The other boy had opened a tin of grapefruit segments and was eating them with a serving spoon. ‘My teacher says, why didn’t you come to Parents’ Evening?’
‘Parents’ Evening?’ asked Jacquetta.
‘You never come.’ He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a damp, partially disintegrated piece of paper. ‘Here’s the reminder.’
‘Did your Dad go?’
‘Buffy? Christ, no. We didn’t tell him. Last time he took out his hip flask. Anyway, he never knows what subjects we do.’ He poured some cornflakes into the grapefruit tin and stirred it up. ‘Nor do you.’
‘I do!’ said Jacquetta.
‘You’re both hopeless. Anyway I’m glad you didn’t come. You’d do something really sad, like last time.’
‘What do you mean?’
He snorted into his Cornflakes, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘You wore that sequin, like, headband thing. Everybody stared at you. And then you told our headmaster you’d had an erotic dream about him.’
‘Did I?’
He shovelled in the last of the Cornflakes. ‘My teacher only wanted you to come in case you brought Leon. She saw him on TV; she’s got the hots for him.’ He flung the tin in the direction of the swing-bin. ‘She’s that pathetic.’
A dirty white cat sprung into Celeste’s lap. It was surprisingly heavy. She stroked it; as it purred, rhythmically, its claws dug into her thighs. She didn’t dare push it off; she didn’t dare move. Only an hour ago she had been standing, shivering, outside this fortress of a house, this creamy cliff five storeys high. Just standing there, staring at it, like Penny used to do. I used to look up at the house and imagine their lives in it. Then she had seen the sign, Baby Rabbits Free to a Good Home and rung the bell. On impulse, just like that. So much had happened, with such swooping speed and a distracted sort of intimacy, that she felt queasy. How easy it had been! She had been like a burglar, discovering a door was unlocked. There was so much she needed to ask, but on the other hand she didn’t want them to notice her sitting there. She felt like a surveillance camera in a crowded shop.
As they bickered, she looked around. It was a huge kitchen. There were a lot of abstract paintings hanging up – violent and splashy, as if someone had been stirring a pot too vigorously and some of it had been flung onto the walls. Every surface was crammed with things – how different from her own neat home in Melton Mowbray! She wondered how much had changed in this room since Buffy had lived here. But then she didn’t know what Buffy’s taste ran to, anyway. She hadn’t visited his flat yet; she hadn’t let him take her there. She was so confused, so emotional, that she suddenly felt exhausted, like an overloaded electricity grid blacking out. But now somebody seemed to be talking to her.
‘What are you going to carry them in?’ Jacquetta was looking at her, eyebrows raised above her blue-rimmed glasses. She was wearing a sort of peasant’s scarf wrapped around her head, and a lot of beads. It was only now that Celeste dared to have a good look at her. She wore a baggy sort of garment covered in zigzags and a long red cardigan. With all that jewellery she looked like a high priestess.
‘Carry them?’ asked Celeste stupidly. She had forgotten why she was supposed to be here.
‘She can take them in that,’ said one of the boys. He pointed to a cardboard box. ‘Leon’s crap book came in it. His author’s copies.’
‘It’s not crap,’ said Jacquetta vaguely.
They put the rabbits into the cardboard box. It had a label on it: Guilt: A User’s Guide, by Leon Buckman. 8 Copies. One of the boys fetched some sellotape.
He was just taping down the lid when the doorbell rang. Jacquetta answered it. She returned with a big black man.
‘Car for Mr Buckman,’ he said. ‘BBC.’
At the same moment a chunky young woman came down the stairs, yawning. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked.
‘Leon’s going on TV,’ said Jacquetta. ‘Go and buzz him, somebody. He’s downstairs. And this person’s taking our rabbits.’
‘You going to the White City?’ the yawning woman asked the driver. ‘Can you give me a lift? Drop me off on the way?’ she turned to Celeste. ‘Hi. I’m India.’
Celeste said she was just taking the rabbits away. India asked if she had a car; Celeste shook her head.
‘Which way are you going?’ asked India.
‘Kilburn.’
