Muddy Waters (21 page)

‘Well, there's Dad and Toby – but it's not the same,' Ruth confessed, wondering if it was too pathetically childlike to admit to missing your mum at seventeen. It certainly wasn't
sexy,
that she did know.

‘No. No, it isn't,' Bernard muttered, putting down his paintbrush and wiping his hands on an oily cloth.

Ruth looked down the length of her body, studying it interestedly. Lying on the soft, velvet covered sofa, her pale naked tummy went pleasingly flat. She was glad she hadn't cluttered it up with a navel ring like Melissa's. Her breasts fell away slightly to each side of her, but were still firm and big enough to form good mounds. They reminded her of cakes on a wonky shelf seen plumply rising through the oven's glass door. She raised her left knee and inspected the flesh of her thigh. It was creamy and firm and so far unpodged with cellulite. The ‘Go Ask Alice' page sometimes got letters from girls as young as twelve who already imagined they'd got the porridgy lumps that their mothers were probably always complaining about and rubbing useless expensive stuff into. Stella was constantly clucking away crossly about magazines conditioning girls into an obsession with the body perfect.

‘So you think I probably shouldn't marry Willow then,' Bernard had moved away from the easel and was standing over Ruth, watching her watching herself.

She looked up at him and smiled lazily, pushing her arms behind her head and arching her back in one long languourous stretch. ‘Jesus, Bernard, I really don't care. You can do whatever the hell you like.'

‘I'm sure water aerobics isn't supposed to make you
hot
,' Stella panted as she swung her right leg up and down sideways through the water, along with Abigail and about fifteen other women. The steam was rising off the pool and the puddingy, early morning faces as yet undefined by make-up were going steadily pink. The water in the pool was warm enough to count as a bath. Stella assumed it was to soothe bodies tender from the various treatments. There was also the potential horror scenario of a guest being shocked to heart attack level by a temperature more usually found in the municipal baths that made the management feel anything less than 88 degrees might be a dreadfully expensive risk.

‘I know. It's supposed to be kind of sweat-free – I thought that was the idea. Might as well be pumping iron in the bloody gym,' Abigail gasped. ‘
He's
very cute though,' she nodded towards the tightly muscled young man who yelled at the class from up on the side of the pool.

‘And nineteen, twenty . . . give me just ten more,
please
ladies,' the voice of the instructor seduced into his microphone. He wore a lilac lycra outfit, shorts and a vest top with black stripes down the side. On his wrists he had pink weighted bands held on with velcro, and his feet bounced comfortably on black trainers so huge-soled, vast-tongued and padded Stella assumed they could only be sports-code symbols of sexual showing off, the footwear equivalent of driving a long red noisy sports car.

‘Hmm, not bad I suppose. Hard to take any notice of him while I feel like a lobster being slowly boiled,' Stella complained. She felt it somehow wasn't fair that being several inches shorter than Abigail, the clammy water came almost up to her chin, whereas on Abigail it was at a more comfortable chest height. On the other hand, Abigail's legs were longer and she therefore, Stella calculated, had to work harder to displace more water when she kicked out. All the tubbiest visitors to Chameleon had joined this class, she noticed, probably on the basis that an aerobics class where their bodies were comfortably hidden under the swirling water made them feel less self-conscious. She felt a surge of sympathy for them, wishing that no one on the whole planet felt awkward about their God-given body shape. On the other hand, she conceded, Chameleon wouldn't exist if they
didn't
feel like that and she would be back at home sorting through the multi-coloured envelopes containing this week's broken teen spirits. She and Abigail were easily the smallest there. If
they
all got out, she thought with a flash of unaccustomed cattiness, the water level might just drop to below her shoulders.

‘And three . . . and two . . . and ONE and
turn
!' the young man with mahogany tanned legs roared at them. Obediently all the women turned to face him and he looked over the group with a professionally seductive smile which only just, Stella thought, disguised a certain amount of scorn. ‘Stupid fat punters,' she imagined him thinking, though she noticed his expression brighten more genuinely as his gaze flickered across Abigail's blond head. Good grief, it really is true, Stella thought with reluctant envy. That's all it takes, just that one little treatment at the hands of a competent hairdresser. If you pointed out, she thought as she obediently swished her left leg up and down through the water, that what made most women's hair blond was basically the same bleachy stuff that scoured the nastiest stains off the bottom of the toilet, would they all suddenly prefer, oh shall we say, a rich deep chestnut colour? Sadly, she thought not.

