Wise Follies

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  By the time I’d finished writing my list it covered every inch of the paper I’d been given. As I re-read it the bit that most surprised me was the sentence that said, ‘I’d like to ring Laren MacDermott.’ I realized I’d been feeling deeply curious about her. We’d been such good friends. It seemed a pity just to ‘lose’ her telephone number like that…even though I hadn’t. It turned up the other day in a pocket of one of my jeans. It was stuck together and hard from the washing machine. The numbers were faded, but I could still just make them out.

  Now I’m in the sitting room with Laren’s telephone number in my hand and wondering if I can summon up the courage to dial it. I’ve spent all morning puzzling over a particularly problematic assignment Sarah has given me so this diversion is, in a sense, quite welcome. Phoning Laren could be fun, as long as I don’t care if we find we have nothing in common anymore. Yes. Why not. We could always talk about her apparent detestation of terrapins.

  I dial the number quickly. She probably has an answering machine. I listen to the ringing tone and look at Tarquin playing with his catnip mouse. No reply. She’s obviously not there. In a way I’m rather relieved. I’m just about to hang up when she answers. ‘Hello!’ she says brightly. ‘Hello, Laren here.’

  ‘Hello, Laren,’ I say softly, suddenly unsure about the wisdom of this reconnection.

  ‘Is that you, Alice?’ she asks. I must admit I’m rather surprised she recognized my voice.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I reply.

  ‘How funny, I was just thinking about you. I was wondering if you’d lost my number.’

  I’m about to say that I did, but decide not to. Why not be honest? There’s enough acting in the world as it is. ‘Well, to be truthful, Laren, I was a bit nervous about phoning you,’ I say hesitantly. ‘I was worried that – you know – we might find we don’t have much in common any more.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we do,’ Laren laughs reassuringly. ‘Don’t be too fooled by my public image, Alice. I’m not quite as intimidating as you might think.’

  ‘Would you like to meet up for a drink sometime?’ I ask. ‘Then we could have that “proper chat” that you suggested.’

  ‘I’d love that,’ Laren replies. ‘But I’m afraid it will have to wait until next month. We’re flying to Japan today. We’re doing a tour in East Asia.’

  ‘Wow, how exciting!’ I exclaim. ‘I’ve never been to anywhere as exotic as that.’

  ‘Come with us,’ Laren suddenly announces.

  ‘What?’ I frown.

  ‘Come with us to East Asia.’ She makes it sound as though she’s inviting me for a cup of coffee in Bewley’s. She has obviously grown used to this type of last-minute suggestion, but I haven’t. We have been leading very different lives.

  ‘But – but, aren’t you leaving today?’ I enquire cautiously.

  ‘Yes. This evening. We have a fantastic tour manager, I’m sure he could get your airplane tickets in time. All you need to bring is your passport. It wouldn’t cost you anything.’

  ‘Laren that’s incredibly generous of you,’ I reply, dumbfounded.

  ‘Not really,’ she replies. ‘You’d be quite busy. I need an assistant and anyway it can get quite boring just being cooped up with the band.’

  ‘I – mmmm – I –’ Laren’s suggestion is deeply tempting, but I realize it’s not feasible. I can’t just sod off like that. However much I’d like to. ‘Laren, I’m afraid I don’t think I can come with you,’ I say. ‘I have a number of commitments here. But it’s wonderful of you to ask me.’

  I hear a man calling to Laren in the background. ‘Hang on a minute, Malcolm,’ she’s shouting back. ‘I’m talking to Alice.’

  ‘Well, don’t be long,’ I hear him saying. ‘We’ve got an interview with that fellow from The Irish Times in ten minutes.’

  ‘Laren, I’d better not keep you,’ I say. ‘I’ll phone you when you get back.’

  ‘Yes, please do,’ Laren replies enthusiastically. Then I hear Malcolm calling out to her again.

  After I’ve hung up I feel strangely exhilarated. ‘Come with us.’ That’s what Laren had said. I could have gone off to East Asia for an entire month. The fecklessness of it. The spontaneity. No one has ever said something like that to me before. I feel like I’ve been put into another category. I am a woman who could arrive at an airport with just her passport. Perhaps this calls for a change of hairdo.

