There were two messages: one was from Cathy who sounded irritated because Jim’s mobile was off and she wondered where on earth he’d got to; the other was from Sally who in clipped but encouraging tones was inviting Effie for drinks the following weekend –‘Sunday about 6.00. We’d like you to see where we live.’
Effie deleted her daughter’s message and attempted to put all thoughts about her firmly into a mental drawer marked ‘later’. She re-played Sally’s invitation with some relief, something to take her mind off the still swirling confusion of her mind which a large cafetiere of coffee and two almond croissants had done nothing to settle. She had tossed and turned half the night, gone in and out of at least three bad dreams which she now could not remember but which had left her feeling like scrambled eggs. She longed to speak to someone and the prospect of hearing Sally’s clear confident voice was just what she needed. Having gauged that 10.30 was too early to ring on a Sunday morning she resorted to the usually foolproof method of calming herself down with the ‘fiendish’ soduku. She impressed herself by completing it through sheer willpower in 17 minutes flat before she picked up the phone to call Sally.
‘Effie? Delighted to hear from you. I imagine you got my message.’
‘Yes, lovely to hear from you too. I’m sure I’d love to come.’
‘Just a few people from around and about. I didn’t have time to really talk to you at the bazaar, and thought you might be interested in seeing our house. Rather different from Oliver’s.’
Effie had no doubt that it would be. ‘So will he be there?’
‘Oliver? Oh yes, he’ll be there. That’s OK isn’t it? I think he’s got himself together a lot since that last time. Just takes time, I guess.’
Does it? Effie was thinking as she put the phone down. Right now she could not imagine how the next few days would work out, let alone a period of years. But the prospect of next Sunday was something to focus on and she was aware that the idea of seeing Oliver again, while not exciting, was not unpleasing. Meanwhile she had to speak to her daughter.
She scrolled through her address list, skimming past ‘Cathy’, on to ‘Jane’ hesitated at ‘Leo’ and went back to ‘Jane’, who sounded surprised to be called by her mother. ‘Hi, Mum, not like you to rouse me from my slumbers on a Sunday morning, what’s up?’
‘Oh, nothing darling, really. Just thought I’d say hello, see how your week’s been?’
‘Since you ask, as a matter of fact, not bad at all. My Scotsman is really becoming increasingly interesting. I think it might even be time to risk an introduction to the family.’
‘Risk?’ Effie felt a stab of alarm.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I have every faith you won’t subject him to a cross-examination about his education or job or something. In fact, he and Jim might get on rather well.’
Feeling only partially reassured by the call to Jane, Effie pressed the ‘call’ button for Cathy, praying that she wouldn’t answer so that she could leave a message. Cathy picked up. Her tone was irritable.
‘Hi, Mum, it’s not a good time, the kids are driving me mad. They keep squabbling and Jim’s just hopeless:let’s them get away with blue murder, then he’s bloody awful to me, and I’m just fed up with being treated like the doormat around here. Anyway, how are you? I guess I ought to say thanks for baby sitting last night. Just sometimes doesn’t seem worth going out with Jim. I don’t enjoy it, he never enjoys it, he seems to get on better with you than me... and what was he messing around with last night? He told me he’d to do something with your back door, and I just wish he took as much care with his wife and...’ a loud yell pierced Effie’s eardrum. ‘Daisy! Just stop that. You’ll make yourself sick! Look, Mum, I’ve gotta go... ‘bye.’
Her daughter’s unhappy tone was to reverberate through the week for Effie. Despite her best efforts to keep calm and return her life to a degree of normality her insides continued to circulate an alarming array of emotions ranging from intense guilt to manic excitement, occasional waves of denial and some half-hearted soul-searching. On the Thursday Susie rang, demanding to know what was going on since she had been incommunicado for an unheard of two weeks and insisted on fixing a coffee date for the Saturday morning. By the time Saturday arrived Effie was exhausted from lack of sleep and bursting like an overripe tomato to unburden herself. She had little doubt that her blood pressure was oscillating wildly so that out of a sense of sheer self-preservation she decided that she would have to tell Susie something or she would die. The final straw was to find that her last week’s stock market predictions, for the first time in years, were completely off the mark. She was devastated: her very own Black Wednesday.
