Therapy

by David Lodge

  Laurence is convinced that there is another man after all and that she staged this row so she could be with him. He thinks he knows who it is, too: the tennis coach at their sports club. It doesn’t sound like Sally to me, but you can never tell. You remember I told you Saul swore blind there was nobody else when he asked me for a divorce, and then I discovered he’d been screwing Janine for months. Laurence says Sally started taking tennis lessons a few months ago and shortly afterwards she decided to colour her hair. No, it doesn’t sound much to go on, but he’s quite convinced and in his present mood there’s no arguing with him. He isn’t coming to London this week because he says he’s too busy. I think he means too busy stalking the tennis coach. I don’t like the sound of it at all, but I can’t help feeling a guilty kind of relief that I won’t have to do another four-hour counselling session tonight.

  Laurence is taking up more and more of our time, isn’t he? Can’t you say something to get me off the subject? What about some free association? I used to enjoy that, we never seem to do it any more.

  All right. Mother. My mother. In the kitchen at Highgate. The afternoon sun is shining through the frosted kitchen window, throwing a mottled pattern on the table, and over her arms and hands. She’s wearing one of those old-fashioned floral print pinafores that crossed at the back and tied at the front. We’re chopping vegetables together for a stew, or soup. I’m about thirteen, fourteen. I’ve just started my periods. She’s telling me about the facts of life. About how easy it is to get pregnant, and how wary I must be of men and boys. Chopping up carrots as she speaks, as if she would like to cut off their willies … I wonder why I should think of that? I suppose it’s because I’m worried about Zelda. Of course I’ve told her all about the facts of life, but should I make sure she’s fixed up with contraception or will she take that as an encouragement to promiscuity? You don’t think that’s it? What then? Oh, go on, Karl, let yourself go for once, give me an interpretation. No, don’t – I know, it’s really about me and Laurence, isn’t it? Oh God …

  Well, Sally has got herself a lawyer now. Yes. Laurence had a letter from him asking if he’ll instruct his own solicitor to enter into discussions about a separation settlement. Also with a proposal from Sally that they should agree to go to their sports club on alternate days, to avoid embarrassing encounters. Apparently Laurence has been going down there and watching Sally practising with the tennis coach. She says it puts her off her game. I should think it would. Of course this has only convinced him all the more that she has something to hide re the tennis coach. Laurence told his solicitor to tell Sally’s that if she wanted to live apart from him she would have to do it on her own salary plus she could have back whatever she had contributed to their savings, which isn’t very much of course compared to what Laurence has earned in recent years. I think it’s a bad sign that they’re quarrelling about money already, and using lawyers, that was when things became really nasty between Saul and me. Oh dear, I have a dreadful feeling of déjà vu about all this …

  Well, things have gone from bad to worse. Laurence has had an injunction served on him to stop him going into the college where Sally works, or university I think it’s called now, Volt University or Watt University – something electrical anyway. Her lawyer wrote back to say that she considered herself entitled to half their savings because she supported him for years by her teaching when he was trying to make it as a scriptwriter. Laurence went to the University in a towering rage and ambushed her outside her office and made a public scene. She told him that he was out of his mind. Well, I think perhaps he is, poor sweet. So Sally took out an injunction against him, and if he goes there again he could be arrested. In fact he’s not even allowed to go within a one-mile radius of the place. That particularly annoys him because it means he can’t try and follow her when she leaves work to find out where she’s living. He’s been keeping watch on the tennis coach’s house, but so far no luck. He says it’s only a matter of time before he catches them. I think he means in flagrante. Heaven knows what he thinks he’s going to do if he does catch them. Laurence would hardly be a match for a tennis coach if it came to blows …

  Well, it seems that Sally wasn’t having an affair after all, not with the tennis coach anyway. Apparently he’s gay. Yes. Well, I must admit I had a job not to laugh myself, when Laurence told me. I don’t know exactly how he found out, he was a bit evasive on the phone, but he seemed quite certain. He sounded very low, too, poor sweet. As long as he suspected the tennis coach he had a target for his anger and resentment. You can’t hate someone if you don’t know who they are. Anyway, I suspect he’s beginning to think that Sally may have been telling the truth after all, about why she wanted a separation – that she just couldn’t bear living with him any more. It hasn’t done anything for his self-esteem. I remember when I found out about Janine, I was a tiny bit secretly relieved as well as absolutely furious, because it meant that I needn’t blame myself for the failure of the marriage. Or not entirely.

