Growing Up for Beginners

by Claire Calman

  After a few minutes, his breathing grew thicker and he instructed, ‘Don’t take me too far.’

  She carried on for another minute.

  ‘You’d better stop there, I think. Are you ready?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She knew she wasn’t.

  Roger heaved himself on top of her and pushed his way in with a satisfied grunt.

  His eyes were squeezed shut. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘It’s a bit uncomfortable.’

  He opened his eyes and dipped his head to deposit a kiss on her lips. ‘Women of your age often have this sort of problem, apparently. It’s very common.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose so.’

  Yes… very common. She should face up to it… accept life as it was and stop pointlessly yearning for something else when she didn’t even have a clue what that something might be. The untold want, she thought, a line from a poem flitting into her head.

  Roger had shut his eyes again and was concentrating on the task in hand. It shouldn’t take too much longer now. Eleanor looked across to the window. Those curtains were starting to look a little faded and sad now; perhaps she should order some new ones… fabrics and colours unfurled in her head… something with an unobtrusive pattern, perhaps, or richly textured… with maybe—

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘Mmm?’ She looked up at him.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Mmm, yes, of course.’

  ‘OK. You seemed distracted.’

  ‘Sorry. No. I’m fine. Really.’

  Roger pressed deeper inside her and she winced.

  Roger’s breathing grew louder and thicker as if he were pounding away on a running machine with the gradient set too high.

  I don’t want to be here. The words appeared in her head all at once. No, don’t think that – you mustn’t think that – never, never. She tried to shove the words back down, then opened her eyes to look at Roger’s familiar face, his features clamped tight in concentration and effort. She shut her eyes again to take herself somewhere else…

  Roger grunted to a halt and lowered his full weight onto her for a few moments before rolling off with a sigh back onto the pillows. He turned towards her briefly to aim a kiss in the general direction of her mouth.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ he said. He lay there for half a minute, then got up and went through to the bathroom. She could hear him running the water in the basin, getting it nice and warm so that he could wash thoroughly before returning to bed for the night.

  I don’t want to be here. The words came again, this time in colour… iridescent… the shimmering blue metal of an exotic butterfly’s wing. The words curled and twined around her mind, circling and turning in an irresistible dance. I don’t want to be here.

  43

  A Habit Worth Cultivating

  Of course, Olivia may well not be there. It isn’t her nearest café, after all. But she did say that she went there a lot, almost every weekend. Besides, Andrew ought to pop in to see his parents, as he’s not seen them for a few days since Christmas. He could give his dad a bit of a breather, and act as a buffer for an hour or two, absorb his mother’s energy like a human shield.

  And if Olivia’s not there, then what? He could call her or email her or drop a note round to her flat, though he didn’t want to come across as some crazy stalker. He could stroll casually up and down her mother’s street on a Sunday morning, when she often visited. And if he did bump into her, then what? What could he say? What possible reason could he have for loitering in that street when she knew his parents lived around the corner?

  Why does it matter so much? he wonders. Why pursue Olivia? Why not simply start again with someone else who doesn’t already know you moved back in with your parents for three months at the age of thirty-five? Someone who might think you’re a proper, together sort of guy? Because… because… she is who she is – sharp yet soft, beady yet kind, clever but with no need to show off, beautiful but couldn’t be bothered to spend more than five minutes getting ready. It wasn’t just that being with her made him feel excited yet peaceful at the same time. Even on that first date, he found himself gazing at her, wondering what it would be like to wake up next to her day after day, grow old with her, go scuffling the rustly autumn leaves in the woods with her into their seventies and beyond.

  He enters the café, scanning the room. Bugger – not here. Still, she might come. As he looks round, a woman gets up from the coveted corner seat on the sofa and smiles at him. Automatically, he glances behind him; presumably she is greeting someone else. But no, she advances a step.

  ‘I’m just going, if you want my seat?’

  ‘Thanks very much. I may sub-let it, of course, as it’s such a desirable position.’

