A Very Big House in the Country

by Claire Sandy

  The Browns were quiet up in their room. Hopefully they were making up, although they might have resorted to miming their insults. As Evie put the terrace to rights, scooping up a Frisbee, a Barbie and some rogue sunglasses, a shout broke the sullen air.

  ‘For God’s sake, you insufferable female!’ It was Clive’s voice, thick with irritation.

  Evie straightened, earwigged.

  ‘Out!’ That was Shen. She was angry. Properly angry. Her rage was top-of-the-range stuff, more powerful than generic brands. ‘Out, now, Clive, before I strangle you with this nappy!’

  Evie could have sworn the house said tsk. Sick of all this argy-bargy, Wellcome Manor was a class act. Historically people had suffered in well-bred silence within its walls; they hadn’t chucked teething rattles through windows.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ snarled Clive, emerging onto the terrace and trying to light his cigar with a match as uncooperative as his wife.

  ‘What does the H. stand for?’ asked Evie.

  Clive goggled at her, then laughed, his self-righteous anger punctured. ‘Who knows? Herbert?’

  Dumping her armful of tat, Evie said, ‘Come and sit down.’

  Evie and Clive. Together again. On their bench. It was comforting, in a day of revelation and discord, to reprise a habit.

  ‘You heard?’ queried Clive. ‘Of course you heard. The whole of Devon heard. I shouldn’t have shouted like that.’

  ‘Shen can take it.’ Besides, Shen was an insufferable female.

  ‘I wasn’t shouting at her.’ Clive dragged deep on his cigar as if it was an antidote.

  ‘You were . . .’ Evie looked askance. ‘You yelled at little Fang like that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Clive wasn’t proud. ‘She just drove me mad – the way they can, you know.’

  Evie did know. Every parent or aunt or uncle or friend knows. ‘But, Clive . . .’

  ‘I can oversee an international merger without breaking into a sweat, but my daughter does a poo on my laptop and I lose it.’

  ‘Yeew. Was it one of those strange runny ones?’

  ‘It was orange!’ Clive looked horrified by life’s cruelties. ‘I knew,’ he turned to her, ‘you’d understand.’

  ‘But I don’t.’ Evie was brisk; with pressing troubles of her own, she wasn’t in the mood to absolve Clive for buckling under his petty woes. ‘Three wives and umpteen kids in, it’s time you got on top of this stuff.’

  Clive exhaled morosely. ‘True.’ He leaned back, put his hands behind his head, reminding Evie of the moves that school boyfriends had pulled at the cinema. ‘Surely you screamed at your old man when he helped you, when the kids were babies?’

  ‘Nope.’ Evie was adamant.

  ‘What, never?’ Clive was rudely sceptical, even as he looked intently at her mouth.

  Evie wondered if she had food stuck to her lip. ‘Not once.’

  ‘I had you down as feisty.’

  ‘I never screamed at him, because he never helped me out.’

  ‘Rubbish! I see Mike in a pinny – no problem.’

  ‘Me too. But he didn’t help me.’ Evie waited for, and got, comprehension in Clive’s eyes. ‘He did his duty.’

  ‘So you did scream at him?’

  ‘Obviously. My hormones were playing musical chairs. I was getting by on eight minutes’ sleep. Motherhood was nothing like what Angelina Jolie leads us to believe. And there was Mike, putting talc on the baby’s head and plonking Scarlett in front of a horror movie, instead of Tellytubbies. We were both overwhelmed and at times he didn’t pull his weight, but I never felt I was in it alone.’ Evie had a strong suspicion: time to air it. ‘Are you cocking up chores on purpose, so you’re never asked to do them again?’

  ‘No. Maybe.’

  She swatted him with her hand. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I am, I am.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Evie rapped him smartly on the knuckles. Tonight, with a storm humming in the hills, the house braced for the onslaught, and her own news heavy within her, was a night to take liberties.

  Clive evidently agreed. He blinked hard, a tic that Evie had never noticed. ‘I don’t let anybody else talk to me like you do. But nobody else does talk to me the way you do. Nobody,’ he shifted nearer, twisting so that he leaned towards her, ‘makes me feel the way you do.’

  That was a cue to dart off like a spinster aunt, but instead Evie became absolutely still.

  ‘Our heart-to-hearts at the end of the day,’ said Clive, ‘are the only times I feel properly alive.’

