A Very Big House in the Country

by Claire Sandy

  ‘Why is Fang crying?’ Miles’s bland, peachy face was troubled.

  ‘Is she depressed about politics?’ suggested Mabel, stealing a major portion of her mother’s eggy bread.

  ‘Or maybe she did a murder,’ suggested Amber, ‘and she’th thcared the police will come for her.’

  ‘Get out, children,’ said Shen, in a quiet way that Evie recognized as dangerous.

  ‘Come, kiddiwinks.’ Evie stood and The Eights followed her to the cinema room, where she pressed random buttons on a remote the size of a tea tray until the screen flared into life.

  ‘Frozen!’ yelped Mabel. ‘I want to live in a ice palace! I like the horse in it too!’

  Knowing how quickly a mob of Eights could turn ugly, Evie asked, ‘Is Frozen OK for the rest of you?’

  ‘S’pose,’ grumbled Dan, who secretly knew all the lyrics to ‘Let It Go’.

  ‘Great.’ Evie shut the door on them, silently thanking Walt Disney for all his babysitting over the years. When she returned to the kitchen, Shen had done a bunk, and in her place was Clive, holding Fang and jiggling her far too fast.

  ‘Ah,’ said Evie.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said Clive, in the hush suitable to church or library. Or a woman you’re trying to have an affair with.

  ‘We’ve talked. We’re done,’ said Evie hurriedly, hearing Mike and Jon in the hall. She sat at the table and pretended to read Shen’s Vogue, while Patch quivered against her leg.

  The other men were keen to help out their buddy, it transpired. All three of them manhandled Fang into her high chair. After some discussion and a few interesting theories about how the restraints worked, they buckled her in safely.

  ‘So. Food,’ said Clive, a born leader of men.

  ‘Carrots,’ said Jon adamantly. Then, more tentatively, ‘Carrots?’

  ‘Yeah, carrots.’ Mike had the air of a man with plenty of carrot experience.

  ‘Do we cook the carrots and then . . . um . . . what is it – purée them?’ Clive stroked his chin.

  ‘No, no, we . . .’ Jon lost faith in his fledgling hypothesis. ‘Oh, hang on, yes, cook them first!’ His face lit up, only to fall again. ‘But how does one purée?’ He looked pained.

  ‘With a mashy thing?’ Mike was right there with a plan, rooting through the nearest drawer. ‘Our one at home is a disc shape with holes in it.’

  ‘No, no.’ Clive’s brow was like a newly ploughed field. ‘Doesn’t it involve a small machine of some kind?’ Help-fully he did an impression of a stick-blender.

  All in all, it only took an hour to purée the carrots, and Fang’s mewling subsided at last as she accepted the sloppily wielded spoonfuls.

  ‘Good girl.’ Clive beamed. ‘Good, perpetually wide-awake little girl.’ He appealed to the others. Evie noticed that he treated Mike exactly the same as ever, with no trace of guilt about his attempted seduction of Mike’s wife. ‘How in the name of God does Fang stay awake for so long? Is she fitted with Duracell batteries or something?’

  ‘She should sleep tonight,’ offered Mike sagely.

  ‘I bloody hope so.’ Clive wiped his daughter’s mouth with the cloth Shen kept for cleaning the guck out of Prunella’s prominent eyes. ‘I think we should let her cry. You know, not run to her every minute.’

  ‘Shen disagrees?’ Jon was rueful.

  ‘Obviously. My good lady wife disagrees with every word out of my mouth.’

  ‘Don’t,’ interrupted Evie, without looking up from Vogue, ‘call her your “good lady wife”. Just saying.’

  ‘Shen agreed we’d experiment,’ said Clive, ‘by not picking up Fang the moment she wails, but then she gave in and grabbed her.’

  ‘Highly illogical,’ said Jon.

  ‘Highly,’ agreed Mike. Evie could tell he had nothing to add, but wanted to keep ‘in’ with the chaps.

  ‘So we pick her up, we put her down, we check her nappy, we have a row, I shout, Shen shouts, Fang screams, we put her down, we pick her up, and so on and so forth.’

  ‘Lunacy,’ said Jon. ‘Sheer lunacy. You need to pull together.’

  Ironic, thought Evie. Coming from him.

