A Very Big House in the Country

by Claire Sandy

  ‘Thank you,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘Just because she loves Zane doesn’t mean we should all go on about it.’

  Over the laughter, Scarlett said, ‘Mum! God! You don’t know anything!’

  ‘Hey!’ Mike’s sharpness chopped the merriment off at its knees. ‘You do not talk to your mother like that, young lady.’

  ‘I just did.’

  Noo, thought Evie. Not another one of these, please.

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ said Mike, frowning into the rear-view mirror as Clive, car-hood down, overtook them, honking his horn.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Scarlett, as if dealing with the official most-stoopid guy in the world.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Neither, thought Evie, will back down. That’s the problem. ‘Can we just enjoy our day out?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to do,’ said Mike. ‘Madam won’t let me.’

  ‘Yeah, right, it’s all my fault.’

  ‘Scarlett, I mean it . . .’

  All in all, the drive to the beach was a long ten minutes.

  The kites bobbed fretfully high in the blue.

  ‘I have to admit,’ admitted Shen, ‘this is fun.’ She had a knack for flying kites, it turned out. Even with her hair blowing in her face and her heels sunk in the sand, she looked as if she was on a fashion shoot. ‘It does exactly as I tell it!’

  ‘As do we all, darling.’ Clive was among the dunes, on a stunted picnic chair, which made him look like a circus bear on a tricycle. ‘Did you remember the champers?’

  ‘It’s in the same coolbox as the sushi,’ said Shen, in between hollers of joy as her kite looped-the-loop. ‘The crystal glasses are in the hamper.’ Her picnics were not as other picnics.

  ‘There’d better be a sausage roll,’ muttered Scarlett mutinously, wiggling into her swimsuit under cover of a towel.

  Mike’s kite dive-bombed the beach. ‘Behave!’ he shouted, as if it could hear him. ‘Dammit.’

  ‘Swear!’ shouted Mabel triumphantly, busy fashioning a seaweed bonnet for Patch.

  Evie lay back on a towel and pretended she couldn’t feel shells digging into her body. She had never felt able to confess her dislike of the beach. It was like disliking kittens, or honesty; everybody likes the beach. Maybe it was the sand, which got everywhere; she dusted it from her orifices for days afterwards. Or maybe it was the sea, which was noisy and wet and needy, constantly rushing at her.

  Plus she could never get comfortable. She fidgeted and shifted, imagining all the tiny creatures using her as an adventure park. At shrieks from the water’s edge, she shielded her eyes and saw Scarlett and Tillie braving the waves. ‘Rather them than us, eh, Mike?’

  ‘He’s abandoned you.’ It was Clive’s voice. Hat on, shirt on, he too withstood the beach’s siren call. Evie wondered if he’d ever be able to get out of that tiny chair; his bottom appeared fused to the webbing.

  Clive nodded to where, a little way down the under-populated beach, Mike wandered, head down, phone to his ear.

  ‘He’s still manacled to the office,’ said Evie. She understood that the demands of everyday life couldn’t be stuffed in a box, no matter how seductive the charms of Wellcome Manor; earlier she’d spent half an hour composing an email to Alex, according to Clive’s suggestions. To her delight, Alex had rolled over and agreed to every one of her demands. Hiding her jubilation from Mike made her feel seedy.

  ‘Go over there,’ said Clive, ‘and biff him one.’

  ‘Maybe later. I prefer to biff after lunch.’ She lay back, eyes closed. She didn’t want to discuss Mike with Clive. Her mind wandered – another by-product of beaches, and one that could backfire – and recalled last night, when the ‘outside world’ had broken in on their lovemaking. It hadn’t been the same after they’d heard that text arrive. Assuming (wrongly, it had turned out) that it was her phone, she’d stiffened, unable to concentrate. Mike, too, had stumbled at the noise, and she knew his body well enough to know he’d been going through the motions. When she got back to London, she’d have a word with his assistant; phoning late at night on holiday was a no-no, surely? She needed Mike to be thoroughly present. She winced at a sudden twinge of discomfort. Twice now she’d felt that spasm. No need to take any notice, she told herself, until it’s three times. And it probably wouldn’t happen a third time.

  ‘I’m starving,’ said Dan. ‘Starving starving starving starving starving starv—’

  ‘Stop it, darling,’ said Evie.

  ‘Me too,’ said Mabel. ‘Starving starving starving starving starv—’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Evie. Mabel noticed the dropped ‘darling’ and glowered.

