Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (32 page)

I’ve put on two or three pounds, but still almost nothing fits me. The only thing I can wear is a pair of jeans that I bought
a size too small last year and never again managed to zip up after trying them on in the shop on one of my “thin” days. I
dress to give myself a bit of bulk. Over a white vest, I wear a chunky shawl-neck cable cardigan cinched with a wide belt.
It definitely helps to make me look less skeletal.

My hair seems to have laid down and died, but I wash and blow-dry it as best I can and hope the candlelight will be kind.
Mid-blow-dry, an uncomfortable thought pops into my head and propels me toward the bathroom and Jack’s robe hanging on the
hook behind the door. The number on the scrap of paper in his pocket. I don’t know what made me think of it now, but the washed-out
numbers, even with one or two bleached out altogether, seem familiar. I retrieve the paper and go straight back to my computer
and to my Outlook address book. As I thought. An avalanche of anxiety envelops me. I look at my hands, and they are trembling.

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it’s proving hard not to. I wanted to use tonight to build
a bridge to Jack, not to blow one apart. As I stare at the hastily torn scrap of lined paper with Sally’s number on it, another
notebook from another time comes sharply into focus. I am on the Tube on the way to work, in the earliest days of my relationship
with Jack, and pulling out the little lavender suede notebook with lined paper that I carried around everywhere with me at
the time. Balancing the notebook on one thigh, somewhere between Swiss Cottage and Bond Street, I wrote the heading
WHY I THINK I LOVE JACK
and, underneath, a list of all his qualities that sprang spontaneously to mind.

I turn away from the computer and start riffling through my desk drawers, slamming them shut as I fail to find what I’m looking
for. From the bottom drawer, where it is buried beneath packets of photographs, postcards purchased at various galleries and
museums, and a miscellany of stationery, I pull out that scuffed old lavender notebook. It feels urgent that I find the list
now, before Jack arrives. I fan the pages like a cardsharp, passing scribbled names and numbers, ideas for the magazine I
was working on, random jottings. The page I’m searching for jumps out at me.
WHY I THINK I LOVE JACK,
it says, written with a thick black felt-tip pen and three times underlined. I lean back in my office chair and swing it
away from the computer, scanning the page.

** Charm without smarm**
reads the first line. This with double asterisks. I read on.

* Never tries to impress anyone*

* Completely without pretension*

* Such healing hands*

* His favorite novelists are women*

* His quirk of tunelessly crooning lyrics—mostly the bad ones*

* That first ever present he gave me—a supersize bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate, rather than a beribboned box of Godiva
champagne truffles

* How he fits with my friends and family*

* His trousers*

* Because the first time we made love, I cried, and the second time, we got the giggles*

* And because I don’t think I’ll ever want to make love to a man other than him for the rest of my life*

I finished with
“to be continued
. . .”

It was the first thing on my list, the unself-conscious charm, that attracted me most of all. With his natural affability
and almost old-fashioned courtesy—Cary Grant without the corny come-ons—Jack could win over complete strangers. He’d meet
someone for the first time, and within ten minutes he’d be receiving an invitation for dinner or a drink. It was a charm that
worked equally well on men and women. I once watched in awe as a belligerent drunk knocked into him in the street. Within
moments the two of them were exchanging anecdotes rather than the blows I’d been expecting. I suppose what Jack had was a
kind of low-key glamour. Inside his aura, you felt somehow sparklier and more animated, although his own manner was quiet
and playful.

His lack of pretension was something I felt grateful for. Jack had none of the petty snobberies of the people I met through
my work as a journalist. He was as comfortable in a deli as he was at the Ritz. He read highbrow novels and trashy detective
stories and appreciated them both for what they were. He never regarded himself as a superior being, nor as an inferior one.
He thought himself good enough. He had self-esteem by the bucketload.

