Heartbreak Hotel (14 page)

He hadn’t tackled her about it; he hated confrontation. Besides, what would be the point? The house business had just made clear to him something which, deep down, he had known all along. Andy lay there staring at the ceiling, the Snoopy clock ticking the minutes – no, ticking the countdown. For he knew, as more snow fell silently outside the window, that this was the beginning of the end.

He dreamed he was sitting in an aeroplane that wouldn’t take off. It bounced through the streets, its wings banging against the houses on either side. He could hear the houses collapsing and people wailing. Children were buried in the rubble but all he could do was sit helplessly strapped into his seat as the plane lurched along on its trail of devastation.

Andy woke drenched with sweat. Snow bathed the room with light. It was Sunday; he heard Toni downstairs, rattling around in the kitchen, her murmurs as she spoke to her son. Last night’s certainty had disappeared; he lay there, rigid with dread and confusion. Could he really bail out? That’s what his father had done – packed up and buggered off. Men did it all the time. He pictured himself pulling down his suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, bringing with it an avalanche of teddy bears from their place of exile. How could he do that to Ryan? The boy would feel that it was his fault, just as he himself had done at his age.

Andy rolled over and buried his head in the pillow. Did he really have the courage to tell Toni that their marriage was over? Did he really believe it himself, in the cold light of day? Could he walk downstairs and, in one sentence, drop the bombshell? He pictured Toni collapsing onto the floor, screaming with fury, her face streaming with tears. Perhaps she would attack him, pummelling him with her fists while Ryan wailed from the sidelines. How could he be responsible for such misery? What had she done to deserve it? People rubbed along, after all. He himself was probably not the easiest person to live with; she was always complaining that he only talked about football and fishing. The thought of dismantling their life together filled him with terror. He would grow old alone, living in a bedsit overlooking the North Circular, a man beloved by no one. Perhaps he should forget the whole thing and take the two of them out tobogganing.

Andy got up. He showered, shaved and went downstairs. Ryan was in the front room, playing on his computer. Shouldn’t a boy his age be outdoors throwing snowballs? Toni was sitting at the kitchen table, working on her laptop.

Andy stood with his back to her, spooning coffee into the Gaggia machine. Toni had bought it at John Lewis the week before. She was a serious shopper but then she was making serious money nowadays, she was a businesswoman with a property portfolio, she had hauled herself up from nowhere by sheer determination. The TV makeover shows had inspired her, aspirational couples gasping over colour schemes and tripling their investment. And why not? This morning Andy felt strangely tolerant – indeed, he rather admired her for it. How weird was that? Was that because he was going to leave her?

Andy thought: I must speak now before I change my mind. He said: ‘I don’t think this is working.’

With a sigh, Toni scraped back her chair and joined him at the machine. ‘I told you, you have to push down that knob.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean us.’

There was a pause. Toni walked across the room and closed the door. She stood there, leaning against it.

‘I know,’ she said.

Andy was astonished. Outside, the great snowbound world lay silent around them.

‘
I’d
better make the coffee,’ she said, and came over. She unscrewed the metal cup. ‘Look, I’ll show you. You fill this up, here, and screw the lid down like this.’ She stopped. ‘Actually, what’s the point?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t need to know how to work it, do you?’ She busied herself with the machine. ‘Not now.’

‘I didn’t say –’

‘Yes you did. We can’t go on like this. You’re right.’ She wrenched the lever tight. ‘You don’t even try any more.’

‘Try what?’

‘To show an interest in what I’ve been doing. To say nice things. You did a bit, once, but that stopped long ago. I could be wearing a bin bag and you wouldn’t notice.’

‘That’s not true –’

‘Yes it is!’ The machine started to hiss. She glared at him through the jets of steam. ‘It’s like I’m not even here, you hardly talk to me, we never do anything together, I might as well not exist. You don’t even have the decency to use the air-freshener when you’ve been to the toilet.’ The cups rattled as she put them in their saucers. ‘You want froth?’

‘Black’s fine.’

The door opened and Ryan came in.

‘Go away!’ she snapped. ‘Mummy’s talking.’

Ryan backed away. Andy closed the door.

Toni put the cups on the table. ‘Got a cigarette?’ she asked.

Andy stared at her. ‘You want one?’ He reached behind the microwave, where he had hidden the packet.

