Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers (6 page)

‘Don't start.'

‘Don't start what? Communicating? I felt happy. I wanted to share my good news with you. Is that a crime?'

‘I said
don't
start. I'm extremely fragile today.' He put the catalogue down and looked at me for the first time. ‘I don't think you understand just how exhausted I get.'

‘Oh yes I do.'

‘No, Rebecca, I don't think you do. And why should you? It's all right for you being at home all day. But you try fighting your way across this godforsaken city …'

‘It's not a godforsaken city, it's a wonderful city.'

‘You see, cloud cuckoo land. You have no idea what it's like out there in the real world. Then again, I should be used to it by now.'

‘Used to what?' I don't know why I asked when I knew the answer would be a heap of criticism, but I did.

‘Used to you living in your own little world completely undisturbed by reality. You have no idea, though, how grating it is to live with someone like that.'

‘Where did all this come from? I arrive home all happy and full of good news and suddenly I'm public enemy number one and –'

‘God, not more self-serving, self-pitying crap …'

The scene was so familiar. We played it out night after night so I knew it by heart. Dominic would grow ever more venomous as I became tearful and reproachful and increasingly like someone I did not wish to know, let alone be. Not tonight, not any more.

‘You know,' I said contemplating him, ‘your whole face seems to shrink when you're being spiteful. It kind of narrows and becomes mean. It's really most extraordinary. Even your eyes grow closer together.'

‘Go away. Fuck off!'

‘Don't speak to me that way.'

‘I said go away!'

I sat at the kitchen table reading a magazine interview with myself. The copy had arrived that morning but I had not had time to look at it until now. I tended to approach these things, articles, interviews, with the slightly queasy fascination of someone watching a reality show. Who
was
this woman? Why had she agreed to it? Who
cared?

As I read on I saw that I lived with my partner in a charming 1920s house that would not seem out of place in a quiet cul-de-sac in some genteel provincial town although it was only a short walk from London's fashionable Fulham Road. My kitchen, with its clotted-cream and buttercup-yellow hues, was warm and welcoming and filled with flowers.

I looked around me. Yes, that was true: it was. In fact the tulips on the table in front of me were particularly beautiful in
shades from shell-pink to mauve, and miraculously for tulips they had remained upright instead of tipping over the rim of the vase as if they were thinking of ending it all.

I read on to find that my own real-life romance sounded so perfect that it might have been taken from the pages of one of my delightful novels.

I thought back to that first meeting some five years ago at the Affordable Arts Fair in Battersea. I had been separated from Tim for about six months. I was living in the country in a rented cottage in the same village I had lived in when still married. Our separation and subsequent divorce had been amicable inasmuch as we both admitted that our love was a rather pallid affair with our feelings for each other more akin to that of brother and sister than lovers. Where we had differed was on what to do about it.

Tim had felt that we should remain married, as we ‘got on', and there was no overwhelming reason to go our separate ways.

‘We share interests, we enjoy our home and our friends; hell, we even like each other. How many other married people can say the same?'

I had looked at him, exasperated.

‘It's not enough,' I had told him. ‘Surely you can see that?'

He said he didn't and could I please try to explain.

I had not been able to, not even to myself, until that day when I stepped back from a painting and straight into the arms of Dominic Townsend. I had turned round to apologise and looked straight into a pair of small but unusually bright eyes fringed with long dark lashes.

He spoke first.

‘And we haven't even been introduced.'

We had wandered round the exhibition together, then as there was so much to talk about we had gone for a walk in the park and ended up kissing in the dappled shade of a large beech tree.

I was interrupted in my reverie by Coco, who was perching on the top shelf of the dresser, his stripy legs dangling as he dabbed at his eyes with a huge red-and-white spotty handkerchief.

That article was right
, he said.
It's just amazing the way your life mirrors your art; cliche upon cliche
.

Piss off, Coco
. I looked at him again.
Anyway, how come your make-up doesn't run?

Imaginary Max Factor
, he said.
You simply can't beat it for staying power
.

I wanted to return to my reminiscences. It was cold and lonely where I was now. I wanted to dream myself back into happiness but Coco had spoilt the mood. In an attempt to get it back I brought out my box of mementos from the cupboard underneath the stairs. I looked through birthday and Valentine cards, photos and letters and the countless little notes Dominic used to leave for me to find in the mornings.

I recalled how Dominic's partner at the gallery had told me, ‘People think he's a philanderer – well, you know the score, the ex-wives, the girlfriends – but what no one seems to realise is that the poor boy is just a hopeless romantic. He's on a quest to find that perfect one and he can't bear to be disappointed.'

I reminded myself of all the reasons Dominic had for being difficult. He had been picked on at school for being small and artistic. His army father had bullied him and neither parent had understood his need ‘to soar and fly', always preferring his
older, sporty and uncomplicated sister. His first wife, and the mother of his grown-up daughter, had been a shopaholic and his second wife had turned hard and bitter when he had insisted they stick to their initial agreement not to have children.

Had he actually used that expression ‘to soar and fly'? He had. And I had still taken him seriously? What was wrong with me?

You were in love
, Coco said.

Dominic and his partner Archie ran a gallery that specialised in Victorian and Edwardian watercolours. Dominic always said he would have preferred to have lived back then. The world today, he said, was ugly.

I did not agree.

‘The world is beautiful: it's just some of the things in it that are ugly.'

‘Cloud cuckoo land.' He had waved my words away.

‘As an Edwardian you would have the First World War coming – think about that. And you hate going to the dentist as it is, so just imagine having a root-canal filling without decent anaesthetic. There were no antibiotics either and your own daughter would have died from appendicitis. Of course, we wouldn't be together because divorce would most probably have been out of the question.'

