Cents and Sensibility

by Maggie Alderson

  Ham barked with laughter when he saw her and ruffled her artfully styled hair.

  ‘You’re a little bitch, Venezia,’ he said, fondly. ‘But you’re my little bitch.’

  Then, inspired by what she’d done with her terrible outfit he suddenly decided we must all wear customized clothes for dinner that night – a very Ham thing to do. He loved spontaneous happenings and sent us all off to the art supplies cupboard to find inspiration.

  ‘No dinner for anyone wearing uncustomized clothes,’ he said. ‘Apart from Chloe. She’s absolved because she’s cooking.’

  Alex looked a bit wary. He had never felt comfortable with this kind of thing when he’d lived with Ham, and I felt a bit sorry for him.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, giving him a sisterly nudge. ‘I’ve got an idea for us two.’

  I nipped upstairs to get some glue and glitter and then we went back to the guest wing.

  ‘Do we have to do this, Stella?’ asked Alex, with a pained expression.

  ‘Oh, come on, Alex, you know what Ham’s like. He wants everyone to have fun – whether they like it, or not.’

  ‘Not,’ he said. ‘I work in the City, Stella. I’m not the spontaneous fun type like you are. I slave for Mammon, remember?’

  ‘Shut up and get that sweatshirt you found last night,’ I said.

  I took the scissors from the guest-wing kitchen drawer and slashed the necks off both sweatshirts. Then I turned them both over, laid them flat on the table and picked up the glue.

  ‘OΚ,’ I said to Alex. ‘What shall we write?’

  He looked puzzled.

  ‘We need a slogan,’ I said. ‘To write on the back. Something funny – and cool, of course – to make a statement about our identity. Now let me think… something about the guest wing. Let’s make a point to Ham.’

  Alex smiled.

  ‘Guest-Wing Gurus?’ he suggested.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, rather patronizingly. ‘That’s the kind of thing I meant, but it doesn’t quite express our feelings of rejection, isolation and manipulation, does it? Hmmmm, how about Reluctant Guest-Wing Guests? No… I know! It’s a Guest-Wing Thing? No…’

  ‘West Wing?’ said Alex.

  We both laughed.

  ‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘But not good enough. Guest, best, zest, pest, messed… Best Western… CZ Guest… One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Guest…’

  Alex bit his lip and narrowed his eyes, while he thought. It suited him and I had to snap myself out of it when I realized I was gazing at him gormlessly. It was just that thing he did with his front teeth nibbling his lower lip. I remembered it so well from school-holiday games of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.

  ‘How about, “Out of the Nest Wing”?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘That’s perfect,’ I said, more than a little surprised. And using the glue and the glitter, I wrote it in curly 1950s script on the back of the sweatshirts.

  Then I styled us both up. I wore my sweatshirt like a 1980s minidress, hanging off one shoulder, with a pair of high heels I had thrown into my weekend bag on a last-minute whim, and I did my hair and eye make-up to match – big and heavy, respectively.

  After some protest, I got Alex to agree to wear his sweatshirt upside down as a skirt – with my nightie as a top, and a tie around his neck. He looked completely mad, but kind of cute too. I spiked his hair up with my gel and made him sit in a chair while I put black eyeliner on him.

  As I was bending over him, very close to his face, applying it to his upper lash line, he gently placed a hand on my hip and, almost imperceptibly, squeezed it.

  It was such a tiny gesture, but so quietly intimate I just froze. Then he opened the eye I wasn’t working on and looked straight at me. No twinkle, or creasy-eyed smile, just a completely direct look. My stomach turned over.

  It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have moved my face just a few centimetres closer and kissed him. Then with one movement I could have been sitting astride him, kissing him, consuming him, all those things I had imagined doing so many times in years gone by.

  But I froze. There was too much import in that moment. Too many years of history and too many implications. If we hadn’t had sex there and then, it was inevitable that after one kiss, we would have seethed with lust through dinner and done it later. After all, we were in adjacent bedrooms.

