Mrs Fytton's Country Life (17 page)

'Have some water,' said Ian, quite affectionately..

It was at that point she realized she must be careful. If she said such things they would put her in a home and freeze her assets. So she just smiled sweetly and said that she hoped her children would continue to call her home theirs. But in Somerset. Non negotiable.
A fait accompli.

Ian, pouring her water, said, very quietly, 'And whatever happened to Women's Liberation - all your ideas of equality?
The Times's
top
100
companies without a woman chairperson among them,' he mimicked.

She was stung. 'Whatever happened to yours?'

'Oh,
purleez,'
said Claire.

So Angela contented herself with saying, 'Women's rights have done well enough. Not brilliantly, but well enough. You can legislate for those. But Women's
Liberation
comes from within. This will be liberation. Free to do whatever I like within the annals of time without feeling guilty.' She slumped a bit then. Knocking out a sentence as complicated as that took a huge effort in your cups. She wasn't entirely sure it contained a subject and predicate. She regrouped. 'Anyway, we've been let down, we mothers with children -'

'Mothers usually do have children,' said Ian, half amused again. 'It's one of the qualifications.'

'Oh, ha ha,' she said. 'Anyway - it has let us down.'

She raised her glass to the unsmiling stare of Andrew, the rolling eyes of Claire, leaned back luxuriously and sighed. 'And I am also a dumped wife. And you have got away with it, Ian Fytton. New home, new wife, new baby
...'

He had the grace to look uncomfortable, which was something, she supposed. Personally she didn't feel uncomfortable, she felt heartbroken and enraged.

'In olden times if a
woman
willingly committed adultery she was put down a well with a large stone around her neck. Or tied to the whipping post at the edge of the town for any passing sadist to chastise. If a
man
committed adultery he was told off - but he couldn't help it because women were lustful creatures. You know, the vampire-vagina, the devil's gateway.
Plus c
a
bloody
change
.
..
If the woman with whom he committed adultery was not willing - that's to say, if he
raped
her -'

This was too much for Andrew, who stood up. 'I'm going to the toilet,' he said.

'Lavatory, dearest,' she said automatically. 'If he
raped
her, she had to pay a fine to her feudal lord for her loss of value

'And?'
said Ian.

She filled her glass very slowly, almost drop by drop. 'Not a lot has changed.'

'You're not down a well or tied to a whipping post.'

Her eyes were brilliant, she knew, because she could feel them moistening. 'No?' she said, far, far too bitterly. 'No?'

'Go on about the house, Mum,' said Claire eventually.

Andrew returned and sat down. He looked very pale. She longed to put her arm round him and say it would be all right. But she couldn't promise that. This was not a grazed knee. It was a decision she had taken entirely for herself, about herself. It was - in a way - a rejection. Her son shrugged at her smile. There was about his mouth that same line of disapproving resistance that lay around Ian's. Very possibly its source was the phrase 'bloody women'. Well, he must learn to paddle his own canoe. He was nineteen, for God's sake.

She smiled at Claire instead. Who glowered. One day, my little bird, she thought, one day you will know."

'Now, shall I go on?'

The skittles nodded, suitably receptive to information.
‘I
arranged this dinner in your honour, mostly,' she said to her ex-husband. 'Because this move of mine will affect you quite a lot.' She said this composedly. Really she wanted to run wildly round the restaurant like a goal-scoring striker, hugging everyone in sight. He looked at her, puzzled.

Firmly retaining the image of herself down a well with a stone round her throat and him above, looking down, smiling, while fondling a toothsome maid, she made it
very
clear. It would affect him because, despite his having remarried and become a new father, he was also father to these two children sitting here. They should have been suspicious at her use of the term
children,
since most of the time nowadays she pleaded with them to grow up. But they were not. This was still fantasy land; still Tintoretto's wife and it will come to nothing.

We'll see about that, she thought. And so saying, looking at the three skittles, she took a deep breath and prepared to roll that ball. But the skittles refused to play. At the mention of new fatherhood Ian suddenly perked up, Church Ale House forgotten. He took from his pocket an envelope of photographs, which he dealt out to Claire and Andrew amid squeals and gruffs of delight. Instead of launching into her moment of glory, Mrs Fytton, genteel daisy, sat through long delighted descriptions of baby Tristan
(Tristan!).
She sat through long delighted reminiscences of Australia and the wedding and how Binnie -

'Who's Binnie?'

'Belinda.' Ian's wife.

'Ah,' she said.
‘I
did not know you called her that.'

Smile, sip, smile, sip.

'Sounds like a plastic rubbish sack.'

In future, she decided, she would think of the woman as a bin-bag. Or a victim of her own gender, she added vaguely.

'I want a wedding like that.' Claire was acting as she once did when stroking someone else's Barbie-at-the-Ball gown.

Binnie, apparently, though already pregnant, looked so great, made everyone laugh, danced the night away
...

Whatever happened to children loathing their stepmothers?

'I used to have a twenty-five-inch waist
’
said Angela to thin air. 'Once. Until very recently actually.'

