The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  The kitchen was warm and friendly. All traces of the plaice fillets, the jelly, the chocolate kup-cakes, the milk puddles and the opened tins of Kit-e-Kat which had been accumulating all day had disappeared. There was a red seersucker cloth on the wooden table, a hot loaf of French bread, salad glistening with dressing and four steaming bowls of crécy soup.

  Three of the bowls were being attacked.

  “We didn’t wait, darling,” Karen said. “I was starving.”

  “Sorry. I fell asleep.” He took his place and broke off a piece of bread with which he pointed at the two blotchy faces of Rosy and Daisy in their dressing-gowns.

  “What are these two doing up?”

  “If they’re well enough to come down for television I imagined it wouldn’t kill them to stay down for dinner. Saves all the wear and tear on the legs. No temperatures anyway.”

  “If you want to make your marriage work,” Rosy said, spilling soup on to her lap which Karen automatically mopped up, “you should be in time for meals!”

  “Mrs Hubble, I presume,” Oscar said. She was notorious for the totally unsuitable words of wisdom she imparted on the children while costly minutes ticked away.

  “No.”

  “Not Magpie, surely!” He was convinced that their favourite programme imparted no more equivocal information than how to make dolls out of pipecleaners, or at the very worst how to train your dog.

  Rosy shifted her behind and withdrew the women’s magazine on which she was sitting.

  “Mrs Hubble left it here.” She scratched the back of her neck and wriggled her itching shoulders.

  “Any other pearls of wisdom you think we ought to know?”

  She squinted at the magazine.

  “Finish your soup first,” Karen said.

  “Don’t want any more!” She pushed her plate away, this time spilling it on to the tablecloth.

  “Lots,” she said. She looked at Oscar. “You have to kiss the back of her neck once a day…”

  Daisy sniggered and Rosy silenced her with a glance. She continued: “Learn some new jokes…”

  “Yes,” Daisy said. Only it was ‘yeth’ because of her brace.

  The interruption was ignored. “… Light her cigarette…”

  “She doesn’t smoke!”

  “Shuttup!”

  “Girls!” Karen said.

  “…Bring her flowers when it’s not her birthday…”

  Karen started to collect the soup plates.

  “Wait a minute, Mummy, there’s some for you too.”

  “Aha!” Oscar said. “I thought it was all a bit one-sided.”

  “Don’t tell him your problems until you’ve fed him…”

  “Rubbish!” Karen said. “Much better to lose your appetite than get indigestion.”

  “Buy a new neg…neggle…”

  “Negligée.” Karen helped her. “I’d fall down all four flights, then there’d be no marriage to work.”

  Oscar had a sudden vision of Marie-Céleste in white satin with the cotton-wool round the sleeves.

  “Can I have your soup bowl, darling.” Karen was holding a hand out towards him.

  “Oh, sorry.” He handed it to her.

  “Shall we put that away now until we’ve finished?” Karen suggested, putting the bowls into the dishwasher and almost in the same fluid movement taking the lid off a steaming saucepan on the cooker.

  “Wait a minute,” Rosy said. “There’s some things for you both to do.”

  “Such as?” Oscar said.

  “Switch off the TV and chat.”

  “Talk about pots and kettles,” he said, looking at both of them.

  “What have pots and kettles got to do with it?”

  “Oh, never mind. Carry on.”

  “Go for a walk in the rain together. Have a big family Bible and read from it.”

  “Well, you put that away now,” Karen said, coming over with the plates, “and afterwards you and Daisy can have a nice read from the family Bible. It will make a change from those revolting comics.”

  “It’s for you and Daddy,” Rosy said patiently, “and I don’t like meat balls.”

  “Well, you eat them up and then Daddy and I can go for a walk in the rain together!”

  “It isn’t raining,” Daisy said, “and I’ll eat hers if she doesn’t want them.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want them. I said I didn’t like them.”

  In bed Karen said: “Aren’t they funny, Rosy and Daisy?”

