Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘I hear Daddy’s gone away for a bit. When’s he coming back, d’you know?’

  ‘Christmas Eve, so he says.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be nice.’

  ‘Yeah, terrific. And no doubt he’ll appear loaded down with presents like frigging Santa Claus and expect us all to sing “Jingle Bells” round the piano.’

  I was startled by his bitterness.

  ‘Oh come on, don’t be like that. I’m sure he doesn’t want to go, it’s just his work, that’s all. Don’t get upset.’

  ‘Who’s upset? I’m not upset, I couldn’t care less!’ He jumped angrily off the wall and ran away down the other side. I watched him go for a moment, narrowing my eyes into the distance as he raced towards the frozen river, shimmering in the limpid winter sunshine. I waited until he was out of sight then sighed and went inside. I hadn’t known these children long, but as Michael had predicted, they popped down to the cottage quite a lot, and I was beginning to realize this sort of behaviour was pretty much par for the course. The twins were bubbly and lively and, as a pair, pretty much self-sufficient, but Toby positively eschewed company of any kind and slunk off to the river at a moment’s notice. I felt for him actually. It must be rotten to be left by his father as much as he clearly was, but on the other hand, plenty of fathers travelled on business didn’t they? It was just that there was usually a mother around to pick up the pieces and hold the home front together while he was away. I sighed. Happily for once this was not my problem.

  ‘What d’you normally do about tea?’ I inquired as I went back in the kitchen.

  Lucy was balancing a tiara on Ivo’s head who was loving every minute of it, entranced that two such huge children should deign to pass the time of day with him, and Emma was tying headscarves on the terriers, both of whom, I realized with a start, appeared to have blue nail varnish on their toenails.

  ‘Oh we just rummage around in the larder. There’s usually bread and cheese or something, but I mostly have Coco Pops.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Vera comes today though,’ Lucy reminded her sister. She turned to me. ‘She’s our cleaner, and she sometimes makes yukky fish-paste sandwiches, but we just give them to the dogs.’

  ‘Really,’ I said, marvelling at this liberal regime, which seemed to go totally unchallenged. I watched as Emma squeezed herself into a ludicrously tight, sequinned body suit.

  ‘D’you think Daddy will bring back presents from America? D’you think he’ll buy me a Barbie ball gown?’ she asked as she gyrated about, disco style.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Who gave you that outfit?’ I inquired innocently.

  ‘Marfa, it was her sister’s. Marfa’s boyfriend, Gary, says I look sexy in it. What’s sexy, Rosie?’

  My blood boiled briefly but I let it come down to a rolling simmer while I shook out her normal clothes.

  ‘I suppose it means looking nice for boys. Do you want to look nice for boys, Emma?’

  She turned, aghast. ‘Ugh, no! What, you mean like those vile yobbos who gob on the pavement in the village?’

  ‘Exactly. Here, put your clothes back on and then come up to the house with me. I’ve got to get this food in the oven now and if you like,’ I threw back over my shoulder as I went to the car, ‘I’ll make that bodysuit into a couple of Barbie ball gowns for you when I get a moment.’

  ‘Would you! Great! Oh, Rosie, thanks!’ they chorused, delighted.

  I smiled as I loaded pies, lasagnes and puddings into the boot of my Volvo. Considering they seemed to have brought themselves up, they were actually very sweet, if a little exhausting. I got in, and with Ivo strapped in beside me, drove carefully up to the house, with the twins in my rear-view mirror slowly dragging their basket up the hill behind me. I parked outside the kitchen door and as I unloaded the car looked for signs of life. Seeing none I gave a sharp tap on the back door, pushed on through then stopped for a moment on the doormat as I gazed around in surprise. I was somewhat taken aback to find myself in a very tatty, old-fashioned, unfitted kitchen. Aside from a huge oak dresser that covered one wall, there was an ancient range, a floor-to-ceiling cupboard, a large formica table in the middle and very little else. The paint also appeared to be peeling off the walls. Over by the dresser, a very skinny girl with aubergine-coloured hair which grew vertically out of her head was talking on the telephone. She wore three earrings in each ear, a gold stud in her nose, a black jumper that covered her bottom and her fingers, leopard-skin leggings and huge platform boots.

