by Georgie Hall
He’s convinced it was the suit. I sometimes wonder if I should signal back that I’m also in the mood by putting on a hat?
The trouble is I’m hardly ever in the mood for sex nowadays. I usually need to drink at least a bottle of wine to even come close. Tonight, staying sober to chauffeur, my sex drive has been valet-parked so far from sight I’ll need to hitch a lift to his party.
*
Everyone’s starving and Dad walks so slowly, we could have eaten our weight in tapenade by now. To our frustration, he stops to look at properties in an estate agent’s window, which is really just to catch his breath, but Jules is straight in bedside him pointing at a bungalow, trying to draw me into a ‘wouldn’t this be much easier for Mum and Dad to cope with, Eliza?’ observation (she thinks that because I work part-time for Stratford’s funkiest all-female estate agency – hosting viewings to supplement my income between narration jobs – my knowledge adds professional gravitas to her ongoing mission to downsize them). I hold up my phone apologetically, turning away to call Summer.
She tells me everything’s fine, yeah-yeah-yeah-ing distractedly, desperate to get me off the line, the television audible in the background. Old-fashioned scheduling is all that’s available at Grandpa and Granna’s cottage and I recognise the Graham Norton Show theme. The hot priest from Fleabag is on tonight; I’ll watch it on catch up. (Summer thinks I’m too old to enjoy the series; I think she’s too young; we both hate the fact Paddy likes it).
‘Is Edward asleep?’ I double check. Please don’t tell me he’s still playing the Switch.
‘Sort of.’
He’s still playing the Switch.
But we’re outside the restaurant now, and the rest of the family are going in, so I ring off. Glancing in, I see the familiar glow of candles on each table, the gingham cloths unchanged, along with the Italian flags and copper pans on the walls.
It’s almost empty. Antonio’s usurper is already failing, I conclude sadly as I wait to follow the others inside.
‘Signor Finch, buona sera! Signore! Avanti!’ an unseen voice incants as my parents are gathered inside. ‘Benvenuto!’
Ahead of me Miles rebouffs his fringe, Julia’s tits are swiftly raised and Reece adopts his iciest prosecutor smile as Mum makes introductions.
‘And this is my other daughter Eliza and her husband Paddy. This…’ she loves a theatrical pause ‘… is Matteo!’
Antonio’s successor is older than I expected and offensively handsome, Mediterranean skin a golden contrast to his peppery hair, his knockout smile in direct contrast to the unfriendly pout of the nubile younger woman glued to his side, dark hair wantonly piled up, Amy Winehouse-meets-Lolita.
‘Bellissima!’ He kisses my hand.
I stare at him, picture him cross-armed and leaning against a snarly bonnet on the hard shoulder.
I wait for him to recognise me too. His eyes smile into mine for a moment – they’re extraordinarily intense, obsidian dark – then he moves on to pump Paddy’s hand. Nothing.
The gonk hair and warpaint have ensured sheep-hugging Crazy Lady is under cover tonight. That and the magical invisibility cloak of being a woman over fifty.
Except I can’t remember the last time a man looked me as directly in the eye as he just has, and I hadn’t realised how much I missed it until now. Is this another one of the things women don’t notice gradually disappearing with age, I wonder, that bold male focus drifting away from us to look at something more interesting?
Matteo exudes the timeless masculine confidence that comes with high-grade charisma, a man whose desirability knows no age limit nor harbours self-doubt. I haven’t forgiven him, however great he looks. I’m equally affronted that Paddy’s gaze is straight on the Lolita waitress, who Mum doesn’t deign to introduce, but from the proprietorial arm the restaurateur puts around her before leading us inside, I’m guessing at a younger wife or girlfriend.
Our table is beautifully decorated with helium balloons, prosecco already poured, flutes raised as soon as we sit.
‘To Peter! Happy eightieth!’ Reece muscles in before anyone else and we obediently echo him.
It’s far too hot and airless in here and the music is awful: Dean Martin singing ‘Amore’. Even Antonio wouldn’t stoop so low.
Fanning myself with the specials menu, I look around at the few occupied tables, a scattering of sated diners polishing off desserts while hungry fellow theatre-goers crack open breadsticks. Tucked neatly into a table for one in the corner is my Japanese tourist friend. He waves at me shyly.
