The answer hurtles like a missile across the table. The truth emerged yesterday morning in Rome, over breakfast in Trastevere, in response to an ultimatum from Daisy. She couldn’t wait any longer: Marco must agree to start a course of IVF immediately on return to London, or they were history. Well, it turned out they were history there and then because there was no point in shelling out squillions for IVF when it never had a hope in hell of working, was there?
The waiter is looking worried. Daisy has hardly touched her meal. Instead, she has made a pattern on her plate of torn pita topped with different-coloured dips. Like a patchwork quilt, Viv thinks. She starts eating more, and more rapidly, to compensate.
‘He’d kept it a secret from me, when I should’ve been the first to know. All those wasted years and he’d never admitted it. He said he didn’t want to lose me. Isn’t that criminal behaviour? Isn’t it beyond unbelievable?’ She directs an accusing gaze at her mother.
Viv agrees, it is an unforgiveable betrayal of trust. But she is also processing this information. There’s something about it that doesn’t quite add up. It’s the contraception issue. Why had Daisy decided IVF was going to be necessary?
‘Why? Because I hadn’t got pregnant, Mum. Why do you think?’
Viv feels as if all the fury, distress and exasperation in Daisy’s voice is aimed at her. She is reminded of episodes of projectile vomiting when Daisy was a baby.
It emerges that Daisy has been trying to get pregnant for the past two years. Or thought she was trying. ‘Little did I know there was fat chance of that happening.’ Two years was how long they said to give it, when you’re already in your mid-thirties, before seeking medical intervention.
So, Viv is still working through this, you went off the Pill two years ago?
‘Mum, try to concentrate, okay? I just told you that. I went through it all. Jesus.’
Without telling Marco that’s what you were doing?
‘Well, he was never going to change his attitude, was he?’ Daisy demands, gesticulating. ‘And he hadn’t chosen to reveal the crucial little nano fact of the vasectomy to me, had he? Obviously I had to be proactive. I thought he’d change his mind when it happened, when we had a baby, whatever he thought he wanted. I was sure he’d actually really like it.’
She tosses her long curling hair. Her mother’s hair, brown but not mousy, with highlights for added interest. An expression of Daisy’s personality, which like her mother’s is neither drab nor timid. Instead it is sometimes wilful and can be fiery. Her parents had hoped these traits might tone down somewhat when she took up with Marco. Instead, they seemed to intensify.
‘I even thought he’d turn out to be a good father. How fucking stupid was that?’ Daisy’s eyes brim with tears.
Viv strokes her hand. ‘If you had told Marco what you were doing two years ago, it might have all come out then, when you were thirty-six …’ She knew full well this was an unwise thing to say when she was halfway through saying it, but it’s too late. Her daughter’s welling eyes flash with an outrage that is all too familiar.
‘Shit, Mum, shove that up your bum. I’m not in the mood to be moralised at.’ The tears spill over in a rush. She buries her face in a pink damask napkin. The sudden lull is pierced by the raucous catcalls of a now defunct punk band, the ringtone of Daisy’s mobile.
She springs up and rushes away from the table, scrubbing at her eyes and narrowly avoiding crashing into the good-looking waiter. He is old enough to be a father, although not old enough to be hers, and he looks after her with startled concern.
Is the caller Marco? Viv is in turmoil too, wanting to wrest the phone from her daughter’s hand and give him the mother of all roastings. But it’s not Marco. She sees Daisy become more effervescent and animated, a sign that she’s talking to one of her friends. From the character and duration of the call, it’s most likely her best friend, Alyse.
Viv is very aware of time ticking by. She will have to make a decision soon, whether to leave Daisy or cancel her appointment. The decision is made for her when Daisy returns to the table, having been to the loo and repaired her face. She is going to Alyse’s. With any luck she’ll get to her place before the older kids get home from school.
Viv is relieved but also torn. Is Daisy sure she will be all right? What about tonight? Would she like to come—
It’s okay, her daughter says with weary emphasis, tonight she’s having dinner with Adrian. Adrian is a gay friend of long standing. Daisy and Adrian have seen each other through various calamities, more or less equally apportioned.
