A Certain Age (21 page)

[
Mocking
] “The same but different. Like a half-formed statue by Michelangelo? Like the lovely Alastair after
Life Groomers?
Oh Alastair, I’ve been meaning to say: you do know you’ve written ‘
BOOKS
’ with an apostrophe over there?”

[
Alarmed
] “What? Where? Quick!”

“Ha!” said Nick. “Got you.”

Scene One: Radio Four – in particular “Woman’s Hour” – in background

I’m going out mountain-biking again today. [
Happy relaxed sigh
] After which it’s the tennis lesson with Pierre and a date in the evening with Ron Weasley, the jet-setting Californian dotcom millionaire I met on my first day. Currently, however – hang on, I can’t concentrate with Jenni Murray talking about incontinence pads – [
switches off radio
] currently, however, as you can see, I am floating on my back in the turquoise hotel pool in my day-glow orange swimsuit, relaxing after a vigorous sea-salt scrub executed by a Swedish woman in a white coat, the sun
kissing my exquisite golden exfoliated body, arms outstretched, and my beautifully painted toes stretching blissfully in the light, sparkling crystal water.

I bet I look lovely in this swimsuit. Tanned thighs, narrow waist, wide athletic shoulders, glittering jewellery. [
Happy sigh; eats toast through next bit
] I tread water to survey the scene. A handsome Frenchie waiter delivers a cool fruit punch to my sun lounger, where my third fat romantic novel of the week so far – packed with episodes of hot sex at polo tournaments amongst the internationally rich and famous – crisps and curls under the fierce rays of the Mediterranean sun. There are clinking and bustling sounds from the kitchens, where a buffet lunch of tasty haute cuisine low-cal savouries and oily salads is taking shape. The odd female scream from the nearby beach. [
jerked back to reality
] Where’s the cat gone? Buster? [
Indulgent
] Oh there you are. [
Back to scene
] Where was I? Oh yes. And here’s Ron Weasley back from shopping in St Tropez, diving neatly into the pool to splash water at me and make me laugh my tinkly laugh. [
Suddenly serious
] I wish I hadn’t chosen the name Ron Weasley. But that’s the trouble with getting the names out of your
Harry Potter
in a bit of a panic when your friend Linda phones out of the blue and asks how you’re getting on. However, look on the bright side. At least I didn’t choose Hagrid. At least I didn’t choose Voldemort.

I don’t feel a bit guilty about deceiving Linda. The thing is, she would never have let me spend my week’s holiday in bed with the cat. I know that sounds ridiculous – your friends can’t control your life, can they, however opinionated and bossy they may be. But with Linda, I don’t know how it happened, I’m ten years older than her for a start, but sorting me out seems to have become her
life’s work, and I don’t have much of a say in it. Perhaps you’ve never got into this situation with a friend, where in terms of bowing to superior knowledge she’s the big white missionary with the bible and you’re the native with the blow pipe and the bone through his nose. But that’s how it is with me and Linda. “Tell you what you should do, Jo,” she says. “Get your hair cut. I know what you should do, Jo. Join my gym; there’s a discount at the moment, you could come with me at lunchtimes. Here’s what I’ve decided, Jo. Get rid of the cat.” Bought Ledger used to be such a happy department. But since Linda came six months ago, she’s appointed herself my older sister, confessor, guru, unpaid personal trainer and saviour of my soul. You know that programme
Would Like to Meet
on the TV? Where an expert panel of smug midgets with bright lipstick interfere with some poor woman to make her more desirable to the opposite sex? Well, imagine those smug midgets rolled into one nightmare colleague sitting at the next desk in Bought Ledger and, trust me, that’s Linda.

She was the one who insisted I go on holiday to the South of France. “You’re turning into a cat lady, Jo” –that’s what she said. A cat lady? Well thanks a lot. “You’ve got to clear that picture of Buster off your desk, Jo. You’ve got to stop reading books called things like
Moggy and Me.
Just because Jeff was a louse who messed up your flat and took some of your belongings, you’ve given up on men and you sit watching
Would Like to Meet
shouting bitter ripostes like, ‘Why don’t you look at yourselves for a change!’ with the cat resting its paws round your neck. I’m coming with you to book that holiday at once.” So we went to the travel agents and before I knew what was happening, I’d booked a very expensive seven-night
package on the Côte d’Azur. Linda spent the next week picking swimwear out of a catalogue. Of course I went back to cancel the holiday the same afternoon, which really hacked off the girl with the short skirt and the grubby keyboard, but there you are. I know I should have told Linda what I’d done. But seeing her so happy, you see – seeing her live each day to the full like that – it seemed a kindness not to tell her.

