A Very Big House in the Country

by Claire Sandy

  Elizabetta stayed mute.

  ‘Yes, yes, Elizabetta made it,’ said Shen, exasperated. ‘Sue me, why don’t you, for prawn-fraud?’

  ‘Madam pays me extra,’ said Elizabetta, escaping.

  ‘Madam’s a cheat,’ said Evie.

  ‘Like just about everybody in this house,’ murmured madam.

  ‘How d’you mean?’ said Evie.

  ‘Have you told Mike?’

  ‘You don’t get to do that. Swerve like that. We weren’t talking about . . .’ She threw a wary glance to the terrace, but Mike had vanished, ‘my job.’

  ‘I know.’ Evie could tell Shen was sorry, but she didn’t know that word in any of her four languages. ‘Go, Evie. I’ll finish up here.’

  Out on the terrace the only available company was Paula. After a moment or two of silence, Evie Made An Effort. ‘Are you sewing something?’

  Paula held up a tiny dress, just centimetres long.

  ‘That’s exquisite!’ Evie examined the tiny stitches.

  ‘It’s for them.’ Paula gestured to The Eights on the floor at her feet, engaged in their interminable, open-ended doll game. Even Miles had become engrossed and, pooling resources, they’d created a doll family. The Barbies, Kens, Sindys, with a couple of Bratz, an Action Man and a wing-less Tinkerbell, were every bit as mismatched as their Wellcome Manor human counterparts.

  Mabel’s Barbie talked in the same emphatic deep voice as her owner: ‘I’m off to buy a massive cat.’

  A Bratz doll dressed like a prostitute had Mabel’s lisp, ‘Letsh call it Russell.’

  ‘Gerroff, Patch.’ Miles rescued Action Man from the dog’s grasp. Tiny plastic hands were irresistible to Patch; most of Mabel’s dolls had mangled stumps.

  ‘Would you like to sew something?’ Paula handed over a half-finished minuscule yellow ra-ra.

  ‘I’ll try.’ Evie cack-handedly employed a needle. ‘This is quite meditative. Has it helped you feel better about . . . earlier?’ She didn’t know how to describe Paula’s demolition of the breakfast table.

  ‘Yes, sewing calms my nerves.’ Paula peered closer at a tiny seam. ‘But it was Jon who straightened out my thinking. He’s used to my silliness.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Is it silliness to blow your top because your husband’s shagging somebody else? ‘Peaceful here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘It’s nice, after London.’ This stuttering conversation was like a bad first date. ‘All those sirens.’ She cast about for another archetypal London noise. ‘Fox-sex.’

  ‘It was like this where we used to live,’ said Paula. ‘Nobody else for miles.’

  Another person would enlarge, but Paula had to be prompted. ‘Did you move for Jon’s work?’

  ‘Hardly. He’s a cab driver.’ Paula was as close to sharp as she could get.

  ‘So what made you move?’

  Paula’s face was hard to read, but Evie sensed cogs whirring. ‘Well, there were . . . issues with our house.’

  ‘Issues?’

  ‘Jon was happy, but . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I made him up-sticks. That man’s a saint.’

  At their feet, Miles adopted a squeaky voice for the scantily clad doll who was, for the purposes of the game, a mum of eight. ‘Look at me, I’m your mummy!’

  ‘Mums don’t say that,’ scoffed Mabel, disappointed with his doll prowess.

  ‘Have her crying,’ suggested Amber.

  That evening’s card game started up behind them. It was shaping up to be a double-hander, just Clive and Shen.

  ‘You. Are. Cheating,’ said Shen.

  ‘No, my little Venus Flytrap, I. Am. Winning.’ As ever, Clive sounded amused; as ever, it bugged his tipsy wife.

  ‘If I’m a Flytrap, you’re the fly, sonny Tim.’

  ‘Jim, darling. Sonny Tim doesn’t exist.’

  Shen dealt another hand, smacking down the cards like insults.

  The doll action became increasingly surreal.

  ‘Whee!’ Miles dropped the mother of eight from a great height. ‘I’m dead!’

  ‘Let’s rescue her!’ Mabel tucked a Monster High doll and Tinkerbell into Prunella’s collar. ‘On our magic doggy!’ They had reached the stage of the evening where they communicated in exclamation marks. ‘Quick! Ken!’

  Amber’s Ken doll seemed not to mind that the magic doggy was sniffing its own private bits.

