The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (24 page)

Mitzi comes out, wearing a sailcloth slop, very fitted jeans and a pair of unmuddied Hunters. Two of her offspring follow her, wearing children’s approximations of the same outfit, trailed by a Labrador and a terrier. I quickly realize that neither I nor my children have the wardrobe nor domestic pet necessary for an English coastal retreat.

“I’m so sorry we’re late, it took us longer than expected.”

“Almost four hours, in fact,” adds Joel. It’s started already, that snapping at each other that he and Mitzi engage in.

“What, did you come via Scotland?” says Mitzi.

“No, just via the same old boring time-space continuum that most of us live in.”

“Well, if you’d helped me pack then maybe we’d have been able to leave a bit sooner and not got into all that caravan traffic.”

“I wasn’t the one who said it was going to take two hours.”

“This place is amazing,” I say, turning to Mitzi.

“Isn’t it? Do you want to have a look around?”

“I’d rather have lunch,” mutters Joel.

“Don’t mind him, I think he may be a bit hypoglycemic. Why don’t you get some cereal bars out of my bag for you and
the boys?” I sigh. “You know what they’re like, they need carbs and/or sugar every two hours.”

“So we opened out the hall to make a more imposing entrance and it doubles up as a dining room,” Mitzi begins. “And then of course the kitchen was so poky that we knocked it all through.” We come into an expanse of light that looks out to all that flatness and all that sky.

“Wow, look at this granite,” I say, stroking an island unit that’s as large as most mortals’ kitchens.

“Not granite, 80 percent recycled glass. And the floor you’re standing on is made from old tires, melted down and woven. Stunning, isn’t it?”

“Look at those views,” I say, though in truth my eye is more taken by the twelve-foot-high sliding doors that divide us from the outside. They must have cost a
fortune
. “Was it difficult to get planning for this extension?”

“Yes. It bloody was. The wood for these units is reconstituted Victorian apothecary cupboards and the timber staircase is made from the planks of boats shipwrecked on this very stretch of coast. The Aga’s new, I must confess, but don’t you just adore that baby blue color? Oh, and that glass dividing wall is made from old milk bottles.”

Beyond the hazy gauze of the recycled glass wall is a space filled with slumpy sofas upholstered with mattress ticking around a large glass coffee table.

“It’s just so great to have a utility room with a shower, so when the kids come in from dune jumping or covering themselves in salty mud, they can just wash off here.” The shower alone is bigger than our bathroom. Wellies and waders line the floor, while the coat pegs are laden with carefully coordinating slops and boating anoraks. “Do you want to see your room? Well, rooms.”

I nod. I don’t think I can speak for envy. I don’t want my stuff, I want
this
stuff. I want my life to match, I want a place for everything. Mitzi is so at ease with her wealth, there is a sense of natural entitlement, of the inevitability of it, that belies her own origins or the fact that she has never made any money of her own. Does she not ever think to herself that if she’d married someone else, someone like Joel, she wouldn’t be tossing up between private schools and employing environmental decoration consultants? She’d be living a life that, while comfortable by any normal standards, is not this one.

“Because we want to have lots of other families to stay, we’ve designed this to be like a separate guest wing with its own staircase. Can you see the way that the stairs are slatted to reference the ones that take you below deck on a boat?”

“Yes, I was just thinking that.” I follow her up what I guess would be called the back stairs but are grander than most people’s front ones. They emerge into two interlinked bedrooms and a large bathroom.

“I liked the idea of the bathroom having the best view so guests could luxuriate in the tub soaking up the suds and the landscape.”

“It is lovely.” I am fantasizing about the possibility of being able to take a bath that isn’t tepid and shared with one of my boys and a selection of bath toys that spew mold when squeezed.

“The bath itself is made of recycled brake pads. And the splashback from old plastic bottles.”

“Wow.” I’m distracted by the shelves laden with expensive beauty products, and the two fluffy robes hanging on the door. Mitzi goes to line up the products into matching pairs of conditioner and shampoo, body wash and lotion. They sit obediently equidistant on the shelves. It’s like staying at the sort of expensive boutique hotel we can’t afford. I look out of the window
to see Molyneux and Mahalia flying a kite, while the twins are swooping on the decking on their wooden bikes, all captured by a photographer wielding a very large lens.

“He’s from one of the color supplements,” she explains.

“Oh, right.”

