No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! (5 page)

It quite brought me down. At least she could have given me a glimpse of the poor animal before it was shipped off to cause mayhem in some tiny African community. I might
have been able to rescue it and keep it in my garden. Though Pouncer would probably have objected.

Then I suddenly felt guilty. ‘For God's sake don't tell her I hated her present, will you?' I said, suddenly remorseful at my outburst. ‘I do know she meant well.'

‘No, don't worry. It's our little secret,' said James.

‘That's the great thing about being older,' said Penny, who was returning to the table with a bottle of Rioja. ‘You can tell people all your secrets and know they'll never repeat them because they can't remember them.'

‘Har, har, har,' said James, ironically.

We ended the evening by singing a few old Beatles songs and then reeling happily back into the night and home.

Oh dear. Champagne and red wine. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Every morning I clamber out of bed and brush my teeth and creak down the stairs to make myself a cup of tea and a bit of toast and Marmite. I then lie on the sofa, Pouncer purring on my lap, and work my way, page by page, through one of the most vile and scandalous right-wing newspapers known to man, the
Daily Rant
as I call it. I get it delivered. When Penny asked me why on earth I took it when I was much more of a
Guardian
-reading sort of person, I found myself giving rather an odd reply.

‘It wakes me up,' I said. ‘And it gets me going and puts me in touch with the world. When I read the hair-raising headlines, it gets my adrenalin flowing, like a freezing cold shower. And when it has some stupid article about how wicked abortion is, I react so strongly against it that I almost
feel engaged in an argument with someone else, “back on the barricades” sort of thing.'

‘Hmm,' said Penny, doubtfully. As another woman who lives on her own, she says she has the same problem with overcoming mental inertia in the mornings. ‘I usually ring someone up to get myself going,' she said. ‘But I never thought reading a ghastly newspaper might do the trick.'

That morning's
Daily Rant
headline read ‘GLOBAL WARMING: IT'S OFFICIAL!
Half the world will be starving by 2050, warn scientists
.'

Well, I can tell you,
THAT
jolted me awake, even though I was muzzy with last night's temazepam. I'm starting to reach out rather too readily for the sleeping pills, I'm afraid, since the news about my entire family leaving the country. Oh well, who cares – not about the family of course. I mean the pills. If I were twenty I could see the risk – one wouldn't want to be addicted for the rest of one's life. But at sixty-five? No problem.

Where was I? Oh yes. The
Daily Rant
. Talk about gloom and doom! It appears we are all going to boil to death (last year it was freeze to death – they never seem to be able to make up their minds, but it's always one or the other) and it seems there are only about a dozen rhinoceroses left, and the pandas won't mate and wildlife is all packing up in general. There was a particularly creepy page showing all the species that only had a few months to go before they became extinct, but I can't say, to be quite honest, I'd miss any of them. There was an exceptionally unpleasant black
beetle that I'd be glad to see the back of. (Now I come to think of it, it looked just like a miniature version of poor dear Archie in his loden coat.) The weird thing is that a hundred years ago no one knew these species existed and everyone was as happy as bees (which are also DOOMED, apparently), and now everybody's wringing their hands because they're all disappearing.

The other day Penny said to me, when I'd said I couldn't care less, ‘But Marie! How can you bear to think that there might be no more rhinoceroses! Think about it! They're such noble beasts!'

I did think, for three seconds, but to be perfectly frank if there weren't any more rhinoceroses it wouldn't make a hell of a lot of difference to my life. After all, there used to be all these dinosaurs milling about and yet these days we seem to be able to cope without pterodactyls, not to mention dodos, perfectly well. Of course if dinosaurs – or ‘dinos' as I gather they're affectionately known these days – hadn't been there in the first place, Gene would have been deprived of a lot of enjoyment since, for some reason, young children seem to learn about nothing these days at school except the lives of Tyrannosaurus rexes and diplodocuses. But if a Tyrannosaurus rex were suddenly to arrive in Shepherd's Bush I bet old Penny wouldn't be terribly delighted when it started ripping up all the trees in her back garden. Not to mention sizing her up for breakfast. We wouldn't hear much banging on about ‘beautiful beasts' in that scenario, I fancy.

