After Everything

by Suellen Dainty

  Over a lunch of bread and slightly mouldy cheese, she decided to prune the small row of olive trees along the side of the house. She looked up the procedure in her out of date Royal Horticultural Society encyclopaedia before hunting out the secateurs, the long-handled loppers and a jar of tree paint. Another satisfying aspect of living alone: she could do whatever she wanted, in whatever order she decided.

  The renegade suckers at the base of the trees were easy to snip away and she cut them into small lengths for a bonfire. The dead wood was next and she switched to the loppers, squinting against the afternoon sun as she inspected each branch before deciding which ones to chop, being careful to leave a stub of wood on the main trunk. She thinned the live stems, making sure she could see the sun between the branches and the trunk, before daubing tree paint onto the fresh cuts.

  The debris was almost completely raked away when she heard a car on the lane and then, annoyingly, turn down the rough track leading to her house. It was Nigel, corseted into his salesman navy sports jacket, and trailing an attractive young couple behind him. He rolled his eyes at her when he was sure the couple couldn’t see, as if to say he knew he was interrupting her and he was sorry, but here he was and here were these strangers, and let’s make the best of it.

  ‘Penny, darling,’ he said in exaggerated vowels. He kissed her on both dirty cheeks. ‘Just passing with Liz and Greg who’re looking for a house around here. They spotted yours from the car and said how lovely it looked.’

  She gave a strangled smile in their direction, knowing it would have been Nigel’s idea all along. Closer, the couple was not as young as she’d thought and they had about them that unmistakeable London lustre of self-satisfied prosperity. She wiped her hand on her trousers and offered it to them. They pumped her arm up and down and bared rows of expensive teeth.

  ‘And so I thought,’ continued Nigel in the same unnatural tone, ‘I thought I might just pop in and ask if you wouldn’t mind them having just a little look around, to see what can be done with a bit of imagination and, of course, so much taste.’

  There was no excuse she could offer without appearing churlish, so she invited them into the house, glaring at Nigel when their backs were turned before remembering his generosity with the computer and how she enjoyed their gossip sessions in his office.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked in a high polite voice, a waitress in her own home.

  ‘Tea would be fantastic,’ said Liz, inspecting the kitchen and peering into the hall. ‘Would you mind? A quick nose around, everything looks so divine. Greg, darling, just look in here.’

  They disappeared into the sitting room. Penny heard them exclaiming over flagstones, beams and fireplaces in a way that suggested they’d never seen such things before that moment, and then the clatter of their feet as they returned to the kitchen.

  ‘That doll’s house is just adorable,’ cooed Liz. ‘Your grandchildren must be in heaven when they visit.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t have any grandchildren,’ Penny replied. ‘Just a little hobby of mine, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Liz. Penny always thought people said things were amazing when they believed the opposite.

  ‘It’s so rude, I know,’ continued Liz, ‘but do you think we could just have a little peep upstairs? I love what you’ve done here. Perfect. Did you use a local designer?’

  Penny was about to say she’d done it herself, but Liz was already cantering up the stairs, pulling Greg behind her. The thump of their footsteps shook the kitchen beams as they passed through her bedroom into the bathroom. She heard windows opening and shutting and then the toilet flush.

  ‘Really,’ she said to Nigel.

  He shrugged, helpless in the face of an impending sale.

  ‘I owe you,’ he muttered. He took mugs off the shelf and placed them on the table. Greg and Liz bounded down the stairs and strode into the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t you love this place?’ enthused Nigel. ‘The perfect bolthole from London. An hour and forty in the air, a quick drive from Bergerac and you’re here. You’d pay twice as much in Somerset or Dorset for the same space. And you’d be crawling along the A303 for most of the summer. On Saturdays, you don’t even make it from the M25 to Stonehenge in under two hours.’

  For someone who had lived in Sarlat for nearly twenty years and rarely visited the motherland, Nigel had an encyclopaedic knowledge of English motorways. Penny sometimes thought he studied Google maps at night.

