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

by Virginia Ironside

  Though don’t speak to me about sponges.

  Dec 22

  Just remembered that Archie likes gardening. I got a card from him saying that I must come down for a weekend soon. But what does it mean, “soon”? I can’t bear it when people issue vague invitations like this. I actually would rather like to go down and see him, but can’t really invite myself.

  Later

  Said goodbye to Michelle, who’s going back to her parents for Christmas. As she staggered out of the house with her enormous purple suitcase, covering me with kisses and saying: “I love you!” I felt it hard to hold back the tears. She’s only going for a week, but she is so adorable.

  Tears dried rather quickly when, hoping for a soothing cup of coffee, I discovered that yet again she’d used up all the milk.

  Dec 23

  Went round to babysit Gene for the last time before Christmas. He is just so lovely! He now can stand up with help, and is a total delight. Later, he sat in his high chair, reaching out for the spoon as I shoved his face full of mashed bananas.

  I play and laugh more with Gene than I do with anyone. When I put my head back he puts his head back, too, and then he laughs. Extraordinary how amusing he is. Far more amusing than most people I sit next to at dinner when I go out. And there is no chance of his growing a beard anytime soon, which is another great plus.

  He has the most adorable face, like a small guru, compassionate, humorous, forgiving. After he’d gone to sleep, I settled down to watch a worthy program on DNA on the telly, hoping to grasp the entire evolution of life in an hour, but had barely watched the opening titles before I suddenly thought I’d have a tiny nap and woke at eleven to find Denis Norden hosting another program of “humorous” television goofs at exactly the same time as Jack and Chrissie returned. I couldn’t persuade them that I hadn’t turned it on specially…

  Dec 24

  Was talking to Penny when I mentioned “virtuous reality.” “Don’t you mean ‘virtual’ reality?” she said. “You mustn’t let this no-sex thing of yours go to your head.”

  Difficult not to, though. My newly decorated bedroom now seems completely huge. I have rehung the pictures, and got a lovely green carpet down, and there is absolutely no room in my new bed for any kind of man, not even a tiny one. In the morning I jump down and run across my vast football pitch of a bedroom, rather in the style of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. There is room not only for me to do the Sun Salutation, but actually for a whole class of people to do it, too. I feel I am living in Versailles. Note the word “feel.” The room is actually only 10 feet by 14 feet.

  Dec 25th

  Odd that I’m not upset about being on my own at Christmas. Probably because I’ve had enough family Christmases to last me a lifetime. Anyway, I wasn’t on my own. I found myself at the lonely flotsam and jetsam table at Marion and Tim’s. As I had been dreading it all, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day morning, it turned out, as so often happens, to be glorious fun.

  Much to my astonishment, Hughie and James were there, having vowed that they wanted only a quiet Christmas at home, and there were also two mad right-wing thinkers, rather a change from the usual lefties, one of whom suddenly said to the other in a very loud voice over the Christmas pudding: “Now, what are we going to do about Tony Blair?”

  There were also several single middle-aged women all of whom looked absolutely desperate for sex, and drank far too much and shouted much too loudly, and were clearly all very unhappy about getting old, which made me feel incredibly smug.

  Sat next to Hughie and pulled a cracker with him. Instead of the usual “What does an elephant pack to go on holiday?” question, we had gnomic phrases of the kind that Jonathan Cainer comes up with. Mine read: “This year you will discover the real you.”

  Hughie asked if I had any idea who the “real me” was.

  I said I hadn’t actually, and it had always worried me. He said he felt the same, which is why he asked the question. Eventually we decided that there are several “real me”s inside us.

  “Many of whom are in direct opposition to each other, of course,” said Hughie. “You have the sensitive Marie inside you,” he said, “as well as the sentimental, the funny and the critical.”

  “And the desperate, vile and loathsome,” I added.

  “Yes, them, too, of course,” said Hughie. “I, on the other hand…but let’s not go into me. Let’s agree that we are, rather, collections of personalities, like football teams. Or perhaps more accurately, an assorted rabble.”

  “So I am a kind of Marie rabble, talking to a Hughie rabble,” I said.

