Muddy Waters (4 page)

‘And it really takes two of them?' Adrian commented in disgust. ‘They'd be far more useful cleaning dog shit off the pavements,' he grumbled. ‘Isn't it today that Abigail comes?'

‘Yep. Lunch time. Or lunch
ish
, anyway. I expect she'll stop off somewhere on the way. I can't imagine her arriving here starving, just in case all we've got in the house is something she couldn't possibly force herself to eat, not even on a desert island, like a can of spaghetti hoops or whatever.' Stella laughed, remembering the awful things she and Abigail had lived on as poor and lazy students, long before affluence had over-refined Abigail's palate and given her selective amnesia. They'd particularly enjoyed toast spread with drinking chocolate powder and there had once been a supper of Angel Delight (butterscotch flavour) with nothing but Jacobs Cream Crackers to dunk into it.

‘If she gets here in time I'll take her to the art fair meeting,' Stella told Adrian. ‘I'll introduce her to everyone, then she'll feel more at home.'

‘Perhaps she'll find herself a playmate,' Adrian suggested. ‘Then she'll be out of your way a bit. How long did you say she was staying?'

‘Er, actually I didn't.' Stella confessed, staring guiltily into her coffee. ‘Though it can't be for long, can it? I mean, Martin can't be away for ever.'

‘Ah, but he can, can't he?' Adrian pointed out. ‘If he's really gone off and left her then presumably “ever” is exactly how long he's gone off for.'

He looked pale, Stella thought, as if the idea of Abigail permanently resident in their spare room was enough to make him quite ill. There'd been a time, she was pretty sure, when he hadn't felt at all like that about her.

Abigail remembered too late that she didn't need to get a cab all the way out from central London – there
were
local trains. But she just wasn't used to having to think about the simple mechanics of such a situation, and her bag was terribly heavy, full of clothes that just might be needed, like an all-purpose slinky black frock, large baggy sweaters to deal with the inevitably damp evenings, sensible shoes that would survive the high tide mud. And there was the cat-basket. She could hardly be expected to trail poor yowling Cleo all the way out to distant suburbia with no help at all. She dearly wished she'd brought her adored little Mercedes. Just one more day and its front offside wing would have been all replaced as good as shiny new and the kind young boy who was thrilled to have been allowed to come and disentangle it from the gatepost would have delivered it back to the house again. She would have given him a ten pound tip and driven him at a splendidly crazy, dizzying speed through the narrow lanes back to his workshop and persuaded him, quite easily, not to tell Martin (if he ever came back) about this latest little mishap. It was typical of her that she simply couldn't allow herself to wait even that long. As she kicked her baggage slowly forward in the taxi queue she wondered if she should, instead, have simply booked herself a week in Venice, just to show Martin when (if) he trailed home that she could have little going away treats too. She wouldn't have had to admit that she'd gone alone, she could easily have spent enough money for two. She could have done a lot of secretive smiling, leaving him wondering and agonizing, picturing her perhaps being cosy in a gondola with the young, stallion-hung pool cleaner he'd caught her eying from her sun lounger in the garden the previous summer. Instead the ‘Gone to stay with Stella and Adrian' message she'd recorded on the Ansaphone was almost as dreary as telling the world she'd run home to mother. He wasn't stupid – he'd identify it immediately as an admission of a need for comfort. She would have gladly changed her mind, phoned Mrs Wiggins to tell her, when she next came in to clean, to switch off the damn machine if it wasn't for a nagging superstition that if Martin suddenly decided to call and grovel for forgiveness but found her untraceable, he might just change his mind back again and plight a permanent troth to this Fiona person.

Abigail ran out of patience, pushed past three men in travel crumpled business suits and climbed into the next taxi as it pulled up. Like a spoilt child, she didn't even acknowledge, let alone thank, those who so kindly piled her baggage in after her. She lit a cigarette, glaring at the ‘Thank you for Not Smoking' sign and waited, her face contorted with angry challenge, to be told off.