Which was why, when I left work last Friday saying, “See you soon! Thanks for all the factor eight!” I felt she had left me with no choice as to how I spent the following week. I got home, locked the door, unplugged the phone and just went to bed with the cat, where I have now been lying and luxuriating without significant interruption for [
excited
] four whole days (!). [
Happy sigh, yawn
] Sometimes I turn this way [
turns over, rustle of bed linen
] and sometimes I turn that way [
more rustling].
The only fly in the ointment is that every day at 2 p.m., I have to put down my
Harry Potter
and answer my mobile. Because it’s Linda, you see. Checking up on my progress, on her way back to work from the gym. “Hello!” I yell, as if I’m answering at some exotic distance and not actually just half a mile away from Worrington’s in my flat in South Croydon. “Linda? Sorry, can’t talk! Too busy with swimming pool, French blokes, exercise, Swedish massage, that sort of thing!” And then I switch off the phone for another day and give Buster a fantastic comprehensive stroke which starts with the gorgeous pussycat back-of-the-head bit between his ears, travels along all the ridges of his beautiful tabby back and ends with an affectionate yank of his lovely, lovely tail.

I’d have switched the mobile off completely if I hadn’t found this. [
Cuckoo clock noise
] Hang on. That’s track 6.
Track 5. Here we are. [
Beach sound; waves; distant laughter
] It’s a BBC sound effects record Jeff rather typically left inside my Shania Twain CD case. I discovered it quite quickly, because obviously when we split up just before Christmas it was Gutsy Shania I turned to. But what did I find when I put her on? Was it a glamorous country gal with ballsy attitude in a floorlength leopardskin coat and hood singing, “That don’t impress me much”? No, it was a lark ascending. “What?” I said. “Tweet, tweet-tweet, tweet, tweet,” it went. “Twit-twit.” Well, I thought, as I took it out of the machine, [
Shania quote
]
THAT
don’t impress me much. But then I recognised the hand of Jeff, of course, and I had a little weep. You always got something back from Jeff, you see – however insultingly small and randomly chosen. Give him a car, and by way of thanks he’d present you with an only slightly soiled fashion magazine he’d thoughtfully picked up on the tube. Give him a camera and he’d reciprocate with an interesting doormat he’d found in a skip. People say cats bring home presents you don’t want, but they should try living with Jeff. He used to buy CDs for people at Christmas and tape them first, which I suppose other people sometimes do without admitting it – but when Jeff did it there was this tiny difference: he kept the CD for himself and gave the tape as the present. I remember he said I was very shallow and ungrateful when I said, “Hang on, is this what I think it is?” looking at a tape with “Van Morrison” scribbled on it. He said nobody had minded before. But I looked at my tape and said I bet they have, actually, and he said that any views on normal human relations coming from a person who idolised a pussy cat should be treated with extreme caution, and I said, oh bog off and die, Jeff, which I seem to think he
shortly afterwards actually did, except for the dying part as far as I know.

Anyway, the rough inventory I made after he left showed he’d taken not only my Shania Twain, but an enormous number of biros, half the bedding, all the storage jars, the fridge, and what was the other thing? Oh yes, I nearly forgot, my childbearing years. In return for which, at first I couldn’t find anything at all, and was quite wounded, until I found this sound effects sampler CD which certainly wasn’t mine, and probably wasn’t Jeff’s originally either – somebody else had probably chucked it out and Jeff had snapped it up as always, doubtless thinking – as he always did about broken chairs or quarter-full paint tins – that it was just far too precious to be thrown away.

