The Move

by Felicity Everett

  ‘Oh, plastic’s no good,’ she said, tilting her head regretfully, ‘it makes the mushrooms sweat. But don’t worry, we can share. Oh look, there’s Luca and ’Lissa.’

  She gave an excited little wave and hurried towards our guides, who had clearly been counting every second of the fifteen minutes they must by now have been waiting by the appointed stile. As soon as they saw us approaching, however, their air of mutual irritation switched to one of unfeasible jollity. A lot of air-kissing and hand-pumping went on. Luca assessed our footwear and clothing for suitability, Imogen and Melissa exclaimed at the coincidence of their identical wicker trugs, Nick stomped his feet, impatient to get going.

  ‘Now just a few ’ousekeeping issues before we set off,’ Luca said. ‘You don’t touch anything without you show me first. You don’t taste any of the mushrooms until we get them back home and identify them and if you find a little colony, you don’t take all. You leave some little ones to drop their spores, OK?’

  He looked meaningfully at each of us in turn, his bespectacled face tilting in its wreaths of scarf like an owl in a tree trunk.

  ‘But where is Douglas?’ he asked, realising belatedly that we were a man short.

  ‘He’s had to cry off, I’m afraid,’ Imogen explained. ‘He sends his apologies…’

  Luca shrugged resignedly. ‘Ho-kaay then,’ he said, ‘let’s get going.’

  It felt like a school trip. Luca up ahead, calling bossily over his shoulder; Melissa and Imogen, the mean girls in the middle, secretly sizing each other up under cover of comradely chatter; Nick, the sixth-form prefect, chomping at the bit to catch up with them, but forced, for decorum’s sake to slow down every few yards and wait for me, the class dullard.

  We ploughed on deep into the woods, the scent of leaf mould and earth and dampness so dense you could almost taste it. Stopping to unhook myself from a vicious bramble, I fell a little behind the others and by the time I had slithered down a mossy bank to join them they were gathered around the gnarly root system of an ancient oak, poring over Luca’s first find. He beckoned me over and I stared stupidly at the forest floor, unable to distinguish anything at first, but as my eyes acclimatised to the dappled half light, a colony of saucer-sized mushrooms seemed to sprout one by one into visibility.

  ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ Melissa breathed.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ Imogen agreed.

  ‘Come on then, let’s have ’em!’ Nick made to bend down, but Luca caught him by the elbow. For a moment I thought there might be an actual scuffle.

  ‘Ah ah!’ Luca chastised, ‘First we identify!’

  ‘Indeed,’ Nick said, smiling through gritted teeth as he removed his elbow from Luca’s grip, ‘indeed.’

  We all gathered round and Luca took out a penknife, cropped a mushroom with great ceremony and held it aloft. The cap was a delicate shade of oyster, the stem a striking violet, the gills folded in on each other like origami.

  ‘What’s it called?’ I asked. Luca leaned his face close to mine so that I could smell the faint eggy scent of his breath and rotated the mushroom as if hypnotized by its beauty.

  ‘Prugnolo,’ he murmured. ‘Because of the purple on the trunk, you see?’

  ‘Stalk, darling,’ Melissa corrected him, her tone decidedly chilly.

  ‘Do we know its English name?’ Imogen wondered aloud.

  ‘Wood blewit,’ Nick said. Everyone turned in surprise.

  ‘Get you!’ Imogen sounded impressed.

  ‘Oh, I’m not just a pretty face, you know,’ Nick smirked.

  ‘So now, please…’ Luca wafted his hand graciously towards the forest floor. ‘But remember, just some, not all.’

  Soon Imogen and Nick were scrabbling around among the leaf mould, while Melissa knelt behind them, handmaiden-like, ready to brush the dirt off each new specimen, before laying it reverently in her trug. I had picked the only two mushrooms I could find and had been standing for some time, peering over the others’ shoulders, when Luca took my elbow.

  ‘Come,’ he whispered, starting to lead me down a woodland path, ‘I have a surprise for you.’

  ‘OK,’ I whispered back (I didn’t know why we were whispering), ‘but shouldn’t we wait for them?’

