Sylvana has caved in: she is telling Nicole all about herself.
I’ve just opted out. Sitting back in my chair, I’m smoking John Player Blues in packets of ten because they ran out of twenties. I’m staring out of the window at the heads of distant giraffes, trying to tell the males from the females.
But I am unable fully to tune out of their conversation. Somewhere in the rear of my mind I am aware of Sylvana recounting animated stories to Nicole about her father. Right now she’s telling her how difficult it has become to accompany the old man to the theatre. The principal problem, apart from the fact that he’s confined to crutches and has crap eyesight, is that he’s totally deaf.
Nicole is nodding gravely, a portrait of total concern. She appears to be deeply affected by the fact that Sylvana’s father is thus misfortuned.
“So what he does is this,” my friend continues, encouraged. “He buys the play first and reads it, commits it to memory and follows it on the night from the actors’ lips.”
Nicole is now shaking her head in awe, chanting what a wonderful achievement this is for Sylvana’s father at his age, adding at the last minute that age shouldn’t matter at all.
Sylvana, clearly, is deeply impressed by Nicole’s demonstrated human qualities. So she launches into the topic of her father full whack – telling her about his devotion to learning despite his disabilities, his interest in everything around him, his kindness, his infuriating habits such as picking his ears in the middle of the city’s auditoria.
Nicole should be a nun – she’s the perfect listener. She is nodding and smiling, and shaking her head where appropriate. She’s a better listener than I am, though I have to say she’s not too hot on irony. And let’s face it, anyone who can paint grass without green in it has to be a few sandwiches short of ironic.
Fifteen minutes later Sylvana has told Nicole something which it took her three years to confide in me: that she was adopted. She says she has recently made strides to locate her birth parents. She says she hopes she won’t be too disappointed when she does manage to locate them: she’s terrified they won’t turn out to be multimillionaires.
She’s scared from another angle too: that if she ends up a multimillionaire in her own right, she’ll be destined to spend the rest of her days fending off alleged relatives.
But her worst nightmare of all, she says, is this recurring dream of hers, which she refers to as a ‘backward premonition’. In the dream she meets a sturdy woman in her early fifties who informs her that she, Sylvana, was conceived in the back of a Morris Minor outside the Top Hat disco in the early hours of one morning in August 1970.
“I mean,” she drawls laconically, “when you think about it.”
Nicole is frowning, getting very involved.
Now it’s Sylvana’s turn to ask Nicole about herself. And so, in the minutes that follow, we get a rundown of Nicole’s life, her art, her music, her obsessions in general. The topic of Ronan is discreetly avoided.
Just ten minutes later we have established that Sylvana felt closer to her father than Nicole did to hers, but that Nicole hated her mother only slightly less than Sylvana hated hers. The main point is that both have gained a thorough appreciation of each other’s feelings in regard to the emotional traumas they endured as small girls in families respectively racked (like my own) by dissension and plate-smashing.
All I can do is glare viciously at Sylvana whenever possible.
Now, Nicole is showing Sylvana the gold necklace Ronan got her. She flips it out over her top and points to a small shiny pendant. She says it’s a Mayan ball, which she bought separately.
“They’re great if you’re in a difficult relationship. Also, if you hang it from the rear-view mirror of your car it reduces accidents. I tell everyone to do that. It works.”
Me, sarcastically: “Have you tried it out?”
Sylvana leans forward for a closer look at Nicole’s Mayan ball. I am beginning to hate my so-called best friend intensely. She can’t seem to grasp the meaning behind my spiteful glares. I’ll try a few Indian smoke signals instead.
Carelessly, I blow several rings of smoke into Sylvana’s face. There’s no reaction: she just sweeps it away with her hands and continues her exclusive with Nicole, who is so full of talk and enthusiasm that it doesn’t seem even to occur to her that I might wish her an early death. Doll-like, she sits across the table in her own dreamworld, blissfully zombified by Sylvana’s attentions.
I shouldn’t worry – it will all be over in about half an hour.
“Tell me about Ronan,” says I, blowing smoke in her face.
Sylvana eyes me warily.
But a genuinely happy smile beams across Nicole’s countenance. She shrugs as if she can’t think where to start. She runs her fingers through her long, golden hair. “He’s very romantic.”
“Romantic.”
“And thoughtful.”
“Aha. Listen to this, Imelda.”
“And he’s so generous.”
“Is he?”
“He used to send flowers to where I worked every few weeks. I kept telling him not to, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Ronan hasn’t given me so much as a petal in the last year. Before that he’d given me flowers all right, but usually the service station variety. For instance, the time I severely sprained my ankle playing chess with him at home – I had to go to hospital for tests and I stayed in overnight – Ronan brought me flowers, which he almost fooled me into believing weren’t from the lobby shop downstairs. They were shrivelled begonias.
“Also,” Nicole says, “he gave me these bangles. They’re gold.”
She stretches out her wrist. Four thin golden bangles with tiny intricate designs tinkle against one another like wind chimes.
“When did he give you these?”
“Last March, on my birthday.”
