A Rural Affair Read online

  ‘So is he breathing?’

  ‘No, darling. He’s dead.’

  ‘Like Shameful?’

  ‘Yes, like Shameful.’

  This, a ram in the field at the back of our house, who’d been found stiff and cold last month, and was so called because he rogered every ewe in the field before breakfast, which Phil had found offensive when he was eating his muesli.

  ‘It’s shameful!’ he’d roar, so Clemmie thought that was his name.

  ‘Where is Daddy?’

  ‘He’s … well …’ I hesitated. The morgue sounded horrible. ‘At the undertaker’s. It’s a special place where dead people go before they’re buried.’

  ‘Not in heaven?’

  ‘Oh, well, yes. Yes, his soul will go to heaven. It’s quite complicated, darling, but the point is, you won’t see him again. Do you understand?’

  She nodded. ‘Will Shameful go to heaven?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Even though he had lots of girlfriends?’

  ‘Well … yes. I don’t see why not.’

  She finished her cereal in silence. Got down from the table. But no tears, which worried me. But then, she was only four; it probably hadn’t quite filtered through. And the thing was, Phil never got home until they’d gone to bed in the week, and at the weekends he’d cycled all day, so how much more had she seen of him than of the ram at the back of the house? In the field where my children played most days, climbing on the logs, splashing in puddles?

  When I collected her from nursery, though, Miss Hawkins had caught my eye, scuttled across.

  ‘May I have a word, Mrs Shilling?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I just thought you should know that Clemmie says her daddy was hit by a plane.’

  ‘True, in a way.’

  ‘And that he’s died and gone to heaven.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that anyone can go, even if they’ve had lots of girlfriends. Even if they’re shameful.’

  I blinked.

  ‘Right. Thank you … Miss Hawkins.’

  She was already hastening away before I could put her straight. I sighed. Oh, so be it, I thought as I watched her departing back. Let the entire village think he was the local lothario. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Unless it was in the interests of conception, which appealed to Phil’s competitive nature, he regarded sex as … a bit of a chore. A box to be ticked by a workaholic who’d rather be on his Black-Berry. There hadn’t been much since Archie had been born, which, Jennie told me darkly, I should thank my lucky stars about. Dan hadn’t even let her get to her six-week check after Jamie, and when she was up on the ramp having her overhaul, she hadn’t liked to tell the nice young doctor who’d coyly told her she could start giving herself back to her husband, that he’d been helping himself for weeks.

  But no, Phil hadn’t been much of a bedroom man; indeed the idea of him putting himself about locally was almost as fanciful as him putting his goodwill about, being a stalwart of this parish, where, thankfully, the vicar was winding up now, his material being quite thin. He cleared his throat and enjoined us to stand and sing the final hymn, number one hundred and seventy two: ‘Jerusalem’. We all got gratefully to our feet.

  As questions go I’ve always thought the one about whether our Lord’s feet actually walked in ancient times upon England’s mountains green to be not only rhetorical, but, if pressed, a resounding no. I was still thinking about it as we filed out of church a few moments later. Blake had clearly lobbed it up metaphysically, wryly, not to be taken literally, and yet hundreds of years later it was belted out by congregations across the land and embraced patriotically, the answer a resounding ‘Yes!’ from those who wanted Him to be an Englishman ten foot tall. Would it have amused Blake, I wondered, as I reached the gate on the lane, my eyes narrowed against the low sun which was dazzling, blinding almost, to hear it sung with such fervour? Did it amuse God?

  ‘Mrs Shilling!’

  A voice cut through my reverie, scattering my thoughts. I turned, abstractedly, at the gate.

  ‘Mrs Shilling?’ There was a note of incredulity to it.

  Back at the top of the path, in the grassy, undulating area to the left of the church, otherwise known as the cemetery, the vicar was waiting, prayer book open, cassock flapping, saucer-eyed, surrounded by the rest of the congregation. They appeared to be clustered around a huge gaping hole in the ground which … Shit. I’d forgotten to bury my husband.

