A Few Days in the Country (7 page)

It was then I decided to go away.

My mother's blue eyes stayed on mine, wide open, seeming to understand what I'd meant to do with those words. Her eyes burned away at me, while she breathed through her nose in silence. I was glad to see she'd decided to hate me for the time being. It was an awful thing I'd told her.

‘Then I can only say I'm very sorry for Nick, if that's true.'

And I breathed out with relief to see that, after all, she'd turned aside from my blow, leaving all the veils between us intact.

‘Sorry. I'm not fit for human company. I'll go over to that place on the east coast for a day or so.'

‘I thought you'd just come up
here
,' she said, carefully stacking the plates in the cupboard.

‘Sorry.'

The instinct that had carried me from London to this small Scottish village was self-preservation. Never having dealt with this unprecedented situation on my behalf before, instinct seemed to throw up its hands and a hatful of ideas in the hope that I would know best. In coming home, clearly, I hadn't.

It was extraordinarily cold at the station, or perhaps it was just that I'd forgotten Scottish winters in the years down south. Everyone north of the border knows Londoners are soft, effete creatures.

‘Don't get out of the car,' I told my parents. ‘Hurry home to the fire. It's much too miserable to wait round on platforms.'

They eyed me, disappointed. It was almost a year since I'd last seen them, and here I was rushing off already. ‘All right, Pip, we've gone. Take care of yourself, there's a good girl.'

They looked a bit shabby, and really quite old, I was alarmed to see. I clutched the car door wondering what I could do to make it up to them. When we'd left the house I'd given them a cheque—something quite substantial, and anyway they were perfectly all right! So why did I want to cry in front of these familiar strangers who said such irritating things to me, and made me feel I shouldn't know the facts of life at thirty? I was maudlin. It was ridiculous!

‘You're a great one for trains,' my mother said. ‘Always rushing away to school, or university, or London.'

‘Oh, choof off, both of you! When I come back we'll see some shows in Edinburgh, and have dinner at the North British every time, too.'

So they went away laughing in a scandalised fashion at the thought of such extravagance, and the fact that their girl Pip had threatened to provide it, and undoubtedly would.

But then I was in the train and there I was no one's daughter; all I was was someone conscious of error. I'd always been so clever! It was almost comical to think of this very worthy IQ bending its powers to the ancient problem of choosing and being chosen by a mate, and coming up with a mistake like this…

‘The North Sea,' I told the taxi driver. My face had frozen on the walk from the train, and it was physically difficult to speak. My chin was paralysed.

‘Is it Mr and Mrs Byrne's place you're wanting?' the old man asked, turning around.

‘I don't know. The North Sea. It's a private hotel. Someone recommended it a few years ago.'

‘Och, aye, it's the Byrnes' place you're wanting. They've been in it now for about two year.' He had a thick Scots accent and bright grey eyes.

‘All right, the Byrnes' place. I'd like to arrive in time for dinner.'

‘Och, there's no hurry for your dinner, lassie. You've missed that by a half-hour at least. Still, they'll not let you go to your bed without a cup of tea.'

This was all very charming. My capacity for making mistakes was obviously in its early stages. I could see myself headed for a long career in the manufacture of mistakes.
Dame Philippa Fraser
would appear in some future New Year's Honours List, her title bestowed by the sovereign for her unremitting efforts to raise the standard of mistakes throughout the country, single-handed.

‘Och, they've let it go down, the old place,' the driver said confidentially. ‘Irish, you know.'

‘Oh?'

‘
She's
Irish!' he assured me, turning right round again and nodding. ‘She's a hard worker, too, but him! Never does a hand's turn about the place. The leaves are all over the gardens and up the drive. You wait. I'll have to change gear to get over them all.'

There was a lack of logic somewhere in his tale that worried me, as trivial things now had the power to do. But it stayed in the background with everything else while my attention listened to Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick…Nothing but a name, but it said everything, ticking in my head the way it had for months.

The old man went on, very dry. ‘Of course, Mr Byrne's got to entertain the guests.' (‘En-tairr-tain,' he said.)

