A Rural Affair (2 page)

It was getting chilly, but I didn’t seem able to put a match to the fire, the one Phil, who got up at six, laid punctiliously
every morning with firelighter, kindling, logs and a drop of coal, for the evening. I stared at the log on top. For me, I
told myself. All for me. And my children. A caring man.

Perhaps I should tell someone? The moment you vocalized these things they became much more real. Tears would flow, it was
well documented. The moment I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hi, Dad, look, Phil’s dead,’ that would be it. Phil wasn’t my
father’s dream son-in-law but he’d nevertheless be shocked and horrified. Drop everything – probably a horse’s reins – and
beetle down from Flampton in his ropy old pick-up to be at my side, still in his breeches and flat cap. But he wouldn’t cry.
He’d sit beside me on the goose-poo sofa and take my hand and not know what to say. And together, dry-eyed, we’d stare glumly
at the carpet. I picked up the phone. Punched out a number.

‘Jennie?’

‘Oh, hi, Poppy. Hang on, I’ll just take the sausages off. Jamie, stop it. No, you cannot have it in front of the telly, come
and sit down – now!’ Then back to me. ‘Sorry. Nightmare day. Frankie had a party here last night and naturally one or two
teenagers were sick. I cleared up most of the puke but at two a.m. I found another on the landing and just bloody hoovered
it. Error. Mrs B beat me to the hoover this morning and now the entire house is giving off the most spectacular pong. Can’t
think why Glade haven’t used it as an air freshener.’

‘Um, Jennie, the thing is, Phil’s dead.’

Things happened quite quickly after that. Within seconds my back door had flown open because Jennie only lived next door.
Within minutes it had flown open again, because Angie, who lives up the road at the manor, had been texted by Jennie, and
in the space of another few minutes a gust of wind heralded the front door flying as Peggy, who lives across the road, heard
from Angie. Beads jangling, cigarette still clasped in her jaws, she’d hurtled up the path, velvet coat flapping.

Angie wept, clasping me to her expensive cashmere breast, my face pressed to her pearls, Chanel wafting up my nose. Jennie
walked round and round, arms tightly folded, saying, ‘I cannot believe it. I
cannot
believe it.’ Peggy helped herself to my Famous Grouse, pouring one for me too, which, when I didn’t drink it, she polished
off as well.

One thing they were all agreed on, though, was that I was in shock.

They agreed again an hour later, when I was still sitting composed and silent and I don’t think particularly white-faced,
whilst they’d been bustling around boiling kettles and checking children and going into huddles and sitting and stroking my
back muttering, ‘Poor
poor
Poppy’.

A bit later on, they wondered, tentatively, if I’d like to be alone? Jennie’s children had been heard making merry hell through
the wall, which she’d banged on a few times, and now there was an ominous silence. She’d texted frantically, but no response.
Angie started muttering in her cut-glass accent about a parish council meeting which, as chairman, she was
supposed
to be addressing, but of course she didn’t
have
to, and Peggy had been seen glancing at her watch on account of
Corrie
. ‘Although Sylvia might have recorded it,’ she murmured into space when no one had moved.

‘Do go,’ I said, suddenly realizing; coming to. ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

Angie and Peggy were already on their feet.

‘Sure?’ said Jennie anxiously, still stroking my back on the sofa.

‘Positive.’

‘You’ll ring if you need me? I’ll come straight round. You can call me at three in the morning if you like.’

‘Thank you.’ I turned to my best friend, her hazel eyes worried in her pretty heart-shaped face. If my eyes were going to
fill, it would have been then. I knew she meant it.

She gave my shoulders another squeeze and then they trooped silently out, shutting the door softly behind them. The cheese
sandwich Angie had made me curled in front of me on the coffee table, the dusk gathered coldly outside the windows, the fire
Peggy had put a match to smouldered in the grate.

I gazed above it to Phil’s cycling medals and trophies on the mantle. Got stiffly to my feet. My legs had gone to sleep beneath
me. It was still early, but I wanted it to be the next day. Not the day my husband died. So I went upstairs, checked on the
children, who were sleeping soundly, and went to bed.

At precisely three in the morning, having stared, dry-eyed, into the darkness for six hours, I sat bolt upright and seized
the phone. Jennie answered immediately. Drowsily, but immediately.

‘The children!’ I wailed. ‘My children won’t have a father!’ Tears fled down my cheeks. ‘They’ll be fatherless – orphans,
practically!’

