Celeste had stopped somebody and was asking them directions. She turned and grabbed Buffy’s hand, pulling him along.
‘This way!’
His chest hurt, his corns throbbed. Gasping, he followed her through a door. They emerged at the mouth of the underground car park. People were climbing into taxis and driving off in clouds of diesel smoke. Maybe he had missed Nyange; maybe she had already gone.
‘There it is!’ said Celeste.
Stage Door. Royal Shakespeare Company. One by one the actors were emerging, looking smaller than they had looked on stage. Buffy paused.
‘Who are we looking for?’ asked Celeste.
At that moment Dermott Metcalfe strode out. He was well wrapped up in an astrakhan coat and fedora.
‘Russell, old cock!’ He strode up to Buffy. ‘Long time no see. Where’ve you been hiding? Enjoyed the show?’ He turned to Celeste. ‘Well, hello. This your daughter?’ Buffy opened his mouth but Dermott was shaking Celeste’s hand. ‘Following in the family footsteps, eh?’
Not this one! Buffy wanted to shout. Not this one, the other one! But at that moment a car slid out of the mouth of the underground car park and stopped beside them.
‘Darling.’
Serena’s face, thirty years older but still recognisable, and indeed beautiful, smiled from the open window of the driver’s seat.
‘Russell Buffery, remember?’ said Dermott.
She frowned for a moment, then her face cleared. ‘Russell! Our children used to listen to Hammy. I told them, I used to know that man. Well, hamster.’
Dermott turned to Celeste. ‘They were sweethearts once, these two. Before I staked my claim.’
Celeste stared at the woman in the car and turned to Buffy. ‘Another one?’
Dermott was talking. ‘Every evening she drives me in from Gerrards Cross, isn’t she a jewel?’ He kissed the tip of his wife’s nose. ‘A pearl beyond price. I’m a lucky bugger.’
Suddenly Celeste took Buffy’s arm. ‘Oh, he’s a lucky bugger too, aren’t you Dad? What with Mum and all of us.’ She turned to Dermott. ‘There’s lots of us, you see, but we’re one big happy family. Isn’t that right, Dad?’
Buffy nodded, dumbly.
She squeezed his arm. ‘Trouble is, Dad’s just too much of a stay-at-home. He’s spent his whole time with us, playing with us, being a good Dad, that he’s hardly had time for his career. Isn’t that true, Daddy? That’s why nobody sees him around much. But it’s been worth it. For all those happy memories and happy times together.’ She pulled him away. ‘Come on, Dad. Time for bed.’
‘My God, Celeste!’ Buffy gazed at her. They were sitting in a taxi, driving home. ‘That was terrific. What an actress!’ He cleared his throat. ‘Er, why did you do it?’
She turned to look out of the window. ‘He was such a creep, I suppose. I’m fed up with people going on about how happy they are. Then you see them messing around in basements.’
‘Basements? Who’s been messing around in basements?’
She didn’t reply. She was sitting huddled in the corner. He moved closer.
‘Did you really mean it? About it being time for bed?’
She shook her head. ‘Just drop me off in Kilburn High Road.’
‘Celeste.’
She turned to look at him. The street lights chased across her face. Her eyes, how dark they were!
‘My darling girl, what’s the matter? I never know, with you. That very first day, in the shop – your lovely face, it changes like the weather. Let me take you home.’
She sat there, gnawing her fingernails.
‘I don’t even know where you live!’ he said.
‘There’s lots you don’t know.’
He removed her hand gently. It was trembling. ‘Tell me.’
‘Not now. Not yet.’
Twenty-three
CELESTE EMERGED INTO the sunshine of Sloane Square. Each tube escalator, she was discovering, propelled her into a different London. One day she might piece them all together. No drunks here; even the air smelt more wholesome and expensive. Women in tweeds strode past, carrying bags from the General Trading Company; one of them had a labrador in tow. A glossy Penny-type, wearing a designer suit, yelled ‘Taxi!’ in a carrying voice. Celeste herself felt smarter now; she had bought a new coat, russet red, from one of those shops she had once found too intimidating to enter. The coat had cost a lot – a whole month’s rent from the people living in her old home, but that’s the sort of thing she did now.
