Calendar Girl (6 page)

“Hello?”

“Ah, Saz, it’s Caroline … um, hello. How are you?”

“Stunned.”

“Yeah, well look, um … I know it’s been ages, and I know I said you shouldn’t contact me …”

“I didn’t, the phone rang this end. You called me.”

“Yeah. Um … Saz, I’d like to see you.”

“Why?”

“Well, because I’m moving to New York in two days time. For good. I’d like to see you before I go.”

“New York? Not Australia?”

“No. Not Australia. Look could we have lunch or something? I would like to see you.”

And, like the stupid, forgetful, easily swayed idiot she was, Saz had agreed. What’s more she’d invited Caroline to her flat. In sixty-five minutes time.

She got out of bed, dusted, vacuumed, washed, dressed (in the most stunning, just-thrown-on effect she could manage), dashed down to the shop to buy flowers (to herself, from herself) and waited. Waited for over half an hour because, as always, Caroline was thirty-five minutes late.

Caroline arrived with apologies and a bunch of flowers – same as the bunch Saz had bought an hour earlier, same shop, same price, different intention. Not “see how happy I am”, but “see how sorry I am”. She stood on the doorstep looking like it was this time two years ago.

Saz caught her breath and asked her in.

Caroline sat at the kitchen table, drinking weak coffee, looking thin and pale and beautiful with her fine, straight, auburn hair falling over her face. Caroline sat at the kitchen table and told Saz all about it. How the Australian had cheated on her, lied to her, used the car and flat for six months and then gone back to Sydney leaving only a huge phone bill and a postcard saying “Thanks for the hospitality but my visa’s run out.” How Caroline had wanted for months to run back to Saz begging forgiveness and kisses. How she’d stayed away until she could trust herself to behave sensibly. How she didn’t want Saz back, not that she assumed Saz wanted her, how she knew she needed to be alone. Which was why she was leaving to go to film school. In New York. The money was coming from her dad who probably hoped she’d find herself a nice American boy. And now, well now she needed to say goodbye. And sorry. Properly.

Saz sat listening spellbound. She really did look very thin. And her skin. She’d forgotten that Caroline didn’t have very good skin. Not enough exercise. She’d also forgotten what wonderful eyes she had. And her hair. The way it fell over her eyes. The way Caroline flicked it back without even a pause in the conversation. The way she wanted to kiss her. Caroline talked so long and so hard, telling her story so fully Saz wondered if maybe she’d given up therapy. She hadn’t. She just wanted Saz to understand.

“Yeah Carrie, I know, I do understand. I understand that what you do is run away. I understand that we were becoming too close. I understand that you want me to forgive you so you can go off to New York feeling whole and happy and clear. I understand that going to New York is just running away again. I understand that this is the third career-oriented course you will have done in five years. I mean how long have you wanted to be a filmmaker? What happened to furniture design? I understand that it’s easy for you to keep running away as long as your father keeps funding you. I understand that as long as you let your father fund you, he will never treat you like the adult you want him to. I understand that now you know what it feels like to be left. And while I must admit I’m sorry for you, I’m also glad. I understand Caroline, that even at twenty-four it’s about time you grew up. Perhaps it’s a good move. Do you think you can stick at this one?”

“I don’t know. But I want to try. I don’t want to fuck up again. I’m sorry you’re still so pissed off at me …”

“Only because you wouldn’t let me be pissed off at you six months ago. If you’d have let me shout at you last year I’d be fine now and shagging half of North London.”

“North London? I thought you’d want to stick to this half of the river after me.”

“Anyway I’m not pissed off at you. And I’m celibate. And I’m bitter. I’m a bitter, twisted old dyke. Obviously.”

Saz laughed despite herself as she quoted Caroline’s mother, who when Caroline had come out had accused her daughter, aged fourteen, of being a “bitter, twisted old dyke”. She’d then apologised and been sweetness and light ever since, but it was a big accusation for Caroline who, at fourteen thought she knew everything and now at twenty-four was just beginning to admit that she still wasn’t quite “grown-up”. The laughing helped. Saz told Caroline that she thought she’d been an absolute bitch and deserved everything the Australian had done to her. Caroline agreed though she thought the phone bill for £368 was a bit much and made more coffee. They asked about each others’ families, mutual friends who had split off on either side and other friends who had never been mutual.

