The Younger Man

Chapter One

The Importance of Being a Sarah

‘Ouch!’

Angie, forty-five, pretty in a hard sort of way, is taking care of business. She is, she unashamedly admits, the neatest bikini waxer in the world. I’ve been visiting Angie for years at my local gym. The GoForIt Fitness Club is an extortionately priced black-and-shiny-chrome ego centre for professionals, heavy on self-absorption, light on self-awareness. The purposely heavy-glassed building tries to be desperately welcoming with the Jane Packer flower arrangements at fifty quid a twig in reception, and the blinding white waffle towels in the changing rooms which everyone, whether they can afford to buy their own or not, nicks. The overly air-conditioned studios have lights that make members look far more blotchy and fat than they are—or as they are—I can’t work out which. And the nursery is equipped with everything money can buy except carers who like children. Sit and listen in this place for ten minutes and you need not buy the Sunday papers. There are the wives and mistresses who twitter to acquaintances they need to know rather than want to know, believing friends are to be kept close, enemies kept closer. Their spindly manicured fingers swooping like swifts over tasteless, indigestible salads, furtively nibbling at the organic cucumber when no one is looking. There are the husbands who hide behind broadsheet papers or mumble into hands-free phones and window-shop at the aerobicized twenty-and thirty-somethings in their sweaty White Stuff gear. Then you have the tanned and toned tennis coaches in their whites, calf and thigh muscles deliciously defined, who strut like peacocks, their every word treated like a grain of worldly wisdom by emaciated Traceys who live in Barnes and Wimbledon Village who want to improve their stroke, on the court. The supersized eighty-degree heated swimming pools are full of noisy children watched neatly on the side by pained mothers who’ve just had their nails, toes, noses, eyes done and look ridiculous in the plastic blue bags they have to wear around their latest Manolos or Jimmy Choos. No working class here of course, but then that’s not what GoForIt is all about. It’s about professionals and professional accessories looking good and being watched. And it remains, despite the happy clappy attempts of the earnest club manager to squeeze soul into the place, as anaemic and false as the smiles on the ladies who Pilates through the pain. I go there for one reason only. I go there because of Angie.

Angie is sharp of chin and nose and wit. She has luxuriant long auburn hair and is permanently tanned, but genuinely so (no St. Tropez muck for her, she tells me) and is model thin. Long of leg, body and arm, she looks like a sexy spider, if there is such a thing. She’s had two husbands, numerous lovers and several abortions. I think she has Mafia connections because she’s always hinting at me should I ever want anyone ‘seen’to, I should give her a call. I don’t think she means waxing. She talks in a posh cockney accent so she sounds Australian most of the time. She’s become my counsellor as well as my waxer. Over the years, she’s seen me at my most vulnerable, emotionally as well as physically. And well, to be honest, as every time I see her I’m naked from the waist down, my legs splayed dangling in midair, like some gigantic dead fly, I feel it’s a tad churlish not to open up lyrically as well as literally about baggage and stuff whilst she waxes away. She’s waxed through my marriage (painful), the birth of my child (painful but worth it), and my divorce (very painful and thanks to focused solicitors Hughes Fowler and Symth very worth it), but her waxing always causes me glazed eye distress. It’s okay pain. It’s positive pain. It distracts from other pain, alternating between the exquisite pain induced by my career, the men, the lack of men, the sex and the frustrations—the latter two are invariably interrelated. She’s given me pain. I’ve given her a few laughs. Luckily, she doesn’t charge for the listening, nor the advice, just the waxing.

Today, she’s giving me a ‘target’. An arrow pointing abruptly upward toward my belly button. I’m here with best friend and soul mate Fran, who’s in the next cubicle getting her finger and toenails French polished and eyelashes permed for, I’ve worked out, £1 a lash.

‘Hazel, now put your hand on there. That’s it. And stretch that bit. Yep. That bit. Yep. All in the stretch. And pull that bit over there. That bit, and hold on tight…’

Rip. The green-pea-coloured tea tree wax, which is allegedly less aggressive than the powder-pink sludge variety, tears fire into crotch. The green sludge is supposed to soothe away all possible pain. It still fucking hurts.

‘Aghh, that hurts even more.’ I whimper, surveying red blotches blossoming all over my nether regions. ‘Are you sure the men won’t think I’ve got herpes?’

‘No, no, Hazel, this is quite normal. Quite normal. The blotches will disappear. Try not to sleep with any one tonight darling, or if you do, do it in the dark. But they might feel the bumps anyway and suspect something’s up. Plus, don’t have a bath, so they may not want to sleep with you anyway. Whatever, when the blotches are gone, you’ll love it. You just wait. They’ll love it. They’ll get all excited when they see it.’

