The Ex-Wives (33 page)

The Dizzy Gillespie record finished with a click. They sat there in the silence. After a moment they realized it wasn't completely quiet; there was a low humming sound. Maybe it was the record-player motor.

They sat very still. Popsi belched. ‘Whoops,' she said, ‘pardon.'

They listened. There was a far rumbling sound, the sound of an engine. They held their breath; they felt like castaways, hearing the drone of an approaching airplane.

It was getting louder. Suddenly they jumped up and hurried to the window. Crowding around it, jostling each other, they pulled open the curtains. A sheep's skull fell to the floor.

They pressed their faces against the glass. Outside, a pair of headlights shone in the darkness.

‘It's Leon,' said Jacquetta. ‘Just when I was starting to enjoy myself.' She turned round and said to Buffy. ‘He's always been jealous of you.'

‘He hasn't!' said Buffy, from the floor. ‘Has he?'

‘Why do you think he writes all those books?'

Penny stared into the dark. Torchlight was approaching, bobbing across the garden. ‘It's Colin, being all manly,' she said. ‘do you know, he's never said he loves me. This is his inarticulate way of showing it.'

‘I used to say I loved you!' said Buffy. ‘All the time.'

Quentin nudged Penny aside and pressed his nose against the glass. The torchlight was closer now, dazzling him. ‘Maybe it's Talbot,' he said. ‘But I don't think so somehow. Anyway he can't drive.'

The doorbell rang. Lorna went out to answer it.
The other women waited. For some reason they looked sheepish, as if they had been caught
in flagrante
. They heard a man's voice, in the hall. They heard the rumble of motors and more men's voices, out in the garden. They smelt exhaust fumes.

Lorna came back in. She spoke to Celeste. ‘It's that man we met in the wood last night.'

Celeste stared at her. ‘What?'

‘That man who took such a fancy to you. The man with the awful wife.'

‘He's here?'

‘What an angel,' said Lorna. ‘He's come to resuce us. He's got them to bring the snowplough down the lane.' She turned. ‘Celeste?'

But Celeste had gone. She had stumbled over Buffy and rushed out into the hall.

THE NEXT DAY
the snow melted. In the wood the trees dripped; secret sighs and creaks. A soft thud as the snow loosened and fell from a bough. In Lorna's garden the snowman was melting. Gradually, Buffy thawed. The burly shape dwindled, perspiring in the sunshine. The overcoat sagged; the hat sank into its shoulders. As the hours passed it subsided gently into its own pool of water.

The next day, all that remained was a bundle of empty clothes on the scuffed and muddy grass. A puddle, surrounded by the skiddy footmarks of its children.

LATER
,
MONTHS LATER
, when Celeste and Miles were living together, he said to her: ‘Just think. A little tin of fishes led me to you, my gorgeous. Pilchards! I don't even like them. Do you?'

She shook her head. A little gold fish had led her, too – back into the past and forward into the future. Sometimes, when she looked back to the events of that winter it all seemed like a fairy story. If she went back to the antiques arcade Popsi's booth would be shuttered up with a metal grid.
Who? Nobody of that name here. Who has a name like that anyway?
If she opened the paper and read a travel piece by Penny who could believe it? Had Penny really sipped a daiquiri in Barbados or was she lying on somebody's floor spinning her own dreams? The recycling book
was never published; the Leisure Experience was never built.

Waxie and the other squatters had long since moved into her flat and changed the locks. In fact she had never gone back at all. The rabbits and telephones and colanders; they had never really belonged to her. They were just props that had helped her form this new character, Celeste; props that seemed to mean something at the time, if only she had understood.

What did it all mean, and did it matter anymore? Everyone she loved, she had them now, and they had her. She had joined them. She had even helped create an ex-wife of her own – Brenda, languishing in Swindon. She felt so guilty about this that she had started to read Leon's book. She had joined them all right, her tumultuous new family.

