Heartbreak Hotel (21 page)

‘I’ll concentrate on pruning, weeding, plant identification, autumn sowings, division of perennials, soil types, planning your garden from scratch, plants suitable for shade, for cities, for window boxes, for containers. Plus basic vegetable-growing, of course.’ Lavinia Balcombe, the course tutor, looked at Buffy. ‘How does that sound?’

‘Splendid,’ beamed Buffy. By God, the woman was terrifying. She was an Hon., the owner of some vast pile over the border in Shropshire whose grounds were open to the public under the National Gardens Scheme. Heaven only knew why she wanted to teach the course. Maybe, like many toffs, she was on her uppers. Or maybe she just liked bossing people around.

‘Will there be some hands-on stuff?’ asked Buffy. ‘You could use the garden here as your guinea pig. So to speak.’

Lavinia didn’t smile. Glancing out of the window, she gave a brief nod. Buffy was relieved. This, of course, was part of the original plan. Though he had got the lawn mowed during the summer, the rest of the place was still a shambles. Now he had got his car sorted out it was time to get to grips with the garden. The beauty of it all, of course, was that people paid him for doing it.

And the first course had been by and large a success. It hadn’t gone entirely according to plan, but then what in life did? On day three Rosemary had decamped with her husband on a second honeymoon in the Brecon Beacons; Des, instead of falling in love with India, had been found in bed with Bella; Amy had decamped to Nolan’s house, reappearing each morning sated with sex and tenderly stroking his bottom when nobody was looking. Then there was the breakaway jewellery group, who had given up on the course altogether and who had gone home festooned like Christmas trees. But they had all enjoyed themselves and the course had made a modest profit.

And now he and Voda were preparing the house for the next influx. All the rooms were booked, with the overflow accommodated in local establishments. The alarming Balcombe woman had submitted her teaching plan for the week in spread-sheet form, each topic itemised and boxed into its allotted half-hour slot, with ten minutes for questions. He wouldn’t be surprised if she turned up in jackboots.

And India was arriving, yet again, to help. This, of course, was welcome – during the last course they had been run off their feet, she had been a godsend. Besides, Buffy always enjoyed her company. But didn’t the girl have better things to do than be a dogsbody to her stepdad? He had actually rung Jacquetta to ask her opinion but his ex had been her usual vague self. ‘India has issues,’ she had said, and gone on to tell him about her own experiments with driftwood sculpture. At what point, in his marriage, had he realised the depths of Jacquetta’s self-absorption? Later than he should, but such is the treachery of desire.

Now India was there, helping Voda make up the beds. Buffy had a bad back, he couldn’t perform the heavier tasks. His job was to replenish the tea bags. As he did so, India told him about the imminent arrival of his grandchild.

‘The baby’s due any day now,’ she said. ‘Bruno’s having kittens.’

It was about time Buffy became a grandfather. Though several of his children were middle-aged, none of them had yet reproduced. Quentin had the excuse of being gay, but what about the others? Had their parents’ shenanigans destroyed their faith in becoming parents themselves? Nowadays people were putting it off until later, of course – women like Nyange, with her high-flying career. But the old clock was ticking and though Buffy found Bruno’s girlfriend a whiny little creature he was grateful to her for knuckling down and getting on with it.

Buffy fancied himself as a grandfather and had been rehearsing the role for years. Everyone said that it was so much easier than being a parent. God knew he had made mistakes in that department but by all accounts a grandchild would be different. Less responsibility, more fun, that sort of thing. To some extent this was also true of stepchildren. His affection for India was unmuddied, even during her teenage years, by the complex and guilt-inducing relationships he had had with the fruit of his own loins. He exempted Celeste from this. Having appeared in his life aged twenty-three, a fully-formed adult, the two of them had picked up from there with a clean slate, and how delightful that had been.

‘They’re going to text me if anything happens,’ said India.

‘I thought your mobile didn’t work here,’ said Buffy.

‘I’ve switched from Orange,’ she said, glancing at Voda. ‘I’m on Vodaphone now.’

Buffy chuckled. ‘How appropriate.’

‘What?’ said India sharply. For some reason, she blushed.

He turned to Voda. ‘Talking of which, I’ve always wanted to ask –’

‘Don’t.’ Voda held up both hands, as if to ward him off. ‘Mobiles weren’t invented then. I was named after some Norse god, but they got the spelling wrong. That’s Mum and Dad in a nutshell.’

‘Everyone asks her that,’ said India. ‘She’s fed up with it.’

