I barged past him and stalked out. Unfortunately I tripped over the rug at the top of the stairs which rather spoiled the effect, but nevertheless, I thought as I tottered away, it was a magnificent exit.
The following morning I got out of bed and drew back the spare-room curtains. It was a beautiful bright morning, the sun just making it over the top of the trees to the east, coldly lighting up the valley. Down below in the stableyard I could see Marcus and Lily grooming their horses: radio on, a cup of tea apiece, chatting quietly as they plaited and brushed and picked out feet. Not my idea of fun, but Lily loved it and adored the fact that her father now did it with her. They could endlessly discuss Dutch gags and laminitis and bog spavins, with Angus and I rolling our eyes in horror, and would spend hours in the stables hosing down and mucking out. I turned and reached for my dressing-gown. No. I couldn’t take her away from here. Of course I couldn’t. This was her home, and she must stay here with Angus and her Daddy. I couldn’t be that selfish. So it would be me, then. I’d be the one on my own. In London.
Tears filling my eyes, I sat at the dressing-table and brushed my hair hard until my head hurt. I gazed at my reflection in the mirror that Marcus and I had found in a little antique market in Paris. Everywhere I looked, everything I touched, I thought in panic – the little cross-stitched mat Lily had sewn in reception class, the clay pot Angus had made – shrieked family, family, family! And he was the one destroying it all, wasn’t he? I paused in my brushing and looked out of the window again as, bottom raised, he picked out Fabrice’s hind hoof. He was the one cleverly disguising it as All My Fault and breaking up the happy home with his – his tart! I swung around in fury and hurled the hairbrush across the room, narrowly missing Lily as she came bursting through the door.
‘Christ!’ She ducked as it hit the wall behind her.
‘Oh – sorry, darling.’
‘Why did you do that!’ she squeaked, regarding me with horror.
I licked my lips. ‘Saw a wasp. Thought I’d – you know. Nail it. Missed.’
‘Oh.’ Then she frowned. ‘What are you doing in here, anyway, Mum? Why didn’t you sleep in your room?’
‘Your father was snoring for England,’ I said smoothly, turning back to the mirror to avoid her eyes. ‘Thought I’d sleep better in here.’ I picked up my comb. Your father. I’d heard ex-wives refer to their former husbands like that, when talking to the children. Not ‘Daddy’ any more, but ‘your father’, as if he was nothing to do with her. All the fault of the unfortunate offspring.
‘Mummy, will you come to the meet? Follow the hunt?’ Lily was behind me now in the mirror, her blue eyes huge.
‘Oh darling, I was going to go shopping.’
‘But Mummy, I’m so nervous, please come. You could follow on foot. I’ll be much better if you’re there.’ Tears were close, I could tell.
I turned on the stool to hug her. ‘Daddy’s going – you’ll be fine.’
‘I know, but he might go fast, and the thing is, Jemima Montague says the fences are going to be really high today. And Freckles is so small and –’
‘Then don’t go, darling!’
She drew back, shocked. ‘Oh no, Mummy, I must. Most of the Pony Club are going. Molly’s going. That would be wussy. Oh no, I’m going, but I’d be so much better if you were there. Please!’
I sighed and turned back to the mirror. Going to the meet would, of course, involve coming face-to-face with Perdita. Have her lord it over me as she sat high on her mighty steed. I saw her arrogant, pale face sneering down at me. Right now though, there was another little face, pleading with me in the mirror. I turned. Smiled.
‘Of course I’ll come. Maybe Angus will too. Yes, we’ll follow on foot.’
She swooped and hugged me. ‘Oh thank you, Mummy – it would make all the difference! I’ll go and tell Daddy.’
She ran back out again. Well, that would be an interesting exchange, I thought, getting up and sidling over to the window – Lily telling Daddy I was coming to meet the mistress. I waited, half-hidden behind the curtain. Marcus was facing me now, crouched down and intent on painting a front hoof with some sort of black nail varnish. Wasn’t it all a bit poofy, I wondered? All this plaiting and manicuring? A bit – you know – girly? Lily ran out into the yard excitedly. He listened and then nodded curtly, but his expression didn’t change. Cool. Very cool, Marcus, I thought, gazing down. He hadn’t rocked back on his heels, spilled his nail polish and exclaimed, ‘Ye gods, the game’s up!’ But then he wouldn’t, would he? After all, he hadn’t got where he was today without a certain sang froid. Yes, well I’ve got sang froid too, I thought as his eyes suddenly flickered up to mine in the window. I didn’t duck away, didn’t flinch, but stared down. Oh yes, I can be icy cool.