  ‘Amber!’ Paula’s voice was sharp. ‘Have you been in the sea?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Amber apologetically. She was dripping wet from head to toe.

  ‘Tillie, you’re supposed to be watching your sister,’ said Paula.

  ‘I thought I was supposed to be on holiday,’ said Tillie.

  ‘Now, Tills,’ remonstrated Jon mildly, as if dismayed by her.

  ‘Proper plates?’ Mike curled his lip.

  ‘I’m going to stop believing in God,’ said Dan, ‘if there aren’t any Wotsits.’

  ‘Everybody, just shuddup and eat.’ Evie’s shout was the Herrera version of grace. Finally she was within fondling distance of a quiche Lorraine. They’d laid and relaid the tablecloth three times before Shen was satisfied, and even now she was adjusting her parasol and saying ‘melanoma’ under her breath. Prunella had stolen a California roll. Patch had walked in the hummus. Clive’s chair had broken.

  The beach had done it again.

  Jon leaned in as Evie resmoothed the tablecloth and laid out the offerings to the Great Picnic God. ‘Lovely spread,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She felt a little better and was grateful to him for being neither smug nor manic – something quite beyond the other adults. She tuned in to Shen’s latest complaint. ‘What’s wrong with paper napkins?’ asked Evie.

  ‘What are we – farmers?’ Shen poured soy sauce into tiny glass dishes. The sushi was beautiful; Shen had a masterly touch. But it was all wrong for such a setting. The fish soon felt warm, and therefore suspect; Evie covertly unwrapped the mini pork pies. ‘Where’s Fang?’ she asked, registering the absence of the smallest holidaymaker.

  ‘Back at the house.’ Shen, while not avoiding Evie’s eye, didn’t rush to meet it. ‘Elizabetta thought it would knock her schedule out, so . . .’

  ‘But you employ Elizabetta,’ said Evie, eyeing Mike’s half-eaten sausage roll lasciviously. ‘Not the other way around.’

  ‘It’s for the best,’ said Shen, as if bringing babies to the beach was some newfangled notion.

  Carefully separated from the boring grown-ups and the tedious kids, the three teenagers had set up camp further along the dunes. Clive motioned to them with his cigar. ‘Love,’ he said, ‘is in the air.’

  ‘Yup. ’Fraid so.’ Evie smiled.

  ‘At Zane’s age,’ said Clive, ‘I was in love with my best friend’s mother.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Evie, scandalized. ‘Did she know?’

  ‘She knew all right,’ said Clive, the look on his face hinting at X-rated memories.

  ‘I wasn’t allowed to date.’ Shen flicked away a fly as if it were paparazzi. ‘My parents wanted me to save myself for a nice Chinese boy.’

  ‘That’s me, by the way,’ said Clive, bowing. ‘I’m the nice Chinese boy she saved herself for.’

  ‘They didn’t like Clive,’ said Shen, launching into an impression of her mother. ‘Why you bring old man home? Then she saw my engagement ring.’ Shen held up a hand weighed down by a diamond like a meteor.

  ‘Suddenly I was acceptable,’ said Clive.

  ‘I had boyfriends before Mike,’ said Evie, recalling the procession of pimply oiks. ‘And I thought I was in love. But then you-know-who came along and that was that.’

  Mike looked at the ground. He
didn’t seem to have heard.

  All eyes were on Jon and Paula, waiting for their story to complete the set. Finally Paula said, ‘We seem to have known one another always.’

  ‘That’s sweet,’ said Evie, even though Paula had said it as if something was wrong with the truth, but they hadn’t had time to cook up a lie.

  ‘Oh, we’re very sweet,’ said Jon, so bitterly that nobody laughed.

  ‘Sweet’s our middle name,’ said Tillie, stealing up on them, her bare feet making no noise on the sand.

  ‘Thmile!’ shouted Amber, leaping into the middle of the cloth and brandishing a disposable camera.

  Paula ducked as if Amber had yelled Thniper!

  ‘Good idea.’ Mike held up his phone, trained the lens on the assembled holidaymakers. ‘Say “cheese”.’

  ‘No, I really don’t, I mean . . .’ Paula buried her head in Jon’s shoulder. He sat immobile, as if he hadn’t noticed her.

  ‘Let’s put it on Facebook,’ laughed Shen. ‘Show the Ubers what a great time we’re having without them.’

