Wise Follies

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  ‘More proactive about men. You’re going to have to get out there and find one. There must be far less of this lounging around evening after evening watching Emmerdale and saying “Fancy a cuppa?” to Mira. It’s getting far too cosy.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ I reply, trying to really emphasize the irony. ‘And this from the woman who watches every soap opera on the schedules. Even the ones on cable.’

  ‘Yes,’ Annie agrees patiently. ‘But the difference is I sometimes go out afterwards. I’m sociable. I haven’t developed hermit tendencies like you have.’

  I listen resignedly. Annie has always been more daring than me. When we were at university I was the one who bought an Afghan coat and burnt joss sticks and said I was going to India, but she was the one who went there.

  ‘What about joining a dating agency?’ Annie urges. She’s really getting into her stride now. ‘You could choose your dates yourself. They supply photos and personal details. Or you could put a personal ad in a newspaper. Lots of people do that these days. There’s no stigma to it.’

  I grimace and start to pull at a loose button on my cardigan. As Annie starts to tell me about an ‘acquaintance’ of hers who met a ‘very nice’ chiropodist through the personal columns of the Buy & Sell magazine, I begin to wonder why she and I are still close friends since we’re obviously so different. I think it’s mainly because we share the same background. We grew up in the same village and have known each other since we were kids. We know the naughty pleasure of testing half-dried cow-pats with our sandals, pressing on them until they released their thick green ooze. We know what it’s like to scamper through fields of long tickling grass and sweet meadow smells. Of finding plump cream mushrooms on a dewy morning and rushing home with them to see if they were the ones that could be fried. Of testing our gumboots in that mucky place where the cows drank from the river. Of being free in a way few city children know and so unsophisticated that we regarded the Eurovision Song Contest as a crucial cultural event. We used to be so similar but somewhere along the line Annie became braver than me, more savvy and less prone to disenchantment. I don’t know how this happened but it did.

  ‘Alice! Alice! Come back from Wonderland, will you?’ Annie is waving her hand in front of my face.

  I stare at her, somewhat startled. I have a tendency to drift off in mid-conversation.

  ‘You haven’t been listening to me at all, have you?’ she demands.

  I regard her bashfully. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I was telling you about a singles dance that’s being held at the Island Hotel this weekend. Look – there’s a big ad about it in the paper.’

  ‘Oh, is there?’ I mumble cautiously, wondering how to sidetrack her. I glance at my watch. ‘Gosh, is that the time!’ I exclaim. ‘I really should be getting on with some work. I’m rather late with an article about masturbation.’

  Annie doesn’t say anything. She’s looking rather exasperated.

  ‘There’s this place in New York where you can get orgasm lessons,’ I continue cheerfully. ‘They sit in a big room with vibrators. Eric McGrath would be fascinated.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know, the boy I sat beside in primary school. He was the first person who told me where “men put their thing”. I thought he was making it up because I wouldn’t let him borrow my Monkees ruler.’

  Annie’s exasperation lifts and she chuckles. ‘Eric McGrath…goodness, I’d almost forgotten about him. He kissed me behind the bicycle shed once. It was awful.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right! You told me. Your braces got stuck together and you were sure it would lead to pregnancy.’

  We’re both spluttering with mirth now like two gleefully naughty little girls. All the differences between us have gone, if only for a moment.

  As Annie leaves I wonder if she’s right. Maybe I do need to become more proactive about men again. Go out more. Be less fastidious. The Gold Blend man is most unlikely to run out of coffee in my vicinity. Romance isn’t going to come to me out of the blue – that’s become painfully clear. Just as I’m thinking this the phone rings. I approach it wearily. Someone’s probably phoning Mira. Her friends tend to leave rather complicated messages. I reach resignedly for a notepad as I pick up the receiver. But the call is not for Mira.

  It’s from a man. And it’s for me.

  Chapter 2

  The phone call was from Eamon. The last man I had sex with. He was ringing to invite me out to dinner. I must say I was extremely surprised. Eamon hasn’t contacted me in ages. Even though it means missing a particularly interesting episode of Coronation Street, I’ve accepted his invitation. In fact, I’m sitting with him now in a swish French restaurant. Céline Dion is singing about everlasting love in the background.

