Not Married, Not Bothered

by Carol Clewlow

  I wouldn’t have known about Iaia if it wasn’t for Magda, Iaia holding pride of place as one of her role models, Magda being a painter herself (also noted poet and playwright, at least in her own estimation). Magda used to see her most days when they used the same deli round the corner from the temple where Magda was working as a vestal virgin. In fact, Magda once hinted to me that the aforementioned Old Woman at Neapolis picture, which Pliny mentions, was in fact her, Magda, in old age – ‘I have a distinct recollection of being painted’ – and this after telling me only a week or so earlier that she’d been cut off in her prime on account of being carted off to Alexandria and buried in some tomb or other.

  ‘Phfff,’ she said, waving a hand in the air, when I brought up the discrepancy. ‘Sometimes it’s just so hard to remember.’

  It will have now become abundantly clear to you that Magda is Queen Flake in our town, the High Priestess of Crazy. But like I said to Sophie just the other day, ‘Really, does it matter? So what if she thinks she was carried off at the Siege of Thermopylae …’ Besides which, where’s the big deal in Magda’s previous incarnations? Don’t we all feel we’ve had them? What do old affairs seem like when we look back and don’t understand why or how – mine with Lennie, for instance – but another life. As for marrying herself, why not? Like Sophie said, ‘Well, it’ll do a lot less damage than if she marries someone else.’

  One thing’s for sure, Hocus Pocus is the temple to New Age folly and excess in this town. For a start there’s the sheer extravagance of the place, its prodigality. Compared to it, Aladdin’s cave was well filed and orderly. Fifteen years ago when Magda first opened up her doors, it was possible to walk around the place. Not any more. Now you squeeze between the piles of merchandise, head and shoulders striking chains of bells, lanterns, scarves, mobiles and all manner of other tinsel and trumpery dangling from the ceiling. The back room is no longer negotiable at all. Instead it must be viewed, full of its mountains of goods, from the doorway like some piece of conceptual art. There’s a belief in our town that Hocus Pocus is a front for drug-dealing but only because it appears that Magda never sells anything, that the piles of smocks, coats, blouses, belts, hats, bags, rugs, cushions, boxes, pictures, posters, bangles, necklaces, rings, earrings, candles (of all description), lamps, artificial flowers, crystals, Tibetan bells, oils, joss sticks, astrological charts, witchcraft starter kits, wildly expensive hand-crafted wooden toys and all manner of other bric-a-brac from A to Z never get any smaller. Which is true. They don’t. But this is because Magda hates to part with anything. She runs the shop because she loves it, truly loves it and everything in it. Customers practically have to tear things from her grasp to buy them. To console herself when sales actually occur, she immediately re-orders, or better yet, shoots off to one or other of her suppliers in Turkey or Nepal or Morocco where she smokes a little high-quality hash to be polite and then gets down to the serious business of the day, ordering another bountiful selection. There’s also the matter of her absurd generosity to her friends. At your peril do you admire a rug or try on an alpaca jacket.

  ‘Perfect … perfect …’

  ‘I can’t afford it.’

  ‘Take it, take it … pay me when you can …’

  ‘This is not the way to do business, Magda.’

  It has to be said that making a profit is not actually top of Magda’s priorities and this is because it’s not a strict necessity. She has a private income although the exact nature of it is something of a mystery. All I know is that it enables her to get a much larger overdraft than the rest of us, and that it derived way back when from several generations of Sri Lankan tea-planters. It’s for this reason that Mad Magda MacBride of the wild Irish name has the look of an Indian princess about her.

  For all these reasons I can forgive Mad Magda pretty much anything, but most of all for her God-given enthusiasm. She’s always got some brand-new idea on the go (at the moment it’s tantric drumming), some new idea, therapy, or self-help book that will change her life, or some new campaign to save something. Last year, for instance, she chained herself to a tree behind her house in the firm belief it had ancient spirits in it, this to stop Carpet World from uprooting it for their new car park. She’s never floored by things. She never gives in either, always believing there is something to be done.

  ‘Ummm … let’s think,’ I can remember her saying after the Lennie débâcle. ‘What can we do?’ which is when her face brightened. ‘I know.’ She waggled a finger in the air. ‘I could put a spell on him. What do you think, Riley?’

  Still, there’s something else about Magda for me, something that forms the bedrock of our friendship although she’ll never know it. It’s that when I look at her I see writ large what I might have been. If it had happened to me. If I had taken that route.

  I too might have been an utterly doting, supremely flaky New Age single mother.

  At first I thought Magda was being slightly cavalier with the title ‘spinster’ that day she decided to marry herself.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you have to be childless as well as unmarried to qualify?’

  ‘Not at all. Check it out.’ And I did. And I was wrong. And ten to one you’d have made the same mistake. But according to the definition,* the only qualification for being a spinster is to be an unmarried woman judged to be beyond the age of marriage. You can even have a marriage behind you if you like and still take the title since never having married is only part of the strict legal definition. One thing’s for sure, in none of these categories is there any mention of children.

