So I thought, no I can’t be doing with this, sleeping like a student at my age, and I went mad and bought myself a proper bed. Call me a stupid optimist if you will. Why, oh why, did I do that, you ask, given that I’ve not got women lining up round the block demanding access to my body twenty-four hours a day? What am I wanting a double bed for? Because buying a single bed when you’re forty—all right, all right, keep calm, forty-one, just checking you’re still awake—is too sad for words and if I truly thought I’d never have sex ever again in my whole life, I’d end it all right now this very minute.
Not that I’m being overwhelmed with offers at the moment. Frankly, if anyone under sixty looked even halfway keen, I’d probably take them up on it. “You’d need a paper bag, mate!” That’s what Lee says if he’s talking about a woman who’s a bit rough looking, so you wouldn’t have to look at her face. If she’s really ugly, he says she’s a double-bagger. He’s a bit of a tosser, Lee.
I’m not like him, but I must confess, being a man and not yet six feet below the daisies, I do think about doing it with most women I meet. Like the sandwich van lady. You should see her muffins. Really. And I used to have the odd fantasy with Fiona in it sometimes, at the B&B. Fortunately, I do have some self-restraint. Not much, I’ll grant you, but I was in no rush to get chucked out on my ear twice in one year. Besides, her husband Dave’s become a bit of a mate as well; we’ve started to go for the occasional drink, have a chat. He’s got a good sense of humour and he doesn’t think the world revolves around football either. And at least he’s not as depressed as Jeff.
But I could definitely do with a woman. I’m not cut out for all this sleeping on my own lark. It doesn’t suit me. Actually, it’s not even the sex I miss most; it’s not like I’ve lost the use of my hands, y’know, but it’s not the same. And you can’t give yourself a cuddle, can you? You can’t snuggle up to yourself or do spoons or stroke your own hair and whisper yourself “Night-night, sweetheart, sleep tight.”
Mind you, the last—what two, three years?—maybe more even—I can’t say Gail smothered me with affection either. It was more a case of quick peck vaguely in the direction of my face, “Night then,” turn over and we’re both snoring our heads off by the time we hit the pillows. ‘Cept Gail would say she doesn’t snore.
It’s not just we hardly had sex any more, though I still say we hadn’t done it for at least two months when I was tempted from the straight and narrow by Angela. Gail and I were still doing it—making love, I mean— only it felt like it was once in a blue moon. I wish we’d marked it on the kitchen calendar, ‘cause she claims it was practically every week and I say it was more like once or twice a month. And it was still nice and everything but a bit, well, the same. Not surprising, really. I mean—me, I’m up for anything (within reason, and not including anything involving gerbils or other wildlife), but if you want to tie me to your bed with your black stockings and have your wicked way with me, you just carry on. I’ll give it a go. But Gail, well, she knows what works for her and that’s what we do. Did.
Anyway, I digress. My new bed’s a double, that’s the point, so I’m ready and waiting if you know any drop-dead gorgeous babes you want to send round. Gail even said she’d look me out some bedlinen and spare pillows and that, and I went to pick up some other bits and pieces from the house—a chest of drawers, a couple of chairs, that old table we kept in the garage, the telly from our bedroom, so I reckon I’ll be all right. Harry lent me one of the vans from First Glass and he gave me a hand too which was good of him. I’m not sure he should still be hefting things about at his age, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, daft old bugger. Rosie was in charge of the move and we had to put different coloured stickers on the things to go in different rooms and she wrote out a list to make sure I did it all properly. Yes, Ma’am! She’s becoming a right little bossy-boots—no, I’m only kidding, it’s nice to see her getting so confident after she’s been so shy most of her life. Yeah. It really is.
Now he’s gone and got a flat. See, I said he wasn’t coming back. I don’t care anyhow because I hate him. No I don’t. Not any more, not like I did before. I just don’t care. If he wants to be stupid and pathetic and keep showing himself up, it’s nothing to me.
Mum’s being really embarrassing. Like at first, when he left, she just let him go and she didn’t try to stop him or anything, and I bet she never even thought about us. But now when Dad comes to pick up Rosie, Mum’s got on all this lipstick and she wears these clingy tops like for girls. I told her she was much too old for them and it just looks stupid, and she said,
“The day I start taking fashion advice from a teenage boy, and one who can’t even manage to tuck his shirt in at that, it will be a sad day indeed.”
