In a Country Garden

by Maeve Haran

  Ella herself had selected the things she loved most to bring here and the rest had gone off to auction. She looked round, feeling surprised at how easily she had been able to wave goodbye to it all. Maybe she wasn’t too old to start again.

  Since moving here she had discovered a whole new palette, from warm blue, a reflection of the river outside, to Tuscan terracotta. It had felt like doing up a doll’s house after her last home. Was that why she loved it? The sense that a house this size would be so much less responsibility? So much less to maintain?

  Her younger daughter Cory had sorted out all the techie stuff, thank God – the broadband and something called fibre optic; God alone knew what that was. Like a car owner who doesn’t want to know what happens under the bonnet, Ella just enjoyed using it all without needing to understand it. She had embraced Facebook to see what her grandsons Harry and Mark were up to (or rather what they’d let her see) and of course she’d adored blogging. What on earth was she going to write about for Sal’s magazine? Especially now she had to be careful not to use confidences entrusted to her by her friends?

  Her mind drifted to her other daughter, Julia. Interfering daughters. That would be a terrific topic. Ella mentally slapped herself on her wrist. It was bloody true, though. Julia, having nagged her for years about moving somewhere smaller, had suddenly wailed at Ella, ‘How could you sell our family home just like that without telling us?’

  And then, when Ella had started to clear three decades of belongings, Julia refused anything valuable but protested at every plastic toy her mother tried to throw out and even, bizarrely, wept over a Tamagotchi which had actually belonged to her sister. Maybe you’re a tough old boot, Ella told herself. Or maybe she couldn’t attach emotional significance to any object after losing her husband so suddenly. When that happened to you out of the blue, nothing material seemed to matter.

  Did Julia feel somehow stuck in a lost childhood for the same reason? She had tried to put her arms round Julia at that thought, but Julia hadn’t wanted to listen. Had Ella not noticed that the staircase in her new house was ludicrously steep? Julia demanded. How would she negotiate it when she was older? And why hadn’t she bought a sensible ground-floor flat?

  But her mother’s other mistakes had been eclipsed in Julia’s mind at the madness of the location of the new house right on the riverbank where it met the Grand Union Canal. Did her mother not remember about the Thames flooding? Was she completely crazy?

  Ella was indeed so crazy that this made her go straight to her CD collection (she actually still had one) and put on Leonard Cohen to listen to him singing about Suzanne and her place down by the river where she fed him tea and oranges that came all the way from China. As a matter of fact, when she was young she’d loathed Leonard Cohen and called it ‘music to slit your wrists by’, but an odd thing had happened: as she’d grown older she’d come to love his melancholy songs with their deeply poetic lyrics and had even been to see him in concert.

  Somehow those mournful ballads about mad muses made her think, as no other music did, of her youth. Hadn’t he been in the news because he’d written a letter to his old lover Marianne when he’d heard she was dying? Being Ella, she had to know now and opened her laptop, instantly googling Marianne. The screen filled with a vast image of Leonard and Marianne, both young and golden, walking hand in hand on the Greek island of Hydra. Ella had to sit down. She’d been to Hydra herself at eighteen, feeling sophisticated and daring and that life was an adventure that was just beginning.

  Cohen’s tender words filled her screen. ‘Well, Marianne’, he spoke directly to the woman he’d loved who had inspired one of his most famous songs, reminding her that now they were both nearing death, it wouldn’t be long before he followed her. Ella had to wipe away a tear, remembering that he had indeed followed her less than a year later. ‘Goodbye, old friend’, were his final words, and that he would see her down the road.

  Ella found that she was crying properly now and had to shake herself. She was only sixty-four, for goodness’ sake! Not that death couldn’t leap out at you at any time, as she knew only too well. As the wonderful Nora Ephron put it, after sixty death is a sniper.

  Nevertheless, this might be the inspiration she was looking for for Sal’s magazine. What Leonard Cohen can teach us all about living well. Not bad.

