The Queen's Margarine (7 page)

‘What?'

‘I mean, if you're coming back this evening, no problem – I'll be here.'

‘Oh, it won't be this evening. I'm up to my ears till God knows when tonight.
And
the next few days. With it being so close to Christmas, everybody's on my tail. And some of them calls are urgent – women with half-a-dozen kids and loads of nappies to wash.'

Simon hadn't wanted children. She'd hoped he might come round to it, eventually, although she had never forced the issue; remained content with what they had: fantastic sex; shared tastes in books and music; the same sense of humour, political beliefs.

She tried to control the tremor in her voice; adopt a businesslike
tone. ‘Look, nappies or no nappies, this job is just as urgent as theirs. I
need
you to come back, OK? I'm the client, so I call the tune.'

With a gesture of annoyance, he reached for his phone again. ‘I'll give the office a bell, see if another engineer is free to—'

‘No,' she interrupted. ‘It must be you. Someone new to the job will only mess things up.'

‘We all have the same training,' he explained, a note of irritation in his voice. ‘Everyone in the company knows these machines like the back of their hand.'

‘Maybe so, but
you
took on the job, so I expect
you
to finish it.'

‘I'm sorry, ma'am, that's impossible.'

‘Don't call me ma'am, OK? I'm not ma'am, I'm Angela.'

He stared at her a moment, then spoke in almost a pitying tone, still avoiding the use of her name. ‘I'm going to put in a request for Gordon to come out. He's had thirty years' experience, and he's totally reliable.'

An image of her dog suddenly intruded into her mind. Jack had been put to sleep by the vet at the age of only four, with inoperable cancer of the pancreas. Four, for dogs, was equivalent to
twenty-eight
for humans – her own age, in point of fact. She still remembered every detail: the injection into his flank, the dreadful silence while they waited for the drug to take effect, Jack's final piteous shudder, followed by the vet's soft, solemn voice, ‘He's gone now.'

‘Please,' she begged, switching from insistence to entreaty. ‘Do come. I'll pay anything you like. And I don't mind what time it is. Make it as late as you like. Just suit yourself, but
come
.'

He said nothing whatsoever, just reached out for another biscuit, as if to play for time. The crunching noise sounded louder than the tick-tick of the clock. Her life seemed poised on a
knife-edge
. Depending on his answer, she might tip over into panic – demeaning, frightening breakdown – or limp and hobble forward in some damaged but not hopeless shape.

‘Please,' she repeated, her voice shaky from the force of her desire. ‘It means so much, means
everything
.'

In the ensuing hush, she fixed her whole attention on his tools: a set of seven screwdrivers, lined up according to size; red-handled,
battered pliers; shiny silver spanners; rolls of electrical tape, and a few spiky, sharp-toothed implements, with vicious, snapping jaws.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quite emotionless. ‘Excuse me a minute, will you, ma'am?'

Pushing past her, he strode into the hall. She gripped the worktop for support. Was he walking out? And without a single word? He'd left his tools behind, but that didn't mean a thing. Perhaps he was scribbling her a note, an insulting, cowardly note. She strained her ears for the scratching of a pen; heard nothing but the slam of the front door.

He'd gone. Like that. Cruelly. Unforgivably. Hadn't told her why. Hadn't asked her what she felt. Or discussed the situation. Hadn't even thought to ask if she could pay the rent without him. Who cared about the rent? It was
him
she craved – as an addict craved a drug – his mind, his soul, his skills, his wit, his cock.

Shutting her eyes, she took a sip of coffee; tried desperately to change the date – turn this barren Wednesday into the Sunday before last: blissed-out with him in bed; hands cupped round her coffee-mug; piles of Sunday papers jumbled on the duvet. She could feel his open, sensuous lips nuzzling along her neck; the shockwaves lower down, as his fingers traced—

Useless. She was bundled up in sweaters and standing in the kitchen, not lolling naked in a dishevelled double bed. Even the coffee was insipid; nothing like their usual brew. Despite the sludge of bitter grounds muddying the cup, she hadn't made it strong enough – a tepid sort of dishwater, with no kick to it, no flavour. No wonder he was shagging someone else. His new lover would be brimming over with caffeine and adrenaline; a
full-bodied
double espresso, potent, scorching-hot.

She sank down on to the floor; knelt where he had knelt, hiding her face in her hands. A long time seemed to pass – hours, perhaps, or days; maybe a full week. They must have reached the solstice now: the shortest, saddest, darkest, longest day.

