The Age of Discretion

by Virginia Duigan

  They have disposed of the bottle of wine, her companion taking the lion’s share, and their plates are empty. Viv declines a dessert. She looks at her watch and makes a show of surprise. Is it really this late? Lordy, hasn’t the time flown?

  When the bill arrives, Drummond puts his hand over it and will take no argument. As they get up the earlier awkwardness, which has never been entirely absent, returns in full. They have each other’s numbers, they say. That was a most enjoyable lunch, wasn’t it? Such an extraordinary thing to happen.

  But at the door, just as Viv is on the point of diving into the cold, Drummond grasps her arm and leans over her. It reminds her of being in the dentist’s chair. Which prompts another memory: she has an appointment in Mr Blake’s rooms coming up before Christmas.

  ‘I hope you might consider doing this again,’ he says. ‘Now that we have broken the ice.’

  Viv is caught off guard. She smiles, genuinely warm as well as apologetic. ‘Well. It would have been very nice. And that was a lovely lunch, I enjoyed it. But I don’t really think, as I’m already your patient, that it would be – well, you know. My husband is a patient of yours too, of course. Geoff Mayberry?’

  ‘Mum’s the word,’ he says. ‘You’re Byron’s patients. Not Drummond’s.’

  This is rather endearing. ‘In any case, we won’t let this queer our pitch, will we, Byron? Because I’d hate to have to go out and find another periodontist, not at this time of life. He’d never be as good. Or as nice.’ She squeezes his arm, then regrets it.

  ‘Perhaps you could think about it, Vivien,’ he says immediately.

  She does think about it on the Tube, for less than ten seconds, and then dismisses it. There’s no getting away from it – if it is assumed to mean embarking upon a sexual relationship with Mr Blake – she couldn’t entertain the idea. It would be preposterous.

  16

  JUDITH

  Joy is unusually frisky today. Viv, who is not feeling frisky herself, has already seen that her chances of a discussion about her recent lunch with the Bulldog are next to nil. Her friend has shunned her usual cowgirl-inspired wardrobe choices, and is sporting a figure-hugging top in electric green and a tight (and short) azure pencil skirt. The gossip is that Mr Jackson Adeyemi doesn’t care for country or gypsy; he goes for princess.

  Joy has been visiting the YMCA and Oxfam with Riley. Not round here, but in posher catchment areas. Riley, the bombshell of the group, is the main buyer of the celebrity weeklies littering the house. She often picks up model cast-offs that look like they’ve never been worn. Riley confides that Mr Jackson was observed descending the stairs and eating a humungous fry-up at breakfast.

  This line of talk is necessarily limited to moments when neither of the principals is in the room. Joy insists that the new male presence is unobtrusive, insofar as a hunk like that can be unobtrusive in a roomful of women. Which is not at all, in Viv’s opinion. But she is becoming quite fond of him, with his shyly polite manner towards everyone.

  He’s still learning the ropes. Joy has been giving him one-on-one tutorials, has she? For free? Joy’s coyness comes as no surprise. She has never been comfortable with intimate personal disclosure, while being perfectly at ease (verging on nosy) about her friends’ activities. Mr Jackson is into research, she says breezily.

  ‘He’s fixing to study the Encyclopedia.’ This is The Complete Encyclopedia of Quilting, presented by her tenants five Christmases ago. Ondine got it off eBay, and it’s a collector’s item, Joy says. She has covered it in cling wrap to protect it from sticky fingers.

  Viv doesn’t need to be told that her friend has fallen heavily. It has been a long time coming, and no one begrudges it. Everyone, though, has their fingers crossed. No one wants Mr Jackson to turn out to be another Mr Ronnie. Although it’s well known that Mr Ronnie, for all his faults, is responsible for everyone being here in the first place.

  Joy’s ex-husband (now vanished off the face of the earth) also happened to be a nice (initially) Nigerian. He made, or came into, a great deal of money, most of which he took with him. But before shooting through, he put the house in Joy’s name. Because it lends an ambivalence to his memory this is hardly ever mentioned.

