'Don't know what you're complaining about,' Jeremy was holding forth to him. 'Men get more attractive when they get older and women get less attractive, so all those twenty-two-year-olds who wouldn't look at you when you were twenty-five will be gagging for it.'
I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass thirty are 'out.' Huh. As if.
'Oh yes, I quite agree it's much the best to go for younger partners,' I burst out, airily. 'Men in their thirties are such bores with their hang-ups and obsessive delusions that all women are trying to trap them into marriage. These days I'm only really interested in men in their early twenties. They're so much better able to . . . well, you know . . . '
'Really?' said Magda, rather too eagerly. 'How . . . ?'
'Yes, you're interested,' interjected Jeremy, glaring at Magda. 'But the point is they're not interested in you.'
'Um. Excuse me. My current boyfriend is twenty-three,' I said, sweetly.
There was a stunned silence. 'Well, in that case,' said Alex, smirking, 'you can bring him to us next Saturday when you come to dinner, can't you?'
Bugger. Where am I going to find a twenty-three-year-old who will come to dinner with Smug Marrieds on a Saturday night instead of taking contaminated Ecstasy tablets?
9st, alcohol units 0, cigarettes 4 (v.g.), calories 3222 (British Rail sandwiches hideously impregnated), minutes spent imagining speech will make when resigning from new job 210.
Ugh. Hateful conference with bully-boss Richard Finch going, 'Right. Harrods one-pound-a-pee toilets. I'm thinking Fantasy Toilets. I'm thinking studio: Frank Skinner and Sir Richard Rogers on furry seats, armrests with TV screens, quilted loo paper. Bridget, you're Dole Youths Clampdown. I'm thinking the North. I'm thinking Dole Youths, loafing about, live down the line.'
'But . . . but . . ' I stammered.
'Patchouli!' he shouted, at which point the dogs under his desk woke up and started jumping about and barking.
'Wha'?' yelled Patchouli above the din. She was wearing a crocheted midi-dress with a floppy straw hat and an orange Bri-nylon saddle-stitched blouse on top. As if the things I used to wear in my teens were a hilarious joke.
'Where's the Dole Youths OB?'
'Liverpool.'
'Liverpool. OK, Bridget. OB crew outside Boots in the shopping center, live at five-thirty. Get me six Dole Youths.'
Later, as I was leaving to get the train, Patchouli yelled casually, 'Oh yeah, like, Bridget, it's not Liverpool, it's, like, Manchester, right?'
Number of Dole Youths approached 44, Number of Dole Youths agreed to be interviewed 0.
Manchester-London train 7 p.m. Ugh. By 4:45 I was running hysterically between the concrete flower tubs, gabbling.
''Scuse me, are you employed? Never mind. 'hanks!'
'What are we doing, then?' asked the cameraman with no attempt to feign interest. 'Dole Youths,' I said gaily. 'Back in a mo!' then rushed round the corner and hit myself on the forehead. I could hear Richard over my earpiece going, 'Bridget . . . where the fuck . . . ? Dole Youths.' Then I spotted a cash machine on the wall.
By 5:20 six youths claiming to be unemployed were neatly lined up in front of the camera, a crisp ?20 note in each of their pockets while I flapped around trying to make oblique amends for being middle-class. At 5:30 1 heard the signature tune bonging and crashing then Richard yelling, 'Sorry, Manchester, we're dropping you.'
'Urm . . . ' I began, to the expectant faces. The youths clearly thought I had a syndrome that made me want to pretend I worked in TV. Worse, with working like a mad thing all week and coming up to Manchester I had been unable to do anything about the no-date trauma tomorrow. Then suddenly as I glanced across at the divine young whippersnappers, with the cash machine in the background, the genii of an extremely morally suspect idea began to form itself in my mind.
Hmm. Think was right decision not to attempt to lure Dole Youth to Cosmo's dinner party. Would have been exploitative and wrong. Doesn't answer question of what to do about it, though. Think will go have a fag in the smoking carriage.
7:30 p.m. Ugh. 'Smoking Carriage' turned out to be Monstrous Pigsty where smokers were huddled, miserable and defiant. Realize it is no longer possible for smokers to live in dignity, instead being forced to sulk in the slimy underbelly of existence. Would not have been in least surprised if carriage had mysteriously been shunted off onto siding never to be seen again. Maybe privatized rail firms will start running Smoking Trains and villagers will shake their fists and throw stones at them as they pass, terrifying their children with tales of fire-breathing freaks within. Anyway, rang Tom from miracle-on-train-phone (How does it work? How? No wires. Weird. Maybe somehow connected through electric contact between wheels and tracks) to moan about the no-twenty– three-year-old date crisis.
'What about Gav?' he said.
'Gav?'
'You know. The guy you met at the Saatchi Gallery.'
'D'you think he'd mind?'
'No. He was really into you.'
'He wasn't. Shut-urrrrp.'
'He was. Stop obsessing. Leave it to me.'
Sometimes feel without Tom I would sink without trace and disappear.
8st 12 (v.g.), alcohol units 3 (v.g.), cigarettes 0 (too shameful to smoke in presence of healthy young whippersnappers).
Blimey, must hurry. About to go on date with Diet Coke-esque young whippersnapper. Gav turned out to be completely divine, and behaved exquisitely at Alex's dinner party on Saturday, flirting with all the wives, fawning over me and fending all their trick questions over our 'relationship' with the intellectual dexterity of a Fellow of All Souls. Unfortunately, I was so overcome with gratitude* in the taxi on the way back I was powerless to resist his advances.** I did, however, manage to get a grip on myself *** and not accept his invitation to go in for coffee. Subsequently, however, I felt guilty about being a prick teaser,**** so when Gav rang and asked me round to his house for dinner tonight I accepted graciously.*****
* lust
** put my hand on his knee
*** my panic
**** could not stop self thinking 'Damn, damn, damn!'
***** could barely contain my excitement
Midnight. Feel like Old Woman of the Hills. Was so long since had been on a date that was completely full of myself and could not resist boasting to taxi driver about my 'boyfriend' and going round to my 'boyfriend's,' who was cooking me supper.
Unfortunately, however, when I got there, Number 4 Malden Road was a fruit and vegetable shop.
'Do you want to use my phone, love?' said the taxi driver wearily.
Of course I didn't know Gav's number, so I had to pretend to ring Gav and find it busy and then ring Tom and try to ask him for Gav's address in a way that wouldn't make the taxi driver think I had been lying about having a boyfriend. Turned our it was 44 Malden Villas and had not been concentrating when wrote it down. Conversation between me and the taxi driver had rather dried up as we drove to the new address. I'm sure he thought I was a prostitute or something.
By the time I arrived I was feeling less than assured. It was all very sweet and shy to start with – a bit like going round to a potential Best Friend's house for tea at junior school. Gav had cooked spag bog. The problem came when food preparation and serving were over and activities turned to conversation. We ended up, for some reason, talking about Princess Diana.
'It seemed such a fairy tale. I remember sitting on that wall outside St. Paul's at the wedding,' I said. 'Were you there?'
Gav looked embarrassed. 'Actually, I was only six at the time.'
Eventually we gave up on conversation and Gav, with tremendous excitement (this, I recall, the fabulous thing about twenty-two-year-olds) began to kiss me and simultaneously try to find entrances to my clothes. Eventually he managed to slide his hand over my stomach at which point he said – it was so humiliating – 'Mmm. You're all squashy.'