No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year (25 page)

“We are here,” I said, “just to stagger on. To be nice to each other. To be kind. That’s all there is to it. Life is,” I went on, warming to my theme, “one big mystery. If you ask what it means you just waste time when you could be making someone else’s life happier.”

Inside I was thinking: “Thank God my ‘What does life mean?’ days are over.”

“But ees zere not God?” she asked sadly.

“Well, I don’t think so,” I said, as kindly as I could. “Once you stop asking the question, you know, you’ll find a great peace descending over you. And everything, paradoxically, becomes clear.”

As I spoke, I could sense a great gurulike clarity come over me. For a brief moment I felt the knowledge of the ancients course through my veins.

“OK,” she said. She shuffled off, and as she tottered out of the room, I detected the distinctive smell of dope coming from her nightdress. She was stoned as a bat.

I, on the other hand, put my head on my pillow and slept the deep sleep of one who feels impregnated with wisdom and goodness. Very pleasant. I felt I had made one of those enormous psychical changes that come only once in a lifetime.

When I woke, all my gurulike qualities had gone down the drain and I was left my usual baffled self.

Feb 10

When I read the papers today I saw that they were chockablock with stuff about old people. Are old people the new young people? Seems quite likely, actually. Forget about yuppies, the acronym now (according to the
Daily Mail,
that is, so perhaps rather suspect) is SWELL—Sixty, Well-Off and Enjoying Life. We are, apparently, the most optimistic, most active and highest-spending age group. Of those surveyed, 80 percent said they enjoyed life, 70 percent said they felt in control and more than half claimed that their sixties had been the happiest time of their lives.

Yesterday I read about a totally different and totally ghastly group of oldies called SKIs—people who are Spending the Kids’ Inheritance. No doubt they blow their fortunes on building golf courses in their gardens, bungee-jumping, face lifts and going to cookery classes in China.
Quel
nightmare, as we used to say at school.

Feb 11

Question: Why is it that windscreen wipers always nearly go back and forth in time to the music, but never quite?

Feb 12

This afternoon Michelle knocked on my door and came into my room. I was expecting an apology for the other night and put on my understanding face. But no.

“’Arry, ’e ees not genius,” she announced. “’E ees idiot.”

“Absolutely,” I said, very relieved. “And are you feeling better now?” I asked. “About the meaning of life?”

“Meaning of life?” she said. “Life means notting,” she added, finally, with great certainty. I realized she had completely forgotten about coming to my room at all. “I am stoppeeng smoke,” she said. “’Arry, ’e say I try, but I do not like.”

Later

James and Hughie came round for a drink. Hughie now appears to have developed a lump of some kind in his stomach.

“When you have cancerous lumps, the words ‘golf ball,’ ‘melon,’ ‘tennis ball’ and ‘football’ take on completely different meanings,” he added thoughtfully.

“But not, sadly, the word ‘mothball,’” said James ruefully.

“Oh, for those happy days,” said Hughie facetiously, “when ‘death was but the rumble of distant thunder at a picnic.’ Auden,” he added.

When they left I felt sad. But in an odd way I can’t believe it. Partly because although he’s a bit thinner, Hughie seems just the same as he always has done. The idea he’ll die soon is very hard to take in. And, anyway, you can’t really imagine someone’s gone when they’re not gone. It’s afterwards, when you’re alone and they’re never coming back, that the pain starts stealing through.

But I do feel regret. It’s not just sadness at the absence of Hughie, it’s his take on everything. And at this particular period of life, that take is increasingly difficult to share with anyone.

When Hughie dies, there will be fewer people who recall the things of my father’s generation. Who remembers now the Quinquireme of Ninevah, John Masefield, Longfellow’s
Hiawatha,
“Albert and the Lion,” Gussy Finknottle, what a cohort is…who will one be able to talk to who one can assume has read all the Russians? Oh, I know that academics have, but I mean just ordinary daily people. Fewer of them about.

Except for Archie, actually…

Marion, who sometimes does reviews for the
Tablet,
being a Catholic, told me that she wrote an e-mail to a literary editor there about a book by some bishop, saying: “If you have no one to review it, Barkis is willin’.” The editor wrote back, saying: “I haven’t…but who is Barkis?”

That’s
the sadness of getting older. No one younger knowing who Barkis is, or, presumably, who Dinu Lipatti or Peter Watson were or what the Light Programme was or where Schmidts used to be, and all of us oldies having no clue who Sade, Jade and Beyoncè are. (Beyance? Beyence?)

Archie’d know.

Feb 13

Chrissie has asked if I’ll babysit Gene one day a week because she’s going back to spa marketing part-time. I am so flattered I can hardly speak. It is just so extraordinarily lovely to be trusted with such a precious person. When I told Lucy she laughed in rather an unpleasant way. “You do know,” she said, “that according to my
Guardian,
four out of five families rely on grannie to work and cope, and around seven million grannies in England are involved in childcare? You’re being taken for a mug,” she added, surprisingly harshly for her. “What about what
you
want to do?”

What
I
want to do is look after Gene one day a week.

When I got to the flat, Jack and I had some coffee before he went off to some psychology course. He’s doing something—whether it’s research, a Ph.D. or an M.A. I’m not sure. Whatever, it means that next year he can start practicing. He told me about a friend of his who was madly in love with the girl who lived in the flat upstairs, but couldn’t think of how to get to know her.

“He could always go up and ask her for a cup of sugar,” I said.

“Cup of sugar?” he said in a puzzled way. “Why should anyone ask anyone for a cup of sugar? I’ve heard that expression before, actually,” he added, “but I’ve never understood what it meant.”

I thought for a bit before I realized where it came from.