  ‘So much less hassle to fly, and you know how cheap flights are these days,’ he said.

  The couple nodded. No one appeared to have calculated the time spent getting to any London airport, queuing, waiting to board and take off, and then collecting their luggage at the other end. Penny knew Nigel would be furious if she mentioned such trivialities. She poured tea as the couple interviewed her about builders, tiles, bathroom fittings, waste systems and heating costs, as if they were about to move in. Patiently she answered their queries. Yes, she was lucky. The house was in good order when she bought it a year ago. Wood burners were very efficient, especially this one which heated water and some upstairs radiators as well. She’d done most of the decorating herself and local trades people put in a new bathroom and refurbished the kitchen. No, she didn’t intend to sell and had no idea of her profit if she did.

  Nigel galloped to the rescue here. ‘Penny would double her money, even in this financial climate,’ he said. ‘People just love this area. It’s full of writers and artists, a fantastic community. And the food and wine is out of this world. It’s heaven here, isn’t it, Pen?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘No mouldy pensioners in our town. Everyone here is just riveting. The collective IQ is off the chart.’

  Nigel glared at her. It turned out Greg had recently sold his plumbing company and was taking a sabbatical while considering his next venture.

  ‘It’s been all go for the past few years,’ he said. ‘Making so much money we haven’t even had time to make some kids.’ He grinned at his own joke.

  Liz looked out to the hills. ‘Are you going to put a pool in?’ she asked. ‘The courtyard is the perfect place.’

  Penny could imagine nothing worse than spending her summers inhaling the stench of chlorine.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ she replied.

  There was a silence. If they left soon, she’d have time to sow a couple of rows of carrots. But Nigel was determined.

  ‘Penny used to live in London,’ he said. ‘In South Kensington, Onslow Gardens. Her husband is a famous songwriter. Famous in the industry of course, the public might not be so aware – but that’s his job, isn’t it Pen, to make other people famous, not himself.’

  Nigel turned to Greg and Liz, who were clearly impressed. Penny almost laughed out loud. She knew what she looked like, plump and getting plumper with a frizz of mad grey hair and her face covered in dirt. She could see the couple trying to accustom themselves to the notion that the odd woman sitting opposite – albeit an odd woman whose house they coveted – once led a glamorous and fashionable life.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘And I’m not married anymore.’

  Nigel would not be deterred. Penny knew what he was doing. If he could persuade the cashed-up Greg and Liz that this area was sophisticated and possessed a St-Paul-deVence or St Tropez allure at half the price, then a sale was pretty much assured. Greg and Liz wanted more than a pretty house and a quiet life. They wanted glamorous neighbours, acquaintances with a provenance of sophistication.

  ‘Sandy, Penny’s husband, wrote songs for Joe Fleetfield. His records sold loads. And he produced every album by that Kate … what’s her name, Pen?’

  ‘Can’t recall right now,’ she replied.

  ‘Really?’ breathed Liz, slamming her mug on the table. ‘You don’t mean Kate Mostyn? And Joe Fleetfield was my favourite of all time. I fell in love with Greg listening to those songs. “Never Give Up” was my favourite.’

  ‘How sp
lendid,’ said Penny.

  ‘And that Kate,’ offered Greg, ‘what a babe, fantastic voice. What was the name of that album?’

  Penny shrugged, pretending not to remember.

  ‘Oh, she knows everyone,’ said Nigel proudly. ‘Eric, Paul, Keith. The stories she could tell. But she’s terribly discreet of course. Until you get to know her.’

  Penny went to the sink. If they didn’t leave in a minute, she’d scream. Was she mad to care more about carrots than concerts, to prefer solitude to this inane chat about things that didn’t matter anymore?

