The Time of Their Lives

by Maeve Haran

  From the stony faces around her she could see this was not the correct answer.

  ‘Do you not think that a little frivolous?’

  ‘I could have said Google Earth or an iPhone to show my resourcefulness but I thought that might be rather obvious.’

  ‘Can you tell us about your management style? How would you define it?’

  Sal almost sighed. She didn’t believe questions like this ever got to the truth. Everyone knew the buzzwords. Inclusiveness. Emotional intelligence. Openness. Blah blah blah. Hannibal and Genghis Khan could probably sell themselves as collaborative managers who believed in democratic discussion at the Monday morning meeting.

  Suddenly Sal felt that maybe she was too old for all this crap. She didn’t feel like playing these games which they thought so vitally important. Once you were used to running things maybe you were probably unemployable.

  She would just have to freelance.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask us?’

  Sal knew this meant the interview was all but over. Suddenly, she recalled one thing that had hit her sharply about the Oakmore Resort she had stayed in on the island of St Lucia.

  ‘Yes, I do have a question. What could you do to reduce the feeling of “them and us”, of extreme wealth cheek by jowl with extreme poverty, which can spoil the pleasure of your guests in extremely expensive resorts?’

  The panel stared back at her in appalled silence.

  Something told Sal she hadn’t got the job.

  Claudia and Don had been driving round the M25 for the last half-hour in complete silence. On Claudia’s side this was partly to do with worry about her father, Len. Len was such a lovely man; that was really the only word for him. He always managed to make you laugh even when you didn’t want to. Sometimes he did this by telling you a joke – he had an endless supply of terrible jokes which he kept up until his audience finally gave in and got the giggles. Sometimes it was just his natural good humour. He was built on a bear-like scale, with thick white hair that curled in an imperial manner. His taste in clothes matched his jokes, loud and unfashionable to the point of being almost, but not quite, bad taste. And yet it was impossible for anyone to dislike him.

  While her mother Olivia had veered towards the snobbish, Len loved everyone. Unfortunately, he also thought everyone he met was equally fascinating, which led to him collecting waifs, strays and bores at a rate that infuriated his wife.

  But the quality Claudia had loved most was his ability to reassure. While her mother made her feel as if she were a nuisance, from her earliest childhood it had been her father who’d built up her belief in herself. Lacking a son, he’d turned Claudia into an honorary version. It had been he who had seen that Claudia’s skills were practical and organizational and he had encouraged them so that her confidence had blossomed, and had stayed with her all her life.

  Now her beloved father was faltering. He had been getting increasingly frail and quiet, cracking only the occasional joke and, much to her mother’s annoyance, hanging around the house instead of frequenting pubs, snooker halls and football grounds.

  And now the fall.

  Don was quiet because he was angry with Claudia. He had never really thought of her as resembling her mother, whom he had christened the memsahib on first meeting her, owing to her bossy and super-efficient manner. But recently he’d started wondering. She had been so bluntly dismissive about his house suggestions, so witheringly disinterested in what he might want from the next section of his life, as if it were only her and her friendships that counted.

  Olivia was waiting for them at the door.

  ‘Hello, Mum.’ Claudia embraced her mother. ‘How’s Dad?’

  ‘Ah, Claudia, there you are at last!’ her mother replied testily. ‘I’ve been waiting all morning to go to the hospital.’

  Looking more closely at her mother, Claudia noticed there was something different about her. Her hair. At eighty, her mother’s hair was normally a tousled sea of iron-grey waves. Today it was more a grey lagoon, smooth, shiny and expensive-looking. ‘Mum, what on earth have you done to your hair?’

  Olivia patted her head with a small smile of satisfaction. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’

  Claudia looked again. ‘You haven’t had one of those Brazilian blow-dries?’ she asked, incredulously. This new hairstyling technique was all the rage in London and employed a chemical process that kept the hair straight and shiny for months. It was also unbelievably expensive, which was why Claudia herself had resisted having her own done. How on earth had her mother afforded it? Sal had even run an article about the pros and cons of the technique in Modern Style. ‘You do know,’ Claudia tried not to sound peevish, ‘the process is really risky. They use formaldehyde!’

