She was appalled when I told her of my plans. ‘But you’ll look all horrible and I won’t recognise you!’ she said. ‘You’ll be completely expressionless and you won’t look like my friend any more! I won’t know if you’re laughing or if your face is contorted into a rictus of hate.’ (The way I looked on opening your beastly goaty present, I thought sourly to myself.) ‘There’s nothing wrong with the way you look! You look lovely! Don’t do it!’
She even quoted a Joyce Grenfell poem at me: ‘At dancing I am no star/Others are better by far/My face I don’t mind it/For I am behind it/It’s the ones in the front get the jar.’
I said that unlike some, I didn’t want the ones in front to get the jar. Funny how it’s all my girlfriends who are against the facelift, and the heterosexual men feel they have to say they think it’s a terrible idea just to show they’re only interested in the inner rather than the outer you. Most heterosexual men are fantastically squeamish about visiting the doctor, anyway, even for some cough lozenges, let alone going in for an operation voluntarily. The only ones who agree that it’s a good idea are the gay friends, like James.
I finally got Marion off the phone after she’d finished berating me for leaving Bitter Quinces, Poisoned Souls too early, saying that we’d missed the very best bit, and that after the fingers being chopped off bit and the car park bit it was absolutely brilliant and incredibly moving, and why was I so impatient, and I’d said because my time was running out, and she said what was wrong with me, taking such a gloomy view, and me saying that she was in denial, and that knowing you weren’t going to live for ever made life actually so much more interesting and vital. Anyway, after all this, she finally gave me the phone numbers of a couple of friends who’d had cosmetic surgery, and I rang them.
Each one recommended a different surgeon so I decided to make an appointment to consult both of them and see what happens.
I must say I am getting extremely nervous about the idea all of a sudden. And it does seem like so much money to squander on what’s basically a vanity project. I mean, I could be giving all the money to starving orphans or donating goats to friends I don’t like. I feel such a selfish creep.
But then I think it would do me good. I mean, I’ve always minded about how I look. I never go out without full makeup, I get my hair coloured and cut regularly, never wear laddered tights, and if someone points to a stain on my skirt I feel like committing hara-kiri.
Later
Have just got the two Pitchforths down from the walls, and the Patrick Caulfield. The Caulfield is a small oil, with no glass on, but the Pitchforths were all sealed up with mounts, so I thought that before I took them to Christie’s to get them valued and then, hopefully, put into an auction, I’d unpick the backs just to check there were no secret maps behind them. Even at my age I still harbour the touching hope that behind every picture I will find some amazing piece of parchment, with a note written in blood which reads, ‘For the treasure, go to the church. Turn left outside the iron door, go North five paces, then East two paces, dig deep and you will find jewels beyond compare!’ I must have these fantasies from reading all those Famous Five adventure stories when I was small. Of course I’ve never found anything like that, but I live in hope.
Putting the framed pictures on the kitchen table, I removed the tape behind, pulled out the panel pins with pliers and then removed the pictures themselves. Luckily I’d hung them in a shady bit of the room so they weren’t faded by the sun, but I could see the glass needed cleaning, even on the inside. And what I found at the back! It was like a wild-life park. Dead flies, discarded chrysalises, endangered species, tiny squashed beetles and even a leaf. It’s amazing what collects behind pictures. No treasure map, sadly. But I still had great satisfaction putting them back together, having cleaned everything up, and it was a relief to find that both pictures were actually signed, though the signatures were hidden under the mounts. So there won’t be any argument about provenance, thank goodness.
26 March
Daily Rant: ‘MORE RATS THAN PEOPLE IN LONDON! Scientists predict plague!’
27 March
Very sad phone message from Archie, who said, ‘Come and see me soon! I so long to see you, darling. I sat under “our tree” the other day, and thought of you. Loads of love.’
