Julia Gets a Life

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Nice to see you.’ Damn. So obvious.

  ‘How are things going?’

  Howard knew all about Richard, of course. I had to tell Emma and Max’s teachers in case the standard of their school work suddenly plummeted and/or they burst into tears in the middle of PSE lessons or something. Which was wretched at the time, because I was in the bursting into tears stage myself, and the thought of my children bursting into tears in class made me want to burst into tears pretty much all the time, and what with Howard being my friend, and deeply sympathetic, I obviously did. Copiously. (Curiously, thankfully, Emma and Max had already moved on to the much more pragmatic ‘Great! We can watch Little Britain without Dad moaning!’ stage, of course.)

  ‘Much better, now,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad. I’ve been worried about you.’

  Wow!

  ‘By the way, I really like your hair like that.’

  Yes!

  So we had the dinner party. We had canapé things with what looked like burned bogies on them, then (at a table that looked just like those ones they set up in old fashioned department store windows) some sort of cold soup, then goujons of something with home-made tartar sauce, then chicken breasts wrapped up in string with some sort of spicy stuffing inside them (and dauphin potatoes, broccoli, beans, artichoke hearts etc. etc.), then pavlova or fruit salad or chocolate creme brulees (or nothing, thanks, really. No, really) then about thirty seven different varieties of cheese. Oh, and some grapes.

  And of course I wasn’t allowed to help with the washing up. While Moira and Caitlin and Dawn clattered purposefully to and fro, I was barred from the kitchen, and instructed to arrange myself in some part of their aircraft hanger lounge. This left me in the sort of conversational limbo that only a long married woman at a suburban dinner party can find herself once the umbilical cord of the other females (and therefore chats about three-for-two offers and washing instructions) had been cut. If nothing else it shored up my flagging resolve that life, the universe and everything was probably happening elsewhere, and that I seriously needed to go out and find it.

  Howard went off to phone and check on his Mother. While my face subsided to its regular hue. Boris and Stuart (the latter’s face had been set in a slight cringe all evening), had been clearly hoping to flick on the TV and catch up with the snooker or something. They both looked balefully across from their respective sofas as Moira announced my continuing presence with small snatches of what sounded like a press release, accompanied by the crackling of her static charged trousers.

  ‘Fair play. Julia’s had a dreadful time of it lately. Can’t have you beavering in the kitchen now, can we, my lovely?’ and ‘You stay by there, and just take care of the fellas for us, while we three get things straight.’ And, bizarrely, ‘So lovely to have such a pretty face amongst us!’ as if they three were all hags. I felt totally discombobulated. It seemed to me that I had been diverted down an altogether different avenue from the one I had previously travelled. No longer (practically speaking) a wife, I was not deemed fit for bringing a pudding (I’d phoned and checked) or for kitchen responsibilities, and instead was assigned a purely decorative role. In short, the one Rhiannon usually had. Yet these were surely the very same women who would be shaking their heads in astonishment and horror if I shimmied into the downstairs loo for a quickie with one of their men. Was this some sort of test? Or did Moira feel it would be therapy for me to be in the company of a largish group of recumbent males for a while; that I could perhaps soak up sex, love, affection, attachment, androgens, shaving rash, sperm etc, by osmosis?

  ‘So,’ said Boris, finally. ‘How’s the painting going?’

  ‘Painting?’ said Derek, who was splayed on a vast sofa at the far end of the room. He was obviously glad to have been given a conversation to hang his small bag of pickled hosting skills onto. He pulled himself marginally more upright than flat. ‘Didn’t know you painted, Julia.’

  ‘I think Boris has got the wrong end of the stick, Derek. I’m not a painter, I’m a…’ But Derek, a good twenty feet away, was deaf as well as drunk.

  ‘Painting! D’you hear that Moi? Julia paints!’

  ‘No, I’m a…’

  ‘D’you not paint then, Julia?’ asked Boris. I shook my head.

  ‘No. I’m a…’

  ‘Painting? How lovely!’

  Moira bustled in brightly. She clearly had Derek wired to a baby alarm. She carried her Bara Brith recipe tea towel ostentatiously, like a shield.

  I said, ‘Are you sure I can’t help you out there?’

