by Georgie Hall
‘A pension!’
*
I’ve always avoided financial planning, partly because I never have any finance to plan, and partly because I never believed I needed to worry about it just yet.
Jules is ISA-ed and insured upto her laser-corrected eyeballs; Miles probably has more offshore investments than the Murdoch family; I have an overdraft, a Post Office Savings Account book dated 1981, two paper Premium Bonds and a lot of unchecked Lottery tickets (which makes me potentially far, far richer, let’s face it).
There’s no time left for me to save. Or grow old. And I can’t shake the image of the kinky undies in the boat cabin wardrobe. What champagne-fuelled spanking orgies does my husband get up to on here when I’m not around? To think I felt guilty bringing Matteo on board to admire her bulkheads.
I listen out for sounds of him still moving around inside The Tempest. The whistling has stopped, but just as I think he must have gone, I hear footsteps again, fast and shuffling, not like his previous loose-hipped saunter.
Dad’s waffling on about my national insurance contributions. I cover the phone mic and poke my head out. The bathroom door’s open, obscuring my view along the corridor, but feet hurriedly retreat off the boat.
‘It’s not as though Paddy has a retirement plan,’ Dad is saying. (Aha, here we go.)
There’s no point reminding him that Paddy cashed in his modest pension to try to keep the business afloat. It would be equally futile to point out that my parents said they would look after Eddie’s boat indefinitely when they stepped in.
‘It’s to your credit that you are so loyal, but Paddy isn’t earning anything like enough to keep this boat going. Or you, come to that.’
‘I’m cheap to run, Dad.’ Why does my father always make me feel silly and naïve, I wonder? I’m fifty years old, yet he adopts exactly the same there-there voice now as he did when he used to read The Owl and the Pussycat at bedtime. ‘At least can we hold onto the half share?’
‘Your family needs more to keep it afloat on a rainy day than that wretched vessel. Old age overtakes us horribly fast. And for some it doesn’t come at all. Just look at poor Eddie. It’s a gift to grow old, Eliza. Bloody well take it.’
*
Death, I think about a lot. Old age, less so. It’s such an abstract thing, a lucky dip of variables and an unavoidable curse of survival. Our genes might give us an advantage, boosted by lifestyle choices and modern medicine, but in a world where a whip-slim teetotal septuagenarian can find themselves far more physically enfeebled than a century-old Scotch-swilling cake lover, it seems to me there’s no predetermined course.
Unlike my terror of death, I don’t yet feel old age close by, nor can I bring myself to acknowledge it needs planning and funding. Actors have no fixed retirement age after all, and playing old ladies was my college forte, so my career might even take off. And whilst I find it a fraction harder to bend down to paint my toenails than I did a decade ago, it’s still hard to conceive of a day I won’t be able to do it at all.
It’s easier to dwell on death. You know where you are with it. Dead. And I want my corpse’s toenails painted crimson.
*
There’s always time for that breakthrough role, I vow silently as Dad summarises my limited pension options, his tone lecturing now, annoyed that I don’t sound more grateful. I’m only remaining silent because I don’t want him to know how close I am to crying, his least successful child. I want the call to end.
It shames me that at my stage of life I’m still so phobic about money. Like death, I hate it; I fear it, it shames and obsesses me, particularly at five in the morning when I free-fall panic that we can’t give our children the opportunities afforded to their cousins, that Edward might require care into adulthood we can never hope to pay for, that one of us will get ill and be unable to work.
Breathe, Eliza.
This boat is worth far more to us than money, I remind myself, although right now I’d willingly throw myself overboard. I’m in full flush, boiling hot and claustrophobic, the diesel smell from the engine beneath the floor gagging me. Tears bubble up, get swiped and bubble again as I feel my mood swing so fast I’m G-forcing menopausal outrage long before serotonin can get involved.
‘Look at the hand you were dealt, Eliza: good health, bright mind, private education, fine looks.’
The silver spoon he welded into my mouth from birth is choking me, still trying to feed me honey to help the medicine go down. There are few parents as indulgently domineering as a self-made one, in my experience.
