Raven

by Monica Porter

  Then there was Elliot, the handsome, sporty teacher. I wasn’t bothered about seeing him again but it really annoyed me that he wasn’t bothered about seeing me, either. He never even asked me out on a second date. What was wrong with him? Was it another case of je ne sais quoi? I refused to brood on the notion that there might be something wrong with me. The Raven? Single, sexy and sixty-one? Impossible! Elliot was churlish, that’s all. Or blind. Maybe both.

  But my feeling that night that something was not right wasn’t due to this catalogue of dating damp squibs. It came from the realisation that I didn’t actually care about any of these men. Not in any deeply meaningful way. I wanted to. I wanted, in particular, to care about Pup. And of course I did. But it seemed easy enough to let him go and I wondered why it wasn’t harder.

  Delete, delete, delete. I erased them all. Had all these human beings, even the good and likeable ones, become mere off-the-shelf products to me and dispensable in our throw-away society? I didn’t want to feel like that.

  But I suspected I might feel like that for some time. And it would only be when I crossed paths with someone who was genuinely special to me, and for whom I was special, that I could learn to care more profoundly again. And perhaps that day would never come.

  At our last chinwag, Sara had reiterated: ‘You know you need to stop seeing these young guys, right? You can’t keep having horny twenty-something strangers turning up at all hours. You should look for a real relationship with a decent man your own age.’

  ‘Where do I find one of those?’

  ‘Dating sites for seniors.’ She’d given me a cautious look, knowing that the very word ‘senior’ would make me shudder.

  ‘No thanks.’

  However, a certain shameful notion did, from time to time, pop up in some dark crevice of my mind and I knew I’d be hauled over the coals for it by the feminist sisterhood. Proudly independent though I was, and self-reliant and liberated and all those fine things, I reasoned that if some worthy bloke with a modest fortune came along who thought the sun beamed out of my orifices and offered to look after me forever, whisk me off on exotic holidays and put my grandsons through Eton, I’d be a fool not to leap at the chance. And it wouldn’t matter if he looked more like Stanley Tucci than Pierce Brosnan, as long as he wasn’t desperately boring. Mildly boring I could handle.

  *

  The next time I saw Vanessa in the pool she informed me that it was all over between her and Gerald. The relationship had lasted less than a month. He had been generous to a fault. Kind. Looked after all her needs. Great in bed (she said that twice for added emphasis).

  ‘So what was wrong?’ I asked.

  She reflected for a moment, as she idly did a few warm-up swirls with her arms. ‘Hard to put my finger on it. I just knew I couldn’t carry on spending my time with him. At the end of the day he was just too, you know…’

  ‘Too normal?

  ‘Yeah. Way too normal.’

  ‘Not enough personality, no oomph?’

  ‘Exactly. I like a man who can bring something to the table. Besides a bottle of wine.’

  Apparently they had spent the weekend together and things went well enough until the Sunday evening, when they were chilling out at her place and he offered to cook dinner. ‘And he was so nice every time he wanted to use something in my kitchen. He kept asking whether he could use this knife and that saucepan, and whether I minded him using the oregano, or would I prefer the thyme, and I wished he wouldn’t be so bloody nice. I wanted him to be a proper man, stop asking my permission and just do it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s terrible when they’re so nice. Making you dinner and all that.’

  ‘So I kicked him out later that night. It was about 2 a.m. And I’m sorry that I hurt him but it couldn’t be helped. I wouldn’t let him sleep over, not even on the sofa. I said he could get a cab home.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Surrey.’

  ‘Bloody hell, that would have cost him over a hundred quid. But I guess he’s rich, right?’

  ‘Well, it turns out he’s not even that rich,’ Vanessa said nonchalantly as she plopped onto her back with a splash. I could tell she was no longer interested in discussing Gerald.

  The only positive thing about the Gerald debacle was that now Vanessa would be renewing her membership on the dating site. I’m not sure why (sensing as I did that I might not be on the site much longer myself) but I found this thought comforting.

