The Ex-Wives (23 page)

‘Little boy?' asked Celeste. The hairspray smelt so strongly of almonds and disinfectant that she almost swooned.

‘Funny little thing, wasn't he,' said Deirdre. Her arms were full of tinsel. She gazed down at it. ‘Never more, tinsel, will you embellish our walls. I think I'm going to blub.'

‘Quentin,' said Rhoda. ‘That was his name. She'd be sitting here, in this very chair, and he'd put on her shoes. High heels, she always dressed nicely. He'd put on his mummy's shoes and stagger about. He did make us laugh.'

‘Not forgetting the ostrich boa,' said Deirdre. ‘He's probably a transvestite now.' She giggled. ‘Or worse.'

They laughed, then suddenly stopped. ‘Lord, I'm going to miss them all,' sighed Rhoda. ‘Every one of them, even the ratbags.'

‘Where did she go?' asked Celeste.

Rhoda inspected her in the mirror. ‘There you are. A small triumph, though I say it myself.'

‘What happened to Popsi? Where is she?'

‘This was years ago.'

‘I know exactly where they went,' said Deirdre. ‘When her old man was put away she got a job at that antique shop down the Fulham Road. She came back once, for her roots.'

‘What antique shop?' asked Celeste.

‘She said we mustn't lose touch. But you do, don't you?'

Celeste was standing at the till now, paying with her Barclaycard. ‘Can you remember?'

Deirdre shook her head. ‘But I go past it on the bus. It's next to that pizza place.'

Celeste signed the receipt. Her writing slanted; she couldn't control the biro properly. Her very name looked unfamiliar, as if it belonged to somebody else. She would have to get used to the hair too. ‘Can you remember which one? You see, there were all these pasta places in Soho and I never found the right one.'

‘Pardon?'

Celeste paused. It must be the hairspray. She really felt quite strange.

‘I know,' said Deirdre. ‘Pizza Hut.'

It was half-past three. Celeste ate a whole pepperoni
pizza, deep-dish, she was that ravenous. Her hunger seemed to exist independently; it functioned, like a hospital generator, when everything else had broken down. The place was empty; outside the street lights were being switched on. She had already looked in the window of the antique shop next door, of course. There was no blonde woman sitting there; that would have been too much to hope for. Just a grey-haired old man and a lot of furniture.

She ate the crust; she always left the crust till last. Buffy had been married three times; each discovery made her feel she knew him less. Had he been a different man with each of them, somebody she wouldn't find familiar? Not just with the wives, with the other women too. He must have been really successful once, to have bought such an enormous house in Primrose Hill. How had he behaved in it, with Jacquetta? She herself had changed so much over the past few weeks, just by moving to London. The city had an unsettling effect on her. It was like living in a huge department store, not full of clothes but full of people. Maybe that was why its inhabitants married so many times. They couldn't resist going into the changing rooms to try on another person, and seeing how they fitted.

She paid up and went outside. The sun had long since gone; a light drizzle was falling. She stood
outside the antiques shop. The man was on the phone. Some plates were displayed in the window. They didn't look any different from the plates back home. She thought of the ornaments on the mantelpiece, back in Willow Drive. One was a donkey with baskets on its sides; how she had loved it when she was little! Maybe it wasn't valuable, but it was valuable to her and that was the main thing. She had put away all the breakables, of course; packed them into boxes in the spare-room cupboard.

She peered through the glass. There was a big gloomy wardrobe at the back of the shop. Probably worth lots of money, but that didn't make it any prettier. Who had died, that their furniture had ended up here? The thought of people's pasts made her feel exhausted; she had had so much of that lately. Lumberyards of the past; children picking through the items, dressed in black like undertakers. Who was this Quentin? Was he another one of Buffy's children?

I'm
not dressed in black, thought Celeste. I'm wearing a posh coat and I've just been to the hairdressers. Summoning up confidence, she pushed open the door. A bell tinkled and the man looked up.

She hesitated. She had seldom been inside an antiques shop, it wasn't her sort of place. But then
Soho hadn't been, either, or Primrose Hill. The place smelt of polish. The man finished his phonecall. He was talking in German; she heard
deutschmarks
.

