But she decided against it and put it away for another day when she could listen alone.
‘Shouldn’t we stay in the area? Do we really want to live out in the country?’ she’d asked him. The panic gripped her heart, squeezed it out like an old floorcloth.
‘Of course we do. Haven’t we always longed for green spaces, dreamed of getting out of the town? And we can’t afford anywhere nice nearer in.’
Ellie considered this move to be temporary, but it was important for Malc’s self-esteem that she acted thrilled.
They settled on a bungalow on a new estate at Heswall, and Malc joked, ‘The right side of the river at last, eh gel?’ It was built out of natural stone and had an oval church window above the porch and a windmill with a bucket on a chain over the goldfish pond on the front bit of lawn. It was easy for Malc to commute from there. He wasn’t a rep any more, had only done that for a few months and last month he’d moved to a suite of offices in the city centre. Ellie had wanted to help with the move but Murphy told her it wouldn’t look good for it to be done in an amateur way. Canonwaits were using Pickfords.
They took photographs of the house and showed them to Di and Dave, Margot and Dick the next time they went to the club. They rarely went there any more, once a month at the most and Ellie, who never dreamed she would miss it, missed it terribly.
‘It’s just habit,’ said Malc. ‘You never liked it, you always complained.’
‘We’ll never see you, living out there,’ objected Di. Everything else might be changing but Di wasn’t. She was still bulky and coarse, fiercely direct, downing the rum and cokes as if there was no tomorrow. Di still worked fulltime in the hospital catering department and Margot was still at the shirt factory, so during the day there was going to be no chance for any of them to meet.
‘You won’t come here any more,’ prophesied Margot. ‘Why would you bother to drive out here? You wouldn’t be able to drink for a start and it’s hardly the Ritz.’ They all knew that it wasn’t the Ritz and Ellie heard the hurt in Margot’s voice.
‘Perhaps you will come and stay with us at weekends. There’ll be plenty of room, there’s two spare bedrooms.’ Ellie was frightened by the note of desperation she heard in her own voice. ‘And when I can drive I’ll come over and we’ll be able to go shopping on a Saturday. Or other than that I can get here by train.’
But they had never gone shopping together on a Saturday, and they all knew that very well.
They hadn’t taken the jeep that night. They’d walked, as they normally did. Perhaps they didn’t need to flaunt Malc’s success any more. In a strange sort of way, without agreeing to it between themselves, they had started to play it down.
But that way felt worse, more devious—patronising?
What were the men saying to each other over there at the bar? What were they exchanging, what were they swapping? It was as secret and baffling to Ellie as it had always been and she could hear Malc’s voice rising importantly. Whatever he was saying was leaving Dick and Dave most impressed, because they stared at their feet with their chins down while he was talking, in the way men do when they’re listening intently, their glasses protectively against their chests. Giving him space.
‘We’ll have to have a farewell party,’ Di said brightly in order to cover the silence and filling as much space as she could with her loud voice and her bag of crisps. ‘We can’t let you go without a bang.’
Oh, how Ellie wished she could tell Di and Margot the truth.
The photographs of the bungalow were pink and blue like the Leggets’ holiday snaps; they smiled glossily and rather slyly. Why do people take pink and blue photographs? So they can never forget? Shouldn’t that decision be left to the memory where the colours are surely truer? They were lying on the table getting stained. Ellie happily left them there. Oh, if only they’d bought a Georgian house by the library none of this would have had to happen, all of this would have been different.
They moved house—well, Ellie moved house, Malc couldn’t get away. He’d had to fly up to Glasgow so Ellie had made the removal men tea, travelled to Heswall in the van and told them where to put the few old pieces of furniture they’d agreed to take with them. They left quite a bit behind. Malc went round the Nelson Street house with a notepad, making a list and striking off anything that wasn’t worth the trouble.
Margot said, ‘It’s one of the most disturbing things that can happen to you after death and divorce.’
Everything’s changed.