I cheer up enormously. How thrilling! I think I might have acquired a stalker.
5
Meal Time
‘Delithous, thanths.’ I lean back to let Lolita collect my plate. I’ve eaten my arancini too fast and burned my tongue. ‘Very hot. Caldo.’
Not looking at me, she moves on to gather Paddy’s antipasti board, and I witness his eyes drift to her lusciously pert backside.
It’s after eleven and he’s looking distinctly glazed. He’s not talking much which isn’t unusual. Reece has droned on uninterrupted about his new motorbike and Dad has summarised rugby, politics and business with kind but soul-destroying condescension.
Miles and Mum are still talking about the play, their conversation exclusive. They’re too far away for me to join in, but from what I can earwig, they’ve got as far as analysing Act Two.
Meanwhile, I’m stuck talking to our host, who takes waiting at tables so seriously, he waits constantly by ours, like we’re a small, select audience at his chat show.
Matteo’s outrageously flirty, his routine off-pat. He wants to know my favourite places in Stratford, where I like to eat, what I enjoyed about tonight’s performance, listening intently, prompting, teasing and laughing, his questioning gaze direct. It’s old-fashioned and compelling, threatening my sangfroid. That intensity.
He still hasn’t recognised me as Crazy Lady even when I steer him onto the subject of sheep as a personal dare. He just gets very animated describing a delicious-sounding traditional lamb sauce called Sugo di Agnello that will feature in Russo’s soon. Unlike Antonio, Matteo doesn’t cook here. He’s brought over his own chef and they’re going to reinvent the entire menu for Puglian authenticity, the emphasis on ethically sourced meat and on-trend plant-based diets. The wickedly rich wild boar ragu and I are having this one final, farewell meal together.
*
My relationship with food has been a lifelong battle of greed over need. As an actress, the pressure to be slim is enormous, even as a character actress, even as a bloody voice artist. And whilst I know my job title is now gender neutral ‘actor’, at times like this I go old school on the basis that epicene rebranding hasn’t made the problem go away. The narrowed eyes of directors and casting agents have been dismissing muffin tops since Sarah Bernhardt limped onstage.
I find it maddening that my metabolism keeps moving the goal posts. Thanks to the shock discovery a year or so ago that my waist was missing, I now eat less than ever and I am, like Anna in Notting Hill, permanently hungry. Tonight, I’m taking these calories for skinny actresses everywhere. And actors.
*
I need the loo again but I’m holding it in because I’d have to go directly past my stalker’s table. That means I’m still stuck with Matteo who has spun a chair around to sit on it, Christine Keeler-style, interviewing me like he’s a volunteer at a nursing home. Have I ever been to Italy? Here’s what he would show me, feed me, share with me if I did, and how they would love an English rose like me. It’s a script designed to flatter which it does, but I want him to go away. I have a perspiring forehead I need to napkin-off unobserved, but there’s no point hoping Paddy might step in and rescue me from all this one-on-one attention. He’s never been the possessive sort. (Even on honeymoon in Thailand when I was briefly kidnapped by a taxi driver off his head on yaa-baa, he was extremely laid back about it.)
‘And what is it you do, bella?’ he asks. I long to whispe
r I work for International Sheep Rescue, tell no one.
‘Eliza’s an actress!’ Dad says proudly (my parents don’t do unisex) and Mum’s focus on Miles flickers.
‘You are in television, no?’
‘Radio and voice work mostly.’
‘Eliza was in The Archers for a while,’ Mum explains. ‘You know, the soap?’ She always, always makes it sound apologetic.
*
I should point out here that Mum and I have a difficult relationship at times.
I love her deeply; she’s kind and funny and through the worst dark days of her cancer treatment we clung to each other for dear life. But we are both jealous types, and she’s never quite forgiven me the longevity of my career, for all its feast and famine. Mum was also briefly an actor (highlight: she handed Robert Stephens his cloak on stage at the Royal Court for six weeks in 1964). She didn’t go back to it after having children whereas I did, only not as well as she feels she would have done. She’s become the doyenne of damning with faint praise. My first role in a Radio 4 play was a huge thing for me and I bust a gut to nail it. After it was broadcast, Mum just said, ‘You were fine, darling girl.’ Nothing more.
