The Country Life Read online

  To return to the scene in the driveway, my suitcases were retrieved, as they had been stowed, by Mr Madden. Meanwhile, Pamela had taken me by the arm – a gesture of appropriation entirely unnecessary, given that her aura of ownership hung like a great canopy over the very air we were breathing – and was leading me towards the front steps of the house.

  ‘Piers likes to batten down the hatches,’ she informed me in a conspiratorial tone. ‘So we’ll leave him to it, shall we?’

  The skin of her bare arm was dry and very warm on mine. I could smell her perfume and beyond that the more general scent of her, which I was dimly aware was arousing muddled feelings of attraction in me. I had a remote sense of some inner derangement, whose faint call I could hear as if momentarily borne on a favourable wind from a great distance.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  I glanced behind me and saw that Mr Madden was indeed occupied with locking the car doors one by one, and, from what I could gather, inspecting the battered bodywork. My suitcases stood obediently side by side behind him on the gravel. My connection with him seemed all at once dreamlike, and he was less familiar to me standing there than he had been minutes earlier in the car.

  ‘Now tell me all about your journey,’ continued Pamela, guiding me through the open front door and into the cool, dark hall. I had an impression of many pictures and mirrors pressed against the walls in the quiet and capacious gloom. Directly ahead a grand polished staircase swept lavishly upwards. The floor shone darkly: it was made, I saw, of great, gleaming flagstones, on which my shoes made a clicking sound as I walked. Pieces of furniture stood frozen in elegant poses about the shadows, slim-ankled chairs with elaborately carved backs, delicate side tables bearing a vase or lamp. A grandfather clock loomed still and straight as a butler at the far end, its throaty, leisurely tick punctuating the cavernous silence. ‘It was so good of you to come at a moment’s notice. I feel terribly guilty. Did you have a dreadful amount to do?’

  At that, I guessed that I was being presented with an opportunity to speak. I opened my mouth; but just then there was a furious sound of scuttling and panting up ahead, and all at once a great black bolt of fur and flesh flew at us from the end of the long hall. Taken by surprise, I shrieked as the animal charged my legs, describing crazed circles of excitement around me before plunging his drooling muzzle directly between my thighs.

  ‘ROY!’ bellowed Pamela. ‘Stop that! Get down!’

  The dog was sniffing at me feverishly, his nose rooted deep in the folds of my skirt. Finally, Pamela yanked him back by the collar and administered a sharp slap to his heaving, glossy side.

  ‘You’re quite disgusting!’ she cried; addressing Roy. ‘Oh, he is vile,’ she said, to me. ‘Did he get gunk all over you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘God, what a madhouse!’ She set off again, still clutching Roy by his collar. His cowed legs slid and scrabbled over the stone floor. ‘You must be wondering what you’ve let yourself in for!’

  We passed the staircase and left the hall through a door to the right. After several twists and turns, and by a manoeuvre about which I was not entirely clear, we entered a large and sunny room which I took to be the kitchen.

  ‘Let’s get the kettle on, shall we?’ said Pamela, releasing Roy, who skulked off into a corner.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘And then you can tell me everything.’

  She left my side and began busying herself at one of the kitchen counters. The whole room was kitted out in old wood, which is why I had been unsure as to whether it was a kitchen at all. A large, old-fashioned stove – the ‘Aga’, as I later came to call it – and a vast wooden dining table were the only clues. Otherwise, it was furnished with the sort of elegant cupboards and dressers which most people put in their formal rooms. I thought I had never seen anything so tasteful.

  ‘What exactly was it you did?’ said Pamela.

  Her grammar, although I am sure it was correct, confused me for a moment.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Before,’ she elaborated. ‘In London.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I worked for a law firm. As a secretary.’ It proved harder to say than I had thought. ‘This is a lovely kitchen. I’ve never seen one like it.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Pamela, who during the above exchange had kept her back to me, turned and gave me that same large smile she had given me earlier. It was a remarkably pleasant smile to receive. She turned away again. ‘And had you always done secretarial work? Or was it a stopgap on the way to something else?’

