On these subjects his interest had expanded to embrace Viv and her views. Had she ever embarked on a leisurely ocean cruise? Never, was the terse response. What about an exotic train excursion, such as the Orient Express or the Trans-Siberian railway?
Not even the Ghan, Viv had replied curtly. An Australian train, she explained with reluctance. Julia had travelled on the Ghan through the Red Centre, from Adelaide to Darwin, a couple of years ago. With her brother Max, Viv recalled. They had sent postcards that looked suitably exotic, although Viv did not disclose this.
Her lack of enthusiasm had not deterred Dev. A long, relaxing sea cruise could be very pleasurable, he suggested, in the right company. Very delightful indeed. With gourmet cuisine and sophisticated cocktail parties, and en-suite jacuzzi tubs. For two, in their luxury cabin, he added.
It might be delightful and relaxing, Viv had conceded, in the right company. In the wrong company it might be very boring. She thought she had said this rather pointedly and with emphasis. Too subtle, she decided, as Dev went on to remark that these days boredom could be kept at bay. Cruise ships featured celebrity guest speakers on topics of the moment, and sparkling on-board entertainment. Guests could dance the night away to world-famous headline entertainers like the beautiful American singer Diana Krall, for example.
Viv chose not to comment on this as they pulled up. ‘You mustn’t feel I’d like you to get out of the car to see me off, Dev,’ she’d said. Without a further glance at the driver she had made a beeline for the newly inviting bowels of Chelmsford Station.
Analysing her feelings as she sits in the train, Viv hits on the exact phrase. High dudgeon is what I am in, at this precise moment. I’m not sure I have ever been in it before. Certainly not to this extent. The fact that it is my own fault is neither here nor there.
She broods over this. Actually, it’s not my fault. I might reasonably be accused of having been somewhat rash, but the point is that another person has just behaved very badly. In a particular type of situation, a type that benefits from some inter-personal skills, however rudimentary, somebody else has behaved with scarcely a nod to the proprieties.
Why did I go along with it, without saying anything? She shelves this question for the time being. It requires some stringent self-scrutiny of the kind she does not feel up to right now. Julia, she has a fair idea, will want to take the question and run with it. Jules will say things along the lines of: you need to own your own problem. Or: it takes two to tango.
When she switches her phone back on, she finds three texts waiting for her. She scrolls down to the earliest. It’s from Daisy, and had been sent nearly two hours earlier. Ok if I come for suppr with jules mon nite? xx
The next one is from her mother. Hi, dear. Can you give me a ring? Are you coming down soon? We should discuss Daisy’s problems; I’m wondering if it would be a good idea for me to slip her some moolah?
Viv knows that it would have taken her mother’s arthritic fingers several minutes to compose this message, and that it would have involved multiple mistakes, painstakingly corrected. It had taken Judith some considerable time to learn the ins and outs of her smartphone, particularly how to create capitals and the location of apostrophes, brackets and semi-colons, but once a modest proficiency had been reached she took to texting with gusto. Although more trouble, arguably, than emailing or even picking up the phone, it makes her feel up-to-date, her daughter thinks, and tech-savvy.
Viv is accustomed to suffering pangs of guilt about her mother. They are mitigated to some extent by the fact, accepted by family and health workers alike, that at ninety-one Judith still has all her marbles (or nearly all) and knows she has them. She is independent to a pig-headed degree. She insists on living alone and does not wish anyone to put themselves out for her.
Least of all her daughter, who looks with disbelief at the third and most recent message. It is from Dev, and dispatched only minutes ago. Hi Vivien! I trust you enjoyed our little tryst?! We must have a ‘repeat performance’ at the earliest opportunity, and make future plans!
Like hell we must, Viv expostulates, loudly enough to get a reaction from the young woman sitting diagonally opposite, with her feet on the seat and wearing earphones.
