The Old House on the Corner

by Maureen Lee

  Mummy was very calm about things. Sarah had expected her to wither away with a broken heart without Daddy to support her, but she seemed to be holding up surprisingly well. She’d actually remained dry-eyed at the funeral, to which very few people came, when Sarah had thought her father had had loads of friends.

  In Sarah’s opinion, the house was put on the market with indecent haste. ‘There’s no point in hanging on to it, darling,’ Mummy said gently, ‘not now that your father’s gone. It’s cold and draughty and costs a small fortune to keep up.’

  ‘Are you short of money?’ Sarah asked, concerned.

  ‘Oh, no, there’s pots of money. Robin died at the height of one of his upward spirals, so I’m more than all right. He left everything to me in his Will but, darling, I shall put large sums aside for you and Julia.’

  ‘Julia needs it, but I don’t, Mummy. Alex is rich, far richer than Daddy ever was.’

  ‘You might need it one day, Sarah, possibly more than Julia. I’ll let you have the details once it’s sorted but I’d prefer you didn’t mention it to Alex.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’ Sarah cried.

  ‘Because a woman needs money of her own that her husband knows nothing about. I only wish I’d had some put away. Daddy got us into some terrible scrapes over the years.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ Sarah protested.

  Mummy laughed. ‘Darling, you don’t know the half of it. There were times when we didn’t have enough to buy groceries or pay Mrs Wesley’s wages. If I’d had money, I could have bought food and paid the wages and Daddy would never have known.’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Where are you going to live when the house is sold?’

  ‘Paris. I shall buy myself a flat there.’

  ‘But you can’t speak French.’

  ‘Sarah, darling, I speak perfectly good French. Didn’t you notice when we were on holiday that it was always me who asked for things?’

  ‘I thought it was Daddy.’

  ‘No, it was me.’

  Despite learning that her father hadn’t been the perfect human being she’d always thought, six months later, Sarah still couldn’t stop crying over his loss. Alex got quite cross with her – he’d already begun to get quite cross before Daddy died. It appeared she got on his nerves rather a lot. She was stupid, never read a book or a newspaper or watched anything on television that was even faintly serious. She didn’t have a hobby, didn’t knit or sew or paint. She couldn’t type or use a computer. He couldn’t talk to her about anything and neither could his friends. He felt embarrassed taking her out. ‘You’re so bloody ignorant, people laugh,’ he sneered one night when Sarah was eight months pregnant. ‘I bet you can’t name a single politician.’

  ‘I know the Prime Minister is Tony Blair,’ she said defensively. Alex and most of the people she knew regarded him as the devil incarnate.

  ‘Who’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer?’ Alex countered.

  Sarah shook her head. She didn’t know.

  ‘You stupid cow!’ To her intense horror, he slapped her face! The blow stung rather than hurt. Then he went down to the basement to play snooker, muttering, ‘I’ll get more sense out of the balls than I do from you.’

  Sarah was left on her own, nursing her face, in the big, terribly depressing living room, the sort that you’d expect in an ancient manor house, not one that had only been built about twenty years ago. The walls were panelled in dark oak and there was a stag’s head on the wall over the gigantic sideboard. The poor thing looked awfully unhappy, which was understandable under the circumstances. Sarah knew how it felt because she was very unhappy too. It was the first time in her life anyone had laid a finger on her and she could hardly believe it had happened.

  Sniffing, she went upstairs to her own little sitting room. She had chosen the furniture and the curtains herself and the paper for the walls. She’d managed to do that on her own. Perhaps she could take up interior decorating as a hobby. She sat on a pretty, armless chair, put her hands on her swollen stomach, and could feel the baby trying to kick his or her way out. Tears ran silently down her cheeks. She hadn’t thought it possible to be so miserable. If only Daddy was around to buck her up. ‘Come on, Poppet. There’s no need to cry,’ he would say in his big, booming voice. He’d remarked, more than once, that she was a trifle short of brains, but he hadn’t said it in a nasty way like Alex. He’d said it fondly, as if it only made him love her more. She reckoned he would have thrashed Alex to within an inch of his life had he known he’d struck her.

