Wise Follies

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  As I leave Fiona I notice a nice man in a navy suit is approaching her. She has such a very jolly smile. She’ll always have people round her. Some men aren’t just looking for women in clingy tops – I must remember that. Some men look deeper. They don’t care so much about the wrinkles. They are attracted to the spirit of a person. The essence. The truth. That’s what I want really, someone who sees the truth of me…but how can I share it with him if I don’t really know it myself? Who am I? I’m just not sure any more. And anyway, the only person who studies me carefully these days is my irritating new neighbour Liam. I saw him looking at me again this evening, from his upstairs window. He obviously has voyeuristic tendencies. I’m beginning to feel rather sorry for his girlfriend, Elsie. I simply must put up those net curtains in the kitchen window. The thing is they need to be altered to fit the window properly and I’m not that good at sewing. I’ll have to get them done professionally. I don’t know why I keep putting it off.

  I approach some other women and continue with my questioning. All through the conversations they look around hopefully. Some are more brazen than others, fixing a man who has caught their interest with a long look, a small but significant smile. As the dancing starts they drift away from me into mixed gender clusters. Occasionally I see a man glancing at me, and then looking away uninterestedly.

  Eamon didn’t look away when we met at that beach barbecue. He looked at me for so long I began to wonder if I had a bit of charcoal on my face. I wasn’t even wearing a clingy top. Just an old sweatshirt and jeans. I suddenly feel a wave of affection for him. Gratitude. I swirl it around me like a cape, hoping it will guard me from the night’s strange chill.

  A tall, swarthy man with greying hair and eyebrows that command uncomfortable attention suddenly says, ‘Hello, Alice.’ I stare at him, bewildered, and then I remember my name tag.

  ‘Hello – er – Malcolm.’ I peer at his own name, which is stuck to his jacket.

  Malcolm informs me that he is a farmer from Mullingar. He is looking for a woman with good morals who likes heifers and loud music. He’s just bought a new car and is very close to his mother. This is obviously his chat-up line, which explains the space around him. He wants to meet ‘someone’ because ‘there’s nothing to greet me when I get home. Only the light bulb I put on when I went out.’

  ‘So, Malcolm,’ I venture. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Sort of, but I wish they’d put on Status Quo.’

  ‘Gosh – or should I say GSOH,’ I smile. ‘Slade’s more my style.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No. Sorry. I was just joking.’

  Malcolm doesn’t laugh, but he’s a nice enough fellow, and quite snazzily dressed. He’s sincere and not as linear as he first appears. He’s doing his best, but I’d baffle him.

  ‘We’re not compatible, Malcolm. I’m too complicated for you,’ I say, after we’ve danced to Tina Turner singing ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’

  ‘Aye – you’re probably right,’ Malcolm agrees.

  ‘But I do hope you meet your “someone”,’ I add.

  ‘And I hope you do too, Alice.’ He gives me a brave grin and then moves purposefully towards a cluster of women in clingy tops.

  I’ve got loads of quotes in my notebook now. Where’s Mira? She seems to have disappeared.

  Mira has retreated to the downstairs bar. She’s tucked away in a corner seat. She’s still reading her book. It’s by Anthony Powell and is part of a series called A Dance to the Music of Time. There are twelve books in the series and she’s on number ten. That’s the kind of person she is.

  ‘Mira, what are you doing?’ I ask. ‘They were playing quite nice music. You could at least have danced.’

  ‘That fellow in the lurid shirt kept pestering me,’ she sighs wearily. ‘When I told him that I was an eccentric spinster he just laughed. He seemed to see it as something of a challenge. He wanted me to spend the weekend in his caravan on Ballybrittas beach.’

  ‘No one asked me to share a caravan,’ I smile encouragingly. ‘You’re an attractive woman, Mira. All my friends have said it. Even Eamon.’

  ‘Did he?’ She looks up at me, surprised.

  ‘Yes, when he first met you he said he couldn’t understand why you didn’t have a boyfriend. Of course, you were involved with Frank at the time, but I didn’t mention that.’

