Raven (11 page)

‘Listen, a friend of mine didn't use protection and got chlamydia recently. It put a real damper on her sex life. And she should have known better. She's almost seventy.'

‘Rock and roll!' I laugh.

‘It isn't a joke.'

‘No, no. I know. Don't worry, I'm being careful.'

But that isn't strictly true. I always
aim
to be careful. But as with waiting for the green light before crossing a road, I'm not dogmatic about it. Women of my age, who can no longer get pregnant, tend to stop thinking about things like condoms and coils and caps. And that is a liberation, just as the Pill was a liberation for us when we were young and fertile. So in the heat of the moment, I have at times found it all too easy to forget the exhortations (from Sara, Vanessa, et al.) to be ‘careful'.

But I had read the newspaper articles about the rise in STDs amongst the older generations, who were living longer and fitter lives and apparently still going at it like rabbits, with nary a care in the world. So I did see the
potential
for coming unstuck.

And with that in mind, I had gone to Boots for a box of condoms to keep in my bedside drawer. I couldn't remember the last time I had bought condoms, and it reminded me of that coming-of-age movie, Summer of '42, in which 15-year-old Hermie goes to a drug store to buy his first ever ‘rubbers' but is so embarrassed to ask for them at the counter that he gets a strawberry ice cream instead. Absurdly, I felt a bit like Hermie. After all, whether you're a green youngster or a 60-year-old grandma, you don't want the shop assistant knowing your intimate business. Then it occurred to me that nowadays you can just pull stuff off the shelf and pay at a self-checkout till, where no one knows or cares what you're buying. So I bought my big box of condoms and, feeling pleased with my admirable prudence, installed it in my bedside drawer…although admittedly the box didn't get opened all that often.

After Franny and I have finished eating, as we linger over our Amarettos, I suggest that she too might like to try online dating, now she is single again. ‘There's a whole world of men out there, Fran. A cornucopia. And not all of them weird!'

She shakes her head. ‘Too dangerous. If my business rivals get wind of me being on a dating site they might try to trip me up somehow. It could cause all kinds of trouble. And can you imagine what Harry would say if he found out? Oh my god!'

‘What do you care what Harry would say? You're free of him now, remember?'

We look at each other and she smiles. I think I see a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, but it could just be the candlelight.

*

It was 10.30 when I got home that night, and after all the wine and the Amarettos, I was decidedly tipsy. Getting undressed for bed, I was down to my bra and knickers when I had an idea. It was one of my impulsive tipsy ideas, obviously, but struck me as a good one at the time. I grabbed my mobile, stood before the full-length mirror on my bedroom wall, and took a snap. It was only mildly saucy, revealing no more than the typical lingerie poster in Marks and Spencer's, while being rather less suggestive. But it worked well, I thought. An effective lingerie shot. I texted it to the randy Ryan, who weeks earlier had asked me for a ‘selfie' of this kind, with a short caption: ‘Here you are.'

It took less than three minutes to get a return message. ‘Holy shit. Why didn't you send me that before? I really want you now.'

‘Ha ha! Get your Irish ass over here then.'

A little later came his rejoinder: ‘Can you take a pic with the bra off and your boobs up close?'

Reader, I switched my phone off in disgust and went to bed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was another of my ‘snap' decisions (get the pun?) a couple of days later, which led me to send my lingerie shot to Charles. I was sitting in the lounge area at my health club, shortly before aqua class, when I sent it. I'd grown bored of being all good and patient (‘good' is a relative term here). A month had passed since our last tryst. He had promised to call and arrange to see me, but failed to follow through, always pleading that he was ‘busy', and I hoped the photo might shake him into action. It did.

‘Good to hear from you,' he texted. ‘I hope you're well.'

‘It would be great to go out for dinner and then come back to my place so that you can ravish me. I've been so looking forward to it, corny thing that I am.'

‘Is that “corny” or do you mean horny?'

‘Maybe both.'

To my delight he suggested we meet early the following evening at his favourite martini bar in the West End.

Me: ‘Yes, maybe I should start drinking martinis. Will they have the same effect on me as Limoncello, do you think?'

‘Even more so perhaps! Let's try it and see what happens.'

‘I'm getting excited now. Glad I sent you my saucy photo.'

‘I was going to call you anyway. But the photo was still nice.'

*

Charles met me outside the entrance to the martini bar, near Oxford Street. He was leaning against the wall and smoking a cigar, looking debonair. You couldn't imagine him using a chemical loo in some caravan crawling with spiders on the Norfolk coast, not in a million years. And I loved that about him.

