Wise Follies

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  I read through the article, which I have almost finished. Then I type: ‘I must make one thing clear, however, and it is this: if you don’t feel like having sex outdoors don’t do it. There is a lot more to life than sex – such as self-respect. Don’t be pestered into it. Men can be very selfish sometimes. If keeping your relationship going means having pine needles up your bum each week, then you may be better off without it. Remember, there are quite a number of interesting evening classes available if you find yourself alone and bored.’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Sarah is waving my article fractiously.

  ‘Since you’ve obviously just read it, I don’t see why I need to tell you,’ I answer with uncharacteristic feistiness.

  Sarah moves around in her seat agitatedly. ‘There’s no oomph to it and the last paragraph is completely inappropriate.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It just doesn’t fit in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the article is supposed to be light-hearted and fun – not a lecture on self-assertion. We’ve done self-assertion. We’ve done it piles of times. You’re quite right to state that women shouldn’t be coerced into this kind of thing but, frankly, that could have been said in a sentence.’

  I sit down on a Habitat cane chair and glare at her.

  ‘What I’ve written is true. I have the grass stains to prove it.’

  Thankfully the phone rings before my mutiny mounts further and Sarah answers it. Someone is trying to argue with her about a design issue, but she’s not having it. Whoever it is should know that it’s usually pointless arguing with her. Sarah can sound plausible on almost any subject. That is her talent. You wouldn’t guess she has this steely side to her at first. She comes across as a career romantic. Her office always has fresh flowers in it, and she tends to wear soft, feminine clothes. She has a delicate silk-lined basket of lavender pot-pourri by her phone and a photograph of her husband and small daughter in a silver photo frame.

  As soon as she gets off the phone I decide to sidetrack her away from the vexed subject of my article. ‘Sorry I couldn’t make your Friends of Georgian Dublin soirée the other night, Sarah. How did it go?’

  ‘Oh, fine. You really should have come. I could have introduced you to Nathaniel.’

  ‘Who’s Nathaniel?’

  ‘Haven’t I told you about him?’ Sarah’s face lights up. ‘He’s a wonderful interior designer. He’s going to marblize the sitting-room next. Aquamarine. To evoke the Aegean.’

  ‘How nice.’

  ‘That silly woman Leonora kept referring to him as my “Toyboy”. “Do have a peanut, Leonora,” I said, proffering a bisque reproduction of one of four téton Sèvres bowls – they’re supposedly modelled from one of Marie Antoinette’s breasts. She recognized it immediately from The World of Interiors. That shut her up, I can tell you.’

  ‘I’m sure it did.’

  Sarah tends to move her arms around in a Gallic manner. As she does so, waves of Giorgio drift towards me. Sarah wears a lot of expensive perfume. She buys it with leisurely discernment at airports because, unlike me, she doesn’t get into a dither about whether the plane will ever get to where it’s going. She doesn’t find herself thinking about Eternity – and I don’t mean the aftershave.

  Another thing Sarah does is she makes disconcerting pronouncements such as: ‘What you have to remember about men, Alice, is that they are basically like dogs’. Because of this I simply mustn’t tell her about Eamon’s proposal, or James Mitchel. She’s bound to tell me to put them both on leads.

  ‘Anyway’ – I can see from Sarah’s brisk expression that she’s going to tug us briskly back to business – ‘when you’ve lightened up that ‘sex out of doors’ piece I want you to look into the whole area of supermarket singles evenings. I’d suggest that you linger around the oriental food section.’

  ‘Meet strange men?’

  ‘Yes. Even more strange than usual.’ Sarah gives me a conspiratorial little smirk. ‘What was the name of that boyfriend of yours who thought if a woman changed her hairstyle she was about to leave?’

  ‘Al.’ I release the information grimly.

  ‘Ah yes, of course,’ Sarah smiles. ‘That short bob really suited you.’

