by Maeve Haran
‘Such a beautiful day,’ Julia enthused. ‘I thought we might go for a walk and then come back for a coffee.’ She plonked down a packet of biscuits on the polished dining table. Ella hoped this wasn’t a ruse to spy on Wenceslaus and make sure he wasn’t abusing her generosity by making unauthorized phone calls to Poland or putting the heating on in the middle of the day.
‘Moore’s Walnut Crunch! I love these. Where did you find them? I thought you could only get them in Dorset.’
‘I have my suppliers!’ Julia smiled, and her face lost its usual buttoned-up expression. She hadn’t been buttoned-up as child, Ella mused, quite a free spirit in fact, always off on her own adventures.
‘Do you remember that time when we were on holiday in Dorset and you ran off with the milkman? To help him with his rounds? You were gone for so long we were about to call the police!’
‘God, imagine going off with the milkman nowadays? We were all so trusting. I really wanted to be a milkman in those days, or a barmaid or a shop assistant. Cory was the ambitious one who wanted to be a vet or a doctor.’
Ella tried not to feel slightly sad that these ambitions had reflected what had actually happened to them. Julia had been young when she’d married Neil – she mustn’t call him Nasty Neil, as Laurence had done secretly – and Cory had gone on to a successful career. To be fair to them both, Julia had had two sons and had devoted herself to them, though quite what she did with herself when they were away at boarding school was a mystery to Ella, while Cory hadn’t yet found a man she really liked enough to settle down with.
‘Don’t you miss the boys when they’re away?’ she asked her daughter, knowing she was treading on dangerous ground and breaking the prohibition against grandparents daring to interfere.
‘Mum, of course I do. I really didn’t want them to go at first, but it mattered so much to Neil, and he made me see I was just being selfish.’
‘Selfish to whom? Surely it isn’t selfish to want your children around and to watch them growing up like I did?’
‘Actually, Mum,’ Julia replied tartly, ‘you were always at work. The nanny was the person who was there for us.’
‘Is that how you remember it?’ Ella asked, stung. In that case maybe she had no right to question Julia’s decision not to work.
‘Let’s leave it, Mum.’
Ella tried to put away her hurt feelings, but Julia’s criticism of her mothering had really hurt.
‘Down to the river or through the park?’
‘The river for me every time,’ Ella replied. They headed off across the square. A left turn took them through the narrow winding lane that led to the High Street with its old-fashioned grocers and vegetable shops. It always amazed Ella how unchanged the place felt, despite cars and the arrival of a discreet Starbucks.
The road down to the river was bordered by walls made of ancient brick, seven feet high, and lit by early Victorian lamp posts. Ella always half expected to see a lamplighter with his taper, in the company of the bellman shouting out the cry everyone would have recognized in centuries past:
Maids in your smocks
Look to your locks
Your fire and your light
And God give you Good Night
At one o’clock!
They walked along the river bank, watching the far side still wreathed in mist. ‘Look,’ Ella pointed out, ‘a swan’s nest! There’s the cob swimming up and down. Did you know they mate for life? I don’t know why I should find that touching.’
A moment’s silence fell between them which they both felt the need to bridge. ‘Do you still miss Dad?’ Julia asked unexpectedly.
Such a question was so unusual from matter-of-fact Julia that Ella stopped. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. Not every day, but sometimes it ambushes me when I’m least expecting it.’
‘Have you never thought of looking for someone else? On the Internet maybe?’
‘I’m not sure the Internet’s the answer to everything. A weekly shop, perhaps, but not a husband.’
‘Lots of people do.’
‘I can imagine. And if Cox’s apples aren’t available you end up with Braeburn instead, just like you do at Waitrose. I’d rather just remember the Cox’s.’
‘So how’s it working out with the handsome Pole?’
‘He is charming and extremely helpful. I feel a lot safer with him there.’
‘You’re not falling for him or anything, are you?’
‘For pity’s sake! He’s not much older than Harry!’ Harry was Julia’s oldest.
‘Ten years older. Harry’s fifteen.’