  I saw that I had got off lightly with Mr Madden, who had asked me practically nothing about myself.

  ‘I’ve done various things, but mostly secretarial work. I didn’t mind it,’ I added, attempting to turn the conversation, ‘but I suppose I just got bored. Which is why I’m here.’

  Pamela laughed, and I must admit that my reply had been skilful.

  ‘Well, you certainly won’t be bored here. Exhausted and infuriated perhaps, but never bored. Although’ – her fine shoulders twitched, as though she had been about to turn around, but had thought better of it – ‘if you’re looking for a social life, you might be out of luck. There’s the village, for what it’s worth, and Buckley isn’t far, but we’re definitely rather short on nightlife around here.’

  I took this as a subtle warning and responded appropriately.

  ‘I won’t mind that,’ I said. ‘One of the reasons I wanted to leave London in the first place was to get away from all of that.’

  ‘And what about boyfriends?’ she continued; quite pleasantly, but still with her back to me, which added to my feeling of being, albeit subtly, interrogated. For the second time – my account of my inglorious secretarial career had been the first – I had the dizzying sense of chasms of treachery yawning open behind me, forbidding retraction. With every step I took on this vertiginous journey, the possibility of going back grew more remote. There was, of course, a feeling of great liberty aroused by the act of severing oneself from the past; but having stripped myself of so much, I had a panicked sense of my own nakedness and the indignities to which it exposed me.

  ‘I’m not seeing anyone at the moment,’ I said, and I think I sounded rather unhappy about it.

  ‘Well, we’ll soon see about that,’ said Pamela, turning around. She had a large teapot in her hands, which she proceeded to bear to the table. ‘Let’s see if we can’t find a nice rich farmer for you.’ She laughed, loudly and spontaneously. I felt I had no choice but to join in. ‘You must be thinking, what’s the old bat on about now? My children are always telling me that I’m far too interfering, but I can’t seem to help it. I just can’t bear to think of lovely young people going to waste.’

  ‘It isn’t always a waste,’ I said, quite sharply. I had realized by now that it was sink or swim with Pamela. ‘Some people just prefer to be on their own.’

  ‘Do they?’ implored Pamela, bringing her eyes – which were an unusual light grey colour, and rather small – to meet mine. We were both seated at the table by this time, the teapot between us. ‘Or do they only say they do, because there isn’t anybody on the scene?’

  ‘Perhaps a bit of both,’ I said politely.

  At that moment Mr Madden entered the room. I was very pleased to see him, concerned as I was that the conversation was straying into deep water. Unfortunately, my pleasure must have announced itself too boldly in my face; for I felt Pamela’s eyes prick me from across the table.

  ‘Darling!’ she said, smile aloft. ‘Is everything shipshape? I’ve been quizzing poor Stella dreadfully, so she’s probably very relieved that you’ve come to rescue her.’

  Mr Madden looked from one to the other of us and back again, an expression of bright vacancy on his rosy face. His response is hard for me to capture, being a sort of grunt or whinny – ‘brrr!’ would best describe it – which I soon learned was his habitual reaction to Pamela’s episodes of sharpness. I myself was mortified by her comme
nt, which penetrated my ears and exited through my cheeks in a matter of seconds with a furious blush.

  ‘Is that tea?’ said Mr Madden, nodding at the teapot.

  ‘There’s plenty left. Go and get yourself a cup,’ said Pamela.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ I interjected, leaping from my chair; Heaven only knows why. It was a sort of reflex action, I suppose. I had begun to feel uncomfortable with my situation, not because it was particularly unpleasant; on the contrary, it was far more pleasant than I had imagined my welcome would be – I had wondered, for example, if I might be put to work immediately on arrival – although of course there is no reason why I should have been able to imagine it accurately. What did I know of the Maddens and their kind? No, by leaping up in that unexpected manner, I was attempting to place myself in the menial role which must, in one way or another, be assigned to me before much more time passed. I suspected, moreover, that when Mr Madden had mentioned tea Pamela had considered asking me to fetch the cup herself. I have a keen instinct for this type of nuance; and even at this early stage had become alerted to the presence of a certain caprice in Pamela’s nature, which suggested that she might not consider the precise articulation of her commands to have undue effect on their speedy and correct enaction.

