A Rural Affair (4 page)

Joyless was a word horrifyingly close to my lips. And as I sat on my heels and looked at him and he asked if I’d ordered the
bedroom carpet, and I replied I hadn’t yet, he held my eye. ‘That’s the second time I’ve had to ask you, Poppy,’ he said slowly.
I went a bit cold.

‘There’s a sample in the kitchen drawer,’ he went on. ‘In the file marked Floor Coverings.’

‘Right.’

‘On the back you’ll find the John Lewis number,’ he added patiently, when I didn’t move. ‘Do it now, please.’

I got slowly to my feet. Moved kitchen-wards.

In retrospect that should have been my moment. Before children. My moment to take a deep breath and think: what have I done?
Marrying this man who knew his way around B&Q blindfold but not the human heart? Who could spot a speck of damp at twenty
paces but not a faint tremble of misgiving from his new wife? A small cry for help? But that way horror lay. And anyway, I
told myself, getting the carpet sample from the file, one of seven files, all neatly labelled in Phil’s precise hand, we were
so good together. Everybody said so. Such a good team. I ordered the carpet and then went quickly to boil the kettle with
the curly spout, the one we both liked and had bought in a junk shop. I made us some tea.

If this all seems a trifle submissive for a hitherto sparky girl, a typical product of the twenty-first century and not the
nineteenth, let me say something about confidence. Mine had taken a battering: first on losing Ben, and then, it seemed to
me, losing everyone else. So many happily married. And I’d experienced quite a bit of loss in my life; didn’t want to experience
any more. Which brings me to family. I didn’t have the backing of a big happy one to wade in and give advice, sit around kitchen
tables cradling mugs of tea before brandishing motherly or sisterly handbags if needs be. I had Dad. Who was lovely, but –
well, a dad. And I’d never missed Mum so much. Never wished so much that I could talk to her, that she hadn’t died. Which
perhaps explains why I’d flown to my best friend’s side. I’m not making excuses here – of course I should have been more punchy,
answered back, told him to order the bloody carpet himself. I’m just outlining mitigating circumstances. I’d only been married
a short while; I wanted to keep the peace. Wanted us to be happy. Didn’t want to throw saucepans at this stage.

And after all, what would I do without Phil? Phil, who pitted his wits against the entire building industry, plumbers who
plumbed in radiators upside down, tilers who used the wrong grouting, the distressed-pine kitchen fitter, who disappeared
mid job, with four out of seven cupboards unfitted, and who, when we rang, leaving messages on his answerphone, seemed to
have disappeared into thin air. Phil eventually tracked him down. His wife, it transpired, had had a miscarriage. But Phil
had him back working in an instant, albeit looking as distressed as his cupboards, I thought, as I took him a cup of tea.

‘It’s the second baby they’ve lost in two years,’ I told Phil as I joined him in the garden, where he was tying up runner
beans.

‘So I gather. But life goes on.’

I shot him a look. ‘I hope you didn’t tell him that.’

‘Why?’

‘Wouldn’t be terribly tactful.’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but it does.’

We continued to do the beans in silence.

Teamwork, that was the key. And of course it would be an even stronger team when we were three. When we had a baby. Even I
could spot the sink-estate mentality inherent in that notion, but it disappeared the moment I discovered conceiving wasn’t
that easy; when nothing happened for a year or two, when we had something else to pit our wits against, another cause to campaign
for, besides the house.

Phil read books, went on the Internet, and declared that the first thing to do was to identify the culprit.

‘The culprit?’

‘Yes. See whose fault it is.’

‘Bit soon, isn’t it?’ I said doubtfully. ‘Shouldn’t we – you know – try for a bit longer first?’

‘What, and waste more time?’

‘Might be fun. I read somewhere that if you do it every night for a month you stand more chance of hitting the egg. Blanket
bombing.’

I smiled flirtatiously, but he’d already turned back to the computer. And within a twinkling, had made appointments for us
both in Harley Street. Me to have my tubes blown, him to fill a test tube, assisted by a girly magazine. This fascinated me.
Not that a smart Harley Street joint provided such a thing, but the idea of Phil looking at one. The results came back and
we were both declared innocent, which I could tell surprised Phil.

‘Why, did you think you were firing blanks?’

‘Oh, no, I knew I’d be OK.’

After that our marriage roared into action, with Phil at the helm, morphing swiftly from house restorer to infertility doctor.
He knew the temperature of my body to within a whisker, knew when my ovaries were ripe and rumbling portentously, could pinpoint
to the hour when conditions were ideal for copulation. He knew when I was hot, in the strictest, David Attenborough sense
of the word. There was to be no blanket bombing, but once a month he’d ring me at work to tell me to hustle home sharpish
and get my kit off, and if that sounds sexy, it wasn’t. Not when your husband is grimly plunging his testicles into freezing-cold
water beforehand without cracking a joke – I tried one, about cold fish, and it didn’t go down very well – and not when I
was instructed to lie doggo for at least an hour afterwards, the only laugh coming when I suggested he lie with me. Personally
I wondered if the tight Lycra cycling suit he squeezed back into afterwards and wore ninety per cent of the time was helping
matters, but since I was rapidly losing interest in the whole project, I decided not to mention it.

Why was I losing interest? Why was I finally succumbing to what can only be described as torpor as I rumbled home every night
on the train from the West End to what should have been my enviable country love nest? Because everyone has their saturation
point. And happy as I wanted us to be, little by little, drip by drip, as the months, then the years ticked by, I was coming
to the mind-numbing conclusion that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.

