Not That Kind of Girl Read online

  ‘You begged and bullied Marcus to move out of London. Banged on and on about how you were suffocating there and needed fresh air and space, how the children needed it –’

  ‘Oh, the children do need it – they love it, there’s no doubt about that. And they were the ones who said they couldn’t live outside a fifty-yard radius of the video shop or the Notting Hill Odeon; said they’d get withdrawal symptoms. But no, they couldn’t be happier. Angus has teamed up with some local boys who fish and roar around on hideously dangerous quad bikes, and Lily’s got her pony and is deeply in love. Spends hours washing his bottom and kissing his muzzle, or vice versa. She’s going to make some man very happy one day,’ I added archly.

  ‘She certainly is. And Marcus?’

  I smiled. ‘Ah, Marcus.’ I paused in my cheese-paring. Put the grater down. ‘Marcus is born again.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean he’s embraced the countryside wholeheartedly, Pen. The same man who declared it both terrifying and pointless a year ago and came out in a rash on the approach road to Clapham Common, has truly seen the light. The same man who felt weak without carbon monoxide coursing through his bloodstream and pavements beneath his feet is an out-and-out convert.’

  ‘Is he? Heavens. So – what does he do here?’

  ‘Do? Oh, he never stops. Last spring he single-handedly restocked the orchard, and now he’s breeding bantams. In the space of six short weeks my husband has become a leading authority on poultry. He used to take the Spectator. Now he takes Feather and Fowl.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I swear it. And he even – get this – enjoys the commute. Relishes it, in fact. Says it gives him time to catch up on his latest deer-stalking periodicals.’

  ‘He stalks deer?’ She glanced around nervously. ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, they come strolling out of that wood behind us.’ I waved my hand airily in the general direction. ‘Wander brazenly into the back garden and nibble at the fast-food outlet I’ve so graciously provided for them.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘My herbaceous border,’ I said grimly. ‘One reason, perhaps, for my lack of skippy enthusiasm about the garden. They stand there guzzling their veggie burgers all of ten feet from the back door. Too tempting for Dead Eye Dick, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You mean …he shoots them?’

  ‘One,’ I corrected. ‘He’s shot one, Penny, and believe me, there was nothing sporting about it. He was at the bathroom window in his dressing-gown at the time and the kick from his brand new rifle knocked him flat to the ground. I had to slap his face to bring him round, and meanwhile Lily was sobbing and being sick in the other bathroom. Having a Bambi moment.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’

  ‘She’s hardly spoken to him since.’

  Penny looked stunned. Shook her head. ‘Golly, I just can’t imagine it. I mean – he was always a bit of a black jeans and leather jacket man in London. Bit of a dude.’

  ‘Not any longer,’ I said darkly. ‘In the space of six short months he’s metamorphosed from Cool Marcus riding high on his Camden Town Production Company, to Colonel Harry Llewellyn riding Foxhunter.’

  Her glass froze en route to her lips. She put it down. ‘He hunts as well?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said breezily, sprinkling the sweaty grated cheese over the limp salad. I put the bowl in front of her rather defiantly. ‘Twice a week sometimes. We don’t see him for dust around here. Him and Fabrice are at it all the time.’

  ‘Fabrice?’

  ‘His new squeeze.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’ Penny seized her wine glass again. ‘I’m so sorry, Henny. I had no idea.’

  ‘It’s his mount, Penny,’ I informed her dryly. ‘He does indeed squeeze her between his thighs, but happily, she’s equine.’

  ‘Fabrice is a horse?’ She took a gulp of wine. ‘Well, that’s a relief. Sounds like something you put down the loo.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ I said bitterly, shaking a bottle of salad dressing rather too vigorously. ‘But I have a feeling this mare wouldn’t flush.’

  ‘But … can Marcus ride?’ enquired Penny incredulously. She took the dressing from me and sprinkled some over her salad. ‘God, I didn’t even know he could.’

  I shrugged. ‘After a fashion. He’s had some intensive training since we’ve been here, went on a six-week course.

  And you know Marcus, he doesn’t go at anything half-cocked. He has all the zeal of the recently converted.’ I smiled. ‘But my spies tell me that’s no substitute for being born in the saddle. We’re talking big fences here, Pen, galloping across some pretty rough terrain. He’s locally known as Teflon.’