Now Malc takes Ellie in every day except Wednesday, and on Wednesdays, if she has to meet Robert, she catches the train into town. She is learning to drive in the evenings, and as soon as she’s passed her test Malc is going to buy her a second-hand car. Next week she is going to have to hand in her notice to Mrs Gogh who knows something strange is going on but, so far, hasn’t mentioned it.
The hot sun sears the top of her head. Robert returns with more drinks in his hand, slopping them as he crosses the road; the ice has already half-melted. He sits down opposite. He wears a short-sleeved blue shirt but he keeps his tie on and his jacket is in the car. It is odd to see his naked arm, it has little blond hairs on it and it is freckled. ‘It must have been strange leaving Nelson Street.’
Strange? Was that the accurate word for leaving the area in which she’d been born and brought up, for abandoning the house she had kept clean and lived in for twenty years? Almost empty, stripped naked like that, she’d had to leave it with such a forlorn, lonely feel about it. She hadn’t been able to look back when the van moved away and the removal man told her that people often felt like that. Yes, Ellie supposes she could call it strange, but then, was there anything in her life now which was not strange?
‘Yes, it was a bit of a wrench.’
‘How are you liking it over in Heswall?’
‘I can’t get used to the silence.’ Ellie shreds a lettuce leaf.
‘You will,’ says Robert sensibly. ‘In time. You will find things to get yourself involved in once you’ve given up work. I can’t imagine you being content with nothing to do all day. You’ve always said how you’d hate that.’
What things? What sort of activities could she get involved in? Ellie’s mind is a total blank and she can’t imagine, now, what she ever thought she would do all day, given her precious freedom. And yet she used to know, once, didn’t she? She used to dream—once. She doesn’t know anyone in Heswall and Malc’s never home to go out with her. Bebington’s not far from Heswall but she notices that Robert does not suggest she contact Bella; he’s not offering his wife as a stepping stone or an open doorway into this strange new world. Ellie knows that Bella works, running creative writing courses for prisoners, sex offenders and the like. Bella’s a busy woman with probably no time to go visiting.
Ellie can’t keep moaning, sounding spoilt and dissatisfied when she’s achieving all she set out to achieve and it’s all going faster than anyone dreamed.
She pulls herself together. ‘I’m just a little bit bewildered by it all, I suppose,’ she tells him firmly. ‘It will all settle down in time, once I get used to it.’
‘It hasn’t worked out quite as you imagined it would, Ellie, has it?’
And it is the gentleness in his voice that causes Ellie to burst into tears.
15
NEW BEDROOM, NEW DRESSING table, new view out of the window across the meadows and over the roofs of the little red farms. New man.
She’s heard once that love isn’t love at all, it is envy. You only love someone you would secretly like to be, or someone who has the traits you’d like for yourself… there is so much for you to admire that you give up feeling jealous, Ellie supposes, and it turns into love. Just like that.
Certainly there are aspects of Malc which she envies now. His adaptability, for one, the ease with which he chats to the Williams, their new next-door neighbours, the confident manner with which he treats the pushy furniture salesman in Baring & Willow when they go to purchase the
contents of their new home. And his energy, all of a sudden! Where on earth has that come from? He’s taken to playing squash with someone called Jarvis, from work, on a Saturday afternoon. Ellie warned him, ‘Be careful, you’re not as young as you were and squash can be dangerous.’
‘You ought to take more exercise, Elle. It makes you feel so good afterwards.’ And he smacked his hardening stomach with pride.
But Ellie can’t breathe from the smoking.
He isn’t content to slump in front of the telly any more; he’s either at work or in the garden, digging away there as if he’s trying to fork something heavy out of his system.
She lures him indoors with shouts of ‘Tea, Malc? Coffee?’ He scrapes the mud off his boots and, placidly, he comes.
When he returns to the garden she goes into the sewing room… the room that doubles up as a dining room only they don’t need a dining room for the two of them… and hems some more curtains on her ancient Singer.
It is hard to find dirt in the new bungalow. You can search and search and not find it. ‘But it must be here,’ she mutters to no one in particular as she moves round the house with a dustpan and brush. ‘It can’t have just disappeared.’
