by Judy Astley
Possibly as sweet equine revenge for being a drunk’s five-minute novelty, Lacy Lil had not even remotely fulfilled her new owners’ eager expectations. In spite of being placed with a first-class trainer she simply didn’t understand this concept of the ‘way forward’ in a race at all, not unless she had another horse to follow and preferably several. George and Mac bought themselves all the kit – the Barbours, the sheepskin jackets, the top-of-the-range binoculars, shooting sticks and hip flasks – and followed their protégée from race to race but eventually the trainer gave up on her, complaining she was taking up valuable yard space and making him a laughing stock. Kate had insisted they did their best for her and Lil had been retired at some expense to a sanctuary in Gloucestershire. You couldn’t put teenagers like Sorrel out to grass though, Lottie thought as she filled a bucket of soapy water to clean the rooster’s mess off the car roof. You couldn’t re-home them like cats.
‘Maybe if we sold the house we could set Sorrel up with a flat in the village if she really didn’t want to leave the area,’ she suggested. ‘There’s a lovely little place going in the high street, just along from Susie’s gallery. I saw someone from Digby, James and Humphreys putting a For Sale sign up.’
Mac laughed. ‘OK, maybe when we’ve made some sort of decisions we’ll put that to her – if she’s not interested then we’ll know how much she really wants to stay where her friends are. But I know what she’ll say. It’ll be a big, fat “no”. If she gets the idea there’s a flat on offer, Sorrel will hold out for Chelsea Harbour.’
Lottie went out to scrub the Audi’s roof. The rooster eyed her from the arch in the yew hedge. The Pushkar Camel Fair, she thought. She’d read up on it. It surely had to be more fun than Ladies’ Day in a heavy drizzle. Apart from the smell: camels were horribly pungent things. And didn’t they spit? She hadn’t seen a lot of spitting at a smart race meeting – at least, not among the horses.
THREE
CLOVER, BLONDE, THIRTY-THREE and as scrummy as a mummy could get, was having an attack of the doubts, her biggest enemy. This Sunday had started badly from the moment she’d skimmed through the Property Abroad pages of the Home section from The Sunday Times. Clover longed for and planned for a dream holiday home in the sun. Somewhere she and Sean and their fast-growing daughters could spend long, sultry summers together before their pair of lovely, sunny-natured little girls vanished into the dreadful whirlpool of hostile teen-dom, begging and scheming to be anywhere that their parents weren’t. It would also be somewhere for friends and family (even Sorrel, so long as she didn’t spend all day having noisy sex with that hormone-charged boyfriend Gaz) to visit. She could see them all now, eating artichokes from a rustic market with pissaladière and village-baked bread, beneath a shady jasmine-scented pergola while the children shrieked and splashed happily in the pool. Sean would have to take weeks at a time away from work and relax properly rather than collapsing in an exhausted heap on the draughty terrace of their annual rented house in Rock. It was such a depressing feature of that Cornwall fortnight – the sight of so many tense holiday fathers, pacing the road outside the Mariners Bar, talking urgent share prices and legal waffle into their mobile phones while trying to marshal small children across the road carrying wetsuits and centreboards and dodging the 4x4s whizzing along to the car park. Awful. Exactly like the school run, only in Boden-wear and Birkenstocks rather than Joseph and L.K. Bennett.
Clover had long ago set her heart on France and had it all mapped out in her head, right down to the lush taupe rough-plastered bathroom walls combined with sleek Starck 3 fittings. Sale time at Fired Earth had her hanging about in the Fulham Road shop, tempted to invest in a few dozen square metres of bargain terracotta for future flooring. And yet … recently the property pages had been featuring more and more adorable places in Italy, Portugal and Greece until she’d felt her dreams slip and alter. Today they were featuring Spain. It seemed you could still pick up an absolutely darling finca for practically next to nothing.
