‘No. Sorry.’
‘The thing about women –’
India stopped. Voda appeared from the kitchen. She waved a piece of paper. ‘Buffy left a note,’ she said. ‘On the dresser, the idiot, I’ve only just found it. He says he’s gone to London and can somebody remember to take out the dog.’
Had Buffy rushed off to find Monica? Penny’s interest was only fleeting. She had other, more pressing, concerns.
She walked into the bar and stopped dead. Harold stood there, talking to Sonia. Though he wore his old corduroy jacket he had spruced himself up in a white shirt. He must have just had a shower, because his hair was wet.
Penny’s heart turned over. He said something funny. Sonia hooted with laughter and laid her hand on his arm.
Just then Harold turned and saw Penny. He muttered something to Sonia and walked over.
‘Thank God you’re here,’ he said.
‘Of course I’m here.’ Her throat dried up.
‘I had a mad vision of you running away.’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
He looked at her, his black brows knitted together. ‘Still, it wouldn’t have mattered.’
‘Why not?’
He said, simply: ‘Because I would have found you.’
16
Buffy
BUFFY DROVE THROUGH the dark, tears streaming down his face. He had put on his CD of Bach’s Cantata 82, sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen
Fallet sanft und selig zu!
Slumber now, you weary eyes.
Close softly and pleasantly!
He was on the M40, in heavy traffic. It was the rush hour, and cars were pouring out of Birmingham.
Welt, ich bleibe nicht mehr hier . . .
Behind Buffy, headlights flashed. He wiped his nose and swerved into the middle lane.
World, I will not remain here any longer,
I own no part of you that could matter to my soul . . .
His satnav lady had fallen silent for the duration of the motorway. He could hardly say he missed her, not with this playing, but in her own way he found her as soothing as Bach. At the second roundabout, turn right. Nolan, knowing Buffy’s poor sense of direction, had fitted the satnav as a thank-you for employing him as a tutor. At the next junction, turn left. Like Cordelia’s, the satnav lady’s voice was gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman. Best of all, she knew where they were going. Which was more than Buffy did.
He must be mad. What was he going to say when he got to Monica’s house? What if she wasn’t there? What if she slammed the door in his face? He was mad.
Yet the drama of it gripped him. He was acting in the final reel, speeding along the motorway in a race against time. On camera was his best (left) profile, his eyes narrowed in the glare of the oncoming traffic like John Wayne’s in the Texan sun. Monica was his woman. She knew it; he knew it. As the music swelled she would fling open the door, backlit and dressed only in her negligee. Like the husband in Brief Encounter, she would say, in her upper-class voice, ‘Thenk you for coming beck to me.’
A car hooted. Buffy jerked to his senses. Christ, he had nearly dozed off! Would Monica be upset? He pictured her switching on the news and seeing the mangled remains of his car. Well-loved actor dies in motorway carnage.
Now he was in London and the satnav lady was guiding him to that foreign land called South of the River. Take the second left . . . How could Monica live in Clapham? Buffy felt a twitch of irritation. Why couldn’t she live somewhere more convenient? He knew that this was a defence thing, to pre-empt his own rejection, but it was true. He had never seen the point of Clapham: those endless streets, straight as rulers, filled with shiny young bankers breeding like rabbits. The dullest common in London. Nowhere to park.
It was a quarter to nine; he had been driving for nearly four hours. His back ached; his haemorroids were playing up. His lust – if that’s what it was – had drained away somewhere near Droitwich. By now he was too exhausted to be nervous. Really, he was too old for this sort of malarkey. All he wanted was to go to bed. Perhaps he should give up the whole thing and check into the Chelsea Arts Club.
At the next junction, turn right. Was it his imagination or did her voice sound steelier? Turn right and don’t be such a sissy. You a man or what? And now he was driving down Monica’s street, Denning Street, You have reached your destination, and of course it was wall-to-wall parked cars. At the end of the road Buffy found himself swept up in a one-way system. You have missed your turning! barked the satnav lady, losing patience. The street stretched ahead, pitilessly long, ghostly in the sodium light.
