Chapter 8
I’ve just caught Ridge shagging the next-door neighbor!” Alice cried into the phone a week later. “In his room—at ten o’clock in the morning. Sunday morning! Mrs. bloody Miller, of all people. Oh, Es, what am I going to do?”
“Calm down, calm down,” Esme soothed. “Which one is Mrs. Miller? The blowsy midmorning gin drinker or the mousy beige librarian?”
“Neither,” said Alice, “she’s the sexy, saucy newlywed, you know, from directly upstairs.”
“Blimey,” breathed Esme, “the one who married the meaty, beefy, big and bouncy kickboxer?”
“Yes,” cried Alice. “What am I going to do? If the meaty, beefy, big and bouncy kickboxer finds out he will squash Ridge like the useless little worm he is.”
“Well, how’s he going to find out? She’s not going to tell him and neither is Ridge, I imagine. And you’re not either, I hope. Alice, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking it’s too hard to be the mother of a teenager.” Alice’s voice cracked. “I don’t feel grown-up enough. Nothing I do is right and nothing he does is right, either. It’s horrible. Like being at war, or something, but without the rules. I liked it when he was little and I was all he had and he loved me. I’m sorry, Esme. I know you don’t need this but I just can’t help it.”
“Oh, Alice,” Esme said, feeling dreadful on her friend’s behalf, “he still loves you, it’s just hormones. It’s normal to be shagging everything that moves when you’re his age. You were.”
“You weren’t,” cried Alice. “You saved yourself. He idolizes you, you know, Esme. He looks at your lovely family with your house in the country and your doting husband and your Labrador dog and he wonders why he couldn’t have had all that.”
Esme was staggered. “The house needs round-the-clock cleaning,” she said. “The dog uses its bladder as a weapon and I did not save myself, I was a retard. I just never fancied anyone that fancied me until, you know, Louis. It wasn’t a good thing. I’ve never been able to quite get him out of my system. I probably should have boffed Acne George from down the road when I was sixteen after all—got it all over and done with and got on with things.”
Alice’s sniffling got quieter. “You still have Louis in your system?”
“A bit,” said Esme, wishing she hadn’t said anything. What was Louis doing in her thoughts, in her conversations? She had been battling him all week. But like those invisible grains of Venolat flour still left in her jar of starter, bits of Louis remained ingrained and untraceable in Esme herself. “Well, a bit more than a bit, I suppose.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and willed herself to stop it there. “Less than a lot, though,” she continued brightly. “I’m just thinking about him at the moment because Charlie’s been here and sort of raked the whole thing up a bit.”
“What do you mean, raked the whole thing up?”
Why don’t I just shut the hell up? Esme asked herself. “Oh, you know. Talking about Venolat and the boy I left behind sort of thing. Dredging up all those hideous old feelings. Oh, it’s too silly to even talk about Alice. It’s pathetic!”
“What do you mean, those hideous old feelings? You barely even mention Louis to me.”
Alice and Charlie had never really hit it off and over the years continued to vie rather childishly, Esme often felt, for her friendship. At first, she’d thought the antagonism between them might have signaled a hidden attraction but she’d been wrong. It had just been antagonism and in recent years it had proved more peaceful to keep them well apart.
“It’s nothing,” Esme said in exasperation, “just some ridiculous middle-aged fantasy that keeps my mind off things and helps me while away the seconds between cleaning the oven, ironing the clothes, scrubbing the toilets, that sort of malarkey.”
“You fantasize about him?” Alice stressed. “Well, that sounds like more than thinking about him a bit, if you ask me. That’s thinking about him a lot, in my book.”
“Can we stop talking about this now?” asked Esme. “I am sure you have far more exciting tales of the lovelorn and heartsick than I do.”
Alice, in her search for a man who could provide her son with a male role model and give her the odd roll in the hay, had become addicted some years earlier to blind dates. In the early days, when Ridge was first at school and she realized she didn’t have to spend the rest of her days alone, she had expected rather fancifully to perhaps meet a good-looking, well-off, professional male about her own age to whom she might get married and with whom she could perhaps raise a family.
