The Nanny (6 page)

Silly girl. The nanny is a wonderful idea, of course – attempting twins alone was madness – but what possessed her to get such a pretty one?

As Clare is fond of reminding me, I know very little about business and spreadsheets and flow-charts; but I do know
men
. They have needs: especially
young
men. Bringing a
highly attractive girl into the house at a time when – to be frank – one is hardly looking one’s best is a recipe for disaster. Particularly when the young lady in question is
also keeping the man’s house and cooking his meals and looking after his babies. One never wants a husband to question what, precisely, his wife is
for.

Clare springs out of the Range Rover as Marc parks and runs up the front steps.

‘Davina, you look marvellous! So brown! Have you been away?’

‘Not really, darling.’ I kiss her cheek. ‘Just a long weekend in Nevis, nothing special.’

‘Oh, Davina! I’d
kill
for a few days in the Caribbean. I hate England in March, it’s so dreary.’

‘Darling, you should have said. The Bartholomews would have loved to see you—’

‘You know that’s not an option.’ She turns and ushers the pretty girl forward. ‘This is our new nanny, Jenna. I thought it might be fun if she joined us this weekend, and
got to know the family.’

‘Lovely to meet you, dear,’ I say. ‘Welcome to Long Meadow.’

The girl gazes up at the house with awe. ‘This is all yours?’

How
sweet
. One forgets.

Marc struggles up the steps with the twins, a plastic baby-seat swinging from each hand, like Jack and his pails of water. Two quilted bags are slung across his chest. He looks cross and out of
sorts, as usual.

I lead the way into the orangery, where, despite the dull weather, Mrs Lampard has set the table for lunch. Clare insists on a place being added for Jenna – ‘She can’t eat in
the kitchen, Davina, she’s part of the family, not a servant!’ – and, worse still, brings the twins to the table when they start squalling.

‘I’m sure Jenna wouldn’t mind,’ I murmur discreetly.

The girl leaps up. ‘Of course—’

‘Jenna, sit down,’ Clare says. ‘It’s Saturday, it’s your day off. I invited you to Long Meadow as our
guest
.’

‘I don’t mind, honestly.’

At least
some
body knows her place. How Clare runs a successful business mystifies me. One has to maintain a certain reserve with staff, and Clare has always worn her egalitarian heart
on her sleeve.

Other children bring home stray kittens and litter runts; as a child, Clare used to turn up with vagabonds from the local council estate that she’d picked up in the village and invited
back to tea. Mrs Lampard would fill them with toast and pound cake in the kitchen, and then Lampard would return them to their miserable high-rise dwellings (having frisked them for teaspoons
first). Clare was always devastated not to receive a return invitation.

She thinks me a dreadful snob, I know; but it never occurred to her how unfair she was being, giving these children a glimpse of privilege they could never share.

Jenna seems a perfectly nice girl, if a little common (gold hoop earrings and rather cheap shoes), but one doesn’t make friends with servants. Although Clare does seem a little more like
her old self again now she’s finally seen sense and hired some help. I knew she wouldn’t take well to motherhood. She’s more like me than she thinks. I did
tell
her.

‘Darling, you really don’t have to breastfeed,’ I reprove her gently as Clare whips out a huge, blue-veined bosom, ‘it’s terribly nouveau. Very
Guardian
.
Formula is quite acceptable these days.’

‘Just because
you
didn’t want to,’ Clare retorts.

I make no apologies for my failure to enjoy child-rearing. There is a dreadful amount of sentimental hoop-la about babies. With few exceptions, they are
not
beautiful; most infants
resemble Churchill in his far-from-finest hour. They bawl, squirm, vomit on one’s clothing, and are generally as appealing at the dinner table as a sandwich full of maggots.

Nor, in my opinion, do they improve with age. Once mobile, they leave a slimy trail of stickiness wherever they go, like snails. The moment they master the rudiments of communication, they use
them to demand the repetition of the same mind-numbing games and stories until you want to scream with boredom. How many times must the wheels of the bus go round before they are satisfied?

I never wanted children; but unfortunately the issue of an heir was somewhat of a deal-breaker for my first husband.