  ‘These games,’ said Evie, ‘are daft, bless them.’

  ‘I love listening in,’ said Paula.

  This irony-free conversation began to relax Evie; she and Shen got very arch round about the second glass. ‘Eight’s a great age.’ Although, thought Evie, watching Mabel valiantly try to extract Prunella’s nose from Prunella’s bottom, all ages are great.

  Using Ken’s hard head, Amber knocked both of Mabel’s dolls out of Prunella’s collar.

  ‘Hey!’ protested Monster High.

  ‘Thut your thupid face!’ Ken jumped up and down on Monster High. ‘I with I’d never thet eyeth on you, you ugly cow!’

  Both Evie and Paula managed to pretend neither of them had heard.

  ‘Amber, darling,’ sang Paula, ‘Come and help us sew.’

  ‘Mummy!’ Mabel’s face folded, like a flower dying. ‘Amber said—’

  ‘Run and get my glasses from the kitchen, sweetie.’

  ‘What?’ The little girl’s wrath wiped her indignation clean away.

  ‘Chop-chop.’

  ‘I’m just a slave,’ muttered Mabel, dragging her feet.

  ‘Room for one more?’ Mike pulled over a chair, whispering to Evie, ‘Here come the lovebirds,’ as Scarlett and Zane meandered, in that drifting way of young folk, out to the terrace.

  ‘Come on,’ Zane was pleading. ‘Let’s go to the tree-house.’

  ‘It’s dark,’ pouted Scarlett in a baby-voice. ‘What if somebody really is hiding out there?’

  Zane reached out his hand. ‘You’re safe with me.’

  Evie and Mike looked at each other. Evie shook her head in a No at Mike as he half-rose.

  Scarlett looked down at the hand being held out to her. The fingers tapered; the wrist was all bone; the skin was the colour of the husk of an almond.

  Zane said, ‘I won’t let anybody hurt you.’

  Scarlett glanced towards her parents, who hurriedly looked away, humming, clearing their throats, looking as guilty as hell.

  ‘OK.’

  Evie sensed the air ripple as the hands joined. Her daughter’s retreating outline softened and disappeared in the twilight. Scarlett had crossed a momentous line.

  So had somebody else; Mike had managed to stay in his chair, instead of flying out of it, pinning Zane to the ground and giving him a crash course on How to Treat My Daughter.

  Nursing a not-hot-any-more drink, Evie wandered the dark downstairs, looking for her laptop. The house was bright with the blueish light of the moon falling in stripes and squares across the velvets of the drawing room. Spotting her mac on the coffee table, she tucked it under her arm and opened the French windows. Evie stepped out into the night just as Scarlett skipped up the steps from the lawn.

  ‘G’night, Mum.’

  ‘Night, love.’ Evie searched her girl’s face for signs. Like what? she asked herself. I JUST DID IT tattooed on her forehead?

  They’d had ‘the talk’, of course. They’d discussed love and sex and the whole damn thing a few times. It was vital to Evie that her brood set sail with a full understanding of the facts of life, both biological and emotional. She and Scarlett had always had a frank, buoyant relationship.

  Evie had always known that at some point her daughter would set sail on her personal sex life, but for some reason it clutched at her gut. Her own sex life was a source of happiness, pleasure, longed-for babies, yet the idea of her naive and lovely Scarlett getting into the sexual nooks and crannies of adulthood was disquieting.

  A rift had cracked between them when Scarlett dated that fool of a boy for
five months – he was Not Good Enough – and now it yawned into a gulf. It felt wrong not to know whether her own daughter was still a virgin . . . And yet, when she was honest with herself (it happened if the wind was in the right direction), Evie accepted that it truly wasn’t any of her business.

  Many seventeen-year-olds were sexually active. Evie wasn’t a maiden aunt: hell, fourteen-year-olds were on the pill these days. She never judged these children (for that’s what any fourteen-year-old is); instead she wondered how they coped with their early membership of the adult world.

  Ah! Good. He was there.

  Pulling her dressing gown tight, Evie took her seat beside Clive.

  ‘Evening.’ He smelled of cognac.

  ‘We punched above our weight last night.’ Evie rushed her words. ‘It got a bit personal. Bop me on the nose with a newspaper when I get too nosy.’

  ‘I liked it. You listen. As if what I say matters.’

