Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [126]
After two hours, they begged in unison for a mulled wine stop. “You’re the customers, ladies,” Justin declared, unperturbed. He agreed to come for them in thirty minutes, and they planted themselves in a quietish corner of the nearest mountainside restaurant and ordered two large gluweins.
Jennifer had forgotten the way that you could be anyone you wanted to be in a holiday friendship. It wasn’t about lying. It was just that the person you were making friends with had no preconceptions about you—they didn’t know your history. She was happy to take Wendy’s lead and be funny and self-deprecating and jolly. It felt good. Although Jennifer would have guessed her new friend’s age as similar to her own, Wendy was a newlywed. She’d married into a long line of skiers late the previous autumn, after a courtship so whirlwind and so summery that no mention of skiing had been made during it. The skiing husband and his skiing family made this pilgrimage annually, and nonparticipation was not an option. So Wendy was fulfilling her wifely duties. With gusto.
By day two, they had mastered turning to some degree. Although Justin said he thought they held the new resort record for number of turns taken to get down a green run, he agreed that they had all been beautifully executed. Wendy’s fall rate had fallen away dramatically. They took a two-hour lunch, dismissing a willing Justin, who made eagerly for the nearest black run. Jennifer told Wendy about her mum, surprised even as she started speaking that she should be sharing such intimacies with a virtual stranger. Wendy was a great listener—face flooded with sympathy—and Jennifer didn’t feel like she had to be polite. She talked for a while. Wendy’s mum was the domineering matriarch of a large chaotic family in Cheshire, Wendy said, and she squeezed her hand when she spoke and said that she couldn’t imagine losing her mum, and how awful.
On the third day, their muscles were really rebelling. The blue sky of previous days had given way to something much grayer and less inviting. “I’m a fairweather skier, me!” Wendy declared. Despite Justin’s halfhearted protestations that the best way to deal with the pain and the weather was to ski through it, they stopped at lunchtime, and descended in the cable car back to the village to share a fondue lunch. Wendy told Jennifer she didn’t want children. Funny how, even when neither of you had them, two women their age couldn’t be friends for more than three days without talking about kids. Like men and cars.
“Never have, really. I kept waiting, you know, for my biological clock to start ticking, but it never has. Thought I heard it, a few times. But realized it was my mates’—getting louder and louder. Never heard my own. And I don’t think I ever will.”
“What about your husband?”
“He knows, of course. It wouldn’t be fair to a bloke, would it, to marry him without having that conversation first? We had it very early, to tell you the truth. When you’re our age, you can’t afford to muck about, can you? After thirty-five, the whole world is one massive speed date, isn’t it?”
“You’re not that old!”
“I’m thirty-nine. Dangerous number, that. Just about ‘too late.’”
“Too late for what?”
“Too late for babies. It’s all downhill, isn’t it, after the age of forty. Nature remains unmoved by women’s lib. We’re supposed to have our babies when we’re in our teens, aren’t we—bodywise? Not wait until we’ve got a degree, broken through the glass ceiling at work, and slept with a load of toads looking for Prince Charming, like I did. So a woman who’s thirty-nine usually has a neon sign on her forehead, flashing BABY MACHINE at blokes. Which, strange to tell, they do not find all that alluring….”
“But not you.”
“Nope.”
“Why not, do you