Wise Follies

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed humbly. James Mitchel was so right. Things do take time. I forget that sometimes. I get impatient. He wasn’t impatient. Maybe he’d been sent to teach me all sorts of important things.

  ‘You should glaze this.’ James was studying my vase. ‘I like it. It’s a nice shape. And it’s the first thing you’ve made here. It’s important.’

  ‘Is it?’ I stared at him gratefully. I have a tendency to dismiss my own efforts too easily. To not give myself enough credit.

  ‘Of course it’s important,’ he smiled, and then he walked off to talk to someone else and I knew I’d have to learn to share him. He’s just that sort of person.

  As I walked home I told myself sternly that I mustn’t get infatuated with James Mitchel. I hardly knew him. And it was plainly part of a recognizable pattern. Indulging in complete cynicism for a while and then, suddenly, converting dramatically back to a kind of Mills & Boon idealism. ‘Poor, dear Eamon out there in Peru,’ I found myself thinking. ‘What an innocent you are about me.’

  Even so, as soon as I reached the cottage I went to my laptop computer most eagerly. The ‘Sex Comes in from the Cold’ article had to be ready the next day and thoughts of James Mitchel had made me much more enthusiastic about it.

  ‘Get some chocolate chip ice-cream and feed it to him slowly on a silver spoon,’ I wrote. ‘Then kiss him gently, sharing its delicious sweetness. Let what you’re feeling roll over your tastebuds. Pretend that you are tasting ice-cream and him for the first time. Don’t hurry. Linger in the moment and enjoy it. These things take time…’

  Chapter 6

  Some things seem to take a very long time. Especially this concert. We’ve only been here half an hour, but it seems like four. ‘Be who you really wanna be,’ a singer called Laren Brassière is screeching at us. ‘You’re not some sideshow monkey, dancin’ on some lead. Find your tune. Your very own. Only it, and not some streetcar slowin’, not some man, can really take you hoooome.’

  I really want to be at home right now. This concert is dreadful. Even the bits of moistened tissue paper I stuck in my ears have only slightly muffled the noise. Mira dragged me here. She says I’ve become obsessed with James Mitchel and need distraction.

  I still only see him once a week – at pottery class. I must see more of him. I must. I make love to him every night, but he doesn’t know it yet. Very occasionally I wander around the roads near his house, hoping that we’ll meet. I’ve started numerous letters to him. They go: ‘Dear James, I hope you don’t mind me writing to you out of the blue like this…’ and then they stop.

  Mira says I’m behaving as if he’s ‘the last good man’. She says I’ve got the whole thing completely out of proportion and if passion has this effect on me I should marry Eamon. She says Eamon’s proposal has sent me into a panic about something, and I’d better find out what it is. I wish she hadn’t dragged me to this stupid concert. I don’t see how it can possibly help.

  Ever since Mira decided to become an eccentric spinster she’s had a very low boredom threshold. A deep need for diversion. She’s been seeking out the oddest people she can find, and Laren Brassière is certainly different. For example, all she’s wearing is a see-through négligée with only a bra and pants underneath. In a boudoir setting this ensemble might look ‘come hither’ but here, on Laren, it clearly says ‘fuck off’. Tall and slim with long black hair that does not appear freshly washed, she seems in her late thirties. Though her lips have a surly confidence, her eyes are huge and almost girlish as they peer out at us.

  ‘Bugger it anyway, and I’m missing Gardeners’ Questions too,’ I think, as the jangled, mangled music continues. Snatches of it sound like the garbled noises that emerged during French class when the Monsieur Thibaud tape went funny.

  ‘Plastic!’ Laren is now screeching into the microphone, occasionally curling her body slightly as if riding out some psychic twinge. ‘Plastic! Plastic! Plastic!’ From what I can make out from the lyrics, which break over us like shards of glass, the song is about people. I feel as though I’m listening to nails being scraped across a blackboard. I look at Mira, hoping that’s what she’s feeling too, but she just sits there entranced.