  ‘Yeah … yeah … I know … I know … yeah …’

  I smiled as I went past her but she didn’t acknowledge me. As I bent to put the pies in the enormous old Aga, she broke off and put the phone down. I straightened up and smiled.

  ‘Hi, I’m Rosie, thanks so much for bailing me out like this.’

  Her white face against the dyed hair was thin and pinched and she had huge dark circles under her eyes. Late night clubbing no doubt.

  ‘’Sorright,’ was her hostile response. She eyed me warily and I grinned back. No, I would not be intimidated by a girl ten years younger than me however scary she might look. I opened my mouth to initiate a conversation but at that moment, the twins burst in through the back door.

  ‘Marfa! This is Rosie, she lives in the cottage and she’s going to make ball gowns for our Barbies!’

  ‘Well bully for her.’ She pushed past me, picked up a Diet Coke and a Cosmopolitan from the table and left the room.

  I gazed after her, genuinely surprised by her rudeness. Although I could see at a glance that we might not necessarily be one another’s cup of tea, as anyone who looks after small children for any length of time will testify, adult company in any shape or form and however fleeting, is usually a bonus. One must, of course, come to recognize that restless, uneasy look in the postman’s eye if he’s kept talking at the gate for more than the statutory two minutes, but the tenant from the cottage would seem to me to be fair game, and I’d have thought she’d relish the opportunity to meet someone over the age of eight who might consume quantities of Nescafé with her. But it was not to be.

  I sighed as I busied myself getting treacle sponges into the oven, but when my next visitor arrived, she couldn’t have been more different. All fourteen stone of Vera Hawkins complete with hairnet and string bag, breezed in just as I was crouched down at the stove.

  ‘Oooh, look at that now, a lovely sticky pudding! Ooh and I know who you are then, luv, I said to my Vic, I said they’ve got a new cook down the Red Lion and she’s livin’ in the old cottage at the big ’ouse, so that must be you, luv, is it? I’m Vera by the way.’

  ‘Rosie,’ I said with a smile as she beamed down at me, shedding her Pakamac like a second skin and bustling over to the cupboard for a housecoat.

  ‘Well it’ll make a change to have some decent food down there, luv, I can tell you,’ she said as she buttoned herself in. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’m going to get on and leave you to it. I’ve got my work cut out doin’ my few hours an’ then getting back to get ’is tea on, ’e’s ever such a demanding old bugger ’e is.’

  And with that she bustled away, duster in one hand, Mr Sheen in the other, ample behind following purposefully in her wake as she embarked on her Herculean task in this huge house. As I watched her go, I realized with a smile who she reminded me of. Of course, John Prescott in drag with a very considerable bosom.

  Remembering my promise to Martha, I offered the twins a jigsaw or a book while the food was cooking but ‘See our bedrooms! Come see our bedrooms!’ was the insistent, shrill response. If truth be told I was dying to see the rest of the house so I staged a great sigh, let myself be dragged out of the kitchen, and then with a girl on each hand and Ivo at my heels, set off down the corridor to the stairs.

  I glanced in all the open doorways as they dragged me along, and considering the elegant grandeur of the entrance hall, it was a revelation. And a huge disappointment. Everywhere paint was peeling off the walls, wallpaper was torn bac
k to the plaster and carpets were either tatty and frayed or nonexistent, with most rooms relying on bare unpolished floorboards. The furniture was mostly old and good, but simply crammed into rooms any old how with no consideration for style or comfort, resulting in a somewhat temporary look, as if it had been plonked there by removal men to be rearranged later. I was staggered by the contrast. It could, of course, have been beautiful. It was a large, rambling house with lots of grand, high-ceilinged rooms many of which ran into one another via a series of double doors. The windows were arched and mullioned, the doors Gothic and the fireplaces, huge stone affairs with vast grates, but Joss and Annabel, it seemed, saw nothing of this. Some windows appeared to be permanently shuttered making the rooms dark and gloomy, and most fireplaces just served as extra bookcases, with stacks of books piled high in their alcoves. The only pictures I saw were likewise stacked in corners. When I asked the girls why they weren’t on the walls they looked at me in surprise, as if it had never occurred to them, so I didn’t pursue it.