  Another depressing development for Laurence is that his children know about the split now. I think that’s a kind of Rubicon as far as he’s concerned. As long as they didn’t know, there was always the possibility that he and Sally might get back together again with no serious damage done, no embarrassment, no loss of face. When Sally walked out the last thing he said to her – he told me he ran down the drive after her car and banged on her window to make her wind it down – the last thing he said was, “Don’t tell Jane and Adam.” Of course they had to know sooner or later. Sally probably told them almost immediately, but Laurence has only just found out that they know. He’s had phone calls from both of them. They’re being very careful not to take sides, but the main thing that’s struck him is that they don’t seem to be terribly upset or even terribly surprised. It’s obvious to me that Sally must have been confiding in them for some time and preparing them for what’s happened. I think this is beginning to dawn on Laurence, too. “I feel as if I’ve been living in a dream,” he said, “and I’ve just woken up. But what I’ve woken up to is a nightmare.” Poor Lorenzo. Speaking of dreams, I had a very peculiar one last night …

  Well, it’s happened, I knew it would, I could see it coming: Laurence wants to sleep with me. Not just to hold me. For sex. The beast with two backs. It was one of Saul’s expressions, don’t pretend you’ve never heard it before, Karl. It’s in Shakespeare somewhere. I can’t remember which play, but I’m sure it’s in Shakespeare. Well, it’s no odder than most of the other available phrases. “Sleep with,” for instance. I knew a girl once, called Muriel, who used to say she was sleeping with her boss when she meant that she had it off with him in the back of his Jaguar in Epping Forest during their lunch hour. I shouldn’t think they got much sleep.

  Laurence raised the subject over dinner last night. I suppose I should have been forewarned when he took me to Rules instead of our usual trattoria. And encouraged me to order the lobster. It was just as well we were eating early and the restaurant was half-empty, otherwise people would have been falling off their chairs trying to listen in. He said the only reason he hadn’t tried to make love to me before was because he believed in fidelity in marriage, and I chipped in tout de suite to say that I quite understood and respected him for it. He said it was very generous of me to take that view but he felt he had been exploiting me in a way, enjoying my company without any commitment, and that now Sally had walked out on him there was no reason why we should inhibit ourselves any longer. I said that I didn’t feel at all exploited, or inhibited for that matter. Not quite as bluntly as that, of course. I tried to explain that I valued our relationship precisely because there were no sexual strings to it, hence no tension, no anxiety, no jealousy. He looked very dejected and said, “Are you saying you don’t love me?” and I said, “Darling, I haven’t allowed myself to love you in that way.” He said, “Well, now you can.” And I said, “Supposing I allow myself to, and then Sally and you get together again, what then?” He said very gloomi
ly that he couldn’t imagine that could ever happen. Relations between them are getting worse. She’s talking about a divorce now, because Laurence refuses to discuss financial arrangements for a voluntary separation, which is very silly of him. His solicitor told him Sally would get half their joint assets and up to a third of their joint income as maintenance in a divorce settlement. Laurence thinks that she shouldn’t get anything at all, because she deserted him. The letters are flying back and forth between the lawyers. And now he wants to sleep with me.

  So what should I do? Oh, I know you won’t tell me, it’s just a rhetorical question. Except a rhetorical question is when the answer is implied, isn’t it? And I don’t know the answer to this one. I told Laurence I would think about it, and I have, I’ve thought of little else since last night, but I don’t know what to do, I really don’t. I’m very fond of Laurence, and I’d like to help him through this crisis. I realize that he just wants to be comforted and I wish I was like one of those earth-motherly, heart-of-gold women in movies who give their bodies generously to nice men at the drop of a hat, but I’m not. Fortunately Laurence remains wonderfully galant. We went back to his flat after Rules began to fill up with the post-theatre crowd and talked some more, but there was no hanky-panky or any attempt at it. A strange thing happened when he saw me out, though. He always comes down in the lift with me and puts me in a taxi to go home. When we opened the street door of the building, there in the entryway was one of those young vagrants you see everywhere nowadays, in a sleeping- bag. We had to practically step over him to get into the street. Well, I just ignored him, it seemed the safest thing to do, but Laurence said hallo to him, as if there were nothing untoward about his being there, as if the man, or boy rather, was somebody he knew. While we stood on the pavement looking out for a taxi, I hissed at Laurence, “Who is that?” and he replied, “Grahame.” As if he was a neighbour or something. Then a taxi came and I didn’t have a chance to ask him anything more. I think I had a dream about it last night …

