A Year in the Château

by Sarah Long

  ‘Less of the “old woman”, please! And it’s not just a hobby. We’re making money out of it.’

  ‘Do you all get involved?’ asked Gus. ‘I can’t see Dougie down on his hands and knees.’

  ‘Beth and me, mostly. Then I go to the markets in the van with Jean-Louis.’

  ‘The hot farmer?’ asked Maddie.

  ‘He’s the farmer, yes. I’m not sure I’d describe him as hot.’

  ‘He looks smoking in the photos you showed us! Or maybe that’s just in comparison with your housemates – sorry, your château mates.’

  ‘They are all lovely,’ said Nicola. ‘I am lucky – they don’t mind if I’m a mess right now, they’re not trying to heal me or wave a magic wand. They’re just there when I need them. Anyway, let’s talk about you, Maddie. It’s the logistics you have to think about. Where will you live and who will look after the baby when you go back to work?’ She corrected herself. ‘If you go back to work.’

  Maddie was full of surprises but Nicola did hope she wasn’t thinking of giving up her job she’d worked so hard for.

  ‘Of course I’ll go back to work after maternity, Mum. I want this baby so much, but if I’m going to do it alone, I need to support us both. And I’ll stay living here, if that’s OK with you? Gus’s flatmate is moving out anyway, so there’ll be a spare room for the baby.’

  ‘I see. Good, I’m glad you’re not giving up on your career, though I’ve never quite got to grips with what exactly that entails. So, who will be pushing the pram around the streets when you’re back at your desk?’

  Maddie looked at her expectantly.

  ‘Is there a crèche at work? A nice nursery nearby?’ Nicola asked. ‘Or maybe you could find a childminder. I had a lovely woman near here when you were a baby.’

  ‘I was thinking of having someone live-in, actually,’ said Maddie.

  ‘You mean an aupair? No good for a baby, they’re not supposed to work full-time, but it’s useful once you get to school age. Or do you mean an actual nanny? They’re very expensive, darling.’

  ‘I was thinking more in terms of a family member, actually.’

  Maddie took a deep breath.

  ‘Mum, I wanted to ask if you would move back here and help me with the baby. It makes perfect sense: you’re on your own now and you’d have such a close relationship with your grandchild. It would be incredibly bonding for you to spend every day together, and we’d have each other. It’s the ideal solution, don’t you agree?’

  *

  ‘Wow, you’re going to be a grandmother! I didn’t see that coming.’

  Nicola was on the phone to Beth, snuggled up in bed in what used to be Gus’s room. He had promoted himself to the master bedroom when they moved away and Maddie was now back in her old room, such were the musical chairs of their new family arrangement.

  ‘Neither did I. And there’s more: Maddie wants me to move back and be her nanny!’

  ‘What? I hope you’ve told her it’s out of the question!’

  ‘I’ve told her I’d think about it.’

  ‘Nicola!’

  ‘What could I say? She’s feeling vulnerable, as you can imagine. A single mother in the making – I’m not going to turn my back on her, am I?’

  ‘There’s a difference between turning your back on her and saying you’re not going to chuck in your own life to make hers easier.’

  ‘Harsh.’

  ‘Clear-sighted. You’d be stuck in your old house with a baby all day. Remember how boring that was? And no end in sight, not like when we were on maternity leave. Anyway, we need you here, you can’t just walk out on us.’

  ‘It would only be for a while, until she’s made other arrangements.’

  ‘You mean for eleven years, until they go to secondary school and you’ll be pushing seventy.’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Chatting with the other nannies and young mums at the school gate, or maybe they’d invite you along to their coffee mornings so you can sing “The Wheels on the Bus”.’

  ‘Oh God, I’d forgotten about all that.’

  ‘While your vegetables go to rot in your beautiful garden here and we set an empty place for you at the table.’

  ‘Now you’re blackmailing me.’

  ‘I’m just reminding you that your home is here now. I’m delighted for you about the baby, but it doesn’t mean you have to turn into Mary Poppins.’

