Muddy Waters (28 page)

‘Where are your clothes?' Stella demanded, wiping the tears from the girl's face, ‘Is this anything to do with Bernard?' she then asked suspiciously, trying hard to keep a rising defensive anger out of her voice. It was important for Ruth to be able to tell her if something dreadful had happened, not to be put off by hostility.

‘Willow,' Ruth eventually managed to splutter. ‘She went and left me. She went
hours
ago.' Stella felt mystified. ‘She didn't come back
on purpose
,' Ruth went on, the sobs renewing their vigour.

‘Come on, let's get you upstairs and find you something to wear.' More plaster cascaded from under the Paisley cloth and Stella began to feel seriously alarmed. ‘What is this stuff? Why are you covered in it?' she asked.

Behind her, Adrian came in from the kitchen. ‘What's going on? I heard someone crying and saw a blanket flapping past the summerhouse . . . Hello, Stella. God, Ruth whatever happened? Allergic to plaster?' Adrian, treacherously Stella thought, seemed to think the sight was amusing.

‘If you think this is funny . . .' Stella hissed at him.

‘Well it is, isn't it? Oh, you don't know, I suppose, Willow's taken it into her head to plaster-cast everyone's rear end. Looks like it was Ruth's turn.'

Ruth glared at him coldly, gathered up her fringed cloak and stamped off up the stairs.

‘Now look what you've done,' Stella accused him. ‘Don't you have
any
sensitivity?'

‘Oh, and it's lovely to see you too, darling,' he said sarcastically, his amusement vanishing. ‘I'll assume that the weight you lost at the health farm consisted entirely of your sense of humour?'

‘What's so funny about our daughter crying? I don't care what Willow's arty-farty plans were, there's no need for her to send Ruth home in this state.'

She turned and left him standing uselessly at the bottom of the stairs and followed Ruth and the trail of plaster chippings to the top of the house. She could hear the shower running in the top bathroom and knocked on the door.

‘Ruth? Do you want to talk about it?' She bit her lip and wished she didn't sound so absurdly
sharing
. The crying had stopped at least, though behind the gush of water from the shower there could still be some desperate sniffing going on.

‘No,' Ruth yelled, following up with, ‘later maybe.'

Adrian had disappeared, back to his summerhouse refuge, Stella assumed as she trailed back down the stairs. He'd walked out leaving her the two stair carpets and two hallways worth of plaster hoovering that needed to be done, in the same thoughtless way that he and the others had left the milk bottles, newspapers and the overgrown plants for her to deal with. The plaster would probably block up the drains after Ruth's shower too and then it would be
her
they'd all come and complain to. Perhaps she could get Willow round and force her to pick up every white crumb in her wolfish bloody teeth. She sighed and reached into the under-stairs cupboard for the vacuum cleaner, feeling resignedly that this at least she would make an initial effort to get sorted out quickly and neatly. No one else was likely to.

Adrian leaned over the river wall and wondered if Peggy was in her barge and willing to give him a cup of tea. He hadn't seen her much lately, she seemed to have taken to going off into the town with her new friend from the council. She'd also taken to wearing a selection of new clothes – a proper jacket instead of simply wrapping herself in the crocheted blanket, and a new pair of navy blue deck shoes instead of the Wellingtons padded with tweedy-knit socks. There was no sign of life inside the barge, but he climbed over its deckrail and sat on the far edge, looking out into the deeper water. The tide was at mid-point, so the still water reflected his face and body back at him, darkly and blurrily, but well enough for him to see an ageing, miserable expression of malcontent on his face. ‘I'm getting old,' he said out loud, experimentally. ‘I no longer know the right track for my life,' he went on. A swan sped across the water towards him, stirring up ripples that destroyed his reflection. Feeling sorry for himself, he thought the fracturing of his watery image to be entirely appropriate.

