“As usual.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
She shook her head.
“Did you tell him?”
She shook it again.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He’ll go mad; want me to stop working. Wrap me in cotton wool.”
“You’ll have to tell him.”
“I know. Did you sleep with Karen?”
“No. She wanted me to.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“You asked me.”
“I’m sorry. Never tell me. Lie to me if you must.”
“Too many lies. It’s getting worse.”
“Do they worry you?”
“Yes. You?”
“Not really. It’s easy to lie to Ernest.”
He looked at the worn, red leather examination couch. Her eyes followed his.
She laughed. “You must be crazy!”
“Can’t lie to you, can I? Don’t you want to examine me?”
“It would take too long. Far too long.”
“I am a private patient.”
“What about all the poor souls out there?”
“F— them.”
“Really?”
“If you ever dared I’d murder you. Oscar John Heath. Come here.”
She came round from behind the desk. He stood up and took her in his arms.
“That’s better.” He lost count of place, time. His hand was up her skirt, caressing her. They didn’t hear the door open.
“Dr Burns, I…” The receptionist, with a letter in her hand, stood transfixed at the door.
Marie-Céleste released herself, smoothing her skirt.
“Yes, Mrs Wilson?”
“I, I er…it can wait.” She beat a hasty retreat and shut the door.
“Will you get struck off?”
“I shall probably have to revive poor Mrs Wilson from the shock.”
“Will she…?”
“Say anything? Good lord no. She’s worked for me ever since I’ve been in practice. I didn’t particularly want her to know but now that she does you can trust her.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You can take my word.”
“Phew! I feel like a naughty schoolboy caught in the act. I suppose I am now meant to walk through the waiting room with my prescription clutched in my sticky little hand.”
“You haven’t a prescription.”
“Well, give me one.”
She went to the desk and scribbled something on her pad. “Not to be opened until you get outside.”
“I hope it’s not too unpleasant.”
“I assure you.”
“Tomorrow?”
She nodded.
“How does one survive?”
“One survives.”
Why were women always so much stronger?
He did not touch her again. He stopped at the door to regain his composure, then strode through the waiting room, avoiding the eye of Mrs Wilson.
In the car he unfolded the prescription. Above her name and Health Service number was written: ‘Je t’adore’.
“I love her,” he told the ceiling of Dr Adler’s room at two minutes past three. “It is affecting my sanity, for what it’s worth.”
“Love has been described as a state of temporary insanity.”
“I can think of nothing else. Can’t work. I shout at Karen, the children. I only exist when I’m with her.”
“Your family seem real enough when you talk about them.”
“My entire existence and happiness are embodied in Marie-Céleste…”
“For the moment perhaps?”
“…why do you interrupt? Either you say nothing for hours or interrupt when I’m in the middle of saying something. I was about to add my child too.”
“Is the child yours?”
“Yes.” He lied.
Silence.
“I don’t want to leave Karen, the children. I am totally confused.”
“You are prone, Oscar, to ‘falling in love’.”
“You must be out of your mind. When have I ever…?”
“The girl at Benthorpe’s, Rosy’s English teacher, the woman on the beach in Yugoslavia… You don’t remember?”
“Fantasies. Marie-Céleste is real.”
“You are acting out your fantasies, for the first time perhaps.”
“You know it’s the first time. She doesn’t mind what I do; in or out of bed.”
“Who else didn’t mind what you did? As an infant.”
“Marie-Céleste is not my mother.”
“Perhaps your unconscious recognizes in her qualities which remind you of the primary love object.”
“According to you my feelings towards my mother were ambivalent, unresolved…remember the Mars bars…for Marie-Céleste these is no hostility; only love.”
“For the moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just now she is ‘idealized’. She appears to have all the qualities you would have chosen in your mother, had you been given the opportunity.”
“I told you. There are only positive feelings.”
“You have excluded the negative ones.”
“They do not exist.”
“Yet.”
“They never will.”
“That is not possible. You know it. Doesn’t she want to leave her husband?”
“I haven’t asked her.”
“Why not? Perhaps you don’t really want to resolve the mixed feelings you have not yet resolved towards your own mother in this surrogate mother.”
“Marie-Céleste is not my mother. Tell me what to do.”
“We can’t work through it in one session.”
“Nor in a thousand. Coming up here is like Sisyphus. He spends years rolling his ball up to the top of the ruddy hill and just as he thinks he’s got there down it rolls again. It’s a giant hoax perpetrated by the analysts.”
“You don’t have to come.”
“I have to come. Benthorpe are expecting the book in two months. I haven’t written a word in weeks. Can’t seem to concentrate. There are no books in Marie-Céleste’s flat. I’ve suddenly realized. Not a book. Neither hers nor Ernest’s. Country Life, Financial Times… There were BMJs in her surgery, hundreds of them. She says the baby is Ernest’s.”
Silence.