Buffy slowed down but the car behind him hooted. How could a man change his life if he couldn’t find a bloody parking space? How did people cope in this world? His eyes filled with tears and this time it wasn’t Bach that did it, it was the hopelessness of everything. Turn right! Turn left! Turn left! Turn right! What was the difference? It was all doomed. He came first with nobody, not even his dog. Fig would be slobbering over whoever had given him his dinner and soon they would all be dead.
Suddenly Buffy found himself back in Denning Street, purely by chance, and ahead of him a car was pulling out. He parked, switched off the engine and climbed out. It was freezing cold; the other vehicles were already matt with frost. His back was so stiff that he could barely stand up. Number 73 was a few yards away. Outside it, a man was picking up his dog’s turd in a plastic bag. Buffy waited until he had moved on and walked stiffly to the gate.
It was a house identical to the others in a street that stretched into infinity. Buffy knew the address, of course, from Voda’s computer, but now he had arrived and was faced with the prospect of Monica’s bodily reality, somewhere behind those windows – now he was actually standing there, he couldn’t catch up with what he was doing. He thought: I have driven from Wales to visit a woman who might not even like me. But what an admission of defeat, to turn tail now!
Heart thudding, he walked up to the front door. Putting on his spectacles, he peered at the row of names. 2: M. Kennedy. He pressed the bell.
Minutes passed. An ambulance sped by, its siren wailing. Finally a shape appeared behind the frosted glass. The door opened and Monica stood there in a blue towelling dressing gown, her face bare of make-up.
She stared at him. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see if I could still do this sort of thing.’
Her face hardened. ‘So you’ve done it a lot, have you?’
‘No! I didn’t mean that. I just meant – God, I just feel so old.’ He sighed. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not canvassing for the BNP.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She pressed herself against the wall. ‘Come in.’
Buffy followed her up the stairs. She wore backless slippers. With his specs on, he could see the cracked skin of her heels. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with tenderness for her, for the two of them.
And now he was in her sitting room. Spic and span, a few plants, Matisse poster on the wall. The room of a spinster. On the coffee table sat a tray, containing a half-eaten meal. In front of it was an open laptop. Monica hurried past him and closed it.
‘What were you watching?’ asked Buffy. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted.’
‘Just something on iPlayer. It keeps freezing, anyway.’
‘It’s worse in Wales. You’re all ready, just about to take a mouthful, and you find yourself staring at that little thing going round and round.’
‘Do sit down. Can I get you something to drink?’
Buffy pointed to the bottle. ‘That looks nice.’
‘It’s not really. Tesco’s.’
‘Anything’ll do.’
She fetched him a glass.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to barge in.’
Monica swung round. ‘Didn’t mean to? But you’ve driven two hundred miles.’
‘A hundred and seventy-six actually.’
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He smiled at her but she turned away. As she did so, she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
‘You look lovely,’ he said.
‘I don’t! I look terrible.’
He spoke to her reflection. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.’
‘I’m not surprised, seeing me like this.’
‘Stop it, Monica!’
‘I can’t give you anything to eat. It’s a Serves One. This is all there is.’
‘I don’t care!’ He held out his hand. ‘Come here.’
Monica hesitated.
‘Please,’ he said.
She sat down next to him and poured him a glass of wine.
‘I just wanted to see you,’ he said.
‘I can’t think why.’
‘Why not?’
She adjusted her dressing gown over her knees. ‘I just wish you’d warned me.’
‘Why did you run away? You didn’t even say goodbye.’
She shrugged. ‘There was no point.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘Because we both behaved like idiots. Like teenagers. And it’s best forgotten.’
‘But we are teenagers, underneath. We’re still those people, aren’t we?’
