Authors: Kathy Lette
‘You’re just going to have to make more effort, Elisabeth. You
are
at that age when husbands start to go off you.’ She swivelled me towards the bank of mirrors. ‘When are you going to Do Something about yourself?’
‘Um … how ’bout never?’ Still, I was startled by the haggard, sleep-deprived, tangle-haired visage peering back at me. Could an adulterous husband do that to you? ‘You
know
I don’t like looking at my reflection.’ I slapped her hand off my arm and turned my back to the glass.
‘Yes. You and Dracula. It’s not normal, darling.’ She leant into my face and scrutinized it ferociously. ‘Look how leathery your skin is. You should have a handle on your arse!’
‘Have you got any idea how annoying you are?’ I growled at her. ‘Skin has only one function. It’s to stop your insides from slopping out everywhere. Why can’t you just let nature take its course?’
‘What?’ she shuddered. ‘Downwards and outwards? Nooooo, thank you.’
‘Look, it’s true. As a teenager I desperately wanted to be super-glamorous, like you,’ I said, glimpsing the clock – I couldn’t believe I’d missed the morning news conference just to enjoy the sharp end of my sister’s tongue, ‘but I had problems with still wanting to eat at least once a day. Now if you’ll excuse me I—’
‘Which is why you’ve ended up old and dull with nothing to regret.’
This was an old refrain I’d put up with since my book-wormed boarding-school days. I felt my blood boil. ‘Oh, yes, all those venereal diseases I missed out on as a teenager, the hangovers and heroin addictions I never experienced. I look on them as the “wasted years”,’ I retaliated flippantly.
The colourist encased Vicky’s tinsel turban between radiator bars. ‘I warned you,’ my sister tut-tutted, pursing her lilo lips. ‘It’s not Life that begins at forty, it’s Death.’
‘Oh, shut up, Victoria. You’re making me feel like the female version of Keith Richards. Now, I really must get back to the Real World. And listen, sis, by the way – the lips? I’m all for collagen injections.’
Her two inflated, fleshy Dunlop tyres mouthed, ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. They provide so many hours of harmless entertainment for the rest of us.’ And with that, I took my cellulite and my crinkles and stomped the hell out of there.
‘Let’s see if you feel that way once you turn forty,’ she called out after me.
‘Once and for all, forty is not old,’ I tossed over my shoulder.
‘Only women who are about to turn forty say that. It’s a terrible age. TOO OLD TO LAMBADA, TOO YOUNG TO DIE.’
* * *
All the way to BBC Television Centre, I massaged my poor, battered ego. I had lived. I had learned. I’d had experiences. I had earned these crows’ feet, goddamn it! Isn’t experience as valuable, in professional terms, as having young skin?
Yeah,
right
. And Cher is ageing
naturally
.
The first blow to my fragile confidence came when I dashed into the doughnut-shaped building known as the Beeb to find myself being taken aside by the production team – Raphael, Crusoe and Dweezil. (It was like working for the Ninja Turtles.) They were PR-ed, upstart, X-generationers (as in X-tremely arrogant), who could pat you on your back to your face while kicking you in your face to your back. Raphael was sorry, he palavered, that I’d missed that morning’s meeting because there had been a long discussion about ‘image’ during which it was decided that I should be shifted from the prime-time slot and replaced by a blow-waved anchorman recently poached from Channel 5.
At first I presumed it was just another instance of There But For the Genetalia Go I.
But no. His appeal, Raphael insisted, was not that he had balls, but that he had what the producer called ‘TVQ’ – Televisual Quotient. In other words, he was young.
I felt a brittle, crumbling sensation inside. ‘Why? Does it make the news any better?’ The office was open plan and all my colleagues were periscoping over their flimsy, carpeted partitions, straining to overhear the conversation.
‘I’m being demoted for someone prettier!’ I announced to them all, as I tried in vain to lasso my extravagant tendrils of hair back into a ponytail.
‘Demoted is such a negative little word, yeah?’ the acned Raphael condescended, sucking on a pen that was probably twice as big as his dick. ‘Think of it more as a staff
feng shui
. We could offer you
Playschool
? That whole mum thing. You can relate to that, yeah?’
Despite the profound sense of loss engulfing me, I squared my shoulders. ‘Screw you and the ageist policy change you rode in on. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’d like to go and spend some more quality time with my wrinkles.’
Which is why I left pretty much as I’d arrived – fired with enthusiasm.
