4

Too Old to Lambada, Too Young to Die

A WOMAN OF thirty-nine prides herself on her worldly smarts. We know never to order anything on the menu described as a ‘medley of’. We know that any product’s packaging which reads ‘easy to assemble’ will contain more components, screws, wires and thingamajigs than a NASA space shuttle …And that husbands are prone to pork younger women. Okay, I know what you’re thinking – not all men fancy eighteen-year-olds …You’re right. Some fancy sixteen-year-olds. It’s a given. Still, every time I thought of my husband’s betrayal it felt as though a slavering wolverine was trying to claw its way out of my abdomen via my oesophagus.

Hugo? Between the legs of a woman he’d met for only ten minutes? Hugo Frazer MD, the man who’s so terrified of diseases that he wears a condom while masturbating? Hugo Frazer MD, who showers before taking a bath in which he uses separate washcloths on different parts of his body so as not to cross-contaminate from one orifice to the other? Who gargles after oral sex? Hugo Frazer MD, whose body is so sterile, a bacterium would die of loneliness there? But there he was. The Howard Hughes of Husbands, discovered with an unprotected part of his anatomy inserted into a vagina monologuist. But was it just his tongue in her mouth? Or had he also explored a more unmentionable aperture of this strange woman’s body? Was this the same man who, when making love to me, stopped at timed intervals to time his own pulse and respiration rate? Post-coitus I’ve often felt that, like a kindly children’s GP, he was going to give me a jellybean for saying, ‘Aaargh.’

The next morning, as I jockeyed for position among the designer jeep gridlock of horn-happy mothers late for Hampstead school runs, steering with one hand because I was leafing through an architecture book to find inspiration for the Greek temple I was planning to construct from ice-lolly sticks at subsequent traffic lights (why is it that kids never tell you about their homework until they’re halfway out the door?), I paused to change gear with my teeth, while simultaneously fielding light, frivolous topics like ‘If God made us, then who made God?’, and balancing a Corinthian column between my legs with an ice lolly under each armpit, I found myself pondering a profound question: why the hell did I ever get married?

Adultery only happened to other couples. I’d read that it was on the increase, but I’d never dreamt my Hugo would cheat. We were completely entwined – emotionally, economically, socially, physically; spun together like silkworms. I just couldn’t believe he could do this to me.

Two traffic fines and a dented bumper later, I delivered the kids to school. Just as I contemplated returning my family to their manufacturer to request a new model (because this one was obviously faulty) Julia and Jamie drowned me in kisses so wet the assistance of surf lifesavers was required. And a great poignancy squeezed into my bones as I felt full of freshly minted mother love. Kids have that way of just slipping in between your heartbeats. And Hugo, the man I’d loved most of my adult life, was their father. I had loved him so hard and for so long, it would take a restraining order to keep these feelings out of my heart. I loved the competent way he steered me through crowds, a sturdy, protective hand in the small of my back. I loved the fact that he always knew just how much to tip. I loved the inky arabesques of his handwriting on those indecipherable prescriptions. I even loved his singing voice, which sounded as though he was chewing off his own foot. I loved him because he was worthy and good. My man had made his name in a charitable cause, helping children injured by land mines, for heaven’s sake. And, by God, I was going to keep him. I would start by abiding by his wishes and being absolutely one hundred per cent lip-zipped discreet.

‘Hugo played doctors-and-nurses with that soap actress from Tell Me Where It Hurts.’ I sobbed into my mobile five minutes later.

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Elisabeth, you’ve been sniffing your kids’ homework glue again, haven’t you?’ diagnosed my half-sister.

‘Or maybe it was just a vigorous exchange of saliva … I’m not sure. You must promise not to tell anyone, Vick …’ I swabbed my leaking eyes with a sleeve.

‘Darling, I hate gossip – but don’t tell anyone I said so! Your secret is safe with me.’

‘Yeah, you and Matt Drudge.’

‘I won’t tell anyone, darling … Well, only about twenty or thirty thousand of my closest friends. Where are you?’ she barked.

I glanced out of the window at the sooty Victorian buildings, recognizing, between hot tears, the Planetarium. ‘Marylebone Road. Why? What are you up to?’

As if I needed to ask. My sister is a petted frequenter of many salons – nail, face, body, groin – but she is most renowned for her long blonde tresses. And, believe me, it costs over two hundred pounds a month to get hair that natural.

Her crimping salon was literally one street away. ‘But I’m …’ I glanced at my Swatch. ‘Jesus! Very late for work.’

‘That Uberslut! What are you going to do to her?’ Her husky voice went metallic and staccato as it broke up on my mobile.

‘I’m pondering the Uzi machine-gun, hostage-taking and gradual-posting-of-bits-of-her-body-for-ransom option.’ I lurched my large family car into an illegal double-yellow park outside the exclusive salon. ‘That option looks quite attractive at this point.’

