by Judy Astley
‘Working as an extra, you mean?’ Delia was asking.
Kate put on a grand look. ‘We call it “Support Artist”, not “extra”,’ she explained.
‘Oh “we” is it?’ Suzy chipped in with envious mockery. ‘D’you think they could find room for me and Tamsin?’
‘Not a chance. The scene is supposed to be a cocktail party. There definitely wouldn’t be any children.’
‘Not unless they’re hiding under the piano,’ Suzy commented. ‘I keep seeing films on TV where kids are hiding under the piano while grown-ups do things.’
‘What sort of things?’ Delia asked.
Suzy started a slow blush which told Heather and Kate exactly what sort of things.
‘Oh those sort!’ Delia snapped. ‘You shouldn’t be watching those sort of films,’ she added, looking sharply at Heather.
‘Mother, she’s nearly fourteen, for heaven’s sake.’
‘All the more reason,’ Delia stated obtusely, concentrating on her cheese and pickle.
In the mirror, Iain was wolfing down a sandwich. How easy it should be, Heather suddenly thought, simply to say to them all, ‘Hey look in the other bar, there’s a bloke I married,’ as if he was no more significant than a chap who’d once done a pretty good job of rethatching the house. A bit late now.
While Delia rested that afternoon, Heather put on her fleecy-lined Musto jacket and her gardening boots, and took Jasper for a walk across the recreation ground to the woods and up the steep hill beyond. She had lettuces to thin out and there was a sudden ripe glut of tomatoes that needed picking from the greenhouse, but she wanted to get out and breathe the sharp, wilder air close to the big trees. Rain drops trickled on to the path from the overhanging chestnut trees, bringing with them a tangy scent which reminded her of bath oil. The sun was beginning to break through the oozing clouds, and the air was becoming steamy as the soaking ground blotted up its warmth.
‘Hallo! Heather!’ Julia Merriman, accompanied by her black labradors strode across the damp grass to meet Heather as she started climbing the hill.
‘Hi Julia! How are the camellias settling in?’
‘Perfectly well, they’ve each got a few new pale leaves already,’ she said.
Heather smiled, satisfied that she’d got it right, though it would have been a pretty poor gardener who hadn’t. Julia was bustling along with her dogs like a woman with an over-full diary, but Heather remembered how she had seemed, on her own premises, sadly under-occupied. Perhaps her own mother felt like that, filling the long days in Putney. Here at least Delia felt needed, even if it was only to tend a dying man and to scurry around getting cross about the state of Heather’s kitchen.
‘You could under-plant the camellias with tiny white cyclamen for the autumn,’ she suggested to Julia, ‘and then maybe sow something hardy and annual for when they’ve finished flowering, like mignonette or Virginia stocks.’
‘Something to smell good you mean?’ Julia mulled over the suggestions. ‘Yes, that would be lovely, right by the kitchen.’
‘Mix in night-scented stock seeds when you plant the others, then you’ll get evening perfume wafting through into the house,’ Heather told her.
Julia smiled broadly. ‘Do you know, I haven’t grown things from seed since I was a child? Mustard and cress and broad beans on blotting paper up the sides of jars. Charles used to do a few lettuces, which he then hid under cloches away from the dogs, but I’ve always been a plant buyer, not a seed sower.’ Heather felt pleased: Julia was looking quite excitedly inspired. ‘We’ve still got an old propagator in the greenhouse,’ she said, ‘I could use that.’
The two women trudged to the top of the hill and turned to look back at the view. ‘I never get tired of all this,’ Julia said, gazing out over the village, the gentle curve of the river and across to the wide grassy flood meadows towards the hills beyond. ‘Charles and I used to come up here on Sundays, before Evensong, in summer, with Fiona in her pushchair. I wonder if she ever thinks of this view, over there in Brisbane?’
‘Probably,’ Heather reassured her. ‘It’s probably one of those memories that gives her the odd twinge about missing England.’ Julia had a lonely, faraway look. Heather crossed her fingers that Kate or Suzy wouldn’t choose to live half a world away from her and Tom. It seemed to be what all men did, enchanting daughters far away from their homes. Her own mother must have felt, all those years ago, that Iain’s ancestral castle was almost as far from Staines as Australia – in those days it took as long to get there by train as it now would for Julia to fly to visit her daughter. ‘Do you still go to Evensong? I’m sure my mother would like to join you while she’s here.’