She started as the doorbell rang; struggled to her feet. The postman bringing Christmas cards. Friends wishing them a happy Christmas, unaware that Simon's name could no longer be conjoined with hers on any card or envelope. Those friends would
probably disappear, as well. People found it hard to cope if a couple went their separate ways, and often avoided
both
partners, to save themselves embarrassment.

She limped to the front door, rubbed her eyes in shock. Could it be an illusion – this change of mind, reprieve? Slowly, she registered each detail, to ensure she wasn't dreaming: thick, unruly hair, the colour of ripe straw; wary, long-lashed eyes, somewhere between grey and blue; angular figure with a slight stoop to the shoulders, high cheekbones, narrow face. Yes, all real, all tangible.

‘It's OK,' he said, ‘I'll come back.'

‘You'll come back?' she repeated, not daring to believe the fact until she heard it from his lips once more.

‘Yeah. I'll come back.'

Wonderingly, she let him in, scared by the elation tingling through her chest; the uproar in her body, ferment in her head.

‘I've managed to swap things round, postponed another job. So if you're in at six this evening, I'll pop straight round from my last call and …'

The words she barely heard, too shaken by the fact that he had met her eyes, at last, and his fierce, intense, blue-smouldering stare was piercing to her innermost core, repairing every damaged part – yes, even her broken heart.

‘Thank you, she whispered, ‘
Simon
.'

You are cordially invited …

Margery ripped the invitation in half and tossed it into the bin. Never would she set foot in that loathsome place again. The envelope contained a letter – in addition to the gold-bordered card – which she gave a cursory glance. An appeal for a donation, no doubt. No, it merely gave further details of the celebration itself: a picnic lunch, followed by a performance of
The Pirates of Penzance
, enacted by the current pupils, and then a formal evening dinner, with speeches by the Head and various distinguished alumnae. Hardly an enticing prospect – an amateur production of Gilbert and Sullivan, and endless dreary trumpetings about the school's superior position in the league tables. About to crumple up the sheet, she suddenly noticed the name at the bottom, typed beneath a bold but illegible signature: Clarissa Scott, née Talbot-Young.

She stood motionless, heart pounding, all her childhood passion reigniting in a rush, at the sight of that alluring name. She was a child again, a willing slave to the most talented and beauteous creature in the whole of Claremont Grange – a much older girl, completely out of reach, with long golden hair and violet eyes, and a range of different skills: school prefect, hockey captain, editor of the school magazine. If Clarissa Talbot-Young was organizing this event, then she, the once ardent admirer, simply must be there, despite the fact she had deliberately avoided all previous reunions.
This was a challenge impossible to ignore; a chance for the lowly servant to wreak her revenge, at last.

Throughout her years in that hated institution, Clarissa had used her and abused her; accepting every menial service as her natural right and privilege, whilst taunting her unmercifully. Yet, she'd continued to worship her tormentor as a goddess and a queen, glorying in each mortification, as preferable to being ignored. When Queen Clarissa finally left school, aglow with an Oxford scholarship, her plain and podgy skivvy had been inconsolable, actually missing all the drudgery and donkeywork, the constant errands and thankless tasks, performed for that enthralling tyrant.

She strode into the bedroom, startled by her sudden sense of outrage. For over thirty years, she had banned the school from both memory and thought, yet now it seemed imperative to confront Clarissa in person; tell her loud and clear what a bully and a brute she'd been.

She began riffling through her wardrobe, intent on finding an outfit for the occasion that would stir no shameful memory of the dumpy, unprepossessing child Clarissa would remember, with her ill-filling uniform (bought always second-hand), and the braces on her teeth. Of course, the goddess would have changed as well: the long golden hair probably short and grey these days; the slender figure thickening round the waist. In fact, the five-year age-difference would actually work in her own favour now, since Clarissa would be coming up to sixty, due for her pension and her bus-pass, while she herself, by some strange stroke of luck, was still
pre-menopausal
.

Her reflection in the mirror provided a certain reassurance: her hair was largely its natural tawny brown; her figure in good shape, with no trace of the former puppy-fat; no grotesque and greasy pigtails just asking to be tugged. But she was determined to leave nothing to chance. In fact, why settle for some existing garment and run the risk of looking out-of-fashion, when she could invest in a brand new outfit, head to toe? She would also book a session at the hairdresser, for a decent cut and re-style. Such matters, in her normal life, were of very minor concern, but this, she knew instinctively, was a crisis situation. As a child, she'd been an outcast
through no fault of her own: the only one in a roll-call of 300 girls who lived with a single mother, shamefully divorced – and lived not in grace and style, but in a cramped two-up, two-down. It might be rather late in the day to make the point that base-born Margery Tomkins could now hold her own in the world, but that was exactly what she intended – and to hell with the consequences.