I know you’d have to be a Trappist vegan celibate not to get hurt in Life, but losing my hubby and my job in twenty-four hours did seem one visit too many from the Fuck-up Fairy. Bumper-to-bumpering back along Euston Road, arms clenched around the steering-wheel, I tried to contain the anguish I felt inside. I rang my sister and ascertained her location – a shabby photo graphic studio in Camden. I drove straight there to find her erotically draped over a couple of seventy-year-old men wearing cardigans.
‘What the hell are you advertising?’
‘Viagra. It was all the agency could get me.
Now
do you understand why I need to be rescued by something tall, dark and Sven-like?’
‘Well, don’t give any Viagra to Sven. He’ll only get taller,’ I said caustically.
‘Ha bloody ha. So what’s up?’
When I’d numbly reported the change in my employment status, her voice shivered. ‘Christ, Elisabeth. Well, you really can’t afford to lose your husband now. If you’re not going to improve your looks, then you’d better get bloody good in bed.’
A hollow laugh escaped my lips. ‘Hugo and I’ve been together for eleven years. To us, “good in bed” means not snoring, farting or taking all the covers.’
‘Really? I always thought Hugo might be quite imaginative in the sack.’ She paused to pout for the camera, looking exactly like one of those tribal women on the Discovery Channel with plates in their bottom lip. She really should have been advertising tableware. ‘Has the passion really gone?’
‘Put it this way, my birthday present was a weed-whacker.’
‘A weed-whacker? Bloody hell. Then you have
got
to get more creative in bed.’
‘What are you suggesting?
Origami?
’
‘No! Toys, games, fantasies, French ticklers, benwah balls, banana-flavoured erecto-gel … Become alluring and sensual. Sex keeps you young. And it’s terribly good for your complexion.’
All the way home up Haverstock Hill (and much to the amusement of other motorists), I practised alluring and sensual facial expressions in the rear-view mirror. After a particularly jubilant response from a group of schoolboys at the traffic lights I rang Vicky back. ‘Posing provocatively in latex lederhosen is
not
the way to intrigue a husband like mine. Think about it. What first captivated him? My composure while under fire. I was too shell-shocked to fight with him last night. If I can just keep my dignity and not get all desperate …’ the car moaned around the corner of my cobbled street ‘… Hugo will have enough space to take a fresh look at me, to remember what he loved about me in the first bloody place. I mean, what could be more attractive to an errant husband, I ask you, than a cool, in-control wife?’
It was then that I crashed into the red pillar-box. I wasn’t hurt, but the sheer shock of it made me slump over the wheel and sob uncontrollably. A blur of raggedness tumbling through the passenger side door slowly resolved into the shambolic shape of Calim.
‘Jaysus. Are you okay?’
‘I’m having a pulmonary embolism, but apart from that …’
‘What’s goin’ on?’
‘Oh, nothing much. I’ve lost my job and … and my sister just told me that I have the erotic appeal of a dental-floss dispenser.’
He grinned coyly, rummaging through his pockets for a crumpled tissue. ‘J’know what men really find excitin’ in bed? A woman who’s confident enough to enjoy sex … and you’re a confident woman, Lizzie.’
I blew my nose. ‘You’ve been to say-the-right-thing school, haven’t you, Cal?’
‘But it is true, Lizzie. Bein’ sexy is more to do with bein’ at ease with your body than anythin’ else. I don’t know any woman with a perfect body … but I know loads of sexy ones. A woman who’s really juiced up, whatever her shape, is more erotic than a woman who walks backwards out of bedrooms.’
Like airbags in a car, sensitivity in a man is an optional extra. And Cal was clearly top of the range. I squeezed his arm. ‘Are you sure you’re not gay?’
‘Hey, I’m so in touch with my feminine side I’m startin’ to complain about me wobbly thighs. Lemme help you out of there.’
Since the driver’s door was wedged up against the post-box, I had to slide across the console. It was then, to add insult to injury, that I got impaled on the gear lever. The symbolism proved too much for me. ‘Hugo … was … unfaithful.’ I started sobbing again.
Cal reeled. ‘No! Who with?’
‘Britney … I can’t even put her name in my mouth, I mean you never know where it’s
been
. The Artist Formerly Known as Slut.’
‘Amore? Britney Amore? Christ almighty.’
‘Yes. The actress from
Genital Hospital
. I walked in on them. He said it was just a kiss, but his hand was between her legs. She was naked. And I’m pretty sure his fly was at half-mast. I couldn’t tell if he was zipping it down, or – or zipping it up.’
