Julia Gets a Life (10 page)

            And of course I wasn’t allowed to help with the washing up. While Moira and Caitlin and Dawn clattered purposefully to and fro, I was barred from the kitchen, and instructed to arrange myself in some part of their aircraft hanger lounge. This left me in the sort of conversational limbo that only a long married woman at a suburban dinner party can find herself once the umbilical cord of the other females (and therefore chats about three-for-two offers and washing instructions) had been cut. If nothing else it shored up my flagging resolve that life, the universe and everything was probably happening elsewhere, and that I seriously needed to go out and find it.

            Howard went off to phone and check on his Mother. While my face subsided to its regular hue. Boris and Stuart (the latter’s face had been set in a slight cringe all evening), had been clearly hoping to flick on the TV and catch up with the snooker or something. They both looked balefully across from their respective sofas as Moira announced my continuing presence with small snatches of what sounded like a press release, accompanied by the crackling of her static charged trousers.

            ‘Fair play. Julia’s had a dreadful time of it lately. Can’t have you beavering in the kitchen now, can we, my lovely?’ and ‘You stay by there, and just take care of the fellas for us, while we three get things straight.’ And, bizarrely, ‘So lovely to have such a pretty face amongst us!’ as if they three were all hags. I felt totally discombobulated. It seemed to me that I had been diverted down an altogether different avenue from the one I had previously travelled. No longer (practically speaking) a wife, I was not deemed fit for bringing a pudding (I’d phoned and checked) or for kitchen responsibilities, and instead was assigned a purely decorative role. In short, the one Rhiannon usually had. Yet these were surely the very same women who would be shaking their heads in astonishment and horror if I shimmied into the downstairs loo for a quickie with one of their men. Was this some sort of test? Or did Moira feel it would be therapy for me to be in the company of a largish group of recumbent males for a while; that I could perhaps soak up sex, love, affection, attachment, androgens, shaving rash, sperm etc, by osmosis?

            ‘So,’ said Boris, finally. ‘How’s the painting going?’

            ‘Painting?’ said Derek, who was splayed on a vast sofa at the far end of the room. He was obviously glad to have been given a conversation to hang his small bag of pickled hosting skills onto. He pulled himself marginally more upright than flat. ‘Didn’t know you painted, Julia.’

            ‘I think Boris has got the wrong end of the stick, Derek. I’m not a painter, I’m a...’ But Derek, a good twenty feet away, was deaf as well as drunk.

            ‘Painting! D’you hear that Moi? Julia paints!’

            ‘No, I’m a...’

            ‘D’you not paint then, Julia?’ asked Boris. I shook my head.

            ‘No. I’m a...’

            ‘Painting? How lovely!’

            Moira bustled in brightly. She clearly had Derek wired to a baby alarm. She carried her Bara Brith recipe tea towel ostentatiously, like a shield.

            I said, ‘Are you sure I can’t help you out there?’

            ‘Heavens no! The perc’s perking. All ship shape and Bristol whatnot. I tell you what! Why don’t we have coffee in the conservatory? Derek, lovely, open up, will you? Ah! Howard. How is your mother, dear? Could
you
have a bit of a wrestle with our patio doors?’

            I wished I could go and phone
my
Mother. I wished I could phone her up and say ‘ Mum, I am at a respectable dinner party and am fantasising about having really energetic sex with Max’s teacher, who is under thirty, a fine physical specimen and who has that excruciatingly sexy combination of little boy/rugged army survival core documentary type person and who, I just
know
, knows I’m salivating over him. And if he doesn’t, probably thinks I’m a complete dimble-wit anyway, who talks utter crap and is old and wrinkly, to boot. Oh, oh, oh. What am I to do?’ sort of stuff.

            But I couldn’t. I’m a grown up person and was therefore not under any physical or mental compulsion to follow him outside or hang around him or try and think up witty and alluring things to say to him. Especially as every time I got within a foot of him, I seemed to have lost the ability to formulate any interesting word strings.

            But I was a mother. I was Max’s Mother. I should really put his case for the cricket team captaincy. So I joined Howard at the business end and held the curtains open for him.

            ‘That’s the way, you two,’ said Moira. ‘Coffee’s almost up. Oop! What’s this by here? Oh, Derek, how could you? I thought you told me you’d hoovered these chairs? Tsk. Bring a moppet in, will you, lovely? Ho hum, I don’t know. People round and we’ve stains on our seats. What
is
this?’ She rubbed. ‘Looks like yoghurt or something. Tsk, tsk.’

             I swivelled my knees and bowed out backwards. The conservatory, dark behind the swags, tails and general frippery of the soft furnishing arrangements, was cool and scented with jasmine. Real jasmine, unlike the horticultural assault that emanated from all the little bowls in the lounge. Real, heady, evocative of.... I said;

            ‘Is your Mum okay?’

            Howard’s mother, he’d explained to me, had some sort of Cancer. Not advanced, but serious enough that I had to arrange my face into something that didn’t involve my tongue hanging out. But he was chirpy.

