Muddy Waters (11 page)

‘I think perhaps that blue and cream one would be lovely,' she decided, pointing to a large, unevenly shaped bowl.

‘Oh, all right then, but this one costs quite a lot more,' said Willow, fetching it down and looking pleased. ‘How long is your friend who doesn't like me staying?' she asked as she wrapped the pot carefully in most of that day's
Independent
.

‘Why do you think she doesn't like you?'

‘Aura trouble, that's what
she's
got.' Willow twirled her silver-ringed fingers, dancer-like, over her own head as she explained, ‘It's all yellow and smoky – like a
devil.
She'll be trouble and she should
never
be allowed to stay on an island.' She looked round nervously and came close to Stella's ear to whisper, ‘Devil's spirits can't get past the water, so they've got nowhere else to go and spread their badness. Here it's all
contained.
It's
trapped
and has to make trouble wherever it finds itself.' Willow smiled suddenly and said kindly, ‘Of course it's not
her
fault. She can't help it. I'll be nice to her tomorrow, I promise.'

Stella walked briskly, intending at last to tackle ‘Oasis Fan, 15' who'd done something stupid at a party. Haven't we all, she thought, wishing, as she often did, that she could give the poor girl a glimpse of the future where she'd eventually understand that one night's foolishness was simply a drop in life's heaving ocean. The bluebells at the side of the path were starting to flower in the patches of sunlight under the trees, giving a purplish haze to the grass. Ferns were unrolling new leaves and stretching their baby fronds up to the warmth. Willow had sounded like a wise old woman giving a witch's warning. Stella knew she was just a silly old hippy who'd spent too many years bending her brain with skippy-trippy drugs and absorbing the mystical scribblings of fellow-trippers, but her words corresponded uncomfortably closely with Stella's own wariness. She felt, after Willow's warning, terribly eager to get home. She had a niggling feeling that disasters might have happened in her absence, as if she was a parent who'd risked going out and leaving a pair of too-young children hell-bent on trouble the moment her back was turned, rather than a pair of ordinary, responsible grown-ups.

Abigail could be trouble, they'd had plenty of it together in the past and it had been enormous fun. Usually. Brought up to be rather cautious, she'd always enjoyed being friends with someone who'd drag out the latent spirit of adventure in her. As she walked back, she remembered the time the two of them had skipped a lecture to accompany Abigail's current man, breaking into an empty mansion to see if it really was, as local rumour had it, a Regional Seat of Government, all equipped and ready for use in nuclear war. ‘Wouldn't it have some sort of security guard?' Adrian had suggested sceptically, too conscientious to miss his seminar on the rise of the Third Reich. “Course not. That's the point, people would
know
if Securicor were all over it,' she'd told him excitedly, as she and Abigail had raided her wardrobe for dark, camouflaging scarves and sweaters.

‘Bit of a soggy old sheep, sometimes, your Adrian. Where's his sense of adventure?' Abigail had commented and Stella hadn't felt like defending him, at least not until the police returned them to the college, lucky not to have been charged with breaking and entering, but exhilarated by the near-miss.

Adrian was, her mother had once told her with enormous approval, one of those men who were
born
sensible. ‘He'll do you good,' she'd predicted, almost causing Stella to abandon him completely. She'd often thought since then that it must have been a true measure of how much she'd loved him that even her mother's damning approbation and assumption that she needed him to keep her under control hadn't put her off. Stella giggled quietly to herself as she reached her gate and looked across the garden to where, with inexplicable relief, she could see Adrian was all alone and safely occupied, tapping away at his keyboard in the summerhouse. If his mother-in-law only knew about the stuff he's writing these days, she thought.

Abigail, refreshed from her rest and with her make-up re-applied and her hair thoroughly brushed, was sitting demurely at the kitchen table when Stella came back in with the new bowl. She looked almost unnaturally neat, Stella thought, a bit like an old-fashioned child prepared by her nanny to meet her parents for tea, all dressed up in innocence. She'd probably looked just like that facing her various husbands straight after adulterous afternoons. Perhaps Martin had seen through it. Abigail watched Stella unwrap the pot's newspaper covering and took a slow critical look at it. ‘Quite good. Did that clapped-out old hippy really make this?'

‘Of course she did. Unless the fairies came in the night, like in
The Elves and the Shoemaker
,' Stella told her, thinking that where Willow was concerned, fairy help might not be so completely out of the question.

