Muddy Waters (12 page)

Adrian finished his chapter and picked up
The Times
crossword. For those like him who could complete it by ten a.m. every day, he wished there was another, harder one, a ‘Here you are, clever bastard, now try
this
' version. He thought of the crossword as work, kick-starting the Thesaurus in his brain each morning so that his writing flowed smoothly, his fluency with his own language satisfyingly enhanced. ‘Use it or lose it' he'd read recently when flicking through the feature pages coming across an article about the effective exercising of brain cells. At this rate, he thought, by the time he was ninety he'd still be able to come up with at least fifty-plus words that meant ‘fuck' – now wouldn't that impress the great-grandchildren, he thought dourly as he reached across and pressed the ‘ready' button on the printer.

‘Well? What do you think?' Abigail demanded as she rushed excitedly into the sitting room where Stella was faxing her column to
Get This!

‘What? Oh
heavens
, you look so . . . so
different
!' Stella felt her mouth drop open with shock and closed it hurriedly, conscious of presenting a gawping and unpretty sight. Abigail's ‘perking up' at the hairdresser had involved a quite drastically short fluffy haircut that was also a sexy and blatantly streaky blond.

‘If you can't beat them . . .' Abigail explained with a broad grin, looking staggeringly pleased with herself.

‘It is real, is it? It's not a wig or something?' Stella asked, wishing she didn't sound so dull and old-motherish.

‘Course it's real,' Abigail said, running her fingers through it and tugging at the short ends. ‘I just thought, well, if I don't do it now, I'll never know if they really do have more fun.
I
intend to anyway. I'm feeling
loads
better already. Where Martin's concerned, it's now time to fight back.'

‘Does that mean you're going off to New York to get him back?' Adrian, coming in and catching her last sentence, sounded almost impolitely hopeful.

Abigail, still frothily excited by her new hair, skipped across the room and gave him a fond kiss on the cheek. He stepped sideways, alarmed, and crashed clumsily into the back of a sofa.

‘No, not quite yet. Hair first, then it's time to deal with my body,' Abigail told him, looking down at her flat stomach and smoothing her hands across imaginary folds of flesh. ‘I thought I might spend a few days at a health spa. Did you know they've turned our old college into one? I suppose it's because student teachers now get to go to proper universities. Anyway, it's called Chameleon, would you believe and supposed to be wonderful. What do you think, Stella, would you come with me?
Please?
I'll pay. They've got
everything
, or so it says. We'll be transformed, it would be such fun.'

Stella was immediately automatically thinking in terms of not having the time, huge expense, couldn't just go off like that and leave the family, but Adrian got in first. ‘Good idea,' he said cheerily, adding, ‘you could do with it, Stell,' prodding her bottom and grabbing some surplus flesh. The smile Stella gave him was so icily dazzling that he backed out of the room hurriedly, having accurately decoded its ‘that was
unforgivable
!' message.

‘Aren't men just ghastly sometimes?' Abigail sympathized when he was out of earshot. Stella collected her pages together from the fax machine and tried to recover her sense of humour.

‘Oh, he just doesn't think,' she said dismissively, horrified to find that she was furious almost to the point of tears.

‘Well, that's just the trouble. He
should
,' Abigail protested. ‘Perhaps you should do something to remind him about that.'

‘Like come to Chameleon with you and be made into a Whole New Woman?' Stella laughed.

Abigail looked thoughtful, ‘Well, that wasn't entirely what I had in mind, but it would do just for a start.'

‘Do you think it might be a bit too cold out here later?' Stella asked Adrian anxiously. She always did this, she thought, forcing guests out into the garden for meals the moment the days were getting just that tempting bit longer and warmer. Most of their friends knew to bring extra sweaters when invited to eat with them anytime between mid-April and late September, just in case. Unless it was pouring with rain or they could plead violent hay fever, they were whisked through the warmth of the house and out to the big teak table under the pergola. On the hottest summer nights there was nothing Stella loved more than sitting in the garden till the early hours, with midges dancing above the lantern lights, nicotiana, honeysuckle and stocks scenting the air, and wine, coffee and chat flowing. The river at night made softer noises, small gurgles and peaceful ripples, hardly enough to rock the nests of roosting ducks.

