Trouble (22 page)

‘You’re insane,’ said Spicer. ‘Paranoid. But then you always were.’

‘Dr Rhea is a hypnotherapist,’ said Annette. ‘That’s what AHTM means. The Association of Hypnotherapists in Medicine.’

‘So?’ said Spicer.

‘As well as therapist, healer, counsellor, astrologer, homeopath, she is a hypnotist as well. She is in every part of you. She has your soul.’

‘At last our Annette believes in the soul,’ said Spicer. ‘That’s something achieved.’

‘All they’ve left of you is dregs, husband,’ said Annette. ‘But it doesn’t devalue what went before. Even if you don’t remember it, I do.’

‘You always adored me,’ said Spicer, ‘that’s true enough, but I always rather despised you. I needed someone to look after Jason so I took you on. I should have known it was a mistake.’

‘You believe that because Dr Rhea and Dr Herman made you believe it, not because it’s true. We’re together because we fell in love.’

‘Ah, such romantic fantasy!’ breathed Dr Herman. ‘Such Englishness!’

‘Let her wear herself out,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘She soon will.’

‘Spicer,’ said Annette, ‘they’ve made you forget all the good memories of you and me together; they’ve taken them out, re-laid them, re-placed them. They even got to the bacon sandwiches. You can’t even have those as a pleasant memory, in case you remember you loved me.’

‘What are you raving about? Bacon sandwiches? Pork’s disgusting,’ said Spicer.

‘When you think of our time together, Spicer,’ said Annette, ‘you associate it with trouble, boredom and the need to escape. You even believe I render you impotent.’

‘You do,’ said Spicer.

‘Where once you thought of your Annette, you now think of Lilith, who is dangerous and destructive. Spicer, you couldn’t even remember having met Dr Herman, though of course you had. God knows what else they wanted you for. Well, I do know, but never mind that.’

‘What are you raving about?’ asked Spicer. ‘Just get out of my house. You have no right here. Take your personal possessions and go: stop persecuting me.’

‘I’ve given you up, Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘I could call in my friend Peter Pan and have your memories relocated and re-laid properly and truthfully, but I don’t like you any more, let alone love you. I don’t believe anyone can make a human being talk and behave the way you do to me, unless there’s a large slice of that human being wants to. Dr Rhea can set up whatever scenario she likes in your mind—the reasons other than sheer forgetfulness that you didn’t put half the house in my name, the reasons other than idleness that we never got properly married—it makes no difference. There is every excuse for you, but I don’t accept them. I want to be free of you.’

‘When you’re finally out of here,’ said Spicer, ‘Dr Rhea and Dr Herman are to set up their surgery in this house. There’s no room for you, or the kids.’

‘I thought as much,’ said Annette. ‘The Drs Marks’ Hampstead house is leased to them by the AJA, the Association of Jungian Analysts, or the British Psychodrama Association or the Association of Sexual and Marital Therapists or whatever comparatively respectable association you care to name, and the Drs Marks have been struck off and turned out, quite rightly, so they think they’ll try further down the hill, where there’s quite a shortage of therapists and a gap in the market to fill, and ours is a nice house, isn’t it? Or was. We were happy here, Spicer, you and me, but you won’t remember that.’

‘What a fantasist she is,’ said Dr Herman. ‘You know she made the most extraordinary sexual advances to me?’

‘Poor thing,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘She has been abusing her children. The boy more or less told me so.’

‘You’d better get out, Annette,’ said Spicer, ‘or things will turn really sour for you. Dr Rhea and Dr Herman are good people: you are a very nasty piece of work.’

‘Spicer,’ said Annette, ‘I would like you to look at this polaroid photograph I found beneath the pillow of our marital bed.’

‘Why should I?’ asked Spicer. ‘What trickery is this?’

‘It is a photograph,’ said Annette, ‘of you, Dr Rhea and Dr Herman engaged in sexual intercourse in this very room. Troilism. Dr Rhea in the middle. Do you have any memory of this? Look closely, Spicer. You can see the faces quite clearly.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Spicer. ‘What is this? Oh dear God!’

‘It is a photograph,’ said Dr Rhea, ‘my dear Spicer, of you and me standing in Highgate Cemetery, next to the bust of poor old Karl Marx.’

‘So it is,’ said Spicer. ‘You have a very sick mind, Annette, full of the most distressing sexual fantasy. Now please just leave, before we throw you out. You are such rubbish, such a soulless person. Here today, gone tomorrow. There is no place for you here. You have always made me profoundly unhappy.’