Toby lay on the damp greasy ground outside the garage and poked about with a spanner and a torch. His adored VW Beetle (1303S, metallic purple, 1972, sloping headlights, flat windscreen) had developed a stubborn little jolting noise from somewhere in the region of the back axle. He heard the rattling throb of a taxi and glanced out to see, stepping out of it, the lower end of pale slim shiny legs wearing long beige low-heeled shoes. This he identified immediately as a creature far removed from the usual sloppily-shod island visitor. From so frequently lying flat out under his car he had come to recognize most of the inhabitants by their legs and feet – Willow's star-painted boots, Bernard's odd socks, the tattooed daisy on Charlotte's ankle, the MacIvers' matching Hush Puppies, Enzo's battered Italian loafers. It was none of those, definitely no one local. Abigail's here then, he thought as he hauled himself out from beneath the car and wiped his oily hands down his oily jeans. Dressed entirely in something silky and cream and fumbling with money for the cab driver as if cash was something she, like the queen, wasn't quite used to handling, she looked completely and pitifully out of place, he thought, as if she'd just landed in coldest Alaska in a strapless ballgown. She was staring across the water at Willow's little house, at the scarlet and yellow oil drums planted with trailing nasturtiums, at the dancing black carnival figures painted in bold silhouette on the sky blue front door.

‘Hello Abigail, how are you?' Toby greeted her politely. She continued staring at the house as if she hadn't heard him and then, pointing across the water, said, ‘Is that
allowed
? Don't you have planning regulations on this island or what?'

Toby looked blankly at Willow's jolly paintwork and shrugged, ‘I dunno. I thought you could just paint your own house any way you want. Aren't you allowed to down in Sussex?'

Abigail sighed, already losing interest in Willow's colour scheme. ‘I suppose so. Who knows. Who cares?' she said with another, deeper sigh, her voice full of remembered woe.

Toby picked up her bag and the cat basket, wondering if his mother was actually expecting this extra little visitor. ‘Come on,' he said to Abigail, ‘I'll take you across on the ferry and show you the way. You look tired.'

Abigail tried a pathetic smile and looked up at him. ‘You do realize,' she said, ‘that at my age the words “you look tired” are almost always polite-speak for “you're looking about a hundred years old.”'

Toby hauled the bag and the basket onto the ferry with a graceful ease that Abigail could only envy. She felt quite literally stiff with misery and the humiliation of Martin's rejection, and all her own suppleness and casual ease of movement had been tensed by awful uncertainties about what life could now be like. Toby took her hand and pulled her carefully from the bank to the raft. ‘Sorry, I didn't know that and you don't actually look any different from last time I saw you. You just look, well, troubled, I suppose.'

He was being kind, Abigail thought, a boy of what? Nineteen or so? Last time she'd seen him he'd been spotty, blushing and silent, engrossed in his GCSE revision and firmly at the grunt-for-an-answer stage. He was taller than her now, spot-free, and with that flopping hair and an easy body that wouldn't look out of place in a jeans advert. His concern touched her. Were boys supposed to notice women being emotional at that age or just think about football and sex? Her eyes filled with tears and she was glad he was occupied with turning the handle that moved the peculiar ferry and sent it trundling noisily towards the island landing stage. This is a perfect example of what it could all be like from now on, she thought – unexpected people being
kind.
I'm an object of pity like a new widow adrift and brave at a dinner party. She didn't like the feeling one bit. And there would be far too many whose offered sympathy would hide a sneaking triumphant glee that she,
she
of all people, wasn't immune from vulnerability. Her role in life had been to be admired and desired by men and envied and emulated by women. As she stepped on to the island she felt she had left behind her all familiar civilization. She would have to find something distracting and amusing so her looks wouldn't deteriorate permanently through unhappiness. Control must be regained. Sadness (and boredom, she suspected) set lines deep into the face out of reach of even the choicest moisturizers – she'd read about that in
Harper's.
Toby swung the heavy bag off the ferry platform and looked back at her. His smile, she thought, was like a warm blessing. She noticed then the perfect teeth that would make such a perfect arcing mark on skin, the golden frosting of hair on his oil-streaked forearm, the way his muscles tightened as he picked up her luggage, and suddenly, with relief and gratitude, discovered that she wasn't yet too emotionally numb to feel desire.

