Aunt Margaret's Lover Page 9

  Pride would not let me answer and pretend I fitted the age category, though I did feel like writing to say I considered it very ageist of him to want a woman younger than himself, and so much younger than himself.

  I idled around the kitchen until about six and then rang Verity. She sounded morbid. Very well, I thought, this will cheer her up. And clutching the magazines and a robust red wine, I went up the road to visit the patient.

  Things were obviously not going well in the 'I did the right thing' department. Verity had the slump of an ageing and discarded courtesan about her and she was wearing black from top to bottom. The only bright moment in the proceedings was her face when she saw the bottle. It lit up.

  'Oh good,' she said, 'I could do with a drink. I've made a rule to only drink with someone else present, otherwise I should probably become an alcoholic. And all for a man . . .'

  She grabbed the Cotes du Rhone and had the cork out before I could say something suitable like 'Pen the men'. And she was halfway down her first glass before I had even smelled mine.

  T should have brought one each,' I said drily.

  'Never mind,' she said in innocence. 'We can always go to the off-licence for more.'

  Realizing this was serious I shoved the magazines, open at their relevant pages, towards her. She read them gloomily, slugging away at her glass, the very picture of dissolute womanhood.

  'Christ!' she said. 'What a depressing scene.' She pushed them away. 'It's hard enough to get shot of the buggers without advertising for another one. Who in their right mind would do that?'

  I put on an air of mature indifference.

  'Quite so,' I said.

  She looked at me suspiciously. 'So why did you get them?'

  Smooth as water I said, 'Because Roger has done it -apparently successfully - and I wanted to see how.' I pointed out his advertisement. She read it, peering with astonishment, mouthing the words. And then she threw back her head and hooted. I felt, oddly, offended.

  'I suppose it is rather amusing,' I said, attempting mature indifference again. Despite my rejection of him, I didn't take kindly to seeing someone else ridiculing my ex. After all, by association it was ridiculing me for having been his woman.

  'Good-looking?!' she spluttered. 'On a dark night with the gas turned down!' She poured some more wine. I felt like my smile had got stuck somewhere between my nose and my eye bags. 'Fit and fun!’ she went on, still hooting. 'What arrogant shits the entire bunch are. You must have had a real laugh when you read this lot.'

  She looked at me.

  I gave as hearty a guffaw as I could muster. And changed the subject. Verity's views on the notion of lonely hearts advertising were clear and unequivocal. She, being of sane disposition and sound mind, despite the temporary hiccough in her love life, could be speaking only for the majority of personkind. I replaced the magazines in my bag and we talked about her erstwhile lover for about two hours. Pretty well non-stop. And then I went home. I tried to put the magazines in the rubbish sack, but they intended, and succeeded, in staying on my kitchen table. Then I went to bed, fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamt I had brought my harp to a party and nobody had asked me to play.

  My first thought on waking was unpleasant. It was: the year is slipping away and you have made no progress in finding a lover. What are you going to do about it? I got up, went to the kitchen, ground the beans and, while waiting for the coffee to brew, idled through those tantalizing advertisement pages again. But I didn't want a musician. And then another advertisement, in a display box, caught my eye. 'If you do not find what you want here,' it said, 'try the dating pages of On Sight, the weekly magazine for Londoners.'

  Whatever I was going to do, I decided, wincing at the memory of Verity, I would definitely keep it a secret. Women may be women's best allies if Euripides is to be believed, but I was fairly convinced that the Elizabeth and Mary sisterhood would always stop short of a man. Pity, a thousand pities, but there it was . . .

  The coffee was cold by the time I got back. Nevertheless, I sipped it, my heart thumping strangely, as I opened the pages of my new purchase and began running my finger down the column headed men.

  They were an interesting and assorted bunch. There was the chap who very nearly stole my heart after two jolly lunches, but who announced after the second that he was, er, actually still in a relationship of sorts.

  'How "of sorts"?' I asked primly.

  'Well, we're not married.'

  'But you live together?'

  He nodded and suggested that, surely - and he put his hand very lightly on my waist where I felt it like lead - it need not matter.

  'Refer to Julius,' I said, then skipped off, leaving him puzzled and cross.

  His view, apparently also shared by some subsequent encounters, was that he needed a fulcrum to leave his dead relationship and so had advertised in the hope of finding one. Honestly, when will the chaps out there learn that it is all right, it is perfectly OK, living on your own? And considerably better than staying on in the yoke of vapid unlove.

  Loneliness is a rite of passage, but it passes once you get the hang of social individualism. I was hardly going to stand in line for a man while he made up his mind whether or not to go. And if he did go, the chances were there would be ordure in the cooling system to which I would, one way or another, be recipient.

