Oliver’s fifteen-year old Ford was spinning along at no mean pace. Effie was in the passenger seat, wearing black jeans that she had just managed to squeeze herself into, and wellington boots. Oliver was at the wheel clad in an old blue sweater which he assured her was cashmere - one of Alice’s favourites - and casual trousers that fitted well on his slim hips. He was certainly not fat himself but was quite at ease with Effie’s ‘embombpoint’ as he called the flesh that she frequently complained of, the roll of fat that lingered round her waist.
‘It suits you’ he protested’ I really don’t like skinny women’.
They were on their way to visit Moldsworth House, a stately home dating back to the seventeenth century, on the last weekend before it closed its doors for the winter. October colours were slowly brightening the landscape as rain clouds parted and the sun appeared. It was the fourth time they had been out together and Effie was beginning to feel some pleasure in his company. It wasn’t exciting as it had been with Kenneth, just being with him, but she had enjoyed the outings which had ranged from a visit to the cinema to see the French film mentioned at the party, an art gallery, a jazz club and now a trip to the country to inspect how the aristocracy had lived in the seventeenth century. It had been a culturally rich few weeks which she had thoroughly enjoyed. She could view Kenneth now as not only flawed in his character but a lightweight compared to Oliver. What had she seen in him? Her diary writing and discussions with Susie were also focussing her attention in provoking and disturbing ways.
Today, however, her troubled psyche was not at the forefront of her mind and she was pleased to be feeling relaxed sitting next to Oliver, acting as map reader. No such thing as a sat-nav in this car. She occasionally looked over to Oliver, trying to gauge what sort of man he was. Not as hopeless as her initial impression had surmised, more interesting, but she was being cautious of her own judgements after an emotionally bruising few months. Externally Oliver looked much more attractive. He was hugely improved by the removal of the wisp of hair that had only emphasised his baldness. The shape of his head with its finely chiselled features was accentuated by the shaved look, giving him a faintly aristocratic air. This reminded her that she was looking forward to seeing the seventeenth century portrait collection that hung in Moldsworth House which they were rapidly approaching. Oliver had done his research, revealing a substantial familiarity with the period. ‘You’ll be stunned by the Gainsboroughs and Van Dycks’ he assured her ‘and marvellous plaster-work and carving by the master, that Gibbons man.’ Effie, whose artistic tastes favoured the more contemporary, was quite ready to be impressed, enjoying his enthusiasm. There was something else she was beginning to enjoy though it was hard to put her finger on it, something about the way he managed to turn round a problem. And the problems certainly had a knack of dogging him. That morning as Effie left her house in response to his honking the horn she had been greeted by a car with a front tyre as flat as a pancake. A stray nail was evidently the culprit. Effie’s reaction was one of immediate disappointment – the trip cancelled - whereas Oliver was instantly burrowing in the boot for the spare wheel and had the whole thing fixed within twenty minutes.
Effie was reflecting on this as the imposing contours of Moldsworth House came into view. She would have been quite happy to take a tour of the house but Oliver preferred to wander around with a book in one hand and his glasses gripped in the other, frequently tugging at Effie’s arm like an excited child when something took his fancy. ‘Just look at this carving. Grinling Gibbons at his best. Quite stunning.’ Which Effie had to agree it was as she inspected the intricate garland of plump grapes and vine leaves that twined around a huge fireplace.
‘And what about this!’. Oliver was peering at the woodwork round the door ‘a pea!’ He was almost hopping around.
‘Oh dear, didn’t you go before we came out?’
‘No, no, Effie. Look it’s a peapod and it’s closed which means he didn’t get paid. Or so the story goes. They say that was how Gibbons indicated whether or not his sponsor had paid up: if the pod is open and shows the peas he was happy. A rather nice myth, don’t you think?’
They both laughed, moving on to admire the paintings, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Van Dyck. Effie knew them all but was happy to listen to Oliver who was voluble in their praises: ‘a superb collection, Effie, just look at this Van Dyck, the third Duke. Cuts a fine figure doesn’t he? Look at all that marvellous lace, and what an expression. Can’t get much more imperious than that, and even the frame is pretty perfect’ he added as he pushed his index finger a little too enthusiastically into a corner of the ornate gold-painted woodwork, dislodging a sizeable chunk which came away in his hand.
‘Oops!’
‘Oh god’ Effie winced.
A tiny waif of a girl with Harry Potter glasses was suddenly prominent in front of the portrait staring hard at Oliver.
