The Ex-Wives (15 page)

‘Can I have a glass of water?'

Maybe she was going to faint. Jacquetta filled a glass and gave it to her. The girl's hand trembled; as she lifted it to her lips the glass dropped from her grasp and fell onto the floor.

‘Oh, gosh, I'm sorry!'

Jacquetta picked it up. It hadn't broken; the builders' dust sheets had saved it. ‘It's the last glass from
a set I bought in Venice,' she said. ‘On one of my honeymoons, actually.'

‘One of them?'

For a moment Jacquetta couldn't remember which man it was. She adored Venice and had been so many times. ‘Ah, yes. My second husband.' Russell. He had spent his whole time eating. In
Venice.
One didn't go to Venice to
eat.
She should have realized, then, that the two of them were totally incompatible.

‘What was he like?'

What an odd thing to ask! ‘A Taurus. Hopeless for me.'

Jacquetta put on her cloak and they went down the steps into the garden. It was freezing cold and the light was beginning to fade. The builders were packing up for the day.

‘What a bore,' said Jacquetta, looking at the rabbit hutch. ‘They've got out again.'

‘They're under there somewhere,' said the oldest builder. She had an idea he was called Paddy. He was pointing at the frozen earth. ‘They've made a burrow.'

‘What shall we do?'

‘Come on lads!' he said, ‘Let's dig 'em out.'

The ground was frozen too hard, however. One of them suggested boiling a kettle, which they did.
They poured it onto the earth. Steam rose. They started digging again.

The one called Paddy pointed to the ground. ‘Know what we've got in there? Some hot cross bunnies!'

Jacquetta sighed, huddled in her cloak. When one had children, everything was so complicated. Even disposing of their pets turned out to be a major operation. And then the boys would probably make a fuss, when they came home from school. She sometimes wished she could just pack her paints and go to Goa or somewhere, somewhere simple, and just
be
. She gazed at the flushed sky. The sound of the spades seemed far away.

‘Steady on, Stavros! Don't want to hurt the buggers.'

She loved this time of evening. The light from the kitchen, shining on the struts of her conservatory, reminded her of the temple at Karnak. She had gone to a
son et lumière
there once, with a man called Austin. Just for a while, he had seemed the man she had been looking for all her life; she was prone to these romantic impulses. She had sat there, in the Egyptian twilight, with his arm around her. Suddenly Buffy's voice had boomed out. ‘
It is said that, long ago, when Thebes was at its zenith, when gods were men, when Isis, she of the mischievous eyes, was beloved
of Osiris
. . .' What a shock it was, to hear his voice! How rudely it had shattered her mood! Even worse, she had been married to him at the time. ‘
Let us journey into the past, let us unroll the scrolls of time and consider again these avenues, built by Rameses II and restored by the Ptolemies
. . .' She'd had no idea he had recorded the soundtrack. How tactless of him! For a moment she had thought he had planned it just to spoil her tryst amongst the ruins.

‘Got one of them! Here, Mrs Buckman.'

A struggling rabbit was shoved into her arms. One of the men was lunging after another one which was hopping away in the dusk. Her husband, disturbed by the shouts and whoops, had appeared in the doorway of his consulting rooms.

‘What on earth's happening?'

She had temporarily forgotten why they were doing this. Then she caught sight of the young woman. She sat like a spectre on the steps of the skeletal conservatory; her head swivelled from Leon to Jacquetta. She seemed to have no interest in the rabbits at all.

‘Two down,' cried Paddy, ‘one to go.'

‘Don't catch the two big ones,' said Jacquetta, ‘the parents. They're staying here.'

She looked at the girl again. I know, she thought. She's like a child, an unborn child, sheltered within
the ribcage of an all-embracing mother. I shall paint that. I have been a child, a mother too. I shall paint her boldly, in acrylics. The struggling rabbit scratched her wrists but she only discovered this later. At the time she was so fired with creativity that she didn't notice.

The three baby rabbits were finally caught. Jacquetta and the young woman carried them into the kitchen and put them on the table. They lolloped around, their whiskers sparkling. They raised themselves on their hind legs and sniffed the copper candlestick; they sat on the
Independent,
washing their faces with their paws.

