She had so much to tell Buffy and now it was too late. Voices and laughter came from the kitchen. As they walked down the hallway Monica thought: I can tell him anything. He would find it all interesting; I would find it interesting – silly things that had happened in the past, things I thought I’d forgotten. I’ve never met a man who conjured up words in my head, not even Malcolm, the so-called love of my life.
She had a mad urge to grab Buffy’s arm and say Let’s go back and have that pudding. But the moment had passed; they had reached the kitchen.
The students were clustered around Voda, who was kneading a lump of dough.
‘Conor broke his collarbone, the twonker!’ she called out to Buffy. ‘Fell into a skip.’
But Buffy wasn’t listening. He was staring at a woman who was standing at the edge of the group. Monica didn’t recognise her; she must be the late arrival – slim and glamorous, glossy bob of auburn hair, a certain age but beautifully groomed. She looked equally astonished.
‘Penny!’ said Buffy faintly. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped.
‘I live here,’ said Buffy.
Voda stopped pummelling. There was a silence as everybody turned to look.
Buffy gestured towards her. ‘This is my ex-wife, Penny.’
Penny gave a short laugh. ‘Well, one of them,’ she said.
15
Penny
PENNY WAS ADDICTED to property porn. In fact, she had contributed to it. Articles about dream houses had been a nice little earner during the boom years. If she’d had a pound for every lifestyle piece she’d penned, accompanied by a photo of a smug couple in their barn conversion . . . In those days the appetite fed on itself; property supplements sprung up in every newspaper, extolling the joys of market towns, of seaside cottages, of penthouses in old blacking factories. In between the estate agents’ ads there were column inches to be filled and Penny was there to fill them – articles about whacking in a loft conversion; articles called ‘To Deck or Not To Deck?’; lists of tips to sell your home (baking bread, fresh flowers, blah blah yawn). She had written them so often she could do them in her sleep. Every publication wanted a property piece. She fondly remembered her Blissful Bathrooms series for The Tablet, rubbish pay but it ran for years. So did her column for the Qantas in-flight magazine, ‘My Rural Bolt-Hole’, where minor – sometimes very minor – celebs posed outside their Cotswold retreat, accompanied by their soon-to-be-divorced wives. Then there were the more personal pieces in which she ruthlessly exploited her own experience – in particular, weekends in Buffy’s country cottage during their marriage. By cunningly altering the tone, she had managed to spread these over several outlets, from the local paper to the national Sundays – decorating mishaps, amusing locals and so on. Those were the days.
For the world had changed. The internet had killed off many periodicals on which she had relied and her contacts had vanished as if they had never existed. When she rang, the phone was answered by some infant to whom she had to spell her name. She was a has-been, her glory days behind her. However, like a drug dealer, she had become addicted to her own product. Alone at her computer, she found herself downloading property websites. Each house or cottage was a new life, a tabula rasa, with its inglenook fireplace and vegetable garden. By writing for others, she had finally convinced herself. She would move to the country! She would live the dream she had created for her readers! The pub, the duck pond, the sense of community, the village idiot.
After all, she had been brought up in the country – well, Godalming – but she remembered a golden childhood romping through fields and swishing at things with her stick. In later years there was Buffy’s cottage – long since sold – where she had pleasant memories of quaffing Chardonnay on warm summer evenings. Admittedly, they had never gone there during the winter, but no doubt they could have enjoyed bracing walks followed by cosy evenings around the fire. And she had friends who lived in the country and seemed happy enough – crowingly happy, in fact. Infuriatingly happy. How can you stand London? We wish we’d done it sooner.
But the main trigger was her break-up with Colin. It was a miracle, really, that they had lasted five years, what with him being so young and – to be perfectly honest – boring. Needless to say, her friends had realised this long before she did. But in the early days, when he droned on she had just gazed at his mouth, and in later years she had simply been grateful she had a man, and such an astonishingly handsome one, when so many of her female friends had been abandoned. Besides, they were often apart – Colin photographing celebs all over the world, she herself off on assignments. Weeks went by when they hardly spoke. And then she had discovered that Colin, a man not known for his originality, had been banging one of his models.
