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

by Virginia Ironside

  (I once tried to get my own teeth sparkling white, with the aid of a curious plastic gum-shield and some special gel, but it turned out that had I stuck it out, my two crowns would have been left as yellowed stumps.)

  Pouncer had a little letter accompanying him saying that as he’d had an anesthetic, I must keep him warm, let him sleep…and rest…not let him out, give him soft food…fish or chicken…

  He came back and scoffed a tin of Whiskas, went straight out into the garden and has been generally prancing around.

  October 29

  Went round to Hughie and James for a drink and to deliver back the trifle dish they’d forgotten to take home.

  “Hughie, darling, what’s the latest?” I said as I sat down on the lovely, squishy, chintz-covered sofa. Over the top, but so, so comfortable. I wish Jack and Chrissie had a sofa like theirs. They have a curious thing that is only about three inches off the floor and you need a couple of skiing sticks to hoist yourself out of it. “Have you heard from the hospital?”

  The minute I’d spoken I felt the room freeze slightly.

  “Yes, he has,” said James. And as he spoke instead of Hughie, I realized, just in that sentence, that something not terribly nice was coming. I felt cold and prickly. “He’s on the waiting list for an MRI. Aren’t you, dear?”

  “I am indeed,” said Hughie. “I can’t tell you how I long to be in that long tube of darkness. Everyone says: ‘Aren’t you frightened?’ but I say I’d like to stay there and never come out. I am looking forward to it immensely.”

  “But I’m not,” said James.

  “My dear,” said Hughie. “You will, I hope, be on the outside, singing wonderful alluring songs like a siren—perhaps the hits from Oklahoma?—enchanting me, reminding me of the wonderful world outside.”

  I knew he was speaking cynically, but James didn’t seem to understand. “Don’t let’s talk about it,” he said. “I’m dreading it.”

  “You’re dreading it,” said Hughie, “because you’re the one who, if I die, might be left behind. I don’t envy you. In your position, I would be the same. And to be honest, it looks more like when rather than if. But then, of course, it is always when.”

  “So what was the result of the brontosauroscopy or whatever it’s called?” I asked, trying to sound casual, but listening like a hawk. I could almost feel my eardrum tightening, in case it missed a vital word.

  “Cancer. Of course,” said Hughie quickly. “I think we all knew that long ago, didn’t we? I knew, anyway. But so what? Lung cancer, schmung cancer.”

  “So what will the MRI show?”

  “How far it’s gone. How long I’ve got. Whether to give me chemotherapy. But since I’m not going to have it, it seems fairly pointless.”

  “You might have chemo,” said James.

  “I am not having it and that’s that!” said Hughie, loudly and sharply. “It would just drag it out. And if I did have it,” he added, “I certainly would not refer to it as ‘chemo’ as if it were some kind of friend of mine. Anyway, I’ve got to go one day, my dear. Why not now? As Proust said, ‘We are all but dead people, waiting to take up our posts.’”

  We laughed, in rather a forced way, and said no more about it. But I knew we were keeping quiet for James’s sake. And, in a way, for mine. I left rather earlier than usual. I know nothing about lung cancer. But I do know some people with cancer can carry on for years. Perhaps I need to consult Penny, the great amateur doctor.

  Oct 30

  In anticipation of buying a bicycle, to stop people calling me stately, statuesque or strapping, I borrowed a bike from Lucy, who’s in London this week, and we both biked to the V and A together.

  What a mistake!

  “I hope you’re going to wear a hat!” said Jack, when I told him on the phone.

  “Certainly not!” I said. “It would make my hair go all funny.” I’ve got rather perky hair and after taking off a biking hat it’s all flat and hideous and the top of my head looks like the warming plate on an Aga. Or, worse, I look like one of those awful short-haired elderly betrousered and asexual-looking American women you see in art galleries, who exist as a warning to everyone over the age of sixty.

  “What do you mean, no?” he said. “You always insisted I wore a hat when I was small, so I’m insisting you wear a hat now. And a yellow jacket,” he added, rather spitefully, I thought.