  ‘Heavens no! The perc’s perking. All ship shape and Bristol whatnot. I tell you what! Why don’t we have coffee in the conservatory? Derek, lovely, open up, will you? Ah! Howard. How is your mother, dear? Could you have a bit of a wrestle with our patio doors?’

  I wished I could go and phone my Mother. I wished I could phone her up and say ‘ Mum, I am at a respectable dinner party and am fantasising about having really energetic sex with Max’s teacher, who is under thirty, a fine physical specimen and who has that excruciatingly sexy combination of little boy/rugged army survival core documentary type person and who, I just know, knows I’m salivating over him. And if he doesn’t, probably thinks I’m a complete dimble-wit anyway, who talks utter crap and is old and wrinkly, to boot. Oh, oh, oh. What am I to do?’ sort of stuff.

  But I couldn’t. I’m a grown up person and was therefore not under any physical or mental compulsion to follow him outside or hang around him or try and think up witty and alluring things to say to him. Especially as every time I got within a foot of him, I seemed to have lost the ability to formulate any interesting word strings.

  But I was a mother. I was Max’s Mother. I should really put his case for the cricket team captaincy. So I joined Howard at the business end and held the curtains open for him.

  ‘That’s the way, you two,’ said Moira. ‘Coffee’s almost up. Oop! What’s this by here? Oh, Derek, how could you? I thought you told me you’d hoovered these chairs? Tsk. Bring a moppet in, will you, lovely? Ho hum, I don’t know. People round and we’ve stains on our seats. What is this?’ She rubbed. ‘Looks like yoghurt or something. Tsk, tsk.’

  I swivelled my knees and bowed out backwards. The conservatory, dark behind the swags, tails and general frippery of the soft furnishing arrangements, was cool and scented with jasmine. Real jasmine, unlike the horticultural assault that emanated from all the little bowls in the lounge. Real, heady, evocative of…. I said;

  ‘Is your Mum okay?’

  Howard’s mother, he’d explained to me, had some sort of Cancer. Not advanced, but serious enough that I had to arrange my face into something that didn’t involve my tongue hanging out. But he was chirpy.

  ‘She’s just fine, as it happens. Sounded really upbeat. Her consultant’s very pleased with her. Should we open the French doors as well, then? I don’t think it’s cold out. Shall I go and ask Moira?’

  I had a vision of us in a Fantasia type cartoon. Going through one set of doors, then another, then another, until we eventually emerged in a forest carpeted with pretty cartoon flowers, wearing loin cloths and holding hands, while little birds fluttered about with ribbons in their beaks.

  ‘I think she said to, didn’t she? I guess we could sit outside, even. Even if they don’t want to, I suppose we….Yes, open them.’

  Oh, God. Burble, burble, burble.

  Howard did so, and the scent of jasmine was replaced by the unmistakable perfume of dew dampened grass on a cool summer night. In the distance, the moon spread a soft milky glow over the hills of the graig, and the stars hung in fairy strings, twinkling and bright. It was just like in a period dramatisation of something by Dickens – apart from Moira’s rustic wood donkey-shaped planter.

  ‘Max,’ I said, hoping to play my advantage. ‘How’s he doing right now? I’ve been so worried about him – more than Emma in fact. Him and Richard, well… Well, he does seem more settled at h
ome.’ More settled than what? His father has given him state of the art iPod technology and pays him £10 to wash his car every week.

  ‘Doing well,’ Howard confirmed, striding across the patio with one hand in his chinos, then turning, arrestingly, his handsome profile tinged with gold from the halogen lamp. He smiled. ‘Very well, considering.’

  ‘And the cricket?’

  ‘Which reminds me, ‘ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve been looking into getting the school registered this new initiative the Sports Council are setting up. It involves the kids getting coaching from Welsh Internationals and so on. Tell you what. Let me take a note of your home number and I’ll give you a ring with more details.’ Then he whipped out a pen and a scrap of paper.

  ‘242478’ I said.

  ‘242478. Great.’

  *

  The telephone rang at 00.21. So exotic, so daring. Written in the stars. (Plus reasonable alcohol intake.)

  ‘Hello Julia,’ he breathed. ‘Did I wake you?’ As if.

