Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Everything’s easy in retrospect. You can spot life’s mistakes like black boulders littering a snow covered hillside or as neon lights phosphorus in the gloom - the hieroglyphics of your existence carved out in sharp relief on your memory. Sometimes in your dreams you feel as if you can run your hand over them and feel the scars.
One such scar - or rather a running sore, is my ex - not my ex-husband but my last ex-but-one boyfriend, Jack, a politics lecturer. Such a face ache. One of his most irritating traits was to smile condescendingly at me and say: “I know exactly what you want, what you think, what you think I think and what you want me to think you think.” And I would reply: “I don’t think so.”
And so it went on. But one of the most painful lessons I've learnt from that experience is that I'm rather addicted to men like that. Even worse, not particularly rich, or handsome, or kind or deeply spiritual ones. On the contrary, they are invariable left-wing urban intellectuals, with paltry public sector pay packets and deeply sexist beneath their carefully cultivated PC exterior.
But on the plus side, much more adventurous in bed than any right-wing Tory. They can’t handle feisty women, they prefer the sort that do it with their tights on and the lights out. Listen carefully and watch my lips: “That’s why I don’t fancy Charles. I might as well flog a dead horse. Preferably his.
How things have changed since Jane Austen’s day. It’s no longer a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. On the contrary. A sensible loaded single bloke won’t risk burdening himself with a wife who could push off and hoover up half his cash, and a spinster’s no longer a marriage market commodity perched prettily on the shelf branded ‘unmarked goods.’ Unless you believe what’s written in the Daily Mail.
In Mrs Bennett’s hey day Charles would have been a monster catch. But now poor Charlie Boy is a mere minnow in the lido of life, a dying breed that will soon be extinct, incapable of adapting to mating with women with highly developed brains, voracious sexual appetites and capable of independent thought. Oh yeah, and very low boredom thresholds. A bit like me.
Which means it could be a wise move to keep old hairless but heir-to-loadsa-dosh ‘warm’ as a reserve relationship - just to amuse myself with until someone more interesting shows up. Keep him dangling on a string, as granny used to say. Let’s face it, despite my vocal protestations that I’ve got a full buzzy social life, a brill job, a fantastic kid and great friends - I’m still gagging for it in the knickers department.
Thinking about kids, Joey will be home soon from his dad’s. I must grit my teeth while I hear about this paragon of virtue who has seemingly endless patience, a bottomless wallet and is so nice that he allows Joey to watch Little Britain - unlike his evil mother who resembles an ogre - on a good day.
Joey's looking forward to this afternoon for our weekly pilgrimage to take tea at mum’s house in the next village, Humpington. Its picture postcard streets resonate with the sounds of baaing sheep and lowing cows grazing in nearby fuzzy-felt fields.
It’s the perfect vision of an olde worlde country utopia that shatters on close acquaintance when you realise that it’s been taken over by a swarm of townies. Their imported urban values now dominate the parish council which goes into a spasm every time a piece of dog poo desecrates the immaculately mown wildflower-free verges, or mud from the farm splatters their BMWs as they drive through the village. ‘And do the animals have to be so loud and smelly?’ they whimper. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
My mother fortunately is not one of those kind of people. But she does have other irredeemably bad habits. Why does the whole afternoon have to take on the form of a ritual with an atmosphere of faint disapproval and a chiding reminder of the chaotic state of my own life. She defers to ten-year-old Joey, who admires his smug reflection in the gleaming silver teapot when granny pours the tea, preening over her reference to him as the ‘man of the house,’ “seeing as grandpa has passed over to the other side - until the Rapture.”
My mother Vera is a curious mixture of execrable snob combined with low church evangelical leanings due to the fact that she married into money but couldn’t shake off the childhood shackles that bind her to the Bible and ‘The Lord.’ How can I forget one of my earliest memories visiting auntie Nora and her minah bird? She was happy in her prefab in Leicester, since swept away in the name of ‘progress’ to make way for a retail park. You don't find many people like her around anymore, a devout Methodist and a war widow. I never met uncle Cyril who was slaughtered on the Somme - she got peanuts for a pension.