‘And TURN! Right, now all face me and it's
jog
time . . . UP and DOWN and . . .'

The instructor bounced up and down in an exaggerated on-the-spot trot which they were all to copy as well as to keep their balance in the water. His lycra shorts and their bulging and obviously unrestricted contents bounced with an impressive and independent enthusiasm all of their own. Stella, Abigail, and the rest of the class had no choice but to watch and admire the mesmerizing flop and swing of his genitals. Abigail, in an attempt to stop laughing, sploshed herself down into the water. ‘Sorry, lost footing,' she apologized. Stella watched the bulge in the man's shorts with fascination.

‘God, I'd pay folding money just to watch this, let alone all the body toning thrown in,' she whispered to Abigail.

‘You've had such a sheltered life,' Abigail whispered back. ‘There's any amount of this sort of thing out there in the big world.'

‘Hey, I thought you were supposed to be repenting and giving all this up.'

Abigail smiled knowingly at Stella. ‘It's not me I'm thinking of. All this stuff is out there just waiting for the new you.'

It's happening at last, Ruth thought. She lay spread out on the velvet, still with her arms lazily supporting her head, having
sex with Bernard
done to her. He seemed quite happy with her idle passivity, perhaps misinterpreting it as a shy lack of experience and giving him the chance to impress her with his reassuringly gentle (but it never fails . . .) technique. Unprotesting, but not quite yet deigning to join in, she allowed him to fondle and explore her body, run his hands and mouth (and that delicately rasping beard) wherever they wanted. Ruth's mind was still up on the ceiling, but instead of concentrating on the cobwebs, she was pretending she was detached from herself, that she was up there staring down at this scene, capturing it like a movie to be replayed and watched later. She saw their copulation as an art installation and wished she'd actually got Melissa perched up a ladder taking reel after reel of photos so she could make a montage for her final A-level assessment. Self-portrait was on the list of possible projects, to be tackled, according to her tutor, with originality and flamboyance. Well try giving
this
marks out of ten for an interpretation, she thought to herself happily as her mind was dragged from the ceiling to concentrate on the more delicious feelings going on down inside her body.

On the glass-topped table by the window, Willow's lava lamp went ‘gloop' and the blob of oil inside it swung itself slowly to the top of the coloured liquid like a lazy goldfish casually seeking food. Willow sat hunched on her purple bean-bag and stared at it and wondered what would happen if she picked it up and threw it, very, very hard, at the wall. Her nervousness that it might explode with far more force than its gentle bubbles implied it ever could, meant that the perfect moment for the actual throwing had passed. Too old and sensible to throw things now, she thought miserably. Too old to be moping about over some man who simply isn't, and never will be, interested. She got up and went into her bathroom and opened the little cupboard that she'd painted with pearl-draped, slender mermaids. ‘Nothing really useful,' she muttered, scrabbling though the tiny phials and jars of homeopathic pills, Bach flower remedies, aromatherapy oils, aspirins and Prozac. She closed the cupboard door and stared at the golden-haired mermaids, thinking about the awful Abigail and the confident, deadly ease with which she'd simply plucked Bernard from Stella's party and marched him back to the boathouse. ‘What's she got?' she asked the mottled cat that sat primly in the bath watching her. ‘Blond hair and a don't-give-a-toss attitude.' The cat started purring and kneading at the cold green enamel, assuming, with the kind of vanity that Willow also ascribed to Abigail, that if it was being talked to, it was being praised and petted. Willow caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door and grimaced. ‘Matted as a cat, grizzled as a rat, matted as a rat, grizzled as a cat,' she chanted over and over, reaching back into the cupboard. She pulled out a pair of nail scissors and, almost trance-like with depression, began snipping at her hair.