It's funny, Stella thought, how women who haven't seen each other for quite a long while automatically say ‘You're looking
wonderful
' and then oh so politely avoid doing any real inspecting. It was probably only one's mother who could legitimately stand back and say ‘Now, let me have a good look at you' before giving a candid appraisal, and only then if there was the trusting expectation of admiration. Some mothers, Stella guessed, probably relished that once-in-a-year or so chance to say ‘You know, I've always thought that shade of green wasn't really you' or suggest, helpfully, of course, ‘Perhaps longer skirts, these days, do you think?'

Between Abigail and Stella, good, loyal friends though they both would swear they were, it would be just too impertinent to do what they both really, deep down wanted to do which was to have a good greedy stare at each other, to estimate any extra pounds of bodily flesh, peer at hair partings for signs of greying roots and search out sagging eye-bags and loose necks. She and Abigail had done the hugs and the greetings, the showing of Abigail to her room in the roof next to Ruth and the settling in of the cat, and they were now skirting round each other in the kitchen, politely mentioning neither Martin nor signs of ageing while Stella organized lunch.

‘Nothing for me, honestly, I hardly ever do,' Abigail protested while at the same time hungrily picking flakes of hot crust off the garlic bread that Stella had just pulled out of the oven.

‘No wonder you're still so thin,' Stella told her, ignoring the protest and ladling Sainsbury's tomato and basil soup into two bowls.

‘Just lucky metabolism, I think. I do rush about rather,' Abigail replied, looking down at her flat stomach and narrow thighs. Stella swooped a quick glance over her as she sat down. Abigail's flowing silk skirt was droopy at the waist as if she'd recently lost weight. That was probably something to do with the shock of Martin leaving. Her hair, the wet fox colour discreetly shaded with tawny lowlights, was also looking unusually lank as if it too was dispirited. It was tempting to ask whether she really was looking after herself and eating properly but Stella didn't want to sound motherly – some people's misery makes them too wound up to eat much, she thought, and others' makes them practically live with their heads in the fridge hoovering up the comfort food and chocolate. I'm probably one of the latter, she decided. She was pretty sure it would only take Adrian having a one-night fling and she'd put on at least a stone, entirely made up of toast and honey and dark, expensive, appropriately bitter chocolate.

‘What happened to Toby? Isn't he having any lunch?' Abigail asked, looking out of the window.

‘Oh, he's probably gone back under his car – I sometimes think he lives under it. I expect he'll grab some crisps or a burger. They all study proper nutrition in school, but it seems to end up as nothing more than an exam subject – about as relevant to their own real lives as the exports of Argentina. Adrian's down the garden working in the summerhouse – he just takes a sandwich down there in the morning and doesn't come out till at least late afternoon, which is very rude of him when he knows someone's coming – and Ruth
should
be at the college.' Stella could hear footsteps outside, perhaps Adrian had found enough good manners to come and say hello. A door opened and in a rush of air and a slamming and thumping, Ruth hurtled past the doorway and up the stairs. ‘Can't stop, see you later,' she yelled.

‘Good grief, what's that?' Abigail asked, her spoon midway to her mouth.

‘Just a teenager in a hurry,' Stella told her with a grin. ‘Wait till yours are that big.'

‘I probably won't see any more of them than I do now. Martin thinks boarding school is character building,' Abigail murmured glumly.

‘So's prison and the French Foreign Legion,' Stella giggled. ‘You don't put their names down at birth for those though.'

‘Isn't Ruth eating either? She hasn't gone anorexic, has she?' Abigail asked.

‘Er, no.' Stella couldn't help smiling at the thought of Ruth's curved and rounded body being suspected of self-starvation. ‘Wait till later, you'll see her then. There is absolutely no way that she could be mistaken for anorexic.' Abigail was hardly eating anything herself, Stella saw. Her bread was crumbled into untidy pieces by the side of her plate and not much of the soup had gone. A glass of wine had been drained and refilled and Abigail was working her way steadily though that, holding tight to the stem of the glass as if she thought it might be stolen away from her. Stella felt a rush of sorrow for her. ‘Look, I'm sorry about having to go to this meeting today,' she said. ‘We can have a proper talk later. Do you just want to rest this afternoon or would you like to come with me and meet some of the neighbours? You might hate them of course.' Abigail frowned for a moment, staring at the table, then looked at Stella and summoned up a dazzling smile.