  And even apart from all the baggage, the next person I wanted to have sex with wasn’t Alex, it was Jay. For just one moment there, it was very tempting, but it wasn’t right. No way.

  So I finished his eyeliner as quickly as I could and pulled away, turning round before he could see how flustered I was by his unexpected touch.

  Dinner was hilarious. Archie had rescued the charred remains of Venezia’s jeans from the embers and was wearing them as a ghastly hat, with the ashes from the bonfire smeared all over his face.

  Tabitha and Venezia – now buddies in the way that only girls who have recently fallen out very seriously can be – had swapped clothes, so that Tabitha was now wearing the McFly T-shirt and loving it, even without the faces. While her Hello Kitty T-shirt – now cropped into little more than a bikini top – looked positively illegal stretched across Venezia’s voluptuous body.

  Ham had done himself proud, of course, fashioning a kind of grass skirt out of branches he had hacked off shrubs in the garden, topped with a very loud Hawaiian shirt – a present from a grateful student – and his old straw gardening hat, with more greenery pinned round the brim. He had some bright green poster paint smeared across his nose and cheeks.

  ‘I am the Green Man,’ he was booming. ‘The Spirit of Spring unleashed.’

  He roared with laughter when he saw the guest-wing statement on our sweatshirts, the final confirmation I needed that the whole thing was a monstrous set-up.

  Which was why, after we had finished dinner, quite late and quite drunkenly, with my eyes meeting Alex’s rather more often than felt completely normal all the way through it, I did something very cowardly.

  After he had sloped off to the guest wing, yawning ostentatiously, but sneaking a covert glance at me to see if I was following, I went up and slept in the empty kid’s room.

  6

  Sunday breakfast was at eleven a.m., but I was up long before that and ducked back to the guest wing to get changed out of my crazy outfit. I felt strangely furtive as I ran down the stairs, although it was nobody’s business except mine where I chose to sleep. Or why.

  By the time I emerged from my guest-wing bedroom, showered and dressed, Alex was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee. Sitting on the same chair where I’d done his eyeliner the night before. My stomach fluttered slightly at the memory.

  I had no idea if he knew whether I’d slept there or not. If he did know I hadn’t been there, it could only be because he had come into my bedroom to find me, so I could hardly ask him.

  ‘Sleep well?’ he said in his best let’s-pretend-nothing’s-going-on, gung-ho style.

  I nodded, wondering whether he had inherited that technique from his mother, or learned it at school, but clearly it was his default setting. If anything gets at all weird, just act jolly until it passes. It was a very English way of coping, I thought.

  ‘Want some coffee?’ he continued, in equally cheery tones.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I think I’ll go over to the main house and get some tea,’ I said. ‘Ham has a great selection over there.’

  I was getting as vapid as him, I thought. I was nearly at the door, when he spoke again.

  ‘Stella,’ he said suddenly. ‘When are you going back up to town?’

  ‘After lunch sometime.’

  ‘Well, as you don’t have your car here and the trains are so terrible on Sundays, do you want a lift up with me? The twins are going back with Chloe and it would be really nice to have some company on the drive.’

  He’d given me so many reasons why it was a good idea – and well-rehearsed reasons, judging by the way he h
ad just gabbled them out – that, caught on the hop like that, I couldn’t think of any excuse to decline, although the idea of spending two hours in a small space with Alex did make me feel rather uncomfortable.

  ‘Yeah, great, thanks,’ I said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than I felt. ‘That would be great.’

  ‘Great,’ said Alex. ‘We’ll go after lunch then.’

  ‘Great,’ I said again and then I legged it over to the main house.

  I avoided Alex for the rest of the morning, sticking my head into the papers – which I did have to read for work and had been planning to do on the train – and keeping it there.

  Ham had looked so pleased when he’d heard we were going back to town together, I set about ignoring him too. I didn’t want him getting all maypole-y on me.

