The Trouble with Single Women Page 7

  ‘Choice,’ Helen thought to herself, ‘has been the mustard gas of this generation. They’re crippled by it. At least we were grateful for the little we had.’

  ‘Your lot will never be contented,’ Helen chastised her daughter. ‘High expectations have been the ruin of your lives. And do you know what your generation is really missing? It’s not love or babies or relationships that last. You mark my words, girl, it’s a sense of shame, that’s what.

  ‘Shame kept us in line – and no bad thing. Less mistakes, fewer tears. My mother always used to say, “Where reality meets expectation, there contentment lies.” Your lot will never know contentment.’

  Fee played with her glass and said nothing. Helen muttered to herself. That damn silence again.

  ‘Have you told Claire yet?’ she suddenly asked. Claire Harper was single but, unlike Fee, sensible with it.

  ‘Claire isn’t back until tonight. She’s on a business trip. We’re having lunch tomorrow and I’ll tell her then. She and I will grow old, spinsters together.’

  The thought cheered Fee, now definitely drunk. ‘If others are glad to be gay,’ she told Helen, jauntily, ‘we’ll be ecstatic to be uno; happy to be unhitched, serene to be seriously single—’ It was the kind of rubbish Fee thought up every day on behalf of F.P. &D. Ironic that now she would have to live it too.

  ‘We’ll see.’ Helen looked quizzically at her daughter. Perhaps Fee was on some drug? Or maybe it was her hormones? An early menopause?

  ‘You have no idea what you’re letting yourself in for. Women don’t like spinsters. Not when they’re your age. You’ll be cut off. You’ll be seen as too much of a temptation for every woman’s husband. But you won’t listen will you? Not you . . . oh no, not you—’

  A fresh angle of attack occurred to Helen. Weren’t women creatures to whom things happened?

  ‘You can’t choose to be a spinster,’ she declared. ‘It happens to you. And we’ve never had a spinster in the family. No spinsters and no divorcees. I tell a lie.’ She paused for thought. ‘There was Aunty Lily. She never married. But at least she had the Great War to blame. Her fiancé was killed when he was twenty and she never looked at another man. Mind you,’ she added, helping herself to more champagne, a sure sign of acute stress. ‘Mind you, I don’t think another man looked at her. She wasn’t exactly a stunner, was our Lil. Yes, she was single all right but she had a good excuse. What’s yours?’

  Fee didn’t even pause to reply. ‘That’s why things are different now,’ she gently dismissed her mother. ‘Us girls don’t need excuses.’

  Fee only wished that it were true.

  Chapter Five

  ‘YOU ARE what ?’

  Fee and Claire Harper were in a restaurant that Claire had selected for its HWA – Heterosexual Waiter Appeal. Except that Monday must have been his day off.

  At first, they had been given a table directly outside the lavatories. Claire announced this was totally unnecessary since, as she was not suffering from any urinary infection, such accessibility was a wasted opportunity. She would appreciate being reseated. So, of course, they were.

  Claire had fine bones, natural skinniness and pale blond hair. All three were virtues in youth but, according to her, did not age well.

  ‘What happens in our family’, she would say cheerfully enough, ‘is that we move from baby doll to TOB in next to no time.’

  TOB stood for Tough Old Bird.

  Claire also had a tendency to act as if she was wing attack in the school hockey team. In her thirties, this had matured into a no nonsense attitude that made her, at times, appear abrupt and formidable.

  What Fee admired most about Claire was her sense of entitlement. She could trot out a list of desires and expect most of them to be satisfied. In contrast, Fee had been brought up to believe that nice girls didn’t want; they appreciated what they were given.

  Twice, Claire had lived with a man. Each time, she had moved out within a year. If Fee’s weakness was for the unattainable male, Claire’s was for the man who literally had more balls than brains.

  ‘Intercourse followed by incompatibility,’ Claire would often say, cheerfully enough. ‘That’s the history of each and every one of my love affairs.’

  ‘But, God willing, when the time’s right, fate will take a hand. Or, if it doesn’t, I will.’

