Catherine Alliott - A Rural Affair

‘Mrs Shilling?’ Miss Hawkins was beside me suddenly, her anxious face in mine. ‘Mrs Shilling, have you got a moment?’

Clemmie was by her side, holding her teacher’s skirt. Eyes downcast she was sucking her thumb, something she hadn’t done during the day for ages. Luckily, Archie was crying in his pushchair; had been for some time.

‘I just wanted to talk to you about the other day,’ Miss Hawkins was saying, having to raise her voice over Archie’s wails. ‘When you forgot to collect Clemmie?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Hawkins, I really need to get Archie home. He wants a bottle.’

Such a long sentence, but somehow I got to the end of it. Then silently I took Clemmie’s hand, which hadn’t instinctively reached for mine, and we set off down the hill, Miss Hawkins’s eyes, I knew, boring into my back. Archie was still sobbing, but he cried a lot these days. All morning, sometimes. Perhaps he was missing his sunny mother, wondering who this withdrawn, distrait woman was, this impostor.

When I turned the corner at the bottom, my cottage came into view. A familiar red pick-up was parked outside. It hadn’t been there when I set off for the nursery a few minutes ago. It did occasionally rock up without warning, but usually after a gap of a few months and I’d seen Dad relatively recently at the funeral. Besides which we’d spoken a bit since. Dad and I were close, but we were self-sufficient souls and I’d imagined we were pretty much familied out. He was emerging from the pick-up – still minus its radiator grill, I noticed, which he’d left in a hedge some years since – in his working wardrobe of breeches, boots and an ancient checked shirt. He turned and waited, hands on his hips, as I came down the lane towards him.

‘Hello, love.’ He looked anxious, his bright blue eyes searching mine.

‘Hi, Dad. What are you doing here?’

‘Grandpa!’ Clemmie’s face lit up and she let go of my hand to run to him. He scooped her up, beaming.

‘That’s my girl! Hey, look at you. Been painting?’

‘No, we had ketchup for tea last night.’

‘Did you, by Jove. Well, you need a flannel. You’ve got it on your rabbit dress too.’ He prodded her chest.

‘Yes and I’m allowed to wear it every day. But I don’t want to wear it tomorrow.’

‘Wise move, Clem.’ He put her down.

Archie had stopped crying and was smiling and kicking his legs vigorously in his pushchair in his grandfather’s direction. Dad bent to tickle his knees, peering up at me the while.

‘Everything all right, love?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ I said as he straightened up to plant a kiss on my cheek. ‘Coming in?’

‘Well, I thought I might.’

I turned to open the gate and he followed me up the path. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ I asked over my shoulder. ‘This is a busy time for you, isn’t it?’

Dad dealt in horses, hunters in particular, and the beginning of the season was usually frantic. He spent every spare moment getting his mounts fit and then was either showing them off to prospective buyers or sending them out as hirelings to go cub hunting, often accompanying his clients if they were nervous.

He scratched his head. ‘Oh … I was passing. There’s an Irish Draught cross near here I might have a look at. Good blood lines, apparently.’

‘Oh, right. Where?’ I let us in.

‘Um …’ He cast about wildly and his eyes lit on an estate agent’s board opposite. ‘Dunstable?’

‘Dunstable’s pretty urban, Dad. In someone’s back yard, is it?’

‘Something like that.’

We went inside.

‘Everything all right, Pops?’

‘You’ve already asked me that,’ I said as he overtook me and crossed busily to open the sitting-room curtains in the darkened room, then stooped on his way back to pick up the ketchup-smeared plates from the carpet. He took them into the kitchen looking anxious. And my dad isn’t domestic.

I made him a cup of tea except there wasn’t any milk, whilst the children leaped all over him excitedly. I had a feeling he’d come for more than a cup of tea, though, so I flicked Fireman Sam onto the little kitchen telly to immobilize my offspring for five minutes and handed them each a chocolate bar. Dad eyed them nervously.

‘Lunch?’

‘Well, you know. Needs must, occasionally.’

Gosh, he looked terrible. Really worried. I did hope the business wasn’t in trouble. Dad claimed the recession hadn’t hit the horse-trading world, but maybe that was just a line he’d spun me, and maybe it had? Or had he come off one of his green four-year-olds and not told me? I did worry about him still breaking in horses at his age, but the trouble was, both Dad and I were so non-controlling, we couldn’t begin to tell each other what to do. Back in the sitting room, we sipped our tea, side by side on the sofa.

‘I felt a bit bad abandoning you like that after the funeral,’ he said at length.

I frowned. This was about as deep as it got. ‘You didn’t abandon me. You just went home.’

‘I know, but …’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘You know. I could have helped a bit. Should have pre-empted this. Anyway.’ He swallowed. ‘You were always in my mind.’

My father was a big Elvis fan and, in times of stress, tended to mangle his song lyrics. Things were clearly bad. In a minute he’d be telling me about the little things he should have said or done if he’d just taken the time. ‘Little –’

‘Dad.’ I interrupted quickly.

‘Hm?’ He looked at me. Blinked in recognition. ‘Oh. Right.’ He nodded. ‘Well, anyway, I’m here now. Better late than never, I suppose. And Jennie and I wondered if I shouldn’t … or if you shouldn’t …’ He hesitated and I waited, surprised. He and Jennie? He hadn’t seen Jennie since the funeral. ‘Well, look, love,’ he said, summoning up something really quite portentous, ‘what I wondered was, whether you’d like to come and stay for a bit?’

I frowned. ‘What, at Grotty Cotty?’ Dad’s cottage was so called because it was unfeasibly chaotic: full of half-cleaned tack and saddle soap, riddled with damp and reeking of a heady combination of horses, dogs, Neatsfoot oil, socks and whisky. It was an extremely ripe bachelor pad and totally unsuitable for children – who of course loved it – but still.

‘That’s kind, Dad,’ I said, speechless. ‘But no thanks.’

‘Or I could come here?’

Now I really was concerned. Dad couldn’t leave his yard for five minutes, let alone stay the night. The mere fact that he’d dropped in for a cup of tea was quite something. Suddenly I went cold.

‘Oh God, Dad, has it all collapsed? The business? Gone tits up?’

‘No! No, it’s going well, couldn’t be better. I sold three eventers last week, one to Mark Todd’s yard. No, it’s just … well, I’m worried about you.’ He put his arm around me awkwardly.

‘Me?’

‘I’m there for you, love. If you need me.’

I nodded, thunderstruck.

‘And I love you, my darling. Always will.’

I gazed down, trying to place it. ‘ “Love Me Tender”?’

He sighed. ‘Could be. Anyway,’ he said, removing his arm, ‘if you’re sure you’re all right …’ He patted my back tentatively and we sat there in silence. ‘Um … d’you want me to get the kids some lunch?’

‘They’ve just had it,’ I said incredulously, convinced I’d already told him that. Hadn’t we just had that conversation? Literally moments ago? Now I was really alarmed. Alzheimer’s?

Dad got up and took his cup into the kitchen. He also spent ten minutes washing up a toppling tower of crockery already in the sink, which was kind but very unlike him, then he came back looking a bit wretched, and then, finally, he left. As he went down the garden path, I watched from the open doorway. He wasn’t looking where he was going and nearly collided with a statuesque middle-aged woman in a tightly belted pea-green coat, spectacles and a purposeful air.