A Certain Age (7 page)

“No,” I said. “It’s been in every picture I’ve taken, with every camera I’ve used, for the past ten years.”

“What, even in news pictures?”

“Yeah. But it’s quite easy to blank it out.”

“We could print these, Mark!”

“Nah,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because people would assume I’d tampered with them, Jules. The way I tamper with them already.”

Oh good. Services two miles.

So what happened then? Oh yeah. Mrs Starling came back with a tray of tea. She’d been really cheered up by the call from the plod. “Sorry I couldn’t help much, pet,” she said. “Funny how things are. Ask me to locate a headless corpse in Grimsby, like, and I’m off like a greased whippet. Wagon Wheel, anyone?”

She put down the tea and munchies, and then went back in the hall, found her purse and put her coat on. It was ten past three. She was evidently heading for the bookies, and I didn’t blame her.

“I’ve got another message from your dad,” she said. “He’s a bit worried, pet. He says to ask, you don’t think he’s a bit
SHALLOW
, do you?”

“Course not,” I said. “Er – you couldn’t, if you’re going to the bookies?” I reached in my wallet and pulled out a fifty. She took it.

“Right, pet. Fifty on the nose. You won’t regret it, like. Anyway, the thing is, pet, he says other spirits send better messages than this, don’t they, about love and stuff. ‘I’m so proud of you, son,’ that kind of thing. ‘I never told you enough when I was alive!’ He doesn’t want you to feel
left out. He’s worried you’ll think he’s not as deep as the other dads.”

“But I know he loves me,” I said. “I know he’s proud of me. He did tell me enough when he was alive. No, tell him I’ve never had a minute’s doubt in my whole life, and I’m forty-two. Besides, what’s wrong with shallow? I’m shallow, Jules is shallow; you’re a bit shallow yourself, Mrs Starling; it’s what keeps us cheerful. Why should I want Dad to be any different just because he’s dead?”

She put her arm round me and kissed me on the head. “You’re a good son, pet. You’re your father’s son. And I’ll be back at about twenty to four with the winnings!”

We heard the front door slam and then we saw her sprint past the window with a determined look on her face. Jules turned off her tape recorder and put her notebook away. My phone beeped. It was probably Kippo. I decided to ignore it. Jules and I might be having a togetherness moment.

[
Gentle
] “Have you really always known your dad loved you, Mark?”

“Oh yeah.”

I put my arm round her. I know I’m lucky. I felt I should say something sort-of profound and reassuring.

“So, there’s this bloke driving across the Arctic when his car breaks down.”

“Heard it,” she said.

I nestled closer to her. [
Soft
] “Jules,” I said. “When I said you were shallow just now, I was only being rhetorical, you know that, don’t you?”

“Look, whatever your dad says, I don’t still fancy you, Mark,” she said.

So I said, [
taking arm away; little sigh
] “Oh. All right, then. Fair enough.”

Scene One: at a health spa. Sounds of swimming pool

“You have the skin of a thirty-year-old, Mrs Phipps,” Maureen said to me this morning. And I said to her, “You’re heading for a very large gratuity, Maureen, if you keep saying things like that.” Whether she heard me I don’t know. I was lying on her massage bench at the time with my face pressed through the face-hole-thing, and Maureen was putting a lot of puff and effort into shoving all the flesh on my back up to my neck – I suppose there’s a chance that one of these days it will stay there. I have to say I smiled to myself – a bit reckless, I know, when you consider the wear and tear on the facial lines. But a thirty-year-old! What would Sasha say? Sasha being twenty-one, that would have me giving birth to her at the
age of [
thinks about it
] … nine! Eight? Nine. I was so bucked up. I mean, my hands are good for my age. And I’ve made a point of never plucking above the lip, which Maureen agreed will certainly pay dividends in the long run. The only thing that spoiled it was at the end, when I was just getting back into the fluffy white bathrobe and slippers and Maureen said, “So. Mrs Phipps. How do you find your skin?” Well, I didn’t know what to say.
HOW DO YOU FIND YOUR SKIN
? “What a strange question,” I said. “Everywhere I look on my body, Maureen, it’s there.”

