No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year (26 page)

“How’s Gene?” I asked, picking him up and putting him on my knee. He is
so heavy
! I can barely carry him now, so heaven knows how I will be able to lift him when he’s two years old, and yet I seem to remember being able to lift Jack up until he was about seven years old. “Oh, I never asked how he got over his flu the other day…”

“Oh yes,” said Chrissie. “Oh, by the way, we found a way to get Calpol down him. Jack got a carton of Ribena, injected some of the Calpol into it and he sucked it all up through a straw!”

“How brilliantly clever you are!” I said.

Feb 16th

James and Hughie picked me up and we went for tapas round the corner and Hughie ordered, at once, two bottles of
vino verde,
which I thought was rather bold. “One for me, and one for you two,” he said, as he helped himself to a gigantic tumblerful.

For the first time, he looked really ill. He was incredibly thin, and gasped a lot. His clothes hang on him baggily, like the skin on an old cat.

“No,” he said, noticing my face as we sat down. “I’m not the debonair devil-may-care boulevardier of old. More of a wreck.”

“He hasn’t been out for days,” said James, and that use of the third person brought it home to me how ill Hughie must be getting. “He’s been resting all day to come out tonight.”

“How’s Penny?” asked Hughie, clearly rather eager to get away from the subject of his illness.

“Fine,” I said. “She’s completely got over the frightful Gavin. Who has, of course, dropped her again.”

“What was that book he read?” asked James.
“Death in Venice?”

“Never managed to finish that,” I said.

“One of Thomas Mann’s worst,” said Hughie. “I find so often that if everyone goes on and on about how marvelous a book is, ten to one you’ve got a cold, dead fish on your hands.”

“You two are talking as if you’ve joined a book club,” said James, helping himself to a huge portion of prawns in oil and chile.

“Nonsense, we’re being much more interesting,” said Hughie. “What’s that you’ve got there?
Patatas bravas?
Let’s get some more. Brave potatoes. That’s us. Brave old potatoes.”

Feb 17th

Was going to the shop in my nightdress under my coat, as usual, when I met Sheila the Dealer, looking very mad indeed. Her face was covered in the kind of scabby spots you see only on cocaine-crazed top models, and she was so thin and anorexic looking it was impossible not to entertain the idea of simply taking her arm and breaking it in half just to hear it snap.

She stared at me like a terrified cat. Clearly she wasn’t aware of ever having seen me before.

“You look just like Celia Imrie,” she said harshly.

“Celia who?”

“Celia Imrie. On the telly,” she said. I had never heard of her, being, like Vivienne Westwood apparently, in complete ignorance as to who the latest celebs are.

“Well, I hope she’s wise and beautiful,” I said, rather charmingly and patronizingly. Hoping to make my escape.

Sheila inspected me for a few seconds. “She’s not
too
bad,” she said, and tottered on.

Feb 18

Things with Maciej have become even stranger. Got up this morning and bustled out of my bedroom door only to find him what I can only describe as tiptoeing down the stairs.

“Oh, hi!” I said, feeling, quite honestly, a bit freaked out. It wasn’t his day. Surely he wasn’t popping in with his key to burgle a few small items? A Polish friend of Hughie’s had warned me about Poles. “They are all scum!” she had said, most disloyally, I thought. But Maciej wasn’t scum. He was brainy and beautiful. “What are you doing here today?”

“I so sorry,” he said. “I come round, actually, I left something here yesterday, I no want to disturb you, actually. My mobile,” he added, producing it from his pocket.

Extremely odd.

Feb 19

The phone rang and who should it be but Baz, an old friend, who only wanted to know someone else’s phone number. “And what’s all this I hear from Hughie that you’ve given up sex?” he asked, rather irritated, I thought. “I’m very upset about that.”

“Hughie has no right to go around telling anyone that,” I said. “It’s private.”

“Hughie’s dying, love. He has every right to do what he wants.”

“No, he hasn’t. Just because you’re dying or old, doesn’t mean you can be bad-mannered and disloyal.”