The meet was in the village, just outside the pub, and as Angus and I drew up, we could quite easily have just driven onto a biscuit tin lid. The hounds had been mustered on the village green and were winding excitedly around the horses’ legs as they stamped and whinnied, their riders, in pink or black coats and hunting stocks, knocking back glasses of port passed around by a smiling publican. It was a fair-sized field and mostly adults, but with a good smattering of children too, on Thelwell ponies. The rest of the village was out in force, on foot, in Barbours and wellies. There were young mothers with children in push-chairs, pensioners with dogs on leads, all chatting and laughing, enjoying the spectacle and bathed in glorious sunshine.
I parked outside the village shop, watching as an elegant blonde woman, very much in the Camilla Parker-Bowles mould, trotted up the lane towards us on her mare. Known locally as Perfect Pippa since she never had a hair out of place, she was followed by her husband, Timid Timmie, a little man on a huge black horse, wearing spectacles. (Timmie, not the horse.) The on dit was that she ruled the roost, and he was so besotted he just trotted along behind her, rather as he was doing now. Pippa, lipgloss shining and hair carefully netted, recognized me and raised what I was sure was a friendly hand, but somehow, up there on her mount, it couldn’t help but look imperious. I nodded back.
‘Come on, Angus,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s go.’
My son was making strange convulsive movements beside me in the car, which to the uninitiated might suggest some sort of fit, but to the mother of a teenage boy, the wires gave it away.
I lifted the earpiece. ‘Let’s go!’
‘Wha’?’ He jerked around, annoyed.
‘Come on, we’re going.’ I turned his iPod off.
‘I think I’ll stay here,’ he grumbled, sliding down into his seat and pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up. He looked around nervously. ‘This isn’t really my sort of thing.’
I’d had to practically drag him out of the house to accompany me in the first place.
‘But Mum,’ he’d whined from his prone, Roman-Emperor-At-Home position on the sofa, ‘Kilroy’s got a woman on who’s married her adopted son. And they’ve had Siamese twins!’
‘Angus, you’re supposed to be a flaming scholar,’ I’d snapped. ‘What would your housemaster say if he knew you spent your entire exeat with your eyes glued to the television? You’re supposed to have your father’s brains!’ See? ‘Your father’ again.
‘Well, I obviously got your eyes then, didn’t I?’ he’d retorted, quite cheekily, I’d thought.
Eventually though, he’d raised himself up to a vertical position, pushed his bare feet into soggy grey trainers and dragged yards of frayed denim across to the back door.
‘Oh look,’ I said brightly as I got out of the car now and shut the door behind me. ‘Laura Montague’s here. And she’s brought Jemima.’
‘Where?’ Angus whipped his hood off.
Jemima Montague was a rather fetching nymphet of fourteen whom Angus had something of a crush on: although you wouldn’t know she was a nymphet today, I thought, camouflaged as she was, almost identically to Angus, in sinister hoodie, ripped jeans and trainers.
‘Might just go and say hello,’ he
grunted, and was out of the car and mooching moodily across the road really quite rapidly for him. I followed to greet Laura. Laura was a mate I’d hit on early upon moving here. I’d liked the fact that she always seemed to have egg down her jumper and looked a bit chaotic. She, too, was an uprooted Londoner, one of the few here today, I noticed, not in regulation lovat green but wearing a fuchsia-pink jacket and tight yellow jeans. She’d endeared herself to me early on by sneaking out of her house late one night, very pissed, to paint the speed camera in the village which had snapped her three times. Her husband, Giles, had been appalled, but on slinking furtively into a crowded village shop the following morning for some paint-stripper, she’d been surprised to find herself hailed as something of a local hero. There’d been much cheering and back-slapping. The Montagues lived in the prettiest pink rectory on the edge of the village, and Marcus and I often had supper with her and Giles in the pub. On the most recent occasion, Laura – up to nine points now on her licence – had spent the evening trying to get Giles, a barrister, to share some of her points.
