Having It All (24 page)

She even had one set of friends who’d ripped out a state-of-the-art split-level oven with white ceramic hob to instal a vast blue-enamelled Aga – and that was in Chelsea!

‘Mummy, why are you shouting at the oven?’ She hadn’t noticed Jamie arrive barefoot in the freezing kitchen behind her. During the night the weather had suddenly changed from
Indian summer to English winter and the Aga had chosen this moment, when Mel was coming to stay for three days, to clap out.

Liz looked with dismay at the Sussex Pond Pudding she had slaved over last night, staying up till midnight to shred the suet for the real suet pastry, carefully swaddling it round the whole
lemon and brown sugar and tying muslin round the top of the pudding basin to boil for three hours on the hob this morning.

But she wasn’t giving up yet. Not at the prospect of no hot food and a freezing house for the whole of Mel’s visit. Summoning her ‘I was a Female Programme Controller’
voice she rang the suppliers and demanded to speak to the Managing Director whom she informed that it was entirely his own, personal responsibility that her Aga had broken down and that her baby
would catch pneumonia and her five-year-old son’s asthma had already returned. What was more, and this in a voice of charming threat, if he didn’t send someone immediately she would be
forced to phone her best friend Esther Rantzen, queen of all the consumer watchdogs, and that would be a pity for Firle Furnaces when she exposed them on TV, wouldn’t it?

When the unfortunate man explained politely that he had no engineer on duty today, Liz suggested that maybe he might like to pop down himself.

‘Mum! Mum! There’s a Bentley outside!’

Liz, still in her Laura Ashley nightie and dressing gown, rushed to the window to see an ancient car pulling up outside the cottage and an equally aged gentleman emerge from it.

‘Mrs Ward, I presume?’

Liz buttoned up her nightie and pulled her dressing gown round her. One glimpse of boob and the old boy would probably have a heart attack. Before he’d looked at her Aga.

‘Here, have a cushion!’ He was so arthritic that it had taken him five minutes to get to his knees and she wasn’t convinced he’d ever get up again. Gratefully he knelt on
the cushion and put his head in the oven. Tutt-tutting he then inspected the small ovens, finally turning his attention to the gauge on the side.

‘Ah. Ha.’ He pulled himself to his feet. ‘I see the problem.’

‘Well it has to be your firm’s fault,’ snapped Liz, warming to the role of outraged householder. Mel would be here soon and the house was still freezing. ‘It was only
serviced last month and these things are supposed to last a lifetime, several lifetimes even –’

‘Only when you put oil in them,’ he interrupted mildly.

Liz stopped mid-fow. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said you’ve run out of oil. See this gauge. It says E. That means –’

‘Empty!’ shouted Jamie starting to giggle.

‘Shut UP, Jamie.’ It wasn’t fair. She’d tried so hard to read all the instruction books but the Aga’s had been lost since World War I. David had always looked after
it. She hardly dared look at the old man. ‘How soon can you deliver some?’

‘A minimum of fourteen days.’

‘Oh no, but that’s our only heating . . . My baby’s pneumonia –’

‘Quite so. And your little boy’s asthma,’ he interrupted again, looking at Jamie and Daisy glowing with health beside her. ‘So as a small precaution I popped a barrel in
the boot of the Bentley. It’ll last you a couple of days anyway. But I’m afraid you’ll have to refill it yourself. Have you got a funnel?’

Liz nearly kissed him. She so wanted the house to be warm and welcoming, a picture of rural charm, by the time Mel arrived. As she showed him out she wondered why it mattered so much. After all,
Mel was her best friend. She wouldn’t mind if they were in their dressing gowns and the house was freezing! She’d think it was funny and suggest they get a Chinese takeaway or go down
to the pub.

But Liz knew how much it mattered to
her
if the house were cold and dark when Mel arrived. Then Mel might think she’d made a mistake in coming to live here. And she needed Mel to
think she’d done the right thing. Because just at the moment, she realized she wasn’t too sure herself.

It took Liz a full ten minutes of searching high and low to find the funnel, but eventually she did and carefully filled the oil tank up with enough oil to last three days.

As she knelt on the stone-flagged kitchen floor and watched the dial snake slowly upwards she put her hand against the oven and felt the first faint flicker of warmth.

