Simply Heaven (17 page)

‘Earl Grey,’ she says. ‘I hope that’s OK.’

Even their
beverages
have titles.

‘Great,’ I tell her. ‘How are you feeling today?’

Tilly pats her distended abdomen with one hand, puts the other in front of her mouth and stifles a tiny burp. ‘I’m ready to explode, to tell the truth. I feel like it’s about to claw its way through my stomach like that monster in
Alien
.’

‘When are you due?’

‘Another two months, amazingly. I’m thinking of hiring a trampoline just to hurry it up.’

‘Do you know what it is yet?’

‘I am very much hoping,’ she replies, ‘that it’ll be a baby. Sugar?’

Rufus takes a seat opposite me. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ he asks.

‘Sausages,’ says Mary.

‘Wow.’ He seems disproportionately thrilled by this piece of news.

‘And scrambled eggs,’ says Tilly.

‘What day is it? I thought it was Tuesday?’

Mary says to me: ‘Melody, you’ll find that my son orients much of his diary around his stomach. A habit he picked up from his father.’

‘No, but –’ says Rufus – ‘we always have sausages on a Saturday.’

‘… If you see what I mean,’ says Mary. Then, to Rufus: ‘We’re having a proper breakfast in honour of Melody’s first day. We also –’ she addresses this to me – ‘don’t usually eat this formally in the daytime. We have a proper family dinner in the dining room, of course.’

‘Mrs Roberts cooks that,’ says Tilly, and helps herself to a piece of toast. ‘Oh, Ruf, there’s marmalade!’

‘Marmalade?’ cries Rufus. ‘
Wow
!’

‘Every night?’ I ask, heart sinking. I’d sort of hoped that last night’s horror had been something of a special occasion.

‘Every,’ she says firmly, ‘night. It’s a family tradition. It’s right to gather the whole family in one place. You’ll soon get used to it.’

‘No sense in fighting tradition,’ says Tilly, and I detect a tiny note of irony. I attempt to throw frantic glances in Rufus’s direction, but he seems to be engrossed in the construction of a marmalade and sausage sanger, and doesn’t notice. So much for the king of chivalry.

Rufus’s grandmother, despite the early hour, is already wearing a hat. It’s a cloche constructed of feathers that have been dyed to match the baby blue of her coat-dress. She has been looking at me in silence since I came in, a dimpled smile of consummate sweetness clamped to her face. I have a feeling that she’s already forgotten me from yesterday.

‘Good morning, Mrs Wattestone,’ I say. I figure you don’t call someone of her antiquity by their first name until you’re invited.

She bats her eyelashes. Beatrice has tiny little circular eyes set in creamy white skin, like raisins dropped carelessly in a snowdrift. The face has obviously been heart-shaped in the past: that soft, round look with the calcified points at the chin and jaw which was the feminine ideal in the 1920s and which modern medics associate with bulimia. Dame gravity has, over the years, pulled the skin downward so it hangs, like a washrag, half a centimetre from the bones.

‘Is she my new nurse?’ she asks.

Then she parts orange-painted lips and smiles at me with teeth of purest plastic.

‘No, Granny,’ says Tilly. ‘She’s Rufus’s new wife. Your nurse will be in at ten, like normal.’

‘But she’s Australian,’ says Beatrice. ‘She must be a nurse.’

‘Shall I get you some eggs?’ asks Mary. ‘You like eggs, don’t you?’

Beatrice waves an imperious hand in acceptance.

‘Morning, Granny.’ Rufus puts down his sandwich in mid-bite and kisses the old trout above her shaven eyebrows. ‘How are you?’

The head wobbles coquettishly, and the lashes bat once more. ‘I’m
vurr
-uh well, thank you,’ she lilts. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’

Showering crumbs, he replies: ‘Not really, Granny. Bucketing down.’

‘But
so
good for the daffodils,’ she says. Now, even I know that daffs don’t usually appear in November.

‘I’d better get up to the roof once I’m finished here,’ he says.

‘Oh,
thank
you, darling,’ says Mary. ‘Daddy will be
so
glad you’re back.’

‘Where is he, anyway?’

‘Doing some lopping.’

‘God, I wish he wouldn’t do that,’ says Rufus. ‘Surely Martin Slatter could be doing that?’

‘Martin’s gone to the dentist,’ says Mary, ‘in Cheltenham.’

‘Poor sod,’ says Rufus.

‘We’re obviously paying him too much if he can afford Cheltenham prices,’ says Mary disapprovingly.

