Mrs Fytton's Country Life (35 page)

Angela Fytton also began to pack. It was quite hard to get her head around proper clothing. Formal attire, daywear, decent
T
-shirts and jeans. But she managed it.

Only for a short while, she told the house, as she closed the door. And then she was in her car and away from all the pleasures of rural life: her garden, her still room, the avocado suite and all those good, good people. She would spend two nights at Joe and Grade's in London before getting her plane and flying to the sun. The first day and evening she would spend with her children. If anything, she thought, was set to remind her of how glad she was to have left London, it was likely to be a day with those two up in town, trying to buy their presents. You paid for your pleasures.

If Ian Fytton thought that Christmas, with everything ready for the departure of his elder children to Australia thereafter, would be a calm affair, he was entirely and very dreadfully, wrong.

When the children came back from seeing their mother in London, they brought with them, as a gift for the household, a pot of Fytton honey. Which Belinda, with uncharacteristic strength, hurled across the kitchen.

'But that was our mother's honey,' they said stoutly, in unison. And reverentially they began cleaning it from the walls.

Her children had informed her that they were expecting Christmas to be a nightmare. A nightmare.

'Shame,' she said. Happily. 'What a shame.'

She made them promise that they would come and visit her in the spring, when they returned from their trip. Of the Bin-bag and their father the news was inconclusive. According to Andrew and Claire, both of them were complete loonies. Binnie was the stepmother from hell. And their father would not have disgraced Mr Barrett of Wimpole Street. Had they an inkling of who he was. But there was not a whisper of disharmony between the pair. Not a whisper. I have failed, she thought despondently, as she checked in her luggage. It will be me alone in that lovely place. Sad she was. So sad. But she brightened up somewhere over the Atlantic. And the reason she brightened up was that she decided, after all, that she would not paint the sewing room a tender shade of lilac. She would leave it, and every other part of that house, exactly as they were when she moved in. A lovely shrine to the past.

On landing she threw her arms around Rosa, who told her she looked well. Which meant fat. And she didn't, she really didn't, care a jot.

'Cook your own bloody turkey,' said his sweet little wife.

So he did. With no great success. And the carving of it, which had once been such a pleasure, was a mucky hell on earth.

On Christmas night, with Belinda lying rigid beside him, he began to pray. He prayed that once his children were gone to the other side of the world, all would be well again. He said this as he laid his weary head next to Belinda's upon their snow-white pillows. And he longed for - oddly - a Gauloise to place between his lips.

'No turkey, no plum pudding,' said Rosa firmly, serving oysters as a first course.

Good, thought Mrs Angela Fytton.
Good.

Part
Three

If man is only a little lower than the angels, then the angels should reform.

mary wilson little

Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary.

Derived from the lights which were then distributed and carried about in procession. The candles of the Purification were said to be an exchange for the lustration of the pagans.
The hallowing of candles upon Candlemas Day. The candles, having been sprinkled with holy water, were lighted and distributed. They were considered to possess a virtue sufficiently powerful to frighten away devils and to be a charm against thunder and lightning.There is a general tradition in most parts of Europe, that inferreth the coldness of succeeding winter from the shining of the sun on Candlemas Day, according to proverbial distich

- Si sol splendescat Maria purificante Major erit
glacies postfestum quamfuit ante.

sir thomas browne

23

January

Husbands are like fires: they go out if left unattended.

zsa zsa gabor

On
6
January, the Feast of Epiphany, Angela's plane arrived back in London. Despite the gruelling flight, which was spent next to a frightened little woman who had never flown before, who spoke almost no English and who wished to communicate her entire life story, a triple combination designed to lay even the most stout-hearted traveller low, she felt elated. It had been a very good Christmas.

It was also the day for the departure of Andrew and Claire, from the same airport. Amazing how easy it was to organize your life if you only had your life to organize. She just flew in from Buenos Aires, telephoned Sammy to make sure that the hens were well and that the ale had not blown her roof off, stowed her bags and cases away in left luggage, bought an English newspaper, a
pain au chocolat
and a cappuccino, and waited. It was quite simple and it was extremely pleasurable. All around her bubbled the chaos of people trying to make sense of a travelling world, and she sat, quiet at the centre of it all, reading about celebrity New Year resolutions and sipping something warm and not-quite-coffee from a polystyrene cup and picking up crumbs with her fingers. After she had done her maternal duty, she would leave the newspaper on the chair, the cup on the table, collect her luggage, collect her car and drive off to Somerset, free as air.

The party of four arrived, Andrew and Claire almost dancing with excitement - more animated than she had ever seen them - and hanging back, behind the trolley with its rucksacks and bags, was Ian, clutching a wide-eyed, sticky-chinned child to his chest. As sweet and blonde and angelic a child as any toddler could be.

Angela tried very hard not to meet that child's eye as it looked so adoringly at its father.

Ian looked harassed as he tried to negotiate the trolley, the child and himself in between the travelling crowds.

'Help your father
’
said
Angela to her children, command
ingly. To her amazement, they did. 'And this is Tristan
’
she said, tapping the baby's chin.

The baby stared at her. She stared back at him.

