The Ex-Wives (24 page)

THEY WERE ONE
big, happy family. That's what they said, Popsi and the traders in the antiques arcade. Always a laugh somewhere; always a drama. They helped each other out; they minded each other's stalls when one of them went to spend a penny. Nobody went upstairs to get a bacon butty without asking if their neighbour fancied one too. They knew each others' life stories and what stories they had! Even Popsi's ups and downs – and she had had a few – even her ups and downs were par for the course here. Put it on the TV, they were always saying, and who would believe it? Take Margot, who had the china stall opposite; who would believe, looking at her now, that she had once been principal trapeze artiste with Gerry Cottle's Circus? Not only
that, but she had won a battle against ovarian cancer and spent three years living in a caravan with a manic depressive? That was a long time ago, of course, before she had put on the weight. She had seven grandchildren now, but she didn't look a day over forty-five.

That's what they said about Popsi, too. People took them for sisters, in their matching sheepskin coats. She and Margot had both done their hair the same colour too – Plum Crazy. Popsi had always believed in ringing the changes, hairwise. They both believed in making the best of themselves, in keeping time's winged chariot at bay. Live life to the hilt, that was their motto. Popsi fondly watched her, across the aisle, talking to a customer. ‘It's a very rare piece,' Margot was saying, ‘it's very unusual, of course, for it not to have a handle.'

Popsi loved it here. Their little band – it was like being in rep. Better really, because nobody went away. Every Thursday to Saturday here they were sitting in their stalls, blowing on their hands, their little heaters glowing. Every week she looked forward to it. The rest of the time she would be away on buying trips – antiques fairs in conference hotels, places like that. Sometimes a call came and she had to drop everything. They were only walk-on parts, of course, but it was good to keep your hand in.
Unlike her, producers were getting younger and it was sensible to keep in the swim. Only the week before she had been a ‘
harassed shopper
' in
Inspector Morse.

But at the end of the week, when she drove along the promenade and unloaded her car, when she came into this chilly hall with
hellos
all round and its low beams saying DUCK OR GROUSE, each week she felt she was coming home. She felt herself here. That was why she had called herself Popsi again. Women's Lib, she had always been for it though she hadn't known at the time. Get out of life what you put into it, that was another of her mottoes, and have a laugh on the way. She had always felt like a Popsi, that was why she had given herself the name in the first place. She had only changed her name to please her husbands and now she didn't have one anymore she was staying Popsi Concorde until she dropped off her perch.

It was even jollier now, with Christmas coming. Trade had picked up; it was really quite brisk, with people coming to find that special present, that personal something that showed you cared much more than a gift pack from Boots.
You're buying a little bit of history,
that was what she told people,
a little bit of someone's life. Recycling's all the rage, isn't it?
When
she thought of all the things she had thrown out, all those times she had moved, she wanted to weep.

Down the aisle Walter, who sold military paraphernalia, was playing
I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas
on his wind-up gramophone. He lived with his mother in a bungalow up on the Downs. He had taken Popsi to a traction engine rally once but he really wasn't her type. When he had tried some hanky-panky on the way home, in the back of his vintage bus, she had patted him on the head and told him to find a nice girl more his age.

Customers tried to pick her up too – men had always tried it on with her, God knows why. Only the week before, one joker had lifted the receiver off one of her phones and pretended he was ringing her: ‘How about coming out for a swift half, you voluptuous pussycat?' She would have, once – give her a drink and she was anybody's – but now all she wanted to do was put her feet up in front of the TV. Her joints were playing up. They ached more this time of year, with the fog rolling in off the Channel. In fact, they ached more
each
year. Sooner or later it would be hip replacement time; everybody here swore by them.