  ‘Ah.’ She grinned. ‘He comes off.’

  ‘Let’s just say he’s a keen student of the ground over which he travels. Regularly inspects it at close quarters. In fact, I’d go so far as to hazard that Marcus has eaten dirt.’

  She giggled and put down her fork. ‘God, I remember spilling Chardonnay on his linen suit in the Bluebird once. He couldn’t get to the loo quick enough to mop it off. Can’t imagine him flat on his face in cow poo.’

  ‘Well, he’s never come back with clean breeches yet,’ I purred, stabbing at my salad.

  ‘But – doesn’t that worry you?’ She forked up some rather sad-looking rocket. Regarded it dubiously. ‘That he might hurt himself? People break their necks on the hunting field, don’t they?’

  I considered this, head on one side, chewing slowly. ‘I wouldn’t mind a clean break,’ I admitted, ‘but I couldn’t be doing with pushing him round a bungalow. Up and down ramps.’

  ‘Henny!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I sighed. ‘He bounces. At least, he has done so far. And then everyone shrieks with laughter and races to catch Fabrice. It’s all part of the fun, apparently. And of course they’re desperate for new recruits who haven’t been born in the shires with a mouthful of silver.’

  ‘Pity he’s not black,’ she observed. ‘He could be spear-heading their advertising campaign.’

  ‘Well, quite.’

  ‘But – what about the production company? Isn’t he still going into London to do that?’

  ‘Oh yes, a few days a week, but it’s all going so well he’s letting Barry take the reins more now.’

  ‘Really? But it was his baby. He was such a workaholic!’

  ‘Because it interested him,’ I said with a sigh. I put down my fork. ‘You know Marcus: he only does what interests him, and then goes at it with a passion. Mucking out is his passion now.’

  ‘Good grief.’ She blinked at me, astonished. ‘He really has got the bug. Quite the country squire.’

  ‘Shall I tell you something, Penny?’ I pushed my plate aside and leaned forward confidentially. ‘Marcus has planted precisely one hundred and twenty-two trees in our orchard out there.’ I pointed behind me. ‘Now when you consider that the average apple tree bears one hundred and twenty-three apples, that’s a lot of fruit.’

  ‘It certainly is. And does he imagine that you’re going to be bottling and pickling it?’

  ‘Yes!’ I shrieked suddenly, making her jump. I slammed the flat of my hand down on the counter, rattling our glasses. ‘That’s exactly what he imagines, Penny – that’s entirely my point!’

  Penny gazed at me for a moment, eyes wide. She looked confused. ‘But – hang on. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you came down here? I thought you wanted all that gathering in of the harvest, plucking and squeezing in your own cider press –’ ‘I know,’ I wailed miserably, ‘I did, because I thought that’s what everyone else would be doing. But they’re not! They’re not doing that at all!’ I turned anguished eyes on her.

  ‘They? Who’re they?’

  ‘You know, all my neighbours here in Happy Valley. All my embryonic girly chums, the wives of other budding Colonel Rufty Tuftys who’ve cashed in their City bonuses and waved goodbye to the Northern Line – I thought they’d all be growing their own veggies and selling th
em at the local WI, organizing barn dances, that sort of thing. But they’re not!’

  ‘So what are they doing?’

  I sank my head dramatically in my hands. Pulled at my roots. ‘They’re captains of industry,’ I muttered darkly. ‘That’s what.’

  She stared. ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. They can’t be.’

  ‘OK.’ I raised my head defiantly. ‘Let’s see.’ I put my hand up to tick off my fingers. ‘First there’s Sara Cowdray who looks like a cross between Meg Ryan and Claudia Schiffer and goes to London three days a week to run her upmarket shirt-shop in Jermyn Street.’

  ‘Nice little sideline.’

  ‘It grosses her eighty thousand a year.’

  Penny shrugged. ‘OK.’

  ‘Then there’s Alice Wynne-Jones who makes beautiful pots in her puke-makingly beautiful converted barn, then there’s Harriet Masters who runs a mail-order clothing company – oh, and up the road there’s –’

  ‘OK, OK, I get the picture.’

