Mutton, page 1
INDIA KNIGHT
Mutton
FIG TREE
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
By the same author
FICTION
Comfort and Joy
Don’t You Want Me?
My Life on a Plate
NON-FICTION
The Thrift Book
Neris and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook
Neris and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet
The Shops
For E
‘One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.’
Oscar Wilde
Prologue
Here are some of the things I have started doing due to age. I am forty-six years old.
a) Making sounds when I sit down or bend. The sound is often ‘Oof’, even though sitting or bending causes me no discomfort whatsoever. There is nothing physically the matter with me; in fact, I’m really bendy. Sometimes I put my hand in the small of my back, for emphasis. I also groan with pleasure, quite loudly – ‘Wooaaarrrgh’ – when entering either the bath or bed.
b) Asking, loudly and indignantly, ‘Who are these people?’ when I read a gossip magazine. Occasionally jabbing crossly at the photographs with my finger. A mere three years ago, I could have named every person in Heat and given you a potted bio – ‘And that’s Dyamondé, who got up the duff to the Loin, who was dating Pipette, you know, with the implants that went wrong. Keep up!’
c) In the rare instances when I do know who the people are, darkly muttering things such as, ‘Heh, that won’t end well,’ Cassandra-like.
d) Going to new restaurants and saying, ‘Ooh, dreadful acoustics,’ as though I were hard of hearing, which I’m not. Leaning forward ostentatiously to emphasize the point. Talking extra loudly. Making exaggerated facial expressions and over-articulating to convey non-existent partial deafness.
e) Being completely uninterested in meeting new people at, say, dinner parties. Being pleasant, obviously, but not even going through the pretence of swapping numbers/emails.
f) Being too old for weddings. Thinking, ‘I’d better go but, oof, it’s a very long day.’ Plus, see e).
g) Thinking, horribly, about many – though not all – weddings, ‘Yeah, good luck with that.’ Like a monster.
h) Forgetting people’s names. Wishing I were camp enough to say, ‘Darling, meet darling.’ Not being as camp as I was.
i) Having two-day hangovers. Sometimes three-day. We’re talking darkened room and death-feeling axe through the head and Temazepam, not Neurofen Plus and ‘plenty of water’.
j) Wondering how it came to pass that the people in charge should be younger than me. Feeling, strongly, that a dreadful mistake has occurred – a rip in the time–space continuum, a grotesque, extra-anomalous anomaly – and that someone needs to notice, and fix it.
k) Realizing that young people talk about the Eighties in the way that I used to talk about the Fifties: i.e. as though speaking quite anthropologically about quaint prehistory. Also, noting that the films being remade are the films of my youth. Ditto the clothes.
l) Developing an interest in the weather. Talking and thinking about it a lot. Responding to the weather as if it were a person – more, a friend: being outraged by the rain’s behaviour, and wondering why it’s doing it. Worrying about slipping in snow, despite snow being my favourite and despite my soles being snow-cautious and grippy.
m) Also developing a strong interest in nature, despite having been the kind of ultra-urban young woman who genuinely didn’t understand what the countryside was for. Being pleased when I see mushrooms. Smiling at trees. Examining leaves. Pondering sheep. Photographing cloud formations and learning their names.
n) Only finding babies interesting up to a point, unless I’m related to them. Sometimes finding the babies a bit irritating, rather than (as in the past) permanently adorable. Saying ‘Oof’ when they leave, and having a nice cup of tea.
o) Oh yes: tea. Pints of the stuff. Pints. Rivers.
p) Developing an unlovely fascination with my own bowel movements. Becoming pleased when I ‘go’ and disgruntled if I am denied my morning poo. Being so breezy about this particular interest (hobby, almost) that I am not shy about discussing it with girlfriends, even though every man I’ve ever slept with is led to believe that I don’t poo or wee, ever, because I am a princess made of special things.
q) Often feeling that there is too much choice. Wishing that there were twenty pairs of shoes to pick from, not 200. Wishing that coffee were just coffee, with three variants, maximum, and only one kind of milk. Preferring small shops to the department stores that I once considered nirvana. Preferring shop assistants not to be versions of my children; craving the matronly.