I mean, it’s
supposed
to be like that. Doesn’t she know anything?
I know he did it with another woman. Like a mistress or whatever. I bet it was someone younger. I thought when he left that he went to live with this woman, but Rosie said he was in a B&B. She keeps acting like she knows everything, but she doesn’t because she didn’t even know about the other woman until I told her. She didn’t even know hardly anything about sex till I told her last year. She thought it was all eggs and tadpoles, she didn’t know any of the good bits. He was probably just waiting till he could get a flat and his girlfriend’ll probably move in then, that’s what’ll happen. That’s how it always happens, and pretty soon they have a whole other family, then they forget about you and all you get is a card and maybe a CD once a year on your birthday and that’s it. I don’t care anyhow.
Rosie’s being such a suck-up. She keeps going on about Dad’s new flat and how he’s going to do up a room specially for her and he said she can have anything she likes, she can have it all in mauve if she wants ‘cause it’s her favourite colour. I said it sounded like it would look really dumb to have it all the same and she wouldn’t be able to find the bed if it was the same colour as the walls, would she, then she said well, it wasn’t up to me, was it, and she was going to choose what she wanted and I was just jealous because there wasn’t a room for me and even if there was, she bet Dad wouldn’t decorate it specially because I hadn’t spoken to him for months and it jolly well served me right.
I hate Rosie too. I hate all of them. I might move in with Steve, his mum says she likes having me round there, though his dad makes all these pathetic remarks that are supposed to be funny, looking at me and going to Steve’s mum, “You know, I was sure we only had the three children. Did you adopt another one while I popped out for fags?”
“Never mind him, Nathan love,” his mum says. “You’re always welcome here, you know that. Here, have some more potatoes.”
Steve said his mum was only being nice to me ‘cause she felt sorry for me ‘cause my dad left, so I wrestled him to the floor and made him take it back.
“You’re just dead jealous ‘cause your mum likes me more than you.”
“So?” He was trying to hit me, but no chance. I’m a better fighter than he is. “Mums are always nice to other people’s kids. It’s what they do. It doesn’t mean anything anyhow. She’s just being polite. They’re only a pain in the neck with their own kids. Everyone knows that.”
That’s not true, is it? Mind you, my mum is always nice to Steve and I don’t reckon she likes him all that much. And she’s nice to Jason, even though he’s always picking his nose.
I dunno. Maybe I’ll go and live in London on my own. They’ll put it on the news and say I’ve disappeared and Mum and Dad will have to go on TV, crying and begging me to come home. I might go to America. Kieran’s family took him to New York and he said it was brill, just like being in a TV cop show, the police had guns just like they do on TV and there were yellow taxis and ginormous great skyscrapers everywhere. We never go anywhere. We went to some stupid Greek island a couple of years ago and Mum and Dad both got sunburned and could hardly move. I did too. Rosie only didn’t because Mum put sun gloop on her about every 10 seconds and made her wear a hat and long sleeves even though Rosie went all whiny and said she wanted to go brown.
Last year we went to one of them dome things that’s always warm inside. Dad said it was spooky and he felt like we were in this vast playpen being observed by scientists and he kept ducking out of sight behind the plants so they couldn’t watch us. Mum said she didn’t care who was watching so long as it was warm and she didn’t have to cook. She liked it ‘cause there was loads of stuff for me and Rosie to do so she didn’t have to look after us. Well, Rosie. I don’t need looking after. It was OK when we got there with a whacking great water chute and a wave machine and everything, but you couldn’t swim properly because there were too many people, and anyway we should have gone to New York. I’ve started saving up for a flight. Jason’s supposed to be saving, so he can come too, but he keeps spending his money. He is clueless sometimes. I don’t want him holding me back if I decide to take off suddenly. I’ll have to see. It’s OK. I’ll probably just go on my own.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”
Cassie stuck her tongue out at me.
“Come on. Why not? What have you got to lose?”
“I don’t have to give a reason. I just don’t want to. I’m too old for all that.” Cassie was trying to fix me up with a date. A blind date if you please. With a work contact of her husband’s, some man called Michael. Divorced.
