Read Online Trouble by Fay Weldon - Free Book Online Page A

said Spicer. ‘But Virgos have a problem with their sexuality. They hold back. Librans are more giving. They don’t have to fake.’
    ‘Good Lord,’ said Annette. ‘Who’d have thought it!’
    ‘Which of course is not a source of grief for the Virgo,’ said Spicer, ‘on the contrary, but can be to the Sun-Aquarian who marries her.’
    ‘I really wish,’ said Annette, ‘my mother had kept her legs closed a little longer, at least until evening.’
    ‘Try not to be so insensitive,’ said Spicer.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette. ‘Besides the sun in the wrong place, what else?’
    ‘For God’s sake,’ said Spicer, ‘I’m trying to explain that nothing in astrology is “wrong”. No one is to blame. It is just useful to locate the problem areas. We now find your moon is square my Neptune, and my Neptune’s in my seventh house, which does suggest marital upsets.’
    ‘But you’re to blame as much as me if it’s your Neptune, not mine.’
    ‘You’re simply trying to provoke me, Annette. You are being stupid on purpose.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Annette. ‘I just don’t seem able to get my head round astrology.’
    ‘It’s not an easy subject. It took Rhea years to get her degree.’
    ‘Her degree?’ enquired Annette. ‘Who on earth gives degrees in astrology?’
    ‘There are very reputable associations in existence which supervise training and issue qualifications,’ said Spicer. ‘It’s a growing field.’
    ‘You’re telling me!’ said Annette. ‘Anyway, I’m put very firmly in my place. Tell me, if I’m so stupid and insensitive, how do I get to hold down a job of work and get a novel published?’
    ‘Your job of work,’ said Spicer, ‘brings in a little pin money. You do it in your spare time. It’s Gilda’s work anyway: you just do the overflow. As for you being the artistic and creative one in the family,’ said Spicer, ‘that’s another of your fantasies. Your idea of art is a novel called Lucifette Fallen, which you manage to get published by a dwarf who thinks he’ll get cheap wine from me in return.’
    ‘I never claimed to be artistic or creative, Spicer,’ said Annette.
    ‘I never even mentioned the words. I’m a researcher by nature. You’re the imaginative one. And the title was your idea, and I’m sure Ernie Gromback doesn’t want his wine cheap. Why should he? He’s rich enough.’
    ‘Everyone wants their wine cheap. When I said call the bloody book Lucifette Fallen I was joking. You took me seriously and went ahead with it. I could hardly believe it.’
    ‘You were being ironic? And you let me go ahead? Laughing at me?’ wept Annette.
    ‘One thing I have learned from Rhea Marks,’ said Spicer, ‘is that it is best to allow people to take the consequences of their actions. For one spouse to intervene to protect the other is in the long run counterproductive. Marriage doesn’t mean that life learning stops. Though Sun-Virgoans do all they can to make it so.’
    Annette went upstairs to the bathroom and vomited. Spicer followed her.
    ‘Are you okay, Annette?’ he asked. ‘It’s important for us to get these feelings out into the open: we have to speak the truth to each other. It is one of the things that Dr Rhea stresses.’
    ‘Please go away and let me be ill in peace,’ said Annette.
    ‘Now why does that sound so familiar? Of course, Aileen! How a man does repeat the same mistake! Aileen was a Virgo too.’
    ‘Please don’t compare me with Aileen,’ said Annette. ‘I keep getting a terrible headache, Spicer. Something’s going wrong with the baby.’
    ‘I’m the one who’s ill,’ said Spicer. ‘But Virgoans do love to compete. If there was anything wrong with you they’d have picked it up at the Clinic. That’s why you go.’
    ‘I haven’t been to the Clinic for three Tuesdays in a row.’
    ‘You pretend to care about this baby,’ said Spicer, ‘but at best you’re ambivalent. That’s why you don’t go to the Clinic. I