  ‘No!’ Paula was fierce now, all her timidity vanished. ‘Absolutely not. No!’ She reached out and snatched Mike’s phone. Only when she had it in her hand, and everybody was staring at her, did she come to. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding out the camera like a naughty toddler.

  ‘Facebook is dumb, anyway,’ said Mike heartily. ‘Who wants a game of footie?’

  ‘Not,’ said Shen, ‘me.’

  Evie’s thinking went this way as she made her way through the whispering dunes in search of her daughter: I have put in seventeen years of looking, of worrying, washing, cooking, reading aloud, spooning Benylin into you, holding your hand literally and metaphorically, nagging you into bed, then nagging you out of it; the least you can do is hang out with me at the beach.

  Scarlett didn’t see it like that.

  ‘Mu-um,’ she said, ‘go away.’

  ‘No.’ Evie stuck out her tongue, planting herself on the blanket spread on the velvety sand amongst the nodding grasses. She’d wondered what the teens were up to – like The Eights, they were now an entity – but, as ever, they were up to very little. They’d elevated lounging to an art form.

  ‘We’re, like, talking,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘I can do that.’ Evie noted Zane roll onto his back, switching off; old ladies, apparently, were not his ‘thing’.

  ‘No, you really can’t.’ There was mild panic in Scarlett’s voice.

  Amused, Tillie said, ‘We’re talking about the Nyko Zoom Range reduction lens. You know, for Xbox. With Kinect.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Evie stole a sweet from an open packet. Its fizzy taste poked a hole in her past and she was momentarily a child again. ‘Nope. Nothing to say on that subject. So, instead, tell me what you want to do with your futures?’

  ‘Oh God, Mum, for God’s sake,’ spluttered Scarlett, sitting up. ‘This isn’t a bloody job bloody interview.’

  Tillie took the question seriously. ‘I’m going into the service industries,’ she said. ‘That’s a massive market that’ll keep growing and growing.’

  Noting Scarlett’s rude gawp at such collaboration with the enemy, Evie said, ‘After university, I’m assuming?’ She nodded at the face-down book by Tillie’s knee, ‘An English-literature degree?’

  ‘Nope. I’m getting stuck in straight after A levels.’

  ‘But . . .’ A degree was the Holy Grail to the families at St Agatha’s gates.

  ‘What’s the point? I’m going to work for myself. I’ll begin by becoming a cleaner . . .’

  Here Scarlett made an odd noise, then apologized.

  ‘I’ll take a bookkeeping course. Then, when I know what professional cleaning entails, I’ll recruit staff and get stuck into refining the company. Eventually I see it as a concierge set-up, where we carry out chores for customers. Not high-end, particularly, so I’ve got to be careful about my price-points.’

  There was silence as Zane and Scarlett stared at Tillie as if she’d just arrived from Planet Nerd. Evie wanted to kiss her. If children really are our future, as the song says, it was in safe hands with sensible, original Tillie. Plus, it would be tidy.

  ‘I’m going to uni,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘And then, Scar?’ asked Tillie.

  ‘And then . . . not sure.’ Scarlett lay back down with a sigh. ‘But, first, uni; so, to quote Dad, he can pay good money for me to sleep all day and get off with gits.’

  ‘Never did me no harm.’ Evie saw the others packing up hampers, folding blankets and winding in kites. ‘Time to go.’

  Lurching away and sinking in the sand, she felt an arm tuck into her own.

  ‘I know that look,’ said Evie, taking in her daughter’s chewed lip.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I know what’s going on, Scarlett.’

  ‘You do?’ Scarlett was dumbfounded.

  ‘Did you think you’re being mysterious and elusive?’ Evie smiled at Scarlett’s lack of self-knowledge. ‘It’s written all over you.’ Scarlett looked over her shoulder at Zane and Tillie. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘And you don’t mind?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Well, Dad would . . .’

  ‘Dad is Dad. He’ll come round.’

  ‘Mum, I know it wouldn’t be your first choice for me.’

  ‘No, no, you’ve got me wrong.’ Evie wished Scarlett had been around when she defended Zane.

  ‘Nothing’s really happened.’ Scarlett spoke in a rush. ‘You know . . .’ She faltered.

  ‘I know.’ Evie saved her daughter from elucidating.

  ‘Maybe I’m not reading the signals right. We make some progress and then next day . . . back to square one.’

