Mrs Fytton's Country Life (45 page)

Angela, very close to tears, called after her, 'But what shall I do? It's such a mess.' She felt this was correct both in the physical and the metaphysical.

To which Daphne Blunt shrugged, winced and replaced her hands to her head. 'Just be good yourself. That's all you can do. And redecorate, of course. Start living in the place. It's not a scene in a play, or a book, or a poem, my dear. It's real life. Forwards, not backwards. If there's one thing those women needed like crazy, it was progress.' Her voice was growing very faint. 'Good night
’
she called. 'Good night.' Which came out, roughly, as 'Gntt.'

But one drunk can always translate for another. Angela knew exactly what had been said to her, of course. And she watched her friend go (and sometimes two of them) until she turned the curve in the lane and was out of sight. What had Maria Brydges said? 'Take the good from the past
...
And add the benefices of the modern world?' And Sammy was right. Anything else was play-acting. She was going to have a very big headache in the morning, one way and another. A very big headache. And she felt so alone.

She went back indoors, passed by the kitchen table, once scrubbed and now covered in discarded food and drink, and entered the parlour. Miserable, forlorn, unhappy place. She heard the chimes of St Hilary's clock strike midnight.

Damn, thought Mrs Angela Fytton. Got it wrong. It was something of a new feeling.

And with the foul smell lingering all about her, and wishing very much indeed that she was not so alone at that precise point in the proceedings, she sank down into the velvet chair and burst into tears. Which ceased only momentarily when she thought, for one foolish moment, that she caught the scent of Gauloise cutting through the foul mutton air.

31

Candlemas

I've married a few people I shouldn't have, but haven't we all?

mamie van doren

There's nothing like a good dose of another woman to make a man appreciate his wife.

clare booth luce

Binnie, tear-stained Binnie, had fallen asleep in front of the television, which now showed nothing but a white flicker. Binnie's mother looked at her sleeping daughter and her sleeping grandchild and shook her head. Binnie's mother knew very well the old adage that if you sow the storm you reap the whirlwind. She knew, being a Celt, originally from Pontypridd and therefore more pragmatic than many, that romance was Welsh rain, Scotch mist, Irish dew and English drizzle. It evaporated. Always.

So she prodded her sleeping daughter, who woke up and blinked her eyes and she said to her, 'You must go back home and make the best of it. And get that silly idea that it's easy being single and with a baby and on your own out of your head.'

Binnie blinked again, for this was a complex sentence to deal with when one has just woken up. But she got the gist.

'As husband's go,' said her mother, 'he's a good one.'

Perhaps she was right, thought her daughter. After all, her mother had been married to her father for thirty-three years and they seemed to get on well enough, so she must know something.

'Do you really think so?' she asked.

Her mother nodded.

So Binnie steeled herself. I'll go home tomorrow
’
she said. 'Though if he's such a good one I don't know why he hasn't come for me.' She stroked her little boy's cheek.

Her mother looked at the scene and pursed her lips. 'If you go home and be civil, you can have quite a happy life. You don't, and someone else snaps him up
...
Like you did once.'

Binnie kissed her baby's head. The maternal lips pursed anew. Welsh pragmatism, sprung from the caves of the Celts, told her that unless someone brought home the bacon, you had to go out and get it.

‘I
shall never love him again, Ian
’
said Binnie firmly.

'What's love got to do with it?' said her mother. 'Try affection. It's easier.' She tucked the quilt around her grandchild's sleeping head and then helped her daughter to bed. 'And if you want romance you can always get it from a book, or go to the pictures
...'

So Binnie went off to sleep again, prepared to get up and pack and go back to Wimbledon the next day. Just for now, though, because it was late, she would not ring her husband. Let him stew for another night all alone and wondering up there. He'd be worried out of his skin. And that was
something,
she supposed.

Was there a star in the sky, he wondered, amused, and did it hang over a chicken shed? Here he was, back once more, and the only house in the whole place that had a light on was his ex-wife's. He smiled fondly, for he always doubted she would fit into the country life. Up with the lark and to bed with sun was not the way he remembered life with Angela Fytton. Just for a moment he felt a catch of breath in his chest at the thought of what he had lost. And then another catch in his chest at what he had gained. It was a conundrum. Quite a painful one.

He parked some way back and walked along the glittering road, enjoying the freshness of the air, the sharpness, the silence, the stars, and smoking his Gauloise, inhaling both its scent and the scent of the crackling night. So what if he had crept off last time? This time he would knock on the door -despite its being midnight - and ask if he could come in and be welcome in the warm-looking kitchen or the inviting sitting room which he had glimpsed through the windows last time. And whoever she had been making love to that night could take a walk. He squared his shoulders, ready for the fight. He needed to talk to somebody and his ex-wife was the somebody. Mrs Perfect. Call off your dogs. You have done what you set out to do. My marriage is wrecked. Couldn't you have got things wrong
just once?
So now what? He wanted to ask her.
Now what, superwoman ?

