Catherine Alliott: A Rural Affair

‘Good evening,’ I greeted one or two. No, I would not sit. It was rude. I got to my feet. Just. ‘And thank you so much for coming.’ An elderly matron blinked at me, astonished. ‘Yes, it is a lovely party, isn’t it? Not at all, my pleasure. Do come again.’ This, to Luke. ‘You too, Sue.’

‘Christ, love, what are you on!’ Dad was suddenly beside me, alarmed. My father doesn’t do alarmed. He’s not a big man, but he was managing to hasten me, bodily, to the door. We passed a waitress. ‘Hey, hang on, Dad,’ I swung about. ‘There’s this little blue glass, right, with this delicious –’ But she’d gone.

‘Schnapps? You drank that?’ he said aghast.

‘Three,’ I told him solemnly. ‘Wouldn’t mind another.’ I made a break for it, but Dad’s an ex-national hunt jockey, and his arms are strong. He was propelling me forcibly outside.

‘Now what I’m going to do,’ he was saying in the patient tones one normally reserves for the educationally subnormal, ‘is pop you in the lorry, OK? Then I’ll go back for the children, and then we’ll potter off home, all right?’

‘Righto,’ I said cheerfully, as he hustled me down the floodlit gravel drive. The night air hit me like a cosh, though, and suddenly I felt terribly, terribly light-headed. And a bit unwell. Was I going to be sick? I counted to twenty and somehow, having taken my shoes off to cross the paddock, found myself seated in the cab of a dark lorry in the middle of a field, shoes in my lap. Dad beetled off.

To stop myself being ill and the world going round, I sang. I sang, with deepest concentration, a verse from ‘Raindrops on Roses’. So many favourite things to remember, though. Whiskers. Kittens. Kettles … Bugger. ‘Edelweiss’, then. On I warbled. Beside me, a young couple who’d left the party early jumped into a Land Rover. They climbed into the back seat and started kissing. Ah well. I sang on. Everyone, it seemed, had found love tonight, except me. I sang on to the stars, just like Maria singing to the children, and somewhere during the third verse, my own children appeared. Just like the Von Trapps, but fewer, thank God.

‘Darlings!’ I greeted them exultantly, arms wide. Archie was fast asleep, wrapped in a blanket as Dad handed him to me through the driver’s door. Then my own door opened and Clemmie was in Sam’s arms, wide-eyed.

‘Why were you singing, Mummy? We heard you miles away.’

‘Because I’m happy, darling! Well, hello,’ I drawled to Sam. ‘Can’t keep away, can you?’

‘Shut up and move across,’ said my dad, unreasonably officious for him. ‘Here, put this across the children.’

‘A seat belt,’ I boggled. ‘Didn’t spot that on the way over. Coming, handsome?’ I winked extravagantly at Sam.

‘That’ll do, love,’ said my father more gently. ‘And let go of his bow tie, there’s a good girl.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he doesn’t like it.’

I dropped it, disappointed. Sam’s head retracted and within a twinkling the cab door had shut on me. ‘Spoilsport,’ I pouted. Then I wound down the window and leaned out. Dad was already behind the wheel, though, and had the engine started. ‘Lovely party!’ I sang, hanging out of the window as we reversed.

As we turned back towards the gate, the headlights from our lorry lit up the back of the Land Rover beside us. Bare limbs shivered in the yellow beam: two people were kissing horizontally and half naked on the back seat. From the waist down, in fact. A pair of pearly white buttocks gleamed, a broad back still in its dinner jacket, the back of a man’s blond head, poised above a dark one. Suddenly Hope’s beautiful but startled face was caught in the spotlight. As we rumbled off across the field, leaving Sam standing in the midst of his acres, it occurred to me that, whilst I hadn’t recognized the buttocks, I had recognized the Land Rover. It rumbled through our village on a regular basis. It was Passion-fuelled Pete’s.

