An Enormous Yes

by Wendy Perriam

  Not that she had seen her friend of late, with so much on her mind, but she decided to pop in now, on the way back home, so they could catch up with each other’s news and discuss the Silas dilemma.

  However, Kate seemed flustered as she opened the front door and began pouring out her own woes. ‘Maria, forgive me if I don’t ask you in, but you’ve caught me at the worst possible time. I’m at my wits’ end, phoning all my friends, in the hope one of them can help. You see, Janet was meant to be collecting the girls today and keeping them till seven, but she’s just let me down, would you believe, right at the last minute. And I’ve booked a Botox appointment specifically for today, because it takes a good five days to work and I just have to look my best for Paul’s big do next Wednesday. Of course, I should have gone this morning, but they were fully booked and only fitted me in at half past three, as a favour. And, anyway, even if I’d cancelled it, I’d still be in a fix, because I’d arranged to go straight on from the salon to visit my aunt in hospital. She’s not far off the end, I reckon, so I just can’t let her down. Besides, I’d promised to bring her a—’

  ‘Don’t change a thing,’ Maria said, interrupting the cascading tide of words. ‘I’ll get the girls from school, give them tea and stay till you get back.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t dream of asking you. I know you’re off to Cornwall at the crack of dawn tomorrow and you’ll need to pack and—’

  ‘Calm down, Kate, I can do that later on. I’m perfectly happy to hold the fort, if it’s any help.’

  ‘Of course it’s a help – it’s bloody wonderful! OK, Botox isn’t my top priority, but I do feel us women should be willing to put in the work. In fact, I see it as almost a moral duty to make the best of ourselves.’

  Maria could think of more compelling moral duties. In any case, she would much prefer to ‘put in the work’ on her art than on eradicating wrinkles.

  ‘Thanks a million, Maria. Come on in and I’ll give you the keys. Oh, and I’d better phone the school and tell them it’s OK for you to collect the girls.’

  Once she’d made the call, Kate dashed around, collecting up her jacket, bag and sunglasses whilst issuing instructions:

  ‘You know where the school is, don’t you? And there’s masses of stuff in the fridge for tea. Actually, they like to choose their own food, but do make sure they change first. Polly’s a messy eater and I don’t want her uniform covered in ketchup. And, as for homework – I warn you, you may need to nag.’

  ‘No problem, Kate, I’m good at nagging! But I’d better get off pretty sharp myself. It’s quite a long walk to the school.’

  ‘Oh, take a taxi, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘No need, if I leave now.’ She waved away the £20 note Kate was holding out, almost hearing Hanna whisper, ‘What shocking extravagance! Walking’s cheaper and good exercise.’ Although Felix, of course, would espouse the opposite view: why not enjoy a bit of luxury for once?

  She and Kate left the house together, her friend hailing a cab, as usual, while Maria set out in the direction of Belgrave Square, hoping she would have a chance, when Kate returned, to discuss both Silas and Cornwall. It had been stupid on her part to have left it so ridiculously late to breathe a word about Felix to her daughter. Yet there was something about having an affair at the age of sixty-six that seemed not only inappropriate but also slightly distasteful. Or was she simply echoing her mother’s prudish views? Kate herself approved, thank God, claiming age should be no bar to anything, be it deep-sea diving, or adventurous sex.

  Only when she was halfway to the school did Maria suddenly realize that she was still wearing her old painting-smock – a shapeless garment covered with charcoal dust. She was also perspiring in the sultry mid-June weather, and just hoped the girls would forgive her if she turned up grubby and sticky.

  What she hadn’t reckoned with, however, were the intimidating mothers – stylish, Sloaney types, who looked at her askance as she joined them outside the school. Presumably, any parent who sent their child to this exclusive institution was expected to dress accordingly, so she placed a wary distance between the smart set and her discreditably scruffy self. Did all these females resort to Botox, she wondered, feeling her usual unease about such procedures, and not just on account of the cost. It seemed a form of cheating to remove all signs of age and, frankly, she would rather look a normal sixty-six, even fraying at the edges, than an enhanced and phoney forty-six. But maybe Botox would become so common that she and her gauche friends in the north would be the only ones with quaint, old-fashioned frown-lines. On the other hand, when would Kate and her ilk decide to call a halt – at seventy, eighty, ninety? – or would they soldier on with youthifying treatments even as doddery centenarians?