  ‘That’s very kind!’ she said approvingly.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mr Madden. ‘I’ll get it myself.’

  ‘She may as well learn where things are kept,’ said Pamela meaningfully, fixing him where he stood with her eyes. ‘She’ll feel more at home once she knows her way around.’

  ‘I’m quite happy to do it,’ I said, anxious that my offer was becoming tarnished in this tug-of-war. ‘Just tell me where you keep the cups.’

  ‘In the cupboard directly in front of you,’ said Pamela. ‘That’s the one! That’s right.’

  I opened the cupboard and there indeed were the cups; not, incidentally, aligned in orderly rows, but stacked in a jumble of conflicting shapes and patterns. I selected one painted a cheerful red.

  ‘Thomas been yet?’ said Mr Madden behind me. ‘I want to tell him about that gate. Bloody nuisance.’

  ‘He telephoned earlier. He’s had to drive his wife to the dentist.’ Pamela laughed, and began to speak in a voluble country brogue. ‘Mrs Ma-adde? The wife’s been taken poorly with ‘er tooth. She’s in tumble pain.’

  ‘Well, did he say when he’d be over?’ said Mr Madden.

  ‘Mr Thomas is our gardener,’ said Pamela, turning to me. ‘He’s a very dear old chap, but he does find things like telephones rather difficult. It scares the living daylights out of you. That you, Mrs Ma-adde?’ she said, doing her deafening imitation again, in spite of the scant encouragement she’d received for it. ‘He said he’d be over later, darling, so do stop worrying.’

  We were all seated around the table by this time, Mr Madden with his tea now in front of him. I could not prevent myself from being intrigued by what I had seen of the Maddens’ relationship to each other, and the part in it which I had so far played. There was something almost combative in the way they behaved, and by my playing a part I only mean that the presence of a third person appeared to have set their game in motion, as a net would a tennis match or a pitch a bout of football. I noticed – not without some satisfaction, I’m afraid – that Mr Madden had seemed far happier in the car with me than he did in the presence of Pamela. Indeed, he looked rather sullen, staring down at his tea like an adolescent, his black hair flopping over his eyes, his large frame recumbent with that limpness slightly menacing in men, as if at any moment they could explode.

  ‘Jolly good,’ he said.

  ‘I think Stella would probably like some time to just regroup,’ said Pamela after a pause. She said it brightly, looking at Mr Madden. ‘Shall I take her over and settle her in?’

  Mr Madden, still slumped in his chair, took in a large quantity of air and held it in his lungs so that his cheeks puffed out. He nodded vigorously, and then expelled the air slowly through his nostrils.

  ‘Right!’ Pamela stood up and grinned at me slightly wildly. ‘Shall we go?’

  I stood up obediently and began immediately to make my way to the door. Behind me, Pamela lingered.

  ‘Darling, you won’t forget to dig up some potatoes and things for dinner, will you? And if there are any gooseberries left you could get those too and I’ll make a pie.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Madden. I heard his chair scrape across the floor. ‘I’ll go and do that now.’

  Pamela’s footsteps came behind me, and I moved forwards through the doorway. Ahead of me was a small and very dark hallway which I did not remember, with three doors, all of them closed. I stopped, confused, and felt Pamela crowd behind me.

  ‘It’s the one on the left,’ she said. ‘That’s it.’

  We entered a long, narrow corridor, with white walls and a low ceiling.

  ‘Right down to the end,’ said Pamela from behind.

