmth and interest as I spoke that I soon found myself telling him about the difficulties I was having, not just with the latest book, but with the whole concept of romantic love.

  ‘What frightens me, more than anything, is that I might never be able to write again.’ I began to smile. ‘I’m not used to being listened to in that way,’ I explained, ‘so intently. It’s very seductive.’ I looked sideways at him, amused in case he might think I was flirting. ‘I mean seductive in the sense of making me happy to carry on talking.’

  He gave me a quick smile back.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean. But I really am interested in hearing about your world. I don’t get much time to read – outside work, that is.’

  Normally that statement annoyed me, being, I always suspected, a euphemism for, ‘I have better things to do with my time than waste it on stories.’ As John Sterling immediately brought out a slim notebook and a pen from his jacket pocket and asked which of my novels he should start with, I decided he might be different.

  ‘I’m not sure they’re really your thing,’ I said. ‘They’re love stories.’

  ‘And what makes you think they aren’t my thing?’

  ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t assume that just because you’re a man. Not even if you’re a man who spends his life wading through the debris of other people’s broken marriages. Actually, I don’t know how you do it – the wading, I mean. I’ve had a couple of days of it and I found it very bad indeed for morale.’ I told him about my idea of collecting happy marriages for Angel-face and how, so far, it had turned out to be a disaster. ‘Are you married?’ I asked him. It would make sense if he were, and happily so. He would have seen all the unhappy marriages and learnt what not to do.

  ‘Divorced,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Me too.’

  He had a way, just before he smiled, of opening his eyes wide, which was most appealing. Angie Bliss had been right, he was very attractive. And he was divorced and possibly unattached, with a sense of humour and a supple mind. Maybe we would see each other again and maybe we would fall in love. It was perfectly possible, or rather it might once have been perfectly possible, but not any more. I thought of a story I’d read about a man who could see right through people, not in the sense of recognising their character but right through to their bones, so that when he looked at his beloved he could no longer see her lovely fresh face, just a grinning death skull with empty sockets where her bright eyes should be.

  I knew now what the poor man must have felt like, because when I looked at the perfect romantic hero seated opposite me at the wine-smeared table all I could see was what lay behind: boredom, disappointment, betrayal, regret and pain, and my heart, which once had fluttered at the slightest excuse, stayed as still as a frozen pond.

  John Sterling shot me a quizzical look.

  I felt myself blush.

  ‘Mind wandering,’ I said. ‘Not because our conversation wasn’t interesting; well, yours was anyway.’ I heard myself babbling and changed the subject. ‘So what do you think about our therapist?’

  John Sterling sat back and crossed his legs.

  ‘I don’t actually know,’ he said. ‘There will be at least one occasion during each session when I think she’s completely barking. I resolve not to waste any more time on her and then she’ll say something that makes perfect sense and before I know it I’ve committed myself to another appointment. She’s got a very persuasive personality.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Is that man-speak for she’s really fit?’

  ‘No, well, yes, she is attractive. Not my type, though.’

  ‘Did she tell you about my clown?’

  ‘No. All she said was that you were a writer and that you needed to talk to a barrister as part of your research. Did she tell you about my OCD?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘How did you come to see her, I mean as opposed to some other therapist?’

  ‘Happenstance. I was actually seeing someone else, a guy called Rupert Daly. But he upped and left the practice rather suddenly and he recommended Angie Bliss.’

  ‘That’s exactly what happened to me. My woman upped and left; she met a man, got married and moved to Australia all in the space of about five minutes. Angie took over part of her client list.’ I pulled a face. ‘Maybe she murdered them for the work.’

  ‘Possible,’John Sterling said, ‘but not very likely. Good plot for a book, though.’

  ‘I was thinking earlier that someone in your line of work might have the perfect marriage because you would have learnt all about the pitfalls, but I suppose it could be the opposite.’

  ‘I think perhaps the latter, yes,’ John Sterling said. ‘You know sometimes when I listen to a client’s story it’s as if I can actually hear it: the sound of dreams shattering.’

  ‘When I was little I thought I knew what a broken heart smelt like.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Cigarette smoke, wool and Old Spice aftershave.’ I stopped and asked him, ‘Sorry, have I got lipstick on my teeth?’

  ‘Yes, you have, as a matter of fact, but actually I was thinking that you have an unusually expressive face. You would make either a very
good witness or a very bad one, depending obviously on what one was trying to achieve.’

  I smiled.

  ‘Thank you, I think.’

