The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton

by Catherine Alliott

  The following day Ant came home from work looking thoughtful. Anna and Stacey were in the sitting room next door watching America's Next Top Model. He shut the kitchen door softly on them.

  ‘Would you hate to live at the farm again?’

  I turned slowly from the sink where I'd been washing up.

  ‘No. I wouldn't hate it.’

  ‘Could you even entertain it?’

  My heart began to pound. ‘Yes. I could.’

  ‘The girls could too, I'm sure.’ His eyes were overbright.

  I took my hands out of the hot water, wiped them deliberately and turned to face him, clutching a tea towel.

  ‘You're not seriously suggesting…’

  ‘Why not?’

  I sat down carefully at the table. ‘Move from here? To the farm?’

  ‘We could do it up. Make it – not chichi – but comfortable. Put a new kitchen in, solve the damp, redecorate. What d'you think?’

  I thought a lot of things. But I didn't want to get excited.

  ‘Can we afford it?’

  ‘Yes, but not easily. Mick Arnold's offered a fortune, and we'd have to match it.’ He was talking quite fast now. ‘This place will be worth quite a bit, though, being so central, but we'd probably need two salaries. So in answer to your question, yes, we could afford it, but only if you work. Which is what you tell me you want to do.’ He gave me a steady look. I returned it equally evenly.

  ‘I do,’ I said soberly. Then blinked. ‘Gosh. Sounded like a vow.’ And in a way, it was. To begin a new life. ‘Oh Ant,’ I breathed, gripping my tea towel, hardly daring to believe it.

  He looked at me, surprised. ‘I wasn't convinced you'd want to. You're such a townie.’

  I laughed, taken aback too. ‘Yes, I am, aren't I? But not always. I mean, once I was a farmer's daughter. And you know what they say: you can take the girl out of the country…’ My eyes slid away over his shoulder. Then came back. ‘And d'you know what, Ant? I've done the city. It used to hold me in such thrall, Oxford. It was such a challenge. Always there when I was growing up, a few miles away, goading me on, those flipping dreaming spires waving at me over the tree tops – come on, Evie, d'you dare? But I feel I've got to grips with it now. I've made my peace with it, and I'd like to go back to the sticks where I belong.’

  It was a surprise to hear myself say it, even though I'd been thinking it these past few weeks, but it was true. And I no longer felt a fraud here, either. No longer felt I was travelling on a false passport. I'd fought my battles in this town, and now I was very much looking forward to going home and curling up in the window seat with a box of lime creams and a Georgette Heyer. My eyes widened in surprise, but I felt my heart swell too. I wondered if Caro felt that way about going back to town. Tossing her swill buckets over her shoulder and kicking off her wellies as she went.

  ‘Caro—’ I started.

  ‘I know,’ said Ant quickly. ‘We'd be doing everything to the farm they'd ever wanted to. I know, Evie, that bothers me. We'd have to square it with them first, obviously, and I'm not sure—’

  ‘No,’ I interrupted impatiently, shaking my head, ‘I mean yes, we will have to square it with them, but I didn't mean that. I don't think it will be a problem. Actually, I think she'll be fine.’

  ‘You do?’ Ant looked surprised, but I didn't just think, I sort of knew. Ordinarily I'd break out in hives at broaching such a conversation with my sister-in-law, but… well, it was a funny thing, life. What was that Chinese proverb? Be careful what you wish for. Perhaps Caro and I had both wished for too much. With maturity comes a certain wisdom, definitely, but also an ability to live in the moment, which, let's face it, is more restful than constantly striving to pin down an endlessly shifting future. It was over fifteen years since Caro and I had been passionate about our futures, and over time, I believe those passions had hardened into positions behind our backs. Our ancient desires had become unrecognizable, even to ourselves. I'd seen Caro turn round and blink in astonishment at her old self the other day as she'd flipped through her decorating book, as she'd glimpsed her new self in her lofty, spacious, state-of-the-art kitchen; in fact, I'd seen her gawp. It seemed to me it wouldn't matter how many terracotta tiles we put down in that farm, how painstakingly we restored the beams that Tim cracked his head on, she still wouldn't want it. Odd, I mused, that Caro and I had both reached that same place at about the same time: reached a tranquil state of acceptance of ourselves. But not that strange, really. Over the years, we'd done an awful lot together.

