‘But she doesn't live round here. It's all done locally, Evie. Neighbouring farms, that sort of thing.’
‘I know, but I thought she could cycle.’
‘Where?’
‘Um, here. It's only about twenty minutes – well, half an hour. Or she could get the train. At weekends. Not every weekend, obviously.’ I was rapidly losing my nerve. My palms felt a bit sweaty. ‘But now and again I thought she could, you know, come across. Have some fun with her cousins.’
Caro folded her arms. Her chin retracted slowly back into her neck. She surveyed me through narrowed eyes.
‘Right,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘So you want me to pick her up from the station on a Saturday morning, take her to the rallies, give her a bed for the night, and then drop her back at the station the next day?’
I flushed. ‘Well, no. That sounds—’
‘You want to cherry-pick your bits of country life for her. You don't actually want to live here, but you want her to reap the benefits. Is that it?’
I stared at her, horrified. Suddenly I saw red. ‘Caro, I did live here, remember? This was my home. And no, I don't mean to pass the buck. I'll come across, do my share, take the children to shows or whatever.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘OK,’ she said suddenly, ‘you're on.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, fine.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘You tack up the ponies, muck out the lorry, drive it to shows in the pouring rain – splendid. I'd like to see more of Anna. And you too, Evie. You're on.’ She challenged me with her eyes.
‘Right.’ I caught my breath, taken aback. ‘I will.’ I swallowed. There didn't seem to be much more to say. After a moment I turned, somewhat shaken, and walked uncertainly across the yard to the gate.
‘But don't forget,’ she called sweetly after me, ‘she can't come to Pony Club unless she has a pony!’
I stopped a moment in the muddy yard. Blinked rapidly. Then I took a deep breath and marched on as best I could, hobbling in the shingle in my heels, knowing she was watching me, a smile on her face.
I turned up the lane, fury mounting. She had to spoil it, didn't she? Just when I thought we were getting on so well, she had to go and muddy the waters. Get all chippy again. And, boy, was her resentment close to the surface. Scratch it and – whoosh – did she erupt. Because that was what it was, I decided angrily as I stalked on to the car. Resentment. And envy. Anna had her cool town life – plays, concerts, friends nearby – and she should jolly well stick to it. Her kids didn't have any of that, so she was damned if Anna was going to have a bit of something hers had in spades.
Well, we'll see about that, I thought as I marched round the church wall to the car. I got in, slamming the door behind me. It created a breeze and sent a shopping list on the dashboard fluttering into my lap. I snatched it up irritably. Eggs, butter, dishwasher powder… On an impulse I plunged my hand into my bag, rifled fruitlessly for a pen, found an eyeliner instead, and in black, sticky and appropriately childish letters scrawled ‘PONY’ underneath. I gazed at it a moment; felt a tiny bit better. Then I turned the key in the ignition and sped off.
3
‘She's infuriating!’ I stormed to Ant the next morning, chucking bowls in the dishwasher and tossing cereal packets back in the cupboard. ‘One minute she's nice as pie, and the next she's morphed into Anne Robinson!’
He smiled into his Independent. ‘Only if you know which buttons to press.’
‘I didn't press anything deliberately.’ I flicked the dishwasher door shut with my foot as I passed. ‘I thought she'd be pleased, actually, to have Anna around, have her more involved in the farm. I certainly didn't think she'd jump down my throat like that.’
Ant folded up his paper calmly. ‘Now why do I suspect you're being slightly disingenuous?’
‘What d'you mean?’
‘Surely you knew there was every possibility? Caro is one of life's throat jumpers.’
‘Yes, but why?’ I wailed. ‘She never used to be.’
‘Because she's sensitive. For obvious reasons.’
He stood up and drained his coffee, tilting back his head. ‘And tackling her in the middle of her party was perhaps not the most subtle of manoeuvres.’
‘It wasn't the middle of her party, it was at the end, when she was being uncharacteristically sweet and understanding and I was stupidly lured into a false sense of security. Oh, morning, sleepy-head. You're cutting it fine.’
Anna had slipped into the kitchen via the basement stairs and slunk into position at the table, shoulders hunched, eyes half shut.