“They’re doing a piece about how it’s possible to make a beautiful retreat that doesn’t cost a fortune or the earth. I thought it would be good publicity.”

“For what?”

“You know I’m thinking of starting my own business. Very chic, environmentally sound products for the home. Ethically produced abroad. I’ve got a domain name and everything, so the piece can point to something when it gets published later on this year.”

I stare out at the photographer, who’s encouraging the children to throw grass cuttings at one another like confetti. “Is he going soon?” I ask. “They’re not going to want pictures of your guests, are they?” As I ask the question I know the answer. There will no doubt be some reference in the article as to how Mitzi and Michael like to “keep an open house so that friends and family can enjoy the house as much as they do.” I look down at my clothes, which are scruffy yet not artfully so. “Do we need to get changed into lovely faded vintage clothes to complete the look?”

“Hmm,” she dissembles.

“And do we need to be very tidy?”

“Don’t be silly, I’d never expect your family to be tidy. They did all the interior shots yesterday. No, today, they want shots of a big family lunch on the terrace…”

“Adorable moppets popping wild blackberries into their mouths, laughing adults passing carafes of wine to one another, big bowls of very simple yet very delicious pasta, type of thing?”

“Blackberries aren’t in season yet.”

“God, Mitzi, how do you do it? How do you manage to decorate a whole other house when I can’t even get around to painting my one and only? And then you also find time to make a rustic feast fit for an interiors magazine.”

She gives an airy wave of her hand as I look out and see that the children are being herded by not only their London nanny, but the back-up au pair, while a portly red-faced woman is laying the wooden table—hewn, I dare say, from the hull of a reclaimed galleon.

We come downstairs to find Michael sneering at Joel’s choice of route out of London and supposedly good-humored joshing at the decrepitude of our car.

“You’re right. They are very environmentally sound,” says Joel to me as we pull out our raggle-taggle collection of possessions from the vehicle only recently referred to by Michael as the sort of car a 20-year-old nursery-school teacher might drive. “Even the conversation is recycled.”

We survive lunch, where we are joined by local friends of theirs, a couple whose female half is a conveniently photogenic African-American, and their heartbreakingly cute daughter. My sons have somehow found themselves wearing stripy toweling beach robes belonging to Mitzi’s family and so look far more appropriate for the photographer’s scene than they did in their Ben 10 T-shirts. The magazine’s writer, stylist and photographer have now retreated, and I thought I heard an exhalation of relief that we are no longer so publicly playing the part of perfection.

“Can I make myself a cup of tea?” I ask Mitzi. “Anyone else?”

“Rooibos?”

“No, the normal stuff.”

I switch on the kettle, only to be interrupted by Michael.

“You must always use fresh water when you boil a kettle,” he explains. “Otherwise you’ll be re-boiling water. And use the Aga—it’s what it’s there for, after all.”

“Okay.” I take the electric kettle off its plinth and carry it toward the Aga.

“Don’t put that kettle on the Aga, you idiot,” he shouts. “You’ll ruin it. Use the stove-top one. Have you never used an Aga before?”

“No, as a matter of fact.” And don’t call me an idiot. “I was joking. Of course I wasn’t going to put the electric kettle on the hotplate. As if.” I spy a chrome kettle with a whistle in its spout and start to fill it.

“Not that tap. This is the drinking-water tap,” he says.

“Fine.” He continues to lurk, watching me. I line up three mugs and am about to plonk a bag in each of them when Michael speaks again.

“Teapot. You must always make tea in a teapot. Can’t you taste the difference between tea made in a mug and tea made in a teapot? It must be made with loose tea and you must always drink it in china cups.” He’s waiting for me to screw up as I grab the teapot with over-sized spots on it. “Mary, you must warm it first.”

This is the longest conversation I’ve ever had with him and it’s about how to make a cup of tea.

“Michael’s very particular about his tea,” says Mitzi, coming into the kitchen. There’s no edge to her voice. She has lectured me before on the importance of not belittling or mocking one’s husband. “And it really does make a difference. You’ve taught me everything there is to know about a good cup of tea,” she says to Michael and then kisses him on his fine Roman nose. I would have poured the kettle of boiling water on my husband’s head by this point, and give brief mental thanks to him for not
hectoring me on how to make a holy cup of tea. Mitzi, on the other hand, is ready with the J-cloth, wiping any spillages I may have made in this tortuous process.

