A Rural Affair (3 page)

He hadn’t always been like that, of course. Phil. Boring, meticulous, health-conscious, dedicated to his own physical well-being
– the supreme vanity, in my book. Hadn’t always wanted a blood-pressure kit for Christmas or a treadmill for his birthday,
hadn’t always been so inward-looking. Once upon a time he’d been quite – I was going to say fun, but I’ll qualify that with
normal. He’d always been around, part of the crowd I’d hung out with in London when I lived in Clapham, but on the edges,
the periphery. Somebody’s brother had known him at university, not Jennie’s because her brother went around with quite a fast
lot, but it could have been Tess’s brother at Durham. Anyway, there he was, at parties, in pubs with us, probably not on the
raucous beery table I was on, but next door with others I vaguely knew but not well. A nice guy. Nice Phil, if you asked.
Oh, yeah, Ben would say, Phil’s a nice guy. Don’t know him that well.

Ben was my boyfriend. Had been for years. Ridiculously, on and off since we were fifteen. In fact it was a bit of a joke.
We’d met at school, gone out for a year, split up for a year, got together in the sixth form, got a bit more serious, split
up for our gap years, and ended up going to the same university together. We hadn’t intended to, but I had to go through clearing
because I hadn’t got my grades and the only place I could read history was at York, where Ben was. I’d worried slightly that
he might think I was following him up there, but he was very cool, totally relaxed, and after the first year we
were back together again, and then for the next three. There were the inevitable jokes about us being a little married couple
and joined at the hip, and girlfriends asked me if I’d ever been out with anyone else, but we shrugged it off. Then in London
we were still together; at parties, concerts, suppers, always Ben and Poppy, Poppy and Ben.

It wasn’t that unusual. It was cosy too. But when Jennie came back to the flat we shared in Lavender Hill one evening, pounding
up three flights of stairs, coat flying, cheeks flaming, like the cat who’d got the cream, crying, ‘I’ve met him! I’ve met
the man I’m going to marry! He’s called Dan and he’s a wine trader and he’s a bit older than me and I love him, I love him
– and oh, my God, I’ve
never
felt like this before. Never!’ – when I looked down into her shiny eyes as she flopped on the sofa, I wondered if I ever
had. Felt that sheer, unadulterated, in-loveness. That euphoria. And when she’d gone to meet Dan for dinner in Chelsea – Ben
and I could only afford the pub – still wrapped up in her happiness, I’d felt a bit flat. A bit jealous. Jennie hadn’t had
a boyfriend for a couple of years, was always bemoaning the fact, but now it seemed she’d not only landed on her feet, but
leaped ahead of me; sprung up the ladder, trumping me with not just a boy next door of our own age, but a proper romantic
hero, who sent flowers to her office, took her on proper dates to restaurants, was older, sophisticated, and what’s more,
adored her.

And then Ben had come round complaining he’d had a shitty day, kicking his shoes off like we
were
married, slumping down in front of the television, while I made us spag bol in the kitchen and while Jennie sat in Tante
Claire, toying with artichokes and blushing prettily. And when I brought supper in to eat on our laps in front of
Friends
, Ben had his
feet up on the sofa, was yawning widely and scratching his balls, and for some reason I flipped; I snapped at him about not
being a bloody waitress. Then a few weeks later, I split up with him.

A guy in my office, in my PR agency, had been flirting with me for months. An attractive guy called Andy: slightly rough around
the edges, not strictly my type, but rather thrilling, very good-looking. Hot. Andy and I had a fling. A very exciting one
in his flat in Docklands. He was only the second man I’d ever been to bed with, and he whisked me off to nightclubs – admittedly
more Brixton Sound than Annabel’s – and we had a laugh. We drank a great deal, smoked in Ronnie Scott’s and I thought I was
living. I think I knew his family were a bit shady but I never met them. And then one night, over dinner, he admired the jewellery
I was wearing; it was quite good because it had been Mum’s. A heavy gold chain and a bangle she’d always worn. And he asked
me why I didn’t accidentally lose them and claim on the insurance? Because it had never occurred to me. But after that – and
it took some time for the penny to drop – one or two other things did. Like the way Andy gambled a lot and spent nearly every
Sunday night playing poker. And a few weeks later we argued about something, and he pushed me. Not hard, but I fell against
the wall. It was enough: we were history.