‘You look awful’ was Susie’s stark comment as Effie sat down next to her at their favourite table in Marco’s.... ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Before you say anything else, I need a coffee, strong, black and lots of sugar.’
Susie, for once, was silent, waiting while her friend settled herself, drank some coffee, blew her nose.
‘Effie, for god’s sake, what’s up? Are you ill?’
‘Well, I feel as though I’m going mad if that counts’ and she leaned in closer to her friend. ‘Susie, have you ever wanted someone who you know you ought not to? I mean desired someone who’s just not possible.’
‘Oh lots,’ was Susie’s breezy reply, ‘I was always lusting after Fred’s work colleagues. He happened to work with some rather good looking, charming men. All a bit long in the tooth now, I guess. But who’s tickled your fancy then? Don’t tell me one of your dates has done something illicit?’
‘Not a date. I wish it was.’ Effie hesitated, absent-mindedly stirring sugar into her now empty cup. ‘Oh dear, Susie, I fear I’ve done something...’ she shook her head silently.
Susie, suddenly alarmed by her friend’s inability to speak, hailed Antonio and ordered two more coffees and a couple of almond croissants. ‘I think this calls for drastic action.’ She pulled her chair in closer to Effie and patted her arm comfortingly ‘darling, can it really be that bad?’
Effie mumbled, still looking down, slowly nodding, ‘yes, I think it is pretty bad, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do but I simply must tell someone other wise I’ll burst, and I’m terrified you’re going to think me so awful you won’t want to speak to me ever again.’
‘For god’s sake, Effie, that is highly unlikely, but it doesn’t help you spinning it out like this.’
‘No, you’re right, it’s just so shaming, so unexpected...’ she tailed off.
‘Effie, I can’t help you if you keep talking in innuendos, and, believe it or not, I can be discrete, if that’s what you’re worried about. I really think you’d better tell me who you are talking about, this forbidden fruit?’
‘You wanna the fruit tarta?’ Antonio, was hovering, a plate with almond croissants in hand.
‘No, that’s fine.’ The interruption seemed to jolt Effie back into speech.
‘You’re right, Susie. Well, it’s not a date, and it’s not that I’ve suddenly discovered I like women or something... it’s Jim’ she blurted the word out.
‘Ah...’ Susie lowered her carefully manicured hand.
`Yes. Jim.’
`I see.’
‘You do?’
‘Well, I can see it’s awkward. Yes, very awkward.’ She stirred her cup thoughtfully. ‘I mean, when you say you ‘desired’ someone – Jim - am I right in thinking that you wouldn’t be in quite such a state about it if nothing had actually happened?’
‘It did and it didn’t. But you’ll be glad to know that I am not totally without boundaries. Having said that, it did go further than it should and I’ve now got to try and clear up the mess.’
‘Mess? You mean Cathy knows?’
‘Good god, no. At least I don’t think she does, though she’s always sniping at me and she and Jim don’t seem to be getting on very well and I worry, of course, I’ve made it all worse....’
‘Yes, I can see that. But you’re telling me this because nothing further is going to happen, right?’
‘Right. Nothing ever again.’
‘And the lovely Jim?’
‘Of course I worry about him, but I can’t get beyond thinking about me and my part, that I could have been so weak, so susceptible and I’d be devastated if Cathy’s marriage broke up. So I’ve got to try and do something, I’ve got to be able to face my daughter with at least half a clean conscience... I mean she and the kids are my nearest and dearest...’
Susie frowned as she brushed flakes of pastry on to the floor. ‘All a bit too near, by the sound of it, but let’s think. God, Effie, I’m not sure what I can do to help.’
‘Oh I don’t expect you to do anything, but it already feels a bit less dire having been able to tell you about it. This last week has been too awful. I haven’t known what to think and I desperately want to see Daisy and Rosie later. I need to go and make sure they’re all right. Does that sound crazy?’
‘No crazier than anything else you’ve told me this morning. Fact is, darling, you’ve got yourself into a not so pretty pickle and I honestly don’t think I’ve got any useful advice other than to be careful. I mean my area of expertise in terms of relationships is a bit more prosaic.’
