Days Like These

by Sue Margolis

  Ten minutes later I’m heaving the sacks into the giant recycling bin in the supermarket car park. When it’s done, I take my shopping list from my bag and head into the supermarket. I don’t look back.

  Mike rings me that evening and suggests dinner at a new French bistro that’s just opened in Soho. Apparently everybody’s raving about it. I tell him it sounds great and we make a date for the following evening.

  When I tell my mother that I’ve changed my mind and agreed to go out with Mike, she manages to be both ecstatic and maudlin. “Mazel tov. Finally you’ve done it. From now on there will be no stopping you. Nobody should grow old on their own. It’s no life. People need companionship.”

  I know she’s referring to herself. “Mum, you’re not alone. You’ve got me and the kids.”

  “I know, but it’s not the same as snuggling up to a warm body in bed and waking up in the morning with him next to you. I miss that.”

  I put an arm around my mother and give her a squeeze. “Of course you do. We both do. But if it matters to you that much, then do what Estelle did and register with an online dating site.”

  “No, my boat’s long gone. Please God, I’ll enjoy seeing you find some happiness.”

  “OK—now you’re just being a martyr.”

  • • •

  By half past seven the children are in bed reading. I’ve told them I’m going out to dinner with a friend. If I tell them I’m seeing Sebastian’s granddad, they will want to know if he’s my boyfriend. Even if I say no, it will be round the school in no time.

  Mum can’t stop fussing over what I should wear. She forbids me to wear black. “It’ll look like you’re still in mourning and he’ll think you haven’t got over Brian.”

  “But I haven’t got over Brian. He knows that.”

  I tell her she’s talking nonsense about me not wearing black. It suits me. She accuses me of being difficult. In the end I choose a charcoal wrap dress, which she’s fine about once I’ve teamed it with some chunky rust-colored crystal earrings and a matching bracelet.

  I would rather Mum didn’t meet Mike—at least not yet. I still have memories from when I was a teenager, of her interrogating my boyfriends about their prospects. But my wish isn’t to be granted. He arrives a few minutes early, while I’m in the bathroom finishing my makeup.

  Even from the bathroom I can hear Mum greeting him. She’s using her posh telephone voice. She ushers him into the living room. When I join them, they’re happily comparing proton pump inhibitors and discussing whether it’s best to take them with food or on an empty stomach.

  “I like your mum,” he says once we’re outside. “It’s hard to imagine what she went through during the war.”

  “I can’t believe she managed to tell you about the war and her ailments—all in five minutes.”

  “Let’s put it this way: Your mother isn’t one for lengthy pauses.”

  As we set off, a text pings. I apologize and am about to ignore it and switch off my phone, but he insists I take it.

  Lovely chap. Good teeth. Wake me when you get home.

  “It’s from Mum. She likes you, too. Says you’ve got good teeth.”

  “Oh boy. I am so in there.”

  • • •

  The restaurant is an homage to fin de siècle Paree. Everywhere you look there are gilt mirrors, giant crystal chandeliers and waiters in black uniforms with long white aprons. You half expect to see Proust and Oscar Wilde leering through their monocles at all the young men.

  The food is as classical as the décor. We eat onion soup, excellent boeuf bourguignon, followed by crème caramel. Mike orders a bottle of the house red.

  “I was so worried you’d be a wine snob,” I tell him. “Most men our age are. If they’re not boring about wine, it’s bloody golf.”

  “Actually I play quite a lot of golf.”

  My heart sinks as my face reddens. “Oh God. Sorry. No. I didn’t mean …”

  He’s laughing. “I’m teasing. I’ve never been on a golf course in my life. It would bore the pants off me.”

  “Really? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

  He assures me he isn’t. “Music is my thing. I’m a bit of an old rocker. I’m really into Led Zepplin.”

  “But their music is such a horrible tuneless racket.”

  “Er, excuse me … That tuneless racket was produced by one of the most important and innovative rock groups in history. Their music was influenced by people like Muddy Waters and Skip James and—”

  “Who?”

