Lessons in Duck Hunting

by Jayne Buxton

  I shoot her a look that says I’m going to tip the salsa bowl over her head if she says any more. I don’t want everyone to know about my kitchen-lust experience, least of all George. I know he’s in favor of courageous flirting, but unrestrained licentiousness? Definitely not. Not even the idea of it.

  Luckily, the others just laugh, as if the idea is a preposterous one. Sara interjects, effectively putting a stop to Mel’s mischief. “I know what you mean. I’ve got at least five pounds sitting there. Probably ten. I’ll join you in trying to lose them, Ally. We can keep each other on the straight and narrow.”

  “God, it’s such a cliché isn’t it?” I groan. “Want to meet a man? Lose weight. Surely that can’t be the answer.”

  “It may not be the answer, honey, but it sure can’t hurt,” drawls Clara. “It’s just one less thing to worry about.” Easy for her to say. She never gains an ounce; then again, I’ve never seen her eat a biscuit.

  I will try to shift the pounds, but I refuse to go to Weight Watchers. Between Marina’s seminars and Weight Watchers meetings I’d be in grave danger of support-group overload.

  “What about makeup?” I ask, changing tack. “The other day I realized that I’ve been applying my eye makeup in exactly the same way for over a decade. Is there something revolutionary that I’m missing?”

  “Ooh. Yes. Yes. I bought some makeup from Mac the other day and they gave me a sort of mini eye makeover. Let me show you.” Mel takes her makeup bag out of her fringed satchel and instructs me to sit up with my head back. She then proceeds to brush a complex combination of pinks and browns onto my eyelids, and finishes by holding up her makeup mirror for me to assess the results. Everyone else gathers around, and I feel a little like a patient in the ER.

  “What do you think?”

  There isn’t a smudge of teal blue eye pencil in sight, which makes me feel a little insecure. And the eyes don’t, at first, look like mine. But I have to admit I like the overall effect.

  “I think you must have walked out of there with over a hundred quid’s worth of stuff is what I think. They saw you coming. But I do like it. Perhaps I’ll spend some of your £1000 on eye shadows tomorrow.”

  Now Clara decides that a change of pace is in order. “Tell you what,” she says. “Why don’t we do that Trinny and Susannah thing where we go through your closet and throw out all the things we think look awful on you?”

  AND THAT IS HOW six adults end up sprawled around my bedroom amidst piles of clothes. George looks surprisingly at home, considering he’s the only male in the room. He’s lying propped up on one elbow on my bed wearing an enormous pink feathered hat that I wore to Ascot ten years ago, and tossing clothes into various piles as Clara hands them to him. There are a few outfits I have to try on, but most can be kept or discarded based on the impression they create on the hanger.

  Even Lisa is having fun. She’s wearing the offending tracksuit bottoms around her neck like a scarf, and must be well into her fourth glass of wine. As I’m pulling on a beige corduroy jacket for inspection, she raises her glass and calls everyone to attention.

  “I’ve one more idea for you, Ally, and I hope you won’t take it the wrong way,” she says. “Do you know what I’ve noticed? I’ve noticed that you carry around this sort of armor. You’re a little bristly with men. You probably don’t mean to be. And sometimes they might be complete tossers, in which case you are certainly justified. But the rest of the time, it might help if you just softened up a little. I think that might make more difference than all this wardrobe revamping.”

  I glance at Mel, who returns my look with the same one she gave me in the kitchen earlier in the evening. So this is something everyone has been wanting to tell me. Loosen up. Lighten up. Open up. Flirt for God’s sake. How is it that it took a choreographed makeover and three bottles of wine for them to tell me?

  I REALLY SHOULD have planned this more thoughtfully. We’ve moved on from repackaging and come downstairs to commence the rebranding part of the agenda, which is by far the most difficult, but the pickled state they’re all in makes any kind of sensible outcome look highly unlikely. Mel is giddy despite having nursed a single glass of wine for the whole evening. (My guess is it’s all part of her plan to throw Clara off the scent of her news.) Lisa is reading out from the second page of the notes, and it’s all the others can do to keep themselves from choking on their laughter.

