Unsuitable Men (26 page)

‘I didn’t hear anything,’ said Auntie Lyd.

‘You wouldn’t,’ said Percy under his breath.

‘I’m sure it was the doorbell,’ said Eleanor, hopping off her stool and moving towards the stairs with whisky-fuelled agility. ‘It might be the postman. I’m
expecting a few things.’

She returned a few minutes later with her arms full of parcels.

‘Who are all of those for?’ demanded Percy. ‘Is there anything for me?’

‘For you?’ asked Eleanor, keeping her arms jealously wrapped around the parcels as she lowered them on to the kitchen table. ‘Why would there be anything for you? Have you done
any shopping on the broadband?’

‘Shopping?’ asked Percy, sneering.

‘Yes, shopping, Percival,’ said Eleanor. ‘Or have you yet to realize there is more to the broadband than just endlessly looking up your own name?’

Percy coughed uncomfortably and didn’t answer.

‘What have you been buying, Eleanor?’ asked Auntie Lyd. She brought the porridge to the table and Eleanor, less paranoid with her in close proximity, released her grip on the
parcels.

‘Oh, just things,’ said Eleanor. ‘Jim showed me how to go on something called the eBay, and you would be astonished at what you can pick up there for next to nothing.’
She picked up one of the parcels and weighed it in her hand speculatively.

‘Why don’t you just open it?’ said Percy irritably. ‘It’s not Christmas, you know. You’re allowed to open it without guessing what it is as if you were a
child.’

‘I think this one might be for you, Lydia,’ said Eleanor, tearing open the brown paper and lifting the lid of the white box inside. Her watery eyes opened wide with delight as she
pulled out an absolutely hideous green marble table lighter. Carved out of a block of stone the precise colour of the avocado bathroom suite Jim had just removed from upstairs, it was heavy enough
to make her hand tremble as she held it. She passed it over to Auntie Lyd and reached back into the box to bring out a matching ashtray.

‘Goodness, Eleanor, you really shouldn’t be spending your money on me,’ said Auntie Lyd, turning the table lighter in her hands, probably considering how long she would have to
have it on display before donating it to the charity shop.

‘It looks lethal,’ said Percy, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, no doubt believing that the treacherous and untrustworthy Eleanor, despite the fact she could barely hold the lighter,
would find a way to stove his head in with it.

‘This one is for you, Rory,’ said Eleanor, pushing a large opened parcel across the table towards me. ‘I hope you like it, dear.’

Inside the polystyrene curls nestled an enormous yellow and brown flowered lampshade, fringed with brown tassels. Eleanor must have hit a rich vein of seventies cast-offs in her eBay
explorations.

‘Wow,’ I said, lifting it out to see it more clearly, but it was no more attractive out of the box than it had been in it.

‘Your room is so bare, dear,’ smiled Eleanor sweetly, and I felt a painful stab of sadness as I realized how true this was. I had thought I would only be in the attic bedroom for a
few weeks so it hadn’t seemed worth making an effort. And yet I had already been there for nearly two months. And it felt like I might be there for ever.

‘There is nothing in there that shows your personality, dear, no personal touches,’ Eleanor continued. ‘I wasn’t sure what to get you, but dear Lydia said you just love
anything that is a bit old.’

Auntie Lyd made a face at me behind Eleanor’s back which I think was an attempt to deny all responsibility for the choice of the lampshade.

‘Must be why Rory doesn’t mind living with you,’ said Percy. ‘Seeing as you’re so old yourself.’

‘Percy,’ admonished Auntie Lyd, frowning at him.

‘If you speak to me like that, Percival, I shall keep your present for myself,’ declared Eleanor. She picked up her whisky and sipped at it, her watery eyes issuing a mild challenge
to Percy, whose expression changed from indignant to grudgingly expectant. If I were him, having seen the presents Auntie Lyd and I had received, I would have let her keep it.

‘I do apologize, Eleanor,’ he said at last. ‘Quite unnecessary of me.’

‘Mmm,’ Eleanor agreed, putting her whisky down. She reached into the pile of parcels for the smallest one; a short brown tube with plastic caps fixed on each end. Placing it in front
of her on the table, she appeared to scrutinize the label for a few minutes.

Percy coughed and crossed his legs, obviously itching to grab the parcel out of Eleanor’s reach, but attempting to be patient.

‘Here you are,’ she said, finally pushing it across the kitchen table. It rolled towards Percy, stopping when it hit his bowl of porridge.

