The Subsequent Wife

by Priscilla Masters

  My curiosity was piqued.

  Most of our customers give you a clue as to why they need a store and what they intended to keep there. It gave them a chance to offload their life stories. Have a moan about circumstances or crow about their success. Not Mr Taverner who was, by nature, I guessed, secretive. It would take a lot to winkle his secret out of him.

  And then the day grew busier. Scarlet and Andrew came in and I didn’t give my new client any more thought. There were more interesting clients then him. I didn’t see his car slide away because Ruby Ngoma had arrived.

  Ruby was seventy and, well, she looked … seventy. Skinny as they come, addicted to cigarettes and gin. A native of Tunstall, Ruby was currently ‘staying with a friend’. Sofa-surfing, which was why her meagre possessions were with us. Eight years ago, she’d been on a holiday to The Gambia. And there she’d met Number One Charmer Solomon Ngoma. Only he wasn’t so much a charmer as a conman. And Ruby, desperate for love – and sex – fell in ‘leerv’. Solomon followed her back to the UK, professing undying leerv also, and Ruby made the biggest mistake of her life. Reader, she married him. They lived in her house, a modest ex-council semi, but a palace to Solomon Ngoma, who quickly adapted to the ways of a love rat/man on the make. Before long he’d realized how much the house was worth – £120,000 – which was a lifetime’s earnings for him as a beach bum. And so he’d worked it all out and married Ruby, who had quickly remortgaged the property in order to lotus-eat on cruise ships and luxury hotels with her leervver.

  ‘I was a bit of a fool,’ Ruby said when she brought her stuff to the store and signed the contract. ‘I fell for it.’ She had given me the benefit of her experience. ‘Listen to me, my girl. Men – don’t trust them. When you’re young they want to get inside your knickers. When you’re old …’ Her faded eyes fixed on mine. ‘When you’re old,’ she continued in her deep, wheezy voice, ‘all they want is your bank account.’

  Having married Solomon – big mistake that – though she said with a wink that it had been a darned sight better than her first wedding (Stoke registry office, pissing down with rain, wearing a borrowed blue evening dress). ‘No,’ she said, ‘I pushed the boat out. Had a bloody lovely Victorian-style wedding dress, long massive skirt and a veil and took our vows on the beach.’ Cough, cough, cough. ‘All the trimmings.’ She rasped out another few coughs and winked at me. ‘Gorgeous, I was. You should have seen me.’

  And I wished I had. I really wished I had. But the official photographs had been a casualty of her marital break-up. ‘Smashed them all. Ripped them to pieces …’ Her face had saddened. ‘Regretted it later but there you are.’ Said bravely, with the spirit of the Blitz.

  You could almost see it coming. Ruby had been made a fool of, in spite of her seventy years. Within three, Solomon had hopped it back to The Gambia, having forced the sale of her remortgaged house. ‘Lovely it was too. You should have seen it. Proper posh. I’d got it lovely. With an en suite off the main bedroom.’ She pronounced it N suite. Solomon had taken his share and scarpered.

  ‘I wasn’t so much heartbroken,’ she said, ‘as I felt a bloody fool. Bloody lawyers,’ she grumbled. ‘How the heck do they expect me to buy a house with less than thirty grand left?’

  I shrugged and she fixed me with a glare. ‘You be careful, my girl. Don’t make the mistake I made.’ Too late, Ruby realized she had been made a monkey of, fallen into a trap set by a clever young man who had only his youth as a bargaining chip.

  But at least she’d had a man, been married – twice. (Widowed then divorced.)

  I’m old fashioned, I know. I wanted to be married. I wanted some family of my own. Not my mum or dad, who were busily, selfishly, proceeding with their lives separately, and as though I didn’t exist. I didn’t even get birthday or Christmas cards from them any more. I wasn’t even sure they knew my address. And certainly not my evil brat of a brother, Josh. I wanted a husband who adored me as Sonny did Stella. An adorable fat baby like Geraint. I wanted love. But where was I to look?

  I’d tried the internet.

  With Scaries I & II, and half a dozen other experiences, I wasn’t going to chance it again.

  Which left me exactly where?

  You guessed it. No Woman’s Land.