And that afternoon she was meeting Buffy for tea. They were going to plan his delayed sixtieth birthday party, to which everyone was invited. They had to meet early because he was working that night. He was playing Mr Hardcastle in
She Stoops to Conquer
and, what with the wig and whatnot, the make-up took ages.

Read on for the first chapter of Deborah Moggach's brilliant new novel
Something to Hide

I'll tell you how the last one ended. I was watching the news and eating supper off a tray. There was an item about a methane explosion, somewhere in Lincolnshire. A barn full of cows had blown up, killing several animals and injuring a stockman. It's the farting, apparently.

I missed someone with me to laugh at this. To laugh, and shake our heads about factory farming. To share the bottle of wine I was steadily emptying. I wondered if Alan would ever move in. This was hard to imagine. What did he feel about factory farming? I hadn't a clue.

And then, there he was. On the TV screen. A reporter was standing outside the Eurostar terminal, something about an incident in the tunnel. Passengers were milling around behind him. Amongst them was Alan.

He was with a woman. Just a glimpse and he was gone.

I'm off to see me bruv down in Somerset. Look after yourself, love, see you Tuesday.

Just a glimpse but I checked later, on iPlayer. I reran the news and stopped it at that moment. Alan turning towards the woman and mouthing something at her. She was young, needless to say, much younger than me, and wearing a red padded jacket. Chavvy, his sort. Her stilled face, eyebrows raised. Then they were gone, swallowed up in the crowd.

See you Tuesday and I'll get that plastering done by the end of the week.

Don't fuck the help. For when it ends, and it will, you'll find yourself staring at a half-plastered wall with wires dangling like entrails and a heap of rubble in the corner. And he nicked my power drill.

Before him, and the others, I was married. I have two grown-up children but they live in Melbourne and Seattle, as far away as they could go. Of course there's scar tissue but I miss them with a physical pain of which they are hopefully unaware. Neediness is even more unattractive in the old than in the young. Their father has long since remarried. He has a corporate Japanese wife who thinks I'm a flake. Neurotic, needy, borderline alcoholic. I can see it in the swing of her shiny black hair. For obvious reasons, I keep my disastrous love-life to myself.

I'm thinking of buying a dog. It would gaze at me moistly, its eyes filled with unconditional love. This is what lonely women long for, as they turn sixty. I would die with my arms around a cocker spaniel, there are worse ways to go.

Three months have passed and Alan is a distant humiliation. I need to find another builder to finish off the work in the basement, then I can re-let it, but I'm seized with paralysis and can't bring myself to go down the stairs. I lived in it when I was young, you see, and just arrived in London. Years later I bought the house, and tenants downstairs have come and gone, but now the flat has been stripped bare those early years are suddenly vivid. I can remember it like yesterday, the tights drying in front of the gas fire, the sex and smoking, the laughter. To descend now into that chilly tomb, with its dust and debris – I don't have the energy.

Now I sound like a depressive but I'm not. I'm just a woman longing for love. I'm tired of being put in the back seat of the car when I go out with a couple. I'm tired of internet dates with balding men who talk about golf –
golf
. I'm tired of coming home to silent rooms, everything as I left it, the
Marie Celeste
of the solitary female. Was Alan the last man I shall ever lie with, naked in my arms?

This is how I am, at this moment. Darkness has fallen. In the windows of the flats opposite, faces are illuminated by their laptops. I have the feeling that we are all fixed here, at this point in time, as motionless as the Bonnard lady in the print on my wall. Something must jolt me out of this stupor, it's too pathetic for words. In front of me is a bowl of Bombay mix; I've worked my way through it. Nothing's left but the peanuts, my least favourite.

I want to stand in the street and howl at the moon.

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Epub ISBN 9781446496060
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Vintage, an imprint of Vintage Publishing,
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Copyright © Deborah Moggach 1993

Deborah Moggach has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published in Great Britain in 1993 by William Heinemann
Published by Vintage in 2006

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library