‘Could be a defect in the belt. Or the drum may be overloaded. Are you putting too much in?’
Not now, she thought. This week’s wash had looked pathetically small without Simon’s shirts and socks, his pyjamas, gym-clothes, muddy walking gear.
‘I’ll need to phone for a new one, OK?’
‘OK.’ She hardly cared. It was other things that needed mending; more precious things, by far.
He snapped his mobile open, started spelling out her details to somebody the other end – name, house-number, street-name, postcode. ‘Nope,’ he said, running a hand through his hair. ‘There seems to be a problem with the housing. The fan keeps sticking. Do you have a replacement?’
She envied him his work – practical and physical – manual work, not head-work. His mind was on pumps and fan-belts, not on absence, darkness, loss.
Shutting off the mobile, he sat back on his heels. She was aware of the black trousers straining over his thighs. Strong, skinny thighs, like Simon’s. She imagined them now, straddling her body, or drawn up around her waist; the feel of his hot, sweaty skin as he thrust and threshed against her. Simon made love in vivid, flaunting colour: marigold, electric-blue. Was that why he had gone – because she couldn’t match his passion; was a ‘magnolia’ kind of lover: tepid, safe and boring? Maybe he’d met a girl who rivalled him in sheer brilliance and flamboyance; a truly scarlet woman, torrid in the sack.
‘There isn’t one in stock, so they’ll have to ring around – see if they can get it somewhere else. They’ll phone back in fifteen minutes.’
‘Oh … good. Look, let me make you a coffee now.’
He might want to wait outside in his van, snatch fifteen minutes’ shut-eye, or sneak a cigarette, rather than share a cup of coffee with her. The thought induced a surge of panic, so she went to stand in the doorway, blocking his escape; talking really fast, to prevent him saying no again. ‘Actually, I could do with one myself. I’ll make proper coffee for us both. How many sugars do you take? And do you prefer hot milk to cold? And if you fancy a biscuit, I bought a load last week….’
Simon had bought them, in fact – Christmas biscuits in a big, round, glossy tin, with a picture of the Horse Guards on the lid. He always picked out the chocolate ones, whilst she preferred the plain. ‘We’re so compatible,’ they used to laugh, in the early days, ‘even down to biscuits.’ Perhaps the new female would also want the chocolate ones, and resent him pigging the lot. Tiny things like that could undermine relationships; destroy them in the end. And, with any luck, the bitch would get annoyed about his tardiness in doing household jobs; insist he got a move on, nag him till he snapped.
Reaching up for the tin, she prised off the lid and removed the padded gold-foil roundel lying on the top. How snug the biscuits looked, nestling close together in their matching gold-foil bed. She and Simon had been like that, snuggling up to one another beneath their padded duvet. Now she was a broken biscuit, a mass of useless crumbs.
‘Take several,’ she urged, proffering Jack the tin.
‘Mind if I hog the chocolate ones? I’m mad for chocolate – any kind.’
Of course. She already knew that. ‘Well, have them all. Go down to the second layer.’
‘Are you trying to fatten me up?’
He sounded suspicious rather than amused. Perhaps he feared she was chatting him up, and might actually pounce, given any encouragement. She was tempted, in fact, just to pay Simon back. Instead, she edged away a little, busied herself with the coffee pot. When it came to coffee, Simon was a connoisseur; insisted that they buy it from the Italian delicatessen, whose proudly plump proprietor ground the beans to order. As she unscrewed the jar, the rich, deep-roasted, mocha smell brought memories of Sunday mornings: coffee in bed; papers jumbled on the floor; his kisses hot and pungent, tasting of Continental Blend.
She jumped as Jack’s mobile rang. He answered through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘You got one? Great! I’ll call by this evening and fetch it.’
As the kettle erupted in a shuddering boil, she experienced the same turmoil in her chest. So he’d be here again, this evening. Maybe spending hours with her, if the part proved hard to fit. She could make him supper – knew the kind of food he’d like: a chocolate pudding, obviously, with something male and meaty first: carbonnade of beef, perhaps, or steak in ale, or oxtail. Simon detested salads; jibbed even at a piece of fish, unless it was fried in batter.
