The Boy Who Fell to Earth (10 page)

It was definitely true that things which never worried me before were suddenly proving profoundly irksome: logoed clothing, 4×4s, nose rings, Western women converting to Islam, piercings, Botox, corporate jargon, loud
doomf doomf
music, personal trainers, people famous for just being famous, upward inflections, incorrect grammar – but also Conan the Grammarians who corrected other people’s grammar … Instruction manuals, leaf blowers, stupid names like Satchel, Sage, Moon, Starlite, Melody and Apple … Oh my God! I
had
become a curmudgeon. Phoebe was right. It was a wonder I hadn’t started wearing brown, crumpled corduroy and tweed knickers, writing letters of complaint in green ink and over-boiling vegetables.

The realization made me laugh out loud. Admittedly it was the kind of desperate and deranged laughter that normally goes with a straitjacket. But it was laughter. ‘Okay. I give in. What am I saving myself for?’ I snatched up my mother’s crotchless panties, not a mother–daughter bonding moment you’d see in a Doris Day movie. ‘Whatever I’ve got left, I’m giving away to whoever will take it. And in the process, finding a father for Merlin.’

My sister re-booted the computer. ‘What shall I put on your dating profile? Non-smoking atheists only?’

‘Oh, darling,’ my mother chirruped. ‘There’s no such thing as a male atheist. They all believe they’re gods!’

I chortled out a suggestion. ‘What about
Don’t assume I’m not into meaningless, degrading sex
.’

Although by then none of us could type, because we were bent double, cackling like a coven, our ribald laughter crunching like cars on gravel.

7

Relationship Roulette

RELATIONSHIP ROULETTE, I
suppose you’d call it. Over the next five years, from the time Merlin turned eleven, I dated a minestrone of men – a manastrone. Not that I did so with any fervour. My mother and sister took it in turns to drag me to cocktail parties, barbecues, charity bike rides and polo matches, anywhere there might be single men. I would spend the whole time sighing despondently and looking around me with all the enthusiasm of a cross-Channel swimmer on a rainy winter’s day. But, for Merlin’s sake, I persevered and was eventually jolted from my sour cynicism by a lightning bolt of lust.

Potential Father for Merlin No. 1. The Polo Player

There are a number of props which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is a man in jodhpurs. Polo players are, well, perfect.
Too
perfect. They look like the type of male you inflate by blowing into his toe. Mahogany brown, glittery eyed and muscular thighed, the
jodhpured
Adonis taking tea in the marquee was way out of my lust league. Watching him tilting back dangerously in his chair, one booted leg casually crossed over the other, I searched in vain for those ‘womanly wiles’ my mother had talked about, but feared I had whiled them away. I was like a circus whose animals have forgotten their tricks. The younger women were
all
‘wiling away’. This seemed to involve pretending to chat to each other whilst flicking their hair about a lot and slyly looking over their shoulders to gauge their effect on the guests. But when I found myself next to the Adonis in the Pimm’s queue, I did manage to muster a few rusty rejoinders.

‘Polo. That’s the thing which lasts in your mouth all day, isn’t it?’ I then enquired if the female groupies ever got nosebleeds from all that social climbing and whether their dress code read ‘boob jobs’. ‘Bimbos should check in their breast implants at the door to level the playing field. Forget foxhunting protesters. You male players need an anti-husband-hunting league. It’s cruelty to dumb animals really, isn’t it?’

‘Are you calling me dumb?’ he asked, astounded.

‘Well, you’re upper class, so I imagine you are probably educated beyond your intelligence.’ I threw in a few comments about horses being more intelligent than humans, because they don’t bet on people, and then asked if his huge mallet meant he was compensating for some other shortcoming. Intrigued, the heterosexual hunk proffered the cake plate, which the stick-insect women going whoosh whoosh with their hair were avoiding like anthrax. I accepted ravenously, explaining that eating was the second best thing a girl could do with her lips.

‘S–second?’ he stammered, beguiled.

A tease that jodhpurs are surely a contraceptive – ‘Once you get into them, you can never get out again’ – and he was driving me home.

My nerves were sizzling filaments, stretched to twanging point. Something was going to give, and I had a feeling it could well be my lacy black knicker elastic … Not much later I was savouring the weight of his thigh as he rolled me on to my back and pinned me against my bedsheets. I felt the corners of my mouth lift as though they’d been hooked over my ears. Pretty soon a smile covered my face like sauce.

‘Christ,’ he panted, some hours later, ‘if you were a praying mantis, I’d be dead now … How long has it been?’

