The Nanny (6 page)

“I'll phone you as soon as I get there,” she'd promised him.

“Cool,” he'd said. “Take care, babe.”

He kissed her lightly on the mouth, and she left, sniffing all the way home. When she got back, her parents left her alone, convinced that the tears were because he had not fallen for the bait and still hadn't proposed. Bill had half a mind to go and show him a thing or two and would have, if he hadn't known Jo would never forgive him, and if Hilda hadn't furiously barred the bedroom door while wearing her dressing gown and curlers, which had made him feel slightly ridiculous.

So bright and early Sunday morning, the three of them set off to Stratford-upon-Avon station. Jo had not been able to think of a kind way to explain that she really didn't need both of them to wave her off. It was only on the drive there that she realized she was letting them think they were doing her the favor because it might be the last time they'd feel needed by her, which was probably the first time she'd ever felt like the protective adult among them.
Typical
, she thought.
Just when I'm leaving
.

The train arrived twenty minutes early. Bill carried Jo's suitcase onto the stationary train, then turned to her before returning to the platform. He spoke quietly and quickly. “Mind you phone your mother. She'll miss you.”

Back on the platform, he gave Jo a brusque hug, coughed, then turned away and started to saunter back toward the main concourse, whistling and jangling the change in the pockets of his grey slacks.

Hilda and Jo watched him as he went.

“Pierce Brosnan, eat your heart out,” said Hilda.

Jo laughed.

“He loves you, you know,” Hilda told her daughter.

“I know.”

“Don't be a stranger. It'd break his heart.”

They hugged, then Jo turned away and got on the train. She busied herself, getting out her book and finding her seat. When she sat down, she looked out and could still just see her mother slowly following her father down the platform.

When Jo's train pulled out of Stratford-upon-Avon station she was a brave, strong adventurer with hope in her soul and a song in her heart. By the time she arrived at the Fitzgeralds' she was a gibbering wreck.

The London Underground had changed since her visit just a month before. When she'd used it for the interview, she'd been a tourist. Its sights, its sounds, tempo, smells, idiosyncrasies, delays, anonymity—everything was quirky and exciting.

This time was different. This time was for real. People moved to a rhythm she couldn't follow. She felt like the new girl at the front of a ballet class in a mirrored room. As the escalator took her deeper and deeper down, a great heaviness expanded inside her chest like she was drowning from the inside, a feeling she assumed must be loneliness. When an advertisement on the walls talked about coping with loneliness she had to turn away.

She tried to ignore her feelings and adopt the air of a seasoned traveler; after all, she'd made the journey to Highgate once already, she knew exactly where she was going. How hard could it be, she asked herself. She answered herself pretty succinctly by arriving in High Barnet.

Half an hour later, she arrived in Highgate, a stressed, traumatized nobody, aware of the ultimate meaningless state of existence and wearing the “Come any nearer and I'll pull the cord,” glint in her eye.

Reaching ground level at Highgate, she waited to feel the recognizable smell, taste, and texture of fresh air. When she didn't, she almost wept. London had different air! Of course. She could almost feel pollution plugging up her pores.

As she walked up the hill toward the village, her rucksack assaulting her back at every single point of contact, head like a cartoon hammer and feet proving themselves once and for all to be a major design flaw, she wondered if Vanessa Fitzgerald would mind if she greeted her with “One hot bath, bitch, or three dead babies.” Then she realized that she would be unable to form such a complicated sentence.

She needn't have worried. Vanessa wasn't in, as it was the first Sunday in the month,

Dick was in sole charge of the children. Only one generation ago that would have meant a day of discipline. Now it meant someone else who wanted to watch crap TV and eat junk food.

“Good journey?” asked Dick as he took Jo's suitcase from her hand and placed it two feet away from her in the hall. He ignored the multicolored rucksack coming out of her head.

“Oh, you know,” she said, forcing a smile. “No.”

“Good,” he said. “The children are upstairs—”

“DA-AD!” yelled one of them.

Dick smiled helplessly at Jo, tutted happily, and left her to it, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

Feeling like an uninvited guest at the party from hell, Jo stood for a moment getting her bearings. Having got them, she decided she wanted very much to change them. Then at the sound of Dick bounding back down the stairs, she mindlessly picked up her suitcase and lumbered through to the back of the house, through the kitchen, and into her suite of rooms.

There she dropped her suitcase and slowly collapsed onto her back, landing on the rucksack. She wriggled her body out of the straps, where, instead of it floating up to the sky as she imagined it would, it refused to budge. There she stayed, like a beetle dying on its back, for a considerable while.

