I gazed in wonder. By now the rain had dried up, the blustering wind had spent, and a bright blue sky had been offered by way of apology. Down the bottom of the hill, in a fold, an adorable little village came into view. A huddle of grey slate roofs grouped around a skinny church spire; loose, crooked walls ran around gardens under chestnut trees, their leaves golden against the blue October haze. A river warbled and rushed through the middle of the village, fleeing west down the valley. Beyond, the toppling steepness of the hills rose up as a backdrop, painted with a smudgy green brush, and just a daub of purple heather.
As we followed the sinuous course of the lane to its conclusion in the valley, it came to rest amidst a string of grey cottages. We purred through. There was a sudden darkening of ancient yew trees, which clustered around the church in the centre, all but hiding its steeple.
‘Just the other side of the church, Daddy, the very next house. Here, with the five-bar gate.’
Five-bar gate? My head snapped around.
Set back slightly from the lane was a detached, but compact, grey stone house. It was twin gabled and symmetrical, and of that more attractive ilk of gothic architecture once reserved for the clergymen of the Church of England: indeed the twinkling stained-glass gaze of the small grey church beside it testified as much. As if more proof were needed, the discreet wooden sign on the gate bore the legend ‘The Old Rectory’. It opened automatically, sensing our car bonnet, and as we crawled across the crunchy gravel under the roomy shade of a splendid old beech tree, the sun, with a flash of cussed brilliance, picked out the mellow stone façade of the house, complete with pretty wooden porch painted a tasteful grey-green, one I recognized from the Farrow and Ball colour chart, crawling with late and fading roses.
As if this paralysing sight weren't enough, the front door opened and there, on the door step, before I'd had a moment to compose myself, were mother and daughter, although it took me a moment to decide which was which. Both were tall and slim, with long blonde hair, and wearing jeans, T-shirts and big anxious smiles. I suddenly felt incredibly overdressed in my meet-the-mother-of-my-husband's-love-child kit of long floral skirt, little nipped-in tweed jacket and suede boots. And she was gorgeous. Gorgeous. For some reason it was the mother my eyes flew to first, with those fabulous cheekbones I recognized from the photograph: full mouth, flawless pale complexion and teeny tiny figure. Beneath her thick blonde fringe I caught a glimpse of amazing blue-green eyes. I gulped. Your average nightmare.
Ant and Anna were already out of the car as I was gawping through the back window taking all this in, embracing, kissing, exclaiming. As I hurriedly got out to join them, my heel got caught in the hem of my floral skirt, which meant I fell out of the car, and in an effort to save myself, cannoned headlong into the mother, Isabella, arms outstretched, as if intent on embracing her.
She steadied me in astonishment as my nose squashed hers. Ant lunged to catch my arm.
‘All right, old thing?’ he laughed.
Old thing. He never called me that. But beside this enchanting creature it was decidedly apposite.
‘Yes!’ I gasped. Shit, my ankle.
‘Evie, this is Bella. Bella, my wife, Evie.’
Flushing with shame and annoyance and, actually, pain, I flashed a manic smile. ‘Hi!’
‘We're so glad you've come,’ Bella said eagerly, meeting my eyes. ‘You've no idea what this means to us.’
It was a simple little speech, but heartfelt; unrehearsed, unlike so many of mine, and consequently disarming.
‘It's… lovely to be here,’ I managed.
‘And this is Stacey.’
I turned, properly, to the daughter. Wide nervous blue eyes gazed at me, like a frightened deer, the colour of Ant's, the shape of her mother's. Her blonde hair was swept back off a high forehead, her bottom lip almost quivered as she plucked nervously at the bottom of her T-shirt with long sensitive fingers. She was so obviously Ant's child it took my breath away.
‘Hi,’ she whispered, averting her eyes to the gravel.
‘Hello, Stacey.’ I smiled and held out my hand, which she took eagerly.
