Whitethorn Woods (35 page)

   I took to keeping big juicy olives and little slices of salami in my fridge in case Oliver called. And I always dressed up anyway so he never found me looking like a slattern. Poor Poppy often looked as if she had been doing hard manual labor all day . . . which in a way she had on those nursing wards. Before she went to that home. And I liked Oliver coming to call, yes I did.

   And of course we went to bed together. I mean, Oliver is that kind of person. I mean, there was nothing serious in it. I was his sister-in-law after all or his ex-sister-in-law, to be strictly accurate. And I didn't really see him as husband material. No, if St. Ann were going to answer my prayers, I don't think it was going to be with Poppy's ex.

   He talked rather a lot about Poppy, which was irritating. I said once that we had gone beyond Poppy as a topic of conversation but he looked puzzled. He always wanted to know if she was seeing anyone and I said, you know Poppy, seeing everyone, seeing no one. This puzzled him further and he asked, did she want to know about him?

   Now the truth was that if I mentioned Oliver, Poppy would raise her eyes to heaven and sigh. But I didn't pass this on. He seemed to think we were much closer than we were, asking me little tidbits about when we were girls. As if I can remember!

   I decided to go over to this idiotic place Ferns and Heathers to see Poppy, well, really so that I would have something to tell Oliver about her. I wanted him to think we were more loving and bonding than we actually were.

   The first thing I saw when I arrived was Poppy's bottom up in the air as she dug at some hole in the ground. Beside her were assorted geriatrics, including, of all people, that loud Grania's redfaced father, Dan. What was he doing here? They were all laughing hysterically at something. I felt that when my shadow fell on them they stopped laughing.

   "Why it's Elegant Jane!" cried the awful Dan. And the others looked at me without much pleasure. Poppy came up from the hole in the ground, her hands filthy and streaks of mud on her face.

   "Oh, hallo, Jane, what's wrong?" she asked. As if there would have to be something wrong for me to come and see my only sister.

   "Why should there be anything wrong?" I snapped at her.

   They all understood, the old folk, and Dan understood better than most.

   "Fasten your seat belts," he said. They laughed.

   "Light the touchpaper and retire," said another old man with hardly any teeth. A man who must have retired thirty years ago.

   I hated them for seeing our coldness and recognizing it for what it was. I hated Poppy for letting them see it.

   "Right, folks, I have to go away for a short while. Please stay well away from the hole, for God's sake, I don't want to be digging you all out with broken hips," Poppy ordered them and led me to her little house in the grounds. She washed her hands, poured me a sherry and sat down to talk to me.

   "You still have mud on your face," I said.

   She ignored me completely. "Is there anything wrong with Dad?" she asked.

   "No, of course not, why, should there be?"

   "Well, his blood pressure was up last week," Poppy said.

   "How on earth do you know?" I asked.

   "I take it every week when I go round on my half-day," she said.

   Poppy goes to Mother and Father every week on her half-day? How extraordinary!

   "So what is it then?" Poppy asked, looking wistfully out at the garden where she wanted to be, not in here talking to her only sister.

   "I was talking to Oliver," I began.

   "Oliver?" She sounded bewildered.

   "Yes, Oliver. Your husband, the man you were married to."

   "But not married to him now, Jane," Poppy said as if she were talking to someone retarded. She talked to those old bats outside on much more equal terms than she talked to me.

   "No, but he was making inquiries about you," I said, wondering how this had got so out of control.

   "Like what kind of inquiries?" She was totally uninterested. I so wished I hadn't come.

   "Oh, I don't know. Things. Like were you good at games at school, like what we did on your birthday at home."

   "Oliver wants to know all that? Lord, he must be madder than we thought," Poppy said cheerfully and looked out the window as if she were dying to get back to digging holes.

   "I don't think he's mad at all, I think he is very sane. I really believe that he wanted it all to work, you know, when you were married."

   "Yes, of course he did, that's why he brought his old girlfriend back to my bed," Poppy said in a matter-of-fact way.

   "Well, it was his bed too," I heard myself say idiotically.

   "Oh well, of course, that makes it all right then," Poppy said.

   There was a silence between us. I tried to fill it. I wanted to show some interest in this mad place where she worked.

   "What were you digging the hole for?"

   "Mass burial ground, cheaper than funerals," Poppy said.

   For a moment I believed her. Well, we don't go round making these silly jokes in the library.

   "Sorry, it's for a giant palm tree. It's arriving this afternoon—we wanted to have its space ready for it."

   "Then don't let me detain you." I stood up huffily.

   "Don't go—finish your sherry." She sat there tousled and untidy. I sipped it in silence.

   Twice she looked as if she were about to confide in me and then stopped at the last moment.

   "Say it," I ordered her eventually.

   "All right, well, item number one, I don't fancy Oliver remotely, so go right ahead if you do. You aren't stepping on any toes. But item two, he's really very boring, clinging and boring. You'll find that. So he's rich and good-looking but actually that's not very important in the long run. The rich can often be tight with spending their money and the handsome are often vain. And you end up feeling guilty because you encouraged him. And he hasn't the remotest notion of being faithful. You told me that years back and I didn't believe you. So why should you listen to me now?"

   Poppy sat there, assured and mud-spattered, with a sherry in her hand and a lot of mad old people outside the window waiting for her to come out so that they could get on with digging a hole.

   "And this is better?" I said, indicating the garden, the residents and the whole setup with a nod of my head.

   "Vastly," she said.

   I knew then that I had never understood her and never would. My efforts at friendship and trying to get close, admittedly late in the day, were being thrown back in my face.

   As I was getting into my car I heard them cheer at the reappearance of Poppy. Well, it was what she wanted. And she had said the coast was clear.

