‘Can I give you my phone number?’ she asked. ‘Will you phone me?’
She stood outside her flat, fumbling with the door-keys. In one hand she carried a bag of cabbage leaves and carrots for the rabbits. After the beeswaxed order of the antiques shop the place next door looked chaotic – racks of coats, old saucepans, the female mannequin leaning against the wall as if she were drunk. MIND CHARITY SHOP, it said.
She felt deeply disorientated. How many names did this Popsi woman have? How many times had she been married? Upstairs, Celeste passed the mirror. A woman, topped with tousled hair, stared back. Who on earth was that?
She took the bag of food into the living room. She hadn’t bought a hutch; she hadn’t had time. Either she was working all day or else off on one of her voyages into the interior. The rabbits hopped up to her; they were becoming quite tame. She put the cabbage leaves on a plate and laid it on the carpet. Squatting there, she was suddenly aware of movement in the corner of the room. Just a tiny movement; something stirring.
It couldn’t be a rabbit. All three were here, dragging the cabbage leaves onto the carpet and nibbling them. She climbed to her feet and walked across the room.
On the floor, jammed between the radiator and a box of recycled stuff she hadn’t unpacked yet, was the bundle of cut-up tights. Half-hidden in it, she saw a squirming tangle of bald, pinkish-grey creatures. She gasped; just for a moment she thought they were maggots, but of course they were far too big.
One of the rabbits had given birth.
Twenty-four
IT WASN’T LORNA’S wood, of course. It belonged to a local farmer called Vic Wheeler. He owned a lot of land, the whole secret valley and beyond, and was possessed of such entrepreneurial zeal that he was known in the village as Wheeler-Dealer Victor. Already, over at Barstone, a 2000-bed international hotel was being constructed, plus industrial units and an Asda superstore. One of his woods had already been bulldozed to create a roundabout and another had been sold to a Japanese firm which specialised in male bonding. Each weekend executives arrived from London, wearing flak jackets, and rampaged through the trees shooting each other with red dye and learning how to relate. That Vic Wheeler’s son had married the daughter of the Chief Planning Officer had done no harm at all, squire.
It was mid-December. By now Lorna knew the full extent of the plans. Vic Wheeler had set up a consortium to build a Leisure Experience. It was to stretch over 300 acres. A theme park was planned, though the theme itself had not been decided yet. There was to be a bowling alley, skating rink, three fast-food outlets and, where her wood now stood, an eight-screen multiplex cinema. The pace was quickening. In the Happy Eater besuited men spread maps across the table and cockily bandied numbers to and fro; outside, their Ford Granadas were spattered with mud from their forays through the fields.
Lorna was a solitary person, an independent spirit. Various protest groups had been formed but she had devised her own plan. She had got the idea from a short story. She had read it, years before, in an old copy of the Times which she been using to wrap up chicken bones. In the story a woman, to save a local wood, had planted it with rare plants and filled its pond with an endangered species of newt. The wood had been declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest and nobody had built anything at all.
The plans were going to be put before the council in the spring. By that time the wood had to be planted up. Lorna felt surprisingly energised. It was like petty squabbles and complaints – who’s going to do the washing-up, say – vanishing the moment war is declared. Looking back, her whole life seemed to have consisted of botched relationships and missed opportunities – men, her acting career, the other thing she didn’t want to think about. So much had slipped through her fingers for reasons that now seemed laughable, if they were not so sad. Now she could actually do something, something positive and complete.
It was a misty Sunday afternoon. She sat on her veranda, sorting through the catalogues that had arrived during the week. There was one from a wild plant nursery in Herefordshire; another from a specialist orchid-grower. With mild interest, she looked at her legs. She was wearing men’s corduroy trousers; she had found them years before in the potting shed. They were tucked into mismatched woolly socks, one red and one striped, with another pair of socks on top. They didn’t match either. She supposed she must look odd, but then oddness only exists in the presence of other people. The same applied to her age and her sex; she was both ageless and sexless, there was nobody to mirror her back to herself. She didn’t know if she were amusing or not because there was nobody around to laugh. She simply existed. After all, human behaviour is only born in company; how does one know a burp is rude if there is nobody there to flinch? She had lived alone for a long time now. Stepping into the Happy Eater was like stepping into the world, like suddenly appearing on stage, but nobody really knew her there, customers passed through, staff came and went. It seemed like a dream and this was the real thing: the hazy sky, the tracery of trees, her cat rubbing its head against her trousered leg.