  Evie held up her finger to shush him, but he took her hand in his paw. She tugged. He held on harder. ‘Clive, my hand, please,’ she said ever so politely and he relinquished it. ‘You shouldn’t be saying this.’

  ‘It’s burning a hole in me. And don’t pretend – not now.’

  ‘Who’s pretending?’ Evie gestured to her face. ‘This horn-swaggled expression is the real deal. We’ll just forget this, Clive. You’re tired and you—’

  ‘Not too tired for a nice cream tea.’

  ‘Well, now you’re just saying whatever comes into your head.’ Evie frowned. Had she missed something?

  Clive leaned closer. She leaned back. She was almost horizontal (and somewhat impressed by her own suppleness; Clive had achieved what Pilates couldn’t) as he said, ‘I’m really into Battenberg too, by the way.’

  ‘I’m very glad for you,’ said Evie. She straightened up, relieved when Clive did the same. ‘I’m not sure a shared love of cake is any reason to—’

  ‘Do this?’ Clive put one hand around her neck and pulled her face towards him.

  ‘Get off!’ Evie pushed against his chest, electrified by the proprietorial way he laid hands on her. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Clotted cream!’ breathed Clive. ‘Cucumber sandwiches!’

  ‘This is now officially scary.’ Evie stood up.

  ‘I read your story. Your little fantasy.’ Clive allowed her a moment to catch up. ‘You and me and a cream tea?’ He brimmed with wickedness, all fatigue forgotten. ‘Let’s make it a reality.’ He took in her dumbfounded face. ‘Forgive me. I shouldn’t have looked at your laptop without your permission.’

  ‘My password,’ said Evie. ‘How’d you . . . ?’

  ‘It was your birthday, darling. Patch could have worked it out.’

  Clive had read her erotic prose; Evie shuddered as if he’d riffled her knicker drawer. (If he had inspected her underwear he’d have snow-blindness from the expanse of big white control pants, and this conversation would not be happening.) ‘That’s not fantasy, Clive. It’s certainly not about you . . .’ She tapered off, as a small, rarely used cog turned at the back of her brain. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said with feeling.

  Slowly, clearly, Clive said, ‘With his pointed tongue, Clive licks the jam from my taut tummy.’ He closed the space between them.

  Evie opened the space again. At this rate she’d soon be flattened against the house. ‘I know I said it was a diary, a fantasy, but it’s not. It’s my sideline. I write erotic books.’

  Clive looked ecstatic. ‘You put me in a saucy book! You hussy!’

  Glancing neurotically towards the house, Evie gasped, ‘I did not.’

  ‘I get it. You’re frightened by what’s happened between us.’ Clive held out his arms. ‘Take a leap, darling. I’m here.’ He disregarded the strange, tortured sound Evie made. ‘Don’t think this is some grubby affair I’m offering. This is different.’

  ‘How many times have you said that?’

  ‘Dozens. But this time I mean it.’

  ‘How many times have you said that?’

  ‘Never.’ Now that Clive was in earnest, he seemed younger, less entitled. As if he feared a slap. ‘This is unfamiliar territory. I feel . . .’ He laughed, as if afraid of sounding foolish. He grabbed for her hand. ‘I feel brand-new.’

  Acutely aware of how visible they were in t
he dusk, Evie tried to pull away her hand. ‘Please stop it. Shut up, please.’

  Holding on tight, Clive said, ‘When we talk, I don’t bullshit. I don’t try to impress you. You’re always your lovely self with me. Don’t force me to do without that now. I can’t.’

  ‘When I said shush,’ said Evie, ‘I didn’t mean go on and on and on.’

  ‘When I’m with you I see life in primary colours. Everything seems simple.’

  ‘Everything is simple.’ Today she believed that more than ever before. She wrenched away her hand. ‘Clive, we’re all striving to feel OK, to feel like we’re home. Stop searching for happiness in other women.’ Evie was now an Other Woman: that sickened her. ‘I promise you that you already have what you’re looking for, in the palm of your hand. And I’m always right, remember?’

  ‘Not this time. But listen, if you and I do this, we don’t discuss Shen, darling. That’s a rule, yeah?’

  ‘Eh?’ She found time, amongst various overlapping feelings, to marvel at his chutzpah. ‘We’re not doing this, Clive. There is no this.’

  ‘That’s not what your subconscious is saying.’