  ‘They all bloody do something, Penny. And I had no idea!’

  ‘Right,’ she said, picking up her glass and swirling her wine around thoughtfully. She looked at me carefully. ‘And you thought you could swan down here and get away from all those people in London who so churlishly asked you what you did all day while your children were at school. Thought you could sink into a glorious rural, yahoo ex istence?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ I bridled, refilling my glass. I sat up primly on my stool. ‘You know very well I’ve never had any truck with that sort of rot. I’ve always considered my role as a fulltime mother and homemaker hugely demanding. Never had time for anything else.’

  ‘But now that they’ve gone?’ she persisted. ‘Now that Angus and Lily are away for weeks on end, only home for exeats and holidays, and even then only pausing to borrow your make-up or block your phone line – what do you do then?’

  I bit my lip and got up to put the plates in the sink. Leaned the heels of my hands on the porcelain as I narrowed my eyes out of the window at the meadow, rolling up from the stream to the hills beyond.

  ‘This house took a lot of sorting out, you know, Penny,’ I said quietly. ‘It was a wreck when we took it on.’

  ‘But it’s not now!’ she retorted.

  ‘No, but there’s always something to do. It’s like the Forth Bridge. Heavens, there are still rugs I need for the drawing room, and only this morning I noticed Lily’s curtains absolutely shriek at her carpet. I must change them. And these tiles need a border. They’re desperately dull above the Aga.’ I clattered busily in the sink. ‘Harriet Masters has got a lovely cockerel motif around hers, I might ask her where she got it.’

  There was an eerie silence behind me as I rinsed the plates.

  ‘Henny, have you rung my uncle yet or not?’

  I laughed. ‘How could I possibly ring him when this house is still such a mess?’

  She got up and stood beside me. ‘This house is perfect and you know it. It took that interior designer precisely six weeks to tart it up at vast expense – Bunny Campbell-Walker or whatever she’s called.’

  ‘Campbell-Waller,’ I said bitterly. ‘And she lives in the next village where she runs her design showroom from a converted bothy in the garden. Her sister, Louisa, the one who designed our garden, has the top floor for her landscape-garden business.’

  ‘Henny,’ she said dangerously. ‘Ring Laurence!’

  ‘But I’m not qualified to do anything, Penny,’ I wailed, dropping the plates in the suds. ‘It’s all right for you, you’re a sodding coffee trader. He’ll want someone far more qualified than me. He’s a famous – what is he?’

  ‘Military historian, and all he wants is someone to organize him – and you’ve spent the best years of your life doing that. Houses, children, a husband – you’re supremely qualified.’

  ‘But he’ll ask me what I’ve done, and I’ve never done anything!’

  ‘Nonsense, you worked before you met Marcus. As a – gosh, what were you exactly?’

  ‘A secretary,’ I said dully. ‘Or in my grander moments, a personal assistant.’

  ‘Well, there you are then!’

  ‘Yes, here I am then. Fifteen years later and qualified only to keep someone’s diary and pick up suits from the dry cleaners.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what he wants,’ she insisted. ‘I promise you, he’s so chaotic, he never knows where he’s going to be next – he needs someone like you to look after him! I’ve told him you’d be perfect, and he’s dying to meet you.’

  I bit my lip and stared out of the window. Penny’s uncle was rather famous if one knew one’s military historians, which I didn’t. Apparently he’d written several weighty tomes on various battle campaigns and lectured regularly on the subject at Cambridge. He presumably shuffled around some dusty gothic pile in a mouldy corduroy jacket and carpet slippers, searching for his glasses, getting increasingly bad tempered, and scratching his beard. Or his bottom. I sighed. I wasn’t convinced it was my dream job, but on the other hand, Penny was right. I could do it, and it would get me back into the real world. Back into London. And actually, how cool would it be, to go to lunch at Sara Cowdray’s or Alice Wynne-Jones’s and say, ‘Yes, I’m working for Laurence De Havilland, the military historian. Yes, very demanding, but frightfully good to use one’s brain again, you know, and heavens, you’ve got to do something, haven’t you? Can’t sit at home all day!’

  Penny was watching my face. She reached in her bag and pulled out a pen. Started scribbling on the back of an envelope.