  ‘Oh well,’ her mother replied nonchalantly, ‘the rest of me is pickled. Why not my hair?’

  Claudia felt stunned. Her mother never made jokes. That was her father’s department. ‘What’s the news about Dad? How long will he be in hospital?’

  ‘He’s got to have a hip operation.’ Olivia could hardly contain her annoyance. ‘A stint in hospital and God knows how long to recover. And who’ll have to fetch and carry for him? It was really stupid of him trying to take a tray downstairs at his age.’

  It was widely acknowledged that her mother Olivia didn’t do sympathy. She expected everyone around her to live up to her own standards of brisk efficiency. It never seemed to occur to her that they might not be able to. Poor old Dad.

  They were standing in Olivia’s spotlessly tidy kitchen. At least they had a cleaning woman, though she, it had to be said, was almost as old as Olivia and Len. ‘The thing is,’ her mother moaned, ‘it’s really bad timing. We have so much on at the moment and I really don’t want to cancel everything.’ Behind her mother’s newly coiffed head Claudia noticed a golfer’s wall calendar. Her father was a keen golfer, or had been – sometimes, Claudia suspected, to get away from her mother. ‘I’ll get my coat. I would offer you a coffee but we really ought to get on.’

  ‘I don’t know why you had to go on and on about her hair at a time like this,’ Don whispered irritably as soon as her mother was out of the room.

  Don, being a man, didn’t realize quite how extraordinary it was for her mother suddenly to emerge with an £80 Brazilian blow-dry – it was rather like the Queen dropping Norman Hartnell and appearing in Victoria Beckham.

  As they waited Claudia studied the calendar with mounting amazement. Her mother had always been busy but this was ridiculous. Tomorrow, she was down for a beginners’ bread-making course run by the WI; the day after, a ‘massage and body polish’ at the posh spa down the road. Next week, there were tango lessons and a thread-vein treatment that Claudia had been rather wishing she could afford herself. Spider-like little strands of red had appeared on her face which she hoped were not attributable to too much white wine. But why was her mother having it?

  ‘Don, look at this. My mother is busier than a minor royal. Bread making. Body polishes. Tango lessons. Look at that – a time management course! She’d need one with all this. Quad biking! But she’s over eighty!’

  ‘Retired people are supposed to keep active, aren’t they?’ Don shrugged. ‘Maybe people out of London have more interests.’ This was another dig, she knew. Well, too bad. She went back to the calendar. ‘Teeth whitening! A ten-course Turkish tasting menu! But they hate foreign food! Somewhere in the back of Claudia’s mind a faint alarm bell started ringing. Had her parents really been doing all this stuff? And if so, how were they paying for it?

  Her mother was back, chic in a belted camel coat. ‘I see you’re looking at the calendar. That’s why your father’s timing is so annoying. We’re too busy for a hip replacement.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he meant to have one. And he is eighty-one. Anyway, what is all this stuff you’re doing?’

  ‘Keeping Busy.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that all right. I feel tired looking at it.’

  ‘No. Keeping Busy is
a social network. It’s wonderful. Everything’s seventy per cent off.’ Olivia smiled beatifically. ‘I’m never at home. Of course, your father doesn’t come. Stays here and watches golf on the television, miserable bugger.’

  ‘When did all this start?’

  ‘Ever since I discovered it a couple of months ago. I’ve got the app on my tablet.’

  Claudia wondered if she’d fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. Since when had a tablet been anything more to her mother than something she swallowed when she had a headache?

  ‘You’ve got a tablet? Don’t tell me. Keeping Busy had an offer?’

  Her mother nodded. ‘It’s got eight gigabytes and it’s Wi-Fi enabled – all for ninety-nine pounds ninety-nine.’

  Claudia thought perhaps she ought to sit down. Her mother really was more tech-savvy than she was. ‘I was going to book your father and me to see the Northern Lights this week, two nights in Reykjavik for two people staying in an Ice Hotel with flight and tour included, three hundred and thirty-nine pounds per person. Now we can’t go, obviously. I don’t suppose Gaby would like to come instead? It’s all paid for.’