  In any case, experience and observation have shown me that there are very few genuinely dead relationships unless one or other partner has found someone new. Refer back to me and Roger: there is always the dog-in-the-manger problem: galling to see what you could not make work, work well with another. And the better it works the more inclined the dog in the manger is to become an albatross. I am inclined to think that ex-wives and mistresses are worse than their

  masculine counterparts at not letting go. Practical dependency rather than an emotional one, perhaps? Who will mend my washing machine now that he has someone new?

  So of course I wanted someone who was completely free. I might require a lover for only one year, but I jolly well wanted him to be a full-blown lover and not some 'Now you see me, now you don't'. He had to be prepared to enter the game fully and openly, or not at all. If I had gone for that fulcrum seeker, it would have been like going into a china shop wanting a jug and coming out with half a teapot. Not what I wanted and completely useless to me. And, knowing my luck, one that was minus the spout.

  After that near miss I tried to be more discriminating. I bought the magazine, read through the advertisements, circled any that appealed - I had to keep them hidden from Verity, under my pillows, so they became as seductive and secret as pornography. I soon learned to go for those who were looking for 'fun, romance, good company', rather than those who said they were serious and wanted a relationship and perhaps 'more' - presumably marriage and children. Anyone who advertised for a 'broad-minded woman' was definitely out - I was all for a decent sex life, but not hanging upside down from a chandelier with yoghurt smeared all over me. I also ignored those who said they had SOH, Sense of Humour, because anyone who has to advertise that he has one, probably hasn't. You have to be firm in these things. I then wrote out a letter introducing myself and saying what I wanted. A lover for one uncomplicated year.

  I enclosed quite a nice photograph that Sassy took of me on holiday last year, which showed the knees and my sunny smile but not much else. I gave only my telephone number and my forename and sat back waiting for the phone to ring. And ring, it most certainly did. Pretty well constantly. I was glad I had sorted out all my cupboards and given up my job for a year in order to pursue this notion, because its pursuit took up almost all of my time. It never occurred to me that the whole thing was distinctly bizarre.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Verity is talking to her wall. Since she took out the video of Shirley Valentine she considers this to be an OK thing to do and not an occasion of madness. In the first few weeks after giving Mark the boot, she used to mutter her way around the house, embarrassed
to be speaking out loud at all, and remembering that in her childhood it was considered certifiable. Shirley Valentine has released her from that fear. Rather like discovering that all the other private and quasi-sinful things she thought only she did were fairly standard to her sex, talking to the wall now feels All Right. She is beginning to develop a relationship with some of her consumer durables, too.

  Today is Thursday. She has done a fair morning's work at the WP. Nothing great but she's keeping her hand in. Aunt Margaret's story of Joan's bisexual lover has been rewarding in the creative sense and she has nearly completed a treatment for a three-part mini-series based on the theme. Now the afternoon looms and every time she sits down to read, or lies down to snooze, her heart suddenly pounds as she remembers some betrayal, some loving phrase, some painfully magical moment with the out-booted Mark. She makes tea, dutifully, then forgets she has and pours a very weak gin. To the Italianate ochre walls of her kitchen she says, 'Well, Wall, what the fuck am I going to do with the rest of my life?'

  The wall does not respond.

  'Answer came there none,' she says disconsolately, and then apologizes to Tuscan Glow. It never said it would reply, after all. But at least - unlike the friends she needs to be with her and who are not - at least it is there and constant. She knows she has bored the knickers off three or four women who have their own married lives to think about as well as children, which she has not - children who, despite their smallness and one would have thought simplicity, seem to take up a damnable amount of caring time that could be spent sitting with her in her kitchen going over her pain.

  She sips the gin. It really is almost tasteless, so she adds some more.

  'Well, Wall,' she says, 'at least Aunt Margaret has time on her hands. At least she isn't bogged down with getting on with life and preparing the way for the new generation, while I'm stuck here attempting to climb out of the pit. It's a question of what you miss about being with a fucker like him, and what you are glad to get away from. Together she and I will survive.'

  The wall seems to glow at the suggestion.

  She sips again ruminatively. 'Or not make any more relationships ever again. I don't much care which. Aunt M manages it. She's even got rid of Roger - not that you could think of him as a relationship . ..' She giggles behind her hand and gives the wall a wicked look. 'Not with those ears .. .' She sips again. The conversation, though one-sided, is warming up. 'I suppose jug ears are like small dongers really; only acceptable if your name is Rothschild. Do you agree?'

  If the wall does, it chooses to keep the accord to itself.

  She taps the glass against her teeth and rearranges some dried herbs hanging above the hob. These make her weep silent tears, which dribble into the glass. 'What is the point, Wall,' she says, 'of having dried fucking herbs when there is no one to enjoy' — she picks up a leaf or two of rosemary -'roast lamb?' She chucks the dried spears away and snaps off a piece of basil. 'Or pasta?' She consigns the basil with the rosemary. The tears are flowing copiously into the glass, into her mouth. She crosses to the wall and lays her cheek against it. If she closes her eyes and really concentrates, the flat, emulsioned surface could be his cheek returning the compliment. For some reason she sees not Mark's face, but Roger's ears, which makes her smile. He was a prat. Mark was a prat. They are all prats, every damned one of them. 'Women are best,' she murmurs to the little bit of Italy beneath her cheek. 'Aren't they, Wall? And you are feminine too. The French say you are and they should know.' She laughs. 'Roger's ears. Dear Aunt M. Haven't seen much of her this last week, come to think of it. ..'