I was impressed by Jack’s refusal to try to impress anyone. He was so different in this respect from any man I’d ever dated.
Men with their ambitions written across their foreheads in forty-eight-point bold Bodoni. Men with egos as blatant as the
Trump Tower. Men who talked at you rather than to you, who bounced ideas off you like you were the back wall of a squash court.
Most people warmed instantly to Jack, and if they didn’t, he never tried to make them like him or put on a show to win them
over. I remember thinking:
When I grow up, I want to be like Jack
.

So perhaps the real reason I fell for Jack was that he was everything I wasn’t. I never stopped worrying about what other
people thought of me, whether I measured up, made the grade. The result was that most people liked Jack a great deal and liked
me less—or at least until they got to know me, after which I seemed to grow on them and they stuck. While Jack made people
feel instantly at ease, I seemed to make strangers fidget—not, I think, out of boredom with my company but because my own
initial twitchiness transmitted itself, spreading mild agitation like a virus. There was a fluidity about Jack that enabled
him to fit in everywhere, to negotiate around the trickiest people and situations.

“So what
exactly
is it about Jack?” I remember Maddy quizzing me one day.

I showed her the list and attempted to amplify. “It’s hard to explain, Maddy, but he seems to glide through life. Things touch
him, of course they do, but they don’t seem to scar him. He’s never bogged down in self-doubt or guilt or regrets.”

“So what’s he doing courting a neurotic fruitcake like you?”

“I often wonder myself. But I do seem to make him laugh. And we always have so much to talk about. I also think he’s reached
a point where he needs to nest. He recognizes my homing instinct, the bit of me that’s a Jewish mama bursting to get out.
After spending so much of his childhood moving from one country to another, and despite his ability to be comfortable anywhere,
he wants to put down roots. And excuse the boast, but it’s also occurred to me that my incredible sexual allure and Olympian
athleticism in bed might have something to do with it.”

“Really? That good?”

“I wish. But I think it’s a balance thing. He doesn’t have to prove himself by getting to the top of some career ladder. He’s
not interested in being the boss or being famous or making a pot of money . . . there’s not a competitive bone in his body.
Even when he wanted to act, it wasn’t fame he was after, only the love of what he was doing. In the end, he probably wasn’t
hungry enough. And although he’s prepared to work hard, he doesn’t expect his work to define him, like so many men—or like
me. On the other hand, he seems to approve of me and my ambition. And he likes my independence. Being with him is so comfortable;
he mops up my anxiety and deposits it somewhere way beyond reach. We’re different, but we add up.”

“So it’s not so much the hurly-burly of the chaise longue as the deep, deep peace of the double bed?”

“Since we’re in quoting mode, I prefer Rilke to Mrs. Patrick Campbell. ‘Love consists in this; that two solitudes protect
and touch and greet each other.’ It’s funny, but you know how I described Jack’s healing hands? I think he has a healing presence,
too. He doesn’t only have this ability to untie the physical knots. When I’m with him, all the mental kinks seem to smooth
out as well. I can let down my guard because he makes me feel safe. Safe and cherished.”

“So you’re really and truly in love.”

“Yes, but not in the way I expected it would happen, or at least not how I expected it would be in the beginning. There’s
been no pain in my belly, no sick feeling in my throat, no melodrama, no jealousy, no fear that he’s going to abandon me,
no explosive rows followed by passionate reconciliations. I thought falling in love had to be agony; now I see it as meltingly
pleasurable. Isn’t that enough?”

“I guess so, but maybe it doesn’t sound . . . I don’t know— exciting?”

Maddy was right. It wasn’t about excitement. I didn’t fall dramatically in love with Jack, I kind of slid into it, gently
and easily. There was never a question of whether we would or wouldn’t be together. After Jack returned from Venice the Christmas
following our meeting, we were a couple. We were together all the time when we weren’t working. Within weeks Jack had moved
out of his rented flat and in with me, to the flat I’d proudly afforded a down payment on from my own savings. And he fitted
in so fast. Even my mother liked him. My dad, my sister, and Maddy adored him. I didn’t have to make any decisions; Jack and
I simply got together and stayed together.

It’s only when it all starts to go wrong that you begin to wonder whether what you felt at the beginning was enough—enough
for things to last. What would I say if I were to try to write that list again from scratch today? No time for that now. I
slip the scrap of paper with the phone number on it into the back pocket of my jeans. There’s a ring at the doorbell. It can
only be Jack.