‘I
can't get into her clothes
’
said Angela's wonderfully soft and rounded daughter.

It was. It was sodding Barbie. Only this time her won-drously soft and rounded daughter did not so much want to own the doll as be it.

'Yes, yes
’
said Angela, whose resentment grew at each new Binnie attribute because she was paying for the meal and because it was supposed to be her evening and because no amount of agony aunt consolations along the lines of 'Try to be glad if your old partner remarries someone your children admire because it helps them' made her feel any better about La Bin-bag and the cherubic Tristan. If she wasn't still sucking up to God following God's major reversal of her fortunes concerning Church Ale House, she might even have wished a six o'clock colic on the babe. That'd sort
all
of them out.

'Yes, yes
’
she interrupted. 'But what about pudding, folks?'

'Remember when we went surfing at dawn and Binnie managed to -'

'LEMON CHEESECAKE sounds good
’
said Angela.

Andrew, no longer pale and no longer in need of the bad painting, said, 'The surfing was really great. Can we go back there, Dad. Can we?'

He sounded, this son of hers, as if he was ten. She felt disgusted and had another glass of wine.

'Or ZAB
AGLIONE
’
she shouted, not managing the word at all well.

They ordered.

'Tristan's cutting his teeth in a very interesting way
’
said Ian, with total seriousness.

Angela waited for Claire to say, 'Euchh! Dad,
PUR-LEEZ,'
but instead, meretricious fruit of her womb, she said 'Really?' and leaned closer to hear.

Even Andrew affected to look interested, though Angela-the-mother knew his mind was still somewhere in the surf of Bondi Beach.

'Aah
’
murmured Claire sweetly, which went through Angela like a knife. 'Aah - how many has he got now, then?'

Ian said, 'Two,' as if it were a double-first from Cambridge.

No one was paying any attention to her. She tested this by saying, 'You both had a full set by the time you were two weeks old.'

Neither of her two little Judases noticed, and the father of Tristan carried on. Apparently the Bin-bag, who was a dentist, thought she could write a paper on the subject.

Angela felt oddly unliberated towards her. * 'She'll be lucky,' she said with tremendous satisfaction, 'if she has time to pick up a pen.'

At which all three of the skittles gave her quite a look.

'Oh, Mum,' said Claire. 'You're so
critical
’

Critical?
she wanted to say.
Critical?
This woman stole my husband and behaved in all kinds of devious ways and you call me
critical?
There, it was out, free at last in her mind, and fuck the sisterhood. 'This thing is bigger than both of us,' the small blonde plastic woman trading under the name of a rubbish sack had had the nerve to tell her. To which Angela had responded shrilly, 'So - we're not talking about my husband's cock, then?' before showing her the door.

'It's not being critical,' she said, as mildly as possible.
‘I
know what it's like to try to get anything done with a little baby. That's
all
I meant

She said no more. Gather ye rosebuds, my children, she thought, sitting back and eyeing them as they rattled away to their father. For soon it will be as ashes in your mouth. A little muddled, she agreed, but her bruised and failing ego felt considerably repaired.

Ian said, very nicely, 'Your mother was very, very good at it all. I'm actually having to be hands-on with this baby. Not like with you.'

Somehow it sounded like a failing on her part.

'Ah
’
said Angela, 'did you miss all the mess, then, darling?' And she picked up Andrew's spoon, dipped it into the zabaglione and gave it to Ian. 'You can catch up now if you like.' And she laughed. It did, indeed, seem a comical idea.

'Mum
’
hissed Andrew. 'Be quiet.' His expression distinctly said he wished his mother was on the moon.

Be quiet,
the boy says. Unable to think beyond his perfidy, she said, 'Andrew, don't speak to me like that.'

She fixed him with her gimlet eye. He fixed her back with his. This was perfidy indeed.
‘I’ll
have you know, my son
’
she said loudly, stabbing at the table top,
‘I
used to wipe your bottom.'

All three pairs of eyes were fixed on her. As indeed were several pairs of eyes from the neighbouring tables. And the waiter's.

In the eighteenth century, she thought, you really would go in fear of Bedlam if your family looked at you like that.

'Oh, Mum
’
said Claire, in a voice that put her in imminent danger of being smacked. 'Oh,
Mum
...'
And she slid Angela's glass away.

Angela promptly slid it back again. That is quite enough of Bondi weddings, the wonders of milk teeth and Belinda Warren's Profession, she decided. No more delays. She rolled that ball.

'So, I'm moving to Somerset
’
she said. . Ian nodded, dipping into his zabaglione. 'You said. When?' 'Three weeks' time.' 'WHAT?'

A strike. A veritable strike. All three stilled their spoons. If she was inclined to smirk it was, she told herself, only fair.

'Well, three and a
half weeks
to be exact.'

'And where are
we
going to go?' asked Claire, all forlorn.

Andrew was staring at his mother as if she
was
the bad painting now. Ian's eyes were fixed, glazed, spoon half to his lips, the zabaglione dripping from it in plops like yellow tears.

It's got four bedrooms
’
she said. 'Five if you count the sewing room. You'd like the sewing room
...'