Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Furniture,’ he said gently. ‘We were talking about furniture, weren’t we? I was going to send you off to John Lewis with my account card, that’s if you don’t have any qualms about sitting in new chairs. Annabel will only deign to park her backside if generations of gentry have done so before her.’

  ‘Oh!’ I flushed, feeling stupid but mightily relieved. ‘No, I don’t have a problem with that at all, in fact that would be great!’ Crikey, let loose in a department store with someone else’s credit card? My eyes began to shine. ‘You mean – I can have it? Can I? Can I really? Oh, thank you so much!’ I tried to resist kissing him.

  ‘On one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That you have someone come in and sort out the plumbing, fix it up with a half decent kitchen and then go and buy some proper furniture. I don’t want to be taken to court because a waif and a baby have contracted diphtheria from living in unsanitary conditions in my back yard.’

  ‘Oh, I will, I will, I’ll do all that – oh, Philly, I can have it!’ I yelled over the banisters to my sister, who hadn’t followed us up.

  She shivered and disappeared into her coat collar, thrusting her hands into her pockets. ‘Lucky you,’ she said grimly.

  ‘Let’s say we’ll halve the rent while the place is being fixed up,’ Joss said, moving towards the top of the stairs. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour by simply being here and overseeing all the work.’

  ‘You mean I can have it for half of what Alice said?’

  ‘For the moment. Although I have to say, when Annabel gets back …’ he hesitated. ‘Sure, yes. For the moment.’

  ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!’ My eyes, inexplicably, filled with tears.

  He frowned and looked at me carefully. ‘Do you always get so excited about derelict cottages?’

  I shook my head, blinking. ‘No, I’m sorry, I’m a bit emotional today. It’s just – well, I’m not used to getting breaks, that’s all.’

  ‘You’ve had a bad time,’ he said simply.

  ‘A bit,’ I admitted.

  He regarded me a moment longer. Then he straightened up. ‘Well, come on,’ he said abruptly. ‘Let’s go. I think your horrified sister would like to get the hell out of here.’

  Chapter Seven

  When I arrived back at my parents’ house in time for lunch, my mother was waiting for me. She was ominously stationed, pale-faced and erect, with her back to the drawing-room fire, the scene of many a showdown. Her chin was high, her lips pursed but trembling, and she was fingering her pearls manically. All bad signs.

  ‘How does it feel to make a grown man cry!’ she demanded theatrically as I walked in. ‘How does it feel, Rosie, hmm? He’s out there,’ she pointed a quivering finger gardenwards, ‘sobbing, yes, sobbing his heart out. It’s pitiful!’ Her voice rose to a tortured cry.

  Philly and Miles, who’d followed my car, came in behind me now, their children and Ivo in tow.

  ‘Do you know what she’s done?’ Mummy cried. ‘Hmm? Have you heard, Philly? Miles? She’s divorcing him! Leaving him for some common little loose-limbed lout she found shelf-stacking in the supermarket!’

  ‘Oh, Mum, no, that’s bollocks. Did he tell you that?’

  ‘Don’t you use that foul language with me, young lady,’ she rounded on me fiercely, ‘and no, he wasn’t that graphic, mercifully. He said he found you both incontrovertibly together – those were the very words he used – in the marital bedroom, and I deduced the rest of the distasteful details for myself, thank you very much!’ She wrapped her pale blue Pringle cardigan round her tightly and sniffed. ‘Oh, I may not be a woman of the world,’ she quavered. ‘I may not have smoked pot and had free love on beanbags like your generation, but I do know a little hussy when I see one!’

  Philly put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Calm down, Mum, and incidentally,’ she jerked her head in the direction of four gaping children, ‘pas devant les enfants, okay?’

  Miles turned them all round and hustled them out of the door. ‘Come on, kids, let’s go and find Grandpa in the garden, shall we?’

  ‘You’ll get nothing,’ she whispered, ‘nothing! No money, no house, no Stockley Hall!’ Her voice cracked at this and she frantically ferreted up her sleeve for a crumpled tissue, burying her nose in it. ‘No one’s going to want you either, you realize that, don’t you? A thirty-something woman with a child – you’ve got a past now, you’re shop-soiled! You’ll never find anyone else to take you on, and just when I thought you were finally beginning to amount to something! You’ll never amount to anything now!’