It was too dark to see the square stone house or the dunes of leaves around it when we pulled up.

‘Come along in,' said Mrs Byrne as the taxi drove off. ‘Willie's an old chatterbox. This is your room, Miss Fraser. There'll be supper in the sitting room at nine, and there's a fire in there, so when you've unpacked you might like to come through and meet the other guests. Just Mr and Mrs Alston. He's an artist from London. And the bathroom's just across the hall here. You may find this tap hard to manage, but it isn't really. So now I'll leave you to unpack. Oh yes, a shilling meter for the radiator. You'll need it tonight.'

The Irish Mrs Byrne was small, compact, hard-eyed. She looked not well disposed towards the world or its inhabitants.

I debated going straight to bed, but I'd eaten so little all day that even tea and a biscuit began to seem desirable, and I was leaving my room to face the strangers when I heard someone shout, ‘No, I'm sorry! I'm not in the mood to discuss knitting with some maiden lady from the Borders!' And a door opened onto the dark hallway showing a lighted room out of which stumbled a thin, bearded man. He sheered away from me, not looking, and belted downstairs.

A woman with dark hair calmly followed him out. ‘Colin…Oh, good evening.' She smiled at me, and waved an arm towards the stairs. ‘My husband.'

So these were the Alstons. The artist. The Artiste! I thought unkindly. A sensitive Artiste, too! Above all mankind I disliked my fellow sufferers. What a boring, despicable crew they were the world over, having ‘breakdowns', and bravely recovering, or else not…

A brass standard lamp and a coal fire lighted the lowceilinged room labelled Guests Only. A girl in a green dress stood at a trolley pouring tea.

‘Hello. I'm Mrs Byrne's daughter, June. This is my husband, Cliff, and that's the baby. It hasn't got a name yet, though it's being christened tomorrow. And this is Pepper.'

She crouched in front of the brown-and-white terrier at her feet, and fed him a biscuit, bite by bite, then stood up, flipping back her fair hair with her hand. ‘How do you like your tea, Miss Fraser?'

Cliff, the young man, held the baby awkwardly, trying to drink his tea; his wife seemed rather pointedly not to notice. He was in his early twenties, white-skinned and sick-looking. Eventually his clumsiness, something, provoked me into taking the baby while he finished his supper. It was a young baby, about six weeks old, a little girl.

June looked on indifferently when Cliff took her back again from me, and said, ‘You'd better come to her christening tomorrow, if you can be bothered. Mother said to ask you. They won't light the fire till we all get home from church, so you might as well.'

Who was I to resist such an invitation? ‘I'd enjoy that,' I said. ‘What are you going to call her?'

‘It hasn't got a name,' she said brusquely. ‘I told you.'

‘I didn't realise…'

‘I think we might call her June, after her mother,' the young husband said, but his wife's eyes moved from the baby to the dog in a sort of venomous silence. She said suddenly, ‘What's
your
name?'

‘Philippa.'

‘We'll call it that.'

Cliff looked up, then down, resignedly, at the baby's small bare feet. They were cold: I'd noticed when I held her. She was far from warmly dressed, and the room was draughty. Outside it was starting to rain. I decided to leave this luckless child and its parents to their own company.

‘What will you have for breakfast?' the girl called after me. ‘Coffee and rolls. Something like that.'

‘Right. I'll tell Mother.' And she looked at me with envy. I was not Cliff's wife. I was not Philippa's mother.

No, indeed! And how enviable I was, lying awake, staring at the wall, hearing that name, my mind disordered by it, wanting nothing, feeling nothing, believing nothing.

In the morning Mrs Byrne lingered over the delivery of the breakfast tray. ‘So, the baby's to be called after you! She should never have had it, that's the trouble. She's a clever girl, June. She could have got a grant and gone to university. (That's what
I
should have done, too, years ago!) Her headmistress wanted it, and her father and I did. But she met Cliff at a youth hostel in the Highlands one weekend and within four months they were married. I should've let her meet more boys. He's been sick the whole time, all in his imagination, I think. He works in the post office in a mining village. They'll go home there after the christening. What sort of life she's let herself in for… Is that enough butter for you? We'll leave for the church at quarter past ten.'