  As I leave Sarah’s office I wonder, yet again, if I should go back to ‘mainstream’ reporting. The thing is I’m not at all sure I have the temperament for it. I worked for a local paper some years ago and was definitely not the Bob Woodward of the suburbs. I seemed to mainly cover local spats about minor planning permission issues, dreary council meetings, cat shows and resident association uproars about, say, dog poo on the pavement. Rotting seaweed also proved to be an explosive issue for coastline dwellers, and heavy traffic on small roads and noisy neighbours were also hardy perennials. I felt a deep sympathy for the people involved in these dilemmas. I tried to understand all the various permutations – in fact, I probably tried to understand them too much. I’d talk to people for ages and then I’d ring them back to make sure I was quoting them correctly. I wanted to be fair to everyone and rang up ‘experts’ to confirm I had drawn the correct conclusions. I gathered a long list of people who were prepared to be quoted on various subjects. Who were good at sounding plausible.

  ‘Tell it to me in a sentence.’ That’s what the News Editor used to bark at me. And of course I found I could. Eventually. I began to discern the extraneous. The unnecessary. I stopped gathering too many quotes because there just wasn’t time for it. Half an hour, that’s all I had for some stories. I began to feel a small exhilaration at all I wasn’t saying. What I’d learned to leave out. And yet what I hadn’t space for was, in a sense, what interested me most. Which is why I eventually decided to freelance in ‘features’.

  But I still sat with more hardened hacks in their preferred hostelries. I imbibed small measures of cynicism, along with full pints of lager, and revelled in their conviction. I listened to them talking about politicians and all the things they wished they could print. What should be done and why about crucial national issues, which sometimes gleefully included how a reporter called Anto could be persuaded to part with his corduroy jacket. A jacket he had worn daily for at least ten years.

  And then slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, I drifted away from them. For journalists are, in general, deeply curious. They have to be. And I was no longer quite sure of the ‘angle’ I might offer them on my own life. And then Sarah offered me this job on the magazine and I grabbed it. I’d grown tired of the insecurity of freelancing. The sheer hard slog and whimsicality of it. I also needed a decent salary if I wanted to buy my cottage. Joining the magazine made perfect sense. Or at least it used to. Now I really want to leave. In fact, if I’m absolutely truthful, this is one of the reasons why I’m considering Eamon’s proposal.

  Eamon gets a good salary so if I married him I could leave the magazine. We wouldn’t need the extra income. Yes, there are many very solid, practical reasons why I should marry him. Looking back, I’m quite amazed at how het up I got the other day about our ‘sex outdoors’. Of course Eamon can be a bit unreasonable occasionally. Everyone is sometimes. I’d just have to take a firmer stand with him about certain things. Be more assertive. I’m sure he’d understand. He’s a good, kind man though, funnily enough, I sometimes think he and Mira would be more suited. She wouldn’t mind his long silences because she has them herself. She’d like his practical, no- nonsense approach to relationships because Frank has really put her off the more high-flown stuff. Yes, in many ways they are extremely compatible…though I’m not sure what he’d make of her membership of the South Seas Club. They’re planning to hold a meeting in my cottage tomorrow.

  I bet Posy and Tarquin Galbraith never had to put up with this kind of thing.

  Chapter 14

  It’s not just a meeting, it’s a ‘bi-monthly beach party’ and the South Seas Club are currently holding it in my sitting-room. There are seven women – including Mira – and four men. They are swaying
gently to exotic music and weaving strange patterns in the air with their arms. The women are wearing bikini tops and ‘grass skirts’ made from crêpe paper. The men are wearing shorts and multi-coloured shirts. All are barefooted and none have been to the place their club is named after. Evelyn Waugh was right, you sometimes have to modify the truth to make it plausible. I bet if I told Sarah about this beach party she’d think I was making it up. I look at the huge poster by Gauguin that Mira has Blu-Tacked to the wall and have a sudden desperate longing to go to the garden centre. Maybe I can sneak out and get a nice big terracotta pot for my hydrangeas.

  As I furtively exit the cottage I wonder if I should write an article about the South Seas Club for the local newspaper. Odd people tend to make good copy and I seem to be meeting quite a number of them lately. I’m so preoccupied with these musings that I don’t notice Annie approaching.

  ‘Hi, Alice! Are you off somewhere?’ she calls out. She’s with Josh. ‘I was just popping by for a cuppa. I haven’t seen you in ages.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Annie – I can’t offer you a cuppa chez moi this afternoon,’ I reply.