‘Want a lift? He’ll drop you off.’ India lifted up the box. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Leon’ll just be putting the finishing touches to his coiffure. He’ll be here in a minute.’
‘Where’re you going?’ asked her mother.
‘Oh, just to see a friend.’ India, the box under one arm, grabbed a coat in the hallway. Celeste turned to say goodbye, but Jacquetta was talking to her sons. They, too, were putting on their coats.
‘We’re going carol singing,’ said one of them.
‘But it’s not December yet,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you can’t sing.’
He laughed his corncrake laugh. ‘Yeah, but they’ll be so scared of us they’ll give us the money.’
Celeste and India sat in the limo, waiting for Leon. They had put the box of rabbits in the front seat. Celeste hadn’t a clue what she was going to do with them. She felt utterly helpless, swept up by events which were now beyond her control. One ex-wife, and now another! She had come in from the cold and sat in their rooms. Neither of them had thought it rude or odd. Children and step-children had appeared. So had rabbits – what on earth was she going to do with them? Buffy’s past was like some complicated board game; she had opened it and taken out some of the pieces, but nobody had read her the rules. It was curiously exhilarating.
‘Why are you called India?’ she asked.
India took a card out of her wallet and passed it to her. ‘I couldn’t bear to tell anyone anymore, so I had this printed.’
Celeste read the card. It was printed in italic script. ‘I see,’ she said, reading it again. Conceived in an ashram in Bangalore. ‘Gosh, how exotic.’
‘That’s what mum thinks. I think it’s fucking embarrassing.’
‘Who’s your father, then?’
‘He’s called Alan. He works in Strasbourg. He only talks to his computer.’ She snorted. ‘He doesn’t communicate with me, I’m not IBM compatible.’ She wiped her nose. ‘Fathers! Who’d have them!’
Alan. Celeste hadn’t heard of him. Where did Buffy come into this? She couldn’t work it out yet; Leon would be arriving any minute.
They sat there, looking at the bulgy folds in the back of the driver’s neck. He wore a peaked cap. She felt comfortable with India. She looked about her own age, for one thing. She looked straightforward too, in a pissed-off sort of way. She had a square, suetty face; she hadn’t inherited her mother’s looks. She wore a woollen bobble-hat and a black, man’s coat. It smelt of mothballs. Her fingernails were bitten right down. Celeste gnawed her fingernails, but only round the edges. Still, she felt a bond.
India leaned forward and addressed the driver. ‘So what’s he wittering on about this time?’
‘Mr Buckman? I just take him there, miss.’
‘Probably blathering on about his book.’ She pointed to the box in the front seat. ‘That’s it.’
The driver read the label. ‘Guilt: A User’s Guide.’
‘Listen to it.’
‘Listen to it?’ he asked.
‘Go on.’
The driver bent over the box and listened. ‘There’s something moving about.’
India sniggered. ‘Smells a bit funny too, doesn’t it?’
The driver sniffed. ‘Now you mention it.’
At that moment the front door opened and Leon appeared. He was the man Celeste had seen in the garden. He hurried down the steps and strode briskly towards the car.
‘It’s all right,’ he called cheerfully, ‘I’ll sit in the front.’
The driver lifted up the box and put it onto the floor. ‘What is it in there?’ He tipped the box; there was a slidi
ng sound.
They drove off. Leon leaned over the seat and shook Celeste’s hand. ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘and who are you?’
Celeste told him her name. Leon’s hand remained in hers for a moment; it felt dry and sincere. Even in the dark she could see that he had a terrific tan; at this time of year too. No wonder Buffy had kicked in his face, on the TV.
‘You’re not from London, are you?’ he asked. ‘You look far too wholesome.’
Celeste told him she came from Leicestershire. She said she worked in a shop – she didn’t say where – and that it was her day off.
‘You have any family here?’ he asked.
