A Very Big House in the Country

by Claire Sandy

‘I can resist everything,’ said Jon, ‘except temptation. Oscar Wilde said that. I love Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘Is Oscar Wilde your dog?’ asked Mike.

  ‘This woman’s different,’ Clive went on. ‘She’s under my skin. I keep women in compartments. You know.’ He shaped boxes in the air with his hands. ‘Wife. Lover.’ He dropped his hands. ‘But this one won’t fit in a box. She’s unique.’

  ‘How,’ asked Mike, trying to focus, ‘does this unique lady feel about you?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Clive shook his head, delighted, disbelieving. ‘She has feelings for me. She wants me. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I do know.’ Mike winked at Clive. He didn’t know what Clive meant.

  ‘This isn’t like the others. I can’t pick her up and put her down. This is real.’ Clive was taken aback by the word.

  ‘Go for it!’ Jon looked entirely different when he was passionate. ‘You have one life, and what’s the point of . . .’ he windmilled his arms, ‘all this . . . without love? Do it. And hang the consequences.’

  ‘Hold on!’ Mike was high-pitched with consternation. ‘You made vows, Clive. Shen’s a great woman.’ He thought of Shen and shuddered. ‘Bit terrifying and bossy, and Jesus Christ – the obsession with tofu; but she’s a good person. Think about this.’

  ‘But what if she’s the one?’ Before this evening Clive had never used that expression: talk of ‘the one’ was for Zane’s age group. ‘What if I dare to be true to myself?’ Here Jon applauded, but Clive, intent on Mike, didn’t hear. ‘Even if innocent bystanders get hurt? What if none of them – not even her husband, who’s a nice enough bloke – matter, when you imagine a life with her?’

  ‘You can’t do it.’ Mike was immovable. ‘Have some back-bone, man. We all need to stand for something. Otherwise we’re just babies, grabbing at whatever sparkles.’ Abruptly he stopped, as if somebody had pulled out his plug.

  ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ hiccupped Jon. ‘Or one of my wife’s ghosts.’

  Suddenly sober, Mike missed the warm fuzziness of a moment before. ‘I shouldn’t preach on this subject.’

  ‘Why?’ Jon’s hiccups stopped. ‘You’re Mr Happily Married.’

  ‘Am I?’ Mike sighed and told them everything. He showed them the texts, and the photos on his phone. He recounted conversations. He left nothing out. ‘What do I do?’ he asked. ‘What the hell do I do?’

  ‘You know what to do,’ said Jon. ‘You tell your wife.’

  ‘She’ll . . .’ Mike imagined what Evie would do. Even the best-case scenario involved a future without testicles. The worst-case scenario involved a bedsit, and visitation rights.

  ‘Listen to a pro, mate.’ On familiar ground, Clive’s chest swelled with confidence. ‘Don’t come clean. Carry on.’

  ‘It’s killing him.’ Jon was empathetic. ‘Lies can destroy you.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Clive was brusque. ‘Deny everything. It’ll blow over. I’ve been in your position more than once and I bluffed my way through.’ Clive lit another cigar and puffed contemplatively. ‘Although, on second thoughts, maybe you should ’fess up.’

  ‘Really?’ Mike tried to process this U-turn. ‘But you said . . .’

  ‘Forget that. Tell Evie. Tomorrow. She’ll understand.’

  ‘She’ll understand I’m a weak-willed bastard,’ said Mike.

  ‘You’re just a man,’ said Jon. ‘Trying to get by.’

  ‘Tell her,’ hectored Clive. ‘Do you promise me?’

  ‘Of course I don’t promise you,’ spluttered Mike. ‘Why are you so keen?’

  ‘Because,’ said Clive, ‘we’ve bloody bonded.’

  DAY 9

  Wednesday, 19th August

  Dear Mother,

  No idea why people write postcards.

  Clive

  Like a knight and his lady on a medieval tomb, Mike and Evie lay apart, not touching. A hangover is a hangover is a hangover; linen sheets make no difference.

  ‘My head,’ said Evie, not moving her lips in case they, too, hurt.

  ‘My guts,’ said Mike.

  They had withstood a spirited ‘Good morning’ from Mabel, who’d launched herself from the door to land cleanly, like an Olympic athlete, first on Evie’s solar plexus and then on Mike’s groin. All they had to do now was withstand until the hangovers wore off. They were withstanding nicely, until doors started slamming on the ground floor and Shen’s raised voice reached them.

  ‘I will kill you!’ she raved. ‘That’s a promise!’

  ‘Should we see what that’s all about?’ Evie wasn’t sure about the whole being-upright-and-walking thing.

  ‘S’pose,’ said Mike.

  ‘Oh God,’ they yowled in unison as they stood up and the second-best bedroom tilted like a galleon.

  A whirlwind of rage, Shen couldn’t stand still. Clive, by contrast, was motionless, standing legs apart in the hall, arms folded, grim forbearance on his features. ‘Welcome,’ he said to Evie and Mike as they descended, ‘to the madhouse.’

  On the doorstep Elizabetta was almost unrecognizable in clothes and without Fang hanging from her like a koala. Shen held the baby as she harangued the nanny, to a rapt audience of the teens and the Eights.

  ‘You’re so selfish!’ Shen shouted.

  ‘My nonna has died,’ said Elizabetta calmly.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Evie, touched.

  Eyes blazing, Shen yelled, ‘Don’t be! Signorina here has run out of nonnas. At the last count, both of them had died. They were helpful enough to kick the bucket when Elizabetta wanted a holiday, but I let that pass.’

  Evie found time to admire Shen’s exquisite outfit; neither hangovers nor defecting nannies got in the way of her grooming. She’d turn up for the Apocalypse with a French manicure.

  ‘There’s such a thing,’ said Tillie, ‘as step-grandmothers. I have one.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s a lovely woman,’ said Shen. ‘But don’t waste your sympathy on Elizabetta, because one look at her emails told me all I wanted to know.’

  There was a communal intake of breath at her attitude to piffling niceties like privacy.

  ‘How you know my password?’ Elizabetta didn’t look so pretty with her mouth hanging open.

  ‘Oh, please,’ scoffed Shen, as if this was kindergarten stuff.

  ‘You had no right,’ said Elizabetta.

  ‘And you have no right to bugger off to Mustique with Françoise!’

  Evie gasped. It was an Uber plot.

  Shen threw up one arm, playing to the crowd. ‘Françoise offered more money, so Elizabetta’s off this minute to join her in Mustique. So, cara,’ she said to Elizabetta, ‘unless your beloved nonna keeled over in the infinity pool, you’re defecting.’

  ‘Spies defect, darling.’ Clive joined them. ‘Nannies leave.’

  Elizabetta took off with her case towards the taxi at the end of the drive. ‘I miss you, baby,’ she called to Fang, whose starfish arms shot out traitorously. ‘And sorry, madam.’

  ‘You will be!’ yelled madam. ‘When Françoise makes you work weekends and listens to your phone calls!’

  ‘You make me work weekends and listen to my phone calls,’ called Elizabetta.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ yelled Shen.

  Lying on the mile-long sofa in the cool drawing room, glad of the respite from the insistent heat, Evie heard Shen roam from room to room making calls.

  ‘I understand – sure, bye.’ She let out a frustrated scream. A pause. A drumming of fingers. Then, for the eighth time, ‘Hi, it’s very short notice, but I need a nanny for the next six days . . . Devon, near Seaton . . . Six months old . . . No, no, right away, like today . . . OK, I understand, bye.’

  In the pause while Shen dialled, Evie called out, ‘We’ll look after Fang together.’

  ‘Now,’ said Shen, ‘is no time for humour.’

  ‘What’s that wailing noise?’ Scarlett, her arm through Tillie’s, wandered in from the gar
den.

  ‘Fang.’ Evie kept her voice low. ‘She’s been crying for . . .’ she looked at her watch, ‘fifty years. Or that’s how it feels.’

  ‘But Fang never cries,’ said Tillie.

  ‘Only because Elizabetta danced attendance on her.’ Evie clamped a cushion over her ears, noting that the girls were without their minder. ‘Where’s Zane?’

  ‘Dad made him help move the cot from over the garage to the master suite. Did you hear,’ Scarlett turned to Tillie, ‘what your mum was saying?’

  Tillie, with a resigned sigh, nodded: ‘Make sure you’ve locked up properly.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Miles popped up. ‘That’s in case murderers hide in the garage and stab us up our bums!’ He paused, added, ‘The fucking fuck-men’ and ran off, cackling.

  ‘When I’ve sorted this,’ Shen wearily stabbed another number into the phone, ‘I’ll sort that.’

  There was much sighing and grunting and general Look at me – I’m a real bloke noises from the hallway as Mike, Jon and Zane manoeuvred the massive cot towards the stairs. Clive oversaw matters, carrying Fang as awkwardly as if she were the Olympic torch.

  ‘Is this cot made of cement?’ Mike’s face was a vivid crimson.

  ‘Can we rest?’ Zane, quiff wilting, sounded tearful.

  The cot banged down on the black-and-white tiles.

