The Younger Man Read online

  We haven’t all been together like this for ages, so we will discuss everything from religion, politics and sex, to childbirth (obviously given one of us is having a baby imminently, possibly at the table by the look of Valerie. SHE IS HUGE), divorce (Carron looks as though she’s going to explode but for different reasons), marriage (Fran has a lot to tell about the wedding and will, but hopefully in precis form), death (okay, we’re forty this year but we’ve at least hopefully got another thirty to go) and men (the understanding of them and having sex with). Not necessarily in that order.

  Doreen starts the proceedings.

  ‘So how is everyone? Who wants to start? And how long has everyone got for lunch?’

  My friend, dear as she is, has an irritating habit of turning our lunches initially into meetings. She has an over-developed time management chip which is usually useful but occasionally annoying. She takes an hour to chill. She chairs so much in her job, that it filters over into her private life. She drives Mick nuts, but I think he’s as officious as she is. We still love her of course, as we’ve known her for over thirty years and saw her develop into this withering career woman. But we all know, deep down, she’s a teddy bear.

  All the girls say they’ve got to get back to someone or for something by three.

  ‘No, no one to get back to,’ Carron answers, eyes glazed and red.

  ‘Better than going home to Dennis. He was always chasing you up about who you were with, how long you were going to be. You’ve got your freedom. Use it,’ says Doreen. ‘Use the scorch and burn approach to ending relationships. Men do.’

  Then Doreen turns to me. ‘Hazel? You got to get back early? A man or anything?’

  For some reason, Doreen thinks as I am single, I am having endless gratuitous sex every night. That as I am single, and Sarah doesn’t need babysitting, I can go off with carefree abandon for long weekends to Bath and Le Manoir aux Quat’saisons (two of my favourite places for long weekends), and am on some sort of superwoman fuckfest to undo all the celibacy I had to endure when married to David (he said he didn’t trust or respect me so couldn’t sleep with me but that is another story).

  ‘Actually, there is someone. Someone I like, but he’s not waiting home for me with slippers and a condom,’ I say, fiddling with the flower decoration which I find rather pretentious so I’m quite enjoying slowly destroying it. ‘But I’ve got some work to catch up on. I’ve got a good three hours to listen and tell all.’

  ‘Oh, tell us about him.’ Valerie beams. ‘I need some light relief. I’ve been having the most awful back pain. I’ve put on three stone, you know.’

  The girls smile. Valerie says this as though we haven’t noticed. She is huge. As in Sumo wrestler huge. As in puffer fish at full blow in Finding Nemo huge.

  ‘It’s just water retention,’ Valerie explains.

  I can feel Doreen aching to say ‘This is complete bollocks,’ but she doesn’t. Of course, it’s not water retention. It’s the fact Valerie hasn’t stopped eating and has done nothing apart from breathe since she discovered she was pregnant. She looks like two people rolled into one and requires two seats rather than one at a restaurant that typically entertains anorexic ambitious neurotic moody secretaries being dined by control freak public school anally inclined bosses.

  ‘The guy is a work colleague and—’

  Doreen interrupts, ‘Never fucking works. Don’t go there. Don’t fuck him. You haven’t fucked him, have you, darling?’

  ‘I am fully aware of the pitfalls of having a relationship at work.’

  ‘You’ve fucked him, haven’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t. We haven’t even kissed.’ I don’t want to explain to her my non-kiss was actually more intense, more exciting, more erotic than a kiss would ever have been. So I go into work spiel.

  ‘I know what happens as I deal with a lot of the divorces which occur as a result of affairs in the workplace. And we’ve got to cross that bridge when we come to it. At the moment, it’s fine. If it becomes a problem, we will deal with it.’

  ‘So you’ve slept with him. Not just a fuck?’

  Shall I just make something up and say, yes, I’ve slept with him and then Doreen will drop this? Mind you, then she’ll just ask what he was like, how big, how wide, how long did it go on for, any party or kinky tricks, where I met him, does he have a friend, so perhaps not. I’m not that good a storyteller. So I say, ‘We haven’t slept with each other, but, he may have relationship potential. He’s fun and sexy and, well, he excites me.’

