A Rural Affair

by Catherine Alliott

  Dad stroked Mitch’s coat and waited. He’d always known how to listen.

  ‘And the odd thing was,’ I stared up at the ceiling for concentration, for clarity, ‘I somehow felt I’d let him down. That it was all my fault.’ I came back, shook my head. ‘Ridiculous, really.’

  ‘Guilt,’ he grunted quietly, making a long arm to the tap and adding some water to his whisky. ‘And if you felt like that with your tit of a husband, imagine how I felt that Boxing Day. When your mother was haring around trying to be all things to all people as usual.’

  It was said lightly but it struck me Dad’s burden of guilt must have been tremendous. And he’d never shown it. Oh, we’d cried buckets together, great torrents of grief – Dad said he never trusted a man who didn’t cry – but he’d never saddled me with the more complicated, adult feelings of culpability. He was made of sterner stuff than me. Suddenly I felt rather ashamed of my recent little collapse in front of my own children.

  ‘I suppose the only good thing that’s come out of it,’ I went on, feeling my way, ‘is that recently I haven’t felt so bad about not grieving him enough initially. I sort of feel vindicated, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I do,’ he said shortly.

  We were silent a moment.

  ‘Anyway,’ I swept on, taking a great gulp of my coffee which was cold. ‘I’m not here to dwell on that. The thing is, he left me some money.’

  ‘Did he?’ Dad said distractedly, reaching down to take something from the beagle’s mouth. ‘Well, that’s something. What have you got, you little minx?’ This, not a reference to my financial gain, his commercial acumen being about as acute as mine, but to Blanche the beagle.

  ‘What has she got?’ I peered as he removed something cream and pearly.

  ‘My false teeth. The little tyke gets them from by my bed. Oh, it’s OK,’ he said, seeing my face, ‘they’re my spare ones.’ He got up and rinsed them under the tap.

  ‘Well, that’s a relief. Wouldn’t want those sported on the cocktail-party circuit, would we? That wouldn’t impress the sexy widows.’ Dad and I had an ongoing joke that one day he might meet one of those.

  He snorted with derision. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

  I watched his back at the sink. ‘D’you want to know how much?’ I asked.

  ‘How much what?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Go on, then.’

  I did go on, and even my father, impervious to such things, dropped his teeth in the sink. He turned.

  ‘Good grief.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money, Pops.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Well, give some to you, for a start.’

  He stared at me. Then scoffed. ‘Bugger off. I don’t want your money.’

  ‘To do the house up, Dad. Fix the plumbing, that type of thing. Not holidays in Mauritius or anything. I’ve got masses.’

  He fixed me with a clear blue eye. The sternest Dad ever got. ‘I don’t want the money, love. Not yours. Certainly not Phil’s. I won’t take a penny. Put it in the bank. For a rainy day.’ He turned, retrieved his dentures, rinsed them again and set them on the draining board.

  ‘Perhaps I should offer some to Marjorie and Cecilia?’

  ‘Would they offer you some? If it was the other way round?’

  ‘No. But that’s not really the point, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ He shrugged. ‘Up to you, love. Entirely up to you.’ My father never told me what to do. Instead he bent and rummaged in what passed for a larder: an old pine cupboard beside the sink. ‘Now. Lunch. There’s the Full Monty but, disappointingly, no one takes their clothes off. It’s a complete bacon, egg, sausage and beans affair in a can. A new one on me. What d’you think?’

  He turned and brandished it, complete with full fry-up illustration, and I knew that was the end of it. The conversation. Knew, before I came, that Dad would no more take money from me than go to the dry cleaner’s. But it had been worth a try.

  I sighed. ‘Go on, then,’ I said, making room on the table amongst a pile of old newspapers. ‘Let’s silt up our arteries together.’

