Aunt Margaret's Lover Read online

  Gradually it became as easy to answer those questions -Did he live here for long? What kind of pictures did he paint? Was he handsome? - as it was to talk about Lorna. Time is not only a healer, it is an instructor. It teaches you how to respond to what is important in the past, and what to set aside. Saskia had a father. It could not be ignored for ever.

  Grudgingly I brought out photographs, the ones I was unable to destroy, of Lorna and Dickie together - usually laughing, certainly always looking the beautiful couple and Saskia kept them in her room, innocently glad to have them. She had been made by two people and I had to accept it. In any case, she soon began to show a talent for drawing and painting, and not only a talent but a passion. As she studied this or that picture waiting for collection, she had such a look of her father about her that it would have been pointless to pretend. One day, I knew, she would seek him out.

  Dickie was somewhere in Canada. He had been sighted, like a rare and fabulous creature - only once - by a friend of mine who was passing through Montreal.

  'How does he look?' I asked, galled.

  'Thinner, wiser and embarrassed to see me. He's not exhibiting so far as I know. It was all quite by chance.' 'He's still painting, then?'

  'Faces and torsoes mostly. I think he sells, just doesn't show.'

  I remembered how Lorna had looked after they pieced her together. 'Apposite subject matter,' I said grimly. 'Don't tell Saskia. Not yet.'

  One day, I told myself, but not yet. And when the time came, around her sixteenth birthday, for her to say in sudden and illuminated wonder, 'I should like to meet my father,' I concurred. Time, the aged nurse, had more or less rocked me to patience ... Nothing was for ever except time itself and I didn't own that, only a small piece of it’ The only certainty was change.

  I went on working hard and enjoying it. And being Aunt Margaret - a title coined at the beginning by friends and well-wishers in amused deference to my tender years and which, for some reason, was never dropped. I was as social as any single parent can be, took Saskia on holiday to places like Club Med where she made friends while I read and lazed and had occasional dalliances, flitted around galleries in London, went to the theatre and cinema. Generally I was quite happy. Very occasionally I had flings - but not many, and I was certainly not interested in anything deeper.

  Colin, my last lover in those days of yore, was quite nice really - Saskia named her hamster after him - but the potential between us was more than I wanted and I let it go. Besides, hamster or not, Saskia at five could make any man feel he was a usurper. Colin put a bolt on my bedroom door to counter the possibility of mistaken child rape. A timely precaution since once, when we were actually at it, we suddenly found we had a threesome. Saskia had slipped under the duvet. Than which, I declare, there is nothing more designed to deflate one's sexual appetite; the guilt of the corrupting harm unleashed by one's frivolous, selfishly adult pursuits on an innocent child (or so I looked upon her apparent guilelessness then) was salutary. He went straight down to B&Qthe next morning with a very determined jaw-line.

  But Colin's lock, of course, did not work. She just banged on the door with her fists. And I defy anybody to deal with a small child bent on being disruptive. Yes, certainly, you can put them back to bed - but try getting smoochy with a background melody of hysterical screaming. You can get a babysitter and go to a hotel for a night - but ... Well, the courtesan anonymity soon wears off and you find yourself wanting your own bathroom. You can get a babysitter and go to his place, and there is a certain delicious wickedness in driving back across London still steamy from your lover's embrace and paying off the babysitter while trying not to simper. You can do all these, and more, but what you cannot do is relax. And so, at the end of the day, I chose tranquillity. It was just easier. Besides, I was working so hard it was scarcely a choice. And if I had really wanted to -if I had met the combined talents of Picasso, Shostakovich and Auden, with the physical attractions of Paul Newman and a Playgirl centrefold - then it might have been different. But the combination never presented itself. Besides, I was aware that the kind of man who attracted me had just those elements - dash, style, danger - that had killed my sister. I was not going to risk Saskia's affections being betrayed or usurped again. The sandal-and-sockers with their patient smiles and caring dispositions left me yawning into the distance, so I stayed with friendship and company, which was a very reasonable compromise.

