She lifted the receiver. The line was dead.
Suddenly, she felt weak. It was moments like these that did it. Bottle tops she couldn’t unscrew; a leak sprung in the bathroom pipe. Only the week before, when struggling to open the sealed plastic container of a prawn and avocado sandwich, she had suddenly and inexplicably burst into tears.
She couldn’t use her neighbours’ phones. ‘Know something?’ she told the dog. ‘I don’t think I would even recognize them in the street. Funny, isn’t it, but I’m a busy person and once you start to talk to people, who knows where it might lead . . . They’d be ringing on my doorbell asking me in for coffee, my life wouldn’t be my own . . .’ Her voice trailed off. It was odd, talking aloud in her flat. Under its shaggy eyebrows the dog gazed at her, waiting for more. ‘Besides, I’m perfectly happy with my own company, thank you very much. And somehow there’s never enough time even to open a book, one’s so busy.’ There was a silence. The dog waited. ‘We’ll have to go to a call box. Now, do you want to stay here or come with me?’
She got up. The dog went to the door and waited for her. They went out together, to the phone box on the corner. The dog sat outside, its eyes fixed on her face as she punched NuLine’s number.
A girl’s voice said: ‘Good afternoon, Ashley speaking, how may I help you?’
Margaret explained that there seemed to be a fault on her line, could she be put through to the engineers? Ashley told her to hang on. She was replaced by Pachelbel’s Canon, a piece of music Margaret particularly disliked. Through the glass, the dog gazed at her confidently.
A man came on the line. ‘Clive speaking, how may I help you?’
She explained again, patiently, as if to a slow learner. Clive was replaced by Pachelbel again. Her money was running out. She slotted in her last twenty-pence piece and cursed NuLine. She had only switched to them because BT had kept pestering her with calls in the middle of supper asking if she was satisfied with their service.
Finally somebody with a foreign name asked her to verify her number and then said: ‘I regret to tell you, Miss Stoner, that your line has been disconnected due to non-settlement of the bill.’
‘But I paid it!’
Hadn’t she sent a cheque? She could remember writing it. Maybe she had forgotten to post it; her hormones had been playing merry hell during the past few months. She had always prided herself on her memory but it seemed to be letting her down. Only the day before she had discovered her gloves in the fridge. Then there were the mood swings. Suddenly, for no reason at all, she would burst into tears. Dr Scott was recommending HRT.
She was interrupted by a paroxysm of barking. A Jack Russell terrier was attacking her dog. Margaret put down the receiver and hurried out.
‘Freddy!’ yelled a voice. ‘Freddy, get down!’ A handsome woman in a leather jacket was struggling with the Jack Russell. She attempted to grab its collar. ‘Freddy! You little bugger!’ Finally she got a grip and pulled the dog away. Yapping and snarling, it skidded along the pavement. The woman snapped on its lead. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, looking up at Margaret. ‘Is your dog all right?’
‘It’s not my dog.’ Suddenly, inexplicably, Margaret’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t even know it.’
How terribly embarrassing. What was the matter with her?
The woman got to her feet. ‘Are you all right?’
Margaret nodded.
A moment passed. Then she shook her head.
She was a tough old bird, Sally, a legendary figure in the business. For more years than anybody knew – for she lied about her age and nobody stayed long enough in their jobs to remember – for many years now she had been the fashion editor of a glossy magazine. Lifted, tucked and dressed in her signature black, she was ageless, a survivor in one of the world’s most ruthless professions. She was feared and fawned upon by designers from New York to Tokyo but she was impervious to flattery – to every emotion, it seemed. Many years ago she had had a child; ‘Was it a human?’ asked Willy Landells, editor of Harpers & Queen. Nobody knew what happened to the child, it was never mentioned. Sally admitted to no personal life. She was a true professional, girt with steel.
Just sometimes, however, something touched her heart. She could be surprisingly maternal to young designers and wept at their boyfriends’ funerals. See, she was a softie, the old fag-hag. And sometimes her iron heart melted when she leafed through photographs of models.