Sitting back on her heels, she threw back her head and laughed as Jamie cheered. She, who had only weeks ago run a vast technological empire, was glowing with relief and happiness that she
hadn’t allowed herself to be defeated by a lump of iron that had been made nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

‘Mum, it’s your friend!’

‘Oh no! It can’t be!’ But Jamie was right, Mel’s car was pulling up in the lane outside the cottage nearly an hour early and she was still wearing the filthy tracksuit
she’d worn to help the old boy from Firle Furnaces carry in the oil. She’d meant to change into the new blue jeans she’d bought last week in Lewes and get the children into the
bright Clothkits outfits that really suited them, a picture of healthy, apple-cheeked, country children.

Oh well. Telling herself to stop being pathetic she rushed to the door and watched Mel get out of her company BMW. She’d come straight from a conference and she was still wearing her
Working Woman suit, though being Mel she’d teamed it with a jade silk blouse cut interestingly low in the neck.

As usual Mel broke all the rules: her huge dark glasses clanked against vast dangly earrings, and she sported leopardskin shoes that wouldn’t have shamed a hooker. But she did it with such
panache, putting it all together with a suit so well cut, so screamingly chic, that the whole thing looked terrific.

For a fraction of a second Liz felt depressed. In her BMW and her £500 suit Mel was like a visitor from another planet. And though it might have been a planet Liz had left willingly, there
are always things you miss about the Auld Country. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Liz longed for the camaraderie of the office, the gossip and the banter, the loaded comments in the lift. She looked down
at her oil-stained tracksuit. If Mel had arrived half an hour later and Liz had been waiting ready at the door as she’d planned, the quietly chic mother with her two charming children, a
Sussex Pond Pudding bubbling deliciously on the hob, maybe she could have warded off this tidal wave of envy suddenly threatening to engulf her.

‘Liz!’ Mel had noticed her on the doorstep at last. ‘Lizzie!’ and threw herself into her friend’s arms. And as she took off her dark glasses to kiss her, Liz
realized they hadn’t been for show after all. Mel’s eyes were red with crying.

‘He hasn’t phoned, Lizzie. Not once in two months. And if I so much as appear in a room at
Femina
, he’s out of it. He’s even started sending his articles in
instead of delivering them! He’s avoiding me, I know it. I must have rung him a dozen times! I know I shouldn’t be hounding him, but Lizzie, he’s the most wonderful man I’ve
met in
years
!’

Suddenly, as though a heavy weight had been lifted off her chest, Liz saw that none of the trappings of success made any difference. You could edit a glossy magazine and be just as lonely as the
girl in the postroom. The power and the money, the expensive restaurants and the smart parties, none of it meant anything if you loved a man and he didn’t want you.

‘Oh Mel!’ She put her arms round Mel and held her friend tight. ‘It’s so bloody
wonderful
to see you!’

Britt looked at the pile of work she’d been planning to get through while the office was empty and the phone silent for once and realized it was no good. She just
couldn’t concentrate. Every time she started on something the thought of David’s limp cock came back to haunt her. Maybe she was making too much of it. Still, everyone had problems from
time to time. Maybe they just overdid it last night. She really must pull herself together.

She looked out of the window at the empty streets. Everyone was at home with their families except for the real hard-line workaholics like her. She’d always prided herself on how hard she
worked – right through the night if the job demanded it. She loved to boast that she could work any man under the table. Sooner or later they always cracked. The lure of wifey or the telly or
the hundred per cent duck down duvet always got them in the end. But not Britt. Or at least not till now. Suddenly she didn’t want to be at work, even though today she actually needed to be.
She wanted to curl up on the sofa with David and read the Sunday papers like everyone else.

For God’s sake, Williams, she told herself, shocked, you’re going soft. Next you’ll be cooing over babies and mugging up on recipe books. Get a grip on yourself for God’s
sake!

But it was no good. If she couldn’t have him in bed, she still wanted to be with him, to sit by him and just be together. Looking at her watch she had a sudden inspiration. Five-thirty.
She’d take him out for an early dinner. Her favourite restaurant, Chinatown, the oldest Chinese restaurant in London, was only a mile from her flat. Feeling cheerful again she made a booking
for an hour’s time and drove home to give David a surprise.