  ‘Something tell me they are not going to miss us…’ Luca said wryly and turning back I saw what he meant. Nick had one hand resting proprietarily on Imogen’s back while he regaled Melissa with some hilarious mushroom-related anecdote. Melissa’s face shone with rapt attention, while Imogen’s wore the secret smirk of one who has nothing to prove. A month ago, even a week ago, I’d have died inside seeing this; the jealousy, the sheer gut-wrenching humiliation would have floored me. Now I felt… what? Detachment, disdain… maybe even amusement, had it not been so depressing watching two grown females compete for an alpha male, like something off Life on Earth. Luca tugged my hand.

  ‘Come!’ he said. ‘Come!’

  It was a circuitous route through knee-deep bracken, tangled brambles and fallen saplings. As the woodland became denser and the path steeper, the faint rumble of Nick’s baritone and the ingratiating laughter of the women died away and I began to feel a little uneasy.

  ‘Shouldn’t we tell them where we’re going?’ I called, but Luca crashed on through the undergrowth as if he hadn’t heard. We were far from the footpath now. The trees were tall and sepulchral, the light diffuse.

  ‘Luca,’ I called, ‘what if they find another variety and they need to check with you?’

  He didn’t seem to hear me, leading me instead to the densest part of the copse, where he stopped suddenly.

  ‘What?’ I said warily. He didn’t reply, but circled his finger above our heads.

  I craned my neck upwards.

  ‘Trees?’ I said.

  He looked at me in amused reproach.

  ‘Abete rosso,’ he announced, ‘I don’t know in English.’

  ‘Spruce?’ I suggested.

  ‘Spruce, yes,’ he said, happily, ‘and where there is spruce we find…’ He pointed down towards our feet and made the same circling motion with his finger. I looked down.

  ‘Wow!’ I said. ‘What kind are they?’

  In among the soil and pine needles and leaf litter were several clusters of squat pebble-like mushrooms, pitted with craters of white where insects and slugs had taken chunks out of them.

  ‘Porcini,’ he said as proudly as if he had grown them himself. ‘Did I save the best for you or what?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we…?’ I gestured behind me. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, taking my hand and pulling me gently towards the centre of the glade. I made to stoop down and start gathering the mushrooms, but Luca caught my elbow and turned me to face him. Clutching my hands between his, he stared into my face, through his half-misted spectacles. He was almost hyperventilating.

  ‘You have to hear me this time, Karen. You have to listen to what I’m going to say to you. What I’ve wanted to say since we met…’

  ‘Oh no, Luca, please…’ I looked everywhere but into his eyes – at his dirt-filled fingernails, at the dew glistening on his stupid mop of hair, at the frayed edge of his linen scarf, at the spittle gathered at the corner of his too-pink lips.

  I might have felt sorry for him if I’d been on home turf, if the others were still within earshot, if anyone was in earshot, but instead I felt angry and a little afraid. He had planned this, I realized. Not just the speech he seemed determined to make, whether I wanted to hear it or not; the whole thing. The route through the wood, the Blewits…

  ‘Luca,’ I said, plaintively at first and then, when his hands remained clamped, vice-like on mine, more stridently, ‘Luca!’

  ‘Melissa doesn’t care, you saw that for yourself. She’s more into your husband than she’s into me. And your husband’s into Imogen. You know that, don’t you? I’ve seen them together in your husband’s car. They are not very discreet. We’ve nothing to lose, you see, you and I.’

&nb
sp; The faint sulphur smell of his breath was nauseating. I turned my face away in disgust, but he was too carried away with his own seduction plan to bother reading signals. He shuffled me backwards, palms clamped around my wrists, thighs propelling mine, needily, insistently, until my back met a tree and there was nowhere else to go.

  ‘He doesn’t deserve you, Karen, a man like that. He doesn’t know you like I do. When something’s right it’s right!’

  As he lunged towards me, lips puckered, eyes closed, something in me snapped.

  26

  ‘Luca can’t make it,’ Nick mouthed at me, one hand clamped round his mobile, the other poking the risotto with a wooden spoon. ‘Migraine.’

  I tilted my head to one side and made a sympathetic face. I would have been surprised if Luca could stand after the force with which my knee had met his crotch, but it was a relief, nevertheless, to know I wouldn’t have to endure an evening in his company. Even with my record of polite acquiescence, I didn’t think I’d be able to stomach that after what he’d done. I’d been thinking of feigning sickness myself.

