Aunt Margaret's Lover (27 page)

'Well, isn't that
just
like life?' I murmured, deciding that I would tell Verity all about this place, in every seductive detail, so that she would be forced by curiosity to come here. It would do her good. She needed taking out of herself. I also felt guilty. Perhaps I had rather left her in the lurch. I quickly put the thought from my head. You couldn't go round being responsible for people in that way. Now, could you?

We returned to the lobby.

'Nasty business all over,' said mine host, rubbing his hands. Not a till nor a cash box in sight. How perfect the illusion here is, I thought, and had the uncomfortable feeling that it wasn't the only illusion in proximity.

Chapter 25

We were talking about your card from Hexham Abbey. Dad says he remembers going there as a student and copying the carvings in the Chantry. I think he misses all that heredity stuff Who were you with? You said 'We' on your card. Was it Jill? Give them my love.

We visited Hexham Abbey before driving on to Jill and David.

I found myself wondering whether we had really needed sex to finish the circle, or whether it was the mythology that dictated it as necessary for a relationship's completion. Sure, it's a pleasure, and a free one if you are lucky, but then so is sitting on a warm beach or having your feet massaged, and you don't have to wear a condom to do either of those. Only, I suppose, they don't perpetuate humankind. Maybe the reason we get in such a muddle about sex is because we have the primal expectancy of 'mating equals offspring' and so our encounters mostly leave us feeling we have failed in our true purpose. Women are upset not because their men fall asleep straight afterwards, but really because they haven't been made pregnant. Possibly? Well, whatever, that morning we agreed to look at the world fearlessly through new eyes, and, like that, it looked very good.

A small piece of travelogue. Hexham Abbey is a comely place which still retains many of its Anglo-Saxon origins. Dating back to 674, it is built in the shape of a cross. The

Anglo-Saxon names connected with it would make a sit-com writer blush. The fair Queen
Etheldreda,
whose husband was godly King
Egfrid,
gave land for the Abbey to Saint
Wilfrid,
who repaid their charity by taking a lawsuit to Rome against the carving up of his see. He won it, but on his return was promptly imprisoned by said godly king. First known example of taking a case to Europe successfully only to come back to find nothing more than a big fat so what .
..
Current governments, please note. Despite his huff, said Wilfrid left a splendid seventh-century stone cathedra, which had once, if sat i
n by an innocent sanctuaree, off
ered immediate and unassailable safety - cause for thought here, all right.

There were more sit-com names in the rood screen - St Cuthbert and St Oswald. The former clutched the latter's head, which produced a kind of saintly sense of sit-com. Appare
ntly
some muddle foll
owing Oswald's death on the battl
efield (hardly a saintly demise) resulted in this part of his anatomy becoming coffin companion to Cuthbert. Rather presumptuous in my opinion — fancy having someone else's head chucked in beside you, not even to be sure of having your coffin to yourself once you have gone to your final rest.

Just like certain trigger words - gusset and truss, for instance - the Anglo-Saxon names rolled off the guide book with increasing absurdity. Cuthbert and Oswald were followed by Walburga and his two brothers St Willibald and St Winebald
..
. There was also an Ethelberga of Barking. For these names alone it was worth letting William the Conq. overrule us .
..

The Abbey's minder, a thin, imperious-looking priest with hair and face like a falcon, looked upon us with growing disapproval. Oxford spent some time with him smoothing the feathers, admiring the misericords, discussing the mixture of styles, commiserating on the decay of the building's fabric. I wandered a little way off and leant against a pillar, watching the two men. I was amused at the thoughts going through my mind, which had
little
to do with Medieval

versus Romanesque- If we had not already been a little late setting off for Jill and David's, I might have suggested a pitstop on the way. But neither of us was sure enough of the other, yet, to suggest leaping under a haystack or bundling up in the back of the car, so we drove in an increasingly high state of unsaid expectancy.
Just
the sort of thing Jill would love, and
exactly
what she would hope and expect to see, I thought, as we rolled through the gates of their drive.

'How do you want to handle this?' he asked after I had switched off the engine.

'As romantically as possible,' I said, 'and say nothing about advertisements.'

He laughed. 'Shame on you,' he said.

I got out. In the distance I could see David on his grass-cutting machine, and the movement of the curtain in a downstairs window indicated that Jill had registered our arrival.

'It might remind David to be a bit more attentive to Jill if we rub his nose in it a bit. Besides' - I took his hand - 'we don't have to pretend anything, do we?'

The front door opened. Jill appeared wearing a very pretty lavender and white dress, and I thought how beautiful she looked with her shimmering eyes and her huge, bright smile.

'Welcome,' she called, arms outstretched to me. We hugged each other.

'He's very nice,' she whispered into my ear. So how could I tell her the truth?

Chapter 26

We are packing up. You won't hear much from me for a while, I wish everything was easy between us al
l and that you could
have come over for some of the summer. I think of you and the house and my room often. Well, I guess this is growing up!

Verity has decided to go swimming in the early evening.

This is part one of plan A, called Cleaning Up Your Act Before It Shows On Your Ageing Face and Body. She feels depressed. It is not relaxing to be constantly wondering what is going on in a northerly direction. She wishes she had had the courage to say to Margaret, 'Please ring me and tell me what it was like
immediately,
,' because what it was like and how it is continuing are two questions that dance around in her head all the time. Margaret's taking a lover has left a hole in Verity's needy world and, though she despises the thought, she would feel much better if Margaret rang up to say it was not so hot. Or, even better, if a tear-stained Margaret arrived on her doorstep to say
'Never again.'
There. The deceitful, dreadful thought is out. Swimming will cure such disease, thinks Verity, and she puts on her costume.

