Having It All Page 17

  Once she’d loved the excitement and the buzz of urban life but now she realized she longed to kiss goodbye to the whole melting pot of crime and dirt, greed and tension. How could anyone want to live here any more?

  Go on, you old reactionary, her streak of honesty wasn’t letting her off the hook so easily. You’re just old and settled that’s all. You loved it once for the very things that now you loathe, like a lover whose louche charms you fell for but now disapprove of. In six months you’ll be moaning how you can’t get avocados in the country and have to drive six miles to Brighton to see a decent film!

  But as they drove out of London towards Sussex, she felt the tension ease. In an hour they would reach Lewes and after that it would be country lanes.

  As Jamie and Daisy slept Liz rolled down her window to let in the afternoon sunshine. She loved the slanting light of October and already the trees were turning. Every year she’d told herself she’d come to the cottage for the autumn and watch the colours change and somehow they never had.

  Beyond Lewes there was a junction, and as they turned right for Seamington she felt the excitement grow until it was almost physical. On either side of the narrow road the golden branches leaned over the lane like welcoming arms. A girl on a pony clopping along in front of them waved a greeting. The brass cockerel on top of the little church’s steeple whirled in the wind, and the clouds blew across the sun, turning the wide open fields of the Downs into patchwork. And she noticed with pleasure that the tea gardens hadn’t yet closed for winter.

  And there it was at the far end of the village. Crossways. The flint and thatch cottage nestling in a fold of the Downs that her grandmother had lived in for the last years of her happy life, and left to Liz, never knowing it would turn out to be the blessed bolt-hole that it was today.

  As she unpacked the boot she stood and looked at it for a moment. She had always had a strong sense of fate. And standing in the shadow of this lovely, peaceful old house with its herbaceous border of asters and bright chrysanthemums almost chocolate box in its beauty, she felt its calm reach out to her. And she knew that all this couldn’t be happening for nothing – losing the job, losing David. It all had to mean something. As Jamie ran on ahead and she lifted the sleeping Daisy from her car seat she knew that this wasn’t the end of her old life as she had felt in the depths of her misery. It was the beginning of a new one. It had to be.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake Jamie! Stop whingeing and go and play with Sam next door!’

  ‘He’s not in.’

  ‘Play in the garden then.’

  ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘Well put your mac on!’ Liz tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

  ‘We left it in London.’

  Liz put down the recipe for home-made steak-and-kidney pudding and picked him up, struck by a sudden pang of guilt. That was the tone she was supposed to have left in London along with the job and the stress that went with it. Instead of which she was rapidly finding that motherhood was just as demanding as running a TV company. How could she snap at Jamie like that? He wasn’t as happy down here as she’d hoped. She’d thought with Sam – the six-year-old friend he’d always loved playing with at weekends – next door and Ginny’s son Ben only five minutes away that he’d settle down in no time. She was just going to have to be more patient. Very soon now his transfer to the village school would come through and he’d be with Ben. Surely that would help.

  Liz sat down for a moment and admitted to herself what was really making her bad-tempered. It had only been two weeks since they left London yet she was exhausted. Having had a nanny since Jamie was four months old she was amazed at the sheer slog of being a full-time mother. She didn’t even seem to be able to cope with the washing and ironing. By the time Daisy needed her third change of clothes that day, something was inevitably still in the machine or out drying on the line.

  By the time the doorbell rang half an hour later, Liz was at the end of her tether. Daisy had been screaming solidly for half an hour because she had a sore bottom so Liz had let her run round nappyless and Jamie had got every toy out of the toy cupboard. As she let Ginny in Liz looked round in horror. If she had come home and found a scene like this when she was working she would have sacked Susie on the spot.

  Ginny simply grinned and picked her way through the piles of toys and soggy bits of biscuit to where Liz sat at the kitchen table.

  ‘Ben’s off school today so I thought Jamie might like a friend.’

