Mrs Fytton's Country Life

by Mavis Cheek

  They turned a narrow corner and went through a glass-paned door into a large and sunlit kitchen.

  ‘I see what you mean about windows,' said Angela.

  Someone, perhaps understanding how much time is spent in these regions, had set in two enormous twelve-paned windows which were almost ceiling to floor and looked overwhelming and odd in the otherwise irregular space. Angela had to blink away the romantic image of a red-cheeked cook making her fruit tarts while the sprigged young mistress sat blushing at a pair of striding boots in a foursquare parlour. Something very peculiar seemed to be taking place in her psyche, she observed nervously. And it appeared to be love. A very dreadful, not-to-be-ignored urge to possess. She had felt it only once before, with Ian. With the children it was entirely different. When she looked upon them, newborn, she knew that she did possess them. The whole future process with them was one of letting go. The whole future process with Ian was one of trying to keep hold of him. She touched the rough whitened plaster of the kitchen wall. She still was.

  She shivered. Could she actually do this thing? She considered her children. They were part of her, warts and all, like her feet or her ears. They still had a lot of growing up to do before they became fully human. A lot. She remembered, for example, last year, when she had had flu. She was nursed by the two of them. If you could call it that. God knows where the deferential, caring children of yesteryear had gone, but they were certainly not living in no. 13 Francis Street. Death would have been infinitely preferable. Capital Gold (old pop music for old people) with the radio placed just out of reach. Judgement of Solomon regarding a particular pair of jeans when her head - yes, she had been sure of it - was the item that was splitting in two. They'd be all right in time... Part of being supermother was realizing when to let go. Part of being superwife was knowing how to hold on.

  She stared at the ancient flagstoned floor. Mrs Perry looked at her questioningly. 'Bit messy,' she said as a cheerful statement of fact.

  For a moment Angela was startled. Did she mean her life? And how did she know? Was she a mindreader? Then she realized it was addressed to the room, not her. 'Neat kitchen, dull life . . .' she said glibly. And she thought what a good, wholesome countrywoman Mrs Perry was in her floral pinny. I'll bet she's never even looked at another man, let alone been privy to the world of adultery... Best go easy on such thoughts, though, just in case the woman was a mind-reader. Country people had their ways. She'd read her Thomas Hardy.

  She leaned against a wide and ancient table, set around with battered wooden chairs, and tried to avoid thinking how Shaker they were. Not Shaker, Angela. Battered. Got it? 'How old is this bit?' she asked, looking up at the slopes and slants of the ceiling. She would not have been surprised to see a sign above the old stone sink warning the house's occupants about the dangers of the Black Death: 'Now Wash Ye Olde Hands'.

  Mrs Perry shrugged. 'Old’ she said.

  'Yes, but -' Angela shrugged. 'Three hundred? More? It must be a lot older than the front’

  'Five, six ...' Mrs Perry also shrugged. 'Who knows?' She jerked her thumb. 'There's a well out there they say is Celtic’

  Angela's heart went bump with love again. Mrs Angela Fytton, at home in her garden, perches on her Celtic well.

  'In the garden?' she said as casually as possible. 'An old well in the garden?'

  ' Mrs Perry looked at her with something vaguely akin to pity. 'Where else?' she said.

  'Well, quite’ said Angela, feeling an urban fool. 'How lovely - all that pure water.'

  And then the first edge of humour crept into Mrs Perry's faded blue eyes. 'With the churchyard just above it. Below body level. Which tells you that the church was built after the well. Which we all know anyway, given what we know... No thought for anybody, the church in those days.'

  Angela tried to look as though a few bodies draining through her water supply were neither here nor there. Mrs Perry did not look concerned. Perhaps she really was fey.

  Just in case, Angela tried to clear her mind of anything compromising. Like giving a twenty-pound donation to the anti-bloodsports lobby. She wanted this house so badly that if Mrs Perry had said, 'We like setting the dogs on little fluffy infant fox cubs and dipping our newborn babies in their blood afterwards’ Angela would have wished her mind, if Mrs Perry was able to read it, to say, quite unequivocally, 'Of course you do - things are so different in the country ...' Rather than reflect the more worrying conundrum of people in red coats with hunting horns saying that they just enjoyed a good day out and scarcely ever found one of the blighters, while other people in red coats with hunting horns said that it was the only way to keep the foxy numbers down...

  ‘I think foxes are very overrated’ she said out loud.

  Mrs Perry looked at her strangely. And then, as if making up her mind to humour Angela, she said, ‘I don't think my hens would agree.'

  'No,' said Angela brightly.

  Hens. Of course there would be hens. She tried desperately to remember what they had been talking about before the consideration of foxes. Graves? Death? Hunting? Football? Football? Why should she think of football?

  Mrs Perry said, 'It probably serviced this place once.'

  Football? thought Angela. Football?

  'The old vicar banned dressing it.'

  Football? Dressing? What ?

  Mrs Perry, who may or may not have read her mind, added in a kind voice, 'For the well.' Ah, the well. That was it. Celtic well. Celtic football club.