r) Sometimes overhearing young people talking and, instead of being excited by the fact that language is a growing, ever-evolving, living thing, thinking, ‘Language has just died in your mouth. You have murdered words.’ Being tyrannically intolerant of bad spelling; equating it with imbecility. Becoming a grammar pedant. Saying things like, ‘How can you think if you can’t even write?’
s) Having bits of poetry I learned by heart at school thirty years ago pop into my head unbidden, after a complete absence of three decades. Not unpleasant. Ditto hymns. Also, wandering into churches and having a sit-down, feeling utterly at peace, even though I am not an especially devout person.
t) Minding about manners. This is not new, but now feeling actual rage at people who don’t say please and thank you. Saying it for them, in a horrible, sarcastic, old-biddy tone. Speaking of which: noticing how prefixing anything with ‘old’ makes it a more effective insult.
u) Knowing that I’m more than halfway through, you know … my life … and pushing the thought away with all my might.
v) Becoming incandescent about 1) litter and 2) dog turds. Chasing people who don’t pick either up. Saying, ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ in a fluting, rising tone, almost singing, until they notice me.
w) Flirting in a completely mild, ordinary way with waiters and sometimes seeing the confusion in their faces, and realizing they are thinking that I could be their mum.
x) Knowing that one day somebody will ask my youngest child, whom I had at thirty-eight, if I am her granny. Not now. Not yet. But one day.
y) Hoicking my bosoms and sniffing to indicate disapprobation.
z) No, not really. Not that last one. But it can only be a matter of time.
1
My friend Olive used to narrate her day to herself in her head as a child. ‘Olive is walking down the street, her long brown hair swishing, whee. Today it is plaits and they are a bit tight. Olive looks nice, even though she is named after a gross-tasting thing, like being called Anchovy, which tastes of fish’s bottoms. Soon Olive will be at school. Maybe it will be sausages for lunch. Johnny says they look like willies. Olive sees a red bus and two lots of blossom.’ She told me years later that, as an only child, she found the running commentary kept her company during the many hours she spent alone, travelling to and fro or waiting for her parents to come home. ‘Every cup of tea I made, or every plate of beans on toast, turned into a little bit of presenting, like I was in Blue Peter: “Olive is lighting the gas carefully. Olive thinks half a tin is plenty for tea, because there is strawberry Angel Delight afterwards.” ’
She said thinking about yourself in the third person did wonders for her self-esteem. She rarely thought, ‘Olive Wilkins is walking down the street looking horrible. Galumph, galumph, goes Olive Wilkins. Urgh, the fat spotto. Round by name, round by nature.’ The story she told herself about herself was cheerful, optimistic, with Olive as its star – a mildly tweaked-for-the-better Olive, but a recognizable one. We’d had a couple of bottles of wine when she told me about doing this a fortnight ago, and she laughingly admitted that she had never entirely stopped. ‘Obviously, it stopped being every moment of the day by the time I was about eleven,’ she said. ‘But if I was feeling a bit anxious or insecure it would pop back again: “Olive really hopes David turns up, because she’s been waiting outside the Odeon for ten minutes now and it’s about to start raining. But why would David not turn up? Olive is wearing her nicest dress and her hair actually looks OK, and he said he’d been looking forward to tonight all week. Ah, there David is.” ’ Once, she said, quite recently and during a particularly unsuccessful sexual encounter, she made herself snort with laughter by returning to her childhood habit: ‘Olive hates Harry’s back, because it is hairy. Hairy Harry. Olive wishes she had known about the hair, but she couldn’t see it through the shirt he was wearing at dinner. Oh no, Olive notices sadly. Harry really doesn’t have much of a sense of rhythm. Poor Olive. Poor Harry.’