• • •

I’ve cleared away the soup and put the steaming pot of Irish stew on the table. Jack automatically picks up the ladle next
to the pot and starts to serve. He burrows the serving spoon deep into the dish, scooping up meat and potatoes and onions
and pearl barley, and transfers it into a wide soup bowl I hold out for him. It’s typical of Jack’s natural grace that nothing
slops onto the rim of the bowl. As I watch him perform this mundane everyday task, something stirs inside me and makes my
own hand falter.

“Steady there, you’ve got the shakes,” says Jack, reaching out to hold the bowl with his free hand and saving the contents
from spilling all over the table.

“Jack, I need to ask you something.” I hesitate; the words won’t come out.

“Yes?” says Jack patiently.

“Are you . . . are you . . .” It’s no good, I can’t do it. “Are you planning to take Olly to the airport when he leaves on
Thursday?” Coward!

“Well, yes, I was planning to. Are you going to come, too?”

“I don’t think so. It’s probably better if I say goodbye to him here. I don’t want to start blubbing at the departure gates.
No, you see him off on your own.”

Jack smiles at me. “ ‘Leaving on a jet plane. Don’t know when I’ll be back again . . .’ ”

“Don’t laugh at me, Jack, please.”

“I’m not laughing. Hope. But he’s only going on an extended holiday. He hasn’t taken out the emigration papers yet.”

“It’s not so much this trip but what it represents. It’s an emotional journey he’s going on, and although he’ll come back,
I guess he’ll never need me again in the way he has up until now.”

“That’s what parenting is all about, Hope.”

“Okay, I admit it. I’m a clingy, moany, whiny, overbearing, possessive, stereotypical Jewish mother. But if one more person
tries to lecture me about letting go, I may have to thump them.”

“I think you’re right not to come to the airport, it will be easier all round. But what I’ve been wanting to say is that you
and Olly seem to have really gotten it together since I left.”

“It hasn’t been easy, but I suppose I finally got off his case, as he puts it, and it’s made the hugest difference.”

“He says that you’ve been quite amazing about the operation, especially considering how awful it’s all been.”

“Thanks for telling me that. It means a lot.”

“I assume the trek is definitely off.”

“You assume wrong.”

“But it’s only six weeks to go.”

“Yes, but I’ve already been out of the hospital for two weeks, and I reckon if I walk a little farther each day, in a month
or so I’ll be absolutely fine. The doctor says I’m recovering remarkably well, and I can only put that down to the fact that
I was fit before the operation, from going to the gym three times a week and walking Susanna every day in addition to the
training walks.”

Jack refills my wineglass and takes the dinner plates over to the sink.

“Do you want to wait awhile before the bread-and-butter pudding?” I call over.

“That Stanko is a bit of a find, isn’t he?” says Jack.

“An angel,” I agree.

Jack returns and sits back down opposite me.

“Jack, would you consider coming back?”

“Would you want me to?”

I pause. “It hurts not having you around, but—and I’m surprised to find myself saying this—I don’t think this is the right
time. I’ve got so much sorting out still to do that if you came back now, I think we’d go straight back to where we were before.
And I don’t think you’d accept that. I’m not even sure I would.”

“We both need more time to sort ourselves out.”

This is my chance. “Jack, do you have someone . . .”

Jack is staring at me intently.

“Do you have someone . . . someone who can fix the table leg? It’s gone quite wobbly.”

“Talk about butterfly mind. But yes, I’m sure I do. I can call you tomorrow with a number.”

We’re playing games. I’m quite sure Jack knew exactly what I was about to say. “Thanks, that would be great.”

It’s all too polite, too damned adult and civilized. I want something real to happen. I want him to reach over the table and
cup my face in his palm. I want to pound my fists against his chest and demand he tell me whether or not he’s having an affair
with Sally. I want him to declare his love and ask to come home, or I want him to tell me it’s over and he’s never coming
back again.