  Sal was wondering what going back to work would be like, and found she was really looking forward to it. It might be all right for Ella and Claudia to revel in retirement but she needed the buzz of the workplace – not to mention the money. She was well aware that of the four of them she was much the worst off, without a property to sell like Ella or a pension and a husband like Claudia. Laura might be in a precarious position, being divorced by that shit Simon, but she would have half of the marital home at least. Sal, who rented her flat and had enjoyed a life of extravagance, only had her talent and her brains.

  However, Sal was an optimist and she was determined to focus on the good things: she had a job she loved and she had her newly discovered daughter Lara, though Lara had now gone back to her native Norway to be with her husband and children.

  But that was fine because Sal was well now and she always had her girlfriends and the magazine, and everyone there had kept in touch.

  What she hadn’t expected as she walked along the Harrow Road towards New Grey’s offices near the junction with Ladbroke Grove was a welcome party, but she found the magazine’s lively octogenarian owner, Rose McGill, plus the jolly receptionist both looking out for her.

  ‘Sal!’ Rose greeted her enthusiastically, wrapping the slender Sal in her voluminous embrace. ‘Look at you!’ She held Sal out at arm’s length to inspect her new look. ‘I wouldn’t have recognized this short-haired sophisticate!’

  ‘Yes,’ Sal grinned. ‘I’m calling it cancer chic. Do you think it’ll catch on? Or is it beyond bad taste? I was never very good at telling.’

  ‘Sounds like a perfect topic for the magazine,’ Rose reassured. ‘God, we’ve missed you. Well, actually I haven’t because I’ve been let loose editing while you’ve been away, but everyone else has. Especially Michael.’ Michael was the CEO and he and Rose had a continual power battle. Rose could easily win, since she owned the magazine, but Michael knew the benefit of having an owner who was so committed to publishing in this age of declining ad revenue and competition from Google and Facebook. Their mutual respect was actually deep and abiding.

  ‘Come to my office and I’ll fill you in on what’s been happening.’

  Sal followed the flamboyant Rose along the corridor, whose walls were almost entirely covered in framed magazine covers, taking in the familiar and comforting buzz of people at work. How she’d missed it during her three months off! The chats round the coffee machine. The quick drinks after work that stretched into badly behaved evenings. The gossip in the ladies’ loo. It was the breath of life to Sal.

  ‘Cappuccino? English Breakfast? Chai?’ offered Rose when they reached her lovely, idiosyncratic office.

  Sal sat down in a wing chair. She decided that Rose must possess the only work space in the country which looked like a cross between a country house library and a branch of Pret A Manger. On a table by the window stood a Nespresso-type machine in shiny stainless steel which was Rose’s current pride and joy. You could almost imagine George Clooney (who always reminded Sal of a sexy dentist) suddenly materializing and proffering you a cup.

  ‘Cappuccino, please.’

  ‘You’re not following the no-dairy path then?’ Rose enquired.

  ‘No,’ stated Sal firmly. ‘Nor am I eschewing alcohol or taking up yoga. I am not intending to Eat, Pray or Love – even if I could find someone interested in a one-breasted sexagenarian. I am just the same Sal but without the hair and hopefully the tumour.’

  ‘Sally Grainger, I’m so glad you’re back. Everyone under sixty is so PC.’

  They chinked their cups. ‘To New Grey! By the way,’ Sal asked, ‘what’s happening with the American inte
rest in buying into the company? Do you still need me to go to the US?’

  When she’d first discovered she had cancer Sal had decided to keep it a secret from everyone. Her friends. Her colleagues. And even from Rose, especially when she’d announced that Sal might have to visit New York and meet a possible investor. By the time she’d finally realized she would have to admit the truth, Rose – canny as ever – had already worked it out and reassured Sal she would keep her job open. The relief had been incredible.

