by Eleanor Wood
‘Shut up.’
We don’t really know anything about RJ – including his real name – but Nan says he must be both ‘very bright’ and ‘from a very good family’, because he is so well spoken. He does seem ambitious, I’ll give him that. I think he seems a bit shifty, but Nan says he’s just very formal and professional. Aside from the hugging, I presume.
As the days go on, Nan finds every excuse possible to visit RJ’s reception desk. He is unfailingly enthused every time. Actually, I have to admit that it becomes extremely helpful. I begin to understand the appeal of RJ, when he starts dealing with Nan and Rose’s tech support so that I don’t have to. Obviously, RJ sorting out their iPhones is far more appealing than boring old me doing it. Good old RJ, I find myself thinking more and more often.
‘RJ, darling, would you mind having a look at my iPad in the morning?’ Rose asks him late one evening as we are returning from dinner. ‘I think I’m having problems receiving emails. I’ll come and find you in the office tomorrow.’
Ten minutes later, there is a knock at the door. RJ has finished his shift and explains that he wanted to come by to help before he goes home for the evening. It is about eleven o’clock at night.
‘You see, I did not want to wait for the morning. Otherwise, madam, I would not sleep well knowing you were having such difficulties.’
This is so sweet but I, shamefully, have to try my hardest not to burst out laughing. He genuinely would not sleep tonight knowing an old lady is having trouble receiving emails on her iPad.
It’s mildly uncomfortable having RJ in the room with us, although thankfully, he refuses my awkward offer of a cup of tea. He fiddles with Rose’s iPad for a couple of minutes and solves the problem, to much grateful applause.
‘You should find a boyfriend like RJ,’ Nan takes to informing me at regular intervals from then on.
‘You want me to go out with RJ? I don’t think you actually mean that, Nan.’
‘Well … No, you’re right. He’s not your type, darling, I know. But someone caring like RJ.’
I have to admit, perhaps in her own way she has a point.
Present Day
While I’m away, I find myself thinking quite a lot about my taste in people. Not just in men, although it’s true I do have a very specific ‘type’ that has not always served me well.
I tend to get addicted to people, especially to the ones that don’t like me very much. I love having to work hard, to win people over, even though it’s exhausting. Even with K, after years of being together, I felt as though I had to be the ‘best’ girlfriend and entertain him at all times – otherwise, what use was I? Of course, my experiences with Stepdad have shown me that’s literally how it works. You will never be worth sticking around for, no matter what you do. This does not stop me from trying. Constantly, unfailingly, like my life depends on it. It’s bloody exhausting.
Even here, on this momentous holiday and supposed break from everyday life, my mood can hinge on how quickly The Lecturer replies to my texts and whether he laughs at my jokes. It’s a bit embarrassing, but there it is.
It’s an ongoing battle and it’s impossible ever, truly, to ‘win’. Sometimes I wonder what it would take for me to feel better, to relax in the knowledge that I was just enough for someone. It’s not a feeling I have ever experienced.
For years – the whole time I was with K – I was vehemently and vocally ‘anti-marriage’. If you don’t get married, you can’t get divorced, I would say to anybody who would listen. And I’ve seen so much divorce, I absolutely knew I did not ever want to go through that.
I really thought I had it all figured out. It used to drive me mad when people would assume that I was patiently waiting all those years for him to propose – this used to happen a lot, particularly at friends’ weddings or thirtieth birthday parties. I was always at pains to point out that it was a mutual decision, if not mostly me – ‘I’m just not the marrying type!’ I would say airily, hoping it made me sound incredibly cool and a bit mysterious.
It was only when it all went wrong between me and K that I changed my mind. I found myself wondering if we’d got it all wrong, if things might have been different if only we’d got married. After we broke up, I felt like a divorced person (I still do) but without the socially accepted weight of ‘A Divorce’. It was just a break-up.
