Wild Oats

by Veronica Henry

  Jamie felt hot tears rising, of anger and frustration. She clenched her teeth in an effort to stop the flow, feeling foolish that she’d broken down in front of Olivier. She seemed to be making a speciality of losing control lately. She tried to smile an apology.

  ‘Sorry. It’s just so frustrating. I can’t bear the thought of losing Bucklebury.’

  ‘Maybe what you need to do is find yourself a rich husband. And fast.’

  She looked at him, appalled.

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t take it seriously. It’s not your home, is it?’

  Olivier knew he sounded flippant, but Jamie was looking for answers he couldn’t give her. His tone softened. ‘You know, Jamie, change isn’t always a bad thing. The fear of it is sometimes worse than the reality.’

  ‘I can’t bear the thought of someone else’s stuff in here!’ she protested. ‘I can just imagine what Bella Deacon would do to it. It’ll be wall-to-wall cream carpet and bowls of pot-pourri and nasty twee prints in gold frames and a huge blow-up photograph of her and Rod made to look like a painting hanging over the fireplace –’

  Olivier looked around the room and had to admit the prospect was grim. Tattered, shabby, comfy and cosy, it was years of accumulated possessions. Candle wax had dripped on to the hearth. Gumdrop and Parsnip were snoozing by the fire. The prospect of anyone wanting to change a thing was almost unimaginable.

  Olivier had never felt sentimental about where he lived. Whenever his parents upgraded to a new house, he had no regrets about leaving the old one. As long as he had his sound system, a comfy bed and a wardrobe to stuff everything into, he was happy. There was a nomadic streak in him. Wherever he laid his hat…

  He wasn’t going to admit it to Jamie, but Bucklebury Farm was the first place he’d ever felt at home. The only place he had never wanted to leave. Telling her that would only add fuel to her argument.

  ‘Life’s not about places, Jamie. It’s about people. They’re the only things that really matter. The worst thing would be if you fell out with your father over this. Believe me, I envy your relationship with him more than anything. What wouldn’t I give for a father who thinks the world of me?’

  There was a certain bitterness in his tone as he spoke, and Jamie felt a sudden twinge of guilt. Perhaps she was being a brat? Infuriating though Jack was, he would never in a million years undermine her or deride her, like Eric had Olivier.

  ‘I know you love Bucklebury, but at the end of the day, it’s just bricks and mortar. Nothing more. It’s the people in it that make it really special.’

  Olivier wasn’t used to waxing so lyrical. Even more surprising was the fact that he meant it. Jack and Jamie were special.

  Quite how special, he was only just starting to realize…

  When Bella got back to Owl’s Nest after a gruelling day teaching aspiring Darcys and Britneys, she found the table laid, the lights dimmed, soft candlelight flickering and David Gray gently tickling the ivories in the background. At each place was a plate of oak-smoked salmon, on a bed of watercress and rocket, with triangles of granary bread. Zinc in the fish. And plenty of iron in the garnish. Rod was an expert on what the conceiving couple should be eating and often presented her with carefully prepared meals.

  Bella sat down as he handed her a glass of wine. She smiled brightly.

  ‘So, what’s all this in aid of?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ answered Rod carefully. ‘I think it’s about time we saw someone. I’ve made an appointment for us with the doctor, so we can be referred.’

  Bella started to protest.

  ‘But it often takes –’

  ‘It’s been nearly a year, Bella. And neither of us are spring chickens any more. We need to sort it sooner rather than later.’

  Bella took a careful sip from her glass without answering. Rod looked at her.

  ‘I know neither of us wants to be told there’s something wrong. But it could be something very simple; something that could be put right straight away.’

  Bella nodded and smiled.

  ‘Maybe you’re right. I suppose we can just… have a chat. It can’t do any harm.’

  Rod walked over to the dresser, opened a drawer and pulled out a package.

  ‘This is for you. I thought it might help.’

  Bella reached out eagerly. She adored presents, and Rod was so good at them; so thoughtful. She wondered what on earth it could be. The package was beautifully wrapped in white tissue paper with silver ribbons, but with no label, no indication as to which shop it had come from. She looked to Rod for permission to open it, and he smiled indulgently. Bella was like a little girl when it came to presents. She picked it up and shook it tentatively, looking for a clue. It was very light, but rattled slightly. It was too large for a ring, but then she wouldn’t put it past Rod to be deceptive in his wrapping; to enjoy keeping her guessing. She tried to brace herself for the worst-case scenario – a bottle of perfume or body lotion – but then reassured herself: Rod wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble for something insignificant. She pulled at the strings of the ribbon, picked impatiently at the knots with her nails, then ripped apart the paper.

  Inside were six boxes. Six very familiar pink oblong boxes. Her face fell. Her heart pounded. She looked up again at Rod. His gaze was no longer indulgent. His eyes were hard.

  Bella was a quick thinker. She did her best to extricate herself from the situation.

  ‘I… I don’t understand,’ she floundered. ‘Why do you want me to go back on the pill?’

  ‘Nice try, Bella, but it won’t work.’ He held up a piece of paper. ‘You ordered this by phone yesterday. Repeat prescription.’

  She frowned, shaking her head.

  ‘No. I didn’t. There must have been some mistake. You know what they’re like at that surgery. Totally inefficient. Always getting things wrong…’

  She trailed off. Rod’s face was impassive, disbelieving. Her face crumpled and she dissolved into noisy sobs. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’ His voice was careful, and she wasn’t to know it was because he was trying very hard not to cry himself. ‘I don’t understand at all. For nearly a year, you’ve strung me along. Every month I’ve been through torture, wondering if this would be the month. My heart’s bled for you. Watching you, whenever you realized you weren’t pregnant – it tore me apart. I did everything in my power to make it up to you.’

  He thought about how desperately he’d tried to compensate. The trips away, the five-star hotels, the jewellery. The bloody Audi! How she must have crowed inwardly when he presented her with the keys only a month ago, after the last time he’d found her sobbing in their en suite. Time and again he’d showered her with material goods because he’d been so afraid that it was his fault, when all along he’d been duped.

  ‘How could you do it to me, Bella? What did I do?’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘You must really hate me.’

  ‘No! Of course I don’t. I love you –’

  ‘Really?’ He looked at her, his face twisted into a cynical smile. ‘So what do you do for an encore?’

  Bella swallowed. Rod walked over to the window.

  ‘I thought we were in this together. I thought you wanted the same as I did. I thought you wanted kids –’

  ‘I do!’

  He looked over at the incriminating pile of pill boxes.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he scoffed. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you about the birds and the bees? Or did she just teach you how to find a sucker; take him for a ride…’

  ‘It’s not like that.’ Bella’s voice was a desperate whimper.

  ‘Then what is it? What am I supposed to think?’ He gestured at the boxes. ‘That’s just annihilated everything I thought we were about. For God’s sake, did I force you into it? You could have said, if you’d wanted to wait. Or if you didn’t want children at all. Instead of putting us through all that agony…’

  He trailed off, his voice cracking with the emotion. Bel
la was sobbing bitterly.

  ‘Please, Rod… You don’t understand.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t,’ he said, his fists clenching and unclenching.

  Bella took a deep, shuddering breath inwards, her eyes as wide as saucers as she twisted her hands with distress. ‘It’s just… I was so afraid. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know if I could cope with…’ She trailed off in despair. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘So am I,’ Rod said bleakly. ‘I had no idea we’d got it so wrong.’

  ‘We can… try again,’ she ventured.

  Rod shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘How could I trust you? When I think of all those times I felt guilty, wishing I could take your pain away…’

  He turned away sharply, not wanting her to see him struggling to fight back tears. Bella looked at the floor, shamefaced.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked, in a small voice.

  ‘There doesn’t seem much point in us carrying on. Does there?’

  There was a challenge in his voice. Bella looked up, and for one moment it seemed as if she was on the point of saying something, was prepared to fight for her marriage. Then she turned, picked up the phone with shaking hands, looked at the taxi number on the card pinned on to the board and punched out the number.

  ‘I’d like a cab, please.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Owl’s Nest, Sandstone Lane, Upper Faviell. Thanks.’

  She put the phone down and ran upstairs to pack.

  Ten minutes later the doorbell rang and Bella came down the stairs slowly with her bag. Rod had opened the door and the taxi driver was hovering uncomfortably on the doormat, sensing tension.

  ‘Where to, love?’

  ‘Manor Close.’

  The driver raised an eyebrow. She was going down in the world all right. He held out a hand to take her bag nevertheless. Bella turned in the doorway to say goodbye to Rod, to appeal to him one last time, but he’d turned his back on her, his body language firmly indicating that there was nothing more to be discussed.

  Bella followed the taxi driver to the car, as if following her executioner to the gallows.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Rod found tears sliding down his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. They were tears of anger: anger at Bella for deceiving him, and at himself for letting himself be deceived. Tears of bitterness for the total sham that had been his marriage. He thought of all the times he’d held her, focussing on her grief rather than his, because somehow it was accepted that the disappointment was worse for a woman, that it called into question her raison d’être. There had been no such support for him. Nolly, of course, had tried, but Rod had kept her sympathy at arm’s length, bottling everything up, because the minute he expressed his fears would be the minute they were realized.

  Mixed in amongst them, however, were tears of relief. Relief that he probably wasn’t sterile or impotent, as he had been starting to fear over the past few months. He might have lost his mate, but now he knew the truth: he had as much chance as the next bloke of becoming a father.

  As the taxi drove through the lanes back towards Ludlow, Bella opened the window in the back and took in big gulps of fresh air to suppress her hysteria. She didn’t want to break down and make a scene in front of the driver. He was curious enough already. It was obvious she’d been turfed out of Owl’s Nest, and he kept glancing in the rear-view mirror to assess her state of mind.

  Instead, she chewed frantically on her perfect fingernails as she contemplated her bad luck. She’d been so careful. She’d hidden the packets at the dance studio, deep in a filing cabinet, and each month she popped each of the twenty-one pills out of its foil wrap and decanted them into an empty folic acid bottle, which she took home. She then took one each day in front of Rod. It had been a foolproof deception.

  Until today. What were the chances of Rod picking up her prescription like that? She’d only ordered them yesterday; she’d been going to pick them up on Monday and squirrel them away as usual. Now the cat was well and truly out of the bag.

  She hadn’t been given a chance to explain, but then how could she? How could she make him understand that the thought of getting pregnant and carrying a child not only terrified but repulsed her? She couldn’t bear the thought of not being in control of her body, of all that weight distorting her beyond recognition. She’d seen pregnant women in the high street, with their huge distended lumps. They barely looked human. And she’d seen the after-effects in her toning classes often enough – the hideous silvery stretch marks, the wrinkles, the deflated bellies that would never regain their elasticity, the pendulous breasts with the blue veins. And she’d heard talk of disfigurements that were not visible – the stitches, the scars, the incontinence.

  And that was before you took the pain of shitting a Ford Fiesta into account.

  Every month she gave herself a pep talk. Every month she promised herself that she would stop taking the pill; that she’d give it a go. But every time she bottled out, finding some spurious reason. She hated herself for it. Once she’d managed three whole days without it before panicking and rushing to the packet with shaking hands and taking the pills she’d missed all at once, then still going for the morning-after pill when she and Rod had sex that month, just in case.