  Claudia shook her head. What had her mother been thinking? Her father hated the cold and the only natural phenomenon he was interested in was the hole in one. Claudia couldn’t imagine her daughter Gaby wanting to take in the Aurora Borealis unless it was a hip new club in Hoxton, and certainly not with her grandmother, but she let it pass. ‘I’ll certainly ask her.’ She hadn’t been invited herself, Claudia noted. Her mother probably thought she’d want to go to bed early and be no fun. No doubt true.

  ‘What about Dad, if you’re going gadding?’

  ‘He’ll be stuck in hospital. Istanbul will be off too,’ her mother added glumly.

  ‘Hadn’t we better get to the hospital?’ Don reminded them. ‘I have an appointment at two-thirty.’

  ‘What?’ Olivia demanded rudely. ‘At the hospital? You’re not sickening too, surely? I don’t know. Men. No Stamina.’

  ‘No, not at the hospital. In Minsley.’

  He disappeared out to the car before Claudia could say anything, but she hurried after him. ‘Don! Have you made an appointment with an estate agent?’

  He turned to face her, his expression stony. ‘Yes, Claudia. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are two people in this marriage and I happen to believe what I want matters as much as your access to your girlfriends.’

  They drove silently to the hospital, unfamiliar anger crackling between them, while her mother moaned about Len’s irresponsible behaviour in cracking his hip until Claudia wanted to strangle her.

  She was totally unprepared for the sight of her father, usually such a larger-than-life figure, in hospital. He seemed reduced, as if he had lost weight to fit into the narrow bed, his beard was unshaven, and his hair stuck out like a scarecrow’s.

  ‘Oh, Dad, you poor old lamb. Is it painful?’

  ‘A bit.’ Len tried to sit up. ‘They’re going to put a sliding screw in. I’ll be better than a kitchen cabinet and have fun setting off those machines at airports. Here, come and give us a kiss.’

  Claudia perched on the side of the bed. ‘So how did it happen? Bringing Mum a cup of tea in bed, I bet. You should make her get it.’

  Len laughed, sounding a bit more himself. ‘Too late for that. I’ve been doing it for sixty years.’

  Sixty years. It was hard to imagine, and yet wonderful that they’d stuck together despite being so different. Her generation would probably have given up. She found herself glancing at Don. Silently she put a hand out to him. He squeezed it, his eyes still on Len.

  ‘You’ll be out in no time. Mum’s already planning jaunts for you.’

  Was that a hunted look she saw in his eye at the mention of her mother’s endless outings?

  ‘She’s always planning some bloody thing. I think she’s getting worse. I hardly see her these days. And now this. Six weeks taking it easy, the doctor says, plus exercises with a physio. Load of bloody nonsense.’

  ‘That would be the end of November.’ Her mother, who had been standing outside the ward staring at her phone, came in. She had had the Keeping Busy app on already. ‘We could go away. Two nights bed and breakfast on the Yorkshire coast with full English breakfast. Perfect.’

  ‘Except that I don’t want to go to Yorkshire. It’s two hundred miles away.’

  Claudia caught her father’s eye. Yes, he definitely looked anxious. Maybe she should have a word with her mother. That would be fun.

  ‘Did you think my mother was more than usually hyper?’ she asked Don as they walked back to the car. Olivia, in a rare gesture of sympathy, had opted to stay at the hospital. Probably the Wi-Fi signal was better there.

  ‘She’s always hyper. You’re just jealous. She has a busier life than you. And more fun.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Claudia, nettled, ‘I do work.’

  ‘I meant to ask, how did it go with that little prick Dooley?’

  Claudia grinned. ‘Rather well, actually. For once technology triumphed and made him look a complete tosser.’

  ‘He didn’t manage to wrench the French exchange from you, then?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Throw a paving stone at him when you go.’

  ‘If I go.’

  Don looked at her, surprised.

  ‘I’m just not sure it’s much fun any more.’

  ‘The French exchange or teaching in general?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Let’s move here, then. We could both have more fun.’

  Claudia wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

  ‘So, are you coming to see around the house I like or not?’

