Vintage Babes (18 page)

After that I had, I decided, kissed my last frog. If my eyes met the eyes of a prince, or better yet a king, across a crowded room and violins played and waves crashed – fantastic. Otherwise, I couldn’t be bothered. I’m not willing to settle for something less than perfect, for Mr Anyone, simply in order to have a man.

Since then I’ve met a few guys whom I have considered to be ‘maybes’, only to discover that either we quickly ran out of conversation or disagreed on basics. For example, one bloke asked me out for dinner and at the end of the meal suggested we should split the bill. No thanks. Quaint little old me likes the man to pay, at least on a first date.

If I was twenty years younger maybe I’d happily jump into bed with every available male – but I’m not and I don’t. In my middle-aged opinion, only hookers have sex with strangers.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

My stomach was firm
and motorway flat, and the flesh on my upper arms had tightened. I felt well-toned, fit, in great shape. A regular babe, as Max would say. Smiling, I stretched, a full body stretch in deference to the maestro. Whatever his hokum, a month of his work-outs had produced results. A builder had still to let rip with a wolf-whistle, but one would, I assured myself. One would.

I climbed out of bed. I usually indulge in a lie-in on Sunday mornings, but my father and Dilys were coming for lunch and I needed to prepare the food, set the table and have a general tidy-up. If it had been my dad here on his own, I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.

Looking around the bedroom, I had to admit I was not the world’s best Molly Maid. Jeans dangled over a radiator and there was a pyramid of waiting-to-be-washed underwear on the carpet. The papery clutter of last week’s weekend papers fanned out from beneath the bed, while two mugs containing dregs of cold coffee sat on the bedside table. Not that my house is dirty. I clean the kitchen, bathroom and loo every Saturday, and dust and vacuum elsewhere whenever I have the time. And the inclination. But I’m not as methodical as Jenny. More laid back. Alright, a bit of a slob.

As I peeled carrots, I thought of how, when I’d visited my father earlier in the week – after obediently phoning him first to obtain clearance – he had asked if he could bring a guest along today.

‘You mean Ernest?’ I had said. ‘That’s fine.’

Ernest, who also lives at the Bridgemont flats, is another widower, and he and my dad are friends. A timid, though determinedly inquisitive gentleman, Ernest had come for lunch twice before. On the first occasion he had asked so many questions about my house – the size of the bedrooms, if they had fireplaces, was there an attic? – that I had felt obliged to get my father to take him on a guided tour. The second time he had wanted to know if I had private health insurance – I don’t, but he does – then proceeded to list his health problems which included a weak heart, mild age-onset diabetes and constipation, the latter described in embarrassing detail. He and Eileen would get on well. But he had soon reverted to his questioning – now about my job. Did I meet any anti-media aggression? Were people always honest in what they told me? Had I ever gone into situations where I had felt afraid? All three answers were negative.

My father had shaken his head. ‘No, not Ernest, Dilys. Just the once. Won’t make it a regular occurrence.’

‘That’s fine, too,’ I had replied. ‘I’d like to meet her.’

‘She’d like to meet you,’ he had said, then added with a chuckle, ‘and it’ll keep her sweet.’

So the invitation was, I had gathered, a ploy in him stringing the woman along. One Sunday lunch from his daughter in return for her making him his evening meal for the next couple of months. Or was it in thanks for Dilys joining him in his bed? He had made no further reference to seeing her in the black chiffon nightgown. Neither had I. But I still wondered about the implications. Still felt a wary curiosity.

Whatever my father’s motives, I was determined to serve an extra-special lunch. Not only did pride insist I keep pace with Dilys who was ‘a dab hand’ with food, but reports of the lunch were bound to circulate around Bridgemont and I wanted my hospitality to be spoken of with praise.

‘Have you heard about George’s daughter? What a cook! Puts that Nigella Lawson right in the shade.’

So we were having prawn cocktail, followed by gammon with a home-made honey sauce, roast potatoes, broccoli and carrots, with a home-made pudding of crème brûlée with fresh raspberries. There may be a lack of the ‘jus’, ‘purées’ and ‘tassell-tied chives’ which are promoted as posh nosh these days, but, considering how rusty I was at producing three-course meals, it had seemed wise not to be too adventurous.

Throughout all the peeling, chopping and stirring, I did not smoke. I hadn’t stopped completely, but I was down to ten cigarettes a day. It had not been easy. In fact, it had been hell. I had suffered withdrawal symptoms when I’d been frantic for a nicotine hit, but I had overcome them – most of them – thanks to Max and the encouragement he gives at the work-outs, and the warning-off e-mails he sends.

As I am grateful to Max, so he is grateful to me. The piece I wrote about him brought in several phone calls from would-be clients asking for more information. And when he went to speak to the manageress of the health club at Garth House, he took my article with him.

‘She was impressed,’ Max had reported. ‘I swear it got me the job.’

His job is running two aerobics classes, three evenings a week and I’d learned about it in dramatic fashion. I had been on my way along the High Street to buy a cheese bap one lunchtime when I’d heard the yell ‘Carol, babe!’, followed by an ear-splitting squeal of tyres. Looking round, I had seen Max skidding to a halt in his white van. When he had leapt out, dashed along the pavement and swept me up in an eager embrace, he had almost brought Dursleigh to a halt. Pedestrians had stopped in their tracks to stare, traffic had slowed, the Post Office Jezebel had abandoned her customers and rushed to the door to monitor the proceedings.