A young springer spaniel came wiggling out of the door between their legs, barking uncertainly. Anna exclaimed in delight and bent to pat him, and as Stacey eagerly introduced her pet, her mother ushered us inside, me, gushing nervously about the proportions of the wide hall, its ancient flagstones, the paintings on the walls, Bella, thanking me for my compliments as I secretly marvelled at the two girls, drifting to each other's side at the foot of the stairs, smiling shyly, the puppy having bounded off. Sisters, I thought with a lump in my throat as I saw them exchange hushed enquiries, cheeks flushed, admiring each other's bracelets, and I realized Bella was watching them too, eyes bright. I glanced at Ant, but his eyes were full of such an extraordinary light, such pride and astonishment, I had to look away.
We followed Bella through to the kitchen: a square sunny room painted duck-egg blue with a terracotta floor and a smart black Rayburn. French windows were flung open onto a sunny terrace and garden. I prattled away nervously, admiring everything, which wasn't difficult – even a bantam hen that had wandered in, and which Bella shooed out, clapping her hands at it: tiny hands, I noticed, with translucent skin. Ant was quiet, as was his wont, unforthcoming, and I wondered who was making who feel comfortable here; who was carrying the show, as usual.
‘Have you been here long?’ I asked, limping finally to the wider extremities of my opening gambits, and also, rather gratefully, to a chair she'd pulled out for me at the table. I sat and rested my ankle.
‘Not really, we – oh, coffee!’ she yelped suddenly, rushing to a rather too ferociously bubbling percolator on the side. I gazed at her blue-jeaned bottom as she ministered to it. It reminded me of someone's… oh, yes, Kate Moss's. She poured the fresh coffee.
‘Two years, not long.’ She turned to flash me a smile. ‘We're still settling in, really, and it's quite a change from what we're used to. But we love it here.’
‘You were in the city before?’
‘Well, in the suburbs. Long Haden, d'you know it?’
‘Um, no.’
‘But – well, when we could afford a bit more, I thought, why not?’
She brought a tray of coffee to the table with a plate of cakes, clearly home-made, arranged on a plate, as if any of us could eat a thing.
‘We'd always wanted to live in the country, and we drove out here one Saturday afternoon, didn't we, Stace?’ She glanced across at her daughter but she was deep in whispered conversation with Anna at the other end of the kitchen. ‘Saw this place, and thought, let's have a look. It needed quite a bit of work – still does – and it's probably too big for the two of us, but we fell in love with it.’
She flushed and I flushed and then Ant did too.
Falling in love. Brought up, inadvertently, and really quite early on in the proceedings. I saw Ant watching her as she busied herself with cups and plates, and tried to interpret his look. Found it was one I wasn't familiar with. Or had I just not seen it for a while?
‘Well, I can quite see why,’ I rushed on approvingly, knowing, with an aching heart that I liked this girl, with her quick nervous manner, her obvious efforts to please me, and her blushing highly strung daughter; knew they were entirely my type: the sort of people who, had I met them first, I'd come rushing home to enthuse to Ant about. ‘Oh, you'll love them, Ant, they're a stunning mother-and-daughter act, clever, pretty, sensitive,’ as one does when one is secure in love, in a relationship, knowing they would pose no threat. And this was often the way in our marriage. I was the open gregarious one, the one who made the friends. I'd come home from a school coffee morning or lunch party and say, ‘She's divine, Ant, and he'll be heaven too, I'm sure. Let's have them over for dinner.’ And I'd invite this new couple, and invariably Ant would like them, but from a distance, cautiously; gradually getting to know them in a quieter, less headstrong way. Yes, I always paved the way, did the groundwork. B
ut this time, Ant had done the groundwork. He knew this girl so much better than I did. She was his friend, his ex-lover and I felt the disadvantage keenly.
Suddenly I was determined to rise above it. Something in my character longed to be able to say to him tonight, as we got into bed, ‘Well, she's lovely, Ant, quite splendid. And did you know she's going to start Open University next year? Yes, and the watercolours in the hall are by a friend of hers in Leeds…’ to be the one informed, the informer, the chatty, gossipy one in control, whilst he smiled indulgently and sank back into his familiar role of slightly disinterested husband, in his propped-up pillows, reading Brecht, as I bustled around the room slapping cream on my cheeks, brushing my hair. But I would never be able to tell him about this girl, I realized with a jolt. It brought me up short. Except… he hadn't seen her, Bella, for over sixteen years, had he? She would have changed, and I'd be able to tell him how; fill in the gaps, help him understand her and her daughter more. I realized I very much wanted to do that; to assist, not to hinder relations, which surprised me enormously. Pleased me, too.