  ‘Two steps forward,’ commiserated Evie, ‘one step back. All love affairs are like that at the beginning. It took weeks of going to the pictures to see films I didn’t really want to see, before your father spelled it out in black-and-white.’

  ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.’

  Evie envied Scarlett and felt afraid for her; she was on the threshold of a giant landscape that would more or less dominate her entire adult life: the pursuit and capture of love. ‘Take it slowly. Baby-steps. If it’s meant to be, it’ll work out.’

  ‘And Dad?’

  ‘No – Dad’s taken. I’ve got Dad.’ Evie enjoyed Scarlett’s snigger. Just because love is one of the great building blocks of a happy life didn’t mean it couldn’t be frothy and sparkling. ‘You’ll always be Dad’s little girl, even if you live to be one hundred and four. It’s hard for parents to accept that their children are growing up. If you scraped your knee when you were teeny, I had to send Dad out of the room until I’d kissed it better and you’d stopped crying. The possibility of you being hurt in any way tears him up inside.’

  ‘Just because I’m grown-up . . . it doesn’t mean I don’t love him.’

  ‘Dad knows that better than he knows his two-times table.’

  Bringing up the rear, Tillie said to Zane, ‘Hel-lo! You can talk to me, you know. You don’t have to keep your eyes on Scar’s arse the whole time.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, you sound it.’ Tillie persevered. ‘You know my ambitions. What are yours?’

  ‘Same one I’ve always had,’ said Zane. ‘Living down to my dad’s expectations of me.’

  ‘Why not change the expectations?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You’re screwing up your life to annoy your dad then, yeah?’

  ‘You try having a dad like mine.’ Zane sounded the closest he ever came to lively. ‘You’re lucky.’

  ‘Tell me how I’m lucky, Zane.’

  ‘Your dad loves you and lives with you.’

  ‘My dad,’ said Tillie, ‘is a monster.’

  Ahead of them, Scarlett and Evie sped up, until Evie broke into a run. Something about the way the other adults were dashing about, trampling the kites into the sand, bothered her. />
  ‘She’s missing!’ Shen, halfway to the treeline, turned. ‘Mike’s gone to the car park. Clive’s doing the rockpools.’

  ‘Who’s missing?’ Evie grabbed Shen’s arm as Mabel’s face, with its pointed chin and constellation of freckles, filled her consciousness.

  ‘Ow!’ Shen rubbed her arm. ‘Amber. I’m sure she’s just wandered off, but . . .’

  ‘Amber?’ Tillie streaked past them, calling her sister’s name.

  A veteran of ‘lost child’ panics, Evie counselled calm. ‘Tillie, we’ll find her. Mabel’s wandered off a thousand times and—’

  ‘Amber’s not Mabel!’ snapped Tillie, taking off down the beach.

  ‘Amber!’ hooted Dan.

  ‘Amber!’ shrieked Mabel.

  ‘My little girl, my poor little girl.’ Paula hugged herself as Jon darted off.

  Torn, Evie decided there was sufficient manpower searching and put her arm around Paula. ‘She’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

  Paula wasn’t listening. Evie kept talking, willing Amber to pop up, sandy and happy. Paula’s fear was infectious; the beach, benign and sunny a moment ago, now looked sinister. She saw Mike, hip-deep in the sea, scanning the water and she shuddered.

  ‘I knew it’d come to this,’ Paula murmured.

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ said Evie, just as Clive yelled, ‘She’s here!’

  ‘Is she . . . ?’ Paula looked up, evidently expecting to see a body, but was rewarded instead by Amber bouncing along on Clive’s shoulders, waving a twig as if it were a wand.

  Everybody’s posture changed. Shen, who would never admit to panicking, slowed down on her heels. Mike waded back to shore. The packing up began again in earnest.

  ‘She was up a tree,’ said Clive, depositing Amber on the sand. ‘Quite high up a tree,’ he added, impressed.

  ‘Did you speak to anybody?’ Paula was on her knees, shaking Amber. ‘Did anybody touch you? Tell me!’

  ‘No!’ Amber switched from carefree to horror-struck. ‘I was looking for nests. Am I naughty?’

  Before Paula could frame the yes she obviously wanted to, Jon took Amber’s hand. ‘No. Help me put the kites back in the car, eh?’

  Nobody except Tillie heard Zane’s whispered, ‘He doesn’t seem too bad to me.’