Free Julia Gets a Life by Lynne Barrett-Lee Page A

purely decorative role. In short, the one Rhiannon usually had. Yet these were surely the very same women who would be shaking their heads in astonishment and horror if I shimmied into the downstairs loo for a quickie with one of their men. Was this some sort of test? Or did Moira feel it would be therapy for me to be in the company of a largish group of recumbent males for a while; that I could perhaps soak up sex, love, affection, attachment, androgens, shaving rash, sperm etc, by osmosis?
                ‘So,’ said Boris, finally. ‘How’s the painting going?’
                ‘Painting?’ said Derek, who was splayed on a vast sofa at the far end of the room. He was obviously glad to have been given a conversation to hang his small bag of pickled hosting skills onto. He pulled himself marginally more upright than flat. ‘Didn’t know you painted, Julia.’
                ‘I think Boris has got the wrong end of the stick, Derek. I’m not a painter, I’m a...’ But Derek, a good twenty feet away, was deaf as well as drunk.
                ‘Painting! D’you hear that Moi? Julia paints!’
                ‘No, I’m a...’
                ‘D’you not paint then, Julia?’ asked Boris. I shook my head.
                ‘No. I’m a...’
                ‘Painting? How lovely!’
                Moira bustled in brightly. She clearly had Derek wired to a baby alarm. She carried her Bara Brith recipe tea towel ostentatiously, like a shield.
                I said, ‘Are you sure I can’t help you out there?’
                ‘Heavens no! The perc’s perking. All ship shape and Bristol whatnot. I tell you what! Why don’t we have coffee in the conservatory? Derek, lovely, open up, will you? Ah! Howard. How is your mother, dear? Could you have a bit of a wrestle with our patio doors?’
                I wished I could go and phone my Mother. I wished I could phone her up and say ‘ Mum, I am at a respectable dinner party and am fantasising about having really energetic sex with Max’s teacher, who is under thirty, a fine physical specimen and who has that excruciatingly sexy combination of little boy/rugged army survival core documentary type person and who, I just know , knows I’m salivating over him. And if he doesn’t, probably thinks I’m a complete dimble-wit anyway, who talks utter crap and is old and wrinkly, to boot. Oh, oh, oh. What am I to do?’ sort of stuff.
                But I couldn’t. I’m a grown up person and was therefore not under any physical or mental compulsion to follow him outside or hang around him or try and think up witty and alluring things to say to him. Especially as every time I got within a foot of him, I seemed to have lost the ability to formulate any interesting word strings.
                But I was a mother. I was Max’s Mother. I should really put his case for the cricket team captaincy. So I joined Howard at the business end and held the curtains open for him.
                ‘That’s the way, you two,’ said Moira. ‘Coffee’s almost up. Oop! What’s this by here? Oh, Derek, how could you? I thought you told me you’d hoovered these chairs? Tsk. Bring a moppet in, will you, lovely? Ho hum, I don’t know. People round and we’ve stains on our seats. What is this?’ She rubbed. ‘Looks like yoghurt or something. Tsk, tsk.’
                 I swivelled my knees and bowed out backwards. The conservatory, dark behind the swags, tails and general frippery of the soft furnishing arrangements, was cool and scented with jasmine. Real jasmine, unlike the horticultural assault that emanated from all the little bowls in the lounge. Real, heady, evocative of.... I said;
                ‘Is your Mum okay?’
                Howard’s mother, he’d explained to me, had some sort of Cancer. Not