After Ever After (30 page)

‘Of course, I don’t mean just you, heavens no. I mean all of the Players, every one. It is each Player’s responsibility to take this honour very seriously, or at least they should do. It’s not just the quality of the production I’m thinking of, or my reputation, though God knows I’ve spent years building it up. It’s the Tring Troubadours. I’d never say this on record, but last year they were better than us, more focused, better sets – more in tune. This year we absolutely have to better them, we have to. For the honour of the town!’ She took a swift shallow breath. ‘And, well, your arrival seems to have brought a kind of levity to the proceedings that is proving rather distracting …’

I smiled inwardly with delight. Me? Frumpy Kitty? Distracting? Levity?

Caroline continued, her voice a hoarse stage whisper, ‘I mean, since you’ve joined, even Ian, er, Mr Crawley, acts like a teenager half the time, and he is usually such a dignified man!’ She stared at me with her black eyes and I gathered that I’d missed my cue to respond.

‘So you’re saying you want me to have less fun?’ I said slowly, trying not to smile.

‘Yes, exactly,’ she replied with a tight little smile. ‘More focus, less fun, let it be your motto!’ She waved her hand as if casting a spell and I shrugged compliantly, swallowing my bubbling hysteria.

‘I’ll certainly try,’ I promised sincerely.

Caroline bobbed her head in a quick nod before flying off to bully Barbara next. At last Clare bounced up behind me and linked her arm through mine.

‘Well, that was fun,’ she said.

But it wasn’t until we got back home that things
really
went wrong.

‘Hi!’ I called as Clare and I went in through the door.

‘Hello, dear.’ This time I was expecting Georgina, I had even arranged it, as I knew Fergus wouldn’t be back before I had to leave and that when he did get in he couldn’t cope on his own, not after a day at work.

‘Everything okay?’ I said, still feeling friendly towards her. She was in high spirits.

‘Yes, dear, everything’s fine, we’ve had a gay old time. Fergus got in about eight and I made him shepherd’s pie, it’s his favourite, you know. He gave Ella her bath and then I put her to bed.’

‘She just went down?’ I said, surprised.

‘Well, she made a bit of a fuss for a while, but she soon learnt that when
Grandma
puts her to bed she stays in bed.’ I bit my lip as I followed her into the living room, trying to remember that I liked her now. Fergus was just polishing off what looked like the remains of a home-made apple pie right out of the dish.

‘Mmmmm, Mum, that was delicious, no one cooks like you,’ he said. ‘Hi, darling, come and give me a kiss.’

I bent over and kissed his forehead, trying not to be resentful; after all, it was hardly fair. If you don’t cook, you can’t complain if someone else does. You can feel slightly narked when your husband so obviously enjoys one of the domestic pleasures you’ve been denying him recently, though.

‘Hi, Clare,’ he said over my shoulder. I had forgotten that Clare was even there. ‘Did you have a good time?’

‘Yeah, I’m making Kitty this huge pink ballgown, it’s going to be fab,’ she said with a giggle. Fergus wolf-whistled sarcastically, if such a thing were possible.

‘What about you, Kits? Did you do some lassoing or something?’ he asked me, his face beaming with contentment.

I smiled. ‘It was so cool, I’m really enjoying it. I mean, it’s totally not hip or anything, but that’s half the fun. Except I’m not allowed to have fun any more, Caroline told me.’ Clare and I grinned at each other.

Georgina appeared from the kitchen with a cup of tea, clearly delighted to be mothering my husband again. She handed me the tea, presented in the ‘best’ china, a flowery Doulton number which was part of a ludicrously expensive service she and Daniel had bought us, even though we had begged for something simple and microwave-proof.

‘While I was making Fergus some dinner, dear, I couldn’t help but notice you were a bit low on basic supplies so I’ve made you a list. I’ve left it on the counter.’ I took the tea and gritted my teeth through a polite smile. ‘You know, herbs, all that store-cupboard stuff Delia recommends, vital to spruce up any basic dish.’

I raised a mildly aggravated eyebrow. ‘Thanks then,’ I said, hoping she’d leave before the other eyebrow got all irritable too.

‘Oh, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, dear, but, well, Fergus has bought you such a lovely kitchen, it seems a shame not to use it properly. I know how busy you are, so I’ve rearranged your cupboards for you, I hope you don’t mind.’

I looked at Fergus and his eyes pleaded with me, ‘Just say you don’t mind.’

‘No, no, I don’t mind,’ I said awkwardly, spitting the words out of my mouth. ‘Thanks, that’s lovely.’