‘Look at the light shining through their ears!' cried Jacquetta. ‘The tracery of veins. Aren't they beautiful! This is the end of my boys' childhood, the last of their pets to go. Really, I can hardly bear you to take them.'

‘You've still got the mother and father. The big ones.'

‘Don't you see how symbolic it is? The young leaving; just a sad old mother left behind.'

‘We all have to leave home. I did.'

‘How could you know about loss?' said Jacquetta. ‘You're far too young.'

‘I'm not.'

The girl was sitting in the Windsor chair, looking at her intently. How abrupt her voice was! With a funny flat accent. Jacquetta looked at the strong, raised eyebrows; the pointed face. In the room nothing stirred except the pendulum of Buffy's old grandfather clock, swinging from side to side, and the rabbits on the table. One of them had found a piece of apple rind, from lunch, and was nibbling it.

The builders clomped through the kitchen on their way home. ‘Cheerio!' they called. In the hall they addressed each other loudly. ‘What're you having for dinner, Stavros?' ‘Rabbit kebabs! And you, mate?' ‘My old lady's cooking my favourite.' ‘And what might that be?' ‘Bunnyburgers and chips!' The front door slammed.

‘I'm glad you came today,' said Jacquetta. ‘You'll never realize how momentous this is.'

‘What do you mean?' asked the girl.

‘It's a turning point for me. It's important to mark these moments, validate them.' The young woman listened intently. It was nice. Sometimes, in the group, Jacquetta had the feeling that the other members looked as if they were listening, but they were really just waiting their turn. ‘My whole life's been geared to my kids, you see. Dictated by their needs.'

‘How many have you got?'

‘What?'

‘Children.'

Jacquetta thought for a moment. It was so complicated. ‘Three, basically.'

‘
Basically
? What do you mean,
basically?
'

‘Well, there's all those stepchildren and things.'

‘How many?'

‘Oh, lots.' Jacquetta gazed at the apple rind disappearing into the rabbit's hinged mouth. ‘But today I've been released. I'm starting the process of separation, you see, of returning to myself. After all these years of being seen in terms of other people.' She paused, and then she announced. ‘Now, I'm sure, I'm going to be able to
paint
.'

THE FRONT DOOR
slammed and two adolescent boys came in. They were dressed in black, and carried school bags.

‘It's fucking freezing out there,' said one of them. ‘What happened to global warming?'

For a moment Celeste didn't dare look at them. They stomped through the kitchen and opened the fridge.

‘Half a tin of bleeding Whiskas. There's no fucking food in this place. There's never any fucking food.'

Buffy's sons. She looked at them now. They were poking their heads like crows into the fridge. They turned. Their faces were chalk-white, and spotty.

‘You're a crap mother.'

‘I've been working,' said Jacquetta.

‘Oh yeah? You never work.'

One of them had his hair shaved at the back and a series of chains in his ear, looped together, like a little link fence. The other one had matted black hair tangled like a cat's coughball. Neither of them looked anything like Buffy, but then she hadn't known him when he was young. Their long skinny wrists protruded from their sleeves.

Jacquetta pointed to the table. ‘This person, sorry I don't know your name, she's going to take your baby rabbits.'

‘What rabbits?'

‘Your pets.'

They looked at the baby rabbits, which now sat huddled together panting. There was a puddle on the newspaper.

‘Don't be upset,' said Jacquetta.

‘I'm not,' said one of the boys.

‘Didn't know they'd had any babies,' said the other. He turned to his mother. ‘Give us some dosh.'

‘Why?'

‘Going to get my nose pierced.'

The older one laughed – a startling, harsh sound like a corncrake. ‘Nobody gets their noses pierced anymore. Only people who live in East Finchley.'

‘The Tuaregs do,' said their mother.

‘They live in East Finchley?'

‘Africa,' she said. ‘They're a tribe. Or maybe it's the Nubans. Incredibly statuesque and beautiful.'

‘Tasmin Phillpott's got a ring through her nose,' said one of the boys. ‘She looks like a pig.'