  ‘I’m in bed,’ I answered. ‘But I wasn’t actually asleep.’

  ‘I thought not.’ Such breathtaking confidence, too. ‘Well. Er… Cricket.’

  I loved that ‘Er’.

  ‘Are you in bed?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Cricket?’

  ‘I didn’t really call you to talk about cricket.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  And then there was a pause. Just a tiny pause. But enough of one to make it quite clear that Howard was hovering meaningfully at the other end of the phone, and thinking of what to say next. Then he said ‘Well.’ Again.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Well, I sort of thought you might feel you need a friend right now. How do you feel about dinner?’

  Did he mean the dinner we’d just eaten or Dinner as a concept? It couldn’t be a repetition of an invitation. He hadn’t actually asked me to dinner yet.

  ‘Dinner?’

  ‘Yes, dinner. Us.’

  His voice was so deep that it resonated down the wire. Then I also remembered the contours of his bare chest at the lob-a-rock stall at last year’s school fete. I began to feel a strange and wonderful heat in my stomach.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, feigning disinterested ignorance. ‘Had you asked me to dinner?’

  ‘No. But I am now.’

  ‘Asking me to dinner?’

  ‘Well, not to my place, exactly. I don’t often cook anything worth inflicting on anyone. I meant food as in a restaurant.’

  ‘What, Us? Go out to a restaurant together?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On our own?’

  ‘If you want to. I thought it might be nice to go out. You know. Chat and whatever.’

  And that was that. Howard, me, dinner, whatever. Actually, I’m having difficulty imagining Howard, me, and dinner without a bolt-on scene in a rumpled bed. From the vantage point of my own bed (not, interestingly, the one I’ve in mind) I can see myself in the wardrobe mirror. I look, I think, rather nice against the terracotta tones of my new duvet cover – a bit of a catch, in fact, legs notwithstanding. That may, of course, have more than a little to do with the fact that I’ve taken my contact lenses out, but then, he might wear them himself, might he not? Seems like just about everyone does these days.

  Dinner with Howard. Dinner with Howard. Well, well.

  Chapter 10

  I have a date with the God Of Year Six. I have a date with the God Of Year Six. I have a date with The God Of Year Six. And let’s not mince words, this is scary with a capital Sc. This is a date with the question of whatever hanging over it like… well, sex, of course. It will involve eating in a sexually charged situation and, quite possibly, snogging (with sexually driven chemical cocktail in nerve endings) as well. I have not snogged anybody other than Richard since I was twenty years old. Eeek!

  Terrifying. What does one do on a date these days? And who can I find out from? Having spent the last week re-inventing myself as a post feminist, post modernist, post the whole wifely package type person, I can hardly ring up anyone cool and hip and ask them for support and guidance.

  So I telephone Lily. Lily and I have that special bond that only comes with shared wrestles with a breast pump. She has no truck, therefore, with any of my clap trap at the best of times. Also she thinks I’m so pathetic it can’t hurt my reputation a jot.

  ‘I’m going on a date.’

  ‘Alors!! How eek-citing! Who with? What’s ‘e like? Is ‘e gorgeous?’

  Lily’s turns her French accent on and off like a central heating boiler during an unseasonal cold snap. I take it from all the spitting and gurgling that she is sitting with someone she wants to impress.

  ‘You would hate him,’ I reassure her. ‘He’s about as Gallic as a bath bun and almost pathologically obsessed with rugby. Oh, and he drives a Ford.’

  ‘Excellent. Your type, then.’

  ‘So what do I wear? What do I talk about? And should I snog him so early on in our relationship?’

  ‘Of course! Acch! Julia! Get your face from the sand! You sound as if you’ve become twelve again. If you want to snog him, you snog him. It’s the new sex, you know.’

  What a peculiar concept. And I’m not sure whether that makes it better or worse. All I know is that if I think about the idea of snogging someone I go all hot and cold. And it’s not a lust-thing, honest. More a sitting O level Geography after two years faffing around at the back of the class painting my nails green with Christine Mumford type thing.

  ‘Mum, I can’t believe you’re going to do that! It’s so gross. And what am I supposed to say to everybody? Hmm?

