Ginnie was always very busy, rushing around in a panic, but doing what? Nothing, Sebastian said. Chasing her tail. She had a man to do everything, he said; all she did was chivvy them and look harassed. But a counsellor? Surely she’d be rather brusque? Your marriage has broken down? Pull yourself together. Your wife doesn’t understand you? Well, can you blame her?
‘A lot of it’s listening,’ she told me, perhaps reading my thoughts. ‘Not necessarily saying much.’
Oh, well, that was out of the question. Ginnie never drew breath. Had an opinion on everything. She’d never be able to sit on her hands without diving in with advice.
‘Good, good.’ I nodded encouragingly. ‘I’m really pleased, Ginnie.’
‘And, in time, I hope I can join the team down at the Holistic Centre. You know, where Lottie works.’
This had me getting to my feet and pretending to wash the mugs, I had to hide my face in the sink so badly. Ginnie with Lottie? Who was so socially inferior Ginnie could barely flick her a tight little smile? I turned to look at my sister, unobserved. She was staring out of the window now, her face collapsed. Shattered. People change. Of course they do. And if I couldn’t see that, and couldn’t help the transformation, I wasn’t much of a sister.
‘I’ll mention it to her,’ I said warmly, knowing that once Lottie had got over her shock and spat a bit of bile about frustrated housewives muscling in on what they saw to be an easy wicket, not to mention certain people only deigning to talk to her when they wanted something, she’d come round too. Lottie had a kind heart. And, after all, what was that Holistic Centre all about – teeming, incidentally, with women of a certain age – if not healing each other? Didn’t it help Lottie and her terrible relationship with her mother? Hadn’t she told me so herself? Perhaps I should be in another room down the hall, I thought gloomily: retrain as a reflexologist or something. Knead people’s feet, so that between the three of us we could offer all-round treatment and be full of good karma ourselves.
‘I’ll sort Mum and Dad out,’ I said shortly. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate.’
‘Thanks, Ella.’
She got wearily to her feet, and just a tiny bit of me thought I had quite a lot on mine, with my husband leaving home, but I wouldn’t mention it.
‘Oh, and such good news about Sebastian moving out. You must be delighted he’s finally taken the hint. And he’s a different man, don’t you think?’
‘What d’you mean?’ I said carefully.
‘Well, much more like he was before the painting all went wrong. More light-hearted. And, of course, it helps that he’s not drinking. I ran into him and the children in Oxford the other day. They showed me the house. It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
‘What house?’ My mouth was very dry.
‘The one the university have given him.’
House. I’d thought rooms. Up a staircase.
‘I haven’t seen it.’
‘Oh, well, I only have because I bumped into them, outside Christchurch. They took me in. You have to go through the porters’ lodge and everything, frightfully grand. It’s off that huge great quad, then through some cloisters and at the end of a dear little row of medieval houses covered in wisteria. It’s got a lovely garden at the back and all the space in the world at the front, with the whopping quad and everything. Christchurch is vast. Tabs showed me her room, and Josh has even got a little corner of Sebastian’s studio. I had no idea he was so good at art. And of course the Playhouse is just up the road. Sebastian made me a cup of tea – can you believe it? – and because I had so much shopping and loads more to do, I left it all there and picked it up later. They were playing Perudo when I poked my head round the sitting-room door later on and said I was going. A really sweet little scene. Heads bent over the dice. And I couldn’t help thinking how lovely to have a brother-in-law in town with a spare room – it’s got four bedrooms – if Richard and I are ever there, at the theatre, or something. In his present mood I doubt he’ll mind at all. Sebastian, I mean. Anyway, toodle-oo, Ella.’
She gathered her car keys from the kitchen table.
‘I’m so glad I told you about Hugo. I’m over the shock of it now and just so pleased and grateful he’s on the mend. Nothing else really matters, does it? And I’m so pleased I told you about going back to work, too. I thought you’d laugh at me. You’ve always been the career girl in the family, the clever one. Golly, at one stage Mummy and Daddy thought you were going to be famous, remember that review in The Times?’ She went to the back door. ‘And don’t worry about Mummy. How like you to exaggerate and say she was starkers when she was nothing of the kind.’ She raised a weary smile as she turned to go. ‘Anyway, good to chat and all that. You’ve made me feel so much better.’
