No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year

by Virginia Ironside

  “Well, Mum,” he said. “I’ve got some news to tell you. Perhaps now’s not the best time.” I could hear excitement in his voice. I just couldn’t imagine what he was going to tell me. An article he’d written for Psychology Today had been accepted? He’d inherited a fortune from a distant relative of his dad?

  “No, tell me now,” I said. “No one’s here yet.”

  “Not even Hughie?”

  “No, he’s late again.”

  “Well. Chrissie’s pregnant.”

  I could not believe my ears.

  “What!” I said, like an idiot. “What!”

  Then a huge feeling started to creep over me. Those words were like the splitting open of a dark rock. It was as if all my life the sky had been covered with thick, dark clouds and suddenly they’d parted to let a huge, dazzling shaft of hot sun pour through. I felt as if I had been drenched in happiness—no—more than that, as if I was being totally immersed and marinated in joy. It was a completely unfamiliar feeling. The carpet had been pulled from under my feet and had sent me cascading into a golden cavern, as if all the happiness that I had found it so difficult to garner throughout my whole life, had been waiting behind a door, which had suddenly opened, letting it burst out all at once.

  “But don’t tell anyone,” he said, unaware of the transformation that was going on the other end of the phone, “because we have to keep quiet about it for three months till it’s OK. But we had to tell you. What do you think?”

  Perhaps my silence had rather unnerved him. “I think…darling…I can’t speak,” I said, tears springing to my eyes. “I think it’s just…just wonderful. Oh, how wonderful!”

  Just then, through the shutters, I saw the security light go on, and heard the bang of the gate. Someone was staring at the door outside, wondering whether to knock or ring. What a moment to have a party.

  “Let’s talk later, darling,” I said. I stumbled, barely conscious with elation, toward the door and opened it to greet Hughie, who’d arrived with Lucy and her family. She was wearing a little black hat, with a sparkling pin in it, and a sparkling skirt. She looked very nervous and very happy as she came into the room. “Oh, Marie, how lovely!” she exclaimed. “What can we do? Doesn’t everything look charming!”

  I just grinned back like someone on drugs.

  Of course the party went beautifully, but I just couldn’t concentrate on anything anyone said. The problem was, I wanted to tell everyone, particularly Lucy, so sympathetic and herself already a grandmother. But I knew I could say nothing. I felt as if I were stoned. It was like the first time I ever smoked dope. My head seemed swollen with an indescribably intense feeling of—what? Intensity, is the only useless answer I can give. My whole body felt encased in cotton wool, and warmth. By the end of the party I thought I was going to burst.

  Everyone had gone, and Hughie had stayed behind to help me fix some electrical fault, which had blacked the party out, luckily, at the very end. Realizing there was nothing we could do, we decided to leave it and he drove me to the restaurant where we were having supper with Marion and Tim.

  “Well, that went well,” said Hughie. His car is all old and glamorous and leathery (he is pretty old and glamorous, too, actually, but not at all leathery), and I sank back in blissful silence. Finally I could hold myself back no longer.

  “Hughie, I have a secret but I can’t tell anyone and it’s killing me. Will you promise not to repeat it to anyone, not even James?”

  He promised, with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Jack and Chrissie are pregnant!” I said.

  “How marvelous!” he replied. “Congratulations! So you’ll be a grannie!”

  “Grannie Sharp,” I said, trying the words out for the first time. “I think it’s what I’ve been hoping for all my life. It’s what I’ve always wanted to be when I grew up. Oh, I’m so happy!”

  December 14th

  Christmas is coming. Always a dodgy time for us singles. Chrissie and Jack are spending Christmas with Jack’s dad, David, which is sad but at least it means that I can get next Christmas with the new baby, so it’s worth sacrificing this Christmas. Michelle is going to her family in Paris, Penny’s going to Lisa’s, and Marion and Tim say they’re having an open-house Christmas “for all the lonely flotsam and jetsam who don’t have a family to go to.” Not sure I really want to be categorized as a bit of “lonely flotsam or jetsam,” sounding, as it does, rather scummy and washed-up, though it’s very nice of them. Anyway, I’m not going to be a lonely flotsam or jetsam because I’m going to go round to Hughie and James’s. So ner.