  Well, I suppose the fact that I used that expression of Saul’s, the beast with two backs, last time, and applied it to Laurence, could be significant – is that what you were getting at? That I’m afraid of having sex with Laurence because sex with Saul was such a disaster? But is that cowardice or good sense?

  I know you think it’s unnatural that I’ve never had sex with anyone since the divorce. No, I know you haven’t said so explicitly – when did you ever say anything explicitly? But I can read between the lines. Well, for instance you referred to my relationship with Laurence as a sort of mariage blanc. Well, I’m virtually certain it was you who said it, not me. Anyway, I distinctly remember your suggesting that I was using my relationship with Laurence as a kind of alibi. And I said that we’ve become so close that having sex with anyone else would have seemed like infidelity. Which is true.

  Zelda comes into it too, of course. If I decide to go to bed with Laurence, will she find out? Can I keep it from her? Should I keep it from her? Would knowing about it drive her into the arms of some lecherous spotty youth? You hinted once that I hadn’t come to terms with the fact that sooner or later she’s going to have sex. That as long as she was under-age I could rationalize my defence of her virginity as responsible parenthood, but that eventually she would become a young adult and decide to have sex with somebody and that there would be nothing I could do to prevent it and so I’d better accept it, but that I wouldn’t be able to if I didn’t have a satisfying sexual relationship of my own. So maybe this is a heaven-sent opportunity for me to become what you would consider a whole woman again, would you say?

  Then at the back of my mind there’s another consideration. The possibility of marriage. If Sally and Laurence divorce, it would be sort of logical for us to get hitched. No, I don’t think so, otherwise he would have mentioned it when he was trying to seduce me the other night. That may be why he took me to Rules, actually, because the padrona at the Italian restaurant we usually go to is always singing the praises of matrimony, casting hints that Lorenzo ought to make an honest woman of me – she doesn’t know he’s married already. I think that secretly, or unconsciously, he still yearns to be reconciled with Sally. He complains bitterly about her behaviour, but I think if she agreed to give the marriage another try he’d scurry back to her with his tail wagging. I’m under no illusions about that. But if she’s serious, if she really goes through with it, then I’m pretty sure he would want to marry again. I understand the way his mind works better than he does himself. He’s the marrying type. And who would he marry but me?

  I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like. There might be some resistance from Zelda at first, but I think she would accept him eventually. It would be good for her to have an adult male in the house, good for both of us. A slightly rosy, soft-focus picture keeps coming into my mind of the three of us together in the kitchen, Laurence helping Zelda with her homework at the kitchen table, and me smiling benevolently from the Aga. We don’t have an Aga, so I suppose that implies that I would want to move house. Whatever Sally got in a divorce settlement, Laurence would still be pretty well off. You know how it is once you start daydreaming, you think vaguely about the possibility of getting married again, and before you know where you are you’re choosing the curtain material for your summer cottage in the Dordogne. But it has occurred to me that if Laurence were to pop the question one day, it would be as well to know already if we were, you know, physically compatible, don’t you think? Or don’t you?

  I’m sure it wouldn’t be a really bad experience, anyway. Laurence is very sweet and gentle. Saul was always so overbearing in bed. Do this, do that, do this faster, do that slower. He directed us as if we were making a porn movie. It wouldn’t be like that with Laurence. He wouldn’t expect me to do anything kinky – at least, I don’t think he would. Yes, Karl, I know it’s a subjective concept …