Their break-up had coincided with her sixtieth birthday. These two traumatic events had made her reassess her life. Why not kick over the traces and make a fresh start? She told herself that she’d grown sick of the brittle media world of PRs and press junkets; the truth was, it had grown sick of her. She’d had a good run for her money but now she was a dinosaur. Anyway, soon there wouldn’t be any magazines at all. God knew how the young were going to cope, but too bad, she was off. Off to the country! Strangely enough, it was Buffy’s announcement that had given her the final impetus. She had bumped into him in Wardour Street one afternoon and he had launched into a diatribe against parking wardens, something about having to eat biscuits in Nyange’s car, and said he was fed up with London and thinking of moving to the sticks. During their marriage Buffy had frequently surprised her. Nothing, however, had astonished her as much as this.
‘You won’t last a week,’ she had said. ‘Do you realise it’s outside Zone 2? It was enough of a heave-ho to get yourself to the Chelsea Arts Club.’
‘That’s what my children said. Have you no faith?’
‘No.’
‘But I had a cottage for ten years.’
‘Only because Jacquetta made you buy it. When we were married I had to drag you down there by your hair. By Sunday lunchtime you were itching to get back to London. And we never went there after September.’ She had paused thoughtfully. ‘It was like a mistress rather than a wife.’
‘I know that look,’ Buffy had said. ‘Thinking of an article, are you? Weekend Cottages: A Bit on the Side? I’m sure you’ve done that one already.’
‘Since when has that stopped me?’ She had shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’m thinking of moving to the country.’
It had been Buffy’s turn to look astonished. ‘You?’
‘It’s no odder than you.’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Some little cottage somewhere,’ she had said.
‘Where?’
‘Some little village.’
‘Some little village?’ he had said. ‘But there won’t be a Harvey Nicks.’
‘I’ve changed, Buffy. I’m not the woman you knew.’ She had added bitchily: ‘Or thought you knew. Maybe you didn’t know me at all.’
Why had she said that? Just to unsettle him. Buffy had raised his eyebrows. But it did unnerve her, that whenever they met they slipped back into their old intimacy, as if nothing had changed.
‘Maybe I’ll take up birdwatching,’ she had said. ‘Bye.’
Her lips had brushed Buffy’s beard. Did he have another woman? If so, she wasn’t keeping that beard in trim. Penny herself used to cut it, the hair scattering on his towelled lap – greyer hairs as the years passed. The sudden smell of him had jolted her. She had stepped off the pavement, nearly colliding with a cyclist.
This meeting had hardened her resolve. If Buffy could do it, so could she. London was too full of memories; bumping into Buffy was like stepping back into the past, it couldn’t be healthy.
So her friends thought she was mad? She would show them. Besides, once she had found somewhere they would come to stay for the weekend, they promised. She had visions of them all slopping about in
their jim-jams, munching toast and reading the Sunday papers before tramping across the fields in their wellies. Social life in London was a staccato affair – phone calls, the occasional lunch or dinner, punctuating the long periods of solitude. People never just mooched around, chatting. It would be like marriage but without the rows.
Within three months Penny had sold her flat and bought a cottage in Suffolk, in the village of Little Haddon, twenty miles from Buffy’s old place. It was a charming cottage – beamed ceilings, uneven brick floor – and a charming village, its thatched dwellings painted pink, its manor house mentioned in Pevsner. It even had a shop, selling jars of boiled sweets.
‘So then what happened?’ asked Harold.
The two of them were drinking coffee in the lounge. Everyone else was in the bar watching a DVD of Babette’s Feast, which both Penny and Harold had already seen. Foodie films were on offer every night as an after-dinner entertainment.
‘Well, I bought it in the summer, of course,’ said Penny.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘By November it was not only freezing cold and pouring with rain but it seemed to get dark as soon as I’d had lunch. Eight hours of darkness to kill before one could reasonably think of going to bed. What on earth do people do?’