  It would take more than a fortnight for Wellcome Manor to offer up all its secrets. Evie discovered a new room, a small hexagonal chamber papered in a pattern of larks and leaves. It was cosily dark, thanks to the clouds slowly obliterating the sky, like bullies spoiling for a fight. Patch slipped in alongside Evie and slid under an antique desk.

  The only light in the room came from the screen of Evie’s laptop as she read Alex’s email. It read breathlessly, as if Alex had typed her raw reaction with no editing, no diplomacy: You’ve let me down. Thanks for nothing.

  Whatever the outcome of her diagnosis (‘I can put the wheels in motion immediately,’ the sympathetic doctor had said, suggesting that Evie might curtail her holiday), she’d burned her bridges with Alex. The gorgeous sparkly job that had sustained her with its promise of a different, better life was dust.

  The door squeaked open. Clive was there, and the room felt claustrophobic.

  ‘Actually, I’m working . . .’ Evie kept her eyes on the screen, on the vitriol: You’ve really landed me in it. Did you even stop to think how stupid this makes me look?

  ‘It can wait.’ Clive closed the door and leaned against it.

  Grateful that he didn’t approach her, Evie turned to face him in the spindly bentwood chair that felt like doll’s-house furniture beneath her; Georgian bottoms were evidently on the small side. ‘I’m very flattered by all . . . this.’ Her voice sounded dry and tired. ‘But you have to drop it.’ She would never add that she simply didn’t fancy him. It was beyond her to be so pointlessly cruel. Moreover, it wasn’t that Clive wasn’t her type, but that Mike – and only Mike – was her type.

  ‘I’m not listening,’ said Clive, unperturbed. ‘I’m going to wear you down, Evie. One morning you’ll wake up and you’ll want me. I’m not some stud flashing his pecs, and this isn’t some fling. I’ve started to need you.’

  ‘You don’t need me.’ Evie was exasperated.

  ‘I need to hear you talk. I need you to listen to me. I need you to take me down a peg or two.’

  ‘A man who’s married to Shen,’ said Evie, ‘already has the services of a professional taker-down of pegs.’ She shrugged. ‘What can I say, Clive? I seem to be wasting my breath, but you really do have everything you want in Shen. She’s intelligent. She’s a great mother. She’s fiery and funny and passionate and gorgeous. Be a team. Stop thinking of ways to get one over on each other.’

  ‘A team.’ Clive considered the word. ‘Like you and Mike, you mean? I’ve been watching you both today.’

  ‘Lovely, and not creepy at all.’

  ‘You’re giving him the same cold shoulder you’re giving me.’ Clive perched on a dainty chaise longue. He looked uncomfortable, as if regretting his decision to perch. ‘It’s a very nice shoulder,’ he said. ‘But it’s cold.’

  ‘That’s personal.’ Evie hoped she sounded duchess-like, but suspected she sounded like Mabel. ‘It’s between me and Mike. I can’t take any more of these conversations, Clive. How many different ways do you need to hear “No”?’

  ‘I’m not giving up.’

  Evie threw her hands in the air. She saw Clive’s expression brighten, as if he saw any reaction as progress. ‘I’m not being coy so that you chase me. This attraction is based on a misunderstanding.’ She faltered. She hadn’t planned to shoot him down like this. ‘Clive, the hero of my current novel is called Clay. A stupid name, which is mandatory in my genre. While I was editing dialogue, I used the “Find and replace” tool to replace the word lay with the word live, but I—’

  Clive’s arms unfolded as he interrupted. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘You made it find and replace all instances of “lay” with “live”, which—’

  ‘Changed Clay to Clive, yes.’ Evie nodded. ‘The universe played a joke on us.’

  ‘So, you don’t want to smear cream
on my—’

  ‘Nope!’ Evie cut in. ‘The cream-smearing was all in a day’s work.’ Now that he was deflated, she longed to reach out and comfort Clive. Best not, she thought. ‘One day we will laugh about this, I promise.’

  ‘I’m a fool. But I don’t take a word of it back. I’d cross this room in a heartbeat to take you in my arms.’

  It was so sad, the way he said it. Evie let the silence lie between them for a while before saying, ‘I’m very flattered, because you’re a man of taste. You married my favourite woman in the world.’

  Clive scoffed, disconsolate.

  ‘What with a demanding wife and a sudden, second chance at fatherhood, you don’t have time to imagine yourself falling for me.’

  ‘I’m doing my best with Fang,’ said Clive, with a hint of impatience, as if they’d changed topics before he was ready.