  She laughs loudly, as if he has made a hilarious joke rather than a mildly amusing quip. Still, he is cheered by it. He occupies the space, colonising two seats’ worth with his jacket because what is the point if one can’t at least try to act with some hope?

  He orders a cappuccino and a cinnamon Danish. Usually, he would have a banana muffin but he is making a point of trying new things, even when the new things seem too small or trivial for it to matter one way or the other. He read about trying new things, in one of the papers. He can see there might be some merit in it – that it is hard, perhaps impossible, to make huge strides every day but that sometimes tiny baby steps are still worth making, so that you do not become a person who is nothing but predictable routines and safe places.

  The door opens again and he looks up. No. Dear God, his heart is pounding. If he has to endure too much more of this, he might drop dead of the strain. He grabs a newspaper and keeps his gaze fixed on it. Do not look up every time the door opens, do not.

  ‘You’re here,’ she says. ‘In my café. Are you stalking me?’ But she has that look on her face, that look he loves, with a smile poised on her lips, one eyebrow tilted slightly in question.

  ‘Absolutely. I’ve been camped out in this corner for weeks, waiting for you.’

  ‘No, you haven’t, because I checked frequently and you weren’t here.’

  ‘Metaphorically camping, not literally.’

  ‘You knew I couldn’t survive without an almond croissant for long.’

  ‘I did. Your weakness has been your undoing.’ He gestures for her to have the corner seat.

  ‘Really? Are you sure? You could sub-let it for an extortionate amount, you know. You don’t want to just give it away.’

  ‘Well, it’s on the market with a few lettings agents, but there’s a lull at present if you want to try it out.’

  She subsides into the sofa beside him and he helps her off with her coat.

  They sit in silence for a minute, then both turn towards each other at the same moment.

  ‘Andrew…’

  ‘I’ve moved out.’ He looks at her, scanning her face for a response. ‘I’m not saying you give a toss one way or the other, I just need you to know that I’m not completely pathetic, that’s all. It took me longer than it should have done, I know that, but I’ve done it. I moved just before Christmas. I’ve rented a flat not far from here and signed up with agents to buy somewhere.’

  ‘No one thinks you’re pathetic.’ Her expression is hard to read.

  ‘Well, I did.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’ She smiles then, but it is a sad sort of smile, barely a dim ghost of the real thing. ‘But, it seemed to me that perhaps you had… um… some problems that you needed to sort out yourself. And, just from a practical point of view, I didn’t want to be like a teenager again, trying to sneak out of some boy’s room so his parents wouldn’t hear.’

  He nods. He wants to take her hand but cannot bear the thought that she might shake her head sadly and dump his hand back in his own lap.

  ‘I’m really glad you’ve moved out from your parents.’

  ‘Me, too. I love them, but God, they were driving me crazy.’

  ‘How was your Christmas?�
�

  ‘It was all right. Too much bad television, too many mince pies, you know. How was yours?’

  ‘Completely horrible. I went to a friend’s because I… well… I had a huge falling-out with my mum, but it just made me miss her so much, even the things that normally drive me mad about her. Anyway… moving on…’

  The waiter zooms up with her tea and croissant at that moment and Andrew registers how the man’s face lights up as he basks in her smile. Yes, that’s how I feel when she looks at me, how anyone would feel when she looks at them like that. Maybe she’s seeing someone else? She’s hardly going to be waiting about for long, is she? He wants to know but cannot bear to know. Better to live in ignorance. Fuck it, he has to know.

  ‘So…’ he takes a sip of his coffee, ‘are you meeting someone here?’

  ‘Yup.’ She nods.

  ‘Your sister…? Or…?’ He starts to reach for his jacket, then he can just get up and leave if he has to. He will not sit there like a lemon while she bestows that smile on some other lucky tosser.

  ‘Nope. A man.’

  He nods. Yes, of course. Well, what did he expect? He fumbles in his pocket for cash so he can get the bill and get out of there.