  ‘I’ve discovered,’ said Mike, ‘that putting your back out cures a hangover. So, that’s something.’

  Evie laughed, nice and loud, so he would hear. She noticed he was leaving rooms as she entered them.

  The howling rose and fell, like a police car approaching a riot. ‘Ssh,’ cooed Clive, patting Fang’s narrow back as she hollered her message of doom, gloom and nappy rash. ‘I don’t know what she wants.’ He held her at arm’s length, gazing into her puckered face, as if she might announce, in perfectly modulated English, ‘Actually, Father, what I want is . . .’

  ‘Have you checked her bottom?’ Mike recalled his own years on the baby frontline. ‘Is she hungry? Thirsty? Does she have wind?’

  ‘How do I bloody know?’ said Clive, as Fang regurgitated many rusks down his shirt front. ‘Oh, for—!’

  ‘Come on, mate.’ Mike bent to take the strain of the Game of Thrones-style cot. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t cope with one teeny baby.’ He shook his head, saddened by such ineptitude. ‘She’s trickier than a business deal, isn’t she?’

  Clive’s good nature had followed the nanny out through the gates. ‘I can handle my own baby daughter, thanks.’

  ‘What made Elizabetta behave like that?’ Mike, as ever, tried to understand.

  ‘Maybe,’ called Evie, ‘she was punishing Shen for, you know, taking advantage.’ She added, ‘You did’, when Shen treated her to a look that could turn a lesser woman to stone.

  ‘It’s all my fault, then?’

  Moving swiftly on, Clive said, ‘Elizabetta’s gone. That’s that. She was a capable nanny, but Françoise shouldn’t leave her alone with that drippy husband of hers.’ He looked down at Fang. ‘I hope you know how to change your own nappies, kid.’ He thrust the baby at Shen. ‘Take her.’

  Recoiling as if the baby might be red-hot, Shen snapped, ‘I’m busy! Nobody can start straight away. These nanny agencies don’t understand the meaning of the word “emergency”.’

  ‘I need,’ said Clive, with clenched-teeth calm, ‘to sponge the sick off my shirt. Darling.’ He doggedly held out Fang, her chubby legs dangling.

  Crossing her arms, Shen said, ‘Hold her until I’ve engaged a new nanny. Or,’ she pulled an ironic face, ‘shall we look after her ourselves?’ Her brittle titter illustrated the lunacy of this idea.

  ‘Ooh, no.’ Mike was inching up the stairs beneath the cot. ‘Clive couldn’t handle Fang twenty-four/seven. He might break a nail. JESUS!’ he yelled as Zane dropped his side of the beast.

  ‘Put your phone away,’ said Clive. ‘If there’s no nanny, so be it. How hard can it be looking after a baby?’

  Evie called to them from the sofa. ‘From personal experience, extremely hard indeed.’

  ‘It’s all about organization,’ said Clive. ‘You women make heavy weather of it.’

  ‘After I’ve sorted the nanny problem and the Miles-swearing problem, I’ll sort the putting-a-hatchet-through-your-head problem.’ Shen hit ‘Redial’.

  ‘Put the phone away,’ repeated Clive. ‘Five days. One Fang. It’ll be a doddle.’

  It had been tricky tussling Fang out of Shen’s arms.

  ‘I don’t need help, Evie,’ she’d insisted, jiggling the noisy dumpling.

  ‘I want her, though,’ Evie had said. ‘I’ve hardly seen my god-daughter this holiday.’ Grateful for Fang’s uncomplicated companionship, she took off on an aimless tour of the garden, half-expecting Clive to follow. He was the opposite of Mike this morning; catching her eye, gazing meaningfully at her. Thankfully he remained at the house, and Evie soothed Fang with a stream of gentle nonsense until the child’s head drooped onto her shoulder.

  The gesture touched her. It was without guile – the way babies are.

  Then one of her own babies, albeit a large one, approached. Dan careered over, calling out, ‘It’s disgusting!’

  ‘What is, darling? Keep your voice down. Fang’s all snoozy.’

  ‘Snogging! Proper snogging!’

  Evie gulped.

  ‘In the treehouse!’ spat Dan. ‘I hate Scarlett. My sister’s disgusting.’ He stormed past, propelled by prudery.

  ‘Grab a lolly from the freezer, love.’ Most of Dan’s troubles could be soothed with the application of a Mivvi.

  ‘I’m full.’

  ‘Eh?’ Dan hadn’t been full since birth.

  ‘I’m going to lie on my bed and read my myths.’ Another bombshell: Dan choosing reading over playing.

