The hens were still eyeing him from their corner. Harold thought: Why not save the trouble and eat them now? After all, they were oven-ready. He picked up the shit-spattered box and shoved it into the recycling bag, squashing it down with his foot. Pia accused him of moaning but she herself was no slouch in the complaints department. The impending cuts were threatening the Fudge Factory and they had already lost two of their staff. She was working longer hours, meetings on Sundays, emergency powwows; no wonder she was stressed and distracted, muttering into her mobile and sitting up late at her computer. Harold had every sympathy but at least she had staff, whereas all he had was a houseful of seedlings and – now – three hostile chickens.
Harold suddenly realised: no wonder they were looking at him like that. They had nothing to eat. Pia had ordered some hen food online but it wouldn’t be delivered until the next day.
Harold stomped into the kitchen. What the hell was he going to do? He stopped in the doorway. Earth was scattered over the floor; the cat had used one of the seed trays as a toilet. He ignored it and opened the larder. What did hens eat – bulgar wheat? pasta? Should he cook it first? Standing there, he cursed the Arts Council. No, he cursed the bankers. If they hadn’t been such greedy bastards his wife would be here, sorting out the poultry. His Sunday was in ruins, the whole of the country was falling to pieces and did they give a flying fuck?
Harold grabbed his wallet and slammed out of the house. No chance of getting any work done today. He would have to buy some birdseed – peanuts, that sort of thing. There was a garden centre off Dalston Lane.
Despite it all, his spirits rose. They always did when he escaped from his computer. It was a gloriously sunny day in early May. He walked round the corner, past the parade of shops – the Jamaican patty takeaway, the Afro hairdresser’s with its display of wigs, the ill-named Elite Minicabs. Soon they would be gone; the block was earmarked for development. Property prices had shot up since the Olympics and the City boys were moving in. Harold gazed with affection at the leprous, doomed shops. Though he had never felt the need for hair extensions he would miss them when they were gone. The whole neighbourhood was being regenerated – out with the patties, in with the pesto. There was even talk of a Waitrose.
In fact, the Waitrose was being built on the site of the garden centre. Harold stopped, and cursed. He hadn’t been to Dalston Lane for months and the place was unrecognisable. Traffic thundered past as he gazed at the skeletal supermarket. Beyond it stood a brand-new block of executive apartments wrapped with a banner proclaiming Only Six Remaining. Across the road, a new hotel seemed to have sprung up overnight.
And out of its revolving door stepped Pia. She carried her helmet and was accompanied by a Japanese woman. They were talking so intently that they bumped into a group of businessmen who were entering the hotel. Harold waved at Pia but she didn’t see him. He stepped off the pavement but a lorry blared its horn and he jumped back.
Through the traffic he could see Pia bending down to unlock her scooter. The Japanese woman opened the seat and took out the second helmet. She was tiny, and dressed in black. She slung her leg over the scooter and they sped off, bouncing over the speed humps in the car park, swerving round the newly planted trees and disappearing through some far exit.
Pia didn’t arrive home until nine o’clock. She flung herself on the sofa and pushed her hand through her hair, shaking it loose like a dog. Her nose was sunburnt.
‘Christ, what a day,’ she groaned. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. Blame it on this crap Bullingdon Club Tory philistine crap government. That Arts Minister should be shot.’
Harold told her about the hens. She jumped to her feet and rushed out. He joined her at the pen. Dusk had fallen and the hens had put themselves to bed; through the window of the henhouse he could see the glimmer of their bald bodies as they sat side by side on their perch.
‘Night-night, girls,’ said Pia. ‘You’re going to be very happy here.’
He told her about the food situation, how he had ended up buying the chickens some bar snacks at Londis – sunflower seeds and peanuts.
Pia smiled. ‘You are a dear.’ She put her arm around his waist as they stood there, looking into the pen. A dear?
‘By the way, what were you doing in that hotel?’
She paused, her hand on his hip. ‘What?’
‘I saw you with a Japanese woman.’
‘Oh, her.’ Pia moved away and walked towards the house. ‘She’s that director I told you about,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘She’s rehearsing The Scream. From the Munch painting.’
