Raven (19 page)

Then Jill regaled me with her latest dating fiasco. She had been asked out to dinner by a wealthy, presentable middle-aged man she had met through her work as a publicist. He chose the restaurant – an expensive one – and ordered the wine, one of the pricier bottles on the menu. But at the end of the meal he studied the bill and told her exactly how much her half came to.

‘The bastard,' Jill hissed down the phone. ‘He drives a Ferrari but can't afford to pick up the tab for dinner? After he did all the choosing? It was more than I wanted to pay. So I just counted out the bills and flung them onto the table with a
harrumph
!'

‘Bastard. I guess that's the end of that little relationship, then.'

Jill sighed. ‘Oh I don't know, Maybe I'll give him one more chance.'

‘Really?' And all I could think was: rather you than me, hon. Personally, I'd prefer to pull on my stockings for sexy Sean any day.

*

I am having lunch with my good friend and fellow journalist, James, in our favourite Soho haunt. The Gay Hussar is a famous old Hungarian restaurant – historic, even – dating back to the days when ‘gay' simply meant merry. In the sixties and seventies it was always packed with lunching, boozing Fleet Street hacks, writers and politicos, gossiping and scheming and chewing over the issues of the day.

That was yesteryear. In modern times, as that old cast of movers and shakers has slowly left the stage, the place has become more touristy. But the food is still excellent and the decor is unchanged, its walls still lined with books and framed cartoons of public figures. So every once in a while James and I go there for a big blow-out meal – chilled cherry soup, stuffed cabbage, creamy paprika chicken with dumplings, chocolate and walnut
palacsinta,
the works. He is my senior by fourteen years and was part of that scintillating Gay Hussar scene decades ago, so he likes to relive his heady early days as a rising national newspaperman, when he gossiped with big-name editors, cabinet ministers and fiery trade union leaders over bowls of goulash soup and slabs of foie gras. I like to go there because the food reminds me of my mother's cooking and my Hungarian childhood. So we are both nostalgic within its aura, and contented.

James is, of course, aware of my internet dating escapades. From time to time I have given him little updates, especially as regards the more dodgy end of the spectrum, which makes for better copy. But this is the first time we discuss my dating activities in greater depth. James is particularly intrigued by the very young men with whom I've been having sexual congress (I love that expression for appearing to put sex on a par with weighty matters of state, which, for some of us, it is). The concept of the big age gap between sex partners intrigues James because he has intimate knowledge of it himself. He was sixty-nine when he became involved with a woman of twenty-one – a difference of forty-eight years. This is no mere gap, it's a chasm of Grand Canyon proportions. Remarkably, their relationship worked very successfully for five years and ended only when the lady in question left these shores to take up a job offer abroad.

James had often told me how ‘sexually compatible' they were, that they shared the same sexual attitudes and ‘tastes'. (The mind boggles.) She had bemoaned the inexperienced, enthusiastic but clumsy young men who did a ‘rushed job' in bed, and could value James's mature, seasoned approach. As her father had abandoned the family when she was a small child and she had grown up without a father figure, he could fill that role for her too. He could advise and enlighten her. She loved asking him about things utterly remote from her own life and times, such as what it was like to live through the Second World War. And James liked explaining things to her. He had always enjoyed the company of lively, intelligent young people…as well as finding young bodies, young flesh, highly exciting. ‘There's a reason why you don't get a lot of seventy-year-old pin-ups,' he once remarked.

Only his two or three closest friends knew of the relationship. ‘Most other men would have regarded it as exploitative,' he says, looking back on the affair, ‘or else just been plain jealous, as in: “you're exploiting that poor girl, wish I had the chance to do the same.”'

‘And what about her? Did she ever tell anyone about it?'

‘No, nobody. Her friends and family wouldn't have understood what she was up to. If I wasn't her sugar daddy, then what was I to her? So the crude but obvious world view of the relationship would have been: what does he want beyond her body, and what does she want other than his money?'

He pauses briefly to refill our glasses with a fine Hungarian Cabernet, then continues: ‘But reverse that and make it a relationship between a young man and much older woman, and it's even more bizarre and socially suspect. Society sees that as inherently ludicrous, like something in a Carry On film. There seems to be no biological or common sense reason for a good-looking, healthy and psychologically balanced young man to desire a sixty-year-old woman's body. I know it goes on, the cougar scene, but it's still a marginal activity and you think there must be something odd and unbalanced about those guys. I mean, look darling, I think you're fabulous and sexy, but then I'm seventy-five. So I was shocked when you told me about your involvements with these men of twenty-one, twenty-two and so on. Not shocked in a moralistic, judgemental way, but in the way I might be if you told me that, at sixty, you were going to start training to swim the Channel. I was worried about what you were getting into. That you might be inviting danger of some kind, either physical or psychological.'