Stella took the Jiffy bag full of mail down to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. Someone, she noticed, had already opened the bag, but she didn't mind – she and Adrian often absent-mindedly opened each other's post. Sometimes it was just as well – he had once filed away her unopened bag full of problem mail among the many manuscripts he had received from aspiring but unsure erotic authors hoping for guidance and praise. She sat down at the table and tipped out the envelopes from the bag and mechanically, out of duty for once rather than real interest, started opening them. She read a few letters about faithless boyfriends, over-strict parents, and a teacher with a grudge, all the time keeping her ears and eyes tuned for the return of either Ruth or Adrian. Just as she was opening a large, dark blue envelope, Ruth appeared looking sad but clean, her hair just starting to twist into its mass of curls as it began to dry.

‘Tea?' Stella offered, shoving the envelopes to one side. ‘Shall I make you some?'

‘Yes please,' Ruth sat down, obviously in a mood to tell her what had happened. Stella said nothing, just waited.

‘Nothing really happened,' Ruth volunteered, staring at the table and picking at the wood. ‘Willow put the plaster on, to make the mould, and said she'd be back soon and then she went out and never came back. It was
hours
ago. It was this
morning
.' The sense of humiliation was still in Ruth's voice.

‘Perhaps she had an accident,' Stella reasoned, bringing Ruth's tea and sitting down again. ‘I'm sure she wouldn't leave you on purpose.'

‘Oh, she
would
,' Ruth insisted, her eyes blazing. ‘It's because of Bernard.'

‘
What's
because of Bernard? Is she jealous because he's painting you? I mean, I know she likes him,' she grinned at Ruth, trying to jolly her along, ‘
everyone
knows she likes him!'

‘It's not just the painting,' Ruth admitted half under her breath, looking up briefly and meeting her mother's eyes for the shortest of all-telling seconds. Stella tried to breathe calmly and take in what Ruth had implied without exploding. She took her time, reasoning that it wasn't as if this was a total surprise, that Ruth was seventeen not seven and that she herself was supposed to be a liberal, liberated, understanding, parent.

‘Oh,' was all she could come out with. For someone who dealt with a vast range of problems for a living, it didn't seem, even to her, to be a very constructive comment. She wondered what the questions were that she was supposed to ask now. Should she ask if he was Ruth's first lover (Did she really want to know if he wasn't? Suppose he was the twentieth?), if she was remembering to be careful, if this was a serious or casual relationship – or were any and all of these things absolutely none of her business?

‘So you see, Willow's just jealous and now she probably thinks she's got some kind of revenge.' Ruth got up and took her cup to the sink, ‘Stupid cow – I mean what a pathetic thing to do, really. She'd better not try asking me to come back and have another go with the plaster.' The hurt had now completely vanished from her voice, Stella noted, glad to hear a rallying tone of angry recovery. ‘Anyway, I'm off. I'm supposed to be at a French class right now,' Ruth said, smiling a goodbye at Stella. ‘See you later, thanks for the tea.'

So that's that then, Stella thought, admiring youth's powers of fast recovery and turning back to the post sorting. Your teenage daughter lets you know she is sleeping with a middle-aged, promiscuous artist and there is nothing more to be said. Obviously she should, she thought, concentrate on those who really did have problems to discuss. She opened the blue envelope.

‘Can we start again? With hello and it's lovely to have you back?' Adrian crept in with pretended nervousness through the kitchen door, holding a ragged bunch of geraniums, buttercups, cow parsley and forget-me-nots in front of him which he offered to Stella along with a mock-humble smile.

‘Oh, they're lovely, thanks,' she said, beaming at him and getting up to give him a hug. He put his arms round her and squeezed her tight against him. ‘Hey, can't you feel how much thinner I am?' she said, laughing, ‘almost down to Abigail size.'

Adrian groaned. ‘Don't ever go trying to be like her,' he pleaded, ‘she's got too many sharp edges. In mind as well as body.'

Stella pushed him away, laughing, ‘And how would
you
know?' she teased.

‘I'll put these in water,' Adrian offered suddenly, picking up the flowers, ‘You know what the wild ones are like, they wilt so quickly.' He bent to find a vase from the cupboard under the sink, ‘Anything interesting among this week's problems?' he asked.