A decade later, all she asked was that they not lunge at her in the first ten minutes and at least buy their own drink.
She had tried dating agencies, dinner clubs, singles’ nights, speed dating and answering Personal ads in the Guardian, the Financial Times and Time Out. She had been to more bars, cafés and pizza joints than she cared to remember and knew every kink and bend in the Thames—she had been on that many river cruises—plus she was on first-name terms with the ticket collector at the London Eye. But what Alice, and subsequently Esme, had learned over the years was that no single man that she would ever contemplate marrying and raising a family with would ever join dating agencies or dinner clubs, attend singles’ nights or speed-dating sessions or place/answer Personal ads in the Guardian, the Financial Times and Time Out.
They were mostly already married to someone else or deeply odd. In just one memorable week a few years back Alice had dated an addictive gambler, a little person, two alcoholics, a one-armed paperhanger (seriously) and an albino with eye-watering body odor.
After five years, she realized she was never going to meet a husband. But after five years, she also realized that blind dating was cheaper than renting a movie and, most of the time, more entertaining.
Now, she just did it for fun.
“Did I not tell you?” she said into the phone to Esme. “I thought I had a normal one on Thursday. I’ve had three living-at-home-with-mothers in a row. Honestly, if I never see a mustard-colored hand-knitted cardie again it will be too soon. Anyway, on Thursday I go to Rockwell in Trafalgar Square—oh, I’ll have to take you there next time you’re down—and in walks this gorgeous-looking creature, six feet tall, full head of hair, impeccable clothes, naturally I never thought for a moment it was him.”
“Shoes?” asked Esme.
“Punched leather brogues,” answered Alice. Experience had taught her that if you spent one second looking at a blind date’s shoes, you could generally save yourself a lot of spittle and mind-numbingly boring conversation about the innermost workings of the Central Line.
“And?”
“And so eventually it becomes clear he is waiting for someone and I am wondering if, please God, it could be me so I go up and ask him if he’s Andrew, and he just looks at me and smiles this beautiful smile, Esme, and then he says, ‘Good Lord. You’re not what I expected.’ Anyway, then he buys me a drink, some vodka thing with coriander and mint in it, and we have a perfectly normal conversation about George Dubya Bush and I’m nearly creaming myself thinking, ‘I don’t believe it—he’s perfect!’ when he says: ‘Enough small talk, let’s go up to my room.’”
Esme squawked with excitement. “What did you do?”
“Well, it has been more than a year and he was gorgeous and I did fancy him like mad so I said, ‘You’re staying here?’ and he said, ‘We are all staying here.’”
“We all who?” Esme wanted to know.
“Exactly,” said Alice. “So he stands up and takes my arm and starts to lead me to the lift, which is when I notice a spotty-looking geek in a bright yellow anorak carrying a bicycle seat and craning his neck around the room as if searching for a certain someone.”
Esme groaned in sympathy. “Another Andrew?” she guessed.
“Another Andrew,” Alice agreed. “Turns out punched-leather-brogue Andrew is a lawyer from Edinburgh down on some big conference and he was first in line for a prostitute he and his mates
had ordered up for the night and assumed I was she.”
“Did you think about going through with it?” Esme asked.
“Think about it? I suggested it and do you know what he said?”
“Do I want to know?”
“He said, ‘I can get it for free at home. I want to pay for it. That’s the point.’”
It was an awful business, Esme had to agree. Especially as it turned out the correct Andrew was actually someone Alice had been on a blind date with once before. She didn’t recognize him until he started talking about his pet hamster, Nigel, who had died when he was fourteen, leaving emotional scars that were clearly not anywhere near healed. Worse still, he had not recognized her at all.
“That’s a good one,” Esme had to admit. “But imagine if you had gone up and fornicated with the horrible lawyer and then he’d flung all this cash at you.”