  Dec 21

  Got this round-robin letter with a Christmas card from an old school friend who lives in the country:

  As the festivities approach, I find myself in the middle of a Christmas decoration course on Wednesdays. We all bring fir cones and spray them with glitter. When I went last time, a small bit of spray landed on our teacher. She said she looked like a Christmas fairy! We all nearly died laughing but I’m afraid it was because she is so portly that none of us could imagine her on top of a tree! On the way back I nearly slipped on a leaf—but thank the Lord, I managed to steady myself, so no damage was done!!! The key was very stiff in the door when I returned, but luckily I have the “knack,” so managed to get back to my snug home. I didn’t like to think what the neighbors would have thought had they witnessed me trying to “break and enter” my own house! I think I would have had some explaining to do to PC Plod—had he, of course, had the time to spare from catching speeding motorists to come to my aid!!!

  And on, and on and on.

  Think I may be getting a cold as have funny feeling like buzzing of bees at the back of my nose. Always a bad sign.

  Dec 25

  Oh God, oh God, oh God! Have had to spend the whole of Christmas Day in bed, as have such ghastly cough and cold and flu. I can barely drag myself downstairs or upstairs. I can’t even drink, which is a sign of how incredibly ill I am. For the last few days have thought I was going to die and I’ve felt extremely self-pitying. I take my temperature nearly every hour, just to see whether I have one or not. So far it’s below normal—which sometimes I think is worse than above. It is extraordinary that, even at nearly sixty, when one’s feeling down, one longs for one’s mum. When I’d taken to my bed a couple of days ago, I heard Michelle going up the stairs to her room to pack, past my bedroom, and realized she wasn’t going to put her head round the door and say “’Allo.” I found myself bursting into tears. I mean, why should she? I have told her enough times that we live separate lives. And I know that if I’d called out and asked her to get me anything, she would have jumped into loving and attentive action. But when one’s ill one doesn’t want to make the effort. No, we want to be cared for by people who are psychically attuned to our every desire. We want our mums.

  Sky outside is awful kind of green color.

  When I went to see my grandmother, Phyllis, in an old people’s home, several of the inmates were yelling for their mothers. After a few moments, which I spent sitting in the hall trying to read a Waitrose magazine, I was shown into the sitting room, where all the inhabitants were screaming and grimacing while, in the background, The Simpsons seemed to be playing on a loop. I realized I had no idea which one she was. None of the sad creatures had any teeth, their legs were all like sticks and every one of them, except the ones who were asleep, had wild, staring eyes and white hair. Finally I worked it out (well, I think I worked it out) and my grandmother (well, I hope it was my grandmother) was wheeled back to her room to have tea with me.

  Unfortunately, she had no idea who she was or who I was. She made absolutely no sense whatever, and kept pulling up her skirts and trying to put biscuits down her bra. Then, for about twenty minutes, she picked up my Waitrose magazine and stared, brow furrowed, at a picture of a mushroom risotto. I eventually eased the magazine from her grasp, and then, when she wasn’t reaching over and trying to pick the flowers off my floral skirt, she attempted to make a
house out of the saucers and biscuits and cups of tea on the tray with disastrous results. Finally I pushed them out of her reach saying, firmly: “No, you don’t want any more tea. It’s all old and cold.”

  Suddenly my grandmother looked up at me. “Old and cold!” she said. “Just like me!” For a moment she was at her amusing best. Then she relapsed back into gibberish. It was a dreadfully sad and unnerving experience. Why did I think of this? Oh, yes. Flu makes you want your mum, just like the people in my grandmother’s home. So sad.

  I could think of nothing for hours, except the miseries of living too long, until the phone rang and it was James, who said he was coming by with a turkey dinner on a plate covered with foil and a bottle of champagne, and though he wouldn’t come in because he didn’t want to catch my horrible disease, he’d ring the bell and leave it on the doorstep.