Fergus got up and stretched with a theatrical flourish that would have gone down well with the Players. He looked at where his watch would have been if he hadn’t taken it off for Ella’s bath.

‘Wow, is that the time? Right, Mum, I’ll just grab my coat and I’ll take you and Clare home.’ Before World War Three breaks out, he might as well have added. As he went outside, Georgina beckoned me closer to her. I went, mesmerised by the thought of what new atrocity she could commit in my living room.

‘Now, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,’ she told me, priming me to do exactly that, ‘but it seems to me that Fergus is under a lot of pressure at the moment, working hard for you and the baby …’ I waited patiently for the final straw … ‘and really, darling, I know it’s the twenty-first century and all that, but I do think that if you cooked him a few decent meals a week it wouldn’t mean that you were tied to the kitchen sink, and …’

‘Oh, shut up you interfering old bag,’ I thought, but out loud as it happened. Out very loud in a shouty, angry tone. Clare clapped her hand over her mouth and backed hastily out of the door.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said predictably, and I thought, ‘in for a penny …’

‘I said, shut up you interfering old bag! How
dare
you, how
dare
you come in here and rearrange my cupboards and judge me on my housewifery skills! I don’t want to be a housewife, I’m
not
a housewife. Your bloody son has forced me into being a housewife, I’m not allowed to do any bloody thing but
be
a housewife, and now you,
you
are having a go too. Is there a mark on the back of your neck that reads Stepford?’

Fergus ran into the room. I think it was at that moment that I realised the true meaning of what it meant to have said too much.

‘Kitty!’ Fergus looked from Georgina to me. ‘Mum, what have you … Kitty!’

‘You ungrateful little tramp,’ Georgina said. ‘He picked you up from the gutter …’

‘The gutter?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘What, you mean Hackney?’

‘
Yes
, the gutter, are you deaf as well as ignorant?’ Georgina spat, her face transformed by fury. ‘He takes on you and your baby …’

‘
His
baby! The baby that looks so much like him I might as well be a test tube!’ I yelled at her, staring at Fergus, waiting for him to step in and defend me. He just stood there, mouth open, arms outstretched.

‘Yes, that’s right, and if you had been, at least she would have a decent mother!’ Georgina had hissed.

At last Fergus moved between us, pushing us apart.

‘Mum, Kitty, please …’ he said. ‘You’ll wake up the baby.’ It wasn’t the display of marital unity I’d been hoping for, so I waded back into the breech on my own account.

‘Ha! You wouldn’t know what it meant to be a decent mother if the bloody Virgin Mary came down from heaven to give you lessons!’ I told her, waving my stupid tea cup at her. ‘At least
I
don’t think it’s fine to leave my baby crying all alone, at least
I
won’t leave her to make her own tea and do her own washing whilst I get pissed and stoned because my husband is so bloody sick of me going on at him all day that’s he left just to get a bit of peace and quiet!’

Georgina stopped dead, mid-riposte, clearly stunned.

‘What do you mean by that?’ she said, her voice wobbly.

‘Fergus told me,’ I said, holding her gaze, avoiding Fergus’s look. ‘He told me about when Daniel left you. And I’ll tell you something else, I bet he wishes he’d never come back!’ I hit her so far below the belt it still makes me wince. All of her anger drained from her face in a second, and for once she looked every one of her sixty-two years. She turned away from me and Fergus then and made her way to the door.

‘Yes, well, do you know why he went?’ she said quietly over her shoulder. ‘He went because I was too hard to be with, because I was too proud, I never showed him that I cared and he felt unloved.’ She straightened her back and lifted her chin. ‘Yes, he did go, and yes, it did nearly break my heart, but in those days people didn’t run out of marriages the way they do now, and he came back, he gave me a chance to see what I might have lost. So you’d better take care, young lady, because if Fergus walks out on
you
, he might find it easier
not
to come back.’ She walked out of the door.

‘Mum!’ Fergus called, rushing after her, stopping briefly at the door. ‘Darling, I’ll have to go after her, explain why I told you about it, all right?’ I nodded dumbly, it was not all right. ‘I’ll be back in a bit, all right?’ I nodded again, not trusting myself to say anything more, and when I’d shut the world out I curled up on the sofa and wept. Georgina was wrong, she had to be, it wasn’t going to be cooking that would heal my relationship. It couldn’t be.

‘Kitty?’ Clare touched me on the shoulder. ‘I’ve made you some tea with some whisky in?’ She held out a steaming mug. ‘Blimey, you really laid into her, didn’t you?’

‘Oh God, Clare, I thought you’d gone! I’m sorry you had to get caught in the middle of all that.’ I thought about just a few of the things that had been said. ‘Sorry, mate, what a fucking bitch.’ I said, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand.