  Liz smiled gratefully as the boys disappeared, macless, into the rain outside.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘OK,’ Liz lied then thought better of it. Pride was part of her old life. ‘Actually I’m knackered. I can’t wait for bedtime when I can sit down and have the biggest glass of wine in the world. I’ve even thought of doing a Laura Ashley and telling them it’s bedtime at four-thirty. The only trouble is Jamie can tell the time!’

  ‘Bedtime! You’re lucky you last that long.’ Ginny leaned towards her conspiratorially. ‘Sometimes I crack and hit the wine at lunchtime!’

  Liz looked at her amazed. ‘But you make it all look so effortless. Immaculate children. Delicious meals. Bedtime stories you write yourself . . .’

  ‘God, you make me sound revolting. Anyway I have a secret technique. If it all gets too much I lock them in the playroom and go and have a bath.’

  ‘Ginny . . .!’ Liz was scandalized.

  ‘Oh, you’ll soon learn. Full-time mothers don’t do everything by the book, you know. The only use I have for Doctor Spock is to throw it at Ben when he’s just pulled the heads off all the neighbour’s daffs or put salt in the goldfish tank.’

  ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘Last week. The goldfish croaked, poor thing. Ben said it was “an experiment to see if he’d like salt water”.’ She took Liz’s hand. ‘Now how are you? Really.’

  ‘Do you mean how am I apart from being racked with guilt at having taken Jamie out of school? Or how am I apart from being racked with guilt at throwing David out? Or just plain racked with guilt about being a lousy mother? I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be, you know.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be which?’

  ‘Any of them. Especially chucking David out. What else could you do? Even if it was Britt’s fault.’

  ‘And how do we know it was Britt’s fault?’

  ‘Is the Pope Catholic? Because we know Britt. You don’t drag a piranha fish into bed kicking and screaming, do you?’

  For the first time Liz smiled. ‘Not if its intentions are dishonourable!’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean. But then again, as my mother likes to say, it takes two to tango.’

  ‘Yes, but she encouraged him. I know. I saw her doing it that time you all came down to lunch.’

  Liz was touched by Ginny’s outrage and anger. She sounded like a mother swan flapping her wings at intruders.

  ‘I wondered if I should say anything to you when you told us all that David was having an affair. But Britt seemed to think it was all finishing anyway.’

  For a moment Liz felt furiously angry. What an idiot she’d been telling them all like that and asking them what she should do, when all the time it had been Britt he was having the affair with!

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘Do you know, Ginny, I really do. I remember years ago my mother saying to me, “Why is it always the bad things people say to us that we remember, instead of the good things?” But with relationships it seems to be the exact opposite. You only remember the good things and the bad things seem just to fade away. If only I could remember the snoring and the arguments as well as the breakfasts in bed and the happy singsongs!’

  Ginny got up and put her arms round her. ‘Poor Liz. You didn’t deserve this.’

  Liz flinched at the pity in Ginny’s tone. She’d got so used to being envied and admired that she was surprised how much it hurt to be seen as a vict
im. ‘Anyway’ – she stood up, suddenly brisk – ‘enough on the wronged wife front. Tell me all about WomanPower.’

  ‘Oh WomanPower’s fine. Absolutely fine!’

  Liz was so caught up with her own problems that she didn’t notice the change in Ginny’s tone as she answered.

  The truth, though Ginny didn’t say it, was that Woman Power wasn’t fine at all. Three weeks ago she’d taken a small first-floor office above an electrical shop in Lewes High Street and waited for everything to start happening. Instead there’d been a deafening silence and Ginny, unused to running a business, wasn’t sure what to do next. It would be so much easier if she had a partner, someone she could share the business with, and who could stop her getting discouraged at times like this.

  Still, it was a great idea. Everybody said so. And there was no shortage of women who wanted to go back to work part-time who were more than eager for WomanPower to find them a job. It was just that so far she hadn’t been able to track down the employers to take them. But then, she’d told herself, you couldn’t expect it to be an overnight success. Businesses took time to establish themselves, that was all.