  “It says here that we need to list out all of Ally’s characteristics, and select the three that best describe her and will be most appealing to other people. Now listen to the examples. Are you ready?” Lisa looks up into faces that are gagging in anticipation.

  “Here’s a good one, apparently: Outgoing, spirited, nurse. And here’s how not to define your brand: Freckly, temperamental, travel agent! Or sensual, adventurous, babe—too forward, apparently. Makes people think you’re up for one night stands.”

  “For goodness’ sake, what ees the purpose of thees brand thing?” asks George.

  “Wait. Wait. I can tell you that,” shouts Lisa. “It’s supposed to be a quick way for us to describe Ally to people we think might be interested in meeting her, and a way for her to describe herself when she registers for all those computer dating services. Then there’s the blurb she needs for her flyer.”

  Ah, yes. I’d forgotten about these. I know they are lurking in seminar two, a set of hurdles I’m quite sure I won’t manage to clear. George is a little confused (“What ees thees theeng, a flyer?”), and Sara is just incredulous (“What? To leave in pubs and restaurants and stuff?”).

  With the notes in her hand, Lisa is irrepressible. “Listen to these,” she says in disbelief. “How about intellectual, Presbyterian, nurse. Or witty, Scottish, teacher. I reckon if I were a bloke forced to choose between these two I’d run to the Outer Hebrides.”

  “So what am I? On the short side, shabbily dressed, with a few pounds to lose?” I venture.

  “Or, frosty single mother with orange preserve obsession, ” jokes Mel.

  “No, no. What about this? Bossy—well, you are, a bit—sex-starved, with suspect standards of household cleanliness. Well, look at this, Ally. You should be ashamed,” says Sara, holding up a food-encrusted sock she’s found under a sofa cushion.

  We’re really on a roll with this. It’s far easier, and more fun, to dream up ghastly personal brands than something that you could actually say with a straight face. We spend another fifteen minutes like this, batting cringe-making descriptions of me back and forth among us. By that time it’s eleven-thirty and we are all pretty tired. I’m just thinking we will have to call it a night, leaving me without any brand at all, when I remember something I have stashed away upstairs.

  “Wait here,” I say, as if anyone is capable of moving quickly at this stage.

  In the top drawer of my dresser, I find what I’m looking for. It’s a Mother’s Day card made by Millie last year. On the front there’s a hand-drawn picture of me, dressed in a blue miniskirt and pink ankle boots and looking rather skinnier than I do in real life. Underneath the picture it says My Mummy.

  I open the card to read Millie’s handwritten inscription. It is almost as I’d remembered it.

  To my Mummy. You are pretty, and nice and funny. And sometimes very clever. (I remember now. This card was made three days after I’d managed to help Millie construct a log cabin for her history project. It had lolly sticks for sides and a roof made of shred-dies, glued on with sugar icing.)

  Is that me? Could I live with that as a brand?

  It seems to me that it’s as good as any we’re going to come up with. The descriptors are a trifle bland, but anything more interesting inevitably comes across as false and self-congratulatory, or lays itself open to misinterpretation. Take attractive, for instance. Doesn’t that immediately say not pretty enough, quite plain in fact? Or the word ambitious, which cries out ballbreaker! Loyal? Means you’ll never get rid of her. Fun loving? Sounds intensely annoying. Hearing someone described lik
e that would make you long instead for someone morose but interesting.

  Even clever is over the top, and will have to be jettisoned. I’ll stick with nice, pretty and funny, however bland it is. I take the card downstairs, where I find Lisa asleep and the others singing along to a Jamie Cullam CD that Mel has put on.

  “I’ve got it,” I announce to those who are awake. “Look at this.” I thrust Millie’s card into Sara’s hands.

  “To my Mummy. You are pretty, and nice and funny. And sometimes very clever,” Sara reads out from the card.

  “That’s perfect,” says Clara, yawning and reaching for her bag.

  “Great. That’ll do nicely. Just drop the clever bit, which is a bit pompous,” says Mel.