Her hand was shaking as she poured the boiling water into the pot. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, once he’d rung off. ‘I’m not going out or anything.’
‘What?’
‘I mean, if you’re coming back this evening, no problem – I’ll be here.’
‘Oh, it won’t be this evening. I’m up to my ears till God knows when tonight. And the next few days. With it being so close to Christmas, everybody’s on my tail. And some of them calls are urgent – women with half-a-dozen kids and loads of nappies to wash.’
Simon hadn’t wanted children. She’d hoped he might come round to it, eventually, although she had never forced the issue; remained content with what they had: fantastic sex; shared tastes in books and music; the same sense of humour, political beliefs.
She tried to control the tremor in her voice; adopt a businesslike tone. ‘Look, nappies or no nappies, this job is just as urgent as theirs. I need you to come back, OK? I’m the client, so I call the tune.’
With a gesture of annoyance, he reached for his phone again. ‘I’ll give the office a bell, see if another engineer is free to—’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘It must be you. Someone new to the job will only mess things up.’
‘We all have the same training,’ he explained, a note of irritation in his voice. ‘Everyone in the company knows these machines like the back of their hand.’
‘Maybe so, but you took on the job, so I expect you to finish it.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, that’s impossible.’
‘Don’t call me ma’am, OK? I’m not ma’am, I’m Angela.’
He stared at her a moment, then spoke in almost a pitying tone, still avoiding the use of her name. ‘I’m going to put in a request for Gordon to come out. He’s had thirty years’ experience, and he’s totally reliable.’
An image of her dog suddenly intruded into her mind. Jack had been put to sleep by the vet at the age of only four, with inoperable cancer of the pancreas. Four, for dogs, was equivalent to twenty-eight for humans – her own age, in point of fact. She still remembered every detail: the injection into his flank, the dreadful silence while they waited for the drug to take effect, Jack’s final piteous shudder, followed by the vet’s soft, solemn voice, ‘He’s gone now.’
‘Please,’ she begged, switching from insistence to entreaty. ‘Do come. I’ll pay anything you like. And I don’t mind what time it is. Make it as late as you like. Just suit yourself, but come.’
He said nothing whatsoever, just reached out for another biscuit, as if to play for time. The crunching noise sounded louder than the tick-tick of the clock. Her life seemed poised on a knife-edge. Depending on his answer, she might tip over into panic – demeaning, frightening breakdown – or limp and hobble forward in some damaged but not hopeless shape.
‘Please,’ she repeated, her voice shaky from the force of her desire. ‘It means so much, means everything.’
In the ensuing hush, she fixed her whole attention on his tools: a set of seven screwdrivers, lined up according to size; red-handled, battered pliers; shiny silver spanners; rolls of electrical tape, and a few spiky, sharp-toothed implements, with vicious, snapping jaws.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quite emotionless. ‘Excuse me a minute, will you, ma’am?’
Pushing past her, he strode into the hall. She gripped the worktop for support. Was he walking out? And without a single word? He’d left his tools behind, but that didn’t mean a thing. Perhaps he was scribbling her a note, an insulting, cowardly note. She strained her ears for the scratch
ing of a pen; heard nothing but the slam of the front door.
He’d gone. Like that. Cruelly. Unforgivably. Hadn’t told her why. Hadn’t asked her what she felt. Or discussed the situation. Hadn’t even thought to ask if she could pay the rent without him. Who cared about the rent? It was him she craved – as an addict craved a drug – his mind, his soul, his skills, his wit, his cock.
Shutting her eyes, she took a sip of coffee; tried desperately to change the date – turn this barren Wednesday into the Sunday before last: blissed-out with him in bed; hands cupped round her coffee-mug; piles of Sunday papers jumbled on the duvet. She could feel his open, sensuous lips nuzzling along her neck; the shockwaves lower down, as his fingers traced—
Useless. She was bundled up in sweaters and standing in the kitchen, not lolling naked in a dishevelled double bed. Even the coffee was insipid; nothing like their usual brew. Despite the sludge of bitter grounds muddying the cup, she hadn’t made it strong enough – a tepid sort of dishwater, with no kick to it, no flavour. No wonder he was shagging someone else. His new lover would be brimming over with caffeine and adrenaline; a full-bodied double espresso, potent, scorching-hot.