  No question, those “hey-look-at-me” bright yellow jerkin tops just don’t suit me. Added to that, because I always wear long skirts, which get caught up in the wheels, I’m forced, on a bike, to wear trousers, which make me look frightful. One of my old boyfriends once told me that I have what he called a “Japanese bottom,” and I never wore trousers again.

  So off I went to this Lighting exhibition at the V and A and arrived, having had exhaust fumes blowing in my face all the way, looking like a sweaty old lesbian, which never does the morale any good. Lucy, who’d bicycled ahead, was waiting for me in the café. She looked very cool and collected. But she also looked very low.

  “When I married Roger, he was a working man,” she complained over a lightly done calf’s liver. (‘I’m going to be naughty,” she said, as she chose. “I know I should have a salad, but what the hell.” The idea of anything but a salad being “naughty” baffled me. If she wanted calf’s liver, have calf’s liver. Nothing naughty about it. But she was behaving as if she were some kind of secret shoplifter. Naughty chocolate cake. Naughty bread and butter. The whole idea made me cringe, but I smiled indulgently as I ordered a steak and chips. “Oh, you’re being naughty, too!” she squeaked. “I’m not being naughty,” I said irritably. “I’m just having what I want…but anyway…go on…”

  “But now he’s retired, he’s driving me utterly bonkers,” she said. “He’s there all the time!”

  The idea of having Roger, a sandy-haired man with hairs growing out of his ears, around even part of the time made me flinch, but the idea of Roger around all the time was an unspeakably unappetizing prospect.

  “He never goes out,” she said. “And at around twelve o’clock every day, you know what he says?”

  “No,” I said.

  “He says, ‘What’s for lunch, pet?’ I just can’t bear it.”

  I bet also, when they’re out and she’s telling a story, he interrupts and at some point in the conversation one or other of them turns to the other and says: “Now, who’s telling this story, you or me?”

  Now, let’s be completely honest. I do have moments when despite Gene, despite my infatuation with the onset of age, and despite my increasing conviction that I should give up men altogether and never even fantasize about them, I can trail around the house feeling like a lost soul, longing for someone to chat to, longing for some kind of connection with AN Other, longing, I suppose, for a partner and a soul mate. But then, when I look back, none of the men I’ve been with would I be happy to have in the house with me now. And God knows, I’ve had enough.

  Anyway, I only have to think of Lucy and Roger or, indeed Penny’s dreadful experience with the frightful Gavin, and the realization of how lucky I am comes roaring home. “I married him for life, but not for lunch.” That’s what Lucy was really saying. Men just can’t cope with retirement. While women are quite happy pottering about reading and getting the shopping and cooking and gardening, your average man just gloops about doing sod all when he’s retired.

  I’ve seen these wretched creatures on walks in the country. You’re going along a lane minding your own business and suddenly, round the corner, comes a retired man, his wife and a dog. The wife has clearly given up all pretence at being a sexual being, since her hair is cut in a weird cut (the same style as mine after I’ve been wearing a bicycle helmet; yes the American-woman-in-art-gallery look) she’s wearing trousers and ghastly stone-colored shoes. He, on the other hand, has clearly had to retire from the important role he used to play in the office, for which he has substituted a wretched dog and a pair of binoculars.

  You
barely have time to say hello before he’s stopped and yelled at his dog, often a mild-mannered spaniel or sometimes even a dachshund: “Sitt! Sitt! No!! SITT!!” As he says this, he struggles to attach the animal to a lead, as if it were some kind of man-eating dragon. Then, as you pass, he retreats very obviously into the bushes to let you by, pulling on his dog so that it is nearly strangled, and says: “Good AFTERNOON! SITTTTT!!!”

  I hate to find myself one of the aren’t-all-men-a-load-of-wallies brigade, but sometimes it’s hard to resist the role.

  So whenever I’m feeling a bit lonely, I just have to say to myself “SITT!!” or “What’s for lunch, pet?” and the desire for a man completely vanishes.