‘And be done for fraud?’ he’d replied laconically. ‘Not necessarily the career move I’m looking for, darling.’
We’d had a lot of fun with them, and it was with a pang that I realized we wouldn’t, in future. As I approached, I noticed one of her legs was darker than the other.
‘Bloody dog peed on me!’ she cried, shaking it in horror.
‘Oh God, poor you,’ I commiserated.
‘And there’s a lot of it. Those dogs are bloody big you know. Got huge bladders.’
‘Hounds,’ I corrected, handing her a tissue.
‘Whatever. Thanks. God, I haven’t seen you for ages, Henny. Where have you been hiding?’
‘Working,’ I said shortly as she mopped away. I didn’t want to go into my father. Not right now. ‘Up in London.’
‘Oh, of course.’ She straightened up. ‘Eleanor Strang told me you’re working for that dishy TV historian. God, lucky you! Gosh, aren’t you frightfully tempted, Henny? I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.’
I blushed. ‘Er, well. I do my best to resist, obviously.’
‘What on earth for? God, I wouldn’t. D’you know, the closest I got to some excitement this week was winning a prize in the village show, and then that awful Mabel Turner complained about my entry. “That’s never a courgette, that’s a marrow!” she hissed spitefully to her husband, Bert. So I eyed Bert and said loudly, “Just because you’ve never seen such a big one, Mabel!” ’
I giggled. ‘Yes, you’ve got to take your thrills where you can, round here.’
She grimaced. ‘Tell me about it. Speaking of which, let’s at least get ourselves a glass of free port while we’re standing around freezing our arses off, shall we?’
We squeezed nervously past a couple of snorting, stamping horses to grab a drink from a passing tray. Laura glanced around.
‘You can see why this is considered a toffs’ game. Perched up high in their red coats with their whips and spurs, they look like gods. The fact that that’s Gary the mechanic is neither here nor there; he looks like Lord Many-Acres.’
‘Except that there is Lord Many-Acres,’ I murmured as the local nob swept by, florid of face on a frisky bay. I looked around anxiously for Lily.
‘Jemima not riding today?’ I said as I scanned the field and saw her standing with Angus.
‘No, she’s a bit windy about hunting, ever since she fell off at that ditch. Molly is, though, she’s bold as brass. She’s with Giles, over there.’
Giles, atop a very solid-looking cob, waved as I turned. His horse shook its head and the bridle jangled noisily.
‘Got a lot of iron in its mouth, hasn’t it?’ I murmured. ‘The horse, not Giles.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, Giles likes good brakes. He’s a very cautious chap. If we’re asked out to dinner on a very windy night, he puts a chainsaw in the boot.’
I giggled. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I kid you not. Ooh look, Perfect Pippa.’
‘I know, I spotted her earlier. With Timid Timmie.’
‘Can’t think what she sees in him,’ Laura said sotto voce. ‘He’s so cringing – and that dreadful stammer! The other day he summoned up the courage to ask me if he could “p-pop ahead of me” in Waitrose, as he only had “one thing in his b-basket”. Came out in a complete muck sweat. I can just imagine him in bed. “Um, P-Pippa, oh p-perfect one, would it be all right if I p-popped my p-plonker in now?” ’
I laughed. ‘She probably swats him away like a dirty old fly and goes back to painting her perfect nails. Come on, I want to find Lily.’
We muscled our way further into the stamping, snorting throng and I glanced around anxiously.
‘There she is,’ said Laura suddenly, pointing.
Lily, looking white-faced and nervous, but very smart in her tweed jacket and Pony Club tie, was standing up in her stirrups on Freckles, searching for me. I waved madly, and when she finally saw me, relief flooded her face. She waved delightedly back, and poked Marcus in the ribs beside her with her whip. He was deep in conversation with someone on a grey horse, but broke off when he saw me, nodded, then went straight back. He said something to his companion, and after a moment, the girl turned to look too. It took me a moment to realize it was Perdita. She said something to Marcus, and the pair of them roared with laughter.
I felt my face flush with embarrassment and fury. God, the nerve of the man! Not even attempting to be coy and careful, to shield me from her, but parading around with her in front of half the village! And with our daughter beside him!