‘No, actually I go to Family Communion,’ Julia confessed as if it was a wicked secret. ‘They do proper hymns, Ancient and Modern and all that, but in addition, there’s a lot of jollity and coffee and a biscuit afterwards and a chance to chat. I like that. Sometimes I make gingerbread men.’
‘I’ll tell my mother, then. She’s fond of gingerbread,’ Heather said, laughing.
Julia looked serious. ‘I don’t know what she’s used to, churchwise,’ she said warningly, ‘but there’s a certain amount of, well, chumminess. Signs of peace and all-join-in and such.’
The two women started the downhill trek, catching up with Jasper, who, panting on his short legs, was still on his way to the top. As the path turned towards the village, they could see flurried activity centred on Margot and Russell’s house. A small crane was hauling something that could have been lighting up close to the top of the scaffolding, and figures, tiny from up on the hill, criss-crossed the garden busily.
‘Has anyone actually seen any actors or anything yet?’ Julia asked, following Heather’s gaze.
‘Kate has, she says it’s all going on inside the house. That’s what the black-out stuff is for. They have cameras out on the scaffolding platforms filming in through the windows.’
‘Can’t think why they didn’t do it all in a studio, if they’re having to go to all that trouble,’ Julia sniffed.
‘Mystery to me too, but Kate’s fascinated,’ Heather said. Down below, Margot’s automatic gates were opening and the cherry Mercedes glided like a toy down the drive, past the garden cottage and towards the road, indicated right and headed fast out of the village along the Oxford road. Good, thought Heather, now it’s safe to go and see Margot.
‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ Margot accused Heather, waving the gin bottle at her. ‘You knew I’d want to know how lunch with your ex went. I’ve been dying to know.’
Heather grimaced. ‘Please don’t call him my “ex”, Margot!’ she said laughing. ‘I don’t like to think of Iain as “my” anything!’
‘Sorry,’ Margot said with exaggerated humility. ‘Can I tempt you to a drink? I’m just going to have a teeny refill.’
‘Tea would be nice,’ Heather suggested, wondering if Margot usually made a start on the aperitifs before five in the afternoon. Margot made a face but went to switch the kettle on. Jasper paced around, his claws clicking on the beechwood floor, and he sniffed the air suspiciously, trembling gently as if aware that Margot carried the scent of every huge dog she was currently boarding. To humans, the kitchen simply smelled of its fresh sky-blue paint and new wood.
Margot bustled about opening and shutting the sleek maple cupboards, rummaging clumsily. ‘Can’t find a thing yet,’ she grumbled, finally locating a box of Earl Grey tea bags. ‘These do?’ she asked, unwrapping the pack anyway and shoving them firmly into a blue glass jar.
‘It’s all terrifically pretty, Margot,’ Heather complimented her, looking around the room. She sat on the window seat cushion, which was covered with blue, white and yellow flowered fabric piped with navy. ‘I wouldn’t mind living here myself.’
Margot grinned at her. ‘Yes you would. It looks cute, but you’d miss the space. There’s nowhere to be separate. Russell and I are falling over each other, which makes him think I’m always watching him. And y
ou know how much space teenagers seem to need: Simon just seems to be all feet. I feel like bloody Marie Antoinette playing in that Wendy House thing she used to have.’
‘Petit Trianon.’
‘That’s the one. I’m going to advertise for a nice couple to come and look after the rectory and they can live here. It would be lovely for two.’ She stopped and splashed gin generously into a glass, adding tonic from a family-sized bottle in the fridge. She chucked in a couple of ice cubes, sending splashes over the granite work-top, which she mopped at with her finger and then licked. ‘I’m sick of all those bloody au pairs. I’m not having any more of them,’ she said, taking a gulp of the drink. ‘Russell took more than a bit of a fancy to the last one. Did I tell you about that?’
She had, at length, Heather remembered, wondering if Margot’s brain was starting to be clouded by alcohol. ‘You did mention it, but it was ages ago,’ she remarked gently.