  ‘OK. Jolly good.’ Why did he say that? Stop being such a twat. ‘Well, have a good one.’ What did that even mean? A good what?

  ‘I’d better be off, in any case.’ He stands up very suddenly. ‘Though I will expect commission if you plan to sub-let my corner to someone else. Obviously.’

  ‘Andrew?’ Olivia tugs at the hem of his jumper. ‘Will you please sit down and stop being a twat.’

  ‘What?’ He remains standing. Looks down at her.

  And then she smiles. Ridiculously, he knows he is on the verge of crying. And he can see her eyes start to pool.

  She clasps his hand.

  ‘You said you were meeting someone. I don’t want – I can’t – OK? I’ll be fine, but not yet. I mean, I’m very happy for you and all that, but I need to get going.’

  ‘I’m meeting you, you noodle.’

  He sits down.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Andrew, I’ve come in here every Saturday morning for the last month, hoping to bump into you accidentally – gosh, fancy seeing you here.’ She looks at him, then away. ‘I didn’t know if you’d gone away for Christmas or were avoiding me or what.’

  ‘But why didn’t you just call me?’

  She looks at him again, brows lifted in question.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Because it’s hard.’

  She nods.

  ‘It’s hard. It feels impossibly hard to call someone and say, “Hey, I miss you,” because of course you think the other person will just say, “Oh, sorry, I’ve got along fine without you, keep well, ’bye now.”’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I’d dropped enough hints when I first met you about coming to the café almost every Saturday… so I kind of thought… but then you didn’t come.’

  ‘I was moving, getting the flat straight, and buying bed linen before my mother inflicted brown polycotton on me.’

  She smiles and he takes her hand without thinking, draws her towards him. She meets him halfway.

  ‘This isn’t like us – kissing in public,’ she says.

  ‘I know. Still, I think it could be a habit worth cultivating.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  They stand on the street outside the café.

  ‘Are you dashing off or have you got a bit of time?’ He knows he must be grinning like a fool. He doesn’t care. If he is a fool, at least he’s a happy one for now.

  ‘No rush.’

  ‘Well, would you like to do something now? Go somewhere? Walk? Bookshop? See my new flat, though it’s so small, we may have to take it in turns to actually be in it. Not that I would be trying to lure you to my bedroom or anything.’

  ‘Flat, please,’ she smiles. ‘I’m terribly nosy – you should know that about me. And I do want to check that your sheets are definitely one hundred per cent cotton, not polycotton, as you’ve been so snooty about it.’

  ‘Good. It’s important to be certain about these things.’ He takes her hand firmly and they start to walk along the street.

  ‘And will you show me some more of your work, too? I’d never really thought before how all those pictures have to be looked after or cleaned or mended.’

  ‘Of course, if you’re really interested? But I don’t keep them at my flat. The British Museum rather frowns on the staff’s taking items from the collection home.’ He turns to look at her, drink her in.

  ‘Really? They mind if you bring back a Hogarth print with a teensy smear of ketchup on it? God, how fussy.’ She smiles and squeezes his hand. ‘The ones on your phone, I meant, like you showed me that first time at supper.’

  ‘Oh, was it the tempera painting? Of the woman in green? Was that the one I showed you? I loved working on that one.’

  ‘I don’t know – you didn’t say. I never saw the whole thing. You just showed me before and after pics of one corner and you told me you’d had to clean off blood spots, so of course I was intrigued.’

  Andrew opens up his photos file and starts to hunt for the picture as they walk along.

  ‘Do you have the whole image? Or just close-ups of the parts you worked on?’

  ‘Both. Hang on. Here it is.’ He taps on the picture. ‘God. That’s so weird. How on earth did I not spot it immediately?’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  Andrew passes her the phone.

  ‘No wonder I thought you looked familiar the first time I saw you. Take a look. How bizarre is that? She’s a dead ringer for you.’

