‘Well, the thing is, Evie, we've got tickets – have had tickets, for ages – for a choral concert at Christ Church. Tom James is the soloist, and we told Caro at the time, when she arranged this, that we could only come to the church, but you know what she's like.’ Felicity looked genuinely fearful, whilst Mum grinned, eyes rolling, enjoying herself hugely.
‘Oh, I think we just tell her to piss off, don't you?’ she said loudly, puffing on a ciggie. ‘After all, it's Jack's party, and he's not fussed, are you, darling?’
‘Go on, you ravers, off you go.’ Jack appeared behind us, putting an arm around each of their shoulders, hustling them towards their car. ‘Off to your gig. Your guilty secret is safe with me. Like the leggings, Granny.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ She struck a pose. ‘I thought if I wore skin-tight Lycra I wouldn't be so tempted to throw my knickers.’
This was baffling even for Mum, and I wondered if she'd got Tom James muddled with an ageing crooner from Wales. Two hours of Fauré's Requiem might come as a bit of a shock if she was expecting to punch the air to ‘Sex Bomb’.
‘Well, you look terrific,’ said Jack, unfazed. ‘Got a fag, Granny?’
‘Yes, darling.’ Mum went for her handbag. ‘Here, I—’
‘No she hasn't,’ hissed Felicity, staying Mum's hand and glancing round tremulously. ‘Caro will freak. Now come on, Barbara, we're in enough trouble as it is. Let's get going.’
Jack and I shielded them as they hastened to Felicity's old green Subaru, and then, as they drove away, we turned to join the straggle of people making their way down the lane to the farm.
‘I've got half a mind to go with them,’ Jack said gloomily, pulling a butt out of his jacket pocket and attempting to set fire to it. It was doomed to failure but he persevered. It always amused me that he deemed me the laissez-faire aunt, the one he could smoke in front of. Or perhaps he was testing me.
‘Oh, come on, Jack, your mum's gone to a lot of trouble.’
He frowned, considering this, his freckled face upturned to the sun. ‘Yes, maybe that's the problem. It's always trouble. Never fun. Oops, talk of the devil.’ He tossed the butt in the hedge as Caro, having gone round the back of the farmhouse, flung open the front door from inside.
‘Come on, Jack, you're supposed to be welcoming everyone!’ she yelled across the yard.
‘Coming,’ he called. Then, softly to me: ‘Might just go for a whiz in the hydrangeas first, though. Got a bit of an experiment going. Did you know if you pee on a pink one, you can turn it blue?’
‘I didn't, but thanks for sharing that with me.’
‘It's the acid, I suppose.’
‘I suppose,’ I agreed, as my favourite nephew – although of course one shouldn't have favourites, but the most like Tim, at any rate – slunk off around the side of the house, shoulders hunched.
I, in turn, squared my own as I went through the sagging, five-bar gate hanging limply on its hinges at the front. I could already see a gaggle of people through the sitting-room windows: old friends, family friends, neighbours from the village, no doubt. People who'd tell me they didn't see enough of me these days. That I spread myself too thinly. Maybe even Neville Carter's parents, I thought with a pang. That rocked me for a second; made me hold the gate. Then I took a deep breath and picked my way in my heels through the filthy yard, which periodically, Tim got the local pikies to tip a load of shingle over. But no amount of shingle could stop the mud seeping through, just as – I paused and glanced up at the modest stone farmhouse – no amount of time could stop the seep of memories.
2
‘Evelyn! Oh my God, I haven't seen you in ages.’
I'd just taken the few steps required to cross the narrow flagstone hall and duck under the low door into the sitting room, when the hated name rang out and my arm was seized. An overweight woman in tight white trousers, tight pink sweater, and an even tighter perm, beamed delightedly at me, her face glowing. She reminded me vaguely of a girl I'd been at school with, Paula someone.
‘It's Paula! Paula Simons, remember?’
‘Gosh. Of… course. How are you?’
‘Really well, thanks. Have you brought your husband?’ Her eyes roved past me, hopefully.
I smiled. ‘No, he had to take our daughter to a music exam, I'm afraid.’
‘Oh, shame.’ Her mouth drooped. ‘I brought a book for him to sign. You should have taken her!’
‘Who, Anna?’ I was startled. ‘Yes, I suppose… but then Jack is my—’
‘Hey, Kay. Kay, look, it's Evelyn Hamilton!’
Another pink-faced middle-aged woman materialized, and this one I really didn't know except… oh heavens, Kay Pritchard. Suddenly I was nine years old again in the school cloakroom, giggling hysterically amongst the hats and coats. Our teacher, Mrs Stanley, had just told us that one of our classmates, Debbie Holt, wouldn't be coming in that day because her mother had died in the night. In the stunned silence that followed, Kay and I had dissolved. Not tears, giggles. Nerves, I suppose. We'd been sent out, but to our horror, couldn't stop, even in the cloakroom. Later I'd been mortified and it had haunted me for weeks. I wondered if she remembered. I also wondered if I was as changed as Paula and Kay: so… old?
‘Oh, Evelyn! Oh God – is he here?’ She glanced around excitedly.
‘He's not, I'm afraid. Will I do?’
‘Oh.’ She pouted. ‘Well, you'll have to, won't you?’ She gave a tinkly laugh. ‘But I want to hear all about it. Did he really go to bed with a different woman every week?’
This, a reference not to Ant, but a Georgian dramatist, whose biography he'd just written and which was currently being serialized, pre-publication, in the Daily Mail.
‘If that's what it says.’ I smiled thinly.
‘You haven't read it?’ Kay's eyes were huge.
‘Er… not that particular one.’ I'd read most of the Byron, and I'd started the one Ant had done on Kilvert, which hadn't been such a success, but not this one, the one Ant referred to disparagingly as his ‘Bodice Ripper’. The whole thing made us cringe a bit, actually. After all, he was a serious biographer, it wasn't usually the sort of thing he did, but the publisher had offered a big advance for something a little more spicy, a little more Byronesque, a little less Kilvert – no more dreary parsons, please! And to be fair, there was really only one steamy chapter, which, naturally, the Mail had chosen…
‘And you're living in Jericho now, I gather?’ Kay's face was flushed, either from the warmth of the room or her sherry. Her eyes were bright.
‘Well, on the edge.’
‘Yes, but still.’ They looked at me admiringly. ‘And what are you doing now?’ demanded Kay, rather pointedly.
‘Oh, this and that,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘What about you, Kay?’ I said quickly. ‘Still, um…’ I mentally scrolled down my school-leavers archive, ‘nursing?’
‘Yes, but not in hospitals any more. It doesn't really work with kids. I'm a practice nurse. You know, in Ludworth?’
The next village. So perhaps I should. Perhaps Caro should have told me. When I'd asked. I smiled nervously. ‘Right.’
‘And I'm on the Parish Council too,’ she informed me. ‘For my sins.’
‘Sounds fun,’ I said politely.
She made a sour face. ‘Think Vicar of Dibley without the humour.’
I laughed, and through the years caught a flash of wit I'd enjoyed when our desks had adjoined long ago. I wondered vaguely what they were doing here, these women, then remembered with a jolt they were also Jack's godparents. It occurred to me that none of Anna's godparents stemmed from my school days. They were all friends Ant and I had met together. Well, not quite true. They were Ant's friends, from Westminster, or Balliol. Not Parsonage Road Comprehensive. I wondered, uneasily, what that said about me. That I'd simply moved on? Or reinvented myself? Didn't sound very nice.
Across the other side of the room I noticed Tim standing awkwardly by the fireplace, resting one leg, his hand gr
ipping the mantel. He'd had a hip replacement a couple of months ago after years of pain, which was supposed to make a new man of him. I thought he looked worse. I'd have loved a quick chat, but Caro, looking harassed, swept by with a plate of egg sandwiches and I realized I should offer to help. But that would mean circulating, and I'd already spotted Neville Carter's parents in the other room, which would mean talking to them and… oh, for heaven's sake, Evie.
I seized the plate of sandwiches from Caro's startled hand and marched across the hall into the small magnolia dining room. It doubled as the children's homework room, and had been hastily cleared of files and papers, which were stacked in a chaotic fashion by the piano, the table requisitioned for drinks. I'd briefly glimpsed the Carters in here earlier, before Paula had claimed me. They were clutching an orange juice apiece and still had their coats on, looking rather temporary. And so old, I thought with a lurch as I greeted them. To my relief, Mrs Carter smiled.
‘Evelyn.’ Her face relaxed. ‘How are you, dear?’