I sit back in my seat and blow a few more smoke rings, one at Sylvana, one at Nicole and one into empty space. “I wish my husband were as generous with me.”
“I’m sure he is, Julianne,” she says, tilting her head sympathetically towards me. “What did Helmut give you for your last birthday?”
“Helmut?” says our Imelda, incredulous.
“Let’s not get hung up on names, Imelda. He gave me a book.”
Audible gulp of sympathy from Nicole: she has grasped my misfortune. What was the book about, she wonders.
“Bumblebees.”
Yes. Not very romantic.
“Once we were watching a documentary about elephants,” I explain, “and I told him that I loved animals…”
“You?” Sylvana grins.
“…and a month later he gave me a book about bumblebees. It was the best he could come up with. He was probably trying to give me a hint about my deadly sting or something. The idiot can’t give you a present without making it symbolic.”
Nicole: “That sounds a bit like like Ronan.”
It’s nearly three o’clock.
We’re walking along a path bordering a lake, approaching the monkey enclosures. These are large cabins with glass fronts through which you can spy (if you’re so inclined) the inner details of these primates’ lives.
First are the colobus monkeys, each of which sits alone on a small length of knotted rope suspended from the ceiling. Their heads are bowed, their eyes closed as if in prayer. Buddhist monkeys. They are black, with a white tufty tail and a cloak of white hair on their backs. Nicole tells us about them off the top of her head: diet, group life, mating habits. And their religious obsessions, naturally.
The spider monkeys next. Black as coal, they hang down limp as a wet shirt on a clothes line, attached to the branch by a tiny fist and a spindly tail – the other limbs hanging loose. Perched on a thick branch at the far end are three of them snuggling up close together like a large coil of shiny black rope. Soon something moves and a tiny black face separates itself from the folds, wrinkled and old-looking. The monkey in question scratches his head and yawns
, bewildered.
We stop at the glass enclosure housing the Celebes macaques, dark monkeys who seem to be tearing each other apart, under the bored, benign gaze of the elders of the tribe.
I’m still feeling annoyed at Sylvana’s warmth towards Nicole, so I tell her that Nicole plays piano. Chopin, to be precise.
“Really?”
“Yes,” Nicole admits. “I’m really into Chopin.” (She pronounces it ‘Cho-panne’. )
Sylvana and I exchange meaning-loaded glances.
Nicole says that when she found out how much Ronan liked Cho-panne, she went straight out and bought the notes to his favourite nocturne in C minor. She finally got to play it for him last Tuesday evening. In Paris. On the hotel piano before going out for dinner together. She was a bit rusty, she apologizes, but Ronan loved it. “It’s a really soul-stirring piece,” she explains.
What do you bet poor Cho-panne rotated in his grave?
“The piano is wonderful,” she adds. “It’s a great stress reliever.”
“Like the sex.”
“Sorry?”
I shrug at her. “How is the sex between you?”
“Don’t ask!”
This issue is one I worry about. For months, Ronan has shunned just about every erotic procedure imaginable. For him, oral sex has come to mean talking about sex. Foreplay has come to mean fumbling with condoms. And orgasm has come to mean annual pilgrimage. If you’re lucky.
My point: is it different for Ronan and Nicole?
“You can tell us, Nicole. Sex should be a meaningful experience.”
“I agree with that,” she says.
“Is it meaningful for you and Ronan?”
A smile slowly and temptingly spreads across her wide mouth, as we cross a narrow bridge over a small stream and head towards the orang-utan enclosure.
“The sex is…”
She falters.
“Go on, Nicole. We don’t mind.”
“It’s wonderful.” She says this almost nostalgically.
This issue has been nagging away at me, really plaguing me.
“What about foreplay?” I ask her.
Sylvana groans.
Nicole turns to me and smiles. “You mean…?”
“For instance, do you and Ronan build up slowly?”
Her green eyes are presently dilating in their orbits. She glances at Sylvana for moral support. But my pal is staring into space, exhaling cigarette smoke into the surrounding shrubbery.
“Take Helmut, for instance,” I deviate, to ease her gently into the topic. “With him, the definition of foreplay is the time it takes for him to get from the shower to the bed. You have to whip him to get him going and even then it’s a battle against nature.”
Nicole is nodding quietly as if I’ve just told her my husband died recently. Any minute now she’ll tell me how sorry she is for my loss.
I repeat my question about whether or not she builds up slowly with my husband. The corner of her mouth is now teetering on the brink of a grin. Incredibly, she asks Sylvana for a cigarette. Sylvana obliges and offers her a light.
Nicole lights up, inhaling deeply. She exhales, staring ahead into blankness. “With Ronan…” she marvels, “foreplay is an art form.”
“You paint him first.”
She clicks her finger. “He can bring me to it just like that ”
“That’s not foreplay, Nicole.”
“Or he can drag it out. To the very, very…”
“Bitter.”
“…very end.”
“That might be foreplay.”
“AH he has to do is go near me and I’ve suddenly got G-spots all over my body. It’s amazing.”
“And how is the orgasm?” I ask her, like I’m referring to a well-known brand of washing detergent.