‘I’d hardly call three marriages prosaic.’
‘But none of them were forbidden. They were all hugely available to my charms without strings. But, look, on a serious note, talking of marriages’ she leaned in again, pausing as Antonio swept down to retrieve the empty cups. ‘Effie, did I ever tell you about my six months on the couch?’
‘The couch?’
‘The analytic couch, though in fact I wasn’t actually on the couch. I felt I wanted to keep my feet firmly on the ground..’
‘You mean you submitted yourself to a shrink?’
‘You needn’t sound quite so bouleversee’ said Susie haughtily.
‘Right now I’m totally stunned.’
‘I think you’re stunned at your own behaviour’ retorted Susie with a flash of insight ‘but sounds like you could do with a dispassionate look. I went when my second marriage was on the rocks and it certainly helped me not to make exactly the same mistake again. I mean, Fred is by far the best.’
‘Best?’
‘Best marriage. That six months of searching in the deeper crevasses of my mind was quite an eye-opener.’
‘But isn’t it just a lot of psycho-babble?’
‘Whatever it is it worked for me, and, honestly, I don’t know what else to suggest.’
‘I hear what you say, but I have to deal with my instinctive response which is to steer clear of all such stuff. Probably my parents’ fault. They instilled in me a deep-rooted distrust of anything that smelt of the confessional which they saw as mumbo-jumbo, like selling pardons in the middle-ages.’
‘Actually, it was more like struggling to untangle a huge knot of backcombed hair with a very small comb: all that twisted knotty stuff in the head.’
‘My mother always said it was Freud needed his head examined, but then, she wasn’t the most sane individual on the planet and certainly didn’t seem to have much idea about how to bring up children. I’ve told you how she openly favoured my brother.’ An image of a triumphant Victor came to Effie’s mind, weeping crocodile tears in his mother’s arms after an incident when they had both fallen off the toy cart that he had sent hurtling down a hill, she to be told to stop crying even though her knees were grazed and raw while his minor scratches were the object of devoted attention.
‘No, my mother didn’t help and I suspect I’m not going to risk relying on some other person to sort me out’ she added angrily ‘sometimes wish I’d never started this dating lark, it’s stirred everything up...’
‘Sounds to me as though you are sitting on a lot of unresolved suppressed anger.’
‘Susie!’ Effie almost shrieked ‘don’t you start trying to analyse me.’
The young couple at the adjoining table looked curiously in Effie’s direction. A hot sensation filled her eyes so that for a moment she thought she would cry. Susie put out a comforting hand to touch her friend’s.
‘Sorry, Susie,’ Effie whispered ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’
‘So what are friends for?’ Susie quipped with the lightness of touch that was her forte. ‘Actually, you know I’ve got a bit of a thick hide: all the time I spend being nice to difficult clients. But let’s think what you’re going to do, if you really are determined to resist shrinking.’
‘At the rate of all these almond croissants we’ve been devouring there’s very little chance of shrinking’ Effie laughed, relieved that at last she could use her humour to defuse her feelings.
‘So if counsellors and therapists are beyond the pale, I think at least a visit to the lovely Dr Gordon would be a good idea. You quite alarmed me just now. You’re the one with the high blood pressure.’
‘But I couldn’t possibly tell Dr Gordon something like this. He’d send me to the nearest loony-bin.’
‘Aren’t you getting this a bit out of proportion?’
‘Right now, no. I think I’m seeing it in exactly the correct way. The only question is how to put it right. I can’t un-think my thoughts or undo my actions.’
Susie tutted. ‘Effie, I’ve gotta go in a minute. My parting shot is to encourage you to go to Dr G. He could at least check your BP. You realise you are worrying me. I mean to say for you to get the stock market that wrong is truly concerning.’
Effie could laugh at this too and gave Susie a big hug. ‘What would I do without you? If you can bear to listen to me a bit over the next few weeks I think I can manage this thing myself. Starting with trying to smooth the waters with Cathy. Yes,’ Effie spoke with new-found determination ‘I’m going over there later. I promised the kids a cake. Jim won’t be there. Just Cathy and the girls.’
‘Into the lion’s den, eh?’