Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was handing round slices of her homemade coffee-and-walnut cake, when they were disturbed by a tinny voice coming from the street. Lydia couldn’t distinguish the words initially, but as they got louder and closer they became clearer:
“CLEAR THE PAVEMENT! SAVE OUR COMMUNITY CENTER! CLEAR THE PAVEMENT! SAVE OUR COMMUNITY CENTER!”
Everyone rushed—well, insofar as they were physically able to rush—to the windows and peered out. Hoving into view was Anna on her mobility scooter, her hair no longer lilac, but bright, almost fluorescent, orange. She scattered women and children from the pavement in front of her, like a snowplow clearing a drift. A loudhailer was attached to the handlebars which, in turn, were attached to an old-fashioned tape recorder. Her walking frame was strapped to the back. They watched her dismount slowly, turn off the tape, and switch modes of transportation.
“Nice work, Anna,” said Art, as she wheeled into the room pushing the walking frame.
“Just doing my bit,” said Anna, peeling off her leather jacket to reveal an AC/DC T-shirt. “Luckily, this ain’t my first rodeo.” Lydia had no idea what she meant by that.
“You changed your hair color,” Lydia said.
“You like?” said Anna, turning her head from side to side. Fortunately, she continued without waiting for a response. “Most folks see gray hair as a sign of age. Not me. I see it as a blank canvas . It’s a challenge, innit? Hey! Did anyone see the postbox by the town hall? It’s wearing a Santa hat! It’s causing a right stir. I wonder who could knit a giant red hat like that…”
They all swiveled as one to face Ruby.
Ruby said nothing, just stared demurely down at the pale-pink knitting on her lap and murmured, “Knit one, purl one.”
“What are you knitting now, Ruby?” asked William.
“Something for my grandchild,” said Ruby, with a little smile.
“Sure you are, Banksy,” said Daphne.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today, Lydia?” asked Ruby, with a deft swerve of subject.
“Well, I brought a huge jigsaw along, which I thought we could do together,” said Lydia, slightly nervously. Her club members, she’d learned, did not hold back with their opinions, which were almost invariably negative.
“There’s no point doing jigsaws ’cause Daphne cheats!” said Anna.
“I do not!” said Daphne, snapping her head around to deliver a look that would have turned a lesser woman to stone. Anna, however, had spent three decades dealing with truckers, and was not easily intimidated. She held up her right hand, second and third fingers pointed into a V-shape, turned them slowly toward her eyes, then leveled them at Daphne while mouthing, I see you, Daphne.
“How is it possible to cheat at a jigsaw?” said Lydia, trying to smooth the waters.
“Last week, she hid the final piece so she could be the one to finish it,” said William.
“Prove it, Sherlock,” said Daphne, icily.
“That piece, which you pulled miraculously out of thin air, was still warm ’cause you’d been sitting on it for hours,” said Anna. “I know a cheat when I see one. I was married to one for years.”
“I didn’t know you were married,” said Lydia, in a clumsy attempt to move the conversation on before her seniors could start stabbing each other with Ruby’s knitting needles.
“Five times,” said Anna, rolling up her sleeve and turning over her arm to reveal five names tattooed in cursive script. “Outlived them all. Wimps.” The names on Anna’s forearm had all been crossed out with neat, black, tattooed diagonal lines.
“Mmm. To lose one husband is unfortunate. But to lose five could be considered careless. If not criminal,” said Daphne.
“Look, this is all interesting but irrelevant,” interrupted Art. “I have a far more important activity for us all than jigsaw puzzles. The council have asked the nursery next door to put on a nativity performance before we all close for the Christmas holidays, and they desperately need our help.”
There was a brief silence while they all digested this information.
“You know what,” said Daphne. “You may not be as stupid as I’d thought.”
“Well, you are just as rude as I’d suspected,” said Art. Daphne ignored him.
“We can skin two cats with one stone. Help the kids next door and save our social club,” she said.
“Kill two birds, I think you mean?” said Lydia.
“Do you?” said Daphne, with a glare that seemed to pin Lydia to her chair, like a butterfly attached to a corkboard. “The point is, we are never going to save this community center by collecting loose change from people, selling a few cakes, or doing a sponsored walk. What we need is hearts and minds . We need to show the council, their constituents, and the local media how important this place is to the community. That way there’ll be an uproar if they try to send in the bulldozers. If we can do that, they’ll find the money to repair our hall. And a joint nativity production is the perfect vehicle. It’s got everything: cooperation, creativity, education, and, to top it all, angels, a donkey, and the baby Jesus. It’s bound to succeed because, to quote The Blues Brothers , we’d be ‘on a mission from God.’?” Daphne steepled her hands in front of her on the table and stared at them all.