  Well, did you see the story in Public Interest? The latest issue, it came out yesterday. No, I don’t suppose you do, but everybody else I know reads it avidly. While pretending to despise it of course. It has a media gossip column called “O.C.” It’s short for “Off Camera.” Somehow they got hold of the story of Laurence and the tennis coach. Yes. It seems that Laurence actually broke into the man’s house in the middle of the night, hoping to surprise him in bed with Sally, and found him in bed with another man. Can you imagine? No, I had no idea until I read the rag myself. Harriet came into the office yesterday morning with the latest issue and laid it on the desk in front of me without a word, open at the “O.C.” page. I practically died when I read it. Then I phoned Laurence but his agent had already told him. He says the story is essentially accurate, except that it has him holding a jemmy in his hand when in fact it was a pair of scissors. You may well ask. Apparently he was going to cut off the man’s ponytail. Just as well the rag didn’t get hold of that detail. The whole piece was cruelly mocking, needless to say. “Tubby Passmore, follically-challenged scribe of the Heartland sitcom ‘The People Next Door’, found himself recently in a situation funnier than anything he has invented …” That sort of thing. And there was a cartoon of him as Whatsisname, the Greek god who was married to Venus and found her in bed with Mars – Vulcan, that’s the one. It was done in the style of an old painting, “after Titian”, or Tintoretto, or somebody, it said underneath. With poor Lorenzo very fat and bald in a tunic and the tennis coach and his friend very naked, intertwined on the bed, and all of them looking very embarrassed. It was quite witty, actually, if you weren’t personally involved. Laurence doesn’t know how they got hold of the story. The tennis coach didn’t press charges because he wants to keep his private life under wraps, so he obviously wasn’t the source. Fortunately for him the piece doesn’t give his name. But the police were involved, so probably one of them sold the story to P.I. Laurence is devastated. He feels the whole world is laughing at him. He daren’t show his face in the Groucho or his tennis club or anywhere people know him. The cartoon seemed to cut par
ticularly deep. He went off and looked up the story of Venus and Mars and Vulcan and discovered that Vulcan had a gammy leg. He seemed to think that was a diabolically clever touch, though I think it’s just coincidence myself. Yes, Laurence has a bad knee, didn’t I tell you before? He gets sudden piercing pains in the knee joint for no apparent reason. He’s had surgery but it came back. I’m sure it’s psychosomatic. I’ve asked him if he can remember any childhood trauma associated with his knee, but he says not. Which reminds me, the other day I remembered an accident that happened to me when I was a little girl …

  Well, I’ve told Laurence I will. Sleep with him, of course. Yes. He’s been in such depths of depression about the Public Interest story that I felt I must do something to cheer him up. No, of course it isn’t my only motive. Yes, I probably had made my mind up already. Well, almost. The P.I. business just tipped the balance. So I’m taking two days off from work and we’re making a long weekend of it. The weekend after next. Leaving Thursday evening, returning Monday afternoon. So I’ll have to miss my sessions on the Friday and the Monday. Yes, I know I’ll have to pay for them, Karl, I remember that little speech you made when I started. Well, if you detect an underlying note of hostility I daresay there is one. Considering I’ve hardly missed a session in three years, I should have thought you might have waived the fees on this occasion, after all it’s a kind of emergency. To save Laurence’s sanity. I expect he would pay the fees himself if I asked him, but you probably wouldn’t approve of that, would you?

  I don’t know yet, Laurence is making the arrangements. I said anywhere, as long as it’s abroad, and preferably warm. I felt we had to go away somewhere. My house is out of the question, of course, and it wouldn’t feel right in his flat either, not the first time, anyway,. It’s very small, and sometimes you feel the whole sordid West End is pressing against the walls and windows trying to get in: the restaurant smells, the traffic noise, the tourists and the dossers … Yes, I did ask him about that young vagrant. It seems he started camping out in Laurence’s porch a few weeks ago. Laurence tried to get rid of him, but in a very Laurentian way ended up inviting him in for a cup of tea. Bad move. Then he gave him some money to find a bed for the night. Very bad move. Of course the youth came back soon afterwards, hoping for more largesse. Laurence claims he hasn’t given him any, but he’s certainly abandoned any attempt to get rid of him. I told him to get the police to move him on, but he wouldn’t. “He isn’t doing any harm,” he said. “And he keeps the burglars away.” Which I suppose is true, in a way. The flats are unoccupied most of the time. But I suspect Laurence lets him stay there because he’s lonely. Laurence is lonely. I think he likes having somebody to greet as he goes in and out, somebody who doesn’t read Public Interest. I had a dream last night about that cartoon, by the way. I was Venus, Saul was Mars and Laurence was Vulcan. What do you make of that?