‘You’re just jealous that I’ve still got mine,’ she adds and regrets it, but only a little, when she sees the shadow of hurt. Geoff is sensitive about his hair loss. She veers away from him. ‘I’ll be in the shed if you need me,’ she says. In the past they might have touched. Physical contact used to be an essential part of the relationship, in small, everyday ways. A hand on the shoulder, a pat on the behind. Not anymore.
It was Geoff who christened Viv’s workroom her shed. He leaves her to it and rarely sets foot up here, on the top floor. The width of the house, with exuberant turquoise floorboards and a small bathroom, it was their daughter Daisy’s den until she left home.
Now, lined floor-to-ceiling with Viv’s overstuffed bookshelves, it exudes a bustling sense of purpose. Trestle tables piled with material scraps, computer and printer, sewing machine. A sheet of paper is pinned to a cork board, displaying a geometric grid of pencilled lines. This is a design for a patchwork quilt, Viv’s second. The end product is intended – over-generously, she now thinks – for the matrimonial bed.
Since she left publishing Viv’s recreational reading has, if anything, doubled. But she has also surprised everyone by taking up the craft of quilting. Her first effort was smaller and less ambitious: a cot quilt. This was done on spec, and since she was unsuccessful in concealing it from Daisy it has been a source of mortification. It is hidden away now in the back of a cupboard, out of sight if not of mind. Daisy is thirty-eight, and her five-year on-again–off-again relationship with Marco would seem, as far as her parents are concerned, to have stalled. Daisy and Marco will be returning to London soon after a week in Rome.
The design of the new quilt resembles a jigsaw with squares and triangles of material pinned up in experimental positions. To Viv, it’s a puzzle awaiting her solution. An intricate puzzle with multiple solutions, rather like life. Viv’s friend Joy believes that everything in life happens for a reason, but Viv believes in pre-emptive action. Certain actions are inherently adventurous and involve taking risks. She has decided she is not averse to taking the odd risk, even at her age.
And today, as chance would have it, the latest copy of The Economist is lying next to a jumble of colourful material cuttings. Lying right there in front of her nose. And Viv’s hand is moved to flip it over to the inside back cover, to the personal columns.
But to call this chance is being more than a little disingenuous, and she knows it. For a start, Geoff likes to go out every Sunday morning and pick up the papers and a magazine or two along with fresh croissants. He likes balance, and often comes back with Private Eye, New Statesman, The Economist or The Spectator. Viv has had occasion to study the various personal columns on and off for a while, and can repeat verbatim the wording of a particular advertisement. It’s a short ad, hardly more than a paragraph, and no matter which periodical it appears in is always the same.
It reads:
DISCRETION
Are you heterosexual, in a committed relationship that is not, for personal reasons, meeting your needs? At Discretion we enable individually screened introductions that are appropriate, intelligent and feasible. Ring Martin for more information and an initial, confidential interview.
There is a website, which Viv has looked at more than once, and a London phone number, which she knows by heart. She picks up her mobile, then replaces it in her pocket and switches the radio on. It happens to be playing an aria from one of Julia’s operas.
She turns the music down, looks at the door (which is closed) and then takes out the phone again, balancing it in the palm of her hand. The sequence of movements suggests a kind of ritual. It suggests the possibility that she may have performed these actions before, perhaps a number of times. This time, however, she doesn’t put the phone away.
The call is picked up on the first ring. Don’t give them time for the cold feet to kick in. Her heartbeat has speeded up. A man’s voice says, ‘The Discretion Agency, Martin Glover speaking.’ He has a pleasant, classless accent.
Viv had expected some sort of intermediary. ‘Oh yes, hello. Hi. I’d like some information please,’ she says. She hears herself sounding less assured than usual. Sounding slightly flustered. ‘I mean, I know it’s all there on the website, Mr Glover, but—’ What she means is, what kind of a business is this? And more to the point: who do you do business with?
‘What would you like to know? Just fire a few questions at me and I’ll do my best to answer them. Please call me Martin.’
