Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (13 page)

• • •

Another three a.m., another night of not sleeping. I review my list.

Get Maddy back on track

Maddy’s so far off track as to be outside the stadium. But this baby might yet turn out to be a good thing, so definite cause
for optimism here. Score out of ten: four.

Talk to Daddy about the future

This went relatively smoothly. And even the outcome, although not what I was aiming for, is perhaps for the best. Score out
of ten: six.

Try and square things with Mummy before she dies

Unmitigated disaster. Score out of ten: zero.

Make it up with Olly

Deferred until later. Scoring deferred likewise.

Have sex with Jack—or at least dinner and a movie

Sex, didn’t even try. Score out of ten: zero. Movie, best result of the month. Score out of ten: ten. Dinner—chips, nicely
crisp; steak, cooked to perfection; bridge-building, aborted. Overall dinner score out of ten: two and a half, for the steak
and chips.

What does this tell me? Other than that I should go more often to the movies? I really think I’ll have to do better than this.

M
addy isn’t even showing. I’m the one who looks pregnant. For a while in the bathroom last night, I entertained the idea of
a phantom pregnancy. I’m a bit hazy about how phantom pregnancies come about, but I know they have something to do with unfulfilled
psychological needs. Might not projected loss (of Olly) and envy (of Maddy), mixed in with a few menacingly menopausal symptoms
(sweaty legs again the other day, this time in the supermarket), be psychologically needful enough to trigger sore breasts
and a belly full of air? It’s not that I really want another baby, I just want to go back in time and relive the good bits
all over again. And being pregnant with Olly was one of the best bits of all.

The real story is that I’m getting fat, and the only things my belly is full of are chocolate biscuits, chips, and cashew
nuts. And rather more vodka than I care to admit. I actually dream of cashew nuts, twice so far this week. The second time
was a nightmare in which I’d swallowed a whole mouthful at once. I awoke, coughing and clutching at my throat, convinced I
was choking. Jack had to bash me on the back and get me a glass of water. There are only two ways to interpret this. It was
either nature’s way of telling me to go on a diet or a subconscious response to my mother’s worsening condition. Both demand
the same course of action: Cut the cashews.

I’ve moved on since March. Having faced the fact that I have no positive influence whatsoever on my friends and family, I
have decided to revert to sorting out the wreckage of my own life.

While I examined my ever expanding flesh in the bathroom mirror last night, I had an unbidden poetry moment. Quite suddenly,
while prodding an unruly bat wing, I found myself reciting T. S. Eliot.

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

That’s all I can remember of my sixth-form studies. And I don’t suppose T. S. Eliot had a disgruntled middle-aged woman in
the buff in mind when he wrote the opening to
The Wasteland
. He wasn’t thinking body brushing in the shower and a good workout to stir dull skin and flabby flesh out of winter complacency.
But as I looked in the mirror, those words spoke to me, succinctly summarizing my current state of mind and suggesting a kind
of limbo land in which things are neither dead nor fully living. Which is pretty much how I feel. Not dead. Not living. Pulled
between memories of the past and a desire to move forward. Exactly. But how? I guess the gym might be a good place to start.

As a VIP member, I’m entitled to a free fitness assessment and two personal training sessions per annum. I fully intend to
use up my quota this week. What makes me a VIP is the fact that I’ve been a member of this particular gym, located on Abbey
Road, a few doors down from the famous studios where the Beatles recorded their even more famous album, for five years.

I’m deeply embarrassed about this, but apart from the first month when I went religiously three times a week, I haven’t been
back since. My membership has been paid by direct debit for exactly
five years
! Which makes it four years and eleven months since I last went to the gym. And yes, I know I could have given the money to
starving children instead, or built a dozen schools in Africa, for all the use I’ve made of it—and even claimed some tax back
on the side, which could have been passed on to Amnesty International or Médecins Sans Frontières—but I haven’t. It’s all
gone into the coffers of Fit for the Future, an organization that floated on the stock market last year entirely thanks to
the likes of super-saps such as me.

