Julia Gets a Life (26 page)

            Except that I have none of those ingredients apart from some billion year old icing sugar, that has, in any case, turned itself into an attractive box shaped Damien Hurst type art installation, complete with petrified ants etc. This is by virtue of inter carton communication between said sugar and a plastic pot of glace cherries with an undiscovered hole.

            All of which quite neatly defines my relationship with baking as an enjoyable pastime i.e one Dundee cake every five years.

            So I popped into Sainsburys on my way home from work and almost collided with Moira Bugle, by the beans. She was travelling at some speed with a very full trolley and was clearly surprised when I leapt out and stopped her.

            ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Shopping for your charity lunch?’

            ‘Hmm. Yes,’ she said, pushing bits of stray hair from her forehead and blinking at, but not asking about, my black eye. ‘Um, yes. How are you, lovely? All right, is it? Hmm. Oh dear, must dash...’

            All very peculiar. One rarely escapes without at least fifteen minutes worth of posturing.

            ‘Oh, and you really must come round to dinner with me sometime soon,’ I said. Like you do.

             ‘Oh, no! Goodness me, no! No, my lovely. I wouldn’t want you to think...’

            ‘No, you must,’ I said brightly. ‘We’ll fix something up at the lunch.’

            ‘No, please...’

            Curiouser and curiouser. My cooking’s not that bad. But perhaps, I thought suddenly, I am a social pariah. I decided not to push it. I didn’t want the old buzzard round anyway.

            ‘All right then. But canapés,’ I quipped.

            ‘Canapés?’

            ‘For your lunch.’ She’d say no, of course.

            ‘Canapés. Yes, lovely. You make some canapés. Must dash now. Byeeee.’

            Bugger.

            But I’m glad I offered to make the canapés now, because I’ve quite enjoyed playing with my canapé cutter and have made a selection of quite exotic looking little fishy thingies, as a sort of dry run. And I have decided to bring these round to Howard’s tonight, because I think homosexual men are probably far more appreciative of that kind of
detail
than straight ones. And I am right.

            Howard, who has become even more handsome since love and happiness have visited his chiselled features, falls upon my tray with delight and enthusiasm and an altogether different timbre to his voice than his previous, non-gay one.

            ‘These are
brill
iant, Julia! I didn’t know you could do this sort of thing.’

            ‘I try not to shout about it, ‘ I say, casting about for signs of Nick as I shrug off my coat. ‘Doesn’t really suit my image. I wouldn’t want it thought that I’m too domesticated. It’s hardly sexy, is it?’

            Howard laughs (ditto timbre) and squeezes my shoulder. I am so glad we have managed to develop such a wonderfully secure and honest relationship. I feel we are growing together. And there are so few people in my life that have so little expectation of me, except as a person they’d like to spend time with. What a shame we couldn’t do this before. He says,

            ‘I don’t
know
. I suspect there’s a man out there that would think so. Food can be
very
sexy. Can’t it, love?’

            And here’s Nick.

            I had thought it would be very easy to spot who was the man and who was the woman, and that with Howard being such a hunk, Nick would have to be the girl. But he is not at all what I expected. He looks rather like Howard, all biceps and eyebrows, and his hair, much like Howard’s, is wavy and dark. He shakes my hand, then pulls me in for a cuddle.

            ‘Well, hell
o
,’ he says. ‘So. Let’s do this dinner thing, shall we?’

            So we do. And though my canapés are completely outshone by Nick’s berry soufflés with raspberry coulis, it’s actually really enjoyable to sit back and watch them together. All the signs, the little looks, the little touches and glances - the signals that weren’t there between Howard and I. They are all now in place. As they would be. These two are in love. And I find I don’t mind in the least about the thing I had about Howard. Funny, but it doesn’t seem real any more.

            I drive home with a real sense of pleasure. Having Howard and Nick as my friends matters far more than I imagined it would. Like having two extra children, which is quite ridiculous, yet that’s how I feel. I can see myself striding about on gay marches, protecting them from all the ills of the world, campaigning to raise money for Aids research, and feeling terribly modern and permissive and in touch with finer thoughts and feelings than most people. And I didn’t
once
think about what they do in bed together, even when they had a quick kiss.

            My canapés don’t go down half so well at Moira Bugle’s charity lunch. Suffering from total amnesia and clearly horrified that anyone has had the bare faced cheek to bring a party food item across her threshold, she gives me a wild-eyed stare, before swiping them from me and marching out to the kitchen, bellowing a terse ‘you shouldn’t have’ over her shoulder. I suspect they are in the bin before I have even removed my jacket, and been hustled into the fray.

            I don’t really know why I come to these things. All my books tell me I shouldn’t do this stuff if I don’t want to - there is probably even a chapter in one, headed, How To Say No To Mrs Moira Bugle. Yet I do. I suspect it fulfils some very deep seated need that I have not, as yet, identified. Or perhaps I just fear that if I don’t play a part, I will become ostracised by all the women I may end up having to share a rest home with one day. Though standing at the edge of the buffet table looking for someone who I both know and who isn’t already engaged in intense debate about something entirely unimportant, I feel a bit ostracised already. Moira certainly doesn’t want to talk to me any more.