‘Do you still resent me for inviting him?’
Julia stiffened. Clearly she did. Ella wondered if Cory shared her resentment. To them it must seem a strange gesture to ask a stranger to come and live with you, but to Ella it made perfect sense. ‘We just thought maybe it was a bit self-centred of you not to consider moving somewhere smaller. A lot of people your age do.’
‘Including my friend Claudia. Entirely unwillingly.’
‘God. Your friends. They’re so selfish. Most parents are happy to downsize and give their kids something instead of handing out free board to foreigners.’
‘Julia, you’re beginning to sound like Neil. And my friends aren’t selfish. They have lives of their own and don’t live through their children. I could be skiing.’
‘You don’t know how.’
‘Skiing – Spending Your Kids’ Inheritance. Besides, it isn’t free board. Wenceslaus is very helpful in exchange for his lodging. And he makes me feel safe.’
‘Well, I hope he’s not taking you for a ride, that’s all.’
The sun went in suddenly and it felt very cold. Ella suggested they head home for a cup of tea.
One of the things Ella most liked about her new guest was his extraordinary intuition. It was as if he sensed her mood. Sometimes when she opened the front door she liked to hear nothing but silence, and feel the place still belonged just to her. At others she felt the need for companionship and miraculously the aroma of coffee would drift up from the basement or she would hear the muffled sound of a distant radio. Occasionally Wenceslaus himself would appear, once in a frilled pinny which made her roar with laughter, and tell her he was making Polish pierogi, dumplings filled with potato, cheese and onions or spicy Kielbasa sausage with pickled cabbage.
Today she and Julia had hardly taken off their coats when he appeared in the hall, teal eyes flashing with good humour, a lock of black hair escaping that a woman of any age would have wanted to tuck neatly back behind his ear. ‘It is cold outside. Almost like Poland except in Poland it cut you like stalagmite – or do I mean stalactite?’
‘Maybe you mean icicle.’
‘Icicle.’ Wenceslaus repeated the word with pleasure. ‘Icicle. Today we celebrating.’ He produced a big bottle of cherry vodka. ‘Because today I get job.’
‘That’s great. Where?’
‘I am going to be barista!’ he announced with all the pride of a toreador waving his cloak at the bull.
Ella smiled, yet couldn’t help experiencing a prick of middle-class guilt at the plight of the immigrant settling for a job like this when he was capable of so much more.
He poured a tiny glass. ‘To excellent and most generous lady El-la.’ Julia noticed how he put the emphasis on the last not the first syllable. ‘Others at allotment wanted to call police when they found I had spent night in your friends’ shed. But El-la trust me. She decide to give me chance. Now I hope I repay belief in me.’
‘Mum,’ hissed Julia like an angry swan when Wenceslaus had left the room, ‘you said you advertised for him, not that you’d found him in a shed! Are you completely mad?’
Ella giggled. Partly it was Julia’s outrage, partly the idea itself. ‘You make him sound like a garden gnome. Besides, I didn’t tell you I advertised for him. As a matter of fact, I didn’t tell you how I met him at all. Mainly because I knew how you’d respond when you found out. And I do wish you’d stop treating me like a cro
ss between a recalcitrant child and a feeble wrinkly!’
Wenceslaus came back in with the vodka bottle to top up their drinks. Julia refused by putting her hand over the glass in a particularly irritating holier-than-thou gesture. What a pity, thought her mother, it would do her good. She’d thought for a moment on their walk that Julia was unbending and becoming a free spirit again, safely away from the influence of Neil, but obviously she’d been mistaken.
‘Anyway,’ Julia enquired nastily, ‘isn’t it a bit early in the day for spirits?’
Wenceslaus’ answer, delivered with another flash of the devastating blue eyes, was engaging if unfortunate. ‘In Poland never too early for vodka.’ He held up his glass and winked. ‘Na zdrowie!’
Ella raised her glass in response. ‘Na zdrowie!’
Oh Julia, Ella wanted to say, stop looking like that. You were so much nicer before. But Julia was already getting her coat.
