The Perfect Happiness

by Santa Montefiore

  Angie and Denny Garner lived in a bleak gray house on the edge of an equally bleak estuary. They had bought the house in the 1960s when Denny, who would have preferred a big house in Gloucestershire, could only afford a big house in an unfashionable corner of Norfolk. Angie longed to be part of the glamorous set who danced the night away at the Café de Paris. But she settled for her husband’s swinging parties at Fenton Hall, where she wore little dresses from Biba and faux-fur coats from Carnaby Street, hopping from lap to lap like a bunny, glass of cheap champagne in one hand, joint in the other. Her hair had been piled into a blond beehive then, her lips pale, eyes heavy with kohl and fake lashes. She had once been chocolate-box pretty. Now her face was swollen with the excesses of alcohol and cannabis, her beehive badly dyed an unsavory orange to match her skin. While his wife had expanded like a soufflé, Denny was as slim as he had been in his youth, though his long hair was now gray and tied into a thin ponytail. For Denny and Angie the world had stopped turning in about 1975. Angie staggered through their tasteless home in silk kaftans and bell bottoms, Denny in high-waisted tight trousers and big-collared flowery shirts from Deborah&Clare, always unbuttoned to expose his narrow chest and gold chains. They still held parties where cannabis cake put everyone in the mood for sex. There was nothing less redolent of the glory days than Angie and Denny’s impoverished and meager swinging scene, where the main subject of conversation was ill health and death.

  Angelica was embarrassed by her parents. She’d rather die than introduce them to her friends in London, keeping them secret like a stain on the carpet hidden beneath a rug. As a teenager she had longed for them to be like other people’s parents—sensibly dressed in Barbour jackets and green wellies, with sleek dogs misting the glass of their Volvo estates. Olivier, on the other hand, found them entertaining and couldn’t understand why his wife was so appalled.

  “You didn’t grow up with them,” she explained. “I’d hide in my room and play music really loudly so I didn’t have to listen to them all downstairs. What was acceptable when they were teenagers became grotesque as they grew older. I didn’t want to think of my mother having sex with other men. I just wanted them to be normal like everyone else.”

  “No one’s normal,” Olivier reassured her. “People present as normal, but really everyone hides some sort of weirdness behind closed doors.”

  “There’s weird and weird—my parents’ weirdness is a unique brand.”

  “Which is why they’re such fun. They’re originals.”

  “Thank God He broke the mold after He made them; otherwise, I’d be just the same. Mercifully, I was spared that life sentence.”

  “At least they were loving parents.”

  “I suppose. But all children need boundaries. We never had any. I longed for proper family meals at the table and regular bedtime. We just did what we wanted and saw too much. They thought it was natural for children to see their parents having sex.”

  “It explains why you were so prim when I met you.”

  “They almost put me off for life.”

  Olivier grinned mischievously. “I gave you a taste for it.”

  “I needed an older, continental man with experience.” She took his hand and smiled back. “Otherwise, I might have remained a virgin all my life.”

  “You’re too sexy for that. Someone would have snapped you up.” He glanced at her. “You’re looking very good these days, you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad I married you.”

  “And I’m glad I married you.” She pushed thoughts of Jack and Candace to the back of her mind. “We’re lucky, you know. What we have is very special.”

  “I might be a bad-tempered devil sometimes, but I do love you, Angelica. Things haven’t been easy these past months, and I know I’ve been neglecting you. But I’ve never regretted marrying you.”

  “I know. And together we have made the two sweetest children on the planet.”

  She turned to find them fast asleep. She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed it back. In that fleeting moment she saw her life with clarity, as if she were above her body, looking down. Jack didn’t belong there. But the moment didn’t last. Soon they were motoring up the drive of Fenton Hall and the children were waking from their nap. Olivier slipped his hand away and replaced it on the wheel. Angelica wound up her seat and prepared for the worst.

  The car pulled up on the gravel, setting off security lights that lit them up like actors on a stage. Denny appeared in the porch with a cigar between his lips, hands in the pockets of his jerkin. A flurry of fluffy dogs scurried out like big rats, sending the children into squeals of panic. Angelica coaxed them out of the car, bending down to stroke the dogs to prove that they weren’t going to bite. Olivier waved at his father-in-law and went round to the boot to see to the bags. Angelica took Joe and Isabel by the hand and led them inside.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said.

  He put his arm around her and planted a smoky kiss on her cheek. “You look smashing, darling. Go and see your mother—she’s in the kitchen with Daisy.” Angelica took the children through the hall, where a grand piano stood in front of a sweeping staircase and pale green sofas clashed with the blue patterned carpet. She recalled the times she had sat at the top of those stairs watching the parties below. Her father at the piano, a girl on his knee, her mother in a miniskirt and platform boots singing Marianne Faithfull songs, the hall smoky enough to hide where people put their hands.

  On the walls were large black-and-white photos of Angelica and her sister Daisy as children in white hippie dresses with buttercups in their hair, big Andy Warhol prints in psychedelic colors.

  She heard her mother’s voice before she reached the kitchen. “Well, he’s not going to be worth a great deal now, love. You should have squeezed him for as much as you could get out of him a year ago at least.” Angelica sighed and stepped into the room.

  “Ah, Angelica.” Angie left the Aga and sailed across the room like a galleon to press the children to her spongy bosom. Both Isabel and Joe recoiled as they were smothered in red lipstick and Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium. “You’ve grown so big. Look at you! You’re adorable. Both of you.”

  Daisy was sitting at the kitchen table looking pale. “My lot are upstairs in the attic, if yours want to join them. They’re playing with Dad’s trains.” Joe’s eyes lit up, remembering the gigantic model railway from the year before.

  “Come on, Isabel,” he hissed, taking her by the hand. Angelica watched them go, hoping they wouldn’t bump into the dogs on their way through the hall. As there was no screaming, she deduced that her father and Olivier were still outside chatting.

  “Hi, Daisy,” she said, kissing her sister. Daisy looked her over in surprise.

  “You’ve lost weight,” she said.

  “Have I?”

  “Yes, you have, love.” Her mother appraised her admiringly, taking a drag of her cigarette. “It suits you. After all, you have to be careful: you have my genes. Daisy’s lucky she’s skinny like her father.”

  “So how are you, Daisy?” Angelica asked, pouring herself a glass of Chablis.

  “Well, since I last saw you, which was, what? Oh, a year ago!” She laughed, trying to make light of it.

  “I know, it’s crazy, but life has been so busy.”

  “Streatham isn’t the other side of the world.”

  “I know. We should make more of an effort to see each other.”

  “Ted and I are now officially divorced, but he won’t settle.”

  “I told her, she’s missed the boat now. I can’t imagine he has much money to give you,” interjected Angie.

  “He’s been made redundant,” Daisy informed her.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Angelica replied truthfully. She knew Daisy didn’t get paid much as a piano teacher.

  “Life’s a bummer.”

  Angelica took a gulp of wine and braced herself for her sister’s defensiveness. Ever since she had married Olivier
and made a better life for herself, Daisy had resented her. “I know how hard it is, Daisy,” she said sympathetically.

  Daisy sniffed. “I don’t think you have the slightest idea, Angelica.”

  “I’ve made a delicious fish pie,” said their mother cheerfully, opening the Aga door to look at it. “Denny loves fish pie. I’ve asked a few friends over for drinks tonight. Just locals. Jennifer and Alan Hancock, Marge and Tony Pilcher. I’ve always had a bit of a thing about Tony. He’s a dreadful old roué!” She laughed throatily.

  Angelica caught Daisy’s eye and knew they were both thinking the same thing—remembering their parents’ parties with horror.

  “You look good,” said Daisy, defeated by the onslaught of memories that only Angelica shared. “I love your blouse. Where’s it from?”

  “Oh, Harvey Nichols, I suspect,” she replied vaguely.

  “I bet it was expensive. I mean, too expensive for me.” Daisy fiddled with the buttons on her Gap shirt.

  “You can borrow it anytime, Daisy.”

  “I don’t know how that’s possible, seeing as we never see each other.”

  “I gather your books are doing very well, love.”

  “They are. Actually, I’m going on a book tour in February.” Angelica brightened at the thought.

  “Really, how wonderfully glamorous. Where are they sending you?”

  “South Africa.”

  “Goodness me! Denny and I went to Cape Town one year when you were little. We stayed in a charming little boutique hotel—it was a delight. I lay beside the pool all day while Denny showed off on the diving board. He had a very sexy pair of red swimming shorts in those days. I wonder whatever became of them.”

  “Who’s going to look after the children?” Daisy asked.

  “I have Sunny, of course, but I’ll need someone to come and supervise the children’s homework. I’ll find someone.”

  “It’s easy if you have money. I could never go away like that, being a single mother and having to do it all on my own.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, Daisy. You’re brilliant: cooking, cleaning, looking after the children, and working as well. You’re a domestic goddess as well as a talented musician. You’re amazing, really.”

  “It’s what I do. I don’t know any other way. You know, I couldn’t have your life. I couldn’t get up every morning and . . . do my hair.” She shrugged and gave another little sniff.

  Angelica stared at her. Once she might have been quietly offended by such an aggressive comment. But now she just laughed. “Well, of course. I mean, my books write themselves. I have all the time in the world to do my hair.”

  17

  Laughter is the greatest healer.

  In Search of the Perfect Happiness

  The following morning, Joe and Isabel ran into their parents’ bedroom at dawn carrying stockings full of presents. Angelica had taken enormous pleasure filling a pair of Olivier’s shooting stockings for each child, and the wool was stretched to capacity. Angelica wondered what Daisy had bought her three children and felt a wave of pity at the thought of them opening their meager stockings on Angie and Denny’s bed, without their father to enjoy it with them.

  She remembered opening her own stocking with Daisy: her mother fighting a hangover with a bottle of pills, chain-smoking in bed in a silk nightie that barely contained her bosom, her naked father on the floor doing press-ups. There were always lots of dogs, and the room smelled of damp fur and Opium. Their presents had been generous. Her mother was extravagant. Denny wasn’t rich, but he couldn’t deny her anything, and he liked her to look good. And she did, in those days. Her nails were always manicured, her hair in an updo. Her clothes had been cheap, but somehow she had pulled it off. Not a lot had changed. Her father still did press-ups, her mother still wore Opium, the dogs still slept on their bed. Only now Angie’s nails were false, her hair badly dyed, the fake tan too orange for her skin, and of course her once voluptuous figure had ballooned so that her clothes had to hang around her like drapes over an ugly table. Angelica didn’t want to imagine the sight on the bed and thanked God it wasn’t her own children having to witness the pill-popping and chain-smoking and her mother’s breasts, sagging like old udders.

  The night before had been a trial for Daisy and Angelica. Angie had appeared in a blue silk kaftan that fell over her bosom like a waterfall. Her turquoise eye shadow shimmered from her false black lashes to her overplucked eyebrows, and her lips were pale beige, clashing against the copper tones of her skin. Denny’s trousers were tight, emphasizing the un-seemly bulge that clearly excited his wife, for she grabbed it with a pudgy hand and gave a dirty laugh. “Hey, handsome!” she breathed, pressing against him.

  “I think I’ve pulled!” he said to Olivier, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

  Olivier caught Angelica’s eye and grinned. Angelica smiled back, grateful for his support. For the first time she realized what a unique man he was for not thinking less of her because of her appalling parents.

  Jennifer and Alan Hancock arrived first, a mousy couple clearly in awe of their hosts and very nervous. Jennifer sat on the club fender, unable to take her eyes off Denny’s crotch, and Alan agreed with everything Angie said, however ridiculous. When Marge and Tony Pilcher arrived, Angie was transformed into a coy little girl. Her voice went soft and babyish, she pouted and giggled, she even blushed through her tan. Denny stood with one foot on the club fender right in front of Jennifer so that she had a clear view of what he obviously believed were his most significant assets. He smoked a cigar, showing off the gaudy signet ring that sat on his little finger like a Quality Street toffee. His nails were too long to be masculine. Olivier filled glasses with pink champagne and passed around the nuts, observing the party with amused detachment.

  Angelica talked to Marge, a sturdy woman who liked gardening. She tried not to look at her father, whose crotch was now so close to Jennifer it was indecent.

  “Did you know Trudy Trowbridge died last week?” asked Tony, dragging on a joint and handing it to Angie.

  “Oh goodness,” she breathed. “How old was she?”

  “Seventy-three,” said Tony.

  “Too young,” said Marge. “I’ll be seventy-eight in March.”

  “You’re as young as you feel,” said Alan, looking at Angie for approval.

  “As young as the woman you feel,” added Denny.

  Angelica rolled her eyes, then gasped as Tony gave her a squeeze.

  “Then I’m very young indeed,” he chortled.

  “I’m not even seventy,” Angie lied. “You can feel me anytime, darling.”

  Tony released Angelica and tossed a glance down the ravine of Angie’s cleavage. In spite of her cheap hair and copper tan, her plumpness made her skin relatively wrinkle free. She could easily have passed for a sixty-year-old.

  Daisy found them all intolerable and went to play the piano. Angelica remained on the sofa a while, listening. She admired her sister. Angelica hadn’t picked up her flute since leaving school. She wasn’t even sure where she’d put it and, were she to find it, if she’d remember how to play. She exchanged a glance with Daisy and smiled encouragingly. Her sister smiled back; the same complicit smile they had shared as children. But after a few pieces Angelica excused herself to check on the children, not that anybody cared, and Olivier followed her upstairs.

  “Bloody hell, I can’t believe they still behave like this! They’re in their seventies!” Angelica exclaimed as they walked down the corridor towards the children’s bedroom.

  “They don’t think they’re dinosaurs,” said Olivier with a grin. “They’ve all grown old together. To each other, they are the same as they’ve always been, and I know you won’t agree, but your mother was obviously very pretty in her youth.”

  “I thought I was going to be swept into an orgy when Tony grabbed me.”

  “I’d never let that happen.”

  “The old lech.”

  “I’m a young lech.”
Olivier swung her around and kissed her.

  “How can you feel horny when that’s going on downstairs?”

  “I only have to look at you to feel horny.”

  “I feel nauseous.”

  “Thank you!”

  “Not because of you, silly.”

  “Let them get on with it. They are not you. They just brought you into the world. And I toast them for that.”

  Angelica laughed. “That’s all you can toast them for. They’re an embarrassment. Thank God I’ll never have to introduce them to my friends. Can you imagine what Candace would think?”

  “Her commentary would be priceless. But she’s your friend, so she would sympathize. No one who loves you would condemn you for having wacky parents.”

  “I’m very grateful you don’t,” she said seriously.

  He kissed her forehead. “Are you crazy? There’s nothing of your parents in you that I can see.”

  “Wait until I’m seventy!”

  Now she lay in bed as the children opened their stockings, taking pleasure from being just the family, away from London and all the stress Olivier seemed to bring home with him every evening. She cast a thought to Jack and wondered whether he was trying to contact her. Her mobile telephone had no reception in Fenton, unless she went down to the estuary, where, for some reason, it worked on a small and desolate bit of beach. She had warned him she might not be able to communicate, and right now she didn’t mind. Olivier had made love to her after dinner, and she had relished his attention. He had always been a sensitive lover. Afterwards, they had lain entwined, laughing about her parents and their atrocious friends. Then they had imagined how things might have gone had they not been there. Laughter had enabled her to talk about it without the usual stab of embarrassment. Once she detached, there was something very funny about Denny and Angie’s swinging scene; it was tragic only if she identified with it.