Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Pig!’ she screamed.

  Harry buzzed down his. ‘Cow!’ he roared back, and we sped off again, a mistake as it happened, because just round the next bend we crashed into – a pig.

  We sat for a moment in shocked silence. The huge Tamworth sow was laid out cold on the road in front of us. I turned to look at Harry.

  ‘Oh God,’ I gasped, my mouth twitching. ‘She meant –’

  ‘Yes, I know what she meant, thank you!’

  Suddenly I felt ridiculously, uncontrollably giggly. Snorting a bit, I scrambled from the car. ‘D’you think it’s all right?’

  ‘Never mind the bloody pig, what about my car!’

  Actually it was my car, a wedding present from my parents. As Harry got out to survey the damage, I attended to the pig. It was a huge ginger sow which I recognized as belonging to the farmer down the road from us. It blinked a bit, but as I prodded it, it gave a snort and staggered woozily to its feet.

  ‘I think it’s okay!’ I cried. ‘Get that chocolate bar out of the glove compartment, Harry.’

  For once Harry obliged. I took the chocolate, broke it up and threw it into the field. The pig turned, crashed back through the hole in the hedge where it had come through and tucked into the Toblerone. Then I ran along the hedgerow and found some willow branches to mend the hole.

  ‘We’ve got to patch this up or she’ll get out again!’ I yelled, dragging half a ton of hedgerow back, puffing, panting, sweating, while Harry got back in the car.

  As I wrestled with ten-foot branches I spotted him through the windscreen, glancing at his watch. Suddenly I realized he was still thinking about lunch. After all that had happened – underage Lotharios, divorce threats, breathalyser tests, flattened pigs – he was still thinking about his groaning stomach and wondering if the Cavendishes were holding the roast pheasant for him. This tickled me somewhat, and as I went about my business, I couldn’t resist making rather a meal of it. Glancing at him occasionally out of the corner of my eye, I wove an elaborate tapestry of branches in and out, this way and that way, doing a spectacular darning job, watching as he tapped his fingers impatiently on the dashboard, glanced at his watch, wondering how long it would take him to lose his –

  ‘OH, FOR GOD’S SAKE, GET BACK IN THE SODDING CAR!’

  Not long. Suppressing a smile, I ran back and jumped in. His word was my command. For the moment anyway. We sailed past my newly woven hedge and a few minutes later turned left into the private road where my parents live. We drove silently past the rows of immaculately manicured lawns with their dinky little chain link fences, past the identical tubs of winter pansies, over the sleeping policemen, and finally turned and came to a halt in the gravel drive.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked up at the house I’d grown up in. For once I was glad to be home. It was a large but fairly hideous 1930s redbrick, red-tile affair with strange extensions sticking out here and there and dark leaded windows. Thanks to my father, though, the garden was always fabulous. Even this late in the year it knocked spots off any other garden in the neighbourhood, and today the Christmas roses were out to greet us in style. Also on the welcoming committee was my mother, who came running down the front steps, resplendent in some sort of green silk ensemble that looked more suitable for going to a wedding in than cooking lunch for her family. I climbed weakly out of the car.

  ‘Darlings, you’re here! Where on earth have you been? We’ve been so worried!’

  Harry slammed his door and strode rudely past her.

  ‘Harry?’ She turned and stared after him.

  I put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Leave him, Mum. He was breathalysed. It was positive.’ At least I presumed that was the problem.

  Mummy turned back to me in horror. ‘Well, for pity’s sake, why weren’t you driving? Did you know he’d had a drink?’

  I shrugged. ‘Harry’s always had a drink. I can’t see why he’s so fussed, actually. He spends his life lolling around in the back of taxis, why does he need a car?’

  She stared at me. ‘Oh, you stupid girl!’ She stormed after him into the house.

  I wearily climbed up the steps after her and encountered my father in the hall.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Harry failed the breath test.’

  ‘Ah. Oh well, it had to happen sooner or later, didn’t it? Probably just as well. Never mind, come and see what I’ve been doing in the garage.’