  “In what way?”

  “The magazine article. They shouldn’t allow such trash to be printed. All those squalid hints masquerading as marital advice. It’s enough to put anybody off. One can hardly blame the kids today for not bothering with the marriage bit when they’re told there’s no more to it than new jokes, kisses on the back of the neck and walking in the rain. I often wondered what’s wrong with all that ‘Aunt Agatha’s instant advice to the lovelorn’ and I’ve just realized.”

  “What do you read it for?”

  “Curiosity. They always talk about behaviour, never about feelings… I suppose it’s difficult really in half a column… We’re lucky really, you and I. Wasn’t it Nietzsche who said that it was not lack of love but lack of friendship that made marriages unhappy?”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, that’s right. I know what you’re thinking and you know what I’m thinking. There’s no need to spell everything out.”

  “Time for sleep,” Oscar said, putting out the lamp.

  “I mean some couples, most of the ones we know, really, haven’t a clue what the other one’s about. Two strangers meeting at the end of the day.” She put a leg between his, her invitation to sex. “Not like us.”

  He yawned and turned over, pretending he hadn’t noticed.

  “You’re absolutely right. Goodnight darling.”

  She draped herself along his back and within moments was breathing the regular breaths of sleep while Oscar lay with his eyes open.

  He had not, positively had not, transmitted anything of his afternoon to any of his household yet they had not stopped – Rosy, Daisy, Karen – discussing marriage, love, the relationship between the two of them. Why today of all days? Why not yesterday, the day before? Not today even, tonight. Coincidence? He closed his ears to Dr Adler’s comment… unconscious…they pick it up…you’d be surprised…and went to sleep.

  Seven

  On Friday, having arranged with Mrs Hubble to remain for an extra hour with the promise of time and a half which had shut the mouth, open ready to protest, Oscar lay in bed next to Marie-Céleste, her red head on his shoulder, lost in post-coital thought.

  He was back the previous day on Dr Adler’s couch. Behind the frosted windows the silence waited expectantly; for words which refused to be voiced, thoughts which passed in a constant, unending procession lost for ever as despite himself he let them disappear unspoken.

  He wondered whether it was to be one of those afternoons when Dr Adler would let the silence go on for the entire fifty minutes, putting the onus upon him to break it or not as he wished, or whether after a while he would say: ‘Well?’ or possibly, ‘What is going through your mind?’ Today he would like to speak the truth but needed encouragement. If asked, he would not make asinine remarks about the pictures made by the marks on the ceiling. He wanted to tell about Marie-Céleste.

  “It’s you or her,” he said finally. “Unless you can see me in the evenings.”

  “Out of the question. I’m sorry. Unless you can make it 11 o’clock in the morning.” Behind his head he heard the pages of the diary turn abortively.

  “I have my living to earn. You know how it is in the mornings. She isn’t even pretty. Skinny as a rake. Boyish apart from her tits. Don’t love her. Lust at first sight if anything. Don’t know her. Just does something to me…”

  “What does it feel like. What does she do to you?”

  “It’s not in the dictionary. It’s in the gut.”

&nb
sp; “Who does she remind you of?”

  “No one. Perhaps Karen before I married her. Before the children. Do you think I can manage on my own?”

  “You will have to see. You know you can always come back.”

  “I don’t want to go. I’m sure you can rearrange things if you want to.”

  “You want it all, don’t you?”

  He always had. Through Dr Adler he had come to recognize his own greed.

  “Funny thing is, I don’t feel any guilt. About Karen, I mean. My feelings for her haven’t changed. I’ve examined them carefully. I’ve taken nothing away that was hers. Can you give me a week? I’ll ring you in a week. I’ll probably have got her out of my system by then. I’m not a philanderer. You know I’m not a philanderer. Never seen any point. They never seem terribly happy. Flirt, yes. Had plenty of opportunities, too, but it’s always been too much trouble. Too lazy. I’m sure after a week…curiosity I suppose really…married for fifteen years and never looked at another woman…not my thing…just satisfy my curiosity. Today is Thursday. Give it till Monday week. I’ll ring you on the Sunday night if not before. It probably will be before. Yes, I’m sure it will be. I think she’s hard. Not like Karen. I suppose not having any children. I’m hard too. That’s why I recognize it. Out for what I can get.”

