Elegance and Innocence (32 page)

Suddenly a green grape bounces off his head.

‘Hey!’ he dithers indignantly.

I look in the direction of the grape’s flight path, at Eddie, who’s staring at his plate and pushing his peas around with incredible intensity. He doesn’t dare glance up at me, but looks as though any minute his face might explode.

‘What’s going on here?’ Poppy’s grandfather demands. ‘Is that a grape? Why don’t I have a bloody grape! I fought in the war! I
deserve
to have a grape! Who’s hoarding the grapes!’

‘Father,’ Mrs Simpson-Stock rolls her eyes heavenward, ‘no one’s hoarding the grapes. They’re in the centre of the table. Centre of the table!’ she shouts automatically. ‘And don’t scream, you’re upsetting the dogs.’

‘Bugger the dogs!’ He lurches forward and appropriates a bunch, clutching them protectively to his chest. ‘Next bastard to chuck a grape is going to get more than he bargained for!’ he threatens, eyeing the assembled party suspiciously. ‘Never saw a grape during the war. Or even a tomato. Here.’ He passes me half a handful. ‘If it weren’t for your scruffy doughboys, none of us would even be here, let alone eating grapes!’

‘Thank you.’ I’ve obviously risen in his estimation, though why remains a mystery. Perhaps the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America only really flourishes under attack.

Pudding is a large, gooey sherry trifle, followed by thimblesful of lukewarm Nescafé. At 9:47, we’re finally released. Mrs Simpson-Stock rises and sweeps back into the lounge, escorted by her furry entourage. The rest of us bolt after her, leaving only her father behind, popping grapes into his mouth, savouring the possession rather more than the flavour.

Once in the hallway, Poppy turns to me. ‘Fancy a fag on the terrace?’ she whispers. Flora opens her cardigan and flashes a hip flask she’s tucked into the waistband of her skirt.

‘C’mon!’ she giggles and the three of us bypass the rest of the party, slipping out into the moonlight.

‘Head for the oak!’ Poppy hisses and we kick off our shoes and run across the cool, damp lawn to the enormous, ancient oak in the centre. Under its canopy of branches, we throw ourselves down, panting and laughing.

‘God! What I wouldn’t give for a packet of Smarties!’ Flora sighs, passing the flask.

‘Ahhh! Or a giant box of Cadbury’s chocolate biscuits!’ Poppy says.

‘So’ I laugh, ‘I’m not the only one who’s starving!’

‘As a matter of fact,’ Poppy says, ‘that’s one of the main reasons we come down here. When I’ve put on a few pounds, I just head home for the weekend. Cheaper than a spa and much, much more effective.’

‘Actually, Pops, your mother’s true calling may be saving
chronic overeaters,’ says Flora. ‘A few family dinners at Lower Slaughter and you’ll never look at food the same way again. And she could put the dogs on patrol at night to keep clients from escaping to the nearest all night mini mart.’

‘There’s an all night mini mart?’ I say, sitting up.

‘Miles away,’ they chorus.

‘Oh.’ I collapse once more. ‘Poor Poppy! Please don’t tell me you were actually raised on this food!’

Poppy takes a long swig and passes the flask. ‘What can I say? I was the only kid at boarding school who thought that school dinners were heaven. I used to weep with joy over boiled cabbage, stringy beef and semolina pudding. Never wanted to go home for the holidays.’

We lean back and gaze up at the stars through the branches of the oak, leaves fluttering in a soft, cool breeze. A chorus of crickets sings gently. And all is quiet except for the sound of our grumbling stomachs.

The next morning, I awake to the thunderous chords of Beethoven’s
Hammerklavier
. Eddie’s obviously an early riser. However it goes rapidly downhill from there. I do my pre-coffee stagger into the bathroom, only to discover that there’s no hot water. Evidently, Mrs Simpson-Stock is a passionate morning person. She rises at dawn, refreshes herself with a quick splash, and can’t understand why anyone would require more, taking an unnaturally hostile view of people whose morning routines include such extravagances
as hot baths and showers. Like many British raised during or just after the war, she regards a bath as the ultimate luxury and hot water as downright frivolous. If you really want to inflame her, all you need to do is mention the disturbing trend amongst the young to wash their hair every day and she’s catapulted into a hysteria second only to her feelings on animal quarantine laws and the decline of the Women’s Institute.

So I crouched naked in the tub, shivering as I sprayed myself with icy water from the hand-held shower attachment. It’s one way to wake up fast.