‘Don't know yet, so far it seems like the mixture as usual.' She picked up the blue envelope, opened it and started to read as Adrian rather clumsily plonked the flowers into a blue Art Deco vase, found years ago at the church jumble sale. ‘Though there's this one, from someone called “Alex”, can't tell if it's male or female but that doesn't matter, listen to this: “My mum's best friend is having problems with her marriage and Mum's been helping her out. Now I think the friend's having an affair with my dad. I saw them out together, though they didn't see me. Should I say anything? And who to?” Some friend,' Stella commented. ‘What do you think he or she should do?' she asked.

Adrian looked blank, ‘What, you're asking me?
I
don't know. You're right though, not much of a friend. I mean, who'd . . .' He stopped and fiddled with a drooping buttercup, then suggested, with a flippant grin, ‘Perhaps the kid should have a word with the dad. Might be worth a bit of extra pocket money . . .'

Stella laughed, ‘Adrian, how could you be so cynical! This is a child, worried the family might break up.'

‘No, no, that won't happen. Not in a million years. Tell it to keep quiet, let things pass,' he said, ‘It'll be all right.'

‘Huh, one thing I can never promise any of these kids,' she said, waving her hands over the heap and adding the one from Alex to the rest, ‘is that anything can be guaranteed to be “all right”.'

Adrian's face acknowledged the truth of that. He smiled, rather wanly and said, ‘Then I guess you'll just have to tell him or her that then, won't you?'

Toby looked around furtively to see if there was anyone he knew in W. H. Smith before picking up a copy of
Get This!
If the security camera saw the guilty expression on his face, he thought, they'd have a store detective tailing him within seconds. The shop was busy, and he had to slide his hand carefully between the bodies of two stout and browsing women to reach the display rack. The magazine was unmissable, all pink and purple with pzazz! headlines in lime green. He couldn't remember his own sister ever buying anything so lurid – Ruth seemed to have graduated straight from
Beano
to
The Face
with no stopping off in between for these pre-woman lessons in make-up and man-trapping. Although the cover featured two giggling girls in citrus-fruit beachwear, there was clearly no way he could pretend he'd picked it up mistaking it for the comfortingly blokeish
Surf's Up
. Caught by a friend now, (or worse, Giuliana), all credibility would be shot to pieces. Around him women flicked through
Hello!
and
Tatler
and took no notice of him. He sauntered to the far end of the aisle to hang around next to men choosing car magazines and computer manuals so as to look less conspicuous before opening
Get This!
and nervously thumbing through to Stella's ‘Go Ask Alice' column. He wasn't sure, not really, if his letter would be in this week, or even at all – perhaps it was too feeble to rate a mention, although he knew Stella worked to a pretty close deadline. ‘Couple of odd problems in this week's batch,' she'd mentioned over supper the night she'd got back from Abigail's, as if she'd wanted a general discussion, which she sometimes did when something unexpected was sent in. Once there'd been a girl who was terrorized by her stepfather's dog, and then there'd been another whose mother had told about (and shown) her newly implanted breasts to just about everyone who called at the house, including the girl's boyfriend. This time though, just as Toby could feel his face turning pink and his appetite going, Adrian had butted in quite rudely and started talking to Ruth about rearranging the summerhouse for her jewellery.

The letter
was
in. He felt almost as thrilled as if he'd submitted a whole article. It didn't have top billing as the five-star problem (that went to a girl who'd fallen in love with her boyfriend's sister and didn't know how to tell him – tricky one that, Toby conceded), but given plenty of attention halfway down the page. Toby read slowly and carefully the advice his own mother was giving him.

You should remember that you might be mistaken about your father and this woman. She might be just as much
his
friend as your mother's, with nothing terrible going on
 . . .

‘Shit!' Toby grunted, feeling thoroughly told off. ‘Keep your trap shut, mind your own, time will tell,' was the essential message. She's so
innocent
, he thought, despairing of Stella. If he even came right out and
said
to her that he'd seen his dad snuggled up with Abigail in the pub, she'd probably just breezily say, ‘Oh, I expect it was just some other couple who looked a bit like them,' and not give it any more thought. Well, I'd want to know, he thought, flinging
Get This!
down on top of a pile of
Literary Reviews
and walking very fast out of the shop.