  *

  I was surprised to receive a text out of the blue from tattooed Tinder boy Damian, who had been due to come over a couple of months earlier but blew me out with some lame excuse involving overtime work and traffic jams. ‘Hey, sexy. How are you?’ He said he was up for arranging a get-together, if I gave him another chance.

  Well, I was having a quiet week and could still picture his hunky illustrated torso and cute, roguish grin. Besides, I’ve always found it hard to maintain a grudge. So I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and said sure, let’s do it. At which he stoked up the proceedings with a few graphic messages about our likely activities, the bawdy devil.

  We agreed on a rendezvous, a few days away. Once again he said he would drive over from his workplace outside London and arrive at my house early in the evening, with plenty of time for fun and frolics. I was definitely ready for this and the prospect charged me with frissons of anticipation. I wondered whether I should wear a silk dress, out of which I could slip gracefully at le bon moment or tight trousers to emphasise my hard-earned rear. All-important decisions.

  In the event my sartorial deliberations were irrelevant. Because, for a second time, the much-vaunted assignation never took place. I texted him on the morning of the big day to confirm arrangements, then again in the afternoon. But when no reply came I realised he would be a no-show. I would have been furious with him, as well as with myself for giving him the opportunity once again to take me for a fool, except that, mercifully, I didn’t care all that much. Perhaps he had a wife and kids, perhaps he was a pathetic fantasist, what did it matter? I decided to send him one last text: ‘I don’t care what your dodgy bullshit is. You’ll never hear from me again.’

  Instead of an evening of rampant sex, I flopped down on the sofa and watched the latest episode of Downton Abbey with a glass of red wine and bowl of olives, and was perfectly content. Is that Tom Branson hot or what?

  A few days later my mobile rang and an unknown number came up. It was a woman with a south London accent who apologised for disturbing me, then said she was calling because she had found texts from me on her boyfriend’s mobile and feared he had been cheating on her. She needed to know what was going on; was I having an affair with him?

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought, here we go. Which one of those bastards is it? I had already forgotten about my recently aborted tryst with Damian. But a moment later it became clear that it was indeed the tattooed would-be lothario. This explained his erratic behaviour and came as no surprise to me, as I had imagined something of the sort. He was another Rajesh, except that he wasn’t upfront about being ‘in a relationship’. I honestly didn’t know which cheat’s tactic was worse.

  Apparently Damian’s girlfriend grew suspicious, examined his phone and confronted him about my messages (how embarrassing), whereupon he admitted that we had met via Tinder. But then he told her that she needn’t worry about me because I was sixty. What a bloody nerve! As if we sexagenarians couldn’t cause as much worry as anyone else.

  She said she was in her early thirties, the same age as him, and they had been together ‘a very long time’. She sounded desperate and I felt sorry for the girl.

  ‘Listen,’ I told her, ‘we never met in person. It didn’t go any further than texting.’

  I could hear the relief in her voice. ‘So at least he didn’t lie about that, anyway.’

  ‘No, but a guy with a girlfriend shouldn’t be on Tinder in the first place, looking for sex partners. And he’s got all these
hard-core fantasies about older women. They’re not going to go away soon. I don’t think you can trust him.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve felt that for a long while.’ She paused and sighed. ‘I’m glad I called you. Thanks for being honest with me. Men like that are losers. Don’t realise what they have till it’s gone.’

  ‘Dump him.’

  ‘Yeah, I will. Everything happens for a reason, so I guess it’s good this happened. I know I really need to move on. I deserve better than this.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Only problem is, I work with him. So I’ll have to keep seeing him around.’

  ‘Oh, what a bummer.’

  We spoke a while longer, then wished each other good luck for the future and said good-bye.

