The Age of Discretion

by Virginia Duigan

  In a conversation with Martin just previous to this one, Viv had declared her intention of hiding behind an alias for a change. It seemed like a harmless bit of fun. She had selected the name Beatrice (after Beatrice Webb) and Woolf (after Virginia). Martin had advised against Woolf. It might have unfortunate overtones, he thought.

  Such as? Such as big teeth and aggression. Viv had replaced it with the less intimidating Taylor, after Elizabeth Taylor (the novelist, not the actress). She thought she might give her husband an alias too.

  Leary’s declaration of full disclosure need not be taken as absolute gospel, Martin suggests. A lot of what he says tends to be a bit over the top. He’s a Jewish American in the Woody Allen mould.

  Somewhat in that mould, Martin says, after Viv expresses a doubt. He’s not married to his stepdaughter. If he was, Martin thinks this would have come out in the initial interview. Leary is not inclined to be retentive, as has already been indicated.

  A text arrives from Leary soon afterwards. Intrigued by your résumé, Beatrice. (What had Martin told him?) Maybe they could put out some feelers. How did that sound? When Viv said it sounded fine, the next text is more informative. Longer, too.

  Leary is a New Yorker, tamed & anglicised, been working in London twenty yrs. He directs series episodes & commercials. His 2nd (Eng) wife Lauren & kids Jay & Shasta are living in Dover. He is into his children’s lives as much as poss but he’d have to say he & his wife are semi-estranged, although they don’t plan on divorcing while the kids are still in high school. What’s your spousal set-up, Bea?

  After some thought, and feeling grateful for her alias, which seems to put such disclosures at a distance, Viv replies that she and her 1st husband George (after George Orwell, she omits) are still living together but she’d have to say they were distanced.

  The next text asks if it’d be okay if Leary gives her a call. Like, how’s today looking? Any chance of a time frame? Viv says anywhere in the next three hours is looking good. It’s not long before Leary is on the line.

  ‘Hey Beatrice! How are you doing today?’ This is the first time she’s been addressed as Beatrice. It feels surprisingly good. Rather liberating.

  ‘Hi Leary. I’m doing fairly well, as far as I can tell. How about you?’

  ‘I’m doing great. Good to make contact. I mightn’t be able to talk for long, though. When I say I’m doing great I’m on the set of a crappy commercial with a bunch of prancing puppets dressed as milk cartons. OMG. What are you doing? Wanna trade?’

  ‘Puppets dressed as …’ Does he mean actors? If she had to describe it, his voice does sound quite like Woody Allen’s. Same accent. She can’t help hoping he doesn’t look the same, or at least not like Woody as he’s looking these days. Weasel in the headlights, Geoff says.

  ‘Yeah, crazy, right? There’s all these new kinds of milk now, you name it they’ve thought of it: low fat, added calcium, added vit D, high protein, lactose free – sheesh, it’s exhausting. Give me the plain white stuff we grew up with. One look at the supermarket shelf and you need to lie down. Are we spoilt for choice or not? And do we care? What are you up to, Bea?’

  Viv blinks. ‘Well, actually I’m making a quilt.’ Is this what Beatrice Taylor would be up to? It doesn’t sound quite right. But Leary seems to like it. Soothing. Calms him down already. So, she’s stitching away in a darkened room with a water feature and chimes?

  Hardly. With all lights blazing and Cole Porter. She’s nearly finished designing it. Not that it’s ever finished until it’s finished. Too much finishing already, she adds, striving (fruitlessly, she fears) for matching sprightliness.

  Leary says they have an old handmade quilt on the bed in Dover. Vintage USA, wedding gift, traditional ring pattern, meant to bring the happy couple good luck – cue groans and cynical laughter, am I right or am I right, Bea? So, she does that for a living, then? Nice. Creative. How many has she done? In the hundreds?

  Not for a living, no. For the love of it. And not in the hundreds quite yet. This is her second.

  Did she sell the first one?

  Oh no, that’s hidden away in the cupboard.

  Hidden away? But that’s crazy! He’d pay good money for it, he could really do with a quilt for his bed.