  The green and white hoops of the football club. .

  Just try reading my mind, she thought. It could be dropped behind enemy lines with its code-breaker and still not be unscrambled.

  'You mean this could be as old as -'

  'Alfred and the cakes,' said Mrs Perry informatively. 'Here.'

  Angela gazed around her. 'Not actually in here?' she whispered hopefully, looking around for the hearth.

  'No,' said Mrs Perry, quite kindly in the circumstances, 'in Somerset. Alfred hid in Somerset. It was somewhere round about here that he played his harp in the Danish camp and did all that wandering.' She looked thoughtful. 'It was always a good site. Of course, most of the land's gone now. But I don't doubt there had always been some kind of place to live in on this part. Protected from the Levels, you see, by the hill. And with the well and the stream.'

  She gave Angela a bright smile. The kind of smile a schoolteacher might bestow upon a foolish but keen child. ‘I suppose Alfred might have used this kitchen - or the one

  before it - or even the one before that. No one could say he didn't, now, could they?'

  Angela was still blushing. How could she have thought -King Alfred actually sat in this room? She smiled as sanely as she could at Mrs Perry and slid over towards one of the windows.

  'Lovely,' she said, staring out unseeing. By the time she looked around she had composed herself again. Sod Alfred. Sod burnt cakes. And sod the foxes. She wanted this house. And she wanted it just as it was. She had seen enough Small-bone kitchens and Pogenpohl bathrooms in her time. And the final madness of her London neighbours, they of a gazebo that dare not speak its name, throwing a party to celebrate the completion of their poky little conservatory. 'It'll be the new en-suite next,' she said, making Ian laugh.

  Don't, she reminded herself. Don't...

  Mrs Perry gestured with her square, red hand. 'Well, then. Kitchen,' she said. And, crossing to the other side of it, she opened another door and said, 'Pantry. Which I don't mind admitting I shall miss.'

  'Where are you moving to?' asked Angela.

  'Taunton,' said Mrs Perry. 'Near the town centre.'

  'That's where my mother-in-law used to live. One of those newish houses up on the hill as you go in.'

  ‘No more hills for me,' said Mrs Perry firmly. 'I want it flat with my hips.'

  Angela eyed her hips. Gout? she wondered. Old hunting accident? 'Um’ she said.

  Mrs Perry filled the kettle while Angela tried not to think of all those grave
yard bones adding flavour. The kettle had once been white and now - from a distance - looked as if it had been stylishly marbled in Conran shades of grey. Next to it was a bowl of dark brown eggs - the kind found resting on straw in the better class of delicatessen - and these too looked as if they had been enhanced by art. Sepia art, with feathers and pretty little smears of shit. Everything looked as if it had come from Divertimentos rustic department. And on the central table were an upturned loaf of bread, a scattering of crumbs, a half-full bottle of milk, three used mugs and a pair of very dirty red plastic gloves. Oldenburg among the Ver-meers. She sighed, reaching out and touching one of the gloves despondently. There was no one to share the visual joke with now...

  Several of Angela's inner organs contracted painfully again. She wouldn't keep him, that new one. She couldn't keep him. She couldn't and she wouldn't because - she tried to think of a why. Because - death knell of love, the modern equivalent of rings round the bath and crusty socks - she, the silly young cow, second Mrs Fytton, sent him out jogging. One of the things she always admired about her husband was his cheerful indifference to sport - whether watching it or performing it. Now he was jogging and pretending to like it. Men of Ian's age either died or moved on when that happened to them. The scales would soon fall from his bulging, sweat-filled eyes as he hurtled around Wimbledon Common like a demented Womble. It crossed her mind, when he first told her about it, that she might drive there early one morning, catch him on the homeward run and lean out of the car window with a cool drink and an adoring look of surprise. But good sense prevailed. It would not do to illuminate his foolishness. If she wanted him back, then she wanted him back with his self-esteem intact. And, under the circumstances, she was not altogether sure she could keep from laughing. Send him jogging, would she?

  Good, she thought, smiling like a serpent. Good.

  She removed her mind from the erotic consideration of her ex-husband's sticky, sweaty body embracing her across an empowering Vimto and focused on a large red and black object. She knew she should restrain herself but it was too late.

  'Oh, an Aga - she gushed.

  Mrs Perry looked at her as if she had just admired a dead cat. 'I'll show you round while the tea brews, Mrs Fytton’

  Country people, Angela reminded herself, do not admire Agas - they cook with them. 'Thank you, Mrs Perry’ she said. And, changing the subject - rather cleverly, she fancied - she added, 'Brews is a funny way to describe something non-alcoholic, isn't it?'

  Mrs Perry said, 'Everything brews in the country. It's all the same - wines, ales, medicines, teas -'

  'Oh, the ancient arts’ said Angela. 'Wise women

  'Well, I don't know about that’ said Mrs Perry, then she nodded. 'But women were the brewers once, so I'm told’

  Angela was just about to ask her the origins of the name Church Ale House when Mrs Perry said, 'Talking of age ...' and crossed to the window ledge. She picked up a handful of little white objects which, just for a very bad moment, Angela thought might be teeth.