  Doreen looks bemused.

  ‘And you haven’t slept with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And he excites you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mentally as well as physically—well, you don’t know about the physical so he could be crap in bed, but the mental excites you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She smiles. ‘He excites you and you find him sexy and he’s been working with you for how many months.’

  ‘A couple.’

  ‘And you haven’t slept with him? Mmm. Does he have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes, living with her for twelve years.’

  Sharp intake of breath from friends of the round table. Everyone avoids Carron’s eyeline.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘A baby. Well, that’s that then. Long-term, live-in girlfriend, good as married, younger man, work colleague. You pick ’em. Can’t you pick an old barrister with a grown-up family and house in the country, or something? Something simple.’

  ‘I did. He was two-timing me.’

  ‘So this seems easier, does it?’

  ‘No. That’s why I’m not pursuing it, but there’s chemistry and I’m being professional.’

  ‘So you don’t want to sleep with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I’ve been through the heartache myself, Doreen. I’m not going to inflict it on another woman. It’s his stuff to deal with not mine.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ Valerie asks eagerly.

  ‘Handsome, dashing some might say, bright, sexy—and young.’

  Carron says quietly, ‘People seem to go for the younger flesh these days, don’t they?’

  Carron’s bottom lip trembles. Waiter, Angus, comes over with the menus and asks us what we would like to drink, which dispels the moment. Lip stops trembling.

  Angus is the best waiter in London. There may be better; I haven’t been to all the restaurants, so in my experience I would say he’s the best. I have known Angus for over ten years. He’s seen me in the same state as Carron—post-divorce stress—so recognises the tell-tale signs of endless tears and dramatic loss of weight. He’s forty-five, gay and immaculately groomed, extremely indiscreet with gossip, but only if it’s of a kinky and deeply sexual nature and he’s never malicious. Doreen has vodka martini, shaken and stirred, Valerie and Carron just water and Fran orders a glass of the South African Chardonnay she’s ordered for her wedding and happens to be on Le Pont’s extensive wine list. I order a kir royale.

  Angus smiles and begins, ‘Specials today are halibut and monkfish. I recommend the halibut. Very good, very light and—’

  Doreen interrupts. ‘Very expensive by the look of it.’

  Angus stares at Doreen blankly. ‘Yes, very expensive. But if you would like a child’s portion, that will be half the price but all the flavour and—’

  Doreen interrupts again. ‘No. I’ll have a whole fish, thank you.’

  ‘Can you give us five more minutes to decide?’ asks Fran.

  ‘Certainly.’ Angus nods.

  ‘No, no, we can decide now,’ says Doreen.

  ‘Doreen! Don’t be so bossy. Angus, can you give us five minutes while we sit on our friend,’ says Fran, being wonderfully assertive and putting Doreen in a position she rarely goes to in or out of the bedroom or boardroom. Submissive.

  Angus smiles again, this time for real. He turns and goes.

&n
bsp; I snap. ‘What is your problem, Doreen? You’re as tight as a top at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, work, and stuff. Home stuff. And I think Mick’s having an affair,’ she replies.

  At which point Carron bursts into tears. This is good. The fact that she sobs for a good ten minutes becomes a bit worrying, as well as exhausting, for her to do and for us to watch. But as I’ve been there myself and have seen many women and a few men in the same situation, I know what to say, what not to say, how to say it and when to say it. It’s affecting me more than it does with clients who spend £300 excluding tax in my office sobbing uncontrollably for hours on end because Carron is a friend and I not only feel her pain, I want to take it on. I’m also not charging for the tears or the advice. I don’t want her to have the full burden. I don’t want her to handle the pain alone. But I can’t offload the pain that way. Experience has taught me I can’t.