  As the pupils began streaming out from school, she kept a careful lookout for Clara and Polly, who would be expecting Janet to fetch them and might therefore fail to see her in the crowd.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Clara wailed, once Maria had explained the situation. ‘Janet promised to take us to Queen’s.’

  ‘What’s Queen’s?’

  ‘Oh, it’s this really fantastic ice-rink, where lots of famous people go, like Kate Moss and Robbie Williams. And the lights change colour while you skate – pink and blue and green and….’

  ‘And,’ Polly added, equally enthused, ‘Madonna’s son, Rocco, held his sixth birthday party there. I wish I’d done that when I was six.’

  ‘There’s a bowling alley, too. And Janet said, if we had time, we could bowl as well as skate.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll rearrange it for another day.’

  ‘Can’t you take us, instead?’

  Maria hesitated. She didn’t have enough money on her to pay for three entrance tickets to some celebrity venue and, in any case, she knew she would only worry that the girls might fall on the ice and do themselves an injury. ‘No, not without your mother’s permission.’

  ‘Phone her!’ Clara commanded.

  ‘I can’t at the moment. She’s busy.’ Probably being injected at this very moment with the miraculous toxin that would freeze her lively face into a mask. ‘But, tell you what, we could do some cooking instead.’

  ‘Cooking’s boring.’

  ‘Not if we made some sweets.’ Maria ushered both girls along the south side of the square and into Belgrave Place. ‘Chocolate fudge? Coconut ice?’

  ‘Yes!’ whooped Polly.

  ‘No,’ Clara repeated, stubbornly. ‘I want to go to Queen’s.’

  ‘Maria, your top’s all dirty,’ Polly accused, mercifully changing the subject, much to Maria’s relief.

  ‘It’s not dirt,’ she explained, ‘it’s charcoal.’

  ‘What’s charcoal?’

  ‘Stuff you draw with. I’ve just come back from my art class.’

  ‘We had art today,’ Clara interjected. ‘And I’m the best in the class.’

  ‘I’m the best in the world,’ her sister trumped.

  Their extraordinary confidence, Maria assumed, must be the result of years of training in self-esteem, a concept unknown in her own fifties childhood. Devout Catholic girls were expected to examine their consciences twice daily, which made them far more aware of their faults and failings than of any intrinsic worth. Indeed, being top in anything could inculcate the sin of pride and thus was best foresworn – a fact she had better not relay to Felix, if she wanted to avoid his ire.

  ‘Polly, wait at the lights,’ she warned, grabbing the child’s blue blazer to stop her dashing ahead.

  ‘Mummy lets us cross on red.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t.’

  ‘Does!’

  Maria suspected she would be ragged by the evening, but she consoled herself with thoughts of tomorrow: strolling across a Cornish beach with Felix, spending whole days and nights with him, which she had never done before.

  ‘Tell me more about school,’ she urged, returning her attention to the girls as she shepherded them across the road.

  ‘At break I
played with Gemma. She’s my best friend. We played “my operation”. I was the doctor and I cut her tummy open.’

  ‘Gosh, that sounds pretty serious.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘And what did you do, Clara?’

  ‘The usual stuff.’ Clara reeled off a list of subjects, with a world-weary expression, concluding with judo and Latin. ‘Only the clever ones do Latin,’ she added. ‘I’m top of the class in that, as well.’

  ‘And I got three gold stars,’ Polly claimed, refusing to be outdone. ‘And a sticker saying “Well done”. I have loads and loads of stickers and gold stars – not just from school, but for being good at the doctor’s, and not crying at the dentist.’

  Again, Maria reflected on her own childhood and the nuns’ extreme reluctance to praise anyone or anything, for fear their charges might forget that, basically, they were sinners. She wondered which was worse: to eradicate any sense of self-worth in kids, or to regard not crying at the dentist as an act of heroic valour, and praise every childish doodle as a work of art on a par with Michelangelo’s?