As she nosed into a parking space between a BMW coupé and a silver-grey Mercedes, she cursed herself for not having come by train. Not only was her own car the smallest, lowest-status one in sight, but she had got completely lost
en route
and was now humiliatingly late. Before getting out, however, she just had to repair her face, even if it made her later still. The make-up she'd applied this morning with such determined care was already beginning to smudge and melt in the fierce heat of the car. BMW drivers would have built-in air-conditioning, but her third-hand Nissan Micra didn't boast such luxury. Quickly, she retouched her lipstick and powdered over the shine; noticing with alarm that her hands were not quite steady.

Incredible that just the sight of Claremont Grange could produce such fierce reactions. The gracious, indeed splendid house – a former Rothschild mansion – appeared to her like a Borstal or a boot camp, with lowering prison-walls and no windows except grudging slits. And the extensive grounds, with rolling parkland stretching lush beyond, seemed to have shrunk to the odd stunted tree, naked of any leaf or flower, even in mid-June. The weather was, in fact, idyllic, with a beneficent sun and baby-blue sky, but for her it was September, grey and overcast. She was five years old again; being dumped here by her grandparents, whom she could barely even see, half-blinded as she was by tears, and by an overlarge school hat.

‘You're an extremely lucky little girl,' they told her, ‘to be getting such a first-rate education. And you've
us
to thank for it.'

And then they drove away, Grandma quite forgetting to turn round and wave goodbye. She stood watching, sobbing, until the car was just a speck, and she was dragged off to her dormitory by somebody called Matron, who was tall and thin and crackled when she walked.

It was years before she realized that by paying her fees at boarding-school, her grandparents were actually solving the problem of their errant son – her father – who had left the marriage, left her mother penniless, and gone to live in Hawaii with a Polynesian beauty-queen. Not only did it salve their conscience, it also saved her father from having to involve himself in her upbringing – or even, for that matter, having ever to see her again. If she were at school all during term-time and with her mother in the holidays, there was no reason for him to squander time and money travelling thousands of miles to visit. She had long ago accepted the situation, refusing to indulge in anger or resentment, however much she had detested Claremont Grange. Yet her sortie here today had revived her sense of being lonely and uprooted, and completely out of place; a common weed in a stylish flowerbed, which might be chucked on the rubbish-heap, should her Grandpa's cash run out.

Determined to suppress such thoughts, she rammed on her new hat and made her way past the side of the house to the expanse of lawn behind. The hum and buzz of voices crescendoed as she walked towards the mass of languid females, sprawled on picnic rugs and groundsheets on the grass. Fighting a strong instinct to turn tail and bolt for home, she forced herself to weave her way between the various groups; eyes peeled for Clarissa. However changed the Queen might be, she knew she'd recognize her instantly, if only by the churning in her guts.

‘Margery!' a voice called. ‘Fancy seeing
you
here! You haven't been back for years.'

Never
, in fact, she didn't say, recognizing a former classmate, Stephanie; still ginger-haired and freckled, although now distinctly overweight. The woman was scrambling up to greet her, and at least half-a-dozen others from her year began smiling, waving and introducing themselves. Not that she had a problem remembering their names, which were tripping off her tongue as easily as if she were back in class: Philipppa, Elizabeth, Felicity, Lucinda, and the twins, Elspeth and Virginia. No one had a ‘common' name like Margery, of course – another badge of inferiority, she had soon learned to her shame. On one hideous occasion, they'd heard her mother call her Marge, and immediately given
her the nickname ‘Margarine' – a name she'd loathed, but which had stuck till she left school.

At least they appeared to have forgotten it, thank Christ, and all trace of condescension had completely disappeared, as they made room for her on the tartan rug; even admired her hat.

‘Perfect timing, Margery!' Lucinda said, with a smile. ‘We were just about to make a start on the nosh. And what would you like to drink? I'm afraid we've finished all the champers, but there's enough wine here to get us all well and truly plastered!'

