Margo

Margo sat with her legs crossed on the outdoor seat in the garden just beyond the raffle table and the cake sale. She wore quite a short yellow skirt and a red blouse with a chunky yellow plastic necklace. She had bare white legs, muscular and long stuffed into red stilettos; legs, while they no longer looked young, they looked purposeful and capable. She wore her customary jungle red lipstick, but now that she was of the age where she denied grandchild, as much as she used to deny children, she was no longer in the habit of making that O shape with her lips when she spoke. Her fingers twitched now that she had quit smoking, as if she no longer had a purpose for them.


Her lifelong friend, Chanel, took the seat next to her. “Margo,” said Chanel.

“Why is everything about sex now a days,” Margo asked suddenly.

“Darling, I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“Really, mention anything, anything at all.”

“Australia is burning…”

“Sexy firemen, big hoses.”

“Floods.”

“Divers in skin tight wet suits.”

“Global warming?”

“Stripping down to get cool. Sweating skin, bodily juices.”

“Margo? Me too?”

“You too?”

“World famine.”

“Selling children cheap to paedophiles.”

Margo raised her shoulders and widened her eyes, and made jazz hands as if daring to be questioned.

“Justin Trudeau.”

“Come on, all night darling, who wouldn’t want to go all night with Justin Trudeau.”

“Emmanuel Macron.”

“Come to mummy.”

“Donald Trump.”

“Getting pissed on in a Russian hotel room by a fat pig with a small peepee.

“Boris Johnson?’

“Ah?” Margo stopped mid sentence. She laughed. “Yes. Well.” She could feel her eyes widen at the same ratio as her mouth making an O grappling for an answer. She exhaled. “You have me there.”

“How long has it been, Margo?”

“What!”

“How long has it been?”

“Two thousand and god damn two, darling.”

“Darling…”

“I know… I need a fuck, or another bottle of gin.” She laughed self-consciously. “I know that.”

Margo turned and stared straight at Chanel. "And if it is the gin, I might just do myself a mischief with the empty bottle."

"Margo!" exclaimed Chanel.


Chanel looked down at Margo’s twitching finger. “You need a cigarette, I’m guessing, not a man.”

“Have you got one?”

“You know I don’t smoke.”

“Desperate does as… um… it does.” She pulled her hands apart, sick of her own twitching fingers. “Or however that saying goes.” Margo laughed self-consciously.


“Even Boris is looking good, I’d guess,” said Chanel.

Margo laughed out loud, it just seemed too ridiculous. “Even if he was the last man on earth.” Margo shook her head slowly.

“The very last peepee…”

“I’d go lesbian before I’d do that,” said Margo.

“I’m sure the lesbians would love to hear you being so flip.”

“I once knew a lesbian who looked a bit like him, actually,” said Margo. They used to call her Bob.”

“Bob?”

“Oh, it had something to do with how good she was at… um… bobbing for apples.” Margo smiled at the dim memory.

“Apples?”

“There were no apples involved, darl.”

“Oh… OH!”

Margo laughed. “I haven’t thought about that in years,” she said. “My uni days.”

“How many millennia is that ago?”

“More than I care to think about now.”

“So… you and Bob?”

“No, darling, not… Bob.”

“Not Bob?”

“Oh darling, that was too many drugs and a life time ago. Dear God…”

“Are you using the term ironically?”

“Of course, darling, is there any other way to use it,” said Margo. “My uni days, not even this century… not even this hundred years. Cruel is the hand of time.”


"What do you remember of your uni days?" asked Chanel.

"Oh, dear God…"

"Irony?"

"Oh darling, you know it is..." Margo laughed, her laugh turned into a cough, she wheezed and cleared her throat as her eyes watered. "Good thing I gave those up."

"Just in the nick of time, I'd say."

"It is just a silly expression we are all lumbered with. Dear god, the only thing religion does for us, gives us an expression which pertains to nothing we believe."

"None of us?"

"Oh really, none of us for sure," said Margo. "We just can't shake that childhood indoctrination."

"I think you are right," said Chanel. "We were brainwashed from an early age…"

A young male waiter walks up with a tray of wine.

"Oh yes please," said Margo. She took a glass for herself and Chanel.

The waiter nodded his head and headed off to serve other guests.

"Him," said Margo. She sipped her wine and nodded her head in the direction of the waiter.

"The waiter?" asked Chanel quizzically.

"My uni days." Margo sips her wine. "There was Marcus." Margo can't stop herself from smiling. "Who bore more than a passing resemblance to that waiter."

"That waiter?"

"That's what I remember from my uni days. Really, freedom. And everything being an adventure. And Marcus, and his sports car, and his beautiful smile."


"I'm confused," said Chanel. "I thought it was Bob."

"Christine."

"Christine?"

"It wasn't me and Bob… it was me and Christine, and Marcus was a friend of Christine's."

Chanel was gazing back at Margo with her mouth open, as though she was waiting for her brain to catch up.

"Bob and I paired up in my psychology tutes, when we were both too slow to pick anyone else. You know, last to be picked on the sports teams…"

"Oh yes, I remember it well."

"Bob turned out to be a darl, and we are still friends…"

"Why have I never heard about her before now?"

"I don't see her very often now a days, but occasionally."

"But Bob liked her girlfriend's butch, so she was never interested in me, not in that way. Christine was a friend of Bob's…"

Chanel shook her head.

"Are you keeping up?"

"Yes, so far."

"Christine liked me and pursued me and she took me on a few dates…"

"Date dates?"

"Yes…"

"And you were all at uni together."

"Yes, but only Bob and I had classes together."

"And I thought I could…" Margo could feel her eyebrows rise at the memory. "But even after a bottle of Pimms and half a bag of weed I found that I still couldn't. Apparently, I am just not built that way. And when it came to the crunch we were all down at Somers at Christine's parent's beach house and Christine and I were alone in a bedroom and we got to that point where it was all going to happen… and…

Tap, tap, Tap.

"Marcus…"

Tap, tap, tap.

"Who…"

Tap tap tap. The president was tapping the microphone on the lectern on the stage "Ladies and Gentlemen thank you all for attending the garden party this afternoon."

Chanel made big eyes at Margo.

"It has been a glorious afternoon and I am sure you have all enjoyed the day," said the president.

"I always thought was gay," whispered Margo.

"It has all been for a very good cause," said the president. "As you will all agree."

"And?" whispered Chanel urgently. "Not gay..."

"So, it has come to that point in the program where we are going to draw the prizes for the raffle. So I will hand over to…"

There was a drum roll. "Marcus was my saviour," Margo said loudly over the timpani.

The president turned to the secretary of the organisation, and as he did everything fell silent, just as Margo said, "Marcus was NOT gay," with such an emphasis on 'not' that no one was left in any doubt as to what she meant.

Everybody turned to look at Margo. The elderly secretary was by this stage at the microphone. "Thank you." She cleared her throat loudly into the microphone. "Margo." She pursed her lips and looked daggers from the stage.