A Place in the Country (3 page)

“Evening,
amigas,
” she called. “Come on in, there's a table near the fire, looks as though you might need it. And I have some good chicken tortilla soup, if you're interested. Warm you up a bit, right?”

Issy looked straight into the woman's compassionate dark eyes and held out the small fur bundle.

The woman looked at it and said, “Well, that's a poor, little wet kitten, isn't it? I'll bet it's even hungrier and colder than you are. Tell you what, I'll warm up a drop of milk, then I'll call my daughter to help. You two can take the kitten into the back kitchen and try and get that milk down it.” She put out her hand to stroke the little creature. It did not even lift its head.

They waited while the woman took her mobile from her pocket and speed-dialed her daughter.

“Sammy,” they heard her say. “I have a young friend here with a kitten in trouble. In the kitchen drawer you'll find the syringe we got from the vet when the starling fell out of the tree. I remember I washed it out well so now we can use it to try to get some milk into this little cat's belly.”

She clicked off, smiled her lovely smile at the two of them, took a small wicker basket usually used for bread and folded a clean, soft tea towel into it. A last resting place for an almost dead kitten.

She said, “Why not take off your wet coats. And you, love.” She was smiling at Caroline who found herself smiling back. “You look as though you could use a glass of wine. I know you're driving, but it's only the one glass and you should have some warm food with it. In a couple of hours you'll be okay. Think of it as medicinal.”

Caroline was never so glad to see a glass of medicinal wine as she was right then. “Thank you,” she said humbly, because she had come into a village pub expecting to be given the cool non-welcome issued to tourists and strangers, and now, here they were, being treated like family.

Sammy came hurrying in. She was short and round like her mother, but with blond hair and blue eyes. “From her Aztec ancestors,” her mother explained proudly when they looked at her surprised. “Of course, we're Mexican.”

The girl crouched, peering at the kitten and a second later she picked it up and the two were headed to the kitchen to heat the milk.

“Operation ‘save the kitten,'” the woman said.

“If love can save her, then she'll make it.”

Caroline had no idea where those words came from but knew that in her heart she'd meant “love” can save anything. She had really believed that, once upon a time.

Quite suddenly she began to cry. Sometimes, no matter what strong capable face she put on things for Issy's sake, that soft wounded underbelly gave her away and the hurt frightened woman showed. She didn't want it to, at least only when she was alone in bed, never in front of her daughter, and
never
like this in public, for God's sake.

The woman fetched a brandy but Caroline refused it, saying she couldn't possibly and that she felt foolish for crying in front of a stranger, and for no reason at all really. Or perhaps it was simply
all
the reasons, catching up at once. Loneliness. Lack of money. Responsibility. Guilt.

The woman set the brandy on the table in front of her anyhow, and called her husband to come and take care of the bar. She poked at the fire with an enormous handcrafted iron weapon and threw on another log. Then she came and sat opposite Caroline.

“Where are you going?” she asked quietly, obviously not wanting to draw the attention of the three other customers, two of whom anyway were occupied with a game of dominoes. The third's only interest seemed to be his Border collie who lounged, tongue lolling, at his feet, most likely waiting for a handout of a bit of ham or a sausage.

“I realize it's not only about the kitten,” the woman was saying. “My daughter's the same age as yours so I know what you're going through with her. I'll tell you what I discovered,
amiga,
until they start school your kids are all yours. They love only you. They want only you.
You
are their world. Then,” she snapped her fingers, “they suddenly discover there are other people, other role models, other friends. Having a child is a full-time job, and one women don't apply for because we have absolutely no qualifications. Tell me, who knows exactly how to do it? It's all instinct. Hah, try putting that on your job application!”

Despite her sudden misery Caroline found herself smiling.

“It's true,” she said. “When your child hits school your rule is over. And when she becomes a teenager, forget it.”

The woman smiled her nice smile, patted Caroline's hand, told her to take a good sip of that brandy, and would she like some of her chicken tortilla soup?