‘What would I like to know? Well, let’s see. Is the agency designed for women as well? Is it for any age group? How do you check people out? I mean, you know, how does it all work, exactly?’ She’s pacing around the workroom. ‘Sorry, that’s too many questions being fired at you already. I’m not usually like this, I think I’m a bit – off balance.’ Fending off a panic attack, more likely.
‘You haven’t done this sort of thing before. Don’t worry, most of my clients haven’t either.’
‘Really, they haven’t?’ Viv is surprised to hear this. It’s heartening.
‘No,’ Martin says, ‘they certainly haven’t. For most of them, men as well as women, this is the one and only time they will have anything to do with an introduction agency. And for most of them it’s a bit of a last resort.’
‘Before giving up on the whole damn thing?’
‘Well, quite possibly. But we have no age restrictions, and you’d be surprised how many people don’t give up.’ Before a client is signed, there is a preliminary, in-depth interview. This helps screen out people with other agendas. The interview is obligatory, and on a no-obligation basis on both sides. That’s the deal.
Martin conducts these interviews himself. He set up the agency with his wife; it’s a small, personal operation. Maybe that’s why it seems to work rather well. But he likes to think it’s thoroughly professional, nonetheless.
‘So, you think there might be a chance for me? Or an off-chance of one?’ Martin is amused, she thinks, but in a nice way. By which she means non-patronising. Before they make a time and date for the interview, he says, he should bring the housekeeping side to her attention. There is the small business of the fee. Which turns out to be not inconsiderable, although the women’s rate is a quarter of that of the men.
Viv approves. It sounds like a very gallant way of doing things. Not exactly, Martin admits; it’s to try to attract more women. There is always an imbalance. Well, that’s better still, isn’t it, she says, from a woman’s point of view. Martin adds that they also offer a cut-price rate for three months, with five intros guaranteed. But this is for men only. Women get a whole year for the same investment.
Investment. An interesting word to use. Viv notices words, and she’s feeling more relaxed. ‘When you say there are no age restrictions …’
‘Well, we have clients on our books from every age range. But the majority are middle-aged.’
‘Oh.’ All their friends think they are still middle-aged. But Geoff wouldn’t agree.
‘Well, middle-age is often the period when problems within a marriage commonly tend to emerge, if they’re going to. And when people have significant investments, such as children, and more compelling reasons not to divorce. Illness of a partner causes others to use our service. Or incapacity – for whatever reason.’
‘Yes, I see,’ says Viv.
‘May I ask your first name?’
She does a quick mental toss-up and comes down on the side of honesty. ‘Vivien. And by the way, I suppose I’d better tell you that I’m sixty-seven,’ she says. It sounds ominous. Jules wouldn’t have said that. And Jules would have given a false name, like Germaine. ‘Might that squeeze in as middle-aged? Is it too old, Martin? Seriously, I mean.’
Not necessarily, is his reply, which while no doubt truthful doesn’t fill her with, as Jules might say, ineluctable confidence. Still, they make a date for the obligatory, no-obligation interview. There is a slot available this Thursday afternoon, which is very soon. In three days’
time, in fact. He suggests the coffee lounge of a hotel near Victoria Station. Most people can get there and it’s nice and quiet, Martin says. There’s a useful screen of ornamental plants at the far end. He generally takes up a tactical position behind that.
‘In hiding?’
‘Well, only if it seems advisable.’ A smile in the voice. ‘But I promise to come out.’
Viv is feeling slightly light-headed. ‘Can I …’
‘Ring me if you change your mind?’ The voice is reassuring. ‘Of course. No worries.’
She puts the phone in her pocket and sits down to take stock. She finds she has a stiff neck, and rotates her shoulders. The particular nature of the conversation makes her think of her mother. Judith Quarry is ninety-one, and still living in her own home.
Until recently, Judith wouldn’t have been seen dead in what Viv is wearing today: old jeans and T-shirt over a long-sleeved top. She’d have worn something she deemed more alluring to the opposite sex. When Viv saw that her mother had stopped dressing with the opposite sex in mind she realised that Judith had crossed an invisible line. She was now, in anyone’s language, an old woman.
