Jemima Goes Shopping

Jemima Goes Shopping

It was a crisp Autumn morning, I had told Hugo it was my monthly meeting with my old school friend Charlotte. I was now on my way to the train station to catch the 9.53 from Chalfont St Peter to Marylebone. From there, I would pick up the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus. Usually there was enough time for a mooch around Liberty’s fabric and haberdashery department or perhaps Selfridges, maybe even the Wallace Collection, that is if I could be bothered to brave the throng of shoppers.

My trips into town gave me the opportunity to escape the humdrum of the weekly flower arranging with Penny Mountshaft, choir practise with Marigold Marsh or God forbid the hellishness of the W.I. coffee mornings.

I stood outside Liberty’s, and admired the mock Tudor frontage, before entering in. I headed straight to the fabric and haberdashery department. I spent some time browsing and finally plumped for two meters of Betsy and a dressmaking pattern for a blouse. The shop girl carefully cut the fabric, wrapping it neatly in tissue paper before putting it in the rope handled purple and gold bag, today’s alibi. I would have liked to have gone to the Wallace Collection, but now there was not time, and I could not be late for my appointment.

I caught the Central Line round to Holborn and changed to the Piccadilly line, I finally resurfaced at Russell Square. The journey had been quicker than expected so I was a little early for my appointment. I idly meandered around the area, admiring the white stucco Georgian terraces with their black railings and deep basements. The ‘Bloomsbury Set’ sprang to mind, and I imagined myself to be a creative intellectual like Virginia Woolf. Who the hell was I trying to fool? Even though I had gone to university when many girls did not, I was hardly an intellectual, and certainly not creative. It was really only due to Daddy sending me to Cheltenham Ladies College, that enabled me to get a place reading law at Kings College Cambridge. Daddy’s reasoning being, though he considered me plain, he thought by continuing my education I might at least have the opportunity to bag a decent husband.

During my first term at Cambridge, there had been a night where too many cocktails and an encounter with another fresher, had ended up with me having a botched abortion. So, when I did eventually, ‘marry well’ and was ready to start a family, no children came along. 

Today I was not meeting Charlotte. Charlotte had been involved in a motor car accident some years ago, and was now paralysed from the waist down and housebound.

I reached the Brunswick Centre, now rather dilapidated and I was reminded of when it was being built. I spied the Renoir Cinema which was now the Curzon Bloomsbury, at least it still screened independent films. I was transported back to Saturday afternoons when Hugo and I would come here and watch black and white kitchen sink dramas, empathising with the urban proletariat whilst sitting in the back row. Our laps covered in Hugo’s Burberry trench to keep our fumblings hidden. That was back in an era they called the swinging ‘60s, although they never swung for me.

Now Hugo and I never went to the cinema, in fact we never did anything together.

Hugo had been called to the bar and was now a QC (Queen’s Councellor), but contrary to his youthful ideals now had little compassion for the working poor or ‘underclass’ as he referred to them. Hugo put his success down to being ambitious, capable and hard working. Although deep down he knew it was really only due to the ‘old school tie’ and Uncle Monty’s connections. Hugo and I lived in a Grade I listed thatched pile with a gravel drive in the home counties and neither of us wanted for anything, materially that is. 

As I trod these old familiar streets, now middle-aged, frumpy and dumpy, I conjured up the sylph I had always longed to be, with a black bob and mauve lipstick, the sort of girl that sat outside cafes and smoked French cigarettes.

I arrived at the address in Tavistock Place, a Victorian mansion block. I rang the bell and was buzzed in. I climbed up the stairs all the way to the top floor, and was greeted by Theo. I had been imagining and hoping that Theo might be a 25 year old struggling Dutch art student, who wanted to paint me. I was disappointed that in reality he was fat and bald, with black rotten teeth, and just had a penchant for fleshy women, a ‘chubby chaser’ was the term.

I went behind the decoupaged room divider where I undressed and then reappeared in the rayon gown that had been left there for me. I walked over to the chaise long and slipped off the gown. I lay down positioning myself as though I were a reclining nude in a Rubens painting, but looking more like something from a Lucien Freud.

Theo took a sharp intake of breath, clumsily clambered on top of me, burying himself in the abundance of my watery fat sagging flesh. He made a strange groaning sound and it was over instantly. 

Theo quickly got off and disappeared, I knew it was time to leave and so I went back behind the screen and quickly dressed. On my way out, there was still no Theo, so I just picked up the two £50 notes he had left for me on the sideboard, not that I needed the money, but I supposed it made me feel like I was worth something.

Hugo knew the moment Jemima entered the room and pecked him on the cheek that she had been with another man, being a criminal barrister all these years had given him a sixth sense for deceit.

Hugo politely quizzed Jemima about her day, feigning an interest in her shopping. At least she would be calm for a week or so, and not complain when he spent the entire weekend playing golf.