My epiphany came as I was standing at the kitchen window one Thursday morning, on one of my precious days off from work, looking
at the list of ‘Things to Do’ he’d left me, the last of which read: Have your hair cut.

I reached for the phone to tell Jennie I needed a coffee, pronto, and also to tell her I was leaving him. Her answering machine
was on. I knew she was in, though, because I’d seen her in the garden a few moments earlier. I was about to go round and tell
her, when I stopped off in the downstairs loo, and saw the pregnancy test he’d left me. It was open, with a note propped on
one of the sticks.

I sighed but peed on it nevertheless, thinking it was the last thing I would ever do for him. Then I watched the blue line
darken, and realized I was pregnant.

As I slowly went back into the kitchen, the telephone rang.

‘Poppy? Did you ring?’

‘Hm? Oh. Yes, hi, Jennie.’

‘You OK? You sound a bit down.’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

‘D’you want to come round for a quick coffee? I’ve got literally twenty minutes before I pick Jamie up from school.’

‘Er, no. Better not. I’ve got the ironing to finish.’

‘This afternoon? Cup of tea?’

‘Actually, Jennie, I think I’m going to have my hair cut.’

The funeral took place a week later and was indeed dreadful. Much worse than I’d imagined or even Jennie had prophesied, but
perhaps for different reasons. The brightness of the day and the pure blue sky didn’t help, adding poignancy somehow, throwing
the occasion into relief. Ancient yews cast long dramatic shadows across the churchyard and villagers were silhouetted starkly
as they left their cottages, one by one or in hushed groups, following the haunting relentless toll of the bell, wreaths in
hand ready to lay at the church door. Inside a sorrowful aroma of dank stone, polish and candle wax prevailed. Our tiny church
was full, as Jennie had also grimly predicted, the respectful silence broken only by the odd hushed whisper or rustle of skirts
as people took their seats, casting me sympathetic glances the while as I swallowed hard in the front pew, biting my lip.
One week on and I felt utterly drained and exhausted. A small part of me was relieved at that. How awful would it have been
to stand here at my husband’s funeral singing ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’ and not to have a lump in my throat? Not to have to
count to ten and dig my nails hard in my hand as the organ struck a mournful chord, everyone got to their feet, and the coffin
processed up the aisle?

Three of Phil’s cycling cronies were pall-bearers: tall, skinny and anaemic-looking to a man. Each what my dad would call
a long streak of piss. The fourth was my father
himself, who’s tiny, so that the coffin, I realized in horror, leaned precariously his way. And his shoulders sloped at the
best of times. The congregation collectively held its breath as the coffin made its way, at quite an alarming angle, to the
front, Dad’s knees seeming to buckle under the strain with every step. The cyclists had to stop more than once to let him
get more of a grip, but finally the altar was achieved. I shut my eyes as the coffin was lowered. There was, admittedly, a
bit of a clatter and a muffled ‘Fuck’ from Dad, but I think only I heard. My father glanced round as he straightened up, unable
to resist making eye contact, to suggest he’d done really rather well, under the circumstances.

I gave a small smile back as he puffed out his chest and stood respectfully a moment, head bowed over the coffin. The other
pall-bearers had dispersed. That’ll do, Dad, I thought nervously, as the seconds ticked by. My father may be small, five foot
seven in his socks, but he’s frightfully important-looking, as small men often are. In his youth, when he hadn’t been riding
point-to-pointers or driving all over the country to do so, he’d done a lot of am-dram, and something in his manner suggested
there was still a chance he’d sweep a cloak over his shoulder, hold Yorick’s skull aloft and proclaim to the gallery. When
he’d milked his moment for all it was worth he turned on his heel and came, head bowed, to sit beside me, clearly relishing
this particular performance.

The vicar meanwhile, after we’d sung the first hymn, manfully launched into the eulogy. Manfully because he’d never met Phil,
so he was really quite at sea. I’d decided to leave it to him, though, despite his anxious ‘Really, Mrs Shilling? Sure there’s
no one else?’ ‘Quite sure.’ And now he was telling us what a helluva guy Phil was, what a pillar of the community,
what a loss to the village. All nonsense, of course, because Phil had never been involved in village life; had indeed never
been inside this church before now, except to get married. But then the vicar said what a marvellous father he’d been and
what a loss to the children, and that’s when I welled up. He hadn’t been marvellous, but any father is a loss. You only get
one, and my children would never have another Christmas with him, another holiday with him, not that they’d necessarily want
to cycle through the Pyrenees being yelled at constantly to keep up, or … OK, he’d never make speeches at their eighteenths,
twenty-firsts, that sort of thing. Actually Phil had only ever made one speech to my knowledge, a best-man’s speech for a
cycling crony, which had gone on for forty-six minutes, and been so turgidly dull that eventually, when everyone began coughing
and nipping to the loo or the bar, the bride’s father, a bluff Yorkshireman, had got to his feet and said firmly: ‘That’ll
do, laddie.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.

I sighed. Still. My poor babies. Clemmie, in particular. Archie, at twenty months, was too young to understand, but Clemmie
had listened soberly when I’d told her the bad news the following morning, sitting her down before nursery school, explaining
carefully exactly what had happened. Her brown eyes had grown huge in her pale little face, knowing, by the tone of my voice,
rather than the content, that this was bad.

‘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.’