Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

I can’t quite remember the exact moment when it all started to go horribly wrong, when the cruel finger of fate, maliciously and mischievously pressed the ‘crush’ button, so that all my dreams, glistening like some phantom silver cypher in the sun, crumpled into a dull metallic clod to disappear unceremoniously down life’s metaphorical shute to dumpsville. Not that I’m feeling sorry for myself or anything.
Could I, if I had handled things differently, be now looking forward to date number two with Charles instead of analysing the inflection of every little word, the body language of every gesture, for the moment when our burgeoning relationship was nipped in the bud, trodden under foot and flushed down the proverbial toilet?
It called for a serious dose of therapy from my closest friend - the telephone.
I rang Delia.
“Hi darling” she said. “Did he get his rocks off then?”
I took a deep breath and started the circuitous route from the mundane account of the earlier part of the day to the juicy bits in the evening.
“I had a premonition that it was all doomed when I burnt the dinner after gossiping with Cesspool,” I explained.
“Sorry darling, but where does that smelly old man fit in the grand scheme of things - lost me I’m afraid,” Delia replied.
Farm worker Cess Poole, affectionally known as Cesspool on account of the manure trapped in his turn-ups, is a living legend. He really ought to get an agent and go on reality TV. His rivetingly entertaining encyclopedic knowledge of the sexual antics and peccadiloes of almost every toff in the county is unsurpassable. He tells his tales with such relish and it’s all backed up with anecdotal evidence that goes back donkeys years. To before the war. The Boer War that is.
But then, why should Delia know that? Although she’s lived in the small and picturesque county of Ruddlesex since marrying 30 years ago, she isn’t a local. For that distinction you need to be able to trace your family’s name, carved for generation after generation, on the stone and slate gravestones in the hillocky churchyards, or carved on the village war memorials, names carried away on the wind as the rector calls them out on Remembrance Sunday while old soldiers stand like black crows amongst the gnarled ancient yews.
“Cecil Poole is our village one-stop-gossip-shop,” I told her. You can’t stop him talking mid-flow in case you miss some vital salacious anecdote.
“I see,” Delia drawled.
I ploughed on explaining how Cess had stopped by for a chat as I was en-route to put all my old red-topped newspapers in the car for recycling in case Charles saw them and realised I had tabloid tendencies. I smugly explained to Cess that I was expecting Charles for dinner.
“Sratching his head under his cap he said - ‘What that drip,’ and went on to tell me some really, really, juicy gossip involving the Ruddlesex upper crust that would make a gossip columnist’s mouth water.”
“Really - do tell,” said Delia intrigued. “Did it involve Squire de Lisle Stocking and that new stable lad of his with the bleached highlights?”
Exasperated at her inability to grasp the vital crux of the conversation I ploughed on with my tale of woe upon woe.
“No, no, nothing as interesting as that, but the point is, I forgot that I’d left some raspberries in kirsch warming over a low heat on the stove. I stood there with my ears flapping, quivering with moral indignation - I promise, I imagined I could smell the smoke of hell fire.”
“That’s what a Calvinist background does for you,” said Delia sympathetically, that and vaginismus.”
I told her mournfully how I had suddenly sniffed the air, screamed and rushed back inside to the kitchen where acrid black smoke was billowing from my best saucepan which was buckling from the heat. As I vainly poked the charred remains of the raspberries, I became aware of Cess standing behind me rubbing his stubbly beard.
“Dead loss old girl, if you ask me,” he said, “if you can resurrect that, my name’s Jamie Oliver.”
“It was awful D”, I wailed. “I could almost see the auto cue rolling in his eyes as he stored the titbits of my misfortune to entertain his cronies over the dominoes and a pint in the Doom and Gloom, you know, the pub on Main Street, the Horse and Groom.”
Yet, despite Cess’s apparent perkiness over my predicament he came up trumps by suggesting he asked his wife Gladys to defrost some of her legendary melting moments, biscuits that always take first prize at the village show, much to the consternation and bitterness of the rest of the village WI ladies who mutter dark accounts of culinary gerrymandering and sexual intrigue of past yore. All fascinating stuff but peripheral to the urgent nature of my tale.
“I felt so grateful, but the stress of it all had made everything go pear-shaped, including my waistline which had expanded with stress. I felt like Posh Spice expecting twins,”I groaned.
Delia laughed: “Shame they weren’t conceived by David Beckham - God, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed in a hurry!”
I went on to explain that pressed for time, I scurried round doing all the essential jobs such as changing the sheets, painting my toe nails and waxing my bikini line. But due to my deformed waistline I abandoned plans to wear my slinky black sexy dress and instead defied the laws of physics by squeezing myself into black velvet boot cut jeans by pulling up the zip with a coat hanger. The pressure nearly perforated my ear drums.
I felt positively light headed as I opened the door to Charles as he stood there smiling with a bottle of Bolly in one hand, the violin strings of his hair wafting over his bald pate in the breeze.
“It was then that I felt the first twinge of misgivings, but I dismissed it as wind on account of my tight waistband, I elaborated to Delia.
I said ‘hi’ as we self consciously ‘air kissed.’ He sauntered in and plonked himself down on the sofa.
“Nice place,” he remarked looking round the room, liberally sprinkled with new county touches including a copy of Country Life, a battered old wicker basket with a tartan scarf in it and a pair of old riding boots casually tucked under a table.
I poured out glasses of Bolly, giving myself a generous slug before inviting him into the kitchen while I fiddled around with the meal. The conversation started benignly, circling round safe topics like what he’d been doing that day. He’d had a ‘jolly’ day at a Point-to-Point then he’d waited around for the vet to arrive to geld one of his favourite nags.