‘Your garden's beautiful,’ I was saying, cradling my coffee and getting up to admire it, trying to ignore my ankle, which was making me wince.
The terrace gave onto a tidy enclosure of about half an acre, the foreground of which was crisscrossed with low hedges of well-educated box, which ran in tandem with gravel paths. It was an agreeable arrangement I recognized from glossy magazines, and which I had a nasty feeling bore the deeply romantic title ‘knot garden’, something, in a half-formed way, as soon as I set eyes on it, I knew I'd always wanted. Why, I'd even got round to tearing out the relevant pages in House and Garden, but never to planting it. Had she grown it all from seed? Perhaps I could hate her after all?
‘Oh, it's one of the reasons I bought it,’ she enthused, coming to join me and stroll amongst it. ‘Sadly I haven't the faintest idea how to maintain it. It needs a lot of TLC and I don't know the first thing about gardening.’ No. Couldn't hate her. ‘But I'm learning. I bought my first book the other day – Alan Titchmarsh no less – thought, now this is positively grown-up!’ I smiled. She was, after all, still young, and boy, had I done the maths. Eighteen plus nine months plus seventeen – thirty-six. With the face and figure of a twenty-six-year-old.
Ant was talking to the girls on the terrace as Bella and I strolled out onto the lawn; damp and shiny and strewn with curling yellow leaves. A cherry tree planted centrally enjoyed sole occupancy, its skinny grey branches scantily clad now, just a few yellowing survivors of summer clinging resolutely to their posts. They fluttered valiantly in the breeze, their comrades littering the sodden lawn below. Around the trunk was a circular wooden seat, which I admired.
‘Except I hadn't realized my tree was so fat, and look, it doesn't meet!’ Bella wailed, showing me round the back, where a six-inch gap prevailed.
‘Looks like the zip of my jeans on a bad day,’ I commented. ‘You need someone to knock a piece of wood in there for you,’ I advised, and as I said it, I knew I meant a man, a husband, an Ant, which of course she'd been without all these years. As it had struck Anna that Stacey had been without a father, so it struck me that Bella had been without a husband. That I'd got in first. And she'd been pregnant first. I had a sudden vision of her carrying Stacey, nine months pregnant in a Laura Ashley maternity dress. Then with a pram around the streets of Sheffield.
‘I… want to thank you so much for what you've done today.’ She looked at me, eyes huge in a pale face. ‘You have no idea how much it means to Stacey. To both of us. And a lot of women wouldn't have done it. Wouldn't have come. I think you've been tremendous.’
My eyes filled with tears and I wanted to tell her I hadn't been tremendous. That up to now I'd been filled with jealous loathing, had stamped on her face in a bookshop, had never wanted to meet her, hoping all summer to be able to cancel this visit, and until recently had had every intention of carrying on in the same hate-filled vein, but now, now that I'd met them both, I knew it was impossible. That I could quite see why Ant had fallen in love with her. That I was mortified he'd ended up with me. That the comparison was odious. I tried to steady my breathing. Her fingers were twisting nervously in the hem of her T-shirt, like her daughter's.
‘It hasn't been easy,’ I admitted. ‘I have to tell you, Bella, when I first heard about you and Stacey I wanted you both burned at the stake.’
‘I can understand that,’ she said quickly. ‘I'd feel just the same.’
‘So… did you feel the same? When you heard he'd married me? And you were left holding the baby?’
She narrowed her eyes at the untamed hills beyond, the sedgy wilderness interspersed with dense clumps of bracken, still darkly green and untouched by autumn, as if groping there for the truth.
‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I didn't hate you, because I knew your claim to Ant was more valid than mine. I was the interloper, the cuckoo in the nest. You'd been the girlfriend. The fact that I got pregnant was immaterial. And immature and stupid. But… I resented you the cosy family life. Which I didn't have. I had a bit of a struggle.’ She sat down on the rickety seat.
I sat beside her. ‘What happened?’
‘I came home when I knew I was pregnant. Left Oxford. It just seemed like the obvious thing to do. I was terrified.’