  ‘I'll ring her later, sound her out. But as long as you're sure, Ant.’ It was my turn to interrogate him. ‘You're a real town mouse, and it's further into college—’

  ‘I know, but I'm working at home more now. Doing more writing.’ He walked round the kitchen, jingling coins in his pocket. He looked young, excited. ‘I can work in your father's old study. French windows open to the garden, the stream…’

  He turned. His eyes caught sharply on mine.

  ‘No, no demons,’ I said quickly. ‘You?’

  ‘No. Not now. Too long ago.’

  Our eyes silently communed for a moment. I gave a small smile. ‘So… not all progress is bad, perhaps?’

  He gave a small smile back. ‘No, not all.’

  Which was how, some months later, I came to be standing in the not so muddy yard of my childhood, waiting for my girls. Happily they'd been enthusiastic about the move, planning bedrooms rather like their cousins, talking parties in barns, barbecues by the river. It also had the added bonus of giving both of them a fresh start, rather than just Stacey. A shared experience. They'd already worked out the buses into town, one of which, these last few days, Anna had started taking into school. Stacey, meanwhile, was still enjoying the end of her last, long, seemingly endless summer holiday, waiting for her new term to begin.

  She'd been allocated a room at Balliol, which we'd all been to see. We'd clattered excitedly up number two staircase, the four of us, throwing open her window over the quad, admiring her new quarters, but she'd told us, as we clattered back down again, that she thought she'd meet Anna at the bus stop on a Friday evening, and come back to the farm for the weekends. We'll see. I was already privately preparing myself, just as I was getting so fond of her, to see less of her as she joined in university life, went to parties, stayed in town at the weekends, although she insisted she wouldn't: was convinced she'd want to spend every spare minute with us.

  ‘You're such a loser,’ she told Anna now, who was giggling uncontrollably as she trailed yet more packets of Hula Hoops out of a box that had clearly burst its bottom. Stacey scooped one up and threw the trodden contents in a handy bucket. ‘Shame the pigs have gone. They'd love these.’

  Ah yes, the pigs. Happily no longer with us, and happily, not ninety of them either, only eight. Leonard, as is so often the case with rippling fecund males, turned out to be all gong, no dinner, and only Boadicea, the first recipient of his gifts, produced a litter. Caro – who had indeed kicked off her wellies with alarming alacrity, making it quite clear she considered any farm business our business now – had disclaimed all responsibility. She had, however, been kind enough to tell us about a lovely little slaughterhouse near Thame, which absolutely everyone went to – rather as if she were recommending a new bistro – and where a delightful man called Trevor would to do the business in seconds flat with a very sharp knife. Before I knew it, they'd be sausages.

  ‘Oh!’ I felt faint.

  ‘Unless you want to do it yourself?’ she demanded.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I gaped.

  ‘Pack the sausages. You can, in a pork-packing unit in Ipswich. Or Trevor will do it for you in what looks like his garden shed. I wouldn't share that with the Environmental Health Officer, incidentally.’

  ‘Um, Trevor,’ I muttered, shaken, but much relieved: for the piglets were very much pigs now, up for having their own sex lives and babies soon, and I wanted shot of them.

  I'd reckoned, however, with
out Anna and Stacey, who, despite eating a great many bacon sandwiches, had not found this plan acceptable. Whilst happy for the mothers to go to market – this, apparently, was entirely within the natural scheme of things – not so the piglets, and they'd sold them on eBay, using a photo of Boadicea surrounded by cute, suckling babies, taken quite a while ago. Eight deluded new owners arrived clutching it, with no idea they were about to collect a huge, ten-ton Spawn of Leonard. I needn't have worried, though. Amongst the smart county set, pigs were the new must-have: the Chanel bag. ‘Darling, haven't you got a pig? Oh, you must, they're heaven.’ They all went.

  So, no pigs now – even Harriet, Caro's blind pig, had passed away in her sleep one night – but lots of restful sheep, thanks to Ed Pallister next door, who was leasing the fields, pathetically grateful for the extra acres. We didn't sell the land to him, though. Ant and I owned every blade of grass, and in a ridiculous, romantic way, I wondered if Tim's boys might want it back one day. When Ant and I were old and grey and needing somewhere smaller? Perhaps a Sunset Home for the confused and bewildered.

