‘Oh, Mum!’ I admonish. ‘Don’t say that. It was just him. I thought you were having a fling with your guide. And then when I saw him, he was just a boy. That’s the only reason I laughed.’
‘He’s twenty-three,’ she says.
‘OK, twenty-three. Whatever. So come on, who is he? What’s his name?’
‘The name’s a bit unfortunate,’ she says. ‘You mustn’t laugh.’
‘I promise,’ I say. ‘I’m dead good with dodgy Christian names. I have to be with mine.’ I feel her flinch when I say this.
‘There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with your name,’ she says. ‘Jenny Robinson called her daughter . . .’
‘Primrose. Yes, I know.’
‘So think yourself lucky.’
‘I think I prefer Primrose,’ I mutter. ‘But anyway, that’s not the subject here. So what’s his name?’
‘Saddam,’ she says.
‘Saddam?’ I repeat, my voice as flat as I can manage. I turn away and blow silently through pursed lips as I restrain my smirk. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Well, that’s a good strong name if ever I heard one. He doesn’t have a big straggly beard, does he?’
‘I knew you’d find the whole thing terribly amusing.’
‘Oh, Mum, it’s just a name. I mean, obviously, it’s a bit funny. You don’t meet a lot of Saddams do you . . . But it’s fine. What’s he like?’
‘What do you mean, what’s he like?’
‘OK . . . What does he look like? Hopefully not like the Saddam.’
‘You know what he looks like.’
‘Do I?’
‘I just showed you. He was in most of the photos.’
I frown and attempt to run the images through my mind’s eye. ‘I think I must have missed him,’ I say. Unless he looks like an old woman or a teenage boy, I think.
‘He was the guide,’ she says.
I freeze. I unlink my arm from hers and turn to face her. This involves leaving the protection of the umbrella. ‘You had a fling with the boy in the photo?’
‘He’s not a boy,’ she says.
‘The twenty-three-year-old, then,’ I say.
‘Yes, dear.’
I swallow with difficulty. I open my mouth to speak, and then, when words fail me, I close it again.
‘You see,’ she says. ‘I knew you’d find it all terribly funny.’
But I don’t. I don’t find it funny at all. In fact I feel like my lunch is about to come back up. ‘But he’s . . . he’s twenty-three,’ I say.
‘I know. I just told you that.’
‘You had a fling with a twenty-three-year-old.’
‘I did not have a fling with him. Will you stop saying that?’
I frown at her. ‘Oh! So you didn’t?’ I say. ‘Oh, thank God for that. I was getting completely the wrong end of the—’
‘It wasn’t just a fling,’ she says. ‘That’s what I mean. It’s an ongoing thing.’
I nod, and then shake my head, and then nod again. ‘An ongoing thing . . .’ I repeat, finally. ‘So you’re hoping to see him again next year? Is that what you mean?’
‘Not at all, dear,’ she says. ‘He’s coming to Camberley at the end of the month.’
On Any Other Day
The force of the rain is such that, though I have no desire whatsoever for physical proximity with my mother, I am quickly forced to return beneath the umbrella.
As we head back towards the entrance to the park (apparently there is an unspoken agreement that our lunch date is now over) I try to remain unemotional – I try to limit myself to logical, practical objections. ‘But what can you possibly have in common with a twenty-three-year-old Moroccan?’ I venture.
‘We make each other laugh,’ my mother offers, with a shrug. ‘We have a good sex life. What more is there?’
‘And how do you know he isn’t just after your money? I mean, you said the Moroccans aren’t exactly rich, right?’
‘Well if he is after my money, he won’t be getting it. So it’s a bit of a non-issue, as far as I can see.’
But the truth of the matter is that my reactions aren’t logical. They are visceral, and, as time passes, increasingly hysterical. I am struggling desperately to control them, to understand them, to catalogue them, because I sense that otherwise this discussion will spiral waaay out of control.
