Muddy Waters (14 page)

‘So should I,' Ruth muttered.

Philip Porter sat in his car listening to a depressing play about Eastern Europe on the radio and rather wishing he got paid overtime for these extra observation duties. Of course no one knew he was doing them; office hours, and his hours, finished at 5.30 and all this was purely voluntary. Ted Kramer would have something to say when he saw the reports the next morning, he was sure: probably something like, ‘Get a life, Philip' which was the flippant and irresponsible way he had started talking recently, since he'd joined the queue for early retirement and stopped wearing proper suits for work. Only two people had used the ferry in the past hour and if it wasn't for the tremendous row it made he'd have dozed off and missed them. But there was the smoke and the smell of spiced food from someone's barbecue, that was worth reporting on. It was a good point towards the council's case, the lack of proper access for fire crew should the need arise. So many valuable minutes would be wasted by firemen grappling with the ferry that would take no more than eight at a time, hauling heavy equipment over the water while perhaps lives were being lost. The whole island could burn down from one careless barbecue, most of the houses were built of nothing more than silly matchwood. He wrote all this down and decided, at 10.45, to call it a night. The left side of his groin was starting to get sore from sitting cramped in the car waiting for something to happen and he eased his body backwards and forwards to relieve the pain. A hernia probably, he thought, perversely pleased to have something to show for all this extra work, and he rubbed gently at the sore area as he rocked.

‘Did you see that?' Enzo, slightly drunk and leaning on his sister, asked as they approached the island's shore, unseen by Mr Porter, by means of a considerately silent borrowed punt. They all turned and looked back at the white Nissan that Enzo was pointing at.

‘Was he doing what I thought he was doing?' Toby laughed incredulously.

‘Next time someone calls him the tosser from the council, they'll be completely right,' Charlotte giggled, hugging her sleeping child to keep her warm in the chilled night air.

‘She'll have to go, Stella,' Adrian said in bed the next morning. ‘Abigail. She'll have to go,' he repeated when Stella didn't reply. ‘She's upsetting everyone. She always has, always will. She was always like that, pushing things just too far. I'm surprised Martin stuck it as long as he did.' Stella could just make out the deep furrow of a frown beneath his floppy fringe. Toby would look exactly like that thirty years from now, she thought. Adrian continued, making sure she got the point, ‘I know she's said something awful to Ruth, I could tell by her face. Ruth spent half of last night looking as if she was trying hard not to cry. And Willow went home in tears because Abigail sauntered off to spend the night with Bernard.'

‘You do exaggerate, Adrian,' Stella said, ‘I know she's never been the most tactful person, but I'm sure no one living here is so thin-skinned as to take her seriously.' She wished she felt the same, though, she thought as she got out of bed and hauled on her ancient pink towelling dressing gown. The dressing gown wasn't at all glamorous: she looked in disgust at its pulled loops and trailing hem. Anyone looking at it, hanging shapelessly from its hook behind the door, would be able to identify her immediately as a woman not inclined to adulterous liaisons, at least not in her own bedroom. Abigail would be ashamed to own such an object – it should be placed immediately, held by arms-length finger and thumb, in the jumble box in the cellar. She should treat herself, get something new and sexy that didn't make her look like a belted pillow. It would have to be simple and stylish enough to look appealing, but not so sexy that it smacked of middle-aged despair. She went to the window to open the curtains and let the sun in. Its warmth might help her not to feel so cross with Adrian who sat propped up on his pillow, content to have issued his request that Abigail should leave and confident that this was now Stella's problem to solve and not his.

‘I know Abigail's tricky, but she's actually very unhappy,' Stella reasoned with Adrian. ‘You can't expect her to pass up on a bit of comforting when it's offered. After all, she did come here so I could help her get through the Martin thing. And you can't expect Abigail to be responsible for Willow's failure to attract Bernard. There's nothing new there – Willow's been banging on that particular door for years and getting no reply.'

