Raven (4 page)

I found his healthy, strong body very appealing. I complimented him on his super-muscular thighs and he told me they were a result of his football playing; he belonged to a team in south London and played on weekends. (As a teenager I had a friend called Esther who, as a pretty seventeen-year-old, went on holiday with her parents to the Algarve. She met George Best on the beach one night and they had sex. ‘His thighs were like rocks,' she said admiringly. I finally knew what she meant.)

Later that evening we went downstairs and ate a dinner of spaghetti and ice cream in the sitting room while watching a silly film on the telly. And we laughed and sprawled on the sofa like a pair of teenagers.

He stayed over that night and fell asleep with his head nestling on my shoulder. And the next morning he left for Tooting.

He sent me a text from the tube station. ‘Hi Miss. It's L'il Pup here. Lovely seeing you. Hope to see you again soon.'

From then on I always called him Pup and he generally referred to me as Miss. I loved the vaguely Benny Hill sauciness of it.

‘I'll do anything you want, Miss.'

Bloody hell.

CHAPTER FOUR

Vanessa's dating site was proving to be highly fertile ground. Even before my upcoming second get-together with SuperA on Friday, I had organised a dating double-whammy for one midweek evening.

My first assignation was for cocktails at the popular bar-café over-looking Piccadilly from the top floor of the Waterstones flagship store. My date was with Ramon, a 48-year-old South American businessman. Darkly handsome, in his outdoorsy photos he resembled a rugged, bearded mountaineer. This macho appearance was at odds with the affected language he used in his on-site messages. Referring to the line in my narrative about all men being rascals, he countered with: ‘Laying the cards down, I struggle to refrain myself from coming to the quite generalised negative view about the opposite sex as well. I'm on the cusp of concluding that all women are heartless. It could be fun to share our case folders.'

I told him that only a heartless woman could refuse his proposal. ‘
Touché
!' he responded. ‘I have another meeting that day which flutters like a butterfly and I don't know what time it will land. Yet a glass at the end of a warm day as the night cold begins to nibble is a glorious time.'

Jesus, I thought. He could be hard work.

We agreed to meet at six o'clock. He told me to look for someone ‘most likely staring at an iPhone, thoroughly detached from his surroundings (some might say, disembodied)'. A description which nowadays would hardly narrow the field.

As I stepped out of the lift I spotted him soon enough, staring into his iPhone. As I approached he glanced up and gave me a smile. Still uncertain of the protocol on these occasions I reached out to shake his hand, but he took me by the shoulders and kissed me on both cheeks.

We ordered mojitos and started chatting. Like many passionate entrepreneurs Ramon could wax lyrical about the challenges of start-ups and ‘high-risk strategies', and expound at length on ‘growing an SME', ‘taking the business to new levels' and the intricacies of recapitalisation. I tried not to let my eyes glaze over. My ex was a business consultant and I'd been listening to the yawn-inducing jargon for many years. But at least the ex hadn't larded his talk with Ramon's flowery, faux-poetic expressions.

At last he showed a modicum of polite interest in me and my own career. He was, after all, a man of breeding, the son of a former government minister and privately educated. And so we carried on conversing for the next hour or so (with me trying to keep it all in plain English) before he had to head off to watch some art-house film with a friend. We exchanged more cheek-kisses as we said good-bye and said we would meet up again. But I suspected we wouldn't. It had been a friendly encounter but as they say in this game, ‘there was no spark'. Our personalities were not a good fit. And despite his rugged Latin looks I found Ramon strangely sexless.

The mojitos had been good, though, and I was reasonably well-oiled for my second date of the evening. This was with Jock (roughly the same age as Ramon), a burly, six foot three inch Scot and yet another beardy. I had never particularly liked facial hair and it was becoming strangely difficult to escape. Jock worked for a private equity company and lived in the Docklands. He had laid on the charm in his messages to me, complimenting me on my looks and ‘fantastic smile' (which he followed with that tedious smiley-face symbol, as if to hammer home the point).

