Mrs Fytton's Country Life

by Mavis Cheek

  They continued to stare, mouths open, exactly like figures in a very depressed Aunt Sally.

  'Francis Street sold very quickly. As they do. Didn't even need to put up a board.' She smiled, humouring. But they were not to be humoured. She eyed her daughter and her son with the faintest touch of malevolence. That'll teach you to pay absolutely no attention to anything going on around you, she thought. 'You always said you hated living there...' She shrugged. They could not stop her, no matter how they tried.

  'You cannot do this’ said Andrew.

  'Oh, come on’ she said. 'It isn't as if I've murdered anyone.'

  They continued to stare at her. Murder, it seemed, would be more acceptable.

  'But it's our gap year, I don't want to be in Somerset’ said Claire.

  'Nor do I’ said Andrew.

  'But I do’ said Angela.

  'I want to be in London’ said Claire.

  'So do 1’ said Andrew.

  'But I do not’ said Angela. 'In Somerset I shall be a good person and a busy person, and I shall be good to others and back to my roots...'

  'Oh, you and your roots’ said Ian, which he really shouldn't have. If ever a man flapped a red rag at an enraged bull cunningly disguised as his ex-wife, it was him.

  'And manage my own small patch. Women have always been allowed to do that, at least. Even the aristocratic lady of the manor, who was supposed to lie around like a lily in her chastity belt, was allowed to dispense alms and grant favours. Of course, I could take the veil, but I think I prefer just moving to the West Country in order to facilitate this. I can't do it in London because everyone is entirely horrible, and half an acre and a cow would cost the earth’

  A flash of the old Ian again, amused despite himself. Isn't it seven acres and a cow?' he asked, quite fondly. 'I think they've worked out that you need at least that in order to sustain life.'

  'Well, there you are - imagine trying to get that lot in Holland Park...'

  'Yes,' he said, almost - almost - laughing. 'I see your point.'

  She knew he wanted to say that she was plastered. But he was also amused - and shrewd - and controlled himself. He had finally realized that he was not dealing with the rational and he put his red rag away. If he had so much as tried again with 'What about a little water, dear?' she would probably have upended the bottle over him. She loved him for that judgement. She nearly reached out and wiped a little speck of yellow from his chin and told him she loved him for that. But she let him speak. One day she would tell him that she still loved everything about him. Including dribbling.

  'You're being a little on the selfish side, Angie’ he said, calm but gritting his teeth. 'Surely you could wait a while?'

  'Nope,' she said. 'And don't call me Angie.'

  She raised her glass to him in an unmistakable gesture of defiance. Her version of the Hemingway spit. 'I'm going, Ian,' she said. 'And no one will stop me.'

  The penny, it seemed, suddenly dropped. Ian finally understood the full implications of her actions. She was going to Somerset. From the look of his son's stony eyes and his daughter's Bouchette at Hanging Rock, his children were not. The penny that had dropped was the one regarding his being their father as well as father to the advancedly befanged Tristan.

  And being their father meant that he still had responsibilities in that department, were they to find themselves homeless in London, so to speak. He had the exquisitely alert sensitivity of a drowning man. He knew. She leaned towards him and said, 'Now do you see why it will affect you so much?'

  'No,' he said firmly. 'I do not.'

  The children were staring at her.

  Her ex-husband was staring at her.

  And it was at this precise and precious moment that she knew she would break him. And once broken, she would have him back. To mend him again.

  'You cannot,' he said.

  'But I have.'

  She knew her children would not follow. And you, my wandering husband, she thought, are in for a terrible shock. Claire and Andrew, your children, are teenagers. And they are completely horrible at the moment. Worse, they are completely horrible without knowing they are horrible. There is nothing malevolent in their behaviour. They are - just for the time being - a complete walking disaster area. And they have nothing else to do for the next year and a bit but lie around watching television. Watch this space: Binnie, the multi-molared Tristan and those twin guns of gross insensitivity, our children, with you somewhere in between. All under the same roof. And not mine.

  'Well,' said Angela, 'if you two don't want to come with me to Somerset, you'll have to find somewhere else to stay in London. After all, your exams are over. I'm sure you've done really well, so it's only for a year or so. Then you'll be off to university.'

  'You could go this year instead,' said Ian to them, clutching at the proverbial straw.

  'Dad’ they both said, 'we're on our gap year.'

  Angela sipped from her glass daintily and licked her lips. 'Now’ she said, 'who do you know with a large enough house in London to put you up?'

  The Aunt Sally eyes, or two pairs of them, swivelled in Ian's direction.

  'Just wait a minute,' he said.

  Tan’ said Angela, with a wonderful smile and a raise of her glass, 'you and Binnie have such a lovely big house. All that garden...'

  'But, Mum’ said her two offspring, once more in unison, 'it's in Wimbledon...' 'Well, that's London, isn't it?'

  If Claire's lip came out any further it would throw a shadow. 'Hardly’ she said, and kicked at the table leg as she used to do in her infancy.

  'Claire’ said Angela warningly, 'don't kick. And anyway, as you keep telling me - all of you - she, Binnie, likes you both so much... And you her. And then there is child of the tooth fairy, Tristan. It seems an ideal solution. I'll miss you, of course.'