  He smiled back at me.

  ‘Sorry, I interrupted you.’

  ‘That’s all right, I’m sure it wasn’t anything important.’

  ‘Broken hearts?’

  ‘Oh yes. No, I was just thinking of Zoe again, my goddaughter.’

  John nodded.

  ‘I wanted to be able to console her but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t sit there and tell her that I truly believed that the two of them, she and her fiancé, would end up living happily ever after. Because the truth is that most couples don’t. Obviously if you marry enough times till death us do part becomes increasingly attainable, but for twenty-somethings the first time around? No.’

  ‘Different partners for different stages of one’s life,’ John Sterling said. ‘It’s being talked about. But there will always be victims of that way of doing it, children in particular. But if the uncouplings were conducted in an amicable manner and communications were left open, we could have not a splintering of families but an expanding circle, where each new partnership means another person being brought into the family rather than one leaving.’ He reached for his wine glass. ‘But of course life doesn’t work that way.’

  I sighed.

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I don’t think I’d ever contemplate getting married, or even moving in with anyone again. If I met someone, I would insist we each have our own home at least. Men and women simply aren’t made to exist together in close proximity for any length of time.’

  John Sterling was about to reply when he was tapped on the shoulder. I looked up at a pretty blonde woman in her mid-thirties. She gave me a friendly nod and then, still standing behind him, she bent down and pecked John Sterling on the cheek.

  ‘Hi, darling. I took a chance I’d find you here.’ She slipped into the chair next to him. ‘Hi,’ she said again, to me this time, ‘I’m Melanie.’

  John looked surprised at seeing her but pleased too.

  ‘This is Rebecca Finch. Rebecca is a novelist,’ he explained.

  ‘A writer!’ she squealed. ‘That’s so amazing.’

  I smiled, trying to look modest.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh but it is. I love reading. I don’t know why I haven’t read you. Oh I tell you what, you wouldn’t consider coming to speak at my reading group, would you?’

  I wrote down my name and details on the back of a napkin and gave it to her.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘Now I must go.’

  Melanie turned to John.

  ‘Why don’t we give Rebecca a lift back? You’ve only had one glass, haven’t you? Then that’s fine. We can go on to my place afterwards. I wanted you to take a look at this file I got from Derek Flint …’

  Shutting my front door behind me was like pulling up a drawbridge and blocking out a messy world full of emotion and turmoil. It was good to be on my own, safely at a distance.

  What do you mean on your own? Coco popped his head round the kitchen door. I’m here.

  No, you’re not, I said and kicked off my shoes, leaving them right in the middle of the hallway, where anyone could have stumbled over them, if anyone had been there.

  Mount Olympus

  MOTHER IS FUMING.

  ‘Why didn’t you stop her?’ she demands.

  ‘Stop who?’

  ‘The Melanie creature.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me to. You told me to stand back and watch.’

  ‘And if I told you to stand back and watch me cross the road and a bus bore down on me, would you still just stand there or would you actually think and push me out of harm’s way?’

  ‘You’re immortal,’ I remind her. ‘There would be no need.’

  ‘You see, this is what I can’t stand: your flippancy, your complete inability to act in a responsible and proactive manner. You know perfectly well what I’m saying. The moment this woman appeared you should have –’

  ‘- Pushed him out of harm’s way.’

  Mother’s eyes are dark-green and her lovely lips are set tight.

  ‘You are either very stupid or very cheeky. Either way I despair. Yes, Eros, I despair.’

  I go up to her and try to give her a hug but she steps away.

  ‘No, Eros, I’m serious.’

  So was I. I’m fed up with trying to please her, with trying to make her love me. Because she never will, it’s as simple as that. There are times when she likes me well enough, she’s probably quite fond of me when she remembers to be, but I know what real motherly love is like, I’ve watched it on the screen. She loved Adonis, though.

  ‘You could have gone down there yourself,’ I mutter.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing. You told me not to shoot, anyway. You told me it would be too soon, that they weren’t fully prepared yet.’

  ‘Yes, Eros, I did tell you that but then circumstances changed and we had an emergency on our hands.’

  I shrug.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Rebecca

  ALL I WANTED TO do was find some uplifting examples of everlasting love for Angel-face. A reasonable enough task, I had thought. But I had been wrong. Instead, I opened the newspaper to find a headline shouting, ‘A quarter of us regret marriage.’ Apparently one in four married people wished they hadn’t ‘bothered’ and one in seven had doubts when walking up the aisle. I thought, OK, that’s not so bad: three in four married people did not wish they hadn’t bothered. Surely it was not beyond me to find just a handful of them? Though I had said I wouldn’t use her, I decided to phone Matilda. Time was ticking by, and according to Bridget, Angel-face’s doubts were growing each day.