‘You were bloody lucky to be born middle class, you know that?’
‘What’s class got to do with it?’ I break my silence.
‘It’s not a swear word, Eliza.’
‘It’s become one, Dad.’
‘Well, that’s a great shame. You’d think differently if you’d had my upbringing. I worked bloody hard to give my children the opportunities you’ve had. You should be grateful you have a bit of class to fall back on, lass.’
Apologising that I have a client appointment to keep, I blow him kisses and hang up.
It’s probably not very classy to unzip my dress and peel it off my arms so that I can unhook my bra to fan myself with it, but I’m too ablaze with anger and flush to care.
Yet again, I’m piggy in the middle between my family and Paddy. Fitting that my hot skin is mottled the colour of gammon.
*
I’m a middle-aged, middle-child Middle Englander. To cap it all, I’m middle class. Middle’s my middle name. Could I be any more mediocre? Or, as Summer would say, ‘meh’.
There’s something offensive about all this safe and cosy middle-ness. I’m guilty as hell about it, but that’s just a side effect of my middle-of-the-road Liberal thinking, I’m told.
Occupying the middle ground of age, class and thought is now a byword for whinging privilege and humble-bragging, our freshly squeezed middle ranks protesting about climate change, pay gaps and library closures whilst still cooking on oil-fired Agas, politely never admitting what we earn and reading 99p Kindle books. We’re halfway between futureproof and out of touch. Many of us also belong to the sandwich generation, caught between the needs of dependent children and elderly parents, our much-loved snowflakes and boomers. Generation X marks the spot, and yes I’m slap bang in it, madly muddling along (menopausally).
When the poetry line ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’ is quoted, Philip Larkin is rarely credited with wisely going on to point out that our parents were fucked up by their own first, ‘By fools in old style hats and coats.’
My grandmother – a woman always hatted and hand-bagged – continually berated Mum and Dad for spoiling us: ‘They’ll grow up discontented.’
Maybe she was right. We’re Thatcher’s oversized children, milk-snatched milksops too evolved to make do and mend yet left behind by swipe-right selfies. In striving for the perfect life-work balance, we overplay both, left seething and unsatisfied behind Facebook walls of carefully curated perfection. Nobody likes a grumbler, especially one who owns more than one Ottolenghi cookbook.
We dare not leave this mean median mode without punishment. While a self-made working-class hero might be applauded for climbing to grandeur and a fallen aristo retains an air of decadent rebellion, we know our place: social mobility is far too risky. Jump rank – like the ultimate middle-England Middletons stepping from fitted carpet to red one – and we’re getting above ourselves; fall down on our heels and we’re ungrateful wastrels.
The Finches are determined to keep me afloat. Don’t rock the boat, Eliza; sell it.
I just want to rock the bloody boat.
*
I make my way hotly back through the bedroom cabin, bra rehooked, dress round my waist. Matteo’s gone so I take another quick peek in the wardrobe. There are several bits of lingerie hanging up, all Carry on Girls meets Eyes Wide Shut confections of wispy lace and garter. I check the labels. Nothing bigger than a ten. She’s s
lim then, with cheap-thrill taste. I have a brief vision of Icepack Bianca stroking Paddy’s arm and saying they all love his ruggedness, then dismiss it. This is far more secretive.
My film of sweat chills, a hollow toxicity brittle in my bones. I rezip my dress and open the drawer with the fluffy cuffs. I stare at the Love Lube tub, imagining his big hands clumsily unscrewing the top like he does his Swarfega at home, only intent on far more personal pleasures. Is this my husband’s secret shag nest? Oh Paddy, what has come of us?
Thinking I can hear somebody moving in the galley, I look up. ‘Who’s there?’
Silence. Just café chatter outside.
Then the sound of a champagne cork popping at the front of the boat makes me quickly close the drawer.
‘Bellissima, come have a drink with me!’ Matteo calls out.
I swing the bathroom door shut as I march through to the galley, but he’s not in the saloon. There’s a large box of chocolates on the galley’s oak work surface.
‘Come outside! The sun’s out again.’ He’s on the well deck.