It was now just possible Clover had selected the wrong language for Elsa to learn. She’d started her at the Bébé France classes the previous autumn because Mary-Jane at Toddle-Tots had gushed on and on about how wonderful it was, how fast they picked it up and how cute her Jakey had been the summer before, happily approaching the patron in the Provençal boulangerie and asking, with complete confidence and no hesitation at all (according to Mary-Jane), for a pain au chocolat. Well he would, wouldn’t he? Clover had bitten back the thought before it escaped out loud, the child spent every blissful summer holiday moment at Mary-Jane’s to-die-for pink-shuttered villa near Avignon. You’d think he’d be bloody well fluent. But with France not now necessarily her sure-fire choice, Clover was having second thoughts. Also Elsa would be learning French when she joined Sophia at St Hilary’s next year. She could, now, be sorting the basics of Spanish or Italian or possibly even Greek instead. Was it too late to change? Would Elsa become hopelessly confused or could four year olds absorb any number of vaguely similar European languages? It was a bit late to do much about Sophia. At seven she was now well grounded in schoolgirl French. If necessary they could find her an after-school tutor for whatever else she needed. Now, sitting in the kitchen of her Richmond Edwardian four-storey semi and sighing over photos of a happy ex-pat family lolling on hammocks in a shady Mallorcan courtyard tendrilled with vines, she wondered if becoming trilingual might yet be a realistic goal for Elsa, obviously bright as she was.
Choices, choices, she sighed. Where to buy if not France? Everyone in Spain smiled, everyone in Italy hugged, everyone in France … she couldn’t think what the French did except shrug and say ‘merde’ a lot and hate the British. That wouldn’t be good, would it? Being loathed and resented in your chosen community? And there would have to be a community, beyond the high, pink, vine-clad walls of her lovely garden. The idea of being totally remote, even marooned among glorious fields of sunflowers and lavender, did not appeal at all. No. Clover wanted her girls to be able to frolic in the plaza/piazza/ place of a steep medieval village, happily accepted among a laughing band of local infants. They would become brown and scuffed and tousle-haired and … bilingual. Such a head-start in life.
It was important to share concerns like this with Sean. And Sunday morning (even this one, where they were soon to race around getting ready to go to the big parental lunch) was the only time to pin him down about the children. He worked so hard, was rarely home before eight during the week and often away overnight in some miserable provincial hotel, poor darling. (She firmly refused to question the ‘poor darling’ aspect of it; that stupid fling he’d had, that had been a long time ago now. And it was only a one-off, a silly mistake. She really didn’t think about it any more. And very soon she really would stop checking through his Visa bills and cellphone call list.)
It was possible Sean might not come up with a useful opinion while he was reading the Motoring section of the paper but at least she must try. And there he was, lying on the cream leather Barcelona daybed, wearing a hotel bathrobe purloined from the Lone Star, Barbados, tanned bare ankles crossed and toes (rather unpleasantly hairy ones, in Clover’s opinion) twitching slightly as if he was aware of distant music. She went and perched on the end of the daybed, careful to avoid those unattractive feet.
‘Sean? Darling? Could we talk about Elsa please?’
‘Hmm?’ He lowered the paper slightly, but did not quite take his eyes off it, clearly reluctant to miss the last delectable detail about a Maserati so deliciously upgraded that even Jeremy Clarkson had drooled.
‘Elsa?’ he asked, sounding puzzled.
Clover gave him a tight little smile. ‘Your daughter. The younger one,’ she teased.
‘What’s she done? She’s all right, isn’t she?’
‘Fine. You’d know if she wasn’t, darling. It’s just, I wanted to ask you about languages. Her French.’
Sean snorted. ‘Her French? What about it? Has she had a crap report already? Blee
din’ ’ell, these swanky schools! The kid can barely get her fluffy little head round English yet! What do they want?’
‘No, no, listen!’ He just didn’t listen, that was the big problem. Deep down she suspected it was because his children were girls. He seemed to think they’d more or less bring themselves up, hardly needing any input from him at all apart, obviously, from loads and loads of cash. What was it he’d said when she’d been doing the frantic rounds of schools? Oh yes, ‘So long as they’re cute they’ll do fine. Don’t want the girliness taught out of them, do we?’ Clover hadn’t liked the way he’d ruffled her hair as he said it, as if she was merely some kind of pretty-pretty lame-brain. She did have a degree; though it would have felt churlish to remind Sean of this, seeing as he didn’t.
‘Toddle-Tots don’t do reports,’ she told him. ‘At least, not till the term ends and then only nice, positive things. No, it’s the Bébé France classes. I’m wondering if we should have started her on Spanish instead. She’ll be doing French soon enough when she goes to St Hilary’s.’
