Barbara Erskine - Whispers in the Sand

Phyllis greeted Anna’s remark with a snort and a raised eyebrow. ‘Considering I’m so old, you mean. Thank you, Anna! I am well, which is more than I can say for you, my dear. You look dreadful, if I may say so.’

Anna gave a rueful shrug. ‘It’s been a dreadful few months.’

‘Of course it has. But there’s no point in looking backwards.’ Phyllis became brisk. ‘What are you going to do with your life now it is at last your own?’

Anna shrugged. ‘Look for a job, I suppose.’

There was a moment’s silence as Phyllis poured out two cups of tea. She passed one over and followed it with a homemade scone and a bowl of plum jam, both courtesy of the produce stall at the local plant sale. Phyllis Shelley had no time in her busy life for cooking or knitting, as she constantly told anyone who had the temerity to come and ask for contributions of either to the church fete or similar money-raising events.

‘Life, Anna, is to be experienced. Lived,’ she said slowly, licking jam off her fingers. ‘It may not turn out the way we planned or hoped. It may not be totally enjoyable all the time, but it should be always exciting.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘You do not sound to me as though you were planning something exciting.’

Anna laughed in spite of herself. ‘The excitement seems to have gone out of my life at the moment.’

If it had ever been there at all. There was a long silence. She stared down the narrow cottage garden at the stone wall. Phyllis’s cat, Jolly, was asleep there, head on paws, on its ancient lichen-crusted bricks covered in scarlet Virginia creeper. Late roses bloomed in profusion and the air was deceptively warm, sheltered by the huddled buildings on either side. Anna sighed. She could feel Phyllis’s eyes on her and she bit her lip, seeing herself suddenly through the other woman’s critical gaze. Spoilt. Lazy. Useless. Depressed. A failure.

Phyllis narrowed her eyes. She was a mind reader as well. ‘I’m not impressed with self-pity, Anna. Never have been. You’ve got to get yourself off the floor. I never liked that so and so of a husband of yours. Your father was mad to let you get involved with him in the first place. You married Felix too young. You didn’t know what you were doing. And I think you’ve had a lucky escape. You’ve still got plenty of time to make a new life. You’re young and you’ve got your health and all your own teeth!’

Anna laughed again. ‘You’re good for me, Phyl. I need someone to tell me off. The trouble is I don’t really know where to start.’

The divorce had been very civilised. There had been no unseemly squabbles; no bickering over money or possessions. Felix had given her the house in exchange for a clear conscience. He, after all, had done the lying and the leaving. And his eyes were already on another house in a smarter area, a house which would be interior-designed to order and furnished with the best to accommodate his new life and his new woman and his child.

For Anna, suddenly alone, life had become overnight an empty shell. Felix had been everything to her. Even her friends had been Felix’s friends. After all, her job had been entertaining for Felix, running his social diary, keeping the wheels of his life oiled, and doing it, so she had thought, rather well. Perhaps not. Perhaps her own inner dissatisfaction had shown in the end after all.

They had married two weeks after she graduated from university with a good degree in modern languages. He was fifteen years older. That decision to stay on until she had finished her degree had been, she now suspected, the last major decision she had made about her own life.

Felix had wanted her to quit the course the moment he asked her to marry him. ‘You don’t need all that education, sweetheart,’ he had urged. ‘What’s it for? You’ll never have to work.’

Or worry your pretty little head about anything worth thinking about … The patronising words, unsaid but implied, had echoed more and more often through Anna’s skull over the ensuing years. She kidded herself that she had no time for anything else; that what she did for Felix was a job. It was certainly full time. And the pay? Oh, the pay had been good. Very good! He had begrudged her nothing. Her duties had been clear cut and simple. In these days of feminist ambition, independence and resolve, she was to be decorative. He had put it so persuasively she had not realised what was happening. She was to be intelligent enough to make conversation with Felix’s friends but not so intelligent as to outshine him and, with some mastery, she later realised, he had made it seem enormously important and responsible that she was to organise all the areas of his life which were not already organised by his secretary. And in order to maintain that organisation uninterrupted it was made clear only after the fashionable wedding in Mayfair and the honeymoon in the Virgin Islands that there would be no children. Ever.

She had two hobbies: photography and gardening. On both he allowed her to spend as much money as she liked and even encouraged her interest when it did not conflict with her duties. Both were, after all, fashionable, good talking points and relatively harmless and she had allowed them to fill whatever gaps there were in her life. Indeed in combining them she had become so good at both that her photographs of the garden won prizes, sold, gave her the illusion that she was doing something useful with her life.

Strangely, she had put up with his occasional indiscretions, surprised herself at how little they actually upset her and suspecting but never admitting that this was because, perhaps, she did not, after all, love him quite as much as she ought to. It did not matter. No other man came along to whom she was attracted. Was she, she sometimes wondered, a bit frigid? She enjoyed sex with Felix, but did not miss it when it became less and less frequent. Nevertheless, the news that his latest girlfriend was pregnant hit her like a sledgehammer. The dam, which had held back her emotions for so long, broke and a torrent of rage and frustration, loneliness and misery, broke over her head in a tidal wave which terrified her as much as it shocked her husband. He had not planned this change in his life. He had expected to carry on as before, visiting Shirley, supporting her, and when the time came paying, no doubt through the nose, for the child, but not becoming too involved. His instant and genuine enchantment with the baby had shaken him as much as it had pleased Shirley and devastated Anna. Within days of the birth he had moved in with mother and child and Anna had consulted her solicitor.

After the uncontested divorce Felix’s friends had been strangely supportive of her, perhaps realising that something unplanned and unexpected had taken place and feeling genuinely sorry for her, but as one by one they rang to give her their condolences and then fell into embarrassed silence she realised that in fact she had very few friends of her own and her feeling of utter abandonment grew stronger. Strangely, the one piece of advice they all passed on before hanging up, was that she take a holiday.

And now here was Phyllis, saying the same thing.

‘You must start with a holiday, Anna dear. Change of scene. New people. Then you come back and sell that house. It’s been a prison for you.’

‘But, Phyl –’

‘No, Anna. Don’t argue, dear. Well, perhaps about the house, but not about the holiday. Felix used to take you to all those places where you did nothing but sit by swimming pools and watch him talk business. You need to go somewhere exciting. In fact you need to go to Egypt.’

‘Egypt?’ Anna was beginning to feel her feet were being swept from beneath her. ‘Why Egypt?’

‘Because when you were a little girl you talked about Egypt all the time. You had books about it. You drew pyramids and camels and ibises and you pestered me every time I saw you, to tell you about Louisa.’