He picked it up with such studied nonchalance it might have been a drama-school exercise: pretend you are an excited elderly thespian who doesn’t want to admit he is dying to see what his
female nemesis might have bought him. Do not let your nemesis suspect your interest in the gift.

Opening the tube, he pulled out a battered magazine. He unfurled it, smoothing the pages out in front of him to show the cover. I could just read, upside-down, the
Radio Times.

‘Eleanor,’ Percy said, in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Is it . . . ?’

I raised my eyebrows at Auntie Lyd, but she just shrugged. Clearly she had no idea what was happening either.

‘It is,’ said Eleanor, settling back in her chair with triumphant satisfaction. ‘It is the
Radio Times
from the 14th of May 1979.’

‘May 1979?’ I asked, trying to decipher the looks that were passing between Eleanor and Percy. I was astonished to see that the deep lines around Percy’s eyes were wet with
tears.

‘The first ever broadcast of
Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood
,’ he said in an unsteady voice. All of his usual bluster and pomp had dissolved, replaced with a hesitant
excitement. ‘I’m not certain, but I think in this issue there might be . . .’ He started to flick through the magazine.

‘A full profile of you?’ said Eleanor. ‘Page twenty-six.’

‘Eleanor, what an absolutely lovely thing to do,’ said Auntie Lyd, beaming at this rare moment of residential harmony.

‘I know,’ said Eleanor, looking immensely pleased with herself. ‘I even outbid the Ashby-de-la-Zouch branch of Percy’s fan club to get it.’

‘I have an Ashby-de-la-Zouch fan club?’ sighed Percy, blinking away more tears. His white-knuckled hands gripped the tattered copy of the
Radio Times
as if he would never let
go of it.

There was a sound from the stairs, and the kitchen door swung open to show Jim standing in the doorway, beaming as if expecting a rapturous welcome.

‘Morning, all,’ he announced. I felt unkindly pleased that everyone was too engrossed in looking at Percy’s
Radio Times
to pay Jim the attention he thought of as his
due. He seemed to think we’d all start genuflecting just because he’d walked into the room.

‘What’s going on here?’ Jim asked, sauntering over to the table where Percy had opened the magazine to the full profile. ‘No way, Perce, is that you?’

We all stared at the glossy photograph of a much younger Percy Granger, smiling confidently from under a bird’s-wing sweep of chestnut-brown hair that pre-empted Princess Diana’s
feather cut by years. He wore a lemon-yellow V-necked jumper that would not have shamed the wardrobe of Lance Garcia, but which, unlike Lance’s, was worn without a hint of irony. A golden
chain glinted from within a tangle of dark chest hair.

‘In my prime,’ whispered Percy, gazing at the photograph. ‘In my prime.’

‘Christ, you were a good-looking man, Perce,’ said Jim, leaning down to look at the picture more closely. ‘Still are, I mean. But look at you there – I bet you were
mobbed by the ladies wherever you went.’

Percy sat up a little straighter in his chair, a lone tear drying on his cheek. ‘I certainly didn’t want for female company,’ he agreed.

‘Oh, he was absolutely gorgeous,’ said Auntie Lyd, pulling the magazine towards her to look at the photographs. ‘I remember when Linda and I were filming the first series of
Those Devereux Girls
, we got thrown off the set of
Whoops!
for trying to sneak into Percy’s dressing room.’

‘Auntie Lyd!’ I said. ‘You stalked Percy!’

‘
Did
you?’ asked Percy, regarding Auntie Lyd with great interest.

‘Oh yes, but you were far too grand to be bothered with two silly girls like us,’ she laughed. ‘Lin ended up going off with one of the security guards instead and I—
Well, never mind what I did.’ She laughed again but it seemed that, for just a second, her face darkened.

‘Well,’ declared Percy, his chest distended with pride. ‘I am very flattered. Very flattered indeed. Stalked by Linda Ellery and Lydia Bell.’

‘There are men all over London who’d love to have been in your shoes, Perce,’ said Jim, nudging Percy’s shoulder.

‘Oh honestly, Jim,’ said Auntie Lyd, blushing. She picked up her porridge bowl and took it over to the sink. It wasn’t an act – she didn’t seem to enjoy talking
about her time as an actress, unlike Percy and Eleanor, who could speak of nothing else.

‘It’s true, you know, Lydia dear,’ said Eleanor, nodding her head in agreement. ‘I tried to buy you a copy of the
Sunday Times Magazine
from 1983 with the big
mud-fight photo shoot of you and Linda Ellery, but it seems it’s a collectors’ item these days. I simply couldn’t afford it.’