I am somewhat miffed at the suggestion that a young guy has to be unbalanced in order to enjoy being my sexual congressman. ‘One or two were a bit odd,' I say, thinking mainly of Max. ‘And several were vulgar and juvenile. But I can vouch for most of them being pretty sound of mind, as well as body. They just prefer a woman who's experienced and mature and confident. In the same way as your young lover chose you over the rookies with their “rushed jobs”, even though I suspect they had better physiques.'

He smiles. ‘Hmm. Touché.'

But a little later, as we dig into our Magyar puddings, washed down with glasses of sweet Tokay, he airs a further note of warning. ‘We're both of us off-centre in our attitudes to sex, emotions and relationships, while the rest of the world, by and large, is still pretty conventional. But people will be more disapproving of you than of me. They'll look at some elderly chap with a young girl on his arm and think, you dirty old man. Still, it isn't that unusual a sight and no one gets too wound up about it. But society doesn't much like cougar liaisons, they're too outlandish, too hard to fathom. And however liberal and progressive we become, I'm afraid I don't think that will ever change.'

I muse on this. ‘Well, I guess I'll just have to not care what society thinks. After all, it's not like I'm drowning kittens. Us old girls just wanna have fun.'

‘I'll drink to that,' says James. We clink our glasses, then talk of other things.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I was restless late one night, as I lay in bed amongst my standard props. The spring and summer of my dating chronicles had come and gone, we were well into the chilly darkness of mid-autumn evenings, and I had a hot-water bottle under my feet. I reflected on my past six months and what I had to show for it. There had been some high points, for sure, which I would not have missed for anything. Moments during which I had felt exhilaratingly alive, akin to other moments from my steadily receding past, such as when I rode pillion my on ex's motorbike and we roared through the glorious backdrops of France and Italy, glimpsing vineyards and olive groves and hilltop castles as we hurtled past.

Just as I had always sensed that my wild days as a biker chick couldn't last forever, I now felt my internet dating exploits edging towards some sort of culmination. I couldn't yet see how things would play out. But they couldn't go on like this for much longer, that much I knew in my bones.

I hadn't expected to find love, I hadn't been searching for it, I wasn't even sure I wanted it. Like fairies and unicorns, ‘true love' was meant for children's storybooks. So, what I was feeling that night as I fiddled with my mobile phone to the gentle strains of Chopin emanating from the radio, wasn't disappointment. It was a vague dissatisfaction, a dull aching in some part of me because something was not right.

I had kept dozens of message threads on my mobile, long exchanges with dating matches and Tinder boys, both those I had met and got to know (biblically or not) and those with whom I'd merely had electronic ‘relationships', who existed, as far as I was concerned, only in yellow speech bubbles on a Samsung. Few people seemed to want to talk on the phone any more, to let you hear their voices, as though that was giving too much away, too soon. They made all kinds of excuses not to. Which meant that I had this visual record of messages from my year of dating dangerously, my
grand projet
. Yes, I had been my own project and it had indeed been grand, in many ways. I had showed myself that, like the supreme Cher, I believed in life after love. Great succulent dollops of life. And I didn't care who knew it. But you have to bring every project to an end at some point, however reluctantly.

Now I was scrolling down the speech bubbles, reliving the emotional jolts and jitters, the thwarted expectations and the semi-gratifications of those messages and the self-contained little tales they told. Naturally I had deleted already all the prick pics dispatched to me, unbidden, by the hyper-horny brigade. The most recent had come from a forty-three-year-old who should have known better. I was nearly sick when I viewed his portrait of a slimy-looking penis and wrinkled testicles. At the same time he asked me to take a photo of myself ‘being wet'. Oh yes, of course, that's what people like me do
all the time
, that's exactly what published authors and Fleet Street feature writers and grandmothers in their seventh decade who shop at Waitrose do
with alacrity
, you have only to ask. When I told this middle-aged asshole he was puerile and disgusting, he replied simply ‘bye then', like a stroppy teenager. Easy to see why he was still single.

It was astonishing how often my derrière figured in those text conversations. I hadn't realised before how obsessed men – especially young men – are with arses, every which way. So for any ladies out there wishing to shed surplus fat in that area in order to acquire the more streamlined bottom which sends the opposite sex into paroxysms of delight, the solution is very simple, really. Go swimming for an hour five times a week and never give a Big Mac or Krispy Kreme donut so much as a passing thought. See? Easy!