  We were halfway through lunch – baked gammon with pineapple, another recipe from Chloe’s future book – when my mobile rang. I had it in my pocket, as I had to be on duty on Sundays in case something came up and the news desk needed me urgently to write a story for Monday morning’s paper.

  I answered it at the table – I was the only one Ham permitted to have a mobile anywhere near it – to find it wasn’t the news desk. It was Jay.

  I nearly choked on my Russian salad, I was so surprised.

  ‘Hi, beautiful,’ he said. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’

  ‘No,’ I squeaked. ‘I’m just having lunch, hold on.’

  Judging by the way everyone round the table was looking at me, it was quite clear from my face that it wasn’t the news desk.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to Ham, who hated people leaving the table during meals only marginally less than people who talked on mobiles during them. ‘I’ll take this outside.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said to Jay and practically galloped across the sitting room, through the French windows and into the garden. I kept walking, across the lawn, until I reached the summerhouse.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, breathlessly, as I sat down. I was so surprised to hear his voice on that phone. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Jay. ‘Are you sure this is an OK time?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s great, I just had to come outside for some privacy.’

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked in such an intimate tone it made my stomach turn over. And much more violently than it had with Alex just a short time before.

  ‘I’m at my father’s place in the country. I’ve been here for the weekend.’

  ‘Willow Barn?’ said Jay.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, amazed. ‘Have you heard of it?’

  ‘I told you, I’m seriously into architecture and it is quite a famous house, as you probably know. Is it as great as it sounds?’

  I looked back up at it; the whole wall of glass in front of the two-storey space that was the living area, with the mezzanine floor off to the right, which housed the kiddie corridor and the little turret beyond that, which was Ham’s lair.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘It’s totally great.’

  ‘When are you coming back to town?’ asked Jay. ‘I would really love to see you.’

  ‘This afternoon sometime.’ I paused for a moment. This was no time for game playing. ‘And I’d like to see you too.’

  We breathed down the phone at each other for a bit, the sense of possibility hanging so palpably between us.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Jay suddenly. ‘I’ll come down and pick you up. How long does it take to get there from Chelsea?’

  I was so surprised, I forgot to protest.

  ‘About two hours,’ I said. ‘But I’d have to ring you back with exact directions. It’s really hard to find. Maybe it’s better if I just meet you in town,’ I added, as the implications of him turning up down there started to hit me.

  ‘What’s the post code?’ said Jay.

  I was still in such a state of shock I told him.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there soon. Don’t go anywhere.’

  And he hung up.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Ham, with his usual bluntness, when I walked back in to finish my lunch. They were all on their pudding – kiwi fruit pavlova.

  ‘Just a friend.’I said, much too quickly. I could see he was looking at me beadily. So was Alex. Oh, God.

  ‘Actually,’ I continued, thinking the only way to do it was to get it over with quickly. ‘He rang to say he’s coming down this afternoon to fetch me, so I won’t need that lift back now, Alex, but thanks so much for offering.’

  Ham was looking very beady now.

  ‘I hope you gave him decent directions,’ he said. ‘Or the poor bugger will never find it.’

  He laughed heartily.

  Just over ninety minutes later, while I was still trying to read the papers, but not taking anything in, there was the unmistakable crunch of tyres on the gravel outside the front door.

  ‘He got here quickly,’ said Ham, with his usual tact. ‘Must be keen.’

  I glanced at Alex. I’d rather hoped he would have been gone before Jay arrived, but too bad.

  I got up slowly to go to the door, trying to be a bit cool. Mistake – Ham beat me to it, moving with uncharacteristic speed.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, looking out of the window. ‘Nice bloody motor. Look at this, Alex.’

  And he threw open the double front doors to reveal Jay, climbing out of a vehicle that looked more like an alien space probe than a car. With his deep tan, his pale blue shirt, his jeans and his sunglasses, he looked like something out of a 1970s Martini advertisement. Sort of perfect.