He followed her into the kitchen. She was rummaging in the cupboard.
‘Do we have any Ovaltine?’ she asked.
‘Ovaltine?’
‘I just feel like some.’
Harold gazed at her back view. She was squatting on her haunches, examining the tins and jars.
‘So what did you do with her?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘The Japanese woman.’
She took out a jar and inspected it.
‘That’s marmalade,’ he said.
‘I took her to the meeting. She was bored stiff in that hotel.’
Harold was puzzled. ‘She was bored stiff, so you took her to an eight-hour meeting about Arts Council cuts?’
‘They’re having the same problem in Japan.’ Pia shut the cupboard and stood up. ‘No Ovaltine.’ She looked around the kitchen, and sniffed. ‘There’s a funny smell in here.’
‘The cat crapped in the seed tray, but I cleaned it up. I’m afraid the seedlings are a goner.’
Pia sat down suddenly. Her eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh God, is it that bad?’ Harold was alarmed; Pia never cried. ‘Can’t you plant some more?’
Pia sat at the table, shuddering, her face in her hands. The cat came in and rubbed itself against her leg.
‘Pia, what’s the matter?’
She looked at him through her fingers. ‘We didn’t go to the meeting. We went for a walk on Hampstead Heath.’
‘But how . . . I mean – did you just sneak out?’
She muttered something but he couldn’t hear, her hands were in the way.
‘What?’
She removed her hands. ‘There wasn’t a meeting.’
Harold was confused. ‘Why not?’
‘There just wasn’t.’
Harold gazed at her sodden face, her sunburnt nose. ‘So you went to Hampstead Heath? For the whole day?’
She nodded.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. ‘I could have come. It was such a beautiful day, and to tell the truth I’m having a few problems with this novel. To be absolutely honest, I haven’t really entirely started . . .’ His words trailed away. He suddenly pictured the familiarity with which the woman had strapped on the helmet.
‘That wouldn’t have been a good idea,’ Pia said.
By midsummer the Fudge Factory had closed, a victim of the cuts. Pia, too, had gone. She had moved to Amsterdam with Kasuko, the tiny Japanese woman. Apparently they were living in some sort of collective.
How could he have been so stupid? His sister Maureen was a lesbian, he should have recognised the signs. But what were the signs? Pia had always worn baggy trousers and no make-up. Besides, she said she wasn’t a lesbian, she just happened to have fallen in love with a woman. She had said it in a dreamy, excluding way, as if he as a mere man couldn’t possibly understand. Harold had resisted the temptation to say that of course he understood, he loved women too.
For weeks he was sunk in depression. He felt disembowelled, the stuffing pulled out of him; he could hardly drag himself out of bed in the morning. He felt utterly deserted – not just deserted as a husband, but as a member of the male sex. Would it have been worse if she had left him for a man? That would have been understandable – horribly hurtful, but understandable; he might even have fought back. He had been there before, he knew the rules of engagement in the battle between the sexe
s. But Pia had moved out of the familiar arena into an unknown world, leaving him alone in the wreckage of his marriage, picking through the rubbish and looking for clues. Acid had seeped back through the years, corroding even the happiest times. Had Pia really desired his hairy, middle-aged body; those unlovely giblets between his legs? Looked at objectively, he could see her point. No wonder she had fallen for a woman. In fact, as time went by, he felt a surprising bond with his wife. He pictured Kasuko’s body, smooth as a seal and sort of boneless, like all the Japanese. She would have a neat black triangle of pubic hair, silkier than an English person’s. Imagining this, Harold felt a jolt of desire. How perverse was that?
Working on his novel was now out of the question. He was an abandoned husband, he had every excuse. In his heart of hearts this was a relief; he could surrender to self-pity. Mary Pickford simpered in the photo that had started to curl on his wall. Hang on, did she become a lesbian too? He knew nothing about her, the whole thing had been a folie de grandeur. Just because he taught something didn’t mean he could do it himself. When his friends enquired he kept it quiet, like a cot death.