Julia is spending a few days with friends in Oxford and would certainly have visited Viv’s mother, of whom she is fond. No doubt they took the opportunity to discuss the Daisy situation. This would explain Judith’s reference to slipping Daisy some money. Her professorial pension has allowed Judith to be comfortably off, but with the expenses of her old age she is living only a whisker within her means. Although she has occasionally mentioned a little something salted away, and likes to give her granddaughter cheques for Christmas and birthday, Viv doubts if the little something is much more than it sounds.
She calls her mother. A soporific male voice answers. This always gives Viv a jolt, but the explanation is benign, as it usually has been in recent years. Judith is being given her massage, a highlight of her week. Viv leaves a message. Judith will be too sleepy to talk for the rest of the day, and will retire to bed early.
The conversation with Jules about Dev, a conversation that Viv is, on balance, rather desirous of having, will have to wait.
Chelmsford leaves her with a lingering hangover. The recurring erotic fantasies, with Dev as the prime mover, have been dislodged. She finds it hard to believe she indulged in them at all, since her mental picture of Dev is now divested, magically, of any trace of sensuality. Daydreams have been supplanted by affront and disbelief. Viv can’t recall having had such oppressive and burdensome feelings for years.
Joy’s quilting circle presents an opportunity to give the burdens an airing. Joy is always a reliable sounding-board, unencumbered by what Viv sees as the baggage of a repressed middle-class English upbringing. Even if Viv’s own upbringing was less typical or repressed, in some respects, than most.
The kitchen is a useful refuge for a chat away from prying ears. Apart from some hammering, the atmosphere down the hall is appreciably quieter than usual. It could almost be said to be muted. This can only be due to one thing: the inaugural appearance of Mr Jackson Adeyemi, the security guard. Mr Jackson’s unveiling had been low-key, but did not lack its moment of drama. As Joy escorted him in, after a stern warning (‘He is a shy gentleman, you girls, and he doesn’t want anybody to take any notice of him. Okay?’) he had collided with a corner of the wooden frame on which the star quilt – destined to be auctioned for the local primary school – was stretched out. The whole edifice would have collapsed if he hadn’t executed a surprisingly agile save. Much, Viv imagined, as he might bring down a felon.
Closer inspection of the frame (formerly a double bed) revealed loose slats and a previous break secured imperfectly with glue and picture wire. That pretty quilt better come off double-quick so he could fix this problem, Mr Jackson announced in a soft (and relatively non-judgemental) voice, nodding for emphasis, because those repairs weren’t done by a lady who knew what she was doing.
While he attends to this, Viv follows Joy into the kitchen, ostensibly to help her make a pot of tea. She has just outlined Dev’s unorthodox approach to intimacy. It hasn’t escaped her notice that Joy is wearing bright cerise lipstick today, not her usual custom, and a form-fitting dress in rose brocade from Oxfam. Joy likes her clothes snug. Today’s dress is extra-snug around the pressure points.
Joy, who doesn’t hold with electric jugs, is putting a large kettle of water on the gas. She has been left in no doubt that the recent occasion had not lived up to her friend’s best, or even worst, imaginings. It was a fiasco. A unilateral performance, to put it more kindly than Viv felt disposed to put it.
Viv chooses to skirt over the delicacies by deft use of generalities. ‘He hadn’t a clue how to relate to a woman. No idea how to go about it. And if that was the only problem, I suppose you could deal with it – well, perhaps you could, over time – but he wasn’t interested in my role in the equation. He didn’t appear to be
aware that I might have a role.’ She considers this and adds, ‘Other than that of facilitator.’
‘It was all about him, right?’ Joy knows that her role is that of reinforcer. ‘He told you what things he wanted done to him. Just one damn thing after another.’
‘Exactly. One damn thing after another. And he told me what to do in some – detail. Which I won’t go into.’
‘You won’t? Well, Lord have mercy.’
Viv is not swayed. This, she thinks, may be the closest she has ever come to kissing and telling. Even if there was no kissing on this occasion. She says, ‘I honestly think it never occurred to him to think about what I might want. Or how to bring that about. Or if it did occur – which I genuinely doubt, by the way, since there was not a glimmer of it – he wasn’t interested in following it up.’
Joy is hovering over the kettle. Viv senses she is anxious to be out of there and back with the action.