  TEN

  My newest client turned up again two weeks later in late April, this time lumping one heavy suitcase, the size you take on a two-week holiday. I watched him struggle to lift it out of the car before wheeling it into the store. He remembered to sign in this time, but scribbled hurriedly, without looking at me, shuffling in, eyes on the ground, steps quick. He couldn’t wait to get out of the office. I would have offered to help him with the keypad or open the shutters but I didn’t have the chance.

  He was the one real enigma in The Green Banana. Which left me very curious. When I am curious, I spin stories. The current one was he’d murdered his wife, chopped her up and put her in the boxes and the suitcase. So I watched for clues. I kept my eye glued on the screens and watched him emerge into the corridor ten minutes later. He looked shell-shocked and pale, kept glancing back nervously inside the store before rolling down the shutter and fixing the padlock. Even then he didn’t leave, but stood with his hands on the roller shutter, face pressed against the steel. I watched, fascinated, already giving a statement to a tabloid (for a massive cheque) about how I’d suspected him from the first. He stood at the locked shutter for a while, not even moving when one of the other clients walked past him and seemed to speak. I could guess what it would be.

  ‘You all right there, mate?’

  I caught sight of his face, lit by the strip light in the corridor. He looked ill. Distracted. Whatever was in there, I thought, this was not just the clothes from three wardrobes. Maybe my theory about him being a wife killer was the right one.

  But that was as far as I got in my Sherlock Holmes deductions that day, because Tommy Farraday arrived, jaunty as ever, grinning from ear to ear. ‘We,’ he announced importantly, leaning across the desk to give me a sloppy kiss on the cheek, ‘have a recording contract, Jenny Wren.’ Apparently not just a song by none other than Paul McCartney but Jenny was also the old countryside name for a wren, he’d told me when I’d asked him.

  ‘Really?’

  He gave a big, stagey nod, blond hair flopping over his face.

  Fact is, I was not just impressed. I was overawed. I’d never met anyone who had a recording contract. I felt my eyes widen, my face warm and my jaw drop. I would have fallen at his feet and worshipped except the desk was in the way. My vision of a wife killer was replaced with rock stars and their glamorous girlfriends piling into The Green Banana, all storing their drums and bass guitars, instruments and music here, me signing them in and out. The place would buzz with the rich and famous. Maybe I’d make it into a magazine. (In the background, of course!)

  After swanning around and dancing me round the office, Tommy exited with a twirl and got cracking unloading the equipment. Three guitars, a synthesizer, set of drums … Some kit. I wondered how the hell he and his band, The Oracles (dreadful name), had afforded such expensive stuff. This contract must be very lucrative. And have paid up front. I’d never actually heard them play but imagined it was some sort of heavy metal stuff, noisy with a bass that would shake the floor.

  I watched on the monitor as he and Callum shifted the equipment, struggling a bit. The drum kit, in particular, was heavy. Even from the office I could hear them laughing, handing each other a roll-up, what I imagined was a spliff, and had a quick vision of Tommy swanning back in here and asking me if I’d join them on the next gig as his girl.

  I know, pathetic. As likely to happen as the queen requesting a six-by-four to keep her crown in.

  I tried to focus on my job. My business was to fill the storage facilities, keep the database up to date, keep the place clean and get the money paid up on time and in full.

  I glanced back at the screen. Steven had not left but was lifting a trunk on to the trolley, whic
h had a mind of its own and was twisting around, refusing to move straight, like a wayward child. As I watched, Callum – still laughing – put his synthesizer down and held the trolley for Steven. There was a brief exchange between the two men and Steven patted Callum on the shoulder as though they were friends. I felt both excluded and part of it as I continued to watch the silent movie providing sounds of my own, little huffs of approval, even a giggle or two. Everyone on my screen today looked happy.

  I did too. Perhaps the job wasn’t all bad.

  An hour later they had all left and the yard was empty.

  As April melted into May and May into June, the days became long and light. I often sat on the forecourt of The Green Banana, listening out for the phone, sunning myself and, one day, when it was very hot, I turned up in a pair of cut-off denims. There was more coming and going in the summer and the folk were more sociable, not in such a hurry to leave. Steven visited a few times; he didn’t bring anything more but he spent time in the store. I didn’t know why or what he did in there. When he left his face was set but sad. If he’d murdered her maybe he regretted it now. He’d walk slowly back to his car, feet dragging, like a child being marched to the doctor’s. And when he signed out, he looked almost tearful. Sometimes his colour was so bad I thought he might be sick. I longed to try to find out more but I felt sure he would rebuff me. Even so, when he deliberated one day over his signature, almost as though he’d forgotten his name, I did try.

