Muddy Waters (9 page)

Adrian looked up and laughed, ‘About the only time she was ever on a bed with her clothes on. I can't imagine her wasting time in bed with a man on Eng. Lit. revision.'

Stella suddenly felt a tweak of anguish, ‘Was that all we were doing? Wasting time?' But Adrian had returned to being absorbed in his magazine, leaving her alone to decide whether she'd been unfavourably compared or not. Sometimes, Stella remembered that in those revision sessions, Abigail had entertained them with tales of what she'd just been up to, telling them about having sex in the church tower and being trapped by the campanology club coming in for bell ringing practice, or doing it on a roundabout on the A40, or fellating a visiting lecturer under a restaurant table. Her stories, rather than the ‘Happy Hooker' column, could easily, Stella suddenly thought, have been the original inspirations for Adrian's career.

‘Oddbins,' Adrian suddenly announced, making Stella jump, ‘that's always got me going. I get really horny going in there knowing I'm in for some serious wine shopping. In fact, I'm really quite promiscuous about it, any good wine store will do.'

‘What are you wearing?' Abigail's foxy head appeared round the door of Stella's bedroom, followed by her body in a cream silk kimono.

‘Oh, just usual day-to-day stuff,' Stella told her, looking down at herself in her jeans and old blue linen shirt and wondering if, compared with long, lean Abigail, she slightly resembled a beach ball. Work would have to wait till she'd taken Abigail round the town and helped her do a bit of therapeutic shopping. She could at least show her properly how the ferry worked so that she was then free to come and go from the island as she pleased.

‘We could have lunch at the Italian deli, or the wine bar or something if you like, but we don't have to dress up for that.'

‘Oh, OK.' Abigail sounded disappointed, as if she'd secretly been expecting a surprise trip to Knightsbridge and a chance to wear something chic from Agnés B. Stella noticed she had bitten both her thumbnails right down to raw red flesh, ruining what must have been an expensive French manicure. Perhaps she really was terribly unhappy, truly bereft without Martin. As a student, Abigail had seemed to discard boyfriends as thoughtlessly as other people might chuck out holey socks. Someone at a party had once said, ‘If all the men in the county were laid end to end . . .' only to be interrupted by Adrian with ‘They have been, mostly by Abigail.'

Stella went to the mirror, flicked a token touch of mascara lightly over her lashes and tried to remember Abigail being dumped by someone, but couldn't recall it happening. She'd growled and complained when one of them, like Martin, had turned to a vibrant blond for comfort rather insensitively soon after she'd abandoned him, but that was more to do with the fact that he'd so quickly sought and found solace than any regrets about her decision.

Abigail (having decided on black Levis and a long, honey-coloured cashmere cardigan) cheered up noticeably the moment she stepped off the ferry and onto the bank from where she could admire the island safely.

‘The island's really awfully pretty,' she said, looking across the water at the abundant trees, the pretty pastel-painted (apart from Willow's) houses. ‘No wonder you decided to live here. I remember your last house – it was OK but it was
exactly
the same as the one next door to it,' she said, as if this, in suburban London, was a highly unusual arrangement.

Stella grinned at her. ‘We like it here. There's a kind of outlaw quality about being cut off from the land. Adrian says we're just fifty drunkards clinging to a mudbank, which makes it all sound a bit mad, but really we're just getting by, like anywhere else.'

‘Not a lot like anywhere else. You don't get cut off by high tides in the middle of Petworth.' She shuddered at the thought. They reached the High Street and Abigail, enchanted to see traffic and bustle, was almost at sprinting point.

‘There's no rush,' Stella laughed, ‘it's only a small town.'

‘I know but it's got
normal people
,' Abigail said, ‘not just a collection of artsy-folksy types. You and Adrian excepted, of course. You know . . .' her voice softened and became tremulous, ‘I can't tell you how grateful I am, you putting up with me like this. I want to buy you something, just a little thank you present.' They slowed down as Abigail peered round, looking for a suitable shop. ‘You'd look really good in red, you know,' she said, turning and looking Stella up and down. Stella immediately got the fat feeling again, hating to be inspected.

