Effie sat gazing at the river which flowed peacefully past quite unconcerned about her inner ruminations. Kenneth was fetching drinks. She had ordered a spritzer which she felt was a nice balance between staying sober, so that she could tackle the issue, and needing a drink to help her cope with that very problem. The dry spell had lasted and it was a fine evening, the pub throbbing with Friday-night revellers and Effie had spread herself out at a picnic table in the garden which she shared with a group of noisy youngsters. Kenneth had turned up in a t-shirt and jeans and looked relaxed. Effie had noticed that the barman greeted him like a friend as they passed on their way out to the garden. She watched him depart towards the bar, stopping to chat to some young man on the way as though he knew him: how at ease with the world he appeared, how people seemed to like him. She reflected that there were people that he obviously cared about, his daughters, his wife, and he even seemed to be attached to the local pub, but she still felt she didn’t know him well and the business with the herpes was still rankling. The symptoms had gone and she was back to normal, but it felt like unfinished business. She had to tell him and the sooner the better.
He was handing her a tall bubbling glass and easing himself into the seat opposite her.
‘Kenneth.’
He raise his own glass of beer, smiling and clinking glasses.
‘Yes, my dear? So what’s been going on for you this week? This, by the way...’ and he waved an arm airily in the direction of the young man Effie had noticed earlier.. ‘is Alexander. He’s the star of the darts team.’
Effie nodded. It was a far from ideal setting for an intimate conversation, but she pressed on.
‘Kenneth?’
‘Effie?’
‘Look, I wanted to talk to you about something.’
‘Goodness, that sounds serious.’
Kenneth in fact looked far from serious and Effie wondered if he wasn’t already a bit drunk while Alexander had squeezed himself into a tiny space opposite her.
‘Good to meet you, Effie.’ He raised his glass in her direction. ‘Kenneth tells me you are a lady of many talents’ he grinned.
‘I am?’
It was no good. Alexander had clearly settled himself down. ‘Waiting for the lads to join me later’ and Kenneth was making no move to move, so that all Effie could do was finish her spritzer, accept a glass of Chardonnay and try and put her prepared speech on hold. An hour later, having been joined by the whole darts team, a group of hearty young men, Kenneth suddenly looked at his watch and announced they had to be at the restaurant precisely ten minutes ago and so finally off they set, Kenneth wrapping his arm around Effie’s waist as they walked the couple of streets to La Fontana, an Italian restaurant ‘of some repute’, according to Kenneth.
He was clearly in good spirits and kept telling Effie how delighted he was to be with her, what a hard week he’d had and how he had been looking forward to their meeting. The jovial mood persisted during the ordering process with Kenneth showing off his limited Italian, addressing Effie as ‘mia amore’ They both ordered pasta and a bottle of red wine. The good mood was catching. She didn’t want to spoil it by having to raise the subject of ‘down there’. She inwardly chuckled to note her own euphemism. Why was it so difficult to name things for what they were? Could it really be so difficult to discuss this with Kenneth?
There was a lull in Kenneth’s rhetoric as he dug into his fettucini with porcini mushrooms and truffle sauce, so that Effie was finally able to gather what was left of her resolve. She swallowed a large mouthful of Sicilian red:
‘Kenneth, look, I need to talk to you about something.’
Kenneth paused, his arm half-way to his mouth.
‘That sounds serious?’
‘Well, it is and it isn’t.’
‘My dear Effie, you’re not ill are you? You haven’t got cancer or something?’
‘No, no – nothing like that – and I’m fine, at least, I’m not entirely fine, but it’s not cancer.’
‘Well, thank god for that. Here, let’s drink to that.’ He raised his glass: ‘to not having cancer. You realise I couldn’t stand someone else dying on me. No, that I couldn’t stand.’
This was not the direction Effie had expected the conversation to go.
‘Kenneth, I need to be frank. I know it’s nothing like cancer but I found out last week that I was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease – herpes to be precise, and it was quite a shock.’
‘Herpes!’ boomed Kenneth.
Effie was sure, correctly, that everyone in the restaurant was looking in her direction. And then he burst out laughing
‘Well, you didn’t get it from me, my darling. I am symptom free, clean as a baby...’
‘You mean, a whistle. Clean as a whistle’ said Effie irritably ‘and I can tell you that I have never had anything of that kind in my whole married life..’
‘And out of it? Out of your married life?’
‘Kenneth, I am not in the habit of sleeping around. I am sixty years old, was married for over twenty years to a man I was faithful to and you are the only man I have had sex with since Jack left me eight years ago.’