She shook her head, willing him to stop. After all these weeks, he was the first person who had actually asked her any questions. Buffy mostly told her how beautiful she was, the light of his life, how could he believe his luck, an old has-been like him. Or else she asked him questions – about his past, how he had met. Gene Kelly once, the thousands and thousands of interesting things he had done and the people he had worked with, most of whom she had never heard of, or only read about in magazines. They sat in teashops for hours, until the waitresses cleared the tables; they went to the theatre; they sat in pubs and talked until closing time. She had learned more, in the past few weeks, than she had learned in her whole life. Buffy had such a rich past packed into him, he was as concentrated as potted meat. Better, because he never ran out.
But Leon asked her questions. As the dark trees of Regent’s Park flashed past he gazed at her with tender curiosity; she felt like one of the rabbits, mesmerized by the headlights of his eyes. No wonder his patients came back for more. She seemed to be telling him that she was an orphan. She must be careful. He would seek out any lies with his professional radar.
‘So how do you like London?’ he asked.
‘Well, it’s full of surprises.’
He smiled. ‘Nice ones?’
She paused. ‘More, like, unexpected.’
‘If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be surprises, would they?’
The car stopped in the Edgware Road. Celeste and India got out, with their cardboard box.
‘Let’s meet again,’ said Leon, leaning out of the window. ‘I can see my family’s taken to you.’ The car drove off into the traffic.
India made a retching noise and pretended to vomit into the gutter. ‘Isn’t he creepy!’ she said. ‘Almost as awful as Mum. They deserve each other.’
‘Why’s he creepy?’
‘See the way he letched all over you? He does that to everybody. He’s always asking me about my sex life. I don’t have a sex life but I make things up, really disgusting things to see if I can shock him.’
‘Do you?’
She shook her head. ‘He gets off on it. He’s sex-obsessed. He’s always touching me, ugh. He screws his female patients and pretends it’s therapy.’
Celeste stared at her. ‘Does your Mum know?’
India shook her head. ‘She never knows what’s going on. She’s too busy going to her groups and talking about it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I found his condoms. He keeps them in his Dictionary of Dangerous Drugs. I’d gone down there to look up something. I borrow the keys to his cabinet, see, I can get all sorts of stuff there, and I was just checking to see if I’d done something really silly this time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, mixing them. You know.’
‘You steal his drugs?’
‘LSD and Librium or something,’ said India. ‘I can’t remember. So I looked in his book and there were these packets of condoms, hidden between the pages. Must’ve been in the L’s. About six packets too, the randy sod.’
They were standing on the pavement, the traffic rumbling past. Celeste held the box; it was a lifebelt to stop her from drowning.
‘You going this way?’ India asked.
Celeste nodded. They started walking.
‘They’re such a fuck-up, aren’t they?’ said India. ‘Parents.’
‘Are they?’
‘They make such a fuck-up of their lives. So bloody irresponsible.’
Celeste was about to argue, but she stopped. Hers had been too, in their own way. Their entirely different way. Strangely enough, her upbringing and India’s had something in common.
‘So bloody childish,’ went on India. She walked, her hands thrust into her pockets, staring at the pavement. ‘Mum used to nick Bunch to take to her Primal Therapy.’
‘What was Bunch?’
‘My teddy bear. She’d used him to help her regress. She’d regress to her childhood. But I was the child! It was my bloody teddy! He wasn’t the same when he came back. One of his eyes was loose.’ She veered left, sharply, and marched across the road. A van screeched to a halt. Celeste hurried after her and rejoined her, breathlessly, on the opposite pavement. ‘Leon’s a mega-wanker,’ said India. ‘Mega. Do you know, his answerphone has messages in English, German and Urdu? They think they’re so trendy but both of them are really pathetic, lonely people.’
‘Don’t you like your Mum at all?’
‘She doesn’t know how to be normal. Parents should be normal. That’s the point of them.’
‘Mine were,’ said Celeste. They weren’t, of course. She realized that. But at the time she had thought they were normal. Boring, actually, though she wouldn’t have used that word about them then.