I prefer coffee.

Now dressed in the jeans and tee-shirt, I make my way downstairs in search of food. If there’s one meal the English excel at, it’s breakfast. I’m dreaming of silver urns filled with steaming piles of scrambled eggs, sizzling sausages, bacon, grilled tomatoes, creamy mushrooms and piles of warm toast. The dining room, however, is completely empty. Not a sausage in sight. I wander tentatively into the kitchen, where I find an enormous woman wading through piles of washing up.

‘Hello?’ I venture. Where did all these plates come from?

‘Hello, to you.’ She doesn’t bother to turn around.

‘Ah, so, what do people do around here for breakfast?’ I wonder aloud.

‘They turn up on time,’ she says brusquely. ‘Need to be down here by eight am at the latest.’

‘Oh.’ I spot the remains of crispy bacon and fluffy eggs being scraped into the bin.

‘There’s cereal on the table and some milk in the fridge,’ she dismisses me.

And that is that.

I eat and make my way into the music room.

‘Hey!’ I shout to Eddie, who’s pounding away.

‘Morning!’ he shouts back, not slowing his pace.

‘Where is everyone?’ I yell.

‘Out killing things! Louise! Just listen! This theme is the best!’

‘Killing things?’ I echo.

‘It’s what they do in the country to have fun,’ he beams. ‘You know, chase ’em, shoot ’em, fish ’em, trap ’em … otherwise known as the joys of country life.’ He pauses a moment, seeing I’m at a bit of a loss. ‘Not everyone’s out butchering the wildlife. I think Flora and Poppy are sunning themselves in the garden. At least, that’s what they’re calling it. More likely they’ve passed out trying to recover from a couple of very mysterious hangovers.’

‘I’d better join them, if only to offer them my sympathy.’ I don’t want to disturb him further. ‘Thanks, Eddie.’

‘Or,’ he stops and looks up at me, ‘we could always take a walk.’

‘Are you sure?’ Do I sound too delighted?

‘Absolutely,’ he says. ‘There’s only so much of me that Beethoven can take in a day and I think he’s had it up to here.’

‘Then I’d love to,’ I agree, ‘only, I’m warning you, I’m not much of an outdoors person.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ he assures me. ‘Only, I don’t suppose you have a pair of Wellingtons, do you? It’s just you never know what you’re going to walk into out there.’

‘Well, no.’ I think of the pair I’d borrowed, comfortably installed in my office, next to my dinner dress, fresh tee-shirts and clean knickers.

‘What a relief!’ he grins. ‘There’s a certain type of girl who owns her own Wellingtons and I’m glad you’re not it!’

‘And what type of girl is that?’

‘The same type of girl who always has a clean hankie, the right bus fare, and matching socks. A girl who owns her own Wellingtons is afraid of looking ridiculous, afraid of getting mud on her feet and that’s a terrible thing.’

‘But you said we needed them!’

‘Absolutely – it’s perfectly foul out there, Louise!’ He stands at the French doors, hand shading his eyes: a dauntless explorer looking towards the woodland beyond the lawn. ‘But just because we need them, doesn’t mean we
want
them. We shall use them under protest, under duress, and with the complete understanding that we welcome mud, wouldn’t be caught dead using a clean hankie when we have a perfectly good shirtsleeve, and would catch a cab over the bus every time. In short, with our integrity intact.’

‘Our integrity?’

‘Yup, our integrity demands that we have boots but recoils at them being ours.’ He’s leading me down a corridor I haven’t seen before.

‘That’s a bit tenuous,’ I trip along, laughing beside him. ‘Amusing, but you’re not making sense.’

‘There you go again! Sense, sense, sense! What is this obsession with sense! Nothing of great beauty in this world makes sense! Now, “Let us go then, you and I,”’

He quotes Eliot and I join in ‘“… when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table.”’

We arrive at the boot room. It’s a kind of giant closet filled from top to bottom with mouldy pairs of mismatched Wellingtons in all conceivable colours and sizes. Along the walls, wooden pegs hold row after row of waxed Barbour coats; my eyes water from the stench of the waxed coating.

‘My God, Eddie! How can people wear those things!’ I gasp, pinching my nose. ‘I can’t even get anywhere near them!’

‘Why, the Barbour waxed jacket is the very emblem of English country life!’ he proclaims, as he chucks various rejects across the room. ‘They repel not only water, but also any form of human contact. Perfect!’