  She looks at me gratefully. ‘So, what did you think of your first singles dance?’ she asks, as we leave the hotel and walk towards her car.

  ‘I suppose you could say I have mixed feelings about it,’ I reply. ‘I found it sensible, and yet somehow lonely – a bit sad.’

  ‘Why?’ she asks, as she unlocks the car door for me.

  ‘There was the feel of the marketplace to it. You know, people sizing each other up in such a very obvious way.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ Mira agrees. ‘But there’s a lot to be said for those kinds of gatherings. If you have the temperament for them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s practical and simple. People are being upfront about their needs.’

  ‘So why did you run down to the bar?’

  ‘I don’t need a man, Alice.’ She smiles at me indulgently. ‘Surely I’ve made that plain by now.’

  No, she hasn’t made it plain at all – but I don’t say this. Frank, her married ex-lover, has snuck into this car suddenly. I can feel him. She loved him so much. When he came to the cottage she looked so happy. Like a little girl. There was such an understanding between them. Such a closeness. The cottage felt full of kisses when he visited. They’d disappear into her bedroom with a bottle of wine and I’d hear them laughing. I could hardly believe it when she told me she wasn’t going to see him any more.

  ‘I can’t share him,’ that’s what she’d said. ‘I can’t be the person waiting in the background for leftovers. It’s like grabbing hors d’oeuvres, hoping they’ll make a meal, but they don’t. I love him too much just to have a little bit of him. He’ll never leave his wife, and do you want to know something really weird, Alice? His loyalty is one of the reasons why I love him.’

  Yes, there was a time Mira used to talk to me about Frank. But she doesn’t any more. For example, even though he’s snuck into this car suddenly the only remark she’s made is ‘Fancy a takeaway pizza?’

  ‘Yeah, let’s get one,’ I reply.

  Sometimes, late at night when I go by Mira’s bedroom door to the bathroom, I hear her sobbing. I want to rush in and comfort her, but I know she doesn’t want me to. So it is in these abrupt gear changes from, say, men to pizza, that we acknowledge Frank. Because what she wanted to say about him has already been said. So now he sometimes fills our silences on nights like these. He is there amid the talk of pineapple and green pepper and sweetcorn pizza topping. I really wish she’d forget about him, but it seems that she just can’t.

  ‘Don’t force the feeling away. Let it leave when it feels less.’ Someone told me that about grief once. They were words I needed to hear. It’s so hard, missing people. The little rituals of love and belonging – the sand to pearl accretions of understanding – had taken such time. But for what? I shed such bewildered tears. But sometimes, now, it seems that the tears Mira and I do not shed as we stay in our silences, our rememberings, are the deepest, the saddest ones of all.

  ‘I think we should get some jasmine and train it up the wall at the back,’ says Mira, as we drive home with a box of hot pizza in the back seat.

  ‘Yes,’ I agree, thinking how I should go to a jeweller’s and at least have a peek at some engagement rings. ‘Yes, that would be nice.’

  Chapter 22

  I’ve been looking at engagement rings in jewellery shops. The assistants are very solicitous. Almost respectful. I’ve seen quite a nice solitaire. Just one diamond in a simple gold setting. I’m sure Eamon would like it. He’s fond of understatement. It would be nice to show off my ring. Flash it around a bit. I wonder who I should invite
to the wedding… if I have one.

  I wouldn’t want it to be too fussy. Just a gathering of family and close friends. I wonder if the California Cafe would do the reception. They have a nice function room which would be just the right size. I’d design the invitations myself. Do a line drawing of something suitable – though I’m not quite sure at the moment what that might be. I’d like my cream dress to have a slight pink tinge to it. I’d like it to be in raw silk and rustle a bit when I walked. I’d want it to have small embroidered blossoms that would match my sweet pea posy.

  Dear God – how can I have decided all this? There is a vast conspiracy to make people marry. I see that even more clearly now I’ve shown some interest in the subject. It’s like joining in on some huge conversation that’s ‘members only’. Once the subject is broached it seems to acquire a momentum all of its own. And, of course, that ‘singles dance’ was most sobering. I rather wish I hadn’t gone to it now.