Of course, in the past few years, I haven't needed the
Rant
to jolt me awake because three mornings a week I've woken up beside Archie – he's either been here or I've been down there. I've always preferred going down to him, really, because despite the freezing cold, Mrs Evans, his housekeeper, has always cooked and frozen delicious meals for at least one night. Then there are the roaring fires, the open countryside outside, the lovely library with the musty smell of books, the reassuring presence of Hardy and, best of all, dear Archie himself.

Until recently he'd always spent the days striding about looking at dead trees or broken gates or reading or checking things out on the computer, and then every evening we'd settle down after supper and snuggle up together on the sofa, and either watch an old movie I'd brought down, or just chatter about nothing in particular.

‘Do you think it would have been as nice as this if we'd got together before I met David or you'd met Philippa?' I'd said rather sentimentally one evening. I looked at his dear old weathered face, and smiled as he gave me a regretful shake of the head.

‘
You'd
have been angelic,' he said. ‘Of course. But I … I was so immature! I remember having so many rows with Philippa during the first years of our marriage, and it wasn't till much later that everything settled down. I don't think you and I would have lasted for a second. It seems strange to say that, doesn't it,' he added, reaching out his hand to stroke my hair, ‘when now we fit together like a couple of old bedroom slippers?'

‘Excuse me!' I said. ‘Bedroom slippers! I can think of a nicer simile than that!'

‘Like what?' he said.

But I couldn't think of anything. ‘I think the reverse is the case,' I said. ‘I was so neurotic when I was young, so emotional, always taking offence. I'm bad enough now, but
then!
And you've always seemed so level-headed. I think I'd have driven you nuts. I agree, it's best now. But it's a shame not to have a history together.'

‘Depends what sort of history,' Archie had replied, pulling me gently over to his side of the sofa. ‘As far as I'm concerned, I like it just as it is now, darling.'

‘So do I,' I said. And with that, we had a brief affectionate cuddle, then gathered up our bits and pieces, put a guard in front of the dying fire, turned off the lights, shut Hardy into the kitchen, and wandered up to bed, me snuggling up to Archie to keep warm and him tucking me in at the sides, with his free arm, as if I were a child.

‘I love you,' he said.

‘And I love you,' I said. ‘And now is all that matters.'

Now
was
all that mattered
then
. But now, oh so sadly, it doesn't seem to be like that any more.

Since my great friend Hughie died, James and I have become very close. ‘I'm your walker, darling,' he says. ‘Don't say that,' I reply. ‘It makes me sound like a dog.' But it's true. Whenever
I need a spare man, he's always around, and whenever I need to go up a ladder, he's always there to steady it. (‘One thing you must promise me, Mum,' Jack said, after he'd found that I'd not only put up but also taken down all the Christmas decorations on my own. On a ladder. ‘Yes?' I'd said, imagining he was going to ask me some enormous favour, like a guarantee that I'd never get married again, or insist I make a will leaving everything to him. ‘Now you're sixty-five, will you please never go up a ladder without someone holding it at the bottom?')

I was rather touched by this request, and of course since making the promise I never have – gone up a ladder, that is. And golly, am I glad! Half my contemporaries either are, or have been, in hospital having fallen off a ladder. It's weird. The moment they hit their sixty-fifth birthday they get a craving to scramble up a ladder, and then they invariably drop off at the top. In the past month alone two of my friends have clambered up ladders and, literally, the moment they've got to the top rung they've swayed slightly and then fallen to the bottom. Just like that. No reason. Perhaps it was the thin air up there.

Anyway, James said he'd come for coffee to get cracking on putting Skype in for me, and I settled down to read the
Rant
before he arrived. I'd barely read the headline (‘DUNCE NATION!
Eighty per cent of adults can't find Britain on a map
'), when the bell rang and it was James. Early.

‘Now before we start on the Skype, I want to ask a favour of you,' he said, as I put the kettle on. ‘You know I've been doing these art classes recently …'

He started to tell me about them as we went into the sitting room, and I sat down and put my feet back up again.

