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Authors: Melissa Nathan

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BOOK: The Nanny
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Our
house—”

“And she'll be someone I have to want to talk to every evening while you're watching television.”

There was a long pause, during which Dick poured them each a stiff drink. “Why are they all so young?” he wondered aloud. “In the olden days they were buxom ladies with starched pinnies and faces who ruled the roost while the parents had a life.”

“Yes, dear, and they were secretly in love with the butler.”

The doorbell rang.

“I'll get that, darling,” said Dick. “Just see if there's a miracle waiting for us.”

He opened the front door. Standing in front of him was a woman in her midfifties wearing a type of checked two-piece suit that he didn't know still existed. She had a bosom like a barrier and a face like a frog. He was actually frightened.

“Come in,” he said warily. She followed him down the hall and by the time he got into the kitchen he was almost running. Introductions were made, and the interview began.

“What do you like cooking for a child?” asked Vanessa.

“They must eat fresh fruit and vegetables twice a day,” said the woman firmly. “I would check my weekly diary with you and then get them used to a routine. It gives children stability and teaches them that they are not the ones in control, you are, via me.”

“Thank you,” said Dick, beginning to stand. “I don't think there are any—”

“Do you have family of your own?” asked Vanessa. Dick sat down.

“Both my daughters live abroad,” said the woman. “I was widowed in '79. I'd be delighted to baby-sit any night. And at weekends.”

“I think that's everything; isn't it, darling?” Dick turned to Vanessa, who ignored him.

“What are your hobbies?” she asked.

“Knitting and cooking.”

“Do you smoke?”

“No. Disgusting habit.”

“Would you like to see our children?” asked Vanessa, ignoring the tiny rocking movement coming from Dick.

“No,” said the lady. “I like children whoever they are.”

Vanessa didn't answer immediately.

“Oh,” she said. “I see.”

“Right!” said Dick, almost jumping up. “Thank you so much for coming, awfully good of you, I love that suit…” He saw off their last interview that week as Vanessa stared miserably into space.

 

Monday in Niblet-upon-Avon was a fresh, bright day, so the park was fairly full—full enough for Jo and her nanny friend Edwina to be forced to share their bench with an old woman who sported an old man's coat and a young man's moustache.

They sat down while keeping their eyes firmly on their charges, who were, naturally enough, charging around. Three-year-old Davey was Jo's latest little boy. His sister was already in big school, and it wouldn't be long before he'd be going to nursery for three hours every morning. He couldn't wait, which Jo and Davey's mother tried not to take personally. Jo had been Davey's nanny since he was six months old, and she adored him. Once he was in nursery, what job satisfaction she did get would be significantly reduced.

She turned and watched Edwina, who was scouring
The Lady
for a new job. Edwina's charge, Nancy, was a needy little sweetheart thanks to the fact that her parents were quite the opposite. Edwina had finally reached her tolerance level with the mother and, like so many of Nancy's nannies before her, spent most of her time with the little girl desperately searching for other jobs.

Jo turned to find the children. After a few moments, she found them sitting together by the tree in the far corner.

“Hmm,” she said to Edwina. “Should Nancy be doing that?”

“Probably not,” muttered Edwina, without looking up.

Eventually, Edwina glanced over to her charge. Nancy was taking off her knickers and showing Davey where Barbie had personally autographed them in pink.

“Oh not again.” Edwina put down her magazine, got up off the bench, and wandered reluctantly toward Nancy.

Jo watched the two children place the Barbie knickers over both of their heads, blissfully unaware that their quality assurance test was soon to
be seriously curtailed. Then a shadow fell across them and four innocent eyes looked up at Edwina through lace-frilled leg holes.

Jo looked at her watch. Another half an hour of playing before pickup time. A welcoming warm breeze suddenly tickled the air, and she closed her eyes for a moment and leaned back on the bench. She was calmed by the sound of children giggling and dogs barking.
Live for the moment
, she told herself.
Just live for the moment
.

She must have fallen asleep, because the tender ripple of glossy pages turning in the breeze feathered into her consciousness, rousing her from a daydream of Hugh Jackman wearing a pinny at her mother's kitchen sink. She opened her eyes and looked down at the magazine Edwina had left on the bench beside her. She had never had any interest in
The Lady
before—all of her jobs had somehow found her—but something made her pick it up. She thought of Alice in Wonderland picking up the bottle marked
drink me
.

She skim-read pages of ads for nannies and became aware of herself as a much-needed commodity. She started to turn the pages, feeling as if she'd just discovered a new layer of chocolates after thinking there had only been orange marzipan left. Finally, her eyes lighted upon one in particular. It had a very nice black frame.