‘It's just that I imagined her making pots with that ghastly lumpy, home-taught sort of texture like whole-meal porridge. She
looks
as if she would. This is really quite beautiful,' Abigail stroked a gentle finger across the glaze.

‘Shows you shouldn't underestimate people. They never fail to surprise,' said Stella, looking into the fridge for some salad to put into it later. ‘She actually sells quite well through galleries and a couple of London stores. Anyone who can live off their art work, I always think, can be said to be doing pretty much all right.'

Abigail lost interest in the pot and fumbled around in her bag beneath her chair for cigarettes. As she bent, Stella could see a tweedy hint of grey at the roots of the fox-coloured hair. That could either mean overdue tinting or that Martin's departure had been more of a shock than she had yet admitted.

‘Tell me why Martin left you,' she demanded abruptly.

‘We've had that one,' Abigail told her, lighting her cigarette.

‘No we haven't, you've not actually said, not really. Only that he'd gone, not why.' Stella sat down opposite Abigail, the better to be able to look her straight in the eye and search out honesty. ‘Did he have a good reason for going? Have you been having an affair?'

‘Huh. An
affair
,' Abigail grinned wryly. ‘When I met him,
he
was an affair I was having. He didn't seem to object to
that.
They have such double standards. God, it was only sex,' Abigail lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply.

‘That made him leave? Only sex with only whom?' Stella persisted.

Abigail wriggled slightly and picked at a loose splinter on the table. ‘I'm easily bored. You know that,' she looked up, big brown tear-filled eyes appealing to Stella.

‘Then you should have taken a job, not a lover.'

‘I haven't had a lover. I've had sex. Martin was my lover. I told you, like we said at college: The One. Well, at least that's what I thought at the time.
At the time
is the only way anyone can think about lovers, isn't it? I'm sure he's only gone off with this Fiona for revenge.'

‘Then he'll probably be back,' Stella said, wishing she could feel sympathetic enough to be more comforting. Abigail didn't seem to have changed one bit in over twenty years, as if the usual processes of maturity had passed her by. Surely there was something rather pathetic about a woman of her age still thinking that all of life's excitement lay in the unwrapping of an unfamiliar penis. Of course, there might be a certain amount of envy involved here, Stella admitted to herself reluctantly, Adrian's being the only one she'd ever actually had any dealings with.

‘No. No I don't think he will – she's twenty-one, every middle-aged man's fantasy. He'd have to grow up to give her up and none of them want to do that, do they?'

‘Oh, I don't know. Some of them do.'

Abigail frowned. ‘Oh well, if you mean
Adrian,
well, who would know how grown up he is? I mean, he's got you in charge of everything, so he hasn't much choice but to toe the line. I expect he finds it comfortable. Not very
sexy
though, is it, all this mummied domesticity?'

‘What?' Stella gasped. ‘What the hell do you mean?'

‘Oh nothing, really, only that here,' she waved her cigarette round the room, ‘here, you run the whole show, you're the one with the reins, aren't you? I noticed how you didn't like not knowing we were going to meet Toby for lunch – you'd lost control of everyone for a second or two there. Like with your job, all that telling people what to do, it's bound to spill over into running the family. Without you they'd either all collapse into a hopeless heap, or . . .' she hesitated, ‘and don't take this the wrong way, or, they'd find their own liberated way quite merrily.' She stopped and grinned, ‘Sorry. Who knows? Maybe I'm just jealous. You've got it all, always have.' She shrugged and went to flick ash into the sink. Stella, wary of being ‘controlling', just stopped herself reaching over for an ashtray.

‘You can't be jealous of me,' Stella stated, ‘it's just not possible – I've always assumed I'm the one who's supposed to envy you.'

Abigail looked her up and down. ‘Oh well, in the looks department, maybe,' she said bluntly, ‘most people are. But otherwise, well, I think it's time I had a piece of what you've got, in terms of living.' She smiled, ‘And I don't think any amount of “Dear Alice” advice is likely to help me there, is it? It'll be all down to me to organize.'