  Shock, naturally, Jennie and Angie both quickly consoled me, as I hastened to join them, to stand between them; that and nervous exhaustion. I nodded dumbly. Horrified and sweaty-palmed I bent my head, which was indeed very muddled, so that as I was passed some earth to throw onto the coffin and nervously did so, Angie, swathed in black mink, had to touch my arm and murmur: ‘Easy, tiger. Wait till the vicar gets to the earth-to-earth bit. Let’s not hurry this along too much, hm?’ She handed me some more in her suede-gloved hand.

  Later, and it seemed like an eternity – so horrible, seeing him lowered in that dreadful box into the ground, so final – I was back at the church gate again with the vicar. I knew it had been part of the plan at some point, I’d just hastened there rather too quickly. One by one the villagers filed past to pay their respects, to say how sorry they were, pressing my hand and murmuring condolences. Yvonne, the post-mistress – whom Phil had once called an interfering busybody to her face when she complained about him leaning his bike against her shop window – said how much she’d miss his sunny smile. Sylvia Jardine at the Old Rectory, who considered herself the local nob and didn’t know Phil from Adam but clearly thought she’d done her homework, said, in a carrying, fruity voice that Philip had been an outstanding bell ringer, a misunderstanding courtesy of this month’s parish magazine, in which someone had complained about Phil ringing his bicycle bell at six in the morning as he waited impatiently for Bob Groves to drive his cattle through the village. Dan, Jennie’s husband, gave me a huge hug and whispered, ‘You’re doing brilliantly, girl,’ which made me well up, and Frankie, in a black minidress and matching nail varnish, who at sixteen had never been to a funeral and had come out of interest – she later confided she didn’t think there’d been nearly enough weeping or black veils – squeezed my hand and said I must be ‘properly pissed’.

  Happily many of the condolences were for the children, whom I’d deemed too young to come for the whole service, and who were now with Peggy across the road. Peggy, who’d brought the children briefly and sat at the back, but who’d told me in her throaty drawl, as she dragged on her fourth cigarette of the morning, that she wasn’t a great one for funerals, and anyway, she’d never liked him. I smiled to myself. Just the one voice of truth ringing in our valley. How I loved Peggy.

  She wasn’t an obvious role model, being widowed and childless, and cut an eccentric figure in her long flowing coats and beaded scarves, down which she dripped cigarette ash – the only time I’d seen Peggy cook, I’d watched fascinated as two inches of ash had fallen from her cigarette into the Bolognese: and she’d calmly stirred it in, muttering ‘Roughage’ – but she had a certain objective wisdom. Objective, perhaps because of a lack of blood ties with the world, which ensured impartiality. And a glorious irreverence for anything humbug. Those who cared to sit in the snug at the Rose and Crown and play backgammon with her, drink copious amounts of vodka and listen to her quiet, upper-class voice and her throaty laugh could learn a lot. I loved her refreshing take on life. ‘When I am old I shall wear purple’ could have been written for Peggy, although I suspect she’d always worn purple: it was just that these days it was diamanté-studded.

  As we all trooped away from the church and across the green for coffee and sandwiches at my house, my father fell in beside me. He linked my arm.

  ‘Well done, old girl.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  He tact
fully left it at that. I might not have rushed to complain to him in the early days of my marriage, but I was close to my dad, and recently he’d known Phil and I had had problems.

  ‘And I’m sorry you’re missing Tick-a-Tape run.’

  This, my father’s horse, or leg of a horse, the one he owned in a syndicate, and for whom he hadn’t missed a race since he bought him. He was running the biggest one of his life today, in a steeplechase at Kempton.

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s only a race. There’ll be others. He was my son-in-law, for God’s sake.’

  Teetotal, fiercely competitive and allergic to horses: everything Dad was not. We walked on in silence.

  ‘Got the beers in, love?’ By now we were following the procession up the path, into the house.

  ‘Well, I thought coffee. And a few bottles of sherry?’

  Dad stopped; looked appalled. ‘Right. Well, no worries. I’ll nip to the offy and get a bit more, shall I? Just to be on the safe side. Back in a tick.’