  “If we separated all the ‘real me’s in this room, we would probably have as many people as there are in, say, Lithuania,” said Hughie, looking round. He laughed. “By the way—any good presents?”

  “Let’s say Age Concern have done rather well this year,” I replied, thinking of the huge charity carrier bag I had already stuffed with unwanted gifts. “Unfortunately, however, I can’t give them the wretched goats from Lucy.”

  “Goats?”

  “Yes, she donated a couple of goats to some African village in my name, without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  “But goats are frightfully destructive!” said Hughie. “They’ll probably eat all the villagers’ wretched crops! And anyway, you can’t give someone a gift to charity as a present. You can ask for someone else to give them to you…but not the other way round. How irritating.”

  “And you? What did you get?”

  Hughie laughed. “James gave me a book about Gaia,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder. I’ve lived with him for twenty-five years…does he actually know me at all, at all? But a bit late, I suppose, to ask that question.”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked. “If that isn’t too crass a question.”

  “Curiously well,” said Hughie. “A bit tired, and losing weight, of course, but unless I knew it from the test results, I really wouldn’t know I’d got cancer at all. That’s one of the oddest things. The doctors know I’m dying but, quite honestly, I don’t feel I’m dying one bit. And no, I’m not in denial,” he added. “They’re obviously right. But the intellectual knowledge doesn’t fit in with the physical knowledge. At the same time, I’m very glad I know where I stand. Or, rather, I know that I’m not going to be standing for very much longer.”

  Dec 26th

  Penny rang and told me that she’d had a lovely time, and pulled lots of Christmas candles.

  Maciej tells me he has just split up with his girlfriend. He is, he says, “very gloamy.” Rather a good word.

  Later

  As I dropped my unwanted Christmas presents—an extremely expensive lemon-yellow cashmere jersey from Penny (lemon-yellow! Me!), a boxed set of scented candles from Marion, a photograph of woodland in a clip-frame from Philippa’s sister—outside the Age Concern shop, I picked up a free charity newspaper. Glanced inside and this is what I read:

  THANK YOU MRS SOUFFLE!!!

  Mrs. Souffle, a podiatrist who has worked for the last fifteen years in Argyle Place has donated a chiropody chair to the Age Concern toenail-cutting service. Mrs. Souffle is now retiring. Age Concern would like to extend warm wishes to Mrs. Souffle for her generosity.

  When I got home I cut it out and sent it to Hughie to make him laugh.

  Jan 4

  Very strange day. I am now older than my mother was when she died. She died at the age of sixty plus a few months, and I worked it out that today I am now officially one day older than her.

  Strange, uncharted territory. Like most women I’ve always worried about turning into my mother, but now I have no guidelines, even if I wanted to turn into her. From now on, I’m on my own.

  I looked into the mirror and examined my face for signs that I didn’t look like her. But it’ll take a few years, I think, before I can really feel free of her. What is so odd is that at my age, although very young at heart, my mother did look old. She had thickened round the waist and even, on occasions, walk
ed with a stick. She dyed her hair, but there was a frailty about her that I don’t recognize in myself.

  Jan 5th

  I discovered the other day that I could customize my mobile phone. Instead of the word “NOKIA” going round and round when it’s on standby, it’s now the word “GENE.”

  Marion, being a general genius, of course, has a picture of her grandchild on her mobile phone. I am, I’m afraid, not quite up to that.

  Nor, I have to say, is my phone.

  Jan 6th

  Maciej tells me, for what seems like the tenth time, that Polish people celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve and eat a huge carp.

  For what seems like the tenth time, too, I reply: “How fascinating.”

  (Sometimes I wonder: Where do they get them from, in London? Do they go and raid the Japanese fish pond in Holland Park?)

  When he’d gone, I went to have a snooze, but when I lay down, I imagined being in Holland Park with Gene and a drug addict coming up and attacking us with a knife and saying if you don’t give me your money, I’ll hurt him. I got terribly upset about this scenario, and started to cry with fear. Then I imagined ringing up Chrissie and weeping…the scenario made me quite mad with fright, I felt my heart was going to break. Why do I torture myself so?

