The Ex-Wives

  Celeste got out at Victoria Station. He got out, following her through the crowds. The place was packed. Everyone was fleeing the city; they carried suitcases and Christmas presents. Just for a moment he lost sight of her, then he glimpsed her standing in line for a ticket. She stood motionless, her face blank. What was she thinking? He felt uncomfortable, watching her. When people are amongst strangers they revert to themselves, they look smaller. Her breathless charm, her very Celesteness, had drained away; she was just a slim, abstracted girl consulting her watch. She could be visiting an aged aunt, instead of setting off to meet her lover.

  She got her ticket and hurried across the concourse. On the way she stopped at W H Smith; he watched her buy a magazine. She had no luggage; she must be returning that night. Besides, she had to cook him dinner the next day. She had said she would come round in the morning to fetch the turkey.

  All of a sudden, such domesticity seemed utterly unlikely. She was leaving him for ever. She was taking the boat train; she was travelling to Gatwick. She was going to fly away and he would never see her again.

  She hurried towards the platforms. Blithering hell, he hadn’t bought a ticket. He didn’t know where to buy a ticket for. Too late now. Too late to go to the ticket office and ask the man her destination. He should have thought of this, but his own boldness in this enterprise and his growing sense of unreality had paralysed him. Quick! Action stations! He hurried after her. He would have to pay on the train. He was swept up in a hurrying surge of people; thank God he had told the porter to take the dog around the block, if he wasn’t home by six.

  ‘But it’s Christmas Day!’ Miles stared at her.

  ‘Not till tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s Christmas Day tomorrow. All your family’s coming!’

  ‘We’ll be back by then. Come on.’ Brenda already had her coat on.

  ‘But it’s miles!’ he said. ‘It’s hundreds of miles. It’s East bloody Kent!’

  She was trembling – actually trembling. He had never seen anything like it. The woman was mad. ‘If we don’t get there first, somebody else’ll find it.’ She switched off the Christmas tree lights. She dashed to the window and checked the catch. ‘Don’t you see, nobody’ll go out tonight!’

  ‘No, because they’re not totally insane.’

  She switched off the light in the little crib above the fireplace. She turned round to face him. ‘I’ve found it, Miles. I’ve worked out the place where the treasure is. If you’re not coming, I’ll just go by myself.’

  Celeste was in the next carriage. Through the interconnecting door, Buffy could see the top of her head. He had bought the Standard; he pretended to read it, but he had forgotten his spectacles. Outside the suburbs slid past. The sun was already sinking; poplars cast long shadows across a wintry sports field. Next to him, a woman nudged her child: ‘Stop that, Lottie, or there’ll be tears tomorrow.’

  He was Gervais, a crooked merchant banker. He had been involved in some dubious insider dealing. The dark glasses were to conceal his identity; he was fleeing the country – Dover-Calais-Basle. The climax of the episode was a fight to the death in the snow-covered Alps. It was a European co-production, Klaus-Maria Brandauer, the works.

  ‘Don’t stare!’ hissed the woman. ‘It’s rude.’

  He smiled at the child, and rewound his scarf. Close-up, here, of his noble profile.

  This is why I love acting, he thought. Anything’s better than being me.

  The car, with Miles and Brenda in it, sped along the M4. They had left their home, which was already in shadow. Miles was trying to remember Christmases past but he couldn’t manage it. Unhappiness plugs our ears, it presses its fingers into our eye sockets. He was a lump of matter, no better than putty. He had no past and no future. Only the car was moving.

  The train stopped at Dover Priory. Celeste got off. Outside, people greeted each other with open arms. Nobody was meeting her, however. He followed the rust-coloured coat as it made for the taxi-rank.

  She drove off. Ducking into a taxi, he leant across to the driver and repeated the line from a thousand movies.

  ‘Follow that cab.’

  The sun was sinking. Beside Miles, in the passenger seat, Brenda leaned forward. ‘Oh, hurry!’ she said. She looked like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, leaning forward on her bicycle. The sharp nose; the sharp voice. They were hurtling through Kent. He was driving so fast that soon, surely, they would spin off into the sky.

