A Makeover for My Old Mum Ch. 01

This whole story started with my gran dying and my mum losing her job. Good start huh? Well gran was in her nineties, ninety-three, I think. She'd been unable to look after herself properly for a decade and in that time mum had acted as her carer, on top of having a day job. Of course, there are nursing homes, but they're expensive and we were generally broke. In fact, the local authority would have paid for the basics but my mum is quite stubborn sometimes; she saw it as her duty for look after her mother. I tried to talk her into putting gran into a home many times. Mum always listened, with that serious face of hers, then said she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she stuck her mother in a local council home. There was a sister, my aunt Katherine, a couple of years older than mum, who could have helped but she'd taken the precaution of marrying a Scotsman and moving to Edinburgh. So there was just mum, and me.

From my point of view it was deadly. Living in a house dominated by the presence of an invalid, the scent of illness and death always lurking in the corners. Not a place where you wanted to bring mates or girlfriends. So after I finished university, and got a job, I found my own flat. Cowardly, I know, but I did plenty to help: I did all the weekly shopping, took gran out in her wheelchair whenever she was up to it and did odd jobs around the house. And the gardening.

I suppose now's a good time to say something about my mum, as she's the focus of this story; the events I'm writing about couldn't have happened if she'd been a different person. She and gran lived in a run-down but respectable suburb of north Oxford; my flat was about a mile away, closer to the city centre. Mum was an assistant librarian for one of the lesser-known Oxford colleges and it's difficult to imagine anyone more stereotypically a librarian than my mother: hushing the students who'd come to chatter rather than work, fussing over late returns and tidying up the piles of books left on the desks at closing time. She looked the part too. It would be easy to say she had awesome tits and perfect make-up and all my mates drooled over her but she wasn't like that at all. Liz Wright (strictly speaking Doctor Liz Wright -- she had a doctorate in mediaeval English) was tall and thin and severe. Her hair was light brown, lacklustre and fading to grey and framing a face that was long and horsey with a rather pointed nose and chin. She also had a full lower lip and slightly too large protruding front teeth, which you could see when she smiled, which she didn't do very often. She was almost flat-chested and narrow hipped and walked with long strides. And she wore spectacles, with thick, black frames, before such things became a fashion statement.

On the positive side, she had beautiful, serious grey eyes and her legs were pretty impressive too. Long and shapely and with exquisitely slim ankles. Not that she ever showed them off; she mostly wore trousers. And if she did wear a skirt or dress she'd wear flat shoes -- espadrilles or schoolgirl sandals. Her other fine feature was her hands. They were long and slender with tapering fingers and perfect oval nails. A few brown spots had started to appear now but there was a time when those hands could have made her fortune on television. Of course, she wore no rings. She didn't have pierced ears either and the only cosmetic she wore was moisturising cream.

She did her best to be a good mum to me, but in all honesty she wasn't really cut out for it. It was like she'd read a book about parenting and was following it to the letter, apart from the bits that talked about smiling and laughing and having fun. I was different, always laughing and joking. I was pretty popular at school and had plenty of friends and I spent a lot of time out of the house while I was growing up. I even went on holidays with some of my schoolmates which was good as mum couldn't afford things like that on her salary. So all in all it wasn't so bad and I guess I loved my mum and wanted to see her happy.

I'm going to fast-forward to the day after gran's funeral. Gran had outlived all her contemporaries and mum hardly had any friends so it was a bit like Eleanor Rigby's funeral -- nobody came. The following afternoon mum and I were sitting in the front room of her house, drinking tea, not talking and contemplating the future. At least, I was, you never knew what mum was thinking. The front room -- gran would never have called it a lounge -- was large and shabby. The whole house was large and shabby. An Edwardian semi in a street of genteel poverty, most of the houses had been converted to student flats and looked about as badly maintained as gran's. Because it had been gran's house, and she'd left it equally to me and mum. The older sister, Katherine, didn't get a look in. I was the one who broke the silence, predictably.

'I'd like to make one thing very clear, Mum: the house is yours to live in as long as you want it. I'm not going to insist on selling up so I can realise my half of the equity.'

