Wise Follies

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  ‘Ah yes, there it is,’ I think. ‘He said the “we” word.’

  Mrs Peabody doesn’t seem to notice Liam’s ‘we’. Instead she turns to me and says, ‘Liam and I met the other day when I was doing a bit of pruning. He asked me what the soil type is round here.’

  ‘It’s alkaline’, I reply automatically.

  ‘Yes, I told him that.’ Mrs Peabody looks at me approvingly. ‘Alice is a most accomplished gardener,’ she announces. ‘I’m sure she’d be glad to advise you about your garden, Liam.’ She turns to me and adds pointedly, ‘Wouldn’t you, dear?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ I nod, somewhat unenthusiastically. Liam seems a nice enough young man, but I have no particular wish to become acquainted with his garden. I have quite enough to do in my own.

  Liam is looking at me carefully. ‘Some gardening advice would be most welcome,’ he says, ‘but I don’t want you to feel under any obligation…mmmm…’ He has clearly forgotten my name.

  ‘Alice,’ I prompt.

  ‘I can get some books about it,’ he continues. ‘I believe the basics are fairly straightforward, though by this stage I think my clematis may require counselling.’

  As he says this Mrs Peabody’s telephone rings. ‘Excuse me for a moment,’ she smiles, and starts to walk away stiffly.

  I wish her telephone hadn’t rung just then. I don’t want to be left alone with Liam. What on earth am I going to say to him? I doubt if we have much in common. Though I may admire his appearance aesthetically, he doesn’t seem my type at all. I wish he’d just go home to his girlfriend. When he said ‘we’ he must have been referring to that pretty woman I saw wedging a picture through his front door the other day. I glance longingly at my own front door and fidget around a bit. I jingle my keys and even stifle a yawn. It’s been a long day and I want to watch Eastenders. But Liam is not getting the message. In fact he is now leaning languorously against Mrs Peabody’s fence. I am beginning to rather dislike him.

  ‘My house overlooks your cottage, doesn’t it?’ he says suddenly.

  ‘Yes, our gardens do adjoin,’ I agree a trifle primly, letting my gaze drift to Mrs Peabody’s roses.

  Liam smiles. What is he smiling at? ‘So that must be your cat who sits on my wall sometimes,’ he observes.

  ‘Yes, probably.’ I say it rather wearily. I’m simply going to have to make my excuses and go. I glance at my watch. ‘Goodness – is that the time?’ I exclaim. ‘It’s been nice meeting you, Liam, but I’d better be off. I have to go to the shop for Mrs Peabody. She wants me to get some bread.’

  ‘I was just going to the shop myself,’ Liam replies. ‘I’ll get the bread for her when I’m there.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks.’ His offer has made me feel flustered. What excuse can I now give for my getaway? ‘Well, I’d better go anyway,’ I begin. ‘Because I have…I have…’

  ‘You have things to do?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have things to do,’ I agree quickly.

  ‘Bye then, Alice’ he says, as he turns to go. ‘It’s been nice meeting you.’

  ‘Yes, missing you already,’ I mutter sardonically to myself as I head eagerly for home. I’m just about to scurry into the cottage when I hear Mrs Peabody calling out ‘Cooee, Alice!’ again. I sigh and go over to her. ‘Liam’s getting your bread,’ I inform her. ‘He was going to the shop anyway.’

  ‘Oh, what a nice young man he is,’ she clucks approvingly. ‘Since you’re here, Alice, could you pop into my cottage for a moment? I’m sorry to impose, but I’m a bit worried about Cyril. I’d like you to have a look at him for me.’ Mrs Peabody doesn’t see things clearly up close these days. She obviously thinks she may have missed something.

  As I go into her small cluttered sitting-room I see that Cyril is standing on his wooden perch, and is staring ahead stonily. Cyril is Mrs Peabody’s budgerigar. He got out of his cage the other day, and he hasn’t been the same since. Now he doesn’t like being in the cage, or out of it, apparently. He’s moping. He’s moping for the Australian outback, it seems to me. A brief flight around suburbia has not soothed him. I know just how he feels.

  ‘Hello, Cyril,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

  He doesn’t reply of course. The only word Cyril knows is ‘bollocks’ and he only uses it on a good day. Mrs Peabody says he picked it up from her handyman. She keeps wanting Cyril to say ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’ but he won’t.