I’m feeling disgusted that my mother feels she can replace my beautiful clever father with a stupid twenty-year-old Moroccan boy. My brain is clever enough to divide itself into chunks, and the logical bit is informing me that this specific reaction is an absurd cliché, and as such should simply be ignored. Virtually all children, it says, feel this jealous repulsion about their parent’s new partners, no matter how suitable they are.
Next on the list is that I’m feeling genuinely worried about my mother’s mental well-being. As I listen to her rambling on about how helpful Saddam is, and about all the beautiful places he took her to around Agadir – places she would never have seen otherwise – I can only think that she has lost her grip on reality. The guy is a tourist guide, for Christ’s sake. He is paid to be helpful and to show people around. It’s like falling in love with the dry-cleaner because he’s good at dry-cleaning.
But the biggest sensation of all is one of overriding physical disgust, and it’s this that I’m having the most trouble containing. I’m trying to understand where it comes from, trying to see if it comes from jealousy, or religion, or logic, or prejudice, but in the end I can neither understand it, nor mask it.
‘It just, somehow . . . it doesn’t seem right,’ I say.
‘It doesn’t seem right,’ my mother repeats flatly.
‘It seems wrong then,’ I say.
‘Wrong?’
‘He’s young enough to be . . . well, he’s almost too young to be your son. He’s young enough to be my son,’ I say.
‘Only he isn’t your son.’
‘Well, no, of course he isn’t. But he could be.’
‘That makes no sense and you know it,’ my mother says, her tone increasingly terse. ‘Anyway, he’s too old. You would have to have had him at sixteen. And we’re hardly that kind of family.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re right. We’re not the kind of family that has children at sixteen because that would be wrong. And going out with someone forty-four years younger than you is wrong too.’
‘Having sex at sixteen, or fifteen or whatever is illegal. It’s hardly the same.’
‘I can see that,’ I say. ‘Honestly. I can. But, I don’t know . . .’
‘What’s your point then?’
‘My point is that I’m worried about you.’
‘Well don’t be.’
‘And I feel sick. This thing . . . It . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry, Mum.’
‘Sick?’
‘OK, look. So where do you draw the line? I mean, if you were a hundred and you were dating, say, an eighteen-year-old. Would that be OK?’
My mother sighs deeply. ‘This is pointless. I’m not a hundred.’
‘But if you were. Would that be OK?’
‘I suppose. If it was what we both wanted.’
I shake my head. I’m about to say that surely there has to be a line, an actual physical, non-negotiable line. But then I remember Charles saying it and putting my gay friends on the wrong side of it.
‘I honestly never thought you would be so “square” about it,’ my mother says, surrounding the word ‘square’ with visual quotes.
This comment momentarily takes my breath away. Being called ‘square’ by my sixty-seven-year-old mother from Camberley is a new event in my life. ‘Look, I think I need to go home,’ I finally say. ‘I’m sorry. I . . . I don’t know what to think. And I don’t want to say what I do think until I’ve thought about it. If that makes any sense.’
‘Why, what do you think?’
‘I don’t . . . please . . .’
‘No, come on. It’s not like you to hold back.’
I unlink my arm f
rom hers. I can’t think what to say to the woman. Or rather, the only word I can think of is one that will go down like a neutron bomb. ‘Really. I don’t want to . . .’
‘You’ve said everything else.’
‘OK, look. I know it isn’t, technically . . . But it seems like . . .’
I swallow hard. My mother opens the palm of her hand as if to say, ‘And?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No. This isn’t a good idea. Let’s just, let’s go our separate ways for today and, we’ll talk in a while.’
My mother shakes her head in apparent despair, then shrugs and opens her arms. We hug rigidly and then I turn and start to walk briskly to the gate, leaving my umbrella with her. I have no idea how she feels about my reaction. I don’t seem to have the space in my brain to work it out.
The rain is harder now, but I don’t put my hood up. The cold droplets lashing my face feel good.
Just as I pass through the gate, I glance back and see Mum still standing on the same spot watching me go. My guess is that she might be in tears, but I just give her a tiny wave and then vanish from view.
