by Georgie Hall
This is the sort of place Jules wants Mum and Dad to move to. But they love The Prettiest Cottage in Warwickshire with its long-established garden and freshly re-rooted prodigal son.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Miles didn’t reply to my tempestuous asp sex text last night. I start composing another while I wait, demanding to know what he thinks he’s doing suggesting Mum and Dad sell The Tempest.
Is my brother as depressed as Joe suggests, I wonder?
I delete what I’ve written and type: I’m worried about you. Call me. Exx
*
Jules has a theory that the children of long-married, mutually devoted couples always struggle to find happiness in their own relationships.
I have a less rose-tinted view of our parents’ relationship, but I can see how this explanation also fits Miles and his ceaseless quest to anchor the wanderlust with love.
As for me, marrying my working-class hero meant rebelling against my parents’ ambitions for me and I’ve always found great happiness in going off script, but I worry that Jules’s theory is finally chiming true. I can sense the fracture between Paddy and me widening.
By the time he rolled in from his team curry last night, I was asleep in bed. Waking up in the early hours, I stared up into the darkness worrying about my marriage withering, about what Paddy will say when he hears the narrowboat might soon be sold, about Mum and Dad not coping, Summer hating me, my latent anti-fascism letting down my generation and why I still miss Arty so much I had to swallow knives of grief to stop myself sobbing.
During this morning’s routine, Paddy was so hungover he said nothing at all. At least, I think that was the reason for the silent treatment. I didn’t ask; I was too tired.
*
Yawning, I go out on the balcony to call the council’s Special Educational Needs department again about Ed’s school transport.
I’m told the colleague I need to talk to is on holiday but I take their direct email and message straight away from my phone with a brief explanation of the issue with the taxi driver, copying in Ed’s school Head and Paddy on his work email. I then text Lou to see how she’s doing, attaching an Edina Monsoon flapping GIF. She sends back a Bitmoji of her likeness laying into a punchbag. Friendship shorthand is a lifesaver.
Think positive, Eliza: happiness sells houses. I head back inside to plump cushions. All I know about the prospective buyer is that he’s called Mr Wright, he’s looking for somewhere to move into with his new wife, and he’s ‘proceedable’. The name makes me smile: somebody has met her Mr Right at last.
When I check the brochure to make sure I have all the amenities off pat, I spot that the lease requires residents to be over fifty, not fifty-five.
That makes me eligible, I realise with a jolt as the buzzer goes.
*
Fifty bothers me, really bloody bothers me, in a way no other landmark age has. Celebrating it felt like passing through a door I can’t ever go back through. My thirties and forties flew by without me ever feeling any older. One minute I was late twenties, worried I’d be left on the shelf, then WHOOOOSH: I’m fifty. I’ve gone through the door and nobody left behind can see me.
It’s scary this side, like walking along Sniper Alley, trying to work out where the fatal shot’s going to come from. And even if I do make it to the far distance, all that’s waiting is old age.
(I read a quote recently that if our forties are the old age of youth, our fifties are the youth of old age. It didn’t make me feel remotely better about being fifty.)
*
I buzz in Mr Wright and take up position by the lift.
The tall, stooped figure who steps out of the doors, creased suit reeking of stale cigarette smoke, is probably mid-sixties and vaguely familiar. He has the dishevelled look of a once-handsome man subsiding into old age through the back door of a pub, although the glitter of a gold signet ring and well-worn Lobb brogues hint at erstwhile grandeur.
‘Mr Wright, I’m Eliza from the agency. Welcome to Lace Mill,’ I offer my hand to shake, which he ignores.
‘Where’s the girl I booked the appointment with?’ he demands, revealing yellowing camel teeth. ‘Blonde, legs up to here, huge’ – he leaves a deliberate pause – ‘smile.’
‘She’s on another appointment so I’ll be showing you around today.’ Now I’ve heard the gravelly voice, I recognise him as one of the tipsters who once co-presented televised horseracing.