“Oh, shut up, Marie,” he said. “What I want to know is why you’ve given it up. Wouldn’t you just have a little try with me? You know how I’ve always fancied you.”

I never knew he’d always fancied me and since he’s married and notoriously faithful I was rather astonished to hear it. But he went on and on, being so flattering that I wasn’t sure whether he was flirting with me or teasing me or whether he was deadly serious.

“I want to take you out to dinner,” he said. “To discuss this.”

“I’m going away,” I said firmly. And I was. I was going to stay with Archie. Only for the weekend, mind you, but I wasn’t lying.

“So when will you be back?” This time I did lie. There was a scratching sound at the other end of the phone. “Can you hear me? I’m writing this down,” he said. “Well, I look forward to that. I’ll ring you when you get back. And we’ll go out and have supper.”

I was so staggered by what sounded like an invitation for a real “date” (having not been asked out on a date for years and years) that later that afternoon, when I went to fill the car up with petrol, I opened the boot up instead of the petrol tank.

Feb 20

“How’s the boyfriend situation?” I asked Michelle, when I bumped into her at breakfast today.

She looked amazingly coy and simpered. “I have met nice Polish boy,” she said shyly.

“A genius?” I said, laughing.

“No—yes, he ees genius. He could not finish studies in Poland to be teacher, so he here cleaning.” She looked at me conspiratorially.

“Not Maciej!” I said. She nodded.

“We hope you do not mind. We very quiet.”

“But that’s lovely!” I said. I couldn’t think why I hadn’t thought of it before. A perfect match. “I’m so pleased for you!”

“Maybe we move in flat together soon,” she added. “And you have to get new lodger?”

February 21

Went down to Archie’s by train. I even took a minicab to the station, which was, as usual, driven by a man who had a dreadful story to tell. He had been some kind of big cheese commander in the Ethiopian Air Force, running a department of 350 men, big pal of the king and so on. Suddenly he was thrown into jail with 23 comrades, where he rotted for two years. All of them were killed by the guards except him, and he somehow got to England and now lives in some ghastly two-roomed flat in Wembley, utterly miserable.

Honestly, in the past all these stories were so very far away, the sort of thing you only read about in newspapers. Now they are coming closer and closer. I feel it’s only a matter of time before my crazy worries about bunions and arthritis and Gene’s feet are going to be last on my list of worries, not first.

Very nice to be driven, anyway. Can’t be doing with driving, as these days I get so panicked on motorways, always having to work out the route on paper—M-25, Exit 5, on to A-362 and so on. It’s totally pathetic, considering I’ve driven singlehandedly across Europe and America in my time, and once even on the roads in India. Though I have to say, after my train journey, I was starting to wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to go back to the old driving method, frightening as it is.

Behind me was a man on a mobile shouting: “I’m on the fucking train, that’s where I am! Forest Hill? No, I won’t fucking meet you for a drink in Forest Hill. Forest Hill, Forest Dump, Forest Gump! I’ll meet you in Victoria tomorrow…six o’clock!”

At the table to my left was a young mother who looked as if she might be a personal trainer, with her three-year-old daughter. They were staring at colors in a book. The child was saying: “Blue…red…brown…yellow…” And the mother was correcting her. “Aquamarine…cerise…burnt sienna…duckegg…”

Meanwhile, ahead of me was a gang of girls reading out problems from a teenage magazine. “Listen to this: ‘I’ve been with my bloke for seven years now and since I had my baby he doesn’t want sex with me. He cuddles up but nothing happens and he won’t talk about it. I can’t go on like this…’”

“What’s the answer?”

“‘Whatever the reason, you’ve got to get to the bottom of this. Cook him his favorite meal, relax him, then give him a big hug and gently explain how you feel…Perhaps he’ll open up…’ Who writes this fucking shit, anyway?”

Archie lives in a kind of mini stately in Northamptonshire. Well, it used to be Northamptonshire. Could be anything now. Could be Clwyd for all I know. If that’s how you spell it. Or that strange place called Cumbria. Oh, for the days when Westmorland existed! There are lots of open fires, which is all very well, but it’s usually a sign that there is no central heating at all, and I realized the minute I arrived that this was going to be one of the coldest weekends in my life.

