Meadowland

by Alison Giles

  In an unexpected rush, I voiced these thoughts to Flora.

  She received them with equanimity, opening a cupboard door and stuffing away the cleaning materials as she did so. ‘Put the kettle on, will you?’ she suggested over her shoulder. I lifted the lid of the hotplate and shifted it across.

  There was something extraordinarily reassuring about Flora’s kitchen table. We sat at it as we so often had before. She was wearing that same jumper – the cat one – that had so mesmerised me the first time I met her. I commented. ‘Do you remember the first time I came?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘A lot’s happened since then.’

  She nodded, smiling.

  My thoughts floated. ‘On the way down,’ I said, ‘I was thinking … it’s just about a year since Father went into hospital.’ I looked up; the corners of Flora’s mouth had straightened. I put out a hand, touched hers. ‘I’m so sorry I never came down when he was alive.’

  She patted mine. ‘We understood.’

  ‘Did you? I wish I did.’ Why hadn’t I stood up to Mother? Why – back to my earlier thought – was I still only partially doing so?

  I stood up, carried my mug over to the window, stared out. Then I shook the questions aside and turned. ‘How about I take you out to lunch?’

  We drove over to The Three Bells at Chadham. At this time of year the beer garden had an abandoned look – umbrellas stowed away, the tables bare but for a stray leaf or two. We settled in a corner of the bar and I fetched a menu over.

  ‘Your father always enjoyed their Fisherman’s Pie,’ said Flora.

  We both settled for that.

  ‘You used to come here with him, then?’ I said.

  ‘From time to time.’

  I raised my glass. ‘To you and Dad,’ I said.

  For a moment, I thought I detected a hint of mist in her eyes. If so, she recovered. ‘To all of us,’ she countered.

  Who did that include, I wondered. What was Andrew doing at this moment? I had visions of a stale cheese sandwich and a plastic cup of coffee balanced amid a mound of papers. When we’d been in town on one occasion, he’d pointed out his firm’s offices – the upper floors of a Victorian building reached via an unobtrusive doorway squeezed between an estate agent and a flower shop. We hadn’t gone in. I wished in a way we had; I could have visualised him, now, more clearly.

  Father had taken me into his office once. I suppose I was about ten or eleven at the time. Memory of the circumstance had faded, but the open-plan interior was as sharply defined in my mind as the familiar façade of the modern town-centre block. On our way to his own separate room with its huge desk and leather chair, we’d passed an army of clerks. Father had proudly – yes, it was proudly – introduced me to those who looked up, and to the one or two of his partners whose paths crossed ours. A secretary had brought us coffee and biscuits on a tray, and chatted to me about school while Father made phone calls. I’d felt very important sitting there in my blue check dress and my blazer with the crest on the pocket. I smiled now at the memory.

  ‘Penny for them.’ Flora was looking quizzically at me.

  ‘I was thinking about Andrew,’ I said. I repeated my image of his utilitarian lunch as I sank a fork into the steaming potato topping of my own appetising one.

  It was gone six when he finally appeared.

  ‘We’ve had a deliciously lazy time,’ I informed him.

  ‘Lucky you.’ He looked tired.

  Guiltily I dropped my teasing. ‘Did you get everything sorted?’

  Hopefully. In any case he wasn’t going to think about it again till Monday morning.

  We stayed and chatted with Flora until eventually she shooed us out: ‘There’s a play I want to listen to on the radio.’ If it was an excuse she was offering us, we were grateful.

  We drove in tandem to the Dower House. I parked the Astra in the spot normally occupied by Ginny’s Metro. As I helped carry supermarket bags into the house, I suddenly felt less comfortable than I’d anticipated.

  ‘Told Ginny not to worry about getting food in for us,’ Andrew had said as he swung the boot open. ‘She had enough to do getting herself and the boys off.’

  ‘A male chauvinist with a conscience!’ I’d quipped, and immediately regretted it. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t fair. It was just …’

  What was it ‘just’? I tried, lamely, to explain as we unpacked the shopping. ‘It’s a bit convoluted,’ I said. ‘Something about my mother being so much the mistress of her kitchen, of the whole house.’