Mr Byrne, a fake-hearty, lantern-jawed Scot, drove us in a fifth- or sixth-hand Daimler to a small stone church set in one of Scotland's countless grassy hollows. There wasn't a cottage in sight, just a few sheep chewing blandly.

The Alstons, at the last moment, had been asked to act as godparents, and had not refused. But I noticed Colin Alston's expression during the ceremony, and saw that a hand or a foot tapped compulsively under the strain of this ordeal. He seemed very tense, but he and his wife, Marion, were pleasant people, and I guessed they were sorry about the outburst the night before that I had been bound to overhear.

Back at the North Sea the new Philippa was placed on the floor by the fire, and Pepper yelped about the room, jealous of her, sniffing her face, investigating. I wanted to protest, but didn't. The baby cried. Pepper dozed by the fire, winking at it, half-awake.

When June noticed this, she flew to him and picked him up. ‘You mustn't look at the fire, sweet, and make your eyes hot. It's bad for them.' She kissed his nose, then went away to collect her remaining bags and baskets while her father revved up the engine to drive them to the station. I stood at the front door with the Alstons to see them go off. Mr and Mrs Byrne were waiting in the front seat while Cliff and June tossed rugs and overnight bags into the back.

‘Cliff, here's a rattle for the baby. There wasn't much choice in the shop.' Marion went over to the window of the car with a pink plastic rattle. ‘I'm afraid it isn't very nice.'

‘Look, June! Little Pip's first present,' he cried, smiling.

‘Oh yes,' she said, and rattled the thing before the baby's face as they drove off through the leaves, past the crumbling stone pillars at the gateway.

In the afternoon Mrs Byrne rested while her husband and Colin Alston went walking by the sea. I stayed beside the fire, and so did Marion Alston, with a book and a cigarette. We talked a bit instead of reading. By half-past two, without a light, it was too dark to see the printed page. By half-past three, the misty, dank and penetrating winter night had settled in. We had been silent for a minute or so, sunk in the profound silence of the house, when Marion said, as if she'd taken a decision, ‘Colin enjoyed talking to you at lunchtime. He very seldom discusses painting now, so it excited him. That's why he went out with Mr Byrne.'

‘I see.' I
had
wondered.

Marion said, ‘He was married once before, you know, almost twenty years ago. The girl died soon afterwards. Colin knew her for six months. He's never quite recovered.'

‘Have you been married long?'

‘No, quite a short time.'

‘It might make a difference to him.'

‘It might. It might be too late. He's forty-five. He used to be a promising young painter. I read about him in London and saw his work long before I met him. Now he calls himself a competent hack. He does work he despises.' She shrugged. ‘There's nothing wrong with competence, and we eat well. The only sad thing is—he was capable of more, and lucky, recognised, encouraged…But he just—gave up the ghost. Or rather—didn't.'

While she looked at the flames of the fire I looked at her hair, and the streaks of grey in it, and I opened my mouth, and closed it. I should say something. But what? I could think of nothing at all. I leaned back in my chair as empty of words, of sympathy, as physically feeble and helpless, as that young baby setting out in life so heavily handicapped.

And it occurred to me as I sat, tired with the effort of drawing one shallow breath after another, that this feeling of bloodlessness, toothlessness, of having had so many qualities drawn off that I was strange to myself, was becoming more and more familiar. And in a way I loved being this weak, indifferent woman.

But why was I being subjected to these sights and stories? Hadn't I taken three months' leave of absence from my practice in London to escape them? Down there, if all those patients had been content with a little less—as much as they paid for and were entitled to!—I'd have stayed on. I was not eager to pass twelve weeks, eighty-four days and nights, without the distraction of work. But at least half of them came to say, in effect, ‘Doctor, I'm unhappy. Help me. What do I do now?'

It's all there in any government handbook describing the medical services—the number of patients seeking treatment for symptoms of psychosomatic origin. I used to be interested in these people—I can't think why. A year ago, of course, I was that much younger, that much more credulous and ignorant…