  ‘Hi, Rebecca. How’s it going?’

  ‘Hi. Fine. I know I’ve asked you this before, but you and Chris are happy together, aren’t you? Please tell me you are.’

  ‘Chris and I are happy together.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Where is this coming from?’

  ‘It’s Angel-face’s book. So far all I’ve got are my maternal grandparents.’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you all the intimate details about my marriage just so that you can tell the world.’

  ‘Not the world, just Angel-face.’

  ‘I know you writers.’

  ‘No, I mean it. And I won’t say it’s you. I’ll call you something else.’

  ‘Can I be Nicolette?’

  ‘Nicolette? Sure.’

  ‘No, Theo, I want to be Theo. I’ve always liked those androgynous names.’

  ‘Whatever you like as long as you tell me you and Chris are happy.’

  We are. We’re perfectly happy. He should be Scott.’

  ‘Scott it is, but I don’t want perfectly happy, I want completely and utterly happy.’

  ‘Did your mother not tell you beggars can’t be choosers? No, no, I don’t suppose Vanessa would have done. But they can’t. And perfectly happy is my best offer. And after twelve years together it’s pretty damn good.’

  ‘You and I have been together for thirty-seven years,’ I said fondly. ‘It’s a heart-warming thought. Of course we never had sex. If we had, we probably wouldn’t even be talking now.’

  Theo’s Story

  Was the secret of happiness low expectations? Hearing Theo’s story you might well think that:

  I suppose you could say ours was a marriage of convenience, but now I’m beginning to think that Scott and I are the only happy couple around.

  We’d always known each other, through our parents initially. Of course at university he was chasing after you. He used to come to my room late at night, drunk, going on and on about how much he fancied you and how you were his ideal woman but you didn’t even know he existed. And you and I used to joke about him. We even took the piss out of his ears. What I never told you was that I rather liked him; I mean admitting that would have been like admitting one liked
Val Doonican.

  Of course, as we know, Scott never got his dream girl. There’s no need to look embarrassed. He still thinks you’re great, but love has to feed on something. After university, he and I kept in touch, as you know, bumping into each other at mutual friends,’ meeting for a drink or a quick dinner now and then, calling each other up when we had a spare ticket to a concert or the theatre. Neither of us were very lucky in love. It seemed that in life’s sitcom we were the eternal sidekicks. In my own case I put it down to my ankles. That probably sounds silly but I really believe that to be a leading lady you need ankles. Scott, of course, is one of those men who narrowly escapes being handsome. If his ears were just a little smaller and his nose a little less beaky …

  The years went by. I got promoted to features editor and Scott was climbing the corporate ladder very nicely. We both owned our own homes. Mine was a little basement flat in Earl’s Court, remember? And he had a rather grown-up place in Pimlico. We should by rights, we told each other, have been the bee’s knees and the cat’s pyjamas – in spite of the ankles and the ears. Why hadn’t we been snapped up? We spent our thirtieth birthdays together (you were away somewhere, researching a book). I had just been dumped by Rob Herbert and Scott was on yet another Arthurian quest for some unobtainable maiden.

  He did find a girl, Fiona King, who briefly loved him back, but in the end, of course, she broke his heart; he has the kind of heart, open and trusting, that’s easily damaged. For a while there I was worried that he’d never bounce back.

  For me there was the old ticking biological clock. I had never been one of those women who dream of motherhood, cooing over every passing pram. In fact you could say I was one of the least cooing amongst our circle of friends, other than you, obviously. But even you were married. Then, as I approached my mid-thirties, I began to find it increasingly difficult to imagine a life without a family. Maybe it’s no more profound than wanting curly hair when one’s own is straight, or straight when it’s curly, but what I had, what I was, single, successful, high-earning, high-spending, home-owning, triple-holiday-taking, didn’t make me fulfilled. Instead I peered into prams and lurked by Mothercare windows. I smiled at the crocodiles of four- and five-year-olds in their school uniforms crossing the street on their way to the park and I envied the mothers double-parking in front of the school, some perky, others exhausted, some shiny-haired and some a mess, but all of them purposeful, needed, at the centre of a family and of life.