  Ham was out to meet him before I could even make it to the door. And Archie and Toby overtook me on the way. Alex was a little slower, but even Chloe and Tabitha were coming out for a look. Daisy and I brought up the rear together. I picked her up. I needed an ally. I was suddenly feeling extraordinarily shy. I mean, I hardly knew the guy and here he was mingling with practically my whole family. The first boy I had ever brought home.

  I arrived outside just in time to see Ham pumping his hand.

  ‘Great to meet you,’ he was saying. ‘Henry Montecourt. Stella’s dad. This is my wife, Chloe, my stepsons, Archie and Alex, various other children. This is Stella’s friend, Jay, everyone. I must say, this is a hell of a car. It’s an Enzo, isn’t it? I’ve been dying to have a proper look at one of those. May I?’

  Before I could even say hello to Jay, Ham was levering his huge bulk into the passenger seat and it looked like they were going off for a spin.

  I could hardly see them through the tinted windows, but the driver’s side suddenly opened and Jay’s head popped out.

  ‘Hi, Stella,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Back in a minute.’

  They were, but then Archie and Toby had to have turns as well. Then Ham took it for a slow drive down past the paddock and back, all on his own, and then he and Alex and Jay had a look under the bonnet.

  It was such a display of male bonding, they should have been wearing penis gourds.

  By the time they came into the house, I was almost losing interest. Almost. And the girls were doing a good job of keeping it up.

  ‘He’s rather gorgeous, Stells,’ said Chloe. ‘You’ve kept very quiet about him.’

  ‘I’ve only just met him,’ I said.

  ‘Well, he must be very smitten then, to come down here to collect you like this,’ she said. And for once, her sweet, uncomplicated nature really irritated me.

  ‘Now he is seriously hot,’ Venezia was saying, coming back downstairs. The little trollop had gone up specially to put lipgloss on, I realized, snitched from Tabitha.

  ‘He is seriously hot,’ echoed Daisy, in her piping tones, just as Jay walked into the house with Ham and the other boys. Ham had his arm round his shoulder. They were laughing in that hearty brothers-in-testosterone way about nothing in particular.

  ‘Would you like some tea, Jay?’ said Chloe immediately, to distract attention from Daisy, who was now singing ‘He’s hot, he’s hot, he’s seriously hot’ as a j
olly little tune, and I loved her all over again.

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you, Chloe,’ said Jay and it was Chloe’s turn to beam at him. He was like a human charm offensive.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, looking around and taking in the space. ‘So this is Willow Barn, it’s just as amazing as I’ve heard.’

  ‘Jay’s interested in architecture, Ham,’ I said. I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Would you like a tour?’ said Ham and off they went.

  Ham’s official tour of the house always started in front of the closed front door – the first stage of the ‘emotional journey’ and all that claptrap – and as they disappeared back out of it, I went over to the kitchen to help Chloe with the tea. I was getting the cups out of the dishwasher as Alex walked past us and out of the back door to the guest wing.

  Shortly after, he was back, holding his weekend bag.

  ‘I’m going to split, Chloe,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘I need to get back to town. Please thank Ham for having me, it’s been great. Bye, Stella.’

  He kissed us both quickly on the cheek and left.

  I felt a bit bad about it for a moment, he was clearly feeling a bit usurped, but then Ham and Jay came back and I kind of forgot about him.

  ‘It’s amazing, Stella,’ Jay was saying. ‘I really love that turret room. It feels so intimate after all the space down here. A real haven. And now Henry says you are going to show me round the garden.’

  I glanced at Ham who was looking beady again. Boy, I thought, he could change horses quickly, but I wasn’t complaining. As far as I was concerned, he was now backing the right one. Gee up, neddy.

  We left the house through the French windows, as I had done to take Jay’s call, and as we turned round to look back at the building from the far edge of the lawn, he caught hold of my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back and immediately dropped it. I strongly suspected Ham was watching us through the telescope in his turret room.

  ‘It’s great to see you, Stella,’ said Jay, looking at me with those intense blue eyes, his head tilted to one side. ‘I like your family a lot.’