No, Daisy doesn’t know where Marco is, nor does she care. No, she hasn’t a clue where she’s going to live. She is too stressed to even think of all that stuff now. All she knows is she couldn’t bear to set eyes on that slimy little turd ever again. She gives her mother a desultory kiss and heads off, towing her suitcase.
She takes a few steps and looks back. ‘Thanks for lunch. Cool threads, Mum.’ Daisy has always had a tendency, lovable to her friends as well as her mother, to undercut her self-absorption at the most unlikely times.
‘Oh—’ Viv is caught unawares. ‘The suit? You don’t think it’s too young?’
‘Too young? Of course not. You’re in your prime, staggeringly youthful, Mum!’ A laugh, even. This is a running routine of theirs. ‘Good hair day too, hey. So, where are you off to?’
Viv is caught short. Just now, the little white lie couldn’t have been further from her mind. And which one to choose? The friend in hospital? College reunion? Dentist? ‘Well, I—’ But by now Daisy is well out of earshot.
Alyse has a responsible lawyer husband and three attractive, lively children. Collective arrows in Daisy’s heart under the circumstances, her mother can’t help feeling. Daisy has often compared her bestie’s luck in love with her own lack of it. And Adrian, while undeniably funny and charming, is a fey and feckless drifter, Viv has always thought. She hopes he will be up to dealing with this latest catastrophe.
She feels she herself has been inadequate, though not for want of love or care. Motherhood has been a joy overall, but it would be inaccurate to claim it has been an unmitigated one. Like old age, it is not designed for sissies. Viv thinks most of the mothers she knows would concur with that.
She looks at her watch. Eight precious minutes of calm before she has to go. She slumps back in her chair, eyes closed, and tries to empty her mind. In this she is unsuccessful. Worry about her daughter supersedes anything else. When she beckons the waiter over for the bill, nothing is said but something passes between them: a shared acquaintance with the perilous shoals of parenting.
One of many useful habits fostered by a career in publishing is punctuality. You don’t keep authors and agents waiting. With two minutes to spare, Viv is outside the hotel. She dives into the powder room and makes an attempt to spruce herself up. Jolly herself up too. She examines her reflection in the mirrored wall, striving to recapture the impression of insouciance. It feels lost and out of reach.
She sees an anxious-looking Caucasian woman in her sixties in a red trilby hat. There are parallel lines (fine, but visible) around the corners of her mouth and radiating from the corners of her eyes. Laughter lines; when she tries out a smile her face creases into them. If she moves out of the direct overhead light, are they more unobtrusive? One should seize every opportunity to be backlit, is Julia’s advice.
The person in the mirror is quite snappily dressed, however. Beneath the hat her hair has life and texture. That’s something. The insouciance flutters like an elusive butterfly. She thinks: I can capture it. I will bring it down.
And on the dot of two-thirty Vivien Quarry can be seen strolling, but with a spring in her step, through the sparsely populated coffee lounge towards the screen of climbing plants at the end. She knows she is being observed by someone behind the screen. As she approaches she sees his profile (male, sixties, Anglo). He is tucking a folded newspaper away into a briefcase.
He gets up and hold
s out his hand, smiling. ‘Madam Vivien, I presume? I’m Martin Glover.’ Medium height and balding, pleasantly unremarkable face, tortoiseshell glasses, slight paunch, grey suit, open-necked blue shirt. He is appraising her in turn, while appearing not to do so. She tries not to guess at his assessment.
‘Let’s bring on the sustenance before we fade away,’ he says, signalling the waitress. ‘Tea or coffee? And we’d better have a plate of their delicious biscuits as well. Chewy oatmeal or chocolate? Hmm, difficult. Both, I think, don’t you, to be on the safe side?’ He is practised at the skills of putting people at ease and drawing them out. Viv recognises the techniques. She has dealt with many introverted authors, and before she knows it he has elicited this very fact from her. Does she think of herself as retired, then?
‘My husband is but I’m not. I mean, I’ve left publishing, but I’m doing other things and I don’t have any more spare time than I used to. Less, if anything.’ She tells him a little about the things. He shows interest, and she thinks it is genuine. Occasionally he writes in a black Moleskine notebook.