‘Mmmm . . . something smells wonderful!’ Mel leaned on the Aga and sniffed the warm tangy scent of lemon.

‘That’s the speciality of the house. Sussex Pond Pudding!’

‘Local recipes already. I
am
impressed!’

Mel looked round the cottage admiringly, taking in the fat pink roses on the chintz curtains and the rag rugs and the pretty pine furniture. ‘Lovely curtains.’ Mel didn’t know
a lot about curtains. She left all that to her decorator.

Liz blushed. ‘I made them myself.’

‘Wow! Hold the front page! Network Honcho Makes Own Curtains Shock! I can see the headline now in
Variety
!’

Liz giggled. ‘Ex-Network Honcho if you don’t mind. Come and see the Honcho’s runner beans.’

She dragged Mel out into the garden, laughing at her as she picked her way through the cabbages and sprouts in her four-inch heels.

‘You’d never make a countrywoman!’

‘Too right! If I’m not within a taxi-ride of The Groucho Club I start having dizzy spells.’

‘Mum! Mum! Come inside!’ Liz knew that Jamie was jealous and wanted her attention but seeing Mel was manna from heaven so she pretended not to hear him and went on showing Mel her
garden.

‘These are my Albertines. They’re pale pink and flower twice a year. I’m trying to persuade them to grow round the door like they do on chocolate boxes! Then these are
delphiniums, I grew those myself, and foxgloves and Canterbury Bells. And
these
’ – she pointed to a clump of pale green leaves – ‘are my greatest achievement
– cottage lilies!’

Mel smiled at the pride in her friend’s voice. Gardening was like jogging to Mel; if she felt the inclination coming on she lay down till it passed, but she could tell how much it meant to
Liz. And she looked so serene, dammit, kneeling there in her dirty tracksuit boasting about her cottage lilies and her delphiniums as though they were million-pound deals she’d just pulled
off.

Much as she loved her, Liz was a mystery to Mel. When she’d given up her job to be a wife and mother, Mel had been horrified. It had seemed like sacrilege to throw away all that power and
privilege as if they didn’t count, as if thousands of women wouldn’t
kill
for what you had. And when David had gone off with Britt, although she’d been devastated to see
Liz so hurt, it had somehow seemed a judgement on this mad, crazy step. You give up being a high-flyer to be a home-maker and your husband goes off like greased lightning with your career bitch of
a best friend. Of course he does! What had Liz expected?

It was a sign of the times. Twenty years ago your husband might have left you if you dared to be a career woman, but not any more. Now he left you because you dared to be a housewife! Yet here
was Liz, husbandless and jobless, hemming curtains and planting flowers and knocking up Sussex Pond Pudding and seeming to thrive on it!

‘Don’t you ever miss work?’ Mel asked curiously.

Liz stood up. ‘Of course I do! I did this morning when you swanned up in your bloody BMW and your power suit! Suddenly I yearned to be hiring and firing, to hear a spot of office
backbiting, to find out if Conrad had left his wife for Claudia, just to feel the thrill of making a brilliant programme!’

Mel grinned, relieved.

‘But then I remembered all the politicking and the time-wasting and all the endless meetings which some man has kindly scheduled for six p.m. because he doesn’t want to go home
anyway! And then it all flooded back to me. We still only win by playing men’s rules, Mel! We’ve even become like them. We’ve taken on their aggression and their competitiveness.
We’re turning into Britts, God help us. We’ve learned to put work first and screw the rest of it!’

She broke off one of the last of the roses and handed it to Mel.

‘I know you find it utterly incredible, but I enjoy myself here. I have things called evenings! I decide every morning what I want to do today. I have the one thing you don’t have
– I have
time
. Time to sit in the garden, to cook, to play with the kids, to read . . .’

‘Mum! Mum!’ Jamie put his head round the door again. ‘There’s a funny smell in here.’

‘I’d better go. He’s probably imagining it but I ought to check. Back in a tick.’

Mel wandered round the garden clutching her glass of wine and trying not to impale herself on the lawn. The frost had cleared leaving blue skies with just a hint of cold in the air. Even she had
to admit, it really was a wonderful place. The whole village seemed to be cradled in a fold of the Downs that the centuries had simply passed by. Living here you could forget that that other world
of hustling and shafting even existed. For the first time she wondered if Liz might have a point.