Send Me A Lover (24 page)

She plonks down on the edge of her bed, clasps the deodorant tightly at her chest. ‘I want to,’ she says quietly. ‘Oh, Angela…I want to.’

‘You’re supposed to say you don’t! That was supposed to be my job!’

‘I know! And I’m supposed to say that he’s too old for me and too short!’

My words to her, once.

‘But it’s not true.’ She claps both hands either side of her face. ‘It’s just not true, Angela.’

‘Spare me,’ I hold up a hand. ‘I don’t want to know how your loins are twitching just thinking of him.’

She is trying not to smile.

I whip my glance over her—the long, pale pink T-shirt with the sleeves that come down to her knuckles, and the way she has two silver bangles over them, ‘napkin-ring style’. The pale denim A-line, knee-length skirt. And the cream espadrilles with her snazzy toenails peeping out. ‘So where is he, then?’

‘He had some work to do. He wanted me to come with him, but I didn’t want to be in the way. He’s not on holiday like we are, is he? But he’s coming back for me at four.’ She stares at me, as though her mind’s elsewhere. ‘I wanted to see you. I was missing you.’

‘Liar. You wanted to come and gloat.’

‘No,’ she shakes her head and does a dirty grin. ‘Actually, I’m dying to tell you something.’ She’s giddy now, a queer mix of nervousness and excitement. ‘A girlie confession.’

‘Hang on…. er… you’ve bonked him.’

‘Don’t say that! That’s so uncouth, Angela. But along those lines… What I wanted to tell you was that… I haven’t….you know. Anything. Not in fifteen years.’

It dawns on me that she’s talking about sex. Mam and I don’t talk about sex. Even when she taught me about the birds and the bees she did such a good botanical job of it that I didn’t realise it applied to people until about ten years later. ‘But Dad’s only been gone eight years.’

‘Your dad and I…’ She clutches her hands in her lap, her index fingers making a tense, bent steeple. ‘Nothing. Not in a good many years.’

I swallow hard. ‘Oh…. I had no idea.’

She glares at me. ‘Don’t look at me like the topic’s so distasteful!’

‘It’s not! I mean, I wasn’t looking at you in any way. Don’t be so touchy.’

She’s too happy to fight. ‘You know, I’ve never told you this… but a long, long time ago, well before I met your dad, there was a boy… I met him at a dance, with my friend Eva. Eva and I both thought he was a bit of scrumptious. But it was me he liked from the start.’ She gazes wistfully into the distance. ‘Which of course he would, wouldn’t he. He was handsome. Decent. A little bit forward—certainly not boring. And I was potty about him, only I don’t think he ever really knew it.’

‘Did you ever go out with him?’

‘I did. We went to the pictures. And he kissed me in the back row. It was my first proper kiss… ‘ She flushes and tries to hide her embarrassment with a laugh. ‘He wasn’t shy, let’s put it that way. He said he knew I was enjoying it because he could feel the quickening of my heart.’ She puts a hand on her chest and draws a sharp breath, like she can feel it all over again. ‘And I thought that was normal. I thought every man would make me feel like that. The pitter-pat… I suppose that’s why I thought I could hold out; if it wasn’t him, there would be others.’

I think of how Jonathan made me feel like that. And when I went on that date with the City Planner—Roger—yes, I felt something like that with him. That was why I had to frighten him off. ‘What happened?’ I ask her.

‘There weren’t others.’

‘I gathered that but I mean what happened with him?’

‘Oh, well, he didn’t want a girl who held out. It was the swinging sixties, remember. So he went for Eva. Eva made it obvious she’d be more fun.’

‘She stole your boyfriend?’

‘I couldn’t totally blame her. He and I had really only gone out once or twice… It was a case of the easiest girl winning.’

‘Well he couldn’t have been very nice.’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think he was. But forty years later, that kiss lives on inside of me. It’ll come to me and I have to push it away, pretend it didn’t happen. I’ve had to suppress the part of me that responded to that kiss, to make myself a little more accepting of things.’ She looks at me like she’s desperate for me to understand. ‘Is it wrong, Angela, to go on wanting something that you never had, even when you’re as old as I am? To look back on your life and not be able to understand it, or have any idea why you made the choices you made? To feel you should have been swinging on the stars! Not all the time, of course. But at least some of the time. There should have been some times. There should have been some thrills.’

‘So my dad…’
wasn’t much good in the sack, is what she’s really saying.

‘It wasn’t your dad’s fault. I married him mainly because he was a good man, and, really, I was too young to know myself. The problem was me, not him. He’d have been fine for somebody else.’ She prods a finger in her chest. ‘I should have had real love and lust and passion, and had my heart broken a few times. But instead, I spent my married life thinking that somewhere out there was a man who would be my match, who I’d click with and there’d be something explosive between us… the kind of passion that I see in the films.’ She scowls. ‘I always wonder is all that exaggerated? Or has it just never happened to me?’

‘What happened to—what was his name?’ I ask her. ‘Who sounds like a right toad if ever there was one.’

‘Edward.’

‘Edward. Did he end up marrying Eva?’

‘Good heavens no! He got his legs over and then he went and married a plain, respectable girl.

‘
Leg
over, mam. It’s usually just the one leg that goes over, or he’d fall down.’

‘Let’s not draw diagrams, Angela.’ Her face changes from distaste to a certain dreaminess again. ‘Do you remember me telling you about the man I saw when the three of us went to Blackpool and you two were up on the Ferris wheel?’

‘Hang on… Not the one who was with his wife and kid, and you two locked eyes and he gawped at your legs?’

‘It was Edward.’

‘
That
Edward?’

‘With his big fat, celullitely, spotty-bottomed wife. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years…’

‘How do you know she had a spotty bottom?’