  It’s not for sale, Viv says firmly. And he wouldn’t want it anyway, it’s far too small, it’s only a little cot quilt … She hears her voice. It sounds defensive. And evasive.

  ‘I get you,’ says Leary, who only, she imagines, gets something broadly inaccurate. ‘Made a few mistakes, I guess, so you put it away. Not surprising if it was your first shot at doing the thing, right? For a grandkid, maybe? Or one on the way? Don’t tell me, you got married in your early teens.’

  ‘God no. I did it on spec.’ It’s necessary to change the subject while she can get a word in; she feels acutely uncomfortable with this one. Ask him about himself. ‘So, what do you do when you’re not filming, Leary?’

  ‘You asked, so I’ll tell you. I do movies. We fell in love at four and we haven’t had a falling out yet. You gotta tell me right away if that’s a major turn-off and we’ll split before we began. Just kidding, Beatrice. Well, you know, kinda kidding.’ A mournful, Woody-like neigh down the phone.

  It’s not a turn-off, Viv says, with some residual doubt. She is feeling faintly overwhelmed by Leary, and they haven’t even met yet.

  Well, that’s good, because he’s an unreconstructed movie buff. NFT? He practically lives in the place. National Film Theatre, South Bank. She ever make it down there?

  Loads of times. You might have bumped into me.

  I might? Okay! So, what do you look like? First thing comes into your head.

  ‘Well, ah, let’s see, I’ve got curly hair, rather a lot of it, and it’s – brownish.’ That is to say, it’s brown now, with interesting highlights.

  ‘And I’m a scrawny git with no hair. What the heck, how can we begin to describe ourselves? And why bother? Martin Glover’s an insightful guy, he obviously gets that. It’s very cool the way he runs the Discretion outfit. Kinda retro, isn’t it?’

  ‘Retro. You mean—’

  ‘I mean the whole personal touch stuff. Genteel-cosy. Like Midsomer Murders, right? No photos, no fictionalised personal guff, no GSOH or SDWJM. Nice civilised English take on arranged dating. You just sit back and let someone else do the weeding and draw up the guest list.’

  Viv is still deciphering the acronyms. She makes a cautious noise.

  ‘Tells you stuff you don’t want to know about yourself, yeah? When you get to see who you’ve been matched up with. Like, stuff no one else is gonna tell you.’ The neighing laugh. ‘Don’t say it, we shouldn’t even be talking like this, right? It’s verging on treason.’

  Viv makes another non-committal murmur. It might tell you more about where you sit in the open market, she suspects.

  Leary thinks the no-pics policy has advantages. With everyone madly photoshopping old vac-snaps from when they were thinner and hairier and way hotter. And that’s just the guys. Probably best you didn’t see a picture of me now, we’d never’ve got this far.

  A pause, and some muffled background noise. ‘Sorry, Bea, the cartons are calling me. Get back to you soonest, set up a meeting, okay? There’ll be a window of opportunity when I’m done with all this shit. Best if I text before calling? Don’t want your old man on my tail. He’s a cop, right? Or a rugby forward? Great to talk to you, Bea. Have a fantastic rest of the day!’

  And that was that, Viv told Martin Glover when he rang to see if they’d made contact. She felt she hadn’t contributed much. But she’d learnt more about Leary in a few breathless minutes than she knew, for instance, about Bulldog Drummond – and that’s after seeing him twice a year for thirty years.

  She realised as she was saying this that it gave Martin some clues as to the Bulldog’s likely occupation. Too late, Leary’s speediness was contagious. It encouraged indiscretion. She felt slightly hung over in the direct aftermath of the Leary
chat.

  Martin said he was wary of concluding anything much from a person’s phone manner, because this could be influenced by factors such as nervousness, bravado or desperation.

  ‘What about the urge to talk loudly and extremely fast?’

  Martin had noted that. He thought it could well be a type A indication. He would await the next instalment with interest.

  ‘Why do I feel I’m only doing this for your entertainment?’

  Why? He couldn’t imagine. He had set up the agency to address unmet needs. There would be by-products along the way, as is the way with any new business – you just had no way of predicting what those by-products might be. ‘They are by way of being rather an unanticipated factor in your case, V,’ he added.