‘He sure didn’t know how to give a girl a good time, honey.’
‘He didn’t give a stuffabout what kind of time to give a girl.’
‘Give that restaurant a miss from now on, huh? Only one crummy dish on the menu there. Fast food and no pig pickin’ cake for dessert.’
Viv has a liking for Joy’s pig pickin’ cake, made with vanilla pudding and mandarin oranges. ‘No dessert at all,’ she says.
‘Over and done before you could say Jack Robinson.’ Joy spoons leaves into a teapot in the shape of a church. Viv enjoys her friend’s use of faded British idioms, as well as genuine (and invented) ones from Joy’s Louisiana childhood.
Joy shoots her a shrewd look. ‘You acted like everything was hunky-dory, right?’ She stirs the tea leaves.
‘I suppose I did act like that. I’m not usually so passive. Or was it passive-aggressive? If so, it was much too nuanced.’
‘Did you fake?’
Viv winces. ‘I’m not sure he’d have noticed if I had.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t know it’s possible. Know what I mean?’ Viv assumes this is rhetorical until Joy says, ‘That Mr Ronnie, he acted like he didn’t know. Remember that thing they have?’
‘Do you mean a penis or Asperger’s?’ Viv is familiar with Joy’s views, as well as many of her beliefs. ‘True, something on the spectrum might explain a lot.’
It wouldn’t explain the empty house with nothing in it, Joy points out with asperity. Not even a proper bed to lie in. Joy, who likes a ruffled valance and deep upholstery, wrinkles her nose in distaste. She can’t for the life of her understand why her friend didn’t make more of an effort to get to the bottom of all that.
Viv doesn’t understand it either. She can only think that she wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Not quite herself. Quite who she was, though, is a puzzle. Several days after the event, she will still be turning this question over in her mind.
A text arrives from Martin Glover. Viv and Geoff are in the kitchen compiling a list for tonight’s dinner with Daisy and Julia. It’s Geoff’s turn to do the shopping. Viv feels a touch of warmth towards him, possibly engendered by her conscience. When he’s gone she goes up to the shed and reads the message: Hi V. How did you feel about the meeting? D seemed v happy. MG.
She calls the Discretion Agency. D may have been v happy, she tells Martin, but it was v unsatisfactory from my perspective. It was a toe-curling debacle, to cut a long story short.
‘Dear me. Toe-curling? That is bad.’ Martin sounds concerned and surprised. ‘Is there anything you feel you need to tell me?’
‘Just possibly. You see—’ Viv pauses. She has been deliberating how she should convey this awkward matter to Martin. Deliberating without reaching any constructive conclusion. She embarks cautiously. ‘Dev told me that I was his first introduction. I don’t know what he said to you, but I have a feeling he may not be very experienced. At least, not with – not in the area of …’
It was a whole lot easier telling Joy. What had she said to her? Something direct and to the point. ‘He seemed to think the way to go about enacting things to his satisfaction was to issue a series of instructions. Maybe he thought he was being helpful about things, but it—’
‘It didn’t assist things to evolve?’
‘Exactly. There wasn’t any – and I do mean any, Martin – attempt to make those things less … mechanical. Or one-sided. For example, it didn’t seem to have occurred to him that I might like a little preparatory romancing, for want of a better word. I don’t mean candles and wine or pretending we didn’t know why we were there, but …’
Why we were there triggers a renewed onslaught of visual memories. ‘And where we were, that’s another unfortunate aspect.’
‘Where were you?’ Martin asks gently.
‘Well, here’s the thing, we were in an empty house in Chelmsford. Empty except for a mattress on the floor. It was all rather – minimalist, really.’ Viv is mortified to feel herself, without warning, struggling with emotion.
‘It sounds like a right shambles all round, if you ask me.’
‘It was, a bit.’ An alarming unsteadiness. ‘Can I call you back?’