  Marriage? A love match? I never came near. I met Roger when Saskia was sixteen. He was undemanding, pleasant company and went fishing a lot. He also loved music, Schubert and Grand Opera in particular, which is where he must have sunk all his passions. This made it easy. We buffered each other and seldom did anything of a hands-on nature. It was so dull if we did. He was in his forties, and a schoolteacher. He suited my purpose. Ovid says you should never tell a failing lover what their faults are unless you want to bind them closer, for they will try to improve them. Good advice if you wish to remain free.

  Colin was still around, too, but only as a friend. He went away, after the door-locking incident, and then came back again years later and lodged with me for a while. He had married, divorced and had a son who lived with his ex-wife. He had been caught cock-naked, as he put it, humping the Spanish au pair spoonlike into the linen cupboard. Apparently she was always bending down with her legs straight and wore skirts. He assured me it was the quintessential male fantasy and irresistible. I made a vow never to do such a thing myself - which was unlikely anyway since I mostly wore jeans or leggings - and I told him that, while he stayed with me, if he ever saw me approaching a linen cupboard, he should jolly well shut his eyes.

  But what he described going through in ending his marriage redoubled my resolve about serious relationships. He laughed and said that if I hadn't chucked him out, he would never have got into the mess in the first place. I thought, Oh yes you would - only you would be doing it with my au pair. I had to admit it was a sexy notion, though - not the au pair but the manner of it. I dallied with the fantasy of such fun for about an hour and then set it to one side. Fun could happen later, if at all, and certainly after Saskia had grown and flown . . . Anyway, fun did not necessarily mean being wedged into a small space smelling of Persil with your face down in a pile of towels.

  Roger was definitely not the linen cupboard type, so that was that. I suppose the sustaining aspect of him was that he was fully house-trained and you could take him anywhere. And if you didn't take him, he didn't seem to mind. He was more amenable than amusing, more reliable than desirable, but he was kind and patient, especially with Saskia, who, though essentially good, nevertheless had her moments. And if these virtues of his did not set the world alight, they certainly oiled the turn of its axis. But it was not the bedrock of a fun-packed relationship. And nothing to do with that other activity, either, the one that makes hearts beat, blood pump, joy and despair crave equal partnership ... No. Nothing to do with love.

  Around about the time that we started preparing for

  Saskia's departure a certain restlessness invaded me, which gave everything a new and disturbing edge. I put it down to the immense change about to occur in my life, the menopause of surrogacy, and thought, as I helped Saskia plan her trip, of Mrs Mortimer and how enviable she was in her tranquillity. I longed to get to that point, to being a fulfilled woman, a woman at peace, and to end my days like that. She had her collection, her home, her routines, and her daily woman. She seemed to lack for nothing.

  Over the years we had become quite close. Once when I had delivered something and we were having a six o'clock sherry, I spoke my thoughts aloud: 'If I could end my days as calm and at ease as you are, I should be very pleased.'

  'Ah,' she said, 'but being wheelchair-bound is rather an important ingredient in that. Don't wish your life away. You are half my age with a good pair of legs to run about on. Enjoy it. Nothing lasts for ever.' She pointed to the bottle. 'Including sherry.' She chuckled and held out her glass. 'Money helps,' she said. 'M
oney helps a great deal. And you must remember that since I was married I have never had to earn a living.'

  'Amen to that,' I replied.

  'Have you ever thought about giving up the shop? Doing something less pressured?'

  I smiled. If her pictures were contemporary, her understanding of life was very old-fashioned. Saskia had a few more years of dependence ahead when this conversation took place, so the notion was quite untenable even had I the motivation. 'Impossible,' I said.

  'You have missed out on fun,' she said. 'Don't you mind?'

  I thought of the linen cupboard and smiled. 'Not really.'

  'Well, you should,' she said thoughtfully, sipping from the little crystal glass. 'I certainly did in my youth!'

  I smiled again. I doubted her notion of fun corresponded with the one I had just recalled.

  I did eventually sell the shop though, but not for hedonistic motives. The economic climate - or rather the economic blanket fog - saw me struggling and when a Greek Cypriot framing chain offered to buy me out, I had no choice. From then on I simply became the manager and was surprisingly glad. For the first time I was free of accounting anxieties and it was like getting rid of a headache that you never knew you had until it went.