‘I'm fine thanks, and you? Hi there, Mr Carter.’
He nodded wordlessly at me, shaking his head as I offered him a sandwich. Much less friendly, I thought, my chest tightening.
‘Oh, you know, we keep busy. Our Eileen's married now, of course. She's pregnant too. Expecting in March, did you know?’
‘I didn't! How marvellous.’
‘And the garden keeps us very busy.’
The garden. Yes, away from children and on to flowers. Good idea.
‘Yes, Caro says you had a terrific display of bulbs this year,’ I blurted. She hadn't, but bulbs were safe, surely?
She frowned. ‘Oh, no, we just did primulas this spring. Perhaps she meant the snowdrops?’
‘That's it.’ I faltered. ‘Snowdrops.’
‘The garden's been a great comfort to us,’ Mr Carter said quietly.
‘Yes.’ I caught my breath. ‘I can imagine. Although,’ I went on bravely, ‘no, I can't really imagine at all.’
There was a silence. Mrs Carter put a hand on my arm. ‘Well, you had a sadness too, dear. You lost your dad.’
I smiled, acknowledging her graciousness. Losing a parent was ghastly, of course it was. But it wasn't the same as losing a child.
Happily Mrs Pallister from next door approached and I took it as my cue to remove myself, and my plate of egg sandwiches, from the Carters' presence. There. I'd done it. I felt a wave of relief. Then shame at the relief. And instead of going back to the sitting room I went down the passage to the kitchen, ostensibly to refuel my plate, but actually, to take a moment.
The kitchen still looked pretty much as it always had done, which was a comfort: cheap laminate flooring had replaced the black and white checked lino, and the walls, once cream, were now lilac, but the old range was still in situ, the oak table still sat squarely in the middle, and the station clock Dad had salvaged from a disused railway yard ticked on above the window seat I used to curl up on with my books. Right now it was fairly chaotic: the table was littered with empty plates and hastily removed bits of tin foil, and a rather cloying, eggy smell prevailed, but it had always been my favourite room and I felt better for being here. I went to the window seat, kneeling on the faded chintz cushion, leaning forward to rest my hands on the sill as I gazed out.
The bumpy, erratically mown lawn, perhaps an attempt by Jack for some extra pocket money, tumbled down to the river at the bottom: in the paddocks beyond, Caro's pink and white marquee, a permanent fixture after months of haggling with the local council, flapped prettily in the breeze on the other side. Sheep were encouraged to graze around it and the huge oak tree spread benign limbs above it in the sunshine.
It all looked desperately idyllic, but I knew the reality. Knew about stumbling out there in January, across the stepping stones in a dressing gown and wellies, slipping on mercilessly hard ground, stumbling over frozen ruts to crack the ice on the troughs for the sheep, the wind stinging your cheeks as it whipped across the Vale. Knew that, just yards from this window, behind that barn, rusting old machinery, not good enough to sell and too expensive to remove, lurked menacingly, like sleeping dragons, camouflaged by weeds and grass, ready to trip the unsuspecting. I knew where the wheel-less Jeeps and tractors were parked on bricks; knew, if you found a length of barbed wire sticking out of the ground, not to pull it or a whole line of broken fencing would emerge like an earth monster. I knew the Steptoe and Son side of farming; all of which was kept from Caro's brides, of course. They saw none of this as they tripped prettily down the lane behind the hedge, fresh from the church, the congregation following on foot – no cars, that was the draw – through a pretty white gate, and straight into the bottom meadow. From that vantage point, as they sipped champagne amongst the buttercups, Church Farm was just a hazy blob on the horizon: small, compact and Georgian. You wouldn't know the masonry was crumbling, the sashes in the windows broken, or that the gutters leaked huge incontinent stains down the brickwork.
‘Bucolic Betrothals’ Caro advertised as in the local paper, and then some blurb about experiencing olde worlde charm and dipping into England's rural past, which was where all this belonged, of course: the past. It should have been sold years ago, the farm, when Dad died. Not that I'd wanted any money. I agreed with Felicity: it was Tim's inheritance, as it had been Dad's from his father, and as it was with all farming families, from father to son. But Tim could have bought himself a little business, set himself up. Keeping it was like hanging on to the trappings of an empire, for all the wrong reasons.