  Very pleased to read, when I gasped my way back from the V and A, that apparently, after the age of fifty, our chances of a serious bike accident increase…they rise 5 percent every decade after fifty. It’s not just because our reactions are slower, but because we have such stiff necks we can’t turn them far enough to see what’s coming up behind.

  Think I’ll give up bicycling.

  October 31

  Saw, this morning in the bath, that my knees are covered in scars anyway from old bicycling accidents I had when I was twelve. Really weird, these visual voices from the past.

  Michelle put her head round the door before I went to bed to discuss the latest with Harry, whom I still have yet to meet properly. Like Gavin, he hasn’t rung for days. It is absolutely agonizing to hear all this, particularly having been through it all myself, and knowing that Michelle’s got years and years of it before she’s old enough to settle down. It is her birthday and she is only twenty, poor girl. All that misery ahead.

  Since Harry isn’t going to take her out on her birthday I suggested she come to the Thai round the corner with me. Privately I thought it would almost be more fun for her to sit alone in her room watching telly than going out for a meal with her ancient sixty-year-old foreign landlady, and hedged my invitation round with all kinds of get-outs like: “But of course, if you get an invitation to go to a party or a club or out for drinks with your friends, just tell me, I won’t be offended…” but she said she would like to have supper with me.

  I rather hope, for her sake, that she gets asked out.

  Later

  Angela, my other aunt, has just rung, saying she is eighty-three, all her friends are dead, she is so upset about her husband who has just died—he was such a lovely old duck—she doesn’t want to live, why do they do all this research on keeping us alive, she asks?

  Later

  Michelle’s friends never called, so I took her to the Thai. What constantly surprises me is the selflessness that comes with old age. I don’t mean one’s selfless in some noble or admirable way. More that nothing matters anymore. I used to have a nervous breakdown if I wasn’t facing outward in a restaurant, if the water they brought was still and not sparkling, if there was a draught…Now I feel I’ve drunk enough sparkling water to quench my thirst forever, I’ve faced outward so many times I’m bored with the view. I suppose, also, there’s that feeling that if something really bugged me, I have enough confidence to ask for things to be altered, quite nicely and without causing a scene.

  We talked a lot about love, and I tried not to say that if she didn’t find it, it didn’t matter. I do think the direct pursuit of love is one of the most destructive aims in the world.

  “I know, darling,” I said. (This use of the word “darling” is getting too frequent. I’m starting to sound like some frightful old actress.) “Like an arrow in a bow all quivering to go, with no target,” I said, demonstrating as I did so and knocking over the soy sauce.

  “Exactement!” she said, laughing. “You know,” she added, “I tell my friend at work I leeve on my own with a woman of sixty!”

  “Oh yes!” I said, trying hard to smile lightly and finding all my muscles had seized up.

  “But she say: ‘Ees eet not borreeng, leeving with one old woman?’ and I say: ‘No, ees not boreeng. Yes, she is vairy, vairy old, but she is also vairy, vairy cool.’”

  I practically fainted I felt so flattered.

  Nov 1st

  Listened to Desert Island Discs, with my least favorite man, Bill Nighy, and he chose a Rolling Stones record called Winter and it took me straight back to running along the cobbled streets of Liverpool when I saw the Stones in the sixties, hand in hand with an old lover by whom I had two abortions. (As he said at the time: “To have one abortion, Miss Sharp, may be regarded as a mistake, but to have two looks like carelessness.”) I could smell him, remember the greasy hotel room we stayed in, recall the inky, dark, glowing evening light as we ran…it was like a drug trip—that sudden surge of memory and emotion, an emotion that, oddly, I don’t remember feeling at the actual time.

  November 2nd

  Penny rang saying she’d been shopping in Fenwicks, had seen a counter selling scent she used to do PR for so went up to look at their literature, and the assistant had gathered up some bits and free samples, put them into a bag and handed them to her, saying: “Something for you to read on the train home, dear.”

  “She thought I was from the country!” said Penny, horrified. “Me! She probably wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for my company. The cheek!”

  November 3

  Rather a nasty surprise as I came running down the stairs to get the post. Have to say those new antiinflammatories really do the business. I spend my entire time turning my head round like an owl to show how supple and pain-free I am. Of course at about forty-five degrees it gets a bit ouchy, but what the hell.

