The Age of Discretion

by Virginia Duigan

  Before she has had time for second thoughts, or for any cautionary thoughts at all, she reaches a decision. ‘Let’s forget about my prejudices. I’m sure I’ve got the full board, but I’m not entirely sure what they are. And I think I’d rather make up my own mind about a person, not rule him out in advance because of the packaging. That gives you more scope, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does widen the catchment area. And nothing’s set in stone. If you find I’m way off the mark with any of the introductions, if you suddenly find you can’t stand excessive weight, or specs or baldness, you can let me know at any time.’

  She likes his self-deprecation, and she finds this encouraging. Any of the introductions; this must mean he envisages more than one. Possibly even several?

  He agrees to forget about her preferences for now. Or her prejudices, as she prefers to call them. ‘But we can’t overlook those of the chaps. They’re not always quite as accommodating, sad to say. We should talk a little more about your background and interests.’

  Oh. She thought they had been. ‘Wouldn’t their prejudices boil down to one? I’m not a beauty, not even a faded one. What I’m getting at is the problem of my age. Given that men are hard-wired not to find older women attractive.’

  She bites her tongue. It just slipped out. Enunciated here in the coffee lounge of an impersonal hotel, it sounds oddly out of place. And it carries more than a whiff of what her mother would call the unexamined idea.

  ‘Now Vivien,’ Martin says, leaning forward. ‘You seem to have a bit of a bee in your bonnet about this. You can rest assured that anyone who contacts you will know in advance your—’ He pauses, and the puckish look on his face becomes, she thinks, even more so. ‘Your approximate age. And they will be fine with it.’

  He removes his glasses for emphasis. ‘You can be quite sure they are fine with it, otherwise I won’t point any of them in your direction. Men come in all shapes and sizes, you know.’ She suspects he has been prompted to say this before. ‘In my line of work I see all types with all manner of druthers. There are widespread tendencies, certainly, but there’s no one size fits all. Any more than there’s one size for all women.’

  Viv feels a little reassured. Also more than a little foolish. ‘Which is fortunate. Yes, of course you’re right. It’s silly to generalise. It’s just that my husband has a problem with me being the age I am.’

  ‘Well, I think I can come up with some chaps who won’t have this problem.’

  ‘You think so? You’re reasonably confident?’

  He appears to consider, looking serious. ‘I think there are grounds for guarded optimism.’ They laugh. ‘I can’t guarantee anything – least of all, of course, whether you will approve of any of them enough to want to take things further.’

  Relating salient points of the conversation to Jules later on, Viv describes Martin’s eyes, at this point, as twinkling. He is a decent man, she has decided. If they weren’t much of an age, she might have described his attitude to her as protective. Paternal, even. Which given the situation is diverting. She is fairly confident that her own father would have reacted to this situation with incredulity. As, no doubt, would Geoff himself. Martin though, she feels, would take any human foibles and deviations in his stride.

  And this is probably why, as they reach the end of the interview, she has become sufficiently trusting of Mr Martin Glover, whom she has known for just under two hours, to write him a cheque for a few hundred pounds.

  Jules had advocated forcefully against this. A cheque or credit card would create a paper trail for Geoff to trip over, which should be avoided at all costs as it could come back and bite you on the bum. When contemplating having an affair – and Jules thought the activity Viv was proposing qualified as such, and could well involve multiple affairs – one should always err on the side of caution.

  6

  TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

  Before shaking hands with Martin (warmly) in the cold air on the pavement outside the hotel, Viv has also signed a brief form in which she engages the introduction services of the Discretion Agency, hereinafter known as the Agency, for the period of a year. During this time, the Agency will do its best to introduce her to a suitable range of clients from its books. However, it makes no binding commitment in this regard.

  Moreover, Vivien absolves the Agency absolutely of any responsibility or liability (moral, legal or financial) for any occurrence, accident or misadventure of any kind or description that may occur as a result of any introduction facilitated by it.

  ‘It’s more of a gentlewoman’s agreement than a formal contract,’ Viv admits to Julia in a rushed phone call later that afternoon. While the wording has a semblance of legalese, she senses the principal input came from Martin Glover himself.

