Some time ago, a friend had told Mavis that she had been “born to serve,” and she had been unsure how to take what had probably been intended as a compliment. It made her sound like something between an army officer and a doormat, and since she had never imagined herself in either role, she hadn’t managed to take it in quite the spirit in which it was meant. But now, she rather liked the idea. Service. To be of service. That had to be good, didn’t it? Serving her customers, helping them to choose exactly the right gift or garment; the job had its compensations, and people often came into the shop asking particularly for Mavis’s assistance.
Another recipient of her services was, of course, her mother.
Mavis loved her mother and was prepared to do her duty by her (she was an only child), but when the old lady could no longer manage on her own, it was with some reluctance that she had welcomed her into her own home. Never having married or lived with anyone since she was a girl, she had initially found it hard to have to sacrifice a downstairs room, as well as her independence and much of her privacy. But in the end, the deed had been done with minimal fuss, and Mother had duly moved in, together with a few bits of furniture, an enormous and very dusty rubber plant, and a bad-tempered cat, who had been bought from a rescue centre and who rejoiced in the name of Pussolini (the name had been Mavis’s idea, and her mother, failing to make the necessary connection, had thought it rather sweet). The plant had mercifully died, but Mother (and the cat) lived on, and five years on, Mavis could no longer imagine life without her.
Old Mrs. Wetherby was an uncomplaining soul. She was good-natured, cheerful, and continent; she ate what she was given and slept a great deal. But she was becoming unsteady on her feet and had had several falls, and she was also becoming alarmingly forgetful.
“Alzheimer’s?” Mavis had asked the doctor fearfully the last time he’d called.
“Oh no, I don’t think so. It’s just her age.” The doctor was young and spoke with the careless insouciance of one for whom old age was still a long way off, and only happened to other people and patients. “Make sure she has plenty of mental stimulation, and she’ll be fine.”
But it is hard to stimulate someone who refuses to leave the house when you yourself have to be out all day, and Mother, with nothing but daytime television and the cat for company, continued her slow decline. A kindly neighbour used to pop in once or twice during the day to see that all was well, and Meals on Wheels had been delivered by the cheery ladies of the WRVS, but the neighbour had moved away, and the WRVS ladies had made their excuses after one of them had been ambushed and bitten by the cat, so once again, everything was left to Mavis.
Mavis reached her own front door and took out her keys. On her way home, she had purchased wine and cheese straws and crisps, and a small fillet of plaice for her mother. As she passed through the hallway, dodging the malevolent advances of Pussolini (Pussolini was a one-woman cat, and sadly, that woman was not Mavis), she went in to check on her mother.
“All right, Mother?”
“Fine, dear.” Her mother had a particularly sweet smile, and the kind of blue eyes whose colour becomes increasingly striking as the face around them ages. “I’ve just been to Mass.”
“No, Mother. I don’t think so. It’s Friday.”
“Is it, dear?”
“Yes.” Mavis kissed her papery cheek. “I’ll take you to Mass on Sunday.”
“That’s kind.” Her mother paused. “Isn’t it time I went to confession?”
“You went last week, remember?”
Her mother loved confession. Mavis had no idea what this gentle woman could have to confess, since she never went anywhere, met no one, and was invariably kind to the few people she did come across. She even managed to help a little round the house, peeling potatoes or doing a spot of dusting. What sins could she possibly conjure up out of the recesses of her increasingly muddled brain, even if she were able to remember them? Mavis suspected that she simply rehearsed old sins of long ago, and she would love to have been a fly on the wall when these sins were recounted, but she would have to remain in the dark. Her mother would leave the confessional with a contented smile, do her penance (three Hail Marys), and then they would come home together.
Mavis herself eschewed the confessional. There had been a time when she too used to like going to confession: the quiet murmuring of the priest, the whispered sins (the more serious sandwiched between the milder, so as to escape notice), the familiar rhythm of the prayers of penance, and the feeling of a slate wiped clean, with everything forgiven and forgotten. But that was a long time ago. That was before Clifford.
Mavis had met Clifford over twenty years ago, when she was a young woman and he a middle-aged married man. Alas, she was no longer young, and Clifford, who was now retired, remained married, but they were still together. Like all these things, it was a long story.
At the time, Mavis had been engaged to be married. Tim had been a nice Catholic boy, and she had been fond of him — perhaps even a little bit in love. But then she had met Clifford, and he had shown her that while there was nothing wrong with nice Catholic boys, a mature, sophisticated man had other, better things to offer. At the time, Mavis was both naïve and inexperienced. Flattered by Clifford’s attentions and overcome by a surprisingly strong physical attraction, she had broken off her engagement, and the affair had started. It had been going on ever since.
