A Certain Age (19 page)

It was too much to take in. Especially when I got back to the office and found Jeff ensconced. Of course. The complainant. The snog. “Pickering has asked me to take
over,” he said. “It’s much better for the magazine this way, Sue.” He emptied some feminine toiletries out of my office drawer, with the look of someone who’s never seen anything like them before. He probably thought Tampax was the name of a side in the Greek second division. He didn’t admit he’d been plotting my downfall. All he said, rather sadly, was, “You used to be really nice.”

[
Radio switched on for the football results
] So here I am. I just kept thinking, “How would this look if it were the other way round?” But I can’t sort that out, it’s too confusing, I just feel sort of double-crossed. There ought to be a book called
Men Who Want Women to be Men, and the Women Who Go Along with It.
I’ll write it if no one else will. Men do want women to be like them, you know. It’s not just Professor Higgins. And I’ve worked out why. Men want women to be more like men because then they don’t have to feel guilty about dumping on us. And then, the gits, they dump on us anyway.

[
Results in background
] I had a little cry last night about Laurence. But how could I let him say he loved me? [
Distracted
] Blimey, five-nil, that’s a turn-up. In the old days when a Bronnley lemon was a romantic highlight, it would have been nice to think I was loved. But as I said to Mum last night, I’m sorry, I’ve reached a certain age and I just can’t be vulnerable to blokes any more. I know how their minds work, Mum. I know too much about them.

[
Recovers
]
Gardening What
, I ask you.
Gardening Why
more like it. I’ll tell you what though. Mendelssohn got stretchered off on his first appearance this afternoon. [
Laughs
] His left foot was superlative, apparently; even his left leg was special. The fans were thrilled, fifteen million well spent. But after a quarter of an hour he collided with his own keeper, and his right leg broke in three places.
Like pistol shots apparently. Crack, crack, crack. Fifteen minutes they got out of him; a million quid a minute. I’m wondering if I might ring Chris Eubank later. I know his number, after all.

Scene One: central London café with low hubbub; it is around 9.30 in the morning on a rainy, wintry day; Alastair is listening to conversation at a nearby table, but we can’t hear it; he talks in a kind of angry whisper, with harrumphs

Why don’t they hang up signs in public places? “Please desist from doing easy crosswords out loud if you are phenomenally stupid.” This was supposed to be
MY
ten
minutes:
MY
ten minutes when I have a double espresso – which they do quite well here, although I told them last time quite clearly, biscotti being a plural form in the first place, there can obviously be no such word as “biscotties”. Anyway, this is supposed to be my ten minutes, in which I peruse this stunning 1895 vellum edition of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses –
the one with the Beardsley linocuts – before swooping down on the biannual Chelsea Book Fair in search of similar leather-bound treasures for Nick’s shop. But can I concentrate? No. Why? Because of some idiots, equipped with a copy of the
Daily Idiot,
trying to fill in the more idiotic of the idiots’ crosswords. “Bee-oh-wolf,” she said just now. And I’m supposed to sit here, studying an illustration of Philomel being turned into a nightingale, and not interfere? “Bee-oh-wolf, four letters, second letter P,” she says. [
Stupid sing-song clueless noise
] “Oh,” says her clueless friend. I haven’t seen either of them properly, but the second one sounded remarkably like that woman Nick set me up with for his fortieth birthday – which he did, as usual, without conducting even the most basic compatibility research. “What’s a Bee-oh-wolf then?” “Dunno,” says the first one, “I don’t think there
ARE
any four-letter words with P as the second letter, are there? Perhaps your “Nipple” is wrong—” and I think I can’t stand this, so I call across, [
snappy
] “Epic, the answer’s epic, you stupid woman!” and then go back to my book. Of course, that was only the beginning. “Who said that?” “He did. Bloke with the beard.” “What’s it got to do with him?”

[
Pause; hubbub; he stirs coffee and sips it
] I’m trying not to listen, but … [
sigh
]. I made a policy decision some years ago, you see, that in this sort of situation, I just won’t suffer in silence. And sometimes it does prevent more
agony, because, all right, they may laugh at me and call me names, but I manage, on occasion, to [
raises voice a bit, to be heard
]
SHAME THEM INTO SILENCE.