‘Not really, there's no assembly this morning. Miss Braithwaite's got clinical depression. Who was being sweet?’
‘Caro,’ I said shortly. ‘At Jack's party.’
‘Oh. Did you ask—’
‘Darling, how was the exam?’ I said quickly. I hadn't had a chance to talk to her last night: Ant and I had gone out for supper soon after I'd got back and she'd been asleep when we'd got in.
‘Fine.’ She yawned widely and shook some Golden Nuggets into a bowl. She sloshed milk on top and began mechanically scooping them into her mouth, crunching hard. As the sugar kicked in, her eyes opened a bit. She gazed blankly out of the open French windows to our stretch of parched lawn, fringed by dusty laurels. ‘I was a bit nervous in the Schubert, though. Probably played a few bum notes.’
‘Didn't sound like it from where I was sitting.’ Ant crossed the kitchen to put his mug in the sink.
‘Could you hear?’ She turned to look at him.
‘The walls at the Royal College are notoriously thin. Granny always used to listen to me.’
‘Oh.’ Her eyes widened with interest. ‘So what about the Beethoven? A bit too slow at the end?’
‘It's supposed to be slow. It's a moody old piece by a moody old bugger contemplating slitting his throat. You had me reaching for the Sabuteos when you launched into those last arpeggios, I can tell you.’
She laughed and I glowed as I cleared up around them, enjoying the musical banter. It was all Greek to me, just as it was when they talked poetry and Latin and, well, Greek.
Anna got up to put her bowl in the sink and I watched as they leaned languidly against the stainless steel together, chewing the academic fat: both tall, fair-skinned and blond, Ant's springy curls turning slightly grey at the temples, Anna's hair much straighter, more flaxen, and tucked behind her ears. Athletic, their figures might be described as, not small and solid like mine, and they both had fine features, straight noses, and wide-apart eyes, which gave them a faintly startled look, although Anna's weren't quite as blue. She'd got his temperament too – calm, unruffled – and definitely his brain. So what had I brought to the party? You might well ask. Ant would be kind enough to say, amongst other things, an impulsiveness to temper his natural caution, his reserve. I might say, not a lot. I smiled as I tossed a fork into the cutlery drawer.
As I popped a slice of bread in the toaster, half an ear on what they were saying about Schubert not being as religious as he made out and just laying it on thick to get in with Beethoven, I marvelled how, even though my subconscious must absorb a certain amount, I never really made sense of it. If you asked me in ten minutes if Schubert had been the religious one or Beethoven I wouldn't have a clue. But I enjoyed listening. A culture vulture, my father used to call me, when, instead of watching Grandstand with the rest of the family, I'd catch a bus into town and go round the Bodleian, or be found lying on my bed with my nose in a book whilst Tim helped with the lambing. Not the sort of book Ant and Anna read, I might add, but a light romance – very light – possibly a clogs-and-shawls saga from the mobile library that used to stop outside the farm. But any sort of book was highbrow to Dad, and the fact that I read all day persuaded him I was clever. That I then messed up my A levels and ended up going to secretarial college was therefore a bit of a surprise all round. Not that he minded. On the contrary, he was pleased I was doi
ng something practical, ‘acquiring a skill,’ he'd say proudly, something I could use afterwards. But I hadn't used it, had probably known I never would, and had gone straight into Bletchley's Books on the outskirts of town as a sales assistant. Dad wasn't convinced about that, but I loved it. Loved the feel and smell of the books – which in my department were way beyond me – loved the people who used to come in and pore over them with their long scarves and their owl glasses. One of whom, of course, was Ant, who'd lost his copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and had come in to replace it.
‘Sir Gawain and the what?’ I'd said, scrolling down the list of titles on my computer.
‘Green Knight?’ He'd swivelled round to look at the screen and I remember our heads were quite close.
‘Is it a fairy tale? Maybe in the children's section.’
He'd laughed. ‘I wish it was. No, it's like deciphering Chinese.’