I married Manon Sterling for love. Admittedly, he was also obscenely rich, but I find that a very attractive quality in a man.

For years, Manon had been a dedicated playboy who adroitly side-stepped any talk of marriage. But at fifty-one he was starting to feel the first cold intimations of his own mortality. He wanted
a pretty, nubile wife to make him feel young again, and an heir to inherit his vast fortune. I was twenty, a virgin and extremely beautiful; but destitute, since my father, who’d given me a
taste for the finer things in life, had then gambled away any means to enjoy them.

Manon and I were a perfect match. He enjoyed doting on me; I enjoyed being doted upon. Sex with my new husband was pleasant, and undemanding. I fell pregnant with Clare within weeks.

I had no choice but to go through with it. It was the most appalling experience of my life. Manon – utterly in love with every aspect of my pregnancy – proclaimed me glowing, but all
I saw was
fat
. I shuddered every time I caught sight of my swollen body in the mirror (oh, my twenty-three-inch waist!). The only thought that sustained me throughout the entire
nightmarish nine months was that I would never,
ever
have to do this again.

Clare was born by Caesarean section; nothing would have induced me to endure the indignity of a ‘natural’ birth (and I refuse to believe that anything, once stretched to ten times
its normal size, is
ever
the same again).

I might have warmed to her a little more had it not been made clear in advance that an heir –
n
. (male) – was expected. I had nightmares I’d be forced to endure
pregnancy after pregnancy, like some medieval brood-mare, until I was delivered of a son. My relief at the birth of Alexander four years later can only be imagined.

I felt nothing in particular for either child. Oh, I didn’t wish anything dreadful to happen to them, of course; I actually became quite fond once they went off to school. But there was
nothing
visceral
; none of that tigress maternal instinct one reads so much about. I was perfectly happy to cede day-to-day care to a series of nannies until the children grew up and became
recognizably human. (My own mother had died when I was two, and nannies clearly hadn’t done
me
any harm.)

No, Manon was the one who spent hours in the nursery, lavishing love and attention on Clare, with whom he was besotted. It was particularly unfortunate, then, that he had a stroke and died when
she was seven and Alexander not quite three.

I had liked my husband (better, after all, to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave), and was in no rush to marry again. However, it appeared Manon was no longer quite as
obscenely rich as everyone thought. In fact, he’d lost rather a lot of money in the past couple of years. A series of bad investments, heavy stock-market losses and a staggering unpaid tax
bill meant that, once his debts were paid, very little, beyond our house in Pimlico, was left. Without his life insurance (ring-fenced from the bailiffs), the children and I would have found
ourselves on the street.

It’s easy for Clare to take the moral high ground, but she should try poverty for a while. I wasn’t brought up to work. I could throw a dinner party for twenty at the drop of a hat
or organize a charity ball in my sleep, but I hadn’t the faintest idea how to earn my own living.

Clare never liked Guy. She didn’t rebel (that wasn’t Clare’s style), but it was quite obvious, despite her scrupulous politeness, that she detested her stepfather. Where Clare
led, Alexander followed.

Thank God Guy could afford good boarding schools.

Mrs Lampard serves lunch: cold roast chicken and new potatoes for Marc and Jenna, egg-white omelettes for Clare and me. Clare pulls a face, but she’ll thank me for it one
day. She’s ballooned to a size eight since her pregnancy, and the nanny really is a very pretty girl.

I watch Jenna use the edge of her fork to cut her roast chicken. I grimace inwardly, and then realize it’s not from ignorance; she appears to have sprained her wrist.

I lean forward and tap her hand. ‘How did that happen?’

‘She fell over the coffee table last weekend when she went home,’ Clare answers. ‘I
told
her she should go to hospital and get it X-rayed, just in case, but she
wouldn’t listen.’

‘Do you live with your parents?’

‘My boyfriend,’ Jenna says.

‘And what does he do?’

‘He’s a plumber—’

Clare interrupts. ‘He has his own business, Davina. Plumbers earn a fortune these days. Ours went to the Maldives for a fortnight last year!
We
can’t afford to go to the
Maldives—’

‘Yes, thank you, Clare. I do know the value of a good plumber,’ I retort tartly. ‘He doesn’t mind, your boyfriend, that you’ve taken a position where you’re
required to live in?’

