The Country Life (42 page)

In the event, the iron railing of the balcony saved what I had become convinced I did not want; for as I stood there, the shock of my discovery combined with the strong sunlight to bring about a sudden giddiness and I appeared briefly to faint. When I came to, with the sound of Edward's monotonous exclamation in my ears, I was collapsed in a kind of V over the balustrade, which, had it given way, would certainly have resulted in my death.

How long this unfortunate recollection endured I could not say. After I had gone through it in my mind, I was awash with strong emotions, which sluiced over me in inarticulate waves. Everything became very confused; but presently I began to come to my senses there in the garden of Franchise Farm. My eyes were closed, but I felt the warm, prickly grass beneath my back and legs and realized that I was lying down.

‘She's still unconscious,' said a man's voice. ‘I think she'll be all right, though.'

I opened my eyes a crack. The man was crouched beside me. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and was looking away so that I couldn't see his face.

‘Are you sure we shouldn't call an ambulance?' said the woman, whom I couldn't see without moving my head. She sounded young and was well-spoken.

‘Maybe. I don't know. She vomited a lot of water, which is the main thing.'

I snapped my eyes shut again, fully alert now.

‘Perhaps she banged her head.'

‘Might have. Doesn't look like it. I'm sure she'll wake up in a minute.'

‘God, where on earth is Daddy?' cried the woman impatiently. ‘He's never around when you need him! I don't even know who she is or anything.'

‘She's probably his mistress,' said the man with a laugh. ‘Running around the place in her knickers.'

I felt a blush begin to suffuse my cheeks. Now I dared not open my eyes, and began wondering how long I could reasonably prolong my coma.

‘
Mark!
' said the woman reproachfully. I could hear a smile in her voice. ‘Thank
God
we were here to pull her out, though. A minute later and she'd have drowned.'

‘She was pretty lucky.'

The woman giggled suddenly. ‘She does look terribly odd. Look, I'm just going to run back over to the house and make sure he hasn't slipped in the front way.'

‘OK.'

There was silence. The man cleared his throat once or twice beside me. I was beginning to feel an uncontrollable desire to move. The sun was burning my face.

‘Mark!' shouted the woman just then, from a distance. ‘Look at this!'

‘Jesus!' he said after a pause. ‘That explains that, then. She must have been pissed. No wonder she's out cold.'

‘I've just realized,' said the woman, closer now. ‘She must be Martin's au pair. What a
scandal
! Mummy'll be furious.'

I opened my eyes. The woman – girl, really – was standing
above me to my left. She wore a short red dress with no sleeves.

‘Oh look!' she said, meeting my eyes, ‘She's waking up! Hel-
lo
.' She knelt down beside me, suddenly solicitous, and put her hand on my arm. ‘How are you feeling? You nearly drowned, you know.'

I couldn't take my eyes from her face. She was around my own age and quite beautiful, dark and slender with a mass of black ringlets. Her expression was tender. Around her neck was a delicate gold chain. I don't think I have ever hated anyone in my life as much as I hated this girl in that moment.

‘Welcome back!' said the man cheerfully, kneeling down and putting his arm affectionately around her brown shoulders.

As soon as I saw his face, I knew that everything was over. I sat up abruptly and our eyes met.

‘
Stella?
' he said.

‘So
how
do you know her?' said Pamela again, as if she couldn't take it in.

‘From university,' said Mark. ‘Actually, I knew Edward better than I did Stella. I haven't seen her for years. I didn't recognize her at first. She looks different.'

‘Who is Edward? The ex-boyfriend?'

‘No.' Mark sounded surprised. ‘He's her husband.'

I was standing behind the door in the dark ante-room, which I had discovered to be an excellent location for eavesdropping on the events of the kitchen.

‘Her
husband
!' shrieked Pamela. ‘How on earth – why on earth didn't she tell us? Are they divorced?'

‘Not so far as I know. They only got married a few weeks ago.'

‘Mark was supposed to go to the wedding,' interjected Millie.

‘But then that Egyptian trip came up and I couldn't make it.'

