Caught the quick flash of pain in Woney’s eyes. Woney, not an advocate of the Talitha school of branding, has allowed the fat-positioning of middle age freely to position itself all over her back and beneath her bra: her skin, falling exhausted into the folds of her experience, unpolished by facials, peels or light-reflecting make-up bases. She has let her once long and shiny dark hair go grey, and cut it short, which only serves to emphasize the disappearance of the jawline (which as Talitha says, can be quickly glossed over with some well-cut, face-framing layers), and has gone for a Zara version of the structured black frock and high ruffled collar favoured by Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.
I sense Woney has done this, or rather not done any ‘rebranding’, presumably not out of ‘feminism’ as such, but partly out of an old-fashioned British sense of personal honesty; partly because she can’t be arsed; partly out of self-belief and confidence; partly because she doesn’t define herself by how she looks or her sexuality; and, perhaps, mainly because she feels herself loved unconditionally for who she is: albeit by Cosmo who, in spite of his spherical physique, yellow teeth, hairless scalp and unbridled eyebrows, clearly feels he would be unconditionally loved by any woman lucky enough to have him.
But for a second, at that flash of pain in Woney’s eyes, I felt a surge of sympathy, until she went on . . .
‘What I mean is that for a single man of Bridget’s age, it’s a total buyer’s market. No one’s knocking at Bridget’s door, are they? If she was a middle-aged man, with her own house and income and two helpless children, she’d be inundated by people wanting to take care of her. But look at her.’
Cosmo looked me up and down. ‘Well, yes, we ought to get her fixed up,’ he said. ‘But I just don’t know who would, you know, at a certain age . . .’
‘Right,’ I burst out. ‘I’ve had enough of this! What do you mean, “middle-aged”? In Jane Austen’s day we’d all be dead by now. We’re going to live to be a hundred. It’s not the middle of our lives. Oh. Yes. Well, actually it is the middle. Come to think of it. But the point is, the whole expression “middle-aged” conjures up a certain look.’ I panicked, glancing at Woney, feeling myself plunging helplessly into a deepening hole. ‘. . . a certain, a certain, past-it-ness, non-viability. It doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, why are you assuming I don’t have a boyfriend, just because I don’t blab on about it? I mean, maybe I do have boyfriends!’
They were all staring at me, slavering almost.
‘Do you?’ said Cosmo.
‘Do you have boyfriends?’ said Woney, as if she were saying, ‘Do you sleep with a spaceman?’
‘Yes,’ I lied smoothly, about the admittedly imaginary boyfriends.
‘Well, where are they, then?’ said Cosmo. ‘Why don’t we ever see them?’
‘I wouldn’t want to bring them here because they’d think you were all too old, set in your ways and rude,’ I was about to blurt out. But I didn’t because, ironically enough, as for the last twenty years or more, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.
So instead I used the immensely skilful social manoeuvre I’ve been employing for the last two decades and said, ‘I need to go to the toilet.’
Sat down on the loo seat, saying, ‘OK. It’s OK.’ Put some more lip plumper on, and headed back down. Magda was on her way to the kitchen, holding – symbolically enough – an empty sausage plate.
‘Don’t listen to bloody Cosmo and Woney,’ she said. ‘They’re just in a frightful state because Max has gone off to university. Cosmo’s on the verge of retiring, so they’re going to be staring at each other across their Conran Shop 70s-style table for the next thirty years.’
‘Thanks, Mag.’
‘It’s always so nice when things go badly for other people. Especially when they’ve just been rude to you.’
Magda has never stopped being kind.
‘Now, Bridget,’ she said. ‘Don’t listen to that lot. But you do have to start moving on, as a woman. You have to find someone. You can’t carry on feeling like this. I’ve known you for a long time. You can do it.’