  So as I’m sitting next to her, I lean over and hug her for the full duration. My blouse is soaked with her tears by the time she eventually raises her heavy head. I can tell she can’t physically get up out of the chair because she’s distraught with grief so I just hug her like I used to do Sarah when she was seven and had just returned from school, crying because some eight-year-old had punched her in the face. I was never a conventional mother. I told Sarah next time the eight-year-old punched her, she should punch her back and continue to punch her back really hard until she was on the ground, and say to her she would get the same treatment if she ever did it again. I remember telling her to have as many of her friends around her when it happened as possible so they could act as witnesses to the bully’s defeat. It worked. Of course, I was called in and Sarah was accused of being troublesome in the playground and I met the aforementioned eight-year-old’s mother, a coward and a bully herself. I told her and the teacher that it was very much up to the children to deal with life in the playground because it was just the same in the outside world, just that the playground was bigger and the guns and swords and knives were real and that words do hurt and are able to injure and kill. But that the arguments were just as petty and usually about possession and jealousy and greed. She didn’t really have an answer for that. But Sarah never got hit by the eight-year-old again and nor did anyone else in that particular playground by that particular bully.

  Carron’s a noisy crier, and I identify with that. When I’m that distressed, quite frankly, I don’t give a damn who hears me. I just cry. None of the girls say anything. They just sit and look on sympathetically. And Valerie gets watery-eyed and Fran feels a tinge of discomfort because she’s just getting married in a few months and I can sense is getting pangs about am I doing the right thing if it causes so much pain if it goes wrong. Hell, I would be if I were her.

  Even Angus realises he should wait till the sobbing subsides before he returns with the drinks.

  She gradually quietens and just hugs me. Angus distributes the drinks and says he’ll return in five for orders for the food.

  Even Doreen just smiles and nods.

  Carron lifts her head and looks at me and says ‘So sorry, Hazel. I’ve got mascara all over your blouse. And it’s soaking wet.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Carron.’

  She turns round to all the others. ‘I’m so sorry, chaps.’

  Valerie tries to lean over to hug her but gets trapped in her chair because her bum is so big. This lightens the moment and makes Carron giggle.

  ‘God, I wish I could cry like that. I’d get rid of all this water retention.’

  Carron laughs out loud now, but she looks tired with tears and lack of sleep. She tells us how the children are doing and how she’s making them feel as secure as possible. In the circumstances. And that Dennis has moved out and sees them every other weekend, but that he doesn’t really know what to do with them when he has them. He would have preferred boys, she tells us. Dennis told her this when she gave birth.

  ‘I’ve been to counselling with him but only to talk about the children. Mind you I don’t trust him and don’t want to be in the same room as him for more than a minute, as he uses every conversation, every opportunity to emotionally drag me down. They’re only young, but the girls know what’s happening. The counsellor said that I should say to the girls that Mummy and Daddy both love them and that it is nothing to do with them that we don’t get on. That it’s not their fault. It’s Mummy and Daddy’s fault that we messed up. She says that children tend to think that way, because they think they are the centre of the universe.’

  ‘Of course I want to say that it’s ninety-nine percent Daddy’s fault because he’s a selfish wanker and only one percent Mummy’s fault as she tried to keep the marriage together, but you can’t do that, can you.’

  ‘And they’ll know, Carron,’ Doreen chips in. ‘Children absorb situations by osmosis. You don’t have to tell them things. They know. They will learn what their daddy is like as they grow up. Don’t put him down in front of them, he will do the damage himself. Emily and Madeline are six and seven, aren’t they?’

  Carron nods yes. “It’s a sensitive age, so I’ve got to be careful. They’ve both taken it badly and think it’s their fault, hence reassuring them every day it isn’t.’ Bottom lip trembles again.

  Everyone pauses for a sip of their drink. I switch the conversation to fluff. Literally.

  ‘I gave myself a Brazilian a few weeks ago,’ I say loudly, turning a few heads at neighbouring tables.

  ‘What, a Brazilian man?’ Valerie laughs.

  ‘No, a Brazilian wax. You have a strip. A bit. I have an arrow pointing up.’

  ‘Surely down would be better. You know, help men find their way and all that,’ says Doreen playfully.

  ‘I thought about having it pointing down but that means I’ve got to expose more and this way it’s better the bottom’s in the tail end of the arrow rather than at the point. If you know what I mean,’ I say trying to explain without getting too explicit about it.