  ‘Thanks, Mum, for that vote of confidence,’ I muttered wearily. ‘It’s just what I need right now. Look, I made a mistake. I should never have married him and I simply can’t live with him any longer, that’s all there is to it. In his heart I think Harry knows that too.’

  ‘Harry knows nothing!’ she spat, drawing the pearls tighter and tighter round her neck for comfort. ‘The poor man is distraught!’

  ‘I’ll go and see him.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s too late, he’s gone,’ she said, shaking her head frenziedly and turning wild eyes in the direction of the French windows. ‘He’s out there, walking blindly, gone for miles, I shouldn’t wonder!’ She gazed out to the manicured lawn and herbaceous border beyond as if it was a blasted heath and Heathcliff himself was staggering around out there, demented with grief. In truth, Harry had probably just waddled down the path, past the lavender bushes and just about made it to the summerhouse for a kip.

  ‘God knows where he’ll finally rest his head. In a ditch maybe. He’s probably fallen in a stream already, but what do you care!’

  My mother, when she felt like it, could be very amateur dramatic.

  ‘Mum, the only water around here is in the Turners’ swimming pool next door and I’m quite sure they’d have heard if he’d fallen in. Look, don’t worry, I’ll go and find him.’

  She seized my arm. ‘Tell him you’ve changed your mind,’ she urged. ‘Tell him it was all a terrible mistake, say you were hallucinating, say it was PMT, you know how unreasonable it makes you!’

  ‘I can’t do that, Mum, it’s not true.’

  She turned away. ‘But what will everyone say?’ she wailed. ‘The Burdetts, the Fosters – I’ve told them all you’re going to inherit Stockley Hall. What will I tell them now?’

  My mother was nothing if not disingenuous. I rounded on her. ‘That’s all you’re worried about, isn’t it? Bloody Stockley Hall. You haven’t even mentioned Ivo!’

  ‘Because I can’t bear to!’ she whispered, raising her chin defiantly. ‘Can’t bear to think about what you’re doing to that poor child, foisting a broken home on him, taking him from the arms of a father who dotes on him, who adores him!’

  ‘Rubbish, Harry never has anything to do with Ivo, as you well know, and anyway he can see him whenever he likes. Every weekend if he wants, which is probably more than he sees him now.’

  ‘You’re cruel and heartless,’ she said, and then to my alarm began to cry. ‘You always were,’ she sobbed. ‘You never think of anyone but yourself. You certainly never think of me.’

  ‘Good God, Mum,’ snorted Philly, ‘the only reason Rosie’s in this diabolical mess is because she probably thought far too much about you in the first place!’

  Suddenly I couldn’t bear it any longer. I bolted from the room, ran upstairs, tore along the passage to my old bedroom and threw myself down on the bed, sobbing into my ancient, balding candlewick bedcover. After a while I wiped my eyes and flipped over. I stared at the bookshelves in the alcove in front of me. Enid Blyton, E. Nesbit and Noel Streatfeild were still in alphabetical order, and beneath them was the little blue desk I used to sit at to do my homework. Tucked neatly under it was the blue chair with its gingham cushion I’d made by hand. When I was a child, that chair always had to be tucked in like that, never pulled out or sprawling at an angle. Everything in here had to be in its place and perfect. Penc
ils then were lined up on the desk in regimental rows, next to my ruler, my rubber and my lucky gonk. Dolls from around the world in their national costumes had stood sentry-like on the now bare mantelpiece – Serbia next to Syria next to Thailand. I didn’t know where these places were but I jolly well knew where they were on my shelf. Clothes were always folded with geometric precision and put away in piles, and rosettes and certificates marched neatly across a now bare cork notice board. Only I was allowed to clean my room, no one else did it to my satisfaction, no one else lined up my rug with absolute symmetry to my bed. Mum used to laugh, said I’d make a terrific little soldier, probably go on to run an army, she said. I bit my lip.

  After a while, Philly came up. She sat on the side of the bed and took my hand.

