A friend of a friend has been staying for a few weeks until her new house is ready to move in to. She is 50 years old, divorced, never stops talking, works with deaf people. She is as shallow as the Thames at Southend when the tide’s going out, but I quite like shallow. I’m shallow myself, come to think of it.
In her spare time her interests are men, wine, Golden Virginia and cannabis sativa. She claims to be a socialist, but I think the extent of her solidarity with the toiling masses is that she might buy a Daily Mirror occasionally to catch up with the showbiz gossip. The truth is she is rather a snob. She is anxious, for example, that her new house might be too close for comfort to a social-housing estate, and she can be very sneering about what she calls ‘poor people’. But we are all ridiculous snobs in one way or another, so I’ve found this particular crassness of hers relatively easy to forgive.
What I have mainly objected to, however, is the moodiness. This woman is up and down like a yo-yo. It’s like living with a dangerous dog. I also strongly object to the imperialism of spirit accompanying these moods, whereby the prevailing mood of the household must conform to hers. On down days she despises happiness. ‘What are you so cheerful about this morning?’ she’ll sneer. On up days, it’ll be, ‘Will everybody lighten up, please?’ Then she’ll start whistling to prove how happy she is. It’s an excruciating, tuneless whistle, clear and unwitting evidence of the exact opposite.
The cause of her unhappiness is so clear-cut that even she recognises it. She’s traded on her looks all her life and the goods are starting to fade. There is a shortage of takers. A winter sale has not had the results she was hoping for. A catastrophe, in other words.
I’ve always thought it must be marvellous to be attractive enough to sleep with almost anyone you fancy. A bit like being a journalist, I imagine: jumping in and out of other people’s universes, having a good look around, taking what you need, leaving without a backward glance. But what a shock when the power of this miraculous spell that you’ve been casting over other people so effortlessly begins to fail! ‘My God, I look like an old witch!’ she exclaims, going on tiptoe and shoving her unmade morning face in front of the kitchen mirror.
But if her vanity was founded on the fact of her beauty, it strangely persists in spite of new and rapidly accumulating evidence to the contrary. She lives and breathes for going out and being chatted up. And before she goes out of the door she always finds time to parade herself in front of me in all her finery to make me feel like a Cinderella (which I don’t).
A week it took me to realise her moods conformed to an obvious pattern. The prospect of a night out equals happiness; staying in, misery. It really is as simple as that. But after a few visits, she found the pubs round here so boring she could no longer face them. Also, I think she ran out of dough. So she stayed in and I had to keep my tin hat on every day for more than a fortnight. She spent the evenings in the garden sipping from tins and chewing her nails or staring angrily at tripe on the telly without taking anything in. I was getting cheesed off with this bad atmosphere all the time. But her moving day was coming ever nearer so I bit my lip and tightened my chin strap.
And then one evening she didn’t appear after work. Pub, I guessed — she’ll be in after 11. She finally turned up at midday the next day with a bruised face and her lips absurdly swollen and bloody. And she was happier than I’d seen her for weeks. Beneath the swelling she was transformed by joy. She’d fallen over outside the pub, she said. And Calum had been so kind to her, looked after her, and then she’d woken up in his caravan. And this Calum was a lovely, lovely man. She was sure I’d like him. And if it was all right with me, she said, she might go and stay with him for a while.
She’s been at Calum’s two days. It was a great relief at first. But it’s funny how I now miss that sullen face, and find myself listening out for her key in the lock in the evening.
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