Sometimes, of a Sunday, having sought yet failed to find it again, she unfolds one of their new garden chairs and sits on the lawn to watch Malc. A mouth-watering smell wafts from Ellie’s new oven, but Malc had said earlier, ‘It’s far too hot for roast potatoes and lamb. Why don’t we have a nice fresh salad for a change?’ She always gets a joint, well she always made sure they had a joint, even in the leanest times.
‘He’s ever so nice, isn’t he?’
‘Sorry?’ Ellie is disturbed in her dreamings as Maria Williams’ head pops over the garden fence. She lowers her new sunglasses and stares against the glare.
‘Your other half! What a pleasant, friendly man. And what a difference he’s making in that garden!’
‘We’ve never had a garden before.’ She transfers her fag to her other hand and lets it rest, out of sight, on the grass. Malc will be annoyed. He hates stubs, they fluff up like snow when he cuts the lawn and they clog up the blades of the mower. Ellie doesn’t know whether to get up and go over or whether to stay sitting down, hardly able to hear and having to shout. She doesn’t want to be thought of as pushy, and she doesn’t know if she really wants to get too familiar with the neighbours. It wasn’t wise, of late, in Nelson Street.
‘Why don’t you pop over and have a swim and a glass of fresh lemonade? Then we can have a chat and get to know each other.’
Well! That’s a shock!
She knows where her costume is. It’s in the bottom drawer of her new built-in wardrobe, so old that the seat has worn silvery thin and it smells of mothballs. With the sun behind it you can see right through it. The last time she’d worn it was during the years she plodded along regularly to the Alvington Baths to teach Mandy and Kev to swim. When they’d gone to Harlech on holiday she’d borrowed one of Di’s and the top had fallen down in the waves.
Malc’s already been over to the Williams’. He’s on easy, chatting terms with Maria and pale, spindly Wilfred, and last weekend Maria gave him some of her home-made ginger cobs to try.
‘She’s nice,’ Malc came and told her then. ‘You’d get on well with Maria. You’d like her.’
Normally it was always Ellie who made the first approaches and who found friends first. Ellie realises that she needs to know people; it is essential that she makes some friends to counter these feelings of isolation and she doesn’t want to be totally dependent on Malc. So this is her chance. It is very important that she succeeds.
Maria is brown and sinewy, athletic and healthy with a fresh, open smile. Her ash-blonde hair is held back from her face with a black and white spotted bow. She wears flowing African prints when she is out in her garden. In the evenings, when they think that no one can see them, Maria and Wilfred swim in their swimming pool naked. Wilfred put the pool in himself, carting all the concrete round the side of the house in a wheelbarrow.
Word has it that Maria, who owns a boutique in Heswall High Street, is having an affair. Ellie overheard that bit of gossip while queuing at the butcher’s last Wednesday, and it was also suggested in the same whispered conversation that the Williams’ barbecues weren’t straightforward picnics at all, but wife-swapping parties.
When she told Malc that he said, ‘So what? As long as they don’t interfere with us.’
‘I don’t feel like swimming, but I don’t mind trying your lemonade.’ And that doesn’t come out in the pleasant way Ellie meant it. ‘I’ll just tell Malc where I’ve gone in case he wants me.’
‘Oh,’ says Maria Williams with a gleaming smile, ‘ask Malc to come too. The more the merrier!’
Malc says he’s too busy, he has to finish the roses, so Ellie finds herself sitting under a green and white striped umbrella beside the startling blue of the Williams’ pool.
‘I hope you’ve settled in.’ Maria’s glass jug has fishes and reeds cut into the sides. And the glasses match.
‘It’s surprising how long it takes to get everything right.’