‘I used to smoke,’ she said, taking a cigarette. ‘I gave up when I was pregnant with Ryan.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘You don’t know anything, do you?’

‘You never told me.’

‘You never asked.’

He lit their cigarettes. She inhaled deeply and blew out a plume of smoke. It made her look like an unknown woman, like an actress.

Andy had no idea what to say; the room expanded around him.

‘You’ve never really loved me, have you?’ she said.

‘Of course I have!’

She shook her head. ‘That’s why I didn’t want a baby. I knew you’d dump me, like Ryan’s dad did.’

‘No I wouldn’t.’

‘Oh yeah?’ She looked at him, her eyes glittering with tears. ‘So what the fuck do you think you’re doing now?’

‘We don’t have to break up,’ he said weakly.

‘Don’t be stupid. Of course we do. I’ve seen it coming for months.’

Over the next few days the strangest thing happened. Now they knew their marriage was over the tension lifted; the words had been said, the decision made, and there was a curious sense of release in the air. They treated each other gently, like invalids. They stopped snapping at each other; they weren’t angry, just fathomlessly sad. And suddenly the floodgates opened; they found themselves talking late into the night, like passengers on a long-haul flight, strangers who had sat next to each other for twelve hours but who only start chatting when the plane begins its descent. Toni told him how she had been bullied at school because her mother was in the nuthouse. Andy told her about his fruitless search for his father, his fury and drinking, his botched relationships with girls. And more, much more. Why had they never talked like this when they faced a lifetime together?

So, now their marriage was over, they finally became friends. No, not friends – intimates in sorrow. They took Ryan tenpin bowling and told him that Andy was moving out but that he wouldn’t go far and would still take him to the football. Toni and her son closed ranks, reverting to their previous survival mode; though Ryan was already overweight she stuffed him with pizza and let him play on his computer until the small hours. How could Andy blame them? Financial arrangements were made; Toni took out a loan to repay him the meagre amount he had put into the house. She was brisk and businesslike, working out the sums on her computer in a fug of smoke, for she was back on the fags.

Whether she bought Mrs Price’s house was no longer his concern. Royal Mail went through another lunatic spasm of reorganisation and he was transferred to Harrow; in the throes of removals his customers slipped forgotten into the past. Toni helped him pack up his belongings, her pale, doughy face naked, her hair pulled back in a rubber band like a chavvy single parent. She
was
a single parent. This desexed woman broke his heart. He thought how strange it was that the curtains between them had parted only twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of their marriage.

On the eve of his departure Toni cut his hair, as if preparing him for a long journey.

‘Property’s effing lonely,’ she said. ‘All the builders are from Ukraine, they talk even less than you.’ She sighed. ‘I miss the salon. We had a laugh, me and the girls.’

‘What did you talk about?’ He remembered her girlfriends gathered in the lounge, the shrieks and giggles, the silence when he entered. ‘What
do
women talk about?’

Snip-snip went her scissors. ‘Blokes like you, of course.’

For once it was warm. Buffy sat in the garden drinking wine with his sons, Tobias and Bruno. The two young men lay slumped on the grass – a matted expanse of dandelions, now gone to seed, it could hardly be called a lawn. They had stopped for the night en route home from the Crazy Sheep Festival, where it had poured with rain for three days. Needless to say, the sun had appeared just as everybody was packing up. This seemed to be the norm, with festivals.

They had arrived matted with mud and stinking of trench foot. Reverting to their younger selves, also the norm with festivals, they had consumed copious amounts of drugs and, upon their arrival at Myrtle House, had gone to bed in a catatonic trance, sleeping for fourteen hours surrounded by the disgorged contents of their rucksacks. Luckily the only other guests were a young family who left a similar trail of destruction behind them. Through the open window of the utility room Buffy could hear the grunts of the tumble dryer as it coped with the mountains of washing.

‘Mum came too,’ said Bruno. ‘God, it was embarrassing. She
danced
.’

India joined them, collapsing on the grass. ‘Nobody should see their mother dancing,’ she said. ‘Specially after she’s had a couple of spliffs.’

‘We had to hide in our tent,’ said Tobias. ‘Luckily she couldn’t face the toilets so she went home.’