  ‘She doesn’t mean it, you know. She’s just upset.’

  ‘She does. She’d rather I lived in abject misery for the rest of my life than disturb the status quo. Not to mention abandoning Harry’s bloody inheritance.’

  Philly considered this. ‘You’re probably right, but she’ll get over it, you’ll see. And Dad’s as happy as Larry.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t said as much, but you should see him charging around the garden with Miles and all the children playing football, he’s like a new man.’

  I sat up. ‘Ivo’s okay out there, is he?’

  ‘Of course, he’s on Dad’s shoulders, they’re key strikers.’

  I smiled. ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he? I mean, with Dad as a father figure?’

  ‘Course he will,’ she said staunchly. She gave me a sideways glance. ‘For a bit. That was utter drivel Mum was touting down there, you know that, don’t you? You’ll find someone else.’

  I blew my nose. ‘I’m not sure I want to, Phil. I’m quite happy just with Ivo, and I can’t wait to get started on that cottage. I’m better off on my own now.’

  The telephone began to ring somewhere downstairs. Philly sighed and got off the bed. ‘Well, we’ll see. For the moment you’re probably right, but later on … Listen, I could easily take Ivo off your hands for you for a week or two while you sort that dreadful cottage out.’

  ‘Thanks, but I think I’ll keep him close for the moment. I sort of – feel the need.’

  ‘Sure.’ She understood immediately. ‘By the way, we’re not having a proper lunch, it’s just help yourself from the fridge – oh, for God’s sake, would someone answer that bloody phone!’ She went next door to Mum’s bedroom and I heard her answer.

  ‘Hello? … Oh, yes, she is.’ Her voice went suddenly cold. ‘Just a minute.’ I waited for her to come back. ‘It’s for you. It’s Alice.’

  ‘Oh!’ I sprang off the bed in surprise and went next door. Philly disappeared downstairs.

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘God, Rosie, I’m so sorry, what must you think of me!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leaving the cottage like that, in such a mess! It suddenly occurred to me, the last time I was there I left in a terrible hurry and I didn’t have a chance to clean it up. I was quietly painting a bowl of oranges in the kitchen just now when my brush suddenly froze, I nearly died of embarrassment as I thought of it. Did Philly go with you too?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘She did, but don’t worry, we didn’t notice a thing,’ I lied.

  ‘God, how appalling, but you know me, I don’t really notice mess. Michael says I only change the sheets when they start to look like the Turin Shroud.’

  ‘We didn’t inspect the sheets and it all looked fine,’ I soothed. ‘And anyway, it’s such a dear little place.’

  ‘Well, it’s pretty basic but then we were only there at weekends and we mostly just went in the summer for the garden. What did you think of Joss, by the way?’

  ‘Well, he gradually loosened up, I suppose, but he’s a bit prickly on first encounter, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t think he means to be, it’s just that he’s incredibly busy and in another world most of the time. He’s got loads of commissions now, the great and the good are all lining up for his pieces, so his dealer’s constantly bullying him to produce. He’s always dashing off to Italy to inspect pieces of marble too, has to see the raw material for himself apparently, and then he’s all over the place with his exhibitions. So I think he’s pretty stressed out one way and another. I have a suspicion he’s a complete softy at heart actually. He certainly lets Annabel get away with murder. Did you meet her?’

  ‘No, she’s away at the moment; she rang from America while we were there though. What’s she like?’

  ‘Beautiful, successful and devastatingly charming but personally I’m not convinced.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m just being a bitch because I’m not beautiful, successful or remotely charming, but she’s a touch too saccharine for my liking. You know who she is, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, she writes all those self-help books.’

  ‘Quite, and lives them too.’

  ‘Really? In what way?’

  ‘Well, I know people think I’m a bit alternative but she really is wacko. She’s a Buddhist okay, so there’s lots of chanting and meditating and all that, which is fine, but I wouldn’t put it past her to dance naked in the moonlight either. She’s a bit like that, our Annabel. Any fad going she embraces it.’

  I giggled. ‘Well I hope she doesn’t do it in my garden. So who looks after the children then? You know, if she’s away chanting at an ashram or something?