Michael is the sort of man who makes a big deal of beckoning the sommelier in a restaurant and discussing the merits of the various years of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I just hadn’t realized he brought such stringent tastes to tea as well. He sniffs the cup I give him and then takes a small gulp. I expect him to swill it around in his mouth and spit it out into the sink, but it seems to pass muster. I don’t let him see me put soy milk into mine, which I’m sure contravenes the first rule of tea-making. I wonder whether Joel didn’t perhaps have a point that sometimes there is too great a price to pay for a free long weekend. Mitzi picks up my cup of tea and wipes the bottom of it with a cloth before putting it down on the recycled glass work surface.

“Delicious lunch,” I say to Mitzi. “Thank you.”

“Hmm,” she says distractedly. “You don’t think there was too much purple and red in it, that they clashed a bit? You know, aubergines
and
cabbage
and
pomegranate seeds?”

So far our stay is anything other than relaxing. I don’t know whose behavior I’m more worried about, Joel’s or Gabe’s. Rufus, on the other hand, is doing me proud by showing off his math skills and his preternatural understanding of division and multiplication, to which Michael keeps asking whether they teach him that at “state school” and the American asks me whether I’ve ever wondered whether he might be autistic.

Gabe is managing to turn every product of nature into a gun or a sword, much to the horror of the twins. Joel seems to be encouraging him by inventing a game that involves placing pinecones on the wall at the end of the terrace and throwing sticks and stones to knock them off, complete with ka-pow noises.
So much for Ursula not allowing him toy guns as a child. I am scurrying around after all three of them to make sure that we’re not leaving any mess except in the sanctuary of our bedrooms, which now look like a refugee camp for displaced peoples clad entirely in now-faded Boden.

After making another trip upstairs to repatriate our chattels, I go for a poke around the bedrooms in the other wing of the house. Rufus is doing the same, closely monitored by Mahalia.

“You can’t come into Molyneux’s room,” she says to him. “You’ll take out toys and you won’t put them back in the right place.”

“I will,” he says. “I just want to have a little play.”

“Toys are not for playing with,” she declares, giving him a sharp rap to the knuckles as he reaches for the 1950s wooden plane that is hanging artfully from the ceiling.

It’s going to be a long day. I can’t remember what you’re supposed to do in the country. These weekends usually involve some sort of trip to a local wildlife reserve or bird sanctuary, I think, which takes about three hours to marshal. I was brought up on the edge of a town that fell away into fields and a river, but I don’t remember any Enid Blyton
Island of Adventure
type activities, more a crushing boredom and the discovery that time would go much quicker than you’d think if you read books all afternoon.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” I say brightly as the ruddy-faced local retainer picks up one of my son’s Thomas the Tank Engine wellies and removes it to the boot room, where the pair stands at attention amid the serried ranks of outdoor footwear.

“Where?” asks Rufus, now banished from the enchanted kingdom of Mahalia’s and Molyneux’s rooms.

“I don’t know. Just for a walk. To the sea?”

“Can I buy a magazine there?”

“No, there are no shops in the sea.”

“Oh.” His voice falls in disappointment. “Can I play on the Wii instead?”

The non-educational electronic games, I noted earlier, are kept in a small windowless room that was not part of the grand tour of the house nor one of the photographer’s subjects.

“It’s a lovely day.” I can hear the fake exclamation mark in my voice and, worse, my mother’s oft-repeated words. How we hated the inevitable exhortations to make the most of the sunshine by collecting wild plants to put in a flower press, or to go and see if there were any water boatmen or tadpoles in the river. Despite all the talk of how different our children’s generation is to ours, I’m struck by how I have the same conversations with them that I had with my mother: the “But ketchup is made of tomatoes” and the “Chips are made from potatoes.” I feel a shuddery sense that I am being physically possessed by her when I crouch over to blow up a child’s armbands while they’re already wearing them, or stick the parking ticket in my mouth while I reverse into a space in the car park. The strange thing about small boys is they do absolutely what you expect them to do, and have done forever. They jump in muddy puddles, they kick leaves, they put their heads through railings and their hands down trousers. Even the things that I thought unique to them, like the way Rufus began obsessively to collect the postman’s discarded red elastic bands, turns out to be common to all the boys around our way, who attach them like great rubbery snakes to their bikes and scooters.