Somehow, perhaps now I’ve seen how impossible it all is, I find my parents’ unfailingly optimistic attitude towards the institution of marriage commendable. They just love being married. Even on the third go, they like to believe it will last for ever this time. It truly is the triumph of hope over experience. It’s flawed, but it’s kind of beautiful.
I want to try everything. I want to have all the experiences. I still want to do new things. I’ve had a few relationships, a couple of them serious. What’s still left to try? Being traditional, I guess. Taking the leap and marrying someone.
I now think I would like to have a husband and children, and if I’m going to do that, I really need to get on with it. Yet I still seem to put myself into situations where that is impossible, then complain about it.
My mum is one of those women who men seem to want to marry. Pretty much every boyfriend she has ever had has tried to wife her up. They’re always trying to do a marry on her. She’s had more marriage proposals than I’ve had second dates, seriously.
My mum loves being married. So does my dad. They both actively seek out marriage. It has to be marriage.
‘You should try it,’ my mum says to me.
‘Mum, literally nobody has ever asked.’
‘I don’t believe that’s true!’
‘No, honestly. I know that’s hard for someone like you to believe. Nobody has ever wanted to marry me. Nobody has ever asked.’
‘Well, to be fair, you can’t knock about with all these cool, unattainable men in bands, or artists or whatever, and then complain they don’t want to marry you. Just change your taste in men a bit, and I’m sure lots of them would ask.’
She has a point, but it’s not like I could ever bring myself to do that, so it’s not very helpful advice. I can’t help who I fancy.
I’ve lived alone for over two years now. I’ve got used to living on my own. I am just not prepared to compromise. But that’s less scary in your twenties, when you have all the time in the world, much more so when you’re thirty-six. I am just not capable of ‘settling’ for anything less than extraordinary.
In the last few years, though, I haven’t really felt strong enough for anything extraordinary. Since everything that happened with Stepdad, and K, I feel like I’ve never quite got back up to full capacity. I’m like an old iPhone: the battery just won’t stay charged.
When you’re at a low ebb, the wrong people are drawn to you – they can sniff it out a mile off, they circle like vultures. Since Bad Boyfriend, I’ve felt like I have been systematically broken down, and I’m still putting myself back together again. So, I’ve continued to complain that I would like someone to want to marry me, but I haven’t had the energy left to really mean it. I’m acutely aware of time ticking, but now I realize – instead of running around and panicking, trying to make everything into something – really I’ve just needed a break.
I feel like now, for the first time in a long while, my energy is truly starting to recharge. Not so long ago, I was still exhausted. I still feel a bit like a one-eyed, battle-scarred cat. These days I’m more suspicious of the world, of people, of men in particular. I’ve been too scared to be adventurous any more.
I have been complaining to my friends about The Lecturer for what feels like forever – he’s an enigma, he’s strange and stand-offish, he’s so confusing sometimes. But it occurs to me now that maybe that’s been part of his appeal. Maybe I didn’t really want him to be as madly in love with me and desperate to be my boyfriend as I had automatically assumed. Maybe the fact he always kept me slightly at arm’s length was part of what was comforting about it.
&nb
sp; Maybe I didn’t really want it to come to anything. But maybe now I do. That’s really something new to think about.
Present Day
While I’m away, I think a lot about all the relationships in my life. I guess the distance puts things into perspective.
Seeing Nan, Rose and Ann together – laughing, bickering, often singing – makes me miss my sister Katy.
Katy and I, in many ways, are polar opposites. Our faces are similar, but we look like distant relatives from two different eras. She has blue eyes and pale skin and a notably slight figure. She is pretty and neat, where I am messy. She is cautious and quiet; I am, as if it needs to be said, neither of these things.
Mostly, when we were growing up, I think Katy viewed me kind of like E.T. I was an alien living in the house with her – I was friendly and funny, but also an entirely different species. I might have been older, but she was always far, far more sensible.