31

The following morning found me a radically altered woman. No longer on top form. No longer singing in close harmony with an aristocratic Austrian family fleeing the Nazis. No longer in heaven. This woman was in hell, not with the sound of music, but the sound of throbbing temples. Unable to move from her bed, or unleash her tongue from the roof of her mouth, or crowbar open her eyes – I managed, briefly, then shut them again – never had a person felt so unwell. Staggered by the weight of my limbs, which I could just about coax into a foetal position, I lay doggo. Deado. Dead. And went back to sleep.

Sometime later I was awoken by the sounds of momentum gathering next door. A grumbling volcano. My children were bubbling under like so much molten lava, surely about to erupt. Ah. There it was. Archie gave a shriek of outrage and Clemmie came running in.

‘Mummy, I think Grandpa put Archie’s nappy on back to front, but when I tried to do it he screamed. He won’t let me.’

‘I’ll come,’ I managed gnomically, as, with a heroic effort, I heaved myself out of bed. I tested my feet for support, rocked momentarily, then lurched next door.

Archie was indeed wearing a back-to-front nappy as he stood gripping the bars of his cot, together with what seemed to be a T-shirt of Clemmie’s. But at least they were alive; at least my father had had a go, I thought gratefully, as I heard him downstairs making tea. I lifted my baby son from his cot and nearly fell over. Had to hold the wall. Somehow I organized a clean nappy, and together we went downstairs, one hand in my son’s, as he insisted on doing every stair himself, one on my throbbing forehead.

‘Morning, Dad,’ I muttered, as my father caught Archie, who ran to him. He set him in his high chair. ‘Turn that down, would you?’ I waved at the blaring radio.

Dad grinned, looking horribly chipper, clearly freshly showered. He made a long arm to the radio as I sank down at the table, head in hands.

‘Morning, love!’ he chortled. ‘All right?’

It’s not often my father has the upper hand in the morning-after department; he was bound to milk it. I kept my head low and grunted non-committally.

‘How’re you feeling, then?’

‘Marvellous.’

Terrible. It was all coming back to me in glorious technicolor. Some little blue glasses. Bob leering at me throughout dinner. Chad’s desperate eyes. Hope careering round the dance floor as the horn blew to ‘John Peel’. Sam. Who I’d danced with, but – oh God, what had I said? I sat up slowly. Covered my mouth as my father put a cup of tea and two Nurofen in front of me.

‘Oh God, Dad, I think I flirted outrageously with Sam Hetherington last night.’

‘No, no, love. Not so anyone would notice.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. Anyway, nothing wrong with a bit of flirting. Makes the world go round.’ He sat down opposite and sipped his tea.

‘No, but the thing is, I think I might have overdone it …’ My mind was a blur. I tried to clear it. ‘Declared undying love, or something. God, d’you think I did?’

‘No one takes that type of thing seriously at a party. Here, put some sugar in, get it into your bloodstream. Good night out, though, wasn’t it?’ He ruffled Clemmie’s hair as she ran past to watch television in the other room.

‘So, you don’t think he noticed?’ I asked anxiously, remembering … oh Lord, had I nibbled his ear? While we danced? I seemed to remember him brushing me off with a ‘No, Poppy.’ Surely not.

‘Not for one moment,’ Dad said firmly. ‘Anyway, people like that get attention the whole time. It’s like Brad Pitt, or whoever; they think nothing of it.’

Brad Pitt. An A-list celebrity. That’s how far out of my league my father thought Sam was. Interesting. Interesting too how, weeks ago, not so very long ago really, I’d felt he was not only in my league, but really quite proximate. At his great house, however, in his bottle-green tailcoat, very much mine host, very much handsome bachelor of the parish, he was light years away. Bachelor. No, not quite. Divorced. From Hope. And thinking of Hope, some strange hallucinogenic memory struck me, to do with buttocks. I wrinkled my forehead in an effort to remember. Across the breakfast table, my father was optimistically setting a rack of toast before me.