  I reflected on how easy it was to view each ‘match’ acquired on a dating site or app entirely within the context of its own little self-contained digital existence, to forget that that same man was also living a whole other life in the real world, a complicated life that you knew nothing about, alongside people you knew nothing about. This was the first time that one of those unknown correlated people had reached across and dipped into my own real-world life. And that had a certain shock value.

  I regretted the part I had unwittingly played in this woman’s pain. On the other hand, perhaps I had done her a favour. In any case I wanted to give her a final few words of encouragement. So before putting the unfortunate episode behind me forever I sent her a text.

  ‘Be strong. Back in the seventies my generation fought for women’s independence. Make the most of it!’

  Admittedly I didn’t do any of that fighting myself, because I always had other things on my mind besides marching around with banners. But she didn’t need to know that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There could have been all manner of neat Hollywood endings to this book. A particularly fine one would have been for Charles to turn up at my door one day and sweep me into his arms, having resolved his onerous issues, declare that I was The One for him because I was cute and funny and sexy and could converse on so many absorbing topics, and promise that we would never again be too busy for wonderful little me. Good-bye to all the other online contestants, they can carry on a-winkin’ all they like, it would be to no avail!

  And after this affirmation of love, Charles carries me upstairs to the bedroom (the way Clark Gable carried Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind), and in the course of some fabulous sex which goes on for hours I get my long-lost orgasm back and the next thing you know it’s ding dong the bells are gonna chime.

  But you always knew it wouldn’t end that way. Because this is not a romcom with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin. This is real life we’ve been talking about here, which is even more ‘complicated’.

  So I’ll tell you the way it really ends. Faithful readers, you’ve stayed with me this far. Now try to imagine the most ghastly calamity that could befall the Raven, the most awful, gut-wrenching, worst case scenario (after being kidnapped by the Taliban, obviously). Yes, that’s exactly what happened.

  One morning, in one instant, with the arrival on my laptop of a single email, my grand project was brought to a juddering halt. The email was from my long-departed ex-partner, who announced that he would be moving back in with me. Yes, without so much as a by-your-leave, he would be returning to what was once our home but was now my home, thereby wrecking my proud new independence.

  His return was not due to the sudden realisation that he had made a terrible mistake by buggering off, and couldn’t live without me. This was no mea culpa. No, the decision was taken ‘regrettably’ for purely financial reasons.

  My immediate reaction was disbelief, quickly followed by anger, because my ex wasn’t given to making bad jokes (or good ones) and I knew it was no idle threat. A year and a half after he had moved out of our jointly owned house into rented accommodation, our property was still on the market. This was bad news all round, but obviously worse for him. I understood the financial imperatives and had some sympathy for his situation. On the other hand, leaving had been his choice, not mine. When he left it took me months to get my equilibrium back – months of hurt and loneliness and distress. But as you have doubtless gathered over the course of these many chapters, I was now comfortable in my skin, cherishing my freedom and proud of my autonomy. I had rather taken to this whole splendid isolation gig. And the prospect of having to share my personal space once more with the ex who had dumped me, of having him know my business, and who my business was with, was odious in the extreme. In my new incarnation I was retrospectively overjoyed that I had been ditched, and didn’t want to be un-ditched, not even for purely financial reasons.

  When I explained this turn of events to Vanessa she was outraged on my behalf and proposed a typically uncompromising solution to the problem: ‘You need to get a doctor’s certificate saying that being forced to live with him again will be so stressful that you’ll have a nervous breakdown and be unable to earn your living. That should do the trick!’

  But it wasn’t true. And anyway, I didn’t hate my ex that much. I didn’t hate him at all. I just didn’t want him around, dragging me backwards with his presence and its echoes of the past. So I appealed to him to choose some other solution.

  Solution One: he could move in with his girlfriend. (Sorry, didn’t I mention he had a girlfriend?) But he claimed her place was too small.

  Solution Two: he could live with his father for a while. His place was big enough. But no, the ex countered that his extremely aged father lived outside London, was too infirm and would be overly demanding. No lies there.