When I turned around, Ben had gone. To America, it transpired. New York, where his investment bank had transferred him; promotion.
So I contacted him. Asked when he was coming back, if we could meet, have lunch. I wasn’t unduly worried. In fact I was so
casual I think I was even painting my toenails on the stairs in Clapham at the time, phone tucked under my chin. And he’d
said not for a bit, not for a good six months, and anyway, he’d met someone in New
York. Caroline. An American girl, who worked with him. Same age, twenty-four. A banker. They were going to get married.

Hard to describe the body blow felt at the time. The breathlessness. The pain. Ben, who’d always been there. Funny, clever,
beautiful, blond Ben, who of course would be snapped up in New York – would be snapped up in London, but with the accent,
the whole Brit bit, would go down a storm over there – but who loved me. Had always been there for me. Whilst I’d been totally
complacent about him. My Ben.

Jennie had endured much grief and wailing. Much smoking of too many cigarettes, much talk of shelf life, and, eventually,
the months having ticked by, much furtive hiding of wedding plans from me after she admitted she was engaged.

She’d meet me after work, samples of shot-silk organza hidden in her handbag, CDs of suitable music for bridal entrances secreted
about her person. She’d counsel and sympathize and suggest suitable replacements for Ben, but all were unacceptable. All were
second-bests. Will Thompson was nice enough, I supposed, when she told me he fancied me, but he didn’t have Ben’s charm, his
easy manner, and Harry Eastgate was fun too, but, oh I don’t know, Jennie, he worked so hard, was very driven.

‘What about anyone at work?’

‘What, like Andy?’ I said gloomily, sinking into my cider without bothering to pick it up.

When Jennie got married it was fine, because I knew she would, to Dan, who turned out to be everything she described and was
madly in love with her, but then Tess, a sweet girl on the fringe of our group, got engaged, and the following year Daisy,
a really good mate, and then Will Thompson and then
Harry Eastgate. Which pretty much just left me. And I can’t tell you how panicky I felt. I told myself to relax, but I hyperventilated.
I went to spas with girls I knew quite well, but not like Jennie and Daisy, and lay around wrapped in seaweed. I went to the
Canaries to get an early tan for the summer. I even went to see Madame Sheriza – not a fortune-teller, you understand, but
a proper medium, at a reputable institute of psycho-something in South Ken, and she told me I’d meet someone through my sister,
except I didn’t have a sister. Sorry, I meant your brother. Don’t have one of those either. And all the while my eyes roved
around in a crazy fashion at parties, and one day I panic-bought. Those crazy eyes lit on Phil. Phil. On the periphery of
society, tall, pleasant-looking, fair-haired, slim – nice Phil, surely?

‘Oh,
lovely
Phil,’ Tess assured me eagerly. A good friend of her brother’s. Really lovely Phil.

‘
Quite
nice Phil,’ Jennie said, more hesitantly. A bit sort of … bland, maybe? And don’t forget, Tess’s brother read sociology.

But I wasn’t listening. Off I went on dates with him and he was delightful. He hadn’t had a girlfriend for years and feeling,
I think, he was punching above his weight, was pulling out all the stops: taking me to country-house retreats, weekends in
the Cotswolds, even mini-breaks in Paris.

‘Phil’s great!’ I’d squeak, flying round to Jennie and Dan’s in Twickenham, where she’d be reading to her stepdaughter, Frankie,
or getting the supper amid packing cases, poised to move to the country. ‘And he’s mad about me, and yesterday I got roses
at work!’

‘Good. And you’re mad about him?’ She poured me a drink and we perched on a box.

‘Of course.’

‘And does he make you laugh?’

‘Oh –
laugh
. Last night we went to see
Airport
and we couldn’t
stop
laughing!’

‘I think you’ll find that was Gene Wilder making you laugh, but good, Poppy. I’m pleased. Shit. Hang on.’

She’d moved like lightning, legging it up the stairs to meet Frankie, aged four, who’d appeared damp and tearful at the top,
still wetting her bed at night.

I finished my drink and left her to it; went home hugging my happiness. My settled-ness. My all-organized-ness. And if, for
a moment, I had any doubts, they were only really tiny ones, like the way he spoke to waiters. The way he’d said to that young
girl in the bistro: ‘I’d like my salad dressing without vinegar. What would I like my salad dressing without?’

She’d glanced at him, surprised. ‘Vinegar.’

‘That’s it.’ He’d smiled thinly. And she’d smiled too, relieved.

‘I have to do that,’ he’d confided quietly to me when she’d gone. ‘Otherwise they forget, and I can’t abide salad with vinegar.’

Of course not.

