Mrs Fytton's Country Life (29 page)

And so it was. A veil will be drawn over the scene that greeted Binnie as she entered her hallway and stepped over body after body before turning to one side and entering her once-white sitting room. Though the howl of pain could, certainly, be heard in the street. A veil should also be drawn over the sight that greeted the reeling Binnie as she made her way to the kitchen, in which, at exactly the moment she arrived, a tall young lad with a penchant for sport climbed on to her once-spotless draining board and pissed very accurately, to the sound of cheers, into first her full-sized sink and then, not at all accurately, also to the sound of cheers, into her half-drainer.

Like a phantom ascending, Belinda made her way past the bodies that lined the stairs and up towards her bedroom. And here it was that her soul appeared to leave her body. Not because of the pair of bottoms hanging over the window ledge, still gesticulating to the garden below; not because of the several cigarettes that smouldered in her Lalique ring tray; not even for the couple clasped in an embrace of deep sleep and pizza dreams under her strangely patterned duvet that was once merely pale peach. No, none of these -
appalling though they were - caused the split of temporal from spiritual in the second Mrs Fytton. But the state of her own dear once-pristine and now no more bathroom did. It was here that perhaps the marriage of that great triple alliance - a youthful liver, a goodly supply of alcohol and rather a lot of deep-pan pizza - came together in horrible fruition.

It was to no avail that the weeping Claire, swaying like a willow in a breeze, begged her stepmother to beat her for her sins. Just as well since, when the weeping Claire sobered up the next morning, she felt - on the whole - that the party had been a great success and that everything was her father and stepmother's fault for coming back early. If they had stayed away as promised, they might never have known - a fantasy brought to its knees by the need to hire the services of a cleaning contractor to put the house back together again. Nevertheless, had her stepmother taken advantage of the peach-schnapped pleadings of her stepdaughter the night before and taken a paddle to her, Claire would have got in touch with Child Line straight away, as soon as she was sober enough to tap out the number.

'I thought you liked me,' wailed Binnie.

'But I do,' said the wide-eyed Claire.

Andrew, who was found some time later flat on his back two gardens down, offered to pay for a replacement doorknob out of his next month's allowance. He was very surprised, astonished really, when his father did not exactly think that he was
due
an allowance for very many years to woman's shame then for egging him on, as much as the man's for being egged. Some women just had to stand there and you wanted them. Not like these.

He smiled. She ran off that time, of course. A decent woman would. Haws bouncing in the hedgerow as she pushed past him. But he'd done keepering. He knew how to set a trail. She came back again eventually. And there was Renata, eyeing them. Pigs can't talk, he told her. And it was warm and secret in there. And she asked him to do it again. Never mind pigs -
that
was men's work. Archie's eels were never up to his wife's causeway.

'What's the joke, Sam?' called Daff Blunt.

If only they knew. 'You women,' he said. 'Should watch out for the chill. Wear a bit more.'

'Embarrass you, does it?' she called archly.

He did not bother to reply but brushed at the verge with his stick. Used to be full of elecampane around here. None now. But after the war, when that feeble husband of hers got pleurisy, she cured him with the stuff. Gwen's mother passed the knowledge on. The herbal. Like breathing. They all knew it once. Elecampane - what she called Helen's tears, pleurisy root, bit of liquorice. He could curse those women and their dribs of this and that and their herbs and cure-alls. Let him be taken, he prayed in the church. But the weak man lived. Elecampane. There was no doubt in his mind that the first girl born to them was not Archie's. Not by a long chalk.

He moved off. Gwen gone into the town. He'd miss her. Red as the haws she went that first time. Eager red, while he did the unbuttoning
...

He looked back at the bare legs of the girls as they sat on the well. At their arms naked, at their throats all exposed. Thigh tops. Thin. And he was unmoved. No mystery, women nowadays. That day, just the size of her under her skirt made him hot. You wouldn't get a handful now. And pigs, nowadays, they were thin too. Thin girls, thin sows. Not bred to it now, not the pigs, not the women. Not bred for work or love.

After he had gone Angela said, much amused, 'Sam must be very shocked by us. I mean, Mrs Perry was so upright and proper and just - well
-good.
Like a big unshakeable tree. And here we are, half dressed and probably turning him on. Poor old thing.'

Daphne nodded. 'She wouldn't have been seen dead in shorts. Not even in the hottest weather. Imagine being covered all the time, knee to hem.'

'Not very sexy.'

'Not very sexy,' Daphne agreed. 'On the other hand, I don't suppose a proper woman like her thought very much about sex. It was just another part of rural married life. A necessity that brought them children. Orgasms were not the common fruit, then.'

Angela kept silent. They weren't exactly the most obvious delicacy around now. 'Talking of fruit,' she said eventually, 'I'm not making mulberry wine but I am going to make ale.'

Daphne smiled back. 'Of course, the
ale-wife
’
she said. 'The ale-wife was often known for brewing more than just good beer. She could be quite accommodating to the men who drank it.'

'Not this one,' laughed Angela a little wistfully. 'Well, not yet anyway.'

'Has Craig tried it on with you yet?' asked Daphne. Angela felt herself go red as a berry. 'Certainly not,' she said. 'Poor Lucy,' said Daphne.

'Yes,' said Angela, 'she could do with a replacement.'

'Maybe,' said Daphne, rinsing the last of the finds. 'But I think she really loves him.'

'Oh, Daphne,' said Angela,
‘I
mean the au pair.'