He smiled to himself rather a nasty little smile, rather a nasty little smile tinged, though he would not acknowledge it, with jealousy. He might even surprise her in bed with whoever he was. After all, it was too cold tonight to be doing it under a bloody tree. Even for her. He flapped his arms like a frustrated crow as he surveyed the pleasing sprawl of Church Ale House - all this bucolic bliss and getting everything right down here too. He could not help himself. He had to say it. It's just
not fair.
..

I'll give her bucolic bliss, he thought. He was about to knock when three things happened. One, he smelt the very strong whiff of something scorched and soaked and not at all pleasant. Two, he heard a woman crying. And three, when he pushed at the front door it was open. So he went in. And he tiptoed down the corridor towards the sound. He trod on a glass and broke it, and nearly tripped on some cutlery and a plate. Odd.

He felt strangely moved. He had heard his new wife crying piteously several - no, many - times of late and the sound had eventually not moved him at all. But this touched his heart. This sound was new. This sound was the sound of his ex-wife, Mrs Perfect, weeping copiously. Ian Fytton was surprised to find that his first, his very first, thought was,

Perhaps he has abandoned her
...
Which was oddly cheering, though not very kind. He composed his face as he arrived at the door of the room from which the sounds came and he turned the handle and he went in.

Angela, midst howl, sniffed. There was that faint scent of Gauloise again. Above that other smell, the vile odour of her failure. The scent of the French cigarettes made her want to be held very, very tightly and comforted. It came, she thought woefully, from a land called comfort.

The smell was
nauseating.
He had expected the house to exude the odour of comforting, delicious, desirable things. And not only was the smell foul but the place was fouled too. The inviting little sitting room looked like a scene from a disaster movie, with upended plates of food and glasses of half-finished drinks spilling over the tables and dripping from the mantelshelf. A velvet curtain lay in a puddle of water and an upturned chair, its covering soaking wet, was legs up on its side. Above all this, strung around the room, pegged from a washing line, hung scorched-looking tapers, blackened, bent and forlorn. He wondered if it was the new rural drug scene. It had an air of old hippiedom about it, with all candles hung about and bunches of leaves suspended from the beams. Dope could sometimes smell a bit ripe, but this
..
. Perhaps it was Satanic? Jesus, not his Angela! What had he done? His ex-wife, face buried in her hands, did not look at all like a woman who had embraced either dope or the devil. He approached, very quietly, unsure what to do with the weeping woman who had once been his mate.

'Angi
e?' he said softly.

She looked up.

'Angie?' he said again, approaching her now as if she were some sort of lunatic animal in pain. He held out his hand. 'Angie?'

She focused. Her crying ceased. And then began again, with renewed vigour. 'I am such a failure
’
she said over and over again. 'And don't call me
Angie
’

But Ian Fytton took heart. For what he saw was that his ex-wife was - to put it kindly - not entirely sober. She reached out a feeble hand and clutched his. She was languorous in her misery. Soft and pliant, temptingly vulnerable. Which gave him, the ex-husband in question, a certain frisson.

He sat beside her, keeping hold of her hand, feeling strong. And he asked her to explain. She produced a series of sounds and gulps and cries and peculiar incantations which told him nothing. And she clung to him, smelling of something beery and smoky and hot, making a fairly reasonable stab at accusations of his abandonment.

'I did come
’
he said, stroking her hair. 'I did come, once before.' Indignation rose in his breast. 'But you were having it off with someone in the garden.' Two could play at the game of accusation, after all.

'I most certainly was not
’
said his ex-wife, with a surprisingly clear verbal rally.

'You most certainly were
’
he said. 'You were up against that big tree out there and you were really going at it
...'

He spoke with such conviction that Angela began to wonder if she
had
forgotten a moment like that. She attempted to call her muddled, fuddled brain to order. She began to feel quite bucked. Maybe she had. Good, she thought vaguely. Good.

'You were wearing pink
’
he said. 'Not a lot of it and it was certainly a chilly night. You sounded, from what I heard, quite warm enough
...'

She remembered. She had been making the ale. That was all. She was innocent. Nevertheless, there was something in his tone of voice that made her disinclined to enlighten him. You can stew, you bastard, was what she actually thought, but even in her cups she knew better than to come right out with it.

'I wanted to discuss our children
’
he said righteously, 'but it was hardly the moment, given what you were up to.' He looked stern. She liked that. Stern. And then a very serious and wonderful thought occurred to her which she just could not keep in.

'Were you jealous?' she said.

'Yes
’
he said.

They both stared at each other, very surprised.

And then she realized, as someone in their cups can sometimes realize a profound and difficult truth very easily, that she was both glad that he was here and sorry that he had come. That she had much to give up as well as much to share. And that this was the moment of no return. Synthesis. Reunification, she thought. All I have dreamed of, she thought. And then, for some extraordinary reason, she remembered Berlin.

'Look where reunification got them
’
she said.

'Who?'
said Ian.

'The East Germans
’
she said. 'Of course.'

‘I
take your point
’
he said carefully. If she wanted to discuss politics, then why not? If she didn't, then he had an overwhelming urge to carry her off to bed. 'In what way the East Germans?' he asked.

'All that glisters is not gold
’
she said. 'Curate's egg. Good in parts.' She put her arms around his neck. 'You give up as much as you gain.'

'In Berlin?' he said, hoping he was still on the right track.