Rosie Meadows Regrets... Read online

  ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.’

  ‘And don’t take any drugs!’ was his parting shot as I pushed off down the road.

  I clenched my teeth to prevent me from yelling obscenities back and pedalled on.

  Alice was an artist. She was also my dearest friend, I’d known her since I was fourteen and to the best of my knowledge she’d never even smoked a cigarette let alone taken drugs. Harry, of course, knew better. The fact that she wore fairly eccentric second-hand clothes and had been known to tie scarves round her head while she wielded her paintbrush suggested all manner of depravities to him.

  Still, as I cycled through the Wandsworth streets and into the sunny park, I suddenly felt as if I was leaving Harry and all his prejudices behind me. It was a glorious winter morning, a crisp, cold, blue-sky day, and the birds who hadn’t upped sticks and gone south were delighted at this unexpected pleasure. They sang their little hearts out, as did Ivo, who was having a jolly good go at ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ behind me. I smiled and breathed deeply as I whizzed along the narrow path with the cold breeze stinging my cheeks and ears. Suddenly I felt lighter and happier than I had done for ages.

  ‘We thee Alice?’ yelled Ivo.

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘And Molly and Lou?’

  ‘Of course.’ These were Alice’s daughters.

  ‘And shops?’ he added hopefully. Shops might mean sweets.

  I laughed. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘An’ then wot?’

  Yes, and then what, Rosie? What would happen next? Where would we go? Where would we live? What would we do? I had no money and I hadn’t worked for two years. Where did women who left their husbands go? Was there a convenient runaway wives’ home located handily about, somewhere to take refuge for a while and collect one’s thoughts, or did one just go Straight Home To Mother without passing Go and without collecting £200? I shuddered at the thought. No, that I couldn’t contemplate. I’d almost rather stay put in the frying pan, but maybe – maybe I could rent a room. Share a flat like I used to. You mean, like you used to before you had a child, a small voice in my head said. Like you used to when you had a full-time job and earned the money to pay the rent. Before you were a single parent. I bit my lip. A single parent. God, I was about to become a statistic, wasn’t I? A burden on the state, one of those people that needed housing, looking after, one of the Needy. I swallowed hard. No, I couldn’t do that either, I’d find something. I’d work part-time, I’d find some way of supporting us without being a pain in the neck to anyone. Something would turn up.

  As I turned a corner, the low morning sun shone straight into my eyes, dazzling me. I lowered my lashes, filtering the light and enjoying the blurred effect it had on my senses. I didn’t want to think too deeply right now, get too bogged down in the logistics. I’d made the decision to leave and that was the main thing. I’d find somewhere to go, and wherever it was would have to be better than where I’d been, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. A far, far better place. I smiled confidently as I turned out of the park and freewheeled down the hill towards Alice’s street.

  Alice’s house was at the end of a grim, redbrick Victorian row, but it was completely different to all the others. For one thing it was much smaller, almost a cottage – as if someone had tacked it on at the end as an afterthought – and it was painted pale pink with a dark blue front door. Crawling all over the paintwork were various evergreen creepers which in summer had a dusting of clematis and roses over them, and instead of the usual dismal patch of dusty London grass at the front, she’d grown a cottage garden with a brick path snaking through the middle of it. Cynics might say that a parody of country life in the middle of Wandsworth was too whimsical for words, but Alice somehow carried all her cottage gardening and bread-making off with an elegance and aplomb that dared anyone to mock it.

  I parked the bike against the wall, followed the path to the door and rang the bell. A moment later I heard singing, then the door swung back. Alice gazed at me. She was barefoot in her ancient blue silk dressing gown, her red-gold hair falling around her face like a lion’s mane, a half-eaten piece of toast in her hand. She blinked her confident blue eyes in surprise.

  ‘God, you’re early, I thought we said ten o’clock.’

  ‘I know, we did, but I wanted to get away. Sorry, are you up to your eyes?’

  ‘No more than usual. Come in – if you can get past the pushchairs. Sorry, it’s like Mothercare in here – oh, hello, angel-baby!’ She paused as she ushered me into the long narrow hallway, crowded with baby paraphernalia, to take Ivo’s face in her hands. She gave him a resounding kiss on the cheek and he rewarded her with one of his very best smiles.