‘Oh well,’ said Annette. ‘I suppose I had better go. I just wanted to be sure I understood the situation properly. Saturn and his loathsome wife, their lease expired on Mount Olympus, taking refuge where they can, spreading destruction and the end of love wherever they set foot.’

‘I understand your anger,’ said Dr Rhea. ‘It is perfectly natural. When relationships break down, it is the unfortunate therapist who always gets the blame.’

‘Gilda?’

‘Oh God, Annette, is that you? We’ve been so worried!’

‘What about?’

‘It’s been more than three weeks! No one’s heard from you. Where are you?’

‘I told Spicer where I was. I called him. I left a phone number. I’m sure I did.’

‘Well, he didn’t tell us. All he said was that you’d walked out on him and the kids, and gone off with Ernie Gromback and he didn’t know where you were. We called Ernie and he sounded really surprised and said he hadn’t heard from you either; he wished to God he had. So we called Spicer back and Spicer said he’d been trying to save your face, you’d left him because he was in financial difficulties and ill, and perhaps you were with your mother. Are you okay, Annette?’

‘I was until you started telling me this, Gilda.’

‘Shall I stop? Is it very painful?’

‘It’s okay. You can go on.’

‘Your voice sounds quite strong, so I will. You need to know. I got through to your mother, who said she had the kids, but she had no idea where you were. Spicer had told her you’d aborted the baby to go off with a lover, and though your mother didn’t believe that, your father was inclined to. You’d better get in touch with your parents, Annette. They sounded rather miffed. Well, I suppose they would, if the kids have just been dumped on them. Spicer told your mum and dad he was too ill to have them back; his doctors had advised him to sell up his business. The stress was too great, what with you killing his baby and then walking out on him. I got Steve to call Spicer but all Spicer said was that you’d been having an affair with Ernie Gromback all these years, and that’s why poor Marion had walked out on Ernie. Spicer said you were the destructive goddess Kali and then he hung up. Are you okay?’

‘Not as okay as I was five minutes ago, Gilda.’

‘Of course I don’t believe any of it, Annette.’

‘Good. I’ll try not to. But it’s hard. I’ve believed everything Spicer said for ten years. If husbands say dreadful things about you, why should they be lying? If you’ve shared a bed for so long and been close and companionable and in and out of each other, wouldn’t the other know?’

‘I guess they just sometimes turn, Annette. And the closer they’ve been the more they want to damage you in other people’s eyes, to justify the turning.’

‘But why should Spicer want to hurt me? Wasn’t losing the baby enough? I haven’t hurt him. I’m just trying to hang on in here, Gilda, and survive.’

‘Where are you, Annette?’

‘Never mind. I thought I was getting better but I’m not. I must go and pick some more flowers.’

‘Pick flowers? Like Ophelia?’

‘A bit. Rosemary grows round here. Rosemary for remembrance. The whole place is scented. I hadn’t realised it flowered. Blue and tiny flowers, and very pretty. I put them round the shrine.’

‘What shrine are you talking about, Annette? Are you in some kind of religious centre?’

‘Good heavens, no. I have a photograph as a talisman, that’s all, in my bedroom. I’ve built a shrine around it. I surround it with flowers. I worship it as objective truth.’

‘What sort of photograph, Annette?’

‘I’m pretty sure it isn’t of Karl Marx’s grave.’

‘Do you have someone with you, Annette? You’re not on your own?’

‘I’m not with Ernie Gromback. I’d notice a thing like that.’

‘Are you in your right mind, Annette? Are you in some kind of nuthouse?’

‘No. I’m just staying with friends till I feel better.’

‘But you’re okay? I hope I haven’t upset you.’

‘It comes in waves. This kind of conversation makes my head sink and sink right under the water, so I guess I’ll stop now. I’m not as strong as I thought.’

‘Annette, tell me where you are, please don’t just hang up—’

‘Oh God, Steve, that was Annette and she just hung up and didn’t leave a number. Yes, I suppose I was tactless. But that’s what Spicer’s saying about her. The trouble is, Steve, she loves him. Supposing she decides to go back to him? She needs to know the truth. She needs to know what a bastard he is.’

‘Can I speak to Spicer, please, Wendy? This is Gilda Ellis. Annette’s friend.’

‘Is Mrs Horrocks okay, Mrs Ellis? I worry for her. I know I shouldn’t, what she did was unforgivable, but she was always so nice to me. Secretaries and wives don’t necessarily get on. She made a real effort and I liked to think it worked well between us.’