  ‘You can call me Beatrice if you like,’ she said. Martin said he wasn’t sure if he would like, as he’d become used to thinking of her as something else and he tended to be a creature of habit. But he thought the name suited her so he’d give it a try.

  Viv used to think twice about answering the phone when she was working in the shed, and for a time turned it off altogether. Lately though, in case it’s Discretion, or her mother, or (a long shot) Daisy to say she’s having second thoughts and has quit living at Adrian’s, she checks the caller. Seeing it’s Jules (with whom they are booked for dinner tonight) she picks up.

  Jules says she’s going to be a jerk, Viv, as if you didn’t know, and cancel tonight. Unless they want lettuce leaves weighed and measured. She is on her crash diet, on account of being obliged to expose her feminine form to hordes of strangers over several nights in the very near future, in the full horreur of a slinky nightgown and filmy negligee.

  A slinky nightgown? Viv thought the role was that of an autocratic eighteenth-century Russian Countess who was very long in the tooth.

  That’s roughly accurate, Jules says. But the director wishes to hint that the old girl isn’t past it. Indeed, that she still has quite a bit of it in her. Quite a broad hint, in fact; he is having her give her granddaughter’s homicidal boyfriend the glad eye.

  Is Jules sure she’s rehearsing the right opera?

  As far as I know, Jules says. It came as a surprise, I must admit. Of course, we shouldn’t forget that the Countess was a rip-roaring femme fatale in her day. Emils thinks the idea that she should still be alluring in her late eighties is not completely beyond the bounds of possibility, Viv. Isn’t that a reassuring thought?

  Yes, yes, says her friend, tolerantly. Now, this wunderkind director – when you say he’s young …

  Twenty-eight.

  That is young. Even younger than Geoff’s bubbly new buddy, Eliza. And what is his aspect?

  Stocky. Dresses like a hobo, looks like he sleeps under the bridge. Forgets to shave. Cuts his hair with shears. Probably has back hair.

  Not a pin-up, then?

  Not for those still stubbornly wedded to conventional norms, Jules should imagine. Of average height.

  Height being possibly the only area he would be average in?

  Quite possibly, yes, but the jury’s still out. Suffice to say he was in possession of sound, old-style sex appeal. The type that has no truck with men’s grooming aids and is tied to energy, originality and brilliance. Oh, and charm and charisma, Viv. There would be holograms on stage, did she mention that?

  ‘Are you all right, Jules?’ Viv asks.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re not losing your head, are you? You’re not in danger of falling into a May–December that can only end in bitter tears?’

  ‘A late-onset cougar crush? January–December might be more like it,’ replies Jules, with vigour. ‘Alas and alack, and all that.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my carefully couched question.’

  ‘I assumed it was rhetorical. I’m not quite off my trolley, Viv. You know me.’

  Do I? That’s a moot point. ‘Some people have been known to indulge in these things, Jules,’ she says, ‘however well you think you know them. What they choose to do can take you by surprise.’ My activities, for instance. ‘I know, you don’t have to tell me – you’re not like some people. But still.’

  ‘I think you may have in mind people like Geoff. So, what’s the latest? Are they or aren’t they?’

  Viv says she put this very question this morning. ‘He protested. But she’s younger than Daisy, he ejaculated. Which I pointed out was never an obstacle to achievement.’

  ‘Quite the opposite.’

  ‘Exactly what I said.’

  ‘He didn’t ejaculate his protest – my God, how that takes one back – too much?’

  ‘It sounded genuine to my trusting if morbidly suspicious ear.’

  ‘There’s a word for a male cougar,’ Jules remarks. ‘I asked around wardrobe. They see things, so they know. The word is manther. Quite good, isn’t it?’

  ‘It should be better known. We must do our bit to make it happen.’

  A fractional pause. ‘You believed him then, did you, Viv?’

  ‘I know it sounds unlikely, and the word gullible is on the tip of your tongue – but oddly enough, I did. You see, Geoff’s really quite a – he has strong views on whether things are appropriate or not. Quite conventional views.’

  ‘You mean he’s a straitlaced moralist? Well, we’ve always known that. It’s why he’s having so much trouble with Daisy. However,’ Jules yawns, and Viv pictures her stretched out like a cat on her chaise longue, ‘people can say one thing all their lives and do another. We’ve always known that, too. And, dare I say it, Geoff is probably no different.’