How I love dear old Woodlands. This is my fifth time. Of course I get the detox headaches, but somehow I always go home a couple of pounds lighter, rested, and with a sort of glow. I finally had my colours done yesterday – I’m a spring person, which came as no surprise. I should wear greens, yellows, peach, pink, lilac. “There’s a very famous spring person, when you think about it, Mrs Phipps,” the woman said. So I thought about it. Greens, yellows, pinks. “Elton John?” I said. “The Queen,” she said. And it was one of those lovely moments when everything falls into place. Anyway, before that I had the manicure, the pedicure, the astringent neck poultice, the deep sonar navel cleansing, the organza scrub and the all-body Bering Straits seaweed. Oh, and the long-distance hosing, which was a bit like finding yourself in the path of a water cannon, actually, but they promise is fantastically good for the flabby bit under the arm, although I read somewhere in a magazine that if you
TALK
to the flabby bit under the arm, sit it down with a cup of coffee and really explain to it that it’s nothing personal, it’s just not welcome, there’s a real possibility it will give up and throw in the towel. The colours lady – whose name is Ros, and who I did think might have been a man dressed up,
actually, monarchist or not – anyway, Ros says when I get home I must simply throw away all my wintry blacks and purples, autumny browns and tans, and summery [
thinks
] … summery whatever they were. According to Ros I have been locked in an unconscious pigmentation tussle with my own wardrobe! For years! And I always assumed the enemy was – within.

I phoned Sasha just before the optional introduction-to-yoga class, where a chap called Gerald in lemon socks asked us brightly what we thought of when we heard the word “spirit”, and I suppose I was still thinking what’s wrong with Sasha, a girl who since puberty has had absolutely no spirit at all. “Anyone?” he said, looking round. “Janey?” He pointed a finger at me, revolver style, and pulled the imaginary trigger. I went all hot. People were looking.

“Me?” I said.

“Yes, Janey. Tell us what you think of when you hear the word spirit.”

“Spunk,” I said. A pained expression flashed across his face as if he were chewing a bee, so it obviously wasn’t the right answer, and he turned to the Irish woman with the gold jewellery and the soaraway pashmina import business.

“Well, I wasn’t
THINKING
of spunk,” he said. “But yes, yes, I think I –”

“Get up and go,” I explained.

“Thank you, Janey,” he said.

“Nerve, guts, va-va-voom,” I said.

“Yes, I see where you’re going with that, Janey,” he smiled. “Now, Dervla. What do you think of when you hear the word … spirit?” She fiddled with the end of her apricot pashmina.

“Would you be thinking of the
Blair Witch Project
at all?” she said. At which point Gerald gave up on the interactive experiment and pushed on with his flip-chart. Tried to sell us a yoga holiday. He gave me his card later, when I let him buy me a low-calorie elderflower presse with no strings attached. He had a nice nose. Lovely hair. But a man with lemon socks? I couldn’t. I thought about it quite deeply afterwards, and I – just – couldn’t.

Anyway, when I phoned Sasha, the Rotter was there in the background, I could hear him. “Are you suffering to be beautiful then?” she asked, in her usual hurtful way. I told her that actually the deep sonar navel thing wasn’t at all pleasant, the boom echoed inside for hours and they hand you the fluff afterwards in a little plastic tub, several inches of it, so I still felt a bit sick, and then happened to mention that the masseuse said I had the skin of a thirty-year-old. Why do I never learn? Sasha covered the receiver and said something to the Rotter – only she doesn’t call him the Rotter, she calls him Mike. The Rotter shouted loud enough for me to hear, “Wait till the thirty-year-old finds out!” And Sasha laughed. She doesn’t want me to be happy. She is the centre of my world, the core of my being, the offspring of my youth – although I wasn’t nine, obviously, when I had her, I was twenty-two. How can I bear it that she never, ever wants me to be happy?

Scene Two: evening, at home. TV in background. She is deflated

It was sad getting back to the house. I wonder if I should buy some humidifiers – this dead atmosphere can’t be good for the skin. I mentioned it to Sasha once, but she
said it was me. “What, my imagination?” I said. And she said, “No, it’s you that causes the dead atmosphere.”