Kind and loving nanny wanted for busy professional household in Highgate Village, London. Clean driving license, nonsmoker essential. Sole charge of eight-year-old, six-year-old, and four-year-old. Sole use of Renault Clio, suite of rooms with television and DVD.

She thought at first that the weekly salary was the PO box number. She read it again, slower. Then she read it once more.

Highgate Village. It was a pretty, quaint-sounding name, yet it was in London. She hadn't been to London since her midteens when a crowd of friends had gone clubbing there. She remembered the exhilaration at how alive with possibilities it had felt, even in the middle of the night. She looked back at the ad.

Three children—she'd never looked after three children before, but she knew as sure as she knew her own name that she desperately needed a challenge. And the car…And the suite of rooms.

After reading it a couple of times, she could feel her heart beating. New and dazzling thoughts began to starburst into her mind. With that much money, she could actually put some aside—maybe even save for the first time in her life. Come back home and put a deposit on a little flat. Or use it to pay for a college course…she was still young. She could start again; her parents would understand—

She suddenly pulled in the reins—she could never leave Mum and Dad. It wouldn't be fair—they needed her now more than ever.

“You can keep it,” came Edwina's voice. “There's sod all in there for me.”

Jo looked up at her.

“Oh no—”

“Here,” said Edwina. “Take it.” And she lifted it from Jo's hands, folded it roughly, and squeezed it into Jo's bag between Davey's beloved Thunderbirds companions Scot and Virgil.

 

That night, Hilda and Bill weren't talking. Bill had had his tea at the pub—steak and chips—instead of waiting till he got home for steamed greens and cod. They were furious with each other, and the television became that night's weapon of choice.

“You're not watching this crap, are you?” said Hilda, every time Bill zapped the channels over to the program he wanted to watch.

Jo didn't particularly want to look at the screen, but neither did she want to catch her mother's eye. For want of anywhere else to look, she looked at the door into the hall.

“What's up?” asked her mother.

“I'm going to make a call,” she heard herself say.

“Alright, love. No need to ask permission.”

And with that, Jo went into the hall and phoned the Fitzgeralds in Highgate, London.

There was so much to take in, Jo didn't know where to look first. The Highgate house had seemed small from the outside, smaller even than her parents'. It was a nondescript end-of-terrace Victorian house with no front garden. It had only one window facing the ugly north London road that looked nothing like a village, with or without a high gate. And the road was so jammed with enormous four-by-fours Jo wondered if they were occasionally used as extra rooms.

She rang the doorbell and waited. Eventually a hassled Francesca, soon-to-be-ex nanny, opened the front door, and Jo stared at the Tardis in front of her.

The entrance hall was practically a room in itself, with bright Victorian floor tiles and ceiling cornicing framing a filigree radiator cover. A chaise longue stretched across the opposite wall, with a mock Victorian-style telephone on the minute table next to it. The walls were painted a sumptuous red. Wordlessly, Francesca motioned Jo to wait in the living room and shut the door behind her. There Jo stood, executing a slow-motion 360-degree turn, trying to take in as much as possible in as little time as possible. The lounge and dining room had been made one room, so what looked from the outside like a tiny front room was in fact a very comfortable sitting room and adjoining dining room with extremely high ceilings.

The living room was furnished with large, deep, white sofas on the varnished real oak floor. The walls were a different shade of deep, rich red, and a stunning Victorian fireplace stood in the center of the wall, framed by minutely detailed, shining Victorian tiles. Above it was a painting in vivid primary colors that Jo imagined must have been done by one of the children.

In the dining room stood a splendid, vast wooden table with matching vast wooden chairs. On the walls, wrought-iron sconces held fat, misshapen candles, as did the central chandelier-style fitting. The only elec
tric light was in the far corner, over the polished upright piano, on top of which sat two descant recorders. Next to them languished a slow-blinking cream cat, staring at her. Jo started at its first blink, feeling she'd been caught red-handed, spying. She smiled shamefacedly at it before tutting at herself and looking away.

Every window was a sympathetically updated sash, and the curtains were a sumptuous, even darker, richer red than the walls, tied back by dramatic wrought-iron fittings.

Jo heard the sound of a man and a young woman saying their good-byes in the hall, the woman very obliging, the man monosyllabic. Then the front door shut and after a moment of silence she heard the man say loudly, “Sweet mother of Jesus.”

Jo sat down quickly as the living room door opened and the man appeared. She stood up again.

“Jo Green?”

“Yes.” Jo walked toward him, and the man nodded briefly, before saying, “Follow me.”

Jo had already put her hand out to be shaken, and the man seemed somewhat taken aback.

“Oh,” he said, coming forward into the room and shaking her hand. “Dick Fitzgerald.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fitzgerald,” said Jo.

“Oh, Dick, please. Pleased to meet you too. Um, do follow me.”

Dick led Jo down a narrow corridor to the back of the house, where he opened the door for her and followed her into the kitchen.