  Over the years, Fee and Claire, in and out of relationships, had squabbled, suffered, sulked, celebrated and supported each other. Their bond of friendship was unbreakable. Or so they had always told each other.

  ‘You are what?’ Fee gazed at Claire, disbelieving.

  ‘You are doing what?’ Fee repeated herself.

  She had intended Claire to be the first to know, outside the family, about her changed status in life. But Claire had her own news to announce.

  ‘I’m getting married,’ she repeated, keeping her eyes on the butter dish.

  ‘In white, in a church with a page boy in plum velvet. And you, as chief bridesmaid.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Fee repeated as if the information could be made more simple.

  Claire pointed to her finger, ‘You know marriage . . . ring . . . wedding bells . . . honeymoon . . . happy ever after . . . all the usual thing—’

  ‘You’ve fallen in love. Are you telling me you’ve fallen in love?’ Fee asked accusingly, not least because she was usually the first to know if there was even a hint of passion in Claire’s life. Never before had developments reached this fully blown stage without dissection, discussion, conferring.

  ‘No,’ Claire now had her eyes locked on to the butter dish as if she was willing the pats to perform a formation waltz.

  ‘No, I mean I’m getting married. In just under four months.’

  ‘So it is love?’ Fee accused Claire again. ‘How come it’s such a big secret? You’ve never mentioned this before. It’s that man, Angus, isn’t it? The one with the bi—’

  ‘The one with the bifocals? No, it’s not Angus. It’s someone you haven’t met yet. He’s not what you’d expect. I mean, he’s not the kind of man I . . . well . . . you know—’

  Fee resorted to flippancy. ‘Are you trying to tell me he’s stable, sane, teetotal and does not have the emotional development of a six-month-old baby?’

  ‘Almost,’ Claire smiled faintly and finally raised her eyes to Fee’s face.

  ‘It’s like this,’ Claire explained, her words tumbling out in an uncharacteristic rush. ‘Soon after we met, he said that although I give the impression I can cope with anything, what I really need is someone who’ll look after me. And he’s promised to do that—

  ‘And, Fee, I really do want to be looked after. I’m fed up with coping. And he’s very decent and dependable. No surprises. No moods. He’s very . . . well, nice—

  ‘It’s not love. But he’s good enough. Probably too good . . . for me, that is . . . But he’s definitely nice. And because it’s not love, I’m sure it’s got a better chance of lasting.’

  ‘Oh,’ she added, as if as an afterthought, ‘he’s not bad in bed either. Quite good, actually.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that’s the last thing on your mind?’ Fee looked at Claire, disbelieving again.

  Claire blushed.

  Claire blushing. Fee couldn’t remember it happening before. Not once.

  Something about this affair, her instincts told her, wasn’t quite what it seemed.

  ‘Nice?’ Fee repeated the word.

  Claire squirmed slightly. ‘Nice, yes. Someone who’s good for me, who has the right priorities. Who doesn’t want to work all the hours and make a million. Someone with a bit of balance in his life—’

  Claire paused while the waiter, camp and concave, placed a plate of salad in front of her that looked like a section of hedgerow. Then she took a deep breath and tried again.

  ‘The thing is, even I can see that the kind of men I fell for are the world’s worst candidates for a permanent relationship. So I decided I’d organize a
marriage for myself.

  ‘And by . . . sort of coincidence, I met this man . . . and last night, when I got back from Chicago, I proposed—’ Claire suddenly paused. ‘Well, go on, say something. Say, “I’m really happy for you.” Or something like that. I would if I were you,’ she prompted Fee.

  Fee was too busy contemplating the irony of the situation. The more she explored the implications of Claire’s decision, the less confident she began to feel about her own. And the greater the rage she felt towards her best friend, not just because of her impending desertion but because she had so efficiently sabotaged one of the first real choices Fee had made for herself.

  She reviewed her situation. Permanently single? From choice. On reflection, perhaps that should be semi-permanently. Or possibly even, single for the time being.

  In fact, why not just ask Claire if her fiancé, her nice fiancé, had an older brother?