  He turned me round and led me firmly outside, right away from the fray. As far as he was concerned, that was it on the sympathy front for Harry. My mother would no doubt be sitting by the fire with him even now, commiserating, tutting, handing him a microwaved plate of roast pheasant, sympathizing, blaming me. I wasn’t hungry, and the last thing I needed was reheated game and Mum. I squeezed Dad’s arm gratefully as we walked round the side of the house.

  ‘Where’s Ivo?’

  ‘Tucked up in bed. Havin’ a bit o’ shut-eye,’ he said with his flat, Mancunian vowels, which despite years of living in the south and intense pressure from my mother, he’d never bothered to lose. ‘He cried for Blinky for a bit, but next time we peeped in he was out like a light. Come on, come and look at this.’ He opened the garage door, went over to the far corner and pulled off a dustsheet. I blinked, adjusting my eyes to the gloom. Underneath was a miniature version of a convertible Bentley, dark shiny blue with red leather upholstery.

  I gaped. ‘Oh Dad, it’s wonderful! Where did you get it?’

  ‘Had it for years. It was mine when I was a boy, actually, but it’s been in a terrible state for a long time. I’ve been doing it up for months.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘For Ivo of course.’

  I flushed with pleasure. My sister Philly had three children too.

  ‘The others can use it too of course,’ he said magnanimously, ‘but they’ve got toys coming out of their ears. I thought Ivo would appreciate it more. He’s a bit young at the moment but in a year or so when his feet can reach the pedals – look at this.’ He reached inside with his hand, turned a key, pushed the pedals and sure enough it shot off down the garage.

  I laughed. ‘You’re a genius. It must have taken ages to get the old motor going again.’

  He shrugged. ‘Oh well, I quite enjoy tinkering around in here, as you know.’

  Of course he did. It was his bolt-hole, his way of escaping my mother, and it always had been. Not that my parents were unhappy, they rubbed along pretty amicably most of the time, just as long as my father toed the line. Just as long as he’d done all his jobs in my mother’s domain, the house. Oh yes, after he’d fetched in the wood, cleared the grates, laid the fires and done a certain amount of skivvying in the kitchen he was free to go out to his garden, or his potting shed and, if he’d been very good, his garage. Philly and I had been quietly alarmed at the thought of Dad retiring, thinking he’d be under Mum’s feet and that she’d be at his throat, but actually it worked better than when he used to come home exhausted from the City every day and she’d nagged and bullied him relentlessly when all he wanted to do was collapse in front of the nine o’clock news. She still nagged and bullied of course, but if he wasn’t tired, he didn’t mind so much, and if he didn’t mind so much, she didn’t do it so much. Funny, that.

  ‘Still got a lot of work to do on it of course,’ he said, reaching for a rag.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  I took a duster off the shelf and started polishing the back bumper while he rubbed away at the front. Like him, I felt safe in here and I didn’t want to go back inside. Didn’t want to go and face the music. In here, the Armchair Symphony on Dad’s old Roberts radio provided a serene background hum and the smells of oily rags and spilled petrol were comforting and familiar. I remembered how I’d sat in here as a little girl, watching him fix a bicycle or polish hubcaps. It was always a sanctuary for me too.

  ‘Dad?’ I ventured after a while.

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Harry and
I. We’re not … we’re not getting along so well at the moment.’

  He sat back on his heels. ‘You’ll need a bit of Brasso on your duster to really bring that up, love. This rust takes some shifting.’

  ‘What?’ I glanced down at my duster. ‘Oh, right.’ I added some Brasso. ‘To be honest it hasn’t really been right for ages. Well, almost from the beginning actually.’

  ‘That and elbow grease, of course. There’s no substitute for elbow grease.’

  I sat back and stared at him as he polished away, head bent. He didn’t want to talk about it. He was ignoring me. For a moment I was hurt, offended, but then I realized this wasn’t so unexpected really. Dad had never talked emotionally to any of his children, but so far that hadn’t mattered. I’d never needed it. But I did now. I wanted to say to him, look, Dad, I do now, so please? I waited. Nothing. I bit my lip and carried on polishing, in what gradually became a companionable silence. Finally he stood up.

