Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers Read online

  ‘I found this when I was tidying your bedside table: “Dearest Dominic, I can’t wait till tonight. Mary tells me your parties are legendary. All love, Martha.” Why haven’t you asked me to the party? And who is Martha?’ I asked while scarcely believing that it was me standing there in an unbecoming towelling dressing-gown, accusing, mouth set tight, arms folded across my chest.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d want to go. You’re always complaining that you don’t like parties and that we go out too much. For God’s sake, I thought I was doing you a favour.’

  ‘But this is your party. Of course I want to go to that.’

  ‘Well, come then. But I won’t be able to look after you. It’s work for me. I have people I have to attend to.’

  ‘Like Martha?’

  ‘Don’t be childish. Martha is a new client, that’s all.’

  I put my pen away and closed the diary. It was all going to be so different, we had said; we were going to be different, break the pattern with our everlasting, shining love. And in that, I thought, closing the drawer, we were just like everyone else.

  Angel-face, my god-daughter, had just got engaged to Zac. The two of them had met at university and four years on they were planning their wedding. Bridget, Angel-face’s mother, had at first worried that they were too young but had since got used to the idea. ‘He truly loves her,’ she had said to me. ‘And he’s got a good career ahead of him. Angel-face needs someone with a good career to look after her.’

  I agreed with that. Angel-face was a potter. Not a potter who made mugs and butter dishes and other handy household goods that sold in their hundreds, but a maker of sometimes wonderful but never useful things such as bouquets of pottery tulips, birds of paradise and pots that were just too small for anything to fit inside.

  Angel-face, as always, was on time and we went inside the restaurant together. I ordered pink champagne and smiled at her across the table. Angel-face did not smile back; instead her soft brown eyes bore a troubled look and her high forehead was creased in a frown.

  The champagne arrived and I tried again.

  ‘To Love.’ I raised my glass.

  Angel-face lifted her glass in reply, not with the forceful upward thrust of celebration but absent-mindedly, holding it just a little off the table, where it stayed as if she had already forgotten it was there.

  ‘Mazel tov?’ I said.

  ‘What? Oh yes, mazel tov.’

  ‘Angel-face, is everything OK?’

  ‘I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I, getting married?’

  I put my glass back down and removed Angel-face’s before it slipped from her fingers.

  ‘That’s quite some question. What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand. You’ve just got engaged. Did you not mean to?’ That wasn’t such a silly question when directed at Angel-face, who quite often ended up doing things she had not really set out to do. Although of course that usually meant things like having her hair coloured black when she’d booked a trim, or joining a month-long sailing trip round the Isle of Wight when she’d just been popping down for the weekend. Getting engaged without meaning to was an altogether bigger deal.

  ‘Of course I meant to,’ Angel-face said, sounding a little annoyed that I had felt the need to ask.

  ‘And you love him?’

  ‘Of course I love him.’

  ‘Has he done something to upset you then? Has he been unkind to you?’

  ‘No, of course not. Zac is the kindest man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Then I really don’t understand,’ I said again.

  ‘Good,’ Angel-face said.

  ‘Good. What do you mean good?’

  ‘I mean good as in you don’t think it’s inevitable.’ Angel-face picked up her glass with more purpose this time and gulped down a healthy mouthful.

  ‘What isn’t inevitable?’

  ‘That Zac and I will end up divorced like forty per cent of couples, fighting over custody of the children – or the cats. Fighting over the house. Slinging insults at each other across a mediation table. Or worse, still together like the Nicholsons but itching with pent-up resentments, nursing years of “wrongs”, unable to say a single word to the other that isn’t barbed or loaded.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ I said. ‘Look at your parents. How long have they been married? Almost thirty years?’

  ‘Yes, look at them,’ Angel-face said with a sour little twist of her full lips.

  ‘They’re all right, aren’t they?’ I asked her. I thought surely Bridget would have told me if there were problems. Then again, she always said that in her view a problem shared was a problem doubled.