She sank down on to the floor; knelt where he had knelt, hiding her face in her hands. A long time seemed to pass – hours, perhaps, or days; maybe a full week. They must have reached the solstice now: the shortest, saddest, darkest, longest day.
She started as the doorbell rang; struggled to her feet. The postman bringing Christmas cards. Friends wishing them a happy Christmas, unaware that Simon’s name could no longer be conjoined with hers on any card or envelope. Those friends would probably disappear, as well. People found it hard to cope if a couple went their separate ways, and often avoided both partners, to save themselves embarrassment.
She limped to the front door, rubbed her eyes in shock. Could it be an illusion – this change of mind, reprieve? Slowly, she registered each detail, to ensure she wasn’t dreaming: thick, unruly hair, the colour of ripe straw; wary, long-lashed eyes, somewhere between grey and blue; angular figure with a slight stoop to the shoulders, high cheekbones, narrow face. Yes, all real, all tangible.
‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll come back.’
‘You’ll come back?’ she repeated, not daring to believe the fact until she heard it from his lips once more.
‘Yeah. I’ll come back.’
Wonderingly, she let him in, scared by the elation tingling through her chest; the uproar in her body, ferment in her head.
‘I’ve managed to swap things round, postponed another job. So if you’re in at six this evening, I’ll pop straight round from my last call and …’
The words she barely heard, too shaken by the fact that he had met her eyes, at last, and his fierce, intense, blue-smouldering stare was piercing to her innermost core, repairing every damaged part – yes, even her broken heart.
‘Thank you, she whispered, ‘Simon.’
Margarine
CLAREMONT GRANGE
CENTENARY CELEBRATION
You are cordially invited …
Margery ripped the invitation in half and tossed it into the bin. Never would she set foot in that loathsome place again. The envelope contained a letter – in addition to the gold-bordered card – which she gave a cursory glance. An appeal for a donation, no doubt. No, it merely gave further details of the celebration itself: a picnic lunch, followed by a performance of The Pirates of Penzance, enacted by the current pupils, and then a formal evening dinner, with speeches by the Head and various distinguished alumnae. Hardly an enticing prospect – an amateur production of Gilbert and Sullivan, and endless dreary trumpetings about the school’s superior position in the league tables. About to crumple up the sheet, she suddenly noticed the name at the bottom, typed beneath a bold but illegible signature: Clarissa Scott, née Talbot-Young.
She stood motionless, heart pounding, all her childhood passion reigniting in a rush, at the sight of that alluring name. She was a child again, a willing slave to the most talented and beauteous creature in the whole of Claremont Grange – a much older girl, completely out of reach, with long golden hair and violet eyes, and a range of different skills: school prefect, hockey captain, editor of the school magazine. If Clarissa Talbot-Young was organizing this event, then she, the once ardent admirer, simply must be there, despite the fact she had deliberately avoided all previous reunions. This was a challenge impossible to ignore; a chance for the lowly servant to wreak her revenge, at last.
Throughout her years in that hated institution, Clarissa had used her and abused her; accepting every menial service as her natural right and privilege, whilst taunting her unmercifully. Yet, she’d continued to worship her tormentor as a goddess and a queen, glorying in each mortification, as preferable to being ignored. When Queen Clarissa finally left school, aglow with an Oxford scholarship, her plain and podgy skivvy had been inconsolable, actually missing all the drudgery and donkeywork, the constant errands and thankless tasks, performed for that enthralling tyrant.
She strode into the bedroom, startled by her sudden sense of outrage. For over thirty years, she had banned the school from both memory and thought, yet now it seemed imperative to confront Clarissa in person; tell her loud and clear what a bully and a brute she’d been.