  Viv is obliged to confess that not only did she neglect to do anything that Jules recommended, she went ahead and did the opposite. She did not subject Mr Glover to the third-degree, or anything like it. The subject of vetting was never mentioned. Nor was the nature of the pool of suitable clients. She committed herself on the spot, handing over a cheque with her own name printed on it.

  Having railed against this raft of actions, Jules, who is about to go out and has her regular minicab on the way, homes in on what she sees as Viv’s gullibility and general attitude of compliance. She has no hesitation in finding this attitude bogus.

  ‘As for the baloney that you don’t have any likes or dislikes,’ the voice on the phone is rich with exasperation, ‘you know you can’t abide slip-on shoes with tassels, or socks with sandals. Or gaudy Rolexes. Or phrases like: In this day and age, or Young people today, and—’

  ‘Are you quite finished?’

  ‘Nowhere near, but I think I’ve made my point. Now, I simply must go or my poor driver will go AWOL. No, the list of your prejudices is endless. As are those of anyone our age, don’t get me wrong – it’s not just you. I too have the odd bias. I tend to shy away from tenors with steatopygia, as you may remember. And dribbling basses. But to give that poor man the idea that you’ll happily take home anything that happens to have a functioning penis – it’s asking for trouble, Viv.’

  Viv pictures Julia shaking her head, shapely nostrils dilated. She knows Jules is already pacing the floor, by the way her voice keeps dipping in and out. Viv is keen to change the topic, and acquaint her with the details of Daisy’s plight.

  ‘Be that as it may, Jules, I thought it was better not to queer my pitch any further than it already probably—’

  Before she can say a word about Daisy, there is an explosive guffaw in her ear. ‘Be that as it may? What fresh bullshit is this? You’re kidding yourself. You’re just after a bit of rough trade. Talk tomorrow after you’ve slept on it. You can always cancel the cheque.’ And Jules hangs up.

  Viv, who is up in the shed with the door shut, has been doing a bit of pacing herself. She needs to go downstairs and get the dinner on. She needs to talk to her husband about their daughter’s problems. Geoff was out playing croquet on this unexpectedly dry afternoon, and he usually comes home in a good mood. He doesn’t yet know that his chances of becoming a grandfather have suffered a major setback.

  This subject is not as fraught as that of Viv and Geoff’s moribund sex life, but it has its difficulties. There are uneasy parallels, not exact but analogous, with their own history as parents. For several years after Daisy’s birth they had fought over whether to have a second child.

  Both find this hard to process now, but Daisy’s very existence was an accident, coming at a stage in their lives when they were still establishing their careers. Her conception was a matter of a missed pill or two for which Viv, perforce, took the blame. And after this inauspicious start the pregnancy itself was plagued with problems. Midway through it, they moved out of Julia’s apartment into a deceased estate untouched since before the First World War.

  Julia’s flat, if nothing like the luxury it would become in later years, was a daily pleasure. They would have left ev
entually, but the imminent – and, it must be said, unwelcome – prospect of fatherhood had a galvanising effect on Geoff. It propelled him out of there. He’d had enough of Bloomsbury women and their managing ways.

  Jules diagnosed this as a primeval instinct, the drive of a hitherto slatternly and undomesticated male to provide for his family in his own cave. Too bad that the cave of choice happened to be unfit for human habitation. Viv opposed the move too, but saw it differently. She saw it as Geoff taking revenge on her for the unplanned pregnancy. Perhaps it was entirely subconscious revenge; perhaps not entirely.

  Julia Jefferies, Covent Garden’s rising young star, had followed up her success as Sophie in Rosenkavalier with a triumphant Juliet in Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, and offers were now coming in from opera houses around the world. Before long they would be flooding in. Her absences were likely to become more frequent and prolonged. She liked to come home to raucous companionship and a well-stocked fridge. Her friends could ramp up the size of their deposit to a more realistic level and have their baby in comfort.

