The Coming of Age. March. Part 1.

Protagonist Jessica has two daughters, both married and a son. Oldest daughter Sarah is malrried to Roland and has two daughters, Alice and Letitia, and a nanny. Second daughter Harriet is married to Russell and is expecting - just - her first child. Jess has a Mother, three special friends, Val, Julia and Poppy, and neighbours; on one side Fran the counsellor, Mavis the hypochondriac with husband Keith and on the other unfriendly triplet mother with husband Phil Mitchell lookalike. She lives in a busy busy little town. Now read on:

On Mother’s day I am invited to lunch in London with both daughters and their families. I am really looking forward to it. When I arrive, ‘Sarah and Roland are ill’, says Harriet.
‘That is a pity,’ I say. However, all is not lost. Nanny is bringing Alice and Letitia over until 6pm.
‘Aren’t you staying?’ I ask Nanny hopefully.
‘No, I’m meeting friends for lunch and then we are going to a movie’.
That sounds nice I think. Peaceful. I gird my loins for a day of amusing two lively toddlers in a public restaurant and think wistfully of previous Mother’s Days, when I took my mother out to lunch in The Grand Hotel, Felixstowe. I must be sure to book us in there next year.
Harriet tells me she has just been sick but is fine now.

The local paper reports that town’s Art Committee has selected ‘Local woman’ Beryl Jinks to paint a mural to celebrate the Queens Jubilee. This, they say will be seen by all who visit the town sited as it will be outside the Town Hall. The mural, as reproduced in the paper, looks like something done by a five-year-old. Every artist in the town, which boasts several RA’s and quite a few people like Val who have been to art school, is up in arms. Never mind. The editor of the local paper is doubly ecstatic because Beryl is not only not an incomer, but she is also a ‘disabled artist’. Beryl is the mother of one of Alex’s mates and I had no idea she was disabled.
Naturally I have to telephone Alex to pass on the exciting news of her success in the art world. He too is surprised both about her ‘disability’, and that she has ever thought about anything except the local tourist attraction, an ostrich farm in a nearby village where Beryl works and where she is very well known by the lads. And probably by the ostriches as well.
Later Alex rings me to say that Beryl is indeed suffering. She fell off her stiletto heels, wrenched a knee and was housebound for a week or so, which is when she took up art. I wonder if I should take up art.

I have not been saying my affirmations. No wonder things are going down hill. I go upstairs, ostensibly to clear out wardrobe and think about summer clothes. It is raining outside and my bed looks very inviting. I get into it and think to myself I shall lie here for a bit and say my affirmations. The bed is lovely, comfortable and warm. I say to myself ‘I am perfect.’ No, that doesn’t seem right. What were the others? There are only three and I can’t even remember those. The effort to do so is quite exhausting and I fall asleep. I wake at five o’clock. Ooh, good. Time for tea.

On Monday I bump into my 80-year-old friend Jean. What a lot of people there are in the streets this early. She has been for her 7.30 a.m. swim, which she does several times a week. Perhaps I should become a Christian Scientist? I asked Jean about it once and she said they believed that those who are in tune with the Divine Spirit should not become ill. If you do become ill, you are in error which I assumed meant sinning. Her mother, Jean said, would not allow the possibility of her being ill. She was just made to ignore any symptoms and get on with it. It certainly seems to have steeled Jean’s will power though it did nothing for her education since at school she could never see the blackboard but was not allowed to visit an optician and have her eyesight checked.
I am reeling at the shock of being out of doors at all by 9 am. I dare not tell Jean that, after all, I am going to have my hair very expensively highlighted using two different shades of golden blonde and lots of bits of tissue paper. I do not like looking grey all over. In spite of my affirmations, which I only remember to do every now and then, I have days when I feel less than vibrant.
Actually she probably won’t notice anyway. She didn’t last time. The more expensive the highlights, the less anyone notices them.
I cower in the hairdresser’s hoping no one will recognise me looking like Worzel Gummidge with bits of paper all over my head. This is at any rate better and certainly less painful than another highlighting method where a very tight perforated rubber cap is forced over your head and then little strands of hair are hooked through. You look like one of those dolls with ‘real hair’ in their rubber scalps, but a very cheap one with lots of scalp and not much hair. This is usually a signal for the person whom you most envy for their chic, or your worst enemy, to walk into the salon, sit down at the next mirror and chat with the stylist about how their already perfect hair can be made more perfect.
Today no one comes in, but the hairdresser is helped by her mother, who stands by me, phone squeezed between ear and shoulder while she is unfolding the little bits of paper that will be used in my highlighting.
The telephone conversation gets very animated and mother keeps forgetting to unfold the pieces of paper. ‘Ohh, no she didn’t? And how do you feel? It must have been very difficult with your foot in that position. Oh no. I should have told him to go home.’
I am riveted but the hairdresser is getting a little tight-lipped. Not knowing what or who her mother was talking about gives me indigestion.