Mavis would have been the first to admit that it was Clifford’s looks that had first attracted her. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but he had fine eyes, an endearing, almost apologetic smile, and at the time, a good physique for his age. Also (and Mavis considered this to be almost as important) he was kind, and a perfect gentleman. He opened doors, walked on the outside of the pavement, pulled out her chair for her in restaurants, and pampered her with flowers and chocolates and expensive silk underwear — all the things that young men of her own age no longer seemed to bother with. Mavis’s late father had been just such a gentleman, and Clifford had reminded her of him. That perfect gentlemen didn’t sleep with people other than their wives and that her father would most certainly have been deeply shocked had he known about the affair were facts that Mavis chose to ignore. Love, as everyone knows, can be astonishingly blind.
From the start, Clifford told Mavis that he had long outgrown his marriage — a marriage that, he said, no longer gave happiness to either party — and that he would leave Dorothy to be with her. Not yet — never yet — but one day, when the time was ripe. But as the years rolled by and the time remained as unripe as it had been at the beginning, Mavis gradually lost first hope, and then, oddly, the inclination to take Clifford away from his wife and family. For what she slowly came to realise was that, contrary to what she might have expected, in this relationship she was the strong one, while Clifford was weak, and without the secure backdrop of a conventional marriage — without that little stake in society — he would find it hard to carry on his day-to-day life. This didn’t make her love him any the less — if anything, it increased her affection for him, for she liked feeling needed.
Clifford needed her reassurance, both as a man and as a lover, and she was able to give it to him. This was all the more surprising since Clifford had been a successful businessman and should have had every reason to feel confident, but outside his field of expertise, he remained strangely diffident. As for their sexual relationship, Mavis had had little experience of sex before they met, while Clifford, with all those years of marriage under his belt (so to speak), might be expected to know his way around the female body and be able to give as well as to receive pleasure.
This proved not to be the case. Clifford had been a clumsy lover — hesitant, shy, and amazingly ignorant when it came to lovemaking. Here, Mavis came into her own, surprising even herself. Clifford’s shyness gave her a confidence she could never have hitherto imagined, and before long, she was not only taking the initiative, but also discovering and sharing new ways to make love.
Of course, this delighted Clifford. Mavis was too tactful to enquire about what had been going on in his marriage bed all these years, but it didn’t take long for her to suspect that the answer would almost certainly be, not very much. He had told her that he and Dorothy rarely made love, and she believed him. His hunger for her body, her hands, her mouth — as well as her company — increased as their relationship progressed. Mavis’s looks had never been remarkable, but she had inherited her mother’s clear eyes and soft dark hair. Her breasts were the kind often described as “pert,” and she had good legs. Clifford thought — and frequently told her — that she was beautiful. Mavis herself was totally without vanity, but as she often said to herself, if one man thought she was beautiful and if he was the right man, what did it matter what she, or anyone else, thought? With his endearments, his attention, and his increasing skill at lovemaking, he managed to make her feel beautiful. What more could a woman ask for?
Mavis knew that when Clifford said that he would eventually leave Dorothy to be with her, he meant it, even after all these years. She also knew that he felt guilty that their relationship had deprived her of the chance to have a family of her own. Often, in the early days, he had asked her whether she shouldn’t leave him to find someone who could give her what he thought all women should have: a home with a husband and babies. But Mavis didn’t need a husband, and she didn’t want babies. She had never been maternal, and when that particular door finally closed with the onset of the menopause, she had no regrets.
“I would like to have given you children,” Clifford had said again quite recently. “Or perhaps just one child.”
“You know I never wanted children,” she told him. “We went through all that years ago.”
And this was true. When Mavis was approaching her fortieth birthday — that final alarm call from the body clock — Clifford had offered to father her child.
“I would pay for its upbringing, keep in touch, be a proper father to it,” he told her. “We’d manage somehow. And then when I leave Dorothy —”
“No.” Mavis had smiled. “No. It’s a lovely idea, but it wouldn’t work. I’m fine as I am. And you have your own children. Let’s just carry on as we are.”
No one knew about Mavis’s involvement with Clifford. While she did have friends, none of them were close, and she suspected that her mother would have been distressed and scandalised if Mavis had chosen to confide in her. Father Lucian at the local Catholic church knew of course, for on the rare occasions when she went to confession, Clifford naturally had to be mentioned, and while she herself no longer felt particularly guilty about him, she also felt that it would be dishonest to leave the confessional without mentioning him.
“You see, we’re not hurting anyone,” she told Father Lucian when he gently upbraided her for her adultery. “No one need ever know.”
“God knows,” said Father Lucian (originality was not Father Lucian’s strongest point), “and besides, you’re damaging yourself and your immortal soul.”
Mavis thought about her immortal soul, and considered that on the whole, it was in fairly good shape.
“What if we don’t have sex anymore?” she asked, genuinely interested. “Suppose we go on seeing each other, but keep the relationship platonic?”
There was a long pause while Father Lucian (presumably) took sex out of Mavis’s relationship and considered it anew.
“Oh no,” he said after a while. “It still wouldn’t do.”
“Because?” Mavis prompted.