  This time I burst into tears of gratitude and affection, and suddenly now, after a couple of glasses of champagne—funny how I can drink champagne at any time—and a telly turkey supper, I feel on the mend at last. James is a darling.

  December 28th

  Had to sign a credit slip for some petrol today. My pen didn’t appear to be working. When I looked closer I found that I was trying to write with the thermometer, which had found its way into my handbag, using the mercury as the point. Embarrassedly stuffed it back in my bag with a hysterical laugh.

  Dec 31st

  Much, much, better. Went round to Hughie and James’s for New Year’s Eve supper. Must explain Hughie and James’s situation. James is Jack’s half-uncle David’s half-brother. Oh, dear, all the halves and sixths and steps these days. It used to be bad enough with people being second cousin once removed, but the half situation is a nightmare. I have, for instance, a half-brother. I call him my half-brother, because he is and because he was born when I was twenty-five and he is a total stranger to me, lives in South Africa, making him even more of a mystery. He, on the other hand, calls me his sister because, presumably, when he was born I was on the scene and quite naturally he sees me as a full relation. When I told Penny about my scrupulosity, she said I must suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome. Charming. I said she should know—she’d read enough about it in the Family Doctor book that is her bible.

  Anyway, James is Jack’s half-uncle, and a very nice, but rather overly sentimental creature who used to be in marketing but now does odd jobs, digging people’s gardens, decorating, taking dogs for a walk. He says he’s never been happier. He’s one of the kindest people I know, always prone to tears, incredibly involved in alternative medicine and “spiritual” things. Anyway, he’s gay and he’s lived with Hughie for twenty years and I love both of them to pieces.

  Hughie, on the other hand, is dry and funny, and he’s the sort of bloke of the two, well, more of the bloke. I never understand why they’re together, nice as James is, but end up with that dreadful cliché that everyone comes up with when they simply can’t understand why two people are a couple: “It must be the great sex.” Then one’s mind boggles, and very soon one has to start thinking about something else.

  Hughie still works as a solicitor, at sixty-five, but you wouldn’t know it, one of those sorts of people. He’s always reading Spinoza and the Times Literary Supplement, has read Goethe twice in the original German, goes to the opera till he’s blue in the face and knows all about classical music and the difference between Pliny and Plato, about which, to my shame, I know nothing.

  I used to go to parties on New Year’s Eve but, like most of the rest of the world, I now discover, have never enjoyed them. Why didn’t everyone tell me before that they hated them? I wouldn’t have felt so out of it. When I was young we never really did New Year’s Eve. We never did Mother’s Day or Father’s Day actually, and when David and I got married we just went to a registry office, had a few people round for a glass of champagne and went to the Lake District for a week for the honeymoon. Nowadays you go to a wedding and you have to give up half your life…breakfasts, dinners, teas, parties, staying over at local bed and breakfasts…whine, whine, moan, moan, oh, stop it, Marie.

  Anyway, Hughie, James and me are all around the same age and that’s why this New Year’s Eve we decided just to have dinner and not make a fuss. They asked Penny and we made up a peculiar foursome.

  Penny and I walked round—they live only round the corner, in a big mansion flat—and James greeted us in a white apron and said he was cooking a couple of pheasants (my favorite) that he’d found at the back of the freezer, and we opened the bottle of champagne I’d brought.

  James was wearing, that night, a kind of weird rubber pink thing round his wrist. That was next to one of those horrible copper bracelets that people believe cures them of rheumatism. It was obviously a statement of a kind—but what statement I didn’t like to inquire since when I last asked someone what their colored bracelet was for, they replied: “It’s for breast cancer.” A surprising answer. “Don’t you mean, ‘For combating breast cancer’?” I asked, and then I really did feel as if perhaps there really might a touch of Asperger’s about me. I fell over myself apologizing.

  Anyway, I’ve seen so many people wearing these bands—yellow, white, blue—that I’m tempted, sometimes, to wear a plain brown rubber band round my wrist so that, when people ask me what it is, I can reply: “A rubber band, you idiot.”

