A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting
Bel Roberts
A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting
by Bel Roberts
A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting Synopsis GERI, a divorced, middle-aged ex-teacher, is looking for an intelligent, attractive man. She enrols as a mature student at a local university, which brings her into contact with teenage students and late-developing contemporaries, like HETTY and GLORIA, who are either desperately clinging onto their men, or losing them in all sorts of unexpected ways. Geri’s sister, VERA, is eager for their widowed mother, MAM, to go into residential care as she and her husband, DARREL-THE-BARREL, are tired of monitoring her. They criticise Geri’s obsession with men and her envy of her friend, STELLA, who has just met a hunk of a man whilst back-packing in South Africa. Fortune-teller, MADAME SONYA, convinces Geri that there is a special man waiting to meet her but warns her that the search is going to involve trawling endless personal columns and patience – not one of Geri’s virtues. GWYN sounds promising – he has clear blue eyes, his own teeth and a red Porsche. He’s even prepared to quit smoking and to woo Geri by writing poetry, but his IQ does not match his libido and he can’t afford the petrol to run his flashy car. Next, Geri’s windsurfing ex-husband, TED, turns up, flexing his impressive wishbone, but he sails too close to the wind and makes the wrong kind of gybe. Then, Geri meets ALISTAIR, a law lecturer, who’s been ousted from his family home. He’s intelligent, hard working and hen-pecked, desperately looking for home comforts and a roof over his head. Geri gets hooked but hedges her bets by joining an introduction agency, which fails to function as advertised. Geri is forced to cancel a student language trip, while Alistair goes ahead with his. He returns infatuated with his teacher, who has the advantage of a ready-made family and a family home. Geri reacts badly to being dumped and fails her exams, but she is offered a place on an M.A. Creative Writing course, provided she can impress the Director of Studies with a mind-blowing article submitted by a strict deadline. Hetty, unable to multi-task as housewife and undergraduate, drops out of university but before disappearing from Geri’s life, she enlightens her about cyberdating. Geri’s first cyber-hit proves that men posting profiles on the internet are not what they seem, or even who they say they are, but then she meets CLIFFORD, an attractive widower and immediately becomes smitten. Unfortunately, he has baggage. Meanwhile, Mam’s domestic situation stabilises, leaving Geri free to write her article, The Witch Report on Manhunting, in which she puts middle-aged men under the microscope and cleverly exposes all their physical and moral weaknesses. The pleasure she derives from writing it gives her damaged ego a welcome boost, which in turn makes her more feminine and lovable. Fact and fiction become inseparable. Geri receives a disturbing letter from her friend, Stella, in South Africa but she soon has to face a crisis of her own. Clifford fights shy of emotional commitment, so Geri books a singles’ foreign holiday and affects indifference. Clifford protests, but Geri’s impetuosity throws him into doubt about rekindling their relationship. A significant power shift in their relationship has occurred and Clifford is now calling
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A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting
by Bel Roberts
the shots. Geri regrets her behaviour, Clifford relents and Geri cancels her singles’ holiday. With Clifford’s co-operation, Geri submits her completed project on time and looks forward to celebrating Clifford’s retirement dinner and their engagement! She’s nearer, but not quite at the altar yet!
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A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting
by Bel Roberts
A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting by Bel Roberts
Sample Chapter Tuesday 22nd March I discovered at Cardiff Central Library that the definitive book on Weimar was on the shelf in the Cwmcwat branch, so I reserved it and drove to collect it. Cwmcwat is an exotic-sounding, scruffy-looking suburb, east of Cardiff. In a side street, where I’d parked, my eye was caught by a shop window display, designed on a Romany theme, complete with wagon awning and life-sized gypsy dummy – its face the colour of a kipper – its head bound with a coin-fringed headscarf. The backcloth – navy-blue velvet drapes, festooned with tinsel stars and pendant crystals – was designed to represent a clear night sky, an astrologer’s Arcadia. In the forefront of the window stood a card-table covered with a runic patterned fabric and holding a dusty, inverted goldfish bowl. Propped against it leant a sign which read: Madame Sonya’s Tarot Card Readings Easter Special: £5. I thought £5 a pittance to pay for a murky insight into any kind of future I might have, so I pushed open the door. A bell jangled deep inside the shop and my nostrils were assaulted by a heady waft of incense from joss sticks smouldering in jars dotted about the freezing room. A veil-covered head peered through a bead curtain and a bent, shapeless form shuffled forward. I asked if Madam Sonya could give me a Tarot card reading. “You’re lucky,” the husky voice wheezed, without much enthusiasm. “There’s been a cancellation. Come and sit down, love.” The bead curtain clicked behind me as I passed through into a gloomy back room. I could just make out a small table supporting a lamp and a pack of cards. I sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, while the figure adjusted its skirts and slumped down heavily opposite me, groaning. Then one podgy hand gave the moist end of its nose a rough wipe, while the other pushed me the cards. I was instructed to shuffle the pack, thoroughly, then hand it back. The mystic peeled off the top three cards, placed them facing away from me on the table and hunched over them, concentrating intensely.