‘You have no soul,' Dominic had replied.

I put on some rice to boil and placed some chicken breasts in an ovenproof dish with a yoghurt and garlic sauce and prepared some salad. While I cooked I thought that there was much for which I had Dominic to thank. For example …

Come on, come on
, Coco prompted me some ten minutes later,
we haven't got all night
.

There was the way he used to look at me, as if I were his sweetest dream made flesh. The way his voice softened like churned butter when directed at me. He had made me believe that just being myself was enough to deserve being loved.

The bully giveth
, Coco said,
and the bully taketh away
.

It was true. The adoration had waned and I had watched it happen, helpless to halt the decline. I had tried to, heaven knows I had tried to, remembering the particular things he had said he loved best about me and trying to be those things even more. But it seemed the rules had changed and what had once been good was now irritating, silly, stupid, or simply wrong. Of course had I been counselling a friend my advice would have been a robust, ‘Just be yourself and if that's not good enough, well, that's just tough.' And, ‘What is
he
doing to try to please
you
?' And, ‘Are you a woman or a mouse?' But as this was about me, none of that worked.

Coco nodded and tried to look wise.

Oh yes, as Mary Poppins would say, ‘When Mrs Self comes through the door Miss Sense flies out of the window
.'

I was pretty sure Mary Poppins had said nothing of the sort but I wasn't going to argue with my own hallucinations.

I thought Charlotte Jessop told you I wasn't a hallucination
, Coco reminded me.

Indeed she had. Coco was a reaction to long-term stress, an escape valve, she had said. With therapy and rest he'd disappear.

But could therapy cure disappointment? Could rest give you back your trust? I thought it unlikely. I put my head in my hands and asked, how had Dominic and I come to this? I remember him looking deep into my eyes way back then and saying, ‘For us failure is not an option.' I had believed it too.
We had learnt from our broken relationships, had we not? We knew what we wanted: each other, and we knew how to nurture our love to make it grow and endure.

There was a thump as Coco, who had been laughing so much, toppled from the dresser and on to the floor.

Once upon a time I had brushed the lock of hair from Dominic's forehead and traced his sensitive –

Weak
, Coco said. He had brushed himself down and was lying like a draught-excluder across the doorway of the French windows, his arms behind his head.

Sensitive
.

Weak
.

Sensitive
.

Weak
.

–
sensitive
mouth with the tip of my index finger.

‘If I wrote you,' I had told him back then, ‘I would be accused of exaggerating.'

And how right you are
, Coco said,
but for completely different reasons
.

Go away, Coco! Bugger off back to childhood, where you belong
.

Coco leapt to his feet and squared up to me, hands on hips.

I call that really unfair
, he said.
You spend years putting up with the jerk upstairs but a pefectly decent imaginary clown you want gone after a few days
.

I had to agree that he had a point.

When Dominic finally appeared I could see by the way he braced himself, straightening his shoulders, flexing his neck and moving the corners of his mouth upwards, that he was determined to
make an effort
.

I watched him toy with his food.

‘Don't you like it?'

‘It's fine.' He made a show of eating a small mouthful. ‘But you know I always say that simple is best.' He pointed to the chicken breast on his plate. ‘Trust your main ingredients. Then you don't have to smother everything in sauces. And before you start taking offence, I'm not being unkind, I'm simply thinking of you. You make so much work for yourself and for not very much return, it has to be said.' He looked up at me and forced a smile. ‘So how was your day?'

‘Good, thank you.'

‘Good, thank you: is that all? Nothing else to tell? You seemed to be pretty excited about something when you came home. Come on, you're not still sulking?'

I tried to coax back some of my earlier excitement but I had become shy of displaying enthusiasm. I started small.

‘At the meeting today they told me about all these plans and ideas for the marketing of the next book. The publicity department had some really good ideas too.'

‘Well, that's good. Oh, I meant to tell you, I was speaking to Jenna, you know Jenna at the gallery? We were talking about books; she's amazingly knowledgeable about the whole literature scene.'

‘Is she?'

‘Absolutely. And she made a really good point saying that, although obviously she didn't read romantic fiction herself, heaps of women did and that by reaching audiences that weren't natural readers you were doing literacy a great service.'

‘Hmm,' I said, ‘crap that mysteriously manages to penetrate the thick heads of the masses. Bit like Enid Blyton really.'

He slammed his glass down.

‘God, you take yourself seriously, don't you?'

‘No, I take my work seriously. There is a difference, you know.'

‘You're always complaining that we don't talk but when we do, when I make an effort all you do is whinge. Is it any wonder that I get bored, eh?'

‘Maybe,' I said, ‘if you approached having a conversation with me as less of an effort …'

He got to his feet.

‘Much as I'd love to stay and listen to you drone on I have work to do, so if you'll excuse me.'

I remained at the table finishing my supper. It took some time; every part of my body seemed heavy, my head had difficulty staying upright and my arms found the weight of my hands hard to support. Then Dominic reappeared, sitting back down opposite me, toying with his cold food.

Suddenly he smiled at me and reached out, putting his hand on mine.

‘I'm glad you had a good meeting.'

I was so tired of fighting.

‘Guess what?' I said.

His smile stiffened.

‘You know how annoying I find that phrase.'

‘Sorry. Anyway,
Suburbs of the Heart
is going to be number one this weekend – here
and
in the States. Dorothy opened a bottle of champagne and well, all kinds of people joined us, toasting our success, toasting me, actually. It was exciting. You know the kind of thing I used to fantasise about when I was starting out.' As I relived the afternoon I began to feel genuinely elated. I grinned at him. ‘The whole thing: it was a writer's wet dream.'