The Country Life Page 13

  ‘Shall I take them inside?’ I said to Mr Madden.

  ‘No, no,’ he replied. ‘Just sit down, why don’t you?’

  I sensed the mildest irritation in his reply, and had an indistinct memory of annoying him before with a similar display of keenness. Searching for this incident, the recollection of Pamela’s unfortunate remarks concerning my feelings for Mr Madden – overheard from the cottage garden – returned forcefully to me instead. I snatched my hands away from the table and held them trembling behind my back. I felt myself dangerously capable of directing some obscenity, or even a punch or kick, at Mr Madden, merely to prove my lack of fondness for him. I sat down again; and when I saw the look of affront on Caroline’s face felt my situation to be rather miserable. Caroline evidently thought it inappropriate that I, a paid domestic, should sit with her, the daughter of the house, while its owners were scurrying about in the effort to serve us. Mr Madden had, however, spoken; and with the question of my fancy already so publicized, I was not about to confirm it in full view of witnesses by pestering him further.

  ‘What do you do, Caroline?’ I sociably enquired instead. My comment had been automatic, an embarrassed reflex, and I was rewarded for my heedlessness by a glacial stare.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Caroline eventually replied.

  ‘I was asking whether you worked,’ I hastily amended. This sounded in some way rude. ‘Or whether…’ For some reason I could think of no alternative, and was compelled to trail off.

  ‘I am a housewife.’

  My lips formed the reply ‘Oh’, but my voice failed to follow it through, leaving us in silence.

  ‘You disapprove of that, do you?’ said Caroline. ‘Are you one of these feminists?’

  ‘Well,’ I began. My skin was now in torment, and I wished that I had been in a position to ask Mr Madden to hoist the umbrella.

  ‘I personally don’t feel the slightest need to compete with my husband,’ continued Caroline. ‘I am not insecure. Were we desperately short of money, then that would perhaps be different. Of course I would do everything I could, but I would regard it as a misfortune. It would be embarrassing for my friends, and above all for Derek. As it is we are very comfortable.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, placing one hand surreptitiously upon my cheek.

  ‘There is a woman, for example, in our village,’ said Caroline, entrenching herself deeper in her chair, ‘who has been driven by necessity to take a job in some kind of shop, ladies’ fashions I believe, in Tonbridge. She used to live in the Rectory with her husband, but then he walked out on her, ran off with his secretary or somesuch, and she had to go it alone. Sold the house, put the children in the local school.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ I said, sympathetically.

  ‘We’ve all tried our best to support her, but it is difficult. At one point, Derek and I thought we might buy the Rectory from her to sort of help her out, but she had it on at such a ridiculous price and wouldn’t consider selling it for less, even to friends. Personally, I think she should have moved right away from the village. We all used to knock about together, you see, but it’s harder to invite a single woman to things, and she obviously isn’t entertaining any more. I mean that in both senses of the word.’ She smiled, surprised at her own unintended cleverness. ‘She’s so down these days that one ends up just having her to supper in the kitchen, lest she bursts into tears or something. Some of the wives say they won’t even have her in the house any more because she gets very aggressive with the men after she’s had a drink or two. And of course the children have turned into savages at that dreadful school. The others don’t want to play with them.’

  ‘Poor woman!’ I cried, my own problems for the time being forgotten.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Caroline after a pause. ‘But you shouldn’t feel too sorry for her. Things could have gone very differently if she had acted with a little grace. I’m afraid to say that she has behaved – inappropriately. Working in a shop!’ She shook her head. ‘One or two of the wives went in, not realizing, of course, and said it was quite dreadful when she came from behind the counter. Doing the hard sell, you know.’

  ‘Surely it’s not her fault if her husband left her?’ I objected. ‘What else could she have done?’

  ‘Well, whose fault could it be?’ said Caroline, amazed. ‘She can’t have been doing her duty to him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There are certain things,’ said she mysteriously, ‘that a woman is expected to do for her husband. You might not always feel like it. But you do it. I don’t think Miriam quite saw it like that. She used to say as much. It’s no wonder, really, that he went elsewhere in the end.’