  ‘No, no, back! I’m coming through, I’m afraid!’ At the other end of the hall Alice’s husband, Michael, looking late and harassed in a double-breasted suit, waved us back with his briefcase as he came squeezing down towards us. ‘For God’s sake, Alice, we’ve got to do something about this sodding double buggy!’ He aimed a kick at it. ‘Can’t they learn to walk or something?’

  ‘Only when they’ve learned to run,’ said Alice firmly. ‘First things first, you know how I aspire to talented children.’

  ‘Whilst I just aspire to a life of peace and plenty away from this madhouse. I really wouldn’t go in there, Rosie,’ he said, jerking his head kitchenwards. ‘Someone’s forgotten to buy the Cheerios and they’re staging a rebellion. It’s not far removed from the Boston Tea Party.’

  ‘Thanks for warning me,’ I grinned.

  He went to move on, then did a double take as he edged past me. ‘I say, you’re looking wonderfully pulchritudinous this morning, Rosie. There’s an almost pre-pubescent glow to your cheeks and a light in your eyes that suggests – have you just had sex?’

  ‘Certainly not! I’ve just had a cycle ride.’

  ‘Ah, yes, those slim little bicycle saddles.’ He grinned. ‘Too, too thrilling, followed, of course, by a close encounter in a darkened hallway with the husband of your best friend – just the thing to get the old heart pounding, the blood rushing to the cheeks, the –’

  ‘Oh, stop being such a revolting old flirt and get to work!’ ordered his wife, ushering him out. ‘And don’t come back until you’ve earned a fortune!’

  He grinned and swept her off her feet as he reached her at the front door. He kissed her rather thoroughly on the mouth and I noticed they looked right into each other’s eyes. Harry never looked at me like that. Not deep into me. I suddenly realized that they probably had just made love.

  ‘She beats me, you know,’ he whispered with a smile, not taking his eyes off his wife. ‘Nightly.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ she responded, giving him a little shove. ‘Now go on, get out there. Get hustling!’

  He went, and she watched him go off down the street, leaning on the doorpost, her arms folded, a slight smile on her face.

  Michael was an account executive in an advertising agency and Alice had met him when she’d worked in the business as an art director. He was a handsome, urbane man, and a surprising contrast to her with his fine line in patter, his suave wardrobe and his conscious charm. If we were being really picky I’d say he was a touch too double O seven for me, but hell, who was I to criticize a happy marriage?

  ‘Right,’ Alice said decisively, shutting the door behind him. ‘Lead on, McMeadows, let’s go and sort out the revolting natives.’

  We went down to the kitchen where the clatter of spoons on bowls was getting louder and louder, accompanied by shrieks of laughter. Alice’s small daughters were chanting away, high on momentum, and Alice had to suck right down to her boot straps, curl back her tongue and expand her chest to bring up a resounding, ‘ALL RIGHT, THAT WILL DO!’

  Instant silence, then giggles, then sulks. I sank happily down into the cushion-strewn window seat and watched as Alice placated and scolded her brood, selling Weetabix on the grounds that Xena the Warrior Princess ate them regularly and shaking the cereal into bowls
amidst howls of protest. I quietly stroked the cat who’d usurped Ivo from my lap and gazed around the small, chaotic kitchen with its eclectic collection of painted wooden furniture. It really was like something out of Hansel and Gretel’s cottage. There were chests that fell apart if you touched them, wobbly tables with bits of newspaper stuffed under the short leg, cupboards that didn’t shut, nothing that matched and nothing that had ever been designed for practical cooking purposes, but then, since most of the surfaces were overflowing with toys and books and ancient magazines anyway, it didn’t really make much difference.

  Amongst all this clutter and confusion, on the plain whitewashed walls above, were Alice’s pictures; bold, strong strokes of gouache colour shone bravely out, resolutely creative amidst the grind of everyday family life. The table we sat at was only half devoted to cereal packets and Peter Rabbit crockery, the other half was taken up with Alice’s silk screens, sketchpads, and marmalade jars stuffed full with brushes and calligraphy pens. A compromise had been reached in Alice’s life. It was comfortable, and it showed. I also happened to know that much of this seeming confusion was artfully arranged, and that Alice, if pressed, could lay her hands on a gym shoe, a car key, or a cleaning ticket at a moment’s notice – albeit under that mouldy pear festering away on top of A.S. Byatt on the dresser. For Alice was a secretly organized woman. What we were witnessing here was art-directed, organized chaos.