Jock lived in a high-rise block with a swimming pool and suggested I bring my bikini so he could check out the tan I mentioned I'd recently acquired in my garden. But I had had an expensive blow-dry that day and wasn't about to spoil my hair in a pool. So we were meeting for drinks and a bite at one of the many Docklands hang-outs teeming with bonus-fed suits in ‘financial services'.

It had started to rain lightly and I reckoned I might as well have gone for that swim. Jock met me at the tube station (a process which took some time as, ridiculously, he was waiting somewhere out of sight) and ushered me through revolving doors into a packed bar. As we settled in a corner with our drinks, he turned his solemn gaze on me. He was less charming and more taciturn in person than he had been online. Neither bad-looking nor good-looking. One of those.

We discussed our respective circumstances and he explained that his divorce had recently come through from his wife, who he described as greedy and calculating. She had really made him pay. The proceedings had dragged on for ages and their rapacious lawyers had made things worse. I made a few ironic asides about divorce and relationships, but they fell flat, as he clearly didn't ‘get them'. In fact Jock didn't smile much at all and his pale eyes studied me closely, almost as if I were his prey, which I found faintly exciting.

When we had finished our food and drinks he invited me up to his ‘apartment' for coffee. He lived high up, he told me, with great views of the river, the O2 Centre and boats and things. I knew exactly what he was inviting me up for but at that moment I considered only that I had never been in one of those glittering Docklands towers with their swanky lobbies and panoramic views. A coffee? Sure, why not?

The outlook from his windows was indeed impressive, although I had to twist my neck around to left and right to see the promised sights. Because dead ahead was another great glass tower, an office block with a million windows staring straight into his butch, no-frills sitting room and I wondered how he ever got any privacy. I sat down on his black leather sofa, leaned back and yawned. Dating was tiring.

He made us mugs of coffee, put them down on the glass table before us and seated himself close to me with an expectant look on his face. I took a few sips. Then he asked me what I wanted to do.

‘Dunno,' I said, as I drank a little more coffee and gave him a noncommittal glance. Whereupon he abruptly took hold of my face and landed a big messy kiss on my mouth. Such a cliché that I laughed. Then without further ado he lifted me up and carried me off to his bedroom, like some Neanderthal carting off a helpless female consort to his cave. He lowered me onto the bed in his equally masculine bedroom, all dark wooden built-in furniture, vast TV screen and state-of-the-art gizmos.

Jock was a robust and practised shagger, in the way that most feral animals are. Hump hump hump. And the delicate chain necklace he wore was markedly incongruous with his caveman behaviour.

Three nocturnal humping sessions later, as the early morning light crept into his ‘apartment', I felt drained and achy and ready to go home. At intervals during the night his various gadgets – phone, computer, god-knows-what – made urgent little bleeps and pips, waking me with a start each time, while he slumbered on. Apparently he never switched anything off.

When Jock, clad in huge, fluffy white dressing gown, finally got out of bed and disappeared into his butch bathroom – seemingly in no hurry to come out – I slowly rose and put my clothes on.

A little later we drank tea and I peered out at the myriad windows opposite, now with office workers moving behind them. Jock spoke in a monotone about his neighbours, who were mainly foreign. They were all right, he said. Unobtrusive. He said he liked living in Docklands and I began to understand why. The area was as cold and impersonal as him.

He gave me an empty peck on the cheek as I left and closed the door behind me. As I wandered down long beige hallways looking for the lift, I remembered my time with Little Pup. What a blinding contrast to the Jock experience. Really, I would have to be more discriminating. And no more of this sex on the first date nonsense. (Unless I really fancied it, obviously.) In any case, I knew I wouldn't be coming back to this place. Observing Jock in the harsh morning light, as he lay in bed, snoring, legs akimbo, I realised I didn't fancy it with him at all.

*

I'm sitting in the kitchen with my tall, blonde daughter-in-law Sara, 34. She's also my confidante. I certainly tell her more about my doings than I tell any of my friends. She is not only astute but ultra-discreet and I trust her implicitly. We have periodic pow-wows over a bottle of wine at which we discuss how my internet dating is coming along, and one recurrent theme is how much I should tell my two sons, the older of which is her husband. She thinks I should keep it on a strictly need-to-know basis, and that they needn't know very much. I agree. For a start, I think it might freak out my sons to know about my coupling with Little Pup, who is considerably younger than they are. Sara, on the other hand, is full of admiration for this development. I think she rather enjoys having a mother-in-law who cooks a traditional Sunday roast for the family one week and gets it on with a cute 23-year-old the next.