‘Mummy, that man is making the picture broken’ she proclaimed as she tugged at the hand of a worn out-looking woman who to Effie’s huge relief was so busy wrestling with a wriggling baby in a pushchair that she was giving only cursory attention to her daughter’s remark. She placed herself firmly in front of the damaged corner prepared to outstare the small child who was in the process of being swept up by a large man who carried her off protesting. By the time she turned round to Oliver she found him rummaging around in his pockets with a concentrated expression on his face.
‘Ah, here we are!’ he exclaimed as he held up a tube of ‘Fixit Forever’.
‘My god, Oliver, do you always just happen to have a tube of glue handy?’
‘You see, you never know. Now just stand there, can you. Pretend to be looking at the little dog in the corner of the painting. Won’t take a minute.’
So Effie did as she was told, bending down in front of Oliver to peer into the corner of the painting at the small creature which turned out to have wide open eyes that Effie could swear were looking at her, as was the duke himself when she glimpsed up. There he was gazing down at her with superior disdain. But true to his word within a few minutes Oliver was asking her for a handkerchief to wipe away any excess sticky bits which he did most efficiently so that she had to admit, when they stood back to inspect his handiwork, it was hard to tell that anything had happened.
The experience, however, was unnerving for Effie so that a coffee break was suggested and they made their way out to the stone courtyard which served as a cafe. It was teeming with children and their families, but the sun was out and Effie found a bench to sit on, having first ascertained that the waif child was not in the vicinity. Oliver went off to get coffees while Effie sat with eyes closed, her face turned towards the warm sun. She could laugh now about what had happened but an image came to mind of Victor again. There was something about Oliver which reminded her of her brother, his knack of fixing things as well as breaking them. She recalled Victor in his shed at the bottom of the garden. He had been given the shed to do chemistry experiments in at a time when he showed an interest in things scientific. She was not allowed in but she remembered once she had been with her mother in the kitchen when they had heard a loud explosion from the garden. They had rushed out to see Victor emerging from his shed with a blackened face and singed eyebrows, revealing his white teeth in a broad grin as he triumphantly proclaimed ‘that’s fixed it.’
She opened her eyes and could see that Oliver was still in the queue. He didn’t look at all like Victor but there was definitely something about his cheerful insistence that things were fixable that reminded her of him, and her thoughts drifted off again back to that garden shed, but later on, when they were both teenagers, with Victor still proprietorial about his bolt hole. There was a Sunday afternoon in June when she had been there with a friend from school, the beautiful Clair, who had long blond hair and long legs. She had cycled round on her bike which turned out to have a puncture when she arrived. Victor, of course, had offered to mend it. She remembered how he had allowed them to glimpse in his shed as he set about fixing the bike, searching for a suitable tool and telling them that the vital item – was it a wrench? - was not there and sending Effie off to search in the basement of the house where their father kept his tools. She spent a good twenty minutes searching, dreading having to go back empty handed, she so much wanted to please Victor. But she couldn’t find it and finally gave up, tramping back into the bright sunlight, hot and dusty to find the door of the shed closed and no sign of Clair or Victor. She remembered standing there for a few puzzled moments looking round, calling out Clair’s name, and then the door of the shed opening and Clair stepping out with dishevelled hair, smoothing down her top. Victor, unabashed, came out grinning and clutching in his left hand a metal wrench: ‘sorry, Effie, it was here all the time.... won’t take a minute’. Whereupon he had set to work to fix the puncture which he did in ten minutes, presenting it triumphantly to the two girls - ‘voila!’
As though everything was all right, was her current melancholy thought, which she must have spoken out loud because Oliver was speaking to her as he placed two steaming cups of coffee in front of her ‘everything all right? Yes, I’m sorry about that little mishap. I really think it is all right though. I once did a course on picture framing, you know.’
‘Goodness, Oliver, you constantly surprise me.’ But she did feel cheered up and able to consider that Oliver’s resemblance to Victor was only partial, and she didn’t have to challenge her view that he was basically decent and it was Victor, sadly, who was the one wanting. It had taken many years for her to accept this painful fact of Victor’s fickleness despite all the evidence. How hard to see that someone you loved had feet of clay. She considered this as she sipped her coffee with Oliver beside her, and was pleased that he was quiet and seemed happy just to be enjoying the sun and fresh air. They continued their exploration of Moldsworth House without further mishap, and by four o’clock Effie’s visual cortex was creaking under such a weight of rich images of carved garlands, reredos, lush wall hangings and of lordly figures surveying the world with aristocratic hauteur that she was delighted when even Oliver’s enthusiastic curiosity was sated and they made tracks for home.