And away she went to her car.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I pulled out a chair and sat down heavily when she’d gone. Listened to the purr of her car leaving the yard. Even after the sound had faded into the distance, I stayed there motionless for a while. Eventually I got up and walked around the kitchen, arms tightly folded across my chest. Marvellous. She felt better. My sister felt better. That was splendid. Sebastian didn’t just feel better, he was better, apparently. Excellent. The children were happy – of course they were: a ruddy great four-bedroomed house in town. How delightful. They’d be the envy of all their friends; think of the parties. Everyone was thrilled. And I was so very pleased for them all. Aware that my jaw was clenched and my nostrils flaring like foghorns, I stopped at the window to breathe. Relaxed my mouth and tried to gain control. Gave my ears a savage tweak. Hopeless. What were those breathing exercises Lottie had taught me? Not just down to the diaphragm, but further, right down to the tummy. Take it right down. I did, but felt a bit sick. Light-headed. I lay my forehead on the window pane to cool it. The moment it met the glass, though, I jerked it away, sharpish.
Mrs Braithwaite was emerging from her cottage, at the double, with her son in her hand, looking furious. Her mouth, if possible, was even tighter than mine. She held Jason’s finger high and aloft, like exhibit A. As she marched very much in my direction I took an executive decision – and dived under the kitchen table. I crouched there on my knees. Moments later, there was a sharp knock upon the back door. Rat-a-tat-tat. I sank lower, head almost on the floor, knowing she couldn’t see me. I’d done it before when creditors had called and they’d all had a jolly good peer through the window – the electricity man had even gone round to the back garden – but, eventually, they’d gone away. And surely if Mrs Braithwaite didn’t get an answer, she wouldn’t just barge into my home?
‘Blimey, whacha doin’ under there, then?’
‘Ah, Mrs Braithwaite. How lovely.’ I crawled out. ‘I, um … dropped an earring. Thought it might have rolled under the table.’
She drew herself up to her full height. Not for the first time it struck me that her eyes were very close together. Very proximate to her nose. She looked at me dubiously. ‘You don’t look like the earring type.’
‘Ooh, I have my lighter moments,’ I warbled girlishly, fondling my unadorned ears.
‘Well, your donkey’s gone and bit my Jison, look.’ She jerked his arm up high, as if he’d won an Olympic medal. ‘He’s bin in terrible pain and there ain’t no more Savlon in that tube, and not an aspirin in the packet, neither. Your animals have bitten him so much we’ve used ’em all. I came over here for something of yours. What with the cockerels and the ducks that chase us, this place is downright dangerous!’
‘Yes,’ I conceded, brushing myself down – it was surprisingly dirty under my table – ‘the country can be slightly hazardous, I do agree. And you’re right about the cockerels, which is why I got rid of them. But the ducks only give chase if they think you’ve got food. I did ask you not to give them your sandwiches.’ Chips, too, from a McDonald’s carton, which I’d found billowing around the yard. I went to the windowsill to embark on what I knew to be a spurious and fruitless search in my messy basket. �
��Aspirin,’ I murmured ostentatiously, ‘now let me see.’ As I riffled amongst empty packets, a crusty old sachet of cystitis remedy materialized. I wondered if I could dissolve it in water and pass it off as aspirin? What would it do to a boy’s waterworks?
‘That’ll do.’ She snatched it from me.
‘Oh, but –’
‘And I’ll take some of that, an’ all,’ she said, grabbing an ancient bottle of witch hazel.
‘Help yourself,’ I said wearily. ‘Not only is it open house here at Liberty Hall but everything is free of charge.’
‘And the sheep are a liability. They had ’im pinned in the corner the other day. Terrified, he was.’
‘Yes, you told me.’ I watched as she emptied the solid lump of crystal into a glass and added water. ‘But, you know, sheep honestly won’t hurt him. They’re just nosy.’
‘And as for those bulls you’ve got, all crowded in together –’
‘They’re long-horn cows, Mrs Braithwaite, and they’re not even mine. They belong to the farmer next door, and, yes, they will be curious if you go into their field.’ Don’t go in, you silly woman, played on my lips.
‘And in the brochure you say you’re a kiddie-friendly farm.’ I most certainly would not have written ‘kiddie-friendly’ but I refrained from correcting her. She made Jason gulp down the brew before I knew how to stop her. ‘We came here expecting to stroke baby chicks, feed baby lambs, but there ain’t nothing like that.’
