Catherine Alliott: A Rural Affair

‘You don’t mind them coming, do you?’ Angie asked me anxiously.

I stared at her, uncomprehending.

‘I’ve only got them for one day, thanks to Tom throwing his weight around and saying he wanted to see them. They have to go back to school after lunch.’

I came to. ‘Of course not, I’m thrilled. And mine will be delighted.’

I watched Clemmie’s eyes light up at the sight of them. She threw herself at Clarissa’s legs. Frankie, on the other hand, bit her thumbnail and looked guarded. I turned. Forced myself on.

‘Now, what else needs to go through?’

‘Nothing,’ drawled Peggy. ‘It’s all going like clockwork. Everyone’s very busy.’

‘Yes, well, you’re not, so why don’t you take these round?’ Angie put a plate of sausages in her hands, knowing Peggy’s mischief-making of old. ‘Is she being a pain?’ she asked when Peggy, sliding off her stool and disappearing with a sly smile, was out of earshot.

I shrugged. ‘You know Peggy.’

‘I do. No social code. When Tom went, she said I’d handed Tatiana to him on a plate,’ she said grimly.

I was silenced, because of course we had all thought that. When Angie employed a smiling, honey-haired, heavily breasted maiden from Auckland to muck out her horses and live in her cottage, we’d all wondered what planet she was on. And then watched in horror as Angie had gone off to yoga on a Monday, and bridge on a Thursday. The curtains in Tatiana’s bedroom would close almost before Angie’s car was out of the drive. Peggy hadn’t known, otherwise she certainly would have told her, and by the time Jennie and I had had endless cups of coffee and dithered and discussed and were honestly just about to break the news – it was too late. Angie was left in the gorgeous Queen Anne manor on the edge of the village with its bell tower and tennis court and gables, whilst Tom ravaged his nubile New Zealander in the horrifically sexy-sounding village of Tussle-under-Winkwood. Satisfyingly, when the pair of them travelled all the way to New Zealand to tell her parents the good news and then returned, she hadn’t been allowed back in the country. But that didn’t last long; she winkled her way in eventually, just as she had into Angie’s home, and her husband’s heart.

‘You know what Peggy said to me when we heard about Phil?’ Angie paused to turn and warm her bottom on the Aga.

‘I bet you wish it had been Tom?’ hazarded Jennie.

‘Exactly.’

‘And do you?’ I asked, wondering where I’d put the cake knife, if I ever had one.

‘Of course.’ Angie raised her chin. In the light, her lovely, sculpted face was fretted with fine lines. She shook back her flaming red-gold hair. ‘It would be so much neater, wouldn’t it? No messy stepmother only a fraction older than my daughters, no drifting between two houses. I’m deeply jealous. And look at all the sympathy you get.’ She waved her hand at the gathering in the next room, the flowers, the cards. ‘All I get is – well, of course she had it coming to her.’

‘That’s not true,’ muttered Jennie, knowing it was.

‘And on a more personal note, if I can’t have my man,’ Angie went on, ‘I certainly don’t see why anyone else should.’

‘Whereas, you see, I wouldn’t mind,’ Jennie said airily. ‘I’d quite like Dan to live elsewhere and just visit me at weekends. Someone else could wash his dirty underpants, sort through the insurance claims, the unpaid bills.’

‘No one believes you, Jennie,’ I told her.