  ‘Daniel gets more turned on if I don’t shave,’ Fran says matter-of-factly. ‘He thinks it’s more feminine to have something there so I have it trimmed.’

  Carron says quietly, ‘Well, I haven’t looked down there for ages. I’m right off sex at the moment.’

  ‘Me, too. Mind you, I can’t even see mine,’ Valerie says stroking her bump.

  Looking down at her own crotch, then at me, Doreen asks, ‘Do they still shave you there when you have a baby? I know they used to. I got a complete wax before I had my three simply because I didn’t want some nurse shaving me when I felt and looked like shit.’

  ‘They didn’t do that to me, but it didn’t seem to matter,’ I reply.

  ‘Did you have yours by caesarean or naturally?’ asks Valerie.

  ‘Naturally,’ I say, trying not to sound smug.

  ‘I never asked you, did you stretch a lot? Did you tear?’ Doreen asks.

  ‘You did ask me at the time, Doreen, I just didn’t give you an answer as I was with David and some of his work colleagues at a banker’s dinner party and they didn’t seem to want to know about the bloody reality of childbirth over the beef Stroganoff. You also asked me if I ate my placenta.’

  ‘Well, did you tear?’ Doreen asks, turning other table heads again.

  ‘No, didn’t tear,’ I say, trying to sound as though we’re talking about opening envelopes rather than giving birth. ‘Very lucky. No stitches. I wasn’t induced. Made David have sex with me.’

  ‘’Full or oral?’ Doreen asks, keeping the heads turned and mouths now open.

  ‘Oral,’ I say quietly, having given up on the envelope scam. ‘And it worked.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want Harry anywhere near me.’ Valerie shudders. ‘I’m scared he will damage the baby.’

  I explain to Valerie that she should go on top. ‘Men like that anyway because it’s more weight bearing down on them and they feel more submissive and vulnerable. That’s why men really like their women fat. It’s like riding a moped, fun to ride but not s
exy to be seen with.’

  ‘Didn’t he go off with a skinny ribs?’ Doreen asks tactlessly, knowing the ‘Charlotte’ is skinny herself.

  ‘Actually no, he went off with a girl who was quite plump and she lost lots of weight.’

  ‘Perhaps she wanted to be more like you,’ Doreen remarks.

  ‘She had to fill her own shoes, Doreen. No one can fill mine. And no one will fill yours either, Carron. You are a very difficult act to follow and this girl, whatever her name is…’ (I remember it but am not going to say it and even Doreen is not ruthless enough to remind me) ‘…has an impossible task. Dennis suffers from what most men suffer from. ME. You know. ME me me me me me me me me me me. Me, myself, I. She’ll get to know that in time and she’s got to make footprints of her own, because you are unique. And Dennis will realise that in two years, maybe five, maybe just before he cops it. By then, you’ll be moved on. You don’t think it now, but you will.’

  ‘Everyone says that,’ Carron murmurs.

  ‘I know. Because it’s true. I remember my counsellor saying that to me every time I saw her as though she wanted it to become my mantra. She said it would only work if I believed it. And eventually I did, and hey presto, here I am, with wonderful child, good health, lovely home and a job I love and find challenging and a fab set of friends in you all.’

  Angus returns asking for our orders.

  I play head girl.

  Monkfish—a whole one—for Doreen, tuna for Carron and Fran, halibut for Valerie and I have the chicken. ‘Do we want wine?’ Yes, we all nod we do. Chardonnay, the one that Fran is having for her wedding. ‘Water, a bottle of still and sparkling. Think that’s about it.’

  Over our food we talk about what we’re planning to do for our respective birthdays. None of us have organised anything, though mine is the soonest—but I’m planning to be at home, with hopefully Sarah and me just celebrating. The girls think it would be good if we could go somewhere like EuroDisney where we can behave like kids. Valerie is scared she will get stuck in one of the rides, but Doreen assures her it’s okay, and tells us she’ll get Jane, her PA, to organise the event.