A Rural Affair Read online

  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 ha
d 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.

  2

  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!’