‘Adrian's always saying that too, which reminds me I've got to pick up his bloody paper from the stationers. We'll do that last, it's too heavy to carry far.'

‘You shouldn't be running round after him like that,' Abigail scolded, ‘you've got your own work to deal with. Would he expect to be sent out like the office gofer and pick up paper clips and staples for you when
you
needed them?'

Stella thought for a moment before replying, wondering when the last time was she'd actually asked him. ‘Well I suppose he would, of course he would if he was going that way. Why wouldn't he?'

‘Because he's a man and by nature they think they're just too big-time, that's why. You should have told him to ring the office supply people, put the stuff on account and have them bike it round. That's what I'd have done. He takes you too much for granted, you know. If I was Auntie Alice or whatever your professional name is, I'd suggest you give him a teeny bit of a shock to perk him up,' she declared, hauling Stella into the doorway of Whistles. ‘Look at that dress, isn't it just to kill for? Let's go in and try things on, just for fun.'

Stella giggled. ‘I haven't done that for years. I remember when it used to be a kind of hobby. The spare time I must have had . . . Do you remember when we bought those white Minnie Mouse platform shoes that we could only just totter about in? I only clothes-shop when I desperately need something these days. Sad really.'

‘Well, I think you desperately
need
that dress, so come on,' Abigail said, opening the shop door.

Ruth ran lightly down the path towards the boathouse, hoping that this would be the day she did more than just modelling for Bernard. She'd planned a whole afternoon college skive, missing double English so she hoped it would be well worth it. She loved posing for him, adored preparing her body before she went, making sure it was oiled and creamed and smelling luscious in case he wanted to savour its abundant delights. He hadn't yet, but she knew he soon would. It was what he did with all his young models, first the painting, then the sex. Bernard's reputation contributed enormously to the town's wariness of the island.

‘Don't you think it would be better the other way round? Sex first, then the painting after?' Ruth had speculated with her friend Melissa while they'd been inattentive at a French class. ‘Surely he'd paint me better if he'd sort of felt his way round as well as just
looked
at me.'

‘You're probably right,' Melissa had agreed solemnly, adding with commercial common sense, ‘After all, I know he thinks he's really big-time, and I suppose he is in a
local
sort of way, but as artists go, he's not exactly a household name, is he? Perhaps that's his big mistake. He needs a more hands-on approach.'

Ruth could feel her breasts and belly undulating as she ran. On modelling days she wore no underwear so as not to make distracting marks on her skin and she loved the primitive, free feeling this gave her as she moved. She was big, what grandmothers of old would have approvingly called ‘well-covered', and she was unusually comfortable with that, revelling in her expanses of flesh, defying the hysterical anti-fat propaganda that shrieked at her from every fashion magazine, every shop that stopped at size 14. She pitied the many, many sad girls who were always writing to her mother, wailing that no one would ever fancy them till they weighed less than seven stone, as if being size eight would be a bigger achievement than A-levels. She was blessed with a face of what Bernard had described so thrillingly as ‘glorious beauty' – a large, deep-red mouth with slightly buck teeth, enormous blue eyes and a cloud of dark hennaed curls that he wouldn't describe as pre-Raphaelite (too obvious) but hadn't yet thought up anything more original to say that would impress her.

‘You're in a hurry, going to see the rabbits?' Willow was standing by the small gate that led to the neglected couple of wilderness acres beyond Bernard's boathouse. She was holding a bunch of buttercups in front of her with both hands like a conscientious bridesmaid and looking ridiculous, Ruth thought, in a too-short pink and white dress that resembled a little girl's party frock.

‘No, Willow, I'm not going to see the ickle bunnies, I'm going to see Bernard.' Ruth couldn't resist crowing at her, just to see the winsomeness fade into controlled fury.

‘Oh, I don't think he's in,' Willow told her. ‘I just rang the bell and there was no reply – though I suppose he might have been down in the gallery or something . . .'

Ruth smiled at her, taunting with youth's casual cruelty, ‘He'll be in for
me. I'm
expected.'