Val rings up to confirm tomorrow nights ‘dining group’ which is at Julia’s. She tells me that Martin has been spotted in the dentist wearing a whole armful of copper bracelets. I tell Alex. ‘Cool’ he says.
At Julia’s Poppy who has an eye for these things, exclaims enthusiastically about my new highlights. Val and Julia peer at me uncertainly, wondering what the difference is.
Poppy has a little moan about the dearth of men; this is a common complaint and one often aired. Tonight though Julia has an answer.
‘The place to meet men’ says Julia, leaning forwards, We all lean towards her, ‘Yes?’ eagerly, hoping for a revelation, Julia is not an abandoned wife, but a widow and seems to have a confidence and savoir faire, as well as an income that the rest of us do not. She appears to know what life is about and we hang upon her lips. ‘Is’, she continues, ‘The Pennine Walk’.
Oh, says Poppy, disappointed that she wasn’t referring to somewhere like The Blacksmith’s Arms or The Constitutional Club.
‘It’s rather a long way away,’ say I.
Poppy says ‘Would you actually have to walk it yourself?’
‘I don’t know’, says Julia ‘but I know that when my daughters did it, they said every time they stopped, they were instantly surrounded by men. Of course they might not be the sort of men you would want.’
Julia seems to have overlooked also the fact that her daughters are thirty-somethings who have not yet reached the age of invisibility like us except insofar as teenagers are concerned.
But do Ramblers go in for ‘that sort of thing’ Poppy asks. We do not need to clarify what she means.
‘Oh yes’, says Julia. ‘It’s non-stop amongst ramblers’.
How she knows I can’t imagine. Her idea of a ramble is a gentle stroll to the nearest hotel or café; the great outdoors is the table outside where she can order a gin and tonic, light up and watch people go by. She is a keen bridge player. What about the Bridge Club? Does it go on there?
‘No’, she says, ‘absolutely nothing like that goes on at the Bridge Club’.
‘What about when you go on Bridge holidays?’ asks Poppy.
‘Well occasionally there are whisperings in corridors and doors open and shut quietly in the night. But I have no personal experience’
We believe her absolutely.
‘It doesn’t sound like the OU Summer Schools,’ says Val. ‘A friend of mine spent the whole week on her back and I don’t think she went to a lecture.’
Poppy says ‘Poor thing.’ She is very kind-hearted.
Perhaps I should do an OU degree? Not that I want to spend a week on my back. I did that once after a bout of too enthusiastic gardening and it soon palls.
Val gives me a look.
‘At least you might meet someone with similar interests,’ I say.
‘You have to write essays, you don’t just go to a summer school’ says Julia.
‘I used to be quite good at essays but it was over 40 years ago. I think I’d be a bit nervous now.’ The sudden memory of myself as a bright undergraduate full of hope and ambition makes my throat feel tight.
Poppy, as usual, puts our modest aspirations in the shade. She has spotted a neighbour of hers driving a pink Rolls Royce convertible round the country lanes where she lives.
‘I just popped a note through his door,’ she said ‘and asked him to take me for a drive.’
We are all dumbfounded.
‘Well I thought, ‘Why not? I just longed for some glamour in my life.’
Why not indeed?
‘What happened?’ we ask in unison.
‘I’m waiting to hear back from him’.
Poppy, an interior decorator, is the envy of us all, tall, slim and pretty with elegant legs, which she shows off, and a fluting voice. At any mixed gathering, she is always surrounded by men. Like my grandmother she has had three husbands, plus, unlike my grandmother, a string of live-in lovers and transient boy friends. It’s hard to keep track. They rarely seem to stay long though and we’ve never understood why.
‘Oh Jessie,’ she pipes softly, ‘I just seem to pick the wrong men.’
I think Pink Rolls Royce may be the wrong man again, or if not the wrong man, then a man presented with the wrong idea.
I set my sights on something less glamorous and write off for details of the local rambling club. Not because I want to meet men but because it sounds healthy and besides I am depressed at thought of visit to mother, planned for tomorrow. I need to do something positive that will move my life forward.