The fact is that I ring every day now, and constantly offer to come down, but he always makes some excuse. ‘Our tree’ … oh dear …
29 March
Well, I’ve done it! I’ve been to see the first cosmetic surgeon. He was called Mr Mantovani and he hangs out in Wimpole Street, next door to Harley Street, home of super-expensive doctors. (The very grandest surgeons are always called Mr rather than Dr apparently.) His reception room was one of those places with giant furniture of the kind you see in Jack and the Beanstalk pantomimes. You sit on a chair and your legs don’t reach the ground. That sort of thing. Opposite me in the ballroom of a waiting room was a battered-looking woman in a fur coat, dark glasses and swathes of expensive scarves up to her chin. There appeared to be tiny little bottles of what looked like blood suspended on tubes hanging from her ears.
Not a good look.
I wondered what on earth I thought I was doing. Did I really want a facelift?
From the moment he welcomed me into his office, I realised that Mr Mantovani was a slimy old thing. His face was such an orange colour it looked as if it had been smoked, and his skin was tightly pulled back to his ears, giving him a sinister, ageless look. I immediately thought: I don’t want to go to the guy who gave him a facelift. Or had he done it himself? Surely not. He had silver wings of hair at his temples, a very well-cut suit and a bright-yellow silk bow tie. (Why is it that all private doctors, particularly surgeons, are not only uniformly tall but also sport ridiculous bow ties? Some I’ve consulted even have red silk linings in their carefully tailored suits. Is it that they want to show how much money they’re making, by these displays of ostentation? Or is it because they all harbour ambitions to play a clown in a circus? Actually, now I come to think of it, it’s probably because if they were performing surgery, their conventional neckties would be dangling down into the blood and liver and kidneys and what-not. Not very reassuring. But then the idea of being operated on by a man in a hilarious bowtie who looks like Coco the Clown isn’t exactly comforting either.)
Mr Mantovani showed me to a huge chair and then sat down behind an enormous desk. Perhaps this ludicrous furniture is installed to make the patients feel even smaller than they do already. His desk was crowded with executive toys and lumps of crystal – presents, presumably, from grateful patients.
‘What can I do for you, Marie?’ he asked, cautiously. I think the first thing he’d noticed was the fact that I didn’t look rich. (I certainly didn’t have a red silk lining in my rather threadbare jacket.) Unfortunately there was no operation that would fix that.
‘I was thinking of having something done to my eyes, Mr Mantovani,’ I said, hoping my formality would stop him referring to me as Marie. I mentioned my eyes, because suddenly I thought that might be a bit cheaper than a facelift. Within seconds Mantovani was out of his chair and sitting on a stool opposite me, measuring bits and pieces with strange metal instruments, rather like the ones we used at art school when we were doing intricate designs.
After a few minutes of poking and measuring, he said: ‘I can understand why the eyes need attention. But I think we should consider a full facelift. Then we could have the neck lifted, too … we don’t want to look beautiful and young – or rather even more beautiful and young – with this …’ and here he pinched at the loose skin on my neck. ‘And it would be possible, at the same time, to do breast reduction. It’s worth a thought …’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my breasts,’ I said defensively.
‘Not at all!’ he said hastily. ‘I just thought that if they were a bit uncomfortable … No – you have a very good figure for a woman of your age, if I may say so.’
And, at the m
ention of figures, I remembered to ask about the price. ‘How much would this cost?’ I asked.
Turned out he was thinking of charging me £8,000 for the full works. I said I’d think about it and hurried away. Then I realised that just to consult him cost £200. Golly. Not too sure about this after all. I’ll see what the other one says.
30 March
Gene came to stay. We had a great time, and did some leaf prints and made a flick-book, and baked some bread with currants in. Then I remembered I’d got an old lead soldier kit of Jack’s and we had a very fun and dangerous time out in the garden with a pan full of boiling lead on top of a campinggas stove, and produced twenty toxic little guardsmen.
He went to bed at eight. He sleeps on a camp bed in the room where I work. It’s all a bit cramped, but he likes it, and he doesn’t mind being surrounded by canvases and piles of books about Donatello and jars full of old paintbrushes – and there’s still the reassuring smell of turps about it, which Gene describes as the ‘Granny smell’. Just as he was getting into bed, he knocked one of the jars onto the floor and it broke.