‘I suppose Spanish would be handy if she marries a footballer …’ Sean mused, picking up his paper again.
‘Or if she is a footballer,’ Clover countered. Well, you had to fight your corner sometimes.
‘No daughter of mine’s playing footer.’ He laughed. ‘She’d get muscles like a docker.’
Clover said nothing. They were straying from the point and, actually, she privately agreed about the muscles. A woman should have shapely calves, but not legs that looked as if they’d been stuffed with rugby balls. Her own were slender and smooth, toned but not unattractively sinewy. She’d bear that in mind when Sophia started junior tennis. Unless she showed a serious possibility of being Wimbledon material she would not be encouraged to overdo it beyond the level of competently social.
‘It really depends where we buy the new place.’ Clover wanted to chew her nails as she always did when there was a dilemma to be dealt with. She sat firmly on her hands. Her Jessica manicure was only a day old.
‘Ah. That house in the sun you’re always planning for …’ He treated her to a swift smile then picked up the paper again, adding casually, ‘We might have to put that on hold for a bit, darlin’.’ Sean returned to his car fantasies, oblivious to the fact that he had just punched a massive hole through Clover’s personal dream-world.
She hesitated for a stunned moment, turning his simple, careless sentence over in her mind in case it could be changed into something encouraging. It couldn’t. One hand wriggled free from under her thigh and her index fingernail went straight to her mouth; bugger the varnish and £60 of expert shaping.
‘What do you mean?’ she whispered eventually. ‘On hold for how long? I thought we’d very nearly decided …’
An impatient and not encouraging sigh came from behind the paper. He was supposed to reassure her now. He was supposed to give a bright, light laugh and say something along the lines of: ‘Oh it’s nothing, it’s just that I’d organized a little Maldives break for the two of us.’
That might have compensated, a little.
‘If you must know, though there’s no reason why you really need to,’ he said at last, folding the newspaper and slapping it rather emphatically onto the table beside him, ‘if you really want to know, there’s a bit of a work downturn at the moment. It’s a bit tricky flogging mega-bucks hospitality packages to companies that are tightening the corporate belt – and right now more of them are having to do that than we like to see. Doesn’t look good, you see, sweetie. A big business providing lavish jollies for the punters can look too much like it’s squandering the shareholders’ assets.’
‘Oh. Yes I do see. But it’s just a blip, isn’t it? Things will get better?’ she prompted, giving him another chance to patch up her plans.
‘Course they will, princess. They always do, don’t they?’ He grinned at her and then stretched. ‘And anyway, if you’re so dead set on a place in the sun, maybe you could ask your folks for a sub. They should at least be good for a deposit, wouldn’t you say? Nice little nest-egg for their darling daughter? You should get your dad on his own when we go there today. After lunch. Put it to him when he’s had a few.’
Her parents? Clover sat back on her hands, wondering if this suggestion of Sean’s was really so completely off the cuff or whether he’d been thinking about it for a while. She wouldn’t put it past him. And was it really a work downturn as he’d put it? Or had he found something else, something/someone expensive to lavish the credit cards on? You couldn’t, according to her favourite newspaper, run a mistress on next to nothing these days. Women weren’t so desperate as to be grateful for being someone’s second string. Being a bit on the side might be convenient for the ultra-busy (or married) who didn’t want the hassle of a proper relationship, but it seemed it required costly compensation in terms of luxury spa treatments and desirable jewellery.
‘I don’t know, Sean. No, really, I wouldn’t ask them. I mean, they already gave us lots of money when we got married, so we could buy this place. I’m not even sure they’ve got any left these days.’ If the run-down state of the kitchen at Holbrook House was anything to go by, her parents were practically stony. The bathrooms could do with more than a bit of paint too. Ripping out and starting again would be more like it. If they’d only let her get her hands on it, she could make it look wonderful, attic to cellar. Just because she’d given up working at Home Comforts when Sophia was born, it didn’t mean she hadn’t kept her eye in, interior-design wise.
