Muddy Waters (22 page)

Stella nodded, though at the same time wondering when the last time was that she and Ruth had found it ‘fun' to discuss any potential hairstyle or item of clothing. ‘You don't get them for long,' she reflected, feeling genuinely sorry for Abigail, ‘one minute you're wondering if they'll ever sleep through the night, and the next you wonder if they'll ever get up before midday. Why don't you go and fetch them out from school?' she suggested, pretty sure it should be that simple. ‘It's not a young offenders' institute after all, is it? They're not locked in. And even if they don't want to leave permanently, surely you're allowed to take them out for a day or two now and then, aren't you? And if the school don't want to let them out, just mutter something about marital problems – that's the kind of thing that gets Matron rushing off and packing their bags for them.' She gave a rueful giggle, ‘After all, what impending divorce usually means is that there's suddenly no money for school fees, so they'll be falling over themselves to help you sort things out.'

Abigail's face brightened immediately. ‘You know, I never thought of that. I've always just waited for half term or the occasional specially allowed days, the way we parents are expected to. But then things are a bit different now . . . Will you come and get them with me? Please?

Stella sighed gently and thought of home and of work and the week's Jiffy bag of problems that must have arrived in the post for her by now. The Island Art Fair was less than a couple of weeks away too, and she wasn't there to stop Willow squabbling with Enzo about signposts and posters and music. Bernard would be stamping around being phenomenally insulting about the MacIvers' amateur efforts and loudly telling everyone that there ought to be some sort of quality control procedure and Ruth would need help persuading Adrian that giving up the summerhouse for just one weekend wouldn't instantly exorcize all his creative spirit from the room.

‘I do have things to do, you know,' she protested to Abigail.

‘No you don't,' Abigail argued, ‘you've got things to do for
other people.
Even your job is about other people. When we came here you said it would do them good to get on with life by themselves for a change. If you go dashing back now, they'll hardly have had time to miss you. I bet Adrian hasn't got through all his clean socks yet. You're too willing to be put upon, that's your trouble.'

‘No I'm not. And anyway, now you're doing the putting upon. All this pressure. And Adrian's extremely good with the washing machine.'

Abigail laughed, looked across the calm and peachy room and out of the window at two women in Chameleon tracksuits sauntering down towards the croquet lawn for some gentle after-dinner exercise. Down across the park, in the valley beyond, the sun was dropping over the lake and glinting orange streaks through the willows. ‘Oh yeah? And what pressure would you rather have, home or all this?'

‘So you don't mind if I stay away for a bit longer?' Stella lazed on the chaise longue beside the zealously-draped window in her room and chatted to Adrian on the phone. She pictured him in the cream leather chair in the summerhouse, his own telephone hauled out from under loose pages of a discarded chapter, unpaid bills and junk mail, magazines and newsletters from the Guild of Erotic Writers, all of which clutter convinced him that his office looked like an authentic businessman's. To him, it only lacked a set of Newton's Balls to play with. Probably a real top-of-the-tree executive would have a desktop supporting nothing but a minute laptop computer, a Mont Blanc pen and a left-over show-off boarding pass from a very expensive flight, Stella always thought, but as long as Adrian was happy . . .

‘It's fine by me, honestly. Stay as long as you like if you're enjoying yourself.' Before Stella could reply he added, ‘As long as you really
are
enjoying it. Are you?'

She felt quite touched by his concern, especially given the rather tense manner of her departure from home. She stretched out on the chaise longue's ocean-blue velvet and looked admiringly at her pearly toe-nails, ‘Well yes, I am having fun, actually. More than I expected – this place is bliss. I'm not exactly a Whole New Me, I suspect I'd need about a year for that, but I certainly
feel
great. I'll only be an extra night or two away. The school isn't too far from where Abi and Martin live, but she doesn't want to stay there on the way so we're treating ourselves to one of those huge old Grand Hotels on the coast. Should be fun.'

She heard Adrian sigh long and loud, like a child who can't cover up tiredness. ‘So if she doesn't want to be at home, where exactly does Abigail intend going after she's seen Venetia and James?' he asked. She could hear the undisguised dread in his voice and laughed.

‘Don't panic, I'll try and persuade her that her own home is the best place to be with them –
for
them. It's only about ten days away from half term, so if I sort of suggest that Martin might happen to come back, at least to see the children, then she can work out for herself that she should be there playing happy families with them and reminding him of what he's missing. And if she
can't
work that out, I'll just have to help her to. It is supposed to be what I'm good at.'

