Free The Circle by Elaine Feinstein

weeks.
    –What the hell with?
    –Well. That’s it. They don’t know. The whole business is wrapped in mystery. First I had this pain in my scrotum—hello?
    –Yes. I’m sorry.
    –And it got so bad they rushed me off in an ambulance.
    Very sympathetic they were: My God, how long have you put up with this pain like? that sort of thing; taking tests of everything from blood to piss. Marvellous. Then it all fizzled out.
    –The pain?
    – Not the pain, for Christ’s sake. All the fuss. I don’t
    know. Everyone’s tone changed somehow, they started giving me these bloody yellow pills and asking me questions about my marriage.
    –Yellow pills?
    –Varium or Valium or something. Hello?
    Good christ, she was overcome with it. Laughing. Was the whole world taking the stuff? the whole godforsaken , love-lost, generation swimming in the stuff?
    –Are you laughing? Danny demanded.
    –I’m sorry, she admitted.
    –You’re on it too. He hooted. Christ, its like the pox, we’ve all gone down with it together. How’s Ben?
    –Well, he’s working, she said. His work’s going very well.
    –Lucky man.
    –Well. When are you coming to see us?
    –Oh no, too bloody cold up there. What I rang about was: why don’t you come up here? We’ve got a big house now, what do you think? We’re having a party.
    –Well, I might, she said. But Ben. Is very busy. I’ll ask him.
    And Ben didn’t want to go. It seemed irrelevant to him. But it seemed to her, desperately, that she needed a bit of irrelevance. She needed to get drunk, to talk pointlessly, to be cheerfully out of the reality that pressed on them. Not to be always walking at the edge of boring disasters, that were there always because neither of them were interested in putting in the slightest preventive effort. And in her case it was worse, and sicker: she grudged even the pain of knowing. Which he insisted on. To keep himself sane.
    She had not seen Danny since his marriage; she had not met his wife; she had not seen his new house. It was set up on the hill near the heath, larger than she could quite understand; and out of all proportion to all the places she had met him in before: beautiful. Georgian. Door set in the middle of white painted windows. And the foliage that grew up the walls, just beginning to flower, was winter jasmine; trained and carefully trimmed.    The hot heavy scent filled the air as she stood at the door, marvelling. And through the curtains, which were open, she could see a bright pink and white room, in which two people were dancing. From somewhere behind the door she could hear a child crying.
    A woman of about thirty-five, broad boned but rounded, answered the door.
    –Is this Danny’s house? Lena asked, uncertainly.
    –Yes, the woman smiled. Very vivaciously, her eyes sparkling, her head tossing a shade mechanically.
    –Then you must be Lisa? wondered Lena.
    –Oh no, the woman laughed. But she had Danny by the hand. Thin and fair, his narrow face more bloodless than Lena remembered it, a new suit hanging from his shoulders like a coat hanger. And he moved to a glass fronted cabinet, to take out three heavy tumblers and fill them. Now Lena could see the child, a girl of about eleven months, sitting upright in a high chair supported by straps and still crying. Uneasily, Lena moved over to her; but the other woman was ahead of her; –I’ll put her in the cot, she said briskly.
    –Lisa will be down in a moment. Or so, said Danny. As the other woman returned, set a table with shiny cups and saucers, and bent over a gramophone to set up a ripple of cool Balinese notes. As she bent over, doing this, Danny came up and ran a lazy hand over her bottom. She twitched away from him, blinking her eyes and smiling.
    And now the bell going again announced the first party guests; Lena was aware of a generalised, profane, excitement. Which she welcomed: why not? All these months she had watched the moons change; it seemed so pointless, the flow of