Chapter 11

“YOU COULD COME with me to the Television Centre,” Matthew said. “I’d like that.”

But Michelle said no, she wouldn’t. “You’ll be better off without having me to worry about, darling.” The truth was she couldn’t face the stares and surreptitious giggles of all those long-legged girls and young men in jeans. Jeff Leigh’s “Little and Large” jibe still rankled.

It was heartening to see Matthew set off for the tube station, walking along almost like a normal person, his shoulders back and his head high. Michelle dusted the living room and vacuumed the carpet. As she lumbered around, breathless, her heart thudding, she tried to recapture what it had felt like to be a normal person herself, to have an ordinary body. Not like a model girl, not even like Fiona, but to be an average rounded woman, wearing a size fourteen. Usually, when Matthew was there, as he almost always was, she stifled such thoughts, pushing them away, pretending she wasn’t thinking them. This was the first time in how long— five years? seven?—that she had been alone in the house. There’s nothing like being on your own for having space to think.

Michelle stood still in the middle of the room and felt her body, really felt what it was like, from her three chins to the cushions on her upper thighs. First with her brain, then with her hands, growing at last fully aware of the mountain of flesh in which her delicate and fastidious mind and her loving heart had their being. She closed her eyes and in the darkness seemed to see Matthew as he might be if restored to health and herself as she was, or nearly as she was, when first they married. And into that dream came a hint, like a winged insect, a fragile wisp, fluttering across her closed lids, of the old desire they had once had for each other, the passion that sprang from physical beauty and energy. Could it ever be recaptured? The love was there, just the same. Surely with that love present, they could return somehow to making love . . .

It was a long time since Michelle had been able to bend down. They had had to get rid of the vacuum cleaner they used to have, the kind with a long hose you pull along like a little dog, because she couldn’t bend down enough to fetch it out of the cupboard and put it back. The upright one they had now was better, but only marginally, because to connect the attachments, she had to make the huge effort of lifting the cleaner by its handle onto a chair and performing this operation at thigh level. Afterward she had to stand still for a moment, one hand pressed against the mountain of her bosom. But once she’d got her breath back, she managed to screw in the nozzle on the brush hose and finish the cleaning of the room. Then she went out shopping.

Not to Waitrose this time but nearer home to the Atlanta supermarket at West End Green. She put kiwi fruit into the trolley, Ryvitas, and a large pack of dry roasted peanuts, but as, almost automatically, she took a big bag of doughnuts from the shelf, her hand was stayed in midair and very slowly she put it back again. The same with the thick wedge of Cheddar cheese and the Cadbury’s Milk Flakes. She was bracing herself not to succumb but to leave the cheesecake where it was in the chilled foods cabinet when a voice behind her said, “Stoking up the boilers, are we? Maintaining the avoirdupois?”

It was Jeff Leigh. Strange things were happening to Michelle in Matthew’s absence. Her mind was in a turmoil as she thought thoughts she hadn’t had for a dozen years and looked at people she was used to with new eyes. For instance, she was seeing Jeff as if for the first time and perceiving him as very good-looking, that it was obvious why women found him attractive. And equally obvious that his charm was spurious and his looks skin-deep. Any reasonable person, not blinded by a love that must be mostly physical desire, would dislike and distrust him. She didn’t answer his question but asked him where Fiona was.

“At work. Where else?”

“To keep you in the luxury to which you’re accustomed, I suppose.” Michelle surprised herself, for she couldn’t remember saying such a thing or using such a tone in all her life before.

“It always amazes me,” he said, smiling genially, “how you women scream for equality with men but you still expect men to keep you and never to keep them. Why? In an equal society some men would keep women and some women keep men. Like Matthew keeps you and Fiona keeps me.”

“Everyone ought to work.”

“Excuse me, Michelle, but when did you last set foot in a nursery for a living?”