I’m trying really hard to visualise any of my recent boyfriends getting excited by my arrow. Their faces grinning inanely like five-year-old schoolboys who’ve discovered the delight of the latest PlayStation game for the first time. I can’t. All I see are blotches. I imagine their faces contorted in astonishment and possible disgust as I seductively pull down the latest lacy almost-there pink number from Victoria’s Secret to reveal one of my own.

Really? I thought most men like something there.

Well, there is something there. An arrow. And it looks sexy. If I were a man, I’d sleep with you, Hazel. And men don’t like it messy. They’re lazy. They like a challenge only if they think it’s achievable. They don’t like to forage for anything too long, Hazel.

Some men like a challenge.

You just wait.

Angie winks at me, as though she knows I’m about to be pounced on, tigerlike, by a prospective date as soon as I leave the room. I’m not convinced but say, ‘Thank you, Angie. You’re sweet.’

‘So, what made you go all the way, love?’ Angie asks, gently rubbing cream into my crotch while I try desperately not to get turned on. I’m not gay, but at moments like this, I wish men could stroke women more like women stroke women, if you know what I mean.

Not realising what she’s referring to initially, I pause briefly and then realising she’s referring to my decision to have a Brazilian wax, I answer.

‘Oh, I wanted a tidy up. Something different. I’m the big Four-O this year, so I want to change a few things. Take a chance, I suppose, and I might as well start here,’ I say, pointing to my crotch.

I look down at myself. My almost forty-year-old crotch. Not bad. Doesn’t look its age considering what it’s been through, but I don’t know what an old woman’s crotch looks like. Not the sort of thing you stare at in the changing room. Not the women’s one anyway. I expect men compare size but women don’t have that. I’ve occasionally asked boyfriends if women are ‘different’ down there. They’ve all said, they are. Shape, size and taste. Some hair is soft and downy, others, you could cut your chin on. Some taste, er, strong, others like strawberries. Yeah right. They’ve reassured me mine is lovely and soft and I taste wonderful, bless them. Not that I would believe any of it, of course. They would say anything to get good head.

‘A fine place to start the new decade as any, I suppose. Must say, you don’t look forty. You’re in good nick. You don’t have many grey hairs.’

‘I have highlights.’

‘I’m not talking about those on your head, Hazel.’

Oh, right.

‘Plus, you don’t have lines on your face.’ (Looks more closely at my eyes) ‘Well, not many anyway. Helps I suppose, you not being married.’

I smile. ‘No, happily divorced. Must be five years now, Angie.’

‘Yep, must be about five. Watched you go down two dress sizes, giving me a running commentary as it were. Spontaneously bursting into tears halfway through the facials. Angry one minute, sad the next, in mourning one day, full of excitement the day after. But now look at you. You’re constant, well, as constant as I think you’re ever going to be, Hazel, and you’re happy. You’re a right SARAH. Single and Rich And Happy.’

‘I’m not rich. I’m comfortable. Happy? Yes, I’m happy and happily single. When I had the energy to make space for a man, they couldn’t handle a single mum with a young child. Now Sarah’s all grown up and off to university soon, I don’t know if I want someone else to care for.’

‘They could care for you, Hazel.’

‘No, it doesn’t work that way, Angie. You end up caring for the man. They’re all little boys—whatever their age. Frankly, I can only see the downsides to marriage these days. None of the upsides.’

Angie looks at me like a mother looking at her child whom she knows is fibbing. She knows me too well. She knows I’m a divorce lawyer and a very successful one at that. When it comes to talking to prospective clients about their relationships, I find a negative in every positive if I want to, and a positive in something negative. So perhaps I’ve started to believe my own bullshit over the years. She says my views are warped and harsh and cynical. I say they are realistic and based on observation and listening. A lot. But I have hope. And my colleagues tell me that hope I have, that single ingredient, makes me human. I think it just makes me weak.

‘No boyfriends then?’

‘No boyfriend, right. I don’t have boyfriends anymore. I think when you’re over thirty they become lovers. How can you call a forty-or fifty-something-year-old a boyfriend.’

Angie looks at me again, giving me a wry smile. She’s penetrated my façade of ambivalence. The one I’ve become so good at nurturing and practicing over the years. She knows, Angie knows, I would like to meet someone, but it sounds so pathetic. That phrase ‘Dear Agony Aunt, I want to meet someone.’ As though I don’t meet another human being in my daily life. Of course I meet men. I meet loads of eligible deeply unhappy men. They also happen to be deeply and overtly embittered and at that particular time of their life, usually openly misogynistic. And the wanting to meet people bit sounds strangely adolescent or alien or both. And it’s taken up so much of my thinking time in past years. A waste of thinking space when there is so much more to do and think about and care about in this world—bigger issues, like, well, like world peace and the cure for cancer, than ‘wanting to meet someone’. I’m thirty-nine, for Christ’s sake. Not nineteen. Yet I want that singular selfish rush to the brain—and be honest with yourself, Hazel—to other parts of my body as well. That buzz of electricity when you’re within three inches of the person’s arm that I always misguidedly diagnose as love, and is the more short-lived but no less potent virus known as chemistry.