[
Short pause; the hubbub is continuous; he picks up something new. Impatient
] Not these two, though; it’s unbelievable, unbelievable; they’re still at it. [
He blurts out another answer
] Waterfall! The answer’s waterfall! Cataract! Nine letters beginning with W! Water, five letters. Fall, four letters. Meaning: a cataract. It’s no good, I can’t stand this. It’s torture. [
Calls out
] It’s all right, madam, I’m going.

[
He gathers his things hurriedly, swigs his coffee
] I’m going, you win, welcome to the Kingdom of Barbaria! I’m going, I’m going, the field is yours.

Scene Two: evening: Alastair is at home; classical music in background. He is quite tired and oddly happy; having a hot drink at bedtime

[
He drinks
] Ah. Cocoa. Those Aztecs knew a thing or two. Yes, after a day of hard, gruelling human sacrifice and baking poor little guinea pigs inside lumps of mud, curl up with a nice cup of cocoa. [
Drinks
]
Life Groomers
, I’d never even heard of it; apparently it gets an audience of two million, but then, let’s face it, so would hanging, drawing and quartering if they brought it back, so that’s hardly a watertight argument for taking part in it. I still don’t quite believe the way today turned out. I mean, it started typically enough, with those Thicky Sisters at that café cudgelling their atom-sized brains over simple synonyms. [
Sips happily
] The Fair went well, I returned to Nick’s shop at 3 p.m. with my antiquarian treasures,
which had been hilariously under-priced by Thatched Cottage Books of Alfriston, and we had a cup of Lapsang to celebrate, and Nick complained about the customers, who were (as usual) within earshot, while I re-shelved the fiction, having noticed that M. R. James had got alphabetically the wrong side of Henry James, which is typical of the sort of morons you get browsing in Charing Cross Road bookshops these days, and I was just back to leafing through
Metamorphoses
when Nick coughed and mentioned in a rather uncomfortable way that, ahem, well, the thing was, a couple of people were coming in this afternoon to see me. Of course, at this point, I was still blissfully innocent of what was about to unfold. “To see
ME
?” I said. “Why?” For one wild moment, I wondered if I was winning a pub quiz trophy – for my years of dedication or outstanding brilliance. But it wasn’t that. He looked at the clock, gulped, and said in a rush, [
quite anxious
] “Alastair, I hope you won’t mind, but I put you forward for
Life Groomers.”
I said, “Oh.” Well, I didn’t know what
Life Groomers
was, so I waited for a bit more information. He said, look, it’s been a long time since Geraldine, hasn’t it? And I said yes, ha, twelve years, why d’you ask? Well, he said, I’m going to tell you straight here, Alastair, as a friend. [
Hard to say it to best friend
] You’re not attractive to women.

WHAT
? I said. I mean, [
hollow laugh
] I’m sorry, but this is
NICK
! “Alastair,” he says, “you’re a nice person. You have a lot of love to give. These Life Groomer people will give you techniques to make you come over
AS
a nice person instead of – instead of as [
this still stings
] a lonely pedantic short-tempered beardy-weirdy. Change is a good thing. I mean, that book you’re reading. That’s all about change, isn’t it?”

So I was just saying, “Yes, Nick, but the people in this book are mostly turned, against their will, into
TREES”
when half a dozen people came in, just like that, door opens, bell goes ding-a-ling-a-ling, man with a camera with a light on top of it, Nick says, “Oops, they’re here,” and in they march. [
It’s an awful memory
] I stand there blinking like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. “You must be Alastair!” says this man with a comical haircut and thick orange make-up. “Good man! I’m Jake from
Life Groomers.
Great stuff. Meet the team! Great stuff! Jancis (“Hello!”) is going to help you with haircut, wardrobe and, er, strategic shaving; Baxter (“Hi, man!”) will improve that oh-so negative body language of yours; and Phoebe (“Lovely to meet you!”) will attempt to train you out of certain linguistic habits. We’ve been filming you secretly for a couple of weeks already. Are you surprised?” [
Pause, stunned
] “Yes, I am surprised.” “Good man! The girl with the very thick glasses is the production assistant Shakira ([
a whisper
] “Hello”), she’s a bit shy, and that’s Chazza with the clipboard ([
idiot voice
] “Hi, man”), anything at all you want to know, ask Chazza.” He paused for me to say something about how thrilled I was. I didn’t. I merely wondered, since Jake had said I could ask Chazza anything at all, what would happen if I asked him the capital of Botswana. “Great stuff. Excellent. What more can I say? Welcome to
Life Groomers!”
At which point, everyone in the shop, including a couple of my least favourite customers who were loitering in the travel section, burst into wild applause.