  ‘How are things at the château?’

  ‘Oh, horrible. Apples on the trees are glowing in the autumn sun, the Michaelmas daisies are the perfect shade of mauve against the white of the Japanese anemones, and the immaculate new roof means we are protected from all vagaries of the weather. Last night Leo made us a faultless soufflé suissesse from Michel Roux’s Le Gavroche cookbook.’

  ‘Did he take it out of the oven halfway through, then add cream and grated cheese?’

  ‘Of course, I told you it was faultless.’

  ‘I do miss you all.’

  ‘And we miss you. Hurry back.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Maddie returned to work the following day, and was gone before Nicola came downstairs to find Gus eating a bowl of porridge to the sound of unfamiliar music.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ he said, looking up from his phone.

  ‘Do you mind if I turn it down?’ asked Nicola. ‘It reminds me of when we’d come back from a weekend away to find the radio tuned to an alien station. It used to drive Dad mad when he came down to make the coffee.’

  ‘Because he couldn’t start his day without listening to people arguing on Radio 4. I find the opposite; give me music any time.’

  ‘Did Maddie get off all right?’

  ‘I didn’t see her, but I guess so.’

  ‘What do you make of all this, Gus?’

  ‘The baby? Great news, now I’m over the shock.’

  ‘Me too. And how do you feel about having them living here?’

  Gus sat back in his chair.

  ‘I’m really happy about it. I know it sounds a bit circle of life cliché, but we were so cut up about Dad . . . and now we’ll have a whole new person to take his place, if you see what I mean. Not that anyone could take his place.’

  Nicola put her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘He was so proud of you.’

  Gus looked up at her.

  ‘Was he, though? I always thought he disapproved of me going back to do a PhD. Perpetual student, blah blah blah, time to get on in the real world. Though he complained enough about his own real world job, you’d think he’d be glad I‘d be spared all that for a couple more years.’

  ‘He was probably a little envious – it coincided with his peak dissatisfaction at work. But he was glad to see you using your brain and doing something you love rather than that soul-destroying job you had, moving wealthy people’s money around. As I say, he was very proud of you.’

  ‘I’m glad he stopped working when he did. At least he had a few months of fun with you and the hippies before he died.’

  ‘We’re not hippies!’

  ‘Rich old hippies.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be glad to put that adventure behind you, now you have more pressing concerns.’

  Nicola could see that Maddie had won him over. They were both presenting it as a fait accompli.

  ‘Gus, you have to understand, the château is my home now.’

  ‘This is your home! Now that Dad’s gone, we are all you have. Surely you want to be with us?’

  His words provoked a surprisingly strong reaction in Nicola. She loved her children, but the idea of them being all she had was dispiriting. As if she should put on her widow’s weeds and quietly pack her own life away in a neat cardboard box.

  ‘Of course I want to be with you, but not all the time! I’m thinking of you as well – it would drive you mad having me here now you’re used to having the place to yourself. One of our motivations for moving away was the hope that it would let
you grow up and be more independent.’

  ‘Grow up! I’m perfectly grown up, thank you, and Maddie is so grown up that she’s having a baby, which is about the most adult thing you can do. We thought you’d be thrilled that we wanted you here – lots of my friends can’t stand their parents and do everything to avoid them. You should be flattered.’

  ‘I am flattered. I’m just not sure I want us all to live together. And I’m certainly not sure I want to spend my days ferrying my grandchild to soft play centres, however much I love them, and I know I will love them to bits.’

  ‘Think about Dad. What would he want you to do? Take care of his grandchild or rattle around like a spare part in a big house in France? You’ve said yourself that keeping busy is what has kept you sane since he died. This way you can keep busy and be close to us. Your poor orphaned children.’

  ‘You’re not orphans, you have me.’

  ‘Exactly. Dad was such a role model for me, Mum; you had the perfect marriage. I hope one day I’ll be as lucky.’