‘Ah, but that’s because you don’t think I’ve got it in me,’ she said, dark eyes suddenly flashing. ‘Don’t think I’ll wake up one morning – when the next Troy incident occurs – and say, “Enough!” ’

This, a reference to last Christmas, when Dan, driving home from work after a protracted boozy lunch, pranged his car into a crash barrier on the A41. Sensing he was too pissed to call the AA, he’d left his immobilized vehicle on the hard shoulder and proceeded to walk home. He’d reckoned without a passing motorist calling the police, though, and soon the nearest patrol car – a dog handler, as it happened, complete with Alsatian named Troy – had found Dan’s abandoned vehicle. In moments they were out of their car and tailing Dan across country. Knowing his house to be literally over the next hill, Dan was taking the scenic route back to the village where, coincidentally, on that moonlit night, the entire population had gathered around the Christmas tree on the green to sing carols. All of a sudden Dan, in the shaky beam of his pursuer’s torch, in a pinstriped suit, briefcase flapping, ran hell for leather over the hill towards us, an Alsatian on his heels. As the handler shouted, ‘Get him, Troy!’ Troy did, and with his children watching wide-eyed on the green, Dan was brought down by his trouser leg, pinned until a back-up police van arrived, then bundled, limping, unceremoniously into the back of it.

‘Don’t think I won’t leave him if a scenario like that ever unfolds in front of the children again,’ Jennie trembled. ‘Everyone has their breaking point.’

The three of us were in a row against the Aga now – a common enough sight in this kitchen – hovering where we shouldn’t be, least of all me. Three women who’d shared a lot over the years, each with a few more lines around the eyes, each with a ubiquitous glass in hand.

‘I’ve done my bit,’ Peggy announced, coming back to join us. She tossed the empty plate on the side and resumed her place on the stool, lighting up again.

Four women.

‘Who’s he talking to?’ asked Jennie after a moment, craning her neck to peer next door. We watched as Dan tried to crack a nut which clearly wasn’t cracking.

‘Phil’s sister,’ I told them. ‘If I tell you she hasn’t laughed since 2006 you’ll know what he’s up against.’

Sour Cecilia, her plain, scrubbed face mystified, was on the receiving end of Dan’s charm offensive, a practised stream of anecdotal wit which he usually unleashed on pretty secretaries at work who’d lapse into fits of giggles.

‘I’d better rescue her,’ Jennie sighed, putting down her glass.

‘Do not,’ Peggy told her, staying her arm. ‘Do her good. She’s a pain in the tubes. I’ve already had two minutes with her. And your Dan’s going the extra mile as usual.’

It probably didn’t help Jennie that we all loved Dan.

‘And that, presumably, is the mother,’ Angie murmured, as an older, but more handsome version of Cecilia hoved into view.

‘Don’t let her see me!’ I squeaked, shrinking back behind Peggy. ‘I’ve done my bit. Hours and hours on the phone last week, and then a whole day down in Kent with the pair of them. I’m not doing any more.’

‘Good for you,’ agreed Peggy. ‘Your dad’s not one to let a mouth like a cat’s arse put him off, though, is he?’

We watched as my father, having returned from his drinks run to hand round gin and tonics with bonhomie, succumbing as ever to his urge to make a party go, sidled up to Marjorie, clearly of the opinion he’d met her somewhere before, which of course he had, at our wedding.

‘It’s Margaret, isn’t it?’ he boomed. For a small man Dad’s got a very loud voice.

‘Marjorie.’ She tensed, visibly.

‘That’s it. Weren’t you at the Gold Cup a while back? In a box with the McLeans?’

‘I was not,’ she said tightly.

He gave it some thought. ‘Didn’t we have a dance at the Fosbury-Westons’ once?’

Her mouth all but disappeared. ‘We did not. I’m Philip’s mother.’

It was pretty to watch. It all came flooding back to Dad. The wedding reception down the road at the country club where he’d greeted her jovially from the top step of that grand house, tightly upholstered as she was in purple silk, a fascinator on her head. A fascinator’s a strange little hat, and this one had a peacock perched aloft, but as he’d lunged to embrace her, the peacock’s antennae had somehow become involved in his buttonhole, which the florist had surrounded with some netted confection, so that her head became locked to his chest. A grim struggle had ensued: Marjorie silent, Dad hooting with laughter as he descended the step – which didn’t help, rendering Marjorie bent double. ‘She can’t get enough of me!’ he roared.