  Andrew looked bemused. ‘I suppose there’s a connection there somewhere.’

  I knew there was. I could feel it; but couldn’t quite put it into words: Mother in control, Father tolerantly allowing it; Ginny running the Dower House, Andrew not objecting; a huge question mark on everyone’s rôles and, in particular, where I fitted into each household.

  Andrew was unwrapping two large steaks. ‘Wake up,’ he admonished lightly. He nodded towards the lettuce I was aimlessly balancing. ‘You knock up a salad while I grill these.’

  We ate on our knees in front of the television – some inane comedy, but it relaxed me. Later I sat, or rather snuggled, through Match of the Day, wedged against Andrew’s shoulder, secure in the warmth and faintly musky smell of him.

  Once or twice he shook his head indulgently. ‘There’s a real baby in you somewhere, isn’t there?’

  ‘Umm,’ I agreed, contentedly complacent.

  Bearing refilled wine glasses, he followed me up to the bathroom and perched on the edge of the bath as I soaked. I lay there, sipping luxuriously, aware of his eyes roving over me – and enjoying it. Then he reached for the sponge and soaped me gently all over. ‘All I need,’ I laughed when he’d rinsed me off with the same smooth movements, ‘is a plastic duck.’

  I knew in an instant I’d said the wrong thing. His expression changed. Abruptly he reached for the towel. ‘Come on. Out.’

  I heard the shower running as I got into bed and lay there, casting my eyes over the evidence of him in the room. When he climbed in beside me a few minutes later, he seemed somehow preoccupied. I cuddled up to him, ran my fingers up and down his forearm, offered my face for a kiss.

  Suddenly he turned on to his back, raised his arms behind his head and lay there, staring up at the ceiling. The hair in his armpits was soft and fuzzy. I’d have liked to reach out and stroke it.

  Instead: ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. Then teasingly, knowing it wasn’t that: ‘Did I pinch all the hot water?’

  No response.

  ‘Well something –’ still attempting lightheadedness – ‘seems to have poured cold water on your ardour.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I sat up, tried to read his expression. It was – the recognition shook me – that withdrawn one I’d seen so often during my teenage years on another face. Panic, irrational but all the more powerful for being so, spread upwards from my stomach. ‘For God’s sake –’ I could hear the scream in my voice – ‘you look just like my father.’

  He turned his head then, making as though to move his arms down. I thought for a moment he was going to put them round me, reassure me. But then he settled them back again, resumed his position.

  ‘Maybe that’s the problem,’ he said, addressing some spot above him.

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘That I’m not your father.’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’

  ‘But you seem to want me to act as though I were.’

  A lump, huge and choking, materialised in my throat. ‘That’s not fair …’ Now I too lay back and stared upwards.

  I was aware of Andrew twisting his head sufficiently to see me out of the corner of his eye. ‘Look’ he said, ‘I don’t mind playing the supportive father rôle occasionally, but in bed Daddy’s little girl is hardly my idea of a turn on. It’s a woman I want.’

  Was it hurt or anger that made me snap back? ‘You mean a mother, I suppose?’

  ‘No.’
The evenness in his voice was chilling. ‘A woman.’ He swung over on his side away from me.

  I lay there. ‘Men!’ I reassured myself. In a minute he’d roll back, apologise. I waited. Still, after about ten minutes, he hadn’t done so. But the tension in his body told me he wasn’t asleep.

  Tentatively I put out a hand, resting it on his hip; then, turning on my side, allowed it to creep round to his chest.

  He didn’t move.

  I curled the hair there against my fingers, then let them wander slowly down over his belly; teased my way lower, unhurriedly and gradually coaxing a physical response. Still he said nothing, gave no sign of even being aware of what I was doing.

  Then at last he turned on to his back and without comment, roughly almost, pulled me astride him.