  ‘Is he rich?’ Fee asked, breaking her silence while Claire pretended to eat. If he was, she swore she would vomit on the spot. Claire, as a partner in a successful firm of headhunters, worked horrendous hours but earned what Fee regarded as absurd quantities of cash.

  ‘No, he earns next to nothing . . .’

  ‘Is that wise?’ Fee couldn’t stop herself. She had an irresistible urge to hurt. ‘I mean, what you’re saying is, you’ll have to keep him in the style to which you are accustomed . . . difficult area that . . ’ Fee knew she’d inflicted enough damage, so she didn’t have to pursue the thought.

  ‘Any mental illnesses?’ she pressed on hopefully.

  ‘Any physical impediments? Impotency? Firing blanks? Perfectly OK if he is. In fact, it’s quite the fashion.’

  Claire shook her head, smiled wryly and explained that her prospective spouse used to manage a trust fund. Then his wife had walked out and gone to live with his best friend. At that point, he had decided to do only what he wanted in life so long as it didn’t cause harm to others.

  Claire smiled a smile that Fee didn’t recognize. ‘He said he realized that because he’d been a workaholic, put money first, he’d lost his wife—’ Claire’s voice had taken on the texture of syrup.

  ‘A man of principle then—’ Fee commented drily. She didn’t mean to sound as sarcastic as she did.

  Claire ignored Fee and continued to try to extract some sympathy.

  ‘You two have got something in common, you know,’ she attempted with forced jollity. ‘He teaches like you used to do. He’s the deputy head of a junior school and he loves it. He’s very good at drama, organizes the school play, lots of after-school activities, that sort of thing—’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘That’s a bit of an odd career for a man to choose, isn’t it?’ Fee questioned, hating herself for trying to insert a worm of doubt in Claire’s mind, but unable to stop herself either.

  ‘He’s not a child molester, is he?’ she went on, only half joking.

  Again, Claire ignored the comment. It was almost as if she’d anticipated Fee’s responses.

  ‘So what’s his name?’ Fee asked, trying to postpone the time when she would have to give her blessing to the arrangement.

  ‘Clem,’ Claire avoided Fee’s eye. ‘And no, he does not wear an anorak,’ she added spikily. She poured each of them more wine before she spoke again. It mattered to her that Fee approved. It mattered more than she could say.

  ‘Look, Fee, all I’ve done is face facts. I’m not getting any younger and the pool of likely mates is getting smaller.

  ‘Free to choose is one thing; “free” because there’s nobody left who will have you is something else altogether. That’s not single, that’s second best.

  ‘I want children. I want to have a family just like everybody else. But I’m working too bloody hard ever to allow it to happen. So, now I’ve decided to make it happen—’

  Claire was unstoppable. Clem was kind. He was funny. He could iron. He had close friends. He put money into collection boxes. He read books. He climbed mountains in his spare time. He was everything to himself that a good wife should be. Oh, and he was thirty-eight.

  ‘He’s not very needy, is he?’ Fee finally interjected, genuinely concerned. ‘Are you really sure you know what he wants from you?’

  ‘A relationship that lasts,’ Claire replied promptly. ‘And kids.’

  ‘What about love?’ Fee realized she was beginning to sound like a chief prosecutor.

  ‘Well, that too,’ Claire shrugged. ‘Eventually. Anyway, he assumes that I do. Love him, I mean. I haven’t said so in so many words, but he’s assumed.

  ‘And, when I asked him to marry me,’ Claire added defiantly, ‘he didn’t even pause. Besides, anyone these days who trusts in personal chemistry and cards with red-velvet hearts has to be mad. I don’t want romance, I want resilience under fire. Something that survives beyond the first five years.’

  As Claire recited her reasons for arranging a marriage for herself, the more hostile Fee grew towards the unknown Clem.

  She didn’t have to meet him to know that he was a thiever of friends and a gold-digger.

  ‘I’m nearly forty, Fee,’ Claire was saying. ‘I’m too old to change the way my heart behaves. So, now, I’m going to rely on my head—’

  ‘Sounds as if you’ve got it all worked out.’ Fee smiled, but her tone was sour.