Adrian still sat frowning, as if he didn't quite understand. She continued, ‘You don't mind me solving other people's problems at a nice safe distance for money, do you, but when there's a real-life person here needing a bit of support you can't stand the pace.' She sat on the end of the bed, the dressing gown falling open and revealing her thigh. She remembered what Abigail had said, and what Ellen had confirmed, and pulled the fabric across her legs, reluctant at that hour to be confronted with the podgy corrugations of cellulite. If she was honest she'd admit that, in terms of Bernard, ‘comforting' hadn't exactly been offered either. In her well-practised way, Abigail had simply helped herself to the man like a skilled shoplifter breezing through the first day of a department store sale. Ruth had gone to her room the night before with much stamping on the stairs and slamming of doors but Abigail hadn't heard her because after Abigail had gone to the boathouse with Bernard she had not come home at all.

Down in the kitchen, Stella padded around making coffee, feeding Abigail's yowling cat and trying to make herself think about work when Ruth came crashing downstairs, clearly in no better mood than the one she'd gone to bed in. ‘Your friend, Mum, she's a complete slag,' she stated with heartfelt force as she opened and shut cupboards and put together a breakfast of muesli and a banana.

‘Hey, come on now, that's no way . . .' Stella said, secretly agreeing.

‘Yes it
is
,' Ruth interrupted, slamming her bowl onto the table and splashing milk out of it. ‘You know she's still out? She's only just
met
him, doesn't even
know
him. That's like one of my friends, Melissa, or me even, going out clubbing and stonking off to screw the first bloke that buys them a drink.
That's
being a slag, I don't care if she is old.
And
she left you her cat to feed. I bet she never even asked.' She waved the spoon accusingly at her mother, then plumped herself down hard onto a chair and snatched angry bites at her banana. Stella leaned against the dresser and studied Ruth and her pious fury. That made two members of the family asking her to get the woman out of the place. Perhaps Toby would like to come back from work and join in, add his vote one way or the other.

‘Suppose Bernard had asked
you
to go and spend last night with him,' she asked, ‘would you have gone?'

Ruth sat very still, her spoonful of muesli halfway to her mouth. Her eyes looked huge and incredulous, quite shocked, really, Stella thought. ‘Me? Why would he ask me?' Ruth floundered, stirring her breakfast and chasing a raisin round the bowl with great concentration.

‘You know perfectly well why,' Stella persisted, sitting down opposite Ruth and forcing her to look her in the eyes. ‘You like him, more than a bit, I can tell. And from what I saw last night he seems to like you. What
would
you do? I'm just curious. I just want to see if you expect a different sort of behaviour from older women like Abigail from what you'd expect from yourself.'

‘Well, for a start I'm not married to someone else and supposed to be pining over lost love like Abigail. Running off to sleep with the first person who asks, if he
is
the first person – might be the
twenty
-first for all we know – isn't much like someone who's really missing their husband.'

‘That's not what I'm asking. What would you do?'

‘OK, OK I know you're just trying to weasel out some hypocrisy,' Ruth sighed, ‘but at least I know him. I didn't just go out and pick him up like a can of lager or something. Anyway, he wouldn't ask me. I think he'd be too scared of Dad.' She smiled, her fury calming.

Stella laughed at the thought of Adrian, gentle and dreamy with his long soft hair and baggy cotton sweaters, squaring up to the brutish caveman Bernard and demanding to know what he thought he was up to, dishonouring his precious only daughter. Adrian wasn't likely to want to know what was going on, if anything did happen. For the sake of avoiding conflict, he'd choose to pretend not to notice even if Ruth was sneaking out to the boathouse in the dead of night, pretend he was too absorbed in work. Stella would be the one who would have to deal with any resulting heartbreak and/or pregnancy, where've-you-been-all-night rows and battles about age difference and sleazy old men.

‘It's Willow I feel really sorry for,' Ruth said, avoiding Stella's face in case she recognized a lie. ‘She got really miserable and pretended she was getting hay fever and that she was going home for one of her remedies. She's
besotted
with Bernard, anyone can see that. You'd think Abigail would have noticed and kept her hands off. Not very sisterly, is she?'