The other boy had opened a tin of grapefruit segments and was eating them with a serving spoon. ‘My teacher says, why didn't you come to Parents' Evening?'

‘Parents' Evening?' asked Jacquetta.

‘You never come.' He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a damp, partially disintegrated piece of paper. ‘Here's the reminder.'

‘Did your Dad go?'

‘Buffy? Christ, no. We didn't tell him. Last time he took out his hip flask. Anyway, he never knows what subjects we do.' He poured some cornflakes into the grapefruit tin and stirred it up. ‘Nor do you.'

‘I do!' said Jacquetta.

‘You're both hopeless. Anyway I'm glad you didn't come. You'd do something really sad, like last time.'

‘What do you mean?'

He snorted into his Cornflakes, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘You wore that sequin, like, headband thing. Everybody
stared
at you. And then you told our headmaster you'd had an erotic dream about him.'

‘Did I?'

He shovelled in the last of the Cornflakes. ‘My teacher only wanted you to come in case you brought Leon. She saw him on TV; she's got the hots for him.' He flung the tin in the direction of the swing-bin. ‘She's that pathetic.'

A dirty white cat sprung into Celeste's lap. It was surprisingly heavy. She stroked it; as it purred, rhythmically, its claws dug into her thighs. She didn't dare push it off; she didn't dare
move
. Only an hour ago she had been standing, shivering, outside this fortress of a house, this creamy cliff five storeys high. Just standing there, staring at it, like Penny used to do.
I used to look up at the house and imagine their lives in it
. Then she had seen the sign,
Baby Rabbits Free to a Good Home
and rung the bell. On impulse, just like that. So much had happened, with such swooping speed and a distracted sort of intimacy, that she felt queasy. How easy it had been! She had been like a burglar, discovering a door was unlocked. There was so much she needed to ask, but on the other hand she didn't want them to notice her sitting there. She felt like a surveillance camera in a crowded shop.

As they bickered, she looked around. It was a huge kitchen. There were a lot of abstract paintings hanging up – violent and splashy, as if someone had been stirring a pot too vigorously and some of it
had been flung onto the walls. Every surface was crammed with things – how different from her own neat home in Melton Mowbray! She wondered how much had changed in this room since Buffy had lived here. But then she didn't know what Buffy's taste ran to, anyway. She hadn't visited his flat yet; she hadn't let him take her there. She was so confused, so emotional, that she suddenly felt exhausted, like an overloaded electricity grid blacking out. But now somebody seemed to be talking to her.

‘What are you going to carry them in?' Jacquetta was looking at her, eyebrows raised above her blue-rimmed glasses. She was wearing a sort of peasant's scarf wrapped around her head, and a lot of beads. It was only now that Celeste dared to have a good look at her. She wore a baggy sort of garment covered in zigzags and a long red cardigan. With all that jewellery she looked like a high priestess.

‘Carry them?' asked Celeste stupidly. She had forgotten why she was supposed to be here.

‘She can take them in that,' said one of the boys. He pointed to a cardboard box. ‘Leon's crap book came in it. His author's copies.'

‘It's not crap,' said Jacquetta vaguely.

They put the rabbits into the cardboard box. It had a label on it:
Guilt: A User's Guide, by Leon Buckman. 8 Copies
. One of the boys fetched some sellotape.

He was just taping down the lid when the doorbell rang. Jacquetta answered it. She returned with a big black man.

‘Car for Mr Buckman,' he said. ‘BBC.'

At the same moment a chunky young woman came down the stairs, yawning. ‘What's happening?' she asked.

‘Leon's going on TV,' said Jacquetta. ‘Go and buzz him, somebody. He's downstairs. And this person's taking our rabbits.'

‘You going to the White City?' the yawning woman asked the driver. ‘Can you give me a lift? Drop me off on the way?' she turned to Celeste. ‘Hi. I'm India.'

Celeste said she was just taking the rabbits away. India asked if she had a car; Celeste shook her head.

‘Which way are you going?' asked India.

‘Kilburn.'

‘Want a lift? He'll drop you off.' India lifted up the box. ‘Come on,' she said. ‘Leon'll just be putting the finishing touches to his
coiffure
. He'll be here in a minute.'