Fit for the Future looks more like Fit for the Scrap Heap. It’s gone badly downhill in the last four years and eleven months,
and despite what I read in the papers about it going public, it looks to me as though it must be in some kind of financial
trouble. The basement, where the changing rooms are located, smells of drains; keys to most of the lockers are missing; and
there are brown marks on the walls at both floor and ceiling level, suggesting rising damp and even perhaps leakage from the
swimming pool above. On the spur of the moment, I put a note in the suggestions box advising the management to ring the editor
of the new
Jasmine
to find out how best to get rid of the stains. I leave Mark’s name and his direct line, the one that bypasses Tanya. I know,
I know, but it makes me feel better.

I should probably be banned from going anywhere near a gym. Or a beach. Or any department store where there are communal changing
rooms. I have this problem with bodies. The problem is staring. I’m no closet lesbian, but I am totally and utterly fascinated
by other women’s bodies—fat, thin, good, bad, or ugly, I simply cannot resist looking and—of course—comparing. The unstated
first rule of gym etiquette is that you mind your own body business, especially in the changing rooms. I spend more time in
the changing rooms than I do working out, because I’m clocking all the other members.

I try to stare subtly, pretending to fiddle in my purse for the coin that will enable me to use the locker, while surreptitiously
glancing at the naked woman to my right who is relatively slim but has enough cellulite to keep a lipsocutionist in business
for the next fifteen years. Jerry Hall has cellulite, too. More useful information gleaned in my long career as a magazine
editor.

There’s a gorgeous young black girl to my left. Legs like Naomi Campbell’s, a bottom so pert you could rest your teacup on
it. But are they stretch marks I see on her thighs? I believe they are, and on her tummy, too. She gives me a hard look. I
avert my eyes and march exaggeratedly toward the toilets, where there used to be a decent pair of scales. Unfortunately, there
still is.

While I’m sitting on the loo, a considerable amount of door banging suggests a couple of women are entering the adjoining
cubicles.

“Hey, V, there’s no loo paper in here. Can you spare a square?”

“Comin’ right under.”

“Thanks, love . . . Ooh, that feels better. Now I don’t mind weighing myself. That must’ve got rid of at least a pound or
two.”

“Too much information, Sandr.”

“You’re probably right. How’s that toy boy of yours?”

The sound of toilets flushing simultaneously and bolts being yanked back.

“Ooh, he’s gorgeous,” says the one called V, switching on the hand dryer, making it hard for me to hear what they’re saying.
“Bit of a skinny kid, but I love him to bits. Even the bony bits.”

“Really?”

“Not
really
really. It’s just a bit of fun, isn’t it? But he’s as cute as a puppy. And a quick learner. And
so
eager to please. I’ve had enough brutes to last a lifetime. He’s even good with my kids—I mean, he’s more their age than
mine.” The two of them titter like five-year-olds. The dryer switches itself off.

“Good on yer, Van. Does he have a playmate for me?”

V? Van?
Van?
I knew I recognized that voice. It’s her. It’s Vanessa the Undresser. And that’s my boy they’re talking about. How
dare
they? Talking about my precious Olly as if he’s a piece of meat.

I storm out of the cubicle as Vanessa and her pal Sandr are adjusting their lipstick. It beats me why women wear makeup to
work out. Or maybe I’ve been too complacently married for too many years.

“Morning,
Van
,” I say. “Having fun making fun of my son, are you?”

“Blimey, it’s you.” Vanessa drops her lipstick in the sink and a little chunk of it falls off. I have magical powers! I feel
like Samantha in
Bewitched
.

“Oh, bugger, that’s my new MAC lippie.” Vanessa picks up the lipstick container and the bit that detached itself and tries
to weld them back together with her fingers, but she only succeeds in squishing the surviving part of the lipstick and having
to scrape the whole lot into a tissue and dump it in the bin.

“But we weren’t making fun, were we, Sandr?” says Vanessa, trying to compose herself and wash off the lipstick that’s smeared
all over her hands. “We were just saying what a lovely boy your Olly is.” She looks at Sandr for support.

“You the mother? Olly’s mum? Nah, not possible. Doesn’t look old enough, does she, Van?”

Good try, Sandr, whoever you are, but it’s not going to work.