‘Can you
believe
it?' added Millie.

‘Well.' Pamela sighed dramatically. ‘I must say I'm absolutely
astonished
.'

‘Isn't it a coincidence?' persisted Millie.

‘But does he know she's here? I mean, why hasn't he been in touch? Why has she never mentioned that she had a husband squirreled away?'

‘I had
heard
,' began Mark doubtfully, ‘that something had happened.'

‘What sort of something?'

‘An accident of some sort. I'm not sure of the details.'

‘Don't beat about the bush,' said Pamela briskly. ‘What sort of accident?'

‘No, really, I only heard the vaguest rumours about it. I couldn't say for sure. I'd hate to get it wrong.'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' said Pamela.

‘Come on, Mark,' said Millie.

‘It happened when they were on honeymoon. That's all I know. I think she had a bit of a fall or something, and that's the last anyone heard of her.'

‘What
can
you mean?' cried Pamela. ‘What sort of a fall? Do you mean she fell off a cliff and her husband couldn't find her, and the next thing we know is that she's washed up here?'

‘Calm down, Mummy.'

‘She fell,' resumed Mark, his voice constricted, ‘and nearly went over the balcony of their hotel room. In Rome, I think. She wasn't hurt. But she evidently went a bit funny.'

‘In the head?' demanded Pamela.

‘Possibly. There was a suggestion that it might have been –
deliberate
, if you see what I mean. Don't quote me on that, though. As I say, I've only heard the vaguest rumours. In any case, she came back to London without Edward and then disappeared.'

‘Well, perhaps she didn't like Edward. Perhaps that's all there was to it.'

I felt a pang of fondness for Pamela as I stood crushed behind the ante-room door.

‘Why would she have married him if she didn't like him?' said Millie.

‘Oh, how should I know?' said Pamela irritably. There was a clatter of saucepans. ‘Pass me that dish, would you? I really must get on with dinner. It's getting terribly late.'

‘I still can't understand what she's doing here,' said Mark after a pause. ‘Even if things did go wrong with Edward, it does seem rather extreme to pack in your job and leave London and all that.'

‘What job?' said Pamela. ‘I thought she was temping.'

‘Oh no, I don't think so. She was a solicitor, as far as I remember. Something like that, anyway. She had a degree, for God's sake.'

‘I can't see what having a degree, if that's what she's got, has to do with anything. We're not exactly barbarians down here. You may think country people sit around discussing crop rotation, but—'

‘
Mummy!
' said Millie.

‘I'm merely defending myself against the suggestion that we're some sort of second best. I shouldn't think Stella would say that she's been bored. You'd need a degree to keep up with Martin, for Heaven's sake.'

There was a silence, and more clattering sounds.

‘I should call Edward, I suppose,' said Mark. ‘He's been going mad, wondering where she is. So've her parents, apparently. And her boss must be furious. I'd say she'll be lucky to get her job back.'

‘Frankly, I'll be sorry to lose her,' said Pamela. ‘Martin
adores
her, and it's such a trial for him chopping and changing every other day. Quite honestly' – a tearful strain entered her voice – I don't see how we're going to begin to cope.'

‘Oh, it'll be
fine
,' consoled Millie.

From my shadowy enclosure I began to hear sounds from elsewhere, a sort of scratching noise coming from further along the passage. I stood rigid as a board, not daring to move. The scratching became a scuttling, and then all at once I felt a rush
of air and something jostling me about the legs. A shriek of surprise escaped my lips.

‘What on earth was that?' said Pamela from the kitchen.

A pair of Satanic eyes glared up at me through the gloom. I heard the familiar sound of panting, the unmistakable bustle of canine chops. Roy, or his ghost, had returned to haunt me.

‘
The wind beneath the door!
' Mark was saying in a spectral voice, while Millie trilled with appreciation.

‘Don't you start as well,' said Pamela. ‘My children think I'm batty enough as it is. Be a dear and go and have a look, would you? Everyone says we're mad still leaving our doors open, but I'd hate to be barricaded in.'