  Buffy had removed his dark glasses. He was in the middle of the countryside, the middle of nowhere. He stood shivering in the lane, watching the cab leave. The driver hadn’t switched off his inside light; it glowed, a bright lozenge against the flaming sky. For a mad moment he wanted to shout stop! Civilization was driving away, leaving him totally alone. He was freezing cold.

  Celeste had disappeared down a muddy track. She hadn’t seen him; he had told his taxi to stop further up the lane. What on earth was she doing here in the wilds of nowhere? Who was she seeing? It was getting darker by the minute. Why did it always get so dark in the country, so soon and for so long? How did anyone stand it? Near him, something was rustling in the hedge – something bulky. Far away, across the fields, a dog barked; the loneliest sound in the world.

  Buffy had always had an equivocal relationship with the countryside. It was best experienced – indeed should only be experienced – during a hot June afternoon with a glass of Chablis in one’s hand. The cottage in Suffolk had been bought for Jacquetta’s sake; she had said she felt trapped in London and at that time he would have done anything to please her. He had had visions of the boys romping through the woods and returning home with sticklebacks in jam-jars; of Jacquetta transformed into a smiling, wife-type person. Of himself transformed into a manly paterfamilias, chopping wood and presiding over games of charades during their TV-free evenings. It hadn’t turned out like that, of course. It hadn’t turned out into anything remotely resembling that.

  He walked along the lane – even that made him breathless – and stopped at the track. It led downhill, between thick hedges. There was still enough daylight to see that it was muddy – tyre-ruts glinting with water. On the other hand it was too dark to see with any accuracy how to step around the muddiest bits. At the end of the lane – far away, impossibly far, in his condition – he could see the lights of some sort of habitation. Celeste’s love-nest. He felt suddenly, achingly, lonely. If only she were here, to keep him company! Impossible, of course. She was his enemy now; the very person he was stalking. Another treacherous woman. His darling Celeste, she had turned out to be just like the others. Oh, the weariness of it, the plummeting predictability!

  He listened to the silence. Far away, there was the hum of the main road. No other signs or sounds of human activity. On the other side of the hedge, startlingly close, something coughed. It sounded horribly human. What a cold, wet, horrible place the countryside was! And there was so much of it, miles and miles of it, going on forever. Oh, to be back in London, in his cosy flat!

  Stumbling and slipping, he inched his way down the track. His feet sank into the mud. He heard the bronchial cough again, then a rustling noise and some bleating. There must be sheep in there. Christmas Eve: in other circumstances the whole thing could be quite Biblical.

  Who on earth lived down there, and what exactly was he going to do? All he knew was that his socks were sodden; his shoes were hopelessly inadequate for this sort of thing. If he had known, he would have brought a pair of wellington boots.

  It took Buffy a long time to inch his way down the track. It was quite dark by now, though a moon had risen. Through the trees he could see the lit windows of a dwelling, nearer now. The yellow rectangles reminded him of an advent calendar, of years of children squabbling about whose turn it was to open the next little window and then, quite suddenly, growing too old to bother. An arctic wind sliced across his cheeks; it sliced through his thin, city coat. Was that a twinge of angina? Faintly, very faintly, he heard the sound of mus
ic. He slithered and grabbed at the hedge, tearing his hand.

  Maybe he should turn back. What had knowledge ever brought him but pain? So many betrayals. Was there anyone one could grasp, in this world, and hold close to your heart?

  He couldn’t turn back, of course. He was lost in the windy night. There was nowhere to go, and nobody to take him there. And it was too late now. Sodden and scratched, he was standing on someone’s spongey lawn.

  The black bulk of a building loomed up. It looked like a cottage. The front door opened, with a blaze of light. Donna é mobile swelled out, Pavarotti, and spilled across the lawn. The light shafted across the garden, illuminating the trunks of trees. He heard laughter.

  Celeste came out. She was with a man, who was muffled up in a hat and greatcoat. They were laughing together. Arm in arm, they hurried off down the garden; they seemed to be carrying bags.

  He watched them, in the moonlight. They crossed the garden, the lit, theatrical set; they climbed over a fence. And then they were gone.

  The blood drained from him. Tears filled his eyes. Another man – he had guessed, of course. But no amount of steeling himself could prepare him for the staggering voltage of the truth.