He has to do
something
now Hughie's died, he said, and has no one to look after – so he's taken up art. I made polite noises because it's always a bit tricky, having taught art at a school until I retired, when some complete amateur says they've started to paint. I mean it's very touching and all that, but they seem to think they can just pick up a brush or a pencil and draw and hey presto! They think they're Leonardo da Vinci. The truth is that you really have to spend years practising day after day before you can even begin to get the hang of drawing or watercolours, a notoriously difficult medium, so I always wince when retired contemporaries say that they've ‘become an artist' in their old age. I mean it's just not possible. It's tricky when they show me their pictures. I'm just so bad at lying. Funny, I would never say, at my age, that I'd decided to ‘become a pianist.' Particularly not to someone who'd been a piano teacher all her life. I mean I might be able to thump my way through a Chopin prelude rather badly, but it's highly unlikely I'd get much further.

But back to James. ‘I've decided to do some portraits, darling,' he said.

I'd had an awful premonition that was coming and I tried not to look as if I'd just opened an envelope with a gifted goat inside. I tried to change the subject.

‘Funny you should say that,' I said. ‘I've decided to get back to painting myself, this year. I was thinking of trying landscapes. You know I've always been keen on them …'

But my efforts failed.

‘And I wondered if I could use you as a model?' said James, as if he hadn't heard. ‘I'd love to, well, interpret your spirit.'

‘What exactly do you mean, “interpret my spirit”?' I asked, suspiciously. ‘I hope I'd still look like me.'

I'm clearly an old fuddy-duddy. I do prefer representations of things to look like what they're meant to represent, and I was nervous of what the ‘spirit' of me might conjure up in James's mind. But I could hardly say no to a useful Skype-installer and ladder-holder.

‘I'll tell you when I've thought it through,' he said guardedly.

Unfortunately, when he looked at my computer he found the broadband wasn't working for some reason, so he couldn't download it. We had to call it a day for the moment.

‘By the way,' he added, before he left, ‘we must see
Bitter Quinces, Poisoned Souls
. It's that new Swedish film and everyone says it's brilliant. It's got five stars everywhere!'

Spent a couple of very jolly hours pulling out old canvases and sorting out paints and brushes, and even managed to dust off a portable easel I sometimes used to take with me when I went down to Archie's. I must say some of the pictures I did in the past weren't half bad, though I say it myself. Feel I've probably got a bit rusty, but it all made me very enthusiastic, and I can't wait to get started again.

I was just about to load the dishwasher this morning – my special way, with the knives all facing downwards – when blow me, as I stomped into the kitchen there was one of those beetles that the
Rant
had warned were on the brink of extinction! At least I was almost sure it was. It was quite big and black and shiny, in two parts, with long waggling antennae. It was pretty swift too. On seeing me it raced to the other side of the room and tried to hide in the crack between the floor and the skirting board.

Of course the thrill of finding one in my kitchen made me reconsider my feelings about this particular endangered species. So I immediately turned into an eco-warrior. I placed a tumbler over the beetle, slipped a postcard under it, picked it up, walked with it reverently to the garden, opened the door, bent down and sent it off with a soothing benediction: ‘God speed, little fellow. May you prosper, and may your children prosper and your children's children …' It was horribly cold out there, though, so I hope he doesn't die.

I even left a note for Michelle. ‘If you see a beetle in the kitchen please don't kill it. It is an ENDANGERED SPECIES' I wrote on a little pink Post-it note. ‘
Espèce en danger
', I added, hoping that made sense, ‘
mais pas dangereuse
.'

‘Are you sure, actually, zat eet ees special beetle?' said Michelle, when I found her in the kitchen this afternoon, mixing a revolting muesli dish with yogurt and drinking some kind of bio thing called Yakult. Funny name. ‘I 'ave see one like zees last week, and I try to keel heem but he
runs by
frigidaire
. 'E is like bad beetle we 'ave in France, actually, 'ow you say, a
concrelat
.'