  He turned and shot off across the road to his mud-splattered pick-up, bound for Leighton Buzzard, and a tick was all he would be, I thought, since he drove at the speed of light. It was one of the things my mother had despaired of. Mum. What would she be thinking now, I wondered, as I carried on into my house, glancing briefly heavenwards as I crossed the threshold. What would she think of this fractured little family of hers, this widowed husband, this only child, now a widow herself? Mum had never met Phil, her own car, which she drove as thoughtfully and carefully as she lived her life, having been involved in a pile-up on the M4 long before he’d been on the scene. That terrible Boxing Day evening when I was eleven, and she’d felt compelled to go and see Auntie Pam, who was on her own, and then come back to give us cold turkey and beetroot for supper; generally packing too much into one day, splitting herself too many ways. The pilot light in Dad’s life and mine had all but gone out for a long time, but gradually we’d lit the fuse together, with shaky hands. She might recognize Dad, I thought as I turned to watch him go, haring off in an all-too-familiar fashion, one hand tuning the car radio into the racing, but would she recognize me? This hitherto headstrong daughter of hers, who’d sat on her hands in a bad marriage for years? She wouldn’t think me capable. But then, she wasn’t to know the after-effects of her death; wasn’t to know I was a different person. Wasn’t to know I now had a very scared, conventional side, one that didn’t want to be the one left without a mother, or a husband; one that didn’t want to be last. Or perhaps she did know that. Perhaps I’d been like that all along, and maybe she would recognize me, after all.

  My tiny sitting room was packed, and some people I swear I’d never seen before in my life, but with Mum still on my mind I greeted them warmly, gratefully, as she would have done, before going to the kitchen, where more familiar faces were busy taking cling film off sandwiches, boiling the kettle. Jennie and Angie turned as I came in; gave me sad little smiles. Perhaps she’d met him, I thought with a start as I went to the fridge. I stopped, in the light of the open door, heart pounding. Perhaps Mum was even now up there shaking hands with Phil, on a cloud somewhere? I felt a hot flush creep up my neck. I hoped not. I could see her lovely generous smile, see her being studiously warm and kind to him, but, underneath, might she be thinking: heavens, who’s this? Whatever happened to Ben?

  ‘Are you all right, Poppy?’ Jennie was at my elbow, peering into my face. I seemed to have dropped the milk bottle. It was flooding in a white lake all over the terracotta floor. Someone else, Angie, was quickly wiping it up, crouching in an elegant black shift dress and heels. I saw them exchange a concerned glance.

  ‘Hm?’ I came to. ‘Oh. Yes. Fine. Sorry about that.’

  Peggy and the children arrived from across the road. The children ran about screeching, darting between adult legs, overexcited to see so many people in their house. Peggy swept in and positioned herself on a stool by my Aga, her usual spot. Once obviously beautiful, she’d kept the streaky blonde hair and the skinny figure and today was in leggings, pixie boots, a long black polo-necked jumper and bohemian beads. She chain-smoked and watched me carefully, her small smile ominously irreverent.

  ‘So everyone’s making themselves very busy?’ she observed in her gravelly way, as if a laugh was barely suppressed.

  ‘I know, aren’t they kind?’ I said, ignoring the inference. Much as I adored Peggy I wasn’t sure this was the moment for her refreshing take on life. ‘Oh, Angie, I thought we’d have the sausage rolls later, after the sandwiches have been … Oh.’ Angie had already swept through to the sitting room on a waft of scent.

  ‘When you’re bereaved, people behave as if you can’t see or hear,’ Peggy told me. ‘It’s as if you’ve been in a tremendous accident.’

  I ignored her and went to get some more milk from the fridge. As I poured it into a jug, Jennie looked doubtful. ‘I’ve smelled it,’ I told her. ‘It’s fine, just a bit creamy.’

  ‘They like to have something to do,’ Peggy murmured. ‘Makes them feel useful. Takes their mind off you.’

  Jennie got a fresh bottle of milk from the fridge, busily poured the first one away, then refilled the jug.

  ‘And anyway,’ Peggy concluded, ‘they don’t know what to say to you.’

  ‘No one ever does at a funeral,’ said Jennie.

  ‘Particularly one like this,’ remarked Peggy darkly.

  I was glad when Angie’s teenage girls burst in, looking windswept and gorgeous: flowing hair, tiny skirts.

  ‘Hi, Poppy. Oh God, I’m so sorry about Phil.’ Clarissa flung her arms around me. ‘Poor you.’

  ‘And I’m so sorry we couldn’t come to the funeral, the train took literally hours.’ Felicity hugged me too.