  Miles, obeying Brenda’s instructions, stopped the car outside a Happy Eater.

  ‘Can’t we have something to eat first?’ he asked. Through the window he saw Christmas decorations, brightly-lit tables, and people putting food into their mouths. We may not be happy, he thought, but we could at least eat.

  ‘You’ve had your sandwiches,’ said Brenda. Shaking, she pulled open the Ordnance Survey map, yet again. ‘Three fields, and we’re there! Come on!’ She got out of the car and pulled out the spade and the trowel. ‘It’s a full moon!’ she whispered. ‘A hunter’s moon! Get the torch!’

  He got out. The wind slapped his race. They seemed to be on some sort of ridge, miles from anywhere. A large elephant stood nearby, its back silvered by the moonlight. Beside him the parked cars were dimmed by condensation. Brenda pulled his arm; he stumbled across the tarmac.

  Buffy stumbled blindly across the garden. He collided with a barbed-wire fence. Breathing hoarsely, he wriggled through it, tearing his coat. He seemed to be in a tangle of brambles now. Trees reared up above him. The moon was hurtling through clouds. Lower down, an orange glow seeped up, like a stain, from the horizon. That must be Dover – civilisation. A thousand miles away. Now he was deeper into the wood he could hear the traffic on the main road, louder somehow. Why? A trick of the air. Amongst the trees some creature – a bird? How the hell did he know? – something made a scraping sound, again and again. The sound of a knife being pulled through a sharpener. Himself, sharpening a knife for the Sunday roast. So many roasts, so many Sundays. Through the trees, in the moonlight, he could see the two figures. They were walking together, close to each other. His brain roared. He stumbled towards them.

  Miles stumbled after his wife. She was galloping down the hill. On either side of her, rocks detached themselves from the ground and scampered away, bleating. He heard her voice. ‘That’s it! There it is!’

  She pointed. A wood rose up, ghostly in the moonlight.

  ‘Fifty feet inside the perimeter,’ she called, ‘due south!’

  I’m not here, he thought. This is a dream. I’m asleep, in Swindon. In a moment I’m going to wake up. There’ll be no Brenda; nothing.

  She was running down the hill towards the wood. He heard the thump thump of her gumboots. The moon was so bright he could see her breath, puffing.

  Buffy pushed through the brambles. A thorn caught his scarf and pulled him back, temporarily throttling him. The sky had cleared. Above, the moon shone in a vaulted dome of stars.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ hissed Brenda. She pulled Miles behind a fir tree. ‘Look!’ she whispered.

  He peered out. Between the trees, fifty feet away, something moved. It was two figures, a man and a woman. He could see them quite clearly. They were toiling, amongst the trunks. Digging. He saw the glint of a spade.

  ‘Oh, no!’ gasped Brenda. ‘Somebody’s there already!’ Her voice broke. ‘I can’t bear it!’

  Suddenly she launched herself off, crashing through the undergrowth.

  ‘Brenda!’ he hissed. Slithering and stumbling, he followed her.

  Buffy stared. What was happening? There seemed to be four people now. He heard the faint sound of voices. Through the trees, in the moonlight, the couples looked quite Shakespearean. Lovers in the Forest of Arden. And what bloody part was he supposed to play? He stood there, numb with cold. He had been thrust upon this stage; he had forgotten his lines.

  A fight seemed to have broken out; two of the people were struggling. He heard a shout.

  Brenda was wrestling with the overcoated figure, trying to pull the spade out of its hand. Miles heard it shouting: ‘We’re not digging things up! We’re putting things in! We’re putting plants in!’

  ‘Stop her, can’t you?’

  A girl stood in front of him. She grabbed his arm.

  ‘Stop that horrible woman!’ she said. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘It’s my wife.’

  He stared at the girl. Moonlight shone on her wild eyes and tangled hair. She was utterly beautiful – the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Gazing at her, he felt a curious sensation. It was as if his body was being both drained and refilled – a tender transfusion. He woke up from his long hibernation. It was as if he were suddenly face to face with the lost half of himself, with somebody so utterly familiar he didn’t have to speak. His heart swelled, filling him, blocking his throat. Gently, he pushed the hair off her forehead.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Celeste.’