‘Not that bloody long or I’d have forgiven him by now. Little Swiss slut, topping up her earnings,’ Margot said after another large swig of her gin. Heather got up and went to deal with the boiling kettle, finding a mug on the draining board. Margot was settling cosily into a cushioned cane chair and had forgotten about the tea. ‘There’s nothing particularly fancy about foreign, I keep telling him,’ she was continuing. ‘They’re such stupid things, men: can’t quite believe that down there,’ she giggled and pointed towards her thighs, grazing her hand on the edge of the table as she did, ‘we’re all exactly the same. He’s out late again tonight – says he’s got a meeting. Huh.’ Then she asked, rubbing her sore hand, ‘D’you ever worry about your Tom, always out there in foreign parts, if you’ll excuse the expression?’
Heather looked out through the window, through the trees and shrubs towards Margot’s treasured rectory, which at the moment looked as if Christo had decided to have a go at turning it into one of his wrapped art-works. The roses climbing the walls underneath would suffocate, she thought. So would she and Tom if they didn’t feel at least partly free. ‘I don’t think about it,’ she told Margot, fairly honestly. ‘I think it’s my own arrogance really – I sort of imagine he doesn’t exist when he’s not here with us.’ Margot was looking puzzled. ‘He probably feels the same about me,’ Heather added quickly. ‘You could drive yourself mad imagining the worst all the time. Really, you can’t even imagine accurately what kind of wallpaper is in someone else’s hotel room, let alone exactly what they get up to in there, who they talk to, whatever. Pointless to indulge in that kind of torture.’
‘Easy to say,’ Margot said glumly, topping up her glass from the gin bottle. ‘Easy enough to bloody say.’
‘Hi Margot! Oh hello Heather. Is it drinks time? Shall I help myself?’ Iain was suddenly strolling round the kitchen as if he owned the place. Heather noticed that he seemed more capable of finding his way around the cupboards than Margot was. Trust him to have made himself completely at home, she thought nastily. He quickly concocted another gin for Margot and assembled two vodka and tonics, one of which he put on the table in front of Heather, whisking away the remains of her tea at the same time.
‘I really ought to be going actually,’ Heather said, cursing herself for sounding so prim.
‘Oh please don’t, not yet,’ Iain said, with his smile of ultimate charm, putting an insistent hand on top of hers to keep her in place. ‘I just wanted to tell you how sweet I think your daughter is. So like you at that age.’
‘Lovely girl,’ Margot agreed, nodding over-emphatically.
Heather decided to invite her to come home with her for dinner, then she couldn’t spend the evening getting even drunker and imagining Russell draped over one of his classy motors, persuading a gullible client how accommodating the back seats were.
‘Good with the dogs, Kate. That’s something else – Russell hates dogs.’ Margot’s whole face was puckering, collapsing like a balloon that’s been too-long treasured after a child’s party. Iain glanced across at Heather with a between-us look of anxiety. ‘He says I should have given up that kind of work. Says it’s beneath him to have a dog-shampooer for a wife.’ Margot’s round face was decidedly crumpled now and big, calm tears overflowed and trickled evenly down her cheeks. She clutched her drink tightly, as if afraid Heather might take it off her. ‘And I don’t want to be Margot any more,’ she wailed, ‘I want to be Maggie again, like I used to be.’
‘Maggie?’ Iain mouthed towards Heather. ‘Who’s “Maggie”?’
‘I’M MAGGIE!’ Margot roared angrily, jabbing herself hard in the chest.
Iain leaned back against the window, moving slightly closer to Heather.
‘Margot is really a Margaret,’ Heather explained quietly. ‘Russell’s always called her Margot, it’s just sort of stuck.’
‘Posher, that’s why,’ Margot growled. ‘God I’m tired.’ She yawned, her mouth wide and pink and uncovered, like a sleepy child.
She had a gold filling in one of her back teeth, Heather noticed. That was probably post-Russell too. ‘Why don’t you come home with me and have supper with my lot?’ she asked, leaning forward and gently taking Margot’s hand.
‘I think I’ll just have a little lie down actually,’ Margot replied, wiping inefficiently at her leaky eyes with the back of her hand.
‘Come on upstairs, then. And I’ll phone later and see how you are.’
‘Not ill,’ Margot mumbled as she hauled herself out of the chair. ‘If I get any fatter that chair will come with me when I stand up. Nearly does now,’ she said, with a sad little laugh.