  This evening has clearly run its course. There’s only so long you can expect people to remain focused on you, after all. They’ve all been good sports. Now they clearly want to go home. It’s not as if any of them are going to pay attention to my brand. They’ll say the same things about me that they always have. If they happen to be upset with me they’ll say something less flattering. There’s nothing I can do about that.

  The more important thing, it seems to me, is that I am actually quite nice, and on a good day, bordering on pretty. I’m not much good at telling jokes, but I know I can be amusing when the mood strikes me. That’s not a bad brand to have. I should be quite a catch.

  WHEN THE OTHERS have gone, Clara and I are left slumped on the sofa waiting for her taxi. She’s ordered a black cab on her account as usual (minicabs give her the creeps) which means she has to wait longer.

  She has seemed quite cheerful tonight relative to the last few times we’ve spoken. Perhaps the ridiculousness of it all has taken her mind off things.

  I tell her everything I told Mel earlier, about the burial and Alan and Gary and Tom. “So what do you think, Clara? Do you suppose I’ve gone mad?” I ask, half expecting her to say yes.

  “You really want to know what I think?” she says with a heavy sigh. “I wish a few marketing methods could do for me what they seem to be doing for you. If only getting pregnant were about making a few bold moves and changing a few superficial things about myself. Wouldn’t that be grand?”

  Grand indeed.

  CHAPTER 23

  BUSTED

  I have a confession to make. I love Busted. I often pinch Millie’s CD and put it on while I’m cooking. I love their upbeat sound and all that leaping about with guitars, perhaps because it reminds me of the bands I grew up dancing to in school gymnasiums. Come to think of it, Busted is exactly what my first boyfriend Ben was probably aspiring to, and what I must have thought he was. I can see now that he was horribly short of the mark.

  That isn’t the real confession. The real confession is that listening to Busted stirs in me simultaneous feelings of motherly pride and teenage sexual longing. The other night I was watching them being interviewed by Jonathon Ross, sitting there fresh-faced and innocent in a way that only eighteen-year-old boys can be. I felt like their mother or their aunt, beaming in admiration of their talent and their unaffected natures.

  Then they played their new hit single and I turned to jelly. Charlie leaned into the microphone and sang something about a hot uniform and I felt a wave of something like desire. I say “like desire” because it isn’t real, even when you’re experiencing it. It’s a bit like a fantasy, or a memory. A remembered desire, dug up from parts of yourself long forgotten. And always dulled by the knowledge that you’d be proud to be their mother (something that never once occurs to you when you are actually sixteen and quivering in the presence of a band).

  Is this what happens when you’re thirty-seven and a mother? When you’re almost past it but not quite? I read an article about grown women with a passion for boy bands. One woman had a shrine to West Life in her kitchen. Another follows the band around on tour. Both were dubbed “embarrassing” by their teenage daughters. I’m not that bad. But I’m not beyond being able to appreciate what the fuss is all about.

  Busted is currently blaring from a loudspeaker that must be just outside the cramped changing room in which I am working my way through three hooks dripping with sportswear. Listening to “You Said No” when I’ve spent the better part of the morning peering out between the shutters to see if I can spot Tom walking by, it occurs to me that I am behaving somewhat like a sixteen-year-old.

  There was no sighting. Not at seven-thirty, when I thought he might be heading out to the park to shake off the effects of an early morning waking by Grace; not at eight-thirty, when I thought he might be coming back with Grace asleep in the stroller. And not during the next two hours, when I’d hoped he might happen by my front door on the way to pick up groceries or a newspaper. Of course, I was only able to peep out of the window intermittently; I couldn’t stand there on permanent guard with a pair of binoculars. So it’s entirely possible that he walked by while I was making a cup of tea, or staring at the sales forecast for one of our clear, jellied marmalades that I was supposed to be reworking.

  “How do they look? Are you going to come out and show me?” Mel shouts through the changing room door.

  I open the door a crack. “Just a second. I’m almost ready.”

  A few seconds later I emerge, wearing a pale pink tracksuit, the top of which is beautifully fitted at the waist, like something J-Lo would wear with a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses.

