Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘So how come she’s finally gone then?’

  ‘This afternoon she was officially served with a decree nisi from Jonathan, Kitty’s brother. I didn’t want it to be like that, but in the end she left me no choice. She’s finally got to get out of my house.’

  ‘You mean you’ve wanted her to leave before?’ I said in surprise.

  ‘Certainly I have. But I wasn’t going to chuck her out and I wasn’t going to move either, which was my only other option.’

  ‘But I thought – well I thought you were so in love with her!’ I blurted. ‘On New Year’s Eve, you went so maudlin suddenly, as if you couldn’t bear to be without her!’

  ‘Hell, no. I guess I went quiet because you telling me she’d sent you off for condoms reminded me of what she was like. Not just ice cold but manipulative too. And it reminded me of what I’d lost. Six years to the day.’ He paused. ‘Kitty died on New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘Oh!’ I gasped in horror.

  ‘It’s the first year in six I’ve seen a moment of it sober. That was thanks to you, Rosie. And that’s how Annabel knew she was beaten. She knew I’d spent it with you and she knew I wasn’t comatose in a heap on the floor either. And it made me realize something, too. Made me realize I could spend that night with you and not just bear it, but enjoy it. Somehow, I also knew that Kitty wanted it too. That it was time now. That she’d approve.’

  I held my breath. Gazed out of the windscreen at the fields whistling past. ‘You … loved her very much.’

  ‘More than words can say.’

  I fell silent. Tried not to breathe. It seemed I suddenly had far too much breath, all noisy and gassy and intrusive. More than words can say … oh God …

  ‘And I didn’t say those words enough. Which probably explains why I find it so hard to express myself to you, too. I’m all right on paper, Rosie, give me a pen and paper and I’ll tell you how much I love you, but leave it to my vocal cords and –’

  I swung round. ‘How much you –’

  ‘I don’t believe you don’t know,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No!’ I gasped. ‘At least – well I’d hoped, of course, prayed – but it seemed so much, too much, and – yesterday in London, you seemed so distant, so cool!’

  ‘Yes, well, forgive me if I didn’t take you in my arms in your marital home just after the police had given a morbid account of your husband’s last few hours. It seemed to me the metaphorical chalk mark of his body was still outlined on the sitting-room floor. It seemed somewhat tacky.’

  ‘Oh! Yes, right.’

  ‘Just as flying into your arms on the hard shoulder of the highway also seemed inappropriate and, frankly, downright dangerous.’

  ‘Oh! Well, yes, I suppose it might have been and – gosh what a supremely practical man you are, Joss!’

  He smiled. ‘Only comparatively. Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  He gripped the wheel hard, driving faster than ever now down a rather familiar lane. ‘You’re not exactly making this easy for me, Rosie. Here am I, a jaded and emotionally battered man with two wives behind me already, three mixed-up kids in two and damn all to offer you except my feelings and I’m doing my best to see if you feel the same way.’ He flew over a sleeping policeman, then suddenly swung a left and skidded to a halt on some gravel.

  I felt dizzy, all I could see were his eyes, which as he turned to me were heavy with meaning. I gazed into them.

  ‘Oh yes!’ I breathed. ‘Yes, I see what you mean and I do, I do feel the same!’ I went to fly into his arms but the bloody seat belt garrotted me.

  ‘Here,’ he snapped it open and finally – finally I was there. Where I belonged. He bent his tawny head to mine and kiss after kiss unfolded on my lips, each one, I thought as I shut my eyes, more gloriously, deliciously sweet than the last. I realized with a pang that I was turning to jelly. At last, I thought joyously, at last after so long, after so many years in the wilderness, after so many years of arid, dried-up emotions, it seemed the thaw was finally taking place. As he lifted my chin to gaze into my eyes, kiss my cheeks, the side of my mouth, my hair, I basked blissfully in the glory of it all, slowly opening my eyes to feast on him. But as I feasted, something else came into my line of vision. My mother. Peering through the sitting-room window. I froze.

  ‘Christ!’ I squeaked, sitting bolt upright. ‘This is my house!’

  He looked around. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘I mean, my parents’ house!’

  ‘Sure, I know that,’ he said patiently.

  I gulped. Rearranged my clothing, patted my hair. Heavens, I’d never actually snogged in my parents’ drive before, not even as a teenager, and I was surprised this eminently practical man found it such an appropriate location. Why had he driven here? Surely there were miles of lovers’ lanes back there just waiting to be grappled in, what the hell were we doing at my parents’?