Viv’s jeans may be old too but she can still get into them. Unlike some of her friends she hasn’t put on weight – well, no more than a few pounds. She rides her bike to the shops against safety-conscious Geoff’s wishes, and since last spring she also rides to the local gym to work out. This was prompted by the slogan of a chain of fitness clubs, plastered all over billboards in the Tube: Look Better Naked.
Geoff works out too. He used to play cricket, but since the arthritis in his bowling arm he’s taken up croquet, which has proved to be a ferociously competitive sport. He is lean and fit; his lack of interest in conjugal relations can’t be put down to incapacity – one of Martin Glover’s words. For a while Viv had wondered whether Geoff’s interest might have been tweaked if she looked better naked, and had signed up for a course with a personal trainer.
The desired outcome did not eventuate, but she has kept it up. She goes to the gym two or three times a week to do cardio and weight-training exercises. The need to be toned is a pressing one among Viv’s friends. Women who lift weights live longer and have a superior body image, is the prevailing wisdom. Everyone subscribes to the theory, if not quite so often to the practice.
The only women of her acquaintance who don’t care about it are members of her friend Joy’s quilting circle. Joy, originally from Louisiana, is also a successful writer of children’s picture books; she was one of Viv’s discoveries. But she’s forty-four, a whole generation younger, and she assures Viv coyly that she gets more than enough exercise the natural way. Joy has lived in London more than half her life, but she likes to play up her Southern drawl for Viv’s benefit. ‘Maybe I’ll start tangling with my body image when I get to your age, honey. That’s if I haven’t passed already.’
Viv knows she only says this to keep her quiet, and has no intention of tangling with it. She accepts that Joy’s body image, forged in the flat river country outside Baton Rouge, has a different template from her own.
Viv’s mind fast-tracks to two o’clock on Thursday afternoon. Martin Glover, an indeterminate figure, will be waiting to meet her from behind a screen of plants at the far end of a hotel coffee lounge. Through the gaps in the screen he will see her approach before she can see him. She has no illusions about the coming interview: it’s an exam, a viva voce she will have to pass in order to go any further – should she wish to do so. No obligations on either side. That’s the deal.
First impressions are important. This woman of sixty-seven is an unknown quantity to Martin Glover. How does she appear? There are a handful of things Viv is powerless to change even if she wanted to.
Gender and age are what a stranger will see first, and process automatically. And – thinking of Joy – skin colour. Age, gender and race, pure and simple. But there is a fourth item on the stranger’s internal checklist, and Viv can’t pretend otherwise because it’s as true of her as of anyone else.
That complicated item is sex appeal. The accidents of birth that make up your level of attractiveness, and that of the unknown person coming towards you. Your pulling power. Everyone has an internal gauge. Men are hard-wired.
But like the small matter of the fee being not so small, there are other components in the not-so-insignificant matter of one’s package. Over some of these elements Viv knows she has some control. Even if, she tries to stop herself adding, they are limited at my age.
There is the matter, for example, of the hair. Like it or not, grey (or – horrors – white) adds aeons, in Julia’s opinion. Is that what you want? Viv inspects her hair once more. It’s grey, it’s shaggy, it needs remedial surgery. Anyone can see that. A man like Martin Glover, accustomed to summing people up and assessing them, would certainly see it.
Well, when you want something done well and in a hurry, go straight to the top. She remembers Julia’s offer, and picks up the phone. Jules is coming to dinner tonight, but Viv will suggest they meet for a coffee first. Or perhaps a drink. Viv doesn’t want her husband to be anywhere in earshot when she acquaints Jules with Geoff’s sentence. And the specific action the s-word has prompted her to take.
Julia’s curiosity, a dominant trait, is piqued by the urgency of Viv’s request and by her refusal to elaborate over the phone. She agrees to lean on her personal colourist Ramona, an angel she has known forever. And within five minutes Jules rings Viv back.