‘She’s totally self-absorbed,’ said India. ‘She has to be the centre of bloody attention. She’s always going on about her work. My work, she says in her suffering artist’s voice. Any woman who talks about her work like that is bound not to do any. And if she does, it’s bound to be awful. Have you seen her paintings? She just leeches off men, screwing them for alimony, screwing them for everything, and then going on about what a feminist she is. And sunbathing in the garden without any clothes on, every nipple on view. And asking bus conductors their birth signs, stupid things like that. And rushing off to Tunisia for three months. Three months! Leaving us with our nanny. Honestly, you’re so lucky!’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because yours couldn’t have been as bad as mine.’ She stopped. ‘God, I have been going on. Must be terribly boring.’
Celeste shook her head.
‘This is where my friend lives,’ said India. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ve got this flat in Kilburn.’
‘Oh! I know somebody who lives round there.’
‘Who?’
‘He’s called Waxie. He sells me coke.’
‘Coke? You go all that way?’ Celeste looked at her, puzzled. Was the whole family mad? ‘Couldn’t you just get it from a machine?’
India burst out laughing. ‘A machine?’
‘Or a shop or something?’
India paused. ‘No, dearie. I mean Coke. Cocaine.’
Celeste didn’t know how to reply. In their box, the rabbits were restless. They all slid one way, she could hear their claws scrabbling. Her fingernails used to make that sound, scrabble-scrabble, when she typed invoices on the Amstrad back at Kwik-Fit.
India put her arm around her, awkwardly. ‘You make me feel awfully old.’ She wiped her nose on the back of her glove; it was freezing cold. ‘In my so-called family, all the kids are old. It’s the grown-ups who’re infantile.’
‘Is that why you take drugs? You shouldn’t, you know. Who’s this friend you’re seeing? Another drug-dealer?’
India laughed. ‘No no. It’s my step-dad. Well, one of them.’
There was a pause. They were standing outside a block of flats. Celeste looked up; the building loomed, heavy and monumental, against the suffused sky. The porch was lit. LOMFIELD MANSIONS, it said. The B was missing.
Buffy! She nearly said the name out loud. She had been so distracted, she hadn’t noticed where they were standing.
‘I said friend because I want to keep Buffy separate,’ said India. ‘They’d just get all psychological otherwise.’ She stood there,
huddled in her coat. ‘I like him, you see. We are friends, actually. My Mum led him an awful dance, I’m really sorry for him. At least he’s human. At least if I have a problem he doesn’t read me the bloody I Ching. He takes me to the pub. Anyway, he makes me laugh.’ She paused. ‘Listen, why don’t you come up and meet him?’
‘No!’ Celeste backed away, clutching her box. ‘I mean, he sounds lovely, but . . .’
She had to get away. Maybe he was looking out of the window! Maybe he could see them standing there together. How could she possibly explain?
She turned to India. But India had already left. Suddenly energetic, she was leaping up the steps of the block of flats, her coat flapping.
Eighteen
‘YOU OLD FOOL!’ cried India, ‘You old fart! What’s her name?’
‘I’m not telling,’ said Buffy. ‘Not if you take that tone.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Your age.’
India snorted with laughter and helped herself to one of his cigarettes. ‘It’s disgusting. Are you sleeping with her?’
‘No. Unfortunately.’
‘I should think not. How grotesque!’
‘I adore her,’ said Buffy. ‘I’ve never felt like this before.’
‘You always say that. You probably said that with Mum.’
‘Don’t I deserve a little happiness?’ he bleated. ‘After all these years? I’ve even given up drinking. More or less.’
They sat there, wreathed in smoke. She stroked his knee. ‘I’m happy for you, Buff, I really am. Maybe this is the real thing. Does she know about all your repellant ailments?’
He nodded. ‘Better than anyone. She knows about my piles and my constipation and my athlete’s foot –’
‘Gawd. She a doctor?’
Buffy shook his head. ‘I’m not telling.’
India gestured around the room. ‘Perhaps she can sort this place out. Look at it! When you’re on your own you revert, don’t you? Remember when you and Mum split up, and I came round after school to spring clean?’
‘In your gymslip, with your little duster,’ said Buffy. ‘My angel of mercy. I remember. I burst into tears.’
‘You were probably pissed.’ She looked around. ‘This flat really pongs. You’ll never get your leg over, not till you do something about it. You can hardly get the door open, let alone drag some woman through it.’