  He sat back, his arm along the back of the seat, watching me. ‘Well, go on then.’

  I gaped at him, mystified. ‘Go … on … where?’ I panicked. Oh God, had he changed his mind again? Was he taking me home to Mother? What was wrong with this man?

  ‘Go and get Ivo. I presume you come as a package, don’t you? Just as I do? Apart from anything else, I’ve got pretty attached to the little guy.’

  I stared. ‘Oh!’ I groaned ecstatically. ‘Oh yes, of course! Is that why –’

  ‘We’ve come back? It is, as a matter of fact, unless you’d like to put him up for adoption?’

  ‘No! No, I wouldn’t!’ I leapt out of the car and ran up the drive. I stopped short of the front door. Turned. Two seconds later I was back, rapping on the car window. ‘Joss!’

  He opened his door. ‘What?’

  ‘Get out! I want you to meet my father!’

  He grinned, got out and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Meet the parents, eh? Sure, but I have to warn you, I haven’t done this for years. Not since I was in the Ivy League. Hope I don’t use the wrong fork or fart as I sit down.’

  I giggled as we held hands and walked up to the door. ‘Well, you’ve already met my mother. She was the one with the blue hair who told you to bog off.’

  ‘Ah yes, charming woman, delightful. How will she feel about me marrying her daughter, I wonder?’

  I stopped dead in my tracks on the top step, my hand on the door handle. ‘You – want to marry me?’

  He turned. Took both my hands. ‘Yes, didn’t I mention that?’ he said gently. ‘Yes, I do. I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.’

  ‘Crikey!’ Crikey, Rosie? Was that a mature response? Cool even? ‘I – I mean –’ I struggled.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he interrupted hurriedly, ‘you’ve just buried a husband and I’m rushing you, and I know you have other plans too, other dreams, like your restaurant, but I’ve thought it all through, Rosie, really I have. I thought you could convert the old hay barn, you know, the one way across the meadow. It’s huge and it’s got a gallery in it and heaps of old beams and character, I reckon with a bit of work you could transform it, have it just exactly as you planned – herb gardens, herbaceous borders, the works. Hell, you can have a nude flying circus in there for all I care, and I thought –’

  ‘Stop, stop!’ I laughed. ‘No, it’s not that! It’s not the restaurant – God, just you and the children are more than enough for me – it’s just, well, I didn’t know! Didn’t know you felt so strongly!’

  His eyes melted over me. ‘I can’t remember when I first fell in love with you, Rosie, I just know it got worse and worse. Almost from the day when you appeared on my doorstep with all your possessions and your ridiculous pride and your courage and your small son in tow, all I could think was, if only. If only I hadn’t rushed into marrying Annabel. If only I’d waited, but then I couldn’t be sure you’d come along, you see. And when you did, I felt as if I’d been kicked smartly and smugly in the teeth. I thought I’d have to sit by and watch, helpless, as you sailed off into the
sunset with that smarmy goddam Alex Munroe but thank God you didn’t, because yes, I do want to make you my wife but if you’re going to turn me down, please tell me now and I’ll go and get quietly hammered in the pub and we’ll forget all about it.’

  I was trembling now. ‘Don’t get hammered,’ I whispered. ‘I love you so much and yes, yes, I’ll marry you, right now if you like! Oh Joss, I must be the happiest girl alive. I –’ Suddenly I stopped. Listened. ‘Just a minute.’ I put my hand on the front door and pushed it gently. My mother shrieked and nearly toppled over backwards. She was crouching down with her ear to the keyhole, duster in hand.

  She struggled to her feet, covered in confusion and delight. ‘Mister Dubarry,’ she beamed, ‘or may I call you Joss? Might I say how delighted I am to see you again and how sorry I am about our little contretemps earlier. I do apologize. Good gracious, whatever was I thinking of, whisking you away like that! Now of course you have both been married before so a white wedding is probably out of the question, but cream can be awfully nice, or even lemon yellow. I know Marjorie’s son married a divorcée and she looked absolutely sweet in yellow, if a little fat, and it’s amazing what some avant garde vicars will let you get away with these days. Why, Cynthia Parker’s daughter was six months pregnant and she went sailing up the aisle in ivory, the little hussy, so I really don’t think there’ll be any problem there and …’

  Chapter One

  Somewhere over the English Channel travelling north, closer to the white cliffs than to Cherbourg and whilst cruising at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, a voice came over the tannoy. I’d heard this chap before, when he’d filled us in on our flying speed and the appalling weather in London, and he’d struck me then as being a cut above the usual easyJet Laconic. His clipped, slightly pre-war tones and well-modulated vowels had a reassuring ring to them. A good man to have in a crisis.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I wonder if I could have your attention for a moment, please. Is there by any chance a doctor on board? If so, would they be kind enough to make themselves known to a member of the cabin crew. Many thanks.’