[
Sound of lark ascending
] This bit’s lovely, though. I’d love to know exactly what sort of bird it is, but of course typically I don’t have the list. But as I say, it’s been a godsend. The first day Linda rang, I picked up the mobile in alarm, and was just about to switch it off when I thought hang on, selected a track at random, and found this [
airport noises].
It was a miracle. I was saved. “I’m at the airport, Linda!” I yelled. “Feeling immensely energised! You were right about me needing to get away! Thanks, Linda, speak to you soon, they’re calling my flight!” and hung up in case the track finished abruptly. The next day, when she rang again at the same time, I skipped through the tracks and found this [
restaurant hubbub noises, quite loud
]. Fantastic. “Who?” I shouted. “Linda? Linda, sorry, can’t talk. Yes! Fantastic time! Met a chap called” – hasty perusal of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire –
“Ron Weasley! You were so right!” At which point I turned it up. [
More hubbub, turned up
] “‘Oui, pour moi le salade niçoise, merci!
Avec les haricots françaises!’ Sorry, Linda, speak to you soon.” Then I hung up, turned off the CD, put the radio back on for
The Archers
and lay flat on the bed till Buster climbed on my chest for a snoozing session that lasted the full distance of
The Afternoon Play
and right through to
PM
at five.

Scene Two: still in bed. Soft classical music in background

I first got Buster when he was six weeks old. That was fifteen years ago. He’d been called Fizzy by the children who owned his mother, but because he was a rather small and feeble newborn tabby-and-white kitten when I first saw him – the only one of the four-day-old litter unable to climb out a low-sided box – I challenged this tiny animal, “Come on, Buster, put ’em up” and although I considered some other names during his weaning period, it was Buster that stuck. Once it has dawned on you that calling a kitten Buster makes him, well, Buster Kitten, the idea becomes irresistible. Had he been a girl-cat, I always say, I would have called him Diane. Anyway, it turned out to suit my cat to be named after Old Stoneface Himself, because truly he’s a comparable master of body language. When there’s anyone else in the flat, such as Jeff, Buster can just sit with his back to them and sort of hunch his shoulders in a way that speaks more contempt and hostility than mere words could ever express. I worked out Buster’s horoscope once, and I won’t go into his moon in Virgo or his lucky number or anything, because you’ll think I’m incredibly sad, but he’s a Cancer cat, which makes him especially territorial. Bless him. He was also born in the Chinese year of the Tiger – which is handy, as it must be
very confusing for cats to be born in the year of the Dog, mustn’t it? Or dogs to be born in the year of the Snake, or indeed rats in the year of the Aardvark or whatever it is. In fact, you’d think the Chinese would have thought of that really. It casts doubt on the whole system when you look at it that way.

Anyway, the point is, Cancer Tiger or whatever he is, I don’t seem to be able to judge Buster. I just love him. unconditionally. Forgive him anything. Pat him on the bonce whatever he’s done and say, “Who’s my darling boy, then?” No wonder it drove Jeff bananas. As he often pointed out, if
BUSTER
had made me a tape of Van Morrison I’d be – well, surprised, obviously, but also thrilled to the core. Meanwhile, I am also incredibly entertained by Buster. Say I get a man in to service the boiler. Buster strolls in, sighs, shoots me an accusing glare and then climbs on the man’s toolbox, and won’t get off. And it cracks me up. That’s my boy. When new friends innocently say, “Is he a friendly cat?”, Buster takes one look at them and goes to his litter box and starts making unmistakeably hostile pawing-through-gravel noises inside it, and what do I do? I shrug with an indulgent smile. I say, [
lightly
] “He always does this!” I must seem like one of those terrible mothers of infant delinquents who say, “Well, you shouldn’t leave it lying about, should you?” and offer to duff up the teachers at the school.

Rather touchingly, Jeff started off pretending to be fond of Buster. I remember they watched snooker together at the start, and that Jeff found it quite amusing when Buster stood up on his hind legs in front of the telly and tried to pat the balls as they travelled across the screen. Then the male bonding started to come slightly unglued, then peeled apart as fondness cooled and there was a period
of each tolerating the other when Jeff didn’t watch the snooker any more, and even on one memorable occasion (rather childishly, I thought) mocked Buster’s efforts to operate the remote. In the end, of course, it descended to naked aggression, and when one day Jeff left the front door open “accidentally”, and Buster ran across our busy main road and got lost for a day and I roamed the neighbourhood shaking a packet of Kitbits and snivelling and weeping, I said Jeff had better go now and take his fridge with him, along with the storage jars and all the other stuff I may have mentioned including my Shania Twain and hopes of future connubial happiness. Losing Buster had been extremely traumatic. I went along the street checking in bins; I was convinced I would find him dead; I asked old ladies if they’d seen him and they said, “I hope you find him quickly, dear, there’s a gang working round here that rounds up lost cats and turns them into gloves.”