She was there in the time it took to throw a coat over her nightie, fish in her fruit bowl for my spare key, run down her
path, up mine, and leg it upstairs. She hugged and rocked me as I sobbed and grieved for my children, gasping and spluttering
into her shoulder, choking out incoherent snatches about how their lives would be wrecked, asking her to imagine distorted
futures, scarred psychological profiles, looming criminal tendencies, broken homes of their own and dysfunctional children.
Eventually, when my body had stopped its painful wracking and my hyperbolic ranting had subsided, Jennie sat back and held
me at arm’s length.

‘Except he wasn’t exactly a huge presence in their lives, was he?’ she said quietly. ‘Wasn’t around a lot.’

‘No,’ I admitted with a shaky sob, a corner of my mind rather shocked. ‘But he did love them, Jennie. There’ll still be a
vacuum.’

‘Oh, sure, he
loved
them. He loved Leila too.’

Leila was Jennie’s dog. A crazy Irish terrier who liked nothing more than to accompany Phil on his bike rides, lolloping along
for miles beside him.

‘Yes, he loved Leila,’ I conceded, wiping my eyes on the duvet.

‘Spent a lot of time with her.’

I knew where this was going. ‘More than he did with the children?’

She made a non-committal not-for-me-to-say face: cheeks sucked, eyebrows raised.

‘Not everyone embraces fatherhood,’ I reminded her. ‘Particularly when the children are little.’

She looked me in the eye. ‘No, but he almost resented it. Remember when you used to bundle Clemmie in the back of the car
in the middle of the night and head for the M25 to stop her crying? So Phil could get some sleep?’

‘He worked so hard. Needed his sleep.’

‘True. But at the weekends, did he ever change a nappy? Push a pram?’

‘Once or twice,’ I said, wishing I could remember him doing any of those things. But Phil was dedicated to his work, his bike
and his body in three equal parts; he didn’t like other distractions. We didn’t really see him. It was just me and the children.
Which was how it was going to be now. No change. I shut my eyes. Prayed for courage. Wondered if I could tell her. Eventually
I opened them and took a deep breath.

‘The thing is, Jennie,’ I said in a low voice, ‘I’d fantasized about it.’

‘About what?’

‘About Phil dying.’

‘Yes.’

‘What d’you mean, yes?’

‘Quite normal.’

‘Is it?’ I was shocked.

‘Oh, yes. How did you do it?’

‘I didn’t!’ I gasped.

‘No, but in your dreams.’

‘Oh. Well. I – I had him being hit by falling masonry, at building sites.’

‘Ah, the old scaffolding ruse. A rogue hammer?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘And I had him bitten by a mosquito in Spain.’

‘Nice,’ she said admiringly. ‘I’ve only ever got to dodgy prawns on holiday.’

‘And then I had him poisoned by bleach when I was getting stains off teacups.’

‘I’ve left the bleach
in
the teacups. Poured it out later, naturally.’

‘Really?’ I peered anxiously at her in the gloom. ‘You’ve thought about it too?’

‘Of course! Life would be so much simpler without Toad.’ This, her husband of many years, whom I adored and thought the funniest
man alive – fall-off-your-bar-stool funny – but of whom she despaired.

‘But, Jennie, I’m lying here thinking: perhaps I thought it so much, I made it happen. You know? Maybe … maybe whatever it
is that causes bad luck – a glitch in the solar system, tectonic plates shifting, an elephant stepping on an ant in the Delta
– everything that makes stuff happen, did so because I willed it to. Maybe I actually killed him? I mean, how bizarre was
his death? It was like one of my very own fantasies – could have been my next one!’

‘Don’t be silly, you haven’t got the imagination. Of course it wasn’t you. Did you beetle off to the airport and strap a lump
of piss to a 747?’

‘No, but –’

‘Well, then.’ She paused. ‘Did you pray?’

‘Pray?’

‘Yes, did you get down on your knees and pray to God? Plead for his demise?’

‘Of course not.’ I was startled. I felt my eyes widen in the darkness. ‘Why, have you?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Jennie sniffed. She sat up straight and shook back her dark curls defiantly. ‘At the foot of the bed like Christopher
Robin. Eyes tightly shut. Doesn’t mean I’d
do
it, Poppy. But that time he wrote off two cars in one week, let the bath overflow through the ceiling into the new kitchen,
came back pissed from the office party and told Brian Cunningham on the train that his wife was having it off with our builder,
then used Jamie’s tracing paper from his geography project, on which he’d laboriously traced the Great Lakes, to wipe his
bum, that night I got down on my knees and asked God for deliverance. I did have a nervous moment when he crashed the quad
bike a few weeks later, remembering my crash-and-burn plea, but we’re only human, Poppy. We can’t make these things happen.
Did you imagine the funeral?’