  January 7th

  Latest piece of spam:

  Lowest prices: Valor, Xray, Vitality, Super Arrow, Philosophy, moo! Fearful desire. On preditation requisite.

  Fearful desire. Rather a good phrase. As for “Philosophy, moo!” I dread to think what that means. All the more reason to give up sex.

  Jan 8th

  I drove down with Penny to her bungalow in Suffolk.

  According to a doctor friend of Penny’s, people who buy bungalows when they’re old pop off very quickly because they don’t take enough exercise. If you want to live long, he said, stick in your eighteenth-century tall house. Or buy a flat in a block in which the lift is always out of order. Not difficult, of course.

  We had supper at a restaurant called The Laughing Cod, a fish and chip joint with pine so stripped and varnished it was orange, dried flowers hanging from the walls plus assorted souvenirs from Wales, Spain, etc. It’s not licensed, so we took a bottle of Chenin Blanc with us, but only drank half of it. As we left, it was extremely windy—a storm was brewing. Penny stuffed the half-empty bottle deep into her coat.

  “You won’t get blown away with that as ballast,” said a huge man with a beer belly wearing a cardigan with leather buttons, as he reached for another chip. As we closed the door behind us, Penny snapped: “He wouldn’t need anything as ballast!”

  Jan 9th

  In the morning we went for a long walk. I am embarrassed by how puffed I get, gasping all the time. Penny kept stopping to look at the view, but I felt she was really stopping to give me a rest. Puff I may but I actually find it easier to stagger on and then sit down than stop and start. We came back to potted shrimps. In the afternoon we walked round the town and I bought Gene a T-shirt. It was a toss-up between one that read: “I may be small but I am very influential” and one that read: “I blame the parents.” In the end I got them to make up one that read, simply, “Gene.” We moved on to the cat’s rescue secondhand shop where Penny persuaded me to buy the most hideous beige, but also most incredibly comfortable kind of padded jacket, windcheatery thing that comes down to just above my knees. It cost me £1. When we got home we washed what my mother would have called the “other people” out of it.

  In the evening the gale was gusting. A friend of Penny’s popped in for a drink and I showed her some pictures of Gene. Poor woman. She looked at them and said: “How sweet!” But really all babies look the same to other people. The television news said it was a hurricane, and trees were falling, and it was dangerous to drive. I put on the cat’s rescue jacket, now dry, and we walked to an Indian restaurant, our hair and ears blowing behind us like the E. H. Shepherd picture of Piglet in Winnie the Pooh. When we returned we looked like a Giles cartoon, with hair and umbrellas flying out in front of us.

  Came back to watch a documentary about pensions. On the screen was a man holding up a placard that read “Pension’s Not Poverty.” Quite unmoved by their plight, Penny commented, rather acidly: “There’s no apostrophe in ‘pensions.’”

  Jan 20

  Pure joy. Looked after Gene all day. He was sunny and charming and laughed nonstop.

  In the afternoon we went to the park and mooched around in the cold, me sitting on a bench and shivering while he sat staring at the trees, and I just felt blissed out. I’m so often impatient, but with Gene I can sit for hours while he sits stuffing leaves into his mouth. Marion says that it took her an hour going down the road with her granddaughter, simply because she wanted to open and shut the gate on every house.

  Sitting a few yards away from us on the next bench was a young girl with a baby a little older than Gene. With my repulsive new-found oldie confidence I went up to her with Gene and said hello. It turned out she was a Ukrainian refugee. The father of her little girl had left her and she was completely on her own.

  “Your daughter-in-law, she is very lucky to have you to help with the baby,” she said sadly. “My mother back in Ukraine. I have no help. And my baby, she is very poorly. I don’t know what is matter with her.”

  The baby girl was indeed behaving very strangely. She must have been at least a year old, and she was crawling miserably along the ground, howling. Her arms were white and weak and her hair was thin.

  “If the doctor says she’s OK, then she must be OK,” I said cheerily, staring at this poor little heap of a girl, who clearly was not all right at all. “I’m sure it’s just a stage.”