‘You’re the best, babe!’ Max had proclaimed, as he had told me of his success. ‘She’s a wonderful woman,’ he had informed the bug-eyed spectators and I’d received more appreciative hugs.

When he had finally released me, I’d been pink-faced and dizzy. Our audience had looked bemused, too.

‘Where did you find a dish like him?’ the Post Office Jezebel had wanted to know, the next time I went in.

‘Oh, around,’ I had said casually.

She had looked at me with new respect. ‘He’s a knockout.’

‘Packs a punch,’ I had agreed.

‘Bet he’s hot stuff in bed?’ she had said, black-lined eyes agleam with interest.

I had pretended not to hear. Given the chance, Jezebel will happily discuss sexual acts – her own and anybody else’s – in uninhibited and graphic detail.

My approach to the sportswear shop had also paid off. When I had spoken about Max and produced my article, the manager had asked if he would go along and speak to him in person. He did. The manager, it turned out, had been wanting to jazz up his window displays. He arranged for a photographer to take shots of Max in various sports gear and now there is a life size cut-out of him in their window. A cut-out which is changed every few days and which, as the flesh and blood Max does, has women stopping to drool. It also prompts more customers to enter the shop and purchase.

By the time the ring of the doorbell announced my guests’ arrival, the table was set, everything which needed to be in the oven was in the oven and the red and white wines were ‘breathing’ and ‘chilling’ respectively.

‘Hello, how are –’ I began, as I opened the front door, then my voice dried.

Because my mother had dressed conservatively and, in her later years, had been forever conscious of preserving dignity and looking respectable for her age – which meant silver hair, discreet make-up, neat two pieces, sensible court shoes – I had assumed Dilys would be the same. Regardless of the black chiffon nightie. It was not so.

Although the woman appeared to be in her late seventies, or more, she had yet to hear the baaa! which warns of mutton dressed as lamb. She wore a purple shellsuit with silver and white stacked trainers. Her hair, which was squid ink black, carried a purple satin bow. Her eyebrows were plucked and drawn in again in thin black arches, her eyelids shimmered silvery blue with eyeliner
à la
Cleopatra. Rouge enthusiastically peppered her cheeks, while her mouth was a splodge of crimson gloss. My father may have described her as ‘a snappy dresser’, but my word would be ‘eccentric’. She reminded me of someone from a
Carry On
film or the kind of wacky old dame I had imagined becoming.

‘Dilys, this is my darling daughter, Carol,’ my father said. ‘Carol, this is my dear friend, Dilys.’

‘Hello,’ I said again.

‘Delighted to meet you, doll,’ Dilys declared.

My father turned to indicate a sleek silver car which was accelerating away down the road. ‘William, Dilys’s son, brought us. First rate car, a Jaguar, automatic with leather upholstery, satellite navigation and park control, cost the earth. I told him he could come for lunch, too. That it would easily stretch and you wouldn’t mind – indeed, you’d love it because you’re short of male company – but seems he has some business to attend to. He’ll be picking us up again around four.’

I nodded. ‘Fine. Please come in.’

I ushered my father and Dilys into the living room then, while they settled themselves, went to check the progress of the food. Although it would have stretched to four, I was grateful not to be saddled with a blind date. The rapidly departing William would not, I suspected, have relished the prospect, either. I was ‘short of male company’? My father had made me sound like some go-nowhere, do-nothing frump who would fall to her knees in gratitude if a man, any man, deigned to set foot inside the door.

‘You have a lovely view,’ Dilys remarked, as we drank pre-lunch sherries.

‘Thank you.’

I live in a semi-detached cottage in an older, more rural part of Dursleigh which, so far, has escaped the march of building progress and trendification. A backwater of small Victorian houses, an untidy farm with tumbledown barns and, bizarrely, a sewing machine repair shop which garners few customers, it possesses a feeling of by-gone days when life was slower and uncomplicated. The back of my house faces west, looking out across fields currently planted with growing corn to tall woods beyond. Today the sky was a peaceful blue and when evening comes the sunsets can be dramatic, slashed with violet, crimson and gold. In my youth I never noticed sunsets, or fields and trees, but now the splendours of nature can fill me with wonder.

I am not, however, enthusiastic about birds, unlike my mother who used to wax lyrical about some two-a-penny robin perched on a branch. But maybe a keen interest in ornithology will arrive with age.

‘Hear you’ve been dining out at The Barley Mow with some fellow,’ my father said.

‘That was a month ago,’ I told him. ‘The Bridgemont rumour mill must be turning awful slow.’

‘Fellow with a touch of the tar-brush, I believe. Not canoodling, are you?’

‘I was interviewing him for the paper, that’s all. Though if I was canoodling you should be pleased. You did tell me to play the field.’

My father scowled. ‘Seems that, another time, he stopped his van in the middle of the High Street and jumped out and hugged you.’

‘He did.’

‘But he’s just a lad. A big lad, too, judging from his photo in the sports shop window.’

‘You’ve seen one?’

‘Went along specially, as soon as I heard about it. Never imagined you’d go in for someone so much younger.’

‘You can be such a fuddy-duddy, George,’ Dilys chided. ‘Haven’t you read about Joan Collins and her whatsisface, and how younger men are just the thing? If you’re having a bit of leg-over, Carol, good for you.’

I smothered a smile. My mother had never used the term ‘leg-over’ and would have been appalled if anyone did. My father looked stunned by the notion, too. Could that mean his relationship with Dilys was purely platonic? He was not wearing the red and white waistcoat she’d bought him – I had never seen him wearing it – so might that, too, hint he was less than in thrall?