  Magda was still working in television when she got pregnant. When she declined to name the father, many people assumed it was the presenter of the Friday night post-pub fodder chat show she was working on at the time as a researcher.* A married man with children, and mildly famous now, he had an early reputation as a philanderer. On the other hand, those more au fait with the situation maintained there were more practical reasons for Magda’s discretion, in short that she neither knew nor cared about the identity of the father, his function being no more than sperm donor.

  Certainly it would be true to say that Magda was sexually active that summer she got pregnant, making up for all those years as a vestal virgin is what I thought at the time. Now I see it was that old body clock chiming away like Big Ben inside her.

  Magda was thirty-six when she had Rochelle. And if Rochelle is utterly pissed off at her daft name – the impression she always gives, rearing up at the sound of it when her mother calls fondly across the shop to her and making a faint spitting movement – well, all I can say is she should think herself bloody lucky. It’s only surprising given Magda’s resolutely New Age leanings that she didn’t end up as Floating Lotus Blossom or Beloved Frangipani.

  The meejah world of the mid-eighties was a cool time to become a single mother. It was entirely the right thing to do. And the role suited Magda well. Tall and extremely striking, with the look of some sixties folk singer about her, she appeared so positively right pushing that buggy. And she was capable too. She could change a nappy with a flick of the wrist. Better yet, she could demand in strident tones nappy-changing facilities in places that didn’t possess them. A hard-liner when it came to breast-feeding in public, for a couple of years Magda’s handsome raspberry nipples were out more than in, something that she confided to me (if you can call Magda’s exclamatory form of address ‘confiding’) brought additional benefits.

  According to Magda, her sex life was never as good as during those early years with Rochelle.

  ‘Trust me, there are men in this world who get seriously turned on by the smell of Sudocrem and baby lotion.’

  Neither did the presence of Rochelle in any way hamper Magda’s social life. Never once did she suffer from the absence of a baby-sitter. Because ‘Whither I go, thou shalt go’ became Magda’s motto, which is why at every party you went to in those days you could be sure to fi
nd Rochelle being passed from hand to hand, dandled upon knee or forced to goo-goo in the air as Magda held court among her envious circle of Baby Wannabees and Body-Clock Watchers.

  Still, what the hell? Like I say, Magda looked the part pushing that buggy, and if there was the faintest suspicion as she strode along the High Street, head thrown back proudly, silver bracelets clinking on the handle of that sooper-dooper, top-of-the-range buggy, if there was the merest suggestion that both contraption and occupant were in some vague way – whisper the words – an adjunct, an accessory, a must-have to complete a life-style, like, say, a Habitat trolley, well, I can forgive it because it’s Magda. Or at least I can for all but those odd, seriously irritating moments when she comes all over mumsy and patronising to those who don’t have children.

  ‘I do think there’s something so wonderfully magical/mystical/elemental about the relationship between mother and daughter, don’t you?’ is one of her favourites, spoken as she gazes mistily over at Rochelle, who almost certainly at that moment is studiously ignoring her.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She claps a hand theatrically over her mouth.

  I sigh. ‘For what?’ I’ve played this scene a thousand times.

  ‘I always forget.’

  ‘What?’

  The smile is wide and self-satisfied and only pretends to be apologetic. ‘Well, I know not everyone wants children.’

  Rochelle is seventeen now, with a multicoloured ponytail, and rings and studs in her face like she’s using it as some sort of voodoo doll; that if she’s really lucky, every time she gets a new piercing there’ll be a mysterious, sudden sharp pain on the body of her mother.

  Despite all this, Magda likes to insist, ‘I think of her as my best friend,’ always smiling serenely as she says it.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Cass said when I mentioned it to her. ‘In what world are mothers supposed to be best friends with their daughters?’*

  Still, there’s something touching in all this, not least because, like I say, in Magda I see myself, what I might have become, the same totally obsessed and doting mother.

  ‘You haven’t … um … mentioned the wedding to Rochelle yet?’ I said, after she’d buttonholed me in Hocus Pocus when I’d gone in for a birthday card for Sophie.

  ‘No. No. I thought I’d wait till I’d finalised everything. Keep it as a surprise.’

  Frankly I thought this a non-starter. I figured that since Rochelle has made it successfully through to seventeen with her mother there was now nothing on God’s earth likely to surprise her.

  It’s going to be a ‘traditional’ wedding according to Magda (not an entirely appropriate word, I thought, it being short of a bridegroom).

  ‘I hope you’re not going to promise to obey.’

  ‘No, no, no. I mean really traditional. With dozens of bridesmaids.’

  In days of yore, apparently, the bride would be surrounded by many bridesmaids, to confuse the mercenaries but also any malign spirits.

  ‘Are you expecting some then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know. Malign spirits.’

  Magda’s bridesmaids will walk with her from her house up the Tor where the ceremony is to be held. They’ll all be dressed in white, with flares (that’s the torches, not the trousers).

  ‘Do you think Sophie would like to be a bridesmaid?’

  I was just pondering the simple unlikelihood of the words ‘Sophie’ and ‘bridesmaid’ appearing in the same sentence* when Rochelle broke in on my thoughts, crashing in through the front door of the shop and slamming it closed in the manner of someone Making A Statement.