  Teeth? Fine. She gritted her own as Mrs Perry took her hand and tipped the objects into the palm. They were roughly square, very smooth, a pearled yellowy white, about a quarter of an inch thick. Angela ran her fingertips over them and rattled them together.

  'Know what they are?' said Mrs Perry.

  Angela was about to suggest upper front molars, but after her orgasmic spasm over the Aga she kept quiet. She shook her head, stared into her palm and hoped that whatever she held there had been very well washed.

  Mrs Perry took one and held it up. 'Roman mosaic chips.'

  Angela blinked. 'No...' she said.

  Mrs Perry nodded. 'Daphne Blunt told me. I dug them up in the garden. Or the rabbits did.' She put them back on the window ledge and shrugged once more. 'So who knows how old this place might be?'

  'Tesserae’ Angela said in amazement.

  'That's the name. They turn up occasionally. So there must have been something once. This house has seen a lot of changes - bits built on, bits pulled off, money made and money lost. I don't suppose the plot has ever been idle.' 'Bit like life,' said Angela.

  The woman nodded. She patted the teapot. 'And now,' she said, 'you'd best be looking around, I suppose, since you're here.'

  5

  April

  Well! some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

  maria edgeworth

  The tour began with what Mrs Perry called the parlour, to Angela's delight. 'The parlour,' she repeated to herself softly as they travelled towards the front of the house, their footsteps clumping and creaking on the fine, bare boards. Not the lounge, not the sitting room, but the parlour...

  On the way Mrs Perry paused and opened a door with half-lights. 'The utility,' she said. 'Washing machine, freezer, sink -you know.'

  Angela said that she did.

  'And where the dogs sleep.'

  'Ah yes’ said Angela, thinking with pleasure of three baskets labelled Victor, Leaky and Otto.

  'The estate agent called it the utility. I call it the old wash-house. And before the war it was the still room. The first war,' ‘she added.

  Angela nodded knowingly, wondering what the hell a. still room actually was, as opposed to a moving one, but she did not ask. She was never very good at showing her ignorance and she didn't intend to do so now. After all, she had a history degree; she knew how to look things up.

  She peered over Mrs Perry's shoulder. The room was big and cold with stone walls, a grubby little high-up window, a well-trodden flagged floor and a small half-glazed door leading to the garden, a door so small in proportion to the space that it looked like an Alice in Wonderland opening. A hen peered in, head on one side, comically querying its outer exile. It pecked at the glass and Mrs Perry rapped her knuckles to frighten it away.

  'They can crack this old glass, silly varmints,' she said.

  Angela was thinking that it would make good office space. Ian would need office space. 'Hens are funny,' she said, to cover her smile.

  'The parlour,' said Mrs Perry eventually, pushing open a panelled wooden door that creaked. 'This and the one opposite are the best rooms, and the two above.'

  'Georgian’ said Angela.

  'Must get that hinge oiled,' said Mrs Perry. She had obviously been saying it for years.

  Double aspect, thought Angela, maybe sixteen foot square, original fireplace or as like as damn it, two good windows overlooking the front shrubs and holly hedge, probably good boards under the carpet, two doors - maybe original - certainly nicely foursquare and fitting. Not a central heating pipe in sight. And good light. Pinch me someone, she thought, pinch me.

  She went over to a window. Mrs Perry's curtains, pulled carelessly aside, were velvet, once a rich olive green but now faded to the colour of gooseberries. Where do you get velvet like that? wondered Angela. As if she had read her mind again, just at that moment Mrs Perry tugged at them and said, ‘I’ll leave the curtains. There's a bit of life left in them yet. They came from the Hall when it was sold. One of Archie's aunts made them. I remember seeing her sewing them when I was a girl.'

  'How lovely,' said Angela.

  'Ruined her eyes,' said Mrs Perry.

  'Ah,' said Angela, realizing she must distinguish sentimentality from happiness.

  'No electric then, mean buggers,' said Mrs Perry. 'And all the girls sewed. Servants' rooms didn't get electricity till the Abdication.' She pulled back the curtains at the other window.

  'They forgot.' She smiled grimly. 'Apparently. And no one complained. Knew their place then.'

  Angela imagined giving her daughter a needle and thread and a candle to sew by. 'They certainly don't now’ she said.

  'Good job’ said Mrs Perry.

  Celia Johnson, thought Angela suddenly, Celia Johnson ... That is the kind of person I shall become. I'll have a black bicycle and a wicker basket full of library books and a wide-eyed innocence for an innocent world in which I'll be sur
rounded only by good, honest folk who do right in the end.

  'Doesn't seem to be doing much good’ said Mrs Perry, looking out of the window.

  Celia Johnson gave a little ring on her bicycle bell and rode off. Angela returned to the present. 'What?' she said.