‘No,' Stella agreed, ‘it's never been her strong point. She'd say it wasn't her responsibility, that the man was free to choose or not choose, and there's not much you can argue with there. And of course there's the Martin problem, which isn't as simple as you think. He's gone off with someone without a thought for Abigail and is having, we all assume, the time of his life. I suppose she doesn't see why she shouldn't grab some of that.'

‘Well, why can't she go and grab it somewhere else then? Why does she have to do it
here
?' Ruth suggested through a mouthful of cereal, ‘You should take her away before she works her slaggy way round to having a go at Dad. I bet he's next on her list, I've seen her the way she's always touching him, She even kissed him for lighting her cigarette. You'd think he'd given her diamonds.' Ruth spooned up more cereal, looked at it and put it back in the bowl as if the thought of Adrian and Abigail together was enough to put her off her food.

Stella grinned at her. ‘Your dad's too lazy. And besides, if he'd wanted to do anything like that with Abigail, he could have got it all over with years ago.' Probably did, actually, she suddenly thought, glad that at a twenty year distance there was no need to feel pained about it.

‘You should go to that place that used to be your college – the place
she
mentioned,' Ruth suggested, bringing her dish to leave by the sink till it found its own way, magically, into the dishwasher.

‘What, Chameleon, the health spa?' Stella said. She looked at her hands, red and raw from washing saucepans that didn't like the dishwasher. ‘A decent manicure . . .' she mused out loud. Hair done, body toned, sleek thighs, no ‘Dear Alice'. Tempting. ‘Would you all be all right if, and it's only
if
I did decide to go?' she asked Ruth.

‘
Mum.
For Christ's sake, take a good look at us properly for once. We're all
grown-ups
.' She laughed briefly, ‘Even Dad.'

Abigail woke up with a headache and felt the sun blasting against her eyelids and making them itch. She didn't want to open her eyes, nervous about what she'd see. There was no one in the bed next to her, that was something, so he hadn't sneaked in and joined her in the night. He was a bit old for that kind of hopeful ruse – students had done that sort of thing, she remembered. On nights when she'd simply crashed out through too much drink or too much talk they'd slyly sidle into the bed beside her in the hope that once they'd got that far it was only the tiniest next step to having full-scale sex. Sometimes it had worked, but not as often as people had thought. Bernard's bed was just like a big version of a student bed. It had uneven hollows in the mattress, as if they habitually followed the lumpy contours of a body that wasn't anything like hers and there was a suspect smell she didn't like too, as if the blankets had spent a month or six on a forgotten dusty shelf in the back room of a vicarage, waiting for the Scouts' jumble sale.

‘Cup of tea?' Bernard came and sat down heavily on the bed close, too close, to Abigail and she opened one eye experimentally. He might have perked up and be readier for action than he had been the night before, and after sleeping on that sofa, be sitting there, perhaps decked out in an antique Paisley silk robe that gaped open obscenely and uninvitingly. Instead, to her relief he looked much the same as he had when he'd dozed off into an unattractive open-mouthed snore on the crumpled velvet patchwork at two a.m., unflatteringly soon after that Ellen-woman (
on
and
on
about the wonders of acrylic paint) had got out her trusty Maglite torch and trotted off home. He'd probably slept in his clothes – the mustiness might not be confined to the bed. She reached out her hand for the mug of tea, trying to avoid too close a look at his thick sandy beard, in case of lurking leftovers.

‘Pretty cup,' she commented, feeling that some sort of good-mannered social interaction was called for. She wasn't very good in the mornings and much preferred afternoon lovers, especially after-lunch lovers who knew that conversation was allowed to stop the moment the restaurant bill was paid.

‘Willow made it. I've got a lot of her things,' he told her.

‘You should marry her, or at least let her move in,' Abigail suggested, wondering if even Willow, lovestruck as she was, would put up with musty bedding.

‘Good grief, whatever for?' Bernard got up abruptly and strode to the balcony door as if an accidental touch from Abigail was going to bewitch him into instant betrothal to Willow.

‘Because she loves you, that's why,' Abigail told him wearily. ‘Rarer than rubies, women who love truly,' she muttered into her tea. ‘And men who love at all are rarer still. But then I don't suppose Willow would mind too much about that.'