‘Well, we’ve been here five years and we’re still not straight.’ But Ellie knows that Maria Williams is lying. Lots of people talk like that… say they’re not straight when they are, say they’re busy when they’re not or that they can’t cope when they obviously can. Touching wood. Everything around here is straight, or cut into perfect circles like that little flowerbed, or in line, like those white plastic urns. Out of the corner of her eye she can see that through the french window, the lounge is one of the straightest lounges she has ever seen… even down to the TV Times and Radio Times which sit on the exact centre of that low round table. A bowl full of dried flowers decorates the empty stone fireplace.
Too clean. Too sterile? It is unusual for a couple this age not to have children, but of course Ellie does not ask because there might be a sad reason.
‘We were worried about who might buy it. The Mattinglys were such nice people.’
Ellie says, ‘Well, that’s natural, I suppose, the bungalows being so close like this.’ And then she feels she ought to defend herself, prove to Maria that she and Malc are acceptable. ‘We live very quietly,’ she decides to say. And then she remembers the barbecues, ‘And we’re easygoing people.’
‘Well, that’s nice,’ says Maria, flashing another bright smile.
‘Home has always been very important to Malc and me.’
‘And you used to live…?’
‘Down Nelson Street, on the edge of the docks. We were there for twenty years. It’s our anniversary next month.’
Maria gives a short laugh. ‘You’re going to find living here very different.’
‘I am discovering that already.’
‘And Malc? How is he settling in?’ Maria’s limbs glisten with Ambre Solaire.
‘Well, he’s not at home much now, because of his work.’ Maria raises her careful blonde eyebrows so Ellie has a chance to explain, and she ought to love this part, the praising and the boasting, but funnily enough this perfect opportunity isn’t how she’s imagined it. She’s tempted to dwell on the darker side of life, she’s tempted to exaggerate the seamy side of life on Nelson Street, the poverty times, the humiliating times of unpaid bills and scratching about for the last penny so the kids could order their Atlases, or their mapping pens, or that extra French which had seemed so important at the time.
She doesn’t give into temptation, though. She sticks to the sort of conversation Maria is keen to have… the kind of conversation one ought to have while sitting at a pool-side.
And anyway, Maria knows all about it already. ‘They featured that company in The Post last week. Wilfred read a bit out to me—they say it’s quite staggering how well it’s gone. They’re using it as an example… trying to lure other new firms into the area.’
‘Well, Malc had everything to do with that. He took the job as a lowly salesman and since th
en he has never looked back.’
‘And what did you say he did before?’
‘He worked at Watt & Wyatt, in their packing department.’ She’s not going to say he was a warehouseman. She doesn’t want Maria Williams knowing that.
‘Don’t you swim, then?’ People who change topics so quickly like that have always unnerved Ellie. They leave you bumbling along in midflow, feeling boring, when they move their eyes and the subject at the same time.
Ellie sips her drink. ‘This is good,’ she smiles at Maria. ‘Yes, I do swim, but in all the disruption of moving house I’ve lost my costume.’
‘You could always borrow one of mine.’
Ellie smiles again. ‘I doubt I’d fit into it.’
And then it’s Wilfred’s turn for the spotlight, and Ellie learns how bright is the future of the pale man in shorts who is down the garden behind the clumps of lavender with a watering can. How really excellent are his prospects, how they do not intend to stay here for long but are beating time while they wait for the right opportunity. ‘Wilfred’s in sugar.’
‘Is he really?’
‘And my boutique is just a little hobby—it keeps me out of trouble, you know,’ says Maria. ‘You should pop in some time.’ Her eyes take in Ellie’s old sundress. It is poplin, with an elasticated top. They don’t make sundresses like that any more. ‘I have some quite nice things hidden away for discerning customers.’
Ellie feels as if she’s being offered a porno video or a smutty magazine.
‘Oh, I will,’ she promises. ‘Next time I go by.’
‘It’s surprising how mean some men can be when it comes to the essentials of life,’ laughs Maria, crossing one supple leg over the other. In the heat Ellie’s legs have stuck together. She could not do that. Moisture is trickling between her breasts and the backs of her knees are stuck to the white plastic chair.
‘Malc’s very generous,’ Ellie replies, raising one leg gingerly.
Rich Deceiver Page 13
