Julia Gets a Life (22 page)

            ‘Well, hello Cardiff,’ she sings, lighting up. ‘What’s occurring?’

            We have decided to go out.

            Jacinta, who as well as writing for
Depth
, pens thrusting articles for the music press, would like to get the feel of Cardiff’s
scene
, apparently, and so would like to hang out for a while tonight, soaking up Welsh Youth Culture and suchlike, and getting rat-arsed.

            So when we got back, I spent some time considering what I believed to be the basics of the Cardiff scene and all I was able to come up with were;

            St David’s Hall

            Atlantic Wharf Leisure Village

            Arcades (v. trendy shops, but will be closed by time we get there)

            Harry Ramsdens

            College (whither
scene
(if any)
on campus?)

            A pretty poor show. Apart from a small kebab house on City Road, I realised I didn’t know one single young/hip/happening place to hang out. Furthermore, I couldn’t think of one young/hip/happening person to ask either. Besides Howard, who, on recent evidence, might well suggest somewhere a bit more hip and happening than was strictly necessary. So I telephoned Lily. Who is young enough at least to be able to point me in the right direction. And then Rani, for corroboration.

            Then I telephoned Richard to advise him of my strictly work related movements (good parenting brownie point - as if
I
should worry) and to tell him that the children had been told to telephone him if they had any problems. I also paid Emma a small cash sum for babysitting responsibilities with a bolt-on promise of strict lock out policy with regard to ‘friends’ wishing to assist.

            In the end, we fetch up at the pub Rani suggested, a spit and sawdust rugby watering hole in St Mary Street, from where I hope such vibes as are to be found in the city will lead us to whatever
scene
is to be found nearby.

            Jacinta loves it to bits. ‘This is the stuff!’ she coos. ‘
God
, like, history! Reality!Authenticity!’ She clucks over old prints of Merthyr and Senghennyd. Should a dozen sooty miners swagger in singing
Myfanwy
in close part harmony, she would not, I suspect, bat so much as a lash.

             ‘Jacinta - Lily, Lily - Jacinta, Jacinta - Rani, Rani - Jacinta. Lily, you and Rani have already met, haven’t you?’

            Lily nods. ‘
Seedlings
book party, February, wasn’t it?’

            Rani nudges me. ‘At the home of the bitch.’

            ‘Bitch?’ This is Jacinta.

            ‘Oh, no-one,’ I answer. Which is another thing. All those people I rustled up so that
she
could get the bumper family encyclopaedia atlas combo. Rani hasn’t stopped going on about what a crock of shit her
Wax Lyrical!
Batik book was ever since. She nods.

            ‘Rhiannon’s the bitch who shagged Jules’s husband...’

            ‘Yes, Julia, and speaking of Richard...’ starts Lily.

            ‘Richard? Ah, Richard!’ Jacinta smiles. ‘Colin said about him.’

            I sip my wine. ‘Did he?’

            ‘Mmm. Said he was a dipstick. Is he?’

             I’m not sure how to answer. ‘Well...’

            ‘Total. She can do much better, can’t you?’ says Rani. ‘Hey, look at
him
.’

            I look. ‘He can’t be more than fifteen, Rani!’

            ‘Exactly.
Virile.
Go for it, Jules. He looks right up your street.’

            But another
him
has clearly sidled up behind us. ‘Julia?’

            ‘I’m sorry?’
Damn.
Stuart Goodrich. Standing beside me, apparently part of some sort of after work beano. Holding a pint, as he would, given that we are in a pub.Though not looking quite as happening as I had hoped for. At present it seems to be filled mainly with people in suits, holding mobiles, and who are destined to be staggering home, smashed, before nine. Looking bemused, Stuart says;

            ‘I didn’t know you came in here.’

            ‘I don’t,’ I say. ‘I’m entertaining a visitor. Jacinta (I spread an introductory arm, but she’s vanished) is working with me on a job. We’re covering the
Kite
concert tomorrow night, for
Depth
.’

            ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Wow! Sounds very exciting..’ He has obviously never had a conversation with Richard about the more high profile side of my early career. I suddenly, irrationally, find this intensely irritating. Like I’ve spent the last fifteen years submerged under a smelly duvet of quiet wifehood, making out like my husband’s the only big I-am on the planet. (Richard? Oh he’s rather well known in town planning circles. Richard? Oh, I know, he’s such a
whiz
with community architectural projects. Richard? Yes, it
was
him you saw in the Herald last Friday. Proud? I’m prostrate.) Why shouldn’t
my
life be exciting? Why shouldn’t
I
be someone? And mainly, why shouldn’t
I hang out in trendy pubs in town and look like I’m part of the action?

            ‘More exciting than my life up to now at any rate,’ I tell him.