She consulted her map and walked down Sloane Gardens, past blocks of mansion flats which resembled Buffy’s except there were BMWs parked outside. Her shiny new boots tap-tapped on the pavement; they sounded confident, but her heart was bumping against her ribs. Why had she been so stupid the night before? Buffy must think she was mad, suddenly jabbering on like that in front of other people. And what would he think if he saw her now? This was the third journey she had made into his past, the third and the deepest. Each one, she had thought, would be the last. How could anybody have had so many wives? Other women, too. She felt like an archaeologist, uninvited and illegal, digging through the foundations of an old building, through Victorian layers and then medieval layers and finally unearthing, way below, the broken mosaic of a Roman villa.
She was in an area called Pimlico. Passport to Pimlico was one of the old films Buffy loved; he had appeared in it, he said, as a talented juvenile. He had told her a rude story about one of the actors but she was in no mood to remember it now. She turned left and walked down Pimlico Road. There it stood on the corner: The Old Brown Mare.
She crossed the street and approached the pub. The sun glinted on its windows. Drawing nearer, she paused. It didn’t look like a pub anymore, not quite. It looked too airy and clean. There was fancy script above the window: Wine and Tapas Bar. She pressed her nose against the glass; inside, the place was empty. Just a lot of chairs and tables, with pink tablecloths on them.
She hesitated. Then she pushed open the door and went in. Behind the bar, the mirrors were still there; the mirrors which had reflected multiple images of Buffy’s ex-wife. She smelt garlic. A woman appeared, carrying dishes of food. She was so tanned and stylish that Celeste felt drained. She put a plate of squid on the counter.
‘Yes, what is it? We’re not open yet.’
Celeste said: ‘I’m looking for someone who used to run this place. When it was a pub.’
‘Dominic!’ she yelled.
A man appeared from the kitchen. He, too, was extremely good-looking. ‘Where’s the effing enchilladas?’
‘Talk to this woman would you,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron.
Celeste explained again, adding: ‘It was years ago. She was called Popsi Concorde.’
‘What?’
Celeste blushed. ‘She was, really.’
He gazed at her. She felt embarrassed on Buffy’s behalf, that he had married somebody with such a silly name.
‘We negotiated with the brewery,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea who the landlord was. Never met him.’
They turned away. They were like two racehorses, tossing their heads and walking off while she stood there rattling her bucket.
Her knees felt weak. She stood outside; ridiculously, her eyes filled with tears. Nobody would talk to you like that in Melton Mowbray. If only Buffy were here; he would have bellowed at them. He would have thumped the counter, making the pimentos jump. She needed him so much that her chest hurt. She thought: I have no one else in the world.
Just then she looked at the row of shops opposite. One of them was a hairdressers.
A peroxide blonde. A peroxide blonde went to the hairdressers, didn’t she? She needed frequent touchings-up. A peroxide blonde went to the hairdressers a lot.
Celeste crossed the street. Of course Popsi could have used one of the many preparations she herself sold over the counter. But no harm in giving it a try. She stopped outside the shop. In the window, the colour photos of models had fa
ded. The place looked as if it had been there for years; that was a promising sign. It said Unisex but she couldn’t see any men inside; just an old dear being combed out. A plump woman, well into her fifties, was standing on a chair pinning up a string of gold letters: MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS. When Celeste came in she stepped down and approached her, smiling.
She looked so friendly – such a change from the people across the road – that Celeste said. ‘Hello. I’d like some highlights. Do you think they’d look nice?’
How soothing it was! Long ago her mother used to wash her hair, cradling her head in the bath, massaging in the shampoo and gently lowering her into the sudsy water. Then the rubber hose, the spray sluicing her head. The shell tiles, glimpsed through stinging eyes.
The hairdresser was called Rhoda. All through the highlights operation, which had taken ages, she had chatted to Celeste and the other stylist about how she was going to decorate her new flat in Lechworth. With each new customer, she started all over again. The lease had expired on this place and The Body Shop was moving in. ‘It’s the end of an era,’ she said. ‘My regulars are gobsmacked. What do they want with Peppermint Foot Lotion?’ Celeste sat while she blow-dried her hair. ‘I’m giving you the tousled look,’ she said, ‘it’s all the thing.’