They ate lunch. Caroline as always ate lots though she looked like she ate nothing. They listened to Tracy Chapman and Kate Bush for old times’ sake. By 4pm they knew all about the past year of each others’ lives and Caroline had to leave. She left leaving an address in New York – luck being what it was for Carrie she’d been given a flat in New York in exchange for her London flat – minimum six months, possibility of two years – and the offer to Saz of a sofabed whenever she wanted it.

Saz closed the door behind Caroline and sighed. The phone rang. It was Gary.

“I’ve got the names of two hundred women, physical descriptions – height, weight, hair and eye colour. I’ve even got marital status and occupation where available.”

“Gary, brilliant! You’re an angel, what do I owe you?”

“Two tickets to ‘As You Like It’ at the Barbican?”

“Sure sweetheart, when do we go?”

“Ah. Well actually, I’d really just like the tickets if you don’t mind. I’ve got someone I’d like to take.”

“Gary! You’ve got a date?”

“Yes and no questions or you don’t get the info. You book the tickets, I’ll send the papers.”

“It’s a deal. But she’d better be cute!”

Saz did the dishes and made a mental note to call Helen or Judith as soon as she was finished cleaning up. She wanted to get cross-referencing as soon as possible.

The phone rang again just as she was putting away the last cup. It was John Clark.

“John. Any progress for me?”

“Well Ms Martin, I’ve typed out a full physical description, a list of all of the restaurants we ever went to, I’ve got the date of when she broke her ankle and, I don’t know if this will be of any use to you but I’ve got a postcard she sent me …”

“A postcard?”

“Yes, she sometimes went on business trips midweek – once though, it overlapped our dinner night. So she sent a postcard to my work instead.”

“Where’s it from?”

“New York.”

“New York! Any address?”

“Well just a hotel address …”

“John that’s brilliant! Don’t you see? She’ll have to have given the hotel some name and address for London!”

“Oh yes, of course, I didn’t think … shall I call the hotel?”

“No, there’s no way they’d give that information over
the phone. Just get all your info to me and I’ll see what I can do. I was thinking of taking a quick transatlantic trip anyway …”

Saz hung up having arranged to meet John the next day.

Then she picked up the phone to tell Caroline the good news.

After a while of living together it became obvious I’d have to meet more of her past. And as I couldn’t meet her family then it would have to be friends. And ex-lovers. I hate meeting ex-lovers. I hate the history that they hold. We both have ex-lovers who are men. Mine are an eclectic collection of performers and artists, men I knew at university, old flatmates, present lovers of other friends – about one third of them gay. Some of them were gay when we met, some weren’t. It took me a long time to make up my mind too.

The Woman with the Kelly McGillis body only has a few ex-lovers. She has three women and three men. Her men are a different sort of men to mine, mine are much more like boys. Hers are a doctor, a lawyer and a carpenter. Men to take home to mother. When we first met she couldn’t get over the number of ex-lovers I have, male and female.

“But Maggie, how did you fit them all in?”

I chose to avoid the obvious joke. I can be quite ruthless when it comes to comedy.

“Look honey, most of them are friends – we were friends, we became lovers and then we went back to being friends
again. If you don’t have to spend the first three months just getting to know each other and if you don’t have to stay together just because otherwise you’ll never see each other again – then you can get through an awful lot of lovers. Besides that, it’s kind of nice, like keeping it in the family.”

I felt strange about all her relationships. I didn’t want to know about them and yet I did. I’d ask about them and then when she told me I’d get angry and jealous. I’d try to hide it but I’m not very good at hiding.

I suffer terribly from jealousy.

I met one of the men once. The carpenter. He seemed nice. And completely innocuous. Dull. Which annoyed me even more. Because if he was so dull and so nice, how was it that she’d ended up with me? That she said she wanted to spend forever with me? Was there in me some hidden shred of boring which she found attractive?