‘You can’t hate Britney Amore as much as I do. Have you any bloody idea how long I’ve been grooming Sven for marriage?’

‘Vick, come on, you didn’t have a real “relationship” with Sven. You just had three hundred and sixty-five one-night stands with the same person.’ I cut the ignition.

‘But I need a man. A rich man. I have designer footwear needs! Then there’s the clothes – Moschino, Versace, Valentino. That John Galliano dress alone was three and a half thousand. All put together by my very expensive stylist, of course. Underwear – La Perla – we’re talking a hundred and fifty for matching bra and pants. Then there’s two thousand a year gym membership so that the body looks good in the La Perla. Prada shoes – plus yoga, acupuncture and osteopathy to recover from wearing Prada shoes. A weekly personal masseur – fifty pounds. Facials once a month, seventy-five. Weekly nail technician specializing in transfers, piercings and varnish airbrushing, fifty-five. Pedicure, forty-eight. Hair-cuts, eighty pounds a trim, not including highlights every fortnight with seventy-pound white-truffle moisturizing shampoo … Darling, people who say that money can’t buy happiness just don’t know where to shop.’

I was walking through the crimpers now; phone cupped to my ear. It was a posh inner-city salon where they dyed your hair in the same sort of organic stuff they seemed to serve for lunch. It was what Cal called bullshit millennium food – balsamic this, sourdough that, wood-fired everything else.

‘I am going to win Sven back, Lizzie. At all costs … Which is why I’m forking out for a few little procedures …’

Her lips came into view first. They were twice as big as they had been last night. These were childbearing lips. Swollen and bruised purple, it looked as if two velvet beanbags had been velcroed to my sister’s lower face. I skidded to a halt. ‘What the hell …’ I dropped my mobile phone on to the mock marble floor where it skittered beneath the kneeling Filipino pedicurist, who was busily separating my sister’s toes with wads of tissue. A manicurist, also of third-world extraction, was kneading Victoria’s left hand as her right propped open a glamour mag at a page entitled ‘Hasta La Vista Body Hair’. Victoria’s entire cranium was wrapped in tin-foil plumes, which a colourist was lacquering in foul-smelling bleach. But it was the lips that demanded total optical astonishment.

‘Beauty,’ Victoria’s Velcro beanbags proclaimed, ‘is one of the most lovely and natural things money can buy … For God’s sake! Don’t kiss me!’ she shrieked, shrinking. ‘Can’t kiss anyone until my own tissue grows around and locks the scaffolding into shape.’

‘Yeuch!’ I backed off. ‘Way too much information.’

‘In a couple of months, apparently, it will feel normal to both eat and talk again.’

‘Oh, well, that’s comforting.’

‘The doctor used alloderm. It’s a sheet of human collagen taken from dead people. They feed the sheet through a small incision and—’

‘Lips to die for.’ I shuddered. ‘Literally.’

‘It’s the Julia Roberts look.’ Actually it was the I’vegot-a-vagina-sutured to my face look. ‘Sven will love it.’

For a moment, I pondered Sven’s fifty-six-year-old gargoyle excrescences. ‘Victoria, have you actually looked at the man lately? He’s so hirsute he needs nostril mousse. What’s foreplay for you two? Combing nits out of his back hair?’

‘Any man on the Sunday Times Rich List looks exactly like Brad Pitt to me.’ Her face flickered and tensed. ‘I’m tired, Lizzie.’ The normal swagger in her voice was extinguished. ‘And I’m lonely. I’m so lonely I’ve started to talk to my daughter! Speaking of which, Sven offered to sign Marrakech and that bloody little egg-head turned him down. Can you believe that? And he’s not happy with Britney Amore. He really opened up to me last night.’

‘And let me guess, confessed to a few major felonies?’

‘You’ve got Sven wrong. He’s charming, he’s polite—’

‘What? He says “please” before he rapes you?’

‘He’s realized that he’s always loved me. He told me, right after we …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Right after what?’ I asked, flopping exhausted into the leather swivel chair beside her.

My sister took a deep breath. ‘Right after we made love last night.’

I gazed at her, stupefied. ‘Am I the only one not having sex around here?’ I finally managed to blurt, modulating the outburst when I realized that every neck in the salon was craning in my direction.

‘It’s all right, darlings,’ Victoria announced to the gawping patrons. ‘She’s just having an out-of-marriage experience … Look on the bright side,’ she lowered her voice, ‘you’ll lose so much weight now!’

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You have way too much time on your hands, Victoria, do you know that?’

She then leant into my ear. ‘Sven’s going to dump the Fellatrix pour moi.’

I felt a sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach. ‘Oh, God. If Sven leaves Britney Amore for you, that will leave her free to steal Hugo!’ It would be the mating version of Musical Chairs.

‘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.