  Worth a try? Not really, I thought as I drove home later, full of beans and bacon and something indeterminable that must have been mushroom but, as Dad said, could easily have been toenail. Not worth it, because I knew Dad had been offended I’d even suggested it. He chose to live like that. He was a free spirit in the very real sense of the expression. But I’d been toeing some conventional line which dictated I make the offer to my ramshackle father; adhering to conformist nonsense that Dad never adhered to, and always turned and regarded me with surprise when I did. I squirmed behind the wheel. I wished too that I’d taken the children. Dad had been surprised not to see them. But I’d somehow imagined I’d wanted a grown-up financial conversation, complete with spreadsheets and charts and what have you, without two small children running around. Instead the conversation had taken all of two minutes and had offended my father, who’d much rather have seen his grandchildren.

  I parked and smiled ruefully as I went up Jennie’s path to collect my offspring. Interesting. As ever, a visit to my father had made me feel better and worse, both at the same time. Just as the superficial chaos was thrown into starker relief when I’d been away a while, so too was his refreshing alternative outlook. To sparkling effect. I sighed. I should see more of him.

  Jennie was clearly bursting with some sort of news as she opened the front door. She didn’t allow me to push on through as usual and was perhaps even lying in wait.

  ‘Guess what?’ she breathed with barely concealed excitement. She faced me in the hall, eyes glittering.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Word of the book club has spread to Potters Wood. The Americans want to join.’

  I’d hardly even made it across the threshold. Hardly got my foot in the door. But I have to say, her delight was instantly matched by mine, as she knew it would be.

  ‘Oh!’ I couldn’t speak for a second. Stared at her bright eyes. Then cautiously: ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No, I am not! They absolutely want to join our gang!’ She shut the door behind me with a bang. ‘How about that?’

  The Americans were a thrillingly exotic couple who lived in Chester Square, Belgravia, during the week and rented a cottage – more than a cottage, actually, a pretty big house – just outside the village at weekends. He was a film producer and she, a beautiful raven-haired mother of two. The only time Jennie and I had come across them was when Leila went missing and I went to help find her. Having asked everyone in the village, in desperation we’d gone to Potters Wood, a pretty white house with tall chimneys at the end of a no-through lane. We knew it was owned by the National Trust but were unaware who was renting it. The most divine-looking man, tall, broad, bronzed and naked to his jeans had opened the door. His hair was brown and wavy, his lips full and he had a smile which split his face. He’d shaken our hands and introduced himself in an American accent as Chad Armitage. Then he’d offered us proper coffee and listened to our stammering story. Instantly he’d suggested he help look for Leila, at which point his beautiful dishevelled wife had appeared down the stairs, dressed only in a silk dressing gown, at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Oh, God. Shall we help look? Shall I get the kids?’ She swiftly tied her robe and reached for her mobile, looking concerned.

  ‘No, no, she’ll turn up,’ we said hastily, drinking in everything. The tumbled, post-coital look of this golden couple so late in the morning. The fabulous modern art on the walls. The children out blackberrying with the nanny, apparently. The way he called her Honey and looked at her with true love. We probably had our mouths open, and certainly wouldn’t presume to have them look for scruffy old Leila, who was probably shagging some terrible mongrel. Eventually we’d taken our leave, regretfully; thanking them as they assured us they’d call if they sa
w her.

  Before we left, I said shyly, ‘It’s a lovely place you’ve got here.’ It was. The garden was brimming with wild flowers and it was all slightly overgrown, as if they were too busy in bed to prune the roses.

  She, Hope, as we now knew she was called, linked arms with Chad on the doorstep and smiled up into his eyes. Then, in a husky voice, she said, ‘It’s paradise.’

  Jennie and I crept away enthralled. I just knew I’d have said, ‘It’s heaven’, and thought how much better her version sounded. How it had truly conjured up the Garden of Eden, and how the pair of them, standing on the threshold like that, had looked like Adam and Eve. Jennie had been equally overawed and we hadn’t spoken for a good few minutes.

  Later that week I’d met Jennie coming up the no-through road to Potters Wood with Leila on a lead. I’d been going down it with Archie. We’d both stopped, blushed.