Later, when I'd found it in the storeroom and boggled at the hideously difficult Middle English, I'd blushed. But it was all part of the learning curve. And after all, that was what I was doing here: learning the way of life, acquiring the habits of an undergraduate, without actually doing any hard graft. I took the Coles Notes approach to Oxford; I didn't actually study the text, but, boy, could I wing the lifestyle. Naturally I had a bike, and long dark hair, and a scarf of indeterminate origin with the stripes going lengthways, and I'd cycle round the city with a basket of books on the front, hoping the gaggle of Japanese tourists on Magdalen Bridge would think I was the real McCoy. I'd once – laughingly – said as much to Ant, and he'd roared.
‘Oh, no, no one would ever take you for one of those St Hilda's girls.’
‘Why not?’ I'd said, hugely offended.
‘You're much too pretty.’
I didn't quite know if I was mollified. Probably. A bit. But I wouldn't have minded being both. Like Anna. Pretty and clever.
I watched now as she scooped up her GCSE coursework folder with one hand and took the piece of buttered toast I proffered with the other.
‘See you,’ she called as she went through the open French windows, pausing to stroke Brenda, our West Highland terrier, who was asleep on the lawn, then going to the wall at the far end where her bike was parked. When she'd dumped her books in the basket she clamped the piece of toast between her teeth and went to wheel her bike through the garden gate to the street. She turned back suddenly. Removed the toast.
‘So what did she say?’
‘What?’
The washing machine had embarked on its final spin behind me.
‘Caro. What did she say?’
I caught this, but shrugged and cupped my ear, pretending I couldn't hear over the noise, which she acknowledged with an impatient shake of her head. I watched as she swung a leg over the saddle and pedalled off down the road in her dark blue Oxford High uniform.
‘She wants to get her ears pierced,’ I murmured to no one in particular, but I suppose to Ant, who was also gathering books and papers, making final debarkation noises, patting his pockets to check for wallet, glasses.
‘There, on the dresser.’ I pointed to his ancient spectacle case on the top shelf.
‘Thanks.’ He reached up. ‘Well, I suppose if that's what all her friends are doing,’ he said vaguely. ‘But she's a bit young, isn't she?’
‘That's what I said. I said, what about next summer, when she's fifteen?’
‘And she said?’
‘Fine. It was almost as if she felt she had to ask, but was quite relieved when I said no.’
We exchanged smiles and I knew we were silently congratulating ourselves on having a daughter who didn't actually want every orifice pierced, or a tattoo on her bottom, like Jess next door; who thought smoking was sad, drink to be sipped cautiously, and who wanted to get ten A stars in her GCSEs, and looked as if she was going to.
‘See you later.’ Ant kissed my cheek.
I leaned on the open frame of the French windows in my dressing gown and watched him go: crossing the garden to get his own bike, head slightly bowed, in the manner of a very tall man. Yes, we didn't do too badly, Ant and I. When friends complained about their bloody husbands, or their bloody marriages, I found myself keeping quiet, or even making things up. ‘Yes, desperately untidy,’ or ‘No, never remembers an anniversary,’ I'd sometimes contribute. I remembered Paula's accusation, yesterday – ‘Don't tell me you're still in love with your husband!’ Well, I was, actually. And he with me. I knew that, not smugly or sloppily, but just with a thumping great visceral certainty: knew we were in this for the long haul. Lifers.
As he went through the back gate he met the postman and took the letters from him, brandishing them at me to let me know he'd got them. I smiled and nodded back. These days they were nearly all for him, anyway. Not just the bills – I could barely manage the milk bill – but readers' letters too. When the publishers had sent the first few – which invariably began, very sweetly, ‘I've never written to an author before but I just had to congratulate you…’ – Anna and I had hooted with laughter.
‘Fan mail!’ she'd spluttered. ‘My God, Dad, like a pop star. They'll be wanting a photo next.’
And the very next one had asked for just that. Ant had declined, writing back saying he was terribly flattered, but really, he was no oil painting, which was why there was no author photo on the dust jacket. But it gave us a flavour of things to come, of the number of people who'd come to listen to him give a reading in New College and the sheer volume at the reception in the adjoining room afterwards, as we'd stood clutching glasses of warm white wine: quite a lot of dusty academics – colleagues, many of them – but also plenty of perfectly normal people too, and that was the clincher. To be celebrated amongst one's peers, the people Ant respected, was crucial, but to have gone over the wire, to have breached the gap between these hallowed, honey-coloured walls and entertained the man on the street, the woman in Tesco's, to have reached the real world, was something else. Joe Public's recognition was secretly craved by the high-minded, for only that brought fame and fortune.