For his friends had rallied round. The break-up of his marriage had opened its curtains to the world; they all weighed in with their honest opinions of Pia, opinions they had kept to themselves all these years. He agreed with most of them, of course – she was so blooming right-on . . . humour bypass . . . so Scandinavian . . . banging on about women’s rights . . . making you look a twat. There was a sense of male solidarity in this, and a sort of uneasy hilarity. A lesbian! In a weird way, it was a relief. After all, it was no reflection on Harold.
‘I always thought she was a muff-diver,’ said Dennis, one of his less reconstructed friends. ‘That’s why she was so bloody rude.’ In fact, she was rude to Dennis because she thought he was an arse but Harold kept quiet; he was fond of Dennis, they had been to primary school together, and though they had little in common they would have laid down their lives for each other.
Some of his women friends were simply sorry for him.
‘How are you going to cope?’ asked Annie. ‘The garden. The hens. She always did everything.’
‘I did pull my weight, you know,’ said Harold irritably. ‘I did all the financial stuff. And her computer, and the remotes, she never got the hang of SkyPlus. And I shopped, she hated shopping, and, oh, all sorts of things. I’m not completely useless.’
‘No.’ Annie looked at him, her head on one side. ‘Not completely.’
They burst out laughing. It was refreshing; he hadn’t laughed for weeks. Annie was an old friend, a big, warm woman; they had taught together at Holloway College. Her lovelife had been a series of disastrous affairs with men who had turned out to be manic-depressives, or shits, or both. He and Pia used to give her advice from the safety of their marriage; now he had joined her in the wilderness. It was a terrifying prospect; he had thought he’d been safe for life. At some point, would he have to start dating again? Such a stomach-churning word. What did one do: meet women in wine bars or something? Take them to the cinema and drape one’s arm casually around their shoulder? He was far too rusty – if, that is, he had ever known how to do it in the first place. When he was young people just got drunk or stoned and found themselves in bed with somebody, whether they liked them or not. And then he had somehow tumbled into marriage with his first wife because that’s what one did, then. Now he was fifty-six and the thought of getting to know a woman all over again filled him with a panic-stricken desolation.
‘There’s something wrong with that hen,’ said Annie.
They were standing in the garden, gazing into the pen. One of the chickens was hunched in the corner.
‘She’s just depressed,’ said Harold.
‘That’s projection,’ said Annie, who went to a Jungian analyst. ‘Forget about yourself for a moment.’ She cooed through the fence, ‘You poor girl.’
‘Why does everybody call them girls? They’re fucking hens.’
‘Don’t take it out on me,’ snapped Annie. ‘I’m not your wife.’
Harold apologised. ‘The trouble is, she’s left me with all these things. The hens, the cat. It’s got some infection in its eye, it’s gone all sticky. And look at the weeds.’ He gestured around. ‘Why do they grow faster than plants?’
‘They’re not things,’ said Annie. ‘They’re animals and vegetables. You just have to look after them.’
In fact Harold had done some weeding in the past. When Jazz Record Requests was on he had weeded around the back door, where he could hear the radio from the kitchen. But Pia had accused him of pulling up her camomile so he had stopped. And now the garden was choked with what even he could see were thistles. Her seedlings had long since been engulfed.
‘Nowadays everything in the garden either pricks me or stings,’ he said. ‘Symbolic or what?’
‘You poor dear.’ She put her arm through his. ‘But she really was a pain in the bum. I can say that now.’
‘What happens if she comes back, her tail between her legs? Imagine how embarrassed you’d be.’
But Pia wasn’t coming back. After she had unburdened herself in the kitchen, after the tears and recriminations, the whisky-drinking into the small hours, she was a woman transformed. Relieved of her secret she was flushed with love, she looked ten years younger. As his wife packed up her belongings she had hummed – hummed. He had heard her through the door. A woman had done that, a slippery Japanese seal dressed in black. Hens and vegetables were forgotten, evaporated in a sapphic haze. Pia had treated him with the sort of offhand kindness she treated the cat, a bowl of Whiskas left out for him as she canoodled upstairs on her mobile. In a matter of weeks their marriage had vaporised as if it had never existed.