'I think he needs changing
’
said Ian.

‘I
think so too
’
said Angela.

Ian looked at her.

'Good luck
’
said Angela.

'Oh
’
said Ian.

She went over to her own children and left Ian to it. Buzzing around her head was the thought that one day by her actions, if successful, that baby would be fatherless. Followed, with more bravado than she really felt, by
c'est la guerre.

'Oh
’
she said to her own reasonably happy offspring, 'Buenos Aires was great. I must tell you . . .' And then she noticed that Claire had her Walkman headphones in and Andrew was already talking to a girl with backpack. Never mind, never mind, at least they were happy.

And the curious thing was, as she watched her ex-husband stumbling off to find the changing room, the wide-eyed baby staring at her over his departing shoulder, and hoping she had won, she was not. Happy. Nor unhappy. If this was victory, she thought, you could keep it for the generals.

Bad, thought Mrs Angela Fytton. Very, very
bad.

When he came back she said, 'If you want to go off I'll stay with them.'

He looked at her gratefully.

She smiled at him as if dispensing much benison. He had obviously been through quite a mill.

'How was Christmas?' she ventured. 'Don't ask
’
he said, shaking his head. 'Just don't ask.' She looked into his eyes as meltingly as she could manage. Then she took his hand in her own and gave it a hearty shake. 'Bye
’
she said. 'Safe home.' That
really
made him wince.

As if in welcome, a pair of pigeons dared the frosty air in front of her as she drove slowly along the Staithe Road. She watched them swoop over the long thatch of the Elliotts' place, its garden littered with toys, its windows papered with children's drawings, a bedraggled Christmas tree lying on its side by the gate. Onward to the Rudges' house, which, this being a Tuesday, was grey and empty, its windows like lifeless eyes, its bare-branched ornamental cherry trees empty of life. Then soar up again to perch upon the proud weather vane of the Tichbornes' house, with an upstairs window open and a lump of bedding hanging out, with the Dorkin girl lying over it and beating it in an extraordinarily lurid manner. To the west and time for one brave
loup de loup
over Sammy Lee's smoking chi
mney and a peck at the thatch. And from there to the church, where the pigeon pair whirled once around the tower before settling momentarily on the naked branch of the ilex in the vicar's garden, cocking their heads at the strumming of a guitar, the sound of an old cowboy love song. Away again to bounce and jounce on Wanda's washing line, which was bare of its usual sludgy-coloured, unapologetically homespun, honest-looking garments, through their garden, with its aroma of some sweet baking. And finally, finally, to hover over the garden of Church Ale House, to whoop and whirl in and out of the depressed-looking cabbage stalks, the purplish, evil-looking pods of dead broad beans, the blackened seed heads of onions, before finally coming to rest on the eaves of her own dear henhouse. She drove through the gate, disturbing the smaller birds feeding on the holly berries, and parked the car under the shelter of the rickety old outhouse.

Home.

She wen
t immediately up to her hives. ‘I’
m back
’
she said to their sleeping silence. She passed the closed well, the empty herb beds, the bare tree and the hedges - only the yews rustled with any faint sound at all. She looked up at the hill, down at the flat spreading Levels surrounding it, where not a cow or a sheep or a pig stirred in the frosty cold, and back to her own back door.

Bash, went her hip.

Home.

The house smelled sweet - pregnant with yeast from the ale, which sat ripening and undisturbed. The jars of honey blinked their golden eyes, the beetroots glowed like stained-glass windows, the green vegetables like treasures from the deeps of the sea, and the pickled eggs strange and sensual, pressing their smooth whiteness up against the glass of the kilners. Besides all these - something she had nearly forgotten - sat three small glass jars. Her decoctions of Wanda's herbs.

Did she need to recover from a hangover? Did she need to lose weight?

Did she need a little drop of something to make her feel sexy?

The answer to all of these was no.

Maybe she used to need all three, but not any more. She pushed them to the back of the shelves, to gather dust for eternity. Then, like an animal returning to her burrow, she touched everything as if to put her stamp upon it all again. 'Mine
’
she said to the silent stillness.
'Mine
’

Then she turned on the immersion heater for a bath. And as she lay there, running her fingertips over the pale green velvet, she remembered Claire and Andrew's tales of Binnie and her woes. And smiled to herself. Australia. They'd be back a great deal sooner than planned, those two. You know your own children. She gave them about four weeks of youth hostels, and the general discomfort that goes with being on the road, before returning. Claire, at passport control, finally removing the Walkman headphones, talked enthusiastically about the beaches and the swimming and the barbies they would enjoy. Andrew, eyes still half on the girl with backpack (so like his father, thought Angela), talked with macho confidence about the scuba diving and the surfing parties he intended to enjoy.

They had not quite grasped the fact that two students hitting the road to Oz alone was not quite the same as two teenagers being wooed by their father and their father's new wife on a once-in-a-lifetime, all-expenses-paid, five-star family holiday. But they would. They would.

She smiled to herself as she slipped under the avocado waters of her bath and let the steamy extract of geranium soothe her dreaming skin. You didn't get much of this to the pound in a youth hostel.