Fifty-Minute Hour (18 page)

‘Quick! Mary, turn that tap off. You're miles away today. Is it Jonathan again? I thought you said his ear infection cleared.'

‘Yes, it did, thank God. He's still not really right, though.' Mary mopped her sodden skirt, swabbed water from the floor. ‘I'm sorry, Phyllis, really. I think I'm simply tired. I'm not sleeping all that well.'

‘You're not drinking coffee, are you? Late at night, I mean?'

‘No, it's usually hot chocolate.' Too often, James would say. It seemed to be either sex or chocolate for some reason, never both.

‘That's every bit as bad dear. People just don't realise, but there's caffeine in hot chocolate,
and
in cocoa. I can't look at them myself. One sip and I'm jumping.'

Mary glanced across at Phyllis, tried to see her jumping, see her murderous. Could
she
be violent, too, exterminating mothers, fighting sexual urges? It didn't seem that likely. Her face looked pale and passionless behind the rimless glasses, the grey eyes weak but kindly, the prim mouth tightly closed, as if to prevent anything unpleasant either going in or out of it. Perhaps caffeine hyped her up, but without it she was dormant, like a small boat always tethered to its moorings, not risking the high seas, not risking any movement beyond a gentle lap and plash. She was dressed solidly and sensibly in lumpy tweeds with olive knitted knee-socks and men's brown leather sandals. Mary towelled a final damp spot from her own Berkertex two-piece, admired her new blue slingbacks which she'd bought in John-Paul's honour. She and frumpy Phyllis didn't really have that much in common, except the Church and lovely gardens. Strange how all her friends seemed wrong now, strangely superficial. She'd never noticed it before – before John-Paul, that is. She longed to have a real best friend (the sort you had at boarding school and swore to giggly secrecy about periods or boys), so they could discuss vital things like super-egos or erotogenic zones, instead of the new Marks and Spencer range of frozen yogurts, or the price of football boots.

She sank back on the window-seat, crossed her legs, uncrossed them instantly, with a stab of guilt and shame. John-Paul had pointed out that when she'd been sitting in the chair in his consulting room (before she'd dared the couch), she had never once uncrossed her legs – no, not in all her sessions. He'd questioned her about it, asked if she were defending herself against something threatening, dangerous. She hadn't understood. She
always
crossed her legs, merely found it comfortable, that's all. Except it wasn't all. John-Paul went on probing, used the term ‘reaction-formation', a word she'd never heard before, but which meant you did the opposite of what you really wanted, so that she could have actually been fighting an overpowering urge to
open
her legs, and open them for him. She had gasped in disbelief – open her legs, for a doctor and a stranger? Oh, she did find him attractive, there was no denying that, and there was something rather marvellous about him being still so young, yet so clever and experienced, but as for urges … Quite nonsensical.

‘Did you enjoy your fireworks party, dear?'

‘Oh, yes. Mary leapfrogged back to Saturday – the drunken shouts, the bangs, the dangerous leaping flames. Today was Guy Fawkes day, in fact, but nobody had parties on a Monday. She hadn't liked the party. Guy Fawkes was for children, and hers were all away. She'd hardly dared to watch as the guy suddenly collapsed, was sucked down by the fire, consumed to ash. He'd looked so like John-Paul – dark, dramatic, dressed in James's old pinstripes – yes, and even with dark glasses. She had found herself weeping, desperate shaming tears. ‘No!' she'd shouted silently. ‘Don't burn him.'

Phyllis was bulking out her roses with green fem, handling both with a mixture of affection and strict discipline, like a nanny with her charges. ‘Dangerous things, those fireworks. You can lose an arm, you realise, or blast off half your face.'

Mary nodded, prayed her boys were safe indoors, not handling squibs or Catherine wheels, or out without their coats.

‘It'll be Christmas next,' mused Phyllis, as she sucked a thorn from one pale and bony finger. ‘Before we can turn round. Are you doing anything special, dear, this year?'

‘Just the usual.' Mary sighed, tugged back a. piece of laurel which had fallen out of line. ‘The usual' meant cooking for a dozen – well, fifteen, actually, by the time she'd invited James's father (and Aunt Alice who looked after him), and his sister and her family, and those two poor chums of Simon whose parents lived abroad, and her own tetchy faddy father who always claimed to be too busy to stop work just for Christmas, then finally capitulated and stayed a good two weeks, insisting on quite different meals from everybody else's. ‘What are
your
plans, Phyllis?' Perhaps she ought to invite her too. One more would hardly matter, and Christmas for unmarrieds couldn't be much fun.