  Solution Three: I could let out the empty bedrooms to lodgers and give him all the money so that he could continue renting a place for himself. But even I realised this would not solve my problem. I’d have as much privacy living with lodgers as I would have living with him. And at least with him I’d be able to manipulate his feelings of guilt to my advantage…

  In the end, after much fuming to myself, I realised I could do nothing to forestall this outcome. I could only pray that we wouldn’t have to co-exist for very long, that we would be able to shift the property soon, so that we could each take our share of the dosh and run.

  It was apparent to me that as well as generally cramping my style, big time, this unwanted new domestic arrangement would put the kibosh on my days of dating dangerously.

  I mused on how things might play out. Let’s see.

  Scrumptious and biddable young man on our first date accompanies me home late at night and asks: ‘Who’s that guy in the kitchen making himself a cup of tea?’ Whereupon I smile sweetly and consider lying. My lodger? A cousin visiting from abroad? A house-mate? I opt for the truth, on the basis that he is bound to find out at some point anyway. ‘That’s my ex.’ At this unexpected response the young man looks startled and confused, is no longer biddable, and mumbles something which sounds like ‘Weird. I’m outta here.’ Desperately I call after his retreating back: ‘Wait! It’s okay! We live together for purely financial reasons!’ But it’s too late. My hunk, who had promised so much, has disappeared into the night, never to return.

  Yep, that sounds about right.

  I always understood that part of my appeal to young men, who generally lived with flatmates or their families, was that I lived on my own. I was an independent older woman with a house to herself, total privacy, no one else around to see anything or interfere or create inhibiting factors. But that would no longer be the case.

  Perhaps I could get away with a little ducking and diving, like a character in an Alan Ayckbourn bedroom farce. Doors opening and closing in the middle of the night, comic misunderstandings, naked buttocks hurrying down hallways…But I didn’t have the stomach for all that. It sounded too tiring. Maybe I was just too old for it.

  I also had no need of my ex’s shock, disapproval, concern and discomfiture – all of which would come my way in great heaps once he got wind of the racy goings-on in our co-ha
bited house. No, my two dating site memberships were due to expire soon anyway, so I reckoned it was easier to call it a day. Perhaps only temporarily. I couldn’t be sure. I had long stopped trying to predict the future, and this Raven, unlike Poe’s original, never says Nevermore.

  As the day of my ex’s return neared, I began to mourn the approaching loss of my liberty. It had taken me to the age of sixty to discover what it was like to live alone. A late baptism of fire, which had at first burned me painfully but which now lit and warmed my world. That solitary life was about far more for me than the freedom to bang boys. It was about the freedom, at last, to be myself, wherever that took me, and lately it had taken me down some shadowy and chancy, not always wholesome but always thoroughly invigorating rabbit holes. My adventures in dating-land. They had been the perfect counterpoint to the other side of me, the side which comprised the softness and unsparing love which I had for my children and grandchildren. No matriarch was more devoted to her family than me.

  Matriarch, Raven. Two vastly different roles but I tackled both with gusto, at full throttle. No holding back, no lame-ass half-measures. Isn’t that the way to take on any role in life?

  *

  It was less than a fortnight before my ex was due to move back in, when I got an unexpected text one afternoon from my erstwhile Tinder boy, Jake. It had been two months since we last had contact, on that surreal night when a sloshed Bob fell into my pond whilst I was replying to the brawny young ’un’s booty call. Now he was thrillingly on my case again with ‘Hi, sexy. How are you?’

  ‘Hello, baby. I’m good. But then you already knew that!’

  ‘Ha ha, yes I did, and you are! What are you up to tonight?’

  I wasn’t up to anything. And if I had been, I would gladly have un-upped myself to it in favour of a roll in the hay with Jake. After all, the window of opportunity for this pastime would not remain open for long. Which called to my mind the words of Badfinger’s evergreen hit song of four decades earlier: