The Ex-Wives by Deborah Moggach.

                            The Ex-Wives by Deborah Moggach.

"He was an outcast, shivering in the cold whilst all over Britain loving families sat beside the fire opening presents and playfully trouncing each other at board games."

It's the 1990s and you will be plunged imminently into the painful and complicated woes of an ageing actor known affectionately as Buffy. Russell Buffery. Apart from the occasion when he wallows in self-pity, he is amiable but absolutely hopeless. He is 61 years of age, a has-been who views himself as a "discontinued model consigned to the scrapheap." If you are feeling uncomfortable with that what about this one: like "an old pit pony put out to grass?" Penny informs us that he has a “bottomless capacity for self-deception” believing everything he wants to believe. “They have to tell lies and believe them.”

Things seem to be looking up for Buffy when he meets Celeste, a 23 year old innocent,  the same age as Buffy’s step-daughter India. Her father had died when she was six and now her mother has also died. Wanda, one of the neighbours suggested that Celeste move to London. Her mother left her a letter and a small goldfish. “The key to it all had been taken away from her. One letter, in a biscuit tin, had done it.” The contents of the letter are crucial to our understanding of Celeste's mission; Moggach manages to successfully sustain interest in the plot, finally revealing its contents towards the end. A fitting denouement, very cleverly weaved into the story.

On the surface it seems as if Moggach is reinventing a romantic saga between a young girl and an ageing actor old enough to be her father. He comes with a lot of baggage: three failed marriages, a brood of offspring and step-children and of course, a number of illicit affairs. Reminds me of Jack Nicholson. We are told an amusing anecdote that Buffy’s ideal life would have been living in a brothel like Toulouse Lautrec! Celeste, on the other hand, is a Melton Mowbray girl, very different to his other lovers, naïve and vulnerable.

At the beginning of the saga Buffy is still married to Penny Warren, his third wife, a successful journalist with 20 years of experience behind her. At her best, Buffy found her invigorating, amusing and entertaining, although she could be bossy, displaying brisk testiness in the way she treated Buffy as if he was George, Buffy’s faithful dog, the only dependable one in this tale. Penny is meant to be working on a travel article based around Positano leaving Buffy home alone, hating the loneliness. He was easily bored and needed constant company to thrive. They had been married for 8 years. Penny thought she had married a father figure. Let’s just say that’s what she hoped for. And what did she get? To her disappointment Buffy proved to be a child-like figure and full of ailments: suffering piles, corns, an enlarged prostrate and back problems. Hypochondria and drinking excessively.

Six trips away from home turned out to be secret rendezvous with photographer Colin in his Soho flat three miles down the road. This affair had been going on for months. What made him incensed was the knowledge that Penny had been “shagging herself senseless, drugged with sex.” When Buffy realises the deception and betrayal Penny storms off and they soon divorce. This is when Buffy hits rock bottom and a chance encounter with the lovely young Celeste: “like a sapling, a silver birch” and our romantic, loveable rogue becomes smitten with Cupid’s arrow. Celeste is the antithesis to Penny and makes Buffy feel incredibly young (although in reality he also feels incredibly old ). It certainly gives him a new lease of life.

Celeste planned a furtive mission, engineering meetings with all the ex-wives and her first port of call was in Soho, trying to locate Penny Warren which proved as difficult as looking for a needle in a haystack. She aborted her first attempt but she did eventually meet up with her on the pretence of wanting to become a journalist too. Penny’s ego is flattered by Celeste’s inquisitiveness, particularly over memories of her ex.

“He moved in a different world to me, that was part of the attraction. He had a past.” In time, as we know, it wore thin and Penny wanted something more. A recycling project allows Celeste to keep in contact with Penny. Having satisfied her curiosity, Celeste tracks down wife number 2 a ghastly, neurotic woman, Jacquetta who had an affair with her shrink whilst married to Buffy. She was moody, fiery and difficult. She needed constant reassurances from the men in her life to counteract her insecurities.  She divorced him and married Leon Buckman, a well-known psychiatrist who freely advocated condoms and recommended plenty of sex and illicit affairs. Whilst married to Buffy they had two sons, Tobias and Bruno described by Penny as being delinquents, lazy slobs of adolescent. Celeste discovers how much insane and irrational jealousy existed between the ex-wives.

She is keen to paint Celeste-as a child waiting to be born in the ribcage of her mother. Popsi Concorde was the stage name of wife number 1, otherwise known as Eileen Fisher. Her motto was “live life to the full.”  She was The Good Time Girl. She had been young when she had met Buffy and realised it was danger ahead and the relationship would hit “spontaneous combustion.” It did of course, sooner rather than later shortly after their son, Quentin was born. There was also Anabel (from Rye), Phoebe, Lorna and Carmella who produced a daughter for Buffy called Nyange.

Life for Lorna had been one of “Botched relationships and missed opportunities.” She had been wild and wayward and ambitious. Work came first and she chose an acting career over her relationship with Buffy at a time when he was “sort of married to Popsi” he was “vaguely with Lorna.”

It’s not surprising that Celeste keeps Buffy at arm’s length when she discovers his history. He is prepared to have a celibate relationship rather like Dante and Beatrice with unfulfilled yearnings- a nice mug of Horlicks, a kiss and a cuddle and no hanky panky or how’s your father! So, is there a happy-ever-after for Buffy and Celeste or will she fall victim to the ex-wives’ club and join the jealous ranks of Buffy’s had-beens? It’s all yours for the taking. Enchanting from start to finish.

“You’ve not been a failure. You’ve just had more of a past to be a failure in.”

Publisher; Mandarin Paperbacks and Heinemann Ltd. ISBN: 0-7493-1931-3

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

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