  ‘That’s too bad,’ Nick was saying into his mobile. ‘Yeah, yeah. No, of course you should still come, Melissa. I’ve made enough to feed an army and you can always take some back for when he’s better. Yeah, soon as you like. Ciao.’

  They had found porcini of their own. They were all over the woods, apparently, not just in Luca’s sacred spot. chanterelles, too, and fieldcap and something called Slippery Jack – all identified by Nick. Who knew? He got a bit cagey when I expressed surprise at his hidden talent for mycology. Just shrugged and said it’d teach Luca to be a cocky little sod. I could only imagine what he’d have done if he’d found out what the cocky little sod had tried next. No need to go into that now, though. Much better glossed over. I had dealt with it myself. I was rather proud of that, in retrospect. I’d felt empowered… once I’d stopped shaking, anyway.

  ‘You look nice.’

  Nick slipped the phone back into the pocket of his butcher’s apron and made to kiss me. I allowed his lips to graze my cheek before pulling away.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Did I buy you that top?’

  I looked down vaguely – it was a floppy pleated thing with a tie-neck that I would never have picked out, but which, when I remembered to wear it, always looked better on than I expected.

  ‘No, Jude did.’

  He tilted his head regretfully.

  ‘Well, I should have done. You look fucking hot. I’m going to buy you more clothes in future. We should go to London. Have a spree in Selfridges.’

  I stretched my lips into a smile, but inside I was recoiling. Is that all you think it takes? I wanted to say, a blank cheque in Selfridges and a few lazy compliments? I came here to heal myself and mend our marriage. I came here thinking you were a changed man who had finally seen the error of his ways but you are the same vain egotist you always were.

  ‘What time are they coming?’ I said.

  ‘I told them seven for seven thirty, but knowing the Gaineses, I wouldn’t hold your breath. In fact…’ He hooked a finger through the belt loops on each side of my jeans and jerked me playfully towards him. ‘We’ve probably got time for a quickie…’

  I stretched my neck away from his puckered lips and removed his hands from my hips.

  ‘Bit chancy,’ I said. ‘Shall I make a salad?’

  ‘All done,’ he said breezily. No sign of hurt feelings, I noted.

  ‘I haven’t bothered with starters,’ he went on, ‘just got some nice olives and nibbles from the farmers’ market. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Why should I mind?’

  He turned back to the stove and ladled some more stock into the pan, before bending over it to inhale the fragrance.

  ‘You are going to love this risotto.’

  I wandered into the living room. The table looked beautiful – a sprig of rose hips for a centrepiece, a slender candle at either end. Nick had served the ‘nibbles’ in my hand-thrown pebble bowls, usually left gathering dust at the back of the cupboard in favour of plain white china. The overall effect was artier than he usually went for – less urban.

  The fireside looked bright and inviting, too, the cushions not so plumped as to indicate effort, but not sagging either, the coffee table just off centre on the rug, a handful of arty brochures left casually arrayed. I caught my reflection in the blue-black sheen of the window and thought in my Nick-approved top with my hair freshly washed, I might almost be mistaken, from the outside looking in, for someone who belonged here.

  I glanced down at the window ledge and noticed, nestling among the flowers and candles, a family photograph I hadn’t seen in years. It had been a favourite of mine, taken for us by a genial Italian waiter in – where had we been? – Sienna? Ravenna? Somewhere like that. Unusually, both boys were in it – adolescent Gabe, raising his half glass of wine triumphantly towards the camera, in celebration of his father’s indulgence; little Ethan, sitting ram-rod straight behind a glassful of breadsticks, his face covered in Bolognese sauce, giving a cheery thumbs up to the camera. Nick, with his arm around me, and his face tilted down, so the lens only caught the corner of his laughing mouth, and me looking – what was that look on my face? Ah yes, happiness.