‘I’ll see myself out,’ she announced.
‘Oh dear,’ Ella sighed, wishing Julia had stayed to join them instead of rushing off. ‘She’s forgotten her walnut biscuits. You and I will have to eat them.’
‘Julia your daughter very pretty lady.’
‘Yes, but always so disapproving.’
‘Is simple. Not get enough love from husband.’
‘You may be right. But it isn’t simple at all. In fact, I think it’s rather sad.’
Once the decision was made to sell the house, Claudia found things starting to move with the speed of a rollercoaster.
Don had bowled in, grinning like a gargoyle, the day she got back to London. ‘Great news! The owners of the cottage have accepted our offer. If the survey’s OK, it should be all smooth sailing.’
‘We have to sell this place first,’ Claudia reminded him.
‘Shouldn’t be difficult.’ He put his arm round her, gesturing round the kitchen. Her kitchen. The room she had created out of love and warmth, making biscuits round the table with Gaby when she was little, the place where they’d eaten endless family meals, the heart of their home.
Some people moved constantly, seeing one house as simply a step to the next larger or grander one. Others saw them as investments, taking the property experts’ advice that to maximize the profit you should move every four years.
To a lot of people, 47 Manton Avenue might have seemed a perfectly ordinary house. Just one in an Edwardian terrace like thousands of others, but to Claudia it had been the centre of her life for almost thirty years. She knew it through every season, where the sun came up, how it set in the distance, pink and glowing over the distant landmarks. Even the wildlife in the garden, the squirrels and jays, robins and rooks, the occasional fox, all seemed familiar.
She began to understand how Ella felt about her house and why she had stayed on there even after Laurence’s death, maybe because of it, even when people told her to move on and start again.
Was it a female thing? An extreme form of nesting, that made women invest so much of themselves in the place in which they lived?
The doorbell buzzed, interrupting her reverie with the arrival of the estate agent and another hopeful couple.
As she unlocked the front door Claudia could hear them discussing her house on the doorstep. ‘So which one’s this?’ asked the wife.
‘The small one, only four beds, but room in the garden for a big extension,’ replied an irritated male voice. ‘You’ve got to stop seeing houses as they are now and imagine the potential.’
‘I’m not sure this one’s got much potential.’
Claudia hated them already. How dare they talk about her beloved home like that?
‘Shall we start at the top?’ Claudia disguised her dislike under a bright smile. ‘Spare bedroom. A bit cold because we don’t use it much. My husband’s study.’ She saw them glance at the rows and rows of books and the poster saying DON’T MAKE ME USE VIOLENCE.
‘My husband’s a teacher,’ Claudia explained as the wife raised an eyebrow. ‘Daughter’s bedroom. She’s moved out but you wouldn’t think so. These are just the clothes she’s left behind.’
Silence.
‘Our bedroom.’ If they didn’t like this she’d spit at them. ‘En-suite bathroom through there.’
She caught sight of the view she loved, over the roofs of the leafy suburb to the square tower of a distant church. ‘I always think we have the best of both worlds here. It’s still in London but feels like the country. Look, you can even see a steeple.’
But the prospective buyers weren’t listening. ‘If you knocked down the wall behind the bed you could have a dressing area going through to the en suite,’ the husband intoned.
‘Yes,’ the wife complained, ‘but it’d still be tiny compared to the one we’ve got already.’
‘I think you’re going to love the kitchen/diner,’ the estate agent enthused as he led them back downstairs. ‘It really is the heart of the home.’
‘No point looking really,’ the husband pooh-poohed. ‘We’re planning to demolish and build a glass extension.’
Claudia almost wished them luck. The owner of the house directly opposite had a habit of walking around naked. That should give them something to look at over breakfast.
‘Can we see the cellar?’ the husband requested. ‘We were wondering if you could dig it out.’
‘It’s a bit full,’ Claudia replied, doubtfully. The truth was her cellar was so chock-a-block there were things in there she hadn’t seen for a decade.