‘Yeah, she was like the queen of bitches,’ Clare agreed heartily. ‘The
Trisha Show
level of bitchiness.’

I took a deep gulp of tea, glad to feel it burning my throat.

‘No, not her, me. What a fucking bitch.’

So we are British and, despite Fergus’s tenuous links with a Celtic past, we are English, and more than that we are southern English, and even more than that we are Home Counties (via Hackney) English and, in the true and proud tradition of that breed, up until this moment we have been pretending that the whole thing never happened. She never called me a guttersnipe or implied that my baby was illegitimate, and I never accused her of being a vicious evil android.

I don’t know what I expected to happen – World War Three, the whole of the Berkhamsted WI sending me to Coventry, a front-page splash on the gazette maybe – but as it was, Georgina had phoned me the very next day and offered to make vol-au-vents. Fergus had picked up the phone and, after a brief and wary chat with her, he’d handed me the receiver saying out loud, ‘Darling, Mum wants a quick word!’ and mouthing ‘PLEASE BE NICE TO HER!’ I’d braced myself for the full force of her anger and felt somehow let down by the offer of diminutive pastries, but Fergus had assured me that that was her way of making peace and I should accept it.

Now, with my father, my ex-addict best friend and out-of-order gardener about to turn up I feel that I have to have at least one thing sorted out before the meal begins. I close my eyes and pretend I’m from California.

‘Listen, Georgina, I just wanted to talk to you before the others arrive …’ I begin.

Georgina presses her lips together, no doubt anticipating a reprise of last week’s folly.

‘Yes, dear, what can I do for you?’ she asks me, clearly demonstrating with every line of her body that she does not want to talk about what happened. Well, she’s just going to have to.

‘I wanted to say that I’m sorry, I’m sorry about all that stuff I said,’ I tell her, rushing out the words before her gimlet eyes and perilously high hair freak me out so much that I lose the power of speech. In fact, my straightforward and what I imagine to be California-style apology freaks her out instead, and for one delicious moment I enjoy the power it gives me over her before I remember I am supposed to be healing the rift not exacerbating it.

‘The thing is,’ I continue before she can regain her composure, ‘it’s that, well, part of me was a bit pissed off with you for rooting about in my house as if you owned it like that, and telling me how I should look after my baby and my husband, but also …’ I struggle to find the right words … ‘sometimes I think I might feel a bit jealous of the way you love Fergus. Not jealous of you, but jealous of him. I mean, no one ever loved me in that way, or at least not for very long.’ It’s not until I finish the last word that I know what I am going to say, and I surprise myself with the truth. Rather reassuringly, Georgina lays down the knife she has been holding and leans against the counter.

‘I am sorry too,’ she says with visible relief. ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Here we are, both grown women, and yet I haven’t felt that way since I was a little girl on the playing field. Oh, and, well, that business with Daniel …’ She shakes her head slightly and her red up-do trembles.

‘I’m so sorry I brought that up …’ I try to tell her, but she waves my apology away.

‘Now listen to me for a change. The thing is, I do know how I’m behaving when I talk to you like that.’ She makes a futile gesture. ‘It’s like I’m on some runaway train for stereotypical mothers-in-law and I can’t get off it,
but
, having said that, my reasons behind what was said are that I do care about you, whatever you might think. I care about you and Fergus.’ She crosses her arms and looks out at the half-finished garden.

‘When he first picked you I
was
disappointed, I can’t deny it. I’d always pictured him with the Masterson girl from Chesham, lovely girl, terribly nice family and immaculate manners. But
anyway
love is love and you can’t deny it. So I made a fist of it, and maybe it would have helped if we’d got to know you before the wedding, but anyway, as I came to know you I came to like you and I could see,
can
see, how much my son adores you. When I said about making him dinner once in a while I did mean it. I wasn’t trying to tie you to the kitchen or turn you into a robotic wife – I was trying to show you how important it is to show someone that you care for them, that you cherish them. That baby of yours is a wonderful, beautiful little person, but a baby can rip a couple apart, especially a couple who really hardly know each other. Now, I’ve said this to Fergus and I’m saying it to you. If you don’t want to cook for him, then run him a bath; if you know he’s going to be in late, video one of the dinosaur documentaries he likes so much. Little things like that connect you to one another.’ She touches her hair with her hand, looking into the middle distance and some memory. ‘Otherwise you’ll drift so far apart you may not be able to find your way back.’ She takes a deep breath and presses her pink lips together. ‘I’m parched now, shall we open a bottle of wine?’