Only then did she notice the ice-buckets and wicker picnic hampers; the pretty patterned china and hallmarked knives and forks. In her particular circle, a picnic involved eating with one's fingers from, at best, a paper plate – and eating something basic like a sandwich or pork pie. But here, spread out in banquet mode, was a whole poached salmon resplendent on a silver platter; an exotic layered terrine; what looked like a roast pheasant, and a huge cache of caviar. There were also mounds of fresh hulled strawberries, topped with clotted cream, and a variety of elaborate desserts, in pretty cut-glass bowls. They had been instructed to bring picnic food to share, so she had bought a pasta salad on her way home from work last night. In fact, she had totally forgotten it, in her distress about arriving late, and left it curdling and sweating in the car, together with a bottle of undistinguished wine. Now she blessed her oversight, since she realized with embarrassment that she should have brought
home-made
food, served in ritzy style; not an uncouth plastic tub, grabbed in haste from Asda.

As she continued to survey the feast, she noticed there were even damask napkins, and a bone-china dish containing exquisite little pats of butter – which immediately set her reflecting on her nickname. Butter was traditional and naturally superior, pure and undefiled, whereas margarine, in contrast, was an upstart: synthetic and adulterated, a garish-coloured mongrel, with no breeding or finesse – and very like her mum, in that respect. Clarissa and her cronies had once dismissed her mother as a ‘pleb', and though she hadn't understood the word, she had felt the deep contempt in it. The other girls had entirely different mothers: delicate, well-spoken women, with soft, white, work-shy hands, who
wore floaty floral dresses and high heels, instead of her mum's miniskirts and dirty, battered plimsolls. And they all had proper fathers who lived with them at home, and not in Honolulu with a bimbo. And they owned dogs and horses and villas in Provence, and went on skiing trips in winter, and employed live-in cooks and nannies. Even her rich grandmother did all the cooking herself (as well as piles of housework), and she and Grandpa never went away, except once, to some small guesthouse in Southend. In any case, their money was despised at school, as not being ‘the right sort', although she had never really understood why any kind of money could ever be judged ‘wrong'.

‘So, Margery, how
are
you?' Lucinda asked, offering her a platter of asparagus.

‘Er, fine,' she said, deliberately refusing any food. She could hardly gobble theirs, having contributed nothing herself.

‘It must be – let's see – thirty years since we last laid eyes on you.'

‘It's actually thirty-six.'

‘Well, tell us what's been happening all that time?'

‘Oh … this and that.' It felt wrong to be the centre of attention; every eye now turned on her with interest. At school, she had learned her place, as someone best ignored.

‘Do you work at all?' asked Stephanie.

‘Oh, yes.'

‘And what line of work would that be?'

‘I run a charity called Kids-in-Crisis, which I set up in the eighties. It helps disadvantaged children who—'

‘Brilliant! Good for you.'

Stephanie had not only interrupted, she had sounded rather patronizing. OK, Margery thought, if you don't care about abused and battered kids, let's change the subject, shall we? ‘And how about you, Stephanie? I remember you were a whiz at maths. Did you follow that up and become a big noise in the City?'

‘Far from it!' Stephanie laughed. ‘I've never really done a thing – except bring up my three sons, of course.'

Margery stiffened at the mention of children; knew she'd be judged inadequate on the grounds of having none, and not even having married. Her mother's own experience had put her off
matrimony for life. Fortunately, she was saved an inquisition by the appearance of Miss O'Sullivan, their former English teacher; now stooped and grey and fading, but instantly recognizable by her hook nose and fierce black eyes.

‘Lucinda! How lovely! And Elspeth and Virginia, still inseparable, I see. And that's Stephanie Simmonds, isn't it? Yes, the same red hair. Wonderful to see you all!'

Extraordinary, thought Margery, that this figure of authority – indeed, a martinet – should be embracing her former pupils, even insisting they call her ‘Mavis'.

‘Ah, Felicity,
you
I'll never forget! You were always trouble, weren't you, and trouble with a capital T! I remember you asking me once why we had to study Wordsworth's shitty daffodils!'

In the ensuing burst of laughter, Margery realized that Miss O'Sullivan had failed to acknowledge her at all. Hardly any wonder, when she had invariably tried to hide at school and make herself invisible. Well-bred girls like Felicity, overflowing with confidence, could afford to be ‘always trouble', but not her, the parvenu. She sat in silence, listening to the jokes and banter, until Miss O'Sullivan (‘Mavis' was a step too far) eventually moved away to liaise with another group.

‘She's not still teaching, is she?' asked Lucinda, gazing after the tall, bent figure, with its shock of coarse, grey hair.