I feel sorry for her. She seems so happy about it all. I honestly don’t want to ruin that for her. But if I had stayed one moment longer I would have said the word that was on the tip of my tongue. I would have told her that her relationship with a twenty-three-year-old may not technically be wrong, but that it feels, to me at least, like paedophilia. That’s the word I would have used.
The call of the pub at Kew station is too much to resist. I feel trembly with pent-up emotion and so, for only the third time in my life, I head for the bar and order a double whisky. Around me, the pub is stuffed with families tucking into Sunday roasts.
I don’t even like whisky, and I totally hate going to pubs on my own, but this is ritual, and in such situations, ritual is useful. My father – who rarely drank otherwise – always greeted any good news with a pint of Guinness and any bad news with a ‘stiff whisky.’ When things happen that are so big you don’t know what to do next, ritual, I find, is usually your best bet.
As I watch the barman pour the double measure, I think about the irony that my mother’s new love interest is up there with Waiine’s death and receiving my divorce papers. On my personal Richter scale of life events, this fits into the top three.
I don’t know why downing this glass of burning liquid helps, but somehow it does. The scorching sensation at least makes me aware of my body again, which takes me out of my brain for a few seconds. I fish for my purse to pay the barman and momentarily consider ordering a repeat. But the thought that he will think me an alcoholic quashes that idea.
Apparently a double whisky is international sign language, for the man beside me at the bar says, in a thick French accent, ‘Bad day, yes?’
I turn and look at him blankly. ‘Yes,’ I say, quietly. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
His expression – scrunched eyebrows, tight-lipped smile – perfectly expresses brotherly concern. ‘You want to talk?’ he asks.
I restrain a sigh. I try to look at him objectively. Though I can see that he’s cute and well-dressed, and French (which despite everything, I rather like), the sad truth is that my brain is just in too much of a swirl to care about him today. I shake my head. ‘Thanks, but no,’ I say.
He nods thoughtfully. ‘OK, I understand,’ he says. ‘No problem.’
I give him a similar tight-lipped smile to his own, and knock back the remains of my whisky.
‘Another?’ he asks.
I turn back to face him and he nods at my now-empty glass.
I wrinkle my nose. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘You’re very sweet. But I have to go home now.’
He looks thoroughly forlorn as I turn and head for the door. Poor guy. On any other day he would have been in luck.
On any other day, I might have been in luck.
But of course on any other day I wouldn’t have been at The Railway in Kew in the first place. Such are the complex webs of chance and missed opportunity that Lady Luck weaves around our lives.
As I negotiate the Underground, I’m glad I didn’t have the second whisky, because travelling slightly drunk at midday on the Tube is a strange and unnerving experience. Everything feels a little unreal, as if I’m watching a pop video with blurred visual effects and over-saturated colours.
When I finally get home, I sit at my kitchen table and stare out at the Leylandii and the rain and nurse a cup of tea, and think about my mother, and Brian, and Ronan, and Waiine and the French guy in the pub.
I seem to have been sitting at this table for years, and amazingly, nothing ever really seems to change. Summer, winter, now spring again . . . and here I sit, alone. Even the Leylandii seems to change faster than my life. Even the Leylandii is growing and broadening its horizons. That tree! It’s like an inverse barometer of my life – as it constantly gets bigger and stronger my life inexorably shrinks into greyness.
I can’t help but wonder if the problem is with Lady Luck – providing inappropriate opportunities at the right time, or appropriate opportunities at the wrong time, and no opportunities most of the time – or if the problem is with me. Would someone else be able to take my life and seize these moments and mould it into something different? Or am I destined to sit and wait for . . . well, for destiny, I suppose? Because it certainly feels like I do my best. And looking at the results – looking at the difference between where I am and where I want to be – I can only acknowledge that my best just doesn’t seem to be good enough to get me there.
Still, surely something will change soon, won’t it?