  We went on to the hall and up a staircase of which it transpired there were three. This, the main one, was shiny and lethal – Vera and Mr Sheen having evidently staked their claim – but the other two were equally perilous, being spiral and rotten with woodworm, so that you had to watch where you put your foot for fear of falling through. All of these assault courses were a source of joy to Ivo, who kept trying to give me the slip and clamber up and down the precipices, like some novice skier intent on sustaining multiple fractures on the black run on day one. Once we’d made it to the girls’ bedrooms I dutifully ooed and ahhed as yet more pink-sequinned froth appeared, but then seeing they were totally absorbed, I left them to it. As I walked back across the landing, I noticed a door was open. I peeped in and caught a glimpse of Martha, fast asleep on a bed. Blimey, that was pretty cool, wasn’t it? Was there no end to her gall? Still, mine was not to reason why and all that was required of me was to collect my food and return, somewhat bemused, to the relative sanity of my cottage.

  And so began something of a routine. Every day I’d cook as much as I possibly could at my stove, then take it all up to the house. Determined not to be cowed by Martha’s sullenness I’d breeze in with a ‘Lovely day, Martha!’ To which she’d turn her cold grey eyes on me and answer ‘Is it?’ In the icy silence that followed I’d flounder blithely on about how much I loved these crisp winter mornings, whilst what I really wanted to say was ‘Well, Martha, and how would you like a good kick in the pants, you silly tart?’

  The arrangement suited me fine though, so I just bit my lip and observed her with mounting astonishment. As far as she was concerned my arrival heralded her departure, and the moment I set foot in the house she’d pluck her bag from the table, grab her leather jacket from the back of a chair, and disappear. And not just into the bowels of the house either, not upstairs for a kip and a Diet Coke, but out, into her car, and away down the hill for a good couple of hours. I watched from the window as she roared down the drive in her ancient Mini. Crikey, she had a nerve. What happened if Joss or Annabel rang, I wondered? Asked where she was? And where on earth did she go, for heaven’s sake? Off to see Gary? Off for a quicky?

  In fact it was a relief to be rid of her. The atmosphere lightened when she’d gone and the twins were surprisingly good company. I taught them some basic cooking as they jabbered like magpies around me, and even Toby would come and perch on the kitchen table, watching as I worked. Sometimes I chatted to him about the river; asked him about the wildlife down there, whether he thought there’d be much fishing this summer, if he’d seen the heron’s nest down by the spinney, carefully drawing him out on a subject I knew he found irresistible. I noticed his face wasn’t quite so thunderous of late, and I also found that if I tried hard enough, I could actually make him laugh. Once, when I’d popped back to get something from the cottage, I came into the kitchen to find him singing away to the radio I’d brought up.

  ‘You’ve got a nice voice, Toby,’ I said in surprise. ‘Do you sing at school?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he snapped, jumping off the table. ‘D’you think there’s room for more than one artistic temperament in this house?’ And with that he slammed out of the back door, armed with a packet of Jaffa Cakes.

  I sighed and went back to my lamb à la Grecque. Yes, lamb à la Grecque. You see, as the weeks had gone by, I’d sneakily managed to foist all manner of haute cuisine on to the Red Lion, and all under the euphemistic guise of ‘stew’. I’d go in armed with coq au vin and announce ‘Chicken stew, Bob!’ To which he’d rub his hands gleefully and say ‘Ooh, good girl, Rosie! Yesterday’s fish stew went down a treat! I’d smile at this description of my bouillabaisse, but it was true, it was going down a treat, because contrary to what Bob had maintained, the locals had very good taste, appreciated decent food, and were lapping it up. Cooking with alcohol wasn’t a problem because I picked it up free from the pub, and since I always stuck to seasonal ingredients, it wasn’t expensive either, all of which meant that I got to cook interesting food, the locals ate well, and in the event, I became positively lauded. ‘The New Cook at the Red Lion’ was quite the talk of Pennington and the surrounding villages. Bob, of course, was delighted.

  ‘It’s packed!’ he roared when I rang one night to remind him to chop some parsley on to the jugged hare. ‘The only time we’ve been as full as this is when we had a bent barman who was giving away free drinks to all his mates!’

