The Age of Discretion

by Virginia Duigan

  How did Mr Jackson respond?

  ‘He said playing lady dress-ups was like, his hobby. He said he got a kick out of it and it was only a bit of fun.’ Joy exudes disbelief. Hobby. A kick. Fun. She blows out her cheeks.

  The majority of cross-dressers are straight, Viv says. Or so she gathers. Apart from this, does he behave normally? In other ways?

  Apart from this he delivers, she is given to understand. But that’s a big apart from, Joy adds darkly. Viv can see how it might have been a surprise, and Joy’s girls probably don’t need to know about it just yet. But does it really matter? On balance? This is what Joy needs to weigh up. Given all the things that could be wrong with a man.

  Joy says it’s easy for Viv to say. ‘You haven’t got one sleeping in your bed that likes to go out all dressed up like a tart. Your problem is you’ve got one sleeping in your bed that doesn’t do anything.’

  Viv acknowledges the truth of this. Has Joy seen Mr Jackson all dressed up yet?

  Joy utters a small scream, giving rise to an uncomfortable mental image. Yet? No, Joy has not. And she’s not going to, either.

  Bearing in mind Martin’s recent advice, Viv counsels her friend not to rush into anything. She should let herself go off the boil for a bit and then see how she feels.

  Joy says she didn’t rush into anything. She didn’t rush into stabbing him multiple times with the carving knife, did she? It’s a nasty shock for any woman, and she’s just trying to get her head around it, you know? Why hadn’t he said something before he moved in, to test the water?

  Viv says that in her experience, men tend to avoid introducing any topic that their gut feeling tells them will not be well received. Until they can’t see any alternative, she adds, thinking of Geoff.

  ‘He said his gut feeling told him how I was most likely gonna be about it,’ Joy says fluently. ‘I was gonna be like, it sucks, but maybe I’d get used to it. I was like, no way, baby. Only way I’m gonna get used to that is when it doesn’t happen.’ Joy bats her eyelashes. ‘Lordy. These men.’

  ‘These men,’ Viv agrees. ‘You know, I hate to strike a defeatist note, but things like that seem to be more of a psychological compulsion than a choice.’

  ‘That’s just psychological crap. Know what he said yesterday? When I’d got used to it I could come with him, and we could have a girls’ night out. Ha hahhh!’ She dabs at her eyes with her gloved hand.

  Viv says, ‘That would be fun. I’ll come with you.’

  She’s not joking, but they both laugh immoderately as they disappear into the Tube.

  27

  JULIA

  Viv doesn’t look at Leary’s text until the next morning. And then only after he sends a follow-up. Thurs cool?

  She reads his message of the night before. Hey B, wide open window likely Thurs. Lunch my place? Whadda you say? Whole pm free. Mulled it over yet? Lx

  Thursday is far away. In five days, anything could happen. She replies: Will pencil in Thurs. Equivocal enough? After some hesitation, she adds, B. And after further hesitation, x. His response flies back: Cool. Big X.

  She puts the phone out of sight, behind a bundle of material scraps, and prepares to start work. It rings almost immediately. Her mother, asking about Daisy’s show. Daisy and Adrian are bringing her up to see it next week, for Daisy’s birthday. Then they can all have an early dinner and she can stay the night. This arrangement is presented by Judith as a given.

  Geoff sitting down at the same table as Adrian? In your dreams, says Viv. For the moment, anyhow. She knows that her mother, while deploring it, will be intrigued to hear that Adrian is the younger son of the Earl of Frensham. She drops this in.

  Frensham, muses Judith. Near the Scottish border, she thinks. If Daisy and Adrian should become pregnant (Viv enjoys her mother’s stringent efforts to keep abreast of social and linguistic trends) her understanding is that the child, as the offspring of the second son, will not be entitled to use the Hon.

  Viv pre-empts her next remark. So, we’re in the clear, she says. Hons can have undesirable airs of entitlement.

  Exactly, Vivi. The rule applies whether or not the parents are married, Judith thinks.