She shook her head. “Thank you but I still have to drive.”

“Where to? I mean, where are you going that's so urgent?”

Caroline thought about it and that hopeless feeling took over again. Where was she going that mattered? Certainly not back to London in this storm, or to another cheap hotel in Oxford and a twin-bedded room with TV she didn't want to watch and a daughter who seemed to wish she was anywhere else but there, with her. She touched the silvery bird-on-the-wing brooch pinned to her sweater that Issy had surprised her with. Well, maybe her daughter did care, sometimes.

“We have a couple of inexpensive rooms we rent out,” the woman was saying. “Warm and comfortable, and no driving. How about it?”

Caroline felt the sag lift out of her shoulders. Relief took over. “Done,” she said, and took a good swig of the brandy, choking as it hit the back of her throat. The Border collie gave a startled bark and the three other occupants of the pub glanced her way, but she had already dried her tears.

The woman held up a hand and high-fived her. “I'll get that soup,” she said. “And then see what's doing with that poor little half-dead kitten.”

Caroline called after her as she walked away. “I don't even know your name?”

“Maggie.”

“Caroline.”

They looked at each other, taking each other in.

Then, “It's not just my daughter,” Caroline said. “It's my ex.”

“I knew it,” Maggie said.

 

chapter 5

Maggie Gonzalez
had run the Star & Plough for sixteen years. It was an old stucco-faced, low-ceilinged, stone-flagged, black-beamed building, with yellowed walls and a fireplace large enough to roast an ox or brew a cauldron of stew. There was a brand-new bar counter with polished brass pulls for the draft beer, a main room, known as “the lounge”; a small back room called “the snug,” which local retirees and single older ladies preferred when the Oxford young bunch rolled up and got the music going. Gleaming glasses reflected in the mirror in back of the bar and there was always a hint of freshly made tortillas in the air.

Maggie's real name was Mercedes, but this had caused some confusion with the locals and too many jokes about cars so she had settled for simply being “Maggie.”

It was not so easy for her husband, whose name was Jesus, and who also doubled as the local handyman, and contractor, when he could get the work. The trouble had come when people received messages on their answer machines saying “Jesus called.” It had given quite a few of the older ones a shock.

“He's a little too early, my dear,” Veronica Partridge, who was seventy-five if she was a day, had said, huffily buttoning her cardigan. “It's not my time for ‘Jesus' to call.” And Maggie was forced to explain it was the audio message that got it wrong and that her husband's name was pronounced “Heyzus.”

Their daughter, Samantha, was almost the same age as Issy, and, like hers, somehow Samantha's name had also become shortened.

Maggie took Caroline into her kitchen at the rear of the pub, sat her at the table with a bowl of soup and told her the story of how she and her husband had come to be proprietors of the Star & Plough, a long and somewhat convoluted route from their home on Mexico's Baja peninsula where a poor girl, Maggie, had worked as a housekeeper at the local tourist hotel, changing beds and cleaning bathrooms.

Jesus was a fisherman, he knew about boats, he'd practically been brought up on one. Which was why one morning he'd been summoned to the marina and offered a job on a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot yacht sailing across the ocean to Monte Carlo, in the South of France.

They had married and ended up in England, in the rain. They got a job at a pub in Surrey, then were offered the stewardship of the Star & Plough in a straggling Cotswold village over the bridge from Burford, make a left a time or two, then a couple of rights—and here they were. And then, when Samantha came along, here they stayed. They served chicken tacos as well as ploughman's lunch. “We've become ‘locals,'” Maggie said. “And friends.”

Caroline knew envy was not a “good” emotion, it was probably even one of the seven deadly sins, but she wished her life could have been like Maggie's. Maggie had known poverty, but she'd worked hard and was still with her husband. “Can I become a friend?” Caroline asked.

“But you already are,” Maggie told her.