‘No, well, you see chicks and lambs tend to be born in the early spring and therefore in late summer they’ve grown into –’
‘Didn’t think we’d be the only ones here, neither. Thought there’d be loads of other kids for Jise to play wiv.’ She glared at me accusingly as if I were the one who didn’t have any friends. ‘And now we know why, don’t we?’ she said triumphantly. ‘Bloody dangerous animals. I’m surprised you’ve got any visitors at all!’
I’m surprised you’ve got any teeth, came to mind, but, happily, not to my vocal chords. Again, I wanted to slap her. I say again, because recently, if you recall, I’d wanted to do the same to my mother. Was this what was happening to me? Was I becoming violent? One did hear of such women, deserted and disaffected, who took to drink – I eyed the gin bottle on the side which, admittedly, had taken a bit of a battering of late – and ended up brawling with innocent bystanders. Except there was nothing remotely innocent about Mrs Braithwaite. I’d known her type the moment I’d picked up the phone to her: not wanting to pay a deposit; asking for a discount because there were only two of them; telling me the second she arrived she wouldn’t be paying ‘the full whack’ on account of it not being quite what she’d had in mind: ‘Being as it’s so far from anywhere and the website said it was accessible.’ Despite wondering if she’d expected a slip road to the M40 outside her front door, I’d wearily agreed to all her demands, knowing I wouldn’t get anyone else at such late notice. Knowing she had me cornered.
‘That’s quite a nasty bite, isn’t it, Mrs Braithwaite?’ I said, looking at Jason’s blemish-free finger. ‘If I were you I’d take him down to the doctor’s for a tetanus.’
This worked like lightning. She looked terrified. ‘What – even though it’s just a scratch?’
‘Oh, yes. You can’t be too careful. Especially in the country. We had foot and mouth here once, you know. It really can’t be ruled out.’
That did it. With a yelp she was out of my kitchen and running fast for her BMW – no clapped-out Volvo for her – dragging Jason with her. I watched them go. Without an appointment they’d have to sit for ages in a crowded waiting room before finally seeing a nurse, who’d say that if the animal hadn’t actually drawn blood there was really little point in a tetanus. Then they’d be back here in high dudgeon, protesting they’d lost a day of their precious holiday and wanted a refund, and their petrol money. Before you could blink I’d be paying them to take my cottage. But there’d been nothing else for it. I’d had to get rid of them.
All at once I felt terribly sorry for Jason. Why was he so large? That wasn’t his fault, at ten, was it? He didn’t buy his own food. And so silent? Was he permanently terrified? And where was Mr Braithwaite? Over the hills and far away, no doubt. Over the hills … I gazed at them as they loomed in the distance, framing my valley. They stared back. My eyes dropped to the Granary, where my mother and my husband would be ensconced for a good many hours to come. I tracked right to the Dairy, where Ottoline would be returning soon, to host another pottery group, with the flurry of oddballs who’d droop through my yard from the bus stop, swearing at the tops of their voices. Suddenly I knew I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to follow Mr Braithwaite. Had to head for the hills.
I thought about going to Dad, but Ginnie’s description of the ménage I’d encounter there seemed to rival my own. I felt a surge of panic. I couldn’t even go home. When I’d first got married, I’d asked Sebastian if we could go home for Christmas – I was only twenty. He’d laughed and said, ‘We are home.’ But there’d been love in his eyes. And tenderness in the way he’d said it, which was what I missed, of course. As a lump of self-pity rose in my throat I plunged my hand into my pocket and, with the speed of Clint retrieving his Colt 45, pulled out my phone and scrolled down. As it rang, I put it to my ear. Ludo answered almost immediately.
‘You know you said that one day we should spend some time together because we deserved it?’ I gabbled with absolutely no run-up or preamble whatsoever.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, that day has come.’
It was a trifle melodramatic, I admit. A trifle – portentous. But that was how I felt. On the cusp of a pivotal moment. Like Madame Bovary had perhaps felt when she’d decided to cheat on her boring doctor, or Anna Karenina, on the point of fleeing to Vronsky. Unbridled – no doubt. Wanton – certainly. But with mind made up and very certain indeed. I realized I’d crossed a line. One I’d hovered and dithered over for so long, but had now leaped in one great jump, landing yards on the other side, in another country. A rather thrilling one. One that was totally devoid of energy-sapping dependants and where my own sap was rising so fast it was liable to bubble over into my Ugg boots. Everyone has their boiling point and I’d reached mine. No, I would not be chatelaine of this charming communal establishment with its marvellously eclectic jumble of freeloaders making constant demands on my time any more. I would have my moment in the sun.
