The Ex-Wives (19 page)

Nearby, Quentin himself sat in a cappuccino place. He often came here in his lunch hour. Black and chrome, sharp and stylish, it made everybody look well-designed. It drained them of their past and recreated them as fashion statements. Stirring his coffee, he remembered when he was a little boy and how he pretended he had a limp. His ma, Popsi, would get exasperated and walk on ahead. Passers-by would murmur
poor little mite
and glare at her – glare at his mum, the most warm-hearted soul in the world. He knew he was making some sort of point, even then; that he was getting at her in some way. He closed his eyes, to concentrate. He must bring this up with his therapist. Closing his eyes, he pictured a shadowy figure – a man, striding ahead with his mother, turning to bellow at him to buck up. Was this Buffy, or one of the fathers who had come after him?

Quentin folded the fluff into his coffee. Talbot, the man he lived with, he always scooped off the froth first. For some reason this was starting to be irritating. Like the way his own ma, Popsi, poured instant coffee into the lid and flung it into the mugs without measuring it out with a spoon.

Quentin looked up and met the eye of a tall, good-looking man with a box of photographic equipment. Nope. No blip on the radar screen. Besides, he was too young. Quentin was irresistibly drawn towards older men. He knew why, of course; he hadn't spent a fortune on therapy for nothing.
I'm looking for my father; all these years, I've been limping to get his attention
.

Across the room Colin gazed, briefly, at the bloke who sat with his eyes closed. Good bone-structure; light him well and he could be a model. He gazed with the same detached interest at the Gubbio coffee-machine and wondered if he could ever fit one into his kitchen. ‘There's no room for anything!' Penny cried. ‘There's no room for me! If only I was hinged, you could fold me up and keep me in a box.' She was a tall woman, she needed to stride about. That's what had made her so attractive in the first place. Sometimes he wondered if he was going to be able to cope with her.

Buffy sat in his local, The Three Fiddlers. He was eating a Scotch egg. Well, a grey, loose piece of breadcrumbed cardboard that fell off a small, bluish, rubbery ball that had probably been hardboiled when he was still married to Jacquetta. Why hadn't he learned his lesson about Scotch eggs; why did he still
order them? A bit like marriage really; you're hungry, you think it'll be different this time, it can't be as bad as the last one.

On the TV some satellite, Sky or something, was showing tennis. In November. Satellite TV, like central heating, rendered the seasons meaningless. Watching the ball fly, Buffy remembered watching a Wimbledon final long ago. Connors, was it? Or even Arthur Ashe? Years ago. Jacquetta was away, supposedly visiting her aunt in Dorset. Funny, then, that as he sat there he saw her quite clearly amongst the spectators in the Centre Court. Just to the left of the umpire. She was sitting next to a man. Their heads turning one way, then the other. And then turning to each other.

And she didn't even like tennis. In fact, she hated it.
That was the worst thing of all. Oh, where was Celeste, who knew nothing of these things? Celeste his innocent girl, his comfort and joy? Not in the shop. Mr Singh said it was her day off. Where was she? His old heart ached.

Celeste sat, hunched on the concrete. Her buttocks were numb. Here in the garden it was freezing; the wintry sun had slipped behind the house and the conservatory lay in shadow. Wind whistled through the skeletal struts; the place hadn't been glazed yet
and the workmen seemed to have disappeared. According to Jacquetta they had been gone for days. ‘Builders!' she sighed. ‘They always let you down in the end. Believe me. I know.'

Jacquetta was painting. Her hair was pulled back in a rubber band; she wore a spattered pair of dungarees which she said had belonged to a plumber of her acquaintance. ‘What a man!' she said. ‘Built like a shire-horse!' Her face was pinched with concentration; her arm flicked the paint to and fro in bold brush strokes. As she worked she hummed – a low, tuneless sound which for a while Celeste couldn't locate. Then she realized that it stopped when Jacquetta rinsed her brush.

Behind her spectacles, Jacquetta inspected her.
If she knew what I was thinking!
But Celeste guessed that she herself was just an arrangement of shapes and colours. She was just an object to be painted.