Margot was doing very well. ‘It's only a hairline crack,' she was telling a customer as she wrapped up a sugar bowl, ‘put on a spot of Araldite when you
get home.' She had run out of carrier bags and Popsi had given her a few from her stock of Sainsbury's ones. It was quieter in her stall. She sold period phones and radios. Her line wasn't so seasonal; she catered more for the bona fide collectors and they didn't believe in Christmas. In between customers she and Margot nattered all day, only pausing briefly to make a sale and then carrying on where they had left off. They didn't stop for browsers, of course; china-teases, Margot called them. From long experience they could both spot one of those and Margot could deal with them as she went along. ‘. . . so then he really started getting violent –
yes it is pretty isn't it
– he got me down on the settee, the kiddies yelling their little heads off, I thought he was going to
kill
me –
no dear, I'll be making a loss on it as it is
. . . when they got me to Casualty they'd never seen such bruises . . .'

A lot of the people here were browsers, actually. On holiday, maybe, and just getting out of the rain. Because it was a seaside town they got a lot of retired folk, too, who didn't like the new shopping centre because it was full of lager louts. They fetched up here, sucking in their teeth when they saw the prices on the old biscuit tins and spinning out the morning over a cup of tea in the café. Just occasionally real dealers visited: Germans and Swiss, in fur-collared
coats, with Mercedes estate cars parked outside. They knew exactly what they wanted. When they walked down the aisles everybody else looked amateurish and dowdy; a hush fell, as it does in a hospital ward when the consultants sweep in.

She was expecting one now, actually: a Mr Fleischmann, but he hadn't turned up yet. She had met him in an antiques fair in Birmingham and she had found him the items he wanted. Dealing with him made her feel suave and international, part of a network. Most of her customers were ordinary nostalgia-buffs who just liked bakelite – young blokes with gelled hair, probably designers, or else anonymous, solitary collectors who wore anoraks and looked like train spotters. She imagined them alone at night, sitting next to their collection of valve radios. It made her feel motherly.

She would kill for a coffee but Margot was busy and Duncan, the clock specialist in the next booth, was talking to a testy-looking customer. ‘Well, it was working this morning,' said Duncan.

Just then Elsa appeared. She ran a period clothing stall and believed in an Afterlife. She was always trying to tell Popsi hers but Popsi said no thanks, this one kept her busy enough.

‘I saw this piece of watered silk and I thought
Quentin
,' said Elsa.

‘You are a dear.'

‘Well, it's Christmas, isn't it?'

See? That was what they were like. Elsa left and Popsi put the piece of material into a carrier bag. Margot, who was wrapping up a teapot, was telling a customer about one of her grandchildren. Sometimes it irked Popsi, that Margot treated complete strangers to the intimate details of her family life, grabbing them with the same breathless confidentiality with which she grabbed Popsi. Did five years of friendship count for nothing? Or maybe Popsi was just irked by the knowledge that, things being what they were, it was unlikely she herself would ever be a grandmother at all. Quentin was you-know-what (she said the word quite openly to other people, she was quite broadminded, but it still pained her to say it to herself) and her daughter Maxine, a big girl, had gone to veterinary college and showed far more interest in horses.

How did Quentin get that way? It certainly wasn't inherited. She herself had always been healthily heterosexual and though Buffy said he had been something of a tart at boarding school – according to him he had been angelically beautiful and passed around the sixth form like a plaything – when he left he had soon reverted to a lifelong interest in the
opposite sex. She blamed the whole thing on the carrier bag episode; that had been the turning point.

Even now she blushed to think of it. Remembering moments like this warmed her up better than any electric blower. She had been living with Terry, above the pub. However, she had also been having a little hows-your-father with a lovely man who lived in Chelsea. He like to see her dressed up. So two afternoons a week she crept off to his flat, with her carrier bag. Quentin was at school then. Trouble was, one day she had picked up the wrong carrier bag. Arriving in the gentleman's bedroom, she had unpacked it: out came some muddy shorts, a packed lunch and a stout pair of football boots.

Margot had hooted with laughter at this but it really wasn't funny. ‘What about little Quentin?' said Popsi. ‘There he is, in the changing room, opening his carrier bag and taking out my suspender belt and my satin corset.' ‘Don't forget the split-crotch panties!' shrieked Margot, who liked to hear this story again and again, ‘and the whip! Don't forget the whip!' Quentin had always been a sensitive boy; sometimes she felt this had sent him right off the tracks.