  Angel-face shrugged.

  ‘Yeah, they’re all right. And that’s a worry in itself, don’t you see? I mean is that the gold standard, the best I can hope for: being all right? And is all right even remotely all right or actually a complete betrayal of all one’s earlier hopes and dreams? You know, Zac took me to see Romeo and Juliet at the Donmar last night. Oh Rebecca, it was awful.’

  ‘Really? I read some excellent reviews.’

  Again Angel-face waved my words away with an impatient flap of her hand.

  ‘No, no, that’s not at all what I meant.’

  ‘Well, what do you mean, Angel-face?’ I said. I was used to getting it wrong at home, I thought. When I was out I wanted a break.

  ‘It was Juliet. There she was in her big scene trying to suck some poison from her beloved’s lips and I wanted to stand up and shout, “No, no, Juliet, don’t do it! Look around you first. Look at your parents and aunts and uncles before you decide to die for Romeo.’” With that she handed me a handwritten page of dove-grey A4 paper (Angel-face never had got to grips with computers). It said ‘Love – My Concerns’, underlined twice in red, and went on:

  Can love ever last for ever? I know, not that first high, but the excitement that that beautiful, perfect person is really yours? Is it possible to go on really caring what the other feels and thinks, wanting to touch and caress easily, frequently, searching each other out still at parties? (This fear brought on by Daddy saying the other day in a restaurant, ‘I didn’t go out to dinner in order to have to sit next to my own wife.’ He thought he was being funny but I would die if Zac ever said that kind of thing.)

  Children! I admit there are a few couples worldwide who are madly in love after years of marriage but none of them have children. I want children AND passion.

  Angel-face had watched me as I read, her eyes wide and expectant. I was getting upset. My god-daughter had come to me for advice. Like most people who knew very little about how to live their own life I was fond of giving advice to others. In fact in my early days as a writer I had supplemented my income by being a newspaper agony aunt. But sitting there, my glass of pink champagne in my hand like a balloon at a wake, I could think of nothing either wise or comforting to say.

  Angel-face raised her little hand with its pink-tipped finger adorned with a ring of a deep-blue sapphire flanked by two diamonds.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

  Really? It was my turn to look expectant.

  ‘You were going to say that the first flush of passion is bound to cool but that the love that takes its place is truer and deeper.’

  Yes, I thought, that was exactly what I would have said, had I thought of it. I nodded encouragingly. Our food arrived. My pasta with clams was pungent with garlic, just the way I liked it. Angel-face, however, stared moodily at her cod in a salt and herb crust.

  ‘Don’t blame the cod,’ I said. ‘I bet that poor fish didn’t even have a chance to get married, let alone divorced.’

  Angel-face looked up at me with a frown, then her brow cleared.

  ‘Oh, a joke.’

  ‘Well, an attempt.’ I coughed. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘I was saying that I know all that stuff about love changing but not for the worse. I know you were
going to tell me how everyone when they’re young looks at the older generation and thinks, I won’t ever be like them, but then you get to that same age and you do become just like them but you don’t actually mind …’

  I was going to say all of that too? I nodded some more.

  ‘But, Rebecca, if it were so, why the ennui and the quiet desperation, why the middle-aged affairs, why the hunger for your books? And why, why, Rebecca, does my mother look at me and Zac with such sad longing?’

  I felt even more discomfited. Bridget was brisk and cheerful, competent and matter-of-fact. She said, ‘Let’s just get on with it,’ where others lingered and debated. She had no business to look at anything with sad longing. And I knew my reaction was selfish, but wasn’t that how it was? We depended on the daffy friend remaining daffy so we could exercise our practical side, and on our poor friend to remain poor so we could be generous. Our strong friend must thus remain so we could let go now and then and appear just as small and scared as we felt.

  ‘I don’t know why your mother looks at you that way,’ I said finally. ‘But it could be simple nostalgia as she remembers that wonderful feeling of being young and in love. It doesn’t have to mean that she’s dissatisfied with what she’s got now.’