“My wife will be along in a minute,” he told Jo's back.

Jo hardly heard. She was standing in the biggest, brightest kitchen she'd ever seen—the size of her parents' entire downstairs floor. Ceiling spotlights shone in the distance onto a glass table in a separate dining area from which enormous, elaborate French doors led onto a perfectly proportioned, perfectly manicured, long, narrow garden. Upon the table languished another cream cat, staring at her like a frosty queen, and Jo wondered uneasily whether this was a twin of the cat on the piano or the piano cat's idea of a joke. Unnerved, she edged farther into the room. The kitchen was painted a color she didn't even know the name of. Was it purple? Lavender? Blue? Lilac?

She kept on walking, and round the corner in an extended conservatory to the side was a matching (purple? lavender? blue? lilac?) two-seater
sofa. Opposite it was the biggest television she had ever seen in her life. She tried not to gasp. The television was so large it was practically another presence in the room. Her dad would be in paradise in this kitchen. All he'd need was a toilet attached and he'd never want for anything. Sod it, he'd make do with a potty. She noticed that the two-seater opposite the television had a throw folded over one arm—the room's one concession for life with children. This must be the nanny's habitat. She found herself grinning. She could be very happy here.

Dick offered her a seat and she sat down at the glass table. She tried not to look at her legs and feet through the glass, but it was a most odd sensation. She followed Dick with her eyes as he tidied some mugs away into the dishwasher. This kitchen had curved doors and curved doors handles. It also had every possible modern convenience, including coffeemaker, pasta maker, and bread maker. It was like being in a state-of-the-art witch's grotto. Every convenience, including the space-age kettle and vast toaster, were made of shining chrome. Not a flower in sight. Her mother would suffer withdrawal symptoms here. And as she looked at the objects all lined up on the wide window ledge of glazed Mediterranean tiles, Jo felt tempted to agree with her mother. She felt like she was in the middle of a chrome battlefield.

Meanwhile, necessities like the fridge were disguised behind matching (purple? lavender? blue? lilac?) doors. Only the fridge was conspicuous thanks to its icemaker, and near it, the large, kidney-shaped sink was completely empty and clean, thanks to the expertly disguised dishwasher. Jo tried to remember if she'd ever seen her mother's sink empty. Instead of two taps, the sink had one burnished brass tap that looked like an old-fashioned pump. Surrounding the sink, and stretching out luxuriously over all the cupboards, a shining, curvy pine work top glistened luxuriously.

Jo took it all in then glanced back at Dick, nodding pleasantly. She might never see this place again—she had to take in as much as possible. Dick moved to another door behind him, and what Jo had assumed was a cupboard was in fact a good-sized utility room, with another, larger though less beautiful, sink. There the dryer, washing machine, ironing board, and iron were kept. The room was as big as her mother's kitchen. Jo was beginning to wish she'd brought a camera.

Dick let her stare. God, he loved this bit. It was well worth taking a Saturday off work to enjoy all this young, provincial adoration. And he
loved it when they tried to pretend they weren't bowled over by the house, as if he couldn't read it all over their faces. This was where they usually became deferential and tongue-tied.

“Your home is absolutely beautiful,” said Jo warmly. “I feel like I've stepped into a glossy magazine.”

Dick laughed with some surprise.

“Oh! Well! Thank you,” he said. “You're very kind. My wife should really take all the credit—”

A woman appeared at the kitchen door. “Are you talking about your ability to dress yourself again, darling?” she interrupted Dick as she approached Jo. “Vanessa Fitzgerald.”

“Jo Green.”

“Thank you so much for coming down to see us.”

“Not at all. Once you're on the train it isn't—”

“Where are you from again?” Vanessa wandered toward the kitchen table and thrones.

“Niblet-upon-Avon, a tiny little village just near Stratford.”

They shook hands firmly.

“How lovely.”

“Oh, have you been to Warwickshire?”

“No. But I hear it's on a par with Tuscany.”

“Um. Well, it's very beautiful.”

“Right,” said Vanessa, shooing the cat away. “Let's start.” The cat resettled itself farther down the table, ready for the show.

The two women sat down. Vanessa gave Jo a tight grin.

“I'll just file the previous applicants.” She scrunched up five CVs and threw them in the bin. “We're hiring a nanny,” she smiled, “not doing ‘Care in the Community.'”

“God, darling,” said Dick from the kitchen. “I love it when you're inhuman.”