  ‘David?’

  ‘Mmmm?’ David opened his eyes and looked reluctantly at Britt.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  There it was. The question every woman asked every man sooner or later after they’d made love. And nine out of ten times the man lied. Usually he was thinking ‘How soon can I get out of here?’ whether it was a one-night stand or ten years of marriage.

  When he’d first arrived two weeks ago he’d had the sneaking suspicion that she didn’t really want him there. But that was before they made love. Since that moment they’d had sex constantly. In bed. On the floor. On the designer sofa. Especially on the designer sofa. They’d even tested out the scene he’d found unconvincing in Fatal Attraction and done it on the draining board. And it had all been great. Just knowing there wouldn’t be that split second of reluctance in Britt’s eyes, that momentary computer search of the brain to find an acceptable excuse, the barely disguised relief when it was accepted. Britt liked sex. In fact she loved it. Liz had once said that Britt thought like a man and she certainly had the male attitude to sex – as much and as often as possible.

  So what was the matter? Why was it suddenly he who was looking for the excuses? It was just that he didn’t know what he wanted any more. He wanted Britt and her hunger for him. His own self-respect demanded that the woman he lived with desired him as much as he did her. But he missed his family so much. He hadn’t realized how much being a father meant to him, feeling the excitement spread through the house when he opened the front door; hearing the joy in Daisy’s little voice when she shouted ‘Daddeee!’ as he lifted her from her cot each morning. And maybe the biggest shock of all. The discovery that it was his family that gave him security.

  Britt lay with the white Descamps sheet wrapped round her sleek, exercised body – she preferred the line of sheets and blankets to soggy disguising duvets – and watched David closely. She knew that the battle wasn’t over yet, that she had only won round one. She knew that to win the war she had to understand David’s complex personality. Liz had failed to do this and that was why she had lost him. And she thought she might have already found the key: his insecurity.

  On the surface he might be thrusting and powerful, he might flourish in the world of nerve and brinkmanship, but in the dangerous swirling waters of the unconscious he still needed reassurance. Like so many men he wanted to screw his mother. Not literally of course, but he wanted not just sex but comfort and massage to his most private part: his ego. Liz hadn’t seen this and that had been her biggest mistake. And it was one Britt didn’t intend to make. But for now she’d take his mind off the past and make sure he started enjoying the present.

  Slowly with featherlight fingers she stroked the inside of his thigh until she felt him shift fractionally towards her. Then, she ran her tongue upwards across his belly, flicking and darting at his prick until he began to buck with pleasure, straining towards her mouth. But she made him wait a little longer, gently blowing on his balls, edging her finger up between his buttocks until he arched and pulled her roughly towards him and she gave him her mouth.

  And as she sucked and licked at his cock, deeper now with every stroke, she saw his eyes close and she knew that for now at least any thoughts of Liz and the children had faded in a blur of exquisite, overwhelming pleasure.

  Liz leaned over in bed and opened the small, latticed window and looked out across the Downs towards the sea. It was another beautiful day. The weather at least was on her side, and she chose to see this as fate, a confirmation that she’d done the right thing in coming here, knowing all the while that any rational person would laugh at her for such daftness, but needing all the good omens she could muster.

  She could hear Jamie and Daisy shouting and laughing next door. Jamie had clearly got into Daisy’s cot and they were bouncing, each bounce making them giggle hysterically. Thank God they seemed to be settling down. Of course they still asked about David all the time, wanted to know when he would be coming to see them. She hadn’t known what to say, didn’t know herself what they should do about him seeing them. For the moment she just wanted to be here with them, alone, with a safe distance between herself and the aching agony she’d tried to leave behind.

  Looking out of the window again she shook herself. Who could be depressed here? The peace of the place was like visiting ten health farms rolled into one. And the very timelessness, the way it hardly changed from generation to generation, was oddly comforting. What did her little problems matter when the village had been there, almost unchanged for hundreds of years?