  Should she tell him now?

  ‘We had a happy marriage, Gus, but it wasn’t perfect.’

  ‘You’d shout at each other from time to time, but who doesn’t?’

  ‘It was more than that. There’s something I need to tell you.’

  *

  Gardening as therapy, Nicola knew all about that. Tending her rows of vegetables in the château garden had been her source of strength and comfort in the months since Dominic’s death, giving her space to grieve, in the knowledge that outside the garden walls, her friends were waiting for her.

  Now she was about to put the same energy into the neglected rear garden in London. Gus had done a pretty good job of keeping the house in order, but the beds outside had been allowed to run riot; dead flowers were falling over the path and weeds were asserting their dominance over the once carefully maintained ground cover.

  Nicola opened the door of the shed, which used to be an outside privy, and took out the old garden fork that someone had given them as a wedding present. Dominic’s gardening gloves were hanging next to hers, moulded to the shape of his hands, reminding her of the death cast her aunt had made of her uncle that had spooked her as a child. She ran her fingers over the gloves and thought how he would never meet his grandchild, he would never show them how to plant a bulb, or help them to write the name of a flower on an old lolly stick and push it into the dark soil.

  Gus had been indignant on her behalf when she told him about Flora. ‘What a complete idiot!’ he’d said. He remembered Flora from the school gates because her son was known as the class bully, yet he always went off meekly with his mother, hand in hand after lessons when he thought no one was watching. ‘If I’d known, I would have duffed him in for you, Mum,’ he said, as though they were in a revenge drama and the sins of the mother must be visited on the son. But he was unwilling for the memory of his father to be tarnished by what he regarded as a one-off aberration. ‘He chose you, Mum. If he’d really loved her, he would have left. Plenty of my friends’ fathers did; then they all got double Christmas presents. I used to be really jealous.’

  She felt better, having told him. It put Dom’s affair in perspective and somehow reduced her shame on his behalf.

  The wheelbarrow was soon overflowing with uprooted bindweed and nettles, and she pushed it down the path to unload on the compost heap at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘Hello, Nicola.’

  She turned round to find John standing on the path behind her.

  ‘Gus let me in. He told me you were out here.’

  He looked sheepish. His blond hair was unbrushed and he stood with his hands in his pockets, as though waiting for her to express her disapproval.

  ‘John, I wasn’t expecting to see you!’

  ‘I was hoping to find Maddie here. I suppose she’s told you . . .’

  ‘Yes, she told me.’

  And yet you’re here, she thought, with a glimmer of hope.

  ‘She’s not taking my calls, so I came over.’

  ‘I’m pleased to see you, John, and I was just thinking it’s getting cold out here. Let’s go inside for a cup of tea, shall we?’

  He followed her into the house, where she put the kettle on and took a good look at him as he slipped his coat off his athletic shoulders and sat up at the counter. He didn’t have the air of a cad and a bounder; he had the look of a good person who knows he has just made a big mistake.

  ‘You’re looking well, Nicola,’ he said politely.

  ‘Better than you,’ she said, taking in his red-ringed eyes. ‘And I’m probably looking better than last time we met.’

  ‘It was a very moving funeral. Maddie and I thought you were incredibly brave to give that reading.’

  ‘It’s all a blur but I’m glad I managed it.’

  ‘Awful. Such a shock.’

  He took his head in his hands.

  ‘Oh Nicola, I’ve really messed up . . .’

  It’s going to be all right, Nicola realised, as she watched him preparing to pour his heart out. She so hoped that Maddie would agree to take him back. They’d be together again and she, Nicola, would be free. Then she chastised herself for her selfish reaction.

  ‘She was devastated when Dominic died,’ said John. ‘And I was being very supportive, I really was. Making tasty suppers to be sure she was eating properly, holding her when she couldn’t stop crying, taking care of everything so she didn’t have to worry . . .’

  ‘I know you were, she told me how good you’d been.’