“Oh, right then. You’ve booked your plot already then, I take it?”
“What? What plot?”
“Your cemetery plot. Why not move in now? You sound like you’re ready to. If you don’t want to get the good out of life any more, shove over and make room for someone else.”
She took my arm and propelled me over to the mirror.
“Look. What do you see?”
“A very pushy, pain-in-the-bum best friend?”
“Ho-ho. And …?”
“Me. I see me, of course. Should I be expecting someone else? What’s your point? That I’m getting on a bit so should hurry up and lasso a man before yet another wrinkle takes up permanent residence?”
Cassie stood, hand on hip, scrunching up her nose at me.
“Finished? All I’m saying is you talk as if you’re 103 but—”
“I might as well be. Women of forty aren’t in huge demand, you know. How many forty-year-olds do you see on the cover of
Cosmopolitan?”
“Thirty-nine. Why are you rushing into being forty? It’ll get here soon enough. But no. You’re right. Sign up for the geriatric day care centre. You’re no use to the world now.”
“Aaaarrggh! Cassie, I may have to hit you in a minute. The fact is I’m very nearly forty and I feel like I look every single day of it. But even if I looked twenty-two and had the body of a supermodel and the face of an angel, I’d still not want to go on a blind date.”
“Babe, if you looked like that, you wouldn’t have to.”
“Oh, charming!”
She plonked me down on the couch.
“Hey, relax, will you? I’m joking. You know you’re attractive so let’s just cut out this poor-little-plain-me bollocks, OK? Look, all I’m saying is if you really don’t want to get back with Scott, then why not start having a bit of fun? I don’t think a convent would take you in now anyway, so you might as well be getting your end away.”
I shrugged. Still, I bet Scott’s not been going without. We all know what he’s like.
“It’s not that I don’t miss making love. I do. And cuddles and male company, all that, but I don’t think I could handle a date. It’s just not me.”
“What? You can’t handle going out to dinner and the cinema? Those are the best bits. Are you completely barking?”
“No, not that. I mean having to laugh at a whole new bunch of terrible jokes and getting used to a
different
set of disgusting habits, and putting up with their macho driving and listening to them moan about their ex-wife. Everyone’s got so much baggage by the time they’re our age.”
“Better that than some spurting virgin still living at home with his mum at forty-five.”
“True.”
“So you’ll meet him?”
I wrinkled my nose.
“You swear he’s definitely not a psycho?”
“I dunno—I believe he may have mentioned something about his collection of axes—oh, for heaven’s sake, Gail, he’s just a bloke.”
“And he’s not bald?”
“Thinning, but only at the front.”
“Height?”
“For God’s sake, I don’t know. Not a gnome anyway. Anything else? Quantity of nostril hair? Willy length and diameter? Name of shop where he buys his underpants? Meet him and if he’s hideous, then just smile politely and don’t give him your phone number.”
I thought about it for another minute.
“OK, then, I’ll do it. But I’m not promising to enjoy it.”
“Heaven forbid.”
To be fair, although Michael was certainly no James Bond, he wasn’t bad looking. He was smart and tidy at least and what was left of his hair had seen a comb in the recent past. There was a little light sprinkling of dandruff across his shoulders but then we’re none of us perfect, are we? He held my chair out for me at the restaurant, which threw me completely having spent most of my adult life with someone who just plonks himself down and is already wondering what he’ll have for dessert without noticing I’m still wrestling with some huge great chair that seems to be made of lead. Scott thinks if he even remembers to say thank you once a day then he’s doing well.
Cassie had told me that Michael was “forty-something,” by which she apparently meant about fifty-five. The plus side of this was that it made me feel incredibly young and I had to stop myself from skipping across to the bar and kicking my legs up in a can-can.
“So hello there, Gail!” he said, darting forward to kiss me on the cheek when he introduced himself. Not a good start. What on earth makes a man think you want to be kissed by someone you’ve never even met?
“Well, here we are!” he laid a hand on my arm. “And what’s your tipple, Gail? No, let me guess! Campari and lemonade, am I right? Or are you dying for a gin and tonic? I know what you girls are like.” He leant towards me then, as if he was telling me a very important and intriguing secret.