‘Oh, but she wasn’t required to—’

‘He doesn’t mind,’ Jenna says.

She doesn’t quite meet my eye. Hmm. I know what that means.

‘And your parents?’ I ask. ‘What did you say your father does?’

‘Davina.’ Clare laughs self-consciously. ‘Stop giving her the third degree.’

I dread to think how my daughter found this girl. A poster on a lamp post, perhaps? Did she not think to check what kind of family the girl comes from? Knowing Clare, she’ll have
considered it ‘judgemental’ to investigate her background. I wonder how much effort she put into researching the purchase of each of her flower shops, and checking the references of
those she employed there. And how much time, in contrast, she spent finding the woman who will be shaping her children’s characters, moulding their minds.

Clare has no idea. A nanny affects the way your child sees the world, and sets the defaults in their nature. ‘Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.’

I blame Nanny Frieda in no small measure for the way Clare has turned out. She was the one who encouraged Clare to mess about with pots in the greenhouse. It was amusing at first; and Clare
certainly had an eye for colour and detail. By the time she was twelve, everyone wanted her to do their flowers. It was rather sweet to have her go to friends’ houses and throw a few roses
prettily in a vase. Reflected rather nicely. But I never expected her to pursue it as a
career
. First the business degree – I know university is all the rage these days, and it can
be a good way to find a husband if you choose the right sort of place; but Clare spent her entire time studying,
such
a bluestocking. Then came the obsession with setting up her own
company. She ran herself ragged financing it all herself, buying up bits of land to grow things, wouldn’t take a penny from Guy or use any of the spare acreage at Long Meadow. I was rather
relieved when she finally said she’d met a man. She was thirty-one, after all. If she’d left it any longer she’d have missed the boat.

‘I suppose you’ll go back to work now,’ I sigh, passing Marc the devilled eggs. ‘I’m sure the children will miss you.’

‘It’s only part-time to begin with, Davina. The twins will be fine with Jenna; it’ll be like having three parents living at home, instead of two.’

‘I’ve told Clare she really doesn’t have to—’

‘I
want
to, Marc.’

Trouble in Paradise. I thought as much.

All this fuss about careers. Men may tolerate a working wife, if needs must; they’ve been bludgeoned into accepting it as a necessary evil, these days. But that doesn’t mean they
like
it. They just want a nice house and a pretty wife and children to come home to, whatever they might tell you. Men are simple. Women have to understand that, if they expect to be truly
happy with their husbands. A good man is hard to find, not keep. All one has to do is give them good food, respect, appreciation and plenty of sex. Lots of sex and no nagging. It isn’t
hard.

To paraphrase that marvellous American president (
dear
Jackie: now there was a woman who knew what men want): girls these days get married thinking about what their husband can do for
them, not what they can do for their husband. Is it any wonder so many of them run off with the
au pair
?

I push my omelette around the plate. ‘Darling,’ I suggest, ‘now you’ve got a spare pair of hands, why don’t you spend a bit of time on yourself? Get back in shape,
buy a few pretty clothes. I know your shops kept you busy when you had time on your hands, but there’s really no need to—’

‘Davina, I run a
business
. I’m not on a rota for church flowers!’

‘Yes, dear, I understand that. But surely the whole point of being the boss is that you don’t have to go in every day. You can manage things from home. It’d be a shame to miss
out on—’

‘You just can’t help yourself, can you?’ Clare cries. ‘It’s bad enough when you correct the way I fold a napkin, but if you think I’m going to sit here and
listen to
you
, of all people, tell me how to raise a family—’

‘You’re upsetting the babies, Clare.’

Marc picks Rowan up and puts him against his shoulder. ‘You know I’m behind you a hundred per cent,’ he adds firmly, ‘but your mother’s right. I don’t want
you pushing yourself too hard. It’s been a really tough few months, and now that we’ve got Jenna, you should take a break and relax while you can.’

Clare looks on the verge of tears. ‘If I’m worrying about PetalPushers, I can’t relax. You know how much the company means to me.’