She gave me a small smile. She really hadn't expressed any emotion over gran's death, at least, not outwardly. There'd been no tears, no grief, nothing. But that was mum. It wasn't to say she didn't care. And besides, she'd looked after her mother for a decade. Hard not to see the death as an opportunity. Though mum wasn't the type to take opportunities. Not the carpe diem sort. Which made her next statement all the more surprising.

'Thank you, Jack. I probably won't be doing anything in the short-term but after that, who knows?' She looked across the room at me and appeared to be going through some internal debate. 'I've decided I'd like to meet someone.'

Well I didn't see that one coming and I just stared at her, which made mum smile a bit wider.

'Not what you expected to hear?' she asked.

'What, a man?' I said, stupidly.

'Yes,' she replied calmly, 'a man.'

My mother had never, so far as I could remember, shown any interest in men, other than professionally through the library. She'd certainly never dated! Then there was the age thing. You may have been wondering how come gran was ninety-three and how old did that make my mum? Well, she was sixty-two, which is a bit late to start dating, isn't it? I'm twenty-five, in case you were wondering and there's a story behind that age difference too, which I suppose I should tell you, as it's pretty pertinent to the whole dating thing.

Liz, my mum, was a sensible and plain girl. Most ladies in that situation meet and marry a sensible and plain man, but she never did. She never dated in fact. Ever. Was quite content with hitching a ride through life as a non-descript lady in a non-descript job. And so things might have gone on into middle-age and confirmed spinsterhood had it not been for the 1995 annual University Librarians' Symposium. This was a glorified term for an annual shindig held in some august establishment, though as all the attendees were librarians, there probably wasn't a lot going on. Until 1995, anyway.

Mum normally wasn't invited to this event. She wasn't the librarian, only an assistant. And she'd have hated it anyway. But that year the head honcho was recovering from rheumatic fever and the senior assistant couldn't make it either as she was due to give birth imminently, so Elizabeth was asked. She wanted to refuse but hated to disappoint her boss. So off she went, during the summer recess, to Leeds. And her life was never the same again.

The symposium started with the usual introductions, guest speaker and ice-breaking cocktail party. Now mum wasn't a big drinker, as you might imagine, but she did enjoy a glass of port and on this occasion, perhaps because she was nervous, and felt out of place, she had one or two more. Then someone latched on to her and plied her with refills. Mum's recollection of the rest of the evening is hazy, and incomplete. What is more definite is that when she woke up in her room at five o'clock the following morning, and lurched to the bathroom to be sick, there was a stranger in the bed beside her, which was good going as it was a single bed. Then he wasn't there when she eventually got back from the bathroom. Whether or not he stayed for the rest of the symposium she never knew. Probably wouldn't have recognised him, anyway, let alone known his name. But she didn't stay around to find out. Embarrassed and hungover, she took a taxi to the station and returned to Oxford where, a couple of months later, her doctor informed her that she was, in his opinion, around eight weeks pregnant.

Gran told me all this before I went off to university. Mum had never breathed a word to me. Obviously I'd been curious about who my father was, and why he wasn't around, but I'd always been fobbed off with a terse 'never you mind about all that.' When gran told me what she knew I was at first excited, thought about tracking dad down. But then I realised that he'd just be a librarian too, albeit a somewhat racier one. So I was probably better off not knowing. What difference would it make? Which explains my shock at mum's disclosure.

'Why now?' I asked.

'It's something I've been thinking about for quite a while, a few years actually. Obviously I couldn't do anything while your gran was alive but now she's gone, and I don't have a job, time's going to hang pretty heavily on my hands. And I'm not getting any younger. It's now or never, in fact.'

'If it's about money,' I began, 'I can help you out -- you know that.'

'Oh goodness me, it's not about money. The house is paid for and gran left a lump sum too, you know. My pension might be small but it'll be enough. I can always earn a bit more by editing students' essays. No, it's not about money; I'm not looking for a sugar daddy, if that's the right expression. I,' she hesitated. 'I don't want to be lonely.'

'I'll always be here, Mum.'

'That's kind, Jack, but you have your own life to lead and it would be supremely selfish of me to tie you down to me! Besides, it's about time I did something different in my life.'

'So what are you going to do?' I asked.

