Hush Hush (5 page)

Angela sat down on the stairs,
heart thumping. She’d lied out of panic (again!), as soon as
she’d heard the word
'
team’.
She’d never expected to get the poxy job, and now she’d
have to leave herself in reception every morning, and grin with
new-girl eagerness to please, at least for the first few weeks.

But with two weeks’ grace,
why not go on holiday? A week would do. Ian Bradley, manager of
Hartley’s, had begged her at Robert’s wake to pop in any
time and avail of an under-the-counter bargain.

No
time like the present, she decided, with a spurt of adrenaline. After
all, somebody wanted to employ her! She did a little dance of
self-importance. She could afford to bask in the moment, before
reality kicked in and forced her to consider rail ticket prices,
wildcat strikes, leaves on the line, unpaid overtime and being called
no fun at the Christmas party.

Angela pushed open the door of Hartley’s. It
would always give her a wrench to come in here. Magdalena looked up
from Robert’s desk and smiled. Angela’s heart froze.
Magdalena had a degree in leisure and tourism, woefully under-used
booking fly-drives to Florida and booze-ups to Ibiza. She also had
great dark, soulful eyes, courtesy of an Italian mother, and an air
of obdurate humility that got Angela’s goat. Since Robert’s
death, Magdalena had been promoted to his job.

Now, as Magdalena’s liquid
eyes settled on Angela, they brimmed
à
la Spanish urchin over the fireplace.
‘
Mrs
Carbery
‒
Angela
‒
what a lovely surprise! How can I help you?’

Angela took a deep breath.
‘
Actually,
Magdalena, I came to see Ian. Nothing personal,’ she lied.

Ian Bradley bobbed out of his
back office.
‘
I’ll
deal with Mrs Carbery, Magdalena. Pull up a chair, Angela. What can
we do for you? You’re looking splendid, considering all you’ve
been through.’

Ian was a man with the right word
for every occasion. Robert had made fun of him, but Angela liked to
give him the benefit of the doubt. He was plump and shiny, like a
sausage about to burst its skin. A fortysomething bachelor, he lived
with his mother, wore slightly outré ties and called women of
a certain age, susceptible to flattery,
‘
bonny
hens’.

‘I need a cheap week
somewhere hot, at short notice,’ explained Angela.

‘Let’s see.’ He
spread brochures over his desk.
‘
Lanzagrotty?
Not your scene. I see you somewhere more
‒
sophisticated.’ He sat back and narrowed his eyes to visualise
Angela in this context.

She fidgeted.
‘
I
don’t think budget bookers can afford to be sophisticated. I’m
afraid it’s straw donkeys and sangria by the funnel over yachts
cruising the Aegean.’

‘OK. Morocco. It’s up
and coming, but not too pricey. And the lager louts find it too
foreign.’ He pushed a brochure towards Angela. As she studied a
picture of Agadir, his plump finger slid against her wrist.

Angela drew back as if scalded.

‘Fancy it?’ grinned
Ian.

‘Pardon?’

‘The Hotel Maroc, Agadir. I
can wangle a week at short notice, with no single supplement.’
He paused.
‘
Maybe
we could discuss it over a late lunch.’

‘I can’t. Is that the
time?’ She leapt up shakily.
‘
I’m
meeting my mother for lunch. I’ll take the hotel wotsit,
leaving whenever. I’ll ring you when I get home to go over the
details. Thanks so much for your help, Ian.’

Outside,
Angela drew a deep breath. She hadn’t imagined that fat finger.
He was Robert’s boss, for pete’s sake! While she was
obviously carrion for every circling vulture. Bloody hell! No longer
giving Ian Bradley the benefit of the doubt, Angela stomped towards
Boots in search of suntan lotion.

Climbing out of the pool, she reached for her
large beach towel. The Hotel Maroc in the sun-kissed resort of Agadir
was a low-key, three-star place, its poolside patrolled
interchangeably by lugubrious waiters and cats, on the respective
lookout for tips and scraps. Angela preferred the cats.

Encased in her towel, she
scurried to her room to prepare for that afternoon’s half-day
excursion to a Berber village in the mountains.