  Don’t use the m word in Geoff’s hearing, Viv warns. At this, Judith asks whether she herself has met any halfway satisfactory man yet? None at all, Viv replies firmly. She has already decided not to say another word on this subject.

  Her mother, in vigorous form this morning, is not so easily put off. Is she in touch with anyone? Has she any follow-up appointments? Is there any new intro on the cards? Viv answers all questions with a flat negative. Having resolved to say nothing more, she hears herself remark, ‘It’s too late now, but I do wish you hadn’t told Daisy about the agency.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Her mother sounds curious and faintly injured.

  ‘Because I wanted it kept private.’

  ‘Really, dear? Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mother. Just a tedious, bourgeois preference.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know, Vivi. On the contrary—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know all that.’

  ‘You told me, didn’t you?’

  And how stupid was that? ‘Yes I did, but I assumed – silly of me – you’d keep it to yourself.’

  ‘Assumptions that are neither informed nor evidence-based—’

  ‘—are unreliable, inadvisable and not worth the candle. Yes, I do remember that, Mum.’

  ‘Daisy is a very strong and freethinking person. I have always thought it’s most important for a daughter to see her mother in another light. As a woman who happens to be her mother.’

  ‘Instead of a mother who happens to be a woman.’

  Somewhat to Viv’s surprise, Judith finds this joke amusing. ‘Have you consulted your guru – what was his name?’

  ‘Martin Glover.’

  ‘About lifting his game,’ says her mother. ‘He’s not coming up with the goods, Vivi. Not only has he not produced a credible prospect, they would seem to have dried up altogether. Are you quite sure you’re getting value for money?’

  ‘It’s all cool, Mum, don’t worry about it.’ Cool. Must be Leary’s subliminal influence. She knows she is not meeting her mother’s expectations here. She maintains a steely resolve. ‘If and when I have something to report, in terms of a credible introduction, I’ll be sure to let you know.’

  If and when. Not the right phrase. There’s something wrong with it, but the nature of its wrongness is not something Viv feels inclined to explore right now. Either in dialogue with her mother, or with herself.

  Viv did not expect to be sitting in Julia’s flower-filled flat again before the season of The Queen of Spades had come to an end, much less before it had even commenced. But early Sunday evening, after the quilting circle, she makes her way to Bloomsbury. Jules had suggested she might like to drop by for a drink on her way home.

  The atmosphere at Joy’s had eased a little, Viv felt. Mr Jackson was still in residence. She was relieved to see him working away, a placid presence at the end of the room. Joy told her he was minding his p’s and q’s.

  Did this mean he was abstaining from lady dress-ups? You can bet your sweet life it does, Joy replied grimly, and he’ll go right on abstaining if he knows what’s good for him.

  Viv provides a rundown on this while Julia mixes gin and tonic. For Jules this means diet tonic with lemon and a thimbleful. If Joy thinks abstention will work in the long term, she opines, she has another think coming.

  Jules is tranquil on the surface, but Viv senses a restive underlay. She puts this down to pre-season nerves. Rehearsals are going well, however, and Jules has lost five pounds to date, mainly in the target area of the midriff. This has obliged her costume cutter Marj Mackenzie to make small adjustments to the Countess’s distinctive nightdress. In addition, Jules has instigated (insisted on, Viv imagines) a few adjustments of her own, with the designer’s compliance. A dropped waistline and a diagonal ru
ffle will be more elegant and decidedly more flattering, she feels.

  She is having a copy made for herself. A sexy black nightie being one of those wardrobe staples that never goes astray. Viv concurs. She tells Jules about the plain satin slip she recently bought herself. Simpler and less dramatic, but it should serve the purpose.

  And do we have a purpose waiting in the wings, Jules inquires. Not a concrete one as yet, her friend concedes, but it’s as well to be prepared. As she says this, she experiences a bout of severe internal fluttering. She asks the same question, on the assumption (informed and evidence-based, this time) that any answer will be as evasive as her own.

  However, Jules throws in a surprising embellishment. ‘But at some point in the not too distant future, I fully expect to whip it off its hanger.’ She strokes the bridge of her nose. ‘Wasn’t there a hyper-speedy TV director?’