“The Lord will provide’ she’d say as she packed me off to the front room to listen to Burl Ives LPs while her and mum rank orange coloured tea with two sugars. Mum would then pour out her troubles to wise old auntie Nora, usually over dad’s latest fall from grace - mainly sexually deviant in nature like looking at the girl at the till in the Co-op in ‘that way.’
I remember listening at the door and then bored, turn up the volume of ‘When the roll is called up Yonder’ so I could teach auntie Nora’s minah bird to say ‘bugger.’ Happy days.
“We amused ourselves when we were children,” I say self righteously to Joey, after the millionth time of hearing his regular mantra of “I’m bored” to the strains of 'Smile.' Poor kid, I sound just like my mum did years ago when I'd beg her for the bus fare to go to C&A’s cafe for egg and chips with my friends. Scary.
“Well, now,” my mum’s voice interjected into my musing, “how did it go with Charles Bothum-Wethum - any wedding bells yet?” We’d arrived slightly late for tea to find her anxiously scanning the street for our arrival through lead latticed windows peeping out from underneath the low thatched eaves of a former farm labourer’s cottage, tarted up for commuters hungry for a taste of the good life.
“Well if there are you’ll need ears with sonic stereo to pick them up,” I replied as I tucked into a scone with jam and cream.
“Really darling, you are a ninny you know, it’s not as if you are getting any younger and if you don’t heed my advice about staying out of the sun you’ll get as leathery as, as,” she waved her arms about vaguely as she searched for a suitable synonym, “as an old cow,” piped in Joey, faining innocence.
“Yes, well, whatever dear,” mum replied a tad sharply, not quite sure if Joey had transgressed the boundaries of good taste.
I gave him a wink.
“Charles is a sweetie mum,” I explained, “but he’s so conventional and predictable.” And short and bald and probably in possession of a small penis, I thought to myself.
“But his uncle Sir Horseham is president of the Ruddlesex Conservative Association and I do Meals on Wheels with his aunt on a Friday, they are sooooo our sort of people.” I sensed a faint rebuke.
I could feel the conversation drifting into its familiar groove, the declining drop in today’s standards, the sheer horror at the way Labour has dismantled the country, fond reminiscences of the Empire and the scandal at the indiscriminate axing of condensed milk.
“The country is falling apart, what with those 'hoodies' and single mothers, she cast me a reproving look, and your father always loved condensed milk on his tinned peaches, people just don’t know what’s good for them these days. I was only talking about it yesterday with your auntie Thelma.”
She fell into a quite reverie as her mind struggled to make sense of the frightening new world that seemed to menace her from all sides.
“I know mum,” I answered gently, wildly irritated but loving her in her bewilderment and nostalgia for a lost organasist world. Everything was so easy then, men were right and women invariably wrong.
Women in her day knew when to be thankful, most of the eligible men had been killed during the war, so if any man showed any interest it offered an escape from a sexless and childless spinsterhood where you became more and more invisible with the passing years.
Mind you, that mindset still exists for loads of divorced 40-something women today who are quite happy to trade in their independence for hard currency. It wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that they often go all high ‘n mighty and expect the rest of us, perceived as gathering dust on the shelf to not only be envious, but respectful of their new elevated status. Yeah right. They might have designer handbags, be botoxed up to the eyeballs and drive a Porsche Carrera but they have to actually have sex with men who wear slacks! Ugh! Sugar daddies might be gold plated but they're invariably physically repulsive, wear incontinence pads or live in a permanently vegetative state. Or, like Charles are kind, wet, sexless, worthy and dull. Or maybe not. For all I know, old Charlie boy could be so turbo-charged in bed I’d be his willing and grateful slave. But I doubt it. Mind you, it could be that my scarred and troubled relationship history has made me so wary of commitment I will find fault with every man I meet until I shrivel up like a dried old prune and no one will want me anyway. I will become such a lonely old biddie I will settle for any old codger I meet in the Post Office pension queue.