  ‘I meant Zane.’ She saw his eyelids waver at the mention of his prodigal boy. ‘Having a close relationship with your children is like . . . like . . .’ Evie fell over her words in her desire to convince him, ‘it’s like a never-ending magic trick that keeps amazing you. It’s something that gets deeper by the hour. It’s the one subject in life that never bores you.’

  ‘Oh, come on, I’m not letting you get away with that. There is nothing,’ said Clive, ‘as fucking tedious as people talking about their kids.’

  ‘Yeah. Their kids. But not your own. Zane’s waving his heart at you, if only you’d notice.’

  ‘Waving his heart?’ scoffed Clive. ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘Just talk to him, touch him every now and then. Eye contact will do, for starters.’ Evie saw his face harden. ‘Zane’s being very generous. Why don’t you stop leaving a trail of baby mamas and take the opportunity he’s offering you?’

  Clive stood up, ruffled his hair, puffed out his chest. ‘You can be damned preachy, Evie.’

  They were back in the playground. I didn’t let Clive catch me playing Kiss Chase, thought Evie. So he’s pulling my hair.

  Napping was for other people. Shen had never got the hang of it. She sat up, irritated with herself.

  The only role she could pull off was Queen Bee; blow-dried, accessorized, droll one-liners ready in her statement handbag; Worker Drone was beyond her. Over-tired, below par, she wasn’t capable of doing the job at hand.

  What made it unbearable was that the ‘job at hand’ was Fang. The chip off Shen’s old block – so like her, and yet so intriguingly different – was wearing her out. She shifted in the tousled bed; a plastic building block dug into her coccyx.

  I’m not a real woman. She was a fake, like those bags Evie bought hopefully on eBay, and which turned out to be Prarder or Channel.

  Motherhood was something you had to learn. Your baby arrived, squawked at you, and you interpreted that squawk and produced a soft toy/your breast, as appropriate. Shen’s first attempt at mothering, with Miles, had been a limo-ride. Whenever she’d drooped, she simply handed him to a trustworthy, salaried adult. She’d slept deeply and woken refreshed, unaware that other women slept like sentries: one eye open, one ear cocked for that unique cry.

  It wasn’t that her beloved schedule was disrupted; there was no schedule. Even if she could muster the energy, there was no time to exercise. Her daily wash and careful blow-dry was only a memory, and her armpits had sprouted little fur gilets.

  The depth of the fury she felt at Clive astonished her. True, theirs was a partnership built on squabbles and jibes, but this was different. Her nagging of Clive, her remorseless reminders that he was damned lucky to have her, were hot air. She knew he liked a volatile woman and that their arguments fuelled the sex, so she bitched and carped for fun. But this low-level resentment towards him, always audible in the background like Sky News, was different.

  Why didn’t Clive notice? How come he could enjoy a long shower, smoke on the terrace and read the papers while she did a thousand-and-one tiny, thankless tasks?

  But worse, why couldn’t she appeal for help in a plain and simple fashion? Shen had long suspected there was a component of their marriage that was on the blink, like a rusty carburettor on a car. The missing constituent was intimacy. And the easy communication that came with it.

  Sometimes she had a mental image of herself on a conveyor belt in the factory that churned out Clive’s Wives. ‘Number three of three’ was how she archly referred to herself, but what if she was not the last, just the latest?

  In bed they communicated, but that timetable was also shot to hell. Today was the twenty-first, so that meant . . . she sighed as she realized she should be prepping her basque.

  Another uncomfortable truth reared its ugly head, blinking in the light. I don’t fancy Clive any more. True, he would never win a Mr Universe pageant, but Shen had never been drawn to good looks. Meeting Clive, she’d felt a primal tug. He was so very there. He was an alpha, a silverback and fizzingly alive, compared to the younger men she’d hung out with before his reign. She’d sensed his power and respected the frank way he pursued her.

  It was impossible to respect the Clive who sauntered away without a backward glance, forcing her to take up the slack;the Clive who only picked up Fang when forced to.

  Those divorce gags weren’t funny any more. As Fang’s air-raid wail started up again downstairs, Shen stood up, pulled her rat-tails into a plait and thought vehemently, If it happens, I won’t take a penny. Not one single penny.

  The sky foamed with angry clouds. Evie sat in the silent kitchen, lit by the eerie acid glow that presages a storm. She heard a voice, low and authoritative.