  I was quite shocked by Caroline’s remarks, and by the assurance with which she made them. The fact that her sympathies lay so far from my own was perhaps to be expected, given the evident differences between us; but it was the confidence of her views rather than their substance which disturbed me. It surprised me to feel a strong and in some way reciprocal identification with Miriam, as if we were two lighthouses telegraphing flashes of sympathy to one another across a dark and treacherous sea. This identification did not please me. It suggested that Miriam and I belonged to some form of minority, with its attendant dangers of exclusion and victimization.

  ‘Martin!’ called Caroline suddenly. ‘Don’t just go off! We’re about to have lunch.’

  During our conversation, Martin had been edging his wheelchair further and further away from the table. So subtly had he moved that I had not really been aware of it; but when I looked round, I saw that he had materialized beside a far-off flower bed. He was throwing a stick for Roy, who jogged slowly off to retrieve it, his black belly heaving. He did not return smartly to the table on Caroline’s orders, but rather affected not to have heard her, and once Roy had been dispatched seemed engrossed by his inspection of a small bush. To my dismay, all at once Caroline dislodged herself violently from her seat and rose in such precipitate anger that the entire doll’s arrangement of table and chairs lurched as she thrashed among them, seeking an exit. She displaced an obstructing chair with one powerful hand, and stormed across the grass towards the inadvertent Martin, whose neck seemed visibly to bristle at her approach behind him. With alarming speed she reached him and, disengaging the brake with her foot, whirled him around so that his hair positively flew and began to propel him back towards the table. I could see her mouth moving, although I could not hear what she was saying.

  ‘Now just stay here!’ she panted, bringing him to an abrupt halt at the table and slamming down the brake with her foot. Martin looked so fragile beside her, and so crumpled by his brutal journey, that I genuinely feared for his health; but it was not a good time to be making solicitous enquiries, which would undoubtedly be taken as a form of insurrection by our general. ‘You’ve got all of us running around after you in this heat!’ she exclaimed, suitably glistening and red-faced. ‘You can’t bear not to have all the attention, can you? You can’t bear the fact that other people can sit and have a perfectly nice conversation without your help.’ I was flattered, but not reassured, by this. ‘No, you’ve got to make everyone stop what they’re doing and give all their attention to you. You can’t bear it if—’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Martin, putting his large hands over his ears.

  ‘No I won’t shut up!’ shrilled Caroline. ‘How dare you speak to me like that? I’ll tell Mummy—’

  ‘Just shut up!’ shrieked Martin, his small body puffing like a pair of bellows. ‘You stupid fat cow! Do you have any idea how your fat voice sounds, nya, nya, nya’ – he worked his chin in an admirable imitation – ‘Mummy this, Mummy that, it’s no wonder Dewek’s such a zombie, it must be like living with a fucking pneumatic drill!’

  ‘MUMMY!’ hollered Caroline in panic, her mouth opened so wide that I could see her pink and trilling tonsils, ‘MUMMY!’

  ‘Da-da-da-da,’ said Martin, apparently drilling, but in fact sounding, more menacingly, like
a machine-gun. ‘Da-da-da-da.’

  ‘JUST STOP IT!’ she roared, her body writhing.

  ‘What on earth is going on out here?’ said Pamela, arriving at the scene with the accuracy and effect of a missile, bringing a sudden and deathly silence. ‘What can you possibly be thinking of, making all this noise?’

  She pushed her way through to the table and stood, to my dismay, glowering at me, hands on her hips. I shrugged and looked at Caroline.

  ‘He’s doing it again!’ moaned Caroline. Her face was a wreck of emotion, awash with tears. I felt rather sorry for her. ‘He’s said the most awful things!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Martin.’ Pamela put her hand to her forehead. Caroline cried out again in fresh agony. ‘Get a grip on yourself, Caroline, for Heaven’s sake. What must Stella think?’

  All eyes turned to me. At that moment, there was a jostling around my legs beneath the table, and something wet and viscous impressed itself on my knee. I gave a yelp of horror and looked down to see Roy’s dripping muzzle nosing between my thighs.