Though there is something about boring which is attractive. A life with no surprises. A life with no change.

I don’t like change.

We went to dinner at the carpenter’s house. He’d just finished renovating it. It had taken him five years. And he’d enjoyed doing it. Enjoyed stripping the banisters by hand. Enjoyed sanding the skirting boards, replacing the sashes on the old windows. I’d have ripped it all out and replaced it with chrome. Something clean and crisp with no hidden recesses. So nothing can hide away.

It did look wonderful, but he said there was still damp in the walls and rot in the foundations. He told us about the
rot as if that wouldn’t shatter the view of all that we’d just seen.

Once I know that something’s rotten, I can’t see it any other way.

And then when she went upstairs to the toilet he told me that he liked me. He liked me and he wanted to have sex with me.

I must have looked stunned because he said it again.

“I mean it Maggie, I think you’re really beautiful. You’re driving me crazy.”

Even if I’d wanted to, that would have done it. I couldn’t possibly have sex with someone who says “driving me crazy”.

“No Peter. I couldn’t. Apart from anything else, I couldn’t do it to her.”

“Well, we can have a threesome.”

Then I knew he was a bastard.

“No Peter. We could not have a threesome. Not only would it bore me senseless, but she wouldn’t like it. She doesn’t have good sex with men.”

“But she told me …”

“She was twenty-two, Peter. At that age women often lie to men. Some women do it all their lives. Some women really believe it would harm a man irreparably to hear that they were an incompetent lover.”

He was blustering now, “I’m not …”

“How do you know? Can you be sure that not one of the women you’ve seduced with your masterful technique was faking it?”

“Well no, but you just know don’t you?”

“Do you Peter? Do you know what it feels like to be a woman? Do you know what good sex feels like for a woman? I know because I’m a woman. How can you possibly?”

He was deflating in front of me. And the more I pushed home my point, the further he moved away from me. Not that it’s even a point I believe in. There’s a big myth surrounding “women-loving-women”, it sells a lot of books. No one can ever really know how another person feels. But it’s a great argument when dealing with a Neanderthal.

Then the Woman with the Kelly McGillis body swayed her slightly drunken way back down the stairs and came to sit beside me. Holding my hand and occasionally kissing my bare left shoulder. And we talked of nothing for another hour or so until she and I left for home. She was getting into the car as I turned to say goodbye to him on the doorstep. I looked up at him and was momentarily shocked to see that Mr Dull-and-Boring was long gone. He grabbed my wrist very tightly and snarled “You’re wrong, she did enjoy it. She never faked a thing.”

But it was him that was wrong there. She might have had good sex with him. Her memories, what she told me of its mediocrity, may have changed with the mists of time. But she did fake things. Lots of things.

We went home, car windows wide open to the cool air and made love slowly, desultorily. I took a long time to come and when I did it was fitful and barely satisfying. And again I marvelled at how such a stunning woman could have liked, even loved, a man so bland.

Until I remembered how tightly he grabbed my wrist and the look on his face as he stood in the doorway and I realised that perhaps she’d seen that look, that anger before too. Perhaps she liked it.

I think maybe she did.

Only one of the women lovers was a problem. She wanted to be my friend. I didn’t even want to know her.

Victoria Cook was an artist.

I expect she still is, but we don’t send Christmas cards.

She was a painter who exhibited at small, primarily women-only galleries. And after we’d been together for about a year and a half, Victoria Cook decided she wanted to be our friend. My friend.

Dolores knew her through a women artists’ group she used to go to. She thinks she’s weird. And if Dolores thinks Victoria is weird then she’s got to be strange. However she, and most of the rest of the world also think Victoria Cook is very, very beautiful. Cool, charming, tall and gracious. All the things I always wanted to be and never became, being too short and loud and “cute”. Cute is good, but it’s not gracious. And unfortunately Victoria isn’t one of those women who avoid their ex-lovers at all costs. She “maintains relationships”. She takes her problems to her therapist and uncovers a “difficulty-strategy”. After staying away for quite some time Victoria realised that she had a difficulty with me being the new lover and came up with a strategy that involved me becoming her new friend.