‘Well, young lady, what can I do for you?'

He spoke as kindly as an uncle; she decided to brazen it out. She couldn't possibly pretend she had come in to buy something. ‘I'm looking for a woman who used to work here. She's called Eileen Fisher. She had blonde hair.'

‘Have a pastille,' he said, offering her the tin. ‘There was an Eileen, but her hair was most definitely red.'

She put a pastille into her mouth. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Ah, Rodney. You can verify this.'

A young man had come in from the back room. He was tall and waxy-looking, with moles on his face. ‘Seen the shipping forms?' he asked.

‘My son, Rodney,' said the older man. ‘Eileen Wingate, you remember. My eyes weren't deceiving me when I say she had red hair?'

‘Wingate?' asked Celeste. Wasn't she called Eileen Fisher? ‘Eileen Wingate? That was her name?'

‘Dyed, Pops.'

Celeste stared. ‘She's died?'

Rodney smiled. ‘Not her. Just the barnet.
Sans doute
a bottle job. Definitely. Why're you looking for her?'

‘It's a bit complicated.' A clock chimed; they waited until it had finished. ‘Why was she called Wingate?'

‘Must've been married to somebody called Mr Wingate. In truth, forsooth, I don't know. She nattered on but one didn't always take in every single word. Never get any work done.'

‘What happened to her? Where did she go?'

Another clock chimed; a lower dong . . . dong . . . dong . . . dong. The father and son shook their heads. ‘Moved out of London,' said the son, finally. ‘She stayed in the business, I think, but not our line of the business. Where was it, Pops?'

‘South coast?' he asked. ‘That ring a bell?'

‘I don't know!' Celeste sat down, heavily, on a spindly chair. ‘When did she go?'

‘Six, seven years. Haven't had a dickybird. Just a card at Christmas.'

‘A card?' asked Celeste. ‘A Christmas card?'

‘Her son does them. Quentin. Frightfully artistic. Woodcuts and whatnot.'

‘Have you got one yet?' asked Celeste. ‘This year?'

The two men looked at her. Maybe she was behaving oddly, but she was past caring.

‘Only got a few, so far,' said Rodney.

He took her into an office at the back of the shop. On the desk, a fax machine beeped; it hummed,
and paper slid out like a tongue. Rodney was sifting through a small pile of Christmas cards.

‘It might have her address on it,' said Celeste. ‘On the envelope – you know, one of those little stickers. It might have her address inside.'

He put down the pile. ‘Not here yet. Maybe we'll get it at home.'

‘Can I give you my phone number?' she asked. ‘Will you phone me?'

She stood outside her flat, fumbling with the door-keys. In one hand she carried a bag of cabbage leaves and carrots for the rabbits. After the beeswaxed order of the antiques shop the place next door looked chaotic – racks of coats, old saucepans, the female mannequin leaning against the wall as if she were drunk. MIND CHARITY SHOP, it said.

She felt deeply disorientated. How many names did this Popsi woman have? How many times had
she
been married? Upstairs, Celeste passed the mirror. A woman, topped with tousled hair, stared back. Who on earth was that?

She took the bag of food into the living room. She hadn't bought a hutch; she hadn't had time. Either she was working all day or else off on one of her voyages into the interior. The rabbits hopped up to her; they were becoming quite tame. She put the
cabbage leaves on a plate and laid it on the carpet. Squatting there, she was suddenly aware of movement in the corner of the room. Just a tiny movement; something stirring.

It couldn't be a rabbit. All three were here, dragging the cabbage leaves onto the carpet and nibbling them. She climbed to her feet and walked across the room.

On the floor, jammed between the radiator and a box of recycled stuff she hadn't unpacked yet, was the bundle of cut-up tights. Half-hidden in it, she saw a squirming tangle of bald, pinkish-grey creatures. She gasped; just for a moment she thought they were maggots, but of course they were far too big.

One of the rabbits had given birth.