  ‘If you two can’t get on, then we shall just have to stop doing things as a family. Do you hear? I won’t have it! I won’t!’

  I forced my thighs together so powerfully that Roy’s head jerked back and impacted with a thud on the underside of the table. I wiped the damp flesh of my leg surreptitiously with my hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled Martin, magnanimously.

  ‘Caroline?’

  ‘Well, I really don’t see why I should apologize, when—’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Martin.

  ‘Martin! I’m bloody well warning you! One more word! Caroline, get on and apologize.’

  ‘Mummy.’

  ‘Do it, or you’re going home.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry for this,’ said Caroline, apparently to all of us. Martyred tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘Just you wait. You’ve spoilt everything. This was supposed to be a wonderful day, and now it’s all been spoilt.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Pamela briskly.

  ‘It’s not nonsense!’ wailed Caroline, stamping her foot upon the grass. ‘Oh, you’re all so awful, I don’t see why I should tell you anyway! I’m just going to go home!’

  ‘Tell us what, darling?’ said Pamela, in a more conciliatory tone.

  Now that she had recouped some sympathy, Caroline struck an attitude at once sullen and composed, her head hung low.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you all,’ she said, generously including me, ‘that Derek and I are going to have a baby.’

  Pamela shrieked so loudly that I started from my chair, thinking her to be in pain.

  ‘My darling girl!’ she cried, flinging her arms around Caroline. Even in that moment of high emotion, I could not help noticing how slim, eager Pamela looked more like Caroline’s daughter than her mother. ‘Oh, well done you! Oh, how absolutely wonderful!’

  Thus deluged by appreciation, but still not wanting her injury to be forgotten, Caroline was faced by the difficult task of appearing pleased and hurt at the same time: she achieved this with an attitude of weary vindication, like a plaintiff emerging from a courtroom to a cheering crowd after a long but successful fight against injustice.

  ‘Oh, where’s Daddy? Piers! Piers! Come out here!’ called Pamela. ‘I’m delighted, darling! Oh look, I’m crying now.’ Pamela swiped at one or two crystal beads about her eyes. ‘What marvellous news.’

  You may think me horribly small-minded, but the fact that Caroline had avoided – albeit in style – making her apology to Martin preyed upon my mind. I found myself watching her, in much the same way as she had observed me earlier, and was rather gratified to see her grow self-conscious beneath my gaze. She turned her head this way and that, and once even placed her hands across her belly and made rubbing motions, as one would rub a lamp to conjure a genie.

  ‘Martin?’ she said finally. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say?’

  I was most interested by this development, it being evident to me that Caroline had vowed, as far as she was able, to resist giving any further attention to Martin by eliciting his response to her news. A confrontation would undoubtedly ensue, and Caroline, I saw, had wanted to capitalize on her current sainthood by being seen not to provoke one. She had, however, failed in this resolution, thus proving, to my mind, both that her feelings for Martin were deep and complex, and, perhaps consequently, that she cared more for his opinion than for that of anyone else.

  ‘I’m very pleased for you both,’ said Martin, quite the gentleman.

  ‘You don’t sound it,’ snapped Caroline; giving me, at least, the satisfaction of believing that my diagnosis had been correct.

  ‘It’s great news,’ said I, heroically. ‘I’m sure you’ll make an excellent mother.’

  ‘Thank you, Stella,’ Caroline replied, nonetheless making it disdainfully clear that her ability at motherhood had never been in doubt.

  ‘Golly!’ said Piers, whom Pamela had by now retrieved from the house. He kissed Caroline on the cheek, smiling so hard that the rest of his features retired in defeat. ‘Well done, Caro!’

  ‘Isn’t it great?’ beamed Pamela. ‘Goodness, we haven’t even asked you when it’s due to land!’

  ‘February,’ blushed Caroline.

  ‘Ah!’ cried Pamela and Piers, in unison.