  ‘I need more documentation before I can consider green-lighting such a dramatic overhaul,’ Clive was saying. It was business double-Dutch, meaningless to Evie’s ears. She crept towards the half-open door of the drawing room.

  On a split computer screen two earnest male faces frowned, while a watery voice floated from a speaker. ‘Sure, but we need to avoid reneging on our contractual commitments.’

  The chair swivelled and Clive’s bulk blocked the screen, jabbing the air as he pontificated.

  It was Clive’s prerogative to ignore her heartfelt advice, to leave Shen to soldier on with Fang somewhere in this vast house. Evie closed the door.

  Hearing a faint click, Clive swung around, but no, there was nobody there.

  ‘Listen, guys,’ he said, ‘I’ve made my position clear. Either we do as I say and make piles of cash, or you ignore me and I sue you. Goodbye for now.’

  He pressed a button decisively, as if it needed a damned good pressing and Clive Little was the man to do it.

  ‘Such utter bollocks, all of it,’ he said. ‘Pardon my French, darling.’ He leaned down towards Fang in a Moses basket beneath the desk, her comma of hair neatly combed, her face shining with the exertion of trying to nab the feather that waved tantalizingly just out of her reach.

  Laughing, Clive took the feather from between his toes and handed it over, grateful to it for keeping Fang contentedly quiet throughout the conference call. ‘There you go, Princess.’

  It had landed. The feeling Evie had struggled to describe had blossomed, as Fang lay against his chest in their like-a-bomb-hit-it bedroom.

  Their eyes had met. And locked. It was the thousandth time he’d looked at Fang’s face, but the first time he’d seen her.

  How had he never noticed before his daughter’s incredible eyes? They were wise and ageless, and sort of like his eyes and sort of like Shen’s. Something had passed between him and his daughter, a bolt of pure empathy.

  Clive had always known that Fang belonged to him, but until today he hadn’t realized that he belonged to her.

  ‘I wondered,’ said Evie, ‘where you’d all got to!’

  The Eights trooped in, teens bringing up the rear, Paula skirting them like an old sheepdog. She’d taken them to the village, and hoped that was all right?

  ‘More than all right!’

  ‘We’re staying up to watch the storm,’ said Dan.

  ‘Th
e chap in the newsagent’s,’ said Paula, throwing teabags into the pot, ‘reckons it’ll be a corker.’

  Surprised that Paula even knew where the teapot lived, Evie fussed around with mugs, slapping away the children’s efforts to snaffle biscuits, and muzzling a smile when Jon said, good-naturedly enough, ‘And everybody knows news-agents make the best weather forecasters.’

  He was as brightly brittle as his wife, the two of them striving for ‘normality’ – never an easy task for the Browns.

  ‘Mr . . . um . . . Jon,’ said Mabel, her eye on the multi-pack of Orange Club biscuits that her mother had moved to a place of greater safety, ‘where did you go?’

  ‘How d’you mean, dear: where did Jon go?’ Paula smiled, unpacking a granary loaf and a slab of cheese and a weepingly cold bottle of white wine. ‘He was with us.’

  ‘Not when we were at the museum of local history. Which was very boring, by the way. I hate local history now. Did you,’ Mabel asked Jon, ‘go to the pub?’ She had an unshakeable belief that all men, whenever they left the house, went ‘to the pub’.

  ‘I . . .’ Jon measured his words. ‘I went for a little wander.’

  ‘He does,’ said Paula, ‘love his little wanders. Don’t you, dear?’

  ‘I do, dear,’ said Jon, as if chewing staples.

  Dinner was odd. Not the food; the chicken and the spiced rice were delicious. Everything else was slightly off-key.

  Eating indoors after days of balmy al-fresco meals meant the acoustics were different: forks scraped on plates and glasses thudded on the table. The overhead lighting wasn’t half as poetic as the lantern’s flattering flicker, which had bonded them against the tightly knit dark beyond.

  ‘It’s the weather,’ said Mike, when Clive commented on the monastic quiet of the table tonight. ‘This is the quiet before the storm.’ He nudged Evie. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Mm.’ She sensed him watching her, putting two and two together. At some point she’d have to congratulate him on getting his sums right.

  ‘I’m sick of this storm,’ mumbled Shen. ‘And it hasn’t even arrived yet.’