‘I suppose you’ll have to do.’ He looks me up and down dismissively, my beige shift dress and nude court shoes kept just for viewings, perfect for blending into a magnolia wall, my split ends tucked into a neat chignon, plus the pearls, of course, because we’re a class agency. His gaze lingers on these. Or it could be on my bust. Hard to tell given he’s wearing the sort of half-tint glasses that went out of style in the eighties.
‘Will your wife be joining us, Mr Wright?’
‘Fiancée, and hardly,’ he tells my pearls/chest. ‘Marta’s still in the Ukraine. Bit of a visa cock-up. The agency are sorting it out.’
‘Mail-order bride’ is now on a loop in my head.
‘Come in and look round lovely Flat Seven!’ I hand him the brochure and run the spiel about the history of the building, the working days of its watermill, the high-class conversion, the shared facilities for the discerning mature buyer.
‘Let’s cut the crap and see what’s here, shall we?’ He marches off.
I wonder how young his Ukrainian bride is; I’m not sure she’ll be allowed to live here under the age restrictions. Best not say anything while I’m on soft sell.
‘Isn’t it a wonderful view?’ I gush as I follow him into the generously proportioned double aspect master suite. ‘Imagine waking up to see something as breathtaking as this every morning?’
‘I’ve prettier things to look at.’ He casts me an amused, appraising look that makes me step back from a chilly blast of déjà vu.
*
Thirteen years ago, in an apartment not unlike this one, overlooking a canal by Birmingham’s Brindleyplace, I admired the view.
‘How would you like to wake up to this?’ asked the man I was there with.
‘Very much.’
‘Play your cards right and you could.’
By which, I thought he meant that I’d soon be acting in the Birmingham-based drama we were there to discuss. He thought I was giving the green light for what was about to happen.
Had #MeToo been trending in 2005, I’d have honestly said #NotMe. Mild flirtation and plenty of innuendo, yes, but at a time when male producers, directors and playwrights regularly demanded actresses strip off at auditions so their figured could be ‘assessed’, I’d never had to. Nor had I been asked for sexual favours in return for a part as others I knew had. Not until that day in the waterside apartment with a television director on whose decision my biggest career break rested.
That day marked my singular professional encounter with… what do I call it? #TimesUp lite? Compared to the experiences of other women I know, it was trivial. But it changed me.
My Agent-Who-Never-Calls had miraculously put me forward for the pilot episode of a new daytime drama, a legal soap about a barristers’ chambers in Birmingham, full of human interest, diversity, clichés and at least five ‘I object, your honour!’ per episode. I knew that world; the role could have been written for me: Alicia Swan, a ball-breaking thirty-something brief. Her name even sounded like mine.
The director was from my parents’ generation and I’d passed the screen test with flying colours (an impersonation of my sister which they loved). Now he wanted a chat about the character moving forwards, so we’d met up in a coffee shop in the city centre. If the series got made, he explained, he’d like Alicia to take a more central role. We talked about human rights, legal aid and McLibel.
He said he’d made some notes but, oh bother, he’d left them behind. His flat was nearby. We could pop there together.
It wasn’t until we were alone together, view admir
ed, that I understood. All the enthusiastic talk coming out of my mouth was nothing to his desire to come in it.
*
Mr Wright is now in the en suite where I have pointed out the convenience of ‘his and hers basins and body-jet shower for that spa-clean feeling’.
‘Washing your arse when you’re too old to reach it, you mean!’ he barks. ‘Care to demonstrate, Elsa?’
‘Eliza.’ I smile fixedly. Happiness sells houses!
‘So are you going to show me or not?’ he snaps impatiently.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘How the shower works. I want to see the water pressure.’ He casts me a sly, amused look.
I’ve been accompanying viewings for years and nobody’s asked me to do this. What is the professional protocol on this, I wonder? Am I allowed to tell him to back off? Or am I over-reading it?
Nobody’s asked me for a blow job on a property viewing either, but what happened thirteen years ago still makes me question everything.