I stared at her, horrified. ‘Yes,’ I whispered finally.

‘I do that too.’ She drew her knees up chummily. Hugged them to her chest. ‘What did you think you’d wear?’

‘That Whistles skirt with the kick pleat and my good wool jacket from Hobbs.’

‘Over your grey silk shirt?’

‘I thought a cami.’

She made a face. ‘Bit louche.’

‘With the jacket done up?’

‘Oh, OK.’ She nodded; looked thoughtful. ‘I’m going to wear my Country Casuals dog-tooth number to Toad’s. Elegant, yet restrained.
Did you flirt?’

‘What, at Phil’s fantasy funeral? No! Did you?’

‘A bit. Only on the way out. Just a few vulnerable glances through tear-stained lashes, and only with Passion-fuelled Pete.’
This, the local farrier, who shod Angie’s horses and was tall, blond and gorgeous. He caused quite a stir whenever his mobile
forge rumbled through the village.

‘Why would Passion-fuelled Pete come to Toad’s funeral?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t worked out the logistics, Poppy.’ She passed a weary hand through her hair, looking tired. ‘Perhaps
he had a horse-drawn hearse?’

‘What, like they do in the East End? Like the Kray brothers?’

‘It’s only a fantasy, for heaven’s sake.’

We sat companionably in silent contemplation for a moment, the only light shining through from the hall, where she’d belted
up the stairs.

‘You’ll have it in the village church, I presume,’ she said at length. ‘I mean, the real one?’

‘I suppose so. Yes. Definitely.’

‘Everyone will come,’ she warned. ‘You know what they’re like round here. Any excuse.’

‘I know.’

‘Sunglasses?’

‘I think so.’

To hide the dry eyes, we both thought.

‘And actually,’ she said slowly, ‘it will be quite ghastly. You will need those glasses. Trust me, you’ll sob.’

‘Really?’ I looked at her anxiously, hoping for grief.

‘Really.’ She regarded me steadily. ‘A human life has been taken here, Poppy. A young man cut down in his prime. And that’s
very sad. You’ll cry. But don’t you go feeling guilty about not feeling or weeping enough. You never wanted to marry that
man, you just slid into it. You made a decent fist of your marriage because he was the father of your children, but let’s
not get carried away here. A few years down the line, you wouldn’t have been with him.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I know so. You’d have flown, Poppy. This way, you’ll just fly a little sooner.’

As she said it, I felt some faint metaphorical itch between my shoulder blades where, one day, I might sprout wings. It was
instantly followed by a lorry load of guilt tumbling on them like rubble, which had me cringing on the bed. We sat there side
by side, Jennie hunched in her old camel coat and hugging her knees, me in my baggy Gap T-shirt, crouched under the duvet.
Through the wall, we could hear Toad, or Dan as I preferred to call him, gently snoring. Not so gently, in fact; he was gaining
momentum. She turned to me, appalled.

‘I didn’t know you could hear him!’

‘Only occasionally.’

‘I’ll put a pillow over his head!’

‘Do not. I don’t mind. Quite like it, actually. Sounds … masculine.’ And automatically I thought how Phil had been quite feminine.
Fastidious. Clean. Two showers a day. Nail brushes. And slept like a mouse.

‘Well, at least there’s no danger of you hearing anything else,’ she remarked darkly.

I didn’t reply. Jennie’s increasing lack of interest in the physical side of her marriage could wait for another night. And
anyway, this wasn’t entirely true. On the odd occasion I had employed ear plugs.

‘Go, Jennie,’ I said quietly, at length.

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’

I nodded; gave her a weak smile. Then she hugged me and slipped away. I listened to her footsteps going down the stairs, the
door closing behind her. I knew she would be back,
first thing. Knew I was blessed with friends like this; knew that moving to this village was the best thing I’d ever done.
That it had been a huge compensation for my marriage, and would now stand me in very good stead. And although my heart was
heavy as I went to the loo and then crawled back to bed – I dreaded my next hurdle, which was telling Clemmie in the morning
– as I lay down and shut my eyes, a part of me was already thinking about how I’d clear the medals from the mantle above the
fire, take down the Tour de France pictures in the loo, sell the rowing machine on e-Bay. Not have to wake up to him doing
press-ups by the bed in the morning. Not have to go downstairs and find a note in the kitchen headed ‘Poppy – Things to Do’.
And part of me was also thinking: no longer, Poppy Shilling. No longer can you say nothing ever happens to you. Finally, something
has gone on in your life.