‘Really?’ said Auntie Lyd, looking over her shoulder. ‘How bizarre.’

‘It was such a shame you retired from acting so young, dear,’ said Eleanor.

‘Too young,’ agreed Percy, looking up from his
Radio Times.
‘You weren’t even thirty-five. Even now I barely meet a man whose tongue doesn’t fall half out of
his head when I say I board with Lydia Bell.’

Auntie Lyd smiled dismissively and turned the taps on full in the kitchen sink, drowning out the sound of the latest compliment.

‘You are all far too kind,’ she insisted, and snapped on a pair of yellow rubber gloves. She turned back towards us with a closed-mouth smile that discouraged further flattery.
‘Now what more needs washing up?’

This didn’t seem a good moment to remind Auntie Lyd that she owned a dishwasher. I stacked the finished porridge bowls on the kitchen table but before I could carry them over to the sink
Jim took them out of my hands.

‘I’ll take those,’ he said, intercepting my path to Auntie Lyd with a smile. ‘You know, you look a lot like your aunt used to, Dawn. You really do.’

I flinched away, not sure what he meant. Auntie Lyd had been stunning; famously so. We might have shared the same large brown eyes, but that was where the resemblance stopped. What was Jim
playing at by trying to flatter me all of a sudden? Had he guessed I was suspicious of his motives towards my aunt?

‘Yeah, right,’ I said.

Jim shrugged. ‘Learn to take a compliment, Dawn. Not everyone’s out to get you.’

Was he on some mission to win me over as well as my aunt? Well. He might have wormed his way into Auntie Lydia’s affections, but there was no way that dodgy plumber was going to fool
me.

Ticky was out of the office all morning at an interview. Her first interview, which I’d insisted she take on, had been an extraordinary success. We all should have
realized years ago that the combination of her emotional vampirism and her magnificently thick skin meant she would confidently wade into depths that other interviewers dared not plumb. Amanda was
astounded when Ticky emerged from her meeting with Araminta ‘Minty’ Clinchmore with not just the anticipated personal tour of the Clinchmore estate, which was about to go up for sale
for the first time in its four-hundred-year history, but with Minty’s on-the-record admission of her husband’s gambling debts and cocaine addiction which had forced the sale. Apparently
the story had been common knowledge in the circles in which Ticky moved, and she refused to accept Minty’s vague allusions to downsizing and not wanting to open the house to the public. What
was intended to be a quiet puff piece that would help to sell one of the grandest private houses in England turned into a genuine society scoop that could not have thrilled Amanda more if she had
personally photographed Octavius Clinchmore with a coke straw up his nose.

Although I was delighted that Ticky was now going to take on more of the interviewing duties, it meant she was in the office even less, and yet more of her menial tasks fell to me. Amanda
didn’t appear to notice. At least she had deigned to comment that my column remained the most viewed regular feature on the website, but even with Amanda’s current approval, I
wasn’t sure enough of my advantage yet to push for the column to be promoted into the proper magazine. It wasn’t just a lack of confidence that stopped me from demanding it. The longer
the unsuitable-men project went on, the more I wondered how much longer I wanted to continue.

I had arrived in the office to an email from Sebastian, tersely wishing me the best in life and announcing that he was leaving the country shortly and would not be returning for some time. I
hoped, uncharitably, that a war had broken out somewhere far away, rather than that I had scared him out of England with my shameful frivolity. I hadn’t wanted to see him again either, but
his emailed rejection meant I would have to return to the depressing unsuitables from the My Mate’s Great website. If Sebastian had been the best of them, how much worse would the others be?
Malky had been the only one of my dates with whom it had all been easy and fun, the only one who I thought might actually replace Martin in some way; and he had seemingly disappeared off the face
of the earth since Mr Bits had attacked his dog.

I knew that Auntie Lyd was right: just because I hadn’t yet met anyone new didn’t mean I should be giving up. Even less did it mean that I should still be pining for Martin. But as
time went on, I seemed to be thinking of him more, instead of less. I tried to fight it. Whenever I found my mind drifting dangerously back to Martin I threw obstacles in front of my daydreams. I
remembered that if I ever wanted to watch something on television he made me watch it upstairs so I didn’t interrupt his sports viewing. I felt Auntie-Lyd-like rage when I considered the
domestic drudge I’d been – even though, there was no point denying it, at the time I hadn’t minded at all. Back then it had felt like a down-payment on a future together. Now I
wished I’d charged for my services like a cleaner.