Older women - beware - from the classics, not to mention the soaps, the women’s magazines and the entire accumulated acknowledged truth that everyone knows, common sense in fact, we learn this simple fact: men simply aren’t interested in women over forty. Past forty? Forget it, love. You’re past your sell-by date, a high miler, mutton dressed as lamb, granny’s oysters, a farcical yet sinister bunny boiler, snatch 22: tragic sub-fertile menopausal harridan with facial hair and warts. And hairy warts. In the dank, hideous winter of your life. With no spring in sight, not even a nasty dismal grey one, not ever. Male comedians will dress up as you, and everyone except you will think it is hilarious. You will want to cry. Just crawl away and die. Go on.
I used to believe that. How tragic I was! That was before this happened:
I’m going to begin my story, right here, jumping in, and you’ll have to keep up with me a bit, because in many ways it’s not the beginning, any more than this is the end, with the day I went to the bank, that April, the cruellest month, great poets know these things, and enquired innocently about the status of my account. It was definitely the end of one part of my life, so necessarily the beginning of something else.
It was a joint account. We’d always had a joint account, since we were married straight out of university. When we were but children, I now realise, looking back. I knew there was a lot of money in there, a vast heap of money, because we had sold our huge old family-size house to cope with his various financial and emotional crises, put all our furniture into storage and were living in a tiny rented flat. Consequently the account was bulging with equity, big fat equity, to the tune of four hundred and forty thousand pounds.
I’m not going to talk much about him, by the way, make your own mind up: you might have to read a bit between the lines; even thinking about him for any length of time can cause me to turn shiraz with rage. Not shiraz rose either, but the good old purple stuff.
What with the general financial crisis and the daughter about to do GCSEs (not to mention having been married for seventeen years, and so not particularly trying any more), I had not been in the habit of giving a lot of time to my appearance so was a bit dishevelled hair-wise as I wandered into the bank that morning, had no make-up on, and was wearing a tweed overcoat with large green checks from the Help the Aged shop, which it would have been over-generous to describe as vintage. I would say it was a lower middle-class, mid-sixties coat, as from my childhood I remember women wearing similar things clutching Silver Cross pram handles and lurking around the primary school gate at home time. A Moors murderer type of coat. You get the picture.
The cashier, who was a snotty blonde with completely the wrong shade of lipstick, a cruel pink which clashed with her complexion in a strangely hypnotic way, how these details remain engraved on my mind, handed me the slip of paper with the mini-statement on it.
“Twenty-eight pounds forty-three pee,” she said in a voice which suggested she had been sent to elocution lessons at some formative stage in her life.
“What? Not four hundred thousand and something? Pounds? Er - some more noughts?” I flailed.
“It’s written down there for you,” she said kindly, clearly feeling that her job was hard enough without having to deal with care in the community customers with mental problems, and pointing at the final total with a long, bright pink fingernail. It matched the lipstick. No chips on her lacquer. She turned away and started to shuffle some papers in a way which suggested I should move on.
There was a hesitation while my emotions considered their options.
“Oh well, thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” I said, clearing my throat, which seemed to have seized up. I never forget my manners in a crisis. It gains me thinking time, as well as being a lot less tiring than shouting.
I went home in a bit of a daze. He was packing.
“Where are you going? What‘s going on?”
“You don’t need to know that.” He left. In my car.
My daughter and I looked at each other. She was crying. I tried to remember what I was supposed to do, and eventually thought about giving her a hug, even though frozen snow-women don’t give the most comforting hugs in the world.
“Mum,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. I was thinking, and this is a strange thing to do in a crisis, and a bit masculine possibly (I like to think I am in touch with my masculine side) but I was thinking how pretty she is. How very extraordinarily pretty, and, even more importantly, young. What lovely hair, what fabulous skin etc. How nice to be sixteen. She also has a wonderful figure and a great brain. I thought, at least I don’t have to worry too much about her. She’ll be alright. Even if her father is a selfish bastard. The wanker. What the hell was going on?
Her name is Nancy.
“Mum,” said Nancy again.
“Yes darling,” I said.
“Mum, what are we going to do?” My shoulder was a bit soggy with tears, but she was slowing down the sobbing now.
“It’ll be fine,” I said, “for a start I can go and buy a computer now, the mean sod wouldn’t let me get one. Hoorah, we can surf the web. And things. All that.”
“But we haven’t got any money.”
“I’m going to get a job,” I said, “and I’ll get all the money back off the mean sod, I mean your dad, and we’ll get a house, and we’ll go on holiday, you’ll see.” I hesitated. “Even to Disneyland, if you like - ” (I had always hated theme parks, so this was very noble). “It‘ll be fine. Trust me. We‘ll manage.” I said all this with splendid and commendable calmness.
“But what if you can’t?” she wailed, falling onto the sofa in a theatrical attitude of despair.
“Have I ever not done anything I said I was going to do?” I demanded.
She looked at me in a way which I decided to interpret as hopeful and tentatively confident. I’m not fantastic at reading facial expressions. Or determining people’s motives. Often, when I’m watching one of those films that depends heavily on eyebrow acting and subtle glances at the floor, I start to be all at sea about what’s going on and have to nudge my companions for enlightenment. This is not always as endearing as I imagine it to be.
“And anyway, I don’t want to go to Disneyland any more.”