  I stared into his face. The softness was gone from it, yet his expression was not so much hard as challenging. OK then; if that was what he wanted. I took charge, discovered an unexpected exhilaration in so doing – until, at the very last moment, he reached up and, in one rhythmic movement, rolled us both over till I was beneath him and he was thrusting deeper and deeper …

  Afterwards he lay with his head buried in my shoulder. Then he raised himself and looked down at me. I opened my mouth to speak but he put a finger over my lips. ‘Don’t say a word.’ After a moment or two he rolled off and we lay there, side by side, our clasped hands bridging what space there was between us.

  CHAPTER 21

  I slid out of bed next morning before Andrew had woken, eased into my silk wrap, and crept downstairs. In the kitchen I pulled up the blinds and started to prepare coffee and toast.

  The garden had that autumn cleansing look about it – a spattering of leaves on the grass heralding a full-blown clear out. Today, for some reason, I felt less empathy with the leaves, clinging on, than with the branches overburdened with yellowing foliage.

  Busy searching in the cupboard for marmalade and laying up a tray, I didn’t hear Andrew come downstairs; nor even was I aware of him entering the room. It was only when I turned to fetch butter from the fridge that I caught sight of him.

  I jumped. ‘Oh, you startled me. How long have you been …?’ I broke off, my gaze drawn downwards, my eyes widening. He had slipped his arms into a bathrobe but hadn’t bothered to tie it. I stared, then laughed.

  Andrew glanced down, raising an eyebrow. ‘Long enough, obviously.’ He looked back at me, acknowledgement crinkling the corners of his eyes and mouth. ‘I’ve been enjoying watching you.’ Then, provocatively, as I stood there still gaping: ‘Well? What are you going to do with it?’

  Our eyes met. I remembered last night.

  ‘Right.’ I advanced towards him, recognising, perhaps for the first time, my power. ‘OK, Daddy, I’ll show you.’

  And I did. Right there in the kitchen, with the breeze brushing a strand of creeper against the window and the smell of hot toast, popping up unheeded from its metal cage, permeating the air around us.

  That afternoon, anoraked and booted, we walked. Across fields and through woods, most of the tracks familiar to me now. The flowers of summer had gone but in their place we found late fruits: acorns, conkers – and sweet chestnuts, their prickled green husks littering the ground beneath broad-branching trees. We heeled them open and squirrelled away pocketfuls to peel and munch as we strolled on.

  I shared my thoughts of the morning about autumn’s rôle in the scheme of things. ‘It’s almost,’ I suggested, ‘as though man and nature are at odds. Man spring-cleans …’

  We debated the matter; agreed that most of winter’s grime was man-made. ‘Just think of snow,’ said Andrew. ‘It’s cars and feet, mainly, that create slush.’

  We elaborated, sought further examples, argued back and forth; noted – as we passed a tractor ploughing in stubble – how farmers, in part at least, conform inevitably to nature’s schedule; progressed to consideration of the merits and demerits of human resistance to the dictates of seasonal daylight.

  I paused then and turned to him. We were walking along a ridge, the countryside spread out on either side. ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘these are the sorts of discussions you had with my father. You know, I used to be quite jealous of you.’

  There was a fallen tree trunk beside the path. Andrew steered me across to sit on it. ‘Tell me.’

  I picked a burr from my sleeve. ‘In a way perhaps I still am. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so confused.’

  Andrew put an arm round me and gave an encouraging squeeze.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ I said. ‘I’m not totally clear about it myself. I guess I was hurt – and angry – that you had the sort of relationship with him that I’d missed out on. It seemed so unfair. But it wasn’t so bad when I could convince myself that made you some sort of a brother …’

  I looked across, checking his reaction; grateful he didn’t allow his expression to flicker.

  ‘Then,’ I forced myself to continue, ‘after Ginny explained, when things … started to develop …’

  He permitted himself a smile then. ‘Difficult,’ he acknowledged.

  I put out a hand and rested it on his thigh, my fingertips circling the matt roughness of his trousers, feeling his leg firm beneath it.

  I got up and wandered away a few yards. I stared over the fields, then up at the sky – uneven snatches of blue between the cumulus. Was he right? Had I then turned him into some sort of father figure? I grimaced: just as incestuous, if I had.