  ‘But everybody listens when you talk,’ laughed Evie. ‘You heap-big important man.’

  ‘Almost everybody listens.’ Clive filled in the blanks when Evie held back. ‘Except my wife.’

  ‘If wives went around listening to their husbands, we’d all be in big trouble.’

  ‘Bet you listen to Mike.’

  ‘Nope. Couldn’t tell you what his voice sounds like.’

  Clive said, ‘You and Shen almost had a spat about the dim sum. Not like you two to snipe at each other.’

  ‘This house’s brochure should carry a warning that paradise can be more fraught than real life. All this free time puts stuff into sharp focus and . . .’

  ‘Perhaps it’s better when we all just muddle through. When we don’t talk,’ said Clive.

  ‘Maybe,’ agreed Evie. She stood up.

  ‘I thought . . .’ Clive’s woebegone expression didn’t suit him; he was designed to look regal. ‘I thought we might sit out here for a bit.’

  ‘Tillie left her book in the treehouse. I said I’d fetch it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, I’m making it up. Yes, really!’ Evie giggled, wondering at Clive’s intensity. Too much cognac, she decided.

  Out in the blank darkness it was easy to imagine Paula’s pet monster in the rustling garden. There were no land-marks, as if everything had melted, and Evie felt she might topple off the end of the garden, if she went too far. Feeling for the rope ladder, she held one hand out in front of her.

  Back at the bench, Clive spotted her laptop, a techie version of Cinderella’s glass slipper. His mouth framed to shout Evie’s name, but he stopped himself and instead slipped back into the house with the computer.

  Not especially nimble, with her dressing gown flapping like a sail, Evie climbed the treehouse ladder. Scrabbling around for Catcher in the Rye on the dark floorboards, her fingers encountered something both soft and hard. A knee.

  ‘Oh, shit God!’ Evie sprang back.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Herrera.’ Zane firmed up in the shadows.

  ‘You could have said something!’ Evie sat back on her haunches. She glanced through the window that he sat by; the light in Scarlett’s and Tillie’s window was still bright. ‘Keeping an eye on the ladies?’

  ‘No!’ said Zane, far too rapidly for it to be true.

  ‘You’re allowed to like people, you know.’ Zane’s thoughts and deeds were criminalized; some support might be welcome. ‘I know about . . .’ She wondered what young people called it. Assuming whatever she said would be wrong, she went with what she’d called it way back when. ‘I know about your crush.’

  ‘Dunno what you’re on about.’

  ‘OK. Sorry.’ She moved and knelt on a book. ‘I’ve got what I came for. I’ll leave you be.’

  The ladder shuddered as she descended. Zane was coming after her. Keeping a careful distance behind her on the grass, he spoke softly, as if chatting to the still night air. ‘You disapprove. Obviously.’

  ‘Nope.’ Evie guessed the rules of this game and didn’t look back at him.

  ‘Really?’ Zane’s voice leapt upwards. Correcting it to its usual bass, he said, ‘You don’t think I’m out of my league?’

  ‘Well, I’m biased, obviously. But people fall for people. That’s the way the world turns. But listen, Zane,’ Evie cranked up the seriousness; this was important. ‘Be gentle. Go slow. Be a gentleman, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah! Of course. Of course!’ His meticulous cool fell away with a clang. ‘If I had a hope in hell! If I was getting anywhere!’

  Evie habitually went where angels fear to tread. ‘She likes you, you idiot.’

  ‘She does?’ Zane stopped dead. ‘No, man, don’t do this, yeah? She is, for real, properly interested, like?’

  ‘Properly.’ Evie added ‘bro’, but managed not to add ‘innit’.

  Zane laughed. It was like firecrackers.

  ‘That you?’ Mike was four-fifths asleep as Evie slipped in beside him.

  ‘No. It’s Dolly Parton.’ She stroked his hair back from his forehead. ‘Of course it’s me.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re fat,’ he mumbled sleepily. ‘I think you’re just right. For me, I mean.’ He groaned, eyes still closed. ‘Did I spoil the compliment again? I mean, you look fine. No, not fine, more than fine. You . . .’

  ‘Back to sleep, Mike, before you make me swoon with your fancy words.’

  In the womb-dark of their room Evie couldn’t ignore it any longer. That insistent, gnawing mouth inside her. A feeling that was familiar to her. A symptom.

