Julia Gets a Life (11 page)

            So I telephone Lily. Lily and I have that special bond that only comes with shared wrestles with a breast pump. She has no truck, therefore, with any of my clap trap at the best of times. Also she thinks I’m so pathetic it can’t hurt my reputation a jot.

            ‘I’m going on a date.’

            ‘Alors!! How eek-citing! Who with? What’s ‘e like? Is ‘e gorgeous?’

            Lily’s turns her French accent on and off like a central heating boiler during an unseasonal cold snap. I take it from all the spitting and gurgling that she is sitting with someone she wants to impress.

            ‘You would hate him,’ I reassure her. ‘He’s about as Gallic as a bath bun and almost pathologically obsessed with rugby. Oh, and he drives a Ford.’

            ‘Excellent. Your type, then.’

            ‘So what do I wear? What do I talk about? And should I snog him so early on in our relationship?’

            ‘Of course! Acch! Julia! Get your face from the sand! You sound as if you’ve become twelve again. If you want to snog him, you snog him. It’s the new sex, you know.’

            What a peculiar concept. And I’m not sure whether that makes it better or worse. All I know is that if I think about the idea of snogging someone I go all hot and cold. And it’s not a lust-thing, honest. More a sitting O level Geography after two years faffing around at the back of the class painting my nails green with Christine Mumford type thing.

            ‘Mum, I can’t believe you’re going to do that! It’s
so
gross. And what am I supposed to say to everybody? Hmm?

            This is Saturday and this is Max. Max is about as appalled as it is possible to be. Standing in the kitchen in his Bart Simpson boxer shorts, holding a pop tart and mug of tea (five sugars) he looks every inch his father. Crumpled, indignant and deeply disappointed in me. He puts down the tea and picks up his PSP. It bleeps and parps and pings for a bit. Max’s PSP is a metaphoric stiff drink. I shake my head.

            ‘You don’t have to say anything to anybody, Max..’

            ‘So it’s a secret?’ Ping.

            ‘No, of course it’s not a secret. It’s just Mr Ringrose and I going out for a meal together. It’s really no big deal.’

            He digests this, eyeing me warily, as though I’m a carnivorous mammal.

            ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Bleep.

            ‘Of course not.’

            ‘So why are you going out to a restaurant with him then?’

            ‘Just because he’s a man doesn’t mean he can’t be my friend, does it?’

            ‘You’ve never been out to a restaurant on your own with a man before, have you?’

            ‘Not lately, but when I was....’

            ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I have a whole term left at primary. Can’t you just wait till I’m gone, or something?’

            Which, strangely, is exactly what went through my mind when Howard asked me out. So my son and I do have some sort of marriage of minds. But I can’t do that, can I? The moment might pass. I might have grown hair on my chin by then, or lost some teeth.

            ‘It’s just a meal, Max. I’m not getting married to him or anything.’

            ‘So he
is
your boyfriend! Mum, do you have any idea how embarrassing this is for me?’ Bleep, parp, ping. Small explosion.

            ‘She’s your mother, Max. Embarrassment is part of the package.’

            This is Emma, who slides in and manages to look superior, even though she is wearing a McFly T-shirt and a pair of novelty cheeseburger slippers. Max grunts his second ‘gross’ of the day, and slopes off to watch his normal Saturday morning diet of nubile presenters attached to short lengths of kettle flex and grouped on pink and purple sofas. Emma hooks her hair behind her ears and gives me a look.

            ‘Does dad know about this?’

            ‘No. And it’s none of....’

            ‘..his business. O
kay
. I just
asked
. Don’t throw a moody.’

            God, why is conversation getting to be such hard work in this house? I can’t help but feel we’re on some slippery slope of family dysfunction which will culminate eventually in me having dockers round every night and screaming at the children to sod off and leave me alone while swigging Sainsbury’s Gin straight from the bottle. It’s a whole new ball game, this lone parenting lark.

            Yet before I had Emma I was so certain I’d never say wait till your father gets home. We used to sit in little self righteous NCT clusters and say; Dummies? Pish! bottle feeding? Tsk! Traditional female-oppression parenting roles where woman changes nappy and man goes to pub? Tut, tut, tut! How brave and true and strong and damn well
together
we were. We’d never
dream
of passing the burden of disciplinary responsibility to our partners. Perish the thought! That was for poor, sad, inadequate mothers who let their babies suck Smarties before they had finished every last wholesome mouthful of their home made alfalfa sprout puree.

            I still know some people like this. They exist in small pockets at the outer reaches of the high school PTA, campaigning for the Coke machines to be removed from the premises and inspecting the food science curriculum for E numbers. Sadly, I fell by the wayside early. It was all I could do to remember to make my children clean their teeth at night. And I said ‘wait till your Father gets home’ almost as soon as they were old enough to understand the full implications of currying disfavour with a man used to taking on entire town planning departments and reducing beefy site foremen to tears. Which is really pathetic, I know. And now it’s too late. I can’t say it any more. And my children, like tap-rooted perennial weeds, are sending out runners of disobedience as I speak.

*

            Well what a turn up.

            Isn’t it just amazing how you can really, really fancy someone one minute and then go right off them the next, over something that’s nothing to do with hormones at all? I can’t believe it.