 

chapter 6

Later that night,
Issy lay in bed in a cozy attic room over the pub. The ceiling sloped to a gabled window set so low it was almost on the floor. The walls were plain white with black beams meeting in a point over the two beds, which had blue-and-white-flowery coverlets and blue-flowery sheets that matched the curtains and the rug. There was a little white dresser with a small pink-shaded lamp and a straight chair set at a tiny table under that low window. A door led out to the hallway while another led into a small adjacent sitting room with a blue velvet couch, and a big squishy-looking chair. Her mom was sleeping in an identical room on the other side of that little sitting room. Sam was down the hall and the kitten was in its basket next to Issy, who was thinking about her life.

She supposed today it had changed for the second time when she'd gotten out of the car and stood with her mom, looking at that falling-down wreck of an Oxfordshire barn with the
Bar, Grill and Dancing
sign. It was the
Dancing
that did it. There was no way she could even remotely imagine anyone dancing in that place. Even its ghosts would not dance. And she'd bet her new boots there'd be ghosts. Always were in places like that.

When her mom said she seriously liked it she knew Caroline had finally lost it. I mean, her behavior had been so totally off the wall, picking up and leaving Dad, just whisking her out of the place she had called “home” all her life (and let's not forget that fifteen years—well, she was just fourteen then—was a bloody long time).

That English word “bloody” was bloody useful and it got her off having to say “fuck,” which made her uncomfortable, probably because, though she knew technically what it meant, she didn't know
“practically,” if you know what I'm saying.
She loved that rapper phrase, that American black all-encompassing, “y'know what I'm saying.” Made her feel part of a greater, bigger world when she used it, like she was one of them, up there to be counted. Instead of this abandoned, homeless person—she refused to call herself a “child.” Fifteen these days was not a child. A “child” was when you were five or six and all was right with your world because nothing could ever go wrong. And it didn't. You were wrapped in that cozy glow of security; Mom, Dad, Home. And then they pulled the rug out from under you. And down you went. Or sometimes up, Issy supposed, though she didn't know enough people in her position to be able to make a judgment.

Now,
there
was a good grown-up statement.
Being able to make a judgment.
She'd heard her dad say that, on the phone probably, talking business in his study, where he usually was.

Her dad, James Evans, was really good-looking. Not like a rock star or a movie star; more just a tall, dark, lean, square-jawed man with an air of authority, who always wore really well-cut suits that he had made in Hong Kong. As he did his shirts, with their small raised monogram
JE
on the cuffs. His ties were silk and very pretty. When Issy was little she used to sit in his closet with a rack of them on her knees, folding them in her fingers, luxuriating in the softness, the beautiful colors. She had wished she could be a boy because then she could have borrowed his ties. She could have been like him.

And don't think she hadn't asked herself many times since, whether, if she had been a boy, her father would have let her go? Just like that. Pack a small suitcase and leave, with Mom clutching her hand tighter than a knot on an anchor line so she wouldn't escape and run back to him? No. Her mom said if she was going, then Issy was going too.

They'd left in a big, stormy huff. Her mom couldn't even slam the door because they lived in a penthouse and the elevator opened directly onto their floor. So they'd had to stand there, facing him, while Caroline pressed the button, and there was an achingly-slow few seconds before it finally pinged and those bloody doors, on their always perfectly soundless oiled wheels, or whatever elevators had, slid carefully together, shutting out her dad, who was standing there, arms folded over his chest, looking at them. Until the very last second.

Issy believed he had wanted to keep her face,
her agonized crying face,
in his memory so that he would come and get her, wherever she was. Wherever Mom took her. Which was actually to the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.

Caroline had said she certainly was not going to the Raffles Hotel, right there in Singapore, because that's where she had met her dad. Issy had heard that story from
both
her parents many times, because she'd asked many times, thinking it was romantic and wonderful and when she grew up she wanted to meet a man exactly like her father. Now of course she'd given that up.