  ‘There. That looks a lot better, you can almost see your face in it.’

  I grinned and chucked my duster back on the shelf. ‘Until Ivo gets his sticky little fingers on it of course.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s all part of the fun. Come on, love, we’d better go in.’

  We went out into the sunshine and he shut the door behind us. We both knew our time in that little retreat was over for the moment. Mum took a very dim view of the garage and would bustle down to drag us out if we didn’t show ourselves back at the house soon. We chose the long way back though, spinning out the walk, going via the greenhouse where Dad picked up his secateurs, then across to the herbaceous border to check out his euphorbias, then on up the slope of the lawn, where suddenly he took my arm. He squeezed it, then let it go. I looked up in surprise. He was still gazing straight ahead. I smiled. I knew that was his way. His way of saying, look, love, I can’t talk about it, but it’s okay, I’ll back you all the way. You’re doing the right thing. It was all there, in that little squeeze. Suddenly, my heart felt lighter than it had done for ages. I smiled in recognition.

  The low winter sun shone straight into our eyes as we approached the house and at first I didn’t see Harry. Then all at once he was bearing down on us, coming down the grassy slope from the terrace, walking back on his heels and bearing his weight before him like a huge bag of groceries that might spill at any moment, as fat men do. As he came to a halt he swayed slightly, reeking of whisky.

  ‘I’d like a word with my wife, Gordon, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘By all means, dear boy,’ murmured Dad, moving quietly away into the shadows.

  As Harry took a step towards me, his body blotted out the sun. He fixed me with bleary, bloodshot eyes. ‘The answer to your question, Rosie, is no. Absolutely, unequivocally, no. No, I do not want a divorce and no, I would not give you one should you seek it, and be assured that if you continue to pursue this unsavoury tack, I’ll make life very difficult for you.’

  ‘Harry, you know as well as I do the marriage is over,’ I said in a low voice.

  He smiled mockingly. ‘Over? Good heavens, it never really began, did it? Any man would find it hard to make a success of being married to you, Rosie.’

  I caught my breath sharply. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Simply that you’re a bore and a drudge. You know as well as I do your life centres round your domestic territory. You think only of your home, your hearth and your offspring and not once, in all the years I’ve known you, have you ever uttered a remotely interesting thought or ventured an opinion that you hadn’t borrowed from someone else. Frankly, I’m embarrassed by the narrowness of your mind.’

  Don’t rise, I told myself, although I could feel myself seething inwardly, wanting to smack his fat face, just don’t rise. This was very normal, very Harry, very calculated. He never balked at hitting below the belt and this was his way of turning the screw, hoping to provoke a scene, a volatile reaction so that he could throw up his hands and walk away saying, see? She’s hysterical! I mean what is a man to do? She’s so unreasonable.

  I calmly met his eye. ‘And where do you get your opinions from, Harry? Sniffing at the heels of your friends in high places, picking up a few crumbs from the master’s table, eh?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said evenly, ‘but they certainly don’t have their origins in the kitchen sink. You’re swamped in domesticity, Rosie. You’re socially awkward, you contribute nothing to sophisticated gatherings other than an update on your son’s teething situation or your latest recipe for tiramisu. You have neither political nor social savvy, no lively debate, you’re gauche, ignorant, giggly and frivolous and you’re unimaginative both in and out of bed.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘I’m perfectly aware, my dear, that during any recent sexual encounter of ours, you’ve clearly been faking it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t fake it, Harry. I really am asleep.’

  ‘Don’t be flippant,’ he snapped. ‘You’re just proving my point.’

  ‘So why did you marry me then?’

  ‘Because I needed a wife. Because I wanted children, and because Bertram approved of you.’

  You had to hand it to Harry. None of this ‘your body was a temple, one touch and I was in ecstasy’ lark for him. Oh no. I looked like a good breeder and his uncle had given me the thumbs up.

