The Sex Life of My Aunt
Mavis Cheek Faber and Faber, 282pp, £10.99
ISBN 0571205089
Dilys, the fiftysomething heroine of Mavis Cheek's tenth novel, is faced with an enviable dilemma: should she stay with her nice but older lawyer husband, or run off with her sexy new lover, Matthew? It's not an easy decision for any grandmother to make - both men are desirable, intelligent and left-leaning, and they both adore her.
She meets Matthew on a deserted train station after a funeral. In true romantic fashion, he gives her his hanky to wipe her teary eyes and she quickly calculates him to be around 40. "For some reason the thought made me incredibly happy." (If he was in his thirties, you understand, she might have hesitated.) As it is, after a respectable interval, she invites him to a private view at an art gallery, returning his (now cleaned and pressed) hanky. There's "no going back", she decides. But there is a problem: Matthew is unemployed. And although this means that he's available for sex in the afternoons, will she be able to give up being part of "Mr and Mrs Couldn't-Be-Better"?
Dilys spends a lot of her time comparing the two men. At first, it seems there's no competition. How can a man in a blazer who wants creases ironed into his Levis, front and back (hubby), possibly compete with a walking advertisement for cool relaxation in a loose black suit and denim shirt (boyfriend)?
Dilys's alibi for her assignations with Matthew is good old Aunt Eliza (unbeknown to Auntie herself, whom Dilys hasn't actually seen since she was a child), and a family meeting threatens to blow her cover. When Dilys finally confesses, Aunt Eliza proves more sympathetic than she might have imagined and has her own surprising story to tell. And so it is only on page 174 that we finally hear about the sex life of the aunt of the title. In her youth, pregnant with her lover's child, Eliza chose to stay with her husband (a repressed homosexual), as she was used to "good things, nice clothes, nice furniture". Her lover, a small-time coal merchant, earned 25 shillings a week. So she got her husband drunk, had sex with him for the first and last time, and passed the child off as his. "Twenty-five bob a week. I just couldn't do it, you see." Thus Aunt Eliza puts the case for the husband.
The bitchy relationship between Dilys and her envious older sister - who, though reasonably well off, did not "marry up" like Dilys - is superbly done, and exposes those cruel social gaps that can appear between members of the same family. And the outspoken Aunt Eliza is a joy.
But I did not really believe in Dilys. Not once does she pull her tummy in, worry about wrinkles round her neck, or feel threatened by Matthew's young girlfriend. Yes, she has her roots touched up with "ebony dye" but, in my opinion, that isn't something posh grannies do, even first-generation ones - and it only seems to make her even more like a caricature of Joan Collins. None the worse for that, except she pops up in a book that is trying to convey the very real agonies of grief and of being torn between husband and lover, a book that I read at one hugely enjoyable sitting, desperate to know who she chose in the end.
Vicky Hutchings works for the NS
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