After she’d walked off in silence he was sorry he’d said that. It was cheap. Also it would have been funnier to have said something more about her shape and weight. Something on the lines of applying for a post with the Fattist Society, if she was in need of a job. Jeff bought the half-pint of milk he needed for his morning coffee and the smoked salmon sandwiches which would be his lunch and went home to think about the hours ahead before Fiona came home.

For years now Jeffrey Leach had planned each day with care. He gave an impression of casual insouciance but in fact he was meticulous, well-organized, and industrious. The trouble was that he couldn’t exactly tell people how hard he really did work, for most of what he did was dodgy or downright illegal. Yesterday, for instance, he’d driven himself to an Asda store and, presenting at the checkout the J. H. Leigh credit card he’d found to pay for their week’s groceries, had asked for cash back. The weary girl, who’d been on for three hours, asked how much. Jeff, who’d been going to say fifty, asked for a hundred pounds. She handed it over and he wished he’d asked for two. Yet she’d looked long and hard at the card before giving him the money, so that he’d heard a little warning bell tinkling.

Home now, he took the card out of his wallet and, resolutely but not without regrets, cut it into six pieces with Fiona’s kitchen scissors. These he put into the waste bin, careful to cover them with an empty cornflake packet and a pair of Fiona’s laddered tights. Better safe than sorry even if safety was going to cost him. The card had served him well as cards go, and as cards go it went. He’d get another somehow or other. Maybe Fiona would get him one. American Express was always writing letters telling their clients to apply for cards for family members. A live-in lover was a family member, wasn’t he? For the life of him he couldn’t see how he was actually to marry Fiona unless he got up his nerve and committed bigamy like Zillah. He’d give more thought to that when August approached.

Jeff used his mobile as seldom as possible, making most calls on Fiona’s phone. He lifted the receiver and rang his bookmaker, placing a bet on a horse called Feast and Famine running at Cheltenham. His almost uncanny success on the racecourse owed more to instinct and serendipity than knowledge of horseflesh. It enabled him to pick up a nice little weekly income. He was in need, however, of a larger sum immediately. Fiona still hadn’t got an engagement ring and the sort he usually picked up for twenty quid in Covent Garden market or off a stall outside St. James’s Piccadilly wouldn’t do for this top-quality woman. Once he’d run a most successful scam, offering—through an advertisement and on receipt of a five-pound note—a brochure on how to be a millionaire within two years. He’d made a small fortune before applicants began writing furious letters asking where their brochure was. But he couldn’t repeat the exercise. Imagine the post he’d get and Fiona’s face when she rumbled him.

Zillah had been right when she’d decided her husband would not blackmail her. To his credit, demanding money with menaces had never crossed Jeff’s mind. The engagement ring would have to come from another source. Fleetingly, he thought of Minty. Funny little thing. She was the cleanest woman he’d ever slept with. Even if he hadn’t met Fiona and quickly picked up on her wealth, he’d have had to drop Minty. What man would fancy the bed smelling of Wright’s Coal Tar soap every time he’d had a bit of a cuddle? Still, he might have got her to take out that mortgage on the house before he left her. Why hadn’t he? Because he was a decent bloke at heart, he told himself, and making one fiancée pay for another fiancée’s engagement ring was too low even for him.

Jeff had a look around the house for money. There never was any, he knew that by now, but he never quite gave up hope. Fiona didn’t seem to have any cash. It was what came of being in banking, he supposed, everything on paper, cards, computers. She’d once told him she dreamed of a day when cash as such would disappear and be replaced by paying and being paid by iridian means or a fingerprint. He looked in a tea tin in the kitchen that seemed to serve no purpose but to contain money, though it never did, and through the pockets of Fiona’s many coats. Not even a twenty-pence piece. Still, he had enough to get along on and when Feast and Famine came in first, as it undoubtedly would, he’d net five hundred.