  ‘It’s saying goodnight.’ She ran out of things to say and left him, wondering if she should round up her family and sneak off in the middle of the night.

  ‘Goodnight, Gorgeous.’

  Evie was an experienced huffer and puffer, but never had she huffed and puffed so much as on that short stomp back indoors. She passed the kitchen door to avoid Shen, so was startled when she stepped through the French windows and came across her friend in the drawing room.

  Shen’s sticky fringe was vertical. ‘I know your little game,’ she said.

  ‘You do? You don’t!’ Evie tried to hold her nerve. ‘Do you?’

  ‘You’ve been out there with Clive.’ Shen sighed. ‘Trying to talk some sense into him.’

  ‘Was I?’ Evie registered relief and a deep, deep need to be far away. ‘I was,’ she added firmly. ‘I really was.’

  ‘He’ll never get why I need him to help,’ said Shen. ‘But thanks for trying.’ She peered at Evie. ‘Are you feeling all right? You look off-colour under your sunburn.’

  ‘The expression is suntan, Shen.’ Evie managed to smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  ‘That you?’ Mike’s voice was soaked in sleep.

  ‘No. It’s Nigella Lawson.’ Evie put out her hand to steady herself as a gush ran through her body, a ripple of feeling that almost toppled her. ‘Oh no-oh!’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yup!’ Evie climbed in beside him. ‘I’m fine.’

  DAY 11

  Friday, 21st August

  Dear Spa reception,

  Book me in 9 a.m. on 25th for anti-ageing facial/full-body massage/bikini wax/pedi/mani/cut/blow-dry.

  Shen Ling-Little

  The air hung heavy as leftover stew. Specifically, Evie’s leftover stew; there tended to be a lot left over of the impromptu casseroles knocked together, after a long day of kinky composition.

  By the pool, the adults lay in neat formation, as still as if posing for a portrait. Even the younger members of the Wellcome Manor squad were affected by the lethargic climate and lazed in the water, leaning on the tiled edging.

  Fang was now a fully paid-up member of the holiday. The sluggish pace of holiday time meant they barely remembered those distant days when she had descended upon them at set times in Elizabetta’s arms. Now she was on her father’s lap, pulling his chest hair.

  No merger goes smoothly at first, thought Clive, attempting to watch Evie through his sunglasses without his wife noticing this covert surveillance. ‘Ow, darling,’ he said softly to Fang, who found that terribly funny and pulled harder. The adorable tot had a sadistic sense of humour.

  First rule of business, he said, telepathically, to his daughter, is keep going. History is made by the people who bother to turn up; Clive would keep turning up and keep facing the put-downs, if it meant winning Evie.

  He peered surreptitiously at her. How had he never noticed that face before, when she dashed in and out of his house in that quicksilver way of hers? She’d merely been Shen’s BF, somebody for his wife to talk to, someone to distract Shen from going through his phone or querying his late-night meetings.

  He’d overlooked a jewel, believing it to be paste. Evie’s blurred jawline spoke of ageing, yet those merry eyes bewitched him.

  Willingly, Clive gave in to her spell. He was good at infidelity; she need have no worries on that score. She could continue her friendship with Shen. They could both continue their marriages. Everybody’s happy. ‘Happy!’ he said to Fang.

  Fang liked that word. She gurgled like a drain. Then again, she liked all words, if said brightly enough. He tested her: ‘Crematorium!’ Yup. That got a huge smile.

  Then Fang was on the move, lifted away by Mike, and Clive’s lap felt cold, even in that leaden sunshine.

  ‘Take a break,’ said Mike chummily. ‘Let me look after her.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Clive, not sure if he was grateful.

  ‘Hello, little lady.’ Mike spoke over-loudly to the baby as he lay back and let her drum her feet on his chest. Had Evie noticed his gesture? He bloody well hoped so; he wasn’t helping Clive for the sake of it.

  Sleepily Shen said from her position two loungers away, ‘A baby suits you, Mike.’

  ‘Ooh, not any more,’ he laughed. ‘Been there. Done that. Bought the vomit-flecked tee-shirt.’ All the same, it was all sorts of delightful when Fang snuggled into his shoulder with that I’m-welcome-everywhere confidence of infants.

