by Jilly Cooper
How lovely to be able to wash her hair and shower so the lack of deodorant didn’t matter, put on her pretty lilac linen dress, and take time over her face.
She found Valent in the kitchen at Badger’s Court, which, under Bonny’s influence, was so like a laboratory, Etta expected to open cupboards and find poor little monkeys being experimented on. Valent, however, was playing Mahler’s First Symphony, which Etta had told him she adored. There was a wonderful smell of mint, rosemary and garlic coming from the oven and a huge glass of Sancerre was thrust into her hand.
‘You look smashing, Etta.’
She then brought him up to date on yard gossip. Rafiq had clocked up another win on Mrs Wilkinson, ‘And there was a big piece in the Express about racing’s new pin-up. Rafiq’s terribly embarrassed but so pleased, he asked for five copies in the village shop to send home to Pakistan. Tommy’s so excited for him. Amber’s still a bit beady, understandably, poor child.’
Valent, who kept tabs, knew all this but he liked hearing Etta’s version as he tested the lamb and the new potatoes.
She was now telling him about Amber sneaking out and illicitly riding Bullydozer over the new Gold Cup fences.
‘Marius is so clever at recognizing a horse’s potential. Bully’s sweet, like a great puppy, and really responding to TLC.’
Valent just managed not to point out that he’d paid for all the fences and bought Bully, after Tommy’s tip-off. As he turned the new potatoes, however, he couldn’t resist telling Etta he’d got a lovely present that day, ‘in that box over there’.
Inside was the most beautiful decanter shaped like a ship.
‘Oh,’ gasped Etta, ‘how ravishing. What does it say on the prow? “God speed to a great boss.” Who gave you that?’
‘The card’s tucked in the side.’
On it were hundreds of signatures, all over the inside and even on the back of the card, accompanying the words, ‘With admiration from all your friends at Goldstein Phillipson’.
‘Oh, how wonderful. That was the American bank you felt guilty about abandoning. What an amazing compliment.’
She listened and remembered, thought Valent.
But as Etta took the glass ship out of its box to examine it, it slipped from her hands and smashed into a hundred pieces on the floor.
‘Oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, so, so sorry,’ wailed a distraught, disconsolate Etta.
‘It doesn’t matter, pet.’ Leaving the new potatoes, Valent put his arms round her. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s only glass, not a heart, that’s broken, please, please don’t cry. Stay there on the window seat, Priceless luv, you don’t want to cut your paws. Now let’s find a doostpan and broosh.’ Then, when Etta couldn’t stop crying as she seized them from him and began sweeping frantically: ‘It’s all right, luv, I’ve got the names on the card, I was so tooched by that, that’s what matters.’
Sampson would never have forgiven her, thought Etta.
Valent was so, so kind, topping up her drink, leading her out into the dusk and turning up the sound fortissimo so Mahler’s second movement, a lovely galumphing dance, erupted down the valley. On cue, the sinking sun burst through a rain cloud to light up Etta’s blonde curls, her smudged mascara, her still falling tears.
To stop her crying, Valent swept her into a waltz and soon had her shrieking with laughter as their feet flew over the grass.
‘I’d no idea you were such a good dancer, de dum, de dum dum, de dum, de de de de dum,’ sang Etta, as Priceless gambolled after them.
Next moment, Valent caught his foot round a rustic pole on the edge of the lawn and pulled Etta over on top of him in the wild garlic.
Both stopped laughing hysterically and gazed into each other’s eyes.
‘Oh Etta,’ muttered Valent, ‘you OK, not hurt?’
‘Far from it, you make a lovely cushion.’
Their hearts stopped, but not Mahler. Then they both jumped.
‘Will you kindly turn down that din,’ roared a voice, ‘or I’ll call the police. There are kiddies trying to sleep here. Valent Edwards will not be pleased when he hears about this.’
It was the Major.
Valent was about to shout back, when Etta put a hand smelling of scent and wild garlic over his mouth. Then, clambering off him, she shot back into the kitchen.
‘He’s got his grandchildren staying,’ she explained, giggling helplessly as she tried to slow her beating heart. ‘I took Drummond and Poppy to tea there yesterday. Drummond pulled up all Debbie’s bamboos to use in a sword fight, then he peed in the Major’s rain gauge. The Major, assuming it was four inches of rain, promptly rang the Met and The Times – so embarrassing. I fled.’
‘How’s dear little Trixie?’ asked Valent.
‘She worries me,’ sighed Etta. ‘She’s so miserable and ratty. I can’t work out if it’s normal teenage behaviour or something more serious. Oh, I’m so sorry about the decanter.’