  And when she used to cry when she came on, she wasn’t faking it. They weren’t crocodile tears. They were tears of shame that she wasn’t able to give Rod what he wanted, no matter how hard she tried to do battle with her head. She wept because she felt she wasn’t normal – all normal women wanted babies, didn’t they? Once you were happily married, which she certainly was, it was a natural progression. But nothing she did could conquer her fear. She peered into prams, examining newborns, hoping they would emanate some sort of magic scent that would make her broody. Once, she was charmed by a particularly winsome specimen giving her a heart-melting grin from beneath a white velour beanie hat. Bella felt a tiny little flicker of something inside her, and wondered if at long last her maternal instincts were kicking in. But one look at the mother changed her mind. She’d once attended Bella’s aerobic classes, and had been lean and toned. Now, with her drooping breasts and thickened waistline, combined with dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep, she was barely recognizable. Bella recoiled in horror, all inclinations to procreate vanishing into thin air.

  The taxi turned into the road that led to her mother’s house. Bella’s heart sank. As council houses went, it was perfectly pleasant. All the old windows had been replaced with smart UPVC leaded windows; the garden was tidy. But not all their neighbours were as conscientious with their upkeep. The estate was notorious as a dumping ground for the villains of the area. Not least several of Rod’s brothers, who ruled the estate with a rod of iron. Cars destined for the scrap heap, some of them without wheels, littered the roadside. Broken fences, peeling paint, front lawns worn bare by relentless football practice – it was a predominantly depressing neighbourhood, despite the efforts of some.

  Bella sighed. She’d worked so bloody hard to get herself out of here. She thought of the long days and nights she and Rod had spent doing up Owl’s Nest. Her nails had been ruined, but she hadn’t minded. She’d worked tirelessly, sanding and stripping and scraping, then painting and staining and polishing. Now here she was, back to square one. She felt her heart slither down to her boots, just like Snakes and Ladders, when the counter slid back down the snake after landing on an unlucky square.

  She’d landed on an unlucky square all right. But it had been of her own making.

  Pauline answered the door, and looked questioningly at Bella’s suitcase.

  ‘We’ve had,’ said Bella, very carefully so she didn’t cry, ‘a bit of an argument. I don’t want to talk about it at the moment. But can I come and stay?’

  *

  As Jamie tossed and turned in her bed that night, trying to get to sleep, she went over and over what Olivier had said to her, and realized he was right.
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br />   It was a sobering thought, but Jack was now her only living relative – the only one that meant anything, that is, though there was the odd aunt and a few cousins floating around. Until she got a husband of her own, and had children, which seemed a long way off if not totally unlikely, he was all she had in the world. She had to do everything in her power to preserve her relationship with him. And she didn’t want to be filled with regret. She knew now that you could never be sure what was round the corner. Her mother’s death had taught her that.

  Maybe it was part of growing up to accept that you couldn’t make everything right, to learn to live with things as they are. Hundreds of clichés spun round her head – make the best of a bad job, like it or lump it, every cloud has a silver lining. She couldn’t change the past or wave a magic wand and save Bucklebury. Jack had been right to salvage what he could from the wreckage. By coming along and throwing her hands up in horror, Jamie realized she’d shown herself up as naive, unrealistic, reactionary.

  Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. And this way was less of a risk. Jamie saw now that her head had been in the clouds. What did she know about running a country hotel, or any sort of business for that matter? Her expertise was childcare, getting newborn babies to sleep through the night, not pandering to the whims of demanding, querulous house guests. She should stick to what she was good at. She could have ended up making a very expensive mistake, putting a lot of time and effort into a project that ultimately lost them everything.

  With Jack’s plan, at least they still had a toehold. He could still wake up and enjoy the same view he’d had for forty years; breathe the same air. And presumably they would have a certain amount of control over how the development looked – she’d get Kif’s advice; make sure that there were certain stipulations built into the contract. No hideous UPVC conservatories; no ghastly fast-growing conifers. From what little she’d seen of Owl’s Nest, Rod was a sympathetic renovator, using authentic materials that blended in with the surroundings. And anyway, if he was going to be living in the farmhouse, he wouldn’t want to look out on anything unattractive; no doubt he’d take as much care over the conversion of the stables as he would the renovation of the house.