Mum and I sat there, quietly musing our own private thoughts on opposite side of the coffee table littered with the detritus that defined her existence, her doilies, china cups and saucers, jam spoons and crocheted tablecloth. Suddenly the leaden silence was shattered by the ring of my mobile phone.
It was Charles.
‘Oh hello,” I said, mouthing Charles’ name and pointing at the phone to mum. She sat bolt upright and listened so attentively that she mouthed every syllable as I ummed and arrred, yes and no’d and finally said goodbye.
“Is it back on?” she queried hopefully after I triumphantly put the phone back in my bag with a flourish.
Well, I don’t know about that,” I laughed, “but he’s invited me to go as his partner to a dinner party at Squire de Lyle Stocking's place at Humpington Hall. Obviously my resistance to his right-wing rantings and his amorous advances has only spurred him on.”
Mum put a warning finger to her lips and her eyes glanced sideways at Joey at the oblique reference to sexual relations, in case it sullied his innocence.
“Is he rich?” asked Joey.
“He’s a nice gentleman and your mother should thank her lucky stars,” said my mum. “Breeding and money, the perfect combination.”
I felt well chuffed, this dinner party was going to be a perfect opportunity to put myself about to scan around for other talent.
“Delia and her husband will be there,” I offered as a tit bit of information.
Mum reveres and worships Delia’s husband Tom Fielding who reads the lesson in church with the same dramatic delivery as Sir Lawrence Oliver’s rendition of Henry V’s ‘into the breach.’ She sees him as the epitome of all that’s great about England, good old gentry farming stock, backbone of almost every village committee and a paragon of self restraint, susceptible only to the odd glass of Talisker, a little more often than is good for him. But then, for mum, men are allowed their little foibles.
Little does she know that he’s humped more stable girls than hay bales during his marriage to Delia, hurls crockery at the wall if the dinner isn’t to his liking, and now, thanks to the drink, can’t get his willy up without Viagra.
Delia says she indulges him with the occasional humping session to keep him quiet. Apparently he pops his pill, waits for the desired effect and then lays down with it sticking up like a poker and then roars at Delia to, “hop on quick,” as if she’s a jockey.
Delia’s worked out that for a 10 minute gallop on top she burns off at least 250 calories so it’s really not that different from an aerobics workout and it’s great for toning the thighs.
“And, credit where it’s due,” Delia conceded with awe, “he’s hung like a bloody horse!”
‘Of course Tom’s wife’s a bit of Tartar,” Mum said suddenly.
“How’s that then?” I replied, my tolerance level dropping faster than a flasher’s trousers.
“Well, have you seen her shoes - for a woman that age! Bleached hair, and jeans with her tummy on show, it’s positively indecent. And these ‘adult’ art education classes she teaches sound very suspect to me and she never closes her eyes during confession in church, poor, poor, Tom what a heavy cross to bear.”
Joey suddenly looked up from playing with his PSP and adopted his most innocent stare. “Cesspool says Mr Fielding is as randy as an old goat and he’s had his leg over more women than five bar gates. He told me when we took Horace the bull to mate with Squire Percy’s heifers.”
His announcement had the desired effect. Mum positively swooned from the shock, spilling tea down the front of her twin set.
“I knew it!” she moaned, “It was only a matter of time before this innocent defenceless, fatherless child got drawn into the wrong company. Your father would turn in his grave.”
“Joey is neither fatherless nor defenceless, in fact he’s a machinatory little menace,” I replied, trying hard not to laugh. “And he doesn’t understand a word of it,” I lied.
Driving home in the car, I read Joey the riot act, warning him in sepulchral tones that a repeat of such a heinous crime would result in unspeakable punishment.
“Yeah, yeah, “ he replied wearily, casually picking his nose and eying a particularly juicy bogie before popping it into his mouth, “There’s no need to go into orbit.”
As I instinctively slapped his wrist I caught his eye and we shared a furtive smile, and then looked fixedly at the road ahead until we reached home.