‘Absolutely,’ says Rufus. ‘Estate workers need estate worker teeth. I’ll cut his wages immediately.’

I’m quite impressed by the way Rufus just ignores it when his family say something outrageous. I’ll have to learn to follow suit.

‘Sausages?’ asks Tilly. I snag one on the end of a fork.

‘Have more than that,’ she says. I shake my head. Normally, with a breakfast like this, I’d be bogging in like nobody’s business, but I seem to have lost my appetite.

Beatrice turns her attention back to me. ‘Have you come far?’ she asks.

‘Yes, Granny,’ says Rufus. ‘We came from Gozo yesterday.’

A small frown, and a pout that doesn’t go too well with bleeding lipstick. ‘Gozo? I could have sworn she was Aw
stra
lian. Do they
have
nurses on Gozo?’

‘She’s not a nurse, Beatrice,’ says Mary. ‘She’s a chiropodist. She can probably do something about those bunions of yours.’

‘Oh,
no
,’ says Beatrice, ‘that won’t do
at all
. Why would I want a chiropodist as a nurse? And where did Nessa go? She didn’t say goodbye …’

‘Nessa’s not gone anywhere, Granny,’ says Tilly. ‘She’ll be here at ten.’

‘So I have
two
nurses now …?’ she muses.

‘She’s not a nurse, Granny,’ says Rufus. ‘She’s my wife.’

‘Nonsense,’ says Beatrice.

‘Not nonsense. We got married a couple of weeks ago.’

A flirtatious wag of the index finger. ‘Ah, now I
know
you’re teasing me,’ she says. ‘We didn’t have a wedding two weeks ago. Our last wedding was Tilly’s.’

‘I’m not a chiropodist …’ I say lamely.

‘Chiropodist … oh,
sorry
, darling,
pedicurist
,’ says Mary.

‘Oh, fantastic,’ says Tilly. ‘I’d kill for a trim and a coat of nail-varnish. I haven’t seen my feet in months.’

‘Where
is
Hugo, anyway, darling?’ asks Beatrice, suddenly.

‘Um … Burundi, as far as I know,’ says Tilly. Evidently Granny’s being kept in the dark like the rest of the county.

‘What’s he doing in Burundi?’

‘Business,’ she says.

‘I’d have thought he’d be here with his wife,’ says Beatrice, ‘waiting for their first baby.’

‘Yes, well, he’s not,’ says Tilly bluntly.

‘A woman’s place is by her husband’s side,’ proclaims Beatrice in the manner of one repeating poetry learned by rote.

‘Yes, well,’ says Tilly, ‘I’m afraid the global marketplace doesn’t really allow for those sorts of pieties any more. I’m going to go and have a bath.’

She lumbers to her feet and stands there rubbing the small of her back. ‘It’s lovely to have you here, Melody.’

‘Likewise,’ I say.

‘I was thinking,’ says Mary, when Tilly has left. Wonders will never cease. ‘I think I should give Melody a bit of a debrief on what she’s taken on this morning. Would you like that?’

Oh, Gawd. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘thanks. That would be really helpful.’

‘Great idea,’ says Rufus. ‘Thanks, Ma. That’s really kind of you.’

My eyes are rolling so hard at him that I think they’ll fall out of my head. Jesus, what
is
it with men?

‘Tell you what,’ he says, ‘I think I should probably get up to that roof as soon as possible. Ma, did that plastic sheeting we ordered come, at all?’

‘Yes, it’s in the stables,’ says Mary.

‘Ah, great,’ he says, pushing his plate away and standing up. ‘Right. That’s it. I’m off.’

As he passes my chair, he puts a hand round the back of my neck and kisses me on the forehead in that irritating brotherly fashion that men all seem to reserve for showing affection to their wives in front of the rellies. With a jolt, I realise that this is the first time he’s ever done this. Even in front of the Marijas, with their monobrows and the metaphorical
mantillas
strapped about their heads, he was relaxed with his hand-holding and waist-squeezing, dropping casual kisses without thought on to my lips as he passed. Now, it seems, I’ve undergone a magical transformation into a twelve-year-old with no tits, clompy shoes and a pair of rubber-band-held pigtails sprouting horizontally out of the sides of my head.

‘I’ll see you later, my love,’ he says. ‘Don’t let her wear you out, now, will you?’

I reach up and pat the hand. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ I lie.

The three Mrs Wattestones hold their poses as he leaves the room, all of us smiling like waxworks, no-one willing to let the façade slip until the door closes. I’m not sure what’s in store next.