She was doing this one day in April, sitting on a Brauer sofa with Berenice, the boss of a large and prestigious agency. Outside the sun shone over Carnaby Street, but Sally had never been interested in the weather. She was looking at the photographs of young girls, artfully lit and shot by Nick Knight and Mario Testino.
‘A tabula rasa, that’s what I’m looking for,’ she said. ‘Dewy, untouched by life. Something special – and very young.’
How short was their blossoming, these girls! Some were barely seventeen. Their hopeful faces gazed from the page. Some had beauty so fragile that in a few years it would vanish. Coarsened by drink or simply their own ordinary lives, they would lose their luminosity and be removed from the agency’s books. Some would succumb to drugs and eating disorders. Some would simply disappear. Their moment was fleeting; caught by the camera, they were already history.
‘And she must be available to fly out tomorrow,’ said Sally. ‘For the shoot.’
Eventually Sally found her. So many times she had felt this sensation in her bones, and she was invariably right. The girl – wide eyes, thin blonde hair falling like water, cheekbones to die for – gazed out of the photo. Moira Hunt.
‘She’s inexperienced,’ said Berenice.
‘I can see that. Why do you think I like her?’
‘For such a big job. But I have to agree with you, darling. She’s perfect.’ The shoot was in Morocco, a five-page spread. Berenice turned to her assistant. ‘Get her on the blower, sweetie, now.’
In a chemist’s shop on Stanmore Broadway, Moira Hunt was stacking the shelves. Her hands were busy, moving plastic bottles of Pantene conditioner from the box to the display rack, HAIR PRODUCTS: SPECIAL OFFER. Her mind, however, was miles away. She was dreaming about Malta – what had happened there, and if he would ever phone. Three weeks, it had been, but she knew that he was busy, she had understood that much of the language. He was on duty breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Hindi words floated past her. The manager, Mr Ramesh, was arguing with his wife.
‘The phone isn’t working.’
‘I know the phone isn’t working.’
‘What have you done to it?’
‘Nothing. Go next door and phone the engineers.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘I’m busy . . .’
All that afternoon there were no phone calls; from the Maltese waiter, from anybody. Moira picked up the empty carton. She paused at the mirror above the Max Factor testers and looked at her face. He had told her how pretty she was. Exaggerating a little, she had replied that she was a model. After all, she had done small jobs. All she needed was a break.
But the agency couldn’t get through on the phone, the line was dead, and Morocco never happened. Not to Moira, anyway. They chose another girl, whose life was changed instead.
Meanwhile, in Brighton, another life was transformed. For on that day of the dogs Margaret fell in love.
That it was a woman who caused this upheaval came as something of a surprise, but that soon passed. In fact, when she looked back over her past, it seemed inevitable. How blind she had been! Her emotions had never been stirred by a man, not deeply. Long ago she had had a couple of short affairs; these had petered out, however, through a mutual lack of interest. She had put this down to the demanding nature of her job. Besides, few men crossed her path – just married fathers on parents’ evenings.
The dog had been returned to its owner; the sun had sunk over the sea. And now there she was, aged fifty-eight, eating pasta with a woman called Clare who that mo
rning had been unknown to her but who now seemed her twin soul, her other half. She felt she had known her all her life.
‘If I were an essay,’ she said, ‘I would write cliché all down my margin.’
Clare laughed. Margaret felt vastly funny; she amused even herself. And the woman had a Jack Russell, a breed of dog she found particularly unappealing – small and yappy, bouncing up like a tennis ball.
Later, they would tell people that they had been connected by a disconnected phone, that things sent to annoy us could have a glorious outcome. And in fact Margaret felt so warmly towards NT that the next day, disordered by love, she paid her bill all over again.
In the following weeks such petty irritations would be forgotten. At the time, however, they came so thick and fast that David’s nerves were stretched to breaking point.
First, Lennox the barman gave in his notice. He had decided to take six months off to travel around South America with his girlfriend.