  ‘As a matter of fact, you won’t need to,’ Rose replied.

  ‘Right.’ Sal had to admit the news came as a relief. Even though she was feeling better by the day, the idea of travelling to America and selling the magazine’s concept to a hard-bitten New York businessman was a tad daunting. In fact, it made her feel quite sick.

  ‘Lou Maynard is coming over here. His daughter lives in Surrey and she’s had a baby. He’s perfectly happy to come and talk in London rather than you having to fly out. Probably wants to get away from Trump! Lou is a hundred per cent Democrat.’

  ‘Great.’ Sal got out her laptop and opened the list of ideas she’d been working on.

  Rose laughed. ‘I see you’ve been taking your convalescence seriously.’

  Half an hour later Michael, the CEO, put his head round. ‘Sal! Great you’re back. Have you managed to wrest power back from Rose’s possessive grasp?’

  He winked at her, softening the words.

  ‘Michael, have you not been following the media?’ Rose enquired with mock seriousness. ‘Banter in the office, especially at the expense of your seniors, is no longer considered professionally acceptable.’

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ announced Michael with a grin before leaving them to it.

  ‘I’ve made progress with Michael. He used to be so very proper.’

  ‘You’re a bad influence, Rose.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Laura finished tidying up the house before the estate agent was due to bring round the prospective buyers and flopped down on the sofa. She was confused as hell. She thought she’d persuaded herself that she was ready to move, that this house with its happy memories round every corner was simply making her sadder, like an old lover you keep bumping into who reminds you of the past.

  Her daughter Bella had moved out with Nigel and their baby and her son Sam would be leaving soon. They were no longer children who needed the security of the family home. She should be more like Ella, who had managed to let go and view her new place as exciting, a new phase. But suddenly Laura didn’t want to let go.

  She stared at the bunch of flowers she’d bought and put in a vase. What the hell was she doing trying to make the place attractive to people who would be turning her out of her home? She picked up the flowers and threw them in the bin.

  Outside she could hear the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel. Then the bell rang.

  Suddenly Laura grinned and flattened herself against the wall of the hall. She was damned if she was going to let them in!

  The bell rang again, insistently this time, as the agent kept his finger on the buzzer for what Laura considered an unacceptably long time. And then it rang again. She could hear the agent begin to apologize to the couple and they all seemed to be checking their smartphones for emails confirming the appointment.

  Just in time, feeling like the star of a spy movie, Laura pounced on her own phone and switched it to silent before they could call her.

  It began to vibrate. Laura smiled and ignored it.

  She heard them leave five minutes later then a set of footsteps crunched back towards her front door. The agent had obviously not yet given up the good fight.

  She heard his voice as he called his office. ‘Hey, Stu, I’m at Shirley Avenue. No one in. I’ve had to send them away. Not best pleased, I can tell you. I didn’t want to explain the circumstances. Some people are funny about buying a house after a marriage breakdown. Usually the women.’ He laughed nastily. Laura could just imagine his weaselly features, no doubt the kind of man who talked of giving women one. ‘Hope we haven’t got a fucking divorce resister on our hands. They’re a nightmare. I’m heading straight back. See you in five.’

  Behind the door, Laura smiled. She rather liked the idea of being a divorce resister. Maybe she could start a one-woman campaign.

  She got the flowers out of the bin, silly to waste them, and poured herself a glass of wine. At four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon it felt delightfully wicked. ‘To divorce resisters everywhere!’ she toasted and went off to find a silly DVD to go with her chilled Sauvignon.

  Claudia walked along the main street of Little Minsley thinking how very like Agatha Christie’s St Mary Mead it was, or maybe the Midsomer of Midsomer Murders.

  The cottages were almost too picturesque with their thatched roofs and roses round the door, gardens full of nodding hollyhocks against a bright blue English sky. In fact, the whole place reminded her of an embroidered cloth her mother used to have on her breakfast tray. Whatever happened to tray cloths? Claudia wondered idly. There must be a flea market somewhere with the world’s supply on display.