“It must come from the war, with rationing,” I said. “Neighbors would ask each other for cups of sugar or bits of butter or dried eggs if they ran out before their next week’s rations arrived.”

“Dried eggs?” said Jack. “What are they?”

Honestly! Sometimes I feel like some ancient old duck being interviewed by schoolchildren for their oral history project. What are dried eggs, indeed!

He washed up but when he turned to say something to me, he saw me transferring all the contents of my bag into my cat’s rescue jacket and asked me what I was doing.

“I’m putting everything in my handbag into my coat pockets,” I said. “I feel nervous going out round here with a bag over my shoulder. Easily snatchable.”

Jack laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. You’d never get mugged in that coat.” He picked up his bag, kissed Gene, said: “Byee!” and went off.

Was the coat that bad, I wondered? I thought it was rather smart, in a beige kind of way. Perhaps I should dye it.

In the park, I pushed Gene in the winter sunshine and sat down on the grass. Gene cuddled up to me, and a man in a baseball cap who was passing by said: “There’s a little lad who loves his mum, ain’t it?” I simpered and, I’m afraid, didn’t correct him.

Only once he’d passed did I notice he was clutching a large can of Special Brew behind his back.

Nearby a huge dark gang of sinister hoodies were lurking with their bicycles. I felt frightened. Surely they wouldn’t take advantage of an old grannie and her grandson? Then I had fantasies that a knife would be held to Gene’s throat and I would have to give up his plastic ball, cloth book and pushchair before they’d release him. I was managing to divert my anxieties with this silly scenario until I saw a policeman in a bulletproof vest behind a tree, talking to someone on a walkie-talkie. Gene was sitting, picking things up from the ground and putting them in his mouth—a crisp packet, a leaf, one of those weird black seed balls to be found only in London parks.

I swooped on him, and we hurtled home.

That evening I came back feeling sated and bloated with loving and caring. A wonderful feeling, almost disgusting, like eating too many strawberries.

Later

Tonight was consumed with anxiety that Gene’s socks might be too small for him. From time to time I get worried…it’s because of the powerlessness of being a grannie. Is he getting enough to eat? Is he getting too much to eat? Is he dehydrated? Is he getting enough to eat? Too much? There is no way that any of these ideas can, of course, be expressed directly to Jack or Chrissie, because they’d rightly think I was being a gross interferer, but I don’t know a single grannie who doesn’t have these weird fears. Marion is always worrying that her granddaughter doesn’t get enough vitamins, and slips her mashed salmon and broccoli behind her mother’s back. Lucy is terrified because her daughter-in-law wants to put her grandchild in a nursery, and she says she’s read that nursery for under-fives makes children anxious and unhappy.

“But what can I do?” Lucy said worriedly to me when we bumped into each other in Waterstones at the board books section. “Perhaps,” she added, looking around the “New Books” laid out on a table, “I should try this.” She picked up a book called
The Good Grannie Guide.

“You don’t need that,” I said, putting it back on the table. “There is only one piece of advice that grannies need to know and that is their twenty-four-hour mantra.”

“What’s that?” asked Lucy.

“‘I say nothing.’”

“Well, come on, tell me,” she said. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“‘I say nothing,’” I said. “That’s it. The advice. ‘I say nothing. I say nothing. I say nothing.’ Again and again and again.”

Actually I did say something the other day, and it sort of backfired on me. Gene was ill with a temperature and Jack was trying to get some Calpol into him, which he was resisting vociferously. I was so upset when I saw Jack forcing his head back, opening his jaws and jamming the stuff down his throat (rather like me stuffing Pouncer with pills) that I went out and bought a small carton of Ribena with a straw.

“Why don’t you put the Calpol in here and then let him suck up the juice?” I suggested. “He likes straws.”

“Does he?” said Jack rather suspiciously. He peered at me crossly. Whoops, I thought, I’ve let the cat out of the bag. I’m sure I’m not meant to buy him the occasional carton of Ribena, because it’s full of sugar, but I do. Well, twice I have, feeling very guilty.

Anyway, he looked annoyed and said it was a ridiculous idea. I then realized that I hadn’t been following the mantra. I drove home repeating: “I say nothing” again and again, hoping that I would never make such a mistake again.

So when it came to socks, I couldn’t say anything. And no one I know has ever had the socks panic, anyway.

I rang James for reassurance. Well, not just for reassurance, but when you’re low, like James, it’s always nice to feel needed. Makes you feel more in control.

“Socks too small?” he shrieked on the phone. “You think a growing child’s feet are going to be deformed by small socks? Hughie!” he called out. “Marie thinks Gene’s socks are too small! Marie, you do know that grass can grow though Tarmac, don’t you? It would take more than socks to stop Gene’s feet growing. If you think his socks are too small, go out and buy him some new, big ones!”

Feb 14th

Most odd. Maciej, who usually arrives at about ten past nine when he’s meant to come at nine, suddenly appeared at eight o’clock.

“Well, this is very nice,” I said, as I made a cup of tea. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

He mumbled something and then Michelle came down and he busied himself washing the kitchen floor.

Later

Rather odd. Got a rather nice Valentine’s card from Archie! Inside he said: “Well, someone’s got to send you one, haven’t they? Keep up the good work! Archie x”

One “x.”

Feb 15th

Bought some new socks at Green Baby and took them round to Chrissie.

“Oh, great,” she said. “They’ll go marvelously with the new shoes I just bought him. His present ones are far too small, aren’t they? I keep worrying that his feet will be deformed.”

“Oh, no,” I said, cheerily. “Grass can grow through Tarmac, you know.”

She looked at me as if I were utterly mad, and then made me a cup of tea.