  After a bit more chitchat I went back home.

  Oddly I felt far, far sadder about that poor sickly child and her lonely mother than I do about Hughie. Hughie can cope with death. That sad mother can’t cope with life.

  Jan 21

  Archie rang and I was ridiculously pleased. Felt all girlish when I heard his voice and immediately started babbling. This is a very bad sign indeed. But didn’t babble for long, because all he wanted to talk about was Hughie.

  “Sorry to burden you with this frightful call,” he said, “but I’ve just heard the news about Hughie and felt I had to talk to someone really sympathetic. Absolutely devastating, isn’t it?”

  “Hughie’s taking it quite philosophically,” I said. “It’s James who’s going to pieces.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly the way I see it,” said Archie. “Look, as two of their oldest friends, I think we should make a plan. Share the duties. I’ll ring James every night from now on, because I’m not in London, and you deal with the Hughie end. Hughie can talk to you. He knows you’re sensible and honest and won’t fall apart. That’s what I so admire about you, Marie. Hughie and I were talking about you the other day, and I was just thinking that you are probably the kindest and most sympathetic person we know. And, of course, the most beautiful!” he added jokingly.

  “Kind? Me? I’m horrible! I’m deceitful, manipulative, the niceness is just a pretense…” I squawked, not knowing what to say. “And if you think I’m beautiful I’m glad you can’t see me now! I’m in my dressing gown, my hair’s sticking on end, I’ve got a flushed, hangovery face like a blood orange…”

  “Yes, yes, don’t go on,” said Archie hurriedly, obviously not wanting to hear the truth. “But don’t you think that’s a good idea? Let’s keep closely in touch, anyway. And you must come down for the weekend. I’ll give you some dates very soon.”

  When I put the phone down I felt utterly confused. What on earth had got into me to describe how awful I was looking? “Flushed, hangovery face like a blood orange”? That would put anyone off for years. “Deceitful, manipulative, niceness just a pretense”? Why couldn’t I just sit back with a serene smile on my face and say, whenever anyone paid me a compliment: “Thank you so much,” like the queen.

  The more I thought of how stupidly I’d behaved, the more I
thought how very nice Archie was, of course. I have never in my whole life so far met a man who would dream, when his friends were in a fix, of ringing up other friends behind their back and making a plan of sympathetic action. He seemed to me suddenly like an old-fashioned knight, full of wisdom and honor.

  NOT THAT I AM INTERESTED!

  Feb 1

  Penny rang saying she’d made an odd discovery in the bath. Her clitoris seems to have disappeared. No sign at all. She wondered where it had got to. Did I think it might come back? Does it just have a little rest when you’re not having daily sex? Had I got one still, she asked? Could it explain Gavin’s disappearance? When I looked I found that mine, while not having disappeared, had rather diminished, and I have to say I’m not sorry. I always thought the clitoris was a much-overrated part of one’s anatomy, which never really lived up to the rave reviews it received over the last twenty years. But I do hope it’s seriously on its way out and isn’t just pretending. It would be awful if it were to pop up again when I was, say, eighty, with Alzheimer’s, gagging for sex with a toothless paralyzed old man disabled by a stroke.

  I wonder if it happens to everyone at a certain age? I don’t move in a group of people who talk about sex—sometimes I wonder if anyone does, actually—and anyway, if I told someone my clitoris was on the wane they might say something awful back, like: “Oh, mine isn’t!” Or, worse: “I haven’t looked recently” in a disapproving kind of way.

  I’m always blurting out personal quirks to people in the desperate hope that they will say: “Oh, I’m like that, too…what a relief to hear you also make Nescafe by running the hot tap…” or something. But there are moments when I go too far, and my confidante suddenly withdraws. “No,” she says, edging away, rather, as if she’s just realized she’s talking to someone with a borderline personality disorder. “I can’t say I’ve ever done that. And no, I haven’t actually ever heard of people doing that.”

  Feb 5th

  Archie rang and asked me for the weekend again. This time he’s given dates. It’ll be bitterly cold, but what the hell. He actually asked if I’d like to bring Gene!