They emptied the bucket and put in all the washed items. Small and inconsequential as they once were, they looked interesting in a heap.

Daphne went back to the church and Angela went down to the hens.

Some jobs were eternal. Like shovelling shit. She hoped very much, and metaphorically speaking, that it was a similar activity engaging the current Mrs Fytton right now. Wedding anniversary indeed, she thought -
wedding anniversary -
shovel, shovel, shovel.

Ian managed to calm his hissing, spitting wife by promising to telephone their absent mother.

'It's either them or me,' said Binnie, who had grown an aura of steel around her that would not have disgraced Joan of Arc.

'I agree. I absolutely agree. I'll do it now.'

From the bathroom above their heads could be heard the sound of something violent occurring in the digestive department. The teenaged hangovers were going apace.

Binnie was off up the stairs like Joan after the English. 'In my bloody bathroom
again
’
she yelled.

Ian sat down at the kitchen table, feeling weak and lost. In front of him, swilling around in various unmentionable substances on the table, was a postcard, which was largely indecipherable save for the words 'Am so enjoying
...
Fytton honey
...
Sammy is wonderful.' For a moment he looked at it quite fondly. Then his expression changed. He threw it in the rubbish bin, pushing it down among the cans. She knew very well it drove Binnie mad that she still used his name.

He went to pour himself a whisky before making the call. He needed something to calm him. He opened the cupboard. 'That too?' he whispered at the Famous Grouse. A sentiment which was echoed when he searched further, only this time it was to his beloved, wholly absent, Glenmorangie.

As Angela walked back from collecting her hops, the clouds began to assemble. Dave the Bread passed her in his van. She waved, but for some reason he looked at her nervously, waved back and accelerated. A piece of paper fluttered behind the van which she thought might have come from its open window. She chased it. It came to rest on the hedge of hazel and cotoneaster that surrounded the Tichbornes' garden. It looked like a wrapper from something, but as soon as she tried to grasp it, the wind came and caught it and whirled it up, over the garden hedge and off somewhere out of sight.

Above her head the first thunder rumbled and a spike of lightning threatened to tear the heavens apart. The air was heavy and the edge of it chill. She hurried home as the first leaden droplets began to fall.

Had she not stopped to catch the wrapper, she might have reached home in time to answer the telephone. But even as she bashed at her door with her hip, another tremendous splice of lightning broke the air, followed by a crash of thunder. There was much fury in the heavens. A lot of it seemed to be directed towards the telecommunications system in the west of England, for Angela Fytton's telephone, along with those of others around about, ceased to function. When Ian tried her again, in that vital five minutes' time, the lines were all dead, dead, dead.

Not that Angela Fytton was aware of this. She merely turned up the Aga, put on a jumper and some leggings, and sat sipping a little glass of port by the heat of the stove. Later she would make a list of all the items needed for the ale. There was much to do both indoors and out before the winter settled upon her. She strung the hops from the beams, looping them over old hooks and nails that had been there for - she was certain - generations. As they warmed themselves, they gave off a tantalizing scent, so they were quite, quite ready.

But Angela Fytton was not.
..
Quite. One thing at a time, she thought happily, putting her feet up on the Aga.

Sip, sip, sip.

'The lines are all down
’
said Ian. 'From storms
’
'Good
’
said Binnie. 'Then maybe she's dead.' 'Oh, now wait a minute
...'
This was the mother of his children of whom she spoke, after all. He looked at his current wife in a new and somewhat unappetizing light. He could wish Angela to Timbuktu on a bed of pins, but he wouldn't want her dying of it.

'Plan A, Ian,' said Belin
da, tapping her little foot danger
ously. 'Plan A. Send them down to their mother's
tomorrow
..!

He put the Plan A to Andrew and Claire. Andrew and Claire said no. They said he was a bad father for wanting to send them somewhere so remote that the
telephone
didn't work. Somewhere away from all their friends. He heard them on the telephone in the hallway telling one of their friends that they were being threatened with
exile.
It not only sounded bad. He felt bad. He remembered his own youth. He had given parties when he was not supposed. It was all part of the pattern of growing up. True, he had not vomited all over his parents' en-suite, or piddled in his parents' double-drainer, but that was only because they did not have such things. He did not want to drive a wedge between himself and his children like their mother had done. He enjoyed having them on his side. It made up for the guilt. Perhaps they could stay if they promised to behave
...
A party - after all, what was a party?

And then Binnie rang the Christian Trisha. After which Binnie's scream of rage again awoke her sleeping infant.

Exile did seem to be the only answer. But maybe somewhere they would actually like to go
...
Not a wholly punishing exile. For had not they, through his little iniquity with Binnie, been punished enough? Maybe there was a different kind of exile.
Much
further away.

He remembered the last time they had all been so happy together. And then he had a masterplan. Somerset was very close to London. Even if he persuaded his ex-wife to take the children, there was no certainty they would stay taken.

'Binnie,' he said, holding her close. She felt like a cocked gun. 'Darling. I've had an even better idea. We'll send them on a trip to Australia. They loved it before. They'll love it again. It's their gap year. In a gap year you are supposed to expand your horizons. So they can go and expand them in Australia
’

'Won't that be expensive?'

'Not if they get a job each out there.'

She was mollified.

'When?'

'As soon as it can be arranged. I'll ask Moneypenny.' Tomorrow?'

'Well, I think that's a bit soon really. Er, I -'