I find out, double-quick. Mary gets to her feet, picks up some abandoned plates. ‘I’m going to make a couple of phone calls,’ she says, ‘and do a bit of admin.’

The cordial tone has slipped right away now that there’s no-one but senile old Beatrice to hear. ‘If you would sit with Beatrice until the nurse arrives … I’m sure you can manage
that
without too many mishaps. There are a couple of the brochures we keep for the tourists on the windowsill over there. If you read that, I’m sure you’ll know more than you need to.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘I dare say you won’t be here long enough for a deeper grounding,’ she tosses over her shoulder as she leaves the room.

Beatrice’s bright button eyes study me as I click my jaw back into place. Steady, I think: keep the appearances going. I turn and smile at her.

‘I think there’s something you should know,’ she says.

‘What’s that, Mrs Wattestone,’ I ask.

‘The doctor says I’m not allowed any more gin,’ she says confidingly. ‘But my normal nurse usually pops a little in my milk at elevenses.’

Welcome to Bourton Allhallows, home of the Callington-Warbeck-Wattestone family since 932
. I do a double take here, before I understand that the printers haven’t missed a digit off the date. The leaflet is printed on the sort of hard, shiny paper you find in cheap motel bathrooms. In fact, it’s the sort of paper you find in the bathrooms at Bourton Allhallows. Whatever else goes on today, I’m going to be visiting the shops for essential supplies at some point.

We hope you enjoy your visit to our house
, says the brochure.
Please remember that this is still our family home, and treat it accordingly
.

History:
Bourton Allhallows and the Wattestone family are first recorded in the parish records of Wednesford and Sidbury, when Edmund Wattestone donated land and materials for the construction of a church in the Sidbury valley. The Allhallows estate was at the time little more than a large, lightly fortified farmhouse built on early Saxon foundations in an estate of some thirty virgates. The castle wall, or bailey, that can be seen today was certainly in situ at this time. The moat was added (by diverting the course of the Bourton river) in 1273-8 and the estate is recorded again in the Domesday book. The main source of income in the area at the time was wool, and it seems that the family were farmers on a large scale
.

Sheep farmers. I’ve married a sheep farmer. Might as well have stayed at home.

The estate was enlarged when Rufus Wattestone married Anne Callington, sole heiress of a neighbouring landowner, in 1515; her estates were joined to the Wattestone land in exchange for the adjuncture of her surname. The family’s landholdings further increased when they converted from Catholicism in 1538, benefiting, coincidentally, from the dissolution of the Sidbury Priory. Many of the main public rooms of the house date from this period. The family reconverted in the reign of Mary I, then settled into Protestant life under Elizabeth I, successfully maintaining good relations with both sides throughout the Civil War and Interregnum
.

The direct Callington-Wattestone line of descent died out in 1727, when, in the absence of a male heir, the estates were left to a cousin, Giles Warbeck, of Plympton, on condition that the family names be preserved
.

I pour myself another cup of half-cold tea. Wonder if it would be rude to leave the table to settle a bit closer to the fire. Beatrice is pretending to read a copy of a magazine called the
Lady
. She sings as she flips through the pages: a Noel Coward song, ‘I’ve Been to a Marvellous Party’.

In the seventeenth century, the family’s fortunes were boosted by the discovery of a seam of gold in the Sidbury valley. The initial find proved to be of disappointing quality, and operations became increasingly intensive for decreasing rewards. They were enough, however, to finance the additions to the house in the Jacobean, Queen Anne and Georgian eras, and it is assumed that, though mining only officially continued for some 175 years in the area, unofficial excavations were continuing to provide revenues for the family for some time after they were producing them for the exchequer
.

I skip a bit. I can’t help it. It doesn’t make gripping narrative.

The current owner, Edmund, was born in 1930, and married Lady Mary Fulford-Ffawkes. Their heir, Rufus, was born in 1976
.

Not a mention of Tilly. Nice. I let the leaflet rest on the table for a minute while I think and drink my tea. So this is my new family. Over a thousand years, they’ve sat here in this valley, been born, got married, bought a bit more land, reproduced, died, got married, bought a bit more land again, reproduced. And that’s … well, that’s it, as far as I can see. A thousand undistinguished years of achieving doodly. No wonder they’re so proud of themselves. A real figjam of a family. The more I learn, the less I get how Rufus has come out so normal.

‘I danced with a man who danced with a gel who danced with thuh Pri-
hince
of Way-
hales
,’ warbles Beatrice.