[
Drinks
] The only good thing about the whole experience was seeing Nick’s expression. He looked like he’d just watched his best friend and long-time employee run over by a tank. Which, in a way, he had. I let him stew. I wasn’t
so much angry with him as shocked. When Jake and most of the others had gone, leaving Chazza and Shakira behind to explain the formalities, I went and stood in the back yard, in the drizzling rain, and I was actually shaking. Before they left, the Life Groomers had given me some bits of instant advice, by way of a free sample. And these helpful hints were: stop hunching; lose the floppy bow-tie; and stop passing hurtful snap judgements on other people’s inferior intellectual capacity.

[
Drinks
] Morons. I came back inside.

[
Serious
] “Do you have any misgivings, Alastair?” said Shakira. Her glasses were so thick, I noticed, that her eyes behind them looked quite tiny. She was frowning and serious.

“You might say that,” I said. “Look, the way I see it is this. If I come across as a lonely, pedantic beardy-weirdy” – I looked at Nick when I said this, in the hope that he would have the grace to look embarrassed, instead of which he prompted, “Don’t forget short-tempered”. “All right,” I said. “If I come across
LIKE THAT
, isn’t it just possible that a lonely, pedantic, short-tempered beardy-weirdy is what I am?”

Shakira folded her arms and for a few moments looked at them in silence. Chazza – concentrating on his clipboard – started drawing pictures of windmills to pass the time. At last, she spoke. “Do you know Michelangelo’s unfinished sculpture in Florence?”

[
Impressed, but suspicious
] “Er, yes,” I said. She had a sweet little face behind those glasses.

“Well,” said Shakira, “to me, you see, that figure, the way it’s half-emerged from the block of marble, sort of struggling to be born – I think that answers your doubts about
Life Groomers.”

“Er, in what way?”

“Some of us don’t want to be helped out of our blocks of marble, even though we sense we are only half-finished. But if we are released, with expert help, we are still the same material, you see. [
She’s warming up
] I mean, the statue is still marble. Which shows that it’s possible to change yet remain the same. I promise you, Alastair, you will
ALWAYS
be essentially a pedantic beardy-weirdy. You just may not always be a lonely one.”

Nick gave me a look, as if to say, “You see?” I gave him a returning look that said, “Oh bog off, you Judas.”

She had another thought. [
Light
] “Chazza, do you remember Jeremy?”

[
Puzzled
] “That geezer who’d never had a girlfriend?”

“Jeremy’s problem was that he was like the unfinished statue.”

Chazza snorted. “Yeah. But he also had a gigantic conk.”

Scene Three: the date. The bathroom of a restaurant, where Alastair is being filmed on a date; he is agitated. Sounds of loos flushing, taps, hand-driers, etc. When he impersonates Caroline, she’s quite posh-sounding

I am trying. But I think this may be the worst torture ever devised by the mind of man. “Just have to go to the Gents,” I said – and I could tell she was a bit puzzled; after all, this is the third time I’ve come in here, and we’re only halfway through the soup. I just keep thinking, look, I’m in here trying to be pleasant to a complete stranger in an extraordinarily provocative frock, and outside in a surveillance caravan there’s Jancis, Baxter and Phoebe,
all making [
exaggerated “that’s interesting” sound
] “O-o-oh” noises, and ticking a box every time I say the word “stupid”.

A shame they wouldn’t let me do this dummy-run with Shakira. I did ask. If it was Shakira, you see, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be interested in her. [
Knows it sounds mean
] Oh, look, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that before she left the shop the other day, she bought a book about early French cinema, and when I said, “There’s a complete Jean Vigo DVD out now,” and she said, “I know, I’ve ordered it,” it was just like, you know, chatting. If it weren’t for the chronic myopia and the crippling shyness, she’d be all right. It turned out she’d even booked to see some of that Jean Cocteau season at the NFT, featuring that rarely seen extra footage from
La Belle et la Bête.