Elbow deep in suds at the sink, I watched out of the corner of my eye as he got up from the table. He held on to the back of a chair for a second, manufactured a groan and looked piteously at me.
‘I think I’ll go and have a little lie down.’
So what’s new? ‘Okay, Harry.’
‘I’m really not feeling so good.’ Just in case I hadn’t got the message.
‘Righto. Shall I wake you when it’s time to go to lunch?’
‘Of course!’ Ah, too quick again, you see, much too quick. I stifled a smile.
‘See you later then.’
‘Okay.’
He shuffled bravely out, bound for his study, and the moment his back was turned, I leapt into action. I snatched a plastic bag from a drawer and quickly filched a few things from under the sink – J Cloths, washing-up liquid, Domestos, etc. I wasn’t going to clean Harry out but I didn’t want to arrive at the cottage without a few basic items. Then I unstrapped Ivo from his high chair, wiped it down and quietly collapsed it, ready for sneaking it out to the hall and thence to the car with the rest of my belongings. I glanced around. Now, what else? Funnily enough, my instinct was to scrub the place from top to bottom, which I think says less about me and more about the ritualistic chains of female enslavement, etc., etc., but happily I resisted the temptation – shook the chains off with a little shimmy – and set about dragging suitcases and boxes up from the cellar. Quietly, stealthily, I filled them with mine and Ivo’s clothes and bedding, tiptoeing from room to room, quietly sliding drawers in and out and then stashing everything back in the cellar until the appointed hour. Then I found a black bin liner and stole around the house like a burglar, taking very little but choosing wisely. A tin opener here, a hairdryer there, a clock here, a radio there, a packet of loo rolls, a jar of marmalade, marvelling as I merrily pilfered and pillaged how simple my needs had become. When I’d first got engaged, I remembered marching around Peter Jones, wedding list in hand, insisting in a loud voice that I couldn’t possibly live without a pair of china Herond candlesticks with butterflies on them, but now I could see that I could exist without them quite easily. I was embarking on a new life and the goalposts had shifted somewhat; making sure I had a bit of Lifebuoy to splash under my arms was slightly more crucial than fine bone china.
I didn’t take any furniture, mainly because it was Harry’s, but also because I’d always hated it – mostly oak, mostly huge, and mostly with barley twist legs. I did take a couple of wedding presents though, a pretty pen and ink drawing that Philly and Miles had given us and a patchwork quilt that Alice had made, on the basis that my friends or family had donated them and Harry had never liked them anyway, sniffily dismissing Philly’s gift as ‘naive’ and Alice’s as ‘arts and crafts whimsy’. Well, I could only think I was doing him a favour by taking them out of his line of vision.
Finally it got to eleven thirty, my bin liner was full, and Harry was still asleep, or pretending to be, upstairs. Who knows, I thought as I sat on the bottom stair nervously biting my thumbnail, perhaps he was lying there wide awake, listening to me playing Burglar Bill, plotting his revenge. I glanced upstairs. I could take a chance, start packing the car – the one large luxury item I was insisting on taking – and just hope he wouldn’t come roaring out at the eleventh hour, Uncle Bertram’s Napoleonic sword in hand, and drag me forcibly back by the hair in front of all the neighbours, or I could, more sensibly and stoically, just sit it out and wait until he stirred. Suddenly I had an idea. I picked up the phone, dialled a number, and when I heard a car pull up outside ten minutes later, went upstairs to Harry’s room. He was snoring soundly on the sofa.
‘Harry. Harry!’ I shook his shoulder. ‘Your taxi’s here.’
‘Hmmm? What taxi?’ He opened his eyes and peered at me blearily.
‘The one I ordered for you. Because you weren’t feeling well I thought you’d better not drive. It’s sitting outside, waiting to take you to the club.’
The mention of the club galvanized him slightly, as I knew it would, and when he stood up I managed to pour him into his jacket and tie, turn him round and hustle him downstairs. I propped him up with one hand as I opened the front door with the other, and all the time whispered magic words like ‘Boffy’, ‘lamb cutlets’, ‘large gin’, ‘another large gin’, subliminally predisposing him towards the throbbing taxi at the bottom of the path. He went like a lamb, very groggy, still half asleep, but he went. I opened the taxi door, manoeuvred him in, gave the driver instructions, pushed Harry’s wallet into his pocket then waved him off like a small evacuee.