  He rolls his eyes, but not without humor. “My wife hated them, too.”

  “I’m not surprised. Women like tunes … Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, ABBA. And please don’t knock ABBA, because I love them. And you can’t deny they’ve stood the test of time.”

  “They certainly have that.”

  He thinks I’m shallow.

  “I hated the Mamma Mia movie, though,” I say in an effort to redeem myself. “Utter drivel. I gave up after ten minutes.”

  He smiles and nods. I have no idea if I’ve gone up in his estimation or have sunk, irreparably, to the bottom.

  It gets worse. I don’t know how I manage it, but somehow I let slip that I read the Daily Mail.

  “You surprise me.” He looks crestfallen.

  “I know it’s a nasty right-wing tabloid rag. But I think that in order to have an informed view of what’s going on in the world, you need to know what the right is thinking. I read the Guardian, too, but there’s no showbiz gossip.”

  He’s looking at his watch. I’ve dug myself in deeper with my talk of showbiz gossip. He can’t wait to get away.

  “Sorry if my tastes are disappointing you.”

  “Disappointing me? Why on earth would you think that?”

  “You’re looking at your watch.”

  “What? No. Oh, crap. I’ve done it again. It’s my Apple watch.” He reaches across the table to show me the fancy timepiece. “It vibrates every time I get an e-mail and I automatically take a look. It’s such bad manners. I’m really sorry.”

  I tell him he’s forgiven. “So you don’t object to my choice of newspaper?”

  “Not at all. I read the Mail most days.”

  “You do? But when I mentioned it, you looked so disappointed.”

  “I wasn’t remotely disappointed. Just surprised. People are usually so sniffy about the Mail. I used to work there many moons ago. Good bunch mostly. Pretty down-to-earth. Not like those grand self-important types you get on the Guardian.”

  He tells me a bit about his career in journalism—how his first assignment, for a local paper in Yorkshire, was to collate the results of the Leeds Annual Flower Show.

  “I was careless and got a load of them wrong. There were so many complaints the editor threatened to fire me.” He puts down his wineglass. For a moment he seems lost in thought. “I met my wife while I was working up north. Seems like a lifetime ago.”

  “And after she left, you never remarried?”

  “Uh-uh. I’ve had a couple of long-term relationships, but I haven’t lived with anybody since Catherine. Even though she abandoned Claudia, I couldn’t stop loving her.”

  “And what about now? Do you still love her?”

  He swirls wine around the bottom of his glass. “These days I don’t feel anything. I don’t know when it happened. It was very gradual. Days would go by and I realized I hadn’t thought about her. Then it was weeks. Now months go by and I hardly give her a thought.”

  After dinner we go for a stroll through Soho and find ourselves reminiscing. We’re old enough to remember the greasy pavements, the neon-lit strip joints and seedy jazz clubs. Now it’s buzzing with trendy bars and restaurants and hipsters selling artisanal cheeses at eleven o’clock at night.

  We both recollect a folk club called Lovin’ Spoonful. I can’t remember where it was, but Mike thinks he can—somewhere off Charing Cross Road. It’s only a five-minute walk.

&nbs
p; “It was along here somewhere,” Mike says as we turn into a side street. In the end he admits he’s confused. He can’t make up his mind if Lovin’ Spoonful is now a tattoo parlor or a branch of Banana Republic.

  “I know it’s a cliché,” he says. “But time really does fly.”

  “Tell me about it. Can you believe I once wore an afghan coat?”

  “I bet you looked amazing.”

  “They didn’t half smell, though. Mine was particularly goaty.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded,” he says.

  • • •

  On the drive home he asks me what music I’d like to listen to.

  “ABBA,” I say, just to wind him up.

  A moment later “Super Trooper” is blasting out of the speakers.

  “Hang on … I thought you hated ABBA.”

  “Seb and Hero love it,” he said.

  I’m laughing. “I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t.”

  As we sing along to ABBA’s greatest hits, I tease him. “So, how come if you hate ABBA, you know all the words?”