            ‘She’s just fine, as it happens. Sounded really upbeat. Her consultant’s very pleased with her. Should we open the French doors as well, then? I don’t think it’s cold out. Shall I go and ask Moira?’

            I had a vision of us in a
Fantasia
type cartoon. Going through one set of doors, then another, then another, until we eventually emerged in a forest carpeted with pretty cartoon flowers, wearing loin cloths and holding hands, while little birds fluttered about with ribbons in their beaks.

            ‘I think she said to, didn’t she? I guess we could sit outside, even. Even if they don’t want to, I suppose we....Yes, open them.’

            Oh, God. Burble, burble, burble.

            Howard did so, and the scent of jasmine was replaced by the unmistakable perfume of dew dampened grass on a cool summer night. In the distance, the moon spread a soft milky glow over the hills of the graig, and the stars hung in fairy strings, twinkling and bright. It was just like in a period dramatisation of something by Dickens - apart from Moira’s rustic wood donkey-shaped planter.

            ‘Max,’ I said, hoping to play my advantage. ‘How’s he doing right now? I’ve been so worried about him - more than Emma in fact. Him and Richard, well... Well, he does seem more settled at home.’ More settled than what? His father has given him state of the art iPod technology and pays him £10 to wash his car every week.

            ‘Doing well,’ Howard confirmed, striding across the patio with one hand in his chinos, then turning, arrestingly, his handsome profile tinged with gold from the halogen lamp. He smiled. ‘Very well, considering.’

            ‘And the cricket?’

            ‘Which reminds me, ‘ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve been looking into getting the school registered this new initiative the Sports Council are setting up. It involves the kids getting coaching from Welsh Internationals and so on. Tell you what. Let me take a note of your home number and I’ll give you a ring with more details.’ Then he whipped out a pen and a scrap of paper.

            ‘242478’ I said.

            ‘242478. Great.’

*

            The telephone rang at 00.21. So exotic,
so
daring. Written in the stars. (Plus reasonable alcohol intake.)

             ‘Hello Julia,’ he breathed. ‘Did I wake you?’ As if.

            ‘I’m in bed,’ I answered. ‘But I wasn’t actually asleep.’

            ‘I thought not.’ Such breathtaking confidence, too. ‘Well. Er... Cricket.’

            I loved that ‘Er’.

            ‘Are
you
in bed?’

            ‘Yep.’

            ‘Cricket?’

            ‘I didn’t really call you to talk about cricket.’

            ‘No, I know.’

            And then there was a pause. Just a tiny pause. But enough of one to make it quite clear that Howard was hovering meaningfully at the other end of the phone, and thinking of what to say next. Then he said ‘Well.’ Again.

             ‘I’m sorry?’

            ‘Well, I sort of thought you might feel you need a friend right now. How do you feel about dinner?’

            Did he mean the dinner we’d just eaten or Dinner as a concept? It couldn’t be a repetition of an invitation. He hadn’t actually asked me to dinner yet.

            ‘Dinner?’

            ‘Yes, dinner. Us.’

            His voice was so deep that it resonated down the wire. Then I also remembered the contours of his bare chest at the lob-a-rock stall at last year’s school fete. I began to feel a strange and wonderful heat in my stomach.

            ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, feigning disinterested ignorance. ‘Had you asked me to dinner?’

            ‘No. But I am now.’

            ‘Asking me to dinner?’

            ‘Well, not to my place, exactly. I don’t often cook anything worth inflicting on anyone. I meant food as in a restaurant.’

            ‘What, Us? Go out to a restaurant together?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘On our own?’

            ‘If you want to. I thought it might be nice to go out. You know. Chat and whatever.’

            And that was that. Howard, me, dinner,
whatever
. Actually, I’m having difficulty imagining Howard, me, and dinner without a bolt-on scene in a rumpled bed. From the vantage point of my own bed (not, interestingly, the one I’ve in mind) I can see myself in the wardrobe mirror. I look, I think, rather nice against the terracotta tones of my new duvet cover - a bit of a catch, in fact, legs notwithstanding. That may, of course, have more than a little to do with the fact that I’ve taken my contact lenses out, but then, he might wear them himself, might he not? Seems like just about everyone does these days.

            Dinner with Howard.
Dinner with Howard
. Well, well.

Chapter
10

            I have a date with the God Of Year Six.
I
have a date with the God Of Year Six. I have a date with The
God Of Year Six
. And let’s not mince words, this is scary with a capital
Sc.
This is a date with the question of
whatever
hanging over it like... well, sex, of course. It will involve eating in a sexually charged situation and, quite possibly, snogging (with sexually driven chemical cocktail in nerve endings) as well. I have not snogged anybody other than Richard since I was twenty years old. Eeek!

            Terrifying. What does one do on a date these days? And who can I find out from? Having spent the last week re-inventing myself as a post feminist, post modernist, post the whole wifely package type person, I can hardly ring up anyone cool and hip and ask them for support and guidance.