  Sarah thought about ringing her sister for a little chat, but she’d be in the middle of something. Julia was always in the middle of something: the washing, or putting the children to bed, or making a meal. Mummy had gone to Paris for the umpteenth time to look at flats and there was no way of getting in touch with her, although she’d promised to come home as soon as the baby was born.

  ‘I need someone of my own to talk to,’ Sarah sobbed. She had friends, but none were the sort you called on in a crisis.

  It dawned on her that she had two children – Jack had been born a year before Daddy died. Alex had been over the moon. He’d always wanted a son. She recalled her father had never once mentioned wanting a son. He’d been perfectly content with his two little girls.

  She left the sitting room and lumbered along the corridor to the nursery. Julia had been right when she said Sarah saw little of her children. Her mornings were taken up with shopping or having coffee with friends, followed by lunch with more friends. In the afternoons, she went to fashion shows or a matinée at the theatre, played Bridge, although she still hadn’t got the hang of it. If she wasn’t pregnant, she played tennis – that was something she was good at. She wished she’d mentioned it to Alex. Occasionally, a group of them went down to London for a few days to see a show and shop at Harrods. They held coffee mornings to raise money for things like blind children in Africa or victims of avalanches. Or was it earthquakes? One or the other. Once, they’d made over two hundred pounds for Battered Wives – she never dreamed that one day she’d become one.

  All these things, important though they were, left little time for children. Sarah played with them when she was home, took them for walks around the garden, pushed them on their little swings when they were old enough. Tiffany was a bundle of energy and Sarah found her rather tiring. Jack insisted on being carried, which was also rather tiring. He was a quiet, nervous little boy who refused to be parted from a scrap of blanket that he took everywhere with him. She had an awful feeling that he was also beginning to get Alex’s nerves.

  Nanny Harper catered for all her children’s needs. Sarah had tried, but was hopeless at changing nappies. She was staggered when she discovered Julia used towelling ones that might well be monumentally cheaper, but were even more difficult to put on. Not only that, they had to be washed.

  She opened the nursery door and went in. It was something she did every night to make sure her children were fast asleep, although Nanny Harper slept in the next room and could hear the least sound.

  A dim lamp illuminated the room just enough to see by. The lace-covered crib had been brought down from the loft and was in the corner, waiting for the new arrival. Eighteen-month-old Jack was lying in his little white bed with a thing on the side to stop him from falling out. His blanket was stuffed in his mouth and he looked terribly pale. She touched his cheek and it felt icy cold. A wave of panic swept over her. Her little boy was dead! She was about to lift him up, when she noticed the sheet over him was rising and falling, ever so slightly. She sniffed. The room wasn’t exactly warm. A heap of bedding was folded on a chair and she carefully laid an extra blanket over her son, then stood watching him for ages. When she touched his cheek again, it felt slightly warmer.

  Like Alex, Tiffany was a restless sleeper and the bedclothes were in a mess. As Sarah was straightening them, Tiffany sleepily opened her eyes and murmured, ‘Hello, Mummy,’ then fell asleep again.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ Fo
r some reason, Sarah wanted to cry. These were her children, yet she hardly knew them. She felt tempted to wake Tiffany so they could have a little talk. A forward child, she was old well beyond her three and a half years, and carried on quite adult conversations with Oliver, her faithful teddy bear. More tears welled up in Sarah’s eyes when she remembered how much Daddy had loved his dear little Tiff.

  For quite a while, she sat in a low chair listening to the soft breathing of her children. She hadn’t realized she loved them quite so much. She could actually feel the love flowing from her body and surrounding them in a misty cloud.

  Getting up from the chair proved difficult. It creaked like mad when she tried to stand, disturbing the children. Jack coughed, Tiffany turned over, and the door to Nanny Harper’s room opened and she came in.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said in an undertone, as if Sarah had no right to be in the same room as her own children.

  ‘Just saying goodnight.’

  Nanny Harper beckoned. ‘Come in here a moment.’

  Sarah shuffled into the large bedsitting room. Nanny was still fully dressed, though minus her white overall, and had been reading a book that had been placed face down on a table. Very quietly, she closed the door. She was a tall, well-built woman with muscular arms and never smiled except at Tiffany and Jack, with whom she was extremely caring.

  ‘I had a job getting Jack settled tonight, Mrs Rees-James,’ she said haughtily. ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t disturb them.’

  ‘But I always come and say goodnight.’

  ‘Yes, but you usually just pop your head around the door.’

  ‘Well, tonight I didn’t.’ She felt defiant. Nanny Harper was far too possessive with the children. Sarah had actually been banned from being present when they were being bathed because they played up in front of their mother.

  ‘Well, I hope you won’t do it again, Mrs Rees-James. Jack is such a fidgety, anxious little boy. I have terrible trouble getting him to sleep.’ She opened the door to the corridor. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Rees-James. Please leave this way just in case you disturb the children again.’

  That night, Sarah cried herself to sleep.

  Alastair was a huge baby, over ten pounds. The labour took for ever and Sarah had to have five stitches when it was over. She felt exhausted and very sore. The soreness quickly went, but not the exhaustion.

  Back home, she lay in bed, day after day, too lethargic to get up. A doctor came and told her to stay there until she felt better. ‘You’re an exceptionally healthy young woman, but you’ve just had a ten-pound baby and it’s taken a lot out of you. You’re a bit run down, that’s all.’

  Nanny Harper or the maternity nurse brought Alastair along for his feeds, although they had to be supplemented with a bottle – Sarah didn’t have as much milk as she’d had for her other children. Mummy came to see her and told her she’d be fine and Julia said the same. Tiffany popped in regularly and climbed all over the bed and Jack fell asleep beside her, much to Nanny Harper’s annoyance. Everyone was very sympathetic, apart from Alex, who complained that, when people came to see the new baby, there was no sign of his mother.

  ‘Are you going to stay in bed for the rest of your life?’ he asked contemptuously. These days, he hardly ever spoke to her nicely.

  ‘I’ll get up as soon as I feel better,’ she promised.

  ‘Huh!’ was all Alex said.

  One morning, Sarah managed to drag herself out of bed and have a shower. She felt slightly stronger today. In the nursery, Alastair could be heard crying and she realized how little she’d seen of her new son who’d been born a whole month ago. She put on a pair of jeans and a loose top, slipped her feet into a pair of flip-flops, and made her way, rather unsteadily, along the corridor. Alastair had stopped crying, but she still longed to see him.

  Her heart nearly turned over when she went in the nursery and found Tiffany putting Oliver to bed, Jack playing with a train and being seriously hampered by his blanket, and a strange woman giving Alastair his bottle. The woman looked up and she wasn’t strange after all. It was Midge, Alex’s first wife, who looked very much at home. Midge was all sharp knobs and angles, like a skeleton with a very fine layer of skin.

  ‘Hello, Sarah,’ she said serenely.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Sarah asked in a cracked voice.

  ‘I used to live here, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t now. I’ll take over, if you don’t mind.’ She plucked Alastair off Midge’s knee. He cried briefly, but stopped as soon as the bottle was put back in his mouth. ‘Please don’t come in here again,’ she said to Midge.

  ‘I think I’d better be going.’ Midge looked very calm. ‘Bye, kids.’

  ‘How long has she been coming?’ Sarah asked when the door closed.

  Nanny Harper looked uncomfortable. ‘Only for a while. It wasn’t my place to stop her.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘She said I wasn’t to. I assumed Mr Rees-James knew all about it.’

  ‘I don’t like her,’ Tiffany put in. ‘She kisses me all the time.’ She wiped her mouth with her hand. ‘Ugh!’

  Sarah was still angry when she laid Alastair in his crib, the bottle empty. How had Midge got in, not just in the nursery, but the house? She felt certain Alex couldn’t have known. She could understand it being possible for men to stay friendly with their first wives, but not allow them free rein of the house where they lived with the second. She’d have a word with him about it. In fact, she’d have it right now, she thought, when the nursery door opened and Alex came in.

  Before Sarah had a chance to open her mouth, Alex snarled, ‘Who the hell do you think you are? How dare you tell Midge to go away? This is my house and I’m the one to say who comes and goes.’