“Vanessa, I’ve nothing against you personally—if I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have invited you to my bir— I mean, our New
Year’s Eve party. But surely you must agree it’s not appropriate. You’re a mother with two kids. He’s a boy.”

“You’re wrong there, Hope. He’s just turned eighteen, and he’s a man. A
real
man. My kind of man. And from what I hear, it’s not me who ought to be leaving him alone, it’s you who ought to be getting
off his case.”

What
nerve
. What bloody nerve. There I am, trying to be reasonable. To discuss things objectively. Woman to woman. Adult to adult. And
she throws it all in my face. Where would she even get an idea like that? Surely Olly wouldn’t complain to her about me. The
idea of him talking to her about me makes me feel physically sick.

“You’re unbelievable. Who the hell do you think you are, telling me how to behave toward my son? You’re the one with the problem
behavior. At least I won’t have to put up with it for much longer. Once he’s on his gap year, he’s sure to meet someone his
own age.”

Vanessa places her hands above her substantial hips and, legs apart, tilts one hip up to the side so she looks like an aggressive,
overgrown teenager. “So now you can’t wait to be rid of your son. That’s a new one on me. I was under the impression that
you were going to fall to pieces when your
one and only
flew the nest. The only reason you don’t want him to be with me is because you want him to be with you. Still tied to your
apron strings. Still a mummy’s boy.”

Sandr stifles a giggle. I know when I’ve been beat. She’s got him and I haven’t. But I’ll get him back. I will. Sandr passes
Vanessa her lipstick, and the two of them go back to concentrating on their
maquillage
. Vanessa’s hand, I’m pleased to note, shakes a little as she attempts to draw a Cupid’s bow.

Flapping my hands vigorously to dry them (I won’t go near those air dryers, they’re absolute breeding grounds for Legionnaire’s
disease), I suck in my stomach as much as I can and flounce off and upstairs to meet my fitness assessor. By the time I get
up the two short flights of stairs, I’m puffed out and on the verge of tears.

“Take a seat and we’ll have a little chat,” says a perfectly ordinary-looking girl in her mid-twenties with a New Zealand
accent and no obvious musculature or designer sportswear. “I’m Callie, and I’m here to sort out a program for you. But first
you need to tell me what you’d like to achieve and the areas you’d like to work on.”

“What’s a punch bag good for?” I ask, trying not to breathe as heavily as my lungs would like.

“Well, it’s great for upper-body conditioning—arms, chest, and shoulders. Abs, too. But why don’t you tell me the areas you
want to shape up, and we’ll sort the equipment for you to use afterwards.”

“Just ten minutes, please, just ten minutes. Afterward we can come back and fill in all the forms and stuff.”

“Need to release some pent-up energy, do we?”

“We do.”

I’ve never used a punch bag before. I’m tentative at first. I feel a little foolish in my sparring gloves. Who the hell do
I think I am? Rocky? Goldie Hawn in
Private Benjamin
? I’m not the sort of person who goes round hitting things. I’m so
not
physically aggressive that I don’t even want to hurt this bag. But I’m getting into the rhythm of it. I’m feeling the warm
blood circulating in my arms and chest, and it’s a good feeling. I punch a little harder, jabbing and punching, jabbing and
punching, until I forget where I am, until I forget everything except the uncontrollable urge to punch harder, faster, harder.
And now this big black plastic thing that I’m beating the life out of has taken on human form. My old boss Simon flashes before
my eyes, and at my next punch, I grunt out his name under my breath. It feels fabulous. And then the name Mark. And another
punch. And then Vanessa. A perfect left hook. And then . . . and then . . . and then the name Jenny. The black bag has become
my mother. Yes, even my mother feels the force of my fist, although I have to close my eyes as I punch. One almighty punch
for all those years of not loving me. Harder, faster, harder . . . Simon . . . Mark . . . Vanessa . . . Jenny . . . Simon
. . . Mark . . . Vanessa . . . Jenny . . . until my hair is soaked, the sweat is running down my body in rivulets, and I’m
gasping for air.

“Slow down now,” says Callie at my side, bringing me back to the present. “That’s more than enough for your first try. Seems
to be what you needed, though. I’ll build it into the program as a regular ten-minute warm-up.”