  ‘Only one meeting and it was a dead end.’ Does this constitute a decision just arrived at? ‘And don’t I recall a spunky young opera director?’

  Jules smiles. He has stolen one heart already. That of the eager young debutante at the Garden, poor little Bridie Waterstreet.

  One and a half hearts, perhaps? queries Viv. And shouldn’t the other half know better? Does know better, says Jules. But nature will have her wicked way.

  She has put out similar nibbles to those she offered Bridie: mixed olives and crisp pita bites with low-cal toppings. The flat is cosy and fragrant. The feathery white sofa induces a state of restfulness. Were it not for a latent jittery sensation Viv would feel pleasantly relaxed. She is aware, on some level she doesn’t care to investigate, that this is linked to the mention of black nightclothes. She asks if Max is still coming.

  Jules raises her eyebrows. ‘Of course he is. He arrives tomorrow.’ This seems to plunge her into a chasm of deep thought. Instead of sitting next to Viv on the sofa she has placed herself in an armchair opposite. Backlit as usual. The light from three lamps and the fire’s red coals is soft and glowing.

  In a quick, decisive movement Jules clicks her feet together on the floor and leans forward. She positions her left forearm across the waist, rests her right elbow on the back of her left hand and supports her chin in her right. For someone who prides herself on the elegance of her posture, this awkward pose is notable. While it is Viv’s first inkling they are not having the cosy drink she had imagined, she has no inkling that her friend is about to detonate a bombshell.

  ‘Vivi, there’s something I haven’t told you.’ Julia’s right hand moves up to stroke her own cheek. ‘I don’t think I ever told you how I met Max.’ Her hand brushes her face in a caress.

  Afterwards, Viv will always associate this conversation with the tango music playing softly in the background. Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion.

  Viv sits on the Central Line heading for Mile End and the school where she volunteers every Monday. On her lap is an unopened novel. She looks at her watch. Max might be just arriving. He might have reached Bloomsbury already. She is still profoundly affected by what she heard last night. It wasn’t so much a conversation as a soliloquy, before an audience of one. Once again, she revisits it.

  ‘How you met him?’ she had echoed. ‘But Max is your brother.’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t grow up together, you see. I was an only child.’ Julia’s eyes are in the shade and unreadable. ‘Or so I thought.’ Jules had thought she was an only child until she was fourteen, when her parents divorced. ‘They timed the split for when I was at boarding school, so I was cushioned from it. To some extent.’

  Viv remembered passing references to their parents’ divorces when she and Julia were still getting to know each other. But they were both in their early twenties at the time and had other things on their minds – pressing, age-related matters that were more germane and far more engrossing. Apart from recounting how June Jeffs had become Julia Jefferies, Viv’s new friend was reticent about her background.

  Since then, Viv had subscribed to the belief that it takes a certain temperament to brood endlessly over family shortcomings. Neither of them had showed that inclination. She thought they recognised this in each other, and respected it. It would take another forty years before she discerned the limits of those perceptions.

  Did the divorce come as a shock? Strangely enough no, Jules said. Not really. She thought she must have anticipated it, deep down. ‘What happened afterwards, though, estranged me from my father. Dramatically, in a way I’d never imagined. But it did make me very close to my mother, for the rest of her life.’

  The teenage Julia had been well aware of a coolness in her parents’ marriage, although unlike Viv she was not taken into her mother’s confidence. After the divorce her father, a doctor, moved to work in Mount Macedon, a country town north-west of Melbourne. The arrangement was for Julia to stay with her father during the school holidays. And after Christmas she came for a prolonged visit. She would stay at Mount Macedon until the end of the summer.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, her violet eyes fixed on Viv, ‘had prepared me for what I found there.’ She broke off abruptly and looked away. For a moment Viv suspected her of playing this for all it was worth. She revised the thought almost before it took shape; Jules was drawing the story out because she found the telling of it difficult.

  Later that night it would occur to Viv that she may never have told it to anyone before. Later still, she would discover Jules had in fact confided in her trusted agent, Malcolm Foster, and (in a slightly modified version) her dresser, Marjorie Mackintosh. I had to tell someone, Viv, or they’d have had to section me. Viv heard this admission with a spark of hurt.