As I watched the taxi trundle round the corner and out of sight, a huge grin threatened to split my face. It was quite hard to resist the temptation to leap up, punch the air and shout ‘YES!’ but I managed not to. Instead, I hastened quickly back inside and seized the phone.
‘Alice? It’s me. Listen, I’m all packed up and I’m just about to go!’ Impossible to keep the excitement from my voice this time.
‘Brilliant!’ she squeaked. ‘Good for you, Rosie, you’ve done it, you’ve made your break for freedom, you’ve got your wooden horse! God, how thrilling. D’you know, I feel just like a member of the Colditz escape committee, probably that shadowy little man who always forged the papers and made civvy clothes out of old underpants.’
‘Yes, well, never mind about the underpants, how about furnishing me with a key? Or do I have to call at the house and disturb the irascible sculptor again?’
‘Oh no, I’ve got one here, pop round and – oh! Hell.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve just remembered. Michael’s got it, damn him. He’s down in Cheltenham today and he always takes it off the dresser, just in case he can’t get a hotel room. Oh! Hang on, even better, he can meet you at the cottage and help you move in.’
‘Oh no, Alice, I couldn’t possibly ask him to do that, he’ll be busy. Honestly, I’m fine, if I could just pick it up from him in Cheltenham maybe, or –’
‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly. ‘He’s never that busy and you’ll be there in his lunch hour. I’ll ring him now and tell him to meet you at – what, half past one? If you’re leaving now?’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but won’t he mind?’
‘Of course not, he’ll only be in the pub, and anyway, how are you supposed to unpack, chase a toddler, turn on the water and all the rest of it all on your own?’
‘Well, quite. Thanks, Alice.’
I put the phone down thinking she had a point, but all the same I couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy that my first great foray into the big bad world without a man at my side had resulted in me instantly enlisting the services of another.
I doodled nervously on the pad by the phone. Now. A note. To Harry. Fifty ways to leave your lover and all that. I sucked the end of the pencil. I could think of many, many reasons but few ways of expressing it. Dear Harry. Sorry I couldn’t stomach you any more? Sorry I grew to hate you? Sorry you turned out to be a cross between Pol Pot and Pigling Bland? In the end I simply told him I’d gone, wrote the address of the cottage, told him there wasn’t a telephone there but that I would be in touch soon and that he could always reach me via my parents. Love Rosie.
With a shaky hand I folded the note in half, wrote Harry’s name on it and put it on top of the telephone. Suddenly I glanced down. ‘Oh God!’ Ivo, taking advantage of my distraction, had quietly unpacked my handbag, scribbled on my driving licence, scattered paracetamol on the floor and was now pretending to smoke one of my tampons. I scooped him up, made a quick detour to the larder for a packet of Hula Hoops and ran outside. I strapped him and the mono-sodium glutamate firmly into the car to keep him quiet. Then puffing and panting I dragged the cases and boxes up from the cellar, grabbed the bin liner, the high chair, the travel cot, and, aware that quite a few neighbouring curtains were twitching feverishly, packed up the car.
Five minutes later I was racing back up the path and shutting the front
door for the very last time. My heart was pounding now, but then, inexplicably, I paused. Come on, Rosie, I thought nervously, don’t hang about, don’t blow it. Suppose the club is shut for redecoration or something and he comes home? You don’t want to be standing here on the doorstep with your trousers down, now do you? Still, I hesitated. I looked up at the house. My house. It was no good, I just needed, very quickly, to search my conscience. It would only take a moment, really. Any regrets? I needed to know. Any last-minute changes of heart? I waited. No, I thought with a great surge of relief, no regrets at all. Just the merest pang about the break-up of the old order perhaps, but then I’d felt that when I’d left boarding school, which I’d loathed. I remembered packing up my trunk in the dormitory, wandering around the old classrooms, taking my last glance around the gym, going into the changing room and thinking how odd it would be never to get changed in there again. Of course there was always going to be a sense of loss, but it was more to do with a sense of lost time, the passing of youth because, let’s face it, I’d hated that bloody freezing cold changing room with its pong of ripe socks and other people’s rotting verrucas, just as I’d come to hate the house I was staring up at now. In fact – yes, I could almost smell the stale socks and the plimsolls again. I smiled, satisfied, and made my way back down the path. I was ready. I got in the car, turned the ignition and set off for the country.