I ran through the stream of messages I had exchanged with Charles. I never replied to his last one, in which he apologised for being out of touch for six weeks and repeated, yet again, that old chestnut of ‘it's not you, it's me' (could he not learn some other clichés?). He said he was spending ‘100% of his time' working and had cut his social life ‘back to zero', but I didn't bat an eyelid when I saw, the very next day, that he was active on the dating site. Not quite 100% of his time, then.

I stopped trying to figure him out, this man I had foolishly once felt might turn out to be ‘the one', even though I hadn't been in quest of a serious partner. I had no idea what his issue was, and doubted I ever would. Was it really to do with his wife and an inability to move on? Or was he plagued by a Hamlet-like indecision, an inertia in matters of the heart, a fear of ‘entanglement'? But if that was the case, why send me periodic messages saying he hoped to see me again at some future point? Why not just drop me completely? Didn't know. Didn't care. Give him his due, though. He could write a complete sentence without a spelling mistake, a lol or a smiley face.

Then there was Pup, with whom I had recently tried to get a dialogue going, hoping to tempt him over to see me. He, too, apologised and claimed to be ‘very busy lately, all work and no play'. He didn't suggest getting together and as I couldn't
feel the love
beaming towards me through the ether, neither did I. I had been more emotionally intimate with him than anyone else throughout my dating annals. But he made it clear enough, without saying so, that he could get by without the Raven's attentions. So perhaps the time had come to say good-bye. I wanted to send him one last text: ‘Bow-wow, Little Pup! Remember me? I'm the mature older woman who taught you how to go up the butt, who was so understanding about your kinky “art form”, who cooked you dinners and watched The Graduate with you cuddled up on the sofa and was your own secret Mrs Robinson, only much nicer. Doesn't all that count for anything any more?' But, with a twinge of regret, I determined not to contact him again.

Crispin had texted several times after our one-night stand, using various enticements (e.g. cooking me an Oriental meal) to entice me into further romps. But I always demurred, at times with a touch of self-irony:

Me: Crispin, I like you but I'm the wrong person for you. You should stick to your own generation. Have a proper relationship, as opposed to a sex match. You need a real long-term partner. Don't be deflected by the likes of me.

Crispin: Ah, the most gentle of let-downs. But I'd love to be wrong with you one more night. Keep my number and if you ever want some no-strings fun please call me.

But I was becoming a tad jaded with no-strings fun, which could just as easily turn out to be no-strings no-fun.

Erik had kept in touch too, with plenty of lols and smiley faces, but receiving scant encouragement from me, his messages eventually petered out. Even Bob had stopped threatening to ‘seduce' me over that much-vaunted but never materialising dinner.

Then there was Elliot, the handsome, sporty teacher. I wasn't bothered about seeing him again but it really annoyed me that he wasn't bothered about seeing me, either. He never even asked me out on a second date. What was wrong with him? Was it another case of
je ne sais quoi
? I refused to brood on the notion that there might be something wrong with
me
. The Raven? Single, sexy and sixty-one? Impossible! Elliot was churlish, that's all. Or blind. Maybe both.

But my feeling that night that something was not right wasn't due to this catalogue of dating damp squibs. It came from the realisation that I didn't actually care about any of these men. Not in any deeply meaningful way. I wanted to. I wanted, in particular, to care about Pup. And of course I did. But it seemed easy enough to let him go and I wondered why it wasn't harder.

Delete, delete, delete. I erased them all. Had all these human beings, even the good and likeable ones, become mere off-the-shelf products to me and dispensable in our throw-away society? I didn't want to feel like that.

But I suspected I might feel like that for some time. And it would only be when I crossed paths with someone who was genuinely special to me, and for whom I was special, that I could learn to care more profoundly again. And perhaps that day would never come.

At our last chinwag, Sara had reiterated: ‘You know you need to stop seeing these young guys, right? You can't keep having horny twenty-something strangers turning up at all hours. You should look for a real relationship with a decent man your own age.'

‘Where do I find one of those?'

‘Dating sites for seniors.' She'd given me a cautious look, knowing that the very word ‘senior' would make me shudder.

‘No thanks.'