  I had the perfect excuse. His three months would soon be up. He needed to pay more dues. He couldn’t leave for another three months, having signed up for six. I really didn’t want him to leave then, not until I knew his story.

  I mentioned it. He looked at me as though he hadn’t even realized I was there.

  ‘Now your three months are up you need to pay. In another three months you can go on a rolling contract,’ I repeated, parrot-fashion. ‘A month at a time. And you only need to give us a month’s notice.’ It was the perfect opportunity. ‘Do you think you’ll want to retain the store beyond that, Mr Taverner?’

  He didn’t respond, instead saying, without smiling, ‘You have very nice hair.’

  To say I was taken aback is an understatement. I gaped and blurted out, ‘Thanks.’ And I stroked it self-consciously.

  It was true, I do have nice hair. Long, shiny, brown, with a natural bounce in it. No tiger stripes these days.

  He was still staring, and I didn’t know how to follow this up, so I stood, like a teenager, biting my lip and smiling stupidly.

  Then he reached out and touched it. Not smiling now. There was nothing intimate or even friendly in the action. He was looking not at my face but at the hair that was now draped across his hand.

  While I just stood and felt awkward and chilled.

  Today he was dressed in a royal blue polo shirt, rather baggy jeans and still those brown leather brogues.

  He gave a little shake and dropped my hair. Gave a little nod and shuffled off, the doors left swinging behind him. I watched him on the CCTV then. He was walking very slowly, as if he was in a funeral procession. Each step he took seemed even, measured, deliberate. His shoulders were bowed, his focus on the floor. He looked up once, straight into the camera, as though he knew I was watching, and I felt embarrassed, found out. Then he climbed into his car and was gone.

  I locked the office door behind me, crossed the yard and stood outside D5, sniffing the air. If his wife’s remains were in there, as the weather was so warm, she would smell, I’d reasoned. Even if wrapped in plastic, she would still smell. But my nose picked up nothing but a faint scent of a perfume I would later identify as Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue.

  Two weeks later, on another blazing hot day, he arrived, again with an empty car, and I realized he hadn’t signed in. It gave me the perfect excuse to leave the office, walk softly up to his store and spy on him if the roller shutters were raised. But when I reached the corridor I heard the roller shutter being dropped and he came out. I felt caught. Trapped. He looked enquiringly at me but neither of us spoke. Until I gathered my wits.

  ‘You didn’t sign in,’ I said, trying to make the statement friendlier, less accusatory. ‘Fire regs, you know?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jennifer,’ he said politely. I was startled for a moment until I realized. It was on the badge pinned to my T-shirt. Jennifer Lomax.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I apologize. I just forgot.’ And then he gave me a blast of a smile. The first time I’d ever seen him smile and it changed him. He had nice teeth and his eyes were warm and attractive. ‘Will you forgive me?’

  I returned the smile with interest, laughing. ‘Of course.’ I risked a joke and tried out his name. ‘It’s not a hanging offence, Steven. It’s just regulations.’

  If he could call me Jennifer, I’d reasoned, then I could call him Steven.

  ‘I could do it for you.’ Another lame joke. ‘I’m good at forgery.’

  His eyes rested on me for a longer moment and I felt a small quiver. Isn’t it funny? Someone uses a name that’s pinned to your breast for all the world to see and it feels … intimate. Personal. A step into your inner space.

  I returned to the office in a bit of a daze. As I was letting myself in, Scarlet arrived, in a skimpy top, skintight leather-look shorts and flip-flops. Seeing my pink face, she glanced up at the screen. ‘That the new guy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Looks quite cute,’ she said, soon losing interest and focusing more on her newly gelled blood-red fingernails than Steven.

  ‘Yeah?’

  For some unfathomable reason I was anxious to defend him, or at least paint him in nice colours.

  She wasn’t really interested. ‘Failed business?’ It was a throwaway, disinterested remark.

  ‘No.’ My eyes drifted across. ‘I think it’s his wife’s stuff. The stuff had her name on it.’

  Her mind followed the same track mine had done. ‘Divorced, is he? Separated?’ She screwed her eyes up to study the images. ‘Looks a bit young to be a widower. But tragedies happen.’ She was still focusing on her nails while I watched him cross the yard.

