‘My god, Effie. How ghastly!’
‘Awful, shaming beyond belief.’
It was Monday lunch time and Effie was regaling Susie with the experiences of the weekend and the whole sorry saga of her battle with the cistern. The two women were seated in a corner of their favourite cafe, sipping lattes. Effie was also indulging in an almond croissant since, as she explained, she needed the sugar after all the excitement of the past few days.
‘I used to think I led a rather ordinary boring existence, and, now this! First a tramp takes a fancy to me, then my granddaughter nearly kills herself falling off a slide, and then I get stuck in a strange loo where I have to do combat with a piece of shit. I swear I have never been so embarrassed in my whole life. God! You should have seen Sally’s face when I came out.’
Effie bit into her croissant causing the almond paste to squirt out over the table.
‘Now come on, darling, no need to repeat the situation. So what about Oliver? Have you heard from him since?’
‘Oliver?’ An image of his hangdog expression came to mind. ‘No. No phone call and I haven’t dared check my emails since. I know I should say a thank you, or do I need to apologise? Or maybe he should apologise to me for having such an ancient old clapped out loo. Allowing me to use it was like inviting me into Guantanamo Bay. I really thought I’d never get out, like that old lady who was stuck in the lavatory from Monday to Saturday.’ The childhood rhyme played in her head.
‘Now don’t get too sorry for yourself’ Susie laughed ‘it was only a mechanical failure. Some of the day sounds OK. I mean, take Sally. She sounds interesting even if she is too perfect for words?’ Susie sipped her coffee ith furrowed brow. ‘Let’s think logically. A man who has a brother who’s not half bad and a sister in law to die for can’t be a total loser.’
‘He can’t?’
‘I don’t think you should score him off completely.’
‘But you were the one who assigned him to the ‘duds’ box.’
‘That was before the lunch. I just mean his family seem interesting and maybe he’s still so sunk in poor Alice he comes across as worse than he really is.’
Effie was not convinced. She wasn’t sure what she thought at all apart from wishing that life was simpler, that Jack hadn’t left her, that she wasn’t having to expose herself on a daily basis. Today she felt absolutely no desire to try anything new and just craved peace and quiet. She resolved to do some gardening when she got home from work. She also wanted to go round to Cathy’s house to check on things there. She’d pay a quick visit before Jim got home. He often worked late.
Susie was talking, something about her work and someone she’d met. Susie had an elegantly un-stressful job running a small dress shop which gave her definite business skills immense satisfaction without the need to make a huge profit since her husband’s ample salary removed that need. This knowledge occasionally niggled at Effie who was not immune from envying her friend both the financial security and the fact of having a man in her life, not to mention a twenty four inch waist. Yet, there were genuinely warm feelings between the two women and Effie knew she could rely on her absolutely when needed. It was Susie who, after Jack’s departure, had helped her pick up the shattered pieces of her life. Her very lightness was a blessing. Right now she was peering quizzically at Effie.
‘Sorry, Susie. I was just thinking about Rosie, I might pop in tonight on my way home, see how they all are.’
‘Good idea, darling, but if I know Rosie she’s absolutely fine and I want to get back to you. What are we going to do about you?’
‘Do?’
‘Yes, ‘do’. You can’t just leave things because it got a bit steamy yesterday. I think you need to contact Oliver to say your thanks and see where it goes from there. And in the meantime, you obviously didn’t hear what I said about this man who came into the shop.’
‘Buying a dress?’
‘No, sweetie. He was with his daughter. She was looking for something for a wedding. Anyway, we got talking and he said that his wife had died a while ago and that he had to sometimes do things like go to shops with his daughters, both grown up I gathered. But he was nice, really nice.’
‘Oh Susie, not another widower.’
`But he certainly didn’t give the impression he was all wrapped up in a dead wife. Far from it: he sort of oozed confidence about life.’
‘But do I want someone who is oozing?’
Susie put her cappuccino mug down firmly. ‘Honestly Effie. If you’re not prepared to try. I mean what have you got to lose?’
‘My dignity, my self-esteem, my sense of self, to mention but a few... thank god, not my virginity,’ she ended with a laugh. ‘You realise, Susie, that all this activity could mean that I end up having a sex life again?’
‘Yes, my dear’ cackled Susie `and much the better you’ll be for it.’
‘Yes?’ Effie stood up scattering pastry crumbs on the floor. ‘Anyway, must get back to work. I’ll think about it.’
‘You do that. He’s coming back with the other daughter end of the week. You might like to pop in, anyway, to have a look at my new stuff? Some super dresses. Stunning materials.’
‘Maybe.’
......
Effie was not accustomed to experiencing such uncertainty about so many different things and was not enjoying it. As she hurried back to her office she could imagine herself years to come looking back at this period in her life and laughing, but right now she had no such vantage point. She was drifting in choppy waters. There was that envy again of Susie and the settledness of her life. Not that it was necessarily more certain. She knew that very little was absolutely certain. She had thought she was certain that Jack loved her, that they’d grow old together. The fact was, she hadn’t been doing too badly in her single life and she had really only herself to blame for where she found herself now. Didn’t it all stem from that fatal moment when she had allowed herself to have an incestuous thought, which she couldn’t now un-think? All she could do was not encourage it, to try and make it smaller. She remembered reading somewhere about how to mentalise a troublesome thought by imagining it as an object which could then be dealt with, such as a weed which could be pulled out of the ground. She recalled a friend who had found she had a massive fibroid growing inside her which had probably been there for years, unbeknownst to her until she had a bad period one month. The size of a grapefruit she’d been told. They’d cut it out and she was fine. Perhaps if she could think of her bad thought as a fibroid she could excise from her mind or at least reduce in size from a grapefruit to more of a hazelnut, or what about a peanut? She’d had those dreams about squirrels and nuts. Perhaps Susie was right. She shouldn’t give up because she was pretty sure that if she did manage to find a new and interesting man in her life the problem of the grapefruit or the hazelnut would recede.