  Why?’

  ‘Well, to get into the cottage you’d need a visa.’

  ‘What?’ She squints at me.

  I explain, adding, ‘Come on. Let’s go to California instead.’ She studies me guardedly.

  ‘California,’ I repeat, ‘you know, the new café. Haven’t you been there yet? It’s just down the road.’

  As we talk, Josh fidgets. ‘Smell my hair,’ he demands suddenly. He’s obviously feeling a bit left out.

  ‘Oh, my poor sweet pea. Did you feel ignored?’ I bend to sniff his honey-coloured curls. ‘Mmmm – lovely. Timotei?’

  ‘Silvikrin,’ Annie smiles.

  I hold out my hand and Josh takes it. I like pretending he’s my son. I like taking him into the corner shop when Annie’s off somewhere and buying him bright toys and sweeties. I love it when he runs to me, arms out, for a hug. He’s taken to asking quite a lot about the ‘Birds and the Bees’ lately, and Annie has not fobbed him off with any tales of storks. Because of this he thinks penises are great. A kind of novelty item. He frequently refers to them.

  ‘Mum, why don’t you have a penis?’ he asks loudly as we sit down on one of the California Café’s comfy cane chairs. Annie looks like she’s about to go into a detailed answer, so I say briskly, ‘Who wants a chocolate chip cookie?’

  ‘I do!’ Josh shoots his hand up eagerly. He’s just started school.

  I go to the counter and order two cookies, a brownie, two cappuccinos and a fizzy lemonade. As I wait for them I look around. It really is a very nice café. The kind of place you could sit in quite happily reading a book. There’s a smell of cinnamon about it. And fresh baking. The mugs are nice and big and in a beautiful shade of golden yellow. The décor is also bright yet cosy, and there’s a large teddy bear wearing a straw hat by the till. Some pictures on the walls are for sale. I gaze at them dreamily, wondering if some of my own paintings might be displayed. Then I see Liam. He’s sitting by the window. I look away quickly. ‘Oh, blast it, he would be here,’ I think. ‘Maybe he and Elsie have had another row.’

  ‘Hello, Alice.’ Oh dear, he’s talking to me. He’s seen me.

  ‘Hello, Liam.’ I give him one of Sarah’s tight philosophical smiles though a Laren Brassière scowl would have been more sincere. I don’t know why, but for some reason I seem to have developed a dislike of my new neighbour. Even the fact that he has leather patches on his rather worn tweed jacket suddenly seems deeply irritating and he really should get his hair cut. His fringe is far too long. What on earth does Elsie see in him? He’s not even faithful. I feel him looking at me again and I glare back at him, no longer hiding my distaste.

  ‘Who is that man who said hello to you, Alice?’ Annie asks as I return to the table with a heavily laden tray. ‘He seems really nice.’

  ‘He’s a new neighbour of mine and I don’t think he is nice, actually,’ I mumble.

  ‘Ask him to join us. Go on. I like the look of him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does Alice have a penis, Mummy?’ Josh interjects.

  ‘No, dear,’ Annie replies patiently. ‘Only boys and men do.’

  ‘So he has a penis!’ Josh is pointing at Liam, who’s obviously heard Josh’s exclamation and is trying not to smile. I have a sudden desperate need to talk about my amaryllis plant.

  ‘My amaryllis did really well this spring,’ I announce. ‘It had four beautiful blossoms.’

  ‘How nice,’ says Annie. ‘Have you told Eamon you’re not going to marry him yet?’

  ‘No…would you like a cutting from my begonia? I could make up a nice hanging basket for you. It would look great on your patio.’

  ‘Thank you, Alice, but I think I’ll pass on that one. I sometimes forget to water that geranium you gave me as it is.’

  ‘I know. I have to give it a good soak every time I visit. I think you should know, Annie’ – I take a comforting sip from my big bright mug of cappuccino – ‘that I can’t help being slightly suspicious of people who forget to water their plants. Don’t you hear their plaintive little squeaks?’ I smile as I say this, but I am not entirely joking.