*
It goes without saying Matteo has never heard of The Archers.
‘They fired her, poor darling,’ Mum sighs. This isn’t strictly true. I was the Pargetters’ bouncy nanny brought in to cheer things up after foot-and-mouth struck in 2002, and I was supposed to marry a local MFH in a Jilly Cooper-esque racy romance, but when I got pregnant with Summer they shelved it, then the Hunting Ban came in, after which I was spotted on Ambridge Green as rarely as Usha. I just faded out.
‘Eliza also narrates lots of books.’ Dad should really be my PR.
‘You write books?’ The Italian looks impressed.
‘No, I record talking books.’
‘To kids, yes?’
‘They’re mostly grown-up books.’
My brother whispers something to Mum whose eyes bulge.
‘Don’t say anything, Miles,’ I warn him.
*
It sounds lovely, doesn’t it, reading books out loud for a living? And it is often good fun, albeit a bit repetitive spending eight hours a day locked in a small room with nothing but a manuscript, bottle of water and lip salve, trying not to mispronounce things, breathe in too loudly or let your stomach rumble. They’ve saved the roof over my family’s head. Which makes me feel all the more ungrateful that I’m getting a bit frustrated with the job. At first, I read out all sorts: biographies, manuals, cookbooks, historic sagas – and I loved that, but of late I keep getting offered the same work. I’ve been typecast.
‘Eliza’s just won Narrator of the Year for female erotic fiction,’ Miles tells the table.
I could kill him.
He beams at me.
Beaming back, I raise my glass, one finger strategically to its fore.
‘To our award winner.’ Miles raises his glass around the table in retaliation, two fingers strategically V-ed for me. ‘Congratulations, you dark horse, you. Next stop the Oscars.’
It’s true I’ve read out nothing but priapic cocks and landslide orgasms for over a year and I’m a winner. Apparently my panting is first-rate. If anybody asks what I’m narrating, I tell them it’s women’s fiction – guaranteed to be greeted with about as much interest in my family as The Highway Code. Even Paddy doesn’t know it’s soft porn. Miles only uncovered the truth because he caught his ex-wife listening to one while she was ironing and recognised my voice.
I manage to hold my smile. Narrator of the Year for Female Erotic Fiction is my first professional accolade, an engraved glass open book shaped like lips which is hidden in my bedside drawer. I told Paddy I was just at the awards to make up numbers, and yes I felt bad for lying, but I had to protect him from all the aural sex I’m giving when our love life is U-Rated.
I glance at him but he’s giving nothing away. My sister and Reece are making shocked little ‘O’s with their mouths; Mum clearly can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, Dad’s face is sweetly baffled and Matteo just laughs uproariously then goes to check progress in the kitchen.
‘Tell me, Eliza, what’s the method acting behind reading out mucky metaphors for the ladies?’ I might have guessed Reece would be straight on it. ‘Do you sit on the washing machine before recording to get in the mood? Fna-ha!’
My brother-in-law’s sexism badly needs an update.
I match his tone. ‘With all the online porn you watch, Reece, you should know it’s easier than that to get in the mood these days!’
It’s a guess, but his eyes flicker tellingly.
We’re both grateful to see Lolita flouncing out of the kitchen with bowls of pasta.
My ragu, scalding hot like my starter, has none of the lovely sage-flavoured earthiness I remember from when Antonio made it. Within seconds, I get a bit of the meat stuck between my teeth. I can’t dislodge it, no matter which way I contort my burnt tongue or discreetly fish around with a fingernail.
Paddy blows a discreet kiss and I wonder if he thinks what I’m doing is intended to be seductive, a bit of finger-sucking table play? He must be pretty drunk by now, given Matteo’s glass-refilling efficiency.
He smiles across at me slowly. I’m not sure whether to be relieved or worried. My erotic professional secret, it seems, has full husband approval.
Turning my face away to try to discreetly dig deeper with the fingernail, I catch sight of Matteo holding out a credit card terminal to my stalker. Both are looking straight at me. I turn jumpily to Paddy, finger still in my mouth. It’s Austin Powers’ Dr Evil rather than erotic.