I got to Pennington at bang on half past one and as I drove slowly through the village, I looked around with interest. This was, after all, to be my stamping ground now, my new patch. It was pretty, but not overly cute, and it certainly wasn’t picture-postcard land. More an orderly, functional village in which people lived and shopped rather than one in which tourists stopped to ogle and feed the ducks on the village green. On one side of the lane was a post office, a butcher and a pub, and on the other a general store, a small Saxon church and another pub. And that was it. No chemist, I noticed, and no deli of course, I thought nervously, but then what on earth did I need with a deli? What need did I have now for sun-dried tomatoes, gravlax and balsamic vinegar? No, no, from now on my life was going to be streamlined and very natural. I was cutting out all that urban dross and concentrating on the good life, the rural life. Hell, I might even grow my own vegetables, keep a few chickens, maybe even a pig – no, not a pig, I’d had one of those. Anyway, I’d get back to the land and all that. Who knows, in a few months from now I might not even need shops at all!
With a growing sense of excitement I turned up the little lane by the church, then swung round the huge stone gateposts that led into Farlings Manor. The big house looked down at me sternly as I approached, huge, benign and quiet, and with no obvious signs of life, although one never quite knew, I thought nervously, who was watching out of one of those upstairs Gothic windows. As I crunched slowly up the drive, two or three frisky, expensive-looking horses trotted towards the post and rail fence to check me out, arching their necks and carrying their tails high in the air like banners. I hadn’t noticed them before and wondered who they belonged to. Joss didn’t strike me as a man who rode hard to hounds somehow, so perhaps they were Annabel’s. Not content with being merely beautiful, talented and successful, she was no doubt a marvellous horsewoman too. I swept round the side of the house, keeping an eye out for children and dogs as a small sign instructed me, through the workshops, down past the barns and parked outside the little flint cottage. My cottage, I thought with a smile.
Sure enough, Michael’s car was parked just round the corner. I glanced over my shoulder. Ivo was fast asleep, snuggled cosily into his snowsuit. His long eyelashes brushed his cheeks, his lips, cherry red and damp, were parted and one hand lay next to his chin with his thumb sticking up as if he’d been sucking it. I stroked his cheek, but he didn’t stir. I could see no point in disturbing him so I left him there and went towards the cottage. Michael seemed to have left the front door wide open so perhaps he was out gathering wood. I did hope he’d managed to light a fire or at least turn the heating on if there was any; it really was getting pretty chilly now.
In fact, Michael had worked out how to turn the television on, and was sprawled full length on the exhausted old sofa in front of the rugby, huddled into his overcoat, controls in his hand. He just about managed to tear his eyes away as I came in, though, and glanced up, giving me a huge smile and what I imagine he thought was an endearing wink.
‘I say, this is marvellous, Rosie. Thought I was going to have to miss this game!’
‘Glad to be of service,’ I said, looking around. The carpet was covered in leaves, blown in through the open door which he hadn’t quite had time to close in his haste to flop, prostrate, on the sofa. It was freezing cold.
‘D’you think you might have shut the door?’ I inquired.
‘Didn’t seem much point. It’s as cold in here as it is outside and of course there’s no heating so – ooohh! How did he miss!’ he roared, clutching his head in despair as a goal kick sailed wide of the posts.
I sighed and turned back to the car. Michael was undeniably amusing but totally useless and I did wonder how Alice put up with him at times. It occurred to me that there were precious few men of my acquaintance – and by this I suppose I meant my friends’ husbands – who appealed to me at all, and there was certainly none that I’d want as a husband of my own. This was vaguely comforting somehow, and I cheerfully set about lugging my cases and boxes in, setting them down just inside the front door. After a while it began to get rather overcrowded, especially since Michael was occupying what would have been prime dumping ground.
