Mrs Fytton's Country Life (23 page)

'If I were you, I'd suggest you open proper accounts and have credit cards and everything,' she said. 'Now you are grown up.'

Sudden amazement. Their mother had refused, categorically, to let them open accounts and have credit cards when they lived with her. Life was looking up.

And while they were contemplating this dizzy joy, Angela said, 'Oh, I do hope you'll come and live with me. Won't you? Please
...'

And she read, after the pound signs and the amazement, another set of signs in both her children's eyes that, loosely translated, said, 'Not on your nelly.'

‘I
suppose you've got lovely big rooms?' she said.

They nodded. 'Huge.'

'Ah,' said Angela, with as much regret in her voice as she could muster. 'Ah.'

Their rooms were perfectly designed and decorated. Pale amber for Claire, pale turquoise for Andrew. With those perfect, perfect expanses of fawn carpet. They had nothing in particular to do for the whole of that fifteen-month period. And they felt that, after the strain of studying for so long, they deserved a bit of time and freedom. And credit cards and accounts with overdrafts. Those were the facts.

'Good job I got those rooms decorated and finished
’
said Binnie, congratulating herself, at least, for
something.

'Ye-e-s
’
said Ian. He recalled the moment that Tristan chucked up his carrot puree over the white rug in the sitting room and how Binnie sat looking at it as if it were a hanged man for several minutes before bursting into tears and running to her bed. 'They are lovely rooms, and they are very lucky children
’
he said. 'And you are wonderful.'

Just in case he was getting fruity, Binnie went to run a bath.

If she loved the idea of bed, this new mother
-
Binnie, she equally loved her bathroom. Even though it opened off their bedroom, she thought of it as her own and Ian tended to use the one down the corridor. All the paraphernalia of her womanliness was stacked and scattered in her en-suite. No baby stuff lined the shelves, no baby stuff dripped and dribbled down the tiled walls. It was her inner soul, her temple of femininity, her private sanctuary - full of the expensive stuff brought back by Ian from his business trips, as once a Prince of Fairy Tale would bring his Princess trophies from his travels and ask for nothing in return. Certainly not humping. Romantic love. Lancelot and Guinevere. No other favour save to adore. She loved it in there. In there she was safe.

Soon Ian was going on his first protracted business trip abroad since Tristan's birth. Binnie had shortened it to her satisfaction and was now quite relaxed about it. She had two teenagers to help her, the Christian Trisha, and she would
not
have to spend all day worrying about conjugal rights.

'You can bring me some more Patou
’
she said, before vanishing up the stairs. 'Please, darling.' And, from the safety of the kitchen doorway, she blew him a pretty kiss.

He responded with two smacking noises made by his own lips that yearned to get themselves around more than just thin air. But with the advent of Claire and Andrew, good as they were, he knew better than to push home even the slightest of enquiries about when, exactly, that side of things might resume. He tried to remember when it resumed with Angela. Not long, he thought. But then, he also thought, with deliberate lack of gallantry, she was always gagging for it, and he wondered, as he tapped the words Belinda and Patou into his organizer, why she couldn't go out and get someone to be getting it from now. He was rather sorry for his gibe about her past lovers. If she only
would
remarry, then everyone could breathe a sigh of relief. Marriages ended all the time. New ones began. It was the way of the world. She'd looked so forlorn - first time ever - the night Otto got drunk that he had been very tempted. Only for a moment, of course. But if she was hooked up with someone else, it would make life so much easier all round.

The phrase 'gagging for it' suddenly re-entered his mind. Along with a picture of his ex-wife in a pose to fit the tag. He closed the organizer with a snap. Bloody woman. He was very fond of her, of course he was, mother of his children, companion for twenty-odd years. But if she thought she could break him, he'd be damned. For some reason he suddenly found himself calling on Jesus. O Jesus, he said to himself, O
Jesus -
if you make this one work I vow I will never be tempted to stray again. Not even for a one-nighter. Which is all it was going to be with Binnie. At first. He was still quite puzzled how he got from that to here. But he had, and he would not, he would never, ever again.

He remembered how, when he was still married to Angela, his colleagues came in to work saying that Her Indoors had had a go last night about their never contributing anything to the running of the home. And how he stayed silent because his own amazing, extraordinary, talented, clever, unbreakable, inviolable, unshakeable, capable star of a wife - whom he loved and adored and who weighed the same then as on the day he married her -
she
never said a critical word about it.

Just smiled. And handed him a glass of his favourite wine. And asked him intelligent questions about the day. And turned willingly, always willingly, towards him in bed each night if he required it. He longed to agree with his colleagues - to say that he too knew how a wife could undervalue a husband - to say that he needed a drink before going home sometimes and who didn't? - to be welcomed into the club of the hard-done-by and misunderstood. But he waited in vain. Much as he waited in vain for her to need him in any important sense. The one time he felt he was valuable was when she gave birth. Then she held on to him and really needed his strength. Twice in a marriage is not enough. And anyway, he'd been late for the first one. Apart from that, she made him feel like a king. It was wearying. It was relentless. It was false. And it was very tedious to live up to.

Fleetingly, he began visiting an alarming woman called the Virago, who tied him up for fifty pounds and told him he was bad. Something like
35
per cent of British males liked some form of bondage, he'd read, and he could almost understand why. Abrogation of all responsibility. The chance to be weak. He loved it when she snarled at him and spat out the words, 'Can't you do anything right?' But after a few visits he just lay there in that small back room in Bayswater and felt like a prat. 'You don't get it, do you?' said the Virago, untying him regretfully.