'Well I understand that everybody meets online nowadays, which is great for oldies like me. I've done some research and I've looked at some websites and I've started to write my profile.'

'Wow!' I said, for want of anything more constructive.

'And I was going to ask you to look at my draft profile, if you wouldn't mind.' Mum coloured a bit as she said this and she suddenly looked more attractive, more animated.

'Of course I'll have a look. And you're right, everybody does online dating nowadays -- that's how I met Jess. And Claire.'

I think mum had by then expended her daily store of confidences, because she changed the subject and we talked about my job and the forthcoming promotion. So it was a few days later when I dropped by one evening after work that she got out her laptop and showed me what she'd done.

Reading through it presented me with a difficulty. How did I tell mum that it was deadly dull and wasn't going to interest anyone that she'd be likely to want to interest. Admittedly, the main reason that it was dull was because her life had been dull, but there are plenty of things you can do to spice it up, like you do with a CV. Then there was the picture, a selfie. It was a bit skew whiff and showed her in a non-descript print blouse and an Alice band. I mean really?

In the end I bottled it. I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I suggested some minor improvements and offered to take a fresh photo. The end result was still pretty dire, although at least the picture was straight. After that I made my excuses and left. She was fired up, at least by her standards, but I felt ashamed and worried about what might happen.

A fortnight later I found out, when mum called me and asked me to come round when I had a bit of time. I'd spent the last two weeks on tenterhooks, waiting, or rather hoping, for a message that she'd

met someone. But there was just this request.

I went over on Saturday afternoon and took mum out for lunch to a riverside pub. She didn't broach the dating topic over lunch but as soon as we got back to her house she stood in the kitchen, facing me over the island, and came as close as I've ever seen her to crying.

'It's hopeless! I'll never meet anybody!'

'What's happened?' I asked, gently.

'Nothing! I've sent loads of messages and got nothing back apart from polite no-thank-you's, and precious few of them. One person was interested! One! And he wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.'

'Did you meet up with him?'

'Yes. Well he was the only one who responded! The meeting was a disaster. His profile said he was sixty. Seventy-five, more like! And all he wanted to talk about was his dead wife. Two hours I sat and listened to him! Then I made an excuse and left, though not before he tried to kiss me.'

'Did he get back in touch?'

'No! That made it worse! Even someone like that wasn't interested in me!'

I tried to comfort mum as much as I could. She was more upset than I can remember her being. I stayed all the evening and slept over too and in the morning I made her favourite breakfast of scrambled egg with smoked salmon and by the time I left at lunchtime, she was more or less herself again. I promised to think about things and to come over early in the week.

'Thanks, Jack,' she said, giving me an unaccustomed hug and peck on the cheek. 'I'm ok now.'

But I was worried, so I thought a bit and came to some conclusions and on the Tuesday evening I braced myself and went round to the house, where I got straight to the point.

'I think the problem is your image, mum, it's a bit dated. Your clothes are very um... old fashioned, and you don't wear make-up or anything.'

I thought mum might get a bit shirty, although I'd avoided words like "dowdy" and "frumpish". Instead, she appeared to carefully consider what I'd said.

'Yes, you're right of course. I never have bothered much with that stuff and I suppose I thought that the sort of man I was looking for wouldn't be bothered by it either.' She gave a brief laugh. 'Kindred spirits and all that. I suppose the problem is that in order to interest your kindred spirit in the first place you've got to look vaguely presentable. Ok, Jack. Point taken. So I need to go out and buy some fancy clothes and put a bit of slap on, right?'

I'd thought about this and had my answer ready.

'Yes, we need to get you some new clothes and make-up, and I'm going to help.'

She looked at me, expressionless.

'Right, this is what's going to happen: we're going shopping next Saturday morning for a whole new set of clothes, and make-up. Then I've booked us in to the Spa Hotel in Abingdon where you're going to have the full works, including a new hairdo, and a beautician is going to help you with the cosmetics. Then you're going to dress up in your new finery and we're going to have dinner in the restaurant. No arguments, Mum, this is what's going to happen, and I promise you that you'll feel like a new woman!'

Mum looked bemused. 'Who's going to pay for all this?'