  ‘Oh, they have a mother’s help. She’s absolutely hopeless but that doesn’t bother Annabel because they’re not her children anyway.’

  ‘What d’you mean? Whose are they then?’

  ‘They’re from his first marriage. His wife died about six years ago, having the twins.’

  ‘No! God, how tragic! I didn’t think people died in childbirth any more?’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ she said grimly. ‘I heard on Woman’s Hour the other day that one woman a second still dies of it, and you can bet your life they’re not all squatting in bushes in the Third World but quietly expiring in some dodgy English cottage hospital. She had appalling pre-eclampsia so they were born much too early and her whole system collapsed. She died a few days later. He was devastated.’

  ‘I can imagine. God, how awful! So when did he marry Annabel?’

  ‘About two years ago. She made a bee-line for him at one of his exhibitions, swept him right off his feet.’

  ‘Why? I mean, she’s gorgeous, isn’t she? And famous too. Presumably she could have had anyone. It seems an odd choice somehow, a sad man with three small children in tow.’

  ‘Ah, but think of the kudos, Rosie. He’s absolutely revered in the art world, and if you ask me she fancies herself as his muse. And then of course there’s that huge, terribly English manor house of his.’

  ‘I saw, quite a place.’

  ‘Could be, but it needs a lot of work inside, although I don’t suppose he asked you in. He doesn’t like visitors much.’

  ‘So we gathered. Oh well,’ I sighed, ‘I won’t have much to do with them down at the cottage, will I?’

  ‘Very little. They’re actually very good at not poking their noses in, and as long as you don’t, it works both ways.’

  ‘Well, I certainly won’t. Thanks, Alice, this is such a lifeline for me at the moment.’

  I said goodbye and sat for a moment on Mum’s bed, hugging my knees to my chest. After a while I got off and stole across to her cheval mirror in the corner by the chintz curtains. So often in the past I’d got dressed in my own bedroom and then, lacking a full-length mirror, had hastened in here to get the full effect. In those days the Full Effect had always been the same: glowing with good health, optimism and shiny blonde hair but too pudgy by half, and I’d spend the next five minutes furiously re-angling the mirror as if that was the problem, tugging away at my clothes, trying to reduce the bulges and putting talcum powder on my cheeks to minim
ize the bucolic Nell Gwyn effect. I was almost shocked by what I saw today. Huge green eyes gazed back at me out of an almost thin face. My hair was still blonde but had lost all its shine and my clothes hung off me. God, I must have lost about two stone in as many years without even noticing it. I sighed and ran my fingers down my pale cheeks, thinking how I would have loved this gaunt look a few years ago. Pale and interesting, it was all I’d ever wanted, but now I’d got it, it just depressed me. I gulped hard. Depressed? Rubbish, Rosie, this is the way forward. Buck up, no good looking back, we’re going onwards and upwards, remember? I nodded firmly at my reflection. Right. That’s more like it. And first thing next week I’d get a decent haircut, have a few sizzling highlights put in and borrow a pair of Philly’s jeans which would at least fit me and, let’s face it, I used to fantasize about borrowing her jeans.

  The next time I encountered my family again was at supper that evening. Philly had cooked roast lamb since Mummy had apparently been rendered incapable of even lifting a potato peeler, and as she brought the vegetables through to the hotplate in the dining room, I slipped in and took the seat beside her. Harry was absent. I tried to ignore Mummy who was doing a lot of stagy sniffing opposite me, dabbing at her nose with her napkin and shooting me hurt, vengeful glances. Daddy was standing at the head of the table carving the joint and Miles, always oblivious of any sort of atmosphere, was in the throes of telling a supposedly hilarious story about a friend of his called Tarquin – Miles’s friends were always called things like Tarquin – who, after a few too many jars in the local pub, had apparently felt unwell and hastened to the loo in order to chuck it all up.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ snorted Miles, ‘he barged into a cubicle that was already occupied, some bald guy was sitting there having a crap, but, too late, old Tarquin throws up anyway, all over his head!’ Miles’s sides began to split. We waited patiently as he tried to gain control, to pick himself up from the parquet floor and continue, because clearly there was more.