“Because of your feelings for each other.”
“We’d still feel the same, even if we never saw each other again,” Mavis told him.
“That’s different,” said Father Lucian. “That’s quite different.”
It was Father Lucian who had contacted Mavis about the Basic Theology classes, having himself been approached by the bishop (the bishop was having some difficulty in recruiting enough sinners to make the classes worth his — or more to the point, Father Cuthbert’s — while). Mavis had initially been curious rather than enthusiastic. She knew very well that the agenda would be the return of sheep to the Catholic fold rather than actually helping those sheep to come to terms with their difficulties, but it would be interesting to meet other people in the same position as herself, and she was entertained at the subterfuge of Basic Theology classes. Father Cuthbert’s parish wasn’t far, and she could put Mother to bed early (her mother loved being in bed, and so that was never a problem), and so she agreed. Apart from anything else, she was aware of Father Lucian’s disappointment at being unable to persuade her to see the error of her ways, and she thought that maybe this would go some way towards appeasing him.
Clifford, on the other hand, was appalled.
“You’re going to leave me,” he said. “You’re — you’re breaking it off between us!”
“Of course I’m not,” Mavis said. “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
“But why, then? Why are you doing this?”
“I suppose because it would be — it would be nice to talk to someone.”
“About us?”
“Yes. About us.”
“But I don’t talk about us to anyone. I don’t need to talk about us.”
“Well, I do,” Mavis told him.
“But why? After all this time, why? Why now?”
“Because there’s an opportunity, I suppose. And because I’m a woman. Women like to — no, need to — talk about personal things, and I’ve never had anyone before. Now there’s this, and I think it might help.”
“Do you need help?” Clifford asked her. “Because you know I will leave Dorothy. I will. I’ll do it soon if you want me to.”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Mavis patted his hand as though she were soothing a small child (it sometimes occurred to her that perhaps Clifford represented the child she’d never had). “You have to stay with Dorothy.”
“Oh, Mavis. I know I’ve promised and promised, and you’ve been so good. I can leave her, you know. I don’t even think she’d mind all that much now. We’re so — apart. We seem to have been apart for years, since even before I met you.”
Mavis turned to him and smiled. A lesser woman would have been irritated at the repetition of what might seem by now to be an empty promise, but Mavis knew better. She knew that every time Clifford promised to leave Dorothy, he meant it. Whenever it was going to be — when the children were older, when his younger daughter had left home, when he could afford to run two homes, when Dorothy had had her hip operation — Clifford really intended to leave her and be with Mavis. Often she had wondered how it was that she could see what he could not — that he was deceiving himself, and that for some time, he had managed to deceive her too. But perhaps in a way Clifford needed to believe that she and he would finally be together; he needed to believe that one day he would be able to make this very difficult decision.
“What will you say?” he asked her. “What will you tell them?”
“I don’t know.” Mavis had asked herself the same question. “I’ll see what everyone else says.”
“You won’t tell them about the — you know.”
“No, I won’t tell them that.” Mavis thought of the discreet cardboard box under her bed and the interesting little device inside, and how surprised people would be if they thought that she knew about, never mind used, such a thing. She smiled again. “No one will ever know about that.”
Clifford returned her smile. “It’s given us a lot of fun, hasn’t it?”
“It has. Oh, it certainly has.”
Later, after she had tucked her mother up in bed, Mavis tidied her small sitting room and laid out the snacks, the wine and glasses, and some apple juice. She felt quite excited. It was a long time since she had entertained anyone, and she was looking forward to it. Her mother hadn’t questioned her when she’d said she was having some friends round. With the self-centredness often found in the very old or the very young, she was happy for Mavis to do as she wished
, provided her own needs were met first, and this suited them both.
Arranging a small vase of early daffodils on a side table, Mavis wondered what it would be like for the three of them to meet up without Father Cuthbert’s anxious, solicitous presence. Would they miss his apologetic interruptions, his gentle rebukes, and his awkward fumblings with the coffee and the biscuits?
On the whole, she thought that they would not.
Gabs
Gabs looked at her watch, and then at the half-naked man who was crawling round the room on his hands and knees, barking like a dog.
“I’m afraid our time’s nearly up,” she told him.
The dog stopped barking and looked up at her mournfully. “Just five more minutes?” he asked.
“No. I’m sorry. You’ve got to get dressed, and so have I.” She put down her whip and began easing herself out of her gymslip and tie. “And I have an appointment.”
“Another — client?” He sounded jealous. It was odd how so many of them were jealous, when they knew very well what the deal was.
“No, not another client. I’ve got a meeting this evening, and I don’t want to be late.”
“You don’t look like the sort of person who goes to meetings.”
“There’s a lot of things I don’t look like,” said Gabs, undoing her pigtails and pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“But I’d like to. Really I would. I’d love to — to get to know you better.”
Women Behaving Badly_An uplifting, feel-good holiday read Page 3