‘Certainly you can. Or you could stay on the line and endure me banging on for a moment.’ She nods into the phone, swallowing. ‘I don’t want you to be discouraged by one disagreeable encounter, Vivien. It sounds as if I need to say something to Dev, have an informal chat, man to man. It sounds like he is going about things the wrong way, and we need to avoid—’
Feeling stronger, Viv interrupts. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want you to do that. I’m sure it would be humiliating for him to know I told you he was, you know—’ how might Daisy put it? ‘a dud bang. And he might not be one at all with someone else, it might have been just me.’
‘I rather doubt it. This sounds more like a pattern of behaviour. Perhaps an ingrained dud habit. And the matter of the bed needs addressing. As well as the venue.’
‘All the same, I really would prefer—’
‘Did you find him attractive, at all?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Viv says, ‘I was bowled over by him, to begin with. But then it went out like a light. And now you could say I’m disenchanted to an equivalent degree.’
‘Would you prefer to talk to him yourself?’
‘Me?’
‘Something does need to be said,’ Martin says firmly. ‘If you want to have a crack at it first, I wouldn’t discourage you. It might be beneficial to air your grievances. Since you were the one impacted by his behaviour, so to speak.’
‘Beneficial?’ She thinks about this.
‘Certainly for Dev. But not only him. It might be useful for you as well. To redress the balance of power, to some extent.’
That’s an interesting idea. ‘I’ve had three texts from him. Which I ignored.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes. Pretty gutless, wasn’t it? We could talk on the phone, I suppose. Or possibly meet in a cafe.’ Not that one. One with decent coffee. ‘Well. I suppose I could have a think …’
‘He’s very keen to continue,’ says Martin, ‘but I take it that’s not on the table.’
‘It’s off the table,’ says Viv, quite heatedly, ‘and on the floor. Just like the mattress.’
She is climbing the stairs to the top deck of the bus when her phone rings. This is her afternoon for volunteer work as a reading coach to disadvantaged and mainly refugee children, and as such is off limits to callers.
Julia has timed it carefully so as to snare Viv en route. ‘I thought you might have something you needed to tell me,’ Jules says, in a more ingratiating echo of Martin Glover. ‘Before tonight,’ she adds. Tonight she is coming over with Daisy. Viv has already taken an implication from this joint visit. There may well be an item of moment to discuss.
There have been times when Julia’s position as Daisy’s godmother has enabled some privileged information to come her way, ahead (and sometimes well in advance of) Daisy’s birth mother. Viv has never resented this. There were periods in her own adolescence and later as a y
oung woman when she would have liked an older female confidante. Judith was assiduous in her duty of affection, but she was not always easy. Viv is no Judith. Still, experience has taught her that a wise intermediary can, on occasion, relieve a degree of maternal pressure.
Jules would maintain that having no kids of her own precludes her from being the fount of anything much, and most especially of all (or any) wisdom. Viv would say that this enables a useful degree of objectivity. Over the whole issue of children she thinks she has detected, from time to time, an undercurrent. It could be regret. Or is she imagining it? Jules has never said a word, either way.
Regardless, Viv believes that experience has refined Julia into someone who is, not more cynical exactly, but wiser than most in the ways of the world. She has come to value Julia’s judgement about many things, and not only in the family sphere.
Geoff would put it differently. He would say that Jules has a head on her shoulders. If she weren’t an opera singer she’d be a politician, in his opinion. Or if things didn’t go so well she’d be a real-estate agent. Or a used-car saleswoman.
Viv lurches towards the front seat of the bus. The top deck is empty, apart from a handful of passengers texting or listening to music. The conversation with Julia lasts for the duration of the bus ride. Jules allows her to get to the end of her narrative without overt interruption, apart from the occasional expressive sound. She has a repertoire of non-verbal responses ranging across at least two octaves. Viv can generally interpret these with no trouble.
The recital draws to a close. Jules snorts. ‘Well, what a surprise. No prizes for guessing what he’s after. You’ve been taken for the proverbial ride, Viv. He’s looking for a sugar mummy.’ No sooner are the words spoken than Viv knows they are spot on.
‘All that talk about high-heeled shoes and glamorous cruises. He just wants to swan around the world as a rich woman’s handbag.’
The Age of Discretion Page 13