  Viv was sympathetic. She suspected this was a roundabout way of saying Jules didn’t want to be alone. But Geoff had just been given a modest raise and he forced the issue by slapping down a deposit on a renovator’s dream in Battersea.

  Following Daisy’s birth, a period that was rarely less than tense lurched into chaos. After burst pipes and rodents came the discovery of asbestos. Bloomsbury was no longer an option as Jules had just engaged a new tenant. Viv leant on her mother for temporary crisis accommodation in Oxford.

  Judith was busy negotiating new domestic arrangements of her own. She had just embarked on life with her second husband, Stefan, Viv’s excitable new Czech stepfather. Stefan was an electrician and amateur jazz violinist with whom Judith had been having an affair (quite widely known in academic circles, although not by Viv’s father) for some time.

  Geoff dug in his heels. The temperature of their relationship, Viv wrote to Jules (singing Juliet in Hamburg) reached new levels of fraught. It threatened to soar off the scale after Viv took the baby to Oxford for a few weeks that turned into six months. The fact that she stayed on with a fractious infant in circumstances that were not ideal (Stefan’s children were grown up, their babyhood a distant and evidently mixed memory) said a lot about the difficulties back in Battersea.

  Things changed when she brought Daisy home. Viv and Geoff had missed each other. They were reconciled. Geoff saw big changes in his daughter, who didn’t know who he was. This was a shock; Geoff couldn’t remember his own father, who had walked out before his third birthday. He discovered in himself a powerful desire not to revisit this script.

  Many of the difficulties in their parents’ marriages had related to domestic chores and child-rearing. Viv and Geoff divided their responsibilities in a more equitable way. But Geoff was adamant that any talk of more children should be postponed.

  They continued to postpone it until Viv, like Daisy now, reached her late thirties. In these years of declining fertility their best efforts didn’t do the trick. Nor did several gruelling cycles of IVF. The inability to have a second child became their biggest disappointment.

  What has now befallen Daisy, therefore, will resonate in ways that are painful and complicated. Memories will surface. On Viv’s side they are likely to be tinged with resentment, as she recalls those years of possibility squandered. On Geoff’s, they will be coloured by guilt. But Viv reminds herself that while the memories may be different for each of them, the upshot is the same. The whole subject is touchy and to be tiptoed around.

  She decides to wait until they’ve had their usual pre-dinner cocktail in front of the TV news. Geoff likes to make these; he mixes them strong and better than most. His mojitos, ever since a holiday in Mexico, are particularly good. He makes them tonight, adding handfuls of mint from the garden.

  He tells Viv about this afternoon’s croquet game. She listens to this on one level, while going through the interview with Martin in her mind. Geoff’s team won today. They tossed, and he was the outright winner of the monthly jackpot. She enthuses. How will he squander it?

  Geoff thinks he will splash out on a new jacket. A corduroy one with elbow patches he has seen in a local shop. Viv is intrigued to hear this, since he rarely buys clothes. She usually has to bully him or buy them herself. Could this be a sign he is having an affair? What colour, she asks.

  Geoff ponders. Dung colour, he thinks.

  ‘Very smart,’ says Viv. ‘Most of your trousers are in shades of dung, aren’t they? You won’t have to worry whether it goes with them.’

  ‘That was my reasoning. I won’t have to worry, I thought.’

  ‘I had lunch with Daisy,’ she tells him, as they sit down for dinner at the kitchen table. Sesame chicken stir fry with Thai vegetables. ‘You could have come if it weren’t for croquet, of course.’ This is not quite true. Today was strictly mother and daughter.

  ‘Daisy’s back? Couldn’t she have come over tonight?’ Geoff stabs a baby corn. ‘Or should I say they,’ he adds darkly.

  ‘She’s having dinner with Adrian.’

  Geoff doesn’t like Adrian either. He gives a grunt of distaste. ‘How was Rome?’

  ‘Rome was not good.’ Viv takes a sip of wine. It’s an unoaked Australian chardonnay, one of Julia’s recommendations.

  ‘Why not? Marco being more of a shit than usual? Or just being his usual shitty self?’