We find one black and one green welly for him and two left footed red wellies for me. It’s not easy to walk with two left feet; there’s a distinct tendency to move in a circle.

Only by turning my right foot outward, at a 90-degree angle do I manage to make any progress at all.

I start to sulk.

‘
Courage, mon amour
!’ he cries. ‘Remember our integrity!’

‘I’ve got two left feet,’ I remind him. ‘You haven’t got two left feet!’

He gives me one of his fetching, quirky looks. (Already I’m building a file of his expressions to go over when I’m not with him.) ‘“You grow old, you grow old, you shall wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled.”’

I stick my tongue out at him.

We tramp (or rather he tramps, I limp) across the lawn until we come to a grassy lane leading to the riverbank.

‘Smell that air!’ Eddie sighs.

Someone has been riding that morning and the air smells of horse manure.

‘Look at that view!’ he cries.

We stop for a moment, look up, and then continue to shuffle along.

‘Feel the sun on your face!’ he beams exuberantly.

We both turn our faces upwards and walk straight into a cloud of midges. We dodge the manure. We duck the midges. We run off the trail to avoid the midges but the horses have been there too. Both midges and manure are remarkably adhesive.

Piers, Lavender’s self-proclaimed better half, is fishing by the river’s edge. Somehow he’s managed to bag the only
matching pair of Wellingtons, has exchanged his brilliant canary yellow corduroys for moleskin trousers and is even sporting a tweed fishing cap. It’s all very Constable-ish. He clearly shops at a store with a ‘What to Wear in the Country’ section. He waves a be-Barboured arm, signalling for us to be quiet. This is what it’s all about: a man, a stream, a smelly coat. A moment of almost overwhelming pastoral beauty. Moments later, he reels in a fish and begins clubbing it to death with a small leather bat he keeps in his pocket.

I had no idea that fish screamed but they do.

‘Well, that was lovely. Just lovely,’ Eddie says. ‘Shall we go back?’

‘Yes, why don’t we,’ I agree.

Fifteen minutes of rural bliss is enough for anyone.

Back at the house we peel off our boots and flop down on the grass. Lunch seems miles away. On the lawn, a heated game of croquet is going on between Mrs Simpson-Stock, her father and Lavender. The game is considerably hampered by the participation of the dogs chasing after each ball and who the elderly man regards as a free target, whacking his mallet around indiscriminately and with some effect. They in turn feel free to savage his leg. Under the old oak, the dozing figures of Poppy and Flora are pretty much where I left them the night before.

‘Now what should we do?’ I ask, pulling lazily at a blade of grass.

‘Let’s take a nap,’ he suggests.

And that’s what we do. He takes off his jumper, bunches it up in a ball and slips it under our heads. Side by side, our eyes closed, we bask in the warm heat of the sun. After a while, I’m aware of the sound of Eddie gently snoring next to me. And it’s a wonderful sound; a soft, whistly little sigh of a snore. I open one eye to see if he’s still smiling, and he is.

I smile too and close my eyes again.

How strange! I think, just as I’m dozing off. Why is it that I can sleep next to Eddie and yet I needed a bed the size of a football pitch to sleep with my husband? And as I snuggle closer to him, he turns and throws an arm over me. It must be the country air, I conclude, dreamily. It obviously has an intoxicating effect.

And that’s how I learnt that the great secret of surviving a country weekend isn’t the right clothes or the right equipment or even an enormous secret stash of food. It does, however, have everything to do with the company you keep.

The next evening, Poppy, Flora and I drive back to London. Sitting in the back seat, I stare out of the window at the patches of green countryside as they flash by. I feel strangely melancholic and agitated. I should be overjoyed to be returning to civilization but I’m not.

‘So.’ Flora looks at me significantly in the rear-view mirror. ‘You and Eddie were thick as thieves. You really like him, don’t you?’

‘
No way!
’ Poppy laughs. ‘Oh, he’s a cute kid but too young for you! I mean, he’s twenty-four and still doesn’t have a proper job! All he cares about is his music. You can’t be serious, Louise!’

‘I know that. She’s just teasing me, Poppy.’ I’m longing to change the subject. ‘Hey, why don’t we turn on the radio?’

‘Sure.’ Flora fiddles with the dial. I catch her eye in the mirror and she smiles.

No, I can’t be serious, I think, as we beetle down the motorway. Everything Poppy says is absolutely true.

So why do I feel so miserable?

Two days later, I arrive at work to find three white roses on my desk along with a note from Eddie.