  She wanted to tell Liz that Kate Mostyn, under her mournful fringe, was a bitch and a pathological liar; that Joe Fleetfield was a raddled fool who now lived on a White City council estate. One of the many reasons for his present low-cost postcode dated back to 1984 when he hired a twenty-four-hour limousine service to be available outside his Mayfair flat, in case he wanted to shop or cruise. The next week he went away on a world tour for a year and his assistant forgot to cancel the booking. Joe also forgot about the million-acre sheep farm he bought in northern Australia and the cruiser in the south of France. While she was on the subject of Joe Fleetfield, she’d like to point out the irony that Joe’s monster hit, ‘Never Give Up’, had been written by a man who had done just the opposite.

  She also wanted to tell Liz that the performance or recording was the death of the song as she knew it; that what she had loved about Sandy and his music was the sight of him at the piano, the way the afternoon sun gilded his head as he played his songs for her. She would stop whatever she was doing and watch his long fingers stretch along the keys while his foot kept a steady rhythm on the piano pedal. His voice was thin and sometimes cracked on the higher notes, but there was an honesty to it that made her heart leap as each note echoed around the basement kitchen.

  ‘Do you think it’s good enough?’ he would ask shyly. ‘Is it all right?’ She would ruffle his hair and kiss the back of his neck, telling him he was wonderful, that the song was wonderful. She had felt herself a seamless part of him then, before he gave the song away to someone else, and made it into something she no longer recognised. She never stopped being jealous of that.

  Instead she offered Liz and Greg a fresh pot of tea and some Elizabeth David flourless chocolate cake she’d baked some days ago.

  ‘Are you sure?’ cheeped Liz, holding out her mug.

  ‘I say,’ said Greg. ‘I won’t say no.’

  Outside, pigeons squabbled in the pine trees.

  ‘So. What was he like? Joe Fleetfield, I mean. You must have known him really well? Was Joe a normal guy?’ Greg spoke the name with reverence.

  ‘I met him once or twice,’ replied Penny. ‘He was more my husband’s friend.’ She didn’t add that Joe and Sandy were inseparable when Sandy’s contagious choruses had pubescent girls weeping and screaming at Wembley. Nor that Joe had less time for Sandy as sales fell, and no time at all to tell Sandy he’d been replaced by some hipper, younger duo. That had been left to Joe’s rat-faced lawyer.

  ‘But,’ she said, ‘he seemed, as you say, a perfectly normal man.’

  Liz and Greg nodded, as if this was something they’d guessed all along. Penny never understood why people like Greg and Liz thought that prancing around a stage and flicking your groin at thousands of screaming girls, some so excited that they wet themselves, might be a normal thing to do. And not just once, but week after week, month after month, sometimes even year after year.

  Nor did she understand why people considered glamorous, even desirable, a world that regarded the saying ‘No blow job, no backstage pass’ as perfectly acceptable conversation. But these were thoughts she kept to herself. She poured fresh tea into their mugs and passed slices of cake. Nigel smiled approvingly.

  ‘Don’t you miss London though?’ Liz said. ‘Do you ever get back there?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Penny, annoyed by the pitying look she saw on Liz’s face, ‘I’m flying there next week. My ex-husband hasn’t been well and I’m going to see him. I’m going to try that new travel agent in town, Nigel, so let’s have lunch tomorrow.’

  Chapter 13

  There was another handwritten envelope, large and stiff, in his mailbox. He recognised the looped handwriting. Carolyn de Farge again.

  ‘It would be so good to catch up, hear your news,’ she wrote on one of those Keep Calm cards. ‘I walk in Kensington Gardens every day and we could meet at the Serpentine Gallery, have a stroll and some coffee somewhere.’

  She had added her mobile number and email address underneath her name. Odd, thought Sandy. He placed the lolly pink card on the kitchen table. Or perhaps not so odd, now that he recalled Penny’s fondness towards lost causes and emotional down-and-outs; the childhood friends who occupied the spare room for far too long after some domestic drama, the hours she spent on the telephone listening to other people’s problems. One evening, he’d been so jealous that he had pulled the telephone socket out of the wall. Carolyn must have decided to put him on her list of charitable projects. Sandy was simultaneously flattered and insulted by the cards, but he was also very bored and, after three days, he sent an email saying he could meet at the Serpentine at four o’clock, which meant he would be back in time to watch the evening news.