  Viv puts down her knife and fork. She’s not quite sure how to tell him. He continues to eat hungrily until he realises something is up.

  ‘What is it, then? Have they split up again?’

  ‘Yes, they have. Only this time it’s for good.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’ Geoff pauses, the persistent Daisy and Marco baby disagreements uppermost in his mind. And Daisy’s age. ‘Well, maybe it’s for the best …’ It sounds uncharacteristically tentative. The subtext is all too plain. In recent years he too has discovered a visceral desire for a grandchild.

  ‘But I can know it’s for good.’ Viv takes a deep breath. ‘You see, Daisy discovered Marco had a vasectomy done six years ago. A fact he’d never seen fit to disclose.’

  Geoff utters an exclamation that includes a strong element of satisfaction. ‘I always knew he was an arsehole.’

  ‘We always knew.’

  They glance quickly at each other for the first time in the conversation, then look down again and go on eating. Each is also chewing over the ramifications. How is Daisy taking it, Geoff asks. Badly, he assumes.

  ‘Badly, yes. Very. She’s violently angry and upset, as you’d imagine. She—’ Viv hesitates. She has been in two minds whether to tell Geoff about the other salient fact, Daisy’s attempt to get pregnant without telling Marco. It’s relevant, in a roundabout way. She goes ahead and tells him.

  Then she says, ‘It’s a bit of a moral conundrum, isn’t it? Not that it affected the issue, in the event. But Daisy wasn’t to know that.’ She wavers, but only briefly. ‘Still, I can understand why she did it.’

  There is an extended pause in which Geoff, knowing nothing useful can be said, says nothing. Viv experiences an upsurge of strong emotion. ‘I should have done the same, shouldn’t I? How I wish I’d done it.’ She didn’t intend this.

  Her husband inclines his head. It is a small movement, scarcely perceptible, but it’s enough. It’s an acknowledgement. It puts them on the same side. She brushes away a single tear.

  Geoff sees it. He says, ‘At least we have Daisy.’

  For more than twenty-five years, on the other occasions, the rare other occasions when they have ventured into this territory strewn with landmines, one or other of them has ended up saying the same thing. Often using the same words. Geoff pours more wine, generous slugs. Julia knows her stuff on the wine front, as on other fronts.

  When they are clearing up, and there has been a safe interval, Geoff asks Viv what she thinks Daisy will do now. Marco was paying the lion’s share of th
eir flat in Docklands. Daisy won’t be able to keep it on unless she gets someone else in. And if she were to do that she would lose her painting studio in the second bedroom.

  ‘I’m worried about her,’ Viv admits. ‘Apart from anything else, she may be tempted to rush into another relationship on the rebound.’ Daisy has rushed into rebound relationships before, and made unsuitable choices as a result. Marco is a case in point. ‘Or …’

  ‘Or?’ prompts Geoff, cautiously.

  ‘It did occur to me to wonder if she might decide she wants to go it alone. As a single mum. In some way.’

  ‘Did she say anything of that kind to you?’

  ‘No. No, she didn’t,’ Viv hastens to say, ‘not at all. She said nothing like that, it was just me speculating.’

  ‘Did you suggest it?’ His voice is neutral.

  ‘Oh no, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. At least, anyway – not ideal. Not necessarily. And I’m not suggesting it would happen. But if it did …’

  ‘If it did happen, we’d just have to support her decision, wouldn’t we?’ Geoff says.

  They watch two gripping episodes of a Swedish detective series, part of a DVD set that Daisy and Marco passed on and they will in turn pass on to Judith, and go upstairs in a preoccupied but more harmonious frame of mind than they have for some weeks.

  Not that there’s anything to show for it, thinks Viv. Geoff has fallen asleep almost instantly but her mind is active. It’s been quite a day, what with Daisy’s news and then the interview. She listens to her husband’s breathing. Should I feel guilty about what I’m contemplating doing, she wonders. In any case, what does should mean, in a situation such as this?

  It’s the kind of linguistic conundrum that her intellectual mother spent a large part of her academic life mulling over. Judith was skilled in identifying ways to determine what might make an action moral or immoral.