  Laren is prancing around the stage now. It’s impossible to ignore her. Everybody is watching her intently. Even the ones dragged here to lend support to battered wives – that’s the cause the proceeds of this concert are going to. Tattoo-less women – women who might as easily be watching Neil Diamond. But there is something about their faces that makes it clear they aren’t. They are looking at Laren Brassière as if for clues. Shocked in some way, but not as much as they’d expected. For though Laren Brassière is both rude and lewd – some of her gyrations are really quite outrageous – there is more to her than that. Even I can see that now. It’s in her eyes. There’s something almost innocent and bewildered about them. And yet she’s obviously not a woman anyone could batter easily. Like James Mitchel, she has conviction.

  Laren ends her encore with what looks like a micro-phone blow job, and then slinks sullenly off-stage. ‘Wonderful,’ says Mira dreamily, and with a strange glint in her eyes. ‘I must meet her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Laren. I must meet her. She’s so – she’s so…’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mira agrees blissfully. ‘Come on. Let’s go to the bar next door. She’s probably there. They all go there after shows.’

  I sigh. There’s quite a good film on Channel 4.

  Mira is right. Laren is in the bar. She’s slouching over the counter having a pint with her band. She’s surrounded by a small group of cautious female fans, many of whom are way past adolescence. They are trying to look as cool as Laren herself. Every so often they throw gimlet-eyed glances in her direction. I glance carefully at her too, though not as carefully as Mira. For it is clear that Laren Brassière is a deeply eccentric woman who does not need spinsterhood as her excuse. As I stand near her I notice that she frequently laughs long and loud in mid-conversation and for no apparent reason. What’s more, the bra under her see-through nightie isn’t even clean.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say urgently to Mira, suddenly deeply fearful. She doesn’t seem to hear me. Her eyes are shining. The last time I saw them shining like that she was with Frank, the married man she had a passionate affair with. The man I don’t think she’s got over, even though she insists she has.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say again. For I suddenly know that Mira feels herself close to the ‘tune’ Laren sang about earlier, and I’m not at all sure it’s one I’d like hearing.

  ‘Mellow out, Alice,’ Mira says, suddenly slipping into California-speak.

  ‘So, are you going to talk to her then?’ I demand. ‘You said you wanted to.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Mira replies, a little shyly. ‘Maybe later.’

  I scrutinize Laren once more…trying to identify her strange attraction. Maybe it’s because she has somehow sidestepped the proprieties most of us have been saddled with for years. Seen in a certain light, that could be a cause of gratitude. This emotion has certainly spilt over on to Mira. She’s talking with a cluster of fellow fans. They’re agreeing that the evening was ‘different’. They’re discussing the aggressive sound-system and Laren’s clothes. Then they move on to other topics, because that’s what adults do. They’re drinking rather freely and, as they talk, small expletives and scowls occur. Slight grimaces twitch upon their lips and when their laughter comes – about men and marriage maybe – it is way too loud.

  I have a sudden yearning to get into conversation with Laren myself. I want to ask her how she came to be like she is – and if it’s preventable. The thing is Laren looks like she wants a conversation as much as I need to know more about smiling. She’s scowling. Scowling into her drink and lighting up cigarettes offered to her by her equally weary drummer. She absent-mindedly scratches her elbow every so often. Someone I knew used to scratch their elbow like that – who was it? Now that I’m closer to La
ren she seems strangely familiar. Have I seen her somewhere before? Glimpsed her on a poster in Virgin Megastore perhaps? From snatches of conversation I gather she and her band are waiting for their equipment to be loaded into their van. They are not waiting around because they want to. I should have known that. Then a skinny fellow wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and tattoo comes over to them, says something, and they drain their glasses.

  ‘Fuck the terrapins – I’m not putting up with them.’ That’s what Laren says to a man with long blond hair as she rises from her bar stool. I’ve heard that voice before. I know I have. It’s nothing like the nasal whine she sings with. As she turns to grab her packet of Gauloises from the counter I look at her. Really look. Burrowing beneath the layers of lurid make-up and spiky, dyed black hair. Like a grainy picture – obscured by its own white spaces – another face flickers for a second in front of me. And then it’s gone and, as the sharp, streetwise features of Laren Brassière condense, I feel even more bewildered. I am now sure I know Laren from somewhere, but I simply can’t place her.

