Mrs Fytton's Country Life (39 page)

'Something for the whole community.' She nodded.

'The more the merrier
’
he agreed.

Old Dr Tichborne walked past, whistling and looking very jaunty.

'He's being so brave
’
said Angela, on the doorstep. 'He certainly does seem to be stepping out a lot
’
agreed the vicar. And he waved. So did she.

If she were not so wholly well disposed towards the kind old man, she could have sworn he glared at her with something approaching murder in his expression.

On then to the Dorkin cott. Mrs Dorkin was all for it. It would, she felt, give her daughter an added stardom. And it would also mean that she did not have to either make, supervise or distribute the baptismal feast. A boon for the servant classes.

And thus it was agreed.

And thus the whole community looked forward to the joint celebration of the Blessing of the Ale and Sandra Dorkin's baptism. With full immersion.

26

January

Witchcraft was hung, in History, But History and I Find all the Witchcraft that we need Around us, every Day.

emily dickinson

It was extraordinarily hot in Australia. Even if you went to the beach and drank and drank and drank, it was still too hot to ever get cool. And beer was not cheap. The youth hostel in Sydney was Oh Just
Bad,
and sleeping on people's apartment floors was not much better. Unless you wanted bar work, there was nothing to do to earn money, and the bar work was no good because they wanted you to work the hours when you wanted to be out with your friends. So there was nothing for it really but to get rid of your thirst by having a few beers. Do the barbies on the beach. And check into an hotel. As Claire said to Andrew, it was hardly likely that if Binnie and their Dad were here
they
'd
be staying in a youth hostel. So why should they? And Andrew, who had suffered the mortification of being called a pale-skinned pom by the first girl he tried to chat up, agreed.

So they checked into the Harbour Hotel, worked out that they could manage to live there fairly well for two and a half more weeks, and rearranged their flights home accordingly.

It seemed appropriate that they should keep the date of their return a surprise for their father and Binnie. They did, however, telephone their mother, who agreed that it was a very good idea. Who then rang them the following day to tell them that it was a terrible idea. And who rang a third time to tell them to be sure not to tell their father that they had let her in on the secret of this possibly good, possibly terrible, idea.

'If Mum didn't like the idea,' said Andrew, 'she would have sent us some money so we could stay on a bit longer.'

‘I
think she's broke,' said Claire, when she rang off.

'How come?'

'She's making her own candles.'

It was Binnie who took the phone call despite its coming through very early in the morning. Ian was in the shower; Tristan was still asleep and she did not want him woken. So she pottered down to the kitchen, collected the phone on the way and spoke into it in a low voice as she crossed to the kettle. She could even afford, in her new springtime, to be sweet and civil to her stepchildren. 'Andrew,' she said, 'how are you?'

Pause. Binnie listens. 'Good,' she says. 'Good. And Claire?'

Pause. Binnie listens. 'Good,' she says. 'Good. And what's the weather like there?'

Pause. Binnie listens. 'Yes - it's raining in London too. But at least where you are is warm.'

Pause. Binnie listens.
‘I
thought it was summer over there.'

The kettle begins to steam. Still Binnie potters about getting teapot, mugs, milk, with the telephone tucked safely under her little ear. She is safe. So she thinks. Until she asks, 'Well, where are you, then?'

Pause. Binnie listens. She laughs a cracked little laugh.

Her husband, father of this Andrew, this Claire, comes into the kitchen just as her cracked little laugh goes an octave higher. She stands there, in front of her husband, who is also the father of her blood child, and she clutches the milk carton to her chest while she silently hands to this man, husband and father, the telephone. He, taking it, looks at her face and thinks she must have had a very rough night, which is strange, because for the last few weeks or so they have both been sleeping like babies, as indeed has the baby.

He speaks into the telephone tentatively. It could be anyone. But it is only his son.

'Hi, Andy,' he says. 'How're you doing?'

He places his free hand on his wife's little shoulder and rubs it gently in a gesture of complete solidarity and tenderness. He had no idea that the advent of his older children had affected her so much. Why, even though they are thousands and thousands of miles away now she looks half mad with fear and her face wears that crumpled look.

'What's the weather like there?'

A small sob escapes from Binnie's throat. Ian feels the vibration of it in his hand. But his hand is now stilled, glued to the spot just above his wife's collar bone. Then he squeezes so that she gives a little yelp.

'Where?' he asks quietly into the telephone.

'Heathrow,' says Binnie automatically. 'They are at Heathrow.'

Above them the sweet, seeking wail of their son begins. A new day, a new dawn.

'Get on to that witch,' spits Belinda. 'This is all her doing. And if she isn't there, keep trying until she
is
...'

'Who?' says Ian. But he knows who.

On the telephone, still in his hand, still at his ear, his son is saying querulously, 'So will one of you come and get us or what?'

'What?' says Ian, and switches off the phone.