  I had forgotten this relic from the past, and was surprised to see it enjoying such a prominent position on the window ledge. Nick was known for a slash and burn approach to memorabilia and the last time I had seen this picture in its cheap IKEA frame, we’d been having a clear-out at Trenchard Street and Nick had dumped it with a pile of stuff destined for the attic. That he had given it pride of place this evening struck me as odd. Could this be his idea of an apology? His subtle way of telling me that he wanted us to be a family after all? I glanced up from the photo and caught my breath. His face was just behind mine, reflected in the darkened glass. How long had he been standing there? Seconds? Minutes? Before I could read the expression in his eyes, however, he had stepped closer, put his hands on my waist and with a light kiss to my hair, propelled me towards the front door with a proprietorial slap to the bottom.

  ‘Wake up, silly, they’re here!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, opening the door, ‘I didn’t hear you knock.’

  ‘We didn’t quite like to!’ Douglas said, giving me a brief but friendly hug. ‘Looked like you were having a moment.’

  ‘Oh no, we were just…’

  But he had already handed me on to Imogen who grazed my cheek with hers so that all I got was an expensive whiff of lilies and lemon. Douglas glanced around the cottage with indulgent curiosity.

  ‘So, here we all are. All’s well that ends well,’ he said jovially.

  I frowned at him.

  ‘After your little… escapade… on the mushroom hunt.’

  ‘I got lost,’ I said tartly.

  ‘Along with Luca,’ said Imogen, with a smirk. ‘Our so-called guide. I shall look forward to hearing his explanation later.’

  ‘Ah well, you won’t, sadly,’ Nick said, taking his apron off and tossing it ostentatiously back through the kitchen door. He strolled over to his guests and clasped each of them to him in turn.

  ‘Why’s that then?’ said Douglas. I closed my eyes briefly against an unwelcome rush of memory. Luca’s greedy wet lips on mine, my knee jerking upward, a deathless groan, then running, running… undergrowth, brambles… chest panting… feet thudding, blood singing… stile… stumbling… barbed wire… ouch! Up again… running, slowing, daylight, cows… limping, heart slowing… safe.

  ‘Melissa just rang,’ Nick told him. ‘Luca’s got a migraine. She’s still going to come though.’

  ‘Oh no, what a shame!’ Imogen said. ‘About Luca, I mean,’ she added hastily. ‘Not that Melissa’s coming.’

  Douglas pulled a sympathetic face.

  ‘Dreadful pity to miss out, especially when it was his thing, as it were.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Nick, his tone suggesting he could live w
ith the disappointment.

  ‘We shall drink a toast to his recovery and send some risotto home in a doggy bag. Now, what’s everyone drinking? Shall I open this baby?’ he indicated the bottle that Douglas had just put in his hand.

  ‘Might need to breathe,’ Douglas said.

  Nick perused the label and gave a low whistle.

  ‘Oh yes, I see what you mean. Bit of a show-stopper. Now, what have I got that won’t ruin our palates for it in the meantime…?’

  I don’t know when my husband had become a connoisseur of fine wines – when he’d been schmoozing clients on the company credit card, I supposed – Tesco’s Finest had been good enough at home. Douglas followed him into the kitchen. Imogen perched on the sofa and I sat down on Nick’s leather chair. The air between us fairly bristled with ill will.

  ‘So cosy,’ she said, looking around our living room, ‘I sometimes think it would be nice to live somewhere a bit more…’

  ‘Cramped?’

  ‘No, no…’ Imogen laughed uncomfortably. ‘Somewhere a bit homelier, I meant.’

  ‘Well, you could,’ I said, ‘you could sell Walford House and buy yourself half a dozen homes. That’s what everyone’s doing in London now.’

  There was a brief silence and then Imogen tried again.

  ‘Do you miss it? London, I mean…’

  I felt a stab of something like grief. In the few months since I’d moved here, I had never allowed myself to ask that question, still less answer it.

  ‘I suppose I do a bit… I don’t imagine you hanker after the city life, though?’

  ‘Oh, I’m there almost as often as I’m here,’ she said, airily. ‘Twice a month in term-time for my teaching commitments and then for various openings and private views and so-on.’

  The shrill of the doorbell made us both jump.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it,’ said Imogen, who by virtue of being on the sofa was a whole yard nearer the door.

  ‘Melissa-a-a!’ they embraced insincerely. Melissa shrugged off a fur-trimmed parka to reveal a slim denim shirt-dress fastened from mid-thigh to throat with small pearl-faced press-studs. I noticed Imogen give her the once-over, before sitting down and smoothing her own velvet pinafore across her knees.