On the way back Effie reflected that she had enjoyed the day although it had left her tired and still busy with her own preoccupations despite the stimulating things she’d seen. She needed something to get her mind off her brother, Jim and the seventeenth century.
‘Are you any good at crosswords?’ she ventured to ask as she dug in her bag for the paper.
‘Sure. Love them. Have you got one?’
So this was something else that they could share. From Effie’s perspective it was a useful way of distracting the mind from complex personal problems while encouraging it to tackle neutral complex problems in the form of cryptic clues. ‘Well, let’s see... one across...’
The crossword turned out to be another thing Oliver was good at, although Effie could hold her own. She could not help feeling, however, that her attempt to get her mind off troublesome personal matters was not entirely successful as the clues unfolded: 2 down - ‘female cat with tangled preoccupations’ - two words, 7 and 7’ she read out.
‘Oedipus complex’ Oliver shot back. And then there was 6 across: ‘number of apples told one can’t eat’ - two words, 9 and 5, which turned out to be ‘forbidden fruit’, and worst of all 10 down: ‘I’m in mixed up perfume becoming taboo’ which Effie worked out was an anagram of the letters of ‘scent’ together with ‘i’ giving the answer ‘incest’.
‘An interesting theme’ chuckled Oliver ‘which reminds me for some reason, there’s something I want to show you. I hope you’ll come back to mine for a bit so I can let you see.’
Effie hesitated. Her meetings so far with Oliver had taken place outside of his house and much as she felt he had smartened himself up and she had enjoyed their outings, she couldn’t help but remember the semi trauma of his downstairs toilet, not to mention the left-over shepherds pie.
‘Well, I promised Cathy I’d pop over to see the children before bed, haven’t seen them in a while’ she lied ‘and I need to talk to Jane about something, you know, she’s getting quite serious about this young Scottish man of hers, and then there’s Leo...’ her voice trailed off and she realised she must sound feeble and indecisive.
Oliver glimpsed in her direction. ‘My dear Effie, I certainly didn’t intend to make you anxious but I thought you might like to come and have a quick glass of something and inspect my new facilities. Well, actually I mean my shower room. All mod cons. It was Sally’s suggestion. She was quite forceful after that time when you, you know, got a bit stuck.’
This gallant invitation could hardly be refused and so half an hour later Effie was being ushered into Oliver’s house to be greeted, first, by the dog that leapt around in excitement, yelping and wagging its tail like windscreen wipers, and secondly by the sight of a much tidier house which no longer smelt of neglect.
‘You’ve obviously been working hard’ she could say sincerely.
‘Yes, my dear, but wait till you see this’ he said as he threw open a door to reveal no longer the broken down cistern and cracked basin but a startlingly modern all-white room with a glass shower cubicle, a huge shower head like a silver sunflower and an array of chrome taps and knobs that instantly reminded Effie of Kenneth’s Japanese bathroom with its sprays and water massagers. She had a brief image of herself sitting astride the bidet with that warm water tingling sensation that made her clench her thighs together at the thought. Yes, she had to agree with Oliver, standing next to him in the close confines of the space, that it was a vast improvement. He danced around her excitedly as he demonstrated the various workings of the impressive chrome-ware, inevitably brushing up against her in the process which was not unpleasant for Effie and perhaps even a bit interesting.
She edged her way out of the shower room. Oliver was smiling but made no attempt to touch her. ‘How about a drink?’ It was after 6 and Effie had to decide whether she would stay for a drink or drop in to see the girls as promised before their bedtime. ‘I told the girls I’d bring them something from Moldsworth House, so I won’t stay, thank you.’ She had two little dolls in an eighteenth century dress tucked in her bag.
He did not press her, but as she was about to drive off, he reached in through the open car window and put his hand on her arm: ‘It was a marvellous day for me, Effie, and now you’ve seen I’m getting my house in order I thought you might risk coming for dinner. I mean to the house? Promise I’ll get Sal to help me with the cooking.’
‘I think that would be extremely nice’ said Effie quietly ‘but honestly, why don’t you just get some M & S. I love their food.’ She could not entirely eliminate her doubts about the wisdom of letting Oliver anywhere near a kitchen. He merely smiled and withdrew his hand. ‘Let’s make it Friday, shall we?’
She sped off in the direction of her daughter’s house.