With Penny, too, she was just as unknown – a willing pair of hands, a person to wear Penny's cast-off clothing and deal with other people's cast-offs. Both women wanted something from her but neither of them had the foggiest idea what
she
wanted from
them.
It was funny, the way neither of them questioned the way she had popped up into their lives. Instead they just found ways of making her useful. Which was lucky, of course. Their lack of curiosity
made the whole thing easier. No, not easier. None of this was easy. But for the moment it made everything more possible to manage.

Celeste sat in the conservatory, as instructed, her arms around her knees. Behind Jacquetta reared up the family home. Buffy had lived in there. He had eaten thousands of breakfasts with this woman. She, Celeste, had never even
seen
him eat breakfast. She didn't want to think about it. Now he was so familiar to her the thought of his unknown lives, so many of them, was becoming horribly painful.

Her arms ached, from gripping her knees. ‘I want you foetal,' Jacquetta had said. ‘What I'm seeing is a child, waiting to be born in the ribcage of her mother.'

Through the ribs the wind blew. Far away, wolves howled. Now Celeste knew they were wolves it made the sound even more desolate. It echoed around the world. She was lost; more and more lost as time went by. She gazed at the cliff-face of the house; at the curtained French windows of Leon's consulting room down in the basement. It was all closed,, to her. Nearby, in their hutch, the two remaining rabbits were mating. They had been at it for hours, judder judder, the hutch rocking. The female's eyes were glazed in an enduring-it sort of way, but at least they had each other.

I must talk to her
. Celeste opened her mouth to speak, but just then Jacquetta said: ‘You make me feel quite broody. I'd love to have had another daughter. Sons are so . . . well, so male.' The brush flicked to and fro. ‘But then Leon says daughters are so
female
. He's got some, you see.'

He's got some
. It sounded like cufflinks. He's got some somewhere, can't quite remember where. In the chest of drawers? To these people children seemed to be produced with the carelessness of rabbits and scattered God knew where. Was it being middle-class and educated that made people so profligate? They didn't have to hoard because there was always more where that came from. And here she was, using words like
profligate
. She was changing. Buffy and his world were changing her.

‘Leon's put in a lot of time with them. His daughters,' said Jacquetta. ‘He knows how important that is. He's seen so much damage, that's why. Dysfunctional relationships. That's his speciality. I was very damaged when I met him, you wouldn't believe. Well, if you'd met my then husband you would.' Jacquetta paused. ‘Er, can you keep still?'

Celeste was staring over Jacquetta's shoulder. She stared at the basement curtains. They weren't quite closed. In the gap, inside the consulting room, something was moving.

‘He works on the child within,' said Jacquetta. ‘We all have a child within us, a child we need to reach. That's what I'm trying to reach too, in my own work.' She squinted at Celeste. ‘You're leaning to the side. Can you sit straight?' She went on painting. ‘He's wonderful with his patients. It takes a lot of work, of course. Years, maybe, with some of them. They can be so resistant, you see. So terribly defended.'

Celeste stared, mesmerized, at the gap between the curtains. A pale shape rose and fell, rhythmically, as if it were being pumped by a pair of bellows.

‘He's very persistent, very sensitive. He thinks of himself as a locksmith, an enabler. He's there to help them help themselves. It can be very exhausting. He gives so much of himself, you see. He works incredibly hard. When he comes upstairs, sometimes, he looks quite drained. The poor love.'

Frozen, Celeste watched. The pale shape was pumping up and down, faster now. She heard a faint cry, or was it just the wolves?

‘Straighten up, can you lovey? You're leaning again.' Jacquetta's brush hesitated. She started to turn round. ‘What is it?'

‘Nothing!' Celeste pointed to the hutch. ‘It's just the rabbits.'

‘Ah. You're not embarrassed are you?' Jacquetta laughed. ‘That's what I like about animals. They're
so honest.' She paused. ‘Excuse me, but could you open your eyes?'

Celeste had to get out of there. Anyway it was getting dark. When she opened her eyes a light had been switched on behind the curtains. They had been closed now; a mere slit of brightness shone between them, just a crack. Hadn't he realized that anyone was out here in the garden?

She couldn't ask Jacquetta questions now. She must have muttered something about it getting cold because the paints were being packed away and now Celeste was hurrying up the spiral staircase, clatter clatter, into the kitchen. She stood beside the Aga. How could she find out what she needed to know when at any moment Leon might come upstairs? He didn't know she had seen anything, of course, but
she
did and that was bad enough.