There was another sigh from Adrian, this time unmistakably of relief. ‘Right. So when you come back here, it'll just be you. No more Abigail.' He seemed to need a lot of reassurance on this point, she thought, wondering why he was suddenly so terribly eager to have her to himself. She felt quite flattered, so lucky to have a husband who still wanted her exclusive company. Abigail would probably dismiss it as his selfish need for her domestic services, a suspect and jealous reluctance to share her with her oldest friends. But then poor Abigail was bitter and bereft, she reminded herself, and not really thinking straight.

‘Body-casting. A million emotions can sing from the body,' Willow declared. ‘Body casting is quite a simple process really, but of course what you do with the basic mould once you've got it, that's where
art
comes in. It could be cast in bronze or simple plain plaster, or' – Willow's clay-streaked arms started to weave the air as she worked her imagination – ‘or spread with streaky bacon and painted gold, or wax and lit as a candle, or chipped like spite, or made in chocolate for breaking off and eating . . .'

‘We understand, it's OK,' Giuliana told her, putting up her own delicate tanned arm to half the flow. She was finding it hard, as were Bernard, Enzo, Peggy, Ellen MacIver and Ruth, to take her amazed eyes off Willow's hacked hair that was like the first stage of a terrorist's punishment. It stuck up in spiky, uneven clumps like a badly pruned shrub, coloured a patchy orange-blond and ginger where the lavishly applied neat peroxide had taken on the different shades of her hair. It simply resembled the same mottled old cat, but as if the poor creature had tumbled into a freshly bleached lavatory. Willow seemed to be oblivious to any change in her appearance, as if the crazed chopping was a perfectly ordinary everyday thing, not mad at all, though her eyes had a hint of a new fierce challenge in them, daring a comment to stumble out. Her audience, gathered in Bernard's gallery to discuss allocation of wall space, became collectively convinced that she had gone over the edge into complete loopiness and felt wary of upsetting her.

‘I want to do
everyone
. Everyone on the island, and I want that wall for them. Arses!' She yelled the last word as if she'd been working up courage for months to be thoroughly insulting.

‘What?' Ruth asked. ‘
Arses
, did you say?' She sniggered childishly and glanced at Bernard.

Willow flashed her such an ice-cold, demonic look that Ruth immediately stared at the floor, hurriedly crossed her fingers and started muttering the Lord's Prayer under her breath. She thought of the little Fimo voodoo doll of Abigail that she'd been making at the college, fearful that just by thinking a few mildly hostile thoughts about Willow, she'd shoved her over the edge. What, if that were true, would be the state of Abigail now? Hairless, padded-celled and ranting with pain, she must be. It wasn't too unpleasing a thought. Bernard nudged her gently, which made her feel better, though just for once she hoped Willow hadn't seen.

‘Bottoms, bums, posteriors,
derrières
then, for those of you who prefer things minced up and flavourless.' Willow reeled off the words with undisguised scorn. ‘I want to cast all the bottoms on the island, starting with . . .' she looked around the assembled group, all of whom immediately gazed at the floor like teenagers in class who haven't revised for a test. ‘Yours,' she announced, pointing at Ellen, who flinched and stepped backwards, terrified.

‘Me? Oh, not me, I wouldn't know what to do . . . I'd rather not . . . really, no honestly.' Ellen fluttered and flapped and the rest of them, relieved not to have been chosen, cravenly ganged up and cajoled her. ‘Oh, go on, Ellen, you'll be fine, it doesn't hurt a bit,' Bernard encouraged her.

‘I expect it's just like doing a face pack, but down the other end of you,' Ruth added.

‘Christ, you only have to take your knickers off and lie down, even you can manage that,' Peggy declared rudely.

‘And then it will be someone else's turn,' Enzo said. ‘But you will be done, over,' he added.

‘Done over, more like,' Ruth murmured.

‘Yes, yes. You're a good sport, Ellen,' Bernard told her with a huge, persuasive smile, hugging her to him briefly and chummily. Ellen, whose team spirit and adoration of Bernard were easily appealed to, now looked quite honoured to have been selected. Willow looked deranged but triumphant.

‘She won't get round to the rest of us, you'll see,' Bernard reassured Giuliana after Willow had flitted off to organize plaster supplies.

‘No, because she'll be taken away in a bloody mad-wagon first,' Peggy said. ‘I'm off before she changes her mind and comes back for
me.
There's something I've left simmering on the boat . . .'

‘I know what she has cooking,' Giuliana whispered to Ruth as they left the gallery and went outside into the calming sunshine. ‘She has a
man.
Toby told me. He is the council man, she has him tied up in her boat and she won't let him go.' Giuliana giggled.