  Unfortunately the bottoms are low-slung to the point of indecency. They reveal not just the tops of my knickers, but an enormous expanse of white Lycra. I’m not sure they even make knickers small enough to remain hidden in trousers like these. Surely even the tiniest thong would be peeping out over the top of the waistband (which, sitting a good five inches below the waist, does not deserve its appellation).

  “Oh God. Those will never do!” Mel doubles over with laughter. “I saw a young girl in a pair like that the other day. Her entire backside was showing, and I just thought, Get over yourself.”

  “So it’s not just that I’m thirty-seven and carrying a few extra pounds?”

  “No, Ally. It’s not. Try on the other things.”

  I return obediently to my cubbyhole and retrieve another tracksuit from its hanger. This one is pale blue with a white stripe down the side of the leg and, on first inspection, somewhat more decent. When I open the changing room door, Mel claps her hand to her mouth and exclaims “That’s perfect! It is so you I will not allow you to walk out without it. Now all you need is the perfect white T-shirt to go underneath.”

  Mel goes in search of a white T-shirt while I try on the next pair of trousers. I’m not sure what these are, exactly. They’re not tracksuit bottoms, but they’re not ordinary trousers either. They’re some sort of hybrid that I think looks rather marvelous, and must surely satisfy Sara’s criteria for smart sloppy wear. I’m wearing them when Mel returns with three T-shirts. She stands looking at me studiously with her index finger pressed over her lips and nose.

  “I like these. They’re a bit tight, but when you shake off those extra pounds they’ll be perfect. I think you should get them,” she pronounces.

  Thus concludes our shopping trip. We pay for two T-shirts, the pale blue tracksuit and the black smart-sloppy trousers, all of which brings the total of my expenditures to £715. Before coming to this department we managed to dispense with £565 through the purchase of a very special pair of DKNY trainers (beige and white with a red stripe on one side, £70), a pair of butter-colored imitation Todd slip-ons (£65), a fantastic belted trench (£155), some Mac eye shadows (£65), a bottle of Chanel No. 19 Parfum (£120!) and three new underwire bras (fuchsia, flowered, and black; £90, but a good deal cheaper than at Rigby and Peller). I’ve decided that the rest of my £1000 must be saved for another day. You never know what I may be required to do after next week’s seminar.

  Mel and I grab a late lunch in the Fifth Floor Cafe, during which she eats very obviously for two and attempts to pry out of me a few last insights for her first article, th
e copy for which will be due next week. I’ve shared almost everything with her already, so I haven’t much to offer besides a comment on Friday night’s branding party.

  “I really enjoyed that. I was expecting it to be really uncomfortable, you know. But it was fun. And I did need a bit of a kick in the arse to make me bother to go out and get some new clothes—and to lose that weight.”

  “I think everyone else enjoyed it too,” says Mel nodding her head. “Even Lisa. Is she always that scary?”

  “Well, she’s pretty opinionated, but she’s not generally that harsh about it.” I consider Lisa for a minute, trying to fathom why she’s had such a violent initial reaction to the event. Why would she care so much?

  And then it dawns on me. We touched a nerve. Lisa has just broken up with Mike, and she’s probably wondering how, and if, she’s going to go out there again and find her Mr. Right. She knows she’s going to have to start all over again, making an effort, even changing some things to please a man. The thought of it probably fills her with horror. And the possibility that it might not be good enough to just amble along hoping to bump into someone, that she might be required to be proactive in the manner specified by The Proactive Partnership Program is too awful to contemplate.

  I say all this to Mel, who nods vehemently. “That’s really good. Fascinating. Can I put it in the article, if I change the names?”

  “Don’t you dare. Lisa will read it and know immediately we’re talking about her. It’s not fair. I may have signed up for this but she didn’t.”

  Mel looks disappointed, but she doesn’t fight back. She’s a journalist with integrity, after all.

  I MANAGE TO finish the sales forecast on Sunday morning, then make a trip to the gym for the first time in about three weeks. I figure exercising the seven pounds off will be easier than starving myself. Wearing my new blue tracksuit bottoms and white T-shirt (which I know is really for hanging around in a park rather than for actual sweat-inducing exercise) I feel pretty good on the Stair Master, but it’s still boring.