‘Seven or so years,’ I confessed. ‘But who’s counting?’

‘The seven-year itch, eh?’

‘Yes … Could you scratch it again?’

‘The man’s sex drive is phenomenal,’ I confessed to my sister the next day. ‘We don’t have much else in common. But ohmygod. I have definitely broken the drought.’

We were sitting at my kitchen table trying to unknot Merlin’s shoelaces. My son’s dyspraxia had been explained to me by the doctor as a retardation of his ‘gross motor skills’. Even though that sounds a lot like driving a tacky car, it’s actually an ostentatious term for clumsiness. Lack of coordination meant that Merlin didn’t ever undo a bow. He just knotted another on top of the last one. The end result was a lumpy macramé a foot or so long on each lace. I showed Phoebe a snap of Octavian on my mobile phone, resplendent in mud-splattered joddies and leather knee-length boots.

‘My God,’ Phoebe drooled. ‘If he were a horse, he’d need gelding.’

‘He’s only twenty-six. I had to keep the lights low so he wouldn’t notice that I’m more than ten years older than him. We made love by Braille.’

‘Well, love is blind,’ Phoebe clowned. ‘So are you going to see him again?’

‘I don’t know. Like I told you, I don’t really like casual sex.’

‘So? Wear a tiara,’ my mother’s voice boomed as she sailed into the room in some kind of paisley kaftan and matching turban. ‘Just train Merlin to lower his age, dear,’ she advised.

I put my fingers to my lips to indicate discretion. None of us had noticed that my son was sitting under the table. But a few muttered numbers suddenly alerted me to the fact that he was ensconced there, writing cricket scores in his notebook.

‘
Girls
,’ my mother whispered, glancing at the photo on my phone, ‘the simplest toy, one which even a senile woman can operate, is the toyboy. A toyboy as sexy and handsome as Octavian only comes along three or four times in a woman’s life. Enjoy it, dear.’

My sister and I exchanged bemused glances. Despite feeling a little queasy at the realization that my mother knew how to operate a toyboy, I had to admit she was right. Tempus was fugiting like there was no tomorrow. I would leap into that sexual saddle and ride the man ragged. Yesterday’s orgasmic interlude was so beneficial I felt sure I could claim my himbo as some kind of medical expense.

But all too soon I was thrown from my mount. It was only our second encounter. I had just mixed Octavian a gin and tonic, the preferred tipple of the polo classes, lured him to the couch and begun to feel his penis thickening in my fingers when the back door boinged open. Merlin didn’t ever just enter a room. He spurted into it.

‘I thought you were at Grandma’s tonight,’ I spluttered, gathering my silk kimono more tightly around my breasts. ‘Um … this is my … friend, Octavian.’

I didn’t introduce Merlin in the hope that he would evaporate but, trained by me in social skills, my polite son extended his hand and said formally, ‘So, how is your private life developing? I am Lucy’s exuberant son, Merlin.’

‘You have a son?’ I could see Octavian doing a quick bit of mental arithmetic.

‘Child bride,’ I explained, with mock-lightness, scrambling to my feet.

‘
Am
I actually your son?’ Merlin’s wind-tangled hair blurred wildly around his face. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? … I find it astonishing that I’m your son. Who introduced us? How did we meet? Did we meet at a party? It was back in the nineties, wasn’t it, Mum?’

‘Darling, shouldn’t you run back to Grandma’s?’ I urged.

‘I forgot my Hansard book.’ Merlin, unaware of the nuances and undercurrents of normal conversation, continued brightly, ‘I’m nearly eleven, but Mum wants me to pretend to be younger. She keeps the lights low so you won’t see how old she is.’

‘I will have you know that I am at the pinnacle of my senility,’ I jested in a hearty voice to camouflage my acute embarrassment, wishing, in fact, that I were anywhere else in the world – including Guantanamo naval base. I hugged Merlin to me, glowering at him in the hope that he would understand my body language and shut the hell up. ‘Oh look, Merlin’ – I fingered his soft face – ‘you’re growing a moustache.’

My son gave me a measured, objective once-over. ‘Well, so are you,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

I could have deep-fried chips on my cheeks. ‘I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate,’ I joshed desperately.

Once more, my son turned his studious countenance towards me. ‘I’m not exaggerating. Look. See all the hairs on your top lip? There’s millions of them. You have one or two on your chin as well.’

‘If only I’d taken a tip from mother nature and eaten my young.’ I laughed a little too loudly. The slight age gap between Octavian and me suddenly widened into a Grand Canyon chasm.