He looked appalled. ‘I’m sorry, Granny,’ he said, very quietly. ‘I didn’t mean it!’
‘I know you didn’t, darling,’ I said, picking up the pieces. ‘I put the jar in a stupid place. Silly old Granny. It doesn’t matter a bit. Let’s put the rug over all the bits now so you don’t step on them, and I’ll hoover them up in the morning.’
He looked very serious as he got into bed.
‘I know why you don’t get cross, Granny,’ he said, solemnly.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘It’s because you’re very, very old,’ he said.
I read him a story, and then he turned over and closed his eyes.
I sleep next door – or try to – but when he’s staying I always find it difficult to drop off. I suppose I’m nervous he’ll have some frightful accident in the night and I won’t hear him.
Anyway, I was still wide awake at 2 a.m. I kept worrying about those blasted cockroaches. Cautiously putting on my slippers in case I stepped on one, I tiptoed downstairs, turned on the light in the kitchen and scanned the floor. Nothing there. I poured some milk into a mug, added some Horlicks and put it in the microwave. That would help me sleep. Just as I was about to leave the kitchen, I started. There was a sinister black shape on the floor. I was sure it was a cockroach. My heart pounding, I approached it as if it were an unexploded landmine.
On closer inspection it turned out to be two enormous currants stuck together, remnants from this morning’s bread-making.
Just as I was getting back off to sleep, at about six in the morning, there was a pad pad pad on the landing between our rooms, and in came Gene in his aeroplane pyjamas, clutching a very disgruntled and uncooperative Pouncer, full of beans and raring to go.
‘Can we make toffee now, Granny?’ he said. ‘You did promise!’
Oh dear. How I shall miss him!
APRIL
1 April
Leafing through the Daily Rant this morning, I came across a story which read, ‘Money really does grow on trees!’ about how a man had buried a ten-pound note in his garden which had sprouted into a bush with tenners as leaves.
I thought this was going a bit far, even for the Rant, but looking up at the date I saw that it was April Fool’s Day. So I was quite prepared, when I went over to Jack and Chrissie’s today for Saturday lunch, to be thoroughly fooled.
There is nothing a little boy likes to do more, particularly on April 1st, than make his granny look like a complete idiot. Indeed, there is nothing anyone likes to do more than to make some powerful figure in their lives fall flat on a banana skin. Never have I seen Jack, aged about ten, laugh quite so much as when I tripped backwards into our tiny garden pond in my dressing gown. I can’t remind him of it now without reducing him to helpless giggles.
When I arrived, Gene opened the door. He was wearing an enormous piece of plastic body armour with a Star Wars logo on it. I went through to the kitchen and there was barely time for me to put my bag down before he said, almost unable to contain his laughter, ‘Sit on this chair, Granny.’ He pointed to a chair with a pad on it, underneath which was a very obvious pink rubber whoopee cushion. I duly sat and pronounced myself astonished and embarrassed at the resulting fart. Then he got hold of the whoopee cushion and stuck it on another chair, and I was invited to sit down again. Interestingly, although he knew I knew all along what was going on, he still found my reaction hilarious. I spent twenty minutes sitting on farting cushions and pretending to be amazed and then mortified by my noisy flatulence, and the response was always the same. Helpless laughter. Endless cries of ‘April Foo–ool!’
‘Shake, Granny?’ asked Gene, extending his hand when the farting orgy had petered out. On his finger was an enormous ring, far too big for him, the metal buzzer quite obvious in his palm. We shook hands and there was a faint buzzing sensation. And then: ‘April Fooo–ool!’ Moments later: ‘I did fool you, didn’t I, Granny? Did you think that was a real ring I was wearing? Did you? Did you?’
And after I’d been duly shocked by that slapstick masterpiece, he wandered off to the sink and then returned, saying: ‘Smell this!’ displaying a very wet plastic flower through a hole in his body armour, that I’d just seen him fiddling with under the tap. ‘April Fooo–ool!’ he cried joyously as my face was squirted with water from the bulb he was pressing inside his armour. I spluttered and waved my arms about and gasped for a towel, as if I’d been completely drenched by the faint trickle that had emerged from the petals.
