Chapter 5

I lay in a state of suspended animation dreaming of a sun kissed balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. A flawless blue sky hung like a banner between two sheer white apartment blocks, framing pink floor tiles surrounding the vivid blue slash of a swimming pool; clean, angular lines broken only by the sharp umbrella fronds of green palms, a vista as flat, surreal and silent as a Hockney.
"Mum! Where are my football socks?" Reality punched its fist through the thin veneer of my consciousness and I rolled over and groaned. That philosopher guy, Baulderise or Baudrillard who maintained that art is a simulacrum of reality, was talking cobblers. Life is a small child jabbing you in the back at some ungodly hour of the morning as chirpy and bright as a butcher’s dog. Paint that and stick it in an art gallery.
I crawled out of bed and looked balefully at my tummy cruncher exerciser lying supinely on the carpet with arms outstretched, ready to embrace my flabby body and convert it into a toned, rippling sex machine. I made a vow to start a strict early morning regime - tomorrow.
I dressed in two seconds flat except for my tights, opened the relevant drawer with trepidation in anticipation of the tentacles that erupted in a tangled skein of coloured nylon. I frantically choose from 300 assorted pairs tangled in knots in various stages of decay, ladders, holes and lacy patterns circa 1990, that are too expensive to chuck out, but too naff to wear. I also rejected various sizes and shades of stockings which a champion Krypton Factor contestant would struggle to match up.
Fifteen minutes later and wearing a pair of tights with an ozone-sized hole in the crutch, I extricated Joey’s football socks from a damp pile of washing in the bath. Damn, I’d forgotten to put them on the radiator to dry last night.
The hands on the clock whizzed round alarmingly. I vainly tried to iron the damn things dry with one hand while eating a bowl of cereal with the other. Guilt coursed through my veins like ice. I imagined Joey pale and prostrate against the sheets, ravaged with pneumonia, rickets or the onset of premature arthritis caused through my wanton neglect.
Fortunately it was dispelled instantly after rushing upstairs expecting to find him pristinely dressed in his school uniform, satchel at the ready, but instead found him in his pyjamas grimy and dishevelled with sleep, ruthlessly slaying the Lord of Destruction in Diablo II on the computer.
I’d only been awake for an hour but it already seemed like a lifetime. What bliss it must be to wake up and only have yourself to get ready. A hassle-free start to the morning, casually sauntering down to breakfast, a leisurely read of the newspaper, before cruising off to work arriving at your desk on time, alert and relaxed, ready for a productive day.
After a bout of hysterical arm waving persuading Joey to co-operate and get ready, I zoomed round like a dervish, packing his bag, my bag, his lunch box, my lunch box, fed Gums the goldfish and shoved some dirty clothes into the washing machine. Smug with satisfaction I opened the front door with a sigh of relief only to feel the dog shoot between my legs as it made a dash for freedom and next door’s cat.
I’ve always thought that people who believe they are the reincarnation of some famous long-dead illustrious person like Cleopatra or Napoleon must have a really exalted view of themselves. Why, out of all the zillions of people that have inhabited the earth, should they have been singled out to have been someone memorable in a past life instead of a sheep stealer or a circus freak?
But sometimes, such as an occasion like this, I do have an irrational conviction that the whole world is conspiring against me. God wakes up in a capricious mood, yawns, scratches his arse and on a whim, revolves his clenched fist in a circular motion over the world before singling out with his finger some unfortunate soul to suffer an off day. This morning it was my turn.
Abandoning all decorum I made an undignified dash around the village as Flossie zig-zagged down the main street yapping excitedly after the cat. After three fruitless circuits Squire Percy de Lyle Stocking came into view riding a magnificent hunter with a bull mastiff loping alongside. Fortunately, Flossie made a beeline for the mastiff’s bum and was so distracted having a good sniff that I was able to grab her by the collar and retreat crab-like, dragging her away from the horse’s hooves. I looked up and managed a forced smile at Percy between tortured gasps for breath, peering up at him through bedraggled matted hair, before gabbling an apology like some mediaeval witch. The shame of it.
He smiled munificently as if at a craven peasant and then suggested it might be a good idea to keep my dog on a lead.
Muttering inanely about being in a frantic rush, I dragged a reluctant Flossie off down the road by her collar, slowed down by the fact that she stiffened her back legs in rebellion. They looked as if they had been suddenly struck by paralysis. The strain made me go over very inelegantly on the heel of one shoe. Damn. Percy gave me a salute as he went by at a fast trot, his delectable jodphur-clad backside bouncing up and down in counter rhythm to his horse. God, what a waste, if that guy was straight I’d be in love.