‘I'm going on a pilgrimage to Rome.'

‘Oh, nice.' Phyllis always went on pilgrimages, if she went away at all, though it was usually to Lourdes and in the summer. ‘Why Rome?'

Phyllis looked a little shocked. ‘Well, it
is
the canonisation, dear – the first English saint for more than twenty years,
and
a local man.'

‘Oh, yes, of course.' She'd quite forgotten the Blessed Edwin Mumford, born in Guildford in 1566 and martyred for his faith at the tender age of twenty-two, under Elizabeth I. He was to be made a saint, in Rome, the first week of january, after a series of quite startling miracles, including casting out eight devils from a bishop. She found she took less interest in church affairs, or saints, since she'd been going to John-Paul; was now thrilling to
Your Dreams Explained
or
Psychology Today
, rather than idling through the
Catholic Universe.
She didn't envy Phyllis. Miracles or no, Christmas should be spent at home with a real coal fire and children. She had never been to Rome. James liked holidays which centred round a golf course, and since Father Fox had told her once that Rome had nine hundred and ninety churches, she doubted there'd be room for eighteen holes. She felt guilty about it, really. It was like supporting Spurs (as Simon did) and never having been to White Hart Lane. The boys should go, at least; see the birthplace of their Church, the centre of all Christendom. Perhaps next year, if James could be persuaded to …

‘Right, I think that's it, dear. Let's put the roses on the altar and your chrysanthemums by the statue of Saint Joseph. I think he'd have liked chrysanthemums, don't you? Though it was desert, wasn't it, so I don't suppose they had them – probably only cactuses and things.'

Mary nodded vaguely, had never spared a thought for Saint Joseph's taste in flowers. There seemed more pressing problems. She let Phyllis take the vases to the altar; knew she loved to do it on her own, as if she were God's loyal and loving wife, organising His dinner party exactly as He wanted it, with no clumsy helpers messing up her table. She herself cleared the leaves and stalks away, cleaned the sink, closed the cupboard doors (Father Fox hated any mess), then picked up her coat and handbag and walked through to the church. She knelt a moment in a pew, praying for the boys, for James and his poor father, whose gout was getting worse; for that nice man in the evening class who'd only come the once and whose own father cut him dead, actually pretended not to know him; added one last prayer – which cost her – for Jonathan's headmaster. She sat back on the bench, idly watching Phyllis as she moved one vase a fraction, then edged it back again, the myopic grey-blue eyes screwed up in concentration.

Her own eyes were almost closing. It wasn't caffeine in hot chocolate which was keeping her awake at night, it was rage at the breast – to use John-Paul's own phrase – or guilt about that rage. Could you really be so angry with a breast? John-Paul had said most definitely, especially as an infant who was denied oral satisfaction by an inadequate or absent mother. He didn't understand. Her mother was a saint, which made her anger all the more deplorable – if she'd really felt it (which she could hardly prove or disprove thirty-five years on). How did John-Paul
know
these things, and did it really help to dig so deeply? She'd felt such great confusion, such remorse about the matricide which she'd obviously been planning as a tot of just a month or so, that sleep had quite eluded her.

She fiddled with her handbag, took out a paper tissue, put it back again, stopped in horror as she recognised the movement. That was masturbation. She'd been doing much the same as she lay on John-Paul's couch, continually taking out her hankie from the pocket of her skirt, then stuffing it back in – out again, in again, out, in, out, in, out, in, like a finger in a … It was John-Paul who'd made the connection, first remarking fairly harmlessly that she appeared to be unusually preoccupied, and could she explain what she was doing with the hankie. She'd looked at him, surprised, hardly aware she was doing anything, then shrugging off her action as just a nervous habit. John-Paul disagreed, suggested that her ‘habit' could possibly be interpreted as a masturbatory substitute, which would prove the force of her unconscious sexual sdrive, despite those strong repressions he'd mentioned earlier. She had almost
died
with shame, had never ever masturbated, never even used the word, yet there she was apparently doing it in public, and now – more heinous still – attempting it a second time, in church.