I’d brought a fantastically small black-and-white glittery skirt and a very sexy top from Zara (only £25) but would have prefered to have worn about eight woolen dressing gowns with a hottie strapped to my middle.

Why is it that other people’s houses are freezing? I’ve noticed that even in my house, other people start to shiver…and I shiver in theirs. It’s so funny because when I was young, it was far, far colder than this. I remember having to brace myself to get out of bed at my grandparents’, onto the cold linoleum floor. Then I used to crouch in front of a convector heater, and dress, first encasing myself with a huge undercoating of vests and long woolly pants. Now I am cold even with the central heating on and we all complain bitterly, yet none of us wears hats or gloves. I remember going to country houses when small where everyone wore mufflers, hats, jerkins—in the house! My aunt Angela used to wear mittens, a scarf and a hat while she cooked!

A huge array of parties had been arranged, and, it seemed, dozens of other people were staying, and as I dressed for dinner, my heart sank. I would have to meet People from the Country. They hear you come from London and before you know it they’re asking if you’ve been to the theater recently. In my experience hardly anyone in London ever goes to the theater. The theater is full of tourists, Americans and People from the Country who think that going to the theater is a sophisticated London thing to do. Like lectures on Chinese glazing at the Royal Academy. Most of my friends in London rarely go to the theater or lectures, but People from the Country can tell you whether Simon Russell-Beale’s performance of
Hamlet
at “the National,” as they call it, was better than Ian McKellen’s
Lear
at “the Vic,” and, worse, take a whole evening explaining why.

Sometimes I feel like asking if they’ve mucked out any good pigs recently, or turned over any fields to arable. But I, unlike country people talking to Londoners, am too polite.

Luckily no one like that at supper, and a good time was had by all, even though I was sitting on a seventeenth-century chair that swayed like a lily. I was next to Archie, who said weren’t young people so lovely to talk to, but didn’t I feel sorry for them, having to talk to us.

“We must seem such
frightfully
boring old ducks,” he said. “Just like old people did to us when we were young.”

I disagreed. I am really fed up with people who are old putting themselves down as if they’ve got some kind of disease.

“I think young people are jolly lucky to talk to you—or me!” I said sharply. “We’re funny and amusing, and we’ve had interesting lives—well, I’m not, and haven’t, but you have. Hold your wrinkly old head up, Archie, clench that liver-spotted fist and wave it in the air!”

When I told him, after the pudding wine, that I probably had a date waiting for me in London, he asked: “Blind?” And I’d already responded furiously, saying: “Certainly not at all blind. He knows exactly what I look like and that’s why he’s asking me out!” before I realized what he meant.

He looked rather puzzled and said: “But I understood from Hughie that you were giving all that a bit of a rest! Seemed a terrible shame to me, frightful waste, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“You must remember, Archie,” I said, gulping, “that Hughie is
terribly
ill.”

I’d seen him a couple of days before coming down, and now he can hardly leave the flat he’s so weak. But all the same, what on earth does he think he’s doing, telling everyone about my private life?

When I got up to bed, full of champagne, white wine, pudding wine, liqueurs and such deliciousness I could barely speak, I found an odd phenomenon in my bedroom. The floor seemed to be heaving, like the sea. I first wondered if it was a drunken illusion, but I discovered pretty quickly that it was the wind, howling through the floorboards, and making the carpet rise in waves. I had never been so cold in my life. I put on my nightdress and then realized that I would have to put my slip on first, then my nightdress, followed by my tights and a jersey. Even then I was freezing. I desperately wanted to go downstairs to get the cat’s rescue, but unfortunately I suspected the burglar alarm would have been put on, so I was stuck, with my teeth chattering, reduced to wearing a skirt around my neck like a scarf, and pulling up the Turkish carpet beside my bed and putting it on top of me. I finally fell into a fitful sleep.