  Whether or not the developing suspense was deliberate or unconscious, it was working. Viv was on the edge of the sofa, hands on her knees. It must have been a full minute before Jules resumed.

  Her father had picked her up from their old house, and driven for nearly an hour and a half to the small town in a mountainous rural area. On the way, he told her he was living there with another woman whose name was Catherine Templeman. He had known Catherine for a long time, and he hoped June would come to like her.

  ‘He’d known her since at least a year before I was born, as it turned out,’ Jules said dryly. She was thunderstruck to see the evidence of this long association. Her father and Catherine were living in a Federation-style house (1907, vaguely Arts and Crafts, rather rambling and fine) with timber verandahs on two storeys. Every room was filled with photographs. Photos of her father with Catherine Templeman and a third person. A child. A boy.

  ‘I think I hardly said hello to Catherine. She was just an indeterminate woman of Dad’s age. Although later I discovered she was also a doctor, and I realised she was quite a stunner. But on that first day I was like a feral animal, roaming all over the house. I was in a fervour, staring at all the photos. My father kissing the baby, the three of them in various contexts. I was completely mesmerised.’

  Jules disentangled her arms. ‘Sorry, Viv, but we’re going to need another drink.’ She went to the cabinet, pouring herself only a slightly stiffer measure than before. She resumed her pose. Viv, as she had done countless times in the past, admired her willpower.

  ‘I asked no questions about the boy. I know it seems incredible, Viv, in this day and age when everything’s out in the open, but I actually think no one said anything. Nothing at all.’

  Two days later, he turned up. He came home from boarding school and they were introduced to each other. They had the same surname. He was Max Jeffs.

  Jules’s face had turned very pale.

  I must try to keep this on an even keel, Viv thought, for her sake. My reaction must be matter-of-fact and unruffled. ‘How amazing, Jules,’ she said quietly. ‘What a shock that must have been for you. How old was he, exactly?’

  ‘Fifteen. He was very dashing at that age. Very dazzling, Viv. As you can imagine. Only three months older than me.’

  ‘Three months. And so – how did you both react?’

  Jules
got up and stood in front of the fireplace, with her back to Viv. She stood still, in silence, drink in hand, her head bowed. ‘We were angry. I can’t tell you how unbelievably, how identically angry we were. We were incandescent with rage. How could they have done this? Been so craven. How could they never have said a word? Even my mother didn’t know.’

  Viv heard Julia’s deep breaths. Incandescent. She pictured two fiery young dragons. ‘Was it a bonding experience?’

  ‘Bonding?’ There was another silence. It extended, to the point where Viv, hardly daring to breathe, began to wonder if she had said something tactless. Something offensive.

  When Jules turned round she seemed almost unaware of Viv’s presence. Her eyes were dreamy and abstracted. ‘You could say that. Yes, I think you could say it was bonding.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Viv asked carefully. This was untrodden territory. ‘I mean, with your father and Catherine?’

  ‘Oh, them?’ With contempt. ‘We just turned our backs on them and lived our own life.’

  The house was close to hill farms and cleared bushlike parkland. They had abandoned the house and gone off every day, on bikes or on foot, taking picnics. Swimming in creeks and waterholes, climbing rocky outcrops. Often stealing wine or beer from the fridge and wrapping it in wet newspaper.

  ‘We were intoxicated at all times. Sometimes in both ways at once.’ Colour had flooded back into Julia’s cheeks.

  Viv was unsure how to interpret this. ‘They didn’t – your father and Catherine …’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘They just – let you do your thing? Turned a blind eye?’

  Jules’s head jerked up. ‘We were unstoppable, Viv. You need to realise that. You would’ve had to lock us away. And they were both at work, most of the time. I think they were vastly relieved we were –’ a fleeting grin, the first for a while, ‘getting on.’

  Viv got up and went to the piano. She picked up the framed photograph of Julia and Max. An arresting study of two dark-haired, strikingly beautiful children. That was how she had always thought of them. But of course, they weren’t children. Every inch of her skin prickled.