  After about five minutes I begin to wonder if I should phone Laren back. Immediately. Say ‘Yes. Yes, I will come with you.’ Sarah, of course, would be deeply pissed off. She’s quite strict about holiday arrangements on the magazine. Heaven knows what she’d do if I just disappeared like that. She might take a very firm stand. And then there are the articles I’ve promised to do for the local paper. And Eamon…

  Eamon will be returning shortly. He’s not quite sure when, but it may be by next month. He told me this in a postcard which arrived today. The job in Peru took less time than they’d expected. He will be expecting me to have an answer to his proposal and I haven’t yet. Though I am frequently convinced I am going to say ‘yes’, there are occasions when I am equally convinced that I’ll say ‘no’. ‘Maybe’ is the answer that seems most truthful, but it wouldn’t sound too good in the wedding ceremony.

  As I accept the fact that I cannot run off with Laren I sigh deeply and head towards my computer. I’m glad I phoned her anyway. She sounded so pleased to hear from me. Maybe she can become a friend again. A weird friend, but then I’m rather odd myself. Odd – yes, that’s a word that could also apply to the assignments Sarah has been giving me lately. They’re enough to make anyone want to go to the other side of the world.

  Having already asked me to trudge through the gloomy territory of supermarket singles evenings, Sarah now wants me to do the same thing with singles dances and personal ads. She seems determined to send me deep into the love jungle. She even wants me to place a personal ad of my own in a newspaper ‘for research’ – or at least answer one.

  I’m getting decidedly suspicious about the match-making themes of these assignments. I’m beginning to suspect Annie has told Sarah about Eamon – they were friends in college. I even saw them having lunch together some time ago. I can almost hear Annie saying, ‘She simply mustn’t marry him, Sarah. We’ve got to do something about it.’ Annie won’t admit to this of course. She’s keeping a coy silence on the subject.

  I don’t want to do it. I really don’t want to answer a personal ad. Even though the men go on about sharing champagne in exotic locations – they want you to be ‘slim’ and ‘attractive’ and heaven knows what else in return. Occasionally they even specify ‘freckles’, or an actress they want you to look like. It’s absurd.

  The ones in the publication I am currently reading seem mostly from very rich middle-aged men. They want someone with a GSOH, which we all know means ‘Good Sense of Humour’, only I somehow didn’t until the other day. I suspected that it might be an abbreviation for some kind of household accessory that I plainly didn’t own. Because some of these men sound very picky. I wouldn’t put it beyond them to require a certain type of Scandinavian wood-burning stove.

  How on earth would I answer one of them?

  ‘Dear Box Number 52,’ I scribble.

  ‘I have a GSOH, GFCH (gas-fired central heating), a cat and a Mitsubishi colour portable. My jumpers tend to bobble shortly after purchase, but people have told me I can look pretty if I try. I watch too much telly, but am willing to have my habits changed, and like the sound of that champagne you mentioned. My romantic experiences have made me deeply appreciative of more predictable pleasures, such as gardening, so please don’t answer if you’re horrible. I really couldn’t take it.

  Yours sincerely, Alice

  I stare at what I’ve written. Though it’s true, it’s far too facetious. It doesn’t seem fair anyway. Meeting some man under false pretences. Just using him for research. I must try to hang on to some scruples.

  Scruple
s. I first heard that word when I was five. ‘What I like about Mrs Smyth is that she has scruples,’ my mother said about an elderly friend of hers whom we often visited. Mrs Smyth had spent a long time in India. She referred to that vast continent as frequently and casually as if it were the corner shop. For some reason I was sure the ‘scruples’ my mother was referring to were the unusual biscuits Mrs Smyth favoured. Firm of texture and tasting slightly of cinnamon, they were strangely pleasing.

  ‘I like Mrs Smyth’s scruples too,’ I announced, glad to have found a point of such obvious agreement. ‘They’re so nice and crunchy.’ Whereupon my mother and father laughed and I sulked off and sat in the middle of a large hedge and pretended I was adopted.

