The Ex-Wives (10 page)

Penny nodded modestly.

‘Gosh! How wonderful. You see, I've read a lot of your things. Articles and things.'

Later, Penny would wonder how she knew she was a journalist if she had got her name wrong. Later, much later, she realized that the whole meeting had been engineered. At the time, however, she just felt ridiculously flattered.

‘They're really great,' said the girl.

‘How nice.' She laughed. ‘You probably remember them better than I do.'

‘Have you got any tips?'

Penny looked at her. Boxy shoulders would set off the neck; emphasise the
gamine
.

‘You know, tips on writing,' said the girl.

‘Don't tell me you want to be a journalist.'

The girl nodded. She didn't seem more than a girl, though she was probably in her twenties. There was
a dateless, fashionless air about her that made her look young and . . . Penny searched for the word.
Innocent
. It took her a moment to find it because it had been so long since she had met anybody to whom it could be applied. How sweet! She felt a warm rush of motherliness – a new sensation.

‘You sure?' she asked. ‘Karl Kraus said
journalists write because they have nothing to say, and they have nothing to say because they write
.'

‘Is that true?'

‘I've never had time to work it out.' She laughed. ‘The thing is, do you believe what you read in the papers?'

‘I used to. I don't know what I believe in now.'

‘Ah! The first qualification for a journalist. That's a good start.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What you have to do is believe in it while you're writing it. Like a man murmuring nonsense to a woman while he's in bed with her. Each piece you write, it's a little seduction.'

The girl looked shocked. ‘That's ever so cynical.'

‘I find it rather bracing,' said Penny. ‘Still want to do it?'

The girl nodded. She was looking at her with a fixed intensity that Penny found gratifying. She seemed to be devouring every detail of her. In her
Kenzo jacket Penny felt chiselled and experienced, a woman of the world with this young Candide.

They talked for a while. Penny told her how she herself had started. The girl seemed refreshingly eager to learn about the business. She also looked biddable. What a stroke of luck, to have bumped into her! Or was it the other way round?

Beckoning for the bill, she asked: ‘Want to start right now? Want to do a job for me?'

She took Celeste back to the flat; she had learnt her name by now. Celeste wore track-suit bottoms and pink trainers, dear oh dear. The sort of thing a children's TV presenter would wear on a Fun Run. Penny would have to sort her out. She felt like a mother, taking her daughter in hand. Motherhood was another thing she had been too busy writing about to ever get round to doing herself.

‘It all started with my column
Penny for Them
. Ever read it? It's in
Mine
.'

‘
Mine
?'

‘The magazine. You read it?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Celeste. ‘Yes, of course.'

She certainly looked like a typical
Mine
reader. C/D Socio-economic group.
Mine
was a reasonably downmarket women's weekly, created to rival
Best
and
Chat.
Recipes, showbiz gossip and for God's sake
nothing longer than 1.5 column inches.
Mine
readers had the attention-span of gnats.
Penny for Them
was a nice little earner because all Penny had to do was to reply to readers' tips. These were suggestions like:
To make that casserole stretch, mix the stewing steak with tinned macaroni for a family supper Italian style!
Or Buffy's favourite,
To make wet concrete more workable, add a little washing-up liquid when mixing it
. For this, readers received a £5 postal order and all Penny had to do was write:
Great idea, Mrs B of Bolton!
or
I agree, but for a low-cal treat try substituting yoghurt.
Buffy, of course, had found the whole thing hysterical and made up his own, like: ‘Wondering what to do with those worn-out diaphragms? Try using them as handy kneeling pads when gardening!'

They walked up the stairs and Penny unlocked the front door. ‘I thought I'd tap my readers' ingenuity. Recycling's the thing nowadays but it's so terribly dowdy, isn't it? So I thought that they could send in suggestions and Colin and I would do a book on it.
Recycle with Style,
something like that. Colin's going to take the pics. He's a super photographer.'

‘Recycling what?'

‘Anything.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘Things you don't need anymore.' Penny laughed. ‘Like old husbands. I know!
100 Uses for an
Ex-Husband
. Lay him on the floor, he makes a great draught excluder! Put him on all fours, to create a super bedside table!'