She’s still thinking about Edward. ‘I knew him in a second. He hadn’t changed. And from the way he looked at me, I imagine he thought I hadn’t either… It was written all over his face. That word
regret.
’

She’s still clutching her deodorant stick.

‘So, is Georgios going to be the one who makes up for all those lost years, Mam? Is he the man who you’re going to have your rapturous moment with?’ I wonder if my mother’s ever had an orgasm. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

‘Go on, you were going to say my last hoorah!’

‘I wasn’t!’

‘You were though!’

‘I was though.’

She beams at me and starts hula-dancing along the side of the bed again. ‘We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we? I mean I’m only just getting used to the idea that it’s not you he fancies…’ She stops dancing. ‘Remember that day in the grocery store? I naturally thought it’s my beautiful daughter he’s besotted with.’ She sits down on the bed again. ‘I wouldn’t have minded if it had been you, you know. I’d have just been happy that you were going to have what I would have liked.’ She looks at me fondly. ‘I was pleased that one of us was.’

His name is Sean McConnell. And he turns up again outside my hotel.

‘Let me guess… your wife is on another day trip?’

He shrugs. ‘No. Not really. And I realise you must think this all very odd behaviour but will you walk with me again?’

So we walk and we talk and I can tell we are both avoiding the topic of his marriage. So I tell him about my mother—the conversation we seem to fall back on. ‘I just can’t picture them, you know, going at it,’ I tell him.

‘Why not? She’s still a person, just because she’s your mother.’

‘Mothers aren’t people. And they’re not supposed to want rollicking rapturous sex with men half their age.’

‘He’s half her age?’

‘Not exactly. I guess, more like a quarter.’

‘He’s a fifteen-year-old?’

I laugh.

‘Is she as pretty as you are?’ he asks.

‘Mam?’ I laugh to hide my embarrassment. ‘If I say no, I’d be doing her a disservice. If I say yes, you’re going to think I’m hung up on myself.’

‘But we both know you are.’

‘Cheeky! What’s that mean?’

‘I could tell that when I first saw you that day, on the tour. You had that look that says nobody’s good enough for you. The way you stuck your nose in the air. You made it clear you weren’t interested in us. You wouldn’t even sit on the bench and talk to us.’

‘That’s not true! And I feel bad about that—about the bench. I felt… I don’t know… conspicuous. Anyway,’ I tease him, ‘I hate it when people who don’t even know me claim they know me! They never conclude anything that’s a compliment. It’s always an opinion you wouldn’t want of yourself.’

‘I’m not claiming I know you. I’m just saying that’s my perception of you, that’s all.’

‘So, want to know what my perception of you is?’

He holds my eyes, playfully. ‘Em…. not really.’

‘Just as well then.’ I try not to smile.

He smiles now.

‘Besides, how could I call myself pretty with this nose?’ I turn my face. ‘Look at it. It’s enormous, and it’s got a great big crack down the centre.’

He leans in for a closer look, pretends to scour it with his gaze. ‘It does look a bit like a bottom. But it makes your face striking. You look a bit like that American actress…’

‘I know. Mira Sorvino. I’ve been told that… So I’m striking now am I? With my nose that looks like somebody’s arse.’

‘Come on. You know you are.’ He smiles. ‘And by the way, I don’t know Mira Sorvino from a hole in the wall, but I’ll take your word for it. I was going to say Gwyneth Paltrow. But it’s that attitude of yours, that’s really… I dunno, that really makes you somebody of more interest than the rest.’

I’m still grinning from the Gwyneth gross exaggeration. ‘The rest of what?’

‘Women.’

‘Well that’s quite the mother of all compliments. Women. We’re quite a big group.’

He laughs now.

‘Anyway, you three were all into your own conversation. You weren’t exactly very welcoming yourselves. Hostile was the word that sprung to mind at the time.’

‘Because of you. You were putting out the back-off signals… Mind you, Costas still thought he was going to score.’

He beams. He’s devastating when he smiles. He uses old-fashioned words like score. I could talk to him for hours.

‘Poor lad. You led the horse to water but you wouldn’t let him drink.’

We sit and have a beer outside of a taverna then leave when someone puts Greek music on and it becomes almost too loud to talk. ‘Why aren’t you sure about moving to Seattle?’ I venture, when we’re walking along a dry-grassy ledge that overlooks the water. It’s quiet here, except for the sound of the sea.

He puts his hands in his shorts pockets. He’s head and shoulders taller than me. Jonathan’s height. But broader than Jonathan, more naturally muscular, without being bulky or looking like he lives in a gym. ‘It’s complicated,’ he says. ‘God, when is life ever not complicated, eh?’ He says it as though he’s more entertained, than frustrated, by the fact. ‘One of the problems is because my wife is very close to her family and she thinks that Seattle’s the other end of the world and once she gets there she’ll never hardly see them again.’

‘Well she has a point. It is a hell of a distance. I had to make a major effort to get back to England every year. I mean, I wanted to go, but you want to see other parts of the world too, and sometimes going home felt like a chore.’ I briefly tell him about the age-old pull in me of being thousands of miles away from my mother.

‘But you’re obviously a very independent person,’ he tells me. ‘And you’d made a commitment to a man in another country because you loved him and you wanted to be with him. You knew exactly what you wanted. Whereas Jen… Jen isn’t the most independent person. Not really. She only likes to think she is.’ His walking slows. ‘She’s heard they all live in big houses over there and they’ve all got swimming pools, so she likes that idea. And I’ve told her we can always come home…’ He starts walking again, sighs. I fall in step with him again. ‘Although that’s easier than it sounds. I mean, once I give up my job in the UK—‘ He looks at me. ‘Then it won’t be that easy for me to just leave and come back again.’