However, a certain shameful notion did, from time to time, pop up in some dark crevice of my mind and I knew I'd be hauled over the coals for it by the feminist sisterhood. Proudly independent though I was, and self-reliant and liberated and all those fine things, I reasoned that if some worthy bloke with a modest fortune came along who thought the sun beamed out of my orifices and offered to look after me forever, whisk me off on exotic holidays and put my grandsons through Eton, I'd be a fool not to leap at the chance. And it wouldn't matter if he looked more like Stanley Tucci than Pierce Brosnan, as long as he wasn't desperately boring. Mildly boring I could handle.

*

The next time I saw Vanessa in the pool she informed me that it was all over between her and Gerald. The relationship had lasted less than a month. He had been generous to a fault. Kind. Looked after all her needs. Great in bed (she said that twice for added emphasis).

‘So what was wrong?' I asked.

She reflected for a moment, as she idly did a few warm-up swirls with her arms. ‘Hard to put my finger on it. I just knew I couldn't carry on spending my time with him. At the end of the day he was just too, you know…'

‘Too normal?

‘Yeah. Way too normal.'

‘Not enough personality, no oomph?'

‘Exactly. I like a man who can bring something to the table. Besides a bottle of wine.'

Apparently they had spent the weekend together and things went well enough until the Sunday evening, when they were chilling out at her place and he offered to cook dinner. ‘And he was so
nice
every time he wanted to use something in my kitchen. He kept asking whether he could use this knife and that saucepan, and whether I minded him using the oregano, or would I prefer the thyme, and I wished he wouldn't be so bloody
nice
. I wanted him to be a proper man, stop asking my permission and just
do it
.'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘It's terrible when they're so nice. Making you dinner and all that.'

‘So I kicked him out later that night. It was about 2 a.m. And I'm sorry that I hurt him but it couldn't be helped. I wouldn't let him sleep over, not even on the sofa. I said he could get a cab home.'

‘Where does he live?'

‘Surrey.'

‘Bloody hell, that would have cost him over a hundred quid. But I guess he's rich, right?'

‘Well, it turns out he's not even that rich,' Vanessa said nonchalantly as she plopped onto her back with a splash. I could tell she was no longer interested in discussing Gerald.

The only positive thing about the Gerald debacle was that now Vanessa would be renewing her membership on the dating site. I'm not sure why (sensing as I did that I might not be on the site much longer myself) but I found this thought comforting.

*

I was surprised to receive a text out of the blue from tattooed Tinder boy Damian, who had been due to come over a couple of months earlier but blew me out with some lame excuse involving overtime work and traffic jams. ‘Hey, sexy. How are you?' He said he was up for arranging a get-together, if I gave him another chance.

Well, I was having a quiet week and could still picture his hunky illustrated torso and cute, roguish grin. Besides, I've always found it hard to maintain a grudge. So I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and said sure, let's do it. At which he stoked up the proceedings with a few graphic messages about our likely activities, the bawdy devil.

We agreed on a rendezvous, a few days away. Once again he said he would drive over from his workplace outside London and arrive at my house early in the evening, with plenty of time for fun and frolics. I was definitely ready for this and the prospect charged me with frissons of anticipation. I wondered whether I should wear a silk dress, out of which I could slip gracefully at
le bon moment
or tight trousers to emphasise my hard-earned rear. All-important decisions.

In the event my sartorial deliberations were irrelevant. Because, for a second time, the much-vaunted assignation never took place. I texted him on the morning of the big day to confirm arrangements, then again in the afternoon. But when no reply came I realised he would be a no-show. I would have been furious with him, as well as with myself for giving him the opportunity once again to take me for a fool, except that, mercifully, I didn't care all that much. Perhaps he had a wife and kids, perhaps he was a pathetic fantasist, what did it matter? I decided to send him one last text: ‘I don't care what your dodgy bullshit is. You'll never hear from me again.'

Instead of an evening of rampant sex, I flopped down on the sofa and watched the latest episode of Downton Abbey with a glass of red wine and bowl of olives, and was perfectly content. Is that Tom Branson hot or what?

A few days later my mobile rang and an unknown number came up. It was a woman with a south London accent who apologised for disturbing me, then said she was calling because she had found texts from me on her boyfriend's mobile and feared he had been cheating on her. She needed to know what was going on; was I having an affair with him?

Fuck, fuck, fuck
, I thought,
here we go
.
Which one of those bastards is it
? I had already forgotten about my recently aborted tryst with Damian. But a moment later it became clear that it was indeed the tattooed would-be lothario. This explained his erratic behaviour and came as no surprise to me, as I had imagined something of the sort. He was another Rajesh, except that he wasn't upfront about being ‘in a relationship'. I honestly didn't know which cheat's tactic was worse.