Julie's Love

Julie fastened the final zipper and turned to look at herself in the
mirror. She was conscious of her heart beating faster than normal, like
a young girl preparing for her first date. Which in a way it was; not
every day did she treat herself to such shiny new clothes, but today
she was going to meet her new love and had to be dressed accordingly.
Not bad, she thought; sexy yet functional.

David wouldn't approve, she told herself as she descended the stairs;
her husband was, in her awakened opinion, a stuffy old fart, a dapper
suit-and-tie exterior concealing a pit of disappointment and
purposeless living; he had walked the tightrope of conformity for over
twenty-five years only to realise that he was never going to rise above
his present post as assistant manager at the local Barclays Bank. They
might put him out to grass and offer him the managership of a sleepy
sub-branch in a dull suburb or a half-dead seaside resort, or they
might just declare him redundant in the next round of cuts; what had he
gained, what had he achieved? She could never remember him taking a
risk; he could always judge margins and percentages to a nicety, and
was therefore employable, and even marriageable - a good catch,
according to her late mother, but Julie had discovered too late that he
dared nothing, dreamt nothing, created nothing and - worst, perhaps, of
all - loved nothing, and had unwittingly dragged her down for too
long.

She would never physically leave him, of course - she had invested too
much time and effort in keeping their home and bringing up their
children - but she was going to do whatever it took to regain her zest
for life, with her husband or, as seemed most likely, without. For
Julie had recently begun to hear the reaper sharpening his scythe, and
oddly enough it wasn't the menopause - that joy had not yet arrived,
but would surely not be far away - but her daughter Zoe who had caused
time's winged chariot to screech to a halt outside her front door. Zoe
had proudly announced that she was expecting her first child and that
Julie would therefore soon be a grandmother. Granny ? the term conjured
up visions of walking sticks and sensible jumpers, meals-on-wheels and
the post office pension queue, then a long illness bravely borne and a
final flowery trip to the crematorium ? no, she wasn't going to go
gentle into that good night, she would go out with a roar and a bang,
maybe literally, but with luck not just yet.

Zoe wouldn't approve of her new adventure either; she had always been a
daddy's girl and had followed David into the world of finance, but
being both talented and ambitious she had eschewed the comfortable
routine of retail banking and was now cutting a figure in Canary Wharf.
Soon to be a lumpy, bumpy, pukey, preggy figure, thought Julie with a
faint seasoning of malice - but, knowing Zoe, it would turn out to be a
trophy offspring, an extra line on the C.V., a footnote to the Coping
With Pressure At Work And Home file and in no time at all she would be
back at her desk coining it in with barely a stretch mark to show.
Granny Julie would be expected to be on hand to sort out the smelly and
time-consuming side of child-rearing, of course - well, we'll see about
that, thought Julie grimly as she waited at the bus stop.

The progress of the bus was slow; as if in mockery of Lucy's reveries
or with a malicious desire to keep her on board for as long as
possible, the bus began to fill with grannies who fumbled their change
and took ages to get on and off. Several of them turned to look at her
with curiosity or disapproval but Julie didn't care; she may never have
to catch that bus again. She thought of Jonathan and smiled; if he
could see her now he would surely put his head on one side and raise
his dark brooding eyebrows in a sardonic manner. He would probably
utter a soft throaty chuckle and make some cryptic comment. Cryptics
and sardonics were the stock in trade of Lucy's favourite child, for he
had left home in the opposite direction to Zoe and was now a leading
luminary in Liverpool's new poetry movement; his clever mouth and wry
verse could certainly match the famed Liverpudlian wit and although he
claimed to live in an insalubrious dockside squat for the sake of his
art, in reality he did rather well from recitals and published works,
not to mention free drinks in student pubs and free students of the
well-read female variety. She realised with a start that perhaps she
was lately taking after her son, or had his quick but lazy mind seized
on her suppressed rebelliousness and made it his own?

The bus turned into a shabby industrial area and Julie jumped up as it
neared her destination. The driver was taken by surprise and had to
brake fairly sharply, pulling up just beyond the stop; had he assumed
that she was fifty going on eighty, doddering all the way into town to
see whether Marks and Spencer had a nice new line in winceyette
nighties? As if to put him and the travelling grannies in their place,
Julie bounded off the bus and skipped along the pavement, her heart
thumping to a wild rock beat as her love came into view.
She had taken the lessons, she had paid the man and now she was going
to take charge. She stretched her legs wide and straddled her love,
shuffling slightly to gain comfort. Hopefully they were going to be
together for a very long time. Then, with a growl and a roar which
thrilled her leather-clad body, the gleaming new motor-cycle bore Julie
from the garage forecourt.