  Ian finally replaced his spoon. Angela sensed an imminent explosion and rushed on. 'So let me know as soon as possible and I can let the removal firm know about your things. I'm very happy to take them with me. Very. If you want to come. And you'll just love the house -1 know you will. It's miles and miles from anywhere, but there's a church and a vicar who plays the guitar and some lovely country walks. Now, when will you come down and see it?'

  'But it's Somerset’ they both chorused.

  'It is’ she agreed, smiling.

  'And you're our mother.'

  'I am. And I always will be.'

  The fuse then blew.

  'It's another of your blasted men, isn't it?' said Ian savagely.

  'Au contraire, my duck’ she said. 'It is the exact opposite. It is Mrs Fytton alone.' She looked at her children. 'Unless you two would like to change your minds?'

  But she knew she was quite, quite safe...

  The removal men brought her back to earth.

  'What's tickling you?' said the driver. She realized she had been chuckling out loud. 'Families’ she said firmly. 'Mine in particular.' 'You can add mine to the list’ he said with feeling. 'And mine’ said his mate. The van turned into the Mump Road. 'But at least’ said Angela proudly, 'at least I have made my escape.'

  The men both looked at her suspiciously.

  'Now the children are grown up’ she added quickly and dutifully, mindful that there was a lot of furniture in the van, a lot of heavy furniture, including the blessed piano. Why she had brought that, she really did not know. She couldn't play and Claire and Andrew's stumbling Grade Three hardly made the bringing of it worthwhile.

  She pointed to the house. 'That's it. The one with the holly hedge on the left.'

  The older driver pulled up at the gate and took a look, squinting at her beloved new home critically.

  'Is that it?' he said jumping down.

  She followed him. Standing to face him on the road. New beginnings, she reminded herself, and placed her hands on her hips in what she hoped was the manner of an earthbound peasant woman.

  He looked back at her and curled his lip contemptuously. Moving to the cou
ntry, in his opinion, meant acreage.

  'It's not very big now, is it?' he said scathingly.

  The younger man jumped out of the cab. He too stared at the house and he too was derisive. 'Not big at all’ he said positively. 'Not at all big...'

  'Well, you wouldn't want it up your nose for a wart, now would you?' she said sharply, having had quite enough of good behaviour.

  After the men had left and she had arranged the basics, she went out into the garden. After all, she had the rest of her life to decide where the cutlery should go.

  The summer evening's light was just beginning to fade. First she walked up towards the top of her garden, passing the Celtic well, which was overgrown and ordinary-looking. Some previous incumbent had fashioned a rough wooden cover, which made an ideal place to sit in the late evening sun. She tried to peer over the blackthorn and the yews behind the well, separating her from the churchyard, but they were too dense and shadowy. She ran her hand over their metallic leaves and heard flutterings from within - mice or birds, and not taking kindly to being woken. A few apple trees, the remains of a small orchard, were set behind a straggly japonica hedge, which was covered in marble-sized growths. Mrs Perry had told her they were quinces. 'Oh, good,' she said to the hard little fruits. For she was full of enthusiasm for her stores and looking forward to spending a lot of time in that kitchen, communing with the past sisterhood of selves. She was not entirely sure what you did with a quince, but she was entirely sure she could find out.

  Beneath the apple trees the hives sat quietly, like miniature tower blocks, and she kept well away. Sammy the pigman was to come and show her how to deal with it all and until he did, she knew better than to mess with the community. She whispered a hello and walked on. You were supposed to talk to them. She'd read it in a book.

  The adjoining Perry field was covered in tufted grass except for an ugly brown churned-up patch close to the hedge, and she wondered what had caused it. But it was none of her business. Just be thankful, she told herself, that they kept it. And then she went over to the wicked mulberry. She paused to run her hand down its curious trunk and then peered round to the other side. Archie had certainly done a good job. All promise and no fulfilment indeed. But despite the paucity of its frontal endowments, the fruits were coming on, the pale green clusters flushed with a faint pink. Mine, she thought, touching it again. Mine. She put her face close to the rough bark and kissed it.

  The day's heat had lessened and the air was damp and cooling with evening dew. She crossed the front of the house and walked down towards the ramshackle outbuildings, pinching at the lavender bushes as she passed. They had been knocked about by the removal men and the scented pellets lay scattered on the path, sending up their heady mixture of peppery mint as she bruised them with her feet! A bit like a bridal path, she thought, except you couldn't carry yourself over the threshold.

  She found a broom down near the hens, an alarmingly witch-like broom made from twigs and a knobbly stick, and she began to sweep. The hens clucked and ran around suspiciously, pecking at the lavender and looking understandably surprised when they ate a bit. She had no idea what to do with them. Mrs Perry said you put them away for the night. What she did not say was how you got them into the henhouse. She could hardly offer them mugs of cocoa and plump up their pillows. They were probably as wayward as night-time children and sulked and ran about. She swept on, building up to it. The first battle. She would probably fail.

  She swept until all the bricks were clear, and she would have swept until Domesday, enjoying the sense of possession, the sense of being on her own. She had never been on her own in the whole of her life. It was oddly pleasant.