  He heard the pages of the diary again and a bump behind his head.

  “I hate it when you kick the bed.”

  “Sorry.”

  He couldn’t understand how anyone could apologise in such an utterly non-committal tone. There was neither sorrow, seduction nor appeasement. It was a pure statement of fact, unadulterated by emotion of any sort.

  “Why do you call it a bed?” Dr Adler said.

  “I didn’t!”

  His denial was accepted without argument.

  “Perhaps I was thinking of Marie-Céleste.”

  “Who were you thinking of?”

  “You. You were kicking it. It always makes me angry when you do that.”

  “You’ve never mentioned it. It was a small kick. Angry is a big word. What does it remind you of?”

  “Intrusion. Disruption of my peace, thoughts.”

  “You feel attacked?”

  “Yes. I’d like to kick you back.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the balls.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like my father. He never got angry, so I often wanted to kick him in the balls to make him angry.”

  “Did you feel he didn’t love you because he never got angry with you?”

  “He seemed to like me all right.”

  “Love you?”

  “He did everything for me. Sat up at night when I was small, holding my hand until I went to sleep. Didn’t let me have a bicycle till I was twelve in case I had an accident…was always looking after me…wouldn’t let my mother…didn’t let me cross the road alone till I was God knows what age…took me to school before morning surgery…usually did a visit or two on the way…left me in the car… I’d watch the front door of the house until he came out, always a bit lopsided because of his case, his stethoscope hanging out of his pocket…he had his visiting list on the windscreen…crossed them off as he was driving…scared me…stopped just short of the car in front…inches…told me about the patient he’d just seen, full of enthusiasm, he loved his work, still does… I didn’t really want to know…didn’t listen half the time…”

  “What did you think instead?”

  “Cigarette cards mostly, or whether I was going to be late for school.”

  “Were you?”

  “Never. Less than seconds to spare but never actually late.”

  “It made you anxious?”

  His heart started to thump as he thought about it. He was in his short grey trousers and black tie outside the forbidding-looking school which looked totally deserted, everybody else seeming to have gone in…

  “Well!” Dr Adler said. “We shall have to leave it.”

  “Christ, you’re enough to drive anybody mad! Just as it was getting interesting…”

  “You always bring it in at the end.”

  “How do I know what time it is? I haven’t even got a bloody watch.”

  He heard the silence descend and knew the verdict to be absolute. Dr Adler would not be drawn into prolonging the session by one more second. He had often tried. He sat up and swung his legs over the couch, smoothing his hair. He looked round the familiar room at the frayed Persian rug, the white spray chrysanthemums on the polished desk, the paraphernalia on the low table by Dr Adler’s chair.

  “You’ll let me know, then,” he said expressionlessly, removing the yellow-and-white head cover from the couch and folding it neatly into a square.

  He wanted to snatch it from him, to shout: ‘Don’t put it away for good!’

  “I suppose so. I don’t see why I can’t stand on my own two feet.”

  He provoked, as he knew he would, no response. Dr Adler was holding the door, the merest vestige of a smile on his face.

  “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” Oscar said as he passed him. It restored his equilibrium. He whistled as he walked down the path.

  “Why didn’t you come yesterday?” Marie-Céleste said into his thoughts.

  He’d been wondering whether to tell her about Dr Adler but had come to no conclusion.

  “I’m in analysis. Every afternoon 3 till 4; till 10 to 4 anyway.”

  “What are you doing here, then? I make it 3.45.”

  “You do me more good.” He knew he was lying.

  “Why?”

  “You make me feel…”

  “I mean why are you in analysis?”