Then Sheila lost the car keys and David had to go out and get some more cut. However, later, when he stopped at a garage to fill up with petrol, he discovered that he had forgotten to cut another key for the fuel-tank flap. This meant a bus ride back home to collect a crowbar with which, when he had taken another bus back to the petrol station, he had forced open the flap. This had resulted in damage to the bodywork and of course a broken hinge. All this undertaken under the impassive eyes of the Ethiopian cashier.
The final aggravation came the next morning when he checked on the delivery from the brewery and found it a barrel short. Back in the bar he paused, before lifting up the phone to ring them, and gazed at his daughter. Chloe sat leafing through a magazine. She lifted her feet as her mother hoovered under them.
‘So, Chloe, what’s the capital of Ecuador?’ David asked.
‘Pardon?’ Chloe’s mouth hung open. She had shapely lips, they were her best feature, but when loose like that she looked subnormal.
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘The capital of Peru.’ And why didn’t she do something about her hair? Lank and brown, it was pulled back in a rubber band.
Sheila, who had stopped the hoover, said: ‘I don’t know the capital of Peru.’
‘Ask Lennox,’ said David. ‘He’s going to see the world, he’s going to do something with his life.’
‘Yes, and where does that leave us?’ replied Sheila. ‘Without a bloody barman, that’s where.’
How small were the horizons of his womenfolk! David despaired of them. Leaving them exchanging glances, he picked up the phone.
The line was dead.
‘Shit!’
He borrowed Chloe’s mobile and rang the phone company. By the time he had got through three voices who needlessly introduced themselves and then abandoned him to canned music, Sheila had opened up and was serving customers, with the help of Chloe, who had lumberingly risen to her feet. Finally David was answered by a female who told him that his phone had been cut off for non-payment of the bill.
Even Archie, not a curious man, swivelled round to listen to David’s bellowed response. Finally David switched off the phone.
‘Maybe there’s some mistake,’ said Sheila.
‘But I paid it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘There must be some mistake.’
‘It’s their mistake, not mine. I’m not going to pay a bloody bill I’ve paid already.’
‘But David—’
‘And they want me to pay a fucking reconnection charge.’
‘Listen, love—’
‘The fucking cheek.’
A man waited at the bar, waving a five-pound note between his fingers. Running a pub meant there was no privacy in one’s life. David had to be there, ready to serve any stranger who, on a whim, happened to come through the door. The front room of his home, the heart of his family life, was constantly being invaded by people who sat on his chairs as if they had a right to be there. David didn’t always feel this way, of course; only when he was in the middle of a conversation with his wife and suddenly he had to become a publican again and pull a pint. An argument had to be put on hold for hours until, having ejected the last drunk, David could continue it at the point where it had been interrupted. Over the years he had become accustomed to this; it was the rhythm of his working life, and sometimes, by chucking-out time, the quarrel had lost steam. Sometimes, however, it had gathered its own momentum and grown out of all proportion. It entirely depended on mood.
When they were closing up Sheila said: ‘It’s probably under a pile of papers somewhere.’
‘What is?’
‘The cheque. These people don’t make mistakes, they’ve got computers.’
‘Computers!’ he snorted. ‘Well, that’s all right then.’
‘Just pay it, David. We must have a phone. Mum’ll be ringing tomorrow, about her test. And there’s the Millers phoning about booking the room.’
‘So I should just cave in?’
‘Oh, don’t be so stubborn.’
‘Whose side are you on?’
She bolted the door. ‘Why are you so touchy nowadays? What’s the matter with you?’
He should have relented then. In the years to come, it was his most bitter regret. He should have said: OK, you’re right, and paid the reconnection charge. He should have taken her in his arms and kissed her the way he had meant to do, all those weeks before, and told her: It’s not about the phone, not really. It’s everything else, and the phone is the final straw. The everything else is so vast that I cannot tell you, for fear you’ll take it personally. Because it’s not about you, it’s about me. You are a wonderful wife and I still love you, and your chapped, reddened hands touch my heart. All these years you’ve put up with me and never complained, though you must have been feeling, in your darkest hours, the same as me. But I’ve never dared to ask, in case I find out it’s true.