Once, Celeste had seen a TV programme of a butterfly emerging from a pupa. It had pushed out slowly, straining and splitting the sides of its strong brown envelope. She too was making an effortful transformation. Once, she had just washed her face with soap and water and put on a track suit. Now she was learning how to apply make-up; how to buy grown-up women’s clothes. She gazed back at the streaky, tangled mop on top of her head. Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. Was she more herself, or less?
Puff-puff went the spray. She looked at Rhoda in the mirror. ‘Remember when the pub opposite was a pub?’ she asked. ‘Do you remember the woman who worked there? Years ago, it might have been. Do you remember her?’
Rhoda nodded. ‘Course. Eileen Fisher. Oh, we had some laughs!’
‘Eileen Fisher?’
‘She was a lovely person. Big-hearted. A warm, lovely person, wasn’t she, Deirdre?’
‘With that little ratty husband,’ said Deirdre. The place was empty now; she was fixing a paperchain onto the wall with a drawing pin. ‘They put him inside, didn’t they? Always thought he was dodgy.’
‘It can’t be the woman I mean,’ said Celeste. ‘Mine’s called Popsi Concorde.’
‘Oh, that was her stage name. She’d been in the theatre, see. Before she took up with what’shisname.’
‘Terry,’ said Deirdre. ‘But give him his due, Rhoda, he was always nice to her little boy.’
‘Little boy?’ asked Celeste. The hairspray smelt so strongly of almonds and disinfectant that she almost swooned.
‘Funny little thing, wasn’t he,’ said Deirdre. Her arms were full of tinsel. She gazed down at it. ‘Never more, tinsel, will you embellish our walls. I think I’m going to blub.’
‘Quentin,’ said Rhoda. ‘That was his name. She’d be sitting here, in this very chair, and he’d put on her shoes. High heels, she always dressed nicely. He’d put on his mummy’s shoes and stagger about. He did make us laugh.’
‘Not forgetting the ostrich boa,’ said Deirdre. ‘He’s probably a transvestite now.’ She giggled. ‘Or worse.’
They laughed, then suddenly stopped. ‘Lord, I’m going to miss them all,’ sighed Rhoda. ‘Every one of them, even the ratbags.’
‘Where did she go?’ asked Celeste.
Rhoda inspected her in the mirror. ‘There you are. A small triumph, though I say it myself.’
‘What happened to Popsi? Where is she?’
‘This was years ago.’
‘I know exactly where they went,’ said Deirdre. ‘When her old man was put away she got a job at that antique shop down the Fulham Road. She came back once, for her roots.’
‘What antique shop?’ asked Celeste.
‘She said we mustn’t lose touch. But you do, don’t you?’
Celeste was standing at the till now, paying with her Barclaycard. ‘Can you remember?’
Deirdre shook her head. ‘But I go past it on the bus. It’s next to that pizza place.’
Celeste signed the receipt. Her writing slanted; she couldn’t control the biro properly. Her very name looked unfamiliar, as if it belonged to somebody else. She would have to get used to the hair too. ‘Can you remember which one? You see, there were all these pasta places in Soho and I never found the right one.’
‘Pardon?’
Celeste paused. It must be the hairspray. She really felt quite strange.
‘I know,’ said Deirdre. ‘Pizza Hut.’
It was half-past three. Celeste ate a whole pepperoni pizza, deep-dish, she was that ravenous. Her hunger seemed to exist independently; it functioned, like a hospital generator, when everything else had broken down. The place was empty; outside the street lights were being switched on. She had already looked in the window of the antique shop next door, of course. There was no blonde woman sitting there; that would have been too much to hope for. Just a grey-haired old man and a lot of furniture.
She ate the crust; she always left the crust till last. Buffy had been married three times; each discovery made her feel she knew him less. Had he been a different man with each of them, somebody she wouldn’t find familiar? Not just with the wives, with the other women too. He must have been really successful once, to have bought such an enormous house in Primrose Hill. How had he behaved in it, with Jacquetta? She herself had changed so much over the past few weeks, just by moving to London. The city had an unsettling effect on her. It was like living in a huge department store, not full of clothes but full of people. Maybe that was why its inhabitants married so many times. They couldn’t resist going into the changing rooms to try on another person, and seeing how they fitted.
