A Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  “Exactly. They’re generally very biddable. Very suggestible to correct behaviour.”

  I nodded. This was a sensitive, intelligent man. I was aware that his right knee was about two inches from mine and suddenly, I wished I’d made a bit more of an effort this morning. I really hadn’t. No make-up, an old denim skirt, and yes—bare legs. I’d be dropping my fag in my pram, next.

  “Mrs. Cameron, may I suggest something?”

  “Imogen,” I muttered, keeping my eyes low and pulling my skirt down a bit. “And yes, please do.”

  “Imogen. Sometimes, in my experience, it’s best not to meet these situations head on. Sometimes it’s better to go round the houses, take a different tack.”

  “What d’you mean?” I glanced up. His face was quite close to mine now. God, he was handsome. His eyes were blue, but flecked with gold, like a tiger’s, and his tawny hair was attractively rumpled in a just-got-out-of-bed sort of way. He didn’t look like a headmaster at all, more like something out of a Richard Curtis film.

  “Well, maybe have a go at charming Carl. Make a friend of him.”

  I gazed at him. “Oh!” A light bulb went on in my head. “Oh—you mean like—invite him for tea or something? A sleepover!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far but—”

  “Oh, yes, that’s a marvellous idea—yes, you’re quite right! I remember now, Kate—my great friend from Carrington House—she had a similar problem with Orlando when Torquil kept pinching his Rubik’s Cube, and she did exactly that. Torquil’s mother came too and it was a great success. She did a fondue!”

  “Ye…ss.” Mr. Hunter licked his lips doubtfully. “Although I’m not convinced you’d have to go to those lengths to—”

  “Oh, you’re a genius, Mr. Hunter, a genius. Thank you so much!” I stood up, eyes shining. He stood up too and our eyes met and d’you know, I damn nearly kissed him. Just managed to stop myself.

  “Daniel,” he smiled.

  “Daniel,” I breathed.

  Golly. For a moment there we really were in a Richard Curtis film. Any minute now the camera would pan out, the music would swell in a crescendo, snowflakes would whirl and—

  “Er, right.” He glanced away, shuffling some papers on his desk, breaking the moment. “And now I really must get on.”

  “Yes. Yes, I must too,” I agreed, coming to. I hastened to the door. Before I exited, though, I turned, clutching my handbag to my chest, beaming widely. “And thank you so, so much.”

  He smiled. Shrugged. “Hope it works. Good luck.”

  And with those words ringing in my ears I hastened away, heart pounding.

  ***

  The rest of the day couldn’t pass quickly enough. First I fed the cows. I was an expert now, taking out a bale at a time in a wheelbarrow in my wellies, remembering a knife in my pocket to cut the binder twine, standing on an upturned milk crate to hurl the hay over in sections, my back to the wind—oh, I could do it in my sleep. Then off to the chickens to give them some grain; feeding the baby chicks and the proud mother, skipping out of the way of the cockerel, who could be a bit aggressive when he felt like it, before zooming off to Waitrose for provisions, my heart soaring. I had a plan, you see, a project, and armed with that, I could go from despair to elation in nought to sixty. And I could see it all now: Rufus and Carl would be playing footy—football—in the orchard, passing to each other—“Oi! Rufus, over here!” “Nice one, Carl!”—scoring goals and flying into each other’s arms to celebrate. Perhaps I should put a couple of makeshift goals up. I roared into Waitrose car park. Some flowerpots, maybe? Or even bales of hay! When I got back, I loaded some into the wheelbarrow, trundled them out, and positioned them at either end. Perfect. Then I paced around the fields a bit, too keyed up to paint, and at three o’clock exactly, raced off to the school.

  Outside the gates, as I assiduously chewed my gum—oh, yes, and I’d even found a suitably dismal grey hoody in Primark—I scanned the mothers a little more carefully. Which one was Carl’s? Or did Carl walk home? Yes, if he was a bit of a lad, he probably did. Oh, well, if need be we could follow him. Ask his mum when we got to his house. I did hope that wasn’t his mother, I thought, nervously eyeing a woman I’d spotted yesterday. She was an unbelievably scary-looking specimen, massively overweight with huge rolls of fat encased in a hoody similar to my own but about ten sizes bigger, greasy jet-black hair and rings in every orifice. Hordes of small children—well, five at least—were grouped around a fully occupied double buggy, and a muddy Alsatian strained from the handle on a string. Even the other mothers seemed in awe of her as she yelled and cuffed her brood and tugged at the dog. She glared at me and I glanced hurriedly away. Now that one, I thought, eyeing up a thin, washed-out-looking girl with straggly hair carrying a baby, that one I could cope with. Feed her up a bit, make some strong, sweet tea; give her a Hobnob.

  A bell went, and as it was still ringing, children began to pour out of the doors. As usual, Rufus was well at the back, but I was relieved to see that he didn’t look quite as despondent as yesterday.

  “Good day, darling?” I took his bag.

  He shrugged. “All right.”

  “Rufus, which one’s Carl?”

  “What?”

  “Carl. Which one is he?”

  He glanced around. “Over there.” He pointed to a tall, toughlooking boy with a shaved head.

  “Right. Come on, we’re going to ask him to tea.”

  “What?” Rufus looked horrified.

  “We’re going to ask him to tea today.” I bent down to whisper in his ear. “Clever tactics, you see, Rufus. Reverse psychology.”

  “But, Mum, he left me alone today. I didn’t really see him.”

  “Nevertheless, it’ll stand us in good stead for the future. You’ve got a hundred and twenty five more days until the end of term, I worked it out last night. We need to put in some ground work.”

  I marched towards him. “Hello, Carl,” I smiled chummily. “I’m Rufus’s mummy.”

  The boy broke off from his mates to turn and stare at me, open-mouthed.

  “Rufus and I wondered if you’d like to come to tea today.”

  A silence fell amongst the bunch of lads.

  “Wha’?” He screwed his freckled face up to me.

  “Yes, we thought you might like to come and play, with your mummy, perhaps. Is she here?”

  “Nah, she’s inside.”

  “Is she? Well, perhaps we could ring her.” I whipped out my mobile.

  “Nah, I mean she’s in prison.”

  I swallowed. Put my phone away. “Right. Well, um, maybe—maybe whoever looks after you, can come?”

  “Me nan looks after me, but I don’t wanna come to tea.”

  I had a fairly captive audience by now: every mother and child at the school gates was listening to this exchange, agog. Rufus tugged at my arm, puce with shame.

  “Come on, Mum.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a pity. I’ve got some lovely Vienetta ice cream and I’ve set the badminton up.”

  “Nah, you’re orright.” The boy looked embarrassed and turned away.

  “And Rufus has got a PlayStation,” I wheedled desperately. I began to feel hot. “I’ve just bought him a new game today actually. Invaders of the Lost Stratosphere.”

  “I’ll come,” said a voice behind me. I glanced around to see a skinny little girl with pigtails and a pinched face.

  I laughed nervously. “Well, I’m not sure—”

  “No, I will. I’ll come.”

  “Right,” I breathed. “And you are?”

  “Tanya. I’m in ’is class, ent I?” She turned to Rufus defiantly. My son nodded miserably.

  “And this is my mum.” She turned to the enormous blackhaired woman with the zillions of children, the rolls of flesh, and the straining Alsat
ian.

  “Yeah, we’ll come,” the mother agreed.

  A profound silence fell. All eyes were on the new mum, Mrs. Cameron; with the bright white legs, the posh voice, the grey hoody, and the incongruous Mulberry handbag.

  “Right,” I gulped. “Okey-doke.” I cranked up a smile. “Marvellous.” We’ll come—Christ, there were about twenty of them now that she’d collected what looked like half the school. Yes, absolutely marvellous, I thought, my palms sweaty now as Rufus and I walked wretchedly to our car, Little Harrington’s answer to the Von Trapp family trooping along behind us, a million amused eyes boring into our backs. I couldn’t look at Rufus. Just couldn’t.

  “D’you want to follow me?” I asked brightly as I opened the driver’s door.

  “Oh, we ain’t got a car,” said the mother, as she stood, looking at ours. I licked my lips. No car. Right. “Well, I’m not sure I’ve got enough seat belts to—”

  “Nah, we don’t want seat belts. They’ll just pile in the back. Jason! Paula! Get the baby, and Darren and Jasmine, you get in the boot wiv’ the little uns. Tanya, get the twins out of that buggy. Come on, look lively.”

  And they did just that. Piled in. All twelve of them—I counted—squashed in any old how, on laps, in the boot, faces squashed against windows, looking like a family of illegal immigrants trying to make it across the border.

  “Well, I hope we don’t meet a policeman,” I twittered nervously, a muscle going in my face. “Because I have a feeling it’s against the law. And I haven’t a clue where you’re going to sit because Rufus absolutely has to have a—”

  “’Ere, come on, little ’un. On my lap.”

  She’d plonked herself down in the front seat and scooped a startled Rufus effortlessly with her arm, into her vast lap. His nose was about six inches from the windscreen.

  “Perhaps if you put the belt around both of you,” I squeaked.

  “Won’t reach,” she assured me without even trying, although admittedly she was probably right. I wasn’t convinced it would encircle her without Rufus on her lap. “Anyway, our Ron’s the local bobby. He’ll turn a blind eye. Come on you, get in.”

  Thinking she was talking to me I hastily obeyed, but she was addressing the Alsatian, hauling him in on his string, somehow getting him past her well-upholstered legs to lodge him between us. He stood with his front paws on my handbrake, panting heavily into my face, jaws wide, tongue lolling, saliva dripping.

  “Good boy,” I breathed, shrinking back.

  “She’s a bitch,” growled my new best friend.

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s n—Oh. I see.”

  Nervously, I burrowed around amongst the furry feet, found the handbrake, and let it out. Without the brake for support, though, the dog lurched forward on to my knees. As I crawled down the road, the best part of an enormous hairy dog lying in my lap, a wet nose in my crutch, I prayed. Please God, let us get there in one piece. Please don’t let tomorrow’s headline’s read, “Mother’s Vitals Mauled by Alsatian as She Drove Car of Fifteen.”

  I drove at a snail’s pace, my eyes glued to the road, only leaving it occasionally to monitor the progress of my son’s nose, which periodically jerked alarmingly towards the windscreen as she swung around to clout her recalcitrant brood.

  “Shauna! Pack it in!” Or: “Ryan! Shut it!”

  Finally we reached the cottage and they all piled out, in an eclectic jumble, on to the grass. As they picked themselves up and gazed around, getting their bearings and taking in the unfamiliar surroundings, I went on to the cottage and opened the door. After only a moment’s hesitation, the ones that were mobile ran through the front door and on up the stairs to check out Rufus’s bedroom. Happily, he did have a PlayStation, and a football table, I thought, pressing myself against the wall as they thundered past me, plus a lovely wooden fort with proper lead soldiers whose lives I feared for, but no matter.

  I ran around getting the tea as my new friend—Sheila, she informed me—proceeded to change a brace of filthy nappies on the kitchen floor. She dealt with them in seconds flat, making me wonder why on earth changing mats had ever been invented, pausing only to suck a dummy that had fallen on the floor and got dusty and replace it in a baby’s mouth, whilst with the other hand, extracting a toddler from inside a cupboard where it was rearranging my china, and all the time punctuating proceedings with, “Leave it, Darren,” or, “Touch that and I’ll knock your block off, Lorraine!” She was like the old woman who lived in the shoe, except that the shoe was my house.

  As I arranged the tea things on the table, she sat up on her haunches and looked up at it doubtfully. “Wha’s this then?”

  “It’s a hot cheese sauce,” I said brightly. “You dip bits of carrot and celery and bread in. Rufus loves it.”

  She got to her feet and picked up a bit of cauliflower in wonder. “They won’t eat this. Got any chips?”

  I had, as it happened, in a bag in the freezer, which I produced nervously. “Yes, but I’m not convinced these will go with the—”

  “Give it here.”

  She took it from me, waddled across to the oven, found a tray, then shook the entire bag, literally hundreds of chips, on to it, and shut the door.

  “Right,” I gulped. “Good idea.”

  All hell appeared to be breaking loose upstairs judging by the noise, and it occurred to me to wonder if Rufus was still alive. Had they chucked him out of the window? Was he being dangled out, even now, by his shiny Start-rites? I didn’t know, and what’s more, I didn’t know what I was more afraid of: that, or the look on his face if I went up and found him sitting mutely in the midst of his chaotic bedroom, watching the anarchy. With shaking hands, I lit the fondue.