She was standing there when the front door banged and Bruno, the other son, came in. He was dragging a large, battered metal sign. It said BUSES ON DIVERSION.

‘Yo,' he said. ‘Want to help me get this up to my room? It's for my collection.'

She lifted up the back end of the sign – it was surprisingly heavy – and they started upstairs.

‘What're you going to do with it?' she asked breathlessly.

‘Dunno.'

‘What's going to happen to the buses? Won't they go off in the wrong direction?'

They stood on the landing, panting. All over the city wolves howled, rabbits juddered and buses careered into blind alleys. How did anyone cope? Quite apart from the other, much more embarrassing thing. She should have been warned when India told her about the condoms.

They had reached Bruno's bedroom. He pushed open the door – he had to push hard, there was so much stuff crammed against it – and switched on the light.

For a moment she thought the place had been ransacked. Clothes and lager cans were strewn ankle-deep all over the floor. Half-open drawers spilled more clothes.
Have I got children? I must have left them somewhere, look in the chest of drawers
. She stumbled over an empty vodka bottle and knocked into a traffic cone. Though basically a rubbish dump, the traffic signs gave it the air of a London Transport depot. There was a curious smell hanging in the air, too – a smell like burnt dung.

‘Gosh,' she said. She thought: Buffy used to tiptoe into this room and kiss this boy goodnight. What earthquakes had happened since then! ‘What a horrible mess!'

‘Good, isn't it. Once I was asleep here for two days. There, under that stuff on the duvet. They couldn't find me. They ended up calling the police.'

In Melton Mowbray teenagers weren't like this. They didn't have his matted hairstyle and stupefied look. And, she was sure, his disgusting living quarters. The more money people had, it seemed, the more untidy they became. Back home people complained about their teenagers, of course, because they got on their mountain bikes and did wheelies around the phone kiosks. But overnight they turned into sober young wage-earners in Tesco's overalls. They had to.

‘It's almost as good as my Dad's place,' he said.

‘Really?'

‘You should see it.'

‘Should I?'

He smiled affectionately. ‘He's hopeless, the old fuck-face.'

‘You shouldn't talk about him like that.' She dumped the sign on the bed. ‘Haven't you any respect?'

‘With
my
parents?'

Just then there was the clump of boots on the stairs and the other one came in. Tobias.

‘Hi,' he said. Then he sniffed and turned to his
brother. ‘What've you been smoking? Where did you get it?'

‘Mum. I scored her some and she gave me a bit. My tithe.' He turned to Celeste and added, kindly: ‘I know about tithes because we've been doing the Middle Ages.'

What was he talking about – his mum giving him cigarettes? Celeste gazed at the walls. They were black. Skulls and posters of leather-clad women hung there, along with signs saying ALTERNATIVE ROUTE and POLICE NOTICE:ACCIDENT. She felt weak, but there was nowhere to sit down. Her life was sinking into chaos, signs sending her off in all directions, the wrong directions, one-way streets and cul-de-sacs, rabbits eating her belongings and people's husbands getting up to you-know-what in basement rooms. Her feelings about Buffy were getting more confused every minute.

Who could she talk to now? His boys, maybe. She had a feeling they were more intelligent than they pretended. But not here. Besides, they had put on some deafening music and her head was throbbing.

There was only one person left, only one hope. She shouted at them: ‘Where's India?'

Tobias laughed his corncrake laugh. ‘Go to Pakistan and on a bit.'

‘What?'

He turned down the noise. ‘Just kidding. Sorry. She's out.'

‘Where?'

‘At work.'

‘Where's that?'

Celeste, emerging from Leicester Square tube station, was assaulted by drunken yodelling and the smell of hot-dogs. A spotty youth was playing a saxophone. She walked briskly past him. Buffy had once said: ‘Why does one only stop and listen to buskers when one's on holiday?' She stepped over a prone body; she hurried, bent double, past a Japanese man who was aiming with a video camera. By now she was learning the Londoner's duck and scurry, the swerves to avoid a drunk, the little skip over a puddle of sick. Only three weeks ago she had wandered dazed around Soho, flinching at the noise and smells. Only three weeks; how she had hardened up since then!