  Eamon looks older than his thirty-nine years and is quite handsome in a restrained, well-ordered kind of way. He takes regular exercise and is generally moderate in his views and lifestyle. He is very practical and methodical enough to save coupons from the back of food packets and get cut-price dinner-sets. His longings don’t seem to lunge at him, like mine do at me, and he doesn’t talk much. Not usually anyway. We are very different.

  He is currently surveying the wine list and I’m wondering whether to order the lobster or play safe with the Chicken Kiev. The lamb sounds pretty good too but I can’t bring myself to consider it. Lambs to me mean fluffy white creatures gambolling through spring meadows. It may sound sentimental, but that’s just the way I am. I’m frowning at the menu. I wish there wasn’t such a large selection. I wish someone would just march up and say, ‘Here, take this,’ and get it over with. Procrastination has been a bit of a problem for me for some time now.

  As you may have gathered, I am not in love with Eamon. If I was I’d be gazing into his dark brown eyes and not fretting about whether to ask the waiter if the chicken is organic. I’d be scanning his solemn, perfectly symmetrical features tenderly. I would have asked him what he is thinking at least five times instead of wishing I hadn’t read my weekly horoscope in The Sunday Times. Apparently the sun is changing signs and Neptune, ‘the planet of deception’, is in a challenging aspect to the ‘unsettling’ Uranus. There is also talk about intensified feelings being triggered by a Full Moon. I should have stayed with the gardening column.

  ‘What are you having?’ I ask Eamon. He has picked up his own menu and has looked at it for about ten seconds.

  ‘The lobster,’ he announces, with exemplary lack of equivocation. I bathe in his decisiveness for a brief moment. Whatever one may say about men, they can be very soothing.

  ‘Yeah, I think I’ll have the lobster too,’ I reply, closing the menu firmly before I’m tempted to scour it again. The starter was easy. We opted for salads.

  ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ Eamon is saying as he unfolds his thick linen napkin.

  ‘Well, thanks for inviting me,’ I smile chirpily. ‘I haven’t eaten in such a swanky place for quite a while.’

  Eamon seems unusually pleased at this revelation. ‘So you haven’t – mmmm – been going out much then?’ he asks, smiling.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I concur. ‘Ah, here come our watercress salads. My! Don’t they look pretty!’ My exclamation is entirely sincere. It’s so nice to feel pampered. No one has stuffed a tomato for me for a very long time. Eamon looks at me happily. I know he finds women rather complicated so my simple delight in my salad must be rather reassuring.

  As I tuck in, he refills my glass of wine and I glance at him gratefully. He’s wearing a very fetching taupe-coloured Armani jacket and looks highly presentable. I really liked the skilful way he ordered the wine and the diligent manner in which he enquired whether I was warm enough and if he should ask the waiter to return my rose-coloured wool shawl. His attentiveness is comforting. He seems so masterful and grown-up sitting there. We fit in perfectly with the other couples in the restaurant – his casual but perfectly groomed appearance somehow compensating for the fact that my Laura Ashley floral-pat
terned cotton dress is inadequately ironed. There are four yellow freesias in a vase on our table, which is covered with a crisp linen tablecloth. I touch them tenderly. The luxuriance of the setting seems almost sensual. I suddenly realize that I’ve been missing this kind of thing – when we used to date, Eamon frequently wined and dined me at nice places. We tended to eat in virtual silence so I entertained myself by earwigging on conversations nearby, which were often fascinatingly indiscreet.

  However, this evening Eamon is far more talkative than usual. He tells me that he has had his kitchen redesigned and that his cousin has given him a book called Talking to Ducks – Rediscovering Joy and Meaning in Your Life. He says the name of this book carefully, as though it is some sort of secret code. Getting to know Eamon requires being alert to these sorts of signals, because he rarely speaks of his own emotions directly.

  I restrain myself from asking him about the ‘duck’ bit. I have talked to ducks myself occasionally and they haven’t answered back. ‘That book sounds interesting, Eamon,’ I say encouragingly. ‘I could certainly do with a bit more “joy and meaning” myself.’

  ‘Yes, you can borrow it if you like,’ he smiles affectionately. ‘I knew it would appeal to you. I’m afraid I haven’t got beyond the first chapter. I haven’t much time for reading these days.’