It was brilliant being so far
away from the richly imagined team at
Goss!
But she was
missing Robert with a physical pain.

At a rational level, she’d
known how difficult this would be
‒
her first holiday alone, after a year spent pottering no further than
the town centre.

She was thrilled that she’d
reached Morocco at all without a major panic attack at the airport.
It was the thought of Sadie’s likely reaction to any volte face
decision
‒
disappointment hardening to impatience
‒
that had buoyed her up.

But now, actually on holiday, the
vibrancy of the place struck a forceful reminder that Robert wasn’t
there to feel the sun on his back and rub factor thirty into hers.
She’d already found nicknames for the other hotel regulars, a
favourite game of theirs on holiday.

‘That’s Cat-shooer,’
she told Robert now, leaning on her balcony and pointing down to the
bodies arranged under the fringed spheres of poolside umbrellas. ’He
shoos away every poor kitty who comes looking for food. Though one
day, he tried to fob one off with a chip dipped in ketchup! There’s
Big Boobs with her Danielle Steel. She’s been wearing the same
tight top since she got here, just in case anyone’s failed to
notice what eyepokers her bazookers are.’

She broke off her bitchy litany
to ponder a sobering thought. What did the other holidaymakers call
her? Stand-offish Woman? Pubic Hair Eruption? Every time she thought
her bikini line was under control, she’d emerge from the pool
with long, dark stragglers stuck to her thigh. Maybe couples talked
about her, lying in bed at night with the balcony doors open to the
heat, giggling.
‘
Have
you seen that funny old trout on her own who treads water in the
shallow end? Old man bolted, d’you reckon?’

Angela sat down on the room’s
single rattan chair, and had a brief, cathartic cry. Deep down,
though, she felt proud of herself.

She’d chatted to people in
the bar most nights; she’d even got up and danced with a curly
dagger strapped to her waist at the Moroccan dinner under canvas in
the hotel garden. She’d resisted the urge to court pity and
admiration by confiding her widowhood to casual acquaintances like
Renee and Norm from Bromsgrove, who’d clocked her wedding ring
but made no comment on it.

I am a presentable thirty-eight,
thought Angela firmly, blowing her nose and stirring herself to put
on trousers. She remained too white and goose-pimply to risk her
single pair of shorts.

At least on excursions (this was
her third), she could sit at the back of the coach and draw Robert’s
attention to the tree-climbing goats and the village women in
biblical blue, balancing pots on their heads.

She waited outside the hotel for
the coach, checking the pile of coins in her battered leather purse.
Wherever you went as a foreigner, you were accosted as a matter of
routine by old, apologetic men, young, impatient men, excited
children and breast-feeding mothers, all with hands outstretched for
alms. Angela was happy to oblige. She felt she was giving something
back, however small, in return for exploiting their country in the
fatuous pursuit of picturesque palms, teeming souks and Technicolor
sunsets.

The tour coach was late.
Eventually, a battered Land Rover drew up and a huge man swung his
brown legs out of the driver’s seat.
‘
Car
Berry?’ he asked in mellifluous foreign tones, and Angela’s
heart sank.

‘I’m Angela Carbery.
Where’s the rest of the tour?’ she squeaked.

‘You’re the only
one,’ he smiled kindly,
‘
so
we go by car instead. We can go further up the mountains in car. You
see more.’

So, this personalised service at
no extra cost was Angela’s treat.

She slid about in the back of the
Land Rover, an unlashed cargo of arms and legs, while big, brown
Habib careered round mountain hairpins and kept his eyes fixed on
her, delivering an informative commentary on tribal conflict,
flowering desert and average rainfall.
‘
To
your left, you see a typical rock formation,’ he shouted above
the engine rev.
‘
No
Mr Car Berry then?’

God, she’d wondered when
he’d get to this.
‘
Didn’t
come with me,’ she yelled back evasively. Handsome nosy git!

By the time Habib had led her
round a souk and blocked a road with the Land Rover so she could
photograph a donkey with a determined glint in its eye that reminded
her of Sadie, Angela was thawing out a bit towards him. He was
direct, not nosy. And she was too hard on Arab men. They were
probably no bigger sexists than Lazlo.