Buffy looked at India in surprise. How did she know? And why take such a proprietorial tone?

Voda frowned at India. Why? There was something going on between them but Buffy was blessed if he knew what.

India changed the subject. ‘I’m amazed anyone actually pays for this room.’ Arms full of sheets, she was gazing at the dressing table, whose broken leg was propped up with a copy of
Palgrave’s Golden Treasury
. They were in the Blue Bedroom, the one that leaked. As it wasn’t raining, the bucket was tucked discreetly under the washbasin.

‘You sound like Nyange,’ Buffy said. ‘Anyway, if these courses are a success I’ll be able to fix the roof.’

At that moment the doorbell rang. Buffy hurried downstairs to find an early arrival on the doorstep.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ said the man. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and looked at it.
Check-in time 2 p.m. onwards
. ‘Shall I go away again?’

‘Of course not.’ Buffy looked at his watch. Five to twelve. ‘Come in and have a drink.’

Buffy still hadn’t got over the novelty of having his own bar, where he could pour his own drinks and not pay for them. There was a transgressive thrill to it. One day he would get a proper contraption where the bottles hung upside down; as it was, they were simply lined up on a sideboard.

The man, who had introduced himself as Harold Cohen, was looking at the posters. ‘I thought I recognised you,’ he said. ‘You’re an actor, aren’t you? I saw you in that thing with Anna Massey. You were a Lebanese pimp.’

Buffy passed him a gin and tonic. ‘Not my finest hour,’ he said. ‘Slight case of miscasting.’

They sat down. ‘Pia, my ex, was in the theatre,’ said Harold. ‘But dance was more her thing, the more obscure and foreign the better.’

‘I had a wife like that,’ said Buffy. He remembered Jacquetta dragging him along to see Pina Bausch’s troupe, where a lot of flat-chested women threw chairs at each other. This was followed by a heated argument in Pizza Express and a week-long sulk, on both sides.

Harold heaved a sigh. ‘Bit of a girls’ thing,’ he said. ‘As I found, to my cost.’ He had a lugubrious, Jewish face and an unkempt air. Buffy recognised a fellow refugee from the marital battlefield; the frayed cuffs and defeated slope to the shoulders were a giveaway. He was already warming to the chap.

‘I’m glad I spotted the article,’ said Harold. ‘Not that I read the
Express
– I found it on the Tube. But things had been getting a bit out of hand.’

‘In the garden?’

He nodded. ‘I was sort of inundated.’

‘I know. Wait till you see my thistles. I’m hoping you lot can sort that out.’

‘I mean, with people.’ Harold stirred the ice cubes with his finger. ‘I didn’t realise there was so much desperation out there. I mean,
I’m
desperate too, of course, in a cosmic sense. But I’m talking about women.’

‘Women? You lucky sod.’ Buffy inspected Harold. He looked younger than him, late fifties at a guess, but nobody could conceivably call him a babe magnet.

‘I know, I know,’ said Harold. ‘Thing is, I’ve got a feeling anyone would do, even an old wreck like me. Or maybe they just fancy the house. Or the hens. God knows. But I’m finding it rather awkward, especially with a couple of old friends. Things haven’t been the same since they, you know …’

‘Tried to get into your trousers? Send them down here!’

Harold laughed. ‘Anyway, that’s why I thought I should learn to tackle the garden myself.’

Buffy made them both a sandwich and uncorked a bottle of wine. Time seemed to be pleasantly slipping away, as it did on a soporific Sunday afternoon. The dog lay slumped in the sunlight, twitching with rabbit dreams. Buffy knew he should be helping the girls but, after all, Harold was a customer. It turned out that the chap was a blocked writer – another reason for the cuffs and the shoulders. He hadn’t written a word for months.

‘You’ll find plenty of material here,’ said Buffy, refilling their glasses. ‘The town’s heaving with drama. London is too, of course, but nobody knows their neighbours so who can tell? Here, the post office queue’s straight out of
The Decameron
. Then you’ve got the people on the course –’

The doorbell rang.

‘Talk of the devil,’ said Buffy, heaving himself to his feet.

He opened the door to three guests, smiling expectantly. They had vast suitcases, as if arriving for a month. At the same moment India thundered down the stairs, waving her mobile.

‘I’ve just got a text from Bruno!’ she cried. ‘Becky’s waters have broken!’

Lavinia, the course tutor, had joined the guests for dinner. When Buffy came round with the bottle, she put her hand over her glass. ‘None for me, thank you, I’ve got to give my talk.’