  For all its semi-conscious style, though, whenever I left here and went back to my own house I always felt the repression there more keenly. Walking into 63 Meryton Road with its determinedly striped wallpapers and fleur-de-lys borders, its regimented ranks of silver photo frames, its snuffboxes lined up with blinding symmetry on highly polished tables, its overstuffed cushions on even more overstuffed sofas so that anyone who dared to sit on them simply perched, like a pea, on top – this, after a morning at Alice’s, seemed like a house with a cucumber right up its basement.

  And that of course was how Harry liked it; stiff, formal, intimidating and with pretensions to grandeur. What he actually wanted, I’d come to realize, was a scaled-down version of a stately home, but when the huge ancestral portrait of his Uncle Bertram took up the entire sitting-room wall, and the pendulous chandelier hung so heavily – and perilously – from the thin dining-room ceiling, it looked to my mind more comical than stately. When I’d first moved in we’d had heated rows about redecoration and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t going to be allowed to be let loose with the steam stripper, but Harry was adamant, and although I’d made efforts to loosen the place up a bit, these days I just limited myself to scattering cushions on the sly and riffling the snuffbox arrangement whenever I passed. But even these minor protests didn’t go unnoticed and Harry was quick to restore order with a pseudo-mild reproach like, ‘I see yesterday’s newspaper saw fit to stay a day longer than was absolutely necessary, Rosie?’ Or, ‘You’re happy with those coats slung over the banisters like that, are you?’ Or, ‘Rosie, any idea what your best shoes are doing by the back door?’

  Making a run for it, came to mind, but lately I simply bit my tongue and quietly put the shoes back in the wardrobe, threw away the old newspaper and hung up the coats.

  On the odd occasion when we were invited to Alice and Michael’s for dinner, Harry would be rendered almost speechless with horror by his surroundings. When he finally found his tongue on the way home, he’d mutter something like, ‘Rum couple, that, very rum indeed. Beats me how people can live like that. What are they, druids?’

  I smiled to myself now as I sank back into the tapestry cushions, waiting patiently for Alice’s undivided attention. She sloshed orange juice into cups for the children and brought some coffee to the table for us, but then suddenly, inexplicably, just as she went to settle down opposite me, I felt my intent begin to waver. Hang on a minute. Exactly how receptive was Alice going to be to my grand plan? How highly was she going to think of me for breaking up the home, for taking Ivo from his father, for throwing in the towel after, what, barely three years of marriage? I gazed around at the cosy domestic scene, the Lego on the floor, the headless dolls in the fruit bowl, the laundry basket under the table with one of Michael’s shirt sleeves hanging reproachfully over the side. Alice had often said she envied me my orderly household, just as I envied her chaotic one, and this was so often the way with home life, wasn’t it? It wasn’t always perfect, but other people’s often looked more so. How could I possibly tell her what I planned to do to mine? How could I ask her to condone the destruction of what she, like every other mother I knew, spent every waking moment trying to hold together? Juggling the commitments – the children, the husband, the painting, the garden – keeping all those balls in the air, how could I tell her I just wanted to walk away from them and let them fall to the ground with a dull thud?

  ‘So?’ she demanded. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Hmmm?’ I stroked the cat distractedly, pretending I hadn’t heard.

  ‘What’s going on, why did you have to get away at the crack of dawn?’

  ‘Oh, no reason really.’ I sipped my coffee miserably. ‘Just the usual four walls and a baby thing, I expect. Thursday morning blues, nothing special.’

  ‘Don’t give me that, you had a bee in your bonnet when you arrived, even Michael noticed it. Where’s it gone?’