‘I thought you were supposed to be the clever one,’ Katy often says, rolling her eyes. However, we love each other fiercely and, as adults, we get on brilliantly – until my mother sets one foot in the room, when we invariably regress and start bickering like idiots.
‘Mum, she’s looking at me!’
‘Girls, grow up – you’re in your thirties now, for God’s sake …’
While on the surface the two of us appear to have little in common, we both love spending time together. When everything else in my life is going to shit, I know that I can always go and stay at her house, put on pyjamas and eat a takeaway in front of the telly.
She is secretly hilarious (I like to think of her as a Trojan horse when it comes to comedy, what with her sweet and innocent appearance) and she can make me laugh like nobody else on the face of the planet. She’s a solid person, a proper person, and I am so lucky to have a sister like her. I’m admiring of her in so many ways.
In fact – although I have never heard my sister swear, or seen her drunk – she’s way more of a badass rebel than I am, in so many ways. She has this core of steel running through her that I just don’t. I can talk a big game, but when it comes down to it, I am skinless. In her own quiet way, Katy is much tougher than me or my mum. She’s one of those people who can charmingly say no to things and never does anything she doesn’t want to do.
When we were growing up, as the eldest, I felt somewhat responsible for both of us – for making sure we made a good impression, for making sure everyone got along. It’s funny, my parents would definitely say Katy was the easiest of their daughters, but I am the chronic people-pleaser – it’s just that I usually mess it up under pressure (by getting drunk, falling over, or generally getting things wrong), so nobody realizes that’s what I’m trying to do. Katy, when it comes down to it, actually gives far fewer fucks than I do.
Despite being the younger sister, I think Katy is already on the path to one day being a staunch old lady. She’s already well on her way there. She’s got her shit together.
Katy didn’t fancy coming on the trip to India. If anything, in a practical sense, she’s even closer to our grandmother than I am. She still lives in our hometown, literally round the corner from Nan, so they see each other most days. They go shopping, or out for coffee together, and at the weekends, Katy and her fiancé help Nan with the gardening. They are a couple of earth angels.
While I ring Nan up and chat to her about nothing for hours on end, she would find it a lot harder to function without Katy. We all would, quite frankly. However, Katy had next to no interest in coming with us on this trip. She hates flying and doesn’t particularly even like going into central London. She prefers being at home more than anywhere else, and she has styled her house and garden so immaculately, I probably wouldn’t want to leave either if I were her. She loves going shopping and eating in restaurants. She likes a nice holiday as long as it’s not too far away – she was the first to admit that she probably would have enjoyed our hotel in India, but she wouldn’t have wanted to venture further afield than the pool.
Often on this holiday, I think she’d hate it – she wouldn’t like the food, she would hate people constantly trying to sell her things. She does not enjoy hassle. I miss her, though.
I look at Nan and Rose together, and I marvel at how they have been a constant in each other’s lives for so long. They bicker, which is extra hilarious to see in two octogenarians. They still have flashes of ridiculous sibling rivalry over the funniest, most trivial things. They argue about things that happened sixty years ago. They love each other fiercely.
I see them on the beach together, walking slowly now and holding onto each other’s hands, as much out of necessity as affection, and it blows my mind how much they have both been through in this life. They have seen so much and they have been there for each other through all of it.
They’re old now, and they’ve schlepped halfway around the world just so that they can go back to where it all started, together. That was so important to them.
I would say I hope Katy and I might get to be that lucky one day – but mostly, I hope we get to be that fucking staunch.
The person I miss most while we’re away is my mum. We all wish she could have come with us.
She has a high-powered job and has recently re-married; of course she couldn’t come. In fact, for her honeymoon, she and her new husband went travelling around India and saw Nan’s old school and the hospital where Auntie Clara worked. My mum has a great affinity with both India and family history; she would love to have come if she could.
I feel her absence a lot of the time. When I hear all the old family stories, I’d love her perspective on it. She is the next step on the ladder of staunchness.