            He looks like he doesn’t know how to take this (which is unsurprising, as I’ve never voiced anything like this before) then says,

            ‘Richard has always done right by you, Julia. I mean, apart from...well. Well, he’s very unhappy. I mean...’

            I am just about to formulate a resounding ‘yeah, right’ when Rani ambles back from the bar.

            ‘Who’s this?’she asks. Having met us here straight from work, she is already on her third. Richard would call her ‘a loose cannon, that one.’ (In which case, Rhiannon’s a bazooka, with knobs on.)

            ‘Stuart - Rani, ‘ I say, noting that Lily has wandered off also, and noting, too, Stuart’s badly concealed leer. Rani sees it as well.

            ‘Hellooo,’ she says, and is obviously about to launch into her exotic Indian bird bit, when a voice calls out,

            ‘Goody, you animal! There’s two pints lined up over here.’

            Goody? Yuck! At the bar there is a huddle of Stuart clones, together with a couple of ageless women, with the sort of hair that can be tossed about a lot - in drinks, people’s faces, taramasalata etc., and who are wearing power suits and astoundingly shiny, flesh coloured tights. It is one of these that is beckoning. Stuart looks shifty.

            ‘How’s Caitlin?’ I ask.

            ‘She’s fine. Very......very busy em
broid
ering.’

            ‘Hmmm,’ I say.

            ‘Hmmm,’ says Rani.

            ‘Well, ‘says Stuart. ‘Nice to see you looking so well. Good...er..luck tomorrow then. Cheerio.’

            Rani makes a totally overt appraisal as he returns to his commercial fold.

            ‘Tosser, ‘ she decides.

            ‘Total.’

            When I wake the next morning, I think I am dead and on a cloud, just like I half expected. But I’m not. The radio pings on and I realise that I am in fact in bed, and that I still have my contact lenses in.

            After ten of the most excruciating minutes of my life (bar that first post-partum wee) I stumble downstairs to the kitchen. Lily, who exercised sufficient restraint last night for me to know that she really does not want to get rid of her baby, is sitting with a mug of marmite coloured coffee.

            ‘Why have I got forty seven beermats in my handbag?’ I ask her.

            ‘Only forty seven,’ she says. ‘It looked like more.’

            ‘But why?’

            ‘None of us could quite divine. But you were rattling about how you wasted your time at college by going in
Habitat
a lot and pricing up Bauhaus chairs with Richard. I think you were anxious to make up for lost time.’

            ‘By putting beermats in my handbag?’

            ‘To put on your wall.’

            ‘What wall?’

            ‘Who can say? You were keen to dismantle a bus shelter also, to get a poster for hair conditioner out of it.’

            ‘A bus shelter?’

            ‘You were the only person in your college who did not have a no-smoking sign from the London Underground or a traffic cone in their room. So you said. Apart from Richard, of course.’

            ‘Of course! God, I must have been wasted.’

            I make myself a less viscous shot of caffeine and sit down beside her.

            ‘I went out with a bloke once who had a beermat collection. He had three hundred odd of them, all different. All in rows on his bedroom ceiling. It’s a thought. It could look quite groovy in the downstairs loo.’

            Except that on closer inspection, I find that twenty three of mine are identical, and say
Brains
.

            There’s a message in there somewhere.

Chapter
18

            Everyone knows that showbiz parties do not start until well after clapped out, boring middle aged provincial types have gone to bed, so I am working on the assumption that I will not be home until sometime after dawn casts its harsh light on my crow’s feet, and have therefore asked Lily to stay one more night, to babysit the children for me. She is, of course, more than happy to do so, because poor, hapless Malcolm can’t track her down.

            While she is babysitting, and as a pre-cursor to abortion counselling, I have taken the liberty of getting hold of a copy of the classic video
Your Baby, Your Future
for her, as it is shot entirely in soft-focus and does not at any point allude to episiotomies or breast engorgement. Also, have primed Emma to;

           
Not
drone incessantly about nappies or posset.

            Avoid
all
hostile contact with Max - priceless
Kite
autograph collection/lifting    of now indefinite (Richard has spied the love bite) grounding dependent.

And Max to;

            Stay mainly in his room and play on Playstation (big dose of grim-reality-of-       parenting not good ploy at present).

            Not attempt punch up with Emma (financial recompense).

            Not consume more than two pop tarts (unless not back before breakfast).

            This is because we have had a full and frank discussion about the baby situation and have reached the conclusion that a woman who says she definitely wants an abortion and then bursts into violent tears crying ‘oh, my baby!’ is not a woman with a handle on her (metaphorical
or
actual) inner child. It is my duty, therefore, to present as positive an image of motherhood as it is possible for a woman with a varicose vein the size of a slug up the back of her knee can reasonably do.