And I'd been so proud, so proud, standing there beside him in my new wraparound dress, Anna, stunning in a Topshop number, laughing later with Ant as I recalled how someone had approached me and asked politely, ‘And what do you do?’ and I'd replied thoughtlessly, ‘Oh, nothing.’ ‘Nothing will come of nothing,’ the bearded cove had murmured before moving on, and I'd shrugged, used to quotes being flung at me in this city, used to people being surprised I didn't teach, or paint, or write, secretly knowing Ant did enough for both of us. ‘Should have told him to sod off,’ Ant had said, annoyed, but I'd just laughed.
But there'd been jealousy too, at his success. Intellectuals, despite, or perhaps because of, their brains, can be a mean-spirited bunch, and there'd been those who'd said Ant had sold out, been too commercial, betrayed Byron, in his flagrant depiction of him as a ‘yoof culture’ figure. But as Anna said, it was all bollocks, because if Byron had been alive today he'd have loved it. Would have turned up the collar of his leather jacket, flopped down on the sofa in his stately pile with his babe and given an interview to Hello!, unlike Wordsworth, who'd have headed for the Lake District in his anorak. And herein lay the rub. The fact that Byron would have been cool and Wordsworth a geek came as no surprise to anyone in the English Department: it was that someone had thought of saying it, of stating the obvious, that they didn't like.
So we'd been careful, in the face of this potential envy. Or rather, Ant had been careful. I, on the other hand, had gone shopping. House hunting, to be more precise. Recalling that, I cringed now as I wrapped my dressing gown around me and scooped up my breakfast tray, making for the stairs. Oh, we'd agreed we were moving, that much had been discussed – the college house was only rented and we needed to buy – but what we hadn't quite established was where. As I nipped up the stairs now to the ground floor, balancing my tea and toast, I passed the double doors into the drawing room – drawing room, God, we never th
ought we'd have one of those – following the curved, French-polished rail up to my bedroom. But this wasn't the house I was cringing about, no. It was the one off the Banbury Road, the one in Westgate Avenue with the six bedrooms, the acre of garden, the music room, the – God help me – orangery. I remember looking round it, excitement mounting, following the estate agent as more and more spacious rooms unfolded, and then the next day, breathlessly dragging Ant and Anna there, verbally incontinent with excitement. I explained, as I hustled them up the crunchy gravel drive, that it was just down the road from Grant Marshall's house – Grant, a medic, having also recently made it over the wire as a television psychiatrist – and his famously snooty wife, Prue, and that I simply couldn't wait to see Prue's face!
In the event, Ant's face had been more interesting. He'd stood on the terrace overlooking the vast, manicured garden, thrust his hands in his pockets and jingled his change nervously.
‘For just the three of us? It doesn't seem quite right.’
There was a silence as I digested this.
‘It's too far from where we've come from,’ Anna, young, but terrifyingly articulate, had commented at length. She'd picked a scab on her knee and frowned, as if she wasn't quite sure what she meant by that. But I knew exactly and I felt ashamed.
Ant cleared his throat. ‘I'm just not convinced it's sort of… us.’
‘No, no, you're right,’ I'd said quickly. Meekly. ‘Quite right.’
Suddenly it was as clear as day. This house took us out of quiet, muted, university-professor land and into loud, cushy, fat-cat suburbia. Suddenly the wall-to-wall white carpets were vulgar, the four bathrooms flashy, the orangery a joke. And I hadn't known. Not immediately. It had had to be pointed out to me by my intrinsically tasteful husband and child.
We'd headed straight back into town, and then the following day had seen this place. Tall, terraced, with a little iron balcony at the front, still central, still close to our friends, still built of mellow Cotswold stone, still with integrity. I paused at the landing window now, looking out at our long, slim walled garden, elegant and leafy, sandwiched between two similarly elegant and leafy enclosures, belonging to a chemistry don and a journalist. Yes. It suited us, I thought, going on to my bedroom. Was right up the Hamiltons' street.
The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton Page 3