'No,'
he said.

There was, he realized now, somewhere in between the two. And he had found it in his adorable Binnie when she landed so prettily and helplessly at his feet. Why, she'd had to import a special chair all the way from Canada for her practice, because the others did not take the patient down low enough. Little Thing.

Well, while his Little Thing was in her bathroom and Claire and Andrew were out, the baby asleep and the afternoon sun still warming the patio, he would have a beer. He went to the fridge, but where he had put half a dozen bottles of his favourite Czechoslovakia!! there were now none. Ah well, he'd have a warm one. He went to the store cupboard beneath the stairs. Two empty six-packs lay crumpled in the darkness. He felt something rising in him that he had never had cause to feel before. A rising bubble of pure rage directed towards his son. And he didn't mean Tristan.

Just then the puzzled voice of Binnie called down the stairs. 'You'd better get me some more Eau de Joy bath oil too, and some Calvin. Lotion and foam. They both seem to have vanished
...'

He began to run up the stairs. If he could persuade her to take a little lie-down with him.

Her voice trailed off as the napping Tristan woke, too early, too early, from his post-lunchtime nap. Thoughtlessly, Binnie was standing right outside the nursery door.

Ian felt a rising bubble of rage yet again. And this time it was not for either of his sons. Someone in Somerset came to mind.

14

September
/
October

Three or four families in a country village is the
very
thing to work
on...

jane austen to cassandra

No, Angela Fytton, in her simple busyness, did not miss her children at all. Her children were like a bunch of temporarily mislaid keys, about which you can say comfortably to yourself, 'Well, I had them when I came in last night, so they must be somewhere and I'm sure they'll turn up eventually.'

Much more pressing than her children's continuing huff was the end-of-summer activity beholden upon the owner of Church Ale House. The gathering of the apples for collection, the last of the garnering of vegetables for storing or bottling, the picking of fruit and the making of quince jam and jelly. The mulberries she abandoned to the birds, for she really did not care for the taste. The birds were more than happy to oblige and cleared the tree. As the first leaves began to fall she found herself avoiding the sight of that poor frontal stump and wondered, again, about Archie, who had caused it so much damage, and why. And why the sight of it affected her so much. Best get on. Didn't do to think.

By now she had learned to pluck a still-warm egg from under a sharp-eyed layer without so much as a by your leave, and she had so many that she looked up Maria Brydges for the pickling of them. Maria Brydges was her customary firm self: 'Procure only the best white wine vinegar. This can be obtained by dealing with a respectable tradesman upon whom you can depend.' Angela got hers from Boots the Chemist in Taunton, which seemed a reasonable compromise. She spotted Wanda at the other end of the shop, but she flitted away before Angela had a chance to speak. Which was a pity, because Angela would have liked some advice. Wanda was checking out the opposition, she supposed, since she was down by the herbal remedy section.

Lots to do, then, much to keep her busy. And when it was all done - when the winter set its seasonal seal on activity - she would give a party. At which she would finally get to know her neighbours really well and feel, at last, that she was good enough to become an established part of the place. Before she introduced her newly returned husband to them all.

She had the occasional fantasy about remarrying in St Hilary's. Though she was not altogether sure how the Anglican church felt about divorcees remarrying each other. Now
there
was a nice theological problem. The church seemed to be full of them. All the fault of the patriarchs, Daphne said, for not letting women in. If women were the law-makers there would be a lot more pragmatism. So said Daphne. Angela was not so sure. Remembering her west London witch-hunters, she thought the female of the species might be even more likely to put a stone round your neck and throw you down a well, or join in heartily at the whipping post. Daphne said it was divide and rule. At which point Angela gave up. Keep busy, she told herself. That is all you need to do. And it was. The pleasure was sustained. And if she did not - if she took a moment out to enjoy the strangeness of her rural surroundings - well, that was always a pleasure, and interesting too.

Craig Elliott, taking his customary stroll past her garden and up the hill, leaned over the gate, not for the first time, squeezed her hand and told her that she looked perfect in her garden - so fresh, so pretty, so inspirational in the light of this new opus of his with which he was having such trouble. He looked up at the hill and back at her, and his eyes were very friendly and kind. Then he squeezed her hand, smiled once more with his crinkling, periwinkle, friendly, handsome smile - with just a tinge of sadness around its edges, she detected - and said breathily,
'Inspirational
..
‘
and squeezed her hand once more. She was flattered and she blushed.

He then wiped his hand across his brow and shook his head in despair. 'It does not get any easier,' he said. 'The Muse?'

He looked at her sorrowfully. 'The au pair. She just does not fit into our lives.' He closed his eyes with the pain of it. 'She is a great, lumpen noisy thing to find on the stairs in the morning, and I must have quiet. And beauty, come to that.'

'Poor Lucy.'

'Poor both of us.'

That saddish little smile again, before he strode off towards the hill. He turned, once, waved his hand and called, 'But you have cheered my day.'

What a nice man, she thought. From a distance you could almost think his Wellingtons were a gentleman's riding boots. And she blushed again.

'Perpendicular,' called Daphne Blunt from the top of her ladder, stretching her elegant Afghan neck and pointing with her long Afghan nose. 'The tower is anyway. Otherwise a good screen and
very
good bench ends.'