A few months later Phil proposed, and things got even better. We went around Peter Jones with our wedding list and discovered,
to our delight, that we had exactly the same taste. We inclined towards the red Le Creuset rather than the blue, the retro
fifties toaster, the antique weighing scales, eschewed a dinner service in favour of hand-painted Portuguese plates, more
conducive to cosy kitchen suppers which we infinitely preferred to dinner parties, decisively ticking our lists attached to
clipboards. Another box ticked. A big one, we felt as we gazed at one another under the bright lights of China and Glass.

We also both agreed we wanted to get out of London.

‘Too frenetic,’ Phil said, frowning thoughtfully, ‘and too …’

‘Superficial,’ I continued and he smiled. Heavens, we were finishing each other’s sentences now.

He favoured Kent, where his mother lived, but I wanted to be near Dad, so we looked at villages in that direction, within
an hour’s commute of town. Eventually we decided, somewhat sheepishly, that Jennie and Dan really had done their homework.
That it was hard to better theirs. Sleepy, idyllic, with two pubs and a duck pond, but a functioning village too, with a shop
and a school.

‘But do you mind?’ I asked her anxiously, when a house at the other end of the village had come up for sale.

‘Mind?’ Jennie shrieked down the phone. ‘Of course I don’t mind, I’d love it!’

She had made one friend, she told me, a lovely girl called Angie, frightfully glam and rich and great fun, but apart from
that was bereft of kindred spirits, and couldn’t think of anything nicer than having her best friend down the road. For moral
support if nothing else, she said grimly, which she needed at the moment, what with dealing with daily tantrums from Frankie,
and Dan’s increasing inability to pass a second-hand car showroom without buying a banger – they were a four-car family at
present – which he drove at speed down the country lanes, parp parping like Toad. Not to mention the dawning realization that
she appeared to be pregnant.

Unfortunately the house at the other end of the village fell through, but then she rang me to say there was one for sale next
door.

‘Bit close?’ I said doubtfully. ‘I mean, for you, not me. I don’t want to – you know, cramp your style?’

‘Trust me, I don’t have a style. Unless you count heartburn that makes me belch mid-sentence, or piles that have driven me
to adopt the post-natal rubber ring two months prematurely. Please come, Poppy, before I change the e in antenatal to a vowel
I regret.’

I shot down to look at the house: a dear little whitewashed cottage, low-slung, as if a giant had sat on the roof, with bulging
walls, a brace of bay windows downstairs – one on either side of the green front door – two more poking out under eaves, a
strip of garden that gave onto farmland at the back and the forest beyond. It was attached to Jennie’s similar cottage on
one side, and next to a sweet terraced row on the other. Inside was a mess: low, poky rooms and an outdated kitchen and bathroom,
but Phil and I decided we could knock through here, throw an RSJ up there, just about have room for an Aga over there. ‘And
lay a stone hallway here,’ he said, indicating six square feet just inside the front door.

‘Yes!’ I yelped, thinking how uncanny it was that I’d been thinking the same. ‘Limestone or slate?’ I asked, hoping for the
latter.

‘Slate, I think,’ he said thoughtfully, and I almost purred.

We moved in, already engaged, and, once the structural work had been done, got to work. We stripped the walls together, sanded
doors, rubbed down floorboards, re-enamelled baths, working every weekend, evenings too, radio blaring so not much chat, whilst
Dan and Jennie, who’d got a team of decorators in to do theirs, popped round to marvel. Jamie was in Jennie’s arms now and
Frankie was still sucking her hair and scowling. Well, of course she was, Jennie said staunchly; her mother might have drunk
too much and run off with an Argentinian polo player, but she was still her mother, for crying out loud. She missed her.

So Phil and I scrubbed and varnished and stippled and dragged, and even found a window of opportunity one Saturday to get
married, arranged with military precision by Phil, both of us agreeing on the music, the number of people, the flowers; as
I say, the only fly in the ointment was the tandem to go away on, the surprise googly, as it were. Another year of tireless
house restoration followed before we sat back on our weary heels and looked at each other, delighted. With the house, at least.
But I do remember, as I regarded Phil that day, spry and fair, putty scraper in hand, slightly narrow lips which didn’t smile
that often, remember looking at him as if I hadn’t seen him for some time, had seen only Designers Guild samples, Farrow and
Ball paint charts, and it being … quite a shock. As if I’d taken a year-long nap. Was this my husband? This man, so free of
jokes and wit and laughter, but full of plans for the garden? This man who had ideas for opening up the inglenook fireplace,
growing roses round an arbour – both romantic notions, I felt – but who made love so quickly and quietly, almost … stealthily?
Who was disinclined to linger in bed afterwards but wanted to get those tulip bulbs in, wanted to get on?