‘I'm sure I must have lived in the south of France in my last life,' she sighed, surveying the table in front of her, laden with bowls of marinading chicken and prawns ready for barbecuing, slices of peppers, aubergines and courgettes soaking in spiced oils, tomato salad, potatoes with garlic and rosemary. A spicy mixture of rice and vegetables was heaped into the bowl she had bought from Willow.

‘Or perhaps that's what you'll get in your next one if you're good. Especially if you keep on attempting to feed the five thousand. How did just having Abigail to stay for a few days turn into supper for thirty-two people?' he asked, mystified.

‘Just trying to make her feel a bit happier, that's all. And she did more than her bit helping with the food. After all, she did come here to be cheered up. It seemed like a good idea at the time, the way these things always do. It
is
a good idea,' she insisted, even though he hadn't really argued that it wasn't. ‘Anyway
do
you think it's too cold? Shall I take everything back into the kitchen?'

Adrian sniffed at the air as if from that he could tell if heavy dew and the temperature were both likely to fall steadily the moment it got dark. His hand was flickering in the air as if at any moment he might hold up an authoritative finger and check the wind direction. ‘No, leave it – I'm sure it'll be fine,' he decided. ‘They can always wander in if they feel the cold. You know what they're like, I once found Enzo sitting halfway up the stairs wolfing down a plate of lasagne.'

Stella smiled at him warily, still smarting from his remark about her being in need of a health spa make-over. She now felt that she no longer resembled a beachball, more an airship and that it was all his unforgivable fault. Perhaps she could actually go away, just for a few days. The family were all grown up, they could easily manage without her. A sudden feeling of bleakness hit her. The days when she, in person, was
necessary
were long gone. Her presence at home was now an optional extra. You can't have it both ways, she scolded herself, thinking of how often she grumbled that they all took her too much for granted, domestically. Perhaps, though, a conspiracy of humouring was going on. Maybe they only asked her to post things and fetch things, what was for dinner and were their best jeans dry in order to make her feel wanted. Certainly, if she died, or disappeared, they'd be sad but they'd manage. Adrian would find someone else after a short but decent interval – women, divorced, bereaved or purely adventurous would pounce on him like cats on a sparrow. She thought about poor Abigail, ousted by Martin's young blond. Where were all the men looking for women of a Certain Age? Being pussy-food, that's where, she concluded crossly. She watched Adrian wrestling with his state of the art all-gas, no-mess barbecue and wondered if, since his duties as impregnator were long ago finished, and since she just about earned enough to cope with the bills, he ever felt like that too. If so, that left the staying together part as a matter of sheer goodwill and the careful avoidance of boredom. She didn't get to hear of those sort of middle-aged problems in her job – teenagers who wrote to her thought terminal boredom was just one Saturday night with nowhere to go. The boyfriend who cruelly abandoned them at sixteen wasn't even remotely likely to be the last one they ever had.

Ruth came out of the kitchen carrying a jug of pink and yellow striped tulips which she put on the centre of the table next to the old wooden salad bowl Stella had filled with a mixture of rocket and various decorative Waitrose lettuces. ‘Are these the colour tulips they call “rhubarb and custard” or something puddingy like that?' Ruth asked.

‘I think so. Unless it's plums,' Stella told her. ‘Will you be here this evening or are you off out somewhere?'

Ruth gave her a sly sideways look that Stella, counting forks, only just caught and noted. ‘I'll be here, I s'pose. Nothing much else to do,' she replied with exaggerated nonchalance, tweaking at the arrangement of tulips. Stella recalled rather fearfully the sight of Ruth at the boathouse gazing devotedly at Bernard. Just a crush, a passing fancy, she thought, resorting for comfort to the vocabulary of her own schooldays, words from the howling depths of history to her sex-smart
Get This!
correspondents. Ruth walked back into the house and Stella watched, marvelling at how her daughter managed to combine a heavy and large-boned body with the spontaneous grace of a panther. She was poised and supple like a dancer and tonight wore a long sleeveless green dress that seemed to have two layers, the top one of which was roughly crocheted and fraying into larger holes than it should have. One of the straps had fallen down her shoulder and rested on her creamy upper arm. She still has skin and flesh as soft as a baby, Stella thought, remembering suddenly how it had felt to hold Ruth, newly born, to her breast, to stroke the downy cheek with her finger and watch the instinctive hungry questing of her baby mouth in the direction of the touch. But Ruth was grown up now, capable of searching out oral pleasures that were best not, by a parent at least, thought about.