‘. . . something really stupid with my boyfriend's best mate,' the pink letter still read the following morning. Stella sat at her computer trying to decide what to tell the girl. Three choices came to mind: a) stick with the boyfriend's best mate (if he'll have her) and make the best of it, b) apologize all round and take the grovel-and-promise option, c) forget them both and start again. And don't be such a sneaky little slapper next time, Stella added mentally as she started to type something along the lines of option b). She might reasonably suggest the same to Abigail when she came back from what she called having her hair ‘perked up'. It had been quite easy to get rid of her for a few useful hours, simply by pointing her in the direction of the town's most expensive hairdresser. Working with Abigail in the house was like trying to sit down with a book in a room containing a cross moth. Perhaps an hour or two talking about holiday plans with a stylist might give her ideas about moving on, Stella thought, struggling to concentrate on teenage tribulations.

‘Dear Alice – I've got in with some people who go shoplifting every Friday night and I'm scared we'll get caught but they're my only friends . . .'

‘Dear Alice – I've told everyone at school my Mum's gone to star in a film in Hollywood, but really she's in prison for doing euthanasia to my Gran . . .'

‘Dear Alice – I got caught having sex with my boyfriend in the school swimming pool . . .'

‘Dear Alice – You think you know it all don't you, well I can tell you you know fucking nothing about people like us . . .'

Abigail's soft pale Clarins-protected hands were sore from turning the ferry handle. Her arms and legs were strong and well muscled from regular working out at the gym, her tight and toned bottom did not wobble and look dodgy from behind when she walked, but all the workouts in the world's most expensive and exclusive gyms could do nothing to prepare her for small, real-life physical tasks that were grimy and awkward and tinged her fingers with rust. ‘Ugh!' she complained out loud, rubbing the chill coppery flakes from her hands and wishing she had a handy sachet of lotion or even a baby-wipe. On the shore, young men and women were shouting team-spirit banter to each other outside the rowing club. It occurred to Abigail that she'd never been much of a team-player, never known the support of any kind of group, or been asked to join in and provide it herself. Stella was a team captain, whereas she was third reserve, forever sitting on the bench and skiving the training sessions. Venetia and James would, no doubt, at their prep school, get a thorough overdose of all that, and she hoped it might be useful to them. The rowers looked happy enough anyway.

Over by the row of garages, the back wheels of Toby's Beetle were propped up on jacks. She wandered over and peered in past it at the oil stains and clutter. In the gloom she could make out the tools and rags and cans hanging from the walls and littered over a workbench at the far end. So
man
-like, she thought in vague admiration, sniffing at the oily air as if scenting pure testosterone. Even the shelves were uncompromisingly sharp, hard steel. There was also unlimited scope for getting filthy, she noticed, reluctant to go too far in. Toby wasn't around – he had told her about his job at a car showroom during the afternoons, polishing bonnets, shifting cars around, generally dogsbodying to save money for the tour of the warmer bits of Europe in the Beetle before medical school. He'd make a lovely gynaecologist, she thought. Female patients would hardly believe their luck – having his lovely hands (when clean) doing the more intimate examining was the stuff of wildest dreams – well, Abigail's dreams anyway. She felt disappointed that he wasn't around – such an attractive boy. It would have been cheering just to have him there in the garage trying to impress her, his grey eyes watching her face, eager to be admired the way boys needed to be, though she didn't want to be bored stiff by discussions of crank shafts or whatever such old cars had. That was the trouble with such very young men, she thought as she started walking towards the high street and the hairdresser, they were so terribly self-absorbed.

Willow coughed as dust clouded out of her wardrobe. Her clothes, as she rifled through them, felt cold to the touch and she wondered if damp might be creeping in over everything. Some nights, especially during the spring tides, she could feel the river's vapours, as if they'd got left behind as the tide receded, slinking under her door like a stealthy invasion of clammy spirits. She picked up the sleeve of an ancient black crêpe dress and sniffed at it experimentally. It seemed just about all right, no greeny mould shone on the fabric, perhaps it was just its age. She held up an old green chenille skirt and wished Bernard was there to admire it. Her clothes, she always felt, complemented so perfectly the various antiquated fabrics of his home – she was sure they must be meant to be together – his crushed velvet bedcover, her silk patchwork cushions. She felt a shimmer of pride that her clothes represented an enviable collection of antiques. There were Victorian jackets beaded with jet, much-repaired muslin skirts, full silk petticoats with black lace trim that made her feel naughtily French, and georgette blouses in over-blown rose prints. She frowned, concentrating hard. For an outdoor party in early summer, she couldn't think of a thing to wear.