Aunt Margaret's Lover (9 page)

I confess, yes, that I
did
saunter down to the post office. It was my first official engagement as predator and I wanted to see what it was like. I mean, I argued with myself, as I pushed at the door and went in, even Gerard Depardieu must post his letters
sometime.

If he did then he did not choose the main post office in Chiswick. The queue was long and I stood behind a cross man in an anorak that gave off the slight smell of not being quite washed. He had a red face and was talking loudly.

'Post office. Huh!
Post office.
I tell you, if this was a business they'd go bankrupt! Ten windows and only three of them lit. And look at this queue . . .' He gesticulated to his audience most of whom were finding the carpet unusually interesting and shuffling their feet like chain-gang slaves. Too late, I did not swing my eyes carpetwards quickly enough. Our eyes met. He moved closer. He opened his mouth to speak and something told me that this was not going to be Depardieu.

'I'm unemployed, I am. Why don't they give
me
a job, eh?'

'Well ...' I said, but of course it was not answers he required, merely encouragement.

'I'm fifty-one
-'
he peered closer -
'fifty-one . . .'

I wanted to show him some solidarity. 'I am unemployed too,' I said meekly.

'There you are, then,
there
you are.' He looked over towards the smug, amused counter staff. 'Here's another one for you. Two of us, out of a job, and willing . . .' He took my elbow. 'You
are
willing, aren't you?'

'Oh yes,' I said gamely and feeling an absolute shit.

'Here you
are
, then,' he called again. 'We'll have six first-class stamps and two jobs please...' He laughed a bitter laugh.

'Excuse me,' I said, detaching my elbow from him as gently as I could, 'I have forgotten something.' And I fled.

Outside, leaning against the wall, I took some deep breaths. Well,
he'd
have made a lover all right, I thought reproachfully - plenty of time on
his
hands. Good grief. What was I doing? Trawling the post office? Why didn't I just go and beckon superciliously at a selectee from the dole queue?

'Margaret?' said a voice. 'Fancy seeing you here.'

It was Verity and I just about stopped myself from saying, 'Don't tell me you're back on the look-out, too' when decency and a sense of proportion prevailed.

'What a way to spend your day, propping up the post office!' She laughed. She looked better. Not entirely her radiant self of yore, but distinctly better. She held a letter in her hand in such a way that made it seem important. She waved it about. She looked at me pointedly. I was being asked to inquire.

'Who are you writing to?' I asked dutifully, nodding at it.

'Mark,' she said, and with a flourish worthy of Sarah Siddons she dropped it into the box.

We had a coffee. I needed one and I also needed to get away before my new-found employment agent came out and took me into Sainsbury's for an assault on the checkouts. She needed one because she had, she said, just done a wonderful, liberating, definitive thing. 'What?'

'I have returned the keys of Mark's flat to him. That's what. And that is
it.
The letter says it all. Goodbye and farewell, may you please rot in hell.'

I stirred my coffee. 'You're a poet and you don't know it,' I said absently.

'Oh, those bloody cliches of yours,' she groaned. 'He asked me back, you see.' If ever the light of triumph and vengeance was illuminated in face of woman, it was now. 'And I have told him no. And I mean it.
No!
Rotten, lousy, stinking, opportunist bastard. Pass the sugar ...'

And we were off.

Or rather she was off. From the nature of her monologue it would appear that Verity was being sensible. Since she had met him she had not worked, had hardly slept, had got bags under her eyes whose luggage capacity would have sufficed for a six-week jaunt to Sydney, and discovered that the true joys of sex required more than mechanical brilliance.

'Snored instantly,' she said.
'Instantly!'
I watched her re-sugar her cup and sip it without even noticing.

'Best off without him, then,' I said, thinking mechanical brilliance wouldn't be bad.

'You bet,' she said.

'I've finished with Roger.'

She put down her cup.
^‘
No!
Why?'

'Dull,' I said.

'Really?' she replied, absently sipping. 'I thought he rather suited you.'

That she meant no malice by the remark, I understood, but nevertheless I had considerable pleasure in telling her about Mrs Mortimer and the legacy, my year away from work and the river of new life - leaving out the bit about the lover, of course. Friendship was restored by her warm and enthusiastic response.

'Well, that's absolutely brilliant. Lovely! Just what you deserve.'

I bloomed in the garden of her delighted approval
...
'And what's more,' she said, leaning forward so that her earrings tickled her cup, 'I never thought you had it in you.'
.
..
and withered, slightly, again.

'Enjoy it solo,'
she said, 'or you'll waste the whole year just like I have.' She put down her cup. 'In fact, we can be two freewheelers together. Friends in adversity and goodbye to men.'

It certainly was not the right time to tell her that I intended the river of life to flow erotically through my days.

Having sworn a bloody oath across the coffee cups that I would, metaphorically, worship only at Diana's shrine and thumb my nose at Venus, I continued to consider possibilities. When the antennae were sleeping, the fins sent me swimming in search of a good catch. It was all quite unnerving, this heightened interest in the male of the species. I now knew what it felt like to be one of those creeping things that go for it in a set mating season. When both antennae
and
fins were up, it became extremely alarming - even greengrocers' assistants were not beyond assessment. I was appalled at myself. But rather amused too. What I needed was to discover some reciprocal antennae or another set of fins masculine in similar circumstances.