She paid up and went outside. The sun had long since gone; a light drizzle was falling. She stood outside the antiques shop. The man was on the phone. Some plates were displayed in the window. They didn’t look any different from the plates back home. She thought of the ornaments on the mantelpiece, back in Willow Drive. One was a donkey with baskets on its sides; how she had loved it when she was little! Maybe it wasn’t valuable, but it was valuable to her and that was the main thing. She had put away all the breakables, of course; packed them into boxes in the spare-room cupboard.
She peered through the glass. There was a big gloomy wardrobe at the back of the shop. Probably worth lots of money, but that didn’t make it any prettier. Who had died, that their furniture had ended up here? The thought of people’s pasts made her feel exhausted; she had had so much of that lately. Lumberyards of the past; children picking through the items, dressed in black like undertakers. Who was this Quentin? Was he another one of Buffy’s children?
I’m not dressed in black, thought Celeste. I’m wearing a posh coat and I’ve just been to the hairdressers. Summoning up confidence, she pushed open the door. A bell tinkled and the man looked up.
She hesitated. She had seldom been inside an antiques shop, it wasn’t her sort of place. But then Soho hadn’t been, either, or Primrose Hill. The place smelt of polish. The man finished his phonecall. He was talking in German; she heard deutschmarks.
‘Well, young lady, what can I do for you?’
He spoke as kindly as an uncle; she decided to brazen it out. She couldn’t possibly pretend she had come in to buy something. ‘I’m looking for a woman who used to work here. She’s called Eileen Fisher. She had blonde hair.’
‘Have a pastille,’ he said, offering her the tin. ‘There was an Eileen, but her hair was most definitely red.’
She put a pastille into her mouth. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Ah, Rodney. You can verify this.’
A young man had come in from the back room. He was tall and waxy-looking, with moles on his face. ‘Seen the shipping forms?’ he asked.
‘My son, Rodney,’ said the older man. ‘Eileen Wingate, you remember. My eyes weren’t deceiving me when I say she had red hair?’
‘Wingate?’ asked Celeste. Wasn’t she called Eileen Fisher? ‘Eileen Wingate? That was her name?’
‘Dyed, Pops.’
Celeste stared. ‘She’s died?’
Rodney smiled. ‘Not her. Just the barnet. Sans doute a bottle job. Definitely. Why’re you looking for her?’
‘It’s a bit complicated.’ A clock chimed; they waited until it had finished. ‘Why was she called Wingate?’
‘Must’ve been married to somebody called Mr Wingate. In truth, forsooth, I don’t know. She nattered on but one didn’t always take in every single word. Never get any work done.’
‘What happened to her? Where did she go?’
Another clock chimed; a lower dong . . . dong . . . dong . . . dong. The father and son shook their heads. ‘Moved out of London,’ said the son, finally. ‘She stayed in the business, I think, but not our line of the business. Where was it, Pops?’
‘South coast?’ he asked. ‘That ring a bell?’
‘I don’t know!’ Celeste sat down, heavily, on a spindly chair. ‘When did she go?’
‘Six, seven years. Haven’t had a dickybird. Just a card at Christmas.’
‘A card?’ asked Celeste. ‘A Christmas card?’
‘Her son does them. Quentin. Frightfully artistic. Woodcuts and whatnot.’
‘Have you got one yet?’ asked Celeste. ‘This year?’
The two men looked at her. Maybe she was behaving oddly, but she was past caring.
‘Only got a few, so far,’ said Rodney.
He took her into an office at the back of the shop. On the desk, a fax machine beeped; it hummed, and paper slid out like a tongue. Rodney was sifting through a small pile of Christmas cards.
‘It might have her address on it,’ said Celeste. ‘On the envelope – you know, one of those little stickers. It might have her address inside.’
He put down the pile. ‘Not here yet. Maybe we’ll get it at home.’