The gods are smiling, the angelic Ramona has buckled under pressure (the ranks of those who have buckled under Julia’s pressure being considerable, and ever-growing) and agreed to give up her lunch hour today. Today, Viv! That’s all right, isn’t it? You did say it was urgent, didn’t you? This is the one and only time she can fit you in before Thursday. Take it or leave it, adds Jules, with an undertone of warning.
Jules once remarked that it was harder to get an appointment with Ramona than a table at The Ivy. Oh, I’ll take it, Viv says, looking at her watch. She runs downstairs full pelt, like someone half her age. In ten minutes flat she has thrown off her work clothes, picked out something more respectable (better trousers, smarter shirt) put on some make-up, and grabbed coat, scarf and bag from the bedroom.
Geoff has made himself a study in a cosy nook off the sitting room. He has a worn leather armchair in which he likes to sprawl and read science fiction and books on the origins of the universe. Viv looks in. ‘I’m off.’
‘Where to, poppet? Why are you in such a hurry?’ Geoff asks, without looking up. He has always been verbally affectionate and hasn’t altered much in this regard. Viv thinks the endearments are automatic, they must have rusted in.
‘Hair appointment, like I said. And I’m meeting Jules later. We might shop for a bit.’
‘I thought you didn’t like shopping.’
‘No, I hate it, but I need something for winter. I’ve got to go, or I’ll be late.’ She heads into the hall, calling, ‘And don’t say my clothes look all right to you.’ And don’t dare think, what’s the point of buying new clothes at your age?
‘You seem to have plenty in your cupboard,’ Geoff calls back, mildly. ‘You’re taking over mine, remember? But it’s true, you always look perfectly all right to me.’
‘I’m aiming higher than perfectly all right.’ The door slams, then opens again. ‘I nearly forgot, Geoff,’ she shouts, ‘Jules is coming for dinner.’
That’s good, she hears him say. Can I do anything to help? Since the sentence, which has not been mentioned again, Viv has noticed a tendency in Geoff to be more helpful than usual. Only a tendency; nothing else has changed. Nothing, or everything.
4
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
You don’t ride your bike when you’re going to get your hair done, and certainly not to Julia’s hair salon. Vivien takes the Tube to Holborn and arrives in Sicilian Avenue where, after some preliminary discussion, she will proceed to have the grey nuked by Ramona. Ramona is not the styl
e-Nazi of Viv’s imagining. Instead she is a buxom Scot in her early fifties whose attitude towards the older Julia is indulgent and motherly.
‘Ah well, I’m part of the accoutrements where our Julia is concerned, you see,’ she says, as if this explains everything. ‘I’m one of all the wee pieces of furniture in Julia’s life.’ Viv likes her on sight and is charmed by the metaphor.
She hadn’t intended to have a haircut as well, necessarily, but upon setting eyes on her, Ramona is moved to observe that a wee trim wouldn’t go astray. Her last trim now, when might that have been? Viv is unsure. It might have been, let’s see – well, it might have been a few months ago. Perhaps even several months, Your Honour, she is tempted to append. Such an admission in this very high-end temple of self-improvement rings like a guilty plea in the dock.
Ramona nods. We do have to work at keeping our hair tamed, do we not, or it’ll start thinking it rules the roost. Especially your headstrong kind, dear. Give it an inch and it’ll take a mile! And she beckons Danni over. Ariane, Julia’s personal stylist of choice, is not available – she’s fully booked, as per usual, but Danni is new and very good. Ramona leans over and whispers, Don’t let the presentation give you the willies; Danni’s a pet, and she knows what she’s doing.
Danni is very young and short-skirted, with multiple piercings and cropped gamin hair. In comparison to half the clientele, and certainly to Viv’s eyes, she appears dangerously thin. She appraises Viv’s bushy locks and makes several rapid observations. Although offered in a neutral way and in a down-to-earth Yorkshire accent, they come embellished with authority. Some thinning out, some shaping, and let’s take a look at the length. Like, how it is now, it’s a bit heavy and draggy, right? And all those split ends and straggly bits, we’ll get rid of them, yeah? Nothing massive, not really, just a tidy up. Yeah? A really good tidy up. It will look sooo much better, trust me.
The Age of Discretion Page 3