Tomorrow she would write to Goldstein Phillipson and ask them to engrave another ship, which she would pay for, even if she had to sell the Munnings.
102
Valent flew off again, coinciding his return with Bonny having a week off from her tour of Private Lives, which she told Valent was proving an incredible success. Seth was so supportive, the audience so warm. The director was so appreciative of how she’d impacted on the play. The designer thought she looked so enchanting in his clothes, after the run he was going to give them to her.
She and Valent were staying in his house in St John’s Wood, when one evening Bonny raised the subject of Pauline’s clothes. They were still upstairs in a boxroom, which Bonny wanted to redecorate.
‘Why don’t you send them to a charity shop, Valent, or at least give them to Etta Bancroft or Joyce Painswick? I’m sure they’d appreciate them. They might have to be let out for Painswick, but she’s so deft with her needle. You’ve got to move on, Valent, it’s the only way you’ll achieve closure.’
When he had looked mutinous, she had stripped off and begged him to make love to her on the lounge shag-pile. For the first time in their relationship, Valent had not been able to get it up. No amount of licking or sucking had worked. Bonny, saying it must be stress-related, insisted Valent consult a sex therapist.
Later, leaving a sleeping Bonny in bed, Valent had crept upstairs to the boxroom, where hung a row of dresses, crimplene and polyester, easy to iron, easy to mock. In the chest of drawers he found Pauline’s handbag, black plastic – he’d never been able to cure her frugality – which the police had returned to him after the crash, which he’d never been able to bear to open.
Inside was a jumble of pens, biros, bus tickets, pressed powder, which had disintegrated, a mirror smashed by the impact, bright red lipstick, without which she felt naked, a purse in which he found a fiver, two pound coins, her credit card and a picture of himself, Ryan and the children. Above all, her perfume in a blue and silver spray, Rive Gauche – she had pronounced it ‘gorsh’ – was still fresh as Valent breathed it in.
The poem that had most moved him in Etta’s anthology was the sonnet in which Milton described the anguish of dreaming his dead wife was alive. It ended: ‘I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.’
Last night, Valent had dreamt of Pauline. Whatever was going to become of him?
The following day he escaped to Willowwood. There he discovered the loveliest May evening, with the cow parsley foaming up to wash the weeping tresses of the willows and hawthorn blossom exploding in white grenades all over the valley. Having taken a large whisky on to the terrace, comforted slightly by the beauty of his garden and the heady smell of pale pink clematis and pastel roses swarming over wall and yew hedge, he spent an hour on his BlackBerry checking his companies around the world.
Glancing through the twilight, he noticed Etta’s white and mossy green Polo had stopped outside his gates and hoped she might be coming to see him. Then he saw her leap out and put her arm round a
passing Mrs Malmesbury.
At the same time Priceless jumped out and was romping up and down the middle of the road with Oxford the foxhound. They nearly got run over by a returning Debbie, who always made a ghastly din with her horn as she came round each of the five bends in the road on her way back to the village.
Picking up his binoculars, Valent realized Mrs Malmesbury was wiping her eyes, poor old duck – or goose. Then he saw Niall arrive, also putting an arm round Mrs Malmesbury and leading her home. He could hear her geese honking their welcome.
Curious to know what had happened, Valent rang Etta and suggested he wander down with a bottle for a quick drink.
Below huge indigo clouds, a scarlet sun on the horizon had turned the white hawthorn blossom pink as candy floss. Cow parsley caressed and soothed his arthritic hands as he walked down to the bungalow. He could hear the strains of Mahler’s First Symphony.
‘Gosh – a whole bottle of whisky,’ cried Etta. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
In fact he looked dreadfully tired. She wondered if sardines on toast would spread to two.
‘What’s oop with Mrs Malmesbury?’ asked Valent.
‘Oh, poor darling.’ Etta turned down the CD player. ‘A fox got her goose, Spotty, on Thursday. Mrs M nipped out to the bank at lunchtime and it was such a lovely day she didn’t shut up the geese. They were sunning themselves on the grass when a fox rolled up. The ganders waddled away but poor Spotty was heavy with eggs and couldn’t run. The vile fox stripped off her feathers and was sucking her blood when Mrs M got back. She rushed her to Charlie Radcliffe but it was too late.
‘The two young ganders now sit on Spotty’s feathers, which the fox scattered everywhere, and call for her. But what’s really sad,’ Etta’s voice trembled, ‘is poor, blind old Honky is utterly heart-broken. Spotty used to lead him everywhere, but because he can see slightly out of one eye, to comfort him, Mrs Malmesbury leaves him on the terrace, so he catches a glimpse of his own reflection in the kitchen window and thinks it’s Spotty.