  ‘Also,’ he went on charitably, ‘I thought you were reasonably decorative. You had an open, friendly disposition and I thought I might be able to do something about your mind. Thought I might be able to mould you, but I now see the folly of that. There wasn’t enough raw material there for me to work with.’

  The audacity of the man was phenomenal. This was a man without an A-level to his name. This was a man who talked a good Oxford but had never actually been there, except as a tourist, and yet he thought he could mould my mind. And the funny thing was that all this time I’d been thinking I could mould his, which is ironic really when you think about it. There we’d both been, three years ago at that altar, both plighting our troths and both secretly thinking he’ll/she’ll do. I’m sure I can do something with him/her.

  ‘So why stay married to me, Harry? Why prolong the agony?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe in divorce. It’s common and degrading and not for the likes of us. It’s tantamount to admitting the biggest, grossest mistake of one’s life and I don’t make mistakes. But I do have a proposition for you.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  He drew himself up to his full height and girth. ‘Separate bedrooms, separate lives. But to all intents and purposes, to the outside world, we carry on as man and wife.’

  I blinked. To the outside world? What, our public? Anyone would think we were Charles and Diana, and even they, with all their vast estates and acreage, hadn’t managed the sort of modus vivendi he was suggesting, to live together but not to live together. How on earth did he think we’d manage it in a Wandsworth semi?

  ‘But why, Harry? What’s the point?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ he said coldly. ‘I don’t believe in divorce. I won’t interfere with your life, you can come and go as you please – although I draw the line at you screwing that plumber johnnie, he really was the end. We can’t have types like that about the place, you’ll catch all manner of sexual diseases, one only had to look at his fingernails to see that. No, he’ll have to go – imagine if any of my friends should see him!’ Suddenly he swooped, his pale eyes big and popping. ‘He didn’t ask about me, did he? Didn’t try to find out anything about me, where I worked or anything?’

  ‘Harry, even I don’t know the answer to that, and no, he didn’t mention you. Why should he, for God’s sake? We only chatted for a few minutes. I’ve told you, nothing happened!’

  ‘Well, just make sure you keep it that way. You’re still my wife, Rosie, and standards must be upheld. You stay with me for the duration and I’ll see you’re all right. But if you should cross me, if you should file for a divorce, be assured I’ll fight you all the way. You’ll get no mon
ey and no share of the house, I’ll see to that. Neither will you get Ivo.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course I’ll get Ivo!’

  ‘Not if I demonstrate to the courts what an unfit mother you are.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I breathed.

  ‘Not if I document your cruelty. Your neglect.’

  I stared at him, totally flabbergasted. ‘But that’s not true!’

  ‘So what? I’ll lie. And I’ll get others to lie too, to back me up. I can do that, you know, Rosie, my friends will do that for me. We’re very close and I know some very influential people.’

  Clearly he thought he was Lord Lucan now. Nevertheless I started to tremble. ‘Don’t threaten me, Harry.’

  ‘No threats,’ he said cheerfully, ‘just food for thought. Something for you to think about before you make any rash moves.’

  I looked him in the eye. ‘But I already have. The ball is already in motion. I’ll see you in court, Harry.’

  He regarded me coldly. ‘And I’ll see you in hell.’

  With that he turned and walked away.

  Chapter Five

  I sat down on the low terrace wall for a long while. I could feel myself trembling still and Harry must have been gone five minutes. I shivered, huddling down into my coat, hands thrust deep in my pockets. At my feet a few dead leaves rustled around in the dank lustrous winter lawn. I watched them blow this way and that, back and forth, all dark and shrivelled, until they came to rest at my feet. How strange, I thought as I stared at them, how one notices a thing like a couple of dead leaves at a moment like this. I’d probably remember them for ever. After a while I stood up. I took a deep breath. Philly. Yes, that was it, I’d go and see Philly.

  I went into the house and stole up the back stairs into the spare room where Ivo slept. He was awake, but only just, sitting up in his cot sucking his thumb, hair askew, eyes bright and cheeks rosy with sleep.

  ‘Hello, darling!’ I whispered, my voice catching.