Country Plot Read online

  ‘I’m a researcher in the features department on TopMet,’ Jenna said, and seeing him throw another blank she added: ‘It’s a magazine. We’re doing a feature on lesser-known statelys next month, so we were on the guest list in the hope that we’ll give the book a mention. I got to come because the goody bags will be book-related, and no one else was keen. It’s the cosmetics and fashion launches they all want. I’m here with the features director.’ She looked around. ‘She loves these do’s, whatever the subject. Where the crowd is thickest, there you’ll find her.’

  ‘I’m quite happy where I am, thank you,’ he said, and Jenna felt a warm blush coming up through her neck because he looked at her as he said it, and it was just enough to suggest he was interested.

  Oddly enough, she hadn’t fancied him that first time she met him. He was good-looking all right, and his presentation was perfect, but she preferred fair types, and his very dark, almost swarthy looks didn’t appeal to her. But when later, as the party was breaking up, he had asked her on a date, she had said yes without hesitation because, my God, a man who actually asked you out was rare enough these days, and she hadn’t been on a proper date since breaking up with Jamie five – no, six! – months ago. There’d been dinner parties with married friends where you’re supposed to get on with the one unattached man invited ‘for’ you, and group outings with other singles to pubs and clubs where you’re supposed to pick up strangers. A couple of disastrous experiments, leading from those episodes, which she tried not to think about, convinced her that if a man was unattached there was usually a reason. So to be asked – straight out, like that – by a more than presentable man if she would have dinner with him, just the two of them, in a proper restaurant, was not something to be turned down.

  She didn’t sleep with him on the first date, but that was because he was being a gentleman: by the end of the evening she was fancying him like mad. He was different. She liked his seriousness, and his certainty about himself and where his career was going. All the other men she knew were racked with self-doubt: it was nice not to spend the evening listening to self-pitying moans. They slept together after the next date and were practically living together after six weeks. Six months – almost to the day: had he timed it? – he asked her to move in with him.

  Everyone told her how lucky she was, and she knew it was true. It was hard enough to get a boyfriend at all these days, let alone one who would commit himself to living together, and had nothing obvious wrong with him – indeed was intelligent and ambitious and successful. It was not long before he had been made a partner; at about the same time, she’d got promoted to features editor, and they moved to the better flat. Nice flat, nice job, nice man. And the next stage was that Patrick would ask her to marry him, and with a bit of luck (and if necessary a bit of hinting) it would happen before she was thirty, everyone’s goal in life. Lucky, lucky Jenna! Her friends told her she had it all.

  Until Lousy Monday struck.

  Like many a broken-hearted person she headed for the river – in her case, not to throw herself in, but because there was always something comforting about moving water. She walked from Albert Bridge along the embankment for hours – all the way to Lambeth Bridge, in fact, where she discovered that her feet were sore and she was tired and starving hungry. She left the river and found a sandwich bar in Horseferry Road where she sat on a high stool at the window bar and wolfed a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of coffee. Then, since her car – her beloved purple Mini Cooper called Florence – was still parked outside the flat (she really hadn’t been thinking straight, had she?) she got a taxi back there.

  In the blankness of her misery, during her embankment walk, she had heard her mobile ringing in her handbag several times, but hadn’t answered it. In the cab she took it out and looked at missed calls. Yes, Patrick had been calling her. There were three messages in her voicemail box and two texts. She deleted them without listening to or reading them, and turned the phone off.

  At the flat she paid the taxi off, and then felt a sickness of misery and loathing come over her. She did not want ever to come here again. She wished she could get all her stuff out now, and have it over with. She looked up and saw there was no light on in the living room. Of course, he might be in his office – you couldn’t see that window from here. She hesitated a moment, and then rang the bell on the street door. There was no reply, even to a second and third ring, so she decided to chance it, let herself in and went upstairs.

  Everything was quiet. He was out. The bed was made – it looked so innocent – and lying on it was a note in his strong, dark, tidy hand:

  Jenna, where are you? Why aren’t you answering your phone? I’ve gone out looking for you, but I’ll be back, so if you’re reading this, don’t leave. We must talk. Ring me on my mobile and I’ll come straight back, but don’t leave. It’s not what you think. P.