‘What is Mrs Horrocks meant to have done, Wendy?’

‘Terminating a foetus at that late stage! I’m a pro-lifer. A dreadful thing to do! She’d even given the poor little girl a name. Gillian. Mr Horrocks has been so upset about it. Mrs Horrocks put her career before her family, before everything: apparently she couldn’t bear to be seen pregnant on a TV screen. She said it was bad for business. And we’re all to lose our jobs, and no redundancy money because of the bankruptcy. Mr Horrocks doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing any more, now that Mrs Horrocks has walked out on him. What a time to choose! We’ve got this great big order: why is he declaring bankruptcy? Strange, isn’t it. Everything seems so normal and happy, and then one day it all just shatters to bits. It almost makes you believe in astrology. Some kind of transit in the heavens; stars getting too close for comfort; all you can do is sit it out and try to do the right thing, and hope it passes without dragging you with it. But I can’t chatter on like this. I’ll put you through.’

‘Hello, Spicer.’

‘Is that you, Gilda? I’m very busy.’

‘Spicer, I heard from Annette. I forgot to get her number. She said you had it.’

‘I don’t know what kind of sick game you and she are playing now, Gilda, but whatever it is, it won’t work. The truth is out now. You were in on her affair with Ernie Gromback. Must have been quite a turn-on for the pair of you, sniggering at me from the corners of rooms. Forever whispering and giggling, running up telephone bills, the pair of you, for me to pay. Mr Stupid! Mr Cuckold, the universal provider. What does Annette want from me now? Money? Tell her from me I don’t pay women who murder unborn children and sexually molest the others—’

‘Spicer—’

But Spicer put the phone down.

‘Gilda?’

‘Annette, before you say a thing, please give me your phone number.’

‘I will later. It’s okay, I’m better now. I won’t hang up.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Describe the room you’re in,’ said Gilda.

‘It’s in Yorkshire, I think. It’s a square room with whitewashed walls and the telephone’s fixed to the wall. It’s an old-fashioned one with a dial. It takes for ever for the dial to rattle back after every number. I’m standing at the window looking at some moors and some grey stone walls. I can count twelve sheep. Did you know most grazing animals have to eat for twenty-two hours out of twenty-four to get enough nourishment to survive? I’m really glad I’m not a sheep.’

‘So am I, Annette.’

‘If you, as a human, eat slices of sheep,’ said Annette, ‘you can get your daily nutritional requirements in about ten minutes, because they’ve done all that work and all that focusing. If you’re a vegetarian it can take a whole half-an-hour munching away: you’re getting the value of mere photosynthesis. There’s a three-piece-suite here with big yellow flowers on it, and an Axminster carpet in purple and red, and a blue spotted lamp shade. Nothing goes very well together but I’m not complaining. If I stretch the telephone cord I can sit on the arm of the chair, just about. There! It’s really good to be on-line again, as it were. Things are looking up.’

‘Why do you only think you’re in Yorkshire? How come you don’t know?’

‘Because I reckon I’m 208 miles more or less north of Watford, which would be about Yorkshire, wouldn’t it?’

‘I could look it up in an atlas if you wanted, Annette.’

‘You don’t have to humour me, Gilda. I’m not insane. I have been, I think. And I had this nasty wound in my neck but it’s healing now. At any rate Henry and Buttercup say it is. It’s round the side so it’s really difficult to see in a mirror. It certainly feels better.’

‘Who are Henry and Buttercup, Annette?’

‘They’re the ones I’m staying with. The ones who picked me out of the ditch.’

‘A ditch, Annette? What were you doing in a ditch?’

‘Crawling about. What one does in ditches. Henry and Buttercup are quite old. He must be eighty-five, she’s ninety-something; quite a bit older than him. I don’t think these gaps in ages matter much, do you? He has more rheumatism than she does. I don’t think she was christened Buttercup, but that’s what everyone calls her. Not that everyone is very numerous round here. I’m talking about the postman, the doctor, the milkman and the man who came to dip the sheep. Sheep have to be dipped annually for scabies by law, but the stuff the Ministry give you to dip them in can really poison you if you so much as breathe the fumes in. Henry says the Ministry care more about sheep than they do about people, but a department has to do what a department has to do. Henry is a very uncondemning person. He sees people on the whole helpless in the face of circumstances. They need to be forgiven, even Spicer.’