  I also wish I didn’t have to go to the laundromat tonight, but I do because our machine’s being serviced. So I empty the contents of the dirty clothes basket into an old plastic laundry bag and lug it gloomily down the road. I have a book with me called The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck. I’ve been trying to read it on and off for years. I put the washing on and settle back into a chair. As I do so a tall man who has had his back to me peers over my shoulder. I can see a bit of his jacket, but not his face. ‘Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest,’ he reads.

  ‘Do you mind?’ I look up at him irritatedly.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replies. Dear God, it’s Liam. ‘That’s a cheery book you’re reading, Alice,’ he continues. ‘Are you “on assignment” here too?’ He’s stuffing some very grubby items of clothing into the machine as he says this. My usual politeness seems to have left me this evening. I decide to ignore him.

  ‘Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult,’ I read. ‘Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.’

  ‘Would you like a liquorice toffee?’ Liam is now asking. I pretend not to hear him. I don’t know why he’s being so forward suddenly. He hardly knows me. If I encourage him he’ll be turning up at the cottage next – wandering around – poking his nose into things. Maybe Sarah is right and men are a bit like dogs. What I want to say to Liam now, and very sternly, is ‘Sit’.

  ‘Self-discipline is a wonderful thing. I love to see it in others,’ Liam observes as I look down at my book again and read: ‘Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy.’

  I can feel Liam studying me. ‘Oh, it really isn’t fair,’ I think. ‘I just wanted to find a quiet corner and read my book and he has to show up.’ I read on, skipping quickly over the more challenging sentences: ‘Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems…It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning.’ Yes. Yes. OK. OK. I turn back glumly to the contents page and see a section called ‘Love Defined’. I turn to it eagerly – some sort of explanation at long last! On mid page I see the following words: ‘One result of the mysterious nature of love is that no one has ever, to my knowledge, arrived at a truly satisfactory definition of love.’

  Oh, just great.

  I’d close the book now if it wasn’t such a useful way of not getting into conversation. So I just gaze at it until ‘Love Defined’ becomes the blur it is anyway and think how I should really have put my whites into a separate wash. Out of the corner of my eye I see that Liam is stuffing more items into a machine and, as he does so, I can’t help noticing he has a rather lurid pair of Mickey Mouse boxer shorts.

  ‘Ah-ha! Caught you!’ he exclaims suddenly.

  ‘Caught me doing what?’

  ‘Admiring my underpants.’

  There are two other people besides us in this laundromat and they are now sneaking looks at us. ‘Your underwear is a matter of complete indifference to me,’ I reply in as withering a manner as I can manage. The cheek of him! Though I knew he was irritating, I never guessed he’d be this brazen. It’s probably his background. He probably thinks I find his New York humour entertaining, but I don’t. I don’t at all.

  ‘Do you have some change for the detergent? I’ve only got euros and I need two fifty cent coins.’ He gives me a pleading look.

  I sigh and reluctantly look into my overstuffed handbag. I hand him the fifty cent coins carefully, determined that our hands shouldn’t touch.

  ‘You are so, so kind, Alice,’ he grins, offering me a euro coin with quite unnecessary ostentation. ‘We all need kindness in this difficult life.’ I give him my ‘fuck off’ Laren Brassière look and open my book again. I stare at it studiously.

  ‘Laundromats are great places for meeting people,’ Liam is now saying. ‘I’ve had some great conversations in laundromats in my time.’

  ‘Really? It’s not a phenomenon I myself have encountered,’ I reply. Then I add rather pointedly, ‘How’s Elsie?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve met her, have you?’ He seems somewhat surprised.

  ‘I’ve seen her around,’ I reply enigmatically.

  ‘She’s away at the moment, actually.’

  ‘Ah, that explains why he’s being so friendly,’ I think. ‘While the cat’s away and all that. Well, he’s not going to foist his Lothario tendencies on to me.’ I stand up.

  ‘Excuse me, Liam,’ I announce. ‘I don’t feel very plural at the moment. I’m going to a café where I can read my book in peace.’ I stress the ‘peace’ bit and stare at him stonily. Funnily enough he doesn’t say anything as I leave, even though I can feel him watching.