  ‘I want a drink,’ Polly demanded, as soon as they were back at the house.

  ‘Please!’

  ‘It’s boring to say please.’

  ‘It’s polite to say please.’

  ‘Polite’s boring.’

  ‘When I was a child, we weren’t allowed to say anything was boring.’

  ‘That’s boring, too,’ Polly giggled.

  ‘Anyway, no drinks or food until you’ve changed out of your uniforms.’

  ‘I’m so thirsty,’ Clara claimed, histrionically, ‘I’ll die if I don’t have a drink.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely.’ Maria was determined to hold her ground, despite more lengthy arguments, and ushered the girls upstairs, to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings. Their bedrooms never failed to amaze her: their sheer luxury and size, and the vast range of toys and gadgets strewn around, often duplicating those in the playroom. She and Amy had shared a bedroom until the child was ten, when a partition was erected to divide the already small room in half. Yet those ten years had been precious and, often, when she had woken in the night, she would look across at her sleeping daughter, curled up in the adjacent bed, and feel blessed to be so close.

  ‘Sit here,’ Polly ordered, indicating a small armchair, upholstered to match the hangings on her own mini-but-magnificent four-poster. ‘I want to show you my new swimsuits.’

  The garments in question turned out to be bikinis – surely inappropriate for a six-and-a-half-year-old, Maria couldn’t help but think. Would it be make-up at eight, Botox at eighteen?

  ‘These are for my summer holiday. I forget the place we’re going, but it begins with an M and it’s somewhere very far away, so we have to go on a plane for hours and hours and hours.’

  Malibu? Maria wondered. Mombasa? The Maldives? ‘How long will you be gone?’

  ‘Oh, weeks and weeks,’ the child said, airily.

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  Polly slipped her hand in hers. ‘Why don’t you come with us?’

  ‘I’m not sure your parents would like that.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mummy I want you to come.’

  Maria smiled, anticipating her role as grandma when, she hoped, she would be loved and needed like this, at least for a few short years. ‘Right, I’ll leave you to get changed, Polly, and see if Clara’s ready.’

  The elder child was already in the kitchen and, within minutes, Polly raced down to join her – although more arguments ensued over the question of their tea.

  ‘You said we could have sweets – fudge and coconut ice.’

  ‘No, we’ll make those after tea. First, you need something healthy. How about an omelette, or a ham and chicken salad?’

  Both girls screwed up their faces in distaste.

  ‘Well, shall I make some sandwiches?’

  ‘OK,’ Polly conceded, ‘but I only like white bread. And I don’t want lettuce in them, or tomatoes. Tomatoes are all slimy. And I don’t like ham or chicken.’

  ‘Right, we’ll have “nothing” sandwiches.’

  ‘What are they?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Two pieces of bread with nothing in between – no butter, no filling, no ham, no cheese, no chicken.’

  ‘Yeah, great!’ the child carolled, even managing a smile.

  ‘I don’t want sandwiches at all,’ Clara mumbled. ‘I want waffles with maple syrup.’

  ‘Sorry – not allowed. Something healthy, I said.’

  ‘“Nothing” sandwiches aren’t healthy,’ Clara pointed out, with maddening rationale.

  ‘You’re right. Which means we have only two choices: either an omelette, or proper sandwiches made with ham or egg or chicken. So which is it going to be?’

  Half an hour later, they were actually sitting eating; Maria vowed that her grandchild would be treated with less leniency and granted far less choice. She had seen Kate submit, in the past, when the girls refused to go to bed (‘Bedtime’s rubbish’), or to eat the food she had cooked (‘stinky elephant-poo’), and had even known her drive thirty miles to buy some special toy or treat, despite the fact that it would be broken or discarded before the week was out. Whatever Felix’s views about indulgence, it could be as dangerous as repression when it came to children’s upbringing.

  ‘Mummy says you don’t have a husband,’ Polly remarked, pushing away her plate, having left half the sandwich and all the crusts.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did he die?’ Clara asked, with relish.

  ‘No,’ she said, quickly filling in the pause to prevent further awkward questions. ‘Talking of husbands, who would you girls marry, if you could choose any man in the world?’