            I am rescued (if you like) by Caryl Phelps. She spots me as she moves in for a tuna
vol au vent
and makes a beeline. Caryl Phelps, now that she is conversant with the details regarding Richard and Rhiannon, is anxious, it seems, to become my new friend. And to put her head on one side a lot and look compassionate and under
stand
ing. And to say ‘but are you
really
’ when I say I’m all right. I short change her a little, of course, by moving on to Oscar’s recent lack of success in the Face2Face competition, but we both agree, ever so sweetly, that Rhiannon’s Angharad has a very good chance, and wish
her
well, even if her mother has done a very sad and selfish (Caryl’s words) thing.

            ‘And what about Moira?’ I say, steering the conversation away from how
hard
it must be, and how be
trayed
I must feel, by reaching for a brie and grape bridge roll and pointing. ‘She seems a little distracted at the moment. Is she all right?’

            ‘You don’t know, then.’

            I’ve obviously missed a lunch somewhere.

            ‘No, I don’t. Tell me. What?’

            ‘Oh, she’s in a complete state. It’s
so
funny.’ (Which is how friendship works, sometimes, in suburban circles.)

            ‘What?’

            ‘About Damon. The condoms.’

            ‘I’m sorry?’

            ‘The condoms that fell out of his wallet. Oh, it was so
funny
. Right in the middle of one of her big dinner parties. And apparently Richard...oh, I’m sorry..’

           
Oh. I
get
it.

            ‘Don’t be. Go on.’

            ‘Well Richard was talking about taxis or something. He’d had some problem with some local firm always letting him down. I don’t know, exactly. Anyway, Damon was just on his way out - it was still early. I think everyone had only just arrived. Anyway, Moira said that Damon had this friend in the chess club who had just started up some taxi company - can’t imagine that, can you? Chess playing taxi drivers. You sort of associate them with bicycles and woolly jumpers and so on - Anyway, Moira apparently told Damon to give Richard one of their cards. So he got his wallet and pulled a card out for Richard, and a packet of three fell on the floor. Right in the middle of everyone. Can you imagine?’

            I can.

            ‘So what did he do?’

            ‘Well, he went scarlet, apparently. As he would. And of course Moira bent down to pick them up, not knowing what they were - though
everyone
else did apparently - and then she realised and just frog-marched Damon out of the room.’

            ‘I can see it now. But isn’t she over-reacting a little? I mean, he’s sixteen, isn’t he? With normal, healthy sixteen year old urges and suchlike.’

            ‘Oh, I know. But I think it was just the shame of it. You know how prissy she is. She’s just terminally embarrassed about it. And of course she’s been telling everyone they belonged to his friend, which just makes it worse, really. And I think she just can’t bear to think her little baby’s having sex.’

            ‘If he is. He might just be hoping. In which case he sounds like a responsible young man.’

            ‘I agree, though the general consensus is the former. But who would have thought it? Damon Bugle. I mean, he’s so...’

            ‘Geeky,’ I whisper. ‘According to Emma.’

            At which point we are stopped in our tittering by a cough and some clapping, and Moira addresses us with a clipboard and pen.

            ‘Now ladies, ‘she says. ‘The destruction of the Wetlands. I’m sure you’ll agree that we need to do more.....’

            That night I had a dream about Damon’s condoms. Except that it wasn’t Damon, but Craig James who had them. We were in his hotel room, and he was blowing them up - multicoloured ones, lots of them - and tying them with guitar strings. I was dancing on the bed in my pants, I think. Then we climbed up onto the hotel roof and let them go, one by one, into the night sky. Craig said,

            ‘Sex isn’t safe any more, Mrs Potter.’

            The alarm woke me before I could reply.

***

            ‘So what we’ll do is take you, Lily, inside for a chat, while your friend here has a coffee and a read. Okay?’

            Lily nods.

            ‘And did you bring your urine sample?’

            Lily nods again.

            ‘And after that, we’ll see the Doctor. Okay?’

            Lily nods a third time.

            ‘And if Lily feels she’d like you to come in and join our discussions at all, later, then we’ll call you. Okay?’

            I nod as well.

            The clinic is on the second floor of a rather neglected looking office block in the centre of town. It has armchairs and lots of displays of silk flowers, and a lady who sits in a glassed off reception (violent visitors?), who looks just like a picture-book grandma, and for all the world as if she should be knitting baby clothes.

            What kind of elderly lady ends up doing voluntary work in an abortion clinic, I wonder? Does it require some sort of missionary zeal to prevent unwanted babies from having life foisted upon them, or do they just spot a small ad in
Pensioners Weekly
or something and think ‘ah, abortion - now that
would
make a change.’ For this is very much an abortion clinic. Women come here because they do not want to be pregnant, and because they know they will not be made to feel any worse about things than they already do. But the air of sadness in the place is still almost palpable. And there are boxes of tissues on all three of the tables - more, no doubt, in the consulting rooms.