  Lovely, sweet girls with soft hair and beautiful manners, they knew exactly what to say, exactly how to behave, courtesy of a full-time mother and expensive boarding school. I hugged them back, hoping for the same for Clemmie one day, hoping to enable her.

  ‘Obviously he couldn’t get them here earlier,’ their mother remarked sourly, coming back in with her empty sausage roll plate. She banged it down on the side and hugged her daughters. ‘Oh no, it would be too much trouble to get out of bed and get them to the station on time. Too much of an inconvenience.’

  Her daughters looked strained, even their pretty manners not stretching to a response to this, a reference to their father, Angie’s estranged husband, Tom, a delightful, twinkly eyed charmer, who, a year ago, had succumbed to the charms of Angie’s girl groom. In fact he’d done more than succumb and the pair of them were now ensconced in a cottage in Dorset, where the girls had clearly just come from. Uncomfortable, they stole silently into the next room.

  Tom’s sudden defection had shattered this perfect, enviable family and Angie had gone from being a beautiful, slightly pampered woman who shopped in Knightsbridge, played tennis on her court in the summer and hunted her horses in the winter, to yet another abandoned wife who hadn’t seen it coming. Hitherto, her housework, garden and horses had all been seen to – and, it transpired, her husband – but if anyone had considered her spoiled, nobody would have wished this on her. The shock had aged her overnight and she’d looked all of her forty-one years. But Angie was a fighter, and recently she was better dressed than ever, more beautifully made-up – even when popping to the village shop for bread – although you didn’t have to look hard to spot the pain which flashed across those limpid blue eyes, or the tension around the full glossy mouth. Her daughters seemed as confident and charming as ever, but I couldn’t conceive that the ripples hadn’t reached them, and Angie told me sadly that they had: they were more tearful down the phone on a Sunday night from school, more demanding. And those ripples would surely reach Clemmie and Archie soon too, I thought in panic, as they felt their own father’s absence. Experienced their own void. At least Clarissa and Felicity had had a family unit for a good number of years; at least it had seen them well into their teenage years. Suddenly the enormity of my children
’s abandonment dawned on me.

  ‘You don’t mind them coming, do you?’ Angie asked me anxiously.

  I stared at her, uncomprehending.

  ‘I’ve only got them for one day, thanks to Tom throwing his weight around and saying he wanted to see them. They have to go back to school after lunch.’

  I came to. ‘Of course not, I’m thrilled. And mine will be delighted.’

  I watched Clemmie’s eyes light up at the sight of them. She threw herself at Clarissa’s legs. Frankie, on the other hand, bit her thumbnail and looked guarded. I turned. Forced myself on.

  ‘Now, what else needs to go through?’

  ‘Nothing,’ drawled Peggy. ‘It’s all going like clockwork. Everyone’s very busy.’

  ‘Yes, well, you’re not, so why don’t you take these round?’ Angie put a plate of sausages in her hands, knowing Peggy’s mischief-making of old. ‘Is she being a pain?’ she asked when Peggy, sliding off her stool and disappearing with a sly smile, was out of earshot.

  I shrugged. ‘You know Peggy.’

  ‘I do. No social code. When Tom went, she said I’d handed Tatiana to him on a plate,’ she said grimly.

  I was silenced, because of course we had all thought that. When Angie employed a smiling, honey-haired, heavily breasted maiden from Auckland to muck out her horses and live in her cottage, we’d all wondered what planet she was on. And then watched in horror as Angie had gone off to yoga on a Monday, and bridge on a Thursday. The curtains in Tatiana’s bedroom would close almost before Angie’s car was out of the drive. Peggy hadn’t known, otherwise she certainly would have told her, and by the time Jennie and I had had endless cups of coffee and dithered and discussed and were honestly just about to break the news – it was too late. Angie was left in the gorgeous Queen Anne manor on the edge of the village with its bell tower and tennis court and gables, whilst Tom ravaged his nubile New Zealander in the horrifically sexy-sounding village of Tussle-under-Winkwood. Satisfyingly, when the pair of them travelled all the way to New Zealand to tell her parents the good news and then returned, she hadn’t been allowed back in the country. But that didn’t last long; she winkled her way in eventually, just as she had into Angie’s home, and her husband’s heart.