I’m trying out Olive’s technique while walking down the street. Here Clara comes, looking halfway presentable despite the early hour, because she had a meeting earlier this morning and has made an effort. She notices that the builders have started work at number 33; she sees them from afar, milling about the pavement as a scaffolding lorry is being unloaded. Bother, Clara thinks, I’m going to have to go right past them, and even though the law’s changed and building firms are all discrimination-aware and everything, you do get the ogle and still, sometimes, the odd catcall. Awful, really, that in 2012 women should still be objectified in this way – that they can’t go about their daily business without some brickie shouting out a vague obscenity. And there are about a dozen of them, plus the scaffolders. Oof. Still, deep breath, Clara. Here we go.
How weird. I mean, I know they have to keep their eyes on their important tools and dangerous builder equipment and everything, but really? Silence? Here I am, a woman, not actually ninety-five years old and with my head on the right way round: that’s good enough for most blokes, isn’t it? And these are blokes. But not a peep.
Not that I want a catcall. Not exactly. But – well, come on. Come on. I’m wearing quite a tight dress and a pair of heels; I’ve got on tinted moisturizer, blusher, eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss. I had a blow-dry two days ago. I am only forty-six years old.
Oh, I know. I spent many decades of my life objecting vigorously to objectification. I could bore for England about the theory. Ew, everyday sexism: the horror. Obviously men shouldn’t shout things out at women in the street. It’s not nice. But I’ll tell you what else I don’t find nice either, to be absolutely honest with you: this weird silence. What is wrong with these freaks?
I don’t like it. Clara is displeased.
I’m just going to go past again, as an experiment. I can see they’re busy discussing plumb lines or cement mixers or something; so busy that they’re obviously not able to concentrate on passing women.
I walk more slowly this time. I don’t saunter – not exactly – but I sashay slightly. I swing my bottom. I am heading towards the biggest group – there are six of them – and as I approach I decide not to swerve awkwardly but to go right through them instead, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Ha! Try and ignore that, men with penises. So this is what I do. And they part, wave-like, and as they part I make sure to make eye contact, and to smile – not what I meanly call the full Desperate Nana when my friend Frances does it, but a little smile, with no teeth showing. (Poor Frances. She’s so obsessed with her own invisibility that she’s fulfilling her own prophecy. Also, she never used to smile like that – I don’t know where it’s suddenly appeared from. She does it at any single man who ever talks to her: it’s a sort of leer, with top and bottom teeth showing. I don’t know what it’s supposed to denote: a certain ‘roar’ carnivorousness, maybe. Appetite. It has literally not worked once. You can see the horror in the men’s faces the second it happens; she’s a nice-looking woman, until she does Desperate Nana and then it’s all, ‘Woah, is that the time?’)
Anyway, here comes take two. And then: bingo. Nothing from the other ones but the main one, the foreman – not bad-looking, actually, thirty tops – smiles at me. Get in! Still got it – I mean, of course I’ve still got it, but it’s pleasant to have it confirmed. One isn’t without one’s anxieties. And he’s about to say something. Success.
‘Oops,’ is what he says, moving out of my way. And then he raises his hard hat by a couple of inches, and I stand and stare at him as he lowers it again. ‘Morning, madam,’ he says.
Why is he raising his stupid hat, like he would to his old school headmistress from when he was six? And ‘madam’? I have never pined more for the old ‘Cor,’ or ‘Don’t get many of those to the pound.’ (My most memorable builder line, in the days when they still talked to me, was, ‘Your eyes are like spanners. Every time I see them, my nuts tighten.’ That would do. It’s vulgar, I grant you, but it’s no-nonsense. You know where you stand with a line that vulgar.)
I wonder, wildly and for a brief moment, whether I should actually thrust my arse in his hand, for pinching. ‘Madam this, baby,’ I could say. But I don’t. I give the foreman a tight little nod, and then I get a grip and move on. By the time I arrive home, I am in a very bad mood.
Are my eyes still like spanners? They look all right to me as I peer into the hall mirror. I haven’t even put my bag down and my keys are still in my hand. There are lines at their edges, obviously, but that’s because I’m forty-six and I smile. Smiling is good. I also laugh. I laugh now, mirthlessly and exaggeratedly, to make the bigger lines come: hahaHA. They’re not tiny, the lines, but nor are they huge. I mean, they’re not crevasses. So that’s good. It’s because I have fat in my face, which is also good. I always knew it would come in handy one day.