  I look down at my napkin and wonder if Eamon ever will find the time to address his more murky personal issues. The fact that he mentioned such a book at all must, however, be in some way significant. ‘Are you doing a bit of mid-life reappraisal?’ I ask gently. ‘It’s all the rage these days.’

  ‘I suppose I am in my own small way,’ he agrees, most surprisingly. Then he says, ‘Ah, here comes the lobster,’ and I know he’s decided to swerve off the subject as deftly as Jensen Button in an Alfa Romeo. Eamon prefers cars to feelings. He likes the way you can just open the bonnet and sort things out there and then, so his evasion does not surprise me. On the rare occasions that Eamon has been open with me, he has done it in his own good time. Any attempts I’ve ever made to get him to ‘open up’ have resulted in emotional withdrawal.

  Sometimes it seems like a little game of his. A ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ kind of thing. It’s a kind of defence I suppose. Though he appears strong, silent and sophisticated, deep down Eamon is very sensitive and doesn’t really want people to know it. I sensed this side of him the first moment we met at a friend’s barbecue two years ago. Frankly, I think it’s what drew me to him in the first place, so of course it was rather exasperating to find he had walled this side of himself off quite so neatly. Bits of it slip out sometimes in conversation, and when they do he almost seems relieved. But, just as quickly, he tucks them back into their box and it’s as if they were never there at all. Because of this our conversations tend to be rather bland – as though we’re skirting around something. It can get very lonely and is one of the reasons we drifted apart.

  Though we are still skirting around things in this swish French restaurant, I do sense that Eamon is trying to be more open. I sense he is working up to something, however laboriously, and I wonder what it is. I order chocolate mousse for dessert and he has profiteroles. As we drink our post-prandial liqueurs I restrain myself from playing with the melted wax on a tall vermilion candlestick and listen. He’s telling me more and more about his house and things he’s had done to it. He is looking at me fondly as he speaks, as though these details somehow involve me. Then, after a generous glass of chartreuse he suddenly announces, ‘But the place is far too large for just one person, Alice. It’s just a house, not a home. I need someone to share it with me.’

  ‘You could advertise in the “Flat Sharing” section of The Irish Times. That’s how I found Mira,’ I reply.

  He looks at me with such obvious disappointment that my tentative decoding is confirmed. When he said ‘someone’ he meant me, though he doesn’t seem able to acknowledge this. Instead he starts to talk about a Van Morrison CD I gave him for his birthday and how he often plays it in his car. He says that the Fair Isle sweater we chose together is now one of his favourites and that even though he’s tried to follow my chocolate sponge pudding recipe, his puddings never taste as good as the ones I make myself. He says he doesn’t have much time for cooking anyway. He buys most of his meals pre-prepared at Marks and Spencer. When he starts to tell me, rather nostalgically, that he came across my ‘occasional’ toothbrush in his bathroom recently, I decide it is time to broach the matter he is obviously avoiding.

  ‘Eamon – are you suggesting that we get back together?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes! Yes, I am!’ he grins delightedly. ‘I’d like you to move…to move…’ He fumbles with his napkin. He just can’t seem to spit it out.

  ‘Move in with you?’

  ‘Yes! In fact, something a bit more than that.’

  ‘A bit more? In what way exactly?’

  He doesn’t reply. Instead, he reaches across the table and takes my left hand in his. He presses it tenderly and looks rather pointedly at my marriage finger.

  ‘Is this – is this something to do with marriage?’ I enquire cautiously. I’m beginning to feel like a contestant on Name That Tune.

  ‘Oh, yes, Alice. It is. Absolutely.’ He looks at me with great relief. I stare at him, gobsmacked. Even when we were dating Eamon had seemed a confirmed bachelor, though now he has decided not to be his decisiveness should not really surprise me. Eamon approaches life the way he ordered lobster from the menu. He scans his alternatives and swiftly reaches a decision. I often wish I was more like him.

  After his pronouncement, neither of us speaks for at least half a minute. It feels like half an hour. ‘Why didn’t you say you felt like this before?’ I eventually ask, taking a gulp from my glass of Grand Marnier. ‘You haven’t contacted me in ages. You seemed to have forgotten all about me.’