Ant would be kinder, I thought, as I heard Paula, roaring with laughter in the next room. I straightened up from the window seat. ‘They can't sell it, it's part of them,’ he'd say.
‘Well, it's part of me too, and I had no problems leaving.’
‘Ah, but you always had your head in a book. Never looked out of the window, let alone went outside. Never let it get to you, the land. That's what it's all about, you know. See the Romantic Poets on this. Wordsworth, Blake – they'd have plenty to say on the subject.’
It was true, I thought as I picked up a fresh plate of cocktail sausages and made to go back. I'd never really troubled the great outdoors. Too busy trying to leave. All that fresh air and I couldn't breathe. I'd always felt a great affinity with the Mitford sister who'd hoarded running-away money; had even started a collection myself. Although, as it turned out, I hadn't needed to run; I was rescued.
As I left the kitchen, I paused a moment at the door at the end of the passage. Through the leaded lights I could see Jack, Henry and Phoebe, plus a few friends, on the trampoline. Too cool to bounce, they were lying on it, chatting and laughing in the sunshine. I smiled. Anna would have liked that. Suddenly I wished she hadn't had the clarinet exam.
Unsettled, I made my way back to the sitting room. Paula and Kay had clearly worked up quite a head of steam and were shrieking and hooting, glasses recharged. This was obviously a big day out for them. I tried to skirt round them to Tim, who was bustling around with a bottle being mine host, but my arm was seized by Paula.
‘And you're so brown. Have you been away?’ Her eyes were squiffy, accusatorial.
‘Only to Italy.’
‘Only to Italy,’ the pair of them mimicked.
I flushed. ‘Ant and I just went for a few days.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Um, Venice.’
‘Oooh,’ they cooed, like a Greek chorus.
A man had joined them now, small and wiry, blinking behind his spectacles. Oh God, Kevin Wise. Again from school, and – yes, of course, Caro had told me. He and Kay…
‘Kevin and I go to Cornwall, don't we?’ Kay regarded him sourly. ‘Every year, to the same grotty bungalow.’
‘Cornwall's lovely,’ I said encouragingly.
‘Not where we go. And his parents come with us, sadly. His mother's a witch.’
Crikey. ‘Ant and I like Helford,’ I managed.
‘Ant and I, Ant and I,’ mocked Paula. ‘Anyone w
ould think you were still in love with your husband!’ She threw back her head and cackled. Then her head snapped back abruptly. ‘My husband won't make love to me any more,’ she announced in a loud voice, clearly spectacularly pissed. ‘He says he doesn't find it stimulating any more. Doesn't—’
‘Evie.’ Caro plucked at my sleeve. ‘Have you had one of these?’
Never had I been so delighted to see my sister-in-law brandishing a plate of vol-au-vents. ‘I have thanks, delicious.’ I took her aside. ‘But listen, Caro, the thing is, I'm going to have to dash quite soon. Ant and I are going out to dinner tonight. His publishers are—’ Shit. Ant and I and the publishers. I held my breath.
‘Don't worry,’ she said gently, to my surprise. ‘I know how it is. We all have commitments, and these summer weekends are a nightmare. Everything seems to come at once, doesn't it? It was sweet of you to come.’
‘Thanks, Caro,’ I said gratefully, remembering why we'd been such friends. Were such friends. Why, at school, we'd stuck together so firmly, amongst the Kays and the Paulas. ‘I'll just say goodbye to Tim.’
‘Oh, don't worry, I'll tell him you've gone. And I'd better escort you out,’ she said, taking my arm. ‘Your fan club will never let you go, otherwise.’
‘I don't know about fan club,’ I said nervously as we skirted the room. ‘I get the feeling they're muttering: “Thinks she's something special”.’
‘They're just jealous,’ she said, seeing me to the door. ‘They know we all left the starting blocks together and they want to know why they haven't gone as far, that's all.’
I shot her a grateful look as we emerged on the doorstep together in the sunshine. Suddenly I remembered my promise to Anna; wondered if this was a good moment. I hesitated.
‘By the way, Anna's got a bit of a bee in her bonnet about riding at the moment.’
‘Oh?’
‘She's had quite a lot of lessons now and I just wondered… well, she's terribly keen to join the Pony Club.’
‘The Pony Club?’
‘Yes, and you're on the committee, aren't you? So I wondered…’
The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton Page 2