  I proceeded to the end of the corridor, which lay around a bend, where I found a door. There being no other option, I opened it, and was surprised when a bank of sunlight and a haze of bushy greenery burst upon me. I could hear the sounds of birds, and the faint, throaty noise of an engine far away. My feet crunched on gravel, and I felt the sun pound on the top of my head.

  ‘We’ve put you over in the cottage,’ said Pamela, taking the lead. We were following a gravel path leading away from the house, on either side of which was a tall, perfectly squared hedge. Surreptitiously I ran a hand along the green wall, half expecting it to be solid, and was surprised by its prickly give. ‘It’s tiny but very sweet, and I thought you’d want your privacy. If you get lonely you can always bolt back to the house and we’ll sign over one of the spare rooms.’

  It took me some time to absorb this information. Naturally, I had assumed that I would be living at close quarters with the Maddens, and having abandoned all thoughts of privacy or independence in my new life I greeted their unexpected return with ambivalence. It struck me then that the cottage arrangement could, on the contrary, entail privations more dire than those of which I just been relieved; namely that I would in all probability be sharing it with another of the Maddens’ dependants, perhaps Mr Thomas and his ailing wife. I did not relish this prospect, and yet it seemed impossible that I would have a cottage all to myself. Not wishing to appear grasping or ungrateful, I felt unable to quiz Pamela on the subject, which taunted me along the path with alternating delight and dread.

  We rounded a bend in the path and there, suddenly upon us, was a vision. It was an old white cottage, built on a single storey, with a thick thatched roof which slanted so low over the front that it resembled a long fringe with two eyes and a nose – the windows and door – beneath it. From the top protruded a chimney, and to the side, I could just see, was a tiny window in the angle of the roof. It was so small that one could take it all in from a single standing position. There was a wrought-iron gate in front of us, beyond which a narrow path led up to the door. On either side of the path was a square of garden, and the whole thing was surrounded by a tall, thick tangle of hedgerows and trees which gave it an atmosphere of shady secrecy. The garden itself was unruly, with sprays of wild flowers and some kind of fruit tree in the middle. On the front of the cottage was a splash of vines, as if the garden had risen up like a large wave and crashed against it.

  ‘Mrs Barker’s been in to tidy up, but Heaven knows what kind of state it’s in,’ said Pamela, opening the gate. ‘Our last girl was not the most responsible creature in the world. You’re free to brighten it up with anything you can find, and Thomas will come and do battle with the grass for you every couple of weeks.’

  At this I deduced, with a cautious pirouette of glee, that I was to have sole command of this vision. We were standing in the buzzing garden now, in the sun, and the heat fused with the birdsong to form a single, pulsing note which thrilled in my heart. The cottage seemed to me to be the loveliest
thing I had ever seen. It was in my mouth to ask Pamela why she herself did not live here, before I remembered that of course they had the big house, and that my rhapsodies were those of scale and expectation. Like a child in a room of adults, I had sought out only what was in my line of vision, what represented my own proportions; and consequently found more to please me in this miniature place than I had in its grander neighbour.

  ‘So what do you think?’ said Pamela coyly, turning to me with her hands on her hips. Her eyes were wrinkled in the sun.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely!’ I said. ‘I didn’t expect anything like this at all.’

  ‘Well, it is rather useful,’ said she, with evident satisfaction. ‘These arrangements can be tricky, and this just makes everyone feel a bit more their own person.’

  She led the way to the front door and wrenched it open.

  ‘You’ve got to give it a good shove,’ she said.

  I followed her inside and immediately felt the stony coolness which is a feature of older buildings. The front door gave immediately on to a small sitting room – there being no hallway – with a low ceiling boned with dark beams and the two windows on the other side of which we had been seconds earlier. I had never been in a place with so insubstantial a threshold between inside and out. At one end of the room was a fireplace with another beam above it, and in front of that were a sofà and armchair covered in flowered material with a low table between them. There were several faded, brownspotted pictures on the wall. They looked like maps, although the lines were so faint that it was impossible to see what they might represent.