When he’d drunk his coffee and eaten his sandwiches, Jeff went out. Even on such a fine day it would take too long to walk to Westminster, but he did get as far as Baker Street before taking a bus. He had no doubt that the woman he’d seen yesterday, driving and nearly crashing the silver Mercedes, was Zillah. This was the first time he’d been sure. The glimpses he’d caught of a dark woman at a window in Abbey Gardens Mansions might have been her and might not. When he’d last seen her in Long Fredington (and bade her farewell, though she didn’t know it) her hair was scraped back and fastened with an elastic band, and she’d been wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. This woman, the one in Abbey Gardens, looked like an Oriental princess, all big hair and jewelry, and some kind of low-cut satin top. It was a matter of chance that he’d seen her the day before. He hadn’t brought Fiona’s BMW; it was too much hassle parking it. He’d done it like today on foot and by bus and, after hanging about for a long time, ended up outside that flash restaurant and been leaning against the wall wondering what to do next. And she’d come along in that car out of Millbank.

Of course he’d given chase, trying to see if the kids in the back were his children. There were two of them, a younger boy and an older girl, of that at any rate he’d been sure. But they hadn’t been looking in his direction, and they seemed too big to be his Eugenie and his Jordan. He thought with a pang that it was six months since he’d seen them and small children alter considerably in six months, growing taller, their faces changing. It couldn’t be, could it, that this Jims had a couple of kids and it was his two in the car? Gay men did sometimes have kids before they decided women weren’t for them. He had to be sure. Today he was going to find out.

Getting off the bus at Charing Cross, he went into a newsagent’s and looked through the sort of newspaper that tells its readers what’s happening in Parliament that day.

The newsagent watched him turning the pages, folding back the sheets. “Like they say, if you don’t want the goods don’t mess them about.”

Jeff had found what he wanted. It was Maundy Thursday and the Commons sat at eleven. He dropped the paper on the floor, said like some character from Victorian fiction, “Keep a civil tongue in your head, my man.”

The river sparkled in the sun. The spokes on the London Eye glittered silver against a cloudless blue sky. Jeff walked past the Houses of Parliament, crossed the road, and turned into Great College Street. From the bus window he’d noticed that The Talented Mr. Ripley was on at the Marble Arch Odeon. He might pop in later. Fiona wasn’t keen on the cinema. He pushed open the art nouveau oak-and-glass doors of Abbey Gardens Mansions and was a little disconcerted to see a porter sitting behind a desk in the flower-decked red-carpeted foyer. “Mr. Leigh,” he said, “to see Mr. Melcombe-Smith.”

Zillah wouldn’t know who it was, but she’d let in a strange man who came to call on Jims. He hoped. However, the porter didn’t attempt to phone through to her but indicated the lift with a surly nod. Up Jeff went and rang the bell of number seven. It was the old Zillah who came to the door, the unmade-up, hair-scraped-back, casual-clothes version, though the jeans were Calvin Klein and the top Donna Karan. She screamed when she saw him and clapped her hand over her mouth.

The children’s schools had broken up for Easter, and Eugenie and Jordan were out for a walk with Mrs. Peacock while their mother packed for the Maldives. That they weren’t there and neither was Jims gave her courage. “You’d better come in,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

“No you didn’t, my dear. You thought I was telling you I was dead. It’s not the same thing. You’re a bigamist, you know.”

“So are you.”

Jeff sat down on a sofa. He lived in comfortable and elegant surroundings himself so he had no need to comment on hers. “You’re wrong there,” he said. “I’ve never actually been married to anyone but you. Admittedly, I’ve got engaged to three or four but marriage, no. You want to remember what they said to the old person of Lyme who married three wives at one time. When asked why a third, he replied “One’s absurd. And bigamy, sir, is a crime.”

“You’re despicable.”

“I wouldn’t call anyone names if I were you. How do you and Jimsywimsy get on about a bit of how’s-your-father? Or is it a marriage of convenience?” He looked about him as if hoping for the missing pair to emerge from out of the cupboard or under the table. “Where are my children?”

Zillah blushed. “I don’t think you’ve any right to ask. If they’d depended on you they’d be in care by now.”

He couldn’t deny it and didn’t try. Instead, “Where’s your loo?” he asked.