They both gazed at the remains of Monica’s cottage pie. Next to it was a dollop of tomato ketchup. This touched Buffy deeply. He hadn’t pictured her as a ketchup woman. There was so much to learn.
‘I can’t bear the pain,’ she said at last. ‘I’m too old for it.’
‘You’re too old?’
‘Even if we liked each other, which might be true –’
‘We do, don’t we?’
‘Even if we did, we’d have to go through all that rigmarole again.’
‘What rigmarole?’
She sighed. ‘Finding out things about each other, discovering our foibles, that the person’s stingy, or bosses waiters about, or drones on about their schooldays –’
‘I’m not stingy –’
‘And you know that all those things have been discovered by other people in the past, many, many other people, nice things as well as not-so-nice ones, they’ve all been delighted over or complained about. It’s like exploring a wood and finding it full of footprints and litter.’
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘You really see it like that?’ In fact, her woodland imagery had surprised him. Delighted him. She was a woman of imagination. This was a discovery and what was wrong with that? No doubt other men had discovered this but now it was his turn.
‘It’s different when you’re young,’ Monica said. ‘Your heart gets broken but you pick yourself up and fall in love again, there’s plenty of people to choose from, but now, to be perfectly honest, there aren’t. Not for someone like me. And the ones there are, they’re all too entrenched in their ways, we all are, we’ve all got too much bloody baggage.’ She drained her glass. ‘Best not to go there. Save ourselves a lot of grief.’
Suddenly Buffy was overcome with gloom. He gazed at Monica’s veined ankles in their fluffy slippers. This wasn’t going according to plan. But then what had he expected?
‘We think we can change people but we can’t, not at our age,’ said Monica. ‘I saw your face last night, when I was suggesting things about your hotel.’
‘It didn’t sound like me. Even if I had the money, which I haven’t.’
‘I was only trying to help.’
‘And I sort of like the place as it is. That’s why I’m living there.’ He took a breath. ‘Everyone tries to change things. Even Marmite. But maybe one should accept things as they are. With all our faults and our funny ways. I know every rotten floorboard in that house but I don’t want to tear it up. Everybody’s trying to tear things up nowadays and rebrand them and Christ knows what, but isn’t that a shame? It’s got memories, you see – of the person who lived there and the person before her and before that. It’s what’s made the house what it is. I know it’s an old wreck but I love it.’
Monica was gazing at the gas-effect fire. He looked at her profile – sharp nose; thin lips. People in profile looked so alien; one had to get used to them all over again. Of course, one never saw oneself from this angle.
He wanted to tell her this, and so many other things, but he feared he had lost her. In a funny way he was proud of being so impulsive but Monica hadn’t thought so. He would beg a cup of coffee and drive home.
Monica said: ‘So you don’t think there’s any room for improvement, in any of us?’
‘Not in my case. It’s against the regulations, I’m Grade II listed.’
Monica burst out laughing. ‘Not Grade I? You’re so modest.’ She looked at him, her head on one side. ‘Now that might be something nobody’s ever told you before.’
He nodded. ‘There you are. Point proven, whatever it was.’ He sighed. ‘We do talk a lot of rubbish, don’t we?’
‘Speak for yourself.’
She gave him a sniffy look. He gazed at her naked face, shiny with moisturiser; at her wide, hungry mouth. God, he loved her.
She said: ‘Do you have a cigarette?’
‘Heavens! I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I gave up years ago.’
She got up to fetch an ashtray. Buffy sat there, weak with longing. Against the wall stood an antique desk with framed photos on it. Some of them seemed to be children – nephews and nieces? The thought of never finding this out, this and so many other things – of her life continuing without him – filled him with desolation.
Monica returned with an ashtray and a bottle. ‘Let’s have this wine instead of the other stuff. They gave it to me at the office and I’ve never got round to drinking it.’
Buffy looked at the label. ‘Blimey, 1996 Léoville-Las-Cases.’ He took the corkscrew and hesitated. ‘If we get through this, I won’t be able to drive anywhere.’