  ‘Dan, sweetie, don’t be hard on Scarlett. Teenagers like kissing, you know.’

  ‘Not in front of me!’ he yelled, disappearing into the house, anxious to put as much space as he could between himself and the snoggers.

  ‘One day,’ shouted Evie, enjoying herself now, ‘you’ll want to kiss a girl!’

  ‘Urgh! Never! Shut up!’

  Evie, with Fang curled about her, delved deeper into the garden, reaching the wild patch. The edge of the known world. A deep restlessness wouldn’t let her sit down, even though she was tired.

  Too tired. Suspiciously tired. She resented how easily it came back, that physical self-policing, that acute attention to detail. Is this sore? Is that tender? Is this normal?

  From the terrace, Mike called her name.

  Evie turned back. ‘What?’ Grateful that he’d stopped avoiding her, she didn’t, however, want to speak to him right then. She could feel something coming, an avalanche building in the hills. Her resilient, sturdy husband was neither resilient nor sturdy on this topic, so until a kindly doctor patted her hand and said, ‘You big silly, there’s nothing to worry about’, she must hug her worries to herself.

  ‘I’m taking you out for a treat!’

  Evie’s brow lowered.

  ‘Well, look pleased!’

  One of the nicest things about a cream tea, or afternoon tea, or whatever you want to call it (Evie just wanted to eat it) is that there are no choices to make. ‘Cream tea!’ you say gaily to your waitress, closing the menu with a snap. ‘And be quick about it.’ Your waitress will forgive your rudeness; she knows that women can’t be kept waiting for a cream tea, in much the same way that they can’t be kept waiting for a naked Channing Tatum.

  Even though this cafe had been the venue for Jon’s extracurricular kiss, Evie would forgive it anything, if it came up with the cakey goods. ‘This place is so right,’ she said, all her senses sated. There were swaggy curtains, there were cushions on the spindly chairs, there were fussy jugs and spoons and cake-stands on every surface. In short, it was stuffed with li’l-ole-lady tat that she normally hated, but which was just right for the taking of cream tea. ‘Look!’ she sa
id, delighted. ‘They have horrific dried-flower arrangements on every table!’

  Fidgeting with the scalloped edge of a doily, Mike said, ‘See, I do listen sometimes.’ He cleared his throat, as if about to make a declaration, but all he said was, ‘I couldn’t let you go through the whole holiday without a cream tea.’

  ‘You get many, many merit points for this. I know it’s your idea of hell.’

  ‘Kind of.’ He almost, but not quite, achieved an authentic smile. ‘I mean, the table has two tablecloths on it.’ He coughed. It was a punctuation mark. It said: Prick up your ears.

  The trolley arrived before he could speak. Blood rushed to Evie’s head as a three-tiered cake stand, gilt-edged, shapely, was laid on their undersized table.

  The waitress pointed to the different storeys. ‘Them’s cucumber sandwiches and egg-mayonnaise sandwiches and, hang on . . . oh yeah, chicken-and-pesto.’ She allowed herself the tiniest of smug chin-tucks at such sophistication. ‘And in the middle you’ve got your cream horn and your Battenberg and your lemon-drizzle. And on the bottom—’

  Evie butted in. ‘Scones,’ she said, the way some men (admittedly not the ones you’d want to hang out with) say, Breasts. ‘And clotted cream. Is the jam made here?’

  ‘Of course.’ The waitress set down a dignified teapot, a large and curvaceous item that has seen Brits through generations of war and peace and recession and booms and births and deaths and weddings and funerals and Midsomer Murders omnibuses. She laid down a strainer in a drip-bowl, two cups and saucers, teaspoons, a jug, a sugar bowl and a pair of tongs. And she left without a word, because she was accustomed to her female customers entering a trance-like state.

  ‘So,’ said Mike, his voice the dusty one he reserved for bad news. ‘Before I say this, I want you to know that—’

  ‘Hang on.’ Emerging from her reverie, Evie poured out two cups of tea, relishing the novelty of straining out the leaves. ‘I can see you have something to tell me, love, and this cream tea is to soften me up.’ She put a dash of milk in her cup, a slightly bigger dash – a dash and a half, maybe – in Mike’s. ‘You think you’re going to upset me no end, I can see that from your face.’ She picked up and dropped the tongs, smiled at their olde-worlde daintiness and picked them up again. ‘So, before you spoil this wonderful spread . . .’ Plop! One sugar in her tea. ‘. . . allow me to say that I already know everything.’ Plop! Plop! Two sugars in Mike’s tea. ‘I know all about it, and it doesn’t matter, and can we please start eating because that cream horn is, frankly, giving me the horn.’