Less good: my eyelids seem lower down than they were. They’ve slumped slightly. You’d have to be on intimate terms with my eyelids to notice this, but then I am on intimate terms: they live in my face. Slippage has occurred, as if a tiny but unusually heavy person had sat on my brows and sort of pushed down with their minuscule little hands. But! I can reverse the effect, I note, by raising my eyebrows in quizzical fashion. Having raised my eyebrows, I lower them as much as I can. That’s quite a frown line I’ve got going, actually. When did it come? But never mind. I don’t ever frown like that, except maybe at my children, and when I’m helping Maisy with her maths homework.
You know how in films women of a certain age press their palms against their cheeks and pull up, to view the effect a hypothetical facelift might have, and how this denotes ‘Our heroine realizes that she is ageing’? I’m not going to do that. No, I’m not, even though I’d quite like to. Just to see. I realize that I am ageing, what with being conversant with the concept of Time. But it’s fine. I’m in pretty good nick, actually, considering. I’m healthy and strong and I do proper exercise and always take the stairs.
And I don’t think forty-six is old. Not these days. It used to be ancient, of course: I remember the shock of realizing, some years ago, that the ancient old ladies who taught me at school must have been in, maybe, their late thirties. But you couldn’t tell, because they wore horrible A-line skirts and cardigans in sludgy colours, and a visible layer of face powder at all times. They had hankies stuffed up their sleeves and sensible shoes that made their feet look like platypuses, and ‘done’ hair like helmets. I don’t have any of these things. I have a couple of pairs of Louboutins, thanks very much. And some kickass underwear, oh yes. I expect my teachers wore enormous white pants, tucking the top carefully into the bottom of their bras for warmth. These are not my pants. Those teachers were not my people.
I realize with a wave of absolute disgust that I am about to tell myself that I am forty-six years young.
Of course it would be at absolutely this point that Sky should wander down the stairs. Now, I like Sky. I like her a lot. It makes me sad that, what with them both being seventeen, her and Jack’s relationship is presumably doomed. I want to believe in the concept of childhood sweethearts who stay together forever – of course I do – but logic and observation tell me this is unlikely. But anyway, Sky’s great: smart and funny and very pretty. I just wish she’d put some clothes on sometimes. She’s not naked, obviously, but she’s wearing what she usually wears at this time of the morning, namely a T-shirt and pants. The T-shirt covers her bottom, just about, but it doesn’t leave much to the imagination. (There’s a youthful phrase, I think to myself even as I utter it in my head. There’s a thought that doesn’t make me feel grannyish at all for having it: ‘Doesn’t leave much to the imagination.’ Works well if you say it in a Sir John Major voice. I don’t expect Sky has any idea who Sir John Major is.)
‘Morning, but you’re already late for school,’ I say. ‘Where’s Jack?’
‘It’s OK,’ Sky says. ‘We’ve got a free first period. He’s just in the shower. I’m grabbing us some toast.’
I put my bag and keys down and follow her into the kitchen. Golden hair, legs up to here – she is very aesthetically pleasing, old Sky, and this makes me happy. I don’t understand that weird thing whereby women my age (Sir John Major’s voice pops up again, saying, ‘My favourite vegetable is the pea’) – anyway, ‘women my age’ are expected to dislike or resent younger, fresher models. It seems deranged to me, that, as an approach, to say nothing of unsisterly in the extreme. I may have dodgy notions about wolf whistles, but I’m sane enough to wish the best for other women, young or old. So I’m glad for Sky. I’m glad she’s lovely and pert and gorgeous and brainy and ambitious, and not necessarily in that order. Why would I not be glad? If someone’s going to mill about my house in a state of semi-undress, I’m glad it’s Sky and not, you know, some nerdy girl with a tache. Not that there’s anything wrong with nerdy girls with taches: they’re usually clever and interesting. But I could do without one in her pants, moping about all gloomily in – what? – black pants. Emo pants, or skull pants. Death pants, gloom pants, the Doleful Pants of Melancholia. I’d rather Sky’s red and white stripes, which are jaunty.