  The bar is closing. ‘Look, I’ll drive home,’ I tell Mira. ‘I’ve drunk far less than you.’

  ‘OK,’ Mira agrees swiftly. She sways a bit as she hands me the keys and keeps exclaiming ‘Oops!’ and giggling as we push our way through the crowds. As soon as she gets into the car she slumps inebriatedly into the passenger seat. Then, as I turn the ignition key, she starts to doze.

  As I drive Mira’s car along the dual carriageway I am still puzzling about Laren. Where on earth did we meet before? Do we go to the same hairdresser? No – no it’s more than that. She’s someone from the past, I know she is. The face I glimpsed through all that make-up seemed a grown-up version of the one I knew. Could she be someone from school? Could she be… Laren MacDermott?

  The thought seems so preposterous that I’m tempted to stop the car in a lay-by. Maybe I drank more this evening than I’d thought. Of course Laren Brassière couldn’t be Laren MacDermott, my meek, mild-mannered friend from school. The girl who cried every time Eric McGrath made the back of her bra ping open by pulling at it through her sweater. It’s just that she speaks like her, and they both scratch their elbows and have the same face and first name.

  By the time I’ve parked outside the cottage I have pretty much accepted that Laren MacDermott is now Laren Brassière. I am still finding it very hard, however, to find any explanation for her mysterious metamor-phosis. As I walk up the pathway and Mira lurches after me, I recall that Laren never spoke about becoming a singer. The last time we met she was about to do a beautician’s course in Edinburgh. We were in Bewley’s Cafe on Grafton Street and shared a plate of chips. She did send me a postcard from Scotland. She didn’t write much on it. It was just a quick scribble to say she’d found a flat. She didn’t give me the address so I wrote to her care of her parents. She never replied. I was a bit disappointed, I suppose, but not that surprised. People do tend to drift apart after school.

  As soon as we get into the cottage I fill a large glass with water and insist that Mira drinks it. She got through a considerable number of vodkas this evening. ‘You don’t want a hangover, do you?’ I fuss protectively.

  ‘Laren was wonderful, wasn’t she?’ says Mira, cradling her glass of water reverentially.

  ‘She certainly was unusual,’ I reply tactfully. I’ve decided not to tell Mira that Laren and I are acquainted. She’d almost certainly want me to invite her round to dinner. She’d probably arrive in a bodystocking or something.

  ‘I wish I’d spoken to her,’ Mira continues wistfully.

  ‘Well, I’m very glad I didn’t,’ I think, remembering that I’d wanted to ask Laren how she became what she is. If I had she might have asked the same thing of me – and I really don’t know what I would have told her.

  I feel frightened suddenly. ‘Life is a narrow bridge,’ Aaron told me that once. It was a quote he’d heard somewhere. ‘Life is a narrow bridge and the important thing is not to be afraid.’ But I am. I wish I wasn’t. And even more so now that Mira has started to laugh beside me.

  Loudly, and for no apparent reason.

  Chapter 7

  Laren MacDermott, that is Laren Brassière, is the reason why I like neon tetras. They are small tropical fish with streaks of blue that flash iridescently, especially in certain kinds of light. She had an aquarium full of them in her bedroom. Laren was a ‘day girl’ at secondary school, but I was a ‘boarder’. I wasn’t allowed to leave the school grounds until fifth form, and when I did it was often to go to her house. I stared and stared at her small fish. In some way they seemed to represent hope and how it can flash at you suddenly, iridescently, at the most unexpected moments.

  I loved Laren’s home. It seemed to me the home of someone who should be carefree and happy, even though she wasn’t. She thought her bum was too big, her nose too long and her hair too lanky. She didn’t even like her teeth, which were perfect, and was very keen on Leonard Cohen’s more lugubrious songs. When I visited her mum used to give us mugs of tea and biscuits. It made me feel like I was back on civvy street. Ever since I’d been thrust into boarding school at twelve I’d felt as though I was in the army – a reluctant soldier sent to some perplexing front. I felt a certain identification with the joke that went ‘her parents couldn’t afford to send her to boarding school so they locked her in the attic for a while.’ I would have far preferred to be in the attic actually. At least it would have been ‘home’. While Laren dreamed of meeting a ‘Wonderful Man’ – initially I simply dreamed of freedom.