Angie laughs. ‘Yep, men are boys, some behave like babies, like my first husband—I had to do absolutely everything for him. My second was more like a toddler, with his alternating tantrums and sulking when I didn’t wear black suspenders and thigh-high boots on Friday nights. Most men are happy with fish on Fridays.’

She stops and smiles, realising what she’s said.

‘And my last boyfriend was in an eternal state of adolescence, angry with life and himself. At the moment I think I’ve struck lucky because I’ve got one who’s about the emotional age of six—malleable, does as he’s told, cute as a button and happy with his lot. But you’re a youngster yourself, Hazel. Always think of you as a free spirit, I do.’

‘I try to be. I’ve found focus and financial freedom in work I find challenging and enjoy and a happiness I couldn’t have imagined in bringing up Sarah by myself.’

Sarah is my teenage daughter. She’s seventeen, has lived with me all her life and is leaving for university in September to study French and politics and life. I will miss her. Correction. I am weeping inside at the thought of her going. But it will pass eventually. She added to my life in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I felt I had one more person on this planet on my side when I gave birth to her. Whereas when I married I felt I dissolved as a person. I even lost my name. But perhaps it was just the man I chose. And what was true of him isn’t of all men. I hope. As for Sarah, we’ve been a good team; I love her more than anything in the known and yet to be discovered universe. My teenage daughter, with her bright blue eyes and long shiny brown hair, in her Gap jeans and Quiksilver sweat shirt is grinning at me in my mind’s eye. She’s gorgeous and smart, but I’m biased. Thankfully, the A level board agree with me and they gave her grades good enough to get her into Bristol, where she says all the talent is and she can still have fun and get a fine degree. I will miss her. I will miss her dreadfully. Sometimes when I think about it, and I try not to too much, I get a heartache and feel it’s breaking. This sounds so dramatic but she’s been so much a part of my life, has Sarah. I’ve read to her over a thousand times at night, and cherished each bedtime kiss and hug in the morning. Her favourite was always the book Big Rabbit and Little Rabbit, about how Big Rabbit loved Little Rabbit to the moon and back. I’ve nursed her through chicken pox and measles and stitches when her granddad was chasing her round the table and she hit her head on the corner and blood was everywhere. And I came and scooped her up and went to the car, running into the casualty department, asking, well, demanding someone see her immediately. And bless the National Health then, they did. I’ve had the pooey bottoms and holding-breath-banging-head-on-floor tantrums (a technique some of my grown-up clients also use in court when they don’t get their own way), Teletubbies and Power Rangers (she always was a bit of a tomboy). I’ve met the boyfriends from hell and those from the local public school (usually the same). She’s seen a lot of her dad and that’s done her good and she’s made her own mind up about him. She’s meant I couldn’t go out with the other adults on so many occasions I can’t count, but I don’t begrudge missing a single one of them. She’s been wonderful company, both my right and left arm and I will miss her to the moon and back a zillion times over when she goes to college. And I mustn’t think of that now, because if I do, I will cry.

A tear runs down my face, which I explain away to Angie as being something in my eye.

Angie sees through it.

‘Sarah’s off to university soon, isn’t she?’

‘Yep.’

‘Miss her, won’t you?’

‘Yep.’

Another tear falls, so she changes the subject.

‘So you think women want to grow up?’

‘I don’t know about all women, but I don’t fear growing up. I quite relish it. I look forward to it. Hassles and all. After all, with age comes experience. Not necessarily increased wisdom, but experience. And I get more of a buzz, much more of abuzz, out of emotional experiences than I think many of the men I meet do, on all levels.’

Angie smiles again.

‘You’re in the minority then, darling. As for growing up or getting old as most people call it, I don’t think most of the women who come to this gym look forward to it one little bit. I have at least fifty women in here a week talking to me about how they bemoan the latest line on their face, or vein in their leg, and how, if they had the money, they would have Botox, or surgery to lift and tuck something somewhere. Believe me, Hazel, these women want to hold back time just as any Peter Pan. Just as much as men do.’