‘Isn’t that Perdita Fennel?’ Laura said in a low whisper.
‘I believe so,’ I spat.
‘God, she’s a goer. I didn’t go to the Hunt Ball in the summer because Molly was ill, but apparently she was all over the men.’
The Hunt Ball. No, I didn’t go either, because Mum had been staying that night. Marcus had gone though, said he had to. To support the hunt.
‘Apparently she went off with some chap at the end of the evening. Took him back to that cottage of hers for a jolly good seeing-to. No one knows who it was, except that he’s very definitely married and very definitely local. It’s all a bit hush-hush. I tried to get it out of Eleanor Strang, who was there, but she wouldn’t tell.’
My heart began to race. Was this Laura’s way of telling me that she knew – that everyone knew? The entire village? And that, as ever, the wife was the last to find out? Was she telling me to look to my laurels? To watch out? I glanced at her. She was watching Molly now, her face impassive. I fumed quietly. So. He’d gone back with her that night, had he? While I’d been at home with Mum. I watched Perdita now, talking loudly to someone else on a huge chestnut, looking admittedly very slim and glamorous in her navy coat with mustard collar.
‘Anyway, apparently she’s dead nervous today,’ Laura confided.
‘Why?’ I could hardly speak. Nervous? I’d never seen anyone so brazen and cocksure in my life.
‘This is her first time out as joint master. She’s leading the field. Come on, they’re off, let’s go and wish the girls luck.’
Horns were blown and the hounds lifted their heads. Excitement filled the air as the whipper-ins, ruddy-faced boys in mustard coats, called them expertly to heel – ‘Bounder, Lurcher, Tizer!’ – each known individually by name. They rounded them up with their long hunting whips, then trotted smartly off down the lane, the pack of hounds ahead, the field mustering and jostling for position behind. We just managed to squeeze through and reach Molly and Lily as they were setting off.
‘Mummy! We’re going!’
‘I know – good luck!’ we called. And: ‘Stick at the back!’ ‘Don’t jump anything too big – go round it!’
I looked at Marcus as he shadowed Lily on Fabrice. Jump as high as you like and break your bloody neck, was what I wanted to say, but instead I gave him a tight, public smile. He touched his hat back. Pillock. Who did he think he was, Harvey
-bleeding-Smith?
The sound of hooves pounding on tarmac filled the air, and everyone who wasn’t already on the village green came to their garden gates to watch them go by and wave.
‘They might be going over your way first, now that Marcus has lifted the ban,’ Laura called to me over the din.
‘What ban?’
‘Apparently the previous owner of your place banned hunting over the land. Bit of a townie. It’s been lifted now. Didn’t you know?’
‘He never tells me anything,’ I said crisply. ‘Is that where they’re heading for, then? Our place?’
‘No, they’ll be goin’ over Top Common way first,’ said a wizened old boy in a flat cap in my ear. ‘See if they can flush anythin’ out up there.’
‘Oh God, that’s quite a hike,’ groaned Laura. ‘Not sure I’m up to that. Shall we follow in the car?’
‘Definitely. I’m all for cheating. Let’s take mine, it’s got four-wheel drive.’
‘Jemima and I are going to follow on foot,’ said Angus, suddenly materializing beside me.
‘Fine, darling,’ I said, surprised. Angus didn’t walk to the television if he could help it. Left it for his parents to turn off. I’d never known him so keen to take a five-mile hike, but then he didn’t usually have the lovely Jemima beside him. Laura and I watched them go, shoulders hunched, hoods up, hands thrust in pockets, denim trailing in the mud.
‘Look like they’re off to do some mugging,’ Laura said.
I giggled. ‘I know. We pay a lot of money for deportment like that. Come on, let’s go.’
We piled into my jeep and set off. Laura, who seemed to know the terrain, barked instructions bossily, making me race round lanes and then take the occasional shortcut through a field.
‘Through here!’ she yelled as we shot through a farm, then, ‘Sorry!’ flashing a winning smile out of the window to the astonished farmer as we scattered ducks and chickens in our wake.
‘Are you sure this is the way?’ I gasped as we bounced down a pot-holed track, our heads practically hitting the roof.
Not That Kind of Girl Page 30