  ‘Bollocks! It’s got nothing to do with being young and everything to do with the place you’re in. Look at Aunt Geraldine.’

  ‘How is Geraldine?’

  ‘She’s fine. Blissed-out, in fact.’

  ‘That’s good. And she’s married.’

  Angel-face nodded.

  ‘Oh yes. Aunt Geraldine is always married. It’s just the husbands that vary. She’s on her third.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah indeed,’ Angel-face said. ‘The only woman of my parents’ generation whose relationship is one to which I feel like aspiring is married for the third time. But, Rebecca, I want to be with Zac. And don’t say, “And you are.” Because if he’s the love of my life it seems to me that the only way I can make sure he remains that way and that we end up happily ever after – with each other – is if I put us on hold and marry at least two other people first. And patently that would be absurd.’

  I was thinking about that when Angel-face repeated, rather crossly, ‘And patently that would be absurd?’

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, of course it would be absurd. Anyway, Geraldine aside, divorce is usually a very painful and debilitating time with long-term consequences, especially if there are children involved.’

  ‘Humph,’ Angel-face said. ‘Tell that to Bella’s mother.’

  ‘Your pretty red-haired friend Bella?’

  ‘That’s the one. Her parents are getting divorced …’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry. Is she all right?’

  ‘Sort of. She hasn’t actually been living at home since uni, but of course it still gets to her. Now they’re going to court fighting over the house and Katy …’

  ‘Bella’s got a sister?’

  ‘Dog. Well, her parents’ dog. And the house thing really upsets her because it will probably have to be sold in the end and even if she doesn’t live there any more it’s still her home, you know. It’s still important that it’s there.’

  I nodded. I knew what she meant. When I left home I had expected my mother to remain for all eternity in the same flat where I had grown up, surrounded by the same furniture and pictures right down to the china ornament on her desk. I might be moving on; my mother, if I had my way, would live out her days preserved in aspic.

  ‘Bella’s father is miserable and stressed,’ Angel-face continued, ‘but her mother seems exhilarated more than anything. It’s just all so disheartening.’ She sighed and poked at her fish with the fork.

  ‘It’s not that bad, Angel-face, it really isn’t. The world is full of people who are happy in long-term relationships.’

  ‘Give me a list,’ Angel-face said. ‘How long were you married to Tim?’

  ‘Eleven years.’

  ‘Ha! Well, as it happens, that’s actually the national average. That would bring me up to thirty-four for my first divorce. How long have you and Dominic been together?’

  ‘About four years.’

  ‘So you have a few years left.’

  And for the first time, right then, at the lunch to celebrate my god-daughter’s engagement, I wondered consciously if Dominic and I had much time left at all.

  The waiter asked if we wanted another glass of champagne. Angel-face said no thank you but I nodded a yes. Sometimes I found that champagne actually alleviated a headache.

  I lowered my glass to find Angel-face staring intently at me.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re not happy!’

  ‘Oh darling, it’s not as if I want to be unhappy.’

  ‘So I’m right. You and Dominic aren’t good, either.’ Angel-face sat back, her arms folded across her chest, her pointed chin raised and a frightened look in her eyes.

  Words were dangerous things. Once let out they took on a life of their own, pulling consequences along with them, reproducing, prompting reactions, making solid that which had been shadowy and only partially formed. Words, once spoken or written, chased your illusions away.

  ‘No,’ I said eventually. ‘No, we’re not very good.’

  ‘That’s it, I give up.’

  ‘There’s no point getting cross with me.’

  Angel-face looked as stern as anyone with a face like hers could.

  ‘I’m not sure there isn’t. What was it they called you in the papers last week? The High Priestess of Romance, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘You know what those headlines are like.’

  Angel-face ignored the comment.