‘Am I really?’ Kenneth’s tone softened. ‘Am I really your first lover in eight years?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes, you are.’
‘Effie, I feel highly flattered.’
‘You do?’
‘Well, of course I do. You are a very attractive woman, you know.’
‘Kenneth, nice as that is to hear, I am really bothered by this situation; to find myself suffering from something I associate with promiscuous behaviour, to go through the indignities of the GUM clinic..’
Kenneth burst out laughing again, ‘You poor thing, Effie. Did you really have to do that?’
‘Yes I did, and I haven’t felt so humiliated in a long time, waiting there with kids still in their teens. It was awful. And I really don’t know what there is to laugh about.’
‘Oh please don’t be cross, Effie. I am sorry you had to go through that, but it isn’t such a terrible disease, is it? I mean, I may have had something like that when I was younger. Things happen, but it’s not worth us falling out about, is it?’
Effie considered this, unsure quite how angry she still was, partly mollified, partly even more infuriated by his nonchalant manner. He topped up their glasses and lent his arms on the table, looking at her.
‘I’d be really sorry if this gets in the way.’
‘I have to say that for the moment it does. I mean, suppose my children found out? They nearly did. The grandchildren saw me coming out of the clinic.’
‘Look, all I can say about that is that they can be grateful that their grandmother has a lively sex life and that she hasn’t got cancer. And now’ Kenneth hailed the waiter ‘how about a pudding? You will have one won’t you, Effie? They do a delicious tiramisu.’
‘Yes, it’s marvellous. One of the best I’ve tasted’.
This remark came from a middle-aged woman sitting at the next table, part of a couple Effie had barely noticed, but who clearly had been listening in to their conversation. Effie glared at her but Kenneth smiled benignly and was soon engaged in conversation on the subject of Italian desserts.
So subject closed for the evening? Not on your Nellie, was Effie’s immediate response, but it was all so difficult. All her overt and covert attempts to get Kenneth’s serious attention to the matter failed dismally: he was far too busy with the boring couple whose fascination Effie failed to comprehend. Two heaped portions of tiramisu arrived topped precariously with thick chocolatey cream which triggered further exclamations of admiration from ‘Janet and John’, as Kenneth introduced them, names which caused Effie to burst out with uncharacteristic lack of restraint ‘you must be joking’.
Far from taking offense, the said Janet and John were soon tucking in themselves to the creamy dessert in obvious good spirits which only added to Effie’s growing frustration and fury that the evening was not going according to plan, that she was surrounded by people with skins as thick as rhino hide. She plunged her spoon broad-side into the pudding spattering flecks of coffee and cream over not only herself but Janet’s pale pink trousers.
‘Oh god, I’m terribly sorry’ Effie lied ‘here, let me help.’ She plunged her napkin into her water glass and began to rub furiously at Janet’s trousers, spreading the brown colouring across the rosy stretch of her ample thigh.
‘Oh don’t worry, my dear. It’s all artificial fibres, it’ll come out in the wash.’
She smiled in an annoyingly friendly way leaving Effie feeling angrier than ever as she rubbed at the spatters on her own trousers which she knew would not wash out so easily. Wouldn’t anyone this evening react in the way she wanted? Kenneth just seemed to find everything amusing including the discovery of a creamy splodge on his shirt which John, not to be left out, echoed as he licked something off his cuff.
‘Good shot’ chortled Kenneth ‘you couldn’t have hit so many targets if you’d tried.’
What makes him think I didn’t? thought Effie angrily as she conjured up the image of the four of them as children in the nursery throwing their food around when mummy’s back was turned. A trip to the ladies’ room was needed to gather together more adult resources. She was not entirely surprised to find that even this did not go according to plan: Janet followed close on her heels intent on a bit of female bonding in the ‘powder room’ as she quaintly called it.
A long pee and plenty of hand washing did relieve Effie sufficiently to allow herself to be at least civil to Janet, who she knew very well was not responsible for her feelings, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and her main fault was to be a bit too friendly. As Janet powdered her nose she chattered excitedly about how nice Kenneth seemed ‘such a lovely sense of humour’ and how she wished her John could laugh at things the way Kenneth did.
‘You’re very lucky, I think.’
None of this really helped Effie who was not feeling lucky at all. She was left at the end of the evening in a state of considerable indecision, if not confusion, and the immediate issue was whether she would go back to Kenneth’s and spend the night in his bed, or whether she would insist on going back to her own, to nurse hurt feelings and anger.