  I felt rather than heard him come up behind me. He put his arms round me, rested his head against the back of mine.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘your father was only ever a casual friend – an older one, I grant you – to me. Yes, I enjoyed talking with him – our minds worked in much the same way; but no-one, male or female, could ever have usurped your place.’

  He rocked me very slightly, moving with me. ‘I guess maybe I’ve been the jealous one. Of him. Maybe … what I was saying last night … was my fault. Perhaps I’ve been trying to be him for you; replace him.’

  I jerked my head round.

  ‘No, not for your benefit. Well, only partly. More because it seemed a way to …’

  I tried to turn, but he held me tight. ‘But I don’t want you to be my father.’ It was true – now, anyway.

  I felt his body relax against mine. Then he moved a hand down, dived it up and under my anorak, and settled it suggestively. ‘Neither,’ he said, and a lightness had returned to his voice, ‘do I.’

  Without displacing his hold, I twisted round to face him. Stretching up, I closed my teeth on his earlobe, making brief play of biting it. ‘Good,’ I said.

  We wandered on, hand in hand, mutually companionable.

  ‘You’re looking more rested already,’ said Flora over bread and cheese.

  It was Monday lunchtime. I’d lain in bed that morning as Andrew dressed. Luxuriating between the covers, I’d watched as he pulled his tie round his neck, flicking the end over and round and through, then peering in the mirror to tighten and adjust it.

  ‘There’s something very sexy about a man putting on a tie,’ I observed.

  He turned, narrowing his eyes. ‘Watch it.’ He glanced at the bedside clock, then reached for his jacket. ‘Saved by the bell,’ he grinned.

  I heard the door slam and listened as the car drove off. After a while I stirred myself, padded round the house tidying here and there, and eventually pulled on jeans and sweatshirt: holiday wear.

  I found Flora in her garden and spent the morning giving a hand. Together we collected up the remains of fallen apples and replied logs she’d had delivered. We each of us carried an armful in, stacking them in the alcove by the drawing-room hearth to dry out. ‘Maybe I’ll light a fire later,’ she said.

  Now, as I reached across to slice off a hunk of Cheddar, she made her comment about how much better I was looking.

  I considered it. ‘Country air,’ I acknowledged.

  ‘You had a good day yesterday, then?’


  ‘Umm.’ I balanced a piece of cheese on my bread, then looked up. ‘Andrew and I had a bit of a heart to heart; sorted a few things out.’

  ‘Oh?’ Neutral enquiry.

  ‘About Father,’ I said. ‘Well, in a way.’ Leaving out the intimate details, I gave her the gist. ‘Andrew,’ I grimaced, ‘seemed to think I’d been playing little girl.’

  ‘And had you?’

  I thought about it. ‘I suppose I had. Lately anyway.’ I found myself staring across the kitchen at Father’s photo. I raised an eyebrow towards it and laughed ruefully. ‘Maybe,’ I acknowledged to Flora, ‘I took you too literally when you said it wasn’t too late to get to know him; imagined in some way I could find him again in Andrew.’

  I munched thoughtfully. ‘But that was hardly what you meant, was it? It was about seeing him more clearly, understanding him.’ I nodded in the direction of the photo again. ‘I wonder what he’d have to say if I could talk to him now? Probably agree with Andrew that it was about time I grew up.’ I addressed the face in the silver frame: ‘You’ll be glad to know I think I am doing.’

  Flora smiled.

  ‘Was that –’ my mind made a leap – ‘why he got fed up with Mum?’

  After all, in some ways she was quite childlike. I saw her, prettily domesticated, never a hair out of place; accepting Father’s arm round her – in those early days anyway; never, that I’d been aware of, reciprocating; always the one on the receiving end of support – and even affection? As though she didn’t even know how to respond perhaps; to give? An involuntary shiver rippled my spine. Like mother, like daughter – potentially? I gave mental thanks for what I hoped was my reprieve.

  I looked across at Flora, then down again. ‘Life’s been a bit tricky with Mother these last few weeks,’ I decided at last to confide. ‘Did Andrew tell you … or maybe you’ve gathered? … I let on … well, it was more that she dragged it out of me … that I’ve been coming down here.’