“Yes,” said Alice drily. “Imagine. How terrible. Anyway, it’s just as well really. One fornicator in the family is enough.” She sighed.
“What are you going to do with your fornicator, then?”
Alice cleared her throat. “He is grounded for the rest of his natural life,” she said. “And I am not going to let him watch cable for a week.”
“Oh, that will really show him,” said Esme supportively. “And what exactly do you expect him to do with his spare time when there is a saucy neighbor upstairs just waiting until she hears your footsteps in the hall so she can put on her negligee and pop around for a cup of milk?”
Alice groaned. “I never thought of that,” she said wetly. “What’s the opposite of grounding someone?”
Rory appeared at Esme’s knee, a frown crinkling the flawless skin above his earnest brown eyes.
“’Scuse me, Esme,” he interrupted politely.
“Just a minute,” Esme said to Alice, holding the phone away and pulling Rory’s face toward her to give it a kiss. He smelled of dog, but it was still delicious.
“What is it, darling?” she asked him.
“We want to go fishing.”
Esme looked out the window; the sea mist that had clung to the trees all morning had lifted, leaving it a spotlessly clear blue day.
“On the Meare? What a wonderful idea. I’ll check on you with Daddy’s binoculars, shall I? You could take your pirate flag and wave it at me.”
Rory looked uncertain. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked her.
“I’m just about to put the bread in, darling. It will be piping hot and crunchy just the way Daddy likes it by the time you get back. You run along and have fun.” She kissed his orange curls. “Bring me back a whale,” she called after him, turning back to the phone.
“She’s not coming,” Rory told Henry, who was waiting outside his room for his grandson.
“She’s not coming,” Henry told Pog when they picked him up at his shed.
“She has to put the bread in,” Rory said, reaching for his father’s hand.
The three of them walked to the Meare in silence. The morning mist had clearly kept the crowds away and no one was out on the water yet. Ducks huddled beneath the picnic table waiting for the crumbs to come.
Pog pulled a wooden dinghy into the shallow water and helped Henry climb stiffly into it, then hoisted Rory and his fishing rod inside, and jumped in himself, picking up the oars. Like most locals, they paid Mrs. Coyle fifty pounds a year for the right to use the rental boats whenever they wanted to as long as tourists weren’t left queuing. About once a fortnight, weather permitting, they came out; but on their last few excursions Esme had been missing.
It was quiet, the bark of a distant dog and the sound of the oars hitting the water all they could hear. Rory was facing his father, his grandfather behind him. The little boy’s rod lay at his feet; his attention was turned to the House in the Clouds, straddling the trees above them.
“Daddy?” He turned back to his father. “Is there something wrong with Esme?”
Pog kept rowing, didn’t falter, didn’t meet his father’s eye.
“No, Rory,” he answered. “There’s nothing wrong with Esme. She’s fine.”
His oars dipped in and out of the water, loudly dripping fat droplets back onto the smooth surface. Henry coughed, uncomfortably.
“She’s been grizzling in Granny Mac’s room,” Rory said.
“In Granny Mac’s room?” Pog asked casually. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I’ve heard her,” Rory answered. “Sometimes there’s laughing, too. Isn’t there, Granddad?”
Pog looked over Rory’s head at his father and raised his eyebrows. Henry gave a shrug.
Pog sighed. “Your mother’s just sad, Rory,” he said. “But she’ll be all right. You just have to let her be sad for a while.”
“How long?” Rory asked.
“I don’t know,” Pog answered truthfully. “But she’s baking bread again and that’s a good sign, don’t you think?”
Henry felt panicked by the rawness of emotion onboard the little boat. It was too close for his comfort.
“I think I just saw a carp, Rory,” he said. “Do you have the bait?”
Pog stopped rowing and pulled the oars onto his lap, then passed the rucksack over to Rory.
“Esme likes bread more than anything, doesn’t she, Daddy?” Rory asked, pulling out a hardened heel of sourdough, his chubby little fingers having trouble getting the hook through the crust.