And she had wanted nothing. This had made it worse. Her passion existed on a rarer plane than mere possessions. The house was full of her stuff – the exercise bike, a Moroccan tagine that wouldn’t fit into the dishwasher, a dinosaur-era Polaroid camera, folksy tourist rubbish from holidays, a breadmaker, stuff, stuff, cupboards full of stuff. And all he wanted was her naked body in his arms.
‘I’ll help you if you want,’ said Annie.
Harold jumped. They were looking at the garden; sunlight shone on the leathery leaves of the ivy that smothered the wall. ‘I’ve got the time, now it’s the holidays,’ said Annie. ‘And my daughter’s off to Durham, did I tell you? She’s going to study marine biology, so that’s my little bird flown.’ Her arm was around his waist; she kneaded his flesh between her thumb and finger. ‘I could bring round a spade and get stuck in.’
The next day the phone rang. It was Melanie, another single parent, who lived a few streets away. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked. ‘Need any help with the garden? I’ve only got a balcony, I hate being cooped up in this weather, and my son would love to see your hens.’
She appeared that afternoon with a bottle of wine in her hand. She wore denim shorts and a vest top.
‘Sorry about my little one, I forgot he had to go to a birthday party. Maybe I could bring him back an egg.’ Melanie’s hair, newly washed, swung around her shoulders as she walked down the path. ‘Is that an apple tree? And what are those long purple things? I’m hopeless, I’m so not a gardener but I’m longing to learn, your wife was so clever, it’s like another world out here, a little bit of paradise.’ Harold followed her. The cheeks of Melanie’s buttocks moved from side to side in the tiny shorts. ‘God, you’re so lucky,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’d kill for a garden.’
Harold’s mobile rang. It was Allie, the ex-wife of his squash partner. ‘I’ve researched weedkillers,’ she said. ‘What you need for the nettles is glyphosate. I can bring some round, you just paint it on the leaves, it’s totally harmless. And if you like, I could stop at Marks on the way and bring us something to eat?’
‘Didn’t take long, did they?’ Dennis spluttered with laughter. ‘I knew it. Couple of months and they’re crawling out of the woodwork, panting for it.’ br />
Harold wished he hadn’t told him, it seemed disloyal to the women concerned. ‘They’re only trying to help,’ he said.
‘Yes, dear.’ Dennis patted his hand.
‘With the garden. It’s all got a bit beyond me.’
‘And have we got our leg over yet?’
‘Is that all you think about?’
‘Yep.’
They were sitting in a pub on the Essex Road. Dennis was halfway through a hair transplant and had to keep his head covered. Though it was a sweltering day he wore his son’s hoodie; in it, he resembled a porky, middle-aged mugger caught on CCTV.
He sighed. ‘You’re a lucky fucker, Harry.’ He was the only person who called him Harry. ‘A pussy-magnet at your age. Our age. But then you’ve always pulled the women, being an intellectual. A bit of the old T. S. Eliot and they’re creaming their pants.’ He drained his pint. ‘Should’ve finished me A levels. And you’ve kept your hair, you sod.’
‘I don’t want women. I want my wife.’
‘Have mine!’ Dennis laughed. ‘Actually, I’m fond of the old girl. Well, she’s had to put up with me, hasn’t she, for thirty years? Seen me through some ups and downs, as you very well know.’ Dennis was a wealthy property developer. At various low points, however, he and his family had been reduced to living in a caravan in Gravesend. ‘She sends her regards, by the way.’
‘Any gardening tips?’
‘Ha ha.’ He paused. ‘It’s just that sometimes a bloke wants to be let off the leash.’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’ Harold frowned at him. ‘Don’t scratch your hood.’
‘My scalp itches.’ Dennis stood up, to get more drinks. ‘Us Jews aren’t supposed to lose our hair. We’re a hairy race. It’s one of the reasons people resent us.’
Harold eyed his head. ‘How much did you pay for that?’
‘Don’t ask. But it was the top guy in the business, little Indian bloke. Only the best for my beloved.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘So she can remember me when we were young, childhood sweethearts and all that.’ His shy smile both surprised and moved Harold. Good God, the man really loved his wife.