Finally: ‘Are you hungry? Would you like a peanut?’ he said, almost wetting himself at the prospect of my unscrewing the lid of a tin marked Peanuts and being sent into complete disarray by a caterpillar on a spring that jumped out at me. ‘APRIL FOO–OOOL! HAHAHAHA!!!’
Whether you play along with such jokes or not is, I think, a sign of being a mature adult. When Gene insisted on playing his tricks on Tim, Marion’s stuffy old husband, he, on being offered the tin of peanuts last year, had declared pompously that as it was April 1st he knew it was a joke, and no, he wouldn’t like a peanut, thank you. At that point he sank down so many points in my estimation that I could barely bring myself to talk to him for weeks.
Of course when I was small, I too found all the April Fool pranks hilarious. Marion and I used to glue half-crowns to the pavement outside my house, and then fall about when we saw innocent passers-by ruin their fingernails as they scrabbled to pick them up. We constructed false parcels and left them on the pavement, beside ourselves if anyone came along and took one away. (I suppose today, if an unattended parcel were found on the street, the whole area would be cordoned off by machine-gun toting police, and helicopters brought in to monitor the situation.)
And of course it was always hilarious, at school, to pass another girl a half-empty water jug, pretending it was extremely heavy, with the result that when she took it, the water splattered all over her clothes.
Anyway, I spent a nice day with them. One of Gene’s front teeth is wobbly. How strange it is to think that only the other day I was so excited to see it poking through his gums! Came back feeling very cosy and contented.
5 April
Oh, I do dread the idea of them going next month. I wish I could just up sticks and buy a flat in the same block as them in New York without them knowing, and then Gene could pop downstairs without anyone looking and we could make origami paper boats together or muck about on the piano. I shall miss them so much. Putting a brave face on it all is such an enormous effort. Every time I see them I can feel myself dragging on this cheery persona, slapping my hands together, roaring with laughter, and saying things like ‘Well, of course I’ll miss you, but I’ve got so much to do, I don’t know if I’ll ever have time to come and visit you all!’ just so they don’t worry about me.
To cheer myself up I ordered some plants from a catalogue that for some reason had been sent to me through the post. The picture show
ed huge foaming banks of flowers in vibrant colours, blues, pinks, yellows, all screaming to be seen and singing with scent and sunshine. So I hope they’ll deliver. Caliban … Calibrach … something.
Archie was meant to be coming this weekend, but never turned up. I rang him to ask where he was, but it was clear he had no idea he was meant to be coming, so I didn’t press it. He said he was in the middle of lunch.
‘I’m worried about Mrs Evans,’ he said. ‘She’s stolen Philippa’s brooch.’
‘It’s not Philippa’s, it’s mine,’ I said. ‘I’ve got it.’ This was starting to sound like a stuck record.
‘You’ve got it?’ he said. ‘But I didn’t give it to you. You didn’t steal it, did you?’
‘I’ve got it, darling. You did give it to me. Philippa never had it. Don’t worry. I told you, I said I was going to sell it to get the money for the facelift, and you said fine.’
‘Oh,’ he said, as if the light were dawning, but I could tell by his voice that he didn’t understand anything I was saying. He was trying to pretend he hadn’t made a terrible mistake. ‘You’ve got it. Oh yes, I remember now. That’s fine.’
We chattered on, but then he said he’d got to go. ‘When are you coming, darling?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t seen you for months. Everything’s looking wonderful here. The bluebells will be out soon. And I’d like to talk to you before I sack Mrs Evans. We can’t have a thief around can we? Who knows what she might steal next.’
On a complete whim, I thought, ‘Why don’t I pop down now?’ He clearly wasn’t doing anything, and I know if I’d suggested it in advance he would have become anxious and made an excuse, so I just said, in a no-nonsense way, ‘I’m coming down right away. I’ll be there in a couple of hours!’ And I didn’t give him time to change his mind.
No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! Page 7