  In a panic now, afraid he would come back any moment, she packed her clothes and belongings into whatever suitcases and bags came to hand. It was fortunate that she didn’t have a lot; and some things she was perfectly willing to abandon in her haste to get away. It struck her as she darted round how much of what was in the flat was his, or chosen by him. His taste. His place. Now she examined her belongings, it was as if she had been camping out here.

  The phone rang once, making her jump, but he had put the answering machine on. She thought she heard his voice, and kept away from it, terrified that he was leaving a message for her. She left his note where it was on the bed. Even in her shocked and panicky state, she observed that he did not speak of love. No ‘I love you’. Not even ‘Jenna darling’ and ‘Love, P’. Just an order not to leave until she had his permission. Not what you think? Well, let’s see – naked blonde hiding in bathroom, having left her watch beside the bed, bloke pretending to be asleep: hard to figure that one out, wasn’t it?

  Oh Patrick! Was it all a sham, the whole four years? Her heart was sore and the last thing she wanted was to let him talk, to hear him try to explain the obvious away. She was afraid she might believe him – and afraid she would not.

  Two

  With Florence stuffed with her belongings, Jenna fled home, which in her case was the one she had grown up in, a large, shabby three-storey house in Muswell Hill. Her father, a palaeontologist, was dead, and her mother, who was trying to grow old disgracefully, now lived permanently abroad with a lover, an ex-Guards major turned watercolour painter. They moved nomadically from Spain to Portugal to Italy to Greece in search of landscapes and a particular quality of light. There was no real reason Ma and the Major shouldn’t get married, but they seemed to enjoy a sort of frisson from living in sin, and since they weren’t doing anyone any harm, the family didn’t mention the ‘m’ word. They were all quite proud of her, really, for her enterprise, and were glad she was happy. Her lover, whom they all called simply ‘The Major’, seemed a nice man, Jenna thought. She just wished he’d dump the moustache.

  The family home was occupied by her brother Oliver, his wife Sybil, and their three children, Allegra, Inez and Tertius. Jenna could never be quite sure whether the children’s names were a joke – perfectly possible given Oliver’s puckish nature – or a serious attempt to set them aside from the norm. The children bore them with dignity. Actually, as they went to private schools, they probably didn’t know anyone with normal names anyway, and would have stood out far more by being called Mary, Elizabeth and John.

  The numbness of shock, reinforced by the weariness from her long walk, was wearing off by the time she got to Muswell Hill, and she was only just able to park the car safely and stagger to the front door before collapsing into tears and abject misery. Sybil was a good person to collapse towards: she was brisk and efficient and quite unflappable, but very kind. Oliver was away – he was a civil engineer and worked on enormous international projects. At present, Sybil said, he was working on a dam in northern India, and would be back at the weekend. ‘So you just take your time, poor thing, and cry all you wa
nt,’ Sybil concluded. Jenna loved her brother but was glad not to have to face him yet. Discovering your man in bed with another woman was like an embarrassing illness, and she wasn’t prepared to expose its anatomy to another member of the male sex yet.

  Sybil had all the right ideas about how to handle a jilted woman. Jenna spent the next few days on the sofa watching self-indulgent movies, reading comforting favourite books (I Capture the Castle, A Company of Swans, Persuasion), and being brought delicious food by Sybil, not to mention tubs of Ben and Jerry’s, chocolate biscuits and fresh boxes of Kleenex. When the children came home from school, Sybil told them that Aunty Jenna wasn’t well, and hooshed them off to play in the garden or another room. Jenna adored them, but couldn’t have coped with them just now. They reminded her too much of what she had hoped to have with Patrick and now never would.

  From time to time in her busy schedule Sybil would come and sit with her so that Jenna could pour out her misery.

  ‘I loved my job,’ she wailed, ‘and I’ve lost that as well as Patrick. I haven’t even got anywhere to live now.’ Patrick owned the flat in Fulham. Jenna had rented before, so she’d had nothing to sell when she moved in with him. It hadn’t seemed a risky move at the time. How naive she had been! What was that poem? I thought that love would last for ever. I was wrong.