  Anyway. The nasty surprise. A letter comes from the Planning Department to the Residents’ Association (me, basically) saying that someone has bought the Kwik-Fit garage down the street and they want to turn it into an evangelical church called Praise the Lord! Inc. My heart absolutely sank. The only reason the Residents’ Association was created originally was because of an evangelical group that set up in a house nearby and spilled out into the garden in the summer. You couldn’t go into the garden at all in the evening without hearing the preacher’s frightful curses of hellfire and damnation for anyone who was homosexual or who had had an abortion, and as for anyone divorced like me (or who had had two abortions), we would roast in the fire for eternity. Not much fun as you’re sitting having a drink and a crisp in the evening sun.

  So my immediate reaction to Praise the Lord! Inc. was, “Over my dead body.”

  I summoned all the members of the Residents’ Association and got them over tonight. Penny’s very loyal. She comes to these things but never says anything, and always agrees with everything we say. That’s the kind of committee member I like. Of course I, preferably, would like a committee made up of deaf and dumb people, and then I could fire off my letters in all directions without a by-your-leave, but unfortunately democracy rules in Shepherds Bush.

  At the end of the meeting it was agreed I should write a letter of objection on account of the noise, and then, thank God, everyone went home, except Penny, who stayed and had supper.

  She said that she’d been so miserable after being blown out by Gavin again last time, that she’d gone round to the new young doctor. I think she’s panicking that she’ll be carted off to the Priory, where she’s already spent six weeks of her life in the past.

  “When it comes to depression as you get older,” she said, “the good thing is that you can spot it a mile away as it comes galloping over the hill—but the bad thing is that every time you get hurt it’s worse than the last time.”

  “Why is that?” I said. “I would have thought it got easier.”

  “My theory is that when you’re one year old and miserable, you’re just miserable. When you’re two years old and miserable, you’re not only miserable, but it reminds you of the last time you were miserable so it’s worse. By the time you’re nearly sixty, any upset rings so many bells in your past that it’s like some ghastly bell-ringing competition in your head. Gavin dumping me upsets me, but it al
so reminds me of my divorce, which reminded me of my father dying, which reminded me of my mother trying to kill herself, which reminded me of the au pair going away…and on and on…”

  “Sounds frightful,” I said. “What did the doctor say, anyway?”

  Turns out she put Penny on some antidepression and anxiety pill, which we looked up in my big book of pills, called Medicines for All, and found that its side effects were fits, headaches and, surprisingly, for an antidepressant, depression.

  Nov 4

  Woke this morning unable to get the words “Matubile Land” out of my head. Am I going mad? Is there such a place?

  Later

  Hughie looked in to borrow some linseed oil because James had got it into his head that he wanted to clean and oil all the furniture in their flat. I also wanted Hughie to look at the planning application from Praise the Lord! Inc. to see if he could think up a brilliant legal way of squashing it. I got a bottle of champagne from the fridge.

  “It will smell disgusting,” said Hughie, taking the linseed oil as he sat down in the garden. He put his hat on the table.

  “Not a cunt’s hat, I hope?” he asked.

  “Just a touch too small,” I said.

  I always feel just a tiny bit odd around Hughie, it has to be admitted. Even though he’s sixty-five, he’s incredibly attractive and, of course, bright and cynical, which makes him extra sexy. I know he’s gay so there’s no chance of anything, and anyway I don’t want to get involved with anyone, blah, blah, blah, but he did once have a girlfriend and there’s something between us. A chemistry. Or is it just affection? I constantly feel that he knows that I know that he knows…even when James is around, I always have the hunch that Hughie is secretly collaborating with me behind James’s back.

  What is it about men that makes them attractive? Their movements, I think. Doesn’t matter whether they’re fat or thin, but they must move elegantly. Their cleanliness—I’ve never gone for an oily rag of a man. And of course, much as it galls me to say it as it’s such a cliché, incredible intelligence and an ability to make fantastically good jokes and laugh uproariously at mine don’t actually count against them.