‘They drink and commit adultery,’ Harold said.
‘But there was nobody to do it with.’
‘Nobody in the village?’
She shook her head. ‘It goes dead in the winter. They’re all second homes and nobody’s there. Or they’re retired people who go to Florida. Or they’re local people and very, very old. Do you know, they have their own Mobility Scooter Formation Trophy Team?’
‘Good-oh,’ said Harold. ‘Formula One or Two?’
‘Nothing happens. Nothing happens! I was walking to the shop holding a mug of tea, because I was still drinking it, and an old dear stopped and gasped and said, “Now I’ve seen everything.”’
Harold laughed. ‘What about your friends coming to stay?’
‘They don’t. They’re busy, you see, they have a life. And grandchildren and weekend cottages that they’re always trying to lure me to. I’m thinking of bribing them but who in their right mind would want to spend a weekend in a sea of mud, in the dark, when they could be having fun in London?’
‘But they’d come to see you,’ said Harold.
‘No they won’t. I’ve become so boring. The high spot of last week was going to Halesworth to get my lawnmower mended.’
‘Tell me all about it.’ Harold leaned forward, eyes bright. ‘What sort of lawnmower? What was wrong with it?’
Penny laughed. She was warming to Harold even though he wasn’t her type – too scruffy, too neurotic. Too short. There were moth-holes in his jumper and his wrists were as hairy as a monkey’s.
‘It’s not so thrilling in this place either,’ he said. ‘Though I hear there’s a Museum of Sheep Droppings in Llandrod.’
‘Excellent. Do let’s go.’
Apparently Harold had hunkered down in Knockton because he was writing a novel. He and Buffy had become friends and she could see why. They had a lot in common – both liking a natter, both somewhat battered by life and both washed up in what looked like a dead-end town for reasons she couldn’t quite fathom.
She was glad to have escaped her ex all evening. Buffy seemed to find it amusing but she still felt disorientated by the whole thing. She’d no idea he had moved to Wales, or indeed that he was – of all hilarious things – running a hotel. She had simply heard about a cookery course and thought that as the nearest M&S was thirty miles away she ought to learn the rudiments of making a meal, something she’d seldom had to do after a lifetime of freeloading and shopping at Selfridges Food Hall. Besides, as the nights drew in she was going stir-crazy and thought a week among other people might restore her sanity.
‘Why didn’t Buffy know you were coming?’ asked Harold.
She shrugged. ‘Our surnames are different, and I guess that girl with the funny name –’
‘Voda.’
‘– made the booking.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve heard a lot about you.’
Penny coloured. ‘Really? What has he said?’
They were interrupted by the murmur of voices. The door opened and people shuffled in from the bar, where the film had ended. India came over to Penny and kissed her goodnight. She wore a plastic hibiscus flower in her hair. So did Voda, for reasons best known to themselves.
‘We’re just off, see you tomorrow,’ said India.
Penny nodded. This had been another shock, of course: to find her ex-sort-of stepdaughter at Myrtle House – and not just there, but a lesbian to boot! India’s heavy features were radiant with happiness. Penny was glad for her; India had had a rocky time in the past – hardly surprising, with a mother like Jacquetta.
India leaned closer and whispered in Penny’s ear: ‘Buffy’s a bit sozzled.’
‘That makes a change,’ said Penny.
‘Maybe you should keep an eye on him.’
Penny gave her a tight smile. ‘Sweetie, he’s not my responsibility any more.’
Monica
Later, Monica couldn’t remember how she had ended up in Buffy’s bed. They were both drunk, of course. She remembered them becoming maudlin about the film, saying nobody like Babette would cook a feast for them. She remembered the two of them drinking whisky in the sitting room, everybody gone, the ashes dead in the grate. She remembered the animal presence of Buffy’s ex-wife lying in bed upstairs, a woman with whom he must have made love a thousand times. Christ, she hadn’t actually put that into words, had she? What else had she told Buffy? That she was as lonely as hell?