  ‘Why isn’t your godmother talking to me?’ asked Mike, his mouth to Fang’s tiny, perfect ear. Evie had stayed on the periphery of his vision all morning. It was worse than out-and-out avoidance, making their interactions just that: interactions. Evie was polite, but she wasn’t warm. This wasn’t about crazy Haley; when Evie put a subject to bed, it stayed there. This was about something else. ‘I’m racking my brains, Fang,’ he told the child. ‘Why won’t she talk to me about it? There’s nothing me and her can’t talk about.’

  Except for one thing.

  Realization hit, and everything around Mike sharpened up. With newly keen vision, he saw through Evie’s striped swimsuit to the bones and the meat of her. Her body no longer a fascinating map of curves and dips, wonderful to warm his feet on and even better to hold, but a collection of hazards. He bored through her and saw her gall bladder glow like kryptonite.

  Even a lioness like Evie would baulk at telling him about a relapse.

  Jerkily, as if he was trying out new legs, Mike stood, foisting Fang onto the nearest human, who happened to be Zane.

  ‘Hey!’ complained Zane, but Mike staggered off, leaving his paperback behind, not even turning his head. ‘Here. Somebody take her.’ Zane held out the curiously heavy baby – was she made of cement? – to Tillie, who laughed in that superior way that infuriated him.

  ‘No way. Don’t bung her to me just cos I’m a girl, Zane.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘You so were.’

  But he so wasn’t; he was giving her to Tillie because he’d never held Fang before and this felt all wrong. The baby was a rival, an adversary, a fellow heir to Clive’s dubious legacy. He looked around for Scarlett, but he knew she wouldn’t help. Every bird in Britain was a bleedin’ feminist these days. Personally, he blamed the Spice Girls. And Mrs Thatcher. Whoever she was.

  ‘Blaaaaaaaah!’ guffawed Fang.

  ‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Zane’s arms began to ache. ‘You’d be useful down the gym, for weight-training.’ He brought Fang to his chest. ‘Can it swim?’ he asked of the world at large. Tilting his head awkwardly, he went on, ‘So . . . um . . . hi.’ Fang listened, rapt. ‘I’m your brother.’

  ‘Half-brother.’ Clive corrected him sleepily.

  Zane pursed his lips and Fang copied him. ‘When you’re all grown-up,’ he told her, loudly, ‘come and find me and we’ll talk about him. How he fu . . .
screwed us up. But don’t worry,’ he added, ‘he’ll pay for our therapy.’

  The little thing, slippery and plump and exploding with good humour, was cute, close up. Zane had imagined she’d smell sour like milk, but she smelled of something indefinable, something between vanilla and wool and summer-time.

  Watching Zane pretend to bite Fang’s fingers and tickling her feet, Tillie said, ‘You’re being a bit obvious, dude.’

  ‘Did somebody speak?’ Zane said it in the coochy-coo voice he’d used to ask Fang if she was lovely-wovely. ‘Did somebody speaky-weaky or did somebody farty-warty?’

  ‘You want her to think: Jeez, he’s amazing with babies, so that her womb melts and she falls for you.’

  Zane wibbled his lip with his forefinger, with Fang looking on as if he were a comedy genius. ‘I don’t know what the silly lady’s talking about, Fang!’

  ‘You think you’re getting somewhere, but you’re not. Not really.’ Tillie flipped over, fidgeting with her straps, offering herself to the clammy sunshine.

  Dropping the baby-talk, Zane said, ‘That’s not what Evie says.’

  ‘You’ve talked to Evie about it?’ Tillie’s careful composure fractured.

  ‘Evie’s cool. She’s broad-minded. She’s not like other mums.’

  ‘She reckons you’ve got a chance?’ Tillie seemed stupefied.

  ‘She says they’ve talked about it. I’m doing OK. If you didn’t have a book in your face the whole time, you might notice what real people are actually doing.’ He lifted Fang into the air, and she cackled with happiness. ‘Hey! Scarlett!’

  ‘Aww!’ called Scarlett. ‘That’s so sweet!’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ said Tillie.

  Patch shot through the kitchen and cowered under the table.

  ‘That means there’s thunder and lightning coming,’ declared Dan. ‘Patch always knows.’

  ‘It’s the only thing he does know,’ said Evie, slipping the daft bugger a corner of her eggy-bread elevenses.

  ‘I’m proud of how stupid he is.’ Mabel’s glass-half-full attitude would stand her in good stead.