She began riffling through her wardrobe, intent on finding an outfit for the occasion that would stir no shameful memory of the dumpy, unprepossessing child Clarissa would remember, with her ill-filling uniform (bought always second-hand), and the braces on her teeth. Of course, the goddess would have changed as well: the long golden hair probably short and grey these days; the slender figure thickening round the waist. In fact, the five-year age-difference would actually work in her own favour now, since Clarissa would be coming up to sixty, due for her pension and her bus-pass, while she herself, by some strange stroke of luck, was still pre-menopausal.
Her reflection in the mirror provided a certain reassurance: her hair was largely its natural tawny brown; her figure in good shape, with no trace of the former puppy-fat; no grotesque and greasy pigtails just asking to be tugged. But she was determined to leave nothing to chance. In fact, why settle for some existing garment and run the risk of looking out-of-fashion, when she could invest in a brand new outfit, head to toe? She would also book a session at the hairdresser, for a decent cut and re-style. Such matters, in her normal life, were of very minor concern, but this, she knew instinctively, was a crisis situation. As a child, she’d been an outcast through no fault of her own: the only one in a roll-call of 300 girls who lived with a single mother, shamefully divorced – and lived not in grace and style, but in a cramped two-up, two-down. It might be rather late in the day to make the point that base-born Margery Tomkins could now hold her own in the world, but that was exactly what she intended – and to hell with the consequences.
As she nosed into a parking space between a BMW coupé and a silver-grey Mercedes, she cursed herself for not having come by train. Not only was her own car the smallest, lowest-status one in sight, but she had got completely lost en route and was now humiliatingly late. Before getting out, however, she just had to repair her face, even if it made her later still. The make-up she’d applied this morning with such determined care was already beginning to smudge and melt in the fierce heat of the car. BMW drivers would have built-in air-conditioning, but her third-hand Nissan Micra didn’t boast such luxury. Quickly, she retouched her lipstick and powdered over the shine; noticing with alarm that her hands were not quite steady.
Incredible that just the sight of Claremont Grange could produce such fierce reactions. The gracious, indeed splendid house – a former Rothschild mansion – appeared to her like a Borstal or a boot camp, with lowering prison-walls and no windows except grudging slits. And the extensive grounds, with rolling parkland stretching lush beyond, seemed to have shrunk to the odd stunted tree, naked of any leaf or flower, even in mid-June. The weather was, in fact, idyllic, with a beneficent sun and baby-blue sk
y, but for her it was September, grey and overcast. She was five years old again; being dumped here by her grandparents, whom she could barely even see, half-blinded as she was by tears, and by an overlarge school hat.
‘You’re an extremely lucky little girl,’ they told her, ‘to be getting such a first-rate education. And you’ve us to thank for it.’
And then they drove away, Grandma quite forgetting to turn round and wave goodbye. She stood watching, sobbing, until the car was just a speck, and she was dragged off to her dormitory by somebody called Matron, who was tall and thin and crackled when she walked.
It was years before she realized that by paying her fees at boarding-school, her grandparents were actually solving the problem of their errant son – her father – who had left the marriage, left her mother penniless, and gone to live in Hawaii with a Polynesian beauty-queen. Not only did it salve their conscience, it also saved her father from having to involve himself in her upbringing – or even, for that matter, having ever to see her again. If she were at school all during term-time and with her mother in the holidays, there was no reason for him to squander time and money travelling thousands of miles to visit. She had long ago accepted the situation, refusing to indulge in anger or resentment, however much she had detested Claremont Grange. Yet her sortie here today had revived her sense of being lonely and uprooted, and completely out of place; a common weed in a stylish flowerbed, which might be chucked on the rubbish-heap, should her Grandpa’s cash run out.
Determined to suppress such thoughts, she rammed on her new hat and made her way past the side of the house to the expanse of lawn behind. The hum and buzz of voices crescendoed as she walked towards the mass of languid females, sprawled on picnic rugs and groundsheets on the grass. Fighting a strong instinct to turn tail and bolt for home, she forced herself to weave her way between the various groups; eyes peeled for Clarissa. However changed the Queen might be, she knew she’d recognize her instantly, if only by the churning in her guts.
The Queen's Margarine Page 6