  Suddenly filled with energy she bounded out of bed and into her apricot tracksuit – how blissful not to have to wonder what to wear! – and scooped Daisy out of her cot. She skipped downstairs with Jamie at her heels and opened the front door, wedging it with the brightly coloured goose doorstop, so that the slanting beams of the early November morning lit up the sitting room. It wasn’t even cold yet. Her absolutely favourite weather: bright and clear with only the slightest sign of autumn, sweatshirt weather with just a touch of jumper in the afternoons. For a moment they all stood in the doorway and watched a hiker toiling up the South Downs Way as it snaked up the hill opposite the cottage. He turned and waved, so happy that he must be another refugee from the city like herself. She waved back and carried Daisy to her highchair.

  ‘Right. What do you want for breakfast, Jamie?’

  Jamie surveyed the row of cereals on top of the fridge.

  ‘Coco Pops.’

  ‘We haven’t got any Coco Pops, darling, they’re bad for you. Too much sugar!’

  Jamie looked momentarily stricken. He’d soon learned how to take advantage of his mother’s guilt to get a few forbidden treats. But today it wasn’t working.

  ‘Cornflakes, then.’

  ‘We haven’t got any, darling.’

  ‘Granny has sugar on her cornflakes!’ He fell about laughing at the absurdity of this proposition.

  ‘We have bran flakes and Weetabix and Shreddies.’

  ‘I want some Shreddies and some Weetabix and a titchy-witchy bit of bran flakes . . .’

  ‘Jamie –’

  ‘. . . and some banana on the top. Only half.’ He looked at his baby sister who was pouring juice down the front of her pyjamas.

  ‘Daisy can have the other half,’ he added magnanimously.

  Liz counted to three and handed him a plate of Shreddies with no banana.

  To Jamie this amounted to a declaration of war. He threw himself on the floor and screamed, his limbs threshing dangerously. ‘Susie let me . . .’

  Liz tried to keep hold of her temper. ‘I don’t care what Susie did. I’ve given you Shreddies with no banana.’

  ‘Wannabanana . . . wannabanana . . . wannabanana . . .’

  For thirty seconds Liz struggled with herself, weighing up whether it would
be too weak to give in against the chances of surviving a morning with her sanity intact. She’d read the Child Psychology books. She knew the importance of consistency. What would Ginny, the Supermum, do? Stand her ground and refuse to be manipulated by the pressure tactics of a five-year-old? Of course she would.

  Jamie screamed louder and started to go blue. Liz caved in and put half a banana on top of his Shreddies. After all, what did half a banana matter in the scheme of things? But even as she chopped it she knew it mattered a lot. Penelope Leach, the High Priestess of Child Development, would be disappointed in her. Well, screw Penelope Leach, I bet her bloody husband hasn’t run off with her bloody best friend! He was probably too busy changing nappies and emptying the dishwasher.

  Miraculously Jamie got up off the floor and sat at the table, as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Liz and he even pretended they couldn’t see it running down his chin.

  ‘Mummy?’

  She looked up at Jamie’s suddenly serious tone.

  ‘Yes, Jamie?’

  ‘Are you my nanny now?’

  ‘No, Jamie. I’m not your nanny. I’m your mummy.’

  ‘But you’re looking after me.’ The puzzlement in his voice made her smile. Poor Jamie. He didn’t know anyone in London whose mummy actually looked after them! What a crazy world it had become where every woman she knew handed their children over to someone else almost at birth and went back to work! Her generation of career women were like Victorian mamas. Except that instead of doing petit point by the fire all day they were out in the big world wheeling and dealing and hustling and shafting with more fervour than men. Converts all to the new religion of Work. Blessed be ambition! Deliver us, O Lord, from all housework and domestic drudgery! Save us from looking after our own children! And vouchsafe unto us the Porsche and carphone as Thou hast given them unto our male counterparts! Amen!