  This is Saturday and this is Max. Max is about as appalled as it is possible to be. Standing in the kitchen in his Bart Simpson boxer shorts, holding a pop tart and mug of tea (five sugars) he looks every inch his father. Crumpled, indignant and deeply disappointed in me. He puts down the tea and picks up his PSP. It bleeps and parps and pings for a bit. Max’s PSP is a metaphoric stiff drink. I shake my head.

  ‘You don’t have to say anything to anybody, Max..’

  ‘So it’s a secret?’ Ping.

  ‘No, of course it’s not a secret. It’s just Mr Ringrose and I going out for a meal together. It’s really no big deal.’

  He digests this, eyeing me warily, as though I’m a carnivorous mammal.

  ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Bleep.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So why are you going out to a restaurant with him then?’

  ‘Just because he’s a man doesn’t mean he can’t be my friend, does it?’

  ‘You’ve never been out to a restaurant on your own with a man before, have you?’

  ‘Not lately, but when I was….’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I have a whole term left at primary. Can’t you just wait till I’m gone, or something?’

  Which, strangely, is exactly what went through my mind when Howard asked me out. So my son and I do have some sort of marriage of minds. But I can’t do that, can I? The moment might pass. I might have grown hair on my chin by then, or lost some teeth.

  ‘It’s just a meal, Max. I’m not getting married to him or anything.’

  ‘So he is your boyfriend! Mum, do you have any idea how embarrassing this is for me?’ Bleep, parp, ping. Small explosion.

  ‘She’s your mother, Max. Embarrassment is part of the package.’

  This is Emma, who slides in and manages to look superior, even though she is wearing a McFly T-shirt and a pair of novelty cheeseburger slippers. Max grunts his second ‘gross’ of the day, and slopes off to watch his normal Saturday morning diet of nubile presenters attached to short lengths of kettle flex and grouped on pink and purple sofas. Emma hooks her hair behind her ears and gives me a look.

  ‘Does dad know about this?’

  ‘No. And it’s none of….’

  ‘..his business. Okay. I just asked. Don’t throw a moody.
’

  God, why is conversation getting to be such hard work in this house? I can’t help but feel we’re on some slippery slope of family dysfunction which will culminate eventually in me having dockers round every night and screaming at the children to sod off and leave me alone while swigging Sainsbury’s Gin straight from the bottle. It’s a whole new ball game, this lone parenting lark.

  Yet before I had Emma I was so certain I’d never say wait till your father gets home. We used to sit in little self righteous NCT clusters and say; Dummies? Pish! bottle feeding? Tsk! Traditional female-oppression parenting roles where woman changes nappy and man goes to pub? Tut, tut, tut! How brave and true and strong and damn well together we were. We’d never dream of passing the burden of disciplinary responsibility to our partners. Perish the thought! That was for poor, sad, inadequate mothers who let their babies suck Smarties before they had finished every last wholesome mouthful of their home made alfalfa sprout puree.

  I still know some people like this. They exist in small pockets at the outer reaches of the high school PTA, campaigning for the Coke machines to be removed from the premises and inspecting the food science curriculum for E numbers. Sadly, I fell by the wayside early. It was all I could do to remember to make my children clean their teeth at night. And I said ‘wait till your Father gets home’ almost as soon as they were old enough to understand the full implications of currying disfavour with a man used to taking on entire town planning departments and reducing beefy site foremen to tears. Which is really pathetic, I know. And now it’s too late. I can’t say it any more. And my children, like tap-rooted perennial weeds, are sending out runners of disobedience as I speak.

  *

  Well what a turn up.

  Isn’t it just amazing how you can really, really fancy someone one minute and then go right off them the next, over something that’s nothing to do with hormones at all? I can’t believe it.

  Howard picked me up (to a chorus of much muffled whooping), and took me down to a trendy (much beaten metal) restaurant in the city centre, kindly inserting all sorts of information about the architectural and cultural niceties of Cardiff, and translating obscure welsh street names along the way. Which I know was only because he was embarrassed, but was actually rather endearing. And informative too. I moved to Cardiff with one toddler in tow and heavily pregnant, so while Richard spent much corporate time hob-nobbing in the city, I spent much of mine dining in ‘Mc’ prefixed eateries, and getting to know all the toilets in Culverhouse Cross.