I grab some kitchen roll to wipe my teary, sweaty face.
Outside, Matteo’s filling two champagne flutes.
‘You opened the Moet?’ I gulp some fresh air. I don’t care if he smashes every bottle against the side of the barge and renames her Boaty McBoatface; but there’s no way I’m drinking the champagne my husband bought for his size ten floozy.
‘Of course not. I buy prosecco from the café bar.’ He passes me a flute. ‘Salute!’
‘I’m driving.’ I hold it away like a grenade, quickly pulling my dark glasses down from my head.
He’s looking at me closely. ‘Are you OK, beautiful girl?’
‘Fine!’ I lie, taking a swig to show I’m in high spirits. I appreciate its chilled kick. And being called beautiful always helps in times of crisis.
‘I put the whip back where I found it,’ he assures me in an undertone.
‘Thanks.’ I swig some more prosecco. It’s so wonderfully cold, I want to press the glass to my neck and chest, pour its contents over them even. (Does Paddy throw Moet over his size ten lover in here, I wonder?)
‘How much do your family want for this boat?’ Matteo steps closer.
I step back, now unable to shake the image of Paddy enjoying his Love-Lubed, sex-loving innamorata doing the things I don’t. I briefly envisage torching the boat with them kink-festing in it, using the cash I could get from selling it to Matteo as tinder. I double the amount my parents paid for her to buy myself time.
‘Too much.’ He sucks on a knowing smile, then shaves 40 per cent off.
The owners of the neighbouring narrowboat have just arrived to take her out and give me a cheery wave. They give Matteo a curious look and I hurry back inside.
He follows. ‘It’s a lot of money, cara.’
My mind’s still in the wardrobe with the peek-a-boo basque and crotchless panties. You’ve driven him to this, a voice nags in my head. A man has needs.
‘Say yes, Eliiiiiza. You know you want to.’
You’re barking up the wrong tree trying to butter me up with all that sexy-voiced cajoling, Matteeeeeo, I want to shout back. Just ask my husband. I don’t succumb to sweet talk. Or anything much.
‘It’s not my decision,’ I tell him blandly.
‘But you can convince them, eh?’ He’s standing far too close.
My champagne flute is almost empty. I no longer feel sick or hot, just very odd. The anger’s still sizzling, ever familiar, but there’s a highly charged undercurrent that’s all new, its sexual charge shocking me. This self-flagellating shame, envisaging Paddy with another woman, desiring another’s body, is giving me headrush. It’s horrid, visceral and the biggest fix of emotion I’ve felt all year. It shouldn’t be, but it’s turning me on.
Things are happening to this body that haven’t for months: nipples out, check, pulses hammering, check, pelvic floor quivering, check. The inner tingle, check. No need for Vagisan right now, it’s slip-sliding away by its own making.
I’m absurdly and inappropriately horny. And still very angry.
I march to the opposite end of the saloon to stop myself hitting something – or on someone.
Watching me, Matteo offers another thousand and a case of Villa Sandi, which he assures me is far superior to this prosecco as he comes to refill my glass.
‘It’ll have to be a better offer than that.’ I knock it back feverishly, buying more time. I think I might be panting slightly.
He steps closer. ‘Come here. I’ll whisper it.’
I brace myself, craving punishment for my wicked thoughts. Don’t flatter yourself.
*
I should state here that I’m categorically not up for adultery. No man other than my husband has had sight of my vagina since Edward was delivered and that’s not about to change. But speaking as a woman who has watched men of my generation refocus on women of my daughter’s, I’m curious whether I have any sex appeal left at all, and if I do, then who exactly does it appeal to?
Friend Lou led a recent social media rant when fifty-year-old suave French author Yann Moix was quoted saying women his age are ‘invisible’ to him and therefore impossible to love, the body of a twenty-five-year-old being far more desirable.
I stayed silent, ashamed to find myself agreeing with him. My body was better at twenty-five. And I wouldn’t have let creepy old Yann anywhere near it, so no worries there. Like every middle-aged male whose celebrity or wealth fools him into believing he’s only as young as the woman he feels, there’s a limit to how long he can press home the advantage to press that young flesh. It’s a meat trade in which he’ll have to keep paying more for cheaper cuts. His soul knows it.