‘These two boxes need to go upstairs but I’ll just leave them here for the minute, they’re a bit heavy,’ I said loudly.
‘Okay. Oh, come on, Guscott, you great fairy!’
I eventually unpacked the entire car myself, with Ivo thankfully asleep all the while. I was halfway upstairs with a ton of bedding in my arms when the final whistle blew.
‘Hopeless, hopeless!’ Michael groaned, getting up and flicking the switch off. ‘Don’t know why we bother.’ He turned and saw me struggling on the stairs. He stretched and yawned widely. ‘Anything I can do, Rosie? You look a bit overloaded there.’
‘I’m absolutely fine, Michael,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘but if you wouldn’t mind rubbing a couple of sticks together and getting a bit of heat going in here I’d be eternally grateful.’
‘All right, all right,’ he said, finally catching the edge in my voice. ‘Gosh, you only have to ask.’
‘Shouldn’t really have to though, should I?’ I muttered under my breath as I shouldered open a bedroom door, dragging the duvets inside.
The heating, as Michael had so cheerfully pointed out, was non-existent, but I’d brought a heater for Ivo’s room, a radiator for the sitting room and there was of course the open fire, next to which, I noticed, someone had thought to put logs in the basket. The place had also been cleaned since I was last here. Was that Joss, I wondered, or had he tasked someone else to do it? Either way, it was thoughtful.
It was beginning to snow now and I paused at the landing window, gazing out as a flurry of flakes whirled past. I felt that same excitement I’d never got over from childhood, but also a sense of foreboding. It wouldn’t be hard to get snowed in here and I was sure no one would think of us for days. Thank God, in a way, for Farlings Manor; I was pretty sure I could crawl up there with Ivo between my teeth if need be.
Downstairs, Michael’s pathetic attempt at a fire had withered and died and he now seemed to be on his way upstairs with my radio to his ear, fiddling with the controls as he went, no doubt trying to tune in to some other unmissable sporting event. I crouched down at the grate, poking around at the logs, desperately trying to rekindle a spark and wishing I’d thought to bring firelighters with me, when a voice behind me made me jump.
‘You have to scrumple up some paper first, uverwise it won’t work.’
I stood up and swung round to see three adorable but dirty children gazing up
at me. The boy was about eight with blond hair, large blue eyes and a sulky expression, and the speaker, a girl, was about six, with darker blond curls and the same brilliant blue eyes. Her sister, an absolute mirror image, stood beside her, grinning from ear to ear.
‘We did scrumple up paper,’ I informed them, ‘but it’s all burned away now and I don’t have any more.’
‘I got some.’ One of the girls produced a dirty tissue and a sweet wrapper from her pocket.
I took them and crouched down. ‘Thank you. And who are you?’
‘I’m Lucy and this is Emma, we’re twins.’
‘I can see that,’ I grinned, spotting a large freckle on the end of Emma’s nose which was about all that came between them. ‘And who’s this then?’ I smiled at the boy.
‘This is our brover Toby. He’s going to big school soon.’
Toby lowered his beautiful blue eyes and scuffed the carpet with his toe.
‘I see. Shouldn’t you be at some sort of school now?’ I asked gently.
‘Don’t like it,’ he muttered.
‘He pretends he’s sick,’ piped up Emma, ‘and Daddy believes him. Marfa doesn’t but she says she can’t be bovered to take him anyway ’cos it’s fucking miles away and she has to get up at the crack of dawn.’
I blinked. ‘Right. And who exactly is Martha?’
‘Our pear. She’s all right, isn’t she, Tobe? She doesn’t mind what we do. We can do anything we like, can’t we, Tobe?’
The taciturn Toby nodded, eyes still on the carpet.
‘I see. So, does she know you’re here now?’
Emma shook her head and the girls moved off around the room, bored with this conversation now. Lucy stuck her finger up her nose and dug deep, gazing curiously into my boxes, picking up my belongings, turning them over with interest. Then she heard a noise. She looked upstairs.
Rosie Meadows Regrets... Page 16