  When Saskia decided she was going to see her father, she was very open about it and, like the sale of the shop, I was surprised at how easy it was to accept. They corresponded for a while and then one day the telephone rang. I answered it, and a hesitant voice - slightly transatlantic - said, 'Margaret?'

  I knew it was Dickie, took a deep breath and answered, 'Yes, Dickie.'

  He said, 'How are you?'

  I said, 'I'm well. I'll go and fetch Sassy.'

  He said, 'I wanted to thank you for -'

  But I cut him short. 'Forget it,' I said, and called his daughter to the phone.

  Saskia planned to go to New York by boat (having a romantic nature and a friend who had done it) and to effect this by working her passage. At the last moment the arrangement fell through, so I paid. It was my eighteenth-birthday gift and nothing - not even Saskia's urgent dissuasion - could deter me. It came to an interesting sum, one which meant remaining firmly in gainful employment, and one that had my friends' eyeballs whizzing like the symbols in a fruit machine.

  'But you can't,' said Verity, who lived in my road and wrote sharp modern feminist stories and scripts. 'You'll need a second mortgage for this!'

  'Don't forget that the house is really Saskia's. I would never have got it if Dickie hadn't -'

  'How are you going to pay for it?'

  'I have taken out a second mortgage.' I looked at her. 'Only a very small one,' I babbled. 'Really. Very small indeed.'

  Verity looked at me as if I were sipping hemlock. 'The fun?' she asked.

  'That'll happen,' I mumbled. After all, I still had my savings. Not a vast nest egg, but enough to cushion me if business at the shop declined, and a sum I took comfort from whenever those midnight panics about security took a hold.

  'Hmm,' she said. 'You work dawn to dusk as it is.'

  'I want her to have it. I want her to have New York and Canada in style. And if you say anything to her about the cost, I shall brain you.'

  I knew that all I said was true, but I also knew that there was another important aspect. I did not want her to have to take one penny from Dickie when they finally met up. Nothing. Zilch.

  After Verity's response, I decided to lie to my oldest and dearest friend, Jill. If Verity whom I had only known for about five years reacted like that, what would a pal of thirty years' duration say?

  'It's a trust fund,' I said when I telephoned her.

  Well, it sort of was.

  'She'd do better to keep it and go by Virgin,' said Jill. 'Come on Aunt Margaret,' she said, in her no-wool-over-my-eyes telephone voice, 'you just don't want Dickie muscling in on the act, playing the generous father.'

  'She needs to have a sensible amount of spending money,' I said, trying not to sound defensive.

  'Saskia wouldn't mind working when she got there. Or taking some of what's due from her father. She would hate to think you were overstretching yourself just to make a point.'

  'I want to do it,' I said firmly. 'Cut off nose, spite face,' she said.

  Sometimes I am very glad that Jill lives a long way away. Her starry eyes can occasionally go quite hard.

  'You should have a fling. A romance. You deserve it now.' She sighed, a long, mournful exhalation.

  I changed the subject quickly.

  'You sound a bit low. Are you?'

  There was a pause and then another sort of musing sigh. 'Well,' she said eventually, 'I'm looking across the sitting-room. At the far end, resplendent on my flounced chintz couch lies the husband of my life, the father of my children. Those same children who smile gummily down from their photographs. The son and the daughter whom we laboured over and who are now respectively at an agricultural college in Amsterdam, and breeding my grandchildren in Wiltshire. It is to be hoped that Giles is, at least, having a few frolics among the tulip-growers. Amanda is, alas, a clone of her parental example -'

  'Don't be bitter -'

  'I am not,' she said peevishly. 'Let me continue. The Sunday Times is draped across his upper region, which has a certain rotundity not noticeable when we used to bonk all night in Brighton. This rotundity moves gently up and down. The eyes are closed, the head thrown back revealing a slightly stubbly chin - not designer - from the regions of which there issues the noise of an adenoidal two-part harmony. We have exchanged several interesting words this morning. Like "Pass the marmalade," "Have you got the Review?" At lunch it hotted up. "Pass the mint sauce." "Is this English lamb?" "I'll need two shirts on Tuesday morning - one to wear and one to pack." "Potato, please ..." Tonight we are having one or two of his colleagues over because they can't quite get all their talking done during the week and -'

  'Enough,' I said. 'You paint a pretty picture. I'll come up for a weekend soon. After Saskia sails. I won't be able to spare much more time at the moment. ..'