  Viv’s elderly mother Judith enjoys hearing news about the members of the quilting circle. Particularly about Mr Jackson’s arrival on the scene. She and Joy, and Joy’s girls, bonded last summer over lunch in the West Hampstead garden and a picnic in Regent’s Park. Still notoriously alert and inquisitive at ninety-one, Judith insists on being kept in the picture. She may have outlived most of her contemporaries, but her interest in other people, and especially in the vagaries of their behaviour, is undiminished. This has guaranteed a sustaining pool of friends of all ages.

  About one development, though, she remains in the dark. Viv has not chosen, up to now, to keep her mother completely (or even partially) in the picture about certain vagaries of her own. Joy thinks she is being unnecessarily secretive. She’s all for Viv spilling the beans. Don’t keep mum about it, she says. Let your mum have a bit of a laugh at you. It’s not like she has much to laugh about these days, is it?

  These days Judith is Viv’s captive audience. She no longer drives, although she takes the bus into Oxford, stubbornly does her own shopping and keeps up with the occasional movie. But when Viv visits, which she does religiously once a fortnight, her mother prefers to stay put. Their habit is to talk over a stiff aperitif in front of the fire before watching something on TV.

  On this overnight visit there is a lot of ground, potentially, to cover. Viv has been weighing up the pros and cons. Does she or does she not put Judith in the picture? She has no doubt that her mother would listen with an open mind. In comparison with friends’ surviving mothers she can only admire Judith’s forthright modernity.

  As a child she thought her mother possessed an almost clinical objectivity and detachment. She later revised this to a clinical detachment allied to, and sometimes on a collision course with, a powerful (and unstoppable) sensuality. Over time, she has found this to be a comparatively unusual combination.

  However, Judith’s mental stamina, as expressed through her attention span, is not what it was. It may well be that her energy level will preclude discussing any family business beyond her granddaughter’s activities. She knows all about the circumstances of Daisy’s break-up with Marco but nothing yet, her daughter has assumed, about Adrian. In this belief Viv is mistaken.

  ‘Did I ever meet this one?’ Judith asks, frowning in concentration. Viv has put down a tray of drinks and olives and is stoking the fire. She likes doing this; it takes her back to camping with the Girl Guides. She is nonplussed by the question.

  She looks at her mother’s shoulder-length but very sparse white hair. ‘You mean Marco?’ The areas of exposed pink scalp, and the backs of her mother’s hands, knotted and wrinkled, dappled with age spots, never fail to move her.

  ‘No, of course I don’t mean Marco,’ Judith says, very testily. ‘I met Marco a hundred times, as you know. And I didn’t like him any more than you did. I thought he was fundamentally selfish, which was confirmed. I’m talking about the new one.’

  ‘Adrian?’ An impatient nod. ‘Oh, I didn’t think you – I’m not sure, Mum. You may have met him years ago, they’ve been friends since university.’ Viv notices, rather late in the piece, that several snaps of Daisy and Marco – on a beach in Greece, eating pizza, all dressed up at someone else’s wedding – have been removed from the crowded line-up of framed photos on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Show me what he looks like.’ Viv hasn’t brought along a photograph. She promises to rectify this next time. She’s fairly sure that Adrian appears in the group photo she has of Daisy’s friend Alyse’s wedding. He hasn’t changed much in seven years.

  ‘Or better still, she can bring him down to see me. She shouldn’t dilly-dally. I might drop off the perch in the meantime.’

  It’s unlike Judith to say something like this. Viv doesn’t wa
nt to hear it. ‘Mum—’

  ‘You don’t like him either, Vivi,’ her mother says, with a probing tilt of the head.

  Viv takes her time. Even though liking someone is dangerously close to a feeling or an impulse, and therefore not entirely subject to the empirical evidence valued by her mother, she is aware that Judith allows this to be important.

  ‘I don’t dislike him, I couldn’t say that. He’s extremely personable. Good company, charming. It’s all the other baggage that complicates the issue.’

  ‘Being gay and good-for-nothing,’ Judith says, eyebrows raised ironically.

  ‘Well. That counts for something, I suppose.’

  ‘It all depends on what Daisy is using him for, doesn’t it?’