She had come to terms with it now, of course. In fact she had become very fond of some of his menfriends and one or two of them still came down
to visit her long after they had split up with him. She was devoted to Talbot, who currently lived with him. Maybe she was a sort of Judy Garland, a fag-hag. From long heart-to-hearts with them she discovered the problem usually stemmed from the father anyway, so she could always blame it on Buffy. He had been a hopeless example to a son.

Margot was still busy. A customer was holding a cruet. ‘Think it over dear,' said Margot ‘but it probably won't be here next week. They go very fast, particularly if they're missing the pepper pot. That makes them a collector's item.'

Irritated, Popsi called ‘Margot!' and tapped her tooth. It had an immediate effect: Margot stopped talking and whipped out her mirror. The two of them had an agreement: Margot rationed Popsi's cigarettes and Popsi told Margot when she had lipstick on her tooth. Margot's front teeth stuck out, that was why, and she always put on too much lipstick in the first place.

When she turned back, Popsi noticed a young woman standing near her stall. She wore a reddish coat and a black scarf. Her hair was streaky. Maybe I should try streaks, thought Popsi. She had dyed her hair for so long she could no longer remember what colour it was. Then she realized: of course, it
would be grey. This gave her such a jolt that she came to a standstill.

The young woman stepped closer, picked up the receiver of one of the phones, looked at it, and put it down again.

‘Nice, isn't it?' said Popsi. ‘That's a Pyramid, Second Series. I've got one in red, too.'

She didn't look like a browser. Nor did she look like a customer. She looked fidgety; Popsi's children used to look like that, fiddling around with things, when they wanted to ask her for some money.

‘This one's nice,' said the young woman. ‘I've seen them in old films.'

‘That's a Candlestick, pet. An early one, probably 1920. Interested in period phones?'

She pointed. ‘We used to have one like that at home.'

‘Yes, my love, they're the most usual. Cheese-boards. Made right through the forties. You wouldn't remember those days of course, fresh young thing like you.'

‘Do the radios work?'

‘Do the radios work, she asks! Or course they work. Need to warm up, but then don't we all? Lovely tone; warm and brown.'

‘I used to listen to the radio.' She touched the walnut veneer of a Ferguson; her finger made a mark
in the dust. ‘I used to think there were real people in there.'

‘Well they are, aren't they? In a manner of speaking.' She laughed. ‘Only too real, some of them.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You really want to know?'

The girl nodded.

Popsi looked at her. ‘How long have you got?'

‘I was playing Doll Tearsheet. First day of rehearsals the director, what was his name? Lovely man. He came up to me and said,
Darling, this is Russ Buffery, our Hal.
And there was this fellow, black polo neck, very racy in those days, very debonair, and he took my hand and kissed it. Something clicked. My knees turned to jelly. I thought:
can't wait to see you in tights!
It was danger ahead, I knew that. Spontaneous combustion. Ever felt it?'

Celeste didn't reply. They were sitting in the little booth; smoke wreathed up from their plastic coffee cups. Popsi took out a packet of Silk Cut. The women in the stall opposite called, ‘Popsi!'

‘Just telling her about my first.'

‘That's your fourth,' called the woman.

‘
Husband
, I mean,' said Popsi. She lit the cigarette, holding it in her mittened hand, and turned to Celeste. ‘Have to smoke when I talk about Buffy. I called
him Buffy, there and then, and it stuck. Oh, he was charming, the rogue! We were both so young, of course, your sort of age, pet. We had our lives ahead of us, or so we thought.' She inhaled, and blew out smoke. ‘You don't want to hear all this.'

‘I do!'

The other woman shouted across. ‘She doesn't, lovey. She's just being polite.'

‘I'm not,' said Celeste. ‘Honestly.'

‘Don't tell her the rude bits!' called the other woman. ‘Not till I can listen! I've heard it all before but I still like it.' She turned to her customer. ‘Sweet, isn't it? Very unusual pattern.'