Iain made a start on clearing up the glasses while Heather manoeuvred Margot towards the stairs. Her bedroom was painted pink and white, with frothy white blinds at the windows. Everything was new and bright and clean, like the kitchen, with a wall-full of hand-made cherry-wood cupboards that still smelt slightly sawdusty. The glazed cupboard doors were lined with floral fabric, and Heather could hardly begin to guess at the final bill Margot must have run up at ‘Inside Story’. She must have bought miles and miles of stuff for this little house, she thought, it’s a real work of love and bank balance. She settled Margot on the huge brass bed and went to unfasten the the blind cords.
‘Mistake, those blinds. I should’ve had proper curtains. Those just remind Russell of tennis players’ knickers,’ Margot said, smiling damply. ‘Russell hates pink, too, says it’s like sleeping in a tart’s boudoir,’ she went on. ‘Hates pink, hates dogs, hates me,’ she said, lying back on the pillows and closing her eyes.
‘Are you comfy?’ Heather asked softly. ‘Feel all right?’
Margot grinned, eyes still closed. ‘I haven’t got the whirling pit feeling, so I’ll be OK. And Heather?’ her eyes flashed open and she looked anxious. ‘Don’t, you know, don’t—’
‘Tell?’ Heather said quietly. ‘No, of course I won’t tell. See you soon.’
Iain was still waiting in the kitchen, pacing about with his drink like a father excluded from the labour ward, but he had, she noticed, washed the glasses, found the right cupboard for the gin and left no trace of Margot’s lonely binge. If Russell came home now, she could probably get away with claiming a migraine. Jasper was whining impatiently at the back door and scratching at the new paint. Heather clipped his lead on and took him outside, where he peed generously against a pot of expensively topiaried bay.
‘Poor Margot. Is she often like this?’ Iain asked quietly with a wary look up towards the windows above.
Heather didn’t feel like explaining away her friend to him. He’d be gone soon, the sooner the better, she thought. Perversely, she found herself blaming him. If he and his crew weren’t making the film, Margot would still be in the rectory, where she and Russell could put enough yards of carpet between them to keep them both happy. Russell could entertain his business friends, play with his model soldiers, show off his symbols of success and compliment Margot on how wonderfully she did the organizing. He seemed to need that constant feeling of being pleased with himself.
And if he didn’t have it, he looked for someone else to feel pleased with him instead.
Heather was walking towards the gate and to home, and Iain was still with her. ‘Do you remember when I took you to Tramp and you got really drunk and fell out of the taxi?’ he asked as they crunched down the drive.
‘I remember being sick on your snake-skin cowboy boots just outside Harrods,’ she said, laughing. It was a relief to think about the silly and fun side of being drunk rather than the maudlin-Margot aspect. She remembered the episode with the op-art duvet, too, of course, but somehow didn’t want to start talking about beds with Iain – too many unsuitable sexual connotations there. ‘Margot’s all right really, you know, but she doesn’t seem to have any confidence in herself at the moment,’ she told him. ‘And Russell really can be a bit of a pain. She’s kept her own business going all this time, just because she loves the dogs. He met her when he took his aunt’s Old English sheepdog to be trimmed at the place where she worked – he kept bringing it in so often just to see her, the poor dog became practically bald. “Hair of the Dog”, she said the salon was called.’
‘That’s probably what she’ll be needing by tomorrow morning,’ Iain said. They stopped to open the gate and he turned to look at her properly. ‘You know, I’m really terribly sorry about the other day, lunch and that.’ Heather waited, while he chose words that seemed to be difficult to find. ‘I didn’t mean to be flippant about when you were pregnant. I did try to contact you after you left Scotland, but your mother said you’d gone away to France and wouldn’t be back.’
Heather said, ‘I did go, but not for more than a couple of weeks.’
‘Did you . . . did you have an abortion? I rather assumed you did,’ he asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘No, it just died by itself. On the train home.’ Heather could feel her lip trembling and told herself impatiently not to cry, not twenty-five years too late, not for something that she’d convinced herself had been no more than a collection of unviable cells.
‘I’m so sorry Heather,’ he said, and he wasn’t saying it from a distance, but with his arms round her, nuzzling into her hair, his mouth close to her ear where she could feel his warm breath. What she really minded most was that she found she liked it, very much.