  The California Café’s a bit of a walk away, but it’s a mild evening. I order myself an Earl Grey tea and a chocolate brownie, which I decide to eat guiltlessly. It’s for my ‘inner child’ – that’s what it is. It’s part of the important process of recognizing the ‘many selves’ inside of me. I go to a quiet corner and chomp it greedily. As I do so, I open my book again. I glance at some more chapter headings in the ‘Love’ section. ‘Falling in “Love”’, ‘The Myth of Romantic Love’, ‘More about Ego Boundaries’, ‘Love is Not a Feeling’. Whatever love is, it’s beginning to sound like an awful lot of hard work. Maybe Eamon is right when he says we don’t really need it. As I drink my tea I take out an old envelope from my bag and decide to list the reasons why I should or should not get married. I begin with the ‘Yes’:

  ‘Yes, because I am a contrary and complicated person, though I seldom admit to it, and need a sensible man to teach me sense,’ I scribble.

  ‘Yes, because if I had a baby I’d be up to my neck in nappies and immediately become a more mature and worthwhile person who could say things like “I never realized how wonderful children are until I had one. My baby has given me a completely new perspective on life.”

  ‘Yes, because acquiring a husband would prevent my married women friends suspecting that I might grab theirs.

  ‘Yes, because when you’re single people often assume you’re available at the drop of a hat to sort out their problems while somehow naively believing you don’t have any of your own.

  ‘Yes, because I could leave the magazine and paint at home instead.

  ‘Holidays in Provence.

  ‘Someone to spend Christmas with.

  ‘No shortage of pine shelving.

  ‘Excellent and expanded horticultural possibilities.’

  I turn the envelope over and under ‘No’ I simply write: ‘But I do not love him.’

  What a peevish, pernickety sentence it seems suddenly. What a small, foolish, sullen reason not to become part of that huge conspiracy of compromise and comfort which marriage surely is. Icing may be sweet, but marzipan has far more texture.
Even my mother discovered that eventually. One day all James Mitchel will be is a slight sugary aftertaste. No more real than Laren’s infatuation with Leonard Whiting. Someone I simply made up because I couldn’t bear to face the truth: that I’m simply not temperamentally suited to all that high-flown romantic stuff. It simply takes up too much time, and it only lasts four years anyway. I stare at my list again and then find myself scribbling:

  ‘Buy new sofa.

  ‘Bleach knickers.

  ‘Continue spiritual quest, but more gently.

  ‘Re-pot geraniums.

  ‘Find backs of earrings or buy new ones at that jewellery craft shop.

  ‘Lose weight from bum and other flabby areas.

  ‘Become tidier.

  ‘Go out more often (where to?)’

  I am deeply engrossed in this new list and about to write more when I glance at my watch. Dear God, I’ve been in this café for nearly an hour.

  Back in the laundromat the first things that come out of the machine are my grubbiest bra, some very unflattering knickers, some laddered navy wool tights and the clay-stained T-shirt I used to wear to pottery class before I bought the posh new ones to impress James Mitchel. I have no wish to impress Liam. I really don’t care what impression I make on him. He’s hardly looked at me since I came back anyway. He’s reading a book as he waits for his clothes to dry. It’s called By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. So he’s reading a ‘cheery little book’ too. I refrain from mentioning this, though I can’t help sneaking some glances at him. He really is very handsome in a slightly dishevelled way. He doesn’t seem to have shaved this morning, but the stubble suits him. He looks so solemn now, so unselfconsciously absorbed in the story he’s reading. I sense there’s a serious side to him. One that I have scarcely glimpsed. I think I’ve hurt his feelings a little. I was so offhand with him earlier. I’m not usually like that with people. What is it about Liam that makes me so defensive? He was probably only trying to be friendly.

  Clothes seem to expand when they’re clean. As I struggle to stuff mine back into my blue plastic bag Liam looks up at me for a moment, and then goes to check if his own clothes are dry. He is behaving with such coolness now that I feel impelled to speak. To soften the tone of our meeting.