  ‘I think he looks a bit more chirpy than last week,’ I tell her. ‘He’s just taken a little bit of seed.’

  Cyril has taken a bit of seed but he doesn’t look chirpy. In fact he looks deeply disillusioned. There is no need to tell Mrs Peabody this.

  ‘Oh, really!’ Mrs Peabody beams with pleasure. ‘Maybe it’s the Russ Conway. I’ve been playing him Russ Conway. That usually cheers him up.’

  ‘Well, I’d better be off then,’ I say, giving Cyril a sympathetic look.

  As I open the front door of my cottage I hope, as usual, that something wonderful has arrived in the post. A letter, perhaps, from James Mitchel saying he ‘cannot keep his love a secret any longer’. What greets me on the hall mat this evening is, in fact, a hand-addressed letter in a blue envelope for Mira and a forwarded catalogue for thermal underwear addressed to myself.

  An aunt of mine called Hilda was concerned about the skimpy cotton dresses I wore about ten years ago. She lectured me about thermal underwear with the zeal of a Jehovah’s Witness. She also put me on the Damart mailing list. I should really write and tell them that I have become a many-layered person in my life and in my clothing, though I’d strip off real fast for James Mitchel. I really would.

  As far as I can tell James Mitchel doesn’t have a girlfriend. Mildred, who’s the class snooper, hasn’t discovered one anyway. Even though she’s seventy she fancies him a bit herself. Who wouldn’t. Especially in those tight black Lee jeans that show off his nice firm bum. He has long toned legs too, and broad shoulders, and strong arms. His hair is genuinely sunstreaked from sailing. ‘Boats may be safe in harbour, but that’s not what they were made for,’ he said the other day and as I listened I knew – I just knew – he could teach me to be less afraid. That he could whoosh me up in the mistral of his wonderful calm enthusiasm. That he could send me scudding.

  The descriptions of James’s outdoor pursuits are so bracing. I almost lean on the words as he says them, as if into a strong sea breeze. They are such a refreshing change from my own introspective tendencies. But I think what’s clinched it is the massage.

  James Mitchel knows how to do massage. He has been trained. He has the certificate. How blissful it would be to lie naked with him. To have his big broad hands knead me all over. How beautiful it would be to stare deep – deep into his eyes. He can probably make love for ages. We’d be surrounded by lit candles and muslin. We’d probably have to leave little snacks lying around to sustain us – like those tantric sex devotees. Sex with James Mitchel would be a meeting of souls as well as bodies. It would be spiritual. Transcendental. Uplifting things like that become more important as you get older, and of course they help you not to care about your bum wobbling a bit. It would be completely unlike sex with someone younger – say, Liam. Not that I’d want to have sex with Liam. I really wouldn’t. I have no interest in him, and he’d never ask me to have sex with him anyway, so I’m just using him as an example.

  With Liam, for example, I’d be terribly self-conscious. I’d just know he’d be noticing my cellulite – even though there’s not that much of it. And the fact that my bum’s a bit too big and I have a hair on my chin, and my breasts aren’t as pert as they used to be. I just know he’d be comparing me to women his own age and wishing he was with one of them. It would be very demoralizing and I’d have to insist on low lighting. I wish James Mitchel had moved in round the corner instead of Liam. That way we’d be sure to get to know each other better. I’d keep popping by in low-cleavage dresses until he had to ravish me.

  I’ve bought some low-cleavage T-shirts to wear
to pottery class. I put ‘Golden Wonder’ on my face, Fidgi perfume into my shoes and tie bright scarves around my hair. I’m not sure James notices, but I have my dreams to console me. For he has moved into my imaginary villa in Provence already. He massages me nightly and I do the same for him. When we buy baguettes in the local village old people smile at us knowingly. We might even start a family soon…

  If only we could get off the subject of ceramics.

  Chapter 8

  My low-cleavage T-shirts have obviously had some effect because James Mitchel chose me the other evening. He chose me when he needed someone to demonstrate the ‘coil technique’. Basically this involves rolling clay into long strips and coiling it round on itself. It’s a technique that’s particularly common in Africa, apparently.