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A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting
by Bel Roberts
A loud sniff was followed by a longer sigh. “God, is it that bad?” I asked, craning my neck to see if I could make any sense of the three pictures. “No, love, it’s this rotten cold. Had it a month. Don’t seem able to shift it.” The head bent lower over the cards. “You’ve been in a turmoil, love. I can see that. Emotional ferment, I mean.” I mumbled an agreement. “You’re at a crisis point in your life.” Would I be there, needing guidance, if things were hunky-dory? “At the crossroads. Adrift. No romantic interest in your life.” My lack of wedding ring had probably been noticed as I’d shuffled the cards, so it was not too perceptive a guess. The seer gasped. “Oh, there is somebody present in the wings. A man.” “What does he look like?” “I can’t see his face. He’s retreating.” “That’s the story of my life.” I couldn’t keep the disappointment from my voice. The voice croaked, “There’s definitely someone waiting for you.” “Where exactly?” I asked. “Locally? Outer Britain? Abroad? Can you narrow it down a bit?” I was getting pissed off with the elusiveness of my mystery suitor. “You’ll meet him before the year’s out. Through a newspaper, or a letter. You’ve just got to be patient.” There followed another flourish of the sodden handkerchief around the streaming nose. “Any other major concerns?” The question was asked loftily, as if I’d had more than my money’s worth. “I’ve gone back to university to do another degree, but I sometimes wonder if it’s worth all the time and expense at my age,” I confessed. “It involves doing tons of research and composing long, creative essays.” A concentrated silence filled the room. “I’m getting definite vibes from these Tarot cards that your creativity’s frozen solid. Little evidence of the warmth of inspirational fire here.” I thought the same could be said about her premises, which must have lain empty and unheated all spring. I was about to suggest that she’d stand more chance of curing her cold if she were to invest in a small electric fire – after all, with her supernatural powers, she must have predicted the unseasonably chill spell we’d just had – when she groaned again and looked at me, reproachfully, through rheumy eyes. “You’ve covered the two most pressing topics,” I said, feeling guilty that I was imposing on a sick woman. The figure facing me took a massive intake of breath, giving me just enough time to back away and effectively dodge a shower of droplets sprayed from an explosive sneeze. “I think you should see a doctor, or dose yourself with Lemsip and honey,” I warned. “You could catch your death in here.” In response to my concern, the beefy hands rooted into the folds of the voluminous skirt and placed a pound coin emphatically on the table in front of me. “Fair play, you haven’t had much joy either, love. Call it four pounds. There’s a pound back.” I stood up to go. When I reached the bead curtain, I heard the voice behind me, “Remember, love, patience. Just give it time!”
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A Discerning Woman’s Guide To Manhunting
by Bel Roberts
The figure was now standing upright, six feet tall, the skirt of her dress caught in the pockets of his trousers, the turn-ups visible over size eleven, striped bedroom slippers. He followed my stare and shrugged. “The missus is feeling even worse than me this morning, love, and Madame Sonya don’t like letting her clients down.” I invested the pound refund in a South Wales Herald on my way home, put the library books aside and settled down to draft a carefully worded advertisement to catch Friday’s deadline. Because of the expensive phone bill from the previous trawl and my last respondent’s cynicism about BT shares, I marked the form ‘WRITTEN REPLIES ONLY’, then biting the (Krupps?) bullet, I began my German essay, just in case the postman delivered an avalanche of erotic mail in the next week.
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