Celeste was staring at her. ‘Really?'

‘Only joking.' Penny laughed. ‘No, it's things like how to grow avocados in your old Ford Escort.' She led her into the bedroom. The door wouldn't open properly. ‘You see, I asked readers to send in their ideas and they did. We're being absolutely inundated.' The door was blocked by a large pile of packages. ‘We can't move. Colin's kicking up such a stink. Have you got somewhere with a bit of room?'

Celeste nodded. ‘I live in Kilburn.'

‘Well somebody has to, I suppose.' She paused, and looked at her. ‘Do you want to do a job for me?'

‘What?'

‘Take the stuff home and sort it into categories. I'll pay you, of course.'

Celeste stared at her. Slowly, she nodded.

‘Done.' Penny shook her hand; it was small and surprisingly cold. What a relief! She needed to get this book finished quickly. A lot of her freelance work had dried up since the discovery of last summer's bogus travel pieces and she needed the money. Besides, it was supposed to be a fun thing to do with Colin. But what had started out as a sure fire money-spinner, and a bit of a hoot to boot, was rapidly
turning into a source of friction between them because of those damn parcels cluttering up the place.

‘I'll call you a cab. Could you take them right now?'

She was just lifting the phone when Celeste cleared her throat and asked: ‘What was your ex-husband like?'

How did she know she had an ex? Maybe from the inventive nature of her uses for one. Penny sat down. ‘I'm rather fond of him, actually. He's called Russell. Colin calls him a boozy old fraud but Colin can talk. He makes his living squirting washing up liquid into beer so it all froths up for the photograph.'

‘What's he like?'

‘Colin?'

‘Your ex.'

‘Why on earth are you interested?' asked Penny.

‘I just am.'

The girl had a flat, Midlands accent.
I just um
. Despite the delicate appearance there was something forthright about her. Perhaps they were all like that up there, in the wilds of wherever – forthright, curious. Her colleagues weren't curious about anything unless they were going to write a piece about it. This candid interest was rather flattering.

‘I'll tell you his all-time favourite scene in a film. It's a Truffaut film, you know Truffaut?'

Celeste shook her head.

‘A babysitter arrives at an apartment one evening. She's a young girl, very pretty. A middle-aged man opens the door and welcomes her in. He shows no sign of leaving, nor does he show her the child she's supposed to be looking after. Finally she asks him,
Where's the baby?
He smiles and replies:
L'enfant, c'est moi
. That's Buffy for you.'

Celeste had sat down on the Eames chair. She was listening intently. What an odd little thing she was, with that direct gaze! Penny was starting to enjoy this. Colin never asked about Buffy. He was either too painfully jealous of her past, or else totally uninterested. She hoped it was the former, of course, but she had her suspicions. It was nice to talk to such an eager listener. She missed the rambling, chatty conversations of her previous life.

She settled into the sofa, remembering the first time she had met Buffy. It had been on that flight from L.A. She had been interviewing a particularly moronic film starlet and was feeling homesick for England. Californians, she had decided, all had irony bypasses. Then along came this big, twinkly man who had made her laugh.

‘He's older than me,' she said. ‘Our first date was going to the opticians to get a new prescription for his glasses.' She remembered the dinner afterwards,
followed by the invitation to try out his Rest Assured Support Mattress – such an unusual seduction line that she had gone along with it. The experience had been quite erotic actually, in a cosy sort of way. ‘I thought older meant wiser, ho ho. Just because he'd seen the original production of
French Without Tears
. Probably
been
in it, for all I know. He moved in a different world to me, that was part of the attraction I suppose. He had a Past.'

‘What sort of past?'

‘The usual sort. In other words, lots of mess. He lived in the most indescribable pigsty, till I came along. The first time I got into bed with him, I found a whole piece of toast in it.'

‘In the bed?'

