A Place in the Country (5 page)

And without a further glance she walked out.

“Mommy, who was that?”

Issy's voice brought Caroline back to reality.

“Oh, a friend of Daddy's. She came to say hello,” she told her hastily.

“Well, she didn't say hello to me,” Issy said. Then, “Mommy, I need you.”

Caroline took her in her arms, put her back into bed and climbed in next to her. She held her through the longest night of her life.

That Gayle Lee was James's mistress and the source of her “betrayal,” she had no doubt. She had come to warn her off and had also scared the life out of her. She had no idea what “business” she was talking about but knew she had to put the forest-green-
cheongsamed
-platinum vision out of her mind. Gayle Lee was in the past and now she had to concentrate on her future. She had a lot of work to do to make their lives right again.

Inevitably, the next day, they went “home,” back to London and Caroline's own mom and dad. Where else could she have gone?

 

chapter 8

Now, over a year
and a half later, divorced, and lying in bed in a small rented attic room over a pub, Caroline knew how much she missed James.

She had never known how completely silent a room could be until he wasn't in it. Only a woman who had been with a man for years could understand what she meant. There was that plaiting together of their lives; the where does he leave off and you begin, the shorthand of sentences left unfinished because the other person would know exactly what you meant; the perfume you wore only for him; the dress you bought because you knew it would please him; the heels you wore even though your feet were killing you because he loved you in heels; the waxing because he liked you naked “down there,” even though you hated it and it was hell growing back.

She missed the sex; she missed the smell of him on the pillow she'd clutch to her face after he'd gotten up in the morning; she missed the way he always took her hand crossing the street because he was concerned she couldn't see properly and was afraid she would get run over. She missed his hand in the small of her back as he led her into a restaurant; his murmured sexy words when he thought no one could hear. She missed cooking for him,
“practicing your skills,”
he would say, because of course she hadn't really ever been a “chef” despite the culinary school training. She even missed the solitary silences when James was gone, as he so often was, wishing the phone would ring, filling her day with school runs and responsibilities, and never, ever, putting herself first.

Was it the chicken or the egg she wondered? Had she been “a woman” first? Or “a wife”? Which had James wanted her to be? Of course she would have been anything he wanted. That was how so many women lost themselves in marriage. But now, since she had supposedly become “her own woman” and left him, she wondered exactly
who
was she anyway?

One morning, a few days later she asked her new friends Maggie and Jesus that question. She had decided to leave London and she and Issy had already moved into the tiny flat above the pub.

Jesus was a true Mexican with a Latin temperament and family values. He was square-built, mustached, with black hair that stood straight up, and a deep voice. He was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee he had made himself, dripped through cheesecloth from beans he'd ground directly into a tall metal pot on the stove. It was thick and cloudy with residue and needed about half a dozen spoons of sugar to make it palatable.

“It's natural for a woman to put a man first,” he said, making his wife laugh.

“Women are not here simply to look after you,” she said. “We have to use our brains to keep you men in your place.”

“Didn't work for me,” Caroline said gloomily, making them laugh.

She hadn't heard good hearty laughter in so long, she rather enjoyed it. She hadn't meant to be funny, though. What she said was true. Throughout her marriage her so-called brains had been kept on the back burner. She'd been too afraid to use them because then she would have had to face facts and acknowledge the truth about her false life and her cheating husband.

Maggie said, “As a friend, I'm going to give you some advice. You must make a plan.”

Caroline stared at her, surprised. Her mind was a blank. Or maybe it was just a clean slate.

“You have been with us almost a week now,” Maggie said. “And you may stay as long as you wish, but it's over a year since the divorce. Jesus and I believe it's important for you to have a home of your own.”

An image of the forlorn barn dripping rain under an almost leafless tree sprang to Caroline's mind, though anything less “homelike” would have been hard to find.

Maggie said, “You told me you have a small settlement from your husband. You must make a budget, work out exactly how much you can afford. Remember, you'll probably need to make repairs, alterations, you know how we women are when we take over a house.”

The cozier image of a thatched cottage flashed into Caroline's mind, but she didn't care for thatch.

“First, though,” Maggie went on, “you must get your daughter into a decent school. Sammy needs to move on from the local, and tomorrow I'm taking her to look at a small prep school just five miles from here. Perhaps you'd like to bring Issy along, too? Take a look?”

Issy sat up from the kitten basket. “I'd like that, Mom,” she said with the first touch of eagerness Caroline had heard coming from her mouth in a year. Indifference was what she usually got: the
whatever-you-say, whatever-you-want, I-don't-care
syndrome that drove her wild because she never knew what to do either.

“We'll go together,” Sammy said. She was like her mother, warm and touchy-feely, and she and Issy had become instant friends.

“So let's do that,” she agreed.

“It's private, you have to pay fees.” Jesus brought Caroline back to reality.

“Yes, well, Issy's father is supposed to take care of all that. It's in the agreement, y'know; he pays for her education.” She didn't add that James's payments were sporadic and that her own father picked up the slack.

“And the day after that we have to get you a job,” Maggie said, bringing Caroline back to earth with a bump.

She reviewed her options, which were exactly nil. Fear clenched her throat. Without James's help she needed to make money to keep their lives going. She
had
to make money. She said, “All I know how to do is cook. I'm pretty good though.”

Maggie briskly cleared the coffee cups. “Good, then as soon as Issy starts school, you'll start in our kitchen. From now on, you'll be in charge of pub lunches. And I've been wanting to do dinners a couple of times a week, so now we can. I'll still be doing my spicy tacos, of course.”

“Then I'll do my Singapore wonton soup,” Caroline said, full of sudden enthusiasm, then wondered where she would get the ingredients.

“Oxford.” Maggie read her mind. “They have everything international now.”