  ‘I loved that flat. Now I’ve got nothing. Nothing to show for four years of my life. I’m nearly th–thirty. I’ll never find another b–boyfriend . . .’

  Wisely, Sybil did not attempt to refute any of this, merely listened, nodded sympathetically, and made another cup of hot chocolate.

  By the third day, Jenna was up to telephoning various friends to explain where she was and why. They were all shocked and sympathetic, perhaps the more so because they were worried for themselves. You and Patrick were so settled, such a good couple, so good together. If it happens to you, what hope is there for us?

  They condemned Patrick roundly. ‘He’s a rat – a pig – he’s scum. He’s not worthy of you. You’re too good for him.’

  To which Jenna’s sad reply was, ‘But if I can’t even keep a man who’s not good enough for me, what hope is there?’

  They all assured her that she would find someone else, that her life was not over, that she wasn’t doomed to eternal spinsterhood. ‘You’ll find someone much better. I never really liked Patrick, anyway. I always thought there was something not quite right about him.’

  Why didn’t you mention it before, then, Jenna thought. Not that it mattered. In a break-up, it’s a woman’s nature to assume it was because she wasn’t good enough for him. And in any case, her friends had spent the last four years telling her he was perfect and she was so–o–o lucky. On the whole, she preferred Sybil’s approach – to listen, say nothing, and apply chocolate cake in industrial quantities. For pin money, Sybil baked cakes and tarts for a very upscale farmer’s market, so the house was often full of delicious smells, and dangerously well supplied with goodies. It was a wonder the children weren’t fat as geese, but they seemed to have inherited good genes, and were whippet-thin despite having a mother who baked like an angel. Jenna wasn’t quite so lucky, but felt she was off the leash for this week at least. Sybil’s offerings seemed to soothe the places other comfort couldn’t reach.

  By the time the weekend arrived, when the children were off school and Oliver came home, she was over the floods stage, was sitting up and taking notice, and was able to play with the former and welcome the latter.

  On Saturday morning the children were agog to talk to her.

  ‘Did you have a cold?’ Allegra asked. ‘Your nose is still a bit red and you’ve got huge bags under your eyes. Everybody in our class had a cold last term except me. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t get to stay home once. Are you going to put some make-up on for when Daddy comes home? Mummy always does. I expect it would make you look a bit better,’ she concluded kindly, ‘and p’raps not quite so old. Can I look in your make-up bag? Sorcha Ravenscroft came to school in nail varnish last week but they made her take it off with smelly stuff. Do you like nail varnish? Do you think I’m old enough to have my ears pierced? Mummy says not.’ Allegra was ten, and longing to be twenty-seven. Jenna could have told her that age was not all it was cracked up to be.

  Inez, who was seven, had less complicated needs, and just wanted Jenna to play Tummy Ache and Greedy Gorilla with her. Tertius, who was nearly six, wanted to show her his entire collection of Carz, and then stage races and horrific crashes on the floor at her feet, which he really didn’t need her to pay attention to. Sybil flew round doing housewifely things, and looked in from time to time to say she was grateful to Jenna for keeping the children occupied. Then as the moment approached for Oliver’s return, she went upstairs to make herself glamorous.

  Jenna was still in tracksuit bottom and sloppy T-shirt – her widow’s weeds – but the general excitement of the house at the wanderer’s return finally filtered through to her vanity, and at the last moment she dashed upstairs too, changed, whacked on some slap, and raked the knots out of her hair. She stared a moment at her image in the mirror, and felt her lip tremble and tears threaten from the back of her nose. She looked pale and haggard and Allegra hadn’t been wrong about those bags. But what did it matter now? No one was ever going to love her again.