  He couldn’t speak. He wanted to put his arms around her. He wanted to open his coat, pull her in and button her up close to him; he wanted to press her against his beating heart.

  At that moment there was a crashing noise, like an elephant approaching. A bulky figure was charging towards them. It wore a black hat and a black coat; it was trying to push through the undergrowth but a fallen tree blocked its path.

  The girl turned. ‘Buffy!’ she cried.

  The man was squeezing under the bough of the tree, trying to crawl through. Suddenly he bellowed – a bellow that echoed through the wood, silencing them all. With a flapping sound, birds flew off.

  He lay on the ground, groaning. ‘My heart!’ he groaned. ‘My back!’

  They approached him. He lay there like a beached whale, moaning with pain.

  ‘It’s a heart attack!’ he moaned.

  Celeste knelt down beside him. ‘Buffy! What are you doing here?’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he yelled. He lifted his head, grunting, and pointed to the figure bundled up in the greatcoat. ‘Who’s that tramp?’ His head fell back.

  ‘That’s not a tramp,’ replied Celeste. A twig snapped as they all stepped nearer. The wind had died down; far away, there was the sound of singing.

  She shone the torch onto the face of her companion. No, it wasn’t a tramp. It was a middle-aged woman. She wore a woolly beret thing pulled over her ears. She stared down at the figure lying at her feet. He stared up.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘Lorna.’

  ‘That’s not a tramp, you silly billy,’ said Celeste. ‘That’s my mother.’

  Thirty

  IT WAS CHRISTMAS Day. Freezing cold, heavy grey clouds, the first flakes of snow falling. The trees were locked like iron in the grip of winter; the only movement was the flutter of birds, swinging on the strings of bacon rind. Outside Keeper’s Cottage, in deepest Kent, several cars were parked.

  In the cluttered little living room Buffy was laid out on the floor, his head resting on a cushion. He was surrounded by his ex-wives, all three of them. Lorna was rummaging in the cupboard, looking for some sherry. Celeste was bringing in some glasses.

  ‘We thought you were dying,’ said Popsi.

  ‘So you care!’ cried Buffy. ‘You all care!’


  Nobody replied to this. Celeste put the glasses on the table, removing a pile of gloves and scarves. ‘I didn’t realize it was only his back,’ she said. ‘He seemed in such a state. That’s why I phoned you all.’

  ‘I am in a state,’ said Buffy. ‘It’s agony. It’s completely locked.’

  ‘It did that in Kendal, remember?’ said Popsi. ‘On our honeymoon. You were as helpless as a baby.’

  Penny looked down at him. ‘It did that when we were supposed to be going to Daddy’s seventieth birthday party. Purely psychosomatic.’ She nudged him with her boot. ‘What an old hypo,’ she said. ‘Buck up, you self-pitying old buffoon.’

  ‘Don’t be so heartless!’ said Popsi. She ruffled his hair. ‘You poor old sausage. Shall I light you a cigarette?’

  Jacquetta gazed at him vaguely. ‘You should centre your spinal fluid,’ she said.

  The room was so crowded it was difficult to move without bumping into somebody. Tobias and Bruno were jammed between the sofa and the bookshelves; like all adolescents, they seemed to take up more space than fully-grown people. They were sorting through Lorna’s pile of cassettes.

  ‘Rough!’ said Bruno. ‘It’s all bleeding opera.’

  ‘You can thank me for that,’ called out Buffy. ‘I taught all these women to love opera.’

  ‘No, actually,’ said Lorna. ‘I taught you.’

  ‘Oh, oh, he’s re-writing history again,’ said Penny. She looked down at Buffy. ‘He’s good at that.’

  ‘I am here, you know,’ said Buffy. ‘You can address me. I’m here, I’m in pain.’

  Eleven people were squashed into the room. Some of them had never met before; most of them had never met Lorna. Summoned from their various Christmases and thrust into this cottage, miles from anywhere, they still wore a dazed look. But they were starting to settle down. Quentin and Nyange sat in the window seat. He was holding a skein of her hair as she demonstrated how to plait cowrie shells into it.