  “I dunno. I guess playing the songs for the kids, I just picked them up.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Try as he might, he can’t keep a straight face. I turn up the volume and we join in: “The Winner Takes It All.”

  We’re still laughing and singing as we pull up outside my house.

  “I’ve had a wonderful time,” I tell him.

  “Then that makes two of us.” He hesitates. “I’d really like to do it again.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  He makes no attempt to move in for a good night kiss. But I’m worried he might and I don’t know how I would handle it. I decide to take the initiative by planting a kiss on his cheek. “Good night and thank you again for a lovely evening.”

  “I’ll call you,” he says.

  I’m waving him off when the front door opens. Mum is in her dressing gown and slippers beckoning me. “Come inside. You’ll catch your death. I’ve made cocoa.”

  CHAPTER

  fourteen

  “So, if I did decide to start Twittering,” Mum says, “who do you think I should follow? I think it should be important people like the Pope and Barbra Streisand.”

  “That’s certainly one way to go,” Tanya says.

  “Mum, before you go on to Twitter, wouldn’t it be a good idea to get the hang of Facebook?” She signs off all her comments: Love and kisses … Frieda.

  “What do you mean? I’m great at Facebook. Oh, I know! I could follow that Mark Zuckerberg.”

  “Well, if you do,” Ginny says, “you can tell him from me that if I find another ad on my sidebar for a walk-in bath, I’m going to leave. I may have just had my last pap smear, but I’m not quite in my dotage.”

  “I get those ads, too,” Mum says. “The thing is that at my age, you need to start worrying about becoming infirm.”

  Here we go.

  “Mum, stop it. You’re nowhere near becoming infirm.”

  “That’s what you think.” She gets up to put the kettle on.

  It’s Saturday afternoon. I haven’t seen Tanya in a while. Plus I wanted to get things back on an even keel with Ginny, so I suggested they come to tea. Mum has also been nagging me about meeting them. She says she hates not being able to put faces to names. I think she feels excluded if she hasn’t met—and approved or not approved of—all my friends.

  When I asked Ginny if she would be bringing Mason and Tyler, she said that she and Emma still weren’t speaking and she hadn’t seen the boys since the fireworks incident. It was rotten that they were still at loggerheads and she wasn’t seeing the boys, but at least I didn’t have to tell her that Sam didn’t want to be friends with them anymore.

  Ginny and Tanya want to know how my date went.

  “He took her to this very nice French place,” Mum says from the other side of the kitchen. “They haven’t kissed yet. But they’re seeing each other again.”

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  “So, do you like him?” Ginny says.

  “I do. But you know … I’ve still got some issues.”

  “Of course you have. But now isn’t the time to turn back. Onward and upward, that’s my motto.”

  It’s not lost on me that my mother and Ginny are happy to dish out dating advice while refusing to act on it themselves.

  Suddenly Rosie and Cybil appear. They would like a snack. My mother comes over and places a cake stand full of homemade delights on the table. “So, what would you like? There’s chocolate cake, honey cake, a nice piece of strudel maybe?”

  “Please may I have a bit of all of them?” Cybil says.

  “Of course you can, my darling. Good choice.”

  “Me, too,” Rosie says.

  “These two won’t need any rocking tonight,” Tanya says, laughing. “They’ll both be in diabetic comas.”

  “Oh, come on,” Mum says. “A bit of what you fancy does you good.”

  I get up to finish making the tea. Mum joins me. She needs more plates. “Do you mind telling me what that girl has done to her hair? What does she think she looks like?” She is of course referring to Tanya’s dreads. “I’ve no idea how she keeps it clean. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s got things nesting in it.”

  I pray to God that the noise of the water boiling and the tinkling of china are masking my mother’s stage whisper. I hiss at her to shut up. “I’m only saying.” She helps herself to plates and returns to the table. While Mum arranges slices of cake, Ginny is reading a text on her phone.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What?” Tanya says.

  “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”

  I put the tea tray down on the table. “What is it?”