  ‘Yeah. Maybe.’

  She gave a sudden snort of laughter. ‘And you haven’t found out, Spinning Jenny?’

  I’d acquired the name when she’d caught me dancing round the office to an old Abba song. I’d had my ear buds in and hadn’t heard her arrive.

  ‘No,’ I said shortly. I wasn’t going to share my musings about him.

  At last her attention abandoned her fingernails. ‘Spinning Jenny,’ she scolded, then looking over my shoulder added, ‘He’s not bad looking, is he? For an old ’un.’

  I turned round in shock. ‘He’s not that old,’ I blurted out, not knowing what to say.

  She gave me one of her looks that drilled right into me. ‘He’s old enough to be your dad.’

  ‘You think?’ I studied the screen too, searching for a clue. ‘He’s only about forty, isn’t he? He’d have to have fathered me very young.

  ‘We-ell, it’s possible,’ she said airily.

  She looked at me fondly and tapped my shoulder. ‘’Bout time we got you fixed up, Spinning Jenny.’

  I shrugged.

  But she wasn’t going to let it go. ‘What about doing a bit of digging around?’

  I kept my thoughts to myself. They weren’t even properly formed. I really liked Scarlet’s rough-and-ready ways, but I wasn’t about to make her my confidante. I knew she liked what she called my ‘innocence’. She used to dig me in the ribs and tease me about my previous disasters which I’d poured out to her in the first week. And she was always on about my not having a boyfriend. She’d laugh even more when I said I’d had enough of men, that there was something wrong with all of them. She always threw back the same retort. ‘What about Andy?’

  I had my answer ready. ‘He’s the exception that proves the rule.’

  As though we were reading each other’s minds, we glanced simultaneously u
p at the screen. Maybe that was when I reached a turning point. What if he wasn’t a wife killer? Or kinky like Scary II? What if he wasn’t married? I remembered the wedding ring and shook my head.

  This was a no-go area.

  I’d had a taster of married men and I was never going to go through that humiliation again.

  I should have suspected something when Kris Martin was so particular about my never ringing him at work or at home. ‘No worries, love. It’s just my mum gets a bit protective. Married? Course not.’

  It hadn’t taken much detective work to watch his house one afternoon and see a pregnant woman shepherding a toddler out to the shops.

  Married? Course not.

  I would have accosted her, but she’d looked so worn out and her pregnancy was so far gone I didn’t have the heart. So instead I texted him, called him a wanker, and said if I found out he was still on the dating site I’d go round to his house and cut his bollocks off myself.

  His response was swift – and predictable – a plea not to tell ‘Andrea’.

  As if. I’d switched my phone off without reassuring him. Let him simmer.

  But the experience was a valuable lesson. These days I could spot a married man a mile off. Or so I believed. Even without a wedding ring I knew the clues. I might be desperate but I wasn’t one to crap up somebody else’s life.

  I screwed my eyes up.

  So who was Margaret? What was in the boxes and cases he was paying to store? And why did he roll down the shutter when he emerged from D5? I’d seen him do it, almost furtively, every single time.

  But the Ford Focus had gone now and a lorry which I knew was full of packing materials had pulled up, together with its flirtatious and noisy driver and passenger. I signed Steven out myself, imitating his writing as best I could. He’d forgotten again.

  Next time I looked back at the screen it was to see Serena, the mobile hairdresser. There were two mobile hairdressers, Esmerelda and Serena, who kept their stuff in containers. Serena was a particular favourite of mine. She drove a pink Ka that I was really jealous of, even though I couldn’t drive. She was always perfectly turned out, nails, make-up, hair different colours week on week, different styles. Her scent? I couldn’t identify it. Something she wafted around her like an expensive cloud. And her clothes? To me she was like a model, completely beautiful, with teeth so white they looked as though she was sucking pieces of ice. She was friendly to me too, a generous person who seemed to want to make everyone as beautiful as she was, offering to do my hair, nails, give me a facial. But the trouble was she would have had to use the office with its newly laid wooden floor, and there was no way Scarlet and Andy were going to put up with Serena’s stilettoes spiking it, her hair dye staining it or bits of hair scattered over it. Scarlet and Andrew were quite particular over the look of The Green Banana, proud of its success, and they wanted to keep it looking pristine. So I had to reject Serena’s offer, even though I would have loved to take her up on it.