  ‘I was born in February,’ said I. I had not really considered what I hoped to gain by this announcement, but the fact that I knew Caroline so little made any other kind of contribution difficult. As a coincidence it was not, admittedly, much; and it struck me that by promulgating myself as an advertisement for a February birth, I could be seen to be issuing a threat rather than a consolation. ‘It’s a good month,’ I continued, as the others seemed rather nonplussed. ‘You don’t get depressed after Christmas because you know there are more presents on the way.’

  ‘True, true,’ mused Mr Madden.

  ‘Right!’ said Pamela. ‘Shall we all drink to Caroline’s baby? Has everybody got a glass?’

  ‘And Derek’s,’ pouted Caroline. ‘It’s his baby just as much as it is mine.’

  ‘Sorry, darling. Caroline and Derek’s baby. Everyone got something to drink? Caroline?’

  ‘I’m not drinking,’ said Caroline bashfully, her hand on her stomach again.

  We raised our glasses, which had become warm in the sun. Afterwards, nobody seemed to have very much to say. The congratulations having been exhausted, still it seemed rude to change the subject.

  ‘I think I’ll bring out the lunch,’ said Mr Madden finally.

  ‘Oh, would you?’ said Pamela. ‘You are a dear. Have you thought of any names, darling? I might be able to suggest one or two if you’re stuck.’

  ‘We thought we’d call it Hugh if it was a boy,’ said Caroline. I was perplexed, thinking her to have said ‘you’. It seemed to me a confusingly renegade feminist stand, considering Caroline’s earlier remarks. ‘If it’s a girl we’ll probably call her after Derek’s mother. Margaret.’

  ‘That’s rather an elderly name for a little girl, isn’t it?’ said Pamela, after a pause. ‘Don’t you think?’ she coaxed, when Caroline did not answer.

  ‘Obviously we don’t,’ Caroline coolly replied, ‘otherwise we wouldn’t have chosen it.’

  Tension had entered the scene stealthily and without warning. I wondered if Pamela was offended that the baby was not going to be named for her, and then thought that perhaps Derek’s mother had died.

  ‘Well, Maggie will be delighted, anyway,’ said Pamela grimly. Derek’s mother was evidently still with us. ‘Have you told her? About the baby, I mean?’

  Caroline hesitated, which of course made what she said next sound like a lie, although whether this was deliberate or not I could not tell.

  ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘We thought we’d pop down to Hastings this evening.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Pamela, nodding energetically. ‘Piers!’ she called to Mr Madden, who was by now making his laboured progress back acr
oss the lawn towards us. ‘You couldn’t be a darling and put up the umbrella, could you? It’s utterly scorching out here.’

  Mr Madden nodded heavily and, depositing the tray upon the grass, turned obediently on his heel. I was pleased by this news, for I had been driven by now to place a hand over either cheek, which I was concerned was giving an impression of theatrical dismay. Martin had been so quiet that I had assumed him to be asleep, but when I glanced at him I saw that his eyes were wide open. I had the feeling that he had been staring at me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said, all at once remembering my role in this family drama. ‘Do you want a hat or something?’

  Martin shook his head.

  ‘Are you overheating, darling?’ intervened Pamela. ‘Daddy will have the umbrella up in a minute.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Martin impatiently. A look of resentment was fired off at me. I gathered that Martin, contrary to Caroline’s theories, disliked having attention directed towards him.

  ‘Goodness,’ said Pamela, looking at her watch. ‘You’re due at the centre any minute. We’d better get on with lunch.’

  The mention of the centre naturally brought the driving issue once more to the foreground, and I wondered if, with the element of change Caroline’s announcement had introduced, Pamela’s offer to drive Martin herself would still stand. I had a discomfiting sense of having let go of the situation somewhat. I could not remember any of my plans for negotiating the difficulty, and indeed felt that it had regained all of its former complexity and more. Like a child trying to recall how to tie its shoelaces, I found it hard to believe that I had ever mastered the method of this particular deception, having now forgotten so completely how to do so. Were Pamela to ask me now to drive, I would, I knew, undo myself utterly.

  ‘Stella, are you ready to shoot off with him as soon as lunch is over?’ said Pamela.