  It could be a symptom of eating too much. It could be a symptom of some dodgy ingredient in the evening meal. It could be a physical reaction to the strain of keeping secrets from Mike.

  She punched her pillow. Evie knew exactly what it was.

  DAY 8

  Tuesday, 18th August

  Greetings, slaves!

  Having a great time. Loads of pics of Thomas Hardy museum to share. COMPLETELY RELAXED!!!

  Boss man a.k.a. Mike x

  p.s. Remember monthly figures are due.

  p.p.s. Remind architects we need plans.

  p.p.p.s. Use petty cash to buy new kettle.

  A man of the world, Clive wasn’t easily shocked, but the words scrolling down the screen made him whistle. Darting looks at the door, in case Shen’s Spidey senses sent her in, he sat on the bed and read more of Evie’s diary, or fantasy, or whatever she called it.

  Deep down in the very pit of my soul I want this man.

  Clive squirmed a little on the silk bedspread. ‘Crikey, Evie old girl.’

  Watching him is torture. His body sends signals direct to my panties. How can I concentrate on what he’s saying, when all I want is to tear at his belt and see if the bulge in his trousers lives up to my feverish daydreams?

  The innocent sounds wafting up from the garden came from a different world. In Clive’s present world, people were smearing nipples with clotted cream.

  Clive knew which world he preferred.

  Guiltily, knowing he shouldn’t, he tore through the rest of Evie’s story.

  ‘I want you!’ I breathe, feeling his greedy erection hard against me. In a frenzy of desire I sweep the tea things from the table and lie back on it, pulling Clive’s body against mine.

  Clive stopped dead. He reread the last line, then read it again. He pinched the bridge of his nose, but the wording didn’t change.

  Reverentially he closed the laptop and stared at the wall for a while. Then he laughed and rubbed his hands together, and skipped – yes, skipped – out of the room.

  Just along the corridor, Mike was reading something just as erotic: I think of you and my whole body smiles my naughty lovely Mikey-man come get me lover!!! xxxx

  The teenage Evie had scoffed at her mum’s assertion that things look better in the morning, but her mother was proved right. Again. (She’d been right about Evie’s legs; they were just like her granddad’s.)

  With not a twinge, not an ache, she leapt out of bed like a kitten, albeit a fairly el
derly kitten with a slight hangover. She had sailed through the morning and now she lay on a lounger, soaking up the warmth that the sun spilled so generously, feeling at one with the world. Perhaps, she thought, I overreacted. I do that. I overreact. She’d once threatened to leave home because Mike couldn’t see what was so great about George Clooney.

  ‘Christ!’ Mike loomed, blotting out the promiscuous sun. ‘You really look rough, Evie.’ He jumped back as she sat up. ‘Just saying.’

  ‘Well, don’t just say!’ It irritated her when Mike treated her like one of the lads, as if years of cohabiting had stripped her of all femininity.

  ‘OK, OK.’ He held up his hands as if she was levelling a machine gun at him. Which wasn’t a bad idea. ‘Bad mood. Christ! Sorry I spoke.’ His showy sigh said, I put up with so much.

  Huffily Evie rammed her feet into her sandals and dragged on the aged cardigan that was her version of Shen’s kaftan. She did look rough; she hadn’t overreacted – those symptoms hadn’t lied. ‘I’ll be indoors, looking rough, if anybody wants me.’ If she stayed on the lounger, Mike would study her, examine her, pretending all the while that he was doing nothing of the sort.

  Hard facts were needed. Evie’s fears must either be confirmed or pooh-poohed before she allowed Mike anywhere near the situation. Asking him to hold her – as she longed to do – would provoke apocalyptic predictions.

  Collaring Evie, Shen was in her white ninja-style Lycra aikido gear. She panted, fresh from practice, ‘I know just what we need!’

  Just this side of testy, Evie paused on the steps. ‘Do tell me, Your Majesty.’

  ‘We need a girls’ night out.’ Shen readjusted her hat, a cream satellite dish that protected her from the sun, and added a small ‘Woo-hoo!’

  ‘We do?’ Evie didn’t feel like a girl; maybe she needed an old bags’ night out.

  ‘And the boys,’ said Shen, ‘need a boys’ night in. To bond.’

  ‘Those three? It’ll take more than a few beers and some peanuts.’

  ‘They can . . . oh, watch some sports thing.’

  ‘Clive hates football. And Jon doesn’t seem the sporty type.’