  ‘I do water it, Alice,’ Annie protests mildly. ‘Just not quite as often as I should.’

  ‘I’ve got some spare nasturtiums I could give you. They’re fairly easy to keep and they self-seed. You can even eat the flowers – add them to a salad or something. They make a wonderful garnish.’

  ‘Oh, Alice.’ Annie regards me with tender exasperation. ‘Do stop casting nasturtiums at me. Just tell me here and now that you’re not going to marry Eamon. It’s been worrying me.’

  I am aware that Liam is listening to our conversation. He is camouflaging this fact by gazing too studiously at his book which happens to be Howard’s End by E. M. Forster, who is one of my favourite authors. I frown at him and lean towards Annie, almost whispering. ‘Look,’ I say pleadingly, ‘let’s not talk about all that men stuff now.’

  ‘I know what it is, you’re just broody at the moment, Alice,’ Annie replies airily. She’s one of those disconcerting people who never believe other people overhear. ‘There’s piles of sperm around if you really want it. You don’t have to have Eamon’s.’

  ‘Sperm! Sperm! Sperm! Sperm!’ Josh repeats happily, as usual picking up the one word I would have preferred him to ignore. Then, as I squidge up my last bit of brownie and munch it, he starts to make loud swishy noises with the straw he’s using for his fizzy drink.

  I glance at my watch. ‘Look, I have to go,’ I say. ‘I promised Mrs Peabody I’d buy Cyril a cuttlefish bone and I simply have to get to the garden centre before it closes.’

  ‘Give that neighbour of yours a nice smile before you leave,’ Annie is leaning towards me conspiratorially.

  ‘Please keep your voice down, Annie. He can hear you.’

  ‘Of course he can’t. He’s just your type, I can tell. He’s even reading E. M. Forster.’

  ‘He’s far too young for me,’ I hiss.

  ‘No, he isn’t.’

  ‘Yes, he is. I’ve tried the younger men thing and it’s never worked.’ Neither has the older or same age men thing, of course, but I don’t mention this. I lean towards Annie irritatedly and whisper, ‘Anyway, he has a girlfriend.’

  ‘You could still be friends,’ Annie replies stubbornly. ‘Some of the best relationships start off that way.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what Eamon says,’ I comment slyly. I rise from my chair and reach for my handbag. ‘You’re most unfair about Eamon, Annie,’ I add reproachfully. ‘He’s a very nice man and I’m getting tired of the way you go on about him. It’s just not fair.’

  Annie just sighs and looks forlornly at the table.

  ‘Bye then,’ I say, then I add, ‘Goodness, where’s Josh?’

  Josh has snuck away from the table, as he often does in cafés. I notice that he is now standing beside Liam. They�
��re chatting away in a very friendly manner. I decide to exit the café swiftly and as I do so I overhear Josh asking Liam something.

  He’s asking whether fizzy lemonade and chocolate chip cookies ever fall in love.

  Chapter 15

  Eamon has sent me a postcard. It features a llama who looks a bit pissed off. ‘Dear Alice,’ he’s written in his tidy hand:

  ‘Thank you so much for your letter. I was very pleased to hear that you may take up golf. Maybe we could even do a bit of golfing on our honeymoon – if you say ‘yes’ to my proposal, that is. There are some wonderful golf courses in the Algarve. By the way, I’ve bought you a nice sweater made from llama wool – hence this choice of card. It’s hand-knitted and in a very simple, but pleasing design. Looking forward to seeing you again. Love, Eamon.’

  I read through the postcard again at least four times. I’m trying to read between the lines, as I so often do in our conversations. I must admit I was expecting him to send me a letter. Oh well, he’s probably very busy. I’m not sure I like his suggestion of a golfing honeymoon, but perhaps it’s sensible. I know a lot of people spend their honeymoon mooning over each other, but I don’t think we’d be that kind of couple. Still, the Algarve sounds nice. I could get a tan and bring my sketchpad with me. We’d probably dine out in wonderful restaurants. Eamon has highly developed culinary tastes. In fact, he’s already done a draft menu for the wedding reception, if we have one…