After such a long gap, I put my arms around his neck and gave him a big, wholehearted smooch. But this appeared to embarrass him and as he took my arms and lowered them to my sides, he said in a gently disapproving tone, ‘I don't think we should do this in the street.'

‘Why? We're not in Dubai.'

We went down the stairs to the basement bar, which was cave-like and eerily lit. It had a vaguely iniquitous atmosphere, like some 19
^th
century opium den. I liked it. Such a thrill after my usual West End haunts, John Lewis and Marks and Spencer.

It was early so the place was almost empty. We sat down at a table in a corner and Charles handed me the martini menu. I listed a dozen different varieties. Orange and cherry and vanilla and espresso and passion fruit and ginger and mango and chilli and the one that really caught my eye, chocolate.

‘Wow,' I said. ‘So many kinds to choose from. Which should I have?'

‘Let's start at the top and work our way down.'

I could see Charles was in his element. He went up to the bar and gave the bartender our orders and watched with rapt attention as the young man did the measuring and mixing, shaking and stirring and whatever else he had to do – I had no idea, but it took a long time. Then Charles came back and set my drink before me. And I smiled up at him, cheerful and full of anticipation.

We worked our through several different types of martini, although as I had suspected the chocolate was by far the best, in my opinion, so I had two of those. I felt pretty full after that but Charles suggested we go and have dinner somewhere.

As we emerged from the murky bar into the bright summer sunlight, I took Charles's hand, but as with my earlier kiss, this didn't go down too well. He let me hold it for a minute or two, then slipped it out of my grasp on the pretext of pointing to something down the street. Well, some people just don't like being demonstrative in public. Fine. I would desist.

We strolled around on St Christopher's Place and the narrow streets nearby, until we found a little Italian restaurant, one of those tight-squeeze eateries which serve traditional fare and always have at least one genuine Italian waiter, even in these ethnically jumbled times. Charles, tall and well-built Yank that he was, seemed an outsized diner at our small table in that small establishment, with Japs and Germans and other tourists edging past us down the narrow aisle. But this was the hub of London and it was humming and I was full of martinis and gazing at my date's handsome face and hearing his easy-going spiel, and everything was great.

Charles was explaining that red wine shouldn't be drunk at room temperature, it should be cooled down and it all sounded like rubbish to me but I didn't care. He asked the waiter for an ice bucket and plonked the bottle of red in it. If he wants it cool, I thought, we'll have it cool.

We ate our pasta and drank our cool red wine, and afterwards Charles ordered a couple of Limoncellos.

‘Oh no,' I piped.

He looked at me in mock surprise. ‘But you love the stuff.'

‘Yeah but I've already drunk plenty and I'm mellow enough.' Then I added: ‘As Woody Allen said in the unforgettable Annie Hall “if I get too mellow I ripen and then rot”.'

He commented that he'd never much liked Woody Allen, didn't find him funny, and he had never heard of Annie Hall. This didn't surprise me. I had already discovered that I shared about as many common cultural threads with Charles as I did with Little Pup, only Pup at least had the excuse of having been born yesterday.

Charles ended up downing my little glassful of Limoncello as well as his own. Then we set off for his place. For the first time we would spend the night there instead of at my house.

It was a business-like flat, really half-home, half-office. The sitting room contained a mammoth desk with a serious-looking computer, and there were shelves stacked not with books but with ring binders. The modest kitchen area looked as if no one had ever cooked a meal there, it was spotless and there was little in the way of foodstuffs. There was however a large jar of olives on the counter. For martinis, I guessed.

We sat down on his neat two-seater sofa. I kicked my shoes off and, curling up beside him, gave him a tender kiss. Then I said: ‘There's no one around now. So it's okay, right?'

He leaned back with his eyes closed and it wasn't long before I realised that he had drifted off to asleep. Well, it was late and he had put away a lot of booze.

But that, I knew, was just an excuse. In truth he seemed very much like a man who was unmoved by my charms. And as I scanned the unfamiliar and somehow unwelcoming surroundings, I felt my spirits droop. What could have changed between us in the weeks since our last meeting, which had held so much promise in its closeness and warmth? Or had I imagined it all? No, I couldn't have.

And what was with his allusions to my dating? A couple of times that evening, when my mobile tinkled to announce the arrival of a text or email, he remarked, casually: ‘There's your next date.' I found this vaguely unsettling. It was as if he were willing me into the arms of other men. Did he intend to send the signal that he and I were just two people whose paths had crossed, randomly, on a dating site, that there was nothing more to it than that and I shouldn't view him as more than just one small part of my dating life? That I shouldn't read too much into ‘us'? That ultimately he just didn't care enough?