  ‘I suppose I’d better. Don’t want you buying it without consulting me, do I?’

  The cottage, Claudia had to concede, was a very pretty one, standing at the end of a large village. It was a back-to-front house that faced away from the rest of the street, with its entrance and two big windows facing out over a landscape of fields. The previous owner had installed a lacy-edged wooden porch with a bench beneath it and a stone path bordered with lavender, which gave the place a vaguely French air.

  To Claudia’s eyes the garden looked like a lot of work.

  Inside, the rooms were surprisingly colourful; pale pink, pistachio, primrose. It ought not to work but it did. The sugar-almond tones were a welcome break from the epidemic of bone and buttermilk that had engulfed London.

  The ceilings were a bit low but the owners had avoided the chintz-and-chocolate-box look of many cottages and kept the lines clean and simple.

  There were four bedrooms. A large double, a smaller bedroom, though big enough for a double bed for Gaby, a spare room, and a kind of large box room. The major drawback was that the bathroom was downstairs.

  ‘It could easily go in the box room,’ Don said eagerly. ‘Not en suite, of course, but you can’t have everything.’

  It was obvious to Claudia that Don loved it.

  He looked out of the window at the garden. ‘I could grow vegetables.’

  There was a suppressed longing in his voice that took her aback. ‘I didn’t know you wanted to grow vegetables.’

  ‘There’s quite a lot you don’t know about me.’ It came over as a rather bleak statement of fact.

  Could it be true after thirty years together? She had better watch out. Once upon a time people who’d been together a long time stayed together. Not any more. Now the over-fifties were the fastest-divorcing group of all. They even had a name. Silver splitters. She’d heard it on the radio. Did she want to be one of them?

  ‘So what do you think?’ Don asked, his eyes fixed on hers.

  ‘It’s a pretty house.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But you know what I think; I’m not ready to leave London.’

  ‘Or the coven.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call them that.’ Maybe she should remind him that friendship often lasted longer than marriage.

  ‘OK.
Sorry.’ His eyes shifted suddenly to the bed. The agent had given them the keys, telling them the owners were abroad for six months and that no one would disturb them. ‘Come on, why don’t we pretend we’re young again. Live dangerously?’

  The thought of moving here, spending the rest of her life in this village, making love in a bed like this with Don, closed in on her like a prison sentence.

  ‘We can’t,’ Claudia lied. ‘I said we’d go and pick up my mother.’

  They were just locking up when Claudia’s mobile rang. She saw that it was the hospital and answered it at once.

  ‘Hello, this is Paul Davies here, Registrar at the North Surrey. Mrs Warren, I’m afraid we’ve got a bit of a problem here. I wonder if you could come right away.’

  Of course. Has there been some development with my father?’

  ‘Not your father, Mrs Warren. He’s fine. I’m afraid it’s your mother.’

  CHAPTER 6

  As she made her way home after the disastrous job interview, Sal went through her usual deliberation. Cab or bus? In a cab she could feel temporarily cocooned from reality; on the other hand, she really really had to economize.

  It had struck her last night that her fridge was more than usually empty. Indeed, it had looked like an aircraft hangar with a tiny two-seater plane, in the form of a two-week-old peach, parked in one corner. And here was a Tesco Express.

  Sal had filled half a basket and was queuing to pay when she caught sight of herself in a mirror handily placed in front of the cigarettes and whisky. She looked bloody ridiculous in this jumpsuit. It was one thing wanting to dress the age you felt, but not at the cost of resembling a sixty-year-old toddler.

  When the next interview came up she would wear something more age-appropriate – like a ghastly Jaeger suit.

  If there ever was a next interview.

  A news-stand by the side of the tills had all the day’s papers and magazines. Sal glanced at it to see what the usual cast of characters – Katie Price, Liz Hurley, Kerry Katona, the Duchess of Cambridge – were doing in the weekly scandal rags.

  Instead her eye was caught by the Daily Post, or rather, the enormous strapline across the top of its front page advertising the articles inside. ON THE SCRAPHEAP AT SIXTY, shouted the headline, and there next to it was a large photograph of herself.