The costume says to her, as does her face above, that whatever the 'It' is, it already
does
show on the ageing face and body. 'Thank God I never had children,' Verity says to her reflection. If she had had children, she feels, then the

body would have been in an even worse state. Already it is quite bad enough. It is not so much that it is fat, it is not, but
it
has a saggy quality about it, as do her jaw and her eyes, the whites of which - she peers closely - are definitely looking yellow. That's it, then - she throws the towel into her bag - she has shot her liver too. Such fools love makes of us, she thinks, for she looked quite all right before all this Mark business began. She takes one last look at her bosom, decides it has become sunken treasure, and moves away from the disgracefully cruel mirror. Perhaps she will throw the mirror away and get a very small one - one you can see only bits of yourself in. 'What do you think, Wall?' she yells. But coming back up the stairs is only silence. The wall is an extremely tactful pal to have around.

At least the swimming-pool will be free of threat. At just after six o'clock on a Friday night the children will be going home for their supper, the strapping Adonii of early-morning lanes will be oiling their muscles at home ready for the weekend, the grannies and the disabled will be t
ucked up with their Barbara Cartl
ands. She feels she is allowed to make this kind of ageist suggestion since she is nearly in that category herself. So she expects that there will be either no one at the pool or others in a similar plight to herself. 'Nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to do it with,' she says mournfully, as she pulls on her
jeans. Oh, really! How did she ever get into this state in the first place? And what on earth is Margaret
doing
opening herself up to it? Foolish woman. Verity sticks a bottle of body lotion into the bag and zips it up. 'Body lotion to keep the body all supple and soft,' she intones to herself as she heads down the hallway. And a tear escapes. But supple and soft for why?

She remembers what Margaret is up to. Fucking Aunt Margaret and her pick-up from Oxford. Fucking Aunt Margaret and her
successful
pick-up from Oxford. Last night's recipe seems to have lost its healing quality. When she rang Colin this morning, just to ask him what he thought about it all, he had seemed puzzled.

'Think?' he said. 'I don't think anything. Let them get on with it. As long as they leave me alone. But I'll tell you what I do think
...'

Verity perks up. 'What?'

'I don't think it will last.'

Verity perks up even more. 'You wouldn't like to come swimming with me now?' she asked. But he politely declined.

Instantly she wished she had not said it and was plunged into gloom again after he had rung off.

It will last, she thinks, it will. Margaret just has that air of confidence about her.

Verity sees Mark twice on the way to the swimming-pool. On each occasion, and once rather dangerously, she reverses the car only to find it is a figment. One was a man with a moustache who grinned back at her unedifyingly, and one a young lad with a shell suit. Verity wonders if such mistakes may be the result of delirium tremens setting in. She vows, as she parks at the leisure centre, that she will not draw cork nor twist cap once tonight. Not
once.
And she is deaf to the inner voice that mocks and says, 'Ha ha. Heard
that
one before . . .'

Jill is now sitting up in bed at midnight and extremely glad to be in a room that is on the other side of the house. David is reading - in that dozy, pre-sleep way - a magazine article about Japan. He has to go there soon and is irritatingly unexcited about the prospect. Jill did think about accompanying him at one point - hang the expense - but the prospect of doing most of her sightseeing alone, and of not having an iota of Japanese under her belt, made her decide otherwise. David suggested that they learn some Japanese together. Jill has long wanted to share an activity with him - perhaps golf, perhaps orienteering, something they could both enjoy in a childlike, open way and which would draw them closer - but learning Japanese for business reasons doesn't appeal.

David turns out his light, rolls on to his side with his back comfortably pushed up against her, reaches round to squeeze her thigh once, and instantly begins the breathing that indicates he is close to untrammelled oblivion.

She nudges him. Hard. 'David,' she says, 'what do you think of him?'

'Who?' says David grudgingly. He knows perfectly well what Jill means but sleep is such a seductive option. 'Her man.'

'He's all right. Very nice chap.' He lets out a deep sigh, full of relish for what is to come. The grass-cutting in the cold, breezy air, the roast duck, the unremitting conversation and an extra glass of port have all had their effect. His eyes have the weight of good conscience upon them. They close in delicious abandonment.

Jill lets him go. She puts her elbows on her knees and her hands under her chin and she sa
ys to the lamplit room, 'Well, I
think
he's very suitable and very nice and they've clearly hit it off. First flush, I suppose. Did you see the way they kept touching - toes and later his hand on her back -like they couldn't wait to get to bed? And I've never seen Margaret so smiley and soppy. Disgusting, really -
she'd
have been disgusted by it in someone else. And her eyes looked
luminous -
she was sparkling, the way they say you should in books. And already -
already -
they had that secret shorthand between them. What on earth was all that about Willibalds and coffins? I think it was rude to be so obscure. And he was so damn well interested in everything. And when I asked how they had met, they exploded with laughter -
laughter.
And Margaret put her arm round me - patronizing cow -and said, "In Oxford." And she calls him Oxford. What's wrong with Simon? It's a good enough name. There's something so childish and possessive about nicknames - not like her at all.'