  ‘It’s a footpath,’ we both blurted in unison. Which it was, but not one we’d ever used before.

  It was obvious what attracted us. Their perfect lives. Moneyed, cultured and happy, with golden children, who we later spotted around the village with the nanny, whilst Chad and Hope no doubt tried position number forty-six beneath a Chagall. Jennie and I, having imperfect lives, were fascinated; although, interestingly, we never really voiced this to each other. Never let on. This opportunity, however, was too good to pass up.

  ‘Where did you see them? What did you say?’ I demanded, still in her hallway.

  ‘In the lane, in their huge Land Cruiser. Just Hope. She slowed down, stopped and said she’d heard about the book club and would we mind, only it was just what she and Chad were looking for, and had hoped to find here, but hadn’t.’

  ‘Both of them? They both want to join?’

  Clemmie and Archie had now found my legs and were clamouring for attention. Sometimes I did wish my children could go blackberrying with a nanny. I hoisted Archie onto my hip.

  ‘Yes, because he’s on gardening leave, apparently. In between films, so slightly at a loose end.’

  The idea of either part of that glamorous double act being at a loose end gave us pause for thought and almost threatened to shatter an illusion.

  ‘Well, relatively speaking,’ Jennie said quickly. ‘I’m sure he’s got something in the pipeline. Reading scripts, et cetera.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ I agreed quickly. They certainly weren’t allowed to kick their heels.

  ‘So you said yes?’

  ‘I said yes, and they’re coming on Tuesday. Don’t you think Simon will be rather impressed?’ She couldn’t resist adding.

  Ah. That little agenda. Her own private subplot. And yes, he would. Chad and Hope were quite a feather in anyone’s cap. Once they’d been outed as Exciting Newcomers everyone had tried to nab them. Their doorbell at Potters Wood had never stopped ringing. Hope had been asked to join every bell-ringing, tapestry-making group in the village, by everyone who had a little fiefdom to push. Sylvia had popped round to see if she’d like to help arrange the church flowers.

  ‘Oh, I’m hopeless at that kind of thing,’ Hope had purred at the door. ‘I just pick them and cram them in a jar any old how, I’m afraid.’ She’d indicated the cow parsley tumbling sexily from a jug on the table behind her.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Sylvia had warbled. ‘I’m a plonker too!’

  No wonder Hope had looked startled.

  Even Simon had tried, with the local Conservative Association, and been politely – and sensibly – declined. Angie had popped round to ask if Chad would sit on the parish council, something, as chairman, she was allowed to ask, but everyone knew you had to schmooze for years to achieve. No one had reprimanded her, though. No one objected.

  ‘What did he say?’ we all asked Angie avidly, about six of us in the village hall at the fete flower-arranging group, when she’d bustled in late to report.

  ‘Hope answered the door and said he wasn’t there. She said he’d be thrilled to be asked, though, and she knew he’d be really sorry to turn it down, but he was just too tied up right now. She was still in her dressing gown, hair all mussed.’

  ‘Ivory silk?’ breathed Jennie.

  ‘Yes, and then his voice drifted downstairs, all American and husky. “What are you doing, Honey?” And she went all pink and stammered, “Oh, I-I guess he is here, after all.” ’

  We all paused wistfully in our peony-trimming.

  ‘Sex all day,’ pronounced Jennie at length. ‘Dreamy.’

  ‘And maybe he really was tied up?’ mused Peggy, going back to her zinnias.

  Back in Jennie’s hall, though, facing my friend now, a thought occurred. ‘But what will we say to everyone else? You know, Frank, Odd Bob, Dickie Frowbisher and everyone else who wants to join?’

  ‘We’ll tell them to get stuffed,’ Jennie said firmly. She squared her shoulders. ‘This is an exclusive club, Poppy, not a free-for-all. We allowed Saintly Sue to join to show willing, and now Hope and Chad, but that’s our limit. We won’t get in anyone’s sitting room otherwise, for heaven’s sake.’

  I nodded in agreement as I left with the children, but knew this was thin. Angie had a huge drawing room. And quite a few noses would be out of joint. Ours was a small village. Oh, to hell with them, I thought, as I let myself in. Jennie was right. We had to be just a little bit selfish occasionally. And the Americans would certainly inject some glamour.

  As I went into the kitchen, the answering machine was flashing. I pressed it absently as I lowered Archie from my hip, watching him toddle off to his playpen, clamouring to get in. It was pretty much his favourite place these days. Wasn’t it supposed to be a prison? Would a child psychologist tell me he felt safe in there, or something heart-stopping? As I lifted him inside, a deep male voice politely asked me to make another appointment, whenever it suited. Nothing drastic, but something had cropped up and he wondered if I could pop in and talk about it. Sam, the solicitor.

  Well, obviously it had been a while since a deep male voice had asked me to do anything, politely or otherwise, surrounded as I was by women and children. But had there been any need to ring back immediately? Before I’d even taken Clemmie’s coat off? I got through to Janice, who made me an appointment. When I got off the phone, I moved around the house feeling lighter, brighter somehow. More energized. I went to the window to smile out at the day. Yes, that’ll be the Americans, I thought. That’s what’s put a skip in my step. The irrational desire to play the message again – which I did, three times – was only to make sure I’d got it straight. About it being nothing drastic. And nothing to worry about. That was all. I turned up the radio as I passed and sang along with Westlife, then I swept Clemmie into my arms to twirl about the room with me. She threw her head back and laughed with delight.

  13

  On Monday night at choir practice I thought we were going to be lynched. Three people on the way to church told me it was outrageous they weren’t allowed to join, particularly since we’d allowed the Armitages; and once I’d achieved the church and was in the choir stalls, Sylvia told me she’d even moved her bridge evening.

  ‘We decided Wednesdays were much better,’ she told me firmly, turning round from the pew in front. ‘So I’ll read Angus’s book when he’s finished and see you there. We thought one copy between the two of us would be fine.’ Sylvia was notoriously tight.

  ‘No, Sylvia, I’m sorry,’ Jennie butted in beside me – Sylvia had pointedly addressed me, not her – ‘we’ve reached our limit. Otherwise the group is too large and people feel intimidated. They won’t pipe up.’

  I doubt if Sylvia had ever felt intimidated in her life, particularly when it came to piping up. I also doubt whether anyone in the village had ever stood up to her. Her left eye began to twitch manically and she looked fit to burst her tubes. Happily Saintly Sue was tapping her lectern importantly, reminding us we’d be singing at the real thing soon so it had better be good, and Luke was flying through the door, so Sylvia didn’t have a chance to come
to the boil. But I saw Angus, who’d been studying his brogues during this little exchange, glance up to give Jennie an admiring look. Whether he’d be allowed out to play with the rest of us now was, of course, debatable. I had a feeling he’d be in his carpet slippers, toying gloomily with his cauliflower cheese in front of Panorama. Sylvia wouldn’t want him mixing with the Americans if she wasn’t allowed to; although her curiosity might get the better of her. She might want him there as a spy, taking notes, so she could quiz him later.

  As Luke bounded boyishly up the steps to the organ, blond hair flopping, he flashed me a grin and I smiled back. Smiled, though, not glowed. And as Angie and Jennie either side of me exchanged a delighted glance, like proud parents – one they clearly thought I didn’t notice – I hoped I wasn’t going to disappoint anyone. He was nice. Very nice. And good-looking too. So perhaps it was just the fact that he was always late and then basked self-consciously in the tiny spotlight this afforded that annoyed me? Or maybe he was genuinely busy and lost track of time? At Peggy’s I’d liked him more, I decided, as he played the opening chord in a dramatic manner. We’d perhaps even had a moment as we’d chatted over a glass of wine by the darkened window – which, let’s face it, was a far more conducive environment than this one. The organ didn’t help, this chilly, damp church didn’t help, and as we all launched into the Gloria and Molly into ‘Nights in White Satin’, I knew that didn’t help either.