Some of the plants had already arrived and lay in a row, waiting to be planted, misting up their polythene bags as if they were breathing in there. They were her allies, her limp, green troops. She had bought some more plants at garden centres, and had even found a rare species of poppy at a Texaco station. Suddenly she thought of Buffy. He would say: Funny, isn’t it? Garden centres are full of furniture and garages are full of plants. And tandoori chicken sandwiches. And bags of potatoes. Amazing one can get any petrol in them at all. She hadn’t thought about him for ages. His voice spoke to her sometimes; other people’s voices too. They were all there, even if she didn’t hear them, like a radio that happened to be switched off.
She shook her head, to clear it. She put on her overcoat, tying it around her waist with string, and fetched her spade. She must get going; weeks of planting lay ahead of her. The sun was sinking; soon it would be dark. She worked in the dark, when nobody could see her.
There had been no frost for days; the ground was soft and ready for her. Beyond the garden lay the wood; thin and airy except for its fir trees and the clotted, dark ivy thickening the trunks. She only noticed the ivy in the winter; it was revealed, now, like a silent person at a party one only notices when the other guests have gone.
Twenty-five
THEY WERE ONE big, happy family. That’s what they said, Popsi and the traders in the antiques arcade. Always a laugh somewhere; always a drama. They helped each other out; they minded each other’s stalls when one of them went to spend a penny. Nobody went upstairs to get a bacon butty without asking if their neighbour fancied one too. They knew each others’ life stories and what stories they had! Even Popsi’s ups and downs – and she had had a few – even her ups and downs were par for the course here. Put it on the TV, they were always saying, and who would believe it? Take Margot, who had the china stall opposite; who would believe, looking at her now, that she had once been principal trapeze artiste with Gerry Cottle’s Circus? Not only that, but she had won a battle against ovarian cancer and spent three years living in a caravan with a manic depressive? That was a long time ago, of course, before she had put on the weight. She had seven grandchildren now, but she didn’t look a day over forty-five.
That’s what they said about Popsi, too. People took them for sisters, in their matching sheepskin coats. She and Margot had both done their hair the same colour too – Plum Crazy. Popsi had always believed in ringing the changes, hairwise. They both believed in making the best of themselves, in keeping time’s winged chariot at bay. Live life to the hilt, that was their motto. Popsi fondly watched her, across the aisle, talking to a customer. ‘It’s a very rare piece,’ Margot was saying, ‘it’s very unusual, of course, for it not to have a handle.’
Popsi loved it here. Their little band – it was like being in rep. Better really, because nobody went away. Every Thursday to Saturday here they were sitting in their stalls, blowing on their hands, their little heaters glowi
ng. Every week she looked forward to it. The rest of the time she would be away on buying trips – antiques fairs in conference hotels, places like that. Sometimes a call came and she had to drop everything. They were only walk-on parts, of course, but it was good to keep your hand in. Unlike her, producers were getting younger and it was sensible to keep in the swim. Only the week before she had been a ‘harassed shopper’ in Inspector Morse.
But at the end of the week, when she drove along the promenade and unloaded her car, when she came into this chilly hall with hellos all round and its low beams saying DUCK OR GROUSE, each week she felt she was coming home. She felt herself here. That was why she had called herself Popsi again. Women’s Lib, she had always been for it though she hadn’t known at the time. Get out of life what you put into it, that was another of her mottoes, and have a laugh on the way. She had always felt like a Popsi, that was why she had given herself the name in the first place. She had only changed her name to please her husbands and now she didn’t have one anymore she was staying Popsi Concorde until she dropped off her perch.