IT WASN
'
T LORNA
'
S
wood, of course. It belonged to a local farmer called Vic Wheeler. He owned a lot of land, the whole secret valley and beyond, and was possessed of such entrepreneurial zeal that he was known in the village as Wheeler-Dealer Victor. Already, over at Barstone, a 2000-bed international hotel was being constructed, plus industrial units and an Asda superstore. One of his woods had already been bulldozed to create a roundabout and another had been sold to a Japanese firm which specialised in male bonding. Each weekend executives arrived from London, wearing flak jackets, and rampaged through the trees shooting each other with red dye and learning how to relate. That Vic
Wheeler's son had married the daughter of the Chief Planning Officer had done no harm at all, squire.

It was mid-December. By now Lorna knew the full extent of the plans. Vic Wheeler had set up a consortium to build a Leisure Experience. It was to stretch over 300 acres. A theme park was planned, though the theme itself had not been decided yet. There was to be a bowling alley, skating rink, three fast-food outlets and, where her wood now stood, an eight-screen multiplex cinema. The pace was quickening. In the Happy Eater besuited men spread maps across the table and cockily bandied numbers to and fro; outside, their Ford Granadas were spattered with mud from their forays through the fields.

Lorna was a solitary person, an independent spirit. Various protest groups had been formed but she had devised her own plan. She had got the idea from a short story. She had read it, years before, in an old copy of the
Times
which she been using to wrap up chicken bones. In the story a woman, to save a local wood, had planted it with rare plants and filled its pond with an endangered species of newt. The wood had been declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest and nobody had built anything at all.

The plans were going to be put before the council in the spring. By that time the wood had to be planted up. Lorna felt surprisingly energised. It was
like petty squabbles and complaints – who's going to do the washing-up, say – vanishing the moment war is declared. Looking back, her whole life seemed to have consisted of botched relationships and missed opportunities – men, her acting career, the other thing she didn't want to think about. So much had slipped through her fingers for reasons that now seemed laughable, if they were not so sad. Now she could actually do something, something positive and complete.

It was a misty Sunday afternoon. She sat on her veranda, sorting through the catalogues that had arrived during the week. There was one from a wild plant nursery in Herefordshire; another from a specialist orchid-grower. With mild interest, she looked at her legs. She was wearing men's corduroy trousers; she had found them years before in the potting shed. They were tucked into mismatched woolly socks, one red and one striped, with another pair of socks on top. They didn't match either. She supposed she must look odd, but then oddness only exists in the presence of other people. The same applied to her age and her sex; she was both ageless and sexless, there was nobody to mirror her back to herself. She didn't know if she were amusing or not because there was nobody around to laugh. She simply existed. After all, human behaviour is only
born in company; how does one know a burp is rude if there is nobody there to flinch? She had lived alone for a long time now. Stepping into the Happy Eater was like stepping into the world, like suddenly appearing on stage, but nobody really knew her there, customers passed through, staff came and went. It seemed like a dream and this was the real thing: the hazy sky, the tracery of trees, her cat rubbing its head against her trousered leg.

Some of the plants had already arrived and lay in a row, waiting to be planted, misting up their polythene bags as if they were breathing in there. They were her allies, her limp, green troops. She had bought some more plants at garden centres, and had even found a rare species of poppy at a Texaco station. Suddenly she thought of Buffy. He would say:
Funny, isn't it? Garden centres are full of furniture and garages are full of plants. And tandoori chicken sandwiches. And bags of potatoes. Amazing one can get any petrol in them at all
. She hadn't thought about him for ages. His voice spoke to her sometimes; other people's voices too. They were all there, even if she didn't hear them, like a radio that happened to be switched off.

She shook her head, to clear it. She put on her overcoat, tying it around her waist with string, and fetched her spade. She must get going; weeks of
planting lay ahead of her. The sun was sinking; soon it would be dark. She worked in the dark, when nobody could see her.

There had been no frost for days; the ground was soft and ready for her. Beyond the garden lay the wood; thin and airy except for its fir trees and the clotted, dark ivy thickening the trunks. She only noticed the ivy in the winter; it was revealed, now, like a silent person at a party one only notices when the other guests have gone.