*
The randy television director had been in the industry a long time, and I trusted him. I didn’t even question what was going on when he poured two glasses of wine.
His flat was a bland, rented pied-à-terre with piles of newly-bought books and DVDs everywhere, and as we sat down in two armchairs I enthusiastically told him that I’d do whatever it took to make the character of Alicia Swan work.
‘Then come here.’ He’d beckoned me towards him, manspreading. ‘Use your head, darling.’
At first, I was incredulous. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘We both know.’
Still not really sinking in. Surely not that?
‘Use. Your. Head,’ he repeated with a twinkle of the eye. ‘Call it lip service.’
‘I’m not like that!’
‘Like what?’
‘I’m a professional.’ More embarrassment, reluctant to offend. ‘I really do want to work with you.’
‘Then show me how much.’
‘I have a husband and two kids.’
‘I have a wife and three and I’ll raise you a grandson. We’re both grown-ups, Eliza.’
Angrier still. ‘I didn’t come here for this. This is a total abuse of your role.’
That’s when he crossed his legs and arms, looking extremely pissed off. Then he started to laugh, a hollow, incredulous chuckle. ‘Oh Eliza, please don’t tell me that you think I was coming onto you?’
Mortification kicked in. Or adrenaline. Hard to tell. ‘I thought maybe you were.’
The chuckle stopped. Hard eyes. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
And in those three words, he had me beaten. It wasn’t use your head that haunted me in coming weeks and months. It was don’t flatter yourself.
Why was I so polite and British? We laughed it off. I apologised. (I can’t believe I actually said sorry.) I was burning with shame. We talked some more about the role, as though nothing had happened. Then I left.
The encounter chipped a fragment out of me, riving a hairline through my ego so small it’s hard to spot. But I’m sharper with men now, more brittle, less trusting. And I don’t flirt.
*
Mr Wright is admiring the high-pressure water flying every which way out of the shower, steam rising. ‘More than big enough for two in there, eh?’
‘Absolutely!’ One arm soaked from turning it on, I stay as far away as possible.
‘You can turn it off now!’ he calls from the hot mist.
I can hear my phone ringing in the bedroom, The Proclaimers singing ‘I’m Gonna Be’, chirpily announcing they would walk 500 miles. It’s my brother’s ringtone.
‘Hurry up, Elsa!’ demands Mr Wright.
‘It’s Eliza.’ Stretching into the shower to twist the tap shut, I get even wetter, the front of my dress soaked, my hair flattened.
Guffaws of laughter greet the sight. ‘Miss Wet T-shirt has nothing to fear from you, eh?’
Rage and humiliation fizz in my veins. ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make comments like that.’
‘It’s only a bit of fun. Marta’s thirty-one. Need I say more?’
Sopping wet and indignant, I snap, ‘Perhaps it’s best if you continue looking around alone while I dry off on the balcony?’
‘I could,’ he shrugs, ‘but I’m not buying this place, darling. It’s for oldies.’
‘Over fifties, yes.’
He scrunches up his nose like there’s a bad smell. ‘Tell blondie in the office to give me a call if she gets something more up our street. And I want her to show me round, not matron. I’ll see myself out.’
I wait for the sound of the lift doors closing, grab one of the hand-embroidered cushions and scream into it with all my force. Like elephants, angry women never forget.
*
My Agent-Who-Never-Calls reported that the team behind the barrister drama had decided I was too old for Alicia. Perhaps the actor who was cast used her head, but the pilot was never commissioned as a series; I like to think it would have been had I been playing her.
I haven’t been put forward for a television role since. My dented confidence turned in on itself for a long time. Had I misread the situation?
Don’t flatter yourself.
For a while I was so angry about it, I wanted to rush back to that flat and slap him, tell him to fuck off, tell him that I was taking it to a tribunal. And I wanted to tell my thirty-five-year-old self that every woman who has struggled to lose baby weight, to conceal the tiredness of motherhood, to compete for work against fresh-faced, childfree juniors understands what it feels like to doubt herself, and standing up for herself takes guts, but she has to. We all have to stop apologising, Eliza! Otherwise nothing will change.