  ‘Now I’m going to go and find my godson, and get him to show me the lie of the land,’ she said quietly. ‘Get him to talk me through his dad’s orchard.’ She snapped the biro nib back smartly. ‘You, meanwhile, are going to ring Laurence.’

  She pushed the envelope towards me and gave me a beady look. Then she reached for my calendar, hanging on the wall beside her and flicked through it. ‘You could go and see him on Monday, actually,’ she observed. ‘You’re not doing anything. In fact, you’re not doing anything at all next week, unless you count a charity Christmas fair. In October, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Oh Pen …’ I quaked.

  ‘Do it!’ she said crossly, making me jump.

  She got off her stool and crossed to my bootroom, delving around for some wellies. Dilly the black Labrador began to bark excitedly, knowing a walk was in the offing. Penny took off her kitten heels, slipped some boots on, and made for the back door, Dilly running frantic circles around her legs.

  ‘And don’t forget to tell him you did history A-level.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I yelped, scurrying after her as she went outside. ‘I didn’t do any A-levels, I did a secretarial course instead.’

  She popped her head back round the door. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘So lie. You’re good at that.’

  I watched as she flung an old Barbour of mine round her shoulders and strode out confidently across the gravel, head back, blonde hair blowing in the wind, a tall, commanding figure, instantly looking the part in this rural setting, as indeed she always did in any setting. Had done no doubt at school as Head Girl, then in the City as a trader, and now, still a trader but a rather more important one. A senior partner, holding her own in a man’s world, despite having a pair of demanding three-year-old twins at home. I noticed she hadn’t brought them with her today. Too clever by half. No, no, she’d left them behind with the nanny.

  And I’d never been able to do that. Ever, I thought, moving back to the sink. I’d always had my children on my hip or around my feet, taken them wherever I went. Emotionally I hadn’t been able to leave them, but also … well, they were my passport to cosy domestic life. I’d worn them like a badge, which said proudly, I don’t go out to work because I do something far more important. And there was no arguing with that.

  But Penny was right, I couldn’t hide behind them any more. They were away for weeks at a time, and when they came back, it was home they wanted, no
t Mummy. I was part of it, but it was the lying around on sofas they needed, the chilling, the kicking at stones in the stream, not my undivided attention. Definitely not my undivided attention. And I had to have more in my life. Had to, or I’d end up like my mother. I shivered and seized a dishcloth to scrub away at a stain on the draining board, just as she would have done. I dropped the cloth, horrified. My hand strayed to the envelope Penny had scribbled on. I stared at it.

  Ten minutes later she was back, with Angus in tow, having found Lily too. Lily’s face was glowing, her fair curls bouncing off her head like a halo as she came through the back door on a blast of cold wind.

  ‘Phew!’ She was struggling under the weight of her saddle. I regarded her affectionately. She glared back. ‘M-um!’

  ‘Oh. Sorry, darling.’ I rushed to help. Took the tack from her arms.

  ‘And can you put it all in the bootroom, Mummy, I’m whacked. Freckles just jumped the whole cross-country course. Two foot nine!’

  ‘Oh, well done, darling,’ I gushed as she went – just about managing to take her boots off – to flop in front of the television in the playroom, followed by Angus. A fight ensued about who took command of the remote control.

  ‘Can’t she do that?’ enquired Penny, following me down the passage as I whipped it all away.

  ‘Oh, she does mostly,’ I assured her over my shoulder. ‘But she’s a bit pooped.’

  ‘And can you give it a wipe too, Mum?’ Lily called. ‘I got some mud on the bridle. Oh – and wash my girth and numnah?’

  ‘Will do,’ I called back, reaching for the saddle soap and getting a J-cloth from the cupboard under the butler’s sink.

  Penny leaned against the wall watching me, her arms folded.

  ‘So, did you ring him?’ she asked casually as I wiped the leather before setting to with soap.

  ‘Hmm? Oh yes, I did,’ I agreed brightly, face bowed to my task.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And yes, you’re right, he’s awfully nice.’ I rubbed hard. ‘Very sweet.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I’m going to see him soon. Going to pop in some time. Heavens, this is filthy.’