Ludo’s voice, when it came, was charged with excitement. ‘You mean …’
‘Yes,’ I declared, equally excited. ‘That is exactly what I mean. Where shall we meet?’ Golly. I felt in charge for once. Liked it enormously.
‘Wherever you’d like to meet,’ he said tremulously. ‘Do you mean a hotel?’
‘I most certainly do.’
Blimey. Did I? And did I have to sound like a policeman?
‘Well, what about the pub I told you about? The Flower at Micklehampton?’
Micklehampton. Quite close. And somehow I needed to be away, away.
‘No, not there,’ I told him. ‘What about that place in Binfield that’s supposed to be rather hidden away – all beams and log fires? The bunch of whatsits?’
‘Grapes, generally. Although, at our age, it could be piles. Well, yes, we could, but it’s too far to go today.’
‘Then let’s go next week,’ I said, thinking that, for all my impetuousness, I did actually need to get my legs waxed. And maybe acquire some pants that weren’t saggy and grey and came comfortably up to my waist. ‘How about Wednesday?’
‘Wednesday, it is,’ he said happily. ‘Eliza is visiting a friend in London then, or so she –’ He broke off.
‘What?’ I pounced.
‘Nothing,’ he said quickly.
I’d caught it, though.
‘Oh, Ella, how perfect. I can’t tell you how much I’ve longed for this moment.’
‘Me too,’ I told him, actually meaning it now. Not just feeling cross and resentful and lashing out, which I
knew I’d been doing when I’d plucked out my phone. I felt rather joyous. Yes, I was running away, with all the negativity that implied, but I was running away with Ludo, don’t forget. Handsome, kind, in-love-with-me Ludo. Not just anyone. And, boy, it felt good. He was right: we were entitled to some happiness. I pocketed my phone feverishly. Not destined to dig gardens and run holiday lets for ever, whilst our spouses fornicated with whosoever they pleased.
As I went upstairs I tried not to think about the women Sebastian would fornicate with at Oxford: adoring young female professors, nubile students at the Ruskin, where he was probably on the syllabus, let alone the payroll. Art students were notoriously pretty. And he was on the wagon too, according to Ottoline. Not quite the alcoholic, shambolic wreck of yesteryear. He’d got himself together a bit. Wouldn’t take long, though, I thought quickly, hating myself for the thought. But, nevertheless, it was true. Sebastian could only ever stay sober for three or four weeks at a time. It wouldn’t be for ever.
Upstairs in my studio, I didn’t even pretend to go in the direction of Leanne and the gang. Instead I went straight to my huge cupboard behind the door, lifted the floorboard in front of it and took out the key on the tiny piece of pink velvet ribbon. I hesitated, but only for a moment. Opened it. Riffling straight to the back of the stack of canvases I found the one I was looking for. Slid it out. Propped it against a wall and drank it in. It was a still life: wild flowers in a jug and a few pieces of fruit on a crumpled tablecloth. I’d painted it years ago, a good fifteen, but I liked it very much. I looked at it for another long moment, then put it back carefully.
My fingers selected another, a seascape, as yet unfinished. Most of it was done, but the boats in the foreground, which I’d sat on a harbour wall and painted in St-Jean-de-Luz in the very early days, when we went to places like that in the south of France and were feted and wined and dined by the wealthy aboard their yachts, were still unfinished. I could visualize the scene now, all these years later. Sebastian and I had got up early one morning and walked down to the harbour from the tiny apartment we’d been renting. Before anyone, aside from the fishermen, was up, we’d sat on the quay wall with Josh in a Moses basket, watching the boats come in with their catches. Then we’d set up our easels and painted together. I could still see that early morning light, lazy and languorous, rolling in from the sea, the sun’s rays breaking through the mist and dancing gently on the water, glancing off the sides of the boats bobbing pink and turquoise in the foreground. Could still see the hills to the west with their clusters of red-roofed houses.
My Husband Next Door Page 27