  Olivia looks down at the screen, at the beautiful woman in green, her red hair flaming around the pale moon of her face.

  ‘It’s not bizarre at all,’ she says. ‘That’s my mother.’

  44

  A Break with Tradition

  For the last four years, Roger had accepted – without consulting his wife – an invitation to a New Year’s Eve dinner party held by his friends Peter and Maggie Harris, and he now regarded it as an unbreakable tradition.

  ‘It’ll save you having to cook, darling!’ Roger always said, as if bestowing a wonderful gift on her, never having understood that Eleanor enjoyed cooking and would always prefer to be a host than a guest.

  There was no aspect of the evening that failed to fill her with dread – the food, the people, the banal conversation, and the long drive there and back again. Maggie would insist on poking platters of canapés in her face every three minutes with a chirpy, ‘Go on, Ellie, be naughty! Have another! We can start our diets tomorrow!’, even though Eleanor had no need to diet and was only reluctant to take another because how could one choose between quails’ eggs boiled hard as bullets, some form of rusk lurking beneath an oil slick of black tapenade, or ‘cheesy surprise parcels’ – ‘surprise’ rarely a welcome word in the context of food.

  Each time, Eleanor hoped that surely there would at least be some interesting people to talk to, but then her heart would sink as each couple arrived: the same guests as last year, all apparently extruded from the same moulds: the men, grey of skin, attired in smart-casual slacks, shirts without ties (living on the edge…) and Germanic metal-rimmed spectacles; the women, with false nails and surprised eyebrows, carrying their astonishingly expensive handbags to the fore as if brandishing shields. Like the other men, Roger always ‘dressed down’ for the occasion, too, but he only ever looked at home in a suit. In casual clothes, he resembled a mannequin that might come to life at any moment if only a magic wand were waved over him. He reminded her of those photographs of the Prime Minister ‘chillaxing’ with his wife and family while on holiday – ‘Look, I’m just an ordinary guy!’ The men talked too much, apparently believing that they were very amusing, while the women spoke too little, which made Eleanor feel she had to work too hard to maintain any sort of conversation, as
if desperately trying to bale out a boat with a gaping hole in it.

  The thought of spending an entire evening at the Harris’s was making Eleanor feel sick, but she couldn’t see how she could possibly get out of it. She’d feigned illness last time they were due to go there for lunch, so she definitely couldn’t try that again. Well, she would simply say that she doesn’t want to go. How hard could it be? Then she remembered how difficult Roger had been about the cruise and put off raising the topic once more.

  In the dull, dead days between Christmas and New Year, Eleanor occupied herself by cleaning and tidying the children’s rooms, and looking out and pressing any clothes that might be needed on the cruise. As she dusted the bottom of Hannah’s wardrobe, she reproved herself yet again for being such a coward. You’re forty-seven, for crying out loud – don’t be such a mouse! What’s the worst that can happen? Say you’re not going. Go on – do it. Do it now.

  Roger appeared suddenly behind her.

  ‘Shall we take champagne to the Harris’s tomorrow, do you think, darling? Or maybe a bottle of that nice Fleurie Beaujolais?’

  Eleanor backed out of the wardrobe on her knees and looked up at him, thinking: I don’t care, I don’t care, I won’t be able to drink it anyway as I know you’re going to land me with driving home.

  ‘Well, perhaps the Beaujolais then? You know you love it and you’re not always sure about Peter’s wine choices, are you?’

  ‘Hmm, that’s true.’ Roger nodded. ‘But a bit of fizz is always festive, isn’t it? And perhaps people expect it at New Year?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Good, good. Let’s take the champers then.’

  ‘Good.’ Why did you ask me? Why ask me at all? Eleanor turned her attention to the wardrobe once more. She was tempted to climb inside it and shut the door behind her, the way she used to sometimes when she was a child, just to savour the solitude and the sense of being secreted somewhere where no one would think to look for you.

  ‘Think I’ll zip to the gym for a quick workout, then, if you don’t need me?’