The Coming of Age. May. Part 3.

20th May cont. I am determined to go on with the feng shui. I ring Poppy and ask her what to do, bearing in mind I had some intractable problems like the loo being opposite the front door and all the doors opening the wrong way. The bathroom door was a particular problem in that it opens outwards and won’t shut at all unless you are inside and have locked the door. The vital chi runs down the wastepipes all the time except when I am in there, having a bath. This could be the reason why my life seems a little flat.

‘You pronounce it fung shway,’ Poppy told me and said it really worked. She had had a rebate from the Tax Office the day after she hung up her wind chimes.

‘You need lots of mirrors, green plants, crystals and wind chimes. You can get crystals and wind chimes in the town’ she said ‘They have them in that shop that sells incense between the Herbalist and the Ethical Cotton Shop. And you’ve got plenty of plants and mirrors. It’s just a question of putting them in the right place. Why don’t I come round and help you? We could do it together. It would be fun.’

She certainly has a more exciting life than I do I think, until I remember about it, and recall that I don’t want an exciting life.

Anyway, what if someone sees me going into that shop? Half the town will think I have gone loopy at last, and the other half, that I have seen the light.

23rd May. Poppy comes round with her book and a roll of tracing paper. This is to make a plan of the house on. Then you have to make an octagonal shape divide it into eight sections and place it over the plan of the house. You have to do this so that you can be absolutely sure that things are placed in the right corners. Poppy certainly seems knowledgeable.

‘It’s called a bagwan.’ she says.

She starts to wander the house measuring it up. I hope she is not going to look too closely into the spare room which is piled high with superfluous items from my previous existence like a set of Wisden that belonged to my father that I am saving for Alex in case he should ever become interested in cricket, a yellow oilskin that belonged to an early boyfriend of Sarah’s, old underwear that might be useful as dusters and twenty cardboard boxes that would come in handy if I wanted to move again as well as my winter clothes and my ski-suit which I am holding on to in case we ever have a really hard winter.

Of course that is the room that Poppy goes into. It is the room I should be sleeping in because it faces in the right direction she assures me. I shall never have a man in my life if I don’t face the right way.

‘But I don’t want a man in my life. I had one for over thirty years. That’s all behind me.’

Poppy looks at me pityingly.

‘Oh Jess, surely you can’t have forgotten the excitement of getting to know a new lover?’

Well I had actually. It was over thirty years ago and those early days have been forgotten, buried beneath thick layers of domesticity and trying to please and being found wanting. You go into marriage like a sleepwalker. Was that really me? Is this really me?

Poppy hasn’t waited for me to answer. She is in the spare room pulling out the cardboard boxes.

‘You must take all this rubbish to the tip,’ she says. ‘You must make room in your life for new things if you want a change. It doesn’t have to be a man.’

I find myself driving down to the Household Waste Tip with a car full of things I am sure I shall need one day. It’s very agitating.

Another car arrives just behind me and pulls in at the side.

I get out and open the boot and start to haul out the boxes.

‘Here, let me help you. Those look a bit heavy.’
I look round gratefully at the other car’s occupant. He is tall, chunkily built with white hair. He looks gravely at me.

‘They are not so much heavy, as rather wedged in’, I say.

‘Let me anyway.’

He leans forward and pulls at one of the boxes only for it to split apart and disgorge its contents over the ground. Ancient copies of ‘Good Housekeeping’ and ‘Woman and Home’ skitter around.

‘I’ve finished with the little housewife bit,’ I say to the man, inwardly anxious about throwing away these old props and guides for married life. All those exhortations about straight seams and sparkling skirting boards.

The man looks distinguished and thoughtful. I would like to tell him that I read the ‘London Review of Books’ or ‘The Times Literary Supplement’ these days but it seems a bit pushy, and anyway is not true.

When I return home Poppy has given up on the spare room and moved into the kitchen. She has taken a large gilt framed mirror from the landing and hung it behind the oven. In a corner where I keep the kettle and toaster, there are three pot plants from the sitting room.

‘Where is the kettle?’ I ask, ‘We could have some tea.’
Poppy points to one of the top cupboards.

‘I put them up there’, she said in her soft voice, ‘out of the way. Now, in the bedroom,’ she continues, ‘we just need to move your bed to the other side of the room. I looked at the book again and I don’t think you need to move into the spare room but now it’s empty, you could use it as a meditation room. You should spend half in hour in there every day, practising creative visualisation.’

‘What’s that?’

'You think about the things you would like in your life, like a kind, supportive man for example.'

It sounds like affirmations to me. Which were a lot less trouble. But perhaps this works. Perhaps it is already working.

‘There was a man at the tip,’ I say. ‘He helped me.’

‘There you are then. It’s working already. What was he like?’

‘Oh, tall, nice looking, white haired.’

‘Clean, tidy, well turned out, helpful?’ Asks Poppy.

‘Well, yes.’

‘Married. Forget him.’

‘How do you know?’
‘Unmarried men look uncared for. Married men have clean, ironed clothes.’

‘Even when dumping rubbish?’

‘Believe me Jess, I know. I can spot a married man a mile off. Don’t ever get involved. I have suffered, yes,’ she pauses, a look of pain crossing her face, ‘suffered from them. All those married men who say their wives don’t understand them. They seem to be interested in you and when you are alone together, after, all they want is to talk about their wives. Do you remember…?’ She mentions one of the many men in her past life.

‘Yes, I do,’ I say. ‘He had ingrown toenails.’

‘That’s the one. Jess, we spent more time talking about his wife’s gallstones than anything else. I think I knew more about them than her doctor did.’

When she has gone I drag out a stool so that I can reach the top cupboards and retrieve my kettle. The sight of myself slaving over a hot stove, frying some bacon for supper, is not very consoling. It is almost as bad as the mirror-covered wall opposite the loo in Sarah and Roland's en suite. Later the gilt edge of my best mirror gets scorched and the glass itself covered with specks of grease.