“Upstairs.” She couldn’t resist saying there were two. “One’s the door facing you and the other’s in my bathroom.”

“Jims, Jims, the rick-stick Stims, round tail, bobtail, well done, Jims.”

Jeff didn’t open the door at the top of the stairs but the one to the right of it. Two single beds, two sidelamps with colored butterflies on their shades, otherwise almost without furniture and very tidy. He nodded. Next to it was a room the same size but rather austere, not quite a monk’s cell but in that category. The door at the end of the passage opened on to what he suspected an estate agent would call the master bedroom. On the double divan were two open suitcases, the kind that unmistakably come from Louis Vuitton. The crocodile handbag beside them was also open. Jeff put his hand inside. Feeling in a side compartment, he came upon a Visa card, still in the name of Z. H. Leach. Then he went back into the living room and offered Zillah a Polo mint.

“No, thanks, as always.”

“I see you’re packing. Going somewhere nice?”

She told him, adding sulkily that it was their honeymoon. Jeff burst out laughing, roaring uncontrollably, tickled to death. He stopped as quickly as he’d begun. “You didn’t answer my question. Where are my children?”

“Out for a walk.” She invented, “With their nanny.”

“I see. A nanny. Jims-oh isn’t short of a penny or two, is he? And will you be taking them to the Maldives?”

Zillah would have liked to say yes, but Mrs. Peacock and the children might return at any time. She’d already had enough stick from Eugenie because she wasn’t taking them. “I told you,” she said, “it’s a honeymoon. My mother will be here to look after them.”

Jeff, who hadn’t sat down again but had been roving about the room, said, “I won’t stay to see them. It might be upsetting for them and me. But I don’t like the sound of what you’ve been saying, Zil. It strikes me neither you nor Jims really want my kids. You didn’t say a word about them to those newspapers, not a hint to that magazine that you’d got any kids—oh, yes, I read it, I made it my business to read it.” He paused. “Now, Fiona loves children.”

This casual remark had the effect he hoped for. “Who the hell’s Fiona?”

“My fiancée.” Jeff smiled wolfishly. “She’s a merchant banker. She’s got a very nice house in Hampstead.” He left out the West.

“I suppose the BMW belongs to her.”

“As you say. Her house would be an ideal home for children. Four bedrooms, garden, everything the heart could wish for. And I’m home all day to look after them while she earns the moolah to keep them in luxury.”

“What are you saying?”

“Frankly, my dear, I’m not sure yet. I haven’t thought it through. But I will and I very likely may come up with a plan. Like applying for sole custody, right?”

“You wouldn’t stand a chance!” Zillah shouted.

“No? Not if the court heard you’d committed bigamy?”

Zillah began to cry. There was a notepad on the table with tearoff pages in a silver case. He wrote down Fiona’s address and gave it to Zillah, pretty sure he could retrieve any letter that came to Jerry Leach. Then he left, whistling “Walk on By.” As he closed the front door behind him he could hear her loud sobs. Of course he’d no intention of taking the children away from her, but the threat was a useful weapon. And he wouldn’t mind getting his own back on Jims, who was certainly using Eugenie and Jordan as pawns in the game he was playing to prove himself an exponent of family values. Should he tell Fiona about it? Perhaps. A doctored version at any rate.

Still, where were his children? That story about the nanny might be an invention. If Zillah had dumped them, where had she dumped them? With her mother? He didn’t like it. Perhaps he’d call again next week when Nora Watling was there and find out the truth. If she was there— if that wasn’t a lie too.

Now for lunch at the Atrium. On Zillah’s credit card? A bit dangerous. She and Jims might be regular visitors. Jeff had an idea that a credit card had some sort of code on it that betrayed the sex of the customer using it. In an Italian restaurant in Victoria Street he put it to the test and had no problem. All was well. Imitating Zillah’s signature was no problem either; he’d often done it in the past. The Talented Mr. Ripley, the threefifteen showing, had just begun when Jeff got to the cinema. The small, intimate theater was almost empty, just himself, two other men on their own, and a lone middle-aged woman. It always amused him to see how they’d placed themselves, as far apart as possible, one of the men near the front on the extreme right, another, who looked very old, on the left halfway down and the third in the back row. The woman sat next to the aisle but as far as possible from the old man. It seemed to Jeff that human beings didn’t like their own kind much. Sheep, for instance, would all have huddled together in the center. He took his seat behind the woman—just to be different.