  I toss my scribbled personal ad into my overstuffed handbag. I’m not going to think about scruples now. I’m going to make another phone call. That ‘personal exploration’ workshop seems to have made me a bit more daring. Yes – I’ll phone James Mitchel.

  Good, he has his answering machine on. I take a deep breath and say brightly, ‘Hello, James. This is Alice Evans. I left a message for you some time ago. There’s no need to phone me now because I got the information I needed. Thanks anyway.’ Then I bash the phone back on to its receiver.

  I have a good reason for doing this. James Mitchel is a very good fantasy and I don’t see why James himself should deprive me of it. This way James’s not returning my call no longer irritates me because I have instructed him not to do so. Out there on the furthest realms of plausibility I may even begin to believe, like Annie, that there were extenuating circumstances for his silence. That he lost the number. That the recording was unclear. That he was shy. Or tried to phone when I was out and then didn’t try again because he was very, very busy. These excuses are fine as long as he does not say them. For they belong to another man. The Good James Mitchel. The one I made up and still have a small affection for because I like – and in some ways even need – his little glimmer.

  Having taken this decisive action about James, I address the vexed matter of the singles dance and personal ads article. The deadline for it is looming and I must work out a course of action. ‘If I go to a singles dance I may meet women who have answered personal ads,’ I think. ‘I could get quotes from them about it. That would do.’

  I see from an ad in the Evening Herald that a dating agency is organizing just the kind of dance I need tomorrow. You have to book in advance. It costs fifty euros, which seems quite a lot, but this includes a free drink and disco. I phone up and make my booking.

  I’ve persuaded Mira to come to the singles dance with me. It is not, of course, something she wanted to do. She’s weaving a particularly complicated wall hanging on her portable loom at the moment. And there’s one of those deeply obscure foreign movies on the telly that she loves.

  We don’t spend long getting ready for the dance. We grab the first slightly dressy things we see in our wardrobes, grumbling as we do so. Of course, Annie would say that I should doll myself up but I know, I just know, I won’t meet Mr Right at an event like this. He wouldn’t have time for it. He’d be planning his next expedition to the tropical rainforests or something.

  ‘I hope I don’t spend the evening discussing Finland,’ Mira says as we enter the hotel. ‘I’ve only been there once but I always seem to end up talking about it.’

  The hotel is quite plush. As I walk across the foyer I feel the words ‘Desperate Single Woman’ are emblazoned on my back – maybe followed by ‘thirty-eight’ in brackets.

  ‘We shouldn’t have come here,’ I whisper. ‘See the way that clerk is looking at us.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ says Mira, who wouldn’t care if he was. ‘He hardly looked at us at all.’

  We leave our coats in the cloakroom and go to the Ladies. We haven’t even bothered to put on some make- up yet. That’s how much we care. ‘We don’t have to stay long, do we?’ Mira looks at me pleadingly.

  ‘I don’t know. I need to talk to some women about their – you know – experiences of this kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she sighs. ‘You’ll find me in the downstairs bar if I get really fed up.’

  We walk towards the ‘function room’ with some trepidation. It’s big and modern with wine-red velvet seating and a parquet floor. There’s a space in the middle for dancing, and a small bar at one side. The proper bar is downstairs. The bar where single people – there must be some of them – haven’t yet been drummed up into this undignified desperation. This antsy, itchy, scratch-me state about being alone. Not that the people here look desperate. ‘Purposeful’ seems a more appropriate description. The lighting is not too low, so people can see each other I suppose.

  The room is quite crowded. A glamorous young woman greets us at a little desk. She ticks us off the attendance list and then hands us our name-tags. We clip them on doubtfully and look around. Lots of people are looking around like we are. Staring at each other in a way that is not usually socially acceptable. There are more women than men so the men are looking slightly smug. Even that plump, balding, sweaty fellow with the lurid shirt in the corner has an air of ease about him. ‘Yes, I am a man,’ he seems to be saying. ‘One of that rare, special species.’