  There was a new female presenter called Catherine to whom he had become irrationally attached, noting if she looked tired, nodding in appreciation if she wore a flattering blouse and returning her smile before the commercial break.

  He particularly liked to see her bare arms when she was interviewing people. How elegantly she waved them about as she remonstrated with politicians about their failures and subsequent economies with facts. How neatly she pointed to moving graphs and charts before she turned to address the camera, and therefore Sandy. He knew his infatuation with the presenter was pathetic, but it got him through the hour when he usually started drinking, and somehow after that he was happy to remain sober for the remainder of the evening.

  On the day of his meeting with Carolyn, he woke sweating with a fierce headache. A mystery ailment, the perfect excuse for a cancellation. He was painstakingly jabbing a text message to her when he heard a ping and there, at the top of his inbox, was an email saying how much she was looking forward to their meeting that afternoon. Sandy deleted his text and looked up bus timetables instead.

  During the last hours of sunlight, Kensington Gardens was full of dog owners clutching small plastic bags of turds while their charges ran wild before the long hours of enforced continence began, relieved only, if they were lucky, by a late night whip around the block. Sandy leaned against the railing and watched a three-legged dog bounding about. It was cold and his toe hurt. He should have worn a scarf. He was about to go into the gallery to get warm when a horn tooted and one of those little Noddy cars, shiny and pillarbox red, braked almost at his feet. The door swung open and a beige cashmere arm waved in his direction.

  ‘Here I am,’ Carolyn called out. ‘Hop in before you freeze.’

  Sandy folded himself into the seat and she pulled out onto the road.

  ‘Too cold for a walk,’ Carolyn said. ‘Let’s go for coffee instead.’

  As she zipped through the gates and headed west, Sandy shifted his legs. The seats were uncomfortably close together. Each time Carolyn moved her arm or leg, she brushed against some part of him. There was an instantly recognisable female scent, sweet and close.

  ‘You don’t mind,’ she said. ‘About the walk?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ he asked and then, as she pulled anxiously at her neck with her free hand, said, ‘Of course not. It might still be spring, but it’s cold out there.’

  She flicked on her headlights and turned into Ladbroke Grove. ‘Could we have coffee at my place?’ she asked. ‘I’ve left the handyman there and I need to pay him.’ A younger, more virile Sandy might have considered this a possible proposition, but he knew that lame ducks and lust were not compatible. She was merely being kind. And Carolyn was as he rememb
ered her; pleasantly unremarkable and plump. Not his type at all. Something of a relief, he thought, not to have to worry about unbidden erections and where they might lead.

  Inside the house, Sandy tried not to look around as Carolyn retrieved a thick wad of cash from her bag and counted the notes out for the handyman, then gave him an extra forty pounds as he packed up his equipment.

  ‘For your good work,’ she said. The man, about Sandy’s own age and grey with fatigue, spoke no English. He looked perplexed and tried to give the money back. Carolyn shook her head and after some minutes of mime and elaborate gesticulation, they made themselves understood and he left the two of them on their own.

  They sat with their mugs of coffee in a kind of conservatory off the kitchen. French doors led onto a terrace and then a garden where severe pyramids of immaculate topiary were outlined against the dimming light. Everything in every direction was clipped and polished, reeking of a purchasing power far superior to Sandy’s own. Yet Carolyn didn’t seem to belong in her own house. Sandy couldn’t imagine her choosing the enormous curved sofas and the bleak modern pictures. He couldn’t see her turning over lamb chops on the hob, which was bigger than his kitchen table.

  ‘I wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about what happened,’ said Carolyn. ‘I didn’t realise when I saw you in the street that day how terribly bad you must have felt then. I mean, I thought you looked so down, but I didn’t do anything, didn’t ask how you were, I just kept on shopping. And then I heard, in a roundabout way through Jeremy, that you … that you had that dreadful accident.’