  I was quietly thrilled. Everything I cooked was perfectly capable of being reheated in a microwave and I resisted the temptation to experiment. Spinach and crab soufflé might taste tremendous fresh from the oven at Farlings, but would taste like a tatty old slipper by the time Bob and the missus had finished with it. Yes, it was hard work – particularly with four children and two terriers in beads and sunglasses trailing me all the while – but I enjoyed it, and Ivo was learning quite a lot too, what with having the older children around. Mostly words like bugger. I couldn’t imagine where they’d picked their language up from, but I supposed it must be Martha, although I have to say, I’d yet to hear her swear. I’d yet to hear her say anything much actually, except ‘yeah … I know …’ on the phone. As I walked in on this particular morning, she was at it again, presumably to Gary. I carried a brace of partridge I’d managed to get from a local gamekeeper over to the table and wondered for the umpteenth time why on earth Joss and Annabel kept her on. Strangely enough the children seemed to adore her and spoke very fondly of her, but I couldn’t help thinking –

  ‘No! Oh no!’ she suddenly shrieked into the phone. I nearly dropped my birds. I swung round to see her collapsing into the receiver. ‘Oh, Nan, I can’t bear it! Not again!’

  I watched in astonishment as, sobbing wildly now, she dropped the phone and hid her face in her hands. I dithered for a moment, then scurried over.

  ‘Martha! What on earth’s happened, what’s wrong?’

  She sobbed on, heartrendingly so. I put my arm tentatively around her shoulders. Her skinny body shook, but she didn’t resist me, so I led her gently to a chair. Gary. Yes, that’s it, it must be Gary.

  ‘It’s my dad,’ she cried, her voice breaking. ‘He’s got cancer. It was all right for a bit, but Nan says it’s come back!’

  I sat down and gazed at her in horror. ‘Oh! God, Martha, I had no idea!’

  She cried into the table, her spiky head cradled in her arms now. ‘He’ll ’ave to go back to ’orspital, it’ll kill ’im!’

  I bit my lip, regarding her slumped form for a moment. Then quickly I got up and nipped to the fridge for a bottle of wine. I grabbed a couple of glasses, sat down and poured them out. When I was sure she’d had a bloody good cry and was getting to the catchy breath stage, I pushed one towards her.

  ‘Here,’ I said gently. ‘Take a gulp of this and then tell me all about it, eh?’

  She raised her head and blinked at the glass. Her watery eyes flicked up at me, then she reached out and took a slug. Her hand shook as s
he lit a cigarette. She took another swig of wine, another drag on her cigarette, but then gradually, haltingly, and with pauses for nose blowing, it all came out. About how her mother had died four years ago. About how she’d got this job on the strength of her father being the gardener here. About how her dad had suddenly been taken ill and how she’d become the breadwinner, about how there were three younger children at home to look after and how she was terrified they’d all be taken into care if she lost her job. About how scared they all were for her dad, how she had to rally the younger ones, keep their peckers up, make them believe he wouldn’t die when all the time her heart was in her boots. Her face crumpled occasionally, and there were pauses to catch her breath, but she told me about the terrible pain her dad was in. Told me how she sat by his bed as he crushed her hand to bits, his face contorted with agony. She told me how terrified he was of going back to hospital, how he relied on her, how they all relied on her, and finally, how truly, terribly, exhausted she was by it all.

  ‘And I know I’m not giving it my all up here neiver,’ she sniffed, ‘but I used to, I swear it. I’m fond of these kids and they’re all right they are, I’ve seen they’re all right, but it’s just I’m so knackered now. And now that Joss is away and I’m stayin’ up here, I’m up all night wiv Toby too. He ’as these terrible nightmares see when ’is dad’s away, so by the time I start work in the mornin’ I just ’aven’t got the strength!’

  I gazed at her. ‘So … hang on … when you disappear every day –’

  ‘I get back to Dad. That first chemo took it out of him, left him ever so weak, so I get him some lunch, get the kids’ tea ready, make sure our Damien’s not skiving school, then sit wiv Dad some more. Read to him an’ that.’

  ‘Oh!’ I started guiltily. ‘And I thought you were seeing your boyfriend!’

  She stared at me. ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘You know, Gary.’

  She gave a hollow laugh. ‘Gary chucked me months ago. Said he never saw me ’cos I was always up here or wiv me dad. And anyway, he’s wiv that slag Dawn Pentergrast now isn’t he. He don’t know I know that, but I walked past his house last Saturday and saw them at it, in the back of his Mr Whippy van.’