He’s holding his smile gamely. There’s a large lump of basil between his front two teeth.
*
These unfashionably ivory teeth of mine have seen a lifetime of devoted twice-a-day brushing, regular dental checks and more flossing than a primary school disco, yet they are ever-more determined to be food traps. Perhaps it’s because I feed them less as I get older that they store spinach, seeds and meat for later?
My dentist has given me little interdental brushes to poke about between them twice a day and I’m regularly appalled by the rubble that comes out. One day I got a bit carried away and the interdental brush itself stuck between my teeth. Paddy had to help me remove it with a small pair of pliers and some olive oil. That’s love.
*
My stalker has paid up and gone. I didn’t look up as he left and I’m slightly regretting the missed thrill of fear. We have the restaurant to ourselves, chairs on tables around us, candles guttering. Matteo – jacket and tie now off, gold neck chain glinting – is doing his Christine Keeler chair thing beside Dad, amaro glasses charged. My sister and Reece are having one of those sotto arguments where their mouths don’t move. Paddy’s entertaining himself handing finished dessert plates to Lolita whose cleavage dips into his eyeline each time. (No matter how many times I’ve tried to explain to my husband what The Male Gaze is and why he should avert his, he’s unconscionable when drunk.) Mum and Miles are onto Act Four. I’ve got a lump of sugar-spun toffee stuck alongside the pork.
Now that I can visit the loo without fear of abduction in a suitcase to Tokyo, I hurry off to lose another quart of mineral water, dig out the trapped food with my earring hook (handy tip that – the friend who passed it on swore it came from Judi Dench) and reapply my lipstick. The rest of my make-up is largely sweated off, but the gonk hair is holding up.
When I get back to the table, Dad’s telling Matteo about the narrowboat. ‘She belonged to Paddy’s late father. We renamed her The Tempest when we bought her. She’s magnificent!’
‘Che coincidenza! Since I was a boy, I love these colourful barges on your canals. I always want one.’
‘Then we must take you out in her, mustn’t we, Miles?’
‘Mmm?’ My brother casts his languid smile across the table, the one he uses when too drunk to follow the conversation.
‘The Tempest! She’s moor
ed not far from here,’ Dad tells Matteo. ‘Miles has plenty of free time to take you out.’
‘I would love that!’ Matteo is straight in there. ‘The painted boats, they are beautiful like your women, yes?’ He smiles across at me and I raise a cynical eyebrow.
I notice Paddy has stopped looking cleavage-wards and looks thunderous instead. He is extremely possessive about the boat.
*
A sixty-foot narrowboat then called Lady Love (I know, ew), that barge was Eddie Hollander’s pride and joy. Messing about on boats was a lifelong passion he passed on to his son. She’d taken the Hollanders the length and breadth of Britain’s waterways by the time Paddy inherited her. The beautiful red barge was one of the few things the family managed to hang onto after everything else was sold to pay Ruth’s care home fees. Which made it doubly heartbreaking that we later had to sell her to stay afloat ourselves.
Despite having no interest whatsoever in boats, my parents kindly stepped in and, name change aside, she’s much the same as ever. They’ve hosted a few parties aboard. Paddy still tinkers at weekends. We’ve had a couple of holidays on her, although the kids prefer camping.
Miles was the one member of the family who showed a great affinity for canal life, loving the barge’s vintage kitsch, Paddy’s generosity with beer and the fact the radio always tuned to a test match or eighties retro rock. But his enthusiasm for hours pottering along the Midlands’ waterways waned when he no longer needed an excuse to avoid going home to his wife. Only Paddy continues to do that.
Miles is now learning to fly a microlight as part of his sexy rainbow reinvention as Warwickshire’s gay James Bond. He has a bet with Summer that he’ll get his private pilot’s licence before she gets her full driving one, and being a competitive Finch he’s already clocked up his first solo flight and a minor air traffic incident involving a weather balloon.
*
At last, the bill is fetched. I’ve swallowed so many yawns I’ve given myself hiccups and I’m boiling hot again. I hold my breath and bet myself that if I hiccup in the next ten seconds I’ll get to play Cleopatra at the National Theatre alongside Daniel Craig. I don’t hiccup. Bugger.