  Laren’s ‘Wonderful Man’ back then was Leonard Whiting, who starred with Olivia Hussey in Romeo and Juliet. She even persuaded me to skip ‘games’ one afternoon and go to the cinema with her to see it. But, somehow, the headmaster found out about this misdemeanour and I was gated. Laren’s mum, on the other hand, was just glad she was taking an interest in Shakespeare. I cried and cried at the unfairness of it. And afterwards I stared harder at the neon tetras than ever. Luxuriating in the way they darted with such carefree competence, in their big, beautifully maintained aquarium – completely unaware, it appeared, of their restrictions. And as I did so, Laren’s dreams of meeting some ‘Wonderful Man’ began to grow on me. It seemed some way beyond my own high walls. At weekends I sometimes stayed with her and she took me to films. Films where some man saw some woman at an airport and their eyes met and that was It. And then some schmaltzy music swelled the cinema and I was so moved I couldn’t even chew my Milky Mint.

  Laren said she was going to marry young and have loads and loads of children. As a teenager I didn’t mention marriage myself, but I did want to be in love. And paint. And travel. And wear skirts as infrequently as possible. I had no idea of the kind of life I might be leading when I was thirty-eight, but I’m sure I didn’t suspect for one minute that I would grow so very keen on horticulture. In fact I only bought my cottage in Monkstown, County Dublin, five years ago because it had a garden at the front and at the back.

  Each of them is now brimful with seasonal blossoms. Tonight, as I walk back up the pathway after work, I pause in royal fashion before various plants and have a brief chat with the new scented geranium, saying that I hope she’s settled in. Then I hear my elderly neighbour Mrs Peabody calling ‘Cooee, Alice’ and go over to her. She’s standing at the wicker fence.

  ‘Sorry to ask, dear, but would you do me a small favour?’ she says. ‘Could you pop round to the corner shop and get me a loaf of bread? My knees are a bit stiff today.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I reply. As I say this the man who’s moved in round the corner saunters by breezily and calls out, ‘Hello, Mrs Peabody,’ in a cheerful manner. Goodness, they know each other already. And he’s even stopping for a chat. He’s standing at Mrs Peabody’s small iron gate. As Mrs Peabody says, ‘Come here for a moment, Liam, I’d like to introduce you to my neighbour,’ he opens the gate and walks up the pathway. I study him with detached interest. It’s hard to tell what age he is but maybe
he’s a bit older than I’d thought. Around thirty perhaps, though he could easily pass as twenty-five. His broad, calm face looks mature, almost philosophical, but there is definitely a youthful twinkle about his deep brown eyes. He is tall and dark-featured. In fact he looks a bit Jewish. I’ve always admired those sorts of looks but since I’ve met James Mitchel other men’s handsomeness does not seem to affect me. That’s just the way it is with love, I suppose.

  ‘Alice, this is Liam,’ Mrs Peabody tells me. ‘He’s just moved in to a house on Half Moon Lane.’

  I’m about to say I know this, but then think better of it. It’s best not to admit to voyeurism to new neighbours. ‘So, how are you settling in, Liam?’ I ask politely, trying to look him straight in the eye.

  ‘Well, I still have piles of boxes lying around the place, but I’m getting around to them gradually,’ he replies, equally politely. ‘It’s a lovely area. And I like being close to the sea.’

  I was right, he does sound slightly American. Maybe he spent a few months in New York once and brought the accent back as a souvenir. I pick up accents quickly myself. Only the other day I was interviewing someone from Manchester. After an hour I was beginning to sound like one of the Rovers Return regulars on Coronation Street.

  ‘So, how’s the gardening going, Liam?’ Mrs Peabody asks, a trifle slyly it seems to me.

  ‘I’ve mowed the lawn but that’s about the extent of it,’ he replies, his calm face clouding suddenly. I recognize that bewildered, half-apologetic expression. It’s one of my own. ‘Gardening’s completely new to me,’ he continues, switching to a brave smile that’s almost as dazzling as Richard Branson’s. ‘The last place we lived in was an apartment. The only bit of greenery in it was a rather rampant cheese plant.’