She felt rather ashamed as she climbed the outside staircase to Bernard's balcony. Hurting Willow was so easy it was like stamping on a butterfly. Willow hadn't been to see the rabbits in the wilderness either, she was pretty sure, unless she'd been loitering in there on purpose, frolicking among the wild flowers and hoping to be spotted from afar and likened to a wood nymph by Bernard. She had probably picked the buttercups with a view to dropping in on him and hanging around in his studio, getting him to notice how domestic and creative she could be, leaving the flowers scattily arranged in a jug (one that she'd made herself and given to him previously) on his big table by the window where he could look at them and think of her. She's definitely a witch, Ruth decided, imagining her humming a small but potent love-spell over the buttercups.

The dress looked stunning, a soft scarlet linen wrapover number that followed Stella's curves and flared out from the hips to swirl just above her knees. ‘I don't wear things like this,' Stella told Abigail as they stood together in the shop, staring at their reflections in the long mirror.

‘Well, you should. You're still thin enough for a bit of cling and your legs are great. You shouldn't hide them away all the time. It's so
apologetic
. I can't
bear
apologetic. Just because you won't see thirty again . . .' The young shop assistant, hovering on the scent of a sale, looked as if she expected lightning to strike.

‘Thirty!' Stella spluttered, ‘You and I both know we're losing sight of forty!'

‘You might have. I've not quite given in to it yet,' Abigail sniffed.

‘Listen, Martin is going to buy this dress for you, I insist, just to thank you for having me to stay and cheering me up.' She pulled out a wallet bulging with credit cards, selected a platinum one and handed it to the assistant.

Stella reached out and snatched it back. ‘Don't be silly, I can buy my own dresses,' she said, hauling out her Visa card and stuffing it into the assistant's hand before Abigail could argue.

‘In that case, I'm buying lunch, no arguments,' Abigail told her, ‘you know how I sulk if I don't get my own way.'

Stella wondered disloyally if it was ten years of Abigail's bossiness that had helped Martin out of the palatial house and on his way to New York with golden-haired Fiona. Perhaps Fiona was restfully adoring, flatteringly submissive – all those things that tired, care-worn men of a certain age seemed to choose in a mistress. It wasn't that different from what the younger ones seemed to want either. Analyzing the letters she got from boys, she would say their ideal girl adored football, was willing to hang around patiently while they joshed with their mates and would allow them to put their hands in her knickers from time to time. Not much change over the years there, she thought. As they walked along the crowded lunchtime street she thought about the heap of problems that waited on the kitchen table to be dealt with – all those adolescents who were confidently expecting her to put in a full day's work on their anguish and give them the priority the young demanded as a right. Instead, she was swanning around town in the middle of the day, carrying, in a stiff black and white carrier, the tissue-wrapped, scarlet dress that she neither needed, nor, probably, would normally have bothered to try on, let alone buy. She couldn't, on the other hand, remember the last time she'd bought something that made her feel so utterly terrific – and that really was entirely thanks to Abigail. Spending money, even by proxy, seemed to have made Abigail positively jaunty – she was now bouncing along the pavement, Stella noticed. Perhaps it was true, like the old Joan Rivers joke, that some women really do only have orgasms when they catch sight of a credit card slip being signed. Just as Stella was considering whether the sexual thrill could be the same with a humble old jolly striped Access card as for a double-titanium, moonrock studded Coutts number, Abigail stopped abruptly outside a wine bar.

‘Oh look! In there, isn't that your Toby?' she asked, pointing into the chic art nouveau gloom.

‘Shouldn't think so, he can't afford places like this, he's saving up for some serious travel. Besides, he's more a Crown and Anchor sort,' Stella said, peering in towards where the pointing finger indicated and seeing only a row of gleaming legs of office girls shining from the bar stools.

‘Well, we'll
have
to go in now,' Abigail decided, shoving the door further open, ‘the barman's grinning at me and it would be too unkind just to walk off. He'd feel rejected.'

‘Considerate of you,' Stella murmured with suspicion as she followed her inside.