I heard footsteps approaching across the kitchen floor. In a flash I had bolted silently from the ante-room and into the hall, leaving Roy – the miracle of whose resurrection I had not even had time to appreciate – behind as prime suspect for the unexplained noise. Quietly I ascended the stairs to Martin's room and stood outside his door.

I was not relishing the thought of an encounter with Martin, even with the weighty matter of Roy off my conscience. After the incident beside the pool, I had fled back to the cottage, where I had sat in my bedroom crouched out of sight beside the wardrobe for a considerable time. Nobody had come to look for me, even after I had heard Pamela's car pull up in the drive. The absence of a search party had lent weight to my suspicion – confirmed just now by what I had overheard from the kitchen – that Mark and Millie had given an immediate and unsparing account to Pamela of my disgrace, and that I had been outlawed from the society of the family, to be dealt with when the opportunity arose and presumably without mercy. I felt guilty nonetheless that I had been unable to fulfil my promise to Pamela of helping her with the dinner, I had considered the option of presenting myself in the kitchen with
this offer as if nothing had happened, and indeed had come over to the house with that aim.

With that expiatory course of action now ruled out, however, I was forced to fall back on the harder truth; namely that my life in the country was to be brought to an abrupt conclusion, and that I was to return to London as soon as possible with few good wishes on the part of those I left behind. I will not go into my feelings concerning this prospect. You may recall the letters I wrote before my departure. I had the sensation, characteristic of the landscape of unrelieved misfortune, that I was rushing very fast downhill, as if through the blackest of tunnels; and that I could neither resist my slide nor indeed feel very much about it at all. There is something almost purifying about this type of loss of control, if one can forget that it will inevitably lead at some point to the most brutal contact with the solid ground of reality.

‘Hello,' said Martin, when I entered the room. He was sitting in his chair reading a book.

‘Hello,' I replied, seating myself in the leather armchair. It was almost dark now, and in the twilight Martin's face wore an indistinct beauty of suggestion. ‘You shouldn't read in the dark.'

‘I wasn't reading.'

‘How was Aunt Lilian?'

‘Old. Aunt-like.'

‘When did you get back?'

‘Hour ago. Bit more.'

‘Sorry. There didn't seem much point in coming over.'

There was a pause.

‘What happened, Stel-la?' said Martin gravely, turning his face towards me.

I had admittedly made my apology on the assumption that news of my afternoon's activities had reached him, but nonetheless I experienced a form of grief at hearing this assumption confirmed. I have always, ever since I was a child, disliked
being in trouble, and would find the machinations of whatever authority it was I had crossed – the deadly conveyance of information, the steely privacy of consultation, the resultant efficiency of the reprimand – strangely sinister. It aroused in me a primitive fear, and even though I was not strictly afraid of the Maddens, and could indeed if pressed make a good case for not caring what they thought of me in the slightest, I felt it now.

‘I could explain it,' I said, ‘but you wouldn't believe me.'

‘Try.'

I remembered my investigation of the Maddens' fridge that morning, the early and innocent misdemeanour which had subsequently cost me so much. What else had I been supposed to do, abandoned without food and with no means of procuring any?

‘I was hungry!' I cried. My still unrelieved inanition flooded forth at the words and I sank weakly back into my chair. ‘I haven't eaten anything all day,' I continued, my mouth dry.

‘Why ever not?' said Martin. ‘You don't need to diet. You're thin.'

‘I don't want to be thin!' I wailed. ‘I just don't have any money!'

‘Well, I know it's not
much
,' said Martin doubtfully. ‘But it certainly should be enough to—'

‘No,' I said, closing my eyes. ‘I mean I
really
don't have any. They – your parents haven't paid me yet.' Summoning my last reserves of energy, I explained the chain of consequence which had led from this simple omission to my discovery, drunk and unconscious, in the swimming pool.

‘Oh, I don't think it was just that,' said Martin, with that hint of ‘authority' which instilled in me such terror. ‘I think they thought you weren't –
happy.
'