  “I had a long bout of depression. Couldn’t write; couldn’t function; suicidal thoughts…the usual I suppose, you must know all about such things. For the last three years I have spent my afternoons undamming the sewer of my mind over one Dr Adler and his Persian carpets; some days in veritable floods with which King Canute would have problems, others in the merest trickle, resistance malgré moi winning the day. I got rid of the depression; not without pain. I’m finding greater trust in constructive and reparative forces; learning to tolerate my own limitations (which I now recognize). I’ve gained a clearer perception of internal and external reality, and most of all have found within myself a capacity for love. If your patients tell you that depression is far, far worse than any physical illness, you can believe them.”

  “Poor darling! I don’t want you to get ill again because of me.”

  “I told you, I’ve more or less resolved my problems.”

  “What are they?”

  Oscar laughed. “Lie there for three years and I’ll tell you.”

  She lay on top of him, supported on her elbows, looking into his eyes. “I can think of worse fates.”

  It had been a long morning. One in which Death on the Riviera had advanced by not one word while he sat eating nougat from a bag he had found in the drawer next to Daisy’s bed and wondering whether he was doing the right thing in exchanging Dr Adler for Marie-Céleste. He presumed that his doubts had to do with the transference situation not yet fully worked through. Dr Adler was his father, mother, lover. He did not know whether he was going to be able to manage without these key figures embodied in the person of his analyst. Of course it would only be until his curiosity about Marie-Céleste was satisfied. How long could that possibly take? A woman was a woman, and since the curiosity was purely a sexual one the voyage of discovery could not take forever.

  By the end of the morning he was in such a state of anticipation and agitation that he shouted at the children, now well on the way to recovery and popping in and out every so often for arguments to be settled or outrageous requests granted and doodled on every available piece of paper on his desk.

  Mrs Hubble was coming at 2.30; he was to be at Marie-Céleste at 3. At 1 o’clock Karen phoned to ask if the girls were all right. He snapped at her.

  “You in the middle of a chapter or something?” s
he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Put Rosy on then.”

  He shrieked to the full extent of his lung-power but there was no reply. He got up ran up the stairs three at a time. Bloody, bloody hell! “Roseeeeee!”

  Halfway up to their landing he met the deafening music of Godspell. He flung open the door. “Are you both deaf or something? I’ve been shouting the house down.”

  From the floor where they sat in their dressing-gowns they looked at him innocently.

  “We were playing Monopoly.”

  “Well, Mummy’s on the phone. Take it in the bedroom. And turn that bloody row down.”

  “It’s Godspell.”

  “I don’t care what it is. I’m not interested. How am I supposed to work with all that bloody row going on?”

  “Mummy doesn’t like you to say bloody.”

  “Well turn the bloody thing off.”

  “We’re listening.”

  “Down then…”

  Back in his study he examined his uncalled-for outburst of temper and made reparative gestures at lunchtime by allowing them two sickly mousses each from the freezer and playing twenty questions.

  By 2 o’clock he could stand it no longer. There was no harm in leaving them alone for half an hour till Mrs Hubble came. He could check her arrival from Marie-Céleste’s. They often left the girls in the house alone for short periods, having drilled them well in emergency procedure and instilled in them the dire consequences of opening the door to strangers. He went through the usual routine. Don’t touch the cooker. Put the chain on the door. Ring Mummy or Aunty Enid if you want anything. Dial 999 in case of Emergency. Daisy said she often wished there was one so that the police and the fire engines and the ambulances could all come up the road at once ringing their bells and everyone would wonder what was the matter with the two poor little orphans their Daddy had left on their own… Rosy pointed out that if they had a Daddy they wouldn’t be orphans, and it was clear to Oscar which of them if any was going to write the books. He pointed out that in any case you had to state which service it was you required and that it was highly unlikely all three would be required simultaneously. He explained the meaning of simultaneously together with its Latin root, told Rosy she was becoming a bore when she asked why he was wearing his red sweater again, and left them squabbling over hotels and houses in Park Lane.