  But you are different, Viv reflects to herself. And not only because you are famous. You don’t fall into the common trap of saying one thing and doing another, because you haven’t made your moral position clear in any hard and fast way. Which is quite a pragmatic and sensible way of going about things. Although Geoff would claim you never had a moral position in the first place.

  A long acquaintance with Julia’s career habits tells Viv that until the première their friendship is effectively on hold. Her social calendar has a heavy black line drawn through it, as everything in her life is subordinated to the demands of preparation. It’s no exaggeration to say that for the immediate future Jules will eat, sleep and live the opera. She will diet, practise and exercise more than usual. She will rehearse until the entire piece, words and score, are imprinted on her mind.

  It is startling, then, to hear that Max is arriving from Melbourne in a fortnight’s time, halfway through the rehearsal period. Viv can only think that Jules’s complaints about the brevity and insignificance of her role are not the exaggeration she had supposed. Then again, perhaps not, as Jules explains that her brother’s divorce has turned nasty. Predictably, with Pat engaging a lawyer in order to secure, Jules declares more in annoyance than surprise, a one-sided settlement.

  Max had been adamant about not going down the legal route. However, his sister was able to persuade him (putty in my hands, Viv) that he needed professional help to represent him against vested interests that were not, she believed, entirely disinterested.

  ‘And once you are forced to drag in the snouts, it’s on for one and all. Max loathes this sort of haggling. He finds talk about money and possessions distressing at the best of times. He’s coming over to get away from it.’

  But he haggles for a living, Viv objects.

  ‘That’s a frivolous remark, and unworthy of you. Max is an art dealer. He works for the love of it. He’s a connoisseur, an entrepreneur. He represents artists.’

  Wouldn’t it be terribly disruptive of her preparation, to have him under her feet?

  Jules scoffs. Disruptive? Not a bit of it, she wants him to come. In some ways Viv finds this more surprising than the fact that he is coming at all.

  20

  DEVELOPMENTS

  Since Leary’s first call there have been three more texting sessions (just touching base; how are you doing, Bea?; what’s new?) and another p
hone conversation to set up a meeting, which has been cancelled and rescheduled twice. He’s had a new TV series dumped in his lap owing to the director being indisposed – read drying out in rehab, Bea – and he’s working 24/7. But a drink this week might be on the cards.

  He asked if she’d read his blog yet. It had started off as a movie diary listing every film he’d seen since the age of ten. But now it had five thousand followers and he was thinking of going down the self-publishing route. Into enemy territory, right, Bea? You could get a whole bunch of exposure through social media, as she’d know.

  Viv felt a twinge of unease. It wasn’t just a movie diary, then? No, it had totally morphed. It was more of a typical rubbish life in progress. Or hopefully not so typical. Work, therapy, love life. The revealing stuff, like sexual hang-ups and gross-out personal fantasies, you know? People really picked up on that. It went viral.

  Leary had picked up on Viv’s visceral reaction to this. Just kidding, Beatrice, don’t freak! So, she hadn’t Googled him already? Disbelief echoed down the phone. No, Viv admitted faintly, it hadn’t occurred to her. But she would, definitely. She’d go and do it, right away.

  He’d Googled her, of course. He’d been tickled pink when her name came up along with a whole bunch of photos. Like, dozens. Hey, she was a celebrity! She was the Beatrice Taylor. But then he started getting anxious. Her hair was like, you know, oldie-worldie? Back-combed and bouffant? Yikes! Her clothes were a worry too. Seriously matronly.

  And by the end of the sequence he was ready to call Discretion, because she was way out of his ballpark, age-wise. That’s when it dawned on him who the Beatrice Taylor was. Aunt Bee! From The Andy Griffith Show!

  ‘Nineteen-sixties. Well before we were sentient beings, right? All the pics were of the actress who played her, now starring in the great big telly series in the sky. Talk about a letdown!’ And Leary had let out an explosive, very unWoody-like cackle.

  How priceless, Viv said. She apologised for not being famous, and for dashing his hopes.