  I shrugged and looked down, feeling tears pricking my eyes. It’s done a bunk, I thought. Bugger, bugger, bugger. It was slipping away like sand through my fingers, I could feel it. I absently picked a piece of dried egg off the tablecloth, aware that she was watching me and that, being Alice, she wouldn’t be fobbed off so easily. I sighed.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, it was just something I decided to do last night. A brave, late-night decision that seemed to make perfect sense after a horrific dinner party with the red wine still storming furiously in my blood, but that actually, in the cold light of a Thursday morning here in your kitchen, seems – ridiculous.’ I gazed at the egg stain on the cloth. ‘It was madness,’ I said softly. ‘I see that now.’ I looked up and forced a bright smile. ‘Forget it. How’s the painting going? Did you get hold of that guy who was keen to share an exhibition with you?’

  She was staring at me across the table, her hands cupping her coffee mug very still. Suddenly she put it down, reached across the table and seized my hand.

  ‘Do it,’ she breathed.

  I blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘Do it. You’re going to leave him, aren’t you? You decided last night, I can tell. God Almighty, bloody well do it, Rosie!’

  I stared at her in amazement. Her face was alive, her red hair blazing in the sun, her eyes shining.

  ‘But … how did you know I –’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rosie, it was obvious! You had to do it sooner or later, it was just a question of when!’

  ‘No! Really?’

  ‘Of course! No sane woman could have stood it as long as you have, it’s only because you’re such a flaming pushover you’ve managed it this long!’

  I gazed at her incredulously. ‘You mean … you really think I should leave him?’

  ‘Of course you bloody should!’ she thundered. ‘You should never have married him in the first place! The man’s a prat and you know it!’

  ‘Alice!’ I was aghast.

  ‘Well, it’s true.’

  ‘But … you … you’ve never said!’ I spluttered. ‘I had no idea!’

  ‘Well, of course I’ve never said, I’m hardly likely to have told you, am I? I’m hardly likely to have taken you to one side and said, congratulations, Rosie old bean, you’ve married a prize dickhead there, now am I?’

  ‘A prize …’ I boggled. ‘Jesus, it’s all coming out now, isn’t it!’ I said angrily. ‘Why didn’t you say all this when I was going out with him then?’

  ‘What, for two minutes? If you recall, Rosie, you brought him round for supper precisely once before you got married. As I remember, he spent the entire evening telling me how to decant my wi
ne, how to rearrange my furniture, how to bring up my children, how to cook coq au vin properly – while simultaneously eating the very same dish – and as a parting thrust informed me that my pictures weren’t real paintings at all but merely “decorative art”. Naturally I shut the door and wrote him off as the biggest jerk I’d met in a long time but I thought, no, now don’t go and open your big mouth, Alice Feelburn. We all make mistakes and Rosie’s made a huge one here but let her find that out for herself, okay? I then went off to Italy for a few weeks on that painting course and when I came back you met me for lunch in the Pitcher and Piano with a silly grin on your face and a rock the size of Gibraltar on your finger and then about two weeks later you were waltzing down the aisle, dewy-eyed in a sea of silk organza! I mean, where exactly did you expect me to stick my oar in? Before, during or perhaps even after the nuptials, like when you were instantly pregnant with Ivo perhaps? Maybe I should have mentioned it then? Popped round with a pair of bootees and had a word in your ear about the total ghastliness of the father of your unborn child?’

  ‘Total … God, the gloves are really off now, aren’t they?’ I blustered. ‘Don’t hold back, will you, Alice!’

  ‘Sorry,’ she gulped, reaching for her coffee, ‘I can’t help it. I’ve been holding back for too long, bottling it all up, and now it’s all coming out in a rush like last night’s dodgy curry.’

  ‘But you never even hinted!’

  ‘Well, would you have listened?’ she hissed, leaning across the table. ‘Of course you wouldn’t, because actually, Rosie, marrying Harry was so bloody typical of you. The more I thought about it afterwards, the more I realized you were running totally true to form. You waft along, gloriously vague most of the time, not knowing if it’s Tuesday or Wednesday, and then every now and then you get a rush of blood to the head and a fixed idea about something and WHAM!’ She slammed her hand down on the table. ‘That’s it, you’re like a guided missile and no amount of persuasion will deter you from some lunatic course. It was just the same at school. There you were, cruising serenely towards your A-levels with consummate ease and then suddenly, with projected straight As and stupendous gall, you announce you’re not going to Oxford after all, you’re going to be a cook – a move which, if not actually calculated to piss your mother off, was certainly guaranteed to do so. It’s just so like you, Rosie!’