“Doesn't it bring tears to your eyes in sympathy?” I queried. He threw back his head and laughed so heartily I could see his tonsils quiver.
“Never thought about it really - nature’s way you see. Anyway, my tackle’s in fine fettle - good enough for a hard day in the saddle without it putting me off my stride,” he winked saucily. Things were looking up.
“Delia, I almost had him in the bag.”
“Oh,” she squeaked.
I swapped the phone from one ear to the other, a subconscious move that signalled a sudden change in the direction of events.
“Err, not quite,” I said slowly.
“You don’t mean you blew him out - just as he was within shagging distance,” Delia exclaimed in horror.
“Well,” I wheedled. “Things sort of escalated and before I knew where I was he was on one side of the front door and I was on the other. Things just suddenly started to wobble when we got on to politics.”
The saying that goes ‘the path to hell is paved with good intentions’ is one that aptly described the moment when I realised that, although he was eligible, we were about as compatible as Margaret Thatcher and Lenin and the evening was hurtling towards a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno, rather than Hironimus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Delights.’
“Shame,” Delia murmurred.
The candles on the table were lit and I felt we were cruising, two forty somethings having an intelligent, rational debate about the political issues of the day. Then came the bombshell.
I paused for dramatic effect to impress upon Delia the yawning chasm that had opened between Charles and myself.
“He, wait for it, said: “Margaret Thatcher, bless her,’ and then reverently raised his glass to the woman he called his favourite leader of all time!”
“So?” queried Delia in a puzzled tone.
“Whadya mean, so?” I shrieked.
I drew in a sharp breath and tried patiently to explain that ideological differences could pose a barrier to a more intimate relationship and I was so irritated with him it made me chew extra hard on my pasta balls.
“Don’t you mean, bless her, and God rest her soul, that she may depart in peace? I said. I really tried hard to sound like a meek, demure Tory wife but I ended up squawking in his face like a fishwife on ketamine.”
“Charles sat up as stiff as a poker in his chair and snapped: “Bring her back, that’s what I say - sort out that rabid lot in the Commons, load of wet, lefty limp-wristed socialists.
“Quite,” Delia murmured in agreement.
“Well I think she’s barking,” I said, remembering that I followed my remark by spiking a succulent piece of garlic sausage and popping it into my mouth - a classic case of Freudian penis castration if ever there was one.
“He’s so up himself you know, he could polish the backs of his eye balls.”
Delia tittered.
“Charles’ hand froze, his fork poised midway to his mouth, he looked like some android whose batteries had gone flat on Star Trek.”
“You don’t mean you're a feminist - a woman with balls,” he whispered hoarsely.
“If you mean, am I a woman who values her independence, am I a woman who doesn’t defer to a man simply because he has a penis, then the answer is ‘yes’, I said brazenly.”
I heard Delia groan.
“Obviously fazed to find himself in such close proximity to a feminist, he started to look wary, eyeing the back door in case he needed to make a sharp exit.
Suddenly realising the enormity of the damage done, I decided to embark on a limitation exercise.”
Giving out a big sigh I told Delia how I had looked deeply into his eyes, smiled my most winning smile and said as innocently as I could: “Who cares about politics anyway let’s just forget it shall we? Then, desperate to fill the awkward silence I lisped provocatively : ‘Do you fancy a melting moment?’
His mouth dropped to reveal partially masticated pasta and his head turned purple, it was enough to dampen the ardour of a Turkish courtesan. Funnily enough it seemed to break the ice and from then on we managed to scramble back from outright war to a truce. Differences forgotten we retired to the sofa.
Charles, obviously thinking feminism is akin to whoredom pounced and started to breathe heavily like a cart horse with asthma. But the tingling sensation I felt in my loins was caused by a lack of circulation to my vital organs from my crutch-strangling jeans which felt as if they were getting tighter by the minute. I feigned virtue and said I never slept with a man on the first date.
Frantic to regain his composure, Charles rearranged his trousers with one hand to hide his hard-on and smoothed the strings of his hair back into place on his sweaty head with the other.
‘Worth a try,’ he muttered as he rose to go. We stood embarrassed and dejected on the doorstep saying our hurried good-byes, where only a few hours earlier we had greeted each other with shy curiosity.
“Why do we put ourselves through such emotional contortions to snare a man when we worked so hard to win our liberation?” I asked Delia plaintively. I feel as if I’ve just had a severe dose of the emotional trots.”
“Because it’s fun darling, celibacy is so debilitating and admit it, you love the fun of the chase, you lead all these poor hapless men such a merry dance, reducing them to tears of frustration. Revenge darling, revenge.”
“I must admit Charles is a bit of a DUD, you know, dull, ugly and desperate, but I thought I’d give him a whirl, you know, sale on return, after all he might have hidden talents.”
“Well, if I were you I would have given him a few rounds. Checked out his credentials in the trouser department. You and your principle’s. Who cares he if loves Maggie, he’s obviously the sort who likes to be dominated. Sounds as if he’s got potential to me.”
I started to giggle. “You're so naughty D - which reminds me. You know I mentioned some juicy gossip that Cecil was telling me about? Well, apparently, Digger Manners was out lamping for rabbits last night when he saw this navy Freelander in a lay-by outside of Adlesbourgh. It was bumping rhythmically up and down and he could hear a faint buzzing noise coming from the back window. He daren't go too near, because, well you never know these days. But he said the car was familiar. Hey, it wasn’t you was it with Toy Boy, trying out that new sex toy - the penis ring with the battery operated remote control?”
‘Oh my God,” shrieked Delia. And then the line went dead. I think she must have dropped the phone.