So, she’s not bored. That’s good, he says. A lot of people are looking for sex on the side as a way of filling in time, although they may not see it that way. Mainly older people, it’s true, but not exclusively.
‘Oh, I’m certainly not bored,’ Viv says. ‘That’s not my problem at all.’
Many people are looking for excitement, to spice things up a bit. Or even for love, at a pinch. To recapture those heady, youthful feelings. What is she looking for? Besides sex, he adds. Lightly, with a sidelong smile.
What an interesting question. Is she looking for anything besides? She hadn’t anticipated being asked precisely this.
‘Well, I’m not looking for love. I’m certainly not looking to recapture that first fine careless rapture; I couldn’t handle that again.’ The answer arrives of its own accord. ‘I want someone – a man – to notice me again.’ Preferably with desire, she thinks. Is this out of the question? Is it so outlandish? ‘With a little affection. If possible.’
And you’re not getting that from your husband, Martin says. A statement, not a question. You want sex within a relationship, of some sort.
Of some sort, yes, Viv says. I want my sex life back. I’ve been very frustrated for the past two years. My husband seems to have lost interest completely, and won’t talk about it.
On one level she is amazed to hear herself say such things to someone she has only just met. Someone who is not much more than a perfect stranger. On another level there is something about the matter-of-fact way the conversation is unfolding that negates the personal. Or is it more that it removes the burden of the intimate from the personal, so that what would normally be private can be put on the table in a businesslike way.
‘But you don’t want a divorce.’
‘No. No, I don’t.’ She is positive on this score. A divorce at her age – at their age? It is somehow unthinkable. And yet, of course, people do it. They take that step occasionally, as Julia has pointed out in relation to her seventy-year-old brother. What has prompted Max to bite the bullet at this stage, so late in his married life? Although Max and Patricia’s relationship was never happy, according to Jules.
‘We’ve got such a history together. To break it all asunder, over something like this, like having no sex – it just doesn’t seem necessary. We’re very companionable together, on the whole, and we have a good life.’ And we have our daughter. Viv has decided not to mention Daisy unless asked.
Martin is listening intently while eating, with evident enjoyment, a chocolate bath oliver. He doesn’t respond, and Viv is aware that this is deliberate. He has gleaned there is more to be said on this subject. She decides to say some of it.
‘We’ve had – we still have, really – a pretty good marriage. But this issue is undermining it on a daily basis.’ She thinks of the events of last week. ‘It’s already done that, quite severely, and I think it’s up to me to stop the rot.’
‘Up to you alone?’
‘Well, it doesn’t seem to affect my husband. I’ve tried everything, all the usual suspects. He says he doesn’t need testosterone, for instance, because there’s nothing wrong with him. And couples therapy would be moving deckchairs on the Titanic.’
Martin, munching his biscuit, has been scribbling in his notebook. He nods. Viv guesses he has encountered this scenario in a wide arc of variations.
‘No doubt you’ve heard all this before, many times. But maybe more often from the other side of the fence? I mean, from the opposite gender.’
He smiles. It’s true that men are more likely to do something about it, and use the internet, or perhaps escorts. Neither of these options holds any appeal for his particular clients, however, which is why they enlist the help of a targeted introduction agency such as his own. He thinks it would be a mistake to assume that this sort of situation does not impact women in the same way as men. But society’s norms mean there are fewer options, and women are more hesitant about seeking solutions.
Women are less likely to take remedial action, I suppose, says Viv. Or they have been, until recent social changes. She likes Martin’s attitude.
He leans back with his hands behind his head. So you want to maintain your marriage, while conducting an occasional discreet, no-strings liaison. What kind of person do you have in mind?
‘Is there a choice?’
This time he laughs. ‘Ah, we should be able to come up with more than one option, with any luck. Thinking about possible candidates, we might start with the non-starters. Something about a chap that would be a deal-breaker in your book. Have you thought about your priorities?’