‘So, tell me honestly, right between the eyes, that you didn't feel in the slightest bit attracted to that man by the pool this morning.' Abigail was nagging at Stella over dinner. Stella concentrated on her salad of grilled Mediterranean vegetables and stubbornly refused to play confessions. To her it seemed a tremendously long time since the water aerobics class. Such thinking as she'd done in this place where the normal use of brain power was entirely optional, had been about whether to have camomile tea or caffeine-free coffee, and whether to go for deep-cleansing exfoliation or an organic fruit-oxide gel mask. Since the morning she'd acquired pearly pink painted toe-nails, a complexion that felt as smooth as new petals, a navy blue thong leotard that was far more comfortable than it looked and a terrifically expensive pair of Capezio split-sole dance trainers. She wondered what Abigail had been doing all day that had kept her mind running on a pair of joggling testicles. Perhaps she'd wandered round the place, tailing the instructor and trying to drop her room number casually into conversation. Perhaps she'd even dropped her room key, much in the way that prowling ladies of the past might have ‘accidentally' dropped a lace hanky at the feet of their desired one. Abigail pushed on at her, ‘I could
tell
you fancied him. You looked as if you hadn't seen anything like it in years.'

Stella laughed, ‘
No one's
seen anything like that in years! Probably ever! Wobbling from side to side like that, and where else could we all look? I mean, when Linford Christie runs at least you're not practically on eye level with his . . . well, his tackle.'

‘Everyone looks at it though,' Abigail said. ‘It would be unnatural not to – it's part of the mating process, like dogs sniffing. Don't you
ever
look at men when you're out? I can't believe you don't even window-shop them in restaurants. Have you really only had eyes for Adrian?' Stella thought for a while. Man-watching wasn't really one of her hobbies. She would vote herself the person least likely to throw her knickers at a Chippendale – wouldn't even want a free ticket for the show. Catching sight of some gorgeous young hunk out of the car window was as likely to turn her head as anyone else's but she tended to think of them in terms of what Ruth might bring home, not for what she herself might be interested in. She was just as likely to look at women too, admiring (and envying) long legs in a short skirt or swearing never to be seen in
that
shade of green.

‘Well, I suppose I have in a way. I mean, I rather liked the look of David Attenborough for a while, but then who didn't? All that sexy running commentary with wild animals
doing it.
Oh, and I've still got a soft spot for Mick Jagger, but that's just left over from way back then, in the same way that I still quite like to eat licorice allsorts in the car sometimes. I don't exactly get the hots for anyone these days, not even the
warms
, as it were. No, you're right, I've been boringly mentally faithful to Adrian ever since I was nineteen.'

Abigail looked astounded. ‘If I announced that dreadful fact to this whole room I bet there isn't a woman here who wouldn't be simply appalled! I feel like getting up on this table right now and telling everyone how boring you are about men. It's disgusting, it's . . . well, it's smug!'

Stella felt as if she was getting a thorough telling-off and became defensive. ‘No, it's not, it's just lucky, that's all. I've always loved him, he's always loved me, end of story. I'm not claiming it's all big deal romantic stuff. It just makes life awfully simple. You can get on with the other things when you know that bit's sorted.'

Abigail glared, ‘Are you trying to tell me something?'

Stella looked puzzled. ‘No – I'm not criticizing or even commenting in terms of other people, I'm just telling you that's how it's been for me. And for Adrian. You just haven't been that lucky, that's all. I get letters from kids who are like you – always thinking there's just one person out there with their name on, like a Christmas present. I get this feeling that some of them will
never
find happiness in the usual love-and-staying-together sense, because they think it should just
happen
, without any effort. Maybe you're looking for something story-bookish that isn't there at all, not for anyone.'

Abigail frowned, ‘Martin went looking for something too. He seems to have found that it
was
there. I wonder what he's doing right now? Probably got his hand up Fiona's skirt under a lunch table. I bet he's even taken her to one of the places
we
used to go to – typical insensitive lack of imagination.' She pushed her grilled chicken round the plate with her fork, looking mournful and hard-done-to. ‘You know, I really am missing the children,' she confessed to Stella. ‘It wasn't
my
idea to send them off to a boarding school and more or less wash my hands of them for half a term at a time. Last autumn they took Venetia out to have her hair cut and I hardly knew who she was the next time I saw her. When I'd dropped her off at their door she'd had a pony tail and when I picked her up on exeat day she'd got this sort of page boy thing with a fringe. That's the kind of decision mothers and daughters should go out and have fun making together, isn't it?'