‘You're not going to
eat
that, are you?' Abigail looked askance at Ruth as she tilted her head back, closed her eyes and aimed a hot dog stuffed with sausage, onion and oozing ketchup towards her mouth. Ruth stared at her insolently through her long black eyelashes, the hot dog protruding rudely between her teeth.

‘Why shouldn't she eat it? It's her supper.' Bernard, glass in hand was sitting on the terrace bench watching Ruth's flamboyant performance with fascination. Her large red lips framed the bun, suggestive as a Chocolate Flake advert, and her pretty teeth bit delicately but hard, neatly chopping through the sausage. ‘She does do it tremendously well,' he added admiringly, acknowledging a performance that was clearly just for him.

Ruth chewed and swallowed, smudged ketchup from round her mouth with the back of her hand then turned on Abigail, ‘Yeah, why shouldn't I eat it?'

Abigail shrugged and drawled, ‘Oh no real reason I suppose; I guess I just assumed you'd be watching your weight.'

‘She doesn't need to. She's perfect,' Bernard chuckled, putting out a hand and kneading hard at Ruth's hip as if exploring the tenderness of a haunch of meat. Ruth shifted her body, leaning towards his outstretched hand like a caressed cat and although she looked as if she registered nothing more than the bliss of the moment, her half-closed eyes steadily watched Abigail for satisfying signs of envy.

Opening more bottles of wine over by the table, Stella made meaningless party conversation with Ellen MacIver and a woman who made suede cushions while her ears strained to listen to Bernard, Abigail and Ruth. She'd overheard Abigail's comment, felt Ruth's habitual pride in her looks wavering against an underlying sensitivity about her weight but could see from Ruth's expression that in the battle for Bernard, round one had gone to her. Bernard's hand was still running a finger idly up and down Ruth's thigh. Abigail noticed Stella watching and joined her to collect another drink.

‘What is Bernard
doing
?' Stella hissed. ‘If Adrian sees Ruth being groped at like that . . . I mean she's only just
seventeen,
for heaven's sake.'

‘And he's what, fifty or so? A bit more?' Abigail mused, crunching loudly on a piece of celery. ‘My first wasn't far off sixty, rather a good thing actually. He was one of my mother's and I was handed over for lessons one night while she went to the pub. By then they should know what they're doing.' She looked doubtfully at Bernard, ‘Not all of them, of course; some never quite get the hang of it.'

Stella glared at her. ‘You just wait till it's your Venetia's turn. Let's see if you're so casual about it then.'

Abigail shuddered. ‘OK, I'll admit I wouldn't make him first choice for Venetia . . . OK, just for you I'll try and help. After all, I do owe you.' She grinned broadly, ‘I have only two talents, pulling men and arranging flowers.' She looked more speculatively at Bernard as if, Stella thought, she was pricing up his assets. Perhaps she was.

‘And tomorrow I'll have a go at re-doing that vase of tulips. I wouldn't want you to think I'm just here to be useless.' Abigail grinned at Adrian who approached them with a plate full of spiced chicken wings. ‘And don't forget, Adrian, I'm counting on you to make Stella come to Chameleon with me. They're awfully good at cellulite. I realized what the word meant when I saw you trying on that red dress, Stella. Or maybe she could go there on her own and I'll stay and take care of you all, shall I?' Stella watched incredulously as she ran her hand lightly across his cheek. Her ears stung from Abigail's careless words and she hardly dared look around to see who else had heard.

‘I'm sure she doesn't mean to be so tactless,' Ellen MacIver said sympathetically, patting Stella's arm, ‘no one could be so awful. I expect she just thinks honesty is a virtue.'