  Verity drains her glass and puts it purposefully into the dishwasher, wagging her finger at it - she has got quite good at liberating herself from reality in the matter of addressing inanimate objects - and saying, 'You stay where you are. I do not nced^yott to survive this blip in my life. After all, what are human friends for?'

  She perches on her high Victorian bar stool, takes the phone from the wall, and taps out Aunt Margaret's number. She waits. It is answered very quickly by a female voice which seems to have been steeped in rich cream before being poured over velvet.

  'Hello,' says the voice. 'This is Margaret Percy speaking.'

  There is a pause. Margaret Percy speaking is clearly waiting for her caller to articulate, and her caller is clearly trying to come to terms with getting the name right but the voice so completely wrong.

  'Hello,' repeats the velvet cream. 'Hello?'

  'Urn,' says Verity. 'Aunt M? Hello?'

  Verity is much relieved to hear that the velvet cream was only a figment, for her friend's voice resumes its pleasant, familiar ordinariness.

  'Verity,' she says. 'How are you?'

  'Miserable,' says Verity. 'Can you come over?'

  There is a tiny sigh at the other end of the phone. 'I'm a bit busy,' says the ordinary voice. 'Can I come tomorrow?'

  'How can you be busy?' says Verity crossly. 'You don't do anything nowadays.'

  Now there is no hint of the velvet cream, only the frostiness of an ice-lolly or two. Even Tuscan Ochre has a stern look about it. Verity realizes that she shouldn't have said something quite so querulous and insensitive. It was the gin, she tells herself, and the Wall, and prepares for contrition.

  'Just because I don't go to the shop doesn't mean I sit in a heap all day.' The justifiably cross implication is that Verity does this, Margaret does not.

  'I mean you are wonderfully free nowadays.'

  'Mmm,' says Aunt Margaret, more like ice-cream but icecream which is inclined to melt.

  'Can you come tonight?'

  'No, I'm going out.'

  Verity waits to hear where: the normal passage of conversation. Where is not forthcoming. 'Where?' she asks.

  Aunt Margaret's voice freezes again. 'Just out. For a drink.'

  'Who with?' asks Verity, thinking she might come too if it is someone she knows.

  Aunt Margaret says, 'What is this? The third degree?'

  Verity is puzzled. 'I just wondered,' she says. 'Well, can you come round afterwards?'

  'No.'

  'Why not?' says Verity peevishly. 'Because I'm doing something else.' 'Well, what?'

  'Going for another drink somewhere else.'

  'Blimey,' says Verity. 'You're boozing worse than me and you haven't got a broken heart to justify it.'

  'I am not boozing, Verity. I am going out for a drink - two drinks at two different venues. That is all.'

  'High life,' says Verity mournfully. 'Can I come?'

  'No!' Aunt Margaret's voice explodes. There is silence. And then, quite suddenly, as with the breaking of a storm, she resumes her normal manner. 'Sorry,' she says. 'Sorry. Didn't mean to be so . .. But you can't.'

  'Is it men?' asks Verity, aggressively. I have no longer got one, resounds in her head.

  'How have you been?' her friend says at last - just the question Verity wants to be asked.

  'Grim.'

  'I'm sorry,' says Aunt Margaret.

  'Yes, well, it goes like that.' Verity's voice quivers slightly. 'Aunt Margaret?' 'Yes?'

  'Whatever happened to After Mark Anonymous project?'

  'Sorry?' Aunt Margaret sounds abstracted.

  'You know - what you said last time. You said if I ever found myself reaching for the telephone to dial his number, I should talk to you first. Like the AA. Don't reach for the whisky, reach for a friend?'

  'Well - are you feeling like calling him?'

  'I'm always feeling like calling him. The telephone is like a sodding quart bottle of gin stuck on the wall.'

  'Poor you. Can't you find something to take your mind off it?'

  'I have. It's called gin. I think my liver has probably gone to live in a squat with a bunch of drunks where it's safer . . .'

  'Oh, Verity.' Aunt Margaret sounds more peevish than sympatico. Verity, at the centre of her pain and anguish, steps it up.

  'I've read Madame Bovary and I'm halfway through Anna Karenina. Need I say more?'


  'Verity, are you blackmailing me?'

  'It is not inconceivable that I could top myself.'

  Silence.

  'Are you dumping the project? Do you know what you are suggesting? You are suggesting that I resume the yoke of destruction, just because you are too busy to give me a few minutes of your time when I need it and —'