  ‘Oh, no, I hadn’t, Alice,’ he replies earnestly. ‘I thought about you a lot – it’s just – it’s just that I’ve been away on assignments. I’ve been incredibly busy.’

  I get that forlorn feeling you get when someone says they’re going to transfer your phone call and clearly doesn’t know how to. The ‘bleep’ just doesn’t sound right, and neither does Eamon’s explanation. Being ‘incredibly busy’ wouldn’t have stopped me from contacting him, if I’d wanted to.

  ‘Eamon’ – I begin the sentence cautiously, but with as much firmness as I can muster. ‘Eamon, I think you should know I’m not at all sure we’re suited.’

  Eamon does not seem surprised at this remark. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about commitment lately,’ he says slowly. ‘My younger brother got married last month and it just didn’t seem right.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m the older one,’ he frowns. ‘It should have been me.’

  ‘I don’t think they keep scorecards about that kind of thing.’

  ‘I went to the wedding alone,’ he continues dolefully. ‘My sister kept saying, “Where’s Alice? Why didn’t you bring Alice?” And I thought, “Yes, why didn’t I? Why isn’t Alice here?’” He says it somewhat reproachfully. I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

  ‘Life has got rather bland without someone to share it with – but it was never bland with you.’ His tone has changed to fond nostalgia. ‘I’ve been remembering all the good times we had together and wondering why I let us drift apart. We could both wait forever to meet our ideal person, but what is “suited” Alice?’ He looks at the wine bottle as though it might speak. ‘We’re comfortable together. We have similar interests. I find you attractive. Sexy too.’

  I watch this lob land in my court with a rogue bounce. It’s hard to respond to compliments with an overhead smash, and yet I want to be truthful. ‘Look, Eamon,’ I sigh. ‘You’re a handsome, intelligent man and, yes, it is true we are quite comfortable together. Sometimes. That pine shelving you put up has been invaluable. And I think all those subtitled movies we saw together did improve my French. But we don’t have that many sim
ilar interests, do we?’

  ‘We’re both alone, Alice.’ Eamon looks deep into my eyes. ‘We’re both nearly forty and, maybe, want a family. That, added to the rest, adds up to quite a lot.’

  I wish he hadn’t said that word. Forty. It wasn’t fair. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve got romance mixed up with tennis. I really don’t want to be ‘forty–love’ – that is, loveless, like some score at Wimbledon. As Eamon speaks I can almost hear the old biological tick tock, and other tick tocks too. He seems to be treating his proposal like some sort of business agreement. The romantic side of me is, frankly, rather offended.

  I just know my Mr Wonderful, if he exists, would have found a better way to broach this subject. He would have looked deep into my eyes like Tom Hanks stared at Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle. But maybe watching too many Hollywood films has skewed my judgement. Maybe Eamon is right to treat marriage in this methodical manner. There’s no ‘whoosh’ about his proposal. No sudden dislocation. It’s nothing like the rabbit holes I have so frequently wandered into. It seems practical. Sensible. So why am I gripping the edge of my seat so fiercely that my fingers have begun to ache?

  Eamon leans towards me earnestly. ‘Look, I’m going to Peru tomorrow.’

  ‘Peru?’ I repeat, somewhat startled.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be away for five months. I know I should have mentioned it earlier but it does give you time, Alice. Time to decide what your answer will be. I sense you need that.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I agree with considerable relief. ‘Leave it with me,’ I add, as though he’s put a memo on my desk. ‘I’ll let you know what my answer is when you get back.’

  Eamon studies me carefully. He’s a consulting engineer. He knows about construction. About the weights that things can take. Is he surveying me to see if I could bear him? There is always a heaviness about him. But would I just add to it? And what would he add to me?

  After the meal, Eamon drives me home in his new Audi. As we cruise along the dual carriageway I press the buttons of the car radio, trying to find something brazen and unsentimental. ‘And now we have Laren Brassière’s new CD, “Little Fishes”,’ an Australian disc jockey says with practised brightness. As a loud wailing sound invades the car I lunge towards the control panel and surf on to Barbra Streisand who is singing ‘I Am a Woman in Love’. I wince and am about to press the buttons again when Eamon says, ‘Leave that on. It’s nice’. He glances at me tenderly, conspiratorially, as though I am ‘A Woman in Love’ myself. But I’m not, that’s just the point. I’m not.