  She disapproved of bitchiness between friends. So, considering how little practice she had permitted herself over the years, she was both impressed and appalled at how adept she was proving to be.

  Claire observed her warily. ‘You’re jealous, that’s what it is, isn’t it? You’re actually jealous?’

  ‘On my honour, I’m not,’ Fee replied, retreating to the language of the school playground.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ Claire peered at her friend. ‘Didn’t you say you had something to tell me? What happened at the christening? How’s Veronica? And Paul . . . And Adam?’

  Fee ignored her questions. Instead, in salute, she raised her glass.

  ‘Congratulations, Claire,’ she said. ‘Clem is a very lucky man.’

  Privately, she had made up her mind. Clem would have to go. It was the least she could do for Claire.

  In her flat, that evening, Fee took the emergency action to which she always resorted when she wanted to waylay an impending depression.

  She walked into her spare bedroom, opened the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe – and took out her wedding album.

  Or rather, it would have been her wedding album, if she hadn’t said no to Bill’s proposal.

  Such was his confidence (or, more precisely, so great was his enthusiasm as an amateur photographer), Bill had already bought the album. It was covered in white plastic, decorated with silver bells. As a compromise, once Fee had turned him down, Bill had filled it with photographs of their first year of living together, then presented it to Fee as an anniversary gift.

  Fee had held onto the album. It served to remind her that no matter how bad the current situation, it could never be as terrible as that period when everyone had continually told her, ‘How happy you must be.’

  Fee sat in her sitting room and turned the first page.

  Bill.

  A self-portrait taken in the bathroom mirror.

  Bill Summers. Pleasant, slightly flattened face with very large eyes, blondish hair. Six foot. He always took up a great deal of space. Now, he burst out of the album.

  They had met at a school fête. Fee was teaching and thirty; Bill was a surveyor, two years older and the brother of a fellow teacher. They went out for a year and suddenly everybody began to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if you two moved in together?’

  Bill had agreed it wasn’t such a bad idea. Fee raised a few objections until one day her mother had snapped. ‘Compromise, Fiona, compromise. It’s what people do. Why should you be any different?’

  Fee certainly hadn’t wanted to be different. At least, she thought she hadn’t. Not then.

  She turned a page of the al
bum. Several photographs taken of the two of them in the garden, all with other people in the frame.

  For a long time, it was easy to overlook what was missing, mainly because they spent so little time alone in each other’s company. They were either at work, or entertaining or being entertained or visiting relatives or shopping for the home. It was like playing at being married.

  Bill also spent much of his free time working on his hobby. He preferred to refer to it as his project. He took great pleasure in photographing the patterns of leaves. He was holed up so often in his dark room, Fee began to call him her Prints of Darkness. Bill said he couldn’t see what was so funny.

  For Fee, life at home was routine and pleasant but somehow not real. She knew this wasn’t how she was going to spend for ever. Bill was no trouble. He was uncritical, accommodating, amusing, all of which had made him good fun in courtship but, on a day-to-day basis, this particular cocktail began to taste, well, almost bland. She missed the occasional emotional bombshell.

  ‘You couldn’t wish for anyone nicer,’ she was often told. Which was absolutely true. Fee longed for someone worse. She used to think such perversity was a sign of her adventurousness. Claire believed otherwise. It was, she told Fee, ‘immature’.

  ‘Look after Bill because if you don’t one day when it’s much too late you’ll realize that you lost a very good man,’ Claire would warn.

  In the time Bill and she were together, Fee had switched careers from teaching to what was initially a lowly job in advertising. Just before they had split up, she had been recruited to F.P. & D.

  She and Bill had been highly supportive of the other; each shared domestic duties and made no complaints about the long hours they worked. They agreed that they didn’t want children for a few years, if ever. On paper, it couldn’t have been a better set-up.

  Much later, Fee realized that the fatal flaw in their relationship had appeared on day one. They worked hard, they played hard, they rarely rowed, they copulated efficiently but not spectacularly, they entertained to a respectable level, but nothing between them had changed.

  She blamed herself.

  She hadn’t allowed anything to develop between them, no growing intimacy, no greater understanding. They were two people living side by side, going nowhere.