Habib bought her sweet black
coffee in a café overlooking date-palmed gorges, before the
return trip to the hotel. He told her, casually, that he was looking
for a western wife.

‘Why? Easier to browbeat?’
probed Angela controversially.

Habib smiled his man-sized smile.
‘
Because
they live their own lives. I don’t want to have to make all the
money.’

‘Maybe you could just marry
it.’

‘Oh, if only I could.’
His smile grew wider, and Angela realised that he was teasing her as
much as she was teasing him.

She relaxed.
‘
So
it’s not economically viable to follow Muslim tradition and
have four wives?’

‘Only for the rich,’
grimaced Habib.
‘
And
just think, four mothers-in-law! Not a problem for your husband, I
think.’

‘He’s dead, actually.
I’m a widow, but not a rich one. I have to work.’

Habib’s face expressed
regret, understanding and admiration, in the correct sequence.
‘B
ut
you are young enough to marry again.’

‘That’s what my
mother reckons.’

‘Your parents live?’

‘Only Mum. She’s a
widow too, but it’s not such a big social gaffe at her age.
People react as if I must’ve killed off Robert by nagging or
working him to death.’

‘And now you live with your
mother?’

Angela’s cup trembled its
way onto her saucer. She hadn’t anticipated the question.
‘
Not
bloody likely! Anyway, she wouldn’t live with me. We’d be
at each other’s throats inside three days. She does her own
thing, still works part-time, and she’d never leave her house
to move in with me. She’s lived there forty-three years and
knows every ruck in the lino. My brother and I were even born at
home.’

‘What does your brother
do?’

Relieved at the change of
subject, Angela flopped back in her canvas chair.
‘
He’s
a bit of a case, to be honest. He emigrated to Canada when he was
twenty-one, married a Canadian, and took her name, if you don’t
mind. Dad said nothing, so we knew he was hurt. Owen asked Mum if she
minded, but she said,
“
Do
what you like, I only borrowed the name by marriage. I still regard
myself as Sadie Dignan.
”
We don’t know the ins and outs because we’re not there in
Canada, but it seems his wife got him to ditch his Irish surname.
It’s Feeney, you see. Doesn’t go with black tie dos and
charity lunches at the yacht club, where his wife’s a member.’

She sneaked a look to see if
Habib had nodded off.

His big smile was back in place,
as wide and gleaming as the vista before them. He’d probably
only half-followed her ramblings, but he was her favourite kind of
therapist. A stranger whose approximate grasp of English shortened
his attention span, filtering out juicier indiscretions.
‘
I
drive a different way back to show you sunset,’ he said.

‘OK,’ smiled Angela,
feeling shriven and reckless. He could now hurtle off a hairpin bend
into the blue oblivion if he wanted. She felt like she’d just
made her last confession, and if he did sheer off a precipice,
there’d surely be time for a gabbled act of contrition before
the airborne Land Rover bit the dust.

Habib delivered her safely back
to the hotel, though later that evening, as she eased her aching
bottom into a restaurant chair, she drew disapproving looks from the
Zimmer frame brigade. Some of them had probably seen her take off
with Habib for the afternoon and speculated, when the canasta and
gin-rummy palled, that she’d hired him for a private rogering
session. Let them think what they liked. Truth was, big men had big
private parts (allegedly), and Angela was scared of big privates. Too
much like squeezing the Titanic through the Panama Canal for her
liking.

That night, as the sun set over
her balcony, she wrote her postcards.

‘You were right about me
being a recluse,’ she conceded on Sadie’s, a picture of a
donkey.
‘
I
hope to return a new woman.’

Rachel
got a fat, moustached water-seller in national costume.
‘
Don’t
fancy yours much, Rache. Nobody’s pinched my bum yet, but can’t
decide if that’s good news or bad.’

That Saturday, she bagged a window seat on the
flight home. She kept her head down, reading about snowboarding in
Aspen in the in-flight mag. She had an absolute belter of a headache
malleting the side of her nose. She shut her eyes and turned in to
the window, wedging her poor, sore nose against the glass. Someone
came and sat next to her. She cared not. The stewardess asked for her
attention during the safety demo. Angela withheld it.