‘Of your parents?’
‘No no, my dad was brilliant. Shocked, but brilliant. My mum died when I was little, so he'd brought me up. He works at the Vodaphone factory down at Sutherton's. You know, by the port?’
‘I… don't.’
‘He'd already brought up one little girl alone, and suddenly here he was with another. But he just took it in his stride. Rose to the occasion and gave me all the support I needed. We lived with him for six years, Stacey and me. I mean, it was my home, anyway. I was only eighteen when it happened.’
‘He must have been very disappointed about Oxford.’ A factory worker. His only daughter. Beautiful and bright as a button too. Ticket to ride.
She smiled. ‘You'd think so, wouldn't you? Me, an only child, getting out of our tiny council house to the dreaming spires, and then made pregnant by a don. Most fathers would bustle down south rolling up their sleeves brandishing a meat cleaver, but he's a remarkable man, my dad. He was completely with me when I decided not to have an abortion. He couldn't bear the thought, either. Told me, when all's said and done, a human life is more important and more magnificent than any degree, or any lucrative career it might have fixed me up with. And he has to be right, doesn't he?’
I followed her gaze to her daughter, Anastasia, talking with Anna and Ant on the terrace, blushing every time Ant addressed her, eyes firmly on the York stone: older than Anna but not as confident, desperately shy. Not the Storm model type I'd envisaged at all.
‘Yes. He has to be right.’
‘And he's a great believer in what goes around comes around.’ She flattened her vowels to mimic a broader accent. ‘Things 'ave an 'abit of comin' right in the end, pet,’ she smiled.
‘And he's right, they have,’ I said slowly. ‘Your books…’
She shrugged. ‘Came about because I didn't want to work in a bank and put Stacey in childcare, exactly. And they've paid for all this. And I love doing it.’
‘He must be very proud.’
She smiled. ‘Brimming. You'll meet him tonight. He's coming for supper.’ She looked at me anxiously as if to check this was all right.
I smiled. ‘I'd like to meet him.’
I wanted to ask, if apart from her father, there'd been any other man in her life. There must have been, she was so lovely. I was wondering how to couch it, without sounding crass, but the others were strolling over to join us: Anna, aglow I could see, chattering away; Stacey, face still trained to the ground but smiling broadly; Ant… oh, Ant. Like a tall, pale daffodil, head bowed, but looking as if his heart would burst, his bright eyes glancing up and finding mine, anxious suddenly, saying – is this OK? Are we going to be all ri
ght? Are you all right, darling? And that wretched lump rose up in my throat again as I flashed him a quick nod and a smile. Yes, I'm fine. We're fine. It's going to be all right.
21
The atmosphere at supper that night put paid to the notion that you can't force jollity. Force is perhaps putting it too strongly as no one was attempting to drag it kicking and screaming, and jollity suggests dizzy heights of levity, which weren't necessarily reached, but we did our best to ensure the evening was a success and pretty much pulled it off.
We ate in the kitchen. There was in fact a tiny, dark red dining room at the front of the house, but Bella deemed it too formal, and claimed people's expectations of the food were always higher. She confided to me as she bent to take a casserole out of the oven, peering in with an anxious look I recognized, although mine usually bordered on the fearful, that actually, she'd never used it: always used the kitchen when she entertained, which was rare anyway. As I laid the table for her, I trembled on the verge of asking who exactly she entertained when she did, albeit rarely, but before I could decently, or even indecently, pose the question, her father walked in.
He was a great bear of a man, who, when he'd squeezed through the doorway, seemed to fill the small kitchen, his sandy hair skimming the oak beams as he ducked. He was brick red in the face and perspiring as he kissed his daughter and granddaughter, his arms full of flowers as he exploded out of a hairy tweed jacket several sizes too small for him. Although I saw immediately where the height and blondness came from, I detected little else: the fine features must be from the mother. Ant had followed the girls into the room and Bella's colour too was high as she turned to make the introductions: I could see she was wondering how to do this. Her fingers were in the hem of her T-shirt.
‘Hi, I'm Evie,’ I stepped forward smiling and proffering my hand. ‘And this is my daughter, Anna, and my husband, Ant.’
The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton Page 25