  Suddenly she was aware of silence. Complete silence. She looked up at the deepening sky, around her at the darkening garden. Silence. Where, then, were the hens? She walked around the house again and back down the path towards the henhouse. Still silence. No clucking and scattering at her feet. She tried a few little clucky, clucky, clucky noises. Nope. Perhaps they had run away? And she had let them go. On her very first night. Were they like pets, then? Had they decided to leave now their owner was gone? Did they in some way know how incompetent she was likely to be? Her confidence waned in the silence. This, surely, all of it, was the stupidest, most irrational mistake of her life... She stared bleakly at the empty pathway, bent to peek under the leafy shrubs, scanned the verges beyond her gate. Nothing. She walked down the path, making sad little clucking noises. No reply. Zilch. She sighed. She stopped and peered hopelessly into the gloom of the henhouse. And, lined up, looking at her sleepily from their perches, six pairs of weary eyes met hers. The odd comfortable sound of hen-crooning floated about. Little poulet noises that said they had all had quite enough for the day, thank you, and could she please bugger off and let them get some sleep. She tiptoed away, closing the door, slipping the bait into place, feeling quite as emotional as if it were a nursery. If anyone who shouldn't came near her chicks, she'd put a hex on them. Goodwife or not.

  A bicycle stopped and a woman, fair-haired, sharp-nosed, leaned against the gate.

  'I'm Daphne Blunt,' she said. 'Not going to mess this place about, are you?'

  'I'm Angela Fytton,' she said, 'and no. Though I might have to do something when my husband joins me. But that won't be for a while.' She enjoyed the sound of the words 'my husband' on her lips again.

  'And you know about the Alice Sapcotes?'

  Angela shook her head. 'Who's she?'

  'You've got eight of the best cider trees at the back. Alice Sapcotes. Very ancient.'

  'Hens, bees, cider, eels...' Angela put her hand to her head, feeling a little dazed by it all.

  'Don't worry. You just put them in sacks and someone from Burrowbridge adds them to their Alices. And there's not much eeling now.' She remounted her bicycle. 'But we always slip one into each of the cider barrels. Gives it body.'

  The trouble with the country, thought Angela, is that you never know if they are laughing at you or not.

  For safety's sake she changed the subject. 'Seems strange to be talking about cider in a place called Church Ale House’ she said, tracing the name on the gate.

  The woman began pushing off. 'Glad you're not knocking it about’ she said. 'Sorry to disturb. See you again.'

  Angela went in. The house was a shambles of her own furniture, the stuff she had not sent to the London auction rooms and the Perry's cast-offs. Somehow she had to make a fitting order out of the chaos, which was a suitable metaphor for the rest of her life. Welcome to ye olde countryside, Mrs Fytton, she said to herself, picking her way around the boxes.

  That night she slept in a goosefeather bed. Exceptionally soundly.

  PartTwo

  10

  July

  In their role as agriculturalists, women produced the bulk of the country's food supply. The entire management of the dairy, including the milking of cows and the making of butter and cheese, was in women's hands, and the women were also responsible for the growing of flax and hemp, for the milling of corn, for the care of the poultry, pigs, orchards and gardens. ann oakley, Housewife

  Church Ale House proved to be much like a lover. From seeing and wanting and finally, rapturously, being clasped into its warm, responsive arms, it gave up its mysteries one by one. Some of which were not entirely easy to accommodate.

  On the first night Angela woke in a puddle of cold fear to hear the tap, tap, tapping of evil fingers on her bedroom window. Insistent evil fingers. The old spirits, she told herself, expecting to die and thinking that if she survived, which was not very likely, she would string a bulb or two of garlic around her neck in future. She wished the image of Wuthering Heights would remove itself from behind her screwed-tight eyes, along with the creeping certainty that some Somerset Heathcliff had torn some Somerset Cathy from her coffin and left her unhappy spirit to roam the Levels. Half fainting with fear, she got out of bed and tottered to the window only to find it was the tip of a branch of the mulberry tree.
A mulberry tree, no matter how romantically fashioned, can lose its charm at four in the morning. And she had not cared very much for its wine either.

  The violence required in using her hip to open and close the back door made it less a rustic piece of gym equipment and more a painful imposition. She was now so sore and bruised on both hips that she could never remember which one she had bashed it with last. So much for symmetry and seductive boyish contours. If anyone did come along and catch her in her underwear, all they would think was that she'd been severely battered by a violent dwarf. And the bathroom -even in summer heat - was cool to the point of coldness, and damp. The howl of the vixens (as Sammy told her) kept her awake, and the lowing of newly bereft cows made her want to cry. The tap water had a reddish tint and left bits in the bath, and the roof rattled when the wind got up (which, despite the balmy summer, seemed a frequent occurrence after lights out -more disturbed spirits, she supposed). She could also hear a certain kind of scrabbling above her head which she was assured was nothing, but which she knew, for certain, was four-legged, came with a long tail and bred. And what with tractors and animals and grain dryers and a one-note church bell, the idea that the countryside was a quiet haven of peacefulness was laughable...