Then again, perhaps he was only trying to protect me from disappointment and hurt. He had told me he planned to return to the States at some point, and that before then there would be a lot of travelling for work, lengthy spells abroad, maybe even a foreign posting. An emotional involvement would only complicate things and lead to a painful parting when the inevitable day came. Was he being tough with me in order to be kind? It hadn't been like that on our first two dates.

When we retired to his bed that night it was clear there would be nothing on the agenda but sleep. But there was always dawn's early light to look forward to, I told myself as I drifted off. We'll wake up rested and maybe he will finally be raring to go. I have my womanly wiles, after all…

But there were no morning frolics for us. Instead we lay in bed talking.

‘Sorry about my lack of interest in sex,' he said. And then he uttered that most clichéd of explanations, which made me groan inside: ‘It's not you, it's me.' When I turned to him wordlessly in a quest for more elucidation, he continued: ‘I've got too much on my mind right now. I'm up to my neck in deadlines and all kinds of administrative paperwork.' He waited to see what response this would elicit and when I still said nothing he added: ‘Men tend to go off sex when they're really busy with work and other things.'

‘Is there anything I can do?' I asked, caressing his face.

‘No. As I said, it's nothing to do with you. If I had Marilyn Monroe in my bed, offering me a blow job, I'd feel exactly the same.'

We got dressed and left the flat and he said he would walk me to the tube station, but along the way we passed a café with outdoor tables looking inviting in the morning sun, so Charles asked if I'd like to have something. We sat down and ordered cappuccinos.

We watched the world go by on Baker Street, silently for a while. At the table next to us a smartly dressed elderly lady was feeding morsels of croissant to the pug at her feet and for a while I gazed down at the little thing, mesmerised by its ugliness and greed. Then with a short laugh I turned away.

That's when, stirring his coffee, Charles told me what was
really
on his mind.

‘I've spoken to my ex-wife a couple of times lately.' I looked up at him. ‘We still have matters to sort out, administrative issues, joint bills to pay. Tedious stuff. Usually we do it by email but thought I'd call instead. Guess I felt like hearing her voice.'

‘And?' I took a sip of the hot cappuccino, hoping not to seem too interested. But of course I was all ears.

‘I still have feelings for her. Not sexual, I don't mean that. But there's still emotion there. A kind of emotional dependency.' He peered down at the table.

‘So…you haven't really moved on.'

‘It was like I was betraying her, that last time I saw you.'

Now I studied the table too, not saying anything but feeling heavy and stupid. To think I had fantasised about introducing him to my sons and welcoming him into the family, and about his becoming the boyfriend, the
other half
. After only two dates! Stupid, stupid, stupid. And all the time he was holding a candle for his ex. Well I hoped it burned him, for making me feel a fool.

‘I don't know if you can understand this,' he said, and our eyes met. ‘I could probably have sex easily enough with the fat 26-year-old girl I once had that date with. Because that would just be sex and it wouldn't matter.' He paused, still holding my gaze, then carried on. ‘But if there were something more involved, well…that's different. That's why I'm having trouble with you.'

I didn't know how to react. It was a compliment, wasn't it? But somehow that didn't help. My anger, on the other hand, started to dissolve.

‘Could we see each other without the sex for a while?' he asked. ‘See how it goes?' He grinned and added, ‘The sex was great, by the way.'

‘You want us just to be friends.' I sighed. Friends. Like me and NiceMan. And
that
didn't exactly work out well. I was in danger of breaking another of Vanessa's sage rules:
never tell a man you can just be friends, they'll keep hoping for more
. Only this time the poor mug hoping for more would be me. I gave Charles a weak smile. ‘I guess so. Okay.'

He gave me a brisk good-bye kiss outside the tube station and I gave him a wave.

I wasn't sure I knew what I wanted any more. But I sensed I couldn't count on Charles for anything, that there was nothing for me there, not now and not in the future. I heard his words about our ‘friendship', but they struck me as hollow.

And the following day when I logged on to the dating site and saw that he was on it too, with the announcement that his profile had been updated and improved, with the addition of new photos, I turned away and shut him and his good looks and his urbane charms and his empty words out of my mind and out of my life. And it was all quick and clean, and at that moment I realised I was relieved that we were done. In the deathless words of that diva of divas, the inimitable Cher:
I've had time to think it through, and maybe I'm too good for you!

As I had said to Francine, there was a cornucopia of men out there, waiting to be plucked out of cyberspace. Why hang about?

But I knew I would never look at a Limoncello the same way again.