  ‘Alice – could you bring your bowl over here?’ James asked me. I naturally complied with his wishes. He and I stood at a table in front of the whole class. ‘Alice has rolled her clay out very uniformly,’ he said, while I blushed with pleasure. ‘See how she’s built it up – rounding it out so that it makes a pleasing curve.’ I looked down at the table and tried to look bashful. I tried to hide the fact that I was absurdly pleased. Mildred was regarding me rather enviously. Her own bowl was pretty good, but I didn’t care. My feelings for James Mitchel seemed to have made me a bit ruthless. When he picked my bowl up and showed the class how I had smoothed the insides carefully, I wanted to kiss him.

  He was standing very close to me. More close than seemed entirely necessary. I began to wonder if he was using this demonstration as an excuse. An excuse to be near me. At one point his arm reached across mine and our warm, naked skin touched. I could even feel his little hairs. He didn’t pull his arm away from mine immediately. It lingered for a moment…almost longingly. Of course this could have happened because he was distracted – Mildred had just asked him a question – but I think there was more to it than that. I suppose that’s why I stayed behind and offered to help him clean up after class.

  It’s really not fair the way people leave the pottery wheels. They don’t clean them properly after they’ve used them. They sponge them out all right, but they don’t bother to get at the stuff that’s wedged into the corners. The stuff that dries in and becomes even harder to extract. They leave globs of clay all over the place and don’t even rinse their sponges properly. They become all squishy and mucky and you have to run them under a tap for ages to get them clean. They leave the utensils around too. They’re supposed to go into a big wooden drawer, but some of them are left on the tables. They’re also supposed to put the clay objects they’ve given up on into a bucket which has some water in it, only sometimes they try to stick it back on to the unused clay in the big clear plastic bag. I began to feel rather angry on James’s behalf as I scurried around the studio, trying to make things shipshape. But I was very glad to have an excuse to be alone with him too. Sharing these somewhat domestic tasks with him had an intimate feel to it. It was as if we were a couple suddenly – a couple clearing up after the kids had gone to bed.

  The fact that we didn’t speak much seemed to make the situation even more loaded. The clay, as it squelched between my fingers, seemed deeply sensual – and the silent rhythm of our movements felt quite carnal too. The way James wiped the tables seemed so masterful. So full of hidden meaning. It was almost like one of the more restrained scenes in that film The Piano. The early ones where the daughter was scampering off somewhere and Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel were alone in his mountain shack. I wished there was a musical instrument in the room and I could play it with sudden brilliance.

  James hadn’t spoken for ages. The sexual tension in the room was so thick I almost had to push my way through it as I scrubbed and wiped and rinsed. I wondered whether he was wrestling with his conscience. Trying to subdue his emotions. After all, teachers aren’t really supposed to become involved with their pupils. But this was different. I wanted to tell him that. This was way beyond ceramics. This was a man–woman thing. I suspected that he was realizing this. Every so often he looked up and gave me a small, grateful smile. If he did speak, it seemed to me that he might say something wonderful. It would come out as a sort of husky groan, a deep rasp of longing. ‘Put that J-cloth down and come here, Alice.’ I furtively slipped a Silvermint into my mouth.

  James was perspiring a bit. I could smell it. It was a lovely smell. Clean and male and lusty. I wanted to snuffle into his armpits like a truffle pig. There are many smells to James Mitchel, and all of them are blissful. I could enthuse about them the way a wine expert might enthuse about her favourite muscatel. ‘A hint of sandalwood wafting through the sweet flowers in a summer meadow, a hint of sea and pine leaves – and something else so wonderful I cannot name it…’ that kind of thing. I wished it was dark outside and that the lights would go out for some reason. That way we’d have to grope around and probably bump into each other and it would Happen. James would take me in his arms and press me so close to him that we almost melted together. He’d press his mouth against mine, urgently, hungrily, for a long, deep, delicious kiss, our pheromones dancing.

  Thinking all this made me rather self-conscious. I was determined to appear businesslike – even searching in the cupboards to see if there was any Ajax. I scrubbed those plastic table-tops until they shone. I scrutinized them carefully. They were clean, there was no getting round it. Any moment now, James and I would have to leave, leave with our passion completely unaddressed. How very poignant it was. I sighed deeply as I gave my J-cloth its final rinse.