   I got my hair done and bought some smoked salmon—in case Oliver came round.

   As it happened he didn't. But he came next evening.

   He never brought a gift and he did look at himself in the mirror quite a lot. And he always stayed just a little too long for me, because I had to get up early for work. Sometimes he would stay the night but that was rather disruptive too.

   He never suggested that we go out anywhere. And there
was
something a bit clinging about him. But we weren't married so I couldn't divorce him or get a barring order against him. Even though at times I would have liked to. For a little peace.

   There was very little laughter around at the library or at home. The days often seemed long. Compared to that madhouse at Ferns and Heathers, where there was never a spare moment in the day and the inmates were laughing all the time.

   Was it at all possible that Poppy could have been right? Poppy, whose skin had never been cherished, whose hair had never been styled and whose wardrobe was a joke, a bad joke. Surely Poppy couldn't have discovered the secret of life? That would be too unfair for words.

I hope it's going to be busy today at the salon. When you have to hang about between clients, time seems to drag a lot. I didn't need any free time to think about the conversation at breakfast.

   I was in at 8:45 as usual. Fabian, who is a legend not only in Rossmore but for four counties around, likes to have what he calls "grooming control" before he opens the door. His salon sinks or swims, he says, by what the staff look like. No grubby fingernails, no down-at-heel shoes and our own hair must be perfect. We had been warned about that at the very outset. Fabian expected us to have shining, well-conditioned hair every morning, any snipping or trimming he would do. It was one of the perks of the job.

   Our uniforms were laundered on the premises so they always looked bandbox-fresh. That's a funny word,
bandbox.
I wonder what it means. Fabian insisted that we all smile a lot and look pleased to see customers. The salon wasn't the place to be if you were going to look glum. Worries had to be left outside the salon. That was an absolute.

   Fabian said he could only charge these top prices he does if people felt they were in a special place. No one with hangovers, headaches, difficult children or unhappy love lives had any place on the staff.

   Unreal, you might say. And Fabian would agree.

   But he said that going to an expensive hair salon was an escape

for people, they didn't want to hear of the dull or problem-filled world of ordinary people. So there was to be no talk about the traffic, or illness, or being mugged. An expensive perfume was sprayed around the salon just before opening time and several times again during the day. This was to set the tone of the place. Glamour, peace, elegance, a palace with the power to transform all who came in and paid big money.

   The tips were good too, and you could work anywhere you wanted to if you had been a few years in Fabian's. But usually you set up your own place. If you said that you were "late of Fabian's," people would come to you from far and wide.

   Not that I was going to be in a position to set up my own salon. Once I thought I might—and Ian had been behind me all the way, assuring me that I was management material.

   But breakfast today had changed everything.

   Stop it, Pandora. Smile. Teeth and eyes, Pandora, we are nearly on show.

   Pandora is my salon name, and that's what I think of myself as being while I'm here. At home, I'm Vi. Don't think of home. Smile, Pandora, the day is starting.

   My nine o'clock lady was in the door like a greyhound out of a trap. She came every Thursday without fail, attached almost surgically to her mobile phone. Fabian was very strict about this. He only allowed phones that vibrated to show there was someone looking for you. No ringing tones to disturb the other clients.

   My smile was nailed to my face. Her conversation was quickfire and one-way, she wanted agreement, nods of affirmation and acknowledgment, all in the right place.

   You couldn't let your mind wander here and so no thoughts of Ian and his guilty, shifty account of where he had been last night was allowed room in my head.

   The nine o'clock lady was always in a lather about some aspect of her work. Some fool had done this, some idiot hadn't done that, some bloody courier had been late, some bloody sponsor had been early. Rossmore was the boondocks of the world. All that was needed was immense sympathy, a litany of soothing sounds—and speed. The nine o'clock lady had to be out screaming at a taxi at nine-forty-five.

   My nine-thirty lady had been shampooed and was deep in a magazine story about Princess Diana.

   "It's a shame they can't let her rest, isn't it?" she said. "Do you have anything else about her that I could read, do you think?"

   She was a regular also, trying out a different style every week until she found the perfect way to look at her daughter's wedding, which was going to be a huge affair. The nine-thirty lady had not been invited to get involved in the planning of it all. There was a wedding organizer. Nothing in her whole life had ever hurt her so much. Her only daughter had turned her back on her on this, the most important day of her life. Mighty soothing was called for here also. Huge reassurance that it had been a kindness rather than a rejection on the daughter's part. Useless bleatings that it gave her much more time now to concentrate on her own hair, her own outfit, her own enjoyment of the day. The nine-thirty lady had wanted to be in the center of it, fussing, bossing and driving everyone mad.

   "Don't marry, Pandora," she warned me as she left. "It's never worth it, believe me, I know."

   I had told her many times in answer to her absentminded questioning that I
was
married, to Ian. But she didn't remember, and as Fabian said, we mustn't expect them to remember anything about us. They are center stage when they come in here. We are just a well-groomed, charming set of props. Certainly not the occasion to tell her that she was spot on about marriage. It was indeed, judging by the way this morning was going, far from worth it.

   The ten o'clock was an out-of-town person who had seen a write-up of Fabian's in a magazine. She had come to the town to get fabric for soft furnishings. She had decided to have a hairdo as well. No, nothing new, thank you, she knew what suited her, like she knew what fabrics she needed. The tedium and monotony of her life seeped all over me. I wondered: if possibly my life with Ian was at the moment anxious and unsettling, it might be better than the living death that the ten o'clock lady seemed to be living.

   My ten-thirty was a model. Well, actually she was a model for a photo catalog for underwear, but she called herself a model. She was nice actually, she came in every six weeks to have her roots done.

   "You look a bit peaky today," she said.