'Me. Or rather my employers. They gave me a rather disgracefully large annual bonus alongside my promotion. So no arguments there either. We're going to do this thing properly.'

To her credit, mum didn't argue and the following Saturday morning found us in the centre of Oxford browsing through some of the more exclusive outlets. It wasn't how I would have chosen to spend a Saturday morning, but needs must. The more I thought about it the keener I was on mum finding someone and relieving me of any future burden. No such thing as a selfless act eh?

The sales assistants in these ultra-chic boutiques were great and took over practically as soon as mum stepped through the door. All I had to do was give the final thumbs up and get my wallet out. Simple. We had an early lunch, burdened down with bags and parcels and headed back to the car. As we were passing a Marks and Spencer's a thought occurred to me.

'I suppose you haven't got any decent lingerie either, have you?'

'What?'

'Lingerie? Underwear? We need to update that too. It's no good looking like a million dollars on the outside when you're wearing tatty old knickers and bra. And if things progress with this man you're going to meet... Some sexy underwear will be expected, I think.'

So we went in and bought mum a couple of sets of underwear. It was mildly embarrassing for me but I was glad we'd done it. Glad I was there to steer her towards black, lacy and sexy, rather than "functional". We even, at my suggestion, picked up some black stockings and a garter belt although mum protested that she'd never worn stockings in her life and didn't even know how to put them on.

At two o'clock that afternoon I delivered her into the hands of the Spa Hotel staff and I slipped off to play a round of golf, having carefully chosen a hotel that had a course attached. We had agreed to meet for cocktails in the bar at seven thirty. I got back to my room at six and showered and changed. I was catching up with the Saturday afternoon football results when my mobile phone rang -- mum.

'Jack? I need some help with these blessed stockings. Can you come over?'

I'd got mum a suite on the top floor. I think it was the best room in the hotel. Should have been, for the price. Mine was a standard double on the ground floor, so I took the lift up and found room 506, a bit bemused by the request. Mum let me in and I followed her into the lounge area. She was wearing a towel around her head and a hotel bathrobe.

'Really sorry to drag you all the way up here, Jack,' she began. 'But I've never put stockings on before and I can't get the suspenders at the back done up. I've tried and tried. I'd have given up but I haven't brought any tights with me, these stocking are all I've got.'

'Don't worry, we'll sort it out.' I stood looking at her and she looked back at me. 'Well I can't do anything until you take that bathrobe off.'

'Ok, but I warn you it's not a pretty sight.'

She shrugged the robe off and I saw my mother in her underwear for the first time. And it was a pretty sight. She might not have been very attractive facially, but her figure was slim, well thin, and taut, with a flat stomach. Ok, she was pretty flat chested, but her legs were great. She turned around, presenting me her rear, which was ok too. Slightly saggy but ok.

The two back suspenders were indeed unattached and I took the first one and secured it, aware of the closeness of my mother's newly bought black silk panties and the aroma of her talcum powder. I took a bit more time over the second, which was naughty of me because I could have secured it in five seconds flat. But I fiddled around for a while my face inches from her knickers and garter belt. I felt the first stirrings of arousal and felt guilty because this was my mother. I had to fight an urge to run my hands down her stocking-clad legs.

'Ok, all done. I'll see you in the bar at seven thirty.'

I was there ten minutes beforehand. Mum arrived at half past seven on the dot; punctuality was one of her strengths. It sounds like a cliché to say that I didn't recognise her at first, but it's true. For a start, her hair was now dark brown and cut in a fashionable bob. And she was wearing make-up. I'd never seen her in lipstick, let alone the full mascara, eye shadow, honey coloured foundation and scarlet lipstick. Her fingernails were a matching scarlet, another surprise. And she was wearing the black satin cocktail dress we'd bought that morning. It had cost over four hundred quid but I'd say it was worth every penny. Below the dress were the black stockings and three inch heeled black patent leather court shoes.

The whole ensemble was a revelation and it was no surprise to see a few heads turn as she entered the bar, mostly admiring her legs. She looked great and I felt really proud of her. Ok, there was never going to be a stampede of eligible men beating a path to her door but there would be someone for her, and with this new image she'd got a fighting chance of meeting him.