  Viv has had cause during her life to marvel at her mother’s scientific knack of getting to the heart of the matter. Getting to it by means of bypassing the normal human distractions of irrationality and emotion. She hasn’t always admired the bottomless capacity for dispassion that is so fundamental to her mother’s character, but as she has grown older she has come to appreciate it more. For its comparative rarity as much as anything else.

  Growing up, especially in the awkward teenage years, she had cause to writhe under the laser beam of her mother’s scrutiny. It no longer has the power to mortify, or even to greatly disconcert. But the accompanying little smile with its hint of complacency, sometimes bordering on triumph, can still rankle, on occasion. This is one of those occasions.

  ‘I’m not sure that Daisy is using him any more than he’s using Daisy,’ Viv says with a touch of asperity. She adjusts the rug on Judith’s knees, and digs industriously at the fire. ‘They may well cancel each other out when it comes to mutual exploitation.’ After a short wait for her mother to interject, she adds, ‘That’s what makes the situation so difficult to comment on, in any useful way. Or to have much of a view on at all, really.’

  ‘I’m sure Geoff has a view,’ says her mother. When she smiles her face creases into a thousand wrinkles. This also never fails to tug at her daughter’s heart. For so long, Judith’s face was unlined and seemed scarcely to alter. It was only after Stefan’s unexpected death twelve years ago that she began to age, in Viv’s eyes, almost overnight.

  ‘Yes, Geoff has a view and it’s dim. You might say it’s entirely negative,’ Viv says. They nod with mutual understanding of Geoff and his views. ‘He thinks Adrian is trouble with a capital T. Daisy’s stuff-up to end them all, he said this morning. All the fucking cock-ups, he said.’ This is accompanied by a grin at her mother.

  ‘Of course he did. Prince Charming-and-gay is irrelevant. He wants Mr Straight-down-the-line reliable. He’s her father.’

  And I am her mother. Why should this always be so much more complicated? It’s because I know exactly where she’s coming from. Because I can empathise in ways Geoff just can’t. And yet I can’t deny that I also understand where he’s coming from.

  Her mother’s next question takes her by surprise. ‘Is this going to be a marital problem for you both?’ Here is a wide-open invitation, if she wants to take it.

  In two minds about the matter as she has been for some time, she says, ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mum. A lot depends on Geoff’s self-control. And on what happens in the long term.’ She reviews this. ‘And I daresay in the short term too. And, no doubt, in the medium.’

  ‘Are you seeing anyone else, at the moment?’

  I’m a tolerably grown-up woman, and I can still be ambushed by my mother. She can still stop me in my tracks and bowl me over with her acuity. Well, what am I waiting for? At least it will give her something new to think about. And it will take the heat off Daisy.

  Viv swills the last of her drink. ‘Funny you should say that, Mum. I have seen one or two lately. I’ve been going to an agency.’

  Leaving this ripe fruit hanging for a minute, she repairs to the kitchen and removes the tray of cheesy vegetarian lasagne that has been bubbling away in the oven. She brought it from home, and the leftovers will give her mother another two easy suppers. Judith likes to eat early in front of the television, with a DVD playing and a tray table across her lap. She has become a big fan of boxed-set dramas, and especially enjoys Scandi-noir thrillers and political intrigues. Viv recycles the pile and replenishes it when she visits. But her news has guaranteed the TV will stay off tonight.

  Tonight there’s nothing wrong with Judith’s attention span. She listens with the trained academic focus that has never left her, and without interrupting. Her response may be non-judgemental but it’s not impartial; her daughter’s well-being is at stake.

  And being Judith, physical gratification is right up there when it comes to well-being. In her estimation it ranks higher, Viv has long suspected, than the profound satisfactions on offer from any other source. From intellectual or artistic sources and even, her daughter would venture to say, with mixed feelings, the mystical (but never mythical) rewards of motherhood.

  Her mother’s advice in this general area had commenced when Viv turned thirteen. If you were not giving and receiving sexual pleasure, and if (and only if, was the conscientious proviso) you regarded this as a deprivation, then Judith was in no doubt about your course of action: you were entitled to do something about it. Indeed, you would be at fault if you did not, and had only yourself to blame. Sexual frustration was profoundly debilitating, Judith said.