‘That’s different, Angie. Yes, I agree, they want to hold back the physical aspects of ageing. We all do. I do. That wouldn’t be natural, although ironically, that’s what the ageing process is—natural. But I don’t think women want to hold back the emotional aspects of ageing. Of gaining experience. I think they rather enjoy that bit. I just think they’re emotionally, well, how can I put it, emotionally deeper, more interesting, more dimensional than men. They have the potential to have more fun with life if they only had the courage and believed in themselves a little more than they do. Like men do. I think women have the capacity to, well, how can I put it, to emotionally orgasm. Don’t think men can.’

Angie laughs. ‘Never heard it described that way, but think I know what you mean. So, let me get this right, you think men are rather emotionally frigid?’

‘Yep. Well, the men I’ve met are. Both in my professional and personal life.’

‘And simple?’

‘Yep.’

‘So if these men of yours are such simple creatures then, why can’t you understand them?’

‘I can. They’re boring emotionally. We think they’re straightforward because that sounds more hopeful, more positive, but actually they’re just boring. Immature if you like, but they’re less honest than children and don’t say what they mean or mean what they say. Or know what they want or want what they need. Children are honest and do say what they want and need. I find men emotionally one-dimensional. Bit dull.’

‘Not all of them surely. What about the romantic gestures they make? You’ve told me about some of the lovely weekends to Prague, New York and Milan you’ve been on care of these boring emotional insipid men of yours. They’ve been spontaneous with flowers and actions.’

‘What about them?’

‘That shows emotional depth.’

‘No, it shows imagination. Consideration. Thoughtfulness. If they want something in return, it shows logic, probable manipulation, it doesn’t show emotional depth.’

‘How do you gain emotional depth, then? How do men gain emotional depth?’

‘For me, was when I gave birth to Sarah. And when I got divorced. I gained an inner strength, an impetus, an edge, an understanding, a focus, an energy, a direction, through childbirth and divorce I didn’t have before.’

‘You didn’t gain any of those things when you got married?’

‘No. I became a part of something. I wasn’t whole anymore.’

‘Don’t you lose yourself a bit when you become a mother, too?’

‘I found being a mother is as whole as they come. And the mother figure as any religion or prophet or tarot card reader will tell you, is the strongest card in the deck. Most powerful. Most resourceful. Most compassionate.’

‘So how did your divorce make you whole?’

‘I got my name back and my self-esteem, having gone through the steepest learning curve I hope I’ll ever experience. I rediscovered my identity.’

‘Don’t you think your ex did, as well?’

‘He never lost his. Moreover, he went straight to someone else, so didn’t give himself time to discover who he was by himself anyway, which is why he’ll never change.’

‘You’ve been out with divorcees and fathers yourself. Didn’t they have emotional depth? Didn’t they show how much they loved their children? They’ve been through the same experiences you have, after all.’

‘To be blunt, no. In my opinion—and from what I’ve observed—little changes for a new father. Or little in relation to the mother. Those I’ve dated view fatherhood as responsibility, one they are happy to take on, to talk about, to show off, but it’s responsibility all the same.’

‘That’s a bit harsh, Hazel.’

‘I know. It’s harsh. I know. And it’s disappointing to think like that, isn’t it.? That men, the ones I’ve met at least, are that shallow. And isn’t it so much nicer to believe in the caring father figure and the romantic hero? The white knight. The Mr Darcy. Much nicer to think men think about their children in the same way women do, wouldn’t it? That men think about women the same way women think about men. That they grieve and hurt in the same way women do. That they gain emotionally through experience. But they don’t. Not the ones I’ve known anyway. They don’t learn. They don’t have the same nurturing chip as women have because, bottom line, they’re the ones that need the nurturing. Even Peter Pan needed his Wendy.’

‘So if you stopped nurturing them, do you think they’d grow up emotionally?’

‘No. And that’s the rub. That’s why it’s disappointing and futile to try. All of mine had this fixation to be and stay young, whatever their age, which makes them fun and fickle, but ultimately rather draining—taking from me emotionally rather than giving back. But I live in hope. I will never give up looking.’

I sit and scrutinise my crotch, which is now blotch free and quite sexy. I remember the time when I was in the car with an old boyfriend and he was stroking my inner thigh, gradually working his way up, and I realised I hadn’t waxed for ages, and didn’t want him to go there. I wonder what he’d think of this now. My cupid arrow. Angie jolts me out of my reverie.

‘So, my love, how do you feel about turning forty?’

‘Fabulous. My school friends are all turning this year as well. Meeting up with them in a few weeks for a celebration of sorts. I know it’s not usual to say this but I’m quite excited about turning forty, Angie. Quite excited.’

‘Good for you, darling. Good for you.’

I like Angie. Angie doesn’t give me any homespun philosophies or advice, but does make me think. Thought for the day—are men emotionally shallow or is there a free-spirited, fun, funny, sexually imaginative Peter Pan out there who also happens to be emotionally mature? Please discuss.