My mobile phone shrieked. It was Jamie’s teacher, Ms Savage, reminding me that I’d promised to go on the afternoon excursion to the British Museum. ‘You signed the return slip and tore along the dotted line at the bottom,’ she reminded me sternly.
‘School,’ I said, staggering out of the car. ‘Excursion. I forgot.’
‘Tell her you can’t go. Tell her you’re a meningitis carrier.’
‘Only a certificate of death – a recent one – would be an acceptable excuse for Ms Savage. Could you drive me?’
Hampstead is built on one of the few high hills in London. The sunshine had vapourized and the city below us had become so grey it looked veiled in gauze – a perfect meteorological match for my mood. In minutes the sky darkened and a passing storm shattered on to the streets. Puddles hissed beneath car tyres. Cal pulled me into his battered Volkswagen with the the bumper bar sticker ‘Who cares who’s on board?’ On the dashboard was a hand-scribbled note declaring, ‘No radio. Already stolen.’
‘I’m going to stick a sign on
Hugo
,’ I said, ‘reading, “This is
not
an abandoned husband”.’
‘Obviously,’ Cal said, trying to concertina his six-foot frame behind the wheel, ‘I’m only drivin’ this wee car to prove that I have an enormous cock. You do understand that, right?’
As he contorted into the driver’s seat, I lectured myself quite sternly. It was no good looking for my self-esteem in Lost Property. I could compete with that Slutcicle. I had a vivid, quirky imagination. Whereas Britney was a No-brow. She was ninety-eight per cent personality free. She was Bimbo-lite. One week and he’d be sick of the bland taste of her. Whereas
I
was a complex carbo of a woman. A nourishing, filling, well-balanced meal. I could make Wildean epigrams. Do cryptic crosswords. I knew the square root of the hypotenuse.
She
, on the other hand, was nothing more than a mattress with breasts – something to lie down on while having a shag – president of the Vaginal Discharge Self-Help Group. Our relationship was based on more than just tawdry sex. We had a deep commitment. Goddamn it.
I
was a return-slip-tear-along-the-dotted-line-at-the-bottom signer! I was not going to degrade myself by trying to compete with the likes of
her
. It was good in a marriage to create a little intrigue, but that didn’t mean greeting my husband at the door in edible undies.
Cal finally squeezed into take-off position and shook his mad hair. Water drops flew off his curls like spangled jewels. As he careered down the street, contenting himself by making helpful corrective gestures at other drivers, I felt a rekindled faith in my husband. I’d overreacted. Birthday blues had made me feel vulnerable, that was all. Maybe it really
was
just a kiss. And what was that, after all? Just the anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction. It was clear that Britney Amore was nothing more than a fly on the windscreen of my life.
Awash with relief I rang Hugo to tell him how much I loved him. The hospital said he’d gone home for lunch. I rang the cleaner. She said Hugo had called to say he’d be staying late at the hospital.
We were outside Jamie’s school gates. ‘Where to now, ma’am?’ Cal asked, doffing an imaginary hat.
‘A whip emporium. Pronto. I need to buy benwah balls, banana-flavoured erecto gel, French ticklers and a vibrator with forward and reverse gears.’
Another thing a worldly, smart thirty-nine-year-old woman needs to know: up against a Sex Goddess, principles and profundity are about as useful as a eunuch at a whipped-cream orgy.
5
If I Can’t Have It All, Can I At Least Have Some of
Hers
?
THE FEMALE ORGASM
is more of a mystery than the continued career success of George W. Bush. But, by God, I was determined to have one with my husband. An Academy award-winning one – better than any two-bit telly actress could pull off.
After a quick detour to a sex shop called Ssssh, Cal had dropped me, late, at the British Museum so I could go into Mother Mode. We got home from collecting Julia to find a message on the answering machine from Hugo, saying he’d be back at seven. I consulted my watch. That gave me one and a half hours. In between burning chicken nuggets and checking maths homework, I ran to the bathroom, showered and shampooed. I pffted with that spray and pffted with another, powdered armpits and nose, painted fingers and toes, trowelled on moustache bleach and spatulaed off depilatory creams. Then, finally, I shook out the lingerie I’d bought (with Cal fiercely guarding the changing room), threaded myself into the tight lace teddy, took a deep breath and dared to glance into the mirror.