  I glanced up from Country Living, dragging myself away from the scatter cushions in faded Cabbages and Roses linen I fully intended to make but probably never would, to toss attractively around the Lloyd Loom chairs in the long grass of the orchard I would one day possess, complete with old-fashioned beehive and donkey. I turned to my husband. Raised enquiring eyebrows.

  He pretended he’d neither heard the announcement nor sensed my eloquent brows: he certainly didn’t look at them. He remained stolidly immobile, staring resolutely down at the Dan Brown he’d bought at Heathrow and had taken back and forth to Paris, but had yet to get beyond page twenty-seven. I pursed my lips, exhaled loudly and meaningfully through my nostrils and returned to my orchard.

  Two minutes later, the clipped tones were back. Still calm, still measured, but just a little more insistent.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry, but if there is a doctor or a nurse on board, we would be most grateful if they would come forward. We really do need some assistance.’

  I nudged my husband. ‘James.’

  ‘Hm?’

  His shoulders hunched in a telltale manner, chin disappearing right into his neck and his blue-and-white checked shirt.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘They mean a doctor doctor,’ he murmured uncomfortably. ‘A GP, not a chiropodist.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, you’re a foot surgeon! Go on.’

  ‘There’ll be someone else,’ he muttered, pale-grey eyes glancing around nervously above his glasses, a trifle rattled I could tell.

  ‘Well, obviously, there isn’t, because they’ve asked twice. There could be someone dying. Just go.’

  ‘You know I hate this sort of thing, Flora. There’s bound to be someone with more general expertise, more –’

  ‘I really think, young man,’ said the elderly woman in the window seat beside him, a well-upholstered, imperious-looking matron who’d removed her spectacles to regard him pointedly and reprovingly over her tapestry, ‘that if you do have medical experience, you should go.’

  She made him sound like a conscientious objector.

  ‘Right. Yes. Yes, of course. All right, Flora, you don’t need to advertise me, thank you.’

  But I was already on my feet in the aisle to let him out, gesticulating wildly to a stewardess. ‘Here – over here. Make way, please.’ This to the queue of people waiting patiently beside us for the loo. We were quite close to the front as it was. ‘He’s a doctor.’

  ‘Make way?’ James repeated incredulously under his breath, shooting me an appalled look as the entire front section of the plane turned to look at the tall, lean, sandy-haired, middle-aged man who’d unfolded himself with effort from his seat and was now shuffling forwards, past the queue to the bog, mumbling apologies and looking, in his creased chinos and rumpled holiday shirt, more like a harassed librarian than a paramedic in a hurry.

  I sat back down again, feeling rather important, though I didn’t really sit: instead I perched on the arm of my aisle seat to get a better view. Luckily, a steward had redirected the queue to the loo at the back and I could now see that a little crowd of uniformed cabin crew had gathered around a young girl of about nine who was sitting on the floor, clearly in distress. In even more distress was the very beautiful woman in tight white jeans and a floral shirt standing over her, her hands over her mouth. She was pencil thin with a luxuriant mane of blonde hair, and her heavily accented voice rose in anguish.

  ‘Oh, mon dieu, I can’t do it again – I can’t!’

  I saw James approach and address her and she gabbled back gratefully in French, clutching his arm. I’m reasonably fluent, but at that range I couldn’t make it out, but then she switched back to English, saying, ‘And I have only one left – please – help!’

  She thrust something into my husband’s hand, at which point I was tapped on the shoulder from behind.

  ‘Excuse me, madam, would you mind taking your seat? We’re experiencing a spot of turbulence.’