Sasha did go to university for a while. Her father insisted on it, suddenly taking an interest after fifteen years. He wanted her to go to Oxbridge, which I found out isn’t even a place, so that shows what he knows about it, and I said Bath had some nice shops, so she went there. She’s a very very clever girl but I was right, she’s got no spunk. I’ve heard her tell people she came home because I blackmailed her emotionally, which I most certainly did not. I don’t even know what it means. But that’s her story. “You threatened to top yourself, so I came home,” she says, in the same dull flat way she says everything. If the house was on fire, she’d say, “You’d better call the fire brigade” in the same depressed way other people say “I’ve got that rash back between my toes.” It’s tremendously difficult to enthuse or even engage Sasha. “What now?” she says. “Oh, what now?” I mean, this is just an example, but say I tell her I’m desperately in love with a new man – but what shall I do, he’s married! [
Pause for effect
] I say it’s so ghastly he never calls. [
Pause
] “And what if I’m pregnant, Sasha! I’m so happy, I’m so worried, there’s a higher chance of Down’s syndrome at my age, shall I book the test?” [
Pause; then angry
] Doesn’t she care? What’s the point of sharing information with someone you love if they don’t take it on board? When I got home last night, she pointedly didn’t even ask how Woodlands had been so I just told her. “Darling,” I said, “I feel so happy and relaxed.” She was putting the kettle on, with her back to me. “It’ll pass,” she said. It’ll pass. To think I was going to show her the little plastic pot with the fluff. And then I don’t know, it all went wrong. I said, “I hope you’re coming to my birthday dinner on Friday.” And
she said, “Can Mike come?” And when I hesitated, she said, “Well, who else will be there? Last time I counted, you didn’t have a single friend.” So I said people with fat faces shouldn’t wear V-necks, and she walked out of the kitchen, walked out and left me sitting there.

But what is it to be a mother? It is a one-way street. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that you must pour yourself, all your love, in your child’s direction and expect nothing in return. You must even accept the Rotter without complaint, who now appears to have moved in, to judge by the number of sheepskin jackets hanging in the hall and the way his car battery is being recharged in the dining room. It was the stress of the Rotter that drove me to Woodlands. She first brought him home about a month ago, a photographer for the glossy magazine she works on, whatever it is, something to do with having nice curtains. Her father got her the job, so we have him to thank for the Rotter as well. Anyway, Mike’s about thirty, dark, divorced, ambitious, hair stuck up like an urchin, eyes of caddish blue. And it’s such a disappointment, to see how he just has to flatter her a little; how she laps it up. Oh Sasha. Can you believe she’s started wearing eyeliner and shortie tops? It’s very hard for a mother to see her lumpen daughter putting on a show of such shallow sexuality. I’ve always told her, “Darling you are
LUCKY
you’re not a man magnet.”

Because it does make life very difficult. I mean, a case very much in point. Mike. The Rotter. On his very first night staying here, what happens? I’m in my black satin dressing gown, innocently coming back from the kitchen with my second glass of Evian past the door to Sasha’s room, when the Rotter emerges. Fully clothed but not completely zipped and buttoned. And what does he
do when he sees me? “Goodnight then, Janey,” he says, and looms close to peck me on the cheek, I can smell his breath and feel his crisp shirt against me and somehow I turn my head at the wrong moment, and well, it’s almost tongues. When we are disengaged, he whispers, “That’s right.” And then he puts his hands on me, just lightly. “That’s right,” says Mike again, and goes back into Sasha’s room.

They’ve gone out, I suppose. Although they can’t have gone very far without the car battery. Gerald rang earlier. I said, “Gerald who?” as if the name meant nothing, but I knew perfectly well who it was, I just wanted to give him a hard time. I’d asked him to my birthday dinner on Friday, and he was ringing for details. He said that at Woodlands, he had noticed I had a very positive pink
AURORA.
I said I don’t know about that, but I am a spring person, and actually talking of pink I’m still all soft from the seaweed wrap as it happens, hurry, hurry, roll up, Gerald, anybody, it’ll wear off by the weekend – although of course I didn’t say that. I just said it’s nice to talk to someone who appreciates your aurora. I never know with the Rotter whether he’s looking at me or not. He stroked the back of my neck the next time he stayed. Sasha had gone up to bed but although I was tired I – well, I don’t know, but I particularly wanted to see the football. And we were sitting there alone watching England play Spurs I think, and he reached out and touched me, just lightly. I had on a rather good push-up bra under a beautiful cream angora sweater, so it was nice to know it worked, and besides this is my house, you know, I can do what I like.

Sometimes I think I imagined it. The thing on the landing. The angora moment. When I look at him when
Sasha’s around, or even when she isn’t sometimes, it’s like looking into a mirror that doesn’t reflect.