Unable to watch Vanessa read her CV, Jo studied Dick as he busied himself in the kitchen. He was what Jo could only describe as a handsome older man. If he had been twenty years younger she would be feeling significantly rosy-cheeked. But age had certainly softened his edges. He was in his late forties possibly early fifties and was wearing a navy crew-neck sweater with the latest fashion jeans. Somehow they didn't look too youthful on him. She glanced back at Vanessa, who, though tired, was really rather beautiful. Soft brown eyes, vanilla skin, and thick dark hair that made Jo think of ice cream. Probably late thirties. She was wearing a
fashionable knee-skimming skirt and a short, close-cut top, which showed off her curves.

Jo began to feel the first signs of hope that she'd felt for a good while. Here were two attractive people who had waited until they'd found the right partner before starting a family, rather than doing it just because everyone else had started around them. Together they had everything—looks, money, large family, and a television the size of a small cinema.
Look and learn
, she thought to herself.
Look and learn.

“Tea? Coffee?” asked Dick from the kitchen.

“Oh tea would be lovely.” Jo smiled.

“Earl Grey, English Breakfast, herbal, or lapsang souchong?”

Jo stared at him. Had the interview started?

“Stop showing off, darling. Make us a pot of tea and shut up.”

Jo stared back at Vanessa. Never in a million years had she ever heard a woman tell a man to make the tea and shut up.

While Dick made the tea, humming as he did so, Vanessa caught Jo eyeing the enormous television behind her.

“It may be big,” said Vanessa dryly, “but it still shows the same crap as any other television.”

“Surround sou-ound,” sang Dick, busily placing cups and a teapot on a tray.

“Surround sound, my a-arse,” sang Vanessa back, still smiling at Jo. She leaned in toward her, and said conspiratorially, “Men think the bigger and faster anything is, the better it is. Except for their women, of course, whom they want small and slow. It's precious, isn't it?”

Jo stared at her. Had the interview started now?

Dick approached with the tray, stepping carefully, over cat number one, who had come in from the living room and positioned itself, sphinx-like, in the middle of the floor. He placed the tray on the table and sat down next to Vanessa, facing Jo.

Jo had never seen so many different brightly colored cups and saucers. Dick carefully arranged them so that not one of the cups and saucers matched. The turquoise cup sat on the fuchsia saucer, the emerald cup on the aquamarine saucer, and the aquamarine cup on the turquoise saucer. Her mother would be out in hives if she could see them.

Vanessa and Dick both smiled at her politely, indicating that the interview was about to commence. She managed to return the favor, feeling increasingly uncertain.

“I have a previous marriage,” Dick started as he poured milk (from the
lilac milk jug) “so it's not just the three children who are living here at the moment. There's Toby, who's thirteen, who my ex-wife, Jane—”


Whom
,” corrected Vanessa.

“—will bring round here every Friday evening, six sharp. Toby stays until Sunday afternoon.” He paused before saying, “I think you'll find it was ‘who,' darling.”

Vanessa smiled sweetly at Jo over her cup of tea (turquoise), as if Dick hadn't spoken.

“Have you ever looked after a child that old?”

“Nearly,” said Jo emphatically, trying to ignore the novelty of watching a couple point-score over grammar. “My previous but one family ranged from five to eleven. Actually I've missed the conversation of the older children. It was one of the reasons I answered your advertisement.”

Vanessa stared at her. “And, perhaps more importantly,” she continued, “have you ever looked after a child of Satan?”

“Darling,” reprimanded Dick.

“Well, you've said it yourself,” Vanessa reminded her husband. “Jane the Drain is the devil woman.”

Jo interrupted before the argument took hold.

“I've always thought that all children—like all adults—have the potential to be nice and nasty,” she said. “If you get on with people, you can get on with children.”

Dick joined his wife in staring at her.

“Then there's Dick's other son,” continued Vanessa after a pause, “who's twenty-five.”

Jo raised her eyebrows in surprise. It was the right thing to have done.

“I know.” Dick grinned, genuinely trying to look humble but genuinely unable to pull it off. “Child groom. Unfortunately, I married a child bride. We didn't stand a chance.”

Vanessa added, “Now you're just a child father-of-five, and she's a bitter bitch from hell.”

“Thank you, darling, very helpful.” Dick turned back to Jo, not remotely put off by his wife. “Josh is a chip off the old block. Good-looking, eye for the ladies, always got a few on the string at the same time if you know what I mean, been living with his mates in Crouch End—
very
trendy area just near here—for a couple of years, very successful accountant, on his way to becoming a partner in a large city firm.”

He paused dramatically, to let it all sink in. Jo raised her eyebrows and nodded, to register immense respect for all this information.

Vanessa turned to her husband and smiled tightly at him. “And what block is that exactly?”

In the silence that followed, the cat on the table suddenly yawned, displaying its incisors to all with complacent pride.

Dick turned slowly to his wife and locked eyes with her. They were sitting a fraction apart. He looked down at her lips. Jo couldn't work out if they'd forgotten she was there or were performing to her.

BOOK: The Nanny
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