  Sarah could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘But she was feeding Alastair!’

  ‘So fucking what?’ Alex asked belligerently. ‘You’ve not exactly been in a state to do much for Alastair yourself.’

  Nanny Harper gasped. ‘Mr Rees-James! Please don’t swear in front of the children.’

  ‘But I’ve been ill,’ Sarah protested. ‘The doctor said I was run down.’

  ‘Run down! Run down!’ he hooted. ‘You’re a lazy bitch, that’s all.’ With that, he slapped her face, much harder than the first time.

  Tiffany, who rarely cried, burst into tears. She ran across to her mother and clutched her leg. Jack looked up to see what all the fuss was about and clutched the other leg.

  Nanny Harper said in a shocked voice, ‘How dare you, Mr Rees-James. The girl’s only just had a baby.’

  ‘Mind your own fucking business, Nanny,’ Alex snarled. ‘And just remember this, both of you, Midge is welcome in this house, in this room, any time she wants.’

  ‘But I don’t want her near my children!’ Sarah cried hysterically.

  ‘The children are mine as well as yours, and what I say goes. Just remember that, Sarah, before you start throwing your weight around again.’ Alex left, slamming the door loudly behind him.

  Tiffany said in a shaky voice. ‘I don’t like Daddy any more.’

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Sarah looked appealingly at Nanny Harper.

  Nanny shook her head helplessly. There was pity in her eyes. ‘I don’t know, Mrs Rees-James. I just don’t know.’

  Sarah felt frightened. Alex was hitting her regularly. Every time they were together, she would say or do something that irritated him and he would lash out. Midge came to the house quite openly now. Sarah often found her with the children and didn’t dare tell her to leave. One night, she actually sat down with them to dinner. Sarah pointedly picked up her own meal and took it to the kitchen to eat, but Alex came storming out, slapped her face, and dragged her back to the dining room.

  ‘There’s no need for that, darling,’ Midge said.

  ‘She needs to be shown who’s boss,’ Alex growled.

  Sarah was too ashamed to tell her mother or Julia. Mummy had
been against her marrying Alex. For the first time, she felt envious of her sister being married to Gary, who was so sweet and helpful and wouldn’t dream of raising a hand to her. Really, when you thought about it, money wasn’t terribly important if you were married to someone you loved. Sarah had only loved Daddy and, to a lesser degree, Mummy. She’d never actually fallen in love.

  Not until she met Jason Bridge, that is.

  Alex wanted Jack to learn to ride. Sarah wanted to say he was too young, too nervous, but was too scared. Tiffany was a fearless rider. She had her own little pony, Boots, and rode him around the paddock a few times every day under the watchful eye of one of the stable boys who could be anything up to eighty years old.

  ‘There’s a new stable boy,’ Alex was saying. ‘He’s younger than the rest and a genius with horses. His name’s Jason. Tomorrow, I want you to take Jack to the stables for his first lesson. I’m off to London on business and won’t be back for a few days.’ He looked at her threateningly, as if to say that if Jack wasn’t a first-class rider by then there’d be trouble.

  Next day, Sarah led a fearful, snivelling Jack, clutching his blanket, to the stables that smelled earthily of a mixture of leather and manure. Jason was in the end stall with Petra, she was told, a mare that had been sired by a successful flat racer, nowadays let out to stud. Alex had high hopes of Petra becoming a winner in her own right one day.

  At the end stall, Sarah stood for a moment, entranced by the sight of the sleek, beautiful horse being groomed by a sleek, beautiful young man in jodhpurs and a sleeveless T-shirt. Jason was slim and brown – she learned later that his mother was Sri Lankan – with straight black hair that shone as brilliantly as Petra’s smooth coat. She could have watched for ever, the way the muscles in his arms rippled as he wielded the brush, the way his neck went taut, looking twice as long as a normal neck, when he stretched upwards. Then Jack started to cry and Jason turned to him, his brown eyes soft and gentle.

  ‘Ah,’ he said in a voice as soft and gentle as his eyes, ‘so, this is Jack. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. And you must be Mrs Rees-James. How do you do?’