Arrived at work really late after depositing Flossie back at home and dropping Joey off at school because he’d missed the school bus in the excitement.
"You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards," said Kathy after taking in my dishevelled appearance as I rushed to my desk all hot and breathless.
Funny you should say that," I replied, before regaling her with my morning’s adventure and the tragedy of the Perfect Percy who pretends he’s hot and happening with women when we all know he only has eyes for guys.
I must stop yawning at work. I think I should sue the Broadcaster Herald, my job as a reporter is nothing like it said in the advert. Writing obituaries and 'News from the Women's Institute' is hardly the stuff of Lois Lane and the nearest I get to a Superman is Super Spam Man beamed down from planet Zog. I spent the first half of the morning shuffling through a pile of press releases that were so boring to read that I lost the will to live after the first paragraph.
I decided instead to spice up the reports on the various village shows that have been happening around the county by writing slightly lewd captions about the size and shape of the prize winners’ vegetables. The punters love it.
It's a shame not a lot of things happen of national or international importance in the nowhere land of Broadcaster or next door in Downmarket, home to my invaluable colleague Colin, an inebriated hack in the district office. The best headline we've dredged up was when a cow got its hoof stuck in a bog at the local nature reserve. It took three fire engines and an armed response team from the local police force to extract it. It was the most exciting thing they’d had to deal with for years.
It's a shame there's nothing better to do than torturing the local council by muckraking over their internecine squabbles and their grossly inadequate handling of the council budget, or stoking the dormant flames of local disputes until they erupt into an inferno of claim and counter claim, overspilling onto the letter’s page with juicy accusations so close to the knuckle they give our legal guy palpitations.
I caught up with Kathy and Delia in the kitchen at lunchtime. D had popped in to discuss her weekly society news column, Delia's Diary, she writes it with such effortless style even though the content's as thin as the hair on Charles Bottum Wettum's bonce. I bet the reader's would rather hear about her salacious sexploits than a round-up of the farmer's balls. Maybe I should rephrase that. Whatever, Delia got that job through sheer nepotism and I'm not ashamed to admit it. If you can't do your best friends a favour now and then what's the point of having influence if you hide it under your bushel?
Kathy and Delia are my rock-solid friends due to the fact that we all experienced an intellectual hunger that led us to study on an Access Course at the Broadcaster College of FE, a grey, ugly, concrete dump that nonetheless inspired in us a belief that we weren't after all redundant, hormonal cretins. We were drawn together as we slowly deciphered the contradictions in Haralambos and discovered the lyricism of the Metaphysical poets, emerging triumphant, liberated in mind and spirit and armed with enough qualifications to get us into decent universities.
Where would we be without our mutual sisterly support through the various trials and tribulations of divorce, bereavement, love affairs and the pecuniary circumstances that have almost driven us back into the slavery of female anonymity, a condition spawned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century writer who launched the blockbuster fantasy fiction genre with the ‘Social Contract’.
Kathy asked for an update on Mervin. I explained how I'd had a nightmare with the realisation that he'd given me a poke, I almost fell out of bed with the shock until I remembered it had been on Facebook. What a relief!
Delia was wracked with worry about the potential expose that could result following her horizontal jogging episode in the back of the Freelander with Toy Boy and the unwise deployment of the penis ring.
‘A bit of a major cock-up you might say," she laughed half heartedly.
"Well, if this juicy tit bit of tittle tattle ever got out it would create such a scandal that the gossip hounds in the Doom and Gloom would feast off it for weeks," I replied. I suddenly had a horrible thought. "I hope it doesn’t come out before next Saturday."
"What, you mean it’s still in there?" Kathy quipped.
We all fell about laughing and between bouts of bawdy sniggers I told them about my dinner invitation to Humpington Hall from Charles and Mum's reaction when I told her Delia would be there with Henry. Then a thought struck me.
"If the news about the penis ring got out they could hardly go and make polite conversation at the table if everyone knew that Delia’s bits had been buzzed by remote control." The image had us in hysterics.
I offered Kathy and Delia a Cheesy Wotsit and went on to explain how it came about that Charles had asked me to go as his date and then described the sequence of events leading up to it including the miserable Mervin miasma.
"I know just how you feel," Kathy sympathised. ‘I went to a night club in Broadmarket with some some of the girls from accounts and I got chatted up by this bloke who’s breath could strip paint at 90 paces. I lied and said I was in deeply committed relationship with a seismic love life." She sighed sadly.