It was even jollier now, with Christmas coming. Trade had picked up; it was really quite brisk, with people coming to find that special present, that personal something that showed you cared much more than a gift pack from Boots. You’re buying a little bit of history, that was what she told people, a little bit of someone’s life. Recycling’s all the rage, isn’t it? When she thought of all the things she had thrown out, all those times she had moved, she wanted to weep.
Down the aisle Walter, who sold military paraphernalia, was playing I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas on his wind-up gramophone. He lived with his mother in a bungalow up on the Downs. He had taken Popsi to a traction engine rally once but he really wasn’t her type. When he had tried some hanky-panky on the way home, in the back of his vintage bus, she had patted him on the head and told him to find a nice girl more his age.
Customers tried to pick her up too – men had always tried it on with her, God knows why. Only the week before, one joker had lifted the receiver off one of her phones and pretended he was ringing her: ‘How about coming out for a swift half, you voluptuous pussycat?’ She would have, once – give her a drink and she was anybody’s – but now all she wanted to do was put her feet up in front of the TV. Her joints were playing up. They ached more this time of year, with the fog rolling in off the Channel. In fact, they ached more each year. Sooner or later it would be hip replacement time; everybody here swore by them.
Margot was doing very well. ‘It’s only a hairline crack,’ she was telling a customer as she wrapped up a sugar bowl, ‘put on a spot of Araldite when you get home.’ She had run out of carrier bags and Popsi had given her a few from her stock of Sainsbury’s ones. It was quieter in her stall. She sold period phones and radios. Her line wasn’t so seasonal; she catered more for the bona fide collectors and they didn’t believe in Christmas. In between customers she and Margot nattered all day, only pausing briefly to make a sale and then carrying on where they had left off. They didn’t stop for browsers, of course; china-teases, Margot called them. From long experience they could both spot one of those and Margot could deal with them as she went along. ‘. . . so then he really started getting violent – yes it is pretty isn’t it – he got me down on the settee, the kiddies yelling their little heads off, I thought he was going to kill me – no dear, I’ll be making a loss on it as it is . . . when they got me to Casualty they’d never seen such bruises . . .’
A lot of the people here were browsers, actually. On holiday, maybe, and just getting out of the rain. Because it was a seaside town they got a lot of retired folk, too, who didn’t like the new shopping centre because it was full of lager louts. They fetched up here, sucking in their teeth when they saw the prices on the old biscuit tins and spinning out the morning over a cup of tea in the café. Just occasionally real dealers visited: Germans and Swiss, in fur-collared coats, with Mercedes estate cars parked outside. They knew exactly what they wanted. When they walked down the aisles everybody else looked amateurish and dowdy; a hush fell, as it does in a hospital ward when the consultants sweep in.
She was expecting one now, actually: a Mr Fleischmann, but he hadn’t turned up yet. She had met him in an antiques fair in Birmingham and she had found him the items he wanted. Dealing with him made her feel suave and international, part of a network. Most of her customers were ordinary nostalgia-buffs who just liked bakelite – young blokes with gelled hair, probably designers, or else anonymous, solitary collectors who wore anoraks and looked like train spotters. She imagined them alone at night, sitting next to their collection of valve radios. It made her feel motherly.
She would kill for a coffee but Margot was busy and Duncan, the clock specialist in the next booth, was talking to a testy-looking customer. ‘Well, it was working this morning,’ said Duncan.
Just then Elsa appeared. She ran a period clothing stall and believed in an Afterlife. She was always trying to tell Popsi hers but Popsi said no thanks, this one kept her busy enough.
‘I saw this piece of watered silk and I thought Quentin,’ said Elsa.
‘You are a dear.’
‘Well, it’s Christmas, isn’t it?’