Viv is thrown. She was unprepared, quite so early in the piece, to be given the news that she has passed the exam. Or at least that she has been given leave to advance to the next stage. Well, I’d like someone in the same boat, ideally, she says. Or a comparable boat. Perhaps with a mad wife in the attic.
Martin looks up. What about age? Would she consider meeting a younger man?
‘Younger? I hadn’t thought. How much younger?’
He counters with his own query, flipping back two pages in his notebook. When they spoke on the phone, how old did she say she was?
Julia had strongly advised putting her age back. Sixty-seven, Viv says, rejecting this advice again, with misgiving. She realises she has not seized control of the interview in the way Jules suggested. It hasn’t seemed necessary.
‘Yes, that’s what I wrote down, but I thought it might be a mistake. You could pass for quite a bit younger, so I think it might be preferable for us to list you as late fifties. Fifty-seven or eight, or so. It’s easier for me to find chaps who want to meet someone that age.’
Viv’s confidence has not recovered from the blow dealt by her husband. Her pleasure at hearing she looks younger is tinged with disbelief.
‘You can always tell them when you get to know them,’ adds Martin, ‘if it makes you feel better.’
‘For instance, if we’re about to jet off on Ryanair for a weekend in Rome? So he doesn’t keel over when he sees my passport and call the whole thing off?’
‘Ryanair? They haven’t upped their game that much. I’d hope it was BA.’ He proffers the plate. They both take another biscuit. Viv finds she is beginning to enjoy this. The interview has acquired a slightly playful quality, now that she has pushed Daisy’s problems to the back of her mind.
‘I don’t know about younger,’ she says. ‘I might feel uncomfortable.’ She thinks it over. ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend who was younger than me. Not even in my twenties, in that post-Pill period.’ When everyone was fucking everything that moved, as Daisy would say.
Well, maybe it’s time to give it a whirl, says Martin. Anyway, don’t worry about it. You can see how you feel on the day. In my experience, you can’t predict how any two people are going to get on, not with any great accuracy. Whatever they may have said in the privacy of the confessional, chemistry tends to ov
erride it. Personality pheromones, auras – call it what you will. But having said that, let’s get back to your preferences.
Yes, Viv can see the logic, or the wilful illogic, of chemistry. But in that case, is there much point in asking me – in asking any of your clients – what they think they’d like or wouldn’t like?
‘There’s some point,’ Martin says. ‘There are certain fundamentals many people feel strongly about.’ He ticks them off. ‘Age can be one. Colour is another. Nationality, too. Habits such as smoking and drinking. Then there’s education level, religion, politics and, dare I say it, class.’
All the ingrained prejudices. ‘Chain smoking might be a deal-breaker, I suppose.’
‘And we haven’t even started on the whole matter of appearance. Fat, thin, tall, short. Receding, balding, dreadlocks, tattoos. You name it, people will have strong views about it. Or think they do.’
Of course. ‘The level of attractiveness. How can you quantify an enigma like that?’
‘And is it even relevant? Have another biscuit. Don’t mind me, I just tick the boxes. Try to locate what you really feel. I’m only doing the maths, I have no opinions.’
‘I doubt that.’ She takes another biscuit. ‘You know, as well as never having had a younger boyfriend, I’ve never slept with anyone black or Asian. I’m boringly middle class, and I don’t think I’ve ever dated a blue blood, or even a blue-collar blood. Or, now I come to think about it, anyone who didn’t go to university, at least for a period. Lordy’ – a word she has picked up from Joy – ‘how shameful is that? What a shockingly narrow life I’ve led.’
‘Well, we were both young in the sixties,’ Martin says comfortably. ‘There may be a few things we don’t remember. Don’t worry, I’m afraid we all tend to surround ourselves with a comfort zone of like-minded people. It’s the way of the world.’
‘Yes, but it shouldn’t be, should it?’ Martin is right about the fog of the sixties. She has just recalled a certain young Turkish musician, a classical guitarist who serenaded her outside her bedroom window. He was self-taught, brilliant, and lived in other people’s beds. Including, for a brief period, her own. He also took hard drugs. What happened to him? Whatever was his name?
The Age of Discretion Page 6