“Not more than anything, Rory. It’s just very important to her. Dad, could you help him with that? He’s going to hurt himself.” Pog dipped the oars back in the water and gently rowed them back to where Henry had seen the carp.
“Why?”
“Why is it important to her? Well, you know that story, Rory. Mummy went to France when she was just a girl and a baker gave her the magic ingredient for her special bread and she’s baked it every day since then.”
“Why?”
Pog had asked Esme this question himself when he first met her and on many occasions since then. And all Esme had ever done was smile her secretive smile and say, “Because it makes me feel good.”
“Because it makes her feel good,” Pog told his son.
“Why?”
“Oh, Rory, do we have to play this game?”
“Yes, I thought we were here to catch fish,” Henry said grumpily. There was something in his tone that rankled with Pog and with a start he realized that his father’s uneasiness was mirrored in his own churning stomach. Was Pog turning into a man who could fidget and bluster and ignore what was going on right in front of him? He thought he had been doing the right thing, leaving time to heal Esme’s wounds, not digging deeper into them himself. But what if he was wrong? What if he had let Esme be sad for too long already? What if he was just being Henry all over again?
Pog looked up at the House in the Clouds and felt all the things he wanted to say to her float up toward the surface, stopping just short of it, like heavy logs in a busy river, lethal but invisible. No, he was different. He knew his wife. She just needed time. He was sure of it.
“I’ll tell you what, when we’ve caught our fish we’ll go and buy some of Mrs. Coyle’s homemade chocolates, shall we?” he suggested, spinning the little dinghy around. “And the Sunday paper. That will cheer her up.”
Esme at that exact moment was being cheered up anyway, courtesy of Charlie Edmonds, who had just rung to invite her down to London for lunch the following day.
“Time to dust the cobwebs from your glad rags, missus,” he said. “Meet me at the Orrery in Marylebone High Street. Their scallops will leave you drooling.”
Her good humor, however, did not last long. The chocolates only went halfway to assuaging her irritation at having Pog hand over the latest installment from Jemima, the first one of which had apparently proved so popular the paper had increased the amount of space dedicated to it.
“Oh, I am going to vomit,” Esme dramatized later that afternoon as she sat on Granny Mac’s bed, flapping her hand at invisible smoke and
blanking out “The Killing of Georgie.” “It’s just revolting, Granny Mac, it really is. The gall of this woman. Honestly. I can’t believe they publish it. There should be a law.”
Granny Mac scorched her with her indifference.
“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” she said. “You never got your knickers in a twist when Bridget Jones got her own Diary.”
Esme threw the newspaper aside. “Bridget Jones didn’t have a diary,” she said, “it was Helen Fielding and that was entirely different. For a start, I don’t know Helen Fielding, and for a finish, even if I did know her she would not have tricked me into hiring her then slept with my boss and turned him against me and trashed my magazine and left me lying in the gutter with only crumpled pages of the Daily Mail for cover while she went on to be rich and fabulous.”
“And you say this Jemima has a gift for fiction. Come on, Esme, was it really so bad, what she did?”
“I can’t believe you would take her side,” Esme railed. “I might have ended up having her career if I had played the game the way she did, stepping on everybody with great big spiky heels and burning bridges from here to kingdom come. It just doesn’t seem fair. It could be me with a fancy column in the Sunday Times.”
Granny Mac failed to get even remotely worked up. “I didn’t realize you wanted someone else’s career,” she said drily. “Here was me assuming you were happy with the one you had.”
“Mine was hard work!” argued Esme. “I had to work my arse off for twelve hours a day to earn probably half what Jemima Jones gets for being a serial gate-crasher between seven and nine and giving little Cosmo his Balinese bloody back massage in the minutes between her facial and her hair-moisturizing treatment. It just seems to come so easily to her, Granny Mac. It always has.”
“And you wanted it to come more easily to you?”
Esme could barely understand her own chagrin, let alone explain it.