See? That was what they were like. Elsa left and Popsi put the piece of material into a carrier bag. Margot, who was wrapping up a teapot, was telling a customer about one of her grandchildren. Sometimes it irked Popsi, that Margot treated complete strangers to the intimate details of her family life, grabbing them with the same breathless confidentiality with which she grabbed Popsi. Did five years of friendship count for nothing? Or maybe Popsi was just irked by the knowledge that, things being what they were, it was unlikely she herself would ever be a grandmother at all. Quentin was you-know-what (she said the word quite openly to other people, she was quite broadminded, but it still pained her to say it to herself) and her daughter Maxine, a big girl, had gone to veterinary college and showed far more interest in horses.
How did Quentin get that way? It certainly wasn’t inherited. She herself had always been healthily heterosexual and though Buffy said he had been something of a tart at boarding school – according to him he had been angelically beautiful and passed around the sixth form like a plaything – when he left he had soon reverted to a lifelong interest in the opposite sex. She blamed the whole thing on the carrier bag episode; that had been the turning point.
Even now she blushed to think of it. Remembering moments like this warmed her up better than any electric blower. She had been living with Terry, above the pub. However, she had also been having a little hows-your-father with a lovely man who lived in Chelsea. He like to see her dressed up. So two afternoons a week she crept off to his flat, with her carrier bag. Quentin was at school then. Trouble was, one day she had picked up the wrong carrier bag. Arriving in the gentleman’s bedroom, she had unpacked it: out came some muddy shorts, a packed lunch and a stout pair of football boots.
Margot had hooted with laughter at this but it really wasn’t funny. ‘What about little Quentin?’ said Popsi. ‘There he is, in the changing room, opening his carrier bag and taking out my suspender belt and my satin corset.’ ‘Don’t forget the split-crotch panties!’ shrieked Margot, who liked to hear this story again and again, ‘and the whip! Don’t forget the whip!’ Quentin had always been a sensitive boy; sometimes she felt this had sent him right off the tracks.
She had come to terms with it now, of course. In fact she had become very fond of some of his menfriends and one or two of them still came down to visit her long after they had split up with him. She was devoted to Talbot, who currently lived with him. Maybe she was a sort of Judy Garland, a fag-hag. From long heart-to-hearts with them she discovered the problem usually stemmed from the father anyway, so she could always blame it on Buffy. He had been a hopeless example to a son.
Margot was still busy. A customer was holding a cruet. ‘Think it over dear,’ said Margot ‘but it probably won’t be here next week. They go
very fast, particularly if they’re missing the pepper pot. That makes them a collector’s item.’
Irritated, Popsi called ‘Margot!’ and tapped her tooth. It had an immediate effect: Margot stopped talking and whipped out her mirror. The two of them had an agreement: Margot rationed Popsi’s cigarettes and Popsi told Margot when she had lipstick on her tooth. Margot’s front teeth stuck out, that was why, and she always put on too much lipstick in the first place.
When she turned back, Popsi noticed a young woman standing near her stall. She wore a reddish coat and a black scarf. Her hair was streaky. Maybe I should try streaks, thought Popsi. She had dyed her hair for so long she could no longer remember what colour it was. Then she realized: of course, it would be grey. This gave her such a jolt that she came to a standstill.
The young woman stepped closer, picked up the receiver of one of the phones, looked at it, and put it down again.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said Popsi. ‘That’s a Pyramid, Second Series. I’ve got one in red, too.’
She didn’t look like a browser. Nor did she look like a customer. She looked fidgety; Popsi’s children used to look like that, fiddling around with things, when they wanted to ask her for some money.
‘This one’s nice,’ said the young woman. ‘I’ve seen them in old films.’
‘That’s a Candlestick, pet. An early one, probably 1920. Interested in period phones?’
She pointed. ‘We used to have one like that at home.’
‘Yes, my love, they’re the most usual. Cheese-boards. Made right through the forties. You wouldn’t remember those days of course, fresh young thing like you.’
‘Do the radios work?’
‘Do the radios work, she asks! Or course they work. Need to warm up, but then don’t we all? Lovely tone; warm and brown.’
‘I used to listen to the radio.’ She touched the walnut veneer of a Ferguson; her finger made a mark in the dust. ‘I used to think there were real people in there.’
The Ex-Wives Page 18