She clicked her handbag firmly shut, fell on to her knees again, begging God's forgiveness. It was all terribly bewildering. Masturbation was forbidden by the Church, yet encouraged by John-Paul, who was like another Church himself, with rules and dogmas, mysteries and ritual, articles of faith. John-Paul had actually instructed her to masturbate, set it like a sort of homework, to be practised every day, to help loosen her, relax her, make her more familiar with her vagina, more genitally aware. (The word ‘vagina' had made her go all hot again. Her friends just didn't use such words, and she doubted Phyllis even
had
one – just a holy-water stoup between her veiny legs.) And of
course
she hadn't practised. There wasn't time, for one thing, what with the ironing and the shopping and her church work and the charities, and, anyway, supposing someone called – Father Fox himself, or Mrs Foster-Clarke, who ran the Surrey Women's Guild – found her flushed and naked with the curtains drawn?

She mopped her forehead, tried to smile at Phyllis, who, wifely duties finished, was tiptoeing down the aisle with her secateurs, her rosary and a laundry-bag of Father Fox's washing which she'd somehow mysteriously acquired. She stopped by Mary's pew, face wrinkled in concern, voice an anxious whisper.

‘You
do
look flushed, my dear. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd caught some nasty virus. There's a lot of bugs around. I think you ought to go straight home and put yourself to bed.'

Mary nodded weakly. Everyone was ordering her to bed. Well – she shrugged, crumpled up her tissue – she'd better simply do as she was told.

Mary threw the blankets off, replaced her pants and tights. It hadn't worked – how could it? To put oneself to bed at five o'clock on a Monday afternoon with a husband expected home in just two hours, the dinner still to make, and that bit of urgent typing she'd promised to bang out for Emma Barnes, not to mention James's trousers, which all needed letting out … She'd better start the dinner straight away, and while the casserole was simmering she could do the other jobs. The phone shrilled in the kitchen as she was braising steak in oil. ‘Is that you, Mary?'

‘Yes, of course it's me, dear.' (James always asked if it was her, as if he were expecting someone else, or had failed to recognise her voice after thirteen years of marriage.) ‘What's wrong? Oh, I see – that Crawshaw chap again. So you'll be a little late? A
lot
late. No, it's quite all right, don't worry. It's just a casserole, so it can't spoil, really, can it?'

She put the phone down, finished off the steak, turned the heat to ‘simmer'. The vegetables were chopped and peeled already, the table laid, the lemon mousse chilling in the fridge. Horatio was snoring in his basket, replete after his own meal (and a chunk of best rump steak which he'd stolen from the table when she turned her back a second). She went to fetch the whisky, put it on a tray. James would need a double after two hours of Larry Crawshaw. She poured herself a sherry – just a modest one – took it to the typewriter, heart sinking as she saw the mound of pages. ‘Bit of typing' had been Emma's phrase, not hers. It looked more like a saga and she really was so tired. Perhaps she ought to go to bed, not to do her ‘homework', but to sleep – just a brief hour's doze to make her more alert for James when he finally came home. She could always do the typing in the morning, before her visit to the old folks' home and her cooking for the church bazaar.

She refilled her sherry – it would help her to relax – drifted back upstairs. The double bed was rumpled and dishevelled, the way she'd left it earlier. She grimaced in distaste, smoothed the sheets and blankets, still reluctant to get in. That bed had such bad memories, seemed always to accuse her, hiss ‘failure' at her, ‘boring'. She sometimes wished secretly that James could be neutered as Horatio had been – just a whiff of anaesthetic, a tiny snip, and total transformation. No more mounting, rutting, coupling, sniffing round the females, leaping five-foot walls to reach a bitch on heat. It had also made him much more docile – placid, almost soppy, which would be nice in James as well.

She straightened the blue counterpane, backed out of the room. Perhaps she'd use the other bed, the spare-room bed, the one she always thought of as her daughter's – that non-existent daughter she chatted to in secret, had even named, bought clothes for. The shrine was still set up, the candles and the vases, though no fresh flowers, no recent smell of wax or burning flesh. John-Paul hadn't appreciated her spiritual bouquet. She sank down on the bed, disappointment struggling with new hope. Why not make him a different one, one he'd really relish? He had encouraged her to masturbate, to give herself an orgasm, so she could experience the feel of it, help herself to pleasure – which he seemed to see as duty, despite the fact such practices were forbidden by the Church. Now she saw a way of solving the dilemma, satisfying everyone, including even herself. If she made the masturbation really painful, she'd be obeying John-Paul's mandate (at least to the letter, if not exactly the spirit), offering him a new and quite unusual spiritual bouquet, while avoiding Father Fox's wrath and her own sense of guilt in indulging in what the Church condemned as ‘solitary and sinful pleasure'.