Matthew came home in the middle of the afternoon. Naturally, he’d had no lunch. Without Michelle to look after him and coax him, he’d never eat at all. But he looked well, very nearly a normal thin man. The recording for the television program had been highly enjoyable. “I loved it,” he said, just like the old Matthew she’d married. “I didn’t really expect to. I was full of gloomy forebodings.”

“You should have told me, darling.”

“I know, but I can’t unload all my burdens on you.”

She said in an unusually bitter voice, “You could. My shoulders are broad enough.”

He looked at her with concern, sat down next to her, and took her hands. “What is it, my love? What’s wrong? You’re pleased for me, I know that. This program may be the start of many. We’ll be richer, though I know you don’t care about that. What is it?”

She came out with it. She could no longer keep it to herself. “Why do you never say I’m fat? Why don’t you tell me I’m gross and bloated and hideous? Look at me. I’m not a woman, I’m a great obese balloon of flesh. I said my shoulders are broad enough—well, I hope yours are for what I’m saying. That’s my burden: my size, my awful, huge, revolting size.”

He was looking at her, but not aghast, not in horror. His poor, thin, wizened face was softened and changed by tenderness. “My darling,” he said. “My sweet, dearest darling. Will you believe me when I say I’ve never noticed?”

“You must have. You’re an intelligent man, you’re perceptive. You must have noticed and—and hated it!”

“What’s brought this on, Michelle?” he asked seriously.

“I don’t know. I’m a fool. But—yes, I do know. It’s Jeff, Jeff Leigh. Every time I see him he makes some sort of joke about my size. It was— well, this morning it was ‘stoking up the boilers?’ and the other day he said—no, darling, I can’t tell you what he said.”

“Shall I speak to him? Tell him he’s hurt you? I will, I shan’t mind doing that. You know me, aggressive bastard when I’m roused.”

She shook her head. “I’m not a child. I don’t need Daddy to tell the boy next door to stop it.” A little smile transformed her face. “I never thought I’d say this about anyone but I—I hate him. I really do. I hate him. I know he’s not worth it, but I can’t help it. Tell me about the television.”

He told her. She pretended to listen and made encouraging noises, but she was thinking how deeply she disliked Jeff Leigh, how certain she was that he was a petty crook and she wondered if she could find the strength to warn Fiona. As if she were her mother. Did people ever heed that kind of warning? She didn’t know. But she wasn’t Fiona’s mother and that would make a big difference.

When she had made a meal for Matthew (milkless tea, a Ryvita, two slices of kiwi fruit, and twelve dry-roasted peanuts), she went upstairs, of necessity holding on to the banisters with both hands, puffing at the top as she always did, and entered the bathroom. The scales were for Matthew. She had never stepped on them. How delighted they both were when Matthew weighed himself last week and the scales registered 100 pounds instead of the needle quivering on the 84-pound mark as it once had. Michelle kicked off her shoes, looking down at her legs and feet. They were beautiful, as lovely in shape as any of those models’, if not as long. Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the scales.

At first she didn’t look. But she had to look, that was the point. Slowly she lowered her closed eyes, forced herself to open them. Her breath expelled in a long sigh, she took her eyes away from what it came to in kilos, in pounds. She weighed three times what Matthew did.

What had happened to her to make her do what she’d just done? Jeff Leigh had happened. That made Michelle smile. It was absurd to think of the person you hated as doing you good. For he had done her good. She put on her shoes, went down to the kitchen again and tipped the food she’d prepared for her tea, a big bread roll (in the absence of doughnuts) with strawberry jam, two shortcake biscuits, and a slice of fruitcake, down into the waste bin.