But now she eyes me with consternation and shakes her head. ‘How could you just go to his place like that, on the first date? He could have been a psycho. Could have done anything he wanted to you.' She is referring to Jock. I try to explain that I acted on gut instinct, made a judgement call, and that at my advanced age I felt I was good at evaluating people, which gave me confidence and a sense of security. ‘I mean, yes it was rather a mindless hump-fest, but Jock wasn't
dangerous
.' But I know Sara is right. I had been silly and rash. I am not an infallible judge of character; no one is.

Neither does she think it was clever of me, the other night, to invite SuperA over to my house, sight unseen. Another potential axe-murderer. I squirm under her disapproving gaze.

‘From now on,' Sara says, ‘just as a precaution, text me whenever you go on a date, with details of the meeting-place, the time, the fellow's name. Then send an “all-safe” text afterwards to let me know you got home okay. Otherwise I'll have to inform the police and you might get your door kicked in the next day.'

I laugh. I know this is the protocol amongst some internet daters. Women looking out for each other. And I appreciate Sara's care and concern. But she is the mother of two small children and drops into bed exhausted by 9.30 most evenings, so I doubt she would be aware of whether or not I'd sent her a late night ‘all-safe'. I give her a hug and promise to be more prudent. And the irony of our role reversal isn't lost on either of us.

*

The day before my awaited dinner date with SuperA, he texted to let me know he wouldn't be able to make it. He had unexpectedly been swamped with work and for the next fortnight would have no time for anything else. He was really sorry, as he had been looking forward to it, but he'd be in touch to rearrange as soon as the pressure was off. He ended with the customary XXs.

I felt a pang of disappointment. I believed there was a real connection between us and was eager to build on it. But I understood about work constraints and wanted him to see just how understanding I was. ‘I'm sorry too, but no problem. Hope the new assignment goes well and looking forward to seeing you at the end of it. XX.'

Naturally I was surprised and dismayed when, logging on to the dating site the following morning, I noticed him online. (It's always flagged up when a member is logged on, so that it is clear who is currently available for potential ‘real time' flirtation.) I also felt another emotion I hadn't experienced for a while: jealousy. And I hated it.

I hammered out a curt, resentful message. ‘Busy working, are we? You men are all the same.'

Back came his immediate rejoinder. ‘Beg your pardon? What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Do whatever you like, it's all the same to me. But I've had enough of men bullshitting me.'

‘What's this outburst about?'

‘It's fine if you want to trawl around the site looking for females to cavort with but a little honesty would be nice. Needn't pretend to be out of action due to work. Just say you've got other fish to fry. As for me, I'm out. Not interested any more.'

‘I'm not trawling, just politely answering a few messages. What has this got to do with whether I'm working or not and why are you so pissed off? I haven't been dishonest with you. I'm mystified as to what I've done wrong!'

‘You gave the impression you were too busy to draw breath for a fortnight. So I was surprised to find you on the dating scene.'

‘Well, unusually for a man, I can multi-task. And I don't appreciate being berated by you.'

End of conversation. And with that it appeared my ‘relationship' with SuperA was over before it had really begun.

Why was I upset? I had hardly known him. Obviously I had read too much into the easy connection we'd made between us. I had thought it promising, but in reality there had been no promise. And I concluded that the reason for his lack of interest in the details of my life was that, the less he knew, the looser the connection, the easier it would be for him to cut me off when he decided my time was up. Maybe that was simply the way internet dating worked for him, and probably for most other men too.

As for me, the answer was not to care so much. After all, there was an abundant supply of willing men out there in cyberspace, as I was beginning to see. No point in crying over any one of them. From now on I would endeavour to stick to that principle. I'd toughen up. No more getting upset or jealous, no more being outwardly insouciant while remaining an unreconstructed old softie inside.