Sean laughed. ‘What, Mac and Lottie? Are you kidding? Don’t tell me those royalties don’t still wallop in twice a year! I bet you at any given hour of the day there’s some radio station or other in the world playing old Charisma tracks – and it all adds up. And anyway why not ask them? It’ll all be coming your way one day, won’t it? Yours and Sorrel’s and Ilex’s? What’s a hundred K or so on account to an old rock star? Better for them to see you enjoy it now, surely, than know you’ll be taxed to buggery when they pop their clogs.’
He stretched again and yawned and the robe fell open revealing a broad expanse of tanned chest (thankfully not hairy – so what was the thing with the toes? Was he growing fur from the feet up now he’d hit forty?). It crossed her mind that only a few years ago she wouldn’t have been able to resist reaching across and stroking that gleaming skin. Now she just wanted to tell him to hurry up and go and have his shower: they were due at her parents’ before two. When did that happen? How come all that anywhere-anytime lust had become condensed into occasional fast under-the-duvet duty-couplings in the dark while you hoped you’d keep quiet enough not to wake the children and you wished he’d remembered to take his watch off? Sure, she still fancied him, but where was the romance in it all, these hectic family-driven days? No wonder, Clover thought as she went to drag the girls away from their allotted half-hour on the dreaded PlayStation, no wonder she obsessed about soft furnishings and paint charts. A woman at her early-thirties peak needed somewhere to focus her passion.
It would have to be another whole year now. One last chance for Ilex to get his act together and just bloody propose. Why couldn’t men read minds the way women did? You could talk at them all you liked about the relationship and where it was heading and they’d just look at you with blank incomprehension as if they were underwater and couldn’t hear. Manda had check-in passengers like that at work. Every day there’d be at least one who didn’t understand the concept of a valid passport for travelling abroad. It was how she’d met Ilex. Someone in the group he was travelling with had booked his ski-trip ticket for him and had him down as Alex instead of Ilex. Of course, she couldn’t let him travel without a ticket that matched the name in his passport – it was against the rules. But he’d had trouble understanding the problem, just as they all did. She needed Ilex to be a bit smarter than that or she’d be single and sixty before he got the message. On that day at the airport when they’d first met, she’d been going off duty and had o
ffered him and his baggage a lift back to London but, after some awkward moments sitting in the car outside his flat, she’d had to be the one who suggested they went for a drink somewhere. Talk about slow on the uptake.
Manda rolled over in bed, looked at the date on the clock radio and sighed the sigh of the deeply disappointed. May 12th. Her wedding day. Except that it wasn’t going to be this year. Even yesterday, even ridiculously far too late, with only hours to go, she’d still clutched the dream tight to herself like something too precious to set free. Ilex hadn’t a clue of course. This was Manda’s big, sticky, cream-bun of a secret. It would take a good year to organize the kind of wedding she had in mind so he’d better hurry up and propose. She wanted the full works – the fabulous dress, the village church, the reception at Mac and Lottie’s gorgeous, scrummy house. If she could persuade them to get a grip on that fabulous garden the place would make such a wonderful setting (those vegetables in the long borders would have to go, obviously. What they needed were romantic, cloudy drifts of soft-shaded blooms). There was plenty of room for a marquee on the side lawn and for glorious photos in front of the porch and on the sunken terrace if they could get the little old fountain-thing functioning. And Mac and Lottie would be so glad to do it all for her, she was absolutely certain. Knowing she had no parents alive, no mother to help her with the shopping and choosing (she could almost feel the tears pricking), no father to harrumph jokingly over the expense, they’d surely gladly take on making the day the most specially special for her and their only son. Money, after all, wasn’t important to old hippies. Especially to those who had it.
Her sister Caro had suggested she do the proposing bit herself: ‘Just ask him!’ she’d urged, laughing, as if it was the easiest, most obvious, thing in the world. It was all right for Caro, all happy and secure with her stolid accountant husband and her sweet twin babies. And she was right of course, really, she could ask Ilex, of course she could. Manda knew that. But she wasn’t going to: it wasn’t part of the plan – plus she’d always wonder, forever more, whether he’d ever actually have got round to it if she hadn’t asked him first. There wasn’t to be any suggestion that she’d pushed him into it. And after five years together a lot of people could wonder about that when they suddenly booked that Times engagement announcement.