“Don’t talk to me about orgasm!” she chuckles, reddening.
“Sorry to be harping on about it.”
“Actually,” she confesses, “I get multiple orgasms when I’m with him.”
“Factor fifty?”
Sylvana: “She’s not talking about suntan cream, Julianne.”
“Factor sixty-nine?”
“Ronan is amazing.”
“I adore multiple orgasms myself,” Sylvana comments. “Especially since you don’t need a man to give you one.”
“That’s all very well, Imelda,” I shoot back, “but when you’ve got this implement at home – a fully accessoried male – it’s a pity when it stops doing what it was put on this world to do.”
I have both of them roaring with laughter.
“I mean, would someone please describe the multiple-experience thing to me? Please? Helmut is a drip. He couldn’t satisfy me if you bloated him with Viagra.”
“Oh no,” she says earnestly. “Ronan always stays with me. He never rushes. He’s very affectionate, very sensitive.”
“He must really love you so.”
As we walk on, I’m desperately trying not to appear too shattered in front of them. I must focus on the positive: the three o’clock rendezvous with my future.
At the orang-utan precinct, Nicole is transfixed. The orang closest to us, rust-coloured and reminiscent of a red-brown rug on legs, is moving slowly in our direction. You can just about make out the tiny gentle eyes darting through flabby cheek pads, which remind me of huge black puddings stuck to her face. In her arms is a tiny baby orang.
Nicole is over the moon. She stands there, spellbound, for several minutes as we all watch mother and baby messing around in this primeval-ape compound.
She turns to me at last. “Julianne?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
“What?”
“I’ve been keeping it to myself up to now.”
“Right.”
“Nobody else knows. Can I tell you?”
“Yes. What? ”
She looks at Sylvana, then back at me. “Julianne, I’m pregnant.”
51
My days spent visiting zoos are over.
Never again can I look at an orang-utan.
Especially not an orang-utan bearing young.
At first I thought I’d misheard what Nicole had said. I asked her to repeat herself. She just smiled and told me and Sylvana not to look so worried, that she’d get through it fine.
“How long have you known this?” demanded Sylvana.
“Several weeks,” she replied, startled.
“When are you due?” Sylvana inquisitioned.
“Mid-November.”
“That means you started it last February.”
Nicole nodded, confused.
“What makes you think it’s not Harry’s?” darted Sylvana. She was watching me like a hawk.
She shook her head. “I am absolutely sure: Harry used those things. Besides…” that’s when she pulled out the letter from her bag “…read this. Ronan sent this to me at work. You can ignore the third paragraph – he’s just being silly.”
She handed it to me. Sylvana read it over my shoulder.
3 March
Dear Nicole,
I want to see you again. Last night was amazing. You were very good indeed, better than I’d expected. It’s the longest session I’ve had in years. I felt like I was going to explode. You mentioned that you weren’t comfortable sleeping with me because I’m married and I told you that my marriage is on its last legs. Nicole, we barely know one another; let’s not make any decisions about one another yet. Let’s just take things slowly at first. We can build up gradually; what is required will then become obvious.
It’s important to be philosophical about this: either it will work out between us or it will not. I think it would help to see it as a chemical reaction. Two elements from the Periodic table will either combine with one another or they will not combine. The capacities of chemical reactions are determined in advance. That’s the way I see it with us: it’s already decided in advance, therefore there’s no point worrying
.
Enough of that. All I can think of right now is being with you again, just like last night.
I have decided not to give you my mobile number yet; it’s too risky. I’ll call you. How does Thursday sound, after work? Thursday is a busy day for me, so it would be nice if you came to my surgery again, say, at about six thirty. The secretary will have gone home then. I’ll call you that morning to confirm.
Ronan
“That was the day I became pregnant,” she said proudly.
Broken-hearted, I handed the page back to Nicole.
“Julianne, you’ve gone all white.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have! Are you okay?”
“It’s you that’s having the baby; it’s you that has all the…”
I wanted to say luck, fortune, happiness, love…but the words dried up.
Nicole started protesting: “Julianne, don’t worry about me – I’ll be fine. Childbirth isn’t that bad, is it Imelda?”
Sylvana snorted.
“Anyway, Ronan will be there for the delivery – I’ll make sure of that. It’s his child, after all. Don’t worry about me.”
I couldn’t help it: I burst into tears. Nicole was mortified. She put her arm round my shoulder and started fussing over me, apologizing, asking me in urgent, high-pitched tones what the matter was.
Then something dawned on her. “This is about Helmut, isn’t it? Oh God, I shouldn’t have said anything – I wasn’t thinking. It’s just when I saw those orangs…”
I started moving away. Nicole kept up, walking beside me. “Julianne, I’m really sorry, please don’t hold it against me. It’s what I was trying to tell you the whole time: part of the reason he’s so important to me is that he’s the father of my child. It wasn’t planned that way.”
“No,” remarked Sylvana. “It was the Immaculate Conception.”
“Does Ronan know about this?” I wondered weakly.
Nicole shook her head, saying she didn’t want to alarm him.
“Well, perhaps we’ll tell him today,” Sylvana suggested.
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