  ‘Darling,’ her mother said with a wide and welcoming smile that indicated she hadn’t noticed the foundations were still shaking. But Rochelle wasn’t in the mood for talking. Her only acknowledgement as she flounced through was her customary curl of the lip and a look thrown at her mother that said that of all those who had ever been, or were, or could be in the world, this woman was the most contemptible.

  That was the first time I noticed the tattoo on her upper arm. It glowed beneath the shop spotlights as she flounced through, purply-blue and bully-boyish. I caught sight of snakes crawling in and out of a skull, and matching daggers. Nowhere, as far as I could see, did it include the word ‘mother’.

  Magda saw it too, although clearly not for the first time.

  As the door at the back of the shop to the living quarters banged closed and the place shook a second time her voice was wistful.

  ‘I wanted her to have a little butterfly,’ she said.

  Thinking about all this, it seems to me that somewhere in here is what I wanted to say to David that night at Fergie’s party. I think I wanted to tell him, ‘Look … I know. If I’d done it… if it had happened, then I too would have ended up one of those besotted, resolutely flaky single mothers.’

  One more heroine. A latecomer to that spinster Hall of Fame.

  Cornelia Parker. Not least because of her performance on Desert Island Discs this morning when she distinguished herself, etched herself for ever on my heart by choosing as her luxury, a solar-powered vibrator. Way to go, Cornelia. Cornelia Parker, who did Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. Ten thousand glorious pieces of the former garden shed suspended in the air. Cass and I stood transfixed before it. I said, ‘Oh, look, she got the army to blow it up.’ I said, ‘Maybe if you asked them nicely they’d do it to Fergie’s.’ Cornelia’s married now and has a child, but still remains an honorary spinster as far as I’m concerned, and this because of the wedding ring she spun out into a thread of gold, and wound round a suburban sitting room. But better yet because of the way she bound Rodin’s The Kiss with what one curmudgeonly male art critic called ‘a mile of string’.

  Which of course it wasn’t.

  Not string at all.

  No, rope, stooopid.

  Rope.

  Thick glorious rope. Wicked rope.

  Bonds.

  Fetters.

  Restraints.

  All looped round that naked, kissing couple.

  Which is what love is all about, isn’t it? What love will always lead to in the end.

  Nathan, for instance, standing there with the rain splattering down over his face, running in and out of his eye sockets. Nathan saying, ‘I’m not trying to tie you down, Riley.’ Nathan raising his head to heaven. Nathan raising that great bull head.

  Nathan saying, ‘If only I could make you understand how much I love you, Riley.’

  * Spin-ster (spinsta) n . 1. an unmarried woman regarded as being beyond the age of marriage. 2. Law (in legal documents) a woman who has never married.

  * ‘That’s it for paedophilia. After the break, used cars. Are they really worth it?’

  * To put this into context, her own daughter had just stormed away up the stairs, hurling behind her words familiar to all good parents: ‘It’s not fair… All of my friends are going … Their parents say it’s all right.’ And all this on account of wishing to be allowed to camp out at the Glastonbury Festival.

  * I did ask Sophie.

  I said, ‘Magda asked me to ask you, so I’m just doing it, OK?’

  I said,’ Look, I will if you will.’

  She said: ‘I’d rather take poison.’

  I is for … the Importance of Aunts

  Dear Riley Gordon,

  I have just finished your book The Importance of Aunts and I should like to point out several factual errors. You say that Alpha Chameleon from which the Aunts Aurora and Lavinia travel in their battered old spaceship is 60 light years away from earth whereas in fact it is 63.4 light years away. You also describe their star as glowing pale pink in the sky with candy floss edges whereas everyone knows it is actually a white star. Also you claim that the reason that they ended up on earth was that they took a wrong turn at Ursa Minor but, of course, this is not even in the same hemisphere. No doubt you will wish to ensure that your publishers correct these errors in the next edition.

  Yours sincer
ely,

  Philip Bridges, aged 11

  PS: I enjoyed The Importance of Aunts although not as much as Harry Potter.

  Dear Philip,

  Thank you so much for your letter. It’s so lovely to hear from my readers. I’m glad you enjoyed the book. I shall of course pass on your comments to my publishers and thank you again for spotting the errors and contacting me.

  Yours sincerely,

  Riley Gordon

  Pompous little prick.

  I guess you could say it was Jane Austen who really started me writing. I’d always written, of course. Don’t writers always say that? But it’s true of me as much as the rest. Recently, clearing out my mother’s attic, I found a box containing souvenirs of my early girly years: Pond’s cold cream, block mascara, that sort of thing. In it was an old exercise book with some early short stories (including one particularly plucky one in which the author attempts to turn an accountant into a romantic hero), this plus some suitably angst-ridden poetry.* I’d done a creative writing module as part of my English degree, something that had resulted in a couple of short stories, one of which made the college literary magazine. On the strength of this, and in the way of these things, I embarked on a novel.† It was grinding gently but inexorably to a halt when quite by chance, and browsing in a book of Queen Jane’s letters I came upon that glorious phrase ‘the importance of aunts’.