  Caro, naturally, was keen on this idea. She'd gripped my arm, eyes shining. ‘Oh, yes, wouldn't that be wonderful? I mean, obviously I'm thrilled you've got it and not Mick Arnold with his repulsive Victorian lampposts and busy Lizzies in all the troughs, but if Jack could have it back one day…’

  She'd been showing me round her new house at the time, and the children were with us. Jack, who'd recently confided his ambition to be a wealthy stockbroker and live in a flat in Docklands with a horny blonde, shot me a horrified look.

  ‘Henry, even,’ she mused happily, as Henry, behind her, slit his throat with his finger and fell quietly to the blond wood conservatory floor. It passed her by and I didn't rain on her generational farming parade. To be honest, she'd been a bit of a star, recently.

  Yes, I reflected, as the girls and I finally set off with our booze-laden car towards town; once the stress of the farm had been removed, Caro had indeed become a different person. When Felicity, determined to redeem herself, had sold her house and taken a year's sabbatical at the University of Toronto, where her sister lived, writing Tim and Caro out a large cheque, Caro had promptly stuck it in an envelope, determined to return it. Tim and I, with a lot of eye rolling, had snatched it back and dissuaded her.

  ‘It's what she wants, Caro. Don't throw it back in her face.’

  ‘I'm not! But I feel awful!’ she wailed.

  ‘Bit late now’ sprang to mind, but I didn't say it.

  ‘We're not farming now, we don't need it. We're not short of money, she should have it. Oh God, what a mess.’

  I sighed. ‘Look, Caro, we are where we are. Take the money and have done with it. Write Felicity a big thank you, with an offer to come and stay whenever she's in Oxford. You've got six bedrooms in that house. Tell her one of them's got her name on it.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I will.’ Her face lit up like a born-again Christian's. ‘One of them will be hers for ever.’ She turned to Tim and me with bright, shining eyes. ‘I'll put “Felicity” on the door.’

  Tim and I exchanged weary glances. So exhausting when everyone wanted to be good.

  She wasn't through, either. Two days later, she and Tim came to see me.

  ‘OK, we're keeping the money, but we're sharing it with you.’ She handed me a cheque.

  ‘He was your father too,’ said Tim firmly, as I opened my mouth to protest. ‘It's your inheritance as well. Fair's fair.’

  I shut my mouth. If I'm honest, it had quietly occurred to me. I gazed down at the cheque in my hands. ‘Thank you.’ It also occurred to me that I'd never had money of my own before. Only my husband's. I looked up at them, a slow smile forming on my lips. ‘Thank you very much.’

  34

  As I pulled up outside the shop, parking defiantly on the yellow lines and putting the hazard warning lights on, Caro was waiting for us. She shot her hand in the air and waved as she saw us. She looked stunning in chocolate linen trousers and an ice-blue cashmere wrap top, happily not stick thin any more, but with a wonderful curvy figure and fuller face. Tanned from a recent holiday in Italy, her bronzed, and not insubstantial, bosom jingled with jewellery as she hastened towards us.

  ‘You're early!’ I wailed, as I got out.

  ‘I know, but I thought I'd help you set up.’

  ‘You're a guest, Caro, you don't have to do that.’

  She bustled round to open the boot. ‘Nonsense, many hands and all that…’

  Old habits died hard, I suppose, and actually I was glad of her: as we unloaded the contents of the boot onto the pavement I realized I needed muscle.

  ‘Where's Tim?’

  ‘Here,’ she jerked her head as he came down the road. ‘He went to park the car. What about Ant?’

  ‘He's got a meeting, but he'll be along later.’

  ‘Now, what can I do?’ Tim appeared, rubbing his hands.

  ‘You could set up the trestle table at the back of the shop – I've left it leaning against a wall in there – and take some boxes in. Girls, go with him and line up the glasses on the table.’

  ‘Can we make the Pimm's?’ asked Anna.

  ‘You can, but don't put the ice in yet.’

  ‘Cloth?’ said Stacey.

  ‘Good thinking.’ I reached into the boot and handed her a white linen one.

  They disappeared, the three of them, carrying a box of booze apiece, and then Tim came back for more, carting them back and forth; nimbler on his pins these days now he wasn't on them twenty-four hours a day, and without that look of continually suppressed pain about him.