I never told anybody what had happened, not even Paddy. I was frightened he might think I encouraged it, and – shamefully – that he’d think less of me if he knew the director’s reaction.
I flatter myself I’m much stronger now. But men like Mr Wright still put me in the blackest of moods.
*
Out on the balcony, I return Miles’s call. It goes straight to voicemail. I don’t trust myself to leave a message. I’m fit to explode, my pulses slamming. I wish I still smoked.
Bracing myself, I call the agency to apologise that I failed to sell the mill’s appeal to Mr Wright. The buxom blonde senior negotiator – who isn’t on another appointment at all – admits that she’d suspected he was an arsehole from the get-go. ‘He was leery the moment he came in. We thought you could handle him, being…’ She hesitates.
A consummate actor? Clever? No-nonsense? Ballsy?
‘Older.’
I look up at the sky and watch a jet-streak fading. Somebody is sitting out on the balcony above me, listening to a wartime drama on radio, air-raid siren wailing, bombs raining. I try to cheer myself up by imagining one landing on Mr Wright, leaving nothing but a pair of smoking brogues.
*
Miles rings back while I’m still fantasy-bombing on the balcony and I answer with an unladylike hiss, ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’
‘I thought you were worried about me?’
‘I am. You’re certifiably mad suggesting selling The Tempest.’
‘It was Jules’s idea.’ Whether seven or forty-seven, our little brother’s lightning quick to shift blame. ‘And Mum and Dad aren’t remotely interested in her and never have been. A buyer has fallen into our lap and I could use the cash.’
‘Can’t I buy your share? How big is it?’
‘Fifty per cent.’
I want to cry. Mum and Dad are so generous to all of us; I could never have asked for something like that after everything they’ve already done.
‘Paddy’s heart is in that boat,’ I whisper.
‘Then it’s a good thing we sell her,’ Miles says brightly. ‘He might get it back.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You figure it out.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?�
�
There’s a long silence at the other end. I watch some canoeists paddling close to the mill and my anger evaporates. ‘Miles, are you depressed?’
I realise he’s hung up.
*
We’re also always slamming the phone down on each other, Miles and me. Paddy calls them our childhood hang ups. I can see how infantile it must look, the cliché younger siblings still squabbling in middle age. We once stopped talking for a whole six months after an argument about car keys.
*
One of us always calls back eventually. I am marching along Mill Lane in blistering sunshine when The Proclaimers start singing again.
‘You told me you wished you’d never set eyes on that narrowboat,’ he points out petulantly.
‘You know I didn’t mean it.’ I try to keep my voice calm, wondering how best to probe the state of his mental health.
‘Like when you called me a cunt?’ He laughs. That childhood insult I can never live down.
I’m even more certain Joe’s right: when Miles doesn’t like himself, he’s hard to like.
Sympathy fraying, I’d quite like to call him one again, but there’s an elderly couple walking towards me along the narrow pavement. A hot flush starts to surface. There’s no shade to be had, brick walls hemming me in the heat. ‘Don’t let’s forget I called you that word because you stole something that didn’t belong to you and hid it rather than admit it, Miles,’ I whisper angrily. ‘You have never apologised for that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Thanks.’ I nip through Holy Trinity’s south gate to shortcut across its churchyard, the tree shade so blissful I pause beneath a lime to breathe in the sweet scent of its first flowers, hot flush raging.
‘Now can I sell the narrowboat without you going all Lucrezia Borgia on me?’
‘No you can’t! This is a lot more serious than a Bionic Woman toy, Miles.’
‘You even remember what doll it was!’ He laughs again.
‘And Mission Purse. I still haven’t forgiven you.’ Remembering his possible depression, I check myself, switching approach. ‘It’s Paddy’s and my wedding anniversary this week, Miles. Please don’t do this to us now.’ I stop myself again. If he’s feeling vulnerable and lonely, the last thing my brother wants is me boasting about my long marriage.