‘Er, what talk?’ Buffy asked.

‘My introductory talk. Nine o’clock, in the bar.’ She paused, feeling her face heating up. She took a breath and said: ‘You know, you’re to blame for me becoming a magistrate.’

‘Goodness, are you one?’

‘When I was young, I was a fan of
Crown Court
. I used to watch it in the school holidays. You were in it, weren’t you?’

He nodded. ‘First Usher, for my sins. Well, fancy that!’ He paused. ‘Er, what exactly were you planning for this talk?’

‘I call it “Roots and Shoots”. Just basic plant structure.’

‘Are you sure they’ll be in the mood for that? After dinner?’

‘We might as well get cracking. There’s an awful lot to get through in five days.’

Appropriately enough, Buffy was wearing a floral waistcoat. Lavinia recognised the distinctive leaves and drooping, bell-shaped flowers of
Dicentra formosa
. Though he had put on a lot of weight since the
Crown Court
days –
every button doing its duty
, as her mother used to say – she had felt a small
frisson
when they met. A real actor! She didn’t meet many – indeed, any – in her circle. In fact, this had been one of the reasons she had volunteered to run the course in the first place. Had she sounded too syrupy?

India brought in the starters. Several people, leaning back and plucking her sleeve, asked, ‘Any news?’ That Buffy’s daughter-in-law was labouring, at this very moment, to bring his grandchild into the world seemed to have caught the guests’ imagination.

Lavinia herself had never liked children and certainly didn’t want one now. Her husband Teddy had once or twice mildly raised the subject but she had stopped that nonsense with one of her looks. Now she was forty-eight and any danger of that was long since past, even if she and Teddy were at it hammer and tongs, which was most certainly not the case.

Besides, her job as a magistrate had put her off any idea of procreation. Why? Need one ask? People seemed to think that the judiciary were old fuddy-duddies but nothing could be further from the truth. The things she heard would make a normal person’s hair stand on end, such was the Sodom and Gomorrah of modern family life. Emerging from the court she felt like a coal miner covered in filth; only a good wallow in the bath could wash it off.

No, her plants were her children. After all, babies looked exactly the same as each other but each plant was different. No contest. She gave life to them by sowing the seed. She nurtured them through their frail, early weeks, then potted them on like teenagers leaving home. But they still needed her, even when settled into the big wide world of her mixed borders. Every day she walked around checking up on them, checking them for pests, for blight, for all the blows that life might fling at them. Their suffering was her suffering; the sight of a dahlia consumed by slugs gave her physical pain. And their flowering was her triumph too.

Not that her husband noticed a thing. Teddy had no interest in the garden at all; it was just a handy site for a blaze. What was it with men and bonfires? Every autumn he waded in, slashing and burning, leaving a trail of destruction behind him. He looked such an inoffensive chap, but then so did most of the men who turned up in front of her bench, guilty of the most brutal abuse.

That’s why Lavinia liked opening her garden to the public. At last she had an appreciative audience for her handiwork. She enjoyed standing there modestly, listening to their gasps of awe – at the house, at the grounds – and answering their questions.
Yellow Book
visitors were a nosy bunch, always trying to worm their way indoors on some pretext or other, usually the loo. They also helped themselves to cuttings, glancing around furtively before taking out their secateurs for a snip. Lavinia didn’t mind; she did the same thing herself.

And at least they were interested. Lavinia was in the bar now, the chairs arranged around her in a semicircle. She was giving her introductory talk about plant structure but her pupils seemed more eager to hear about the blasted baby. ‘How much is she dilated?’ they asked India, when she brought in the coffee. ‘How many contractions per minute?’

It was mostly women who asked, of course, but then it was mostly women in the audience. In fact, it was mostly women everywhere, and all of a certain age. Wherever one went – to church, to the theatre, to a gallery, to a garden centre, it was wall-to-wall females. The same applied to courses, to cruises, to just about anything. The only place where men outnumbered women seemed to be at the magistrates’ court or the Shropshire Agricultural Show. Lavinia had presumed that ‘Gardening for Beginners’, advertised for those who had recently broken up, would attract an equal proportion of males – more, in fact, as they were unlikely to know much about the topic – but it was the usual ratio of three men to seven women. Several of these had the bright, needy look found in solitary females of advanced years. Pathetic though Teddy was, the thought of abandoning him and joining their ranks was too ghastly to contemplate.