  ‘There’s no one good enough for me,’ Clara replied, with a shrug.

  ‘I don’t want to marry at all,’ Polly said. ‘And I don’t want any children.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you have to cook for them and wash their clothes. And, anyway, I might have a boy and I don’t like boys, only girls.’

  ‘Finish your omelette,’ Maria instructed, seeing Clara also push away her plate.

  ‘No, I don’t want to get fat.’

  The child was stick-thin, but Maria held her peace, having no desire to embark on the vexed subject of children dieting.

  ‘You’re fat,’ Polly observed, gazing fixedly at her breasts.

  Yes, she thought – fat and old and messy. Would her grandchild also damn her as unfashionable and overweight? Still, whatever the questionable joys of looking after children, at least it provided the perfect distraction from the pressing problem of what to tell Amy tonight. And, anyway, true to her entrenched belief that all pleasure had to be earned, the harder she worked now, the more she would be permitted to enjoy the break tomorrow.

  ‘So, what I suggest,’ Kate concluded, stretching one arm across the sofa-back, ‘is that you make out it’s more an artistic thing – you know, you’re hoping to derive inspiration from the landscape and the light? And don’t forget what I said – to keep stressing Felix’s role as tutor, rather than mention any close friendship, let alone anything sexual. But, listen, Maria, you’re an adult, for heaven’s sake, so why let your daughter dictate what you do or don’t do in bed?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. And, even if she does twig, she’s hardly going to read the riot act.’

  ‘How long do you plan on going, by the way?’

  ‘Only five days. I wish we could have left today, but Friday’s the life class and, anyway, Felix already had something fixed for this afternoon. And we can’t stay the whole week because I need to be back well before next Sunday. Hugo’s parents are coming up for Father’s Day and I promised Amy I’d do the shopping and cooking. But never mind all that. I want to talk to you about Silas – he’s even more of a problem than Felix. I mean, how do I convince him that sex is out of the question, without making him feel spurned?’

  ‘Tell him you’re go
ing through the most appalling menopause.’

  ‘I’m a bit past that, at sixty-six!’

  ‘No, actually you’re not. Paul’s Aunt Eileen started the change at fifty and had these really awful hot flushes and night sweats. Now she’s almost seventy, but they’re still as bad as ever. Thank God for HRT – that’s what I say! I was put on it last year and I don’t intend to stop it till I’m safely in my coffin.’

  Maria thought back to her own tedious sweats and flushes which, fortunately, had stopped of their own accord a good ten years ago. But, even had they continued, she would never have resorted to drugs to halt the natural course of ageing.

  ‘Poor Eileen.’ Kate gave a rueful smile. ‘She told me she’s so dry down below she can’t bear her husband coming anywhere near her, so, you see, that would be the perfect line for Silas.’

  ‘Kate, I’d be far too embarrassed to mention things like being dry.’

  ‘Why, for heaven’s sake, when he told you all about his bowels, in gruesome technicolour detail?’

  Suddenly, they both began to laugh, rolling around on the sofa, until they were near-hysterical.

  Kate sat up and wiped her eyes. ‘Oh, I just wish I could be there, when you confess.’

  ‘Don’t! I’ll never keep a straight face. But, look, I’d better be going – it’s almost eight o’clock. Thanks a ton for everything.’

  ‘It’s you who deserve the thanks.’ Kate ushered her to the door, calling out to the girls, who came galumphing down the stairs to see her off. ‘But I won’t hug you, if you don’t mind. After Botox, you have to be careful not to touch the treated area.’

  Maria refrained from comment. The only difference she could see after this £500 procedure was a marked redness on Kate’s forehead. And alcohol was forbidden for twenty-four hours afterwards, so while she had made serious inroads into a bottle of Prosecco, her friend had toyed with a fruit juice. However, the wine had certainly made her more relaxed and, as she walked the short distance to her house, she was still giggling at the thought of her non-stop menopause. She no longer even felt anxious, but determined to do as Kate had urged and enjoy the next few days. As for Felix, well, he was hardly likely to complain about her new-found hedonism.