The husband surveyed the Aladdin’s cave of cardboard packaging, old toasters, skateboards, computer paraphernalia, Christmas decorations, Gaby’s school exercise books, somewhat worm-eaten, and old paint tins. She could tell he was a tidy cellar man. He probably knew where every last screw and light bulb was kept.
The pièce de résistance were the dear little plastic trays of rat poison placed to deter a once-glimpsed rodent that had popped out of the understairs cupboard and nearly given Claudia a heart attack.
‘My God,’ the husband murmured, loud enough for Claudia to hear, ‘you’d think if you were selling your house you’d make a bit of an effort. Bet they’ll leave all this rubbish for the next people to clear out.’
‘Well, it won’t be us!’ his wife replied.
Claudia smiled as she waved them off, feeling a little glow of satisfaction that they wouldn’t be back.
But wasn’t that somewhat self-sabotaging? Maybe the agent had better take the next lot round on his own.
‘Laura, we need to talk.’ Simon’s voice had been stressed and anxious. Under other circumstances she might even have felt sympathetic, but all she’d thought when he called was Good. I hope you’re in hell. ‘Could we meet for a coffee, or a drink? Somewhere other than the house? This afternoon about four?’
Laura had stared at the phone, her stomach churning. Why was Simon in such a rush? There were so many questions she hadn’t even confronted yet. It had all come at her like a plane crash, Simon’s revelation about the other woman, her fury at discovering the affair and chucking him out, the awful confrontation with the children.
She supposed he was going to ask for a divorce. God, she was such an innocent. She didn’t even know the grounds! Thank God for the Internet, at least she could find something out from that.
To Laura’s horror, the moment she had typed in ‘Divorce’ the sites started appearing – Quickie Divorce . . . DIY Divorce – sites offering a decree absolute in less than six months if the divorce was uncontested.
She’d clicked on ‘Grounds for Divorce’. As far as she could tell, she could divorce Simon as a result of his adultery with Suki as soon as she liked. But what if she didn’t want a divorce? Would Simon and Suki have to wait five years? And what about the house? Was Sam right about him being able to sell it whether she liked it or not?
The reason Laura knew for certain that she didn’t want Simon back was because she’d made absolutely no effort with her appearance before their meeting. This might seem a frivolou
s and shallow indicator, but, as every woman knows, it is the most truly honest. Had she wanted a reconciliation she would have pulled out all the stops, blow-dried hair, perfect make-up, smart but understated clothes. Laura noted with interest that she did none of these things.
Simon hated women crying. Whenever she’d cried during a fight he had looked entirely unmoved or faintly bored. So, even if she’d wanted to, even if she’d felt desperate, Laura would not have cried.
Her hair was clean, that was important. It was impossible to feel strong and morally determined with dirty hair. She put on jeans, a simple shirt, boots. Looking in the hall mirror as she left, she saw she looked younger than usual. Normally that might have given her a moment’s pleasure. Today, what did it matter how old she was?
Before she left she knocked on Sam’s door. Silence. As usual he was still in bed. His nocturnal habits had got out of hand since Simon had left.
‘I’m just going out for a bit,’ she told the lump under the duvet. It didn’t move or even register her presence. Today there was too much else to face to take on this too. ‘I’ll see you later, darling. I love you.’
Simon had chosen a coffee shop in the busy High Street which was crowded with yummy mummies. As a stay-at-home mother herself, Laura found herself resenting these confident young women, with their au pairs and their Babyccinos. No doubt they all thought marriage was a good career choice. Ha!
Simon was sitting at a table for two right at the back nursing a large black coffee. He stood up awkwardly when she arrived as if it were a date and he needed to make an impression. It was because he was nervous, Laura realized. At first this didn’t strike her as suspicious.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘All right. I’ve been better, but that’s only to be expected.’ She kept her tone brisk, avoiding his glance.
‘And the kids?’
‘Bella’s largely absent. Sam never gets out of bed. Next?’
‘Don’t be hard, Laura.’
Laura resisted the temptation to throw her coffee over him. ‘I’m not being hard. I’m surviving. Now what was it you wanted to talk about?’