PART TWO
Autumn Blues
I sit and eat my yogurt and flip between flicking through the Guardian and staring out at the garden. I watch a red autumn leaf from a distant tree drift through the air and land in the lower branches of the Leylandii. Proper English trees at least have the respect to shed their leaves and let the winter light in.
But I can’t complain, it’s a beautiful day today – the weather people are calling it an ‘Indian Summer.’ I sip my morning coffee and think that I really should get out and make the most of the weekend. As the red leaf warns: winter will be with us soon enough. If only I could bottle a little of this sunshine up and open it in January, like jam.
I hear the metallic clack of the letterbox and drag myself from my reveries to the front door where I scoop up the letters. I know it’s weird, but I love getting post, even if it is only bills. Today provides the usual collection – Visa statements and electricity bills – plus one. A hand-written, purple envelope, which, on opening, turns out to be an invitation to Mark and Ian’s housewarming in Tower Hamlets. Confirmation, if any were needed, that other people’s lives really do move on. And proof that mine is about to become challengingly worse. For winter, single in this flat, without my old ally Mark living upstairs, is frankly a thought that terrifies me.
Still, I think, struggling to find the bright side, at least it shows that anything is possible. For this time a year ago, Mark would never have imagined such a happy outcome.
And at least the envelope isn’t from my mother . . . for a fleeting moment I had feared that it could be an invitation to a wedding. Not that she has mentioned any plans to marry Saddam, in her ‘e’ mails – she always writes email as ‘e’ mail.
But apart from these regular ‘e’ mails about how much Saddam has been enjoying Camberley, the only actual conversation we have had since Kew has been a single phone call. A single phone call that degenerated, almost immediately, into an argument.
She had called to ask if I had any idea how to buy a goat over the internet. She wanted, she said, to buy Saddam’s mother a useful gift, and he had indicated that a goat would be most appreciated. With my usual tact, I told Mum that this was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard and she proceeded to hang up on me. Well. A goat!
Anyway, this argument was entirely my fault, because I myself had told her, she now claims, that you can buy truly anything online these
days.
So, no . . . No marriage plans as yet . . . but, well, how can I put it? Nothing she could come up with would surprise me these days. Once your mum starts dating a Moroccan adolescent, you have to get ready for anything really.
I finger Mark’s invitation . . . it’s set for the eighteenth of October which also happens to be Darren’s birthday. I’m pretty sure that Mark will have chosen this date out of kindness, but it crosses my mind that Darren – being as sensitive as I am about being single – might well feel that he is having his nose rubbed in Mark and Ian’s happiness.
Still, perhaps by then Darren too will have a new boyfriend. Maybe this one will even be the right one. Maybe even I will have met someone by October. Maybe pigs will fly.
Mark once told me about Mona’s Law, which he had seen in a film, or read in a book – I can’t remember which. Anyway, Mona’s Law apparently states that everyone wants three things – that happiness is made up of a three-piece jigsaw: a good relationship, a nice place to live, and a good job. And Mona’s law states that it is mathematically impossible to maintain more than two out of the three. Thus, if you have a good job and a nice flat and you meet a lovely guy, bam – you lose your job. So you change jobs and find the perfect undreamt-of work opportunity, and wham, your landlord kicks you out on the street. I reckon that these days I’m due for a shake-up. Yes, I still love my flat, even though it’s now darker than Stockholm in January. And my job is perfect, especially now I am working regularly with lovely Tom on the New York Grunge! campaign. But the truth is that I would happily live in a tent and eat out of dustbins if I could find The Missing Boyfriend.
But how to shake it up? Should I quit my job? Should I sell the flat? For as far as I recall, Mona’s law never said that it’s impossible to lose all three bits of the jigsaw. It’s clear though that I have to do something, or I shall end up sixty years old, still wondering when things are going to change of their own accord.
I imagine this for a moment. In my mind’s eye I’m wearing a pinny like Mrs P’s, and her Leylandii has broken, Triffid-like, through my kitchen windows.
The Case of the Missing Boyfriend Page 18