  Luckily James wanted to show Penny the new herb garden he’d made on the roof, and because I’d already seen it and didn’t fancy staggering up a ladder by torchlight in the freezing cold, I was left with Hughie. The sitting room is all puffed-up chintz sofas and gold mirrors, very camp. He shoved some pistachio nuts at me, topped up my glass and asked me how Archie was.

  “You mean how is he ‘bearing up’?” I replied. “I don’t know. I haven’t been in touch. But no doubt in five minutes he will find some glamorous young woman to marry and, irritatingly, start a whole new family. Eligible widowers like him usually do.”

  “Or someone finds them,” said Hughie. “I thought you were always interested in him? Didn’t you have a teenage crush on him?”

  “Oh, that was years ago,” I said rather crossly. “And he never knew about it. And anyway, I’m beyond all that. It’s the life of the grannie, for me. Oh, God, Hughie, I’m just bursting to tell everyone about this baby! I keep meeting people who say things like: ‘When you’re a grannie…’ And I want to say: ‘But I’m going to be a grannie! And I want to jump up and down!’ Instead I have to look all sorrowful and wistful and say: ‘Well, one day, perhaps…’ Then there are all these people who are never going to be grannies because they don’t have any children, and I feel so sorry for them!”

  Hughie bowed his head and pointed to himself. “Don’t mind me,” he said, in an amused way, and I suddenly felt dreadfully insensitive and rude and cursed myself.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Hughie, sometimes I just open my mouth and toads jump out like those princesses in fairy tales.”

  “It’s all part of your charm,” said Hughie. “But don’t worry. I couldn’t bear to be a grannie. My role as half-great-uncle-out-law, as you would no doubt insist on my being called, will do me nicely.”

  In August I shall be a grandmother. It is the most extraordinary feeling. Grandmaternal feelings are already pouring out of me like sweat. I want to take my grandchild to the Science Museum, to the park, swimming, teach it the old songs (whatever they are), to bounce it up and down on my knee. I want to play “This little pig went to market” on its toes, and bounce it up and down on my knee saying, “My lord and my lady went into the park, To have a little airing before it got dark…My lady went trit-trot-trit-trot…” I want to make gingerbread men, and play pooh-sticks. I am desperate to be the kind of grannie that I had—and, funnily enough, most of us had—a woman full of cuddles, patience, treats and mischief.

  It’s odd—apparently a lot of women these days dread being a grannie because just the word reminds them of some tiny, bent person with a white bun shaped like a doughnut on top of he
r head, giving off a smell of dirty clothes, peppermint and cat’s pee. But children don’t notice these things. All they know is that Grannie is a source of fun and love and calm all at the same time.

  After delicious pheasant with apples, a recipe from the Jane Grigson Good Things book, it was ten to ten and Penny said she was knackered, and James said so was he, and Hughie said why didn’t we pretend that ten o’clock was midnight, so we opened another bottle of champagne and toasted each other and absent friends.

  “To Philippa!” said Hughie. “I remember when she was in hospital with breast cancer and she rang me saying, ‘Darling, I’m in remission!’ and I said, ‘Don’t be silly, of course you’re not,’ and she said, ‘But the doctors say I am, darling!’ Complete rubbish of course. She was dead in three weeks.”

  “Don’t be so bitchy, dear,” said James. “I know none of you liked her very much, but she was very good to Archie—and she was always very nice to me.”

  “‘Always very nice to me,’” said Hughie, with a wry smile. “Not quite good enough that, really, is it? I hope they don’t put the words ‘Well, he was always very nice to me’ on my tombstone.”

  “Your voice is getting very high and querulous, dear,” said James to him, querulously, as it happened.

  “It happens as you get older, dear,” said Hughie to him. “I think I shall have to apply weights.”

  After that, Penny and I got up off the sofa, each saying “ugh” as we did so, another sign of growing older, and went staggering off into the night. Very nice.

  Anyway, as far as the midnight bit went, Penny and I wondered why we hadn’t thought up this ruse years ago. Black may be the new white, and night the new day, and holidays the new work, as they constantly say in the papers, but what about ten, on New Year’s Eve, being the new midnight? There is no one I know over sixty who wants to go to bed after eleven o’clock at the very latest.