Buffy remembered how Jacquetta danced, swaying in her loose, ethnic layers, jewellery swinging, her eyes closed in showy self-absorption. In the early days he had found it mildly erotic but as time passed her exclusion of everyone else, himself included, had drained away his lust and he had stopped joining her on the dance floor. He doubted that she noticed.

‘It’s embarrassing watching
anyone
dance for the first time,’ said India. ‘It’s like hearing them speaking French.’

She rolled over and held out her glass. Buffy, who was sitting in a chair, leaned down and filled it. He was very fond of India, though in fact she was just his stepdaughter, the product of Jacquetta’s earlier marriage to a man called Alan and named to celebrate the place of her conception, an ashram in Bangalore. Buffy pitied India; a name like that, and its explanation, seemed a good deal more embarrassing than dancing, and would last a lifetime. The sixties had a lot to answer for.

‘So what’s the big plan, Dad?’ asked Tobias.

Buffy gazed down at his long, lean son, his bare feet protruding from his jeans. He had mentioned something the night before but he presumed they were too stoned to listen.

‘I’m going to run residential courses for people who’re just divorced,’ he said.

Bruno sat up. ‘What?’

‘Or just broken up,’ said Buffy. ‘Split up. Something I’m a bit of an expert in.’

‘Courses?’ asked India. ‘What sort of courses?’

‘Where they learn the skill the other person had. Say, gardening or DIY. I got the idea from somebody who had lost her way trying to get to Blandford Forum. She was going to a course on basic car maintenance. She said her boyfriend had always taken care of that side of things but now she was alone she needed to feel empowered.’

‘Empowered?’ Tobias raised his eyebrows. All three of them were now sitting up.

‘Your stepmother Penny, for instance,’ said Buffy. ‘She knew how the boiler worked, and the video, and all sorts of stuff around the flat. When she buggered off with that photographer I was as helpless as a baby. If it had happened now I could’ve gone on one of my courses and not been such a pathetic wreck.’ His voice rose in excitement. ‘There’ll be courses on all sorts of things – Household Finances –’

Tobias burst out laughing. ‘
You
, teaching Household Finances? But you live in total chaos, you file everything under M for Miscellaneous.’

‘Not me,’ said Buffy patiently. ‘Other people; I’m already asking around. I’m only going to teach one of the courses.’ He remembered Janet Pritchard’s complaint about her husband. Indeed, Sita’s complaint about her boyfriend. ‘It’ll be called “How to Talk to Women”.’

The three of them were now doubled up with laughter. Tobias clutched his stomach as if in physical pain.

Buffy, offended, said: ‘Voda thinks it’s a marvellous idea. We’ll have full occupancy throughout the week. There’s room for five guests here, more if they share, and if we’re oversubscribed there’s other B&Bs nearby.’

‘Everyone’ll be shagging!’ Tobias chortled. ‘Rebound sex – wow, it’ll be a total fuckathon.’

‘No, that must be against the rules.’ India looked serious. ‘People will be feeling very fragile when they get here –’

‘Heartbreak Hotel!’ said Tobias, humming the tune.

‘– I know I did when Guy dumped me.’

‘Who’s Guy?’ asked Buffy.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ India said. ‘It’s all over.’

Buffy felt the familiar lurch of melancholy. How much was he missing, stuck out here in Wales? But then how much had he missed throughout the lives of the three people at his feet, now humming together tunelessly? After all, in the eyes of the world they were grown up. Bruno, who worked in IT, lived in Shepherd’s Bush with his pregnant girlfriend; Tobias did graphics; India made jewellery. Buffy only knew the bare bones of their lives but maybe this would have been the case if he had stayed married to their mother. Divorce skewed a man’s perceptions and poisoned them with guilt.

‘
Since my baby left me, I’ve found a new place to dwell
…’ They swayed side by side, singing in unison as the dandelion clocks floated around the garden. Buffy felt a surge of optimism. The sun was shining; the more he spoke of it, the more his idea gained weight and conviction. Why had nobody thought of it before?

They ate lunch in the kitchen, which still smelt of the morning’s fry-up. Buffy told them his catering plans – a simple midday meal but a full sit-down dinner, cooked by the ‘Basic Cookery’ class. He pointed out of the window. ‘And the “Gardening for Beginners” can sort that out. Cunning or what? Set the students to work! What could be a neater way of utilising labour?’