“I don’t want it to be Ernest’s. More than Rosy, more than Daisy, this one I want to be mine. I cannot believe Ernest is his father.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a boy?”
“It’s a boy.”
“We shall have to wait and see.”
“You may have to. I know. I want to stay with her while it is born, right to the end, not like with Rosy and Daisy, coming back when it’s all cleaned up. I want to see her giant orgasm… I want to share it; more than anything. It has nothing to do with Ernest. He can wait outside if he likes. Once I went with my father to deliver a baby. He didn’t know it was that so he took me in the car. He was a long time and the car windows were open and so were the windows of the house which were right on the street. This woman was screaming and screaming. I think she was Irish, she kept saying things like ‘Mitherogod!’ It was horrible. I thought my father was killing her. Then it was quiet and a baby cried. A nurse went in and my father came out beaming, with his case. I said, ‘Why did you hurt her?’ and he laughed and said ‘Naughty Mrs Dogherty thought she was putting on weight and has nine already and should have known better.’ Then he said he was sorry to have been so long and did I know what was for dinner. When I was very small I thought he actually took the babies in his case, then my cousin Lois said don’t be stupid he pulls them out on a long string through your tummy button. I imagined the string like a skipping rope. I still think of it when I see a skipping rope. Those games they play and the ryhmes ‘salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper’. Children are better informed these days, Rosy and Daisy can quote precise anatomical details chapter and verse. They are lucky.”
<
br /> “The information may help them intellectually; not emotionally.”
“I still envy them their ability to talk about things which were taboo in my days; their freedom. I heard Daisy ask Rosy the other day how old she was going to be when she first ‘did it’.”
“What did Rosy say?”
“Fourteen. When they try our door and it’s locked they say, ‘Oh they’re at it again’. I never imagined my parents doing anything so outrageous except once, to conceive me; that was hard.”
“Perhaps you don’t want to imagine it.”
“Come to think of it I don’t think they ever did…”
“Come now!”
“Honestly. I’ve never seen my mother and father do anything that could have the slightest possible sexual connotation. It was different in those days.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes. My father was too busy.”
“You like to think he was. Then you could have your mother all to yourself.”
“No. He was busy from the moment he woke up until he went to bed at night. With his patients.”
“And at night?”
“He was too tired. He often had to get up in the night and go out, remember?”
“Did they sleep in a double bed?”
“Yes. Still do.”
Silence.
“They just lived; side by side.”
“Now perhaps.”
“Always did. I’m sure.” He tried to imagine his mother, grey haired and aging rapidly, lying with her legs spreadeagled, his plump little father with an erection.
“Yes?”
Silence.
“Well, we shall have to leave it for another time.”
“F— you,” Oscar said and angrily got off the couch.
“We have to decide about the summer,” Karen said. “I have to let Boyd know when I want to take my holiday.”
“I don’t particularly want to go away.”
“Why not? That’s not like you. Besides, I think you need a holiday more than ever.”
“I’ve just had one.”
“That was work. It doesn’t count.” She took out her diary. “Rosy and Daisy are going away with the school in June. Daisy’s class is going to the country and Rosy’s to Brittany; so I thought probably about the middle of August to spread things out a bit.”
“Whatever you like.”
“I can’t fix it without you. Where do you want to go? France, Italy, Greece, Spain, touring…?”
“I told you I don’t want to go away.”
“Well, I do; and the girls. They enjoy holidays with us.”
“Fix it up then. It’ll be OK with me.”
“Sure you won’t consider France?”
“I don’t mind.”
“But you said…”
“Not that end. Not Villefranche. It’s too…busy in August. So much traffic. You can hardly move. I don’t mind the other end.”
“The girls can practise their French. Shall we take the car?”
He shrugged.
“Oh, come on, Oscar!” She wrote in her diary. “We’ll make it about the twentieth then and drive down, if that’s all right with you. I’ll find a little place we haven’t been to.” She flipped over the pages of the diary. “Oh yes, June the sixteenth I have to go to Edinburgh with Boyd. He’s giving a lecture. It works out quite well because both the girls will be away.” She looked at him. “You don’t mind?”
He smiled. “Live a little.”
“My God, with Boyd!”
“What did Mrs Wilson say?” he asked Marie-Céleste next afternoon in her flat.
“Nothing. It’s not her business.”
“Come off it, M-C. Don’t expect me to believe you talked about the morning visits as if nothing at all happened.” They were in the flat drinking tea and eating Fortnum’s chocolate almond biscuits.
She poured more water into the silver pot and stirred it.
“We did have a heart to heart over coffee.”
“Thought so. What did she say?”
“She told me about how she went to Rimini on a package for ten days without her husband and met this gorgeous man from Manchester. She had one wild week before the bottom fell out of her world and she had to go home to the old man and the kids. It took her a year to get over it.”
“I meant about me.” He was not interested in Mrs Wilson’s tawdry love life. “What did she say about me?”
“Nothing. I just told her how it was.”