David said none of this. He swabbed down the bar and hung the damp tea-towel over the pumps. Sheila paused, on her way upstairs.
He switched off the lights. ‘I’m not paying it.’
Throughout the next day, Friday, David tried to get through to the NuLine Customer Services Manager. Despite yelling down the phone he got nowhere. Fridays were the busiest day of the week, people knocking off early and putting away a few drinks before they legged it into the city centre. By five o’clock the pub was packed.
‘Where’s Chloe?’ David shouted.
‘She’s upstairs, getting ready.’ Sheila swiped the froth off a Guinness. ‘She’s going out, remember?’
Chloe gazed at her reflection in the mirror. The bed was heaped with clothes. She had tried them all on and they had all looked terrible – correction, they looked terrible with her inside them. The dresses made her look like a cleaning lady. The skirts (size 16 now) revealed her bulging stomach. This isn’t my body, she thought. It has swollen around me, an alien growth, it belongs to someone else. Take it away, please! Deep in her heart she knew why her father had stopped taking photos of her: he was ashamed of what she had become. A great mutant creature, spawned by him. How could he possibly love her?
How could anybody? Two floors down she heard the hum of voices; people had spilled out on to the pavement. Somebody laughed. Down in the bar they stood there, chatting each other up. A stage on – how well she knew the courtship ritual, from her position on the sidelines – a stage further on they would be sitting together, touching all the way down and inspecting the cinema listings in the evening paper. The next stage on, the breeding period (oh she longed for children), they all but disappeared from sight, though the bloke might drop in to watch the big match on Sky. But he had a home to go to, a life. He was loved.
Chloe finally chose black leggings – repulsive when seen alone, straining over her bulges, but slightly less so when covered by a voluminous top. The front was scooped, revealing her cleavage. She suddenly thought: One day, will my breasts drive some man crazy? For they were the
only part of her body of which she felt remotely proud. My feet aren’t bad either, she thought, but who’s going to bother with them? Only I have ever noticed my slender toes, that seem to belong to another person entirely.
Chloe clumped down the stairs and made her way through the bar. Lennox had his back to her. He was collecting empties. She had never known any man who could hold so many empty glasses in one hand; it was just another wonderful thing about him.
It was a shame she was all done up and he didn’t see her go. Her mother was nowhere in sight. Her dad, however, was in his usual position behind the bar.
He looked at her and paused. A spasm of what she took to be irritation crossed his face. His last words to her were: ‘Got your keys?’
It was Rowena’s birthday party – Rowena the air hostess – and she had booked a club in the city centre, somewhere behind Debenhams. Chloe wasn’t an habitué of the Manchester club scene. This was a place called Pixies. She could hear the music out in the street; there was a roped-off bit around the entrance, and even a bouncer. She nearly told the minicab driver to turn round and take her home again. It was only the thought of her parents’ faces, the humiliation, that stopped her.
Inside, the room was crammed. Chloe was seized with panic. She knew she should be doing this; it was called having a good time. You’ve got to live, said her father. He had been a bit of a raver but why should she? You fought through bodies to get a drink you didn’t particularly want. You shouted at other people, who couldn’t hear what you were saying and who wouldn’t be interested anyway; you roared with laughter at a joke whose punchline you had missed. It was the same in the pub every night, the shouting, the getting rat-arsed, the incomprehensible slide into oblivion.
Clutching a cocktail, Chloe longed for her bedroom. Its peace, its fringed lamp, the unread Elle magazine waiting for her. You can’t just sit here, rotting away. How could her father have said that? Rotting away. She wasn’t dead yet; she was just biding her time. She would join the Civil Service; she would show him. Once she had decided what it would be, she would do it. He was such a bully, and so insensitive. Couldn’t he see that nobody would want her as an air hostess?