While I could still lie down on the floor and weep when I think of what she has gone through over the past few years, I know there is nobody in the world who can laugh in the face of adversity like my mother can. That’s something that runs in the family.
In some ways, I feel we’re so close because we grew up together. She was twenty-four when I was born. I guess this wasn’t unusually young for the time, but it seems like it to me now. She got pregnant by accident because she had been told it was unlikely she could ever have children. Considering she again accidentally got pregnant with my sister three years later when she had an IUD, I think it’s safe to say that the doubts about her fertility were unfounded.
When I think about how close my mum and I are – in age, as much as everything else – it blows my mind a bit. In pictures of the two of us when I was a baby, to me, she looks like a pretty student holding somebody else’s baby for a joke.
For a treat as a child, I would ask to look through my mum’s photo album of her university days. She and her flatmate Celia (my beloved godmother) were my style icons: smoking cigarettes, having wild parties in their flat and looking like total rock chicks. They lived in a condemned building on Gilbert Street, just off Oxford Street – their local shop was Selfridges Foodhall. The flat was decorated with cigarette packets and the ‘Tickets and Trains’ sign they had nicked from Bond Street Station. The bathroom plumbing was dodgy, so they had a tin bath that they would fill up in the kitchen.
I would listen to these tales like they were fairy stories. I was furious that she’d chucked out her Seventies dresses and Biba collection. I wanted to be exactly like her.
When I was a teenager, we both loved Prince and The Lemonheads, singing along together in the car to school. We would share clothes and argue over missing lipsticks and earrings. If I was going to a party, I’d get her to do my hair and make-up for me. She’s always been so much better at that kind of thing than I am.
When my mum was the age I am now, she had a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old. Her first marriage had ended and she was about to get married for the second time. The idea of this is unthinkable to me. I look at pictures of her at this time, and I could drown in the vast canyon between us.
It makes me look at myself differently. Dating now is difficult, because I look in the mirror and
feel like I’m at the wrong stage. Despite the tattoos and overgrown hair and the leather shorts I still insist upon wearing – at my age, at best, I look like a hot mum. I look like my mum looked when I was twelve. If I had been married for five years and had a couple of small children, I’d probably be the coolest-looking mum in town. However, for a single woman – well, by this point, I can’t help but feel that I’m sort of lacking.
Far from looking young for my age, now every one of the last five years shows up on my face – you could balance a pound coin in the frown line between my eyes. If I ever get married, my husband will never have seen my tits at their best, which is a shame.
Every day throws up something more dispiriting that I can’t control. A lot of this consists of hair in unexpected and annoying places. I have to start bleaching my new moustache, for the first time in my life, and plucking around my belly button. Staying neurotically on top of the nipple hair is a fucking full-time job. I can’t decide if I can be bothered or not. Sometimes I leave it and pretend I’m Frida Kahlo, but then I worry that nobody will ever fancy me again. I’ve always prided myself on my lack of vanity; now I understand why my mum always rolled her eyes at me and said it’s easy not to be vain when you’re sixteen, twenty-one, twenty-six, even thirty …
We often get mistaken for sisters, which these days I think speaks as much of my ageing as it does her lack of.
What all this really means, though: having a life that is anything at all like my mum’s is a closed-off path for me now. The idea of that is over, impossible. It’s funny getting to this age and realizing that you are running out of potential.
I feel strangely out of time, here on the beach. I see people wondering what my relationship to the others is. I feel like the child of the group, but then I’ll see local mothers with husbands and multiple children, who are clearly at least ten years younger than me. It makes me feel like I don’t quite belong anywhere.
When I was a teenager, I assumed I’d be just like my mum when I grew up. I guessed I’d have babies in my early twenties and be a cool, sexy mum just like her. There have been a lot of relatively early pregnancies in my family and thus a lot of cool, sexy young mums. I thought that was the norm.