She nodded. ‘With marmalade on it. The lazy slob. Terribly unfit – all that smoking and drinking, he comes from the generation when everybody did, only he kept on at it. He once acted out Erich Von Stroheim being the butler in that Greta Garbo film,
As You Desire Me,
you ever seen it?'

‘No.'

‘I hadn't, then. Well, he was showing me how Erich Thingy did it, with hardly any movements – just a flick of the wrist, a flicker of the eyes. And afterwards he was panting away as if he'd run in the Olympics.'

‘Did you love him?'

Penny paused. ‘I suppose so.' She smiled. ‘Women like him because he's interested in the same sort of things they are. Gossiping. Sitting around talking about people.' Buffy had said that his ideal life would be to live in a brothel as a sort of mascot, like Toulouse Lautrec but bigger, watching the girls dressing up and hearing them nattering about their clients. Or else to be a salesman in the Harvey Nichols lingerie department. He loved making up scenarios for himself.

Her mother had adored him. She still did. Her mother thought Penny was mad, leaving him, but then she didn't have to live with him did she? Hauling him out of the boozer at four in the afternoon, making excuses on the phone to furious producers, having his horrible dog tripping her up and weeing on the carpet.

‘He had this revolting little dog which looked like a hairpiece – an incontinent hairpiece. He was a terrible driver too. Weaving all over the road. When it was dusk he'd start flashing his lights at the other drivers, the belligerent bugger, and then he'd find he hadn't put his own lights on in the first place. Typical Buffy. Or he'd try to flash them and squirt his own windscreen instead.'

‘You left him because he was a bad driver?'

‘No, no. I left him because I fell in love with Colin.'

‘What happened?'

Penny looked at her. She was leaning forward, her face pale against the black leather of the chair. ‘Now I see why you want to be a journalist. Funny, you didn't look the curious type.'

‘Oh dear, I'm sorry. Do you mind?'

Penny shook her head. ‘We had this cottage in Suffolk. Still have, though it's up for sale now. Anyway, I got a conservatory built onto it, for a feature actually. Always a danger sign, building a conservatory.'

‘Why?'

‘It's a displacement activity. I've always thought divorce lawyers and conservatory architects should go into partnership together, save a lot of bother.' She paused. Had she thought of this herself or read it somewhere? Either way, was there a piece in it? Could she stretch it out to 800 words? ‘Anyway, I had it built – classy job, carpenter called Piers, that's how classy. And Colin came to photograph it. It was lust at first sight.'

‘Did you grow carrots?'

Penny hesitated. Was this some sort of sexual euphemism?

Celeste said: ‘I mean – I just meant – did you have a vegetable garden?'

Penny nodded. ‘I did all the digging, of course. Buffy said he couldn't because of his back.' She smiled. ‘When the film
Batman
came out he called himself Backman. Just about to do some daring feat, music playing da-da-da-da, then he'd groan and stop. “
Backman!
” ‘She was laughing, now. ‘Anyway, I did all the work and he took all the credit, of course. I think he believed he actually did it. He has a bottomless capacity for self-deception.'

‘Has he?'

‘Bottomless. He can make himself believe anything. He's an actor, you see. I forgot to tell you that. They're even worse than journalists. They have to tell lies, and believe them. That's how they make their living. Then – poof! – it's all gone. In their case, into thin air. Not even wrapping up fish and chips.'

‘You mean he's a liar?' Celeste paused. ‘Can I have a glass of water?'

‘You do look pale.' Penny jumped up and went into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and inspected the bottles of mineral water. ‘Carbonated, decarbonated, double decarbonated, double-double decarbonated with a twist of lemon?' she called.

‘Pardon?'

‘Or just tap water?'

She gave Celeste the glass of water. The girl's hand was trembling. Maybe she was going through some
traumatic affair, too. Must send myself a memo to ask her, Penny thought. She was in that sort of mood – skittish.

The cab arrived and they carried the parcels downstairs. Celeste was driven off. Penny returned to the flat.

Talking about Buffy had done it. On the one hand she was deeply relieved to have left him – not since she was a child had she offered up such fervent prayers of thanks. On the other hand she missed him too. Perverse, wasn't it?