‘I think this deserves new glasses.’ Monica crossed the room and opened a cupboard. ‘Anyway, where would you go?’
‘Not a clue. I can’t drive back to Wales.’
‘No.’
‘My back would go into spasm. They’d have to winch me out.’
‘We don’t want that,’ she said.
‘No.’
She sat down beside him. Buffy poured the wine. He lit two cigarettes and passed her one. How meltingly sexy it was, how Bogey and Bacall! He hadn’t done such a thing for centuries.
Monica inhaled deeply and blew the smoke through her nostrils. They took a sip of the wine.
‘We should have let it breathe,’ she said.
‘Fuck it.’
They smoked for a while in silence. From upstairs came the faint sound of a TV.
‘I could make you some toast,’ Monica said. ‘Or we could rummage in the freezer. I only got back at lunchtime, I haven’t been to the shops.’
‘Don’t worry, I bought a sandwich at Warwick Services.’
‘What sort was it?’
‘Crayfish and rocket. I’ve never had one of those before.’
‘Nice?’
‘Delicious.’ He shrugged. ‘You see, there are still some things left to discover.’
‘What else did you have? A bit of cake? A shortbread biscuit?’
He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Do you really want to know?’
Monica squinted through the smoke. And then she smiled. ‘I want to know everything.’
Buffy woke the next morning without a weight on his legs. No dog. Instead, he was lying in a blue bedroom with Monica asleep beside him. Sunlight shone through a gap in the curtains. The room faced the front; he could hear the traffic down in the street.
Monica lay with her back to him. She was breathing so softly it was possible she was awake; she was just lying there, immobilised with the realisation of what they had done. Moles were scattered over her skin; in her dark, disordered hair, the grey roots were visible. He gazed at her bedside table: a blister pack of contact lenses, a pile of Condé Nast Traveller magazines. A bottle of water.
&
nbsp; Buffy’s throat was parched. He tried to reach over her shoulder, to get hold of the bottle, but a spasm shot down his spine. Whimpering, he fell back onto the pillow.
‘What’s the matter?’ she murmured.
‘Back’s buggered.’ He groaned. ‘It’s all that driving.’
She shifted round to face him. ‘Can you move at all?’
‘It’s pretty stiff.’ He tried to sit up and yelped with pain. Easing himself back on the pillow, he lay there staring at the ceiling.
‘Has it happened before?’ Monica asked.
He nodded. ‘I just have to rest it for a bit.’
‘How long?’
‘I don’t know. It varies.’
‘You poor thing,’ she said without enthusiasm. ‘I must warn you, I’m a terrible nurse.’
‘Yes, I can imagine.’
She eased herself out of bed. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’
If they were onstage Monica would fling on a silk wrap in one fluid movement. As it was she had to walk across the room, naked, to pick up her dressing gown. For those of mature years, even filtered daylight is felt to be unforgiving. Buffy turned away and looked at a poster of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Hand shielding her pudenda, Venus returned his gaze with a half-smile.
Suddenly Monica gasped. ‘Oh God, they’ll be here in a minute!’
‘Who, your parents?’
‘No, the traffic wardens! It’s ten to nine.’ She hurried out. He heard her pulling open a drawer and scrabbling about.
‘What day is it?’ she called.
‘Friday.’
‘What date?’ Monica hurried back in, carrying a visitor’s permit. ‘Haven’t done one of these for ages.’
‘Don’t know,’ said Buffy. ‘November the something. Have you got today’s newspaper?’
‘Of course not. 17th? 18th? I need something to scratch with.’ She stared wildly around the room. ‘It’s one of those scratchcards.’
‘I know – it’s the 18th. Last day of the cookery course.’ How distant that seemed, another world! He hoped someone had walked the dog.
‘It says scratch with a coin. Where’s my handbag?’ She rushed out again.
‘That’s why I left London!’ Buffy called out. ‘Bloody parking warden vultures!’