Caroline thought how life worked out when you took control back into your own hands. With the help of new friends, a couple of children, and a kitten, of course. And without James.

When, she wondered, did you ever fall
out
of love?
How
did you do it?

 

chapter 9

The kitchen at the Star & Plough
was twenty-five feet square with uneven hard-on-the-feet flagstone floors, terrible fluorescent lighting, and a massive and quite beautiful, oil-fired bright-blue Aga range with three ovens, one of which remained permanently, and miraculously Caroline thought, at the correct temperature for roasting practically anything. There was another for slow-cooking, and the third for keeping things warm. There were two hotplates, also always on, though at different temperatures; you simply chose the appropriate one from boiling to simmering. Plus another perfect for a pot of soup, just to sit there, ticking over.

Agas were invented by the clever Swedes who, living in a cold country, knew how to use a stove to best effect. The pub Aga never went out; it heated the water and kept the kitchen at a useful glow. Why everyone in damp England did not have one amazed Caroline. In fact, she e-mailed her parents to tell them so. They were stuck out in some outlandish bit of the Dordogne countryside in the middle of forty useless acres that her father spent most of his time mowing, sitting on his John Deere, a Panama hat clamped on his head and an always-unlit cigar clamped between his teeth.

“Best day's work I've ever done,” he would say, showing up at six
P.M.
promptly for the glass of champagne he and Caroline's mother had the new habit of sipping in the evening.

“Idyllic,” Caroline's mom told her on the phone. “I've never seen your father happier.”

Since her father had spent forty or so years as an engineer working on other modern miracles like suspension bridges that spanned remote gorges, and pipelines that ran through frozen tundra, Caroline could understand that a day's gentle mowing and a glass of champagne at six of an evening was a pretty good exchange, lifestyle-wise. And if her father was happy then so was her mom.

She supposed she got her own ingrained “good wife syndrome” from watching her mother's happy marriage, where the husband was king and the wife the loving subject. Yet, somehow, her parents had always been equals. She had run her domain. He'd done the job he liked. They were happy. Then why had it not worked for her?

“Come live with us,” her father had told her sternly, when he'd sold up their London home and they had departed for a quiet life in the French countryside. “There's more going on here socially than there ever was in London. There must be some unattached men around, we'll have 'em over for dinner. You know how your mother is, she'll cook up a storm and they'll never want to leave.”

“Never want to leave
Mom,
you mean,” she'd replied. Though in fact the one thing her mother did do for her, that now turned out to have a market value, was insist she go to cooking school. “At least you'll have a ‘trade,'” she'd told her, fearing her daughter's romantic notions of real life.

So now, between Caroline's pies and Maggie's famous spicy chicken tacos plus the tamales Maggie cooked every weekend—the ones that were always served at Christmas in Mexico, made from
masa,
a kind of corn flour, with slow-cooked pork, shredded and mixed with diced onion, cilantro, and jalapeño peppers, then rolled in corn leaves and baked in the oven to a savory melting softness—they were a big success.

Meanwhile she was cooking steak and fries, but she'd also added chicken pot pie to her menu, American-style, served in big white bowls with the flaky pastry crusts fluffed to spectacular heights that brought gasps of admiration. She had also taken to making her own bread, round, dense, flattish loaves that she let rise overnight on back of the Aga, with a cloth draped over the tins, then baked just before lunchtime.

“With good bread and butter, you can keep the customers waiting for their food a bit longer,” she told Maggie, “and they won't even notice, they'll order a second bottle of wine before you know it.” She was learning the business on the hoof, so to speak.

And after long nights on the pub's infamous hard stone floors her feet felt like hooves. She longed for one of those whirlpool Jacuzzi baths they had in spas, where she could sit with her feet being gently hot-massaged while her hair frizzed in the steam and she could keep her eyes shut against the world. A world she was still afraid to acknowledge existed, where she took complete responsibility for her own life. And her daughter's.

Right now, they were living “on the kindness of strangers” as Tennessee Williams had so tragically phrased it in
A Streetcar Named Desire.
Not that she was a Blanche DuBois. Far from it. Blanche was a woman totally alone. And Caroline had Issy, who thank God, was loving her time at Upperthorpe school. The Headmistress had taken her under her wing and she was getting a good education, preparing for sixth form and boarding school, though James was still not paying for it.

Caroline's father paid up and never once said I told you so. He never said what were you thinking signing that prenup. What he did say though, was, “Look, James can't do this, he's legally obligated to pay for his daughter. Not only legally, but morally.” Her father was a moral man.

Meanwhile, Caroline was getting on with her new life. She'd met some of the locals who seemed to know more about her than she did them, via the “pub grapevine,” she supposed, and received many a cheerful good morning while shopping on the high street, or queuing at the post office where the line was so slow you could read the morning paper while you waited, because everyone had to have a chat and a laugh. And of course she became familiar with the regulars at the pub, who came for her pie and Maggie's tacos, as well as the cute young guys whose eyes fastenened onto her as she walked across the lounge to serve them, making her blush, which of course made them laugh and tease her.

“I'll have you know I'm old enough to be your mom,” she would say sternly, folding her arms over her sweatered bosom. Oh, go
on
! they'd reply, or words to that effect. You're not old enough to be anyone's mom.

There was one face, though, Caroline found herself looking out for. He wasn't “a regular,” he only popped in occasionally, and he was never “dressed up.” Middle height, dark hair, a bit beaky-looking. Hawklike some might have said. Maybe he had a sexy mouth? What did she know? She certainly wasn't thinking about “sex.” Anyway, he came in early, sixish usually for a beer, and his sweater always seemed to be dotted with bits of wood shavings. Caroline assumed he was the local carpenter, though she never asked. She wasn't
that
interested. Or was she simply being cautious?