Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

getting up and going, the coming back at night. I spent ten years doing the job I most wanted to do, it meant a huge amount, I minded most dreadfully when I lost it. But the funny thing is, after a week or so, I forgot about its routines. I know that I was plunged into turmoil over Nathan but not having a job doesn’t worry me too much. It is not engrained. How worrying is that? Forgetting something that took up so much of your life, so easily’

‘How worrying is that?’ He spoke seriously but the blue eyes were smiling.

Hal and I stared at each other. It was not an important or significant look, just a relaxed exchange of thoughts – a clearing of the ground – but, suddenly, I was convinced that it would be possible to be happy and whole again.

‘If I’m truthful, Hal, I miss Parsley, my cat, more than the job. She was put down earlier in the year and I think of her most days. Sometimes I wake up and imagine she’s on the bed.’ I looked down at my ringless hand, a gesture that was becoming a habit. ‘She symbolized such a lot of things.’ I looked up at him. ‘Like the rucksack you used to keep in your room.’

At midnight, Hal got up to go. ‘That was very nice,’ he said. ‘Can we repeat it?’ He bent to kiss my cheek, and there was a second’s anticipation – what next? ‘We are friends, you know. We go back a long time.’

Was that true? Hal and I had not been friends but lovers, and we had failed each other at a crucial point. Then there had been neither time nor room for friendship. But ‘friends’ was a good word. It evoked the loyalty of old acquaintanceship and knowledge. I liked it. It could be carried into my new life.

‘Shall I phone?’ Again Hal bent and kissed me. A warm, careful touch on my cheek of which I approved, but my flesh, assuming an independent life, had other ideas and responded with a ripple of gooseflesh. His finger brushed my chin. ‘Since we have begun nicely, shall I ring?’

When you toss a seed into ground primed with rich compost and watered, it will grow. Usually, unless attended by bad luck, it will grow.

‘Yes.’

Chapter Twenty-four

I thought a lot about the house I would lose. The shell and what was in it. ‘Simple. Buy another one, start again. The house is not the most important thing,’ argued Hal, when I told him of my feeling for number seven. But he would.

I thought of the hours, the years, I had spent on it, happily and inventively, its spaces, its corners, the places where the sun spilled into the interiors and over its objects. My hands bore a reminder of hours of polishing and brushing, my back the burden of carrying my children up and down its stairs, the king-size double bed the two dents where Nathan and I had slept for so long.

I thought of my garden, of the tiny pointed buds of spring and the mass cull of autumn, the cycle of growth and death. In the past, I had struggled to put house and garden into order, to render clean and fresh my family’s dwelling place. I had struggled to put myself into order. Perhaps there is nothing quite so strong as sublimated passion, the one forced underground, which pulses with secret life.

Richard and Poppy planned to remain at Lakey Street until the New Year and ended up staying well beyond that. Apparently the Kensington flat required repairs and it was easier if they were with me while these were done. Richard had started his job; he left the house early and returned late, the deal being that the still jobless Poppy would supervise the move, and repaint the kitchen and bathroom in their flat.

Christmas came and went, a subdued, different but peaceful Christmas, and nothing had been achieved in the packing department, still less in the job-hunting one. ‘I’m not cut out for DIY,’ protested Poppy, when I tackled her. ‘Anyway, paint gets over my glasses and I can’t do it in the lenses.’

Both she and I knew that these were excuses. The radiant vision that had burst on me from Thailand had vanished. Its replacement trailed around the house, stuffing objects into plastic bags in a vague, unfocused manner, and spent a lot of time on the phone to Jilly. Jilly who, I pointed out, had got herself a job. How irritating of her, Poppy flashed back. She would.

I consulted Sam about Poppy’s state of mind. Sam, who was sounding a great deal more relaxed, happy, even, these days, laughed and said it was pre-wedding nerves. Only, Poppy being Poppy, she had got the timing wrong.

By mid January, however, Richard had developed the habit of shutting the front door behind him with a bang when he left in the morning and I considered it was time to take action.

I chivvied Poppy upstairs to the spare room and made her begin to pack up the presents. Sniffing a little, she drifted around, picking up clothes and throwing them down. The once immaculate room looked as if a storm had burst through the door and out through the window.

‘Can you remember when you moved to Lakey Street?’ Poppy abandoned any attempt at packing.

‘I do. After living in a flat Dad and I were so pleased to have stairs that we raced up and down them.’

‘Being an adult… it’s tricky’ Poppy hunched on the bed. ‘Isn’t it? Adults are so wicked and destructive.’

‘You always said you couldn’t wait to grow up.’

Poppy pleated the hem of her cardigan. ‘I wasn’t to know adulthood takes a running jump and hangs on your back for the rest of your life.’

I took this to mean that Poppy wished she was still in Thailand. You could never be quite sure what Poppy was driving at, but the lateral approach tended to be more productive. ‘Don’t you like your flat?’

‘I didn’t choose it. But that doesn’t matter.’ She twisted the flesh of her wedding finger so hard that I reached over and stopped her. She looked up at me. ‘Last night I dreamt I was a little girl again. In the silly bed, you know, the one with the sides that let down. In the dream, I tried to make sure that my room remained the same, but someone kept changing it round.’

So Sam had been correct about the pre-wedding nerves. I moved over to the chest and wrapped up a wineglass. ‘Where’s the girl who had so many plans?’

Poppy stood up. ‘Where is that bed, Mum?’

‘In the attic’

She brightened. ‘Can I take it with me?’ She surveyed the stack of salt and pepper mills, tablecloths, decanters, and a toast rack in the shape of the Millennium Dome. ‘Do you want any of this? I don’t think I can cope with it all.’

‘As an act of charity, I’ll take the Dome.’

Poppy shoved it in my direction. ‘It’s obscene being showered with all this stuff. I should never have allowed it. What will I do with it?’

‘The usual.’

‘That’s it. I’ll have to use it and put it away tidily. Polish things. Clean them. Take control.’

‘You’re lucky, Poppy,’ I interposed, gently.

‘I know I’m lucky, so don’t start up about refugees and all that.’

I tugged at a strand of her hair. ‘Stage-fright, darling?’

Seizing a modern cut-glass decanter from the clutter, Poppy held it out to me. Reflected in its curve were two distorted faces, preternaturally round and smooth. ‘You take this.’

‘No.’ I was sharper than I intended. ‘Mazarine sent it over from Paris.’ My lips twitched. Apparently, it’s a modern classic’

Poppy peered at it. ‘That’s what it is.’

There was a pause. ‘If you weren’t sure about Richard, why did you marry him?’

Both irritated and amused, she snapped back, ‘You sound just like Granny.’

‘So I do. And a mother’s place is always in the wrong’

‘So sad, Mum.’ She rolled the decanter stopper restlessly between her fingers. ‘It isn’t Richard. It’s the set-up.’

I reached for another glass. ‘You’re right about one thing. Richard’s full of surprises.’

Immediately Poppy went all dreamy. ‘Yes, he is.’

‘That’s the main thing,’ I said. ‘The rest can fall in behind it.’