‘You must be the one she doesn’t have anything in common with, who has a good sex drive,’ Merlin continued, oblivious to my distress. ‘Although I’m not sure what that means … Does that mean you drive here for sex with my mother?’

Gin and tonic spurted out of my nose.

‘So, um, Merlin’ – Octavian’s polite private school education kicked in and he tried to tack into calmer conversational waters – ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’

My eleven-year-old son took a long, serious look at my toyboy. ‘Why? Are you looking for some ideas?’ he said, without a trace of irony. ‘Actually, when I grow up I want to be taller,’ he then added logically.

The air had become too thick, too hot, too rich – like broth. I kissed Merlin with urgency. ‘Off you go! Grandma will be so worried about you …’

‘Gosh, Mum …’

I spasmed with fear. Hair follicles prickled up all over my body in a premonition of disaster. ‘Y … Y … yes …’ I whispered, in a voice that screamed NO!

‘Your breath smells so much nicer now. When you’re in bed in the morning, it smells like poo.’

When Merlin was safely dispatched, my jodhpured Adonis rose to erotic ardour with all the enthusiasm of a giant panda at London Zoo glumly coaxed to do his duty.

After he’d faked some equestrian-related phone call that demanded his immediate departure, I threw on some clothes, put on my sunglasses, even though the sun had long gone in, and stomped the block and a half to my mother’s home.

In the gloom of the hall, I excavated a space on the book-lined stairs, sat Merlin down and attempted to explain to him that it wasn’t always best to tell the truth.

His blue eyes lasered into me. ‘You want me to lie?’

‘Well, yes. Sometimes. For example … if I said to you “Does my bum look big in these trousers?” it would hurt my feelings if you said yes.’

‘But your bottom
is
far too big for your trousers.’

‘Merlin! That’s not the point …’ Losing my train of thought I stood up and craned over my shoulder to scrutinize my reflection in my mother’s hallway mirror. ‘Do you really think my bottom looks too big for these trousers? It just looks a little peachy, doesn’t it? Oh,’ I sighed in exasperation with myself and with him, and flumped back on to the stairs. ‘Look, there are just some things it’s not nice to say. Like, okay, you should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she’s pregnant unless you can see her waters breaking and she’s lying on a birthing table with her legs up in stirrups.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because she might just be fat. Do you understand?’ I snapped, trying hard to keep the frustrated fury out of my face.

Merlin shook his head.

I looked at my eccentric son in disheartened despair. As
usual,
I longed for some operating instructions. ‘Oh, Merlin, just sometimes can’t you try to act normal? Okay? Just for my sake. Like, smile occasionally. Not glower. And don’t just volunteer information. Try to ask questions about
them
.’ My voice was raised in irritation. ‘
Will you promise to at least try?
’

Merlin just looked up at me with the huge, sad eyes of a dog that didn’t understand why he’d been kicked by his master. Just as well I wasn’t doing yoga any more, as I’d be crying into my hair during headstands.

My mother and sister were waiting for me in the kitchen with a glass of what my mum called ‘lady medicine’.

‘Darling, we are crossing Outlandishly Handsome Men off our list. Beautiful men always leave you. Of course, an ugly man may leave you too, but … who cares?’ my mother chortled, topping up Phoebe’s Sauvignon blanc.

‘Having a drop-dead gorgeous toyboy on your arm merely distracts from your designer handbag’ was my sister’s verdict. ‘Why not opt for an older man?’

‘Oh yes,’ my mother enthused. ‘Older, uglier men are just so damn grateful.’

Octavian had left me feeling a little genitally gun-shy, so for the next eight months or so I declined my family’s matchmaking machinations. After turning down Phoebe’s tenth invitation, she regarded me with an expression of bemused sadness. ‘If you don’t get a date soon, we’re going to organize a telethon to help you,’ she warned.

There was a good chance I’d have remained in romance rehab if I hadn’t been summoned to Merlin’s headmaster’s office. When I rushed in, late, having slipped out of my own school during a frantic lunch hour, Merlin’s smile came out like the sun. The headmaster, who’d only been at the school
for
about a month, made his sombre Stonehenge face and steepled his hands. He seemed to have some kind of AstroTurf glued to his head. Perhaps he was planning a game of miniature golf for pygmies up there? I tried not to stare at his hair transplant as he droned on about Merlin’s disruptive behaviour, absenteeism, pathetically low grades in his Key Stage 2 plus exams and lost homework.