  “Tea time!” I warbled up the stairs, and moments later, a stampede engulfed me.

  When I’d peeled myself off the stairwell wall, I tottered to the kitchen to find that, somehow, they’d all got around my tiny table: on stools, on counters, two to a chair, on an upturned milk crate, or just plain standing. They fell on their chips greedily, then gazed in wonder as Rufus solemnly dunked cherry tomatoes and chunks of bread into the bubbling sauce.

  For a while they just chomped away in silence, but in time it became hard to resist, and the oldest boy, Ryan, a disreputably handsome lad of about twelve, plonked a chip in with a giggle. The others watched in awestruck silence as he chewed. Eventually, he pronounced a verdict.

  “’S orright,” he declared grudgingly.

  There was no stopping them then. Chips were dunked in by the fistful as I steadied a precarious bowl of bubbling cheese, then Ryan picked up a bit of celery.

  “Wha’s this then?”

  “Celery.” I eyed him. “I dare you.”

  “Yeah? What ya gonna give me?”

  “50p.”

  “A pound.”

  “Done.”

  He looked taken aback, but gamely dunked his celery in.

  “Yeah, ’s orright too.” He crunched away. “Where’s my pound?”

  I reached in my bag and handed it over.

  “Can I still have some more, though?” he asked warily, picking up another piece of celery.

  “Course you can.”

  “Can I?” asked Tanya.

  “Of course.” Feeling rather flushed and elated, I cut up some more for the others, who naturally also wanted to try.

  “You won’t like that,” Ryan advised them all. “It’s too s’phisticated. You might like the carrot, though.”

  Well, of course they all wanted to be sophisticated, and after that, tea disappeared in a flash. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Sheila, giving a baby a bottle on a stool in the corner, looking impressed. She sat the baby up on her knee and rubbed her back, burping her efficiently, then jerked her head outside.

  “Who looks after the stock, then?”

  “The stock? Oh,
you mean the cows. I do.”

  “Yeah?” She went to the open back door, jiggling the baby across her arm. “And all them Jacobs. They’re ’is majesty’s, are they?” She nodded.

  Jacobs. This girl knew her stuff. “Yes, that’s right,” I said, picking up an already assembled tray of tea and biscuits. She moved aside as I went through the door and set it on the little table in the garden. “They belong to Piers.” I sat down to pour. “D’you know the Latimers then?”

  She followed me out, sat down heavily opposite me and made a face. “Everyone round here knows the Latimers. They own half the village. Me mum cleans for them, don’t she?”

  “Vera?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, so you’re Vera’s daughter. Oh, Vera and I are like that!” I beamed and held up two crossed fingers, hoping to ingratiate myself.

  She gave me a sharp look, and it occurred to me that she might know if her mother and I were joined at the hip.

  “Does she enjoy working for them?” I rushed on, handing her a mug of tea.

  She looked suspicious, and I realised that job satisfaction might not be high on Vera’s priorities. The job was there, she needed it, she got on with it. “’S all right, I s’pose. She’s bin there twenty years so what’s the difference? Mum says she’s all right, but he’s a funny one.”

  “Piers?”

  “Yeah, Piers. I wouldn’t want to be married to him for all ’is money. Can’t say I blame her neither, though there are some round ’ere say she should know better.”

  “Who, Eleanor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Blame her for what? Know better than—”

  But Sheila’s tantalising observations on the Latimer ménage were cut short as she got to her feet, pink with fury and pointed her finger accusingly at the bushes.

  “CINDY! GET THAT COCK OUT OF YOUR MOUTH—NOW!”

  My eyes bulged in horror, my tea-cup rattled. Lordy. What on earth was going on? Who was Cindy in the bushes with? Where was Rufus?

  Sheila bustled away at the double and it was with some relief that I saw her emerge moments later from the undergrowth, wrestling the Black Rock cockerel from the jaws of the Alsatian. The cockerel gave an angry squawk and bustled away indignantly, minus a few feathers and some pride, but otherwise intact. Sheila, though, was distraught. She whipped a piece of binder twine from her pocket, put it round the dog’s neck, and dragged her back to the chair to tie her up.