Ruth thought about the bizarre encounter with Peggy in Boots and smiled, ‘I'm not surprised. Peggy probably wants him as a sex slave.'

Giuliana's large brown eyes opened very wide, ‘No – I thought she had him for a hostage, so he can't make her leave.
Sex
– it could be. In Italy,' she declared with pride, ‘we are never too old. Not till we die.' She grinned, ‘Maybe not even then, who knows?'

Peggy stumped off back to her barge and clambered aboard as fast as she could. Ted Kramer helped her down the steps and handed her a mug of tea. ‘Have we got something to put in it?' she demanded, looking past him to the corner cupboard where her drinks supply (five brands of Scotch) was arranged.

‘Famous Grouse?' he asked with a grin, sensing a crotchety mood.

‘That Willow woman. You should see what she's done to herself. She was never a beauty, but what she's done's practically self-mutilation. Barking mad, she's gone.' Peggy poured a generous dollop of whisky into her mug and sipped deeply. ‘So've I,' she suddenly added, looking at Ted as if seeing a large, leather-clad burglar instead of a benign leather-skinned man in a crumpled selection of old corduroy, ‘Just now, I said, “Have
we
got something to put in this tea”, instead of “
I
”. Haven't done that since Bill was alive, oh twenty or so years since.' She sat down heavily on the arm of the collapsing armchair by the stove and looked shocked at herself. Ted was a comfortable person to be with, that was the awful truth of it, she realized. He kept visiting and talking. Even in the confined space of the boat he managed never to be in the way. He had economic movements, that was it, neatness, agility (oh, remember agility? she thought), dexterity. Quietly, almost stealthily, he'd cleaned the kitchen, swept corners that hadn't seen a brush in years, washed the windows, was there on the boat with her because he
chose
to be. One day, she thought, he'll not be here, because his job is all about getting
me
out of here. Off he'll go to his cottage in St Ives, job done, and I'll be in Acacia Close, doorway to death, where you pick up the phone and it's a direct line to the undertakers. He'd not only given her his time and his company, he'd given her someone to
miss
when he'd inevitably be gone. That wasn't fair. She had to make an effort, right now, to make sure that the ‘missing' would be mutual, perhaps not even have to happen at all.

‘Tell me about your cottage,' she asked him, ‘I've always been fond of Cornwall.'

Toby carried the fat padded envelope into the kitchen, hauled off the parcel tape and tipped the contents onto the table. He looked around furtively to check no one was lurking at either the doorway or window and rummaged among the heap of coloured envelopes, searching out the one he had sent to the magazine. Clever thinking, that. It would hardly have done to slip one in that had neither stamp nor postmark – he might as well have dropped it on her desk while she was actually sitting at it. His own was electric blue, taken from the drawer in the sitting-room where Stella kept a spare supply of emergency birthday cards. One day, though not too soon, he hoped, she'd notice that there wasn't an envelope for the watercolour of Richmond Bridge.

Stella opened the door and went out onto the balcony to sniff at the sea air. There was the usual stiff British breeze that always sneaks most of the warmth off the coast. It's as if, she thought, we're just not to be trusted with the sheer, wicked heat of the Bahamas or southern oceans, that we need just a little puritanical cool reminder to keep hot thoughts in check. The early evening sun forced itself down quite strongly enough, though, on the parched hanging basket beside her, seaside-livid with salmon-pink geraniums, scarlet begonias and trailing pink and mauve surfinias. She fetched water from her authentically restored, gloomy Edwardian bathroom, trickled it slowly on to the dry compost and thought fondly of her cool garden at home, where oozing tree-ferns and glossy-leaved acanthus flourished by the water and the purple-black clematis threaded itself through the weigela. Adrian would be strolling down the garden with a large vodka and tonic about now, perhaps taking one for Peggy and joining her on the barge's deck to watch the moorhens and the rowers and the passing cyclists, joggers and ponies on the opposite bank. She picked up the phone and dialled her home number, but gave up after fifteen rings. She wondered what they were all doing, all out being social without her. A small twinge of envy got at her – if Adrian was only on Peggy's barge he'd have easily been able to get to the phone in the summerhouse. That was the second time she'd phoned and he'd been off somewhere. They couldn't even leave the answering machine switched on for her to leave a message, couldn't be bothered to imagine or to care that she might want to. All of them, all were just too busy having fun with her out of the way. It's only for another night or so, she thought, as she dead-headed the awful plants, making up her mind to enjoy herself. When Abigail's got the children she'll be all right. She can take them home and get on with the rest of her life. There can't be anything more I can possibly do for her. And then I can go home.