  The glossy, lipsticked smile on the expertly made-up face of the stewardess meant business. The plane was indeed bumping around a bit. Reluctantly, I lowered my bottom, which obviously meant I missed the crucial moment, because when I craned my neck around the stewardess’s ample behind as she passed, the crowd at the front were on the floor and James was crouching with his back to me, clearly administering something. They’d tried to move the girl to a more secluded position and shield her with bodies, but a plane doesn’t yield much privacy. The blonde, clearly the mother, was the only one standing now, pushing frantic hands through her hair, clutching her mouth, unable to watch, but unable to turn away. My heart lurched for her. I remembered the time when Amelia shut her finger in the door and almost sliced the top off and I’d run away as James held it in place with a pack of frozen peas, and also when Tara coughed up blood in the sitting room and I’d raced upstairs, screaming for her father. You knew you had to help, but you loved them so much you couldn’t bear to watch. There was a muffled collective murmuring from the crew and then, without looking indecently ghoulish, I really couldn’t see any more, as the mother had dared to crouch down, obscuring James as well.

  I went back to my magazine. An interview with a woman from Colefax and Fowler informed me that, on the paint-effects front, Elephant’s Breath was all over. Everyone was coming into her Brooke Street showroom asking for chintzes and borders now. Borders. Blimey. I had rolls of the stuff in the attic. Did Laura Ashley circa 1980 count? Probably not. My mind wasn’t really on it, though, and I narrowed my eyes over my reading glasses. James had straightened up and was answering a series of quick-fire questions from the mother, whose relief was palpable, even though strain still showed in her eyes. My husband, typically, made light of it, brushing away what were clearly effusive thanks, and came back down the aisle, perhaps less hunched and beleaguered than when he’d gone up it, as quite a
few passengers now regarded him with interest. I got up quickly to let him slide in and sit down. The ordeal was over and relief was on his face.

  ‘Well?’ I asked. The matron beside him was also agog, needlework abandoned in her lap.

  ‘Nut allergy,’ he reported. ‘She’d taken a crisp from the girl beside her and it must have been cooked in peanut oil. The mother realized what had happened but had never had to administer the EpiPen before, and she cocked it up the first time. She had a spare one but was too scared to do it in case she got it wrong again. The stewardess was about to have a stab.’

  ‘So you did it?’

  He nodded. Picked up Dan Brown.

  ‘Did it go all right?’

  ‘Seemed to. She’s not dead.’

  ‘Oh, James, well done you!’

  ‘Flora, I have given the odd injection.’

  ‘Yes, but still.’

  ‘I say, well done, young man,’ purred his beady-eyed neighbour approvingly. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing. I gather you’re a surgeon?’

  ‘Consultant surgeon,’ I told her proudly.

  ‘Ingrowing toenails, mostly,’ said James, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. ‘The odd stubborn verruca.’

  ‘Nonsense, he trained as an orthopaedic. He’s done hips, knees, everything, but he gets a lot of referrals from chiropodists these days, when it’s out of their sphere of expertise.’ I turned to James. ‘Will she be all right? The little girl?’

  ‘She’ll be fine. It just takes a few moments to kick in.’

  ‘Anaphylactic shock,’ I explained to my new friend across his lap. Like most doctors’ wives I considered myself to be highly qualified, a little knowledge often being a dangerous thing.

  ‘Ah,’ she agreed sagely, regarding James with enormous respect now, her pale, rheumy eyes wide. ‘Well, that’s extremely serious, isn’t it? I say, you saved her life.’

  James grunted modestly but didn’t raise his head from his book. His cheeks were slightly flushed, though, and I was pleased. Morale could not be said to be stratospheric in the Murray-Brown household at the moment, what with NHS cuts and his private practice dwindling. When he’d first decided to specialize, years ago, he’d chosen sports injuries, having been an avid cricketer in his youth, but that had become a very crowded field. He’d seen younger, more ambitious men overtake him, so he’d concentrated on cosmetic foot surgery instead. A mistake in retrospect, for whilst in a recession people would still pay to have a crucial knee operation, they might decide to live with their unsightly bunions and just buy wider shoes. He’d even joked with the children about getting a van, like Amelia’s boyfriend, who was a DJ, adding wheels to his trade, morphing into a mobile chiropodist, perhaps with a little butterfly logo on the side. ‘A website, too!’ Amelia had laughed, ‘I’ll design it for you.’ But I’d sensed a ghastly seriousness beneath his banter. He spent too much time in what we loosely called ‘the office’ at the top of our house in Clapham, aka the spare room, pretending to write articles for the Lancet but in fact doing the Telegraph crossword in record time, then rolling up the paper and waging war on the wasp nest outside the window. Not really what he’d spent seven years training at St Thomas’s for. This then, whilst not the Nobel Prize for Medicine, was a morale boost.