  Jill sighed. 'Don't leave it too long,' she sighed again. 'For I believe I am turning into wallpaper. Bye-bye for now. Lo, Leviathan stirs . . .'

  After Saskia sails. The phrase had a dull resonance like a hammer on a long-unpolished gong. Loneliness, that was my fear. How to turn it into freedom?

  Chapter Four

  Thus to Mrs Mortimer's exhortation to 'kick up my heels' for a bit, I smiled ironically. I really wasn't in a safe financial position to do anything immoderate. At least, that was my excuse. Perhaps a bit of travel would be fun, but I wouldn't have wanted to trek across the desert on a yak. She laughed when I said this.

  'How different we are,' she said. 'I should love to ...' She eyed me for a moment. She was good at this, and possessed a disconcerting perception. 'How are you feeling about life after Aunt Margaret?'

  I did not mention the lacklustre resonance of the gong. Instead I changed the subject. For I am quite good at that. 'I do admire the way you live alone. I always assumed a wheelchair would make its occupant domestically dependent.'

  'Not at all,' she said. 'You adapt very quickly. Though I dare say as time marches on it will be different. I shall cross that bridge when I come to it, for the very notion of paying a companion - or worse, some kind of nursing auxiliary - is most unedifying. No doubt Julius will sort something out for me eventually. The Stanna he put in is an absolute godsend. He's very good. If only he didn't like Victorian painting, we should get along very well. . .'

  Julius, her son, who had done India and the Maharishi, finally settled down to a job in Post Office senior management. He married his secretary, had two children, and lived in Virginia Water. Like so many from that time, he swapped his laid-back, drop-out days for the solid bourgeois comforts of life in a rural Lutyens estate, and had nothing left to explore. He thought his mother had a screw loose - a wheelchair = low brain power, especially in elderly ladies -and she was happy to let him go on thinking so. Mr Mortimer
senior, a solicitor, had been dead for some time before I first met her. She said little about him except that he had left her very comfortably off and had been a good man. Her wealth was not boundless but enough to indulge her whim of collecting, to take the occasional cruise, lose a little here and there at bridge, and generally conduct herself contentedly.

  The major excitement in her life, some years previously, was the purchase of an electric wheelchair. She wanted a wheel on the wild side, and when she first took delivery was unstoppable.

  I first confronted this new and dangerous phenomenon when she fairly charged into Cork Street for the opening of an exhibition of Picasso etchings. Very erotic - or should I say explicit - etchings, produced in photo-gravure. I was already in the gallery when she arrived and looking out for her. The car set her down, the two ramps that the hire company always used for her transportation were put in place, out she came backwards, and then, like some fairground toy, she whizzed around with a look in her eye that I can only say made me glad to be on the safe side of the glass. The chair was extremely smart - black and chrome - and had buttons on the arm. She pressed one, accelerated, ran straight into a couple who were preparing to make an entrance, and knocked them out of the way as cleanly as a skittle ball. There is a kind of horrible humour in the frustrations manifest upon those who have been severely bumped by a wheelchair. On the one hand they wish to shake their fists, to swear, to hit back, at least to protest loudly. On the other, they perceive a disadvantaged member of society. The man readjusted his hat, the woman gave her battered ankles a rub, and Mrs Mortimer, with a brief apologetic exchange, sat, completely in the way, and waited for the gallery minions to aid her through the door. Once through and spotting me, who it must be said was frozen from both suppressed laughter and a desire to remain unnoticed, she bore down Nigel Mansell-style, scattering the cognoscenti in her way like slaves before Nero.