Delia urged her to elaborate. "He backed off, but unfortunately relayed the information back to his best mate who I’d been eyeing up all evening. He lost interest and disappeared with this woman with fat ankles," Kathy explained forlornly.
She suddenly stuck her out own neat ankle and surveyed it keenly. "I hope mine never get like that," she said. It prompted her to tell us about this new holistic diet that she’s on that involves drinking lots of herbal tea sitting in a yoga position meditating on kind karmas and positive images of lithe Naomi Cambellesque limbs.
"I didn’t lose an a ounce actually," she admitted, "but it gave me a great excuse to keep walking past Dick, the dishy new deputy editor, on the way to the ladies."
I must try it I thought.
Suddenly Kathy sat up and and clicked her fingers. "I know what I wanted to tell you," she said. But before she could elucidate Moyra our matronly receptionist burst into the kitchen.
"There’s been a delivery at reception for you Rebecca," she said, breathless with excitement.
Curious we followed her out of the kitchen into the reception area, festooned with pictures of village fetes, school sports days and ruddy faced councillors at civic receptions.
There lying resplendent on the counter was a bouquet of pink carnations, fragile gipsophila and furry ferns all wrapped up in shiny purple paper and tied with a big gaudy ribbon.
"Oh," squeaked Kathy.
My heart leapt. Who could have sent me flowers? I picked them up and buried my face into the petals inhaling their sweet, heady fragrance.
"Open the card, open the card," came a chorus of voices.
I extracted a pink card from beneath the ribbon with Rebecca Pearce scrawled on the front. I opened it slowly, my heart beating hard with hope. Who could it be? Maybe, maybe, it was from Jack to say he was sorry for being such a heartless, ruthless bastard. It wouldn’t be a day overdue. The thought flashed across my mind like a comet with a shiny tail of sparkling dust, only to have it burst like a boil when I read out the inscription.
"Thanks for such a lovely evening. I hope this is the start of a beautiful and prosperous friendship. Speak to you soon. All yours, Mervin."
I dropped the bouquet as if it was contaminated with ricin. "Yuck!" I wailed and walked off leaving the flowers abandoned on the carpet. I plonked myself down in front of my computer and started to viciously hit the keys with more force than was necessary.
I heard Moyra bustling up solicitously behind me. She thrust the flowers under my nose.
"Now dear," she said soothingly, "it’s not often that a woman gets sent such a lovely bouquet of flowers."
Unfortunately for Moyra that was true. Not even the most inventive and audacious advertorial writer could call Moyra attractive or even ‘interesting.’ The poor thing had been born with looks to die for - literally. Cruelly, Keith the editor once jokingly re-christened her, changing her name from Moyra Hadman to Moyra Never-Had-a-Man and we’ve called her that behind her back ever since. Sad.
"You have them," I said, looking at her kind face, "you love flowers."
She flushed with pleasure. "Are you sure, dear?" she asked.
I nodded and she walked off, gently cradling the bouquet to her ample bosom like a child, savouring second hand a romantic gesture from a man to a woman.
I fell into a slough of despond, faced with the familiar problem of how to detach myself from a persistent Spam Man. My reverie was broken as Kathy bounced up behind me like Tigger on acid.
"I take it that was a no?"
I looked up at the high windows where the only view is the sky and pondered dreamily if it would be fairer to Mervin if I were really truthful. I turned to Kathy. "Do you think it would be okay to be brutally honest rather than get his hopes up?"
Well, it depends on how you phrase it really," said Kathy.
"I thought along the lines of, look, why don’t you piss off and leave me alone as the only way I could have sexual intercourse with you is if I was anaesthetised first."
"I bet you go out with him for a drink next week," Kathy said dryly.
"Over my dead body," I spluttered.
I suddenly remembered that she was just about to impart some spicy piece of information in the kitchen before being cruelly interrupted by Moyra. I asked her to elaborate.
"Oh yes, I forgot in all the excitement," she said. "Forget about old Merv the Perv, we are going to indulge ourselves in the latest spot of man baiting to hit the singles scene this century. I’m taking you speed-dating on Friday and we are going to catch us a man each with maybe a couple to spare."
Well, Kathy’s news really cheered me up, here was a ray of light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Surely out of 20 or 30 men I could snare at least one-half decent guy.
Kathy slapped me on the back as she returned to her desk yelling over her shoulder as she went, "You’ll have no trouble. With your big tits you’ll knock ‘em dead. WMDs or what!"
I clocked a lascivious glance from Dishy Dick who joined in a hilarious ricochet of ribald office banter that continued to ring in my ears as I happily returned to caption more pictures of proud gardeners fondling their engorged vegetables. Things were certainly looking up at last.