  These ideas were viewed as daringly subversive at school. They gained Viv much cachet among her friends, imbued as they were with various eye-rolling factors. One of these factors, in the young Viv’s eyes, was nothing but a brazen attempt to legitimise what she, protective of her kindly, repressed father, saw as nonstop serial adultery.

  On the face of it, Judith had nowhere near as much in common with her second husband (the electrician and jazz violinist) as her first (the professor of medicine). But no one who knew her and Stefan, and especially Viv who saw them together more than most, could be in any doubt that they hit it off in other ways. Ways that made their differences irrelevant. It fostered a durable union that survived Stefan’s explosive temperament (explained away by Judith as artistic) and continued until his death.

  This evening Viv can see more clearly than before how her own attitudes, together with her behaviour, have been informed by Judith’s views. It occurs to her now as she looks at her mother, and it’s an entertaining thought as well as being faintly worrying, that the Discretion Agency might have been designed with Judith Quarry in mind.

  Not that anyone introduced to her now could have the slightest idea of how she used to be before Stefan came along. No idea that she was once a seductive and, Viv would have to concede, predatory woman. No idea, furthermore, that this little old lady, increasingly deaf, white-haired and shuffling, harboured a volcanic interest in sex and a catalogue of provocative opinions. None of which, in her daughter’s estimation, have significantly diminished with age.

  They wouldn’t have the slightest idea, Viv reflects, unless they thought to look into her eyes. Gimlet-eyed might have been written with my mother in mind. They may be pale and watery now, but behind them lurks an iron-willed personality that age has not wearied nor the years substantially condemned. Although the manipulative side of her personality has (arguably) mellowed.

  Viv doesn’t tell Judith what prompted her to contact the Discretion Agency in the first place. She expects her mother to draw her own conclusion, and that this will be in the appropriate ballpark. Judith is charmed not only that the agency exists, but that society has evolved in such a way as to enable its existence. Dedicated as it is, she says approvingly, to giving partnered women who need it a helping hand.

  Viv feels bound to point out that the hand of succour is extended to the deprived partnered of both sexes. She remembers Martin saying there is an imbalance. Too many men, and he needs to attract more women.

  ‘Too many men is an advantage for you,’ Judith responds at once. She thinks the imbalance is symptomatic of Discretion’s novelty.
Society will adjust, and once the word gets out there will likely be a balance. Down the ages entrenched patriarchies have always catered for the needs of men, she continues, climbing on this favoured hobby-horse with virtual agility. In the past women have had to like it or lump it in marriage, whereas men have always had a multitude of helping hands available, chiefly the outstretched ones of prostitutes. Judith wrinkles her nose. Which has been not only grossly inequitable but ultimately degrading to both parties.

  ‘If the Discretion Agency had been in existence before I met Stefan,’ she remarks, ‘I would have availed myself of its services. I’d very likely have spent a great deal of energy and much of my disposable income. Still, a by-product might have been the avoidance of a great deal of unpleasantness in the process.’

  Viv can only agree that this might have been a very desirable by-product. Her father only lived a few years after the divorce, and was never the same. Her mother wipes her mouth with her napkin. She still likes to wear the scarlet lipstick favoured by Viv’s stepfather, although her hand is shaky now and her aim less accurate.

  ‘When I met Stefan all that expenditure of time and energy into exploring random byways became unnecessary.’ She has finished a good portion of lasagne and laid down her fork. ‘I don’t mean that I suddenly ceased to expend the same amount of time and energy. In fact, between ourselves, I probably spent rather more, if the truth be known.’ Viv smiles. It’s not the first time she has heard this particular confidence.

  ‘It was just that it ceased to be random. It was channelled in one direction, which was a far more efficient use of time.’

  ‘And productive,’ Viv prompts. ‘In terms of well-being.’ In the absence of her mother’s traditional aid to well-being, an inevitable absence nothing can be done about now, she feels this nostalgic recital does her a power of good. And it is far and away her mother’s favourite topic. Not a dialogue so much as an interior monologue delivered aloud.