  He was selling agricultural machinery now, a rep; getting out to all the many farms around here, and indeed the whole of the southwest of England, which, as he said, meant ‘seeing all my mates but not doing the sodding donkey-work. I wave bye-bye as they stand in the shit admiring my company car.’ He pointed it out to me now as he came back for the final box of lemonade, parked just down the road: a brand-new silver Saab. I saw Caro smile as she shut the boot, and we listened as he eulogized about the turbo charged something-or-other, the fuel-injected what-not.

  At the back of the shop the girls had laid the table with the cloth and were lining up glasses. Caro was paring a cucumber like a demon, and Stacey was attacking the lemons.

  Mint?' She glanced up.

  Oh. I darted back to the car. As I came back with it, though, I paused a moment midway through the shop; took a second to gaze around. Yes, the duck-egg blue really had worked, I decided. Cheered the place up no end; made it – all due respect to Malcolm and Ludo – less like a gentleman's club, and more feminine; more sophisticated. But not remotely intimidating. I'd been nervous of going down that route, since that was something it had never been in Malcolm's day, and I certainly didn't want to alienate his old customers. I needn't have worried. As the door opened behind me, I turned to see a clutch of his elderly regulars come in, bang on the dot of six o'clock. I spotted Joan of the long brown coat and Spearmint smell amongst them as they hurried past to the back, keen to be the recipients of the first drink. I followed with the mint. Anna and Stacey were going to have to pour fast.

  The cousins were next, strolling nonchalantly in from just around the corner. They instantly installed themselves with the girls on bar duty, where, I noticed, tasting was de rigueur. A few more early birds appeared, looking around in wonder, exclaiming, and then the man I was most worried about, who breezed in on a gust of wind with Clarence.

  ‘Darling!’ He sashayed across the room to kiss me, then clasped his hands in delight. He spun around, tossing a blue velvet scarf over his shoulder as he twirled. ‘What a triumph!’

  ‘D'you really think so, Male?’ I said nervously. I followed his gaze, fearful of his censure. More and more people were coming through the door now, Ant and Mum amongst them. They gave me a wave.

  ‘Not too girly?’

  ‘Oh, it's girly all right, but that's what makes it work, don't you think, hon?’
This, hon, not directed to me, but to Clarence, smiling indulgently at Malcolm's over-camp style, whilst remaining resolutely straight himself.

  ‘I agree – thank you.’ He took a drink from Stacey, who'd approached with a tray. ‘You've done a superb job, Evie. I hardly recognize the place.’

  I relaxed: these boys had taste, and I was pretty sure I'd know if they were fibbing. Pretty sure I'd know if they hated it. I enquired about London life, which, they assured me, was working out well. Some months back, Clarence, having completed his sabbatical at Magdalen, had headed back to the smoke, to take up the reins of his legal department at King's, leaving Malcolm desolate. Until Clarence had asked him to come with him, that is.

  ‘What, to visit?’ Malcolm had told me how the conversation had gone. Malcolm was a very good mimic and he'd acted out the parts, jumping to one side to be Clarence, and affecting his deep, treacly tones, then jumping back to play himself, in a high, silly voice.

  ‘No, to live,’ Malcolm growled, a.k.a. Clarence.

  ‘What, with you?’ (High squeak).

  ‘Unless there's someone else you'd like to live with.’ (Low growl.)

  ‘In your house?’ (High squeak) ‘In Little Venice?’

  ‘If you can bear it.’

  ‘But… what about my boat?’

  ‘It's not called Little Venice for nothing, Malcolm. I'm sure a mooring can be arranged. If not, it can stay in Oxford and be our country retreat.’

  ‘Can Cinders come too?’

  ‘Sooty would be distraught if she didn't.’

  Malcolm, adopting an even higher falsetto: ‘You're asking me to move in with you?’

  ‘That's… the general idea.’

  Quite a lot of jumping up and down on the spot was re-enacted for me then, together with excited flapping of hands, and then smothering of fictitious Clarence with kisses, which I eventually had to ask Malcolm to edit out as he wrapped his arms around himself and really got going. Besides, there was more.

  ‘But what about the shop?’ squealed baby bear, stepping back from the embrace, panting and blinking rapidly.