Lou was scathing when someone online suggested that maybe men ‘age up’ in proportion: that a fifty-year-old woman becomes the fantasy of men over seventy-five: ‘Face it, all men are the same,’ she raged. ‘Hot Teen appears in their drop-down box as soon as they type “h”.’
(I typed h in our laptop to test this and got ‘historic narrowboats’ and ‘HSBC login’.)
But is the reverse true? Do older women secretly all prefer the bodies of men half our age? On a purely visual level, say in one’s direct eyeline at a hotel pool, maybe. But not to love, no. It was painful enough the first time. They hog the mirror for a start.
Lou openly admits to occasionally lusting after young men (‘all legal: uni age, entirely an academic exercise’) but I can’t get there. At least not since I caught Joe’s handsome, flirty friend Tig masturbating furiously in our walk-in wardrobe, his face buried in my best party dress. I felt criminal even running it back in my head afterwards; I’d known Tig in nappies. OK, so it didn’t stop my subconscious screening one or two late-night flights of fancy – at least until he came out as gender-confused – but those were entirely beyond my control.
Then the hormones changed guard, and even my fantasy world was gone. Whoosh. No time for end credits. Sex drive top-shelved.
There’s still a latent pulse, that tug which tells me my basic instinct is deep inside, that an orgasm is waiting. But it’s like a reminder for a car valet. Easier to do it myself. Then I forget and don’t bother.
*
That’s still no excuse for finding myself in a canal barge with an amorous Italian whispering in my ear, no defence to justify this loyal wife of twenty-two years risking a quick mid-morning flirtation to prove that this isn’t a joke at her expense, that she still has, if not what it takes, then the chutzpah to take it.
Matteo is breathing warmly on my neck. ‘Eliza…’
It should be funny, the just-one-Cornetto flirtation, but it isn’t because the cliché just got serious. The warmth of his fingers around the bare skin of my arm. The closeness. His unswerving male gaze. The aftershave. The tick, tick, tick.
‘Bellissima Eliiiiza…’ God, I love the way he says my name. It’s so Mediterranean. No, that’s no excuse either.
‘That first time I
saw you,’ he breathes, ‘Ero pazzo di te: I was crazy for you.’
‘You were crazy at me.’
‘You drive like an Italian. You look like a goddess. You save dumb animals. Oh, mio cuore! Then you come to my restaurant burning brighter than every candle, and all night, forgive me, I wanted to do this.’
He kisses me.
*
Forget aphrodisiacs like oysters and asparagus tips, forget silk underwear, luxury hotels, mood music and massages. Please, God, forget PornHub.
It’s all in the kiss.
Klimt had it gold-plated for a reason. The intimacy of lips on lips.
Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak kissing in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Molly and Sam in Ghost.
Han Solo and Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back.
Zack Mayo and Paula in An Officer and a Gentleman.
Denys kissing Karen Blixen in Out of Africa.
Jack and Rose in Titanic.
It’s watching the big-screen kiss when I still get that inner flip, when the pulse finds its way through the maze again. It’s my most enduring of sexual triggers. And when it happens, I know it’s not gone forever, this roar inside; it’s just lost its way a little bit.
Too many middle-aged women are quoted as saying ‘I’d rather have a cuddle’ if asked about their sex lives. But wouldn’t some of us rather kiss like Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca?
Unless it’s with the wrong person.
Caught by surprise, I let the kiss happen, ignoring the voice in my head shouting, scream, hit him, handbag him!
I’m so used to Paddy’s lips – not lately, admittedly – that my first reaction is ‘this is so bloody weird’. Like an out-of-body experience. Matteo’s seriously hot-blooded, one of those men who kisses like he’s trying to suck venom out of a snakebite. It’s all so surreal, I want to laugh. And, oh shame, I kiss him back. That just makes me want to laugh more.
I feel alive. I’m still a woman.
Then I hear Paddy’s voice call ‘hello?’ and I stop laughing.
16
The Nick of Time