I attempted to damp the mating season down a little by reading
properly -
not the grabbed ten minutes before dozing off. So I decided to investigate the novel section at the library and treat it rather like a delicatessen counter - trying out the unknown and not going for safe old cheddar. It was as I was doing this - running my fingertips along the stacks, assessing a jacket blurb - that I bumped against a suede jacket, beige chinos and an apologetic smile. But instead of giving back a warm and apologetic smile in the vague ritualistic way you do on such occasions, I felt my antennae instantly on the alert. Here was a male. Male singular? How did you
tell?
Very possibly by a wedding ring? I peered. He wore gloves. Our eyes met above the book he was consulting. I remembered that I had barely cleaned my teeth before tipping out that morning (living alone and not working inclines you to great personal laziness), let alone gone in for fin-twitching gear. I looked down again at the book he held and he must have read the hunger for knowledge in my eyes.

'Did you want this?' he asked.

'Is it good?' Quick on the repartee, I thought.

'I haven't actually read it,' he said, a little tersely. 'That's why I got it off the shelf.'

Of course, while I was temporarily engaged in thought, he swam off without giving me a backward glance. End of brief encounter. But the pudding had been stirred, the aroma released, and the fruit was tentatively beginning to show itself. Very possibly this could be
fun,
for each day now represented an adventure. I realized that though I was outwardly nearing forty, inwardly I was once more the woman in her early twenties who had existed pre-Saskia. With the salutary admonishment not to take this too literally and to remember the years bring wisdom one should not undervalue, I inclined myself cheerfully to the hunting down of Aunt Margaret's Lover.

After the library I left all my receiving equipment out -antennae, fins, pricking of my thumbs - and let it ride. I made sure I looked appetizing even before visiting the little run-down corner shop. Most bizarre. But always a little inner voice said, 'You never know
..
.' for who might not be found gracing that cluttered emporium with its yellowing boxes of rubber bands and economy lavatory paper? Even Harvey Keitel might need a Lyons fruit pie from time to time.

I began to miss the framers, but when I crept back there on one of my days off from hunting, Joan was extremely proprietorial, quite bustling, and put down the cup of coffee she offered me -
my
coffee - on the customer's side of the counter. I took the point. I had spent long enough being schoolmarmy about how I really wanted them to take responsibility and not keep running to me, so I could scarcely blame them for complying.

'Anybody interesting been in?' I asked, but had the grace not to add, 'Single men for instance?'

Joan said they were doing fine. Business was as usual and Son of Spiteri showed little in the way of damaging interest. He arrived at about eleven, departed for lunch, sometimes came back and sometimes did not. 'Cover for him if his father inquires,' I advised, for he was clearly quite harmless if kept indolent.

I finished my coffee and resisted the urge to do some Florentining on a gold frame. Joan picked up the mug. 'We'll ring you if we need to,' she said. I took the hint. One of the signs of a really good manager is one who can devolve and who has nothing on her desk but a telephone and a picture of the kids. I devolved my way home. Nothing on the answerphone, but on the mat . . . lo! a good-quality white envelope, addressed in pen and ink, Surrey postmark, and an invitation within. It was from Julius and Linda. They were having a small party to 'celebrate my mother's life' and would be 'glad if you could come . . .'

Was this, I wondered, fate? Might not Mrs Mortimer, even now, be guiding me towards a liaison? Apart from this invitation there had been very little social activity in my life. It is not at all easy meeting new people, let alone potential lovers. I began by saying I would be prudent, cautious, assessing, and certainly not jump at the first opportunity. By the end of the first week I would have willingly settled for a vault into the dark with one new male face between twenty and sixty-five and without a wife or a poodle.

Once, in a moment of weakness, I rang Colin, but thankfully he was going away. If I was glad, I was also envious, for he was off somew
here warm with one of his unlined
floosies. Where on earth do all those dollies come from? I asked my hall wallpaper after I had wished him
bon voyage
and replaced the phone.
Where?

Chapter Eleven

His girlfriend, Judith, is also his model but does not live with him in the apartment. We get on very well. He has given me a corner (quite a large one) of his studio, which has pitched me into working straight away. He is extremely disciplined (something to emulate?) and paints the figure, quite obsessively, with great feeling. Are you behaving yourself? Don't go off the rails while
I
am away, will you?

A party! That was more like it. Out could come the knees, the skirt and the drawstring
decollete.
I cheered up at once and decided on a course of action to repair the ravages of decay. Face packs, hair treatments, emery boards, cuticle stuff and a rather strong magenta nail polish with flecks of gold in it. Special offer. Do I need electrolysis? I pondered, scanning my face in a raking light. I decided not. If a potential lover wished to stand me under the upturned Anglepoisc before making up his mind, then he had not the mettle for me. I
settle
d for plucking my eyebrows which made me sneeze, squeak and cry, and after such suffering I felt considerably more worthy, to be blessed. No kindly Venus could look down and ignore the agonies of one who has never plucked before.

I was extremely pleased to be able to say to Saskia, when she rang and spoke to me as if I were some aged relative in a rug by the fire, that
1
only sounded odd because I had on a face-pack.

'But why?' she asked incredulously. 'You don't need one. ..'

I couldn't be sure whether she meant, 'You don't need one because you look great as you are ...' or 'You don't need one because you are past your sell-by date anyway . ..' I took it to mean the former and said that it was nice to pamper oneself.