  Her friends had been shocked that if she was going to leave London, she would opt to live in a village rather than out in the country away from busybody curtain twitchers and prying eyes, but actually Claudia liked villages. The scale of a village made sense. You felt involved and knew that your neighbours would look out for you. They were places where all ages mixed in a way that rarely happened in cities stratified mainly by what people did and where their children went to school.

  Not that it hadn’t been a shock leaving London. Actually, shock was an understatement. At first it had felt like a black hole had opened in front of her into which her forty-year career as a teacher, her colleagues, the pupils both good and bad, The Grecian Grove and her closest friends had all fallen. The almost-affair with Daniel the sexy choirmaster had been an attempt to come to terms with her radically different life in deepest Surrey. It was that or go mad.

  Fortunately her daughter Gaby had shaken her out of it just in time and Claudia and her husband Don had promised each other a new start. Just what that meant, she was still trying to figure out.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the pattern for elderly coupledom in front of her. The prosperous nearby town of Manningbury seemed entirely populated with Stepford-like grey-haired husbands and wives, all holding hands. They held hands sitting in coffee shops, then strolled hand in hand down the street, and even went to afternoon offers at the cinema where no doubt they held hands in the dark. The effect on Claudia was to make her want to throw up. It was awful, she knew, and it meant she was a cynical old cow, but she and Don had never been hand-holders. Still, they had to find a way of making good their promise to each other.

  Claudia found she was staring into the window of The Singing Kettle, one of Minsley’s many tea shops. Sometimes she thought Minsley must be the tea-shop capital of the world. Countless DFLs (Down From Londons) seemed to abandon the rat race and follow their dreams of opening yet another cafe in Little Minsley. Someone inside, she suddenly noticed, was staring back.

  Claudia’s eyes locked with horror on the laughing face of Daniel Forrest, the sexy choirmaster. To follow her instinct and turn abruptly away would make her look like the shy and overweight sixteen-year-old that she had once been. Attempting a haughty Lauren Bacall expression, Claudia raised a dismissive eyebrow and delved into her bag for her phone, the universal saviour of awkward social situations, then pretended to be sending an urgent message.

  Betty Wilshaw, her octogenarian fellow choir member, came to the rescue, arriving suddenly aboard Henry, her lethal mobility scooter. Taking in the situation in one swift and comprehensive glance, she yelled, ‘Claudia! The very person I was looking for. Come with me into the post office and help me reach down some dog food.’

  ‘Thanks, Betty,’ she whispered as they pushed open the olde-worlde twelve-paned glass door. ‘
You saved my bacon.’

  ‘And not just your bacon.’ She gave Claudia a roguish look.

  ‘Betty, you know perfectly well any suggestion of that is over.’

  ‘Is it now?’ They both watched as Daniel emerged from the tea shop and started walking down the street in their direction, a dangerous smile on his handsome face.

  Claudia hid behind the birthday card rack and pretended to be engrossed in a gruesome selection of cards that were either puke-makingly sentimental or quite hair-raisingly crude.

  Daniel was about to push open the door of the post office when Claudia’s husband Don emerged from the Oxfam shop over the road. Claudia stared at him, transfixed. Only this morning he had left home in his usual baggy jeans and a jumper that had so many holes it looked like a moth’s midnight feast.

  Now he stood checking his phone, decked out in rust-coloured corduroys with a tweed jacket over a button-down denim shirt with a colourful silk scarf knotted round his neck the way smart Italian men do. Claudia was stunned. Don actually looked stylish!

  Completely ignoring Daniel, Claudia ran across the road. ‘Where did you get all that clobber?’ she greeted her husband admiringly.

  ‘Now there’s an expression that takes me back. Very Carnaby Street. I was actually looking for a denim shirt and decided to go a bit wild.’

  ‘You look terrific.’