  Ginny jerks her head toward the girls. She wants to wait until they have gone back upstairs before she reveals what’s in the text. Mum hands Cybil one plate. Rosie gets two. The extra one is for Sam, who is alone in his room playing chess.

  “OK … I’ve just got a text from one of the mothers I’m friendly with at school. Did I know it’s all round the school that Sam and my grandsons were caught letting off fireworks and the police were called?”

  “You didn’t tell me the police were involved,” Mum says.

  “Me neither,” says Tanya.

  I make it clear that the police weren’t involved. “Somebody’s gilded the lily because it makes for better gossip.” I finish handing round mugs of tea. “But how did it get out? None of us told anybody.”

  “It’ll be Rosie,” Mum says. “You can’t expect a child her age to keep a secret.”

  “She’s managed not to tell her parents,” I say.

  Mum says that’s different. “It wouldn’t occur to her that she could get Sam into trouble by telling her friends.”

  “She’ll have told Cybil,” Ginny says, “and Bob’s your father’s brother.”

  “Bugger.”

  “Short of locking her up,” Tanya says to me, “there was nothing you could have done to stop her. She was bound to tell the kids at school.”

  “Right … so now I have a grandson who not only takes assault rifles into school, he lets off fireworks. Nobody’s going to want their kids anywhere near him. Oh … and I’m forgetting Rosie teaching everybody to say motherfucker.”

  “Yes,” Tanya says, “but that was Cybil’s doing.”

  “Nobody will remember that. I’m bound to get a call from the head. Sam could be expelled for this.”

  Ginny tells me not to be so daft. “Of course he won’t get expelled. It didn’t happen on school property. It’s a private matter.”

  “Jeez … Claudia is going to love this.”

  “Sod Claudia,” Ginny says. “Who cares what she thinks?”

  “Only the entire bloody school.”

  Tanya says there’s nothing to be done. I simply have to wait—like she’s doing—until it blows over. Meanwhile Ginny’s shaking her head.

&nb
sp; “This is all my fault. I don’t know what’s going to become of Mason and Tyler. They’ll be shoplifting next. I’ve been having nightmares about them ending up in court.”

  Tanya takes Ginny’s hand, tells her it isn’t that bad. But I’m with Ginny on this. Mason and Tyler need discipline. Without it, one day not very long from now they might well end up in court.

  “In other news,” Ginny says, “my brother, William, called this morning to say that my mother has had a heart attack.”

  “Bloody hell,” Tanya says. “You kept that quiet.”

  “It was very mild and she’s back home. The upshot is that William thinks I should go and see her.”

  “This is the mother who threw you out and told you never to darken her door again?” Tanya says.

  Ginny manages a smile. “The same.”

  I ask her what she wants to do.

  Ginny shrugs. “Want and ought are different things. What I want is to leave her to stew. She hasn’t asked to see me. Why should I risk going there and have her tell me to get lost again?”

  “You could live to regret it,” Tanya says.

  I tell Ginny that I’m with Tanya. “It won’t be easy. But your mother’s not well. Even though the heart attack wasn’t serious, she’s old and you don’t know how much time she has left.”

  “When I last saw her, she made her position very plain. I was never to darken her door again. I was her only daughter. Have you any idea how that felt? What sort of mother rejects a child like that?”

  “I’m not making excuses,” Tanya says. “She did a terrible thing… .”

  “It was more than that. It was unforgivable.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” I say. “That’s for you to decide.”

  Ginny rubs her hand over her chin. “Going to see her would be such a risk.”

  “So would not seeing her.”

  • • •

  On Monday morning after I’ve dropped Sam and Rosie at school, I finally decide that I need to see Mrs. S.J. I’ve thought about taking Tanya’s advice to do nothing and let the gossip about Sam and the fireworks blow over. But I’m worried that in the meantime mothers will forbid their children to play with Sam. I decide that the only way to limit the damage is to speak to the head and explain what happened. Once she knows my side of the story, she might be able to spread the word.