She sat down at her desk in a better frame of mind, pleased that her instinct to seek out her friend today had been correct. There were two things: she would try imagining her bad thought as a hazelnut and secondly she would take up Susie’s suggestion of dropping in at the shop. Friday was her day off and she could easily hang around there with Susie over a cup of tea.
At half past five she closed down her computer and headed for Cathy’s house. The girls would be back from swimming where they went after school on Mondays and she was looking forward to seeing them. It was Daisy opened the door.
‘Hi, Grandma. I did back crawl.’
‘Clever you!’
Effie was always sincerely impressed with her grandchildren’s achievements on the physical front, Daisy’s dancing, their swimming skills, Rosie’s gymnastic agility. It delighted Effie to observe that her own somewhat slothful attitude to such activities did not appear to have been genetically passed on to her grandchildren. Daisy was pink-faced, damp hair clinging to her scalp as she danced around chewing a bit of toast. Rosie was sitting at the kitchen table, her hair quite dry.
‘So didn’t Rosie swim?’ she asked Cathy.
‘No, still being a bit careful after the fall. Whatever they say, I think it’s best she keeps out of public swimming pools for a week or so. But she’s fine, aren’t you, poppet?’
Rosie grinned at her grandmother and did, indeed, look well despite the criss-cross marks at the side of her head. ‘Hi, gran’ma.’
Cathy was ladling fish fingers and peas onto plates for the girls as she talked. ‘Come and sit down, Mum. Here, some tea.’ She topped up the mug with milk as Daisy came to join the party at the table and for several minutes the children were quiet as they ate, obviously hungry.
‘You know, Jim was really upset by the business in the park, still feels guilty I think. Rosie is just a bit too confident sometimes, aren’t you, darling?’ she turned to her daughter. ‘You know you’ve got to be more careful in future, don’t you?’
‘Well, I like the slide’ replied Rosie with her mouth full ‘an’ Daddy didn’t say I couldn’t.’
‘Well, he should have done’ Cathy said firmly.
‘Should not!’
‘Young lady, he should.’
‘Not!’
‘Rosie, don’t argue about it.’
‘Oh, it really was just bad luck’ Effie couldn’t resist intervening.
‘In my book, Mum, Rosie is still too young for that playground and I’d really rather you didn’t take her there.’ To which Effie was about to point out that it had not been her that had taken Rosie to the big playground but her father, but she stopped herself as she noticed that Rosie had put her fork down, and her lower lip was beginning to wobble. A tear rolled down her cheek. Effie waited to see what her daughter was going to do, resisting the instinct to scoop Rosie up in her arms and tell her everything was all right.
Cathy sighed, and for a few moments mother and daughter looked at each other across the table, Rosie silently tearful and Cathy silently serious. Daisy stared at the half-eaten fish finger on her plate. Effie held her peace.
The silence was broken by the sound of a key in the lock. It was Jim.
‘Well, hi everyone. What’s up?’
Cathy sounded impatient as she explained that she was trying to make Rosie understand that she had to be more careful about what she did, that she was not quite a big girl yet so that she had to accept there were some things she could not do, like going on dangerously high slides. There was the obvious unspoken criticism of Jim for having let her do it. Effie said nothing. Let Jim defend himself.
‘I think Rosie knows that, Cathy. You don’t need to rub it in. Come on darling, there’s no need to cry now’ he said sitting down beside his daughter and lifting her onto his lap for a hug. ‘Now you are going to be careful, aren’t you, and Daddy’s going to be careful too. So no more tears. Come on, let’s have a look at that head.’ He dabbed her wet cheeks with a piece of kitchen roll as he inspected the wound. ‘Looks fine to me, Rosie. I came home early ‘specially to see how you were after swimming.’
‘She didn’t go swimming’ said Cathy firmly. ‘We agreed we’d wait.’
Rosie by now had stopped sniffing and was allowing herself to be rocked in her father’s arms. Cathy had not yet smiled but she went over to the kettle to make another cup of tea which she placed in front of her husband.
‘I know she’s Ok but it’s just a case of what might have happened... it could have been...’
‘I think it’s enough for Rosie this afternoon, Cathy. Let’s leave it till later. Come on, girls. Hey, Daisy, eat up or you won’t get any pudding.’
Effie stayed a further half hour but made to leave as Cathy was about to run their bath. Her daughter was still looking serious and was uncommunicative, giving Effie the definite sense that she, too, was somehow responsible for Rosie’s accident. Whatever the truth, Effie knew she would have to wait till Cathy was in a better mood before it could be discussed. The tension between husband and wife was troubling too and a reminder for Effie that her daughter’s skin was thin when it came to things going wrong, that she took things to heart and was slow to recover.
She gave the children a farewell hug, a particularly warm hug from Rosie, a more rigid one from Cathy, and was just leaving the house when Jim appeared.
‘You off then, Effie? Have you got a minute?’
‘Yes, sure.’
‘I just wondered, I mean, about the business with Rosie. I don’t know... Cathy’s giving me a hard time about it and I just wondered what you thought?’
Her thought was, you poor man, you’re feeling guilty about the fall, which wasn’t your fault, and you feel bad about fainting which you haven’t told Cathy about but wasn’t really your fault either. You’re just a human being, and a rather nice one too. She said something to this effect, taking care not to mention the fainting, and Jim gave her a smile and another of those grateful looks with those eyes of his so that Effie left the house feeling she was emotionally back in extremely choppy waters.