  ‘And then, just as she was starting to come to terms with it, being more her usual self, I had this awful reaction. I felt I’d become the dumping ground for all the misery she had been through, and that she wasn’t interested in me at all. No sense of me as a person. I was just a comfy old sofa whose only role was to prop her up. She said I was her rock, but who wants to be a useless great lump of rock? I’m not a bloody rock, I’m her boyfriend. I was her boyfriend. I just wanted us to be the way we were. And then I said some terrible things and we argued and I said: “if that’s the way you feel, we should just call it a day because I can’t be doing with all this, I’m too young; it’s not like we’re some old married couple who are stuck together because they don’t know what else to do with their lives.” Then she just stood up and said she was leaving. The last thing she wanted was for me to feel like she’d trapped me into co-dependence. So she packed her bags and came back here.’

  ‘And rang me because she was so devastated.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  There’s a lot you don’t know, thought Nicola. She empathised with Maddie’s reluctance to tell John she was pregnant. Pride and hurt would have pushed her to behave the same way as her daughter.

  ‘And now?’ she asked.

  ‘I want her to come back. Of course I do. I love her, Nicola. I can’t imagine my life without her.’

  He reached down into the bag at his feet and produced a bunch of pink tulips.

  ‘Look, I even bought her some flowers. She complained I never bought her any, even though I explained that flowers only fade and die, which makes them an unsatisfactory present in general and a particularly unsatisfactory token of love.’

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ said Nicola. ‘Let’s put them in some water and wait until Maddie comes back.’

  *

  When she saw Maddie walking up the front door steps, Nicola slipped away upstairs, leaving John to confront her on his own. This wasn’t the moment to be third-wheeling. From the safety of Maddie’s old bedroom, she could hear the murmuring of their voices below, then the sound of the front door opening and closing. At least it wasn’t being slammed. She went out onto the landing to look downstairs to check if one or both of them had left the house.

  Maddie swung round from where she was standing in the hall and stared accusingly at her mother.

  ‘Have you been listening in? You’re such a snoop!’

  ‘Of course not
! That’s why I went upstairs, to get out of your way.’

  Nicola came down and followed Maddie into the sitting room, waiting for her to say something.

  ‘Honestly, he seems to think he can win me back with a bunch of garage flowers!’

  She sat down on the sofa and crossed her arms defiantly.

  ‘That’s nice, though. You said he never bought you flowers.’

  ‘No, but he could have chosen some decent ones. Not the sort an indifferent husband lazily picks up at the garage on his way home – that’s exactly the sort of relationship he was so keen not to be involved in.’

  ‘Hmm. I love pink tulips, personally.’

  ‘Anyway, he says he wants me back, but I don’t believe him.’

  ‘He seemed pretty genuine to me, earlier. He told me he’d made a colossal mistake.’

  ‘Yes, but why would he say those hurtful things if he didn’t mean them? Say I do go back – what’s to stop him doing it again? And this time it’ll be me and the baby – I have to think of that now, don’t I, Mum? I have to give the baby a stable environment, I can’t just carry on as we were, treading on eggshells, waiting until John decides he’s not ready for this after all . . .’

  Nicola sat beside her and held her as she started crying.

  ‘Did you tell him about the baby?’

  Maddie shook her head.

  ‘No. I need to get my head straight first. Obviously he’ll need to know at some point. But for now, I just want things to be calm. I need to stay here, Mum. I can’t go running back to John and then drop this on him.’

  Nicola nodded.

  ‘I can understand that. You know, of course, that I’ll support you. I’ll come over for the birth, and then you and the baby can come stay at the château for the rest of your maternity leave. Wouldn’t that be a lovely way to spend the summer? With or without John, depending on how things work out.’

  It was an appealing thought, to have her infant grandchild staying with them all at the château. Infinitely more appealing than returning to London to work as her daughter’s nanny. She did hope that Maddie wouldn’t wait too long before she told John he was going to be a father.