  ‘See anyone interesting?’ I ask Mira, forgetting for a moment that this is entirely beside the point. That I am here purely for the purposes of research.

  ‘Of course not,’ Mira sighs, looking for a quiet corner. She finds one. Then she opens her bag and takes out a book.

  ‘Not here, Mira.’ I stare at her, astounded. ‘You’re not going to read here, are you?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she replies firmly.

  I go off to get some drinks and when I return I find that the plump lurid-shirt man has found her. She’s saying, ‘I’ve only been there once. For a holiday.’ Dear God, she’s got on to Finland already. ‘Here’s your drink, Mira,’ I say, giving her a sympathetic smile.

  Some of the women here are dressed quite sedately. They’re talking to each other in cheerful clusters, veterans of the considerable consolations of sisterhood. Others, however, are really dressed for action in short sexy skirts and clingy tops, in tiny dresses and tight pants. Many of the men, subtle creatures that they are, are crowding round them.

  No one is crowding around me in my Indian mother-earth number. A dress so loose you could hide a few illegal immigrants in it without detection. This, of course, doesn’t matter because I am a journalist on assignment.

  Even so I can’t help feeling that it’s a sobering reminder to me that my dreams of meeting some ‘Wonderful Man’ are highly unrealistic. I am thirty-eight. I am not young and nubile anymore. I am easily overlooked and I find it hard to get used to it. Because when I was in my twenties these men would have looked at me with interest. Some of them would have been chatting to me at this very minute. Perhaps offering me a drink or a dance. My dress wouldn’t have made any difference. Perhaps I should buy myself a clingy top.

  I head towards the women and not the men. I ask them original questions, like whether they come here often. I tell them about my article and take out my little notebook while they tell me their tales. ‘I’ve met some very nice men at these dances,’ a woman in her forties, called Fiona, tells me cheerfully. ‘They’ve really transformed my social life. I go out on lots of dates these days. I usen’t to before.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask, hoping my shorthand can keep up with her. She’s talking rather quickly.

  ‘Because nearly all my friends are married, and so were most of the men of my age that I used to meet. I stopped going to discos and things like that because the people were so young. I felt like their mother. I almost put myself on the shelf, and then I decided not to.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I decided to face facts,’ she says. ‘I decided to seek out people who are in the same position as myself. It felt a bit awkward at first, admitting that I was lonely. But then I discovered that it’s a very common thing.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I
agree, looking at her thankfully. It’s great when you get someone who’s this succinct with their views.

  ‘I’ve been to all the latest films,’ she continues. ‘I eat out a lot and do some ballroom dancing. I have company now, and that’s what I wanted.’

  ‘But…’ I hesitated. ‘But don’t you sometimes wish you could meet – you know – someone special?’

  ‘Oh, I gave up on marrying George Clooney at least ten years ago,’ she says, laughing heartily and rather too loudly. This, I realize, is one of her anecdotes. A nice way of getting off the subject, but I don’t want to…not just yet.

  ‘But surely you’d like to meet someone that – that you could…’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course I would,’ she replies quickly, almost impatiently. She glances at my name tag. ‘Doesn’t everyone, Alice? The thing is, I don’t know if I’ll find that person. Maybe I missed him. A nice, kind bloke, that would do me fine these days. Someone who likes football.’

  ‘Oh, so you like football?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Her face lights up. ‘Manchester United, Alice. They mean more to me now than George Clooney ever did.’

  ‘Good for you, Fiona,’ I find myself saying. I am deeply impressed by her. How well she has adjusted to her situation. She has ‘faced facts’ just like I’m doing with Eamon, my ‘nice, kind bloke’.

  ‘But if I do meet someone special, Alice,’ she is now adding, ‘I hope that I’ll recognize him. Not let him slip by without at least telling him how I feel. That kind of thing takes courage, but I think it’s worth it.’

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ I say, feeling a bit better about my phone call to James Mitchel, even though he did ignore it. Her words have made me wonder if there’s someone else around who’s ‘special’ that I haven’t recognized. Sometimes I get a distant sense there is. It must be wishful thinking. I’ve done a lot of that over the years.