We’ve been forced into a day in the house today - not even able to go out for a walk. Why? Well, we managed to find a mechanic who is working today and, after a neighbour gave us a carton of engine oil, we filled up the car’s oil reservoir and DM drove it down to the workshop of the mechanic. He got a lift home and a mere two minutes after the mechanic left here, realised he still had the Vectra’s keys in his pocket. Pah! Of course, as is always the way when you want to speak to someone urgently, the mechanic had his mobile switched off so we couldn’t get him back. When we eventually managed to speak to him, he was back at his workshop, working on another car and said he’d pop back up to the house ‘later’ to get the keys so he could fix the car. We’d worked out it was the oil seal leaking by the time he arrived so it’s not a big job but the filter’s cover had been screwed on so tightly that our hand-tools wouldn’t shift it and so we were unable to tackle it ourselves. the fact that he said he’d be back ‘later’ has meant we have just had to sit and wait for his return. Mind you, it’s entirely our fault he’s had to make a return trip so I suppose we can’t complain too much.
The enforced sojourn could have been dull or fractious (which it started as) but I’ve had my nose in a book that I’ve read in a day. I was bought it for my birthday by Shazzer and Hughie and I brought it to Cornwall expecting to read loads while here but I’ve been so totally absorbed by walking, the cottage and this land that is becoming so deeply ingrained in my psyche that I’ve not read anything while inside these four walls other than an occasional newspaper or magazine. The book has sat on the shelf, unread, until today. It’s ‘A round-heeled woman’ by Jane Juska.
In a way, I feel a bit cheated about the book (it promised to be ‘the best book about sex I have read in a long time’ - a review by Lynne Truss of the Sunday Times) because that was certainly not what I found it to be. Though I accept completely that the reviewer found that among its pages and maybe her definition of ‘best’ referred to the reality of the descriptive passages about disappointment and loneliness.
For me, its story is too sad, too heartbreakingly lonely to be either sexual or sensual. The woman whose life-story is within the pages is desperately lonely but has built up around herself a wall of reasons why she doesn’t need love or physical contact. She has thrown herself into her work as a teacher (and loves it with a passion) to help keep misery at bay and it’s only when she retires from her full-time profession that she has enough time on her hands to pause and reflect on a largely love-less, sex-less life. She does something either brave or stupid in advertising for a lover in the New York Review.…
“Before I turn 67 - next March - I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”
The book interlaces the two stories of the twists and turns of her life that made her became so lonely and her quest for some physical contact to dispel her ghosts. I found myself almost squirming as I read it. Not with any kind of voyeuristic pleasure but purely and simply with sadness. She found what she had set out to find but still ended up chasing away demons each night. She found herself wanting more - more love, more companionship and more intimacy. She has not been satisfied by the experience.
Mostly the men she meets turn out to be looking for ‘closure’ for their own sex lives - she becomes a ‘test’ for them - a way of working out if their other (more permanent) relationship is the right one to take them into old age. This, in itself, seems terribly sad - I still think that if you think there might be someone better out there then the relationship you are in is probably not right. Then I suspect it’s a simple choice - do you accept it or do you strike out alone again? For me, there is another tragedy in there - that’s the person who isn’t loved in the way they thought - the partners of these men. I know I’d rather be alone than feel I am someone’s second best.
Anyway, she recognises that she has invited these relationships and wants honesty and integrity from her lovers but the pain from these rejections is palpable and, if anything, seems to increase the sense of terrible, invasive loneliness. She is happy during the day until she closes her front-door at night alone. I know how miserable that is and I’ll bet there are millions of others out there who know it too.
I hope I don’t get into trouble for this but I feel the need to quote a passage.…
‘Life just keeps coming at you. Make no mistake, it’s out to get you and in the end it will. But every so often, you can catch a piece of it and make it do what you want it to, at least for a little while. You’ve got to stay alert though. Heads up so you don’t get caught off base though if you do, what the hell, it’s not the ninth innings, until it is.’ (Jane Juska, A Round-Heeled Woman)
Why does this seem so tragic to me? Well, I see my old, pre-David self in her. It comes back to that primal need to be held in the night by someone who loves you. I know that, had I not stepped out on my adventure with David that my own loneliness may never have been driven away, I might have ended up writing just such a book myself. (It’s all right Mum - I’m not about to do any such thing!!!)
My photo composition is not a million miles from one I’ve done before, but with what I hope is a subtle difference in the message. On the last occasion, my pose was supposed to depict giving oneself in a child-like way - this time it’s meant to say anguish - I thought I could get away with the two in the circumstances. This little ‘prop’ has served me ever so well - it cost nothing but half an hour of my time to find myself a bit of red satin in my fabric box, cut out the heart and sew it up. its stuffing is old holey tights cut into ribbons!!! It has now featured in my PotD on four occasions - how is that for thrift?
Update on car.….it is more serious than we’d thought - the filter was fitted so badly that it has damaged a part (no wonder we couldn’t get it off ourselves) and a new one needs to be ordered from Vauxhall. We’re promised a new part in the morning and the car returned later in the day tomorrow - I do hope so or I suspect DM will need to be tranquillised - he’s going stir crazy now!