“I hate to say this, and I very much doubt I’ll ever say it again, but I agree with Daphne,” said Art. “Which is why it was my idea in the first place. A bunch of geriatrics aren’t going to pull the local heartstrings, but if we add some of those cute kids next door into the mix…”
“It’s genius!” said William. “And I still have contacts in the London press offices: the Evening Standard , Metro , the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle . I’ll buy them a few pints, and make sure they pick up the story.”
“So, William can be in charge of scenery, since he has an artistic eye, and taking publicity shots,” said Art. “Ruby, since you’re so good with textiles, can you do costumes?”
“On it like a car bonnet,” said Ruby, somewhat incongruously. Perhaps she was actually planning to knit a bonnet for a car?
“Lydia, can you organize refreshments? Anna and Daphne can be general helpers, and I’ll direct,” said Art.
“Of course you will,” said Daphne, under her breath, followed by, “General helper, my arse.”
“Oh, and don’t forget Maggie! I have a role in mind for her, too,” said Art.
“Don’t they say never work with children or animals?” said William.
“Ha!” said Art. “It’ll be fine. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?”
Lydia felt a warm glow of satisfaction, watching her club members collaborating over something that wasn’t borderline illegal, or positively dangerous. Or perhaps it was just a hot flash? It was difficult to tell the difference. She was reading a book called Cracking the Menopause: While Keeping Yourself Together , but she still felt like she was falling apart. She’d put the book down somewhere and lost it for days, before finding it in the microwave.
“Lydia, about the other project we’ve been working on,” said William.
Lydia’s good mood dissipated, replaced by a wave of nausea. She’d given Art and William details of Jeremy’s routine, his office address, and so on, but had rather hoped they’d forgotten about the whole surveillance thing. She’d convinced herself that Jeremy was right: she was overreacting. Hysterical. But what if they had found something? Did she really want to know? Wouldn’t it be better to keep her head planted firmly in the sand?
“We followed your husband for forty-eight hours, and this is all we got,” said William, taking a brown A4 envelope out of his bag and pulling out an array of glossy photographs, which he spread in front of them with the practiced manner of a man who had covered many editors’ desks with prints over the years.
“This certainly wouldn’t be enough for the legal departments of the Sun or the Daily Express. Nothing that proves anything untoward is going on.” Art waggled his gray eyebrows meaningfully at the word “untoward.”
Lydia felt her shoulders relax. There were shots of Jeremy entering and leaving his fancy gym. Out for lunch with a client. Shopping in his favorite gentlemen’s outfitter’s.
“What’s this one?” she said, pushing a photo across the table toward William with her index finger. It showed her husband kissing the cheek of a much younger woman on a busy pavement. The sort of woman for whom traffic stopped when she wanted to cross the road. Unlike Lydia, who’d nearly been mowed down by a yellow Fiat Uno the other day, despite being on a pedestrian crossing. It would be just her luck, to suffer the indignity of being killed by an affordable yellow car.
“He was just kissing her goodbye, right outside the office. They walked off in opposite directions,” said William.
“I don’t think that kiss meant anything,” interjected Art. “In my industry—my ex-industry— people kiss like that all the time, hundreds of times a day, while calling each other ‘darling’ and saying mwah-mwah .”
“It’s a great example of how context is everything,” said William. “I honestly wouldn’t worry about it. We’ll keep following him, though. Just for a few more days, if you like?”
“No, no,” said Lydia. “I don’t want to waste your time.” She was feeling utterly stupid and embarrassed. And having Jeremy followed was unethical, if not illegal.
She stared at the pictures again, wondering why she didn’t feel more relieved. Something about them unsettled her. There was her husband, chivalrously kissing a woman goodbye, politely pouring wine for his lunch guest, smiling at the doorman as he left the gym.
When had he last treated her like that? Looked at her like that? When had he stopped bothering? When had she stopped noticing him not bothering? When had she stopped feeling worthy of him bothering?
Snap out of it , Lydia , she told herself. Everything was going to be fine. Jeremy wasn’t having an affair, they were going to save the community center and her job, and the girls would soon be home for the Christmas holidays. It was all coming together brilliantly.
Lydia helped herself to another celebratory slice of cake. Maybe it would help plump out some of her wrinkles. Like a cosmetic filler, but more tasty.
···
Art and William were helping Lydia stack the chairs back in the corner of the room, while Daphne was hovering, looking uncharacteristically nervous and awkward, by the door.
“Is there a problem, Daphne?” Lydia asked.
“I have a favor to ask William,” she said.
Art and William, who were holding one end of the table each, stopped in their tracks and stared at her in astonishment.
“I was wondering if you could take some photos for me,” said Daphne, shifting from one foot to the other, in the manner of someone not used to asking for help.
“What kind of photos?” asked William.
“Of me,” said Daphne. “For a website. Ziggy says I need to look happy. Approachable and friendly. The photos should show me doing hobbies, and having fun with friends and family—that kind of thing. Do you think you can do that?”
“Well, of course I can do that,” said William. “But more to the point, can you ?”