  Since the first day, Patrick hadn’t phoned once. She’d had her mobile turned off, but there was nothing on voicemail; and though she hadn’t told him where she was going, he could have guessed, surely, and rung her on Oliver’s landline. Well, he didn’t love her any more, that was clear – not that she didn’t know that already, after finding him in bed with another woman (and who was she, anyway? None of her friends had had any clue). She was homeless, jobless and manless, putting on make-up for her brother! How sad was that? But then she gave herself a brisk shake – none of that, now! – told herself not to spoil Oliver’s return, and went down for the hugfest.

  Oliver was shiny-eyed with tiredness and the long flight, not to mention the punishing work schedule and the horrible climate. He had been away three weeks this time. He hugged Jenna briefly but hard, and whispered, ‘Poor old monkey-face,’ into her ear. Sybil had told him the story during their daily telephone talks. He had to give his immediate undivided attention to his excited children, sit with them while they had supper, and then put them to bed, and then he wanted a long bath while Sybil prepared the grown-ups’ meal; so it was not until he came down, clean, damp-haired, freshly-shaved and smelling of Radox, and was wandering round the kitchen with a bottle of Burgundy in his hand looking for the corkscrew, that he was able to address his sister’s woes.

  Jenna looked at him admiringly, thinking how handsome he was: tall and strong, with a slightly darker version of her own red hair – auburn, where hers was red-gold – and really blue eyes, instead of the greenish-blue hers were. They both took after their mother in colouring, while the rest of the family were dark like their father. It had always made her feel closer to him when they were children. When she had been mocked at school for being a redhead (Ginger, you’re barmy!) he had made her see it as being different in a good way – special. He had been her hero: there was nothing, she had felt, that Oliver couldn’t do. When she was about fourteen she had been so in love with him she thought she would die if he ever went away and got married; but he did go away, of course – to university first, which had eased the parting somewhat. He’d been going away ever since; but he always came back. And when he did marry, it was to Sybil, who was as unlike Jenna as could be, and whom she was glad to be able to feel was worthy of him. So that was all right.

  Oliver found the corkscrew where Tertius had left it under the kitchen table – he’d been using it as an alien robot in one of his savage games – drew the cork and poured them all large glasses. ‘First today,’ he said. ‘God, that journey gets longer every time I do it. Why doesn’t anyone ever want a dam built in St Albans or Enfield?’

  ‘Next time, maybe,’ Sybil said, prodding
the potatoes.

  ‘The first thing I want to say to you,’ Oliver went on, sitting at the kitchen table across from Jenna, ‘is that you’re not homeless. You can stay here as long as you want. It’s as much your home as mine, after all.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Jenna said.

  ‘It’s true. We all grew up here, and Ma didn’t give it to me or anything. I just live here by default, because no one else wanted to.’

  ‘But she’s bound to leave it to you in the end, because you do live here. Isn’t she?’

  He grinned. ‘I hope to God she does. Imagine moving this lot out at a moment’s notice! But I don’t even know if she’s made a will.’

  ‘Michael would know,’ Sybil said. Michael was not only the eldest sibling, but a solicitor. ‘And if she hasn’t,’ she went on in her practical way, ‘he ought to make her. If she died intestate the state would get most of it, since she’s not married to the Major.’

  ‘Where are they, anyway?’ Jenna asked. Their mother communicated more with Oliver than anyone else. In every large family there’s always one sibling who is the correspondent, who keeps it all together.

  ‘On a yacht, belonging to a friend of the Major’s. It’s been lent to them for some unspecified time. They’re sailing up and down the south coast of Crete. But the Major’s apparently got an exhibition coming up in September in Cannes, so they’ll have to be back at Juan-les-Pins by then. You could do worse than think about angling for an invitation, Jenna. The Cap d’Antibes in September? How bad could that be?’

  ‘It’d work for me,’ Sybil remarked.

  Jenna shuddered. ‘No, thank you. I’ve no desire to see my mother disporting herself among the Eden Roc set. Why can’t she live in a bungalow in Worthing and knit things, like anyone else’s mother?’

  Oliver laughed. ‘Oh, come on! Which would you rather, if you were her? Cocktails at the Hotel du Cap, or a Thermos of tea in a beach hut in Bexhill? Even at the price of living with the Major . . .’