It is to no avail. Come they will. Ian departs for work - he has to or empires will crumble. Binnie remains in the house for just as long as it takes to have a bath in her own little bathroom, dress herself, dress her child and get out. Although they now have a new one, it is not a cleaning-lady day, so she locks the door behind her and goes off to the zoo. Perhaps there will be some explanation, some comfort, in the behaviour of the apes? She weeps with rage, vexation, frustration and bile. She thinks of the former Mrs Fytton in her rural retreat, full of peace and quiet, and she begins to get a sense of having been stitched up. Who can say why she should suddenly think this, but she does. She knows that there is no justification in the world for she, Binnie, to say to her, Angela, You must have your children to live with you. They are no more her children than they are Ian's. That is equality. She is stuck. She looks at the birds in the beautiful white aviary, trapped. And she knows that nothing will ever be the same for her or Ian or Tristan again.

She turns to go home. Wishing with all her little bruised and weary heart that when she first saw Ian she had not fallen at his feet. Wishing that she had simply leaned over and patted his hand and said a friendly goodbye - and gone, resolutely, on her way. Instead of thinking that he was attractive, rich, vulnerable and would be easy to remove from his marriage. And that she was fed up with waiting for an available Mr Right to come along. And wishing that there had never been such a thing in the world to drive her to it like the ticking of her biological clock.

Baby Tristan waves to the birds and makes noises indicating that an ice cream is in order, despite its being the last day of January and freezing. Binnie pushes the stroller towards the cafe with damp, bowed head. Whatever is coming, she thinks, come it will. She sees her life stretching forth as a single parent after all. Hellfire and damnation, she shrieks inwardly, she might as well have gone for the IVF and saved everyone a load of bother.

Claire said that the only way to get in was to break in. So they did.

Thus did Binnie arrive back with the sleeping Tristan to find a howling gale blowing through the house from the conservatory where Andrew had broken a pane of glass. And her two suntanned stepchildren in the whitish sitting room eating crisps and watching TV and wonderfully uncritical of there being no thought spared for their arrival. One thing you could say about these two teenagers was that they did as they would be done by and were forgiving and without expectation in the matter of people being organized. To go out and forget to leave a key was just the kind of thing they might do themselves. And there was no harm done.

Binnie, being of a different opinion, took to her bed, tucking Tristan up beside her and thinking that he could stay there with her in future and that Ian could get into the cot every night. That might make him see sense about his horrible, horrible children. She then threw the boomerang, the gift of her stepchildren, across the room violently.

Fortunately, it was another failure, and it did not come back to her.

Now Belinda, who once asked nothing from life but the chance to be cared for by a husband, and who was perfectly prepared to cede liberation for the net gain of a place in the maternal pantheon, decided to have one more go at putting things right. So she rallied. And here she was, mid-rally so to speak, sitting on the settee trying to look relaxed and commanding and in control. That last was very important, because she had been somewhat out of control these last few days and it was quite a frightening experience. Largely the out of controlness manifested itself in an urgent and recurring desire to wring her stepchildren's necks, closely followed by a bursting into frustrated tears because she was not allowed to. So, at considerable expense, and wishing to see her own son grow up and not from the wrong side of prison bars, she went to see a counsellor.

The counsellor told her that if she wanted to preserve her marriage and retain the father of her child's goodwill, she must get some kind of solid foundation of understanding going between the interpersonal dynamics of the situation. Binnie took interpersonal dynamics to mean the opposite of strangling, so she listened to the advice. And now here she was, and here they were, and she was about to put it into practice.

'Sit down,' she said very nicely, indicating the chairs. The pair, slightly nervous, did so.

'Drink?' said Binnie. She had the drinks tray on a table in front of her with ice and lemon and glasses, so there was no fussing. She poured them a vodka. Grown-up drink for grown-up occasion, she thought. And, just as she replaced the cap on the bottle, from above came the wail of little Tristan.

‘I’ll
go,'said Claire.

She brought him down. He stopped wailing and beamed around the room at everyone, pleased to be part of the proceedings. Andrew made goo-goo noises at him, which sent him off into paroxysms of chuckling. Binnie wondered, when she looked at them all behaving together like this, whatever it was that made her so full of murderous intent.

She said, 'You know sometimes, when they are in love, people like to spend time on their own together.'

Two pairs of very surprised eyes stared at her, with a third pair that simply looked.

'Y-e-e-s,' said Claire.

'We all need our space from time to time, don't we?' Andrew said,
‘I
was going to ask you about that.' Now we're getting somewhere, thought Binnie happily. 'Can I have a double bed?'

Binnie went on sipping. This, she felt, was slipping away from her as she sip, sip, sipped. She just made the faintest of noncommittal noises. It seemed the best way. 'Umph,' she went, and waited.

'So that Elly can stay.'

It dawned. This was not some unimaginable trial sent by the gods. This was her stepson Andrew on sparkling form. And Elly was a poisonous creature who viewed the entire house and its contents with eyes of green glass.

'And Claire?' she said. 'Perhaps you'd like your boyfriend to move in with you too?'

'Oh no
’
said Claire, with complete derision.
‘I
haven't got one.'

Andrew looked at Binnie very kindly. 'I wouldn't
’
he added sweetly, 'mind if it was only a futon actually. After all
’
he said with urbane reasonableness, 'this is my house too.'

It seemed strange to him. After all, it was a so-called responsible adult, his very own mother, who had pointed out the veracity of that statement. And now here was another of the so-called breed going ape-shit at the very suggestion. Jeezus! Life was a minefield when all the adults surrounding you were nuts.