  And then James said something. ‘Come here, Alice, I want you…’ As I stared at him, he seemed to hesitate. ‘For a moment,’ he added quickly, but I barely heard him. I wanted to run, arms out, grab him. I didn’t. I approached him slowly, cautiously, like David Attenborough might a mountain gorilla. I didn’t want to frighten him away.

  ‘What do you want me for, James?’ I asked tremulously. Then I gave him a very encouraging smile. I looked at his earlobes and thought how I’d love to nibble them. I was very glad I’d had that peppermint in my pocket.

  He seemed so tall as he stood there before me.

  ‘Alice, I was wondering if you’d like to…?’ He was looking straight into my eyes.

  I fluttered my eyelashes in as coquettish a manner as I could manage. ‘I’m sure I would, James,’ I thought, almost quivering with nervous excitement. ‘Go on. Please, just ask.’

  ‘I was wondering if you’d like to look at the new glazes I mixed the other day. One of them might be suitable for your coil bowl.’ He was pointing enthusiastically to some large plastic containers full of viscous coloured liquids. As he peered at them with a deeply preoccupied expression it became clear that romantic lunges were very far from his mind. He had that rolled-up sleeves, ‘isn’t this interesting?’ expression that one often sees on children’s television.

  I gazed at the glazes too. Numbly. Uninterestedly. The humiliation of it. I’d almost thrown myself into his arms and there he was mulling over pottery all the time. He was clearly trying to be kind to me, but not in the way that I’d wanted. ‘I fired some samples of these glazes,’ he continued, as he picked up some small ceramic squares from the table. They were all different colours.

  ‘I – I like the sandstone,’ I mumbled, trying to force a little smile. ‘The – the sandstone is very nice.’

  ‘Excellent choice,’ James beamed. ‘Well, Alice, thanks so much for your help. Don’t wait – I’m sure you’re keen to get home. I’ll lock up.’

  ‘Good-night then, James.’ I looked at him longingly.

  ‘Yes, good-night, Alice,’ he replied, producing a large bunch of keys from his jeans pocket.

  As I walked home I wondered how I could have misread James’s signals quite so drastically. It hadn’t been like The Piano at all – more like Blue Peter. It was so very humiliating. And disappointing. That Silvermint had been entirely unnecessary. The self-deception of the evening made me squirm.

  But at least
James had been friendly. He had used me to demonstrate the coil technique. He smiled at me so gratefully. Yes – yes – that was something. Surely one day – one day very soon perhaps – James might take me in his arms.

  This is the fifth time I have asked James about ‘raku’ – a type of Japanese lead-glazed coarse-grained pottery. He sounds slightly exasperated as he goes over the details again. I have to find a way of talking to him somehow. Asking him if I could open a window only took five seconds. And admiring his sherbet-coloured shirt was equally brief. ‘James, ravish me – here – now, or during coffee break,’ I want to tell him. Instead the conversation somehow slips on to slipware and then porcelain until Mildred, who’s been trying to make a jug for the past four weeks, asks for his assistance.

  This is the final night of term and I’m getting desperate. Even though I ask James questions I already know the answers for, I can’t seem to broach the one I am most doubtful about. I can’t seem to ascertain whether the tender interest he takes in my ceramic endeavours extends to any romantic interest in myself. I’m being far too meek. I stare up at him as though he is a mountain. I search for emotional footholds from my base camp. In fact, I’m just about to gingerly attempt a slight ascent of my beloved and tell him I like his aftershave when he says he has something to tell us.

  ‘I am infatuated with Alice Evans. I simply must share this with you.’ How wonderful those words sound, only James Mitchel isn’t saying them. He’s standing near the door and is solemnly informing us that he is moving to West Cork. He’s opening a pottery studio there.

  I’m gobsmacked. I just stand there trying to keep my expression calm, while emotions go off inside me like popcorn. Then I start to smile idiotically, as though absurdly pleased.

  ‘West Cork is such a lovely place,’ I sort of squawk.

  ‘Yes, it is. So picturesque,’ people agree as they head calmly, unbrokenly, back to their clay. Someone says they have brought in chocolate digestive biscuits for the tea break as a special treat. They’ve all just accepted it, like it’s no big deal. But I can’t accept it as I pretend to study my newly glazed vase with an expression so rigid with sadness, so expressionless, it makes my cheeks ache.