            Howard picked me up (to a chorus of much muffled whooping), and took me down to a trendy (much beaten metal) restaurant in the city centre, kindly inserting all sorts of information about the architectural and cultural niceties of Cardiff, and translating obscure welsh street names along the way. Which I know was only because he was embarrassed, but was actually rather endearing. And informative too. I moved to Cardiff with one toddler in tow and heavily pregnant, so while Richard spent much corporate time hob-nobbing in the city, I spent much of mine dining in ‘Mc’ prefixed eateries, and getting to know all the toilets in Culverhouse Cross.

            So. We’ve done the drinks, done the dinner, done the chit chat about the state of Welsh Politics/Rugby, avoided having the chit chat about Cardiff Bay (Howard being in the camp that believes the development of Cardiff Bay to be a terrible and mutilating act of social rape, and the end to talents such as Shirley Bassey being given to the world, and me being latterly in the camp that’s pleased to see a bit of investment in the area, particularly as lump of said investment is going the way of Fielden, Jones and Potter, Consulting Engineers, and thus securing my children’s hope of a university education). We’ve also done the argument over the bill, done the bill, done the dithering over whether to go on somewhere (going ‘on’ somewhere is a new concept for me; apart from the twenty four hour Tesco store on the A48 at Gabalfa, I wouldn’t know quite where to go on
to
). Then we’ve gone to his flat for a cup of coffee/foreplay/ sex (eek!) or whatever, and there it is, all before me.

            I don’t know what I expected Howard’s flat to be like. I wasn’t even conscious that I’d formed much of an idea about it. But I obviously had, because I’m so disappointed. Actually, I
had
formed an idea. If I’m honest I expected it to be scruffy but welcoming, to smell of old leather and moss or something, and to have empty beer bottles on the mantelpiece and empty take away cartons as ashtrays. Except that Howard doesn’t smoke, of course. But what we’ve got here is, well, prissy, quite frankly.

             I know there’s the odd person who takes the rise out of me because I like making lists of things, but this guy is so anally retentive you could tell every anal retentiveness pun you ever heard and you’d still be way short of the mark. He has everything in order.
Everything
. Not just the obvious things like CDs and paperbacks - the latter of which I note are carefully colour and height as well as author sorted. But things like magazines which he seems to have sorted by spine-widths. How sad can you get?

            I waft around the living room, uttering explosive little oh! and oh, no! sounds at his records, his books, his choice of co-ordinating knick knacks, knowing that at any moment he is going to return with a pair of bone china Clarice Cliff mugs and try, in no doubt equally logical fashion, to snog me. I pass the mantelpiece mirror and am arrested by the contrast between me (Meg Ryan meets pineapple and kohl pencil) and the room behind me (Homebase meets Upstairs Downstairs). Well, at least
I
look fine. Eye make up slightly smudgy, cheeks slightly flushed, hair tousled and looking surprisingly, well, tousled. Richard used to say that there is nothing so unsexy as a fastidiously groomed woman (which was always pretty handy) and that face powder and tights were the most wilt inducing items a woman could tarnish herself with. And just when I’ve arrived at a point in my life when I can put the theory to the test with someone other than a thinning on top engineer I sense I am in the home of someone who may feel I’m simply a trollop. A slovenly slattern who’s no better than she should be. I take another long look at my oozing-sexuality-without-trying-to image. I’ve done it so bloody well. What a terrible waste.

            I cruise back across to the other side of the room, where the only encouraging note in this crashingly loud affirmation of niceness is the higgledy piggledy pile of papers on the floor beside the sofa - work he is clearly in the middle of doing. I pick up the top one - a worksheet for his class, presumably - it entitled ‘Kool Kidneys’ and is scattered with sweet little cartoon kidneys, with street wise expressions and little stick legs. The text, hand-written in his familiar floppy hand, is accompanied by beautiful freehand drawings that explain filtration and describe how the glomerulus works. There is a packet of coloured pencils on the floor beside it with a label on them saying
Mr Ringrose’s, Hands Off!
This is more like it.

            It is all so poignantly touching that I find myself feeling guilty for thinking him prissy, and wanting to cry, or to hug him, or go for autumnal walks with him in Next overcoats, and sip hot chocolate huddled by the fire afterwards. Or even learn, heaven help me, to appreciate opera.

            At which point he comes in, with mugs that are heavy, cheap and reassuringly non-matching, and blushes to find me inspecting his work. Okay, I like him again. Quite a lot. Oh, the relief, the relief.

            ‘Never ends, I guess, the planning, ‘I say, replacing the sheet. And think
okay, I’m ready. You can kiss me now.

           
He shrugs.

            ‘I don’t mind. I enjoy it. In some ways, it’s the best and most challenging part of the job. You know, being able to teach them something in such a way that they don’t feel taught. Do you know what I mean? They seem to absorb so much more when they’re well motivated. It’s great when it works.’

            I realise that Howard is in the unfortunate (though entirely self inflicted) situation of trying to chat up someone whose child he teaches. I suspect that in the staff room all sorts of completely outrageous things are said about the children and, I’ve no doubt, their parents. But he doesn’t need to worry about me on that score.