“You keep telling people.”
“Only Mrs Wilson. We’ve known each other for years. She’s the soul of discretion.”
“And Marie-Claire.”
“You said you didn’t mind about Marie-Claire.”
“No.”
“That’s all then.”
“I’d like to tell the whole world. I don’t like all this secrecy.”
“What did Dr Adler say?”
“F— all, as usual. ‘Love is a state of temporary insanity’, if I understood him correctly. I hope I never regain my sanity.” He did not tell her she represented the good mother. He didn’t think she’d be very flattered. He didn’t believe it anyway.
“I told Ernest. About the child.”
“I’m sorry you did. I wanted to keep it to ourselves a bit longer.”
“It’s his child.”
“Debatable.”
“You won’t give up, will you?”
“No.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him just then. He had taken her to dinner at the White Elephant; homecoming celebration; he had missed her while she was in France. They’d had a drink at the bar, recognizing one or two acquaintances and a stoned disc jockey who was draped on a stool over a Buck’s Fizz.
When their table was ready Marie-Céleste said she’d start with consommé. Ernest looked surprised and suggested pâté, avocado pear with shrimps, smoked salmon. She stuck to consommé and Ernest ordered giant Mediterranean prawns, his favourite. When they came they arched obscenely pink over their silver, ice-filled goblet. He took one in his finger and cracked it.
“I always think…” he said.
“Excuse me,” Marie-Céleste said and made off in the direction of the ladies’ room.
When she came back Ernest, solicitous as always, had made the waiter put the soup back to warm on the little spirit stove on the serving trolley. He’d made no progress with the prawns.
She sat back next to him on the banquette. The waiter laid her napkin across her lap and put a fresh bowl in front of her into which he ladled the soup.
Ernest said: “Are you all right, darling? You look a bit pale.”
“I’m going to have a baby,” she said stupidly. “It’s the Mediterranean prawns.”
Ernest’s first reaction was to call the waiter, who came running, to remove the prawns. His second was to cancel the wine he had ordered, and to ask for a bottle of Château Latour 1962, Premier cru Pauillac.
Turning to Marie-Céleste he said: “I think you’ll like this. I know you don’t care for champagne.”
She waited for him to kiss her, take her hand.
He said: “You must stop work immediately, and we must get the finest gynaecologist.”
“Ernest, I’m having a baby, not the drawing-room re-decorated.”
“What on earth’s that got to do with it?”
“Don’t you care?”
“My God, you know I care. That’s why we must have the top man.”
It was useless.
“I’ve no intention of giving up work and Dr Boyd will look after me.”
“There’s no question of you working. You can get a locum tomorrow.”
“It’s good for me.”
“Besides there will be things to do. You’d better go and stay with Mother while we make a nursery out of the second bedroom. What about the nurse? Where will she sleep? With the child or do you think that we should move?”
“Ernest, I’m pregnant, not ill, and I haven�
�t the slightest intention of giving up work or going to stay with your mother; and there’s absolutely no need to move; it’s only one. Not twins or triplets.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. But I can take a pretty good guess.”
“What’s the feller’s name who delivers the royal family?”
“I’ve no idea but he’s about ninety. I’m going to ask Alan Boyd to look after me. I did my midwifery with him and I like him. I’ve already made an appointment,” she lied.
“I’m not happy about it.”
“But then you’re not having the baby.”
“I’ll have to make some enquiries.”
“I’ve made up my mind. You’ll be wasting your time. Ernest, do we have to argue?”
He was immediately concerned. “Oh I’m sorry, darling. It’s just that we’ve waited a long time. I don’t want anything to go wrong.”
She felt sorry for him.
“It won’t go wrong.”
“I’d never forgive myself. What shall we call him?”
“Him?”
“Bound to be a boy. What about Warnford, after my father?”
“Not exactly my favourite name,” Marie-Céleste said. “Will you love me when I grow fat and hideous?”
Oscar looked at her, and put out his hand. “Come into the bedroom.”
The telephone started to ring. She tried to pull away. “Leave it!” he said masterfully.
It was still ringing when they’d got undressed.
“I’m supposed to be on duty,” Marie-Céleste said.
“They can always phone someone else or call the police.” He pulled her towards him. “…before you get hideous and fat.”
She leaned over to the telephone and switched off the bell.
When they made love he was careful not to hurt the baby although she said it didn’t matter, couldn’t possibly come to any harm. He was surprised at the new depths of tenderness he found within himself provoked by her condition. In all his married life love had never been like this. He did not want to leave her. She did not want him to. They had more tea and chocolate biscuits. Mrs Hubble would be gone; Rosy and Daisy home. He did not care. What was it Dr Adler had said about losing touch with reality? She was wearing the white negligée.
“I would like to be married.”
“You are.”
“To you. Newly weds expecting our first child.”
“You already have two; and a wife. You can’t expunge them. You don’t want to. Do you?”
The Life Situation Page 20