  Instead, she said, ‘I’m afraid it’s people like you: poets, film-makers, ad-writers, wedding-magazine editors – romance-mongers the lot of you – who are to blame, who are absolutely responsible for little girls growing up still dreaming of finding the perfect love and marrying while wearing the perfect frock in the perfect venue and going on to live the perfect romance. Oh we pretend we’re not. We tell ourselves and those around us that what matters is our careers and our independence and our darling girlfriends, but back in the privacy of our own minds we go on dreaming and planning and hoping and that’s as much due to people like you as anything. Then when I come to you for some reassurance what do I get? Nothing. I mean how can you do it? How can you go on writing your books that you obviously don’t believe in? J’accuse, Rebecca Finch, that’s what I do.’

  I tried to think of something to say, tried to untangle my thoughts and retrieve one at least that was straight and true and useful.

  Angel-face went on, ‘So what are you saying to people like me and Zac, young people about to embark on marriage?’

  I opened my eyes wide. I shut them tight. I opened them wide again.

  ‘Better luck next time?’

  I walked fast down the Fulham Road towards home. The afternoon had turned chilly: April playing at winter, the wind chasing from the north making a nonsense of my short thin jacket and the flimsy skirt that blew and billowed around my legs exposing my thighs with every other step that I took. I walked as if I could outrun my own thoughts. When I had been a child I had been able to. If my mind was especially troubled I would shut the front door behind me and start running anywhere, as fast as I could, until I had reached the speed at which my mind was left behind. However, due to incipient middle age and a sedentary lifestyle, I wasn’t so fast any more and my thoughts had no problem at all catching up with my feet: I had upset Angel-face on a day that was meant to be a celebration and I had heard myself say that I was in an unhappy relationship. Yet how could I be? I had promised myself that it would be different with Dominic and I had believed me. Right through the arguments and screaming matches, the insults and petty betrayals I had believed that ours was still a grand love affair. Until today when I heard myself state the opposite.

  Back home I stripped off the outfit that had seemed so appropriate that morni
ng but now seemed to mock me with its simpering prettiness and changed into a far more suitable pair of black trousers and an oversized jumper. Sitting down at my desk I proceeded not to work but to stare out of the window and on to my street. Usually the view soothed me. Soon the hydrangeas in the tiny communal front gardens would be in bloom, some pure pink, some veering towards blue as if they had decided to change but had been interrupted halfway through. Now, in spring, the multitude of blossom on the cherry trees made me feel as if I were living across the street from Mary Poppins and, as everyone knows, when she was around nothing bad could happen. Only it seemed that it had. I needed someone to talk to, someone to ask if sometimes they too looked out on a much-loved view only to find that the trees and houses looked liked cousins of the usual trees and houses, alike but not the same, and the cars did not appear like the everyday items they were but alien things, newcomers. I needed someone, not Angel-face, who took my words and pierced her own heart with them, not Dominic, who reacted to any attempt at conversation beyond small talk or quips like a virgin to an indecent proposal, and certainly not Vanessa, my mother. Vanessa, or daughter of Pangloss, as I liked to call her, took bad news, any bad news, whomsoever it might relate to, as an unwarranted act of vandalism, graffiti scrawled across the pretty wall she had erected against the ugliness of life. Try telling her that all was not actually for the best in this the best of all possible worlds and she would tell you not to be naughty.

  I thought of calling my friend Matilda.

  ‘Hello, it’s me. I know we spoke as usual at ten this morning but I just wanted to add that I’m not in the enviably romantic and passionate, although somewhat stormy, relationship I’ve led you to believe I was in, but that actually I’m unhappy. What’s that? You’re not surprised? You’re telling me all the signs have been there: the constant bickering in public that made everyone around us uncomfortable. Goodness, you noticed? And you say that I seemed quieter, not my usual confident self when he was around. His constant flirting with other women, you say, and me just having had the best holiday in ages – in Paris. On my own. Well, yes, Matilda, those were all clues but it seems that I needed something more to make me see clearly. A cosh with the words “You are in a toxic relationship”? Well, thank you for offering that, Matilda, but I think I’m getting the message. Would I like to come round for supper and talk about it? No!’