When she felt her eyes well up, she heaved her body into what could loosely be termed a sitting position. Once up, she forced her body into a vague approximation of a standing position. Once standing, she conquered her inner fear, invoked her fighting spirit, and placed one foot in front of the other. She tripped over her suitcase, swore and stamped over it to her other room.

She stood in the doorway and took it all in. An enormous wardrobe dominated the far corner, a vast television squatted in the middle, and a dressing table perched in the near corner. Opposite them all was a funky futon-cum–double bed.

If I had the energy
, she thought,
I'd bring all my stuff in here and unpack it next month
.

Instead, she walked in and opened the vast wardrobe, half-expecting to find herself in Narnia. She stared sadly at the solid back of the empty wardrobe. It was absolutely enormous. She frowned and stared at it some more.
Hmm,
she considered.
I'll need more clothes
.

She walked back through her bedroom, tripping briefly over her luggage, into the en suite shower room. It was also enormous. Unfortunately no bathtub (Jo's parents had never had a shower installed), but the shower took up almost as much room as a tub would, and there was a toilet, sink, and a floor that could have doubled as a small dance area.

If I had the energy
, she thought,
I'd bring my stuff in and leave it in the middle of the floor for a month
. Instead, she washed her face and looked at herself in the mirror. “This must have been how Lady Di felt when she arrived at the palace,” her reflection seemed to say. Suddenly a small voice sounded behind her.

“It's teatime.”

She spun round and looked down to face Tallulah. “Hello!” Jo knelt and grinned at her like a long-lost friend.

Tallulah inspected her gravely. “Hello,” she said politely.

“How are you?” asked Jo.

“I'm fine, thank you,” answered Tallulah. “How are you?”

“I'm fine, thank you,” said Jo.

There was a lull in the conversation.

“It's teatime,” announced Tallulah.

“Ooh, lovely,” said Jo. “Thank you.”

“Daddy says will you be wanting brioche or focaccia?”

Jo thought for a moment, trying to work out if the little girl had just sworn at her. She repeated the sentence in her head a few times. “I'll come and find out, shall I?” she said eventually.

Tallulah frowned. “If you don't know now, you won't know then.”

“Oh!” said Jo. “Is that what you think, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Well then,” said Jo, gently taking Tallulah's hand in hers, “you'll just have to decide for me.”

“I can't do that,” said Tallulah, leading Jo back through her bedroom.

“Why not?” asked Jo.

“Because I can't.”

“Of course you can. I trust you completely.”

In the kitchen, Tallulah blinked contemplatively up at Jo. Just before the other children advanced toward the front line, Jo thought she caught the glimmer of a smile on the little girl's face.

“I'm having chocolate spread,” announced Toby, leaping onto one of the velvet-cushioned iron thrones, almost squashing the two cream cats,
who leaped out of the way and cast him looks that would have shrunk a lesser man.

“It's Nutella,” corrected Cassandra, plonking herself opposite him.

“I'm having chocolate spread, too,” announced Zak.

“It's
Nutella
!” repeated Cassandra.

“I'm choosing Jo's tea for her,” Tallulah told them all.

“It's chocolate spread, smarty-pants,” Zak told Cassandra.

“It's Nutella, poo pants,” Cassandra told Zak.

“Now, now,” Dick told them all.

“And I'm not having chocolate spread on bread,” said Zak, “I'm having it on chocolate digestives.”

“Hummus, anyone?” asked Dick.

“Bleagh!”
spat Toby.

“Yes please!” said Tallulah.

“Hummus tastes like sick,” explained Toby.

“I love hummus,” Tallulah quietly informed Jo.

“It's made with chickpeas,” Cassandra told them.

“Oooo-oo-ooh,” mocked Toby. “It's made with
chickpeas
!”

Zak collapsed in hysterics.

“It's made with
chickpeas
!” he repeated.

“Well it
is
!” said Cassandra, frustrated.

“Well it
is
!” repeated Toby.

“Now now,” said Dick. He turned to Jo. “There's mixed salad with balsamic vinegar and sun-blushed tomatoes—the children find sun-dried a bit too salty—and focaccia with hummus, tzatziki, or guacamole. Or if you have a sweet tooth there's brioche, butter, and chocolate spread or raw honey—most of it organic. I'll grind some coffee when the kids are sorted. Half-decaffeinated, organic, Brazilian, hope that's okay.”

After deciding that Dick was being serious, Jo looked down at Tallulah. “Tallulah's choosing for me,” she said. “I'll have whatever she's having.”

Without further ado, Tallulah poked her little pink tongue neatly out of the corner of her mouth and started making Jo's tea.

“Chocolate spread! Chocolate spread!”
shouted Zak, victorious.

“It's Nutella!” cried Cassandra. “Look at the label!”

“Dad said chocolate spread!”
shouted Zak.

“Da-ad!”
wailed Cassandra.

“Now, now,” said Dick.

Tallulah chose buttered toasted brioche with lots of chocolate spread and hummus. Luckily, homesickness seemed to be temporarily numbing Jo's taste buds.

“I like the cats,” she said, hoping the act of talking would distract her body from the act of having a minibreakdown.

Dick smiled.

“They're Molly and Bolly,” said Tallulah, solely to her. “Molly's the boy, he's the bigger one, and Bolly's the girl.”

“Molly's a strange name for a boy,” said Jo.

“It's short for Molière,” said Tallulah. “Mummy's favorite playwright. He's French.”

“I know. I studied him for French A-level.”

The table went quiet.

“Bolly's short for Bollinger,” continued Tallulah. ‘It's Mummy's favorite champagne. Bolly's always busier than Molly but doesn't eat as much as him. They're Burmese, but they don't have a funny accent.”

The conversation was then drawn to a close as the table started arguing about what sort of accent the cats would have if they could speak, Dick playing as active and passionate a role in the argument as his children.

While they were eating, Jo became vaguely aware of the sound of the telephone breaking into the cacophony around her. She waited for someone to answer it, and when no one did, wondered briefly if it was only going on in her head. But no, Dick was starting to notice it, too. He kept frowning at it and tutting. Was this a test? To see if she was able to take responsibility? Was it Vanessa calling? Or could it be her parents checking that she had arrived in London safely? She hadn't had a moment to call them. The longer it was ignored, the more frantic she started to feel. Eventually, unable to contain herself any longer, she said to Dick, “Would you like me to get that?”

“Oh yes, please,” he answered eagerly.

As Jo approached the ringing phone, the family as one became silent. Jo realized she didn't know the phone number, yet didn't feel she could answer informally, as if she were mistress of the house, especially if it was Vanessa on the other end. She also realized she had no idea how to answer the tiny chrome instrument. She grew suddenly self-conscious. She picked up the phone and heard herself say, in a stilted voice, “The Fitzgerald residence. May I help?”

“Press the green button!”
cried the suddenly hysterical Fitzgeralds.

Jo managed not to throw the phone in the air and pressed the green button.
“Speak!”
they yelled at their new nanny.

Jo turned her back on them.

“The Fitzgerald residence,” she said brusquely. “May I help?”

There was a long pause. She could feel the entire family staring at her back. The pause continued. She could hear someone breathing at the other end of the phone.

“The Fitzgerald residence, may I help?” she repeated.

Another pause. She turned away from the family a bit more.

“Or not?” she whispered pointedly.

“Hello,” came a warm male voice.

“Can I help?” she repeated.

“Help who?” came the grinning voice. “You're the one who sounds like you've got a poker up your arse.”

Jo's body underwent a thermal flush.

“Thank you,” she said. “To whom would you like to speak?”

“Dick. Is…of whom I would like to speak. To.”

Jo tried to hand the phone to Dick as if it was a hot bomb, but Dick was having none of it. He shouted into the mouthpiece, “Who the hell is disturbing my Sunday tea?” Jo took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and turned her back again.

“Who shall I say is calling?”

There was a pause.

“You shall say Josh is calling.”

“And what's it about?” yelled Dick across the kitchen.

This must be a test,
she decided.
No wonder their nannies don't last long
.

“Will he know what it's concerning?” Jo said into the phone.

“No,” said the voice. “I don't even know what it's about yet,” it said. “Let's just live dangerously and see what happens, shall we?”

Jo wondered how on earth she had become a figure of fun for someone who hadn't even met her yet. She felt a stab of longing for home and yearned for the chance to be the one mercilessly ridiculing others and not the other way round. Was she ridiculous to the Fitzgeralds? Were they all laughing at her? She turned to face them. They were all grinning, and Dick was stuffing his face with salad. She felt a sudden need to be back in her neighborhood pub with Shaun, getting her usual without asking. She handed the phone to Dick and, imagining Shaun, Sheila, and James were lis
tening, found a spark of her former self and said, “It's Josh. He doesn't have a strategy for the conversation, but is willing to live dangerously if you are.”

The Fitzgeralds burst into happy laughter, and all tried to grab the phone.

“Firstborn!” shouted Dick into the phone. He held the phone out to his children, who all yelled their greetings.

Jo pretended not to hear Dick repeatedly say into the phone, “Did she? Did she?” punctuated by hearty laughter.