She was woken by the dog jumping onto the bed. Buffy lay beside her, snoring into the pillow, one arm flung across her waist. She was still wearing her (mismatched) bra and knickers, and thank God her tights. Buffy seemed to be clothed, though minus his trousers. The bedside lamp was still on, though grey light glimmered through the window.
Monica eased herself from under the duvet and picked up her clothes. The floorboards creaked as she crept out of the room, as furtive as a teenager. It was half past seven. On the landing she paused, listening. The house was silent. Back in her room she poured herself a glass of water, her hands trembling. Her head pounded and she had a raging thirst.
She dreamed she was lying trussed up and naked in a field. Wolves were nibbling her face. Her father stood by, watching. She had a horrible feeling that he was sexually aroused and woke with a jerk, drenched in sweat. It was five to eleven. There was a faint smell of fish.
Down in the kitchen Voda greeted her cheerfully. ‘We’re making a fish pie. And a bouillabaisse with the stock. I’ve been talking about soups in general but I’m sure you’ll catch up.’
Nobody looked at Monica oddly. India made her a cup of tea and some toast. There was no sign of Buffy.
He appeared at lunchtime, however, when she was sitting down with her plate of food. Standing in the doorway, he caught her eye. Monica felt herself reddening. He scratched his head and gave her a puzzled grin. How unreal it was, to have spent the night lying next to this man! He looked a shambles in his crumpled yellow shirt. Though he had changed his clothes, he still appeared to have slept in them.
Penny was sitting opposite her, looking cool and observant. Did she know that something was up? She wore a Virgin Airlines Maiden Voyage T-shirt; there was a healthy, Home Counties glow to her, though Monica suspected a nip and tuck. Probably a tennis player. Anybody less like Buffy was hard to imagine.
Penny was telling one of the women about moving to the country, how it wasn’t what she had expected. She said she was writing a column called ‘Rural Moans’ for the Grocer, the only publication that took her stuff, she said, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Apparently her cottage was next to a field and when winter arrived an encampment of Ukrainian vegetable pickers was revealed beyond her hedge. ‘I’m sure they weren’t there i
n the summer, when I bought it,’ she said. ‘Their sex wagon’s right beside my potting shed. The noise they make, honestly! Like cats being strangled. I wrote a column about it, rather amusing I thought, but they considered it unsuitable for grocers and I had to write about the cuts to the local bus service instead.’
Monica was only half listening. Buffy sat at the next table, gazing pensively at his plate of cold cuts. For once he wasn’t being the life and soul of the party. Was it a hangover, or the realisation that he had spent the night with her half-clothed, ageing body?
After lunch the students trooped back into the kitchen to make fairy cakes. Monica announced that she had a headache and was going out for some air. She left Myrtle House and walked down the street, willing Buffy to have overheard what she had said, willing him to follow her. She suddenly, ridiculously, felt sick with longing.
And then the dog was yapping at her heels and she heard Buffy’s footsteps.
‘Monica!’
She stopped. Buffy wheezily caught up with her and put his hand on her arm.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he panted.
‘What for?’
He frowned with the effort of remembering. ‘We didn’t do anything, did we?’
She shook her head. ‘Not as far as I can remember.’
Buffy let out a sigh. ‘Thank God for that.’
Monica shook off his arm. ‘What do you mean, thank God?’ She glared at him, her eyes glittering with tears. ‘Such a repulsive thought, is it?’
‘I didn’t mean –’
‘Leave me alone!’ She pushed past him and hurried off down the street.
‘Monica!’ he called.
The dog danced around her feet, whining. ‘Fuck off!’ she snapped.
‘Wait for me!’ Buffy shouted.
Monica, stumbling over the dog, turned up an alley and broke into a run. Buffy called out, faintly.
She found herself in a back lane, behind the houses. A man was mending his car so she veered away and turned left. She hurried along the gravel, the dog nipping her ankles. Suddenly the bloody animal was under her foot. She tripped and fell heavily.