‘Niall was so sweet to her just now, he’s so much more outgoing these days. Did you know that foxes were illegal immigrants? Henry V was so enamoured of hunting at Agincourt, he brought them back here after the battle.’
Etta suddenly realized neither she nor Valent had a drink and she was chattering into a vacuum. Turning, she gasped in dismay. Like rain trickling down the side of a grey castle wall, the tears were pouring down Valent’s cheeks. It was the poignancy of the old gander kept happy by his own reflection, an illusion that his wife was still alive. Next moment he collapsed on the sofa, narrowly missing Priceless.
‘Oh Etta, if only I could see Pauline again – even if it was only the shadow of my own reflection in a window. I was such a workaholic, whizzing round the world, I never told her how much I luved her.’
Perching on the edge of the sofa, Etta put her arms round him.
‘There, there, darling. Please don’t cry. Of course you miss her, but I’m sure she knew. Please don’t be sad.’
It was like holding a huge bison brought down by the huntsman’s spear. Etta just hugged, patted and handed him one sheet of kitchen roll after another. Gradually the sobs subsided, so she poured him a mahogany whisky.
‘I’m sorry, I’m such a bluddy wuss.’
‘You’re not, you’re the bravest, kindest person I know. What happened, what is it?’
Stumblingly he told her about Pauline’s things and Bonny wanting him to chuck them out.
‘It was her perfume that did it.’
‘You could leave her things here, if that would help.’
‘You’d have to put them on the roof,’ Valent laughed shakily.
Priceless, who didn’t like dramas, nudged Valent with his long nose. Next moment, Gwenny had jumped through the window on to his knee and started purring.
For a second Valent pressed a great muscular forearm to his eyes, his shoulders shaking again. Then he picked up Gwenny and plonked her on Etta’s knee.
‘Forgive me, Etta, I’ve been a wimp. I’m so sorry. Priceless needs his sofa back.’
Stumbling to his feet, he squeezed her hands, then patted Gwenny and Priceless and lumbered off into the night.
Next day he ordered Joey to install an electric fence down to the ground round Mrs Malmesbury’s geese run, sent Etta lilies and altroemerias and flew off to the Far East, bitterly ashamed of himself. He had never broken down since Pauline died.
103
Towards the end of June, Alan, who was longing for the school holidays so he could see more of Tilda, took his laptop and a bottle of red into the garden and seated himself under a big lime tree which was in flower.
He could hear, like a great orchestra, the growling hum of bees glutting themselves on the sweetly scented flowers. How industrious they were, unlike him. Disinclined to work, he decided to send Dora an email, which he could use later as material for his book on Mrs Wilkinson:
Darling Dora, Please come home, we need you to cheer us up. You were so right to suggest Rafiq rode Wilkie, they were really flying – but everything seems to have gone belly up. Talk about a summer of discontent.
For a start the terrorist bomb scares have made everyone even more suspicious of poor Rafiq, who thought every policeman at the races was going to arrest him, particularly now his infamous cousin Ibrahim has been peddling propaganda on the internet.
Secondly, the stock exchange crash has screwed the hedge fund market, disastrous for my dear wife Carrie, who is putting a lot of pressure on yours truly to make some money out of writing. This makes me so depressed, I ought to interview myself for my depression book, but I’ve been forced to send it off to my publishers as they were threatening to tear up the contract.
In passing, I fear Carrie’s soon going to sack Toby, who’s on paternity leave because Bump has arrived. He’s a dear little baby, but Phoebe is already expecting the whole of Willowwood to babysit for nothing.
But to return to our summer of discontent, foot and mouth has caused hideous problems for Marius, preventing him moving his horses around. Even worse, poor little Chisolm has become such a celebrity, she’s being stalked by DEFRA because she’s got cloven hooves. They first suffocated some other poor goat at a nearby farm, by way of an example, then buzzed all over Marius’s yard in helicopters trying to track down and kill off Chisolm. Mrs Malmesbury was convinced World War III had broken out.
In fact the bird had flown. Ione had already very sportingly allowed Chisolm to be hidden in the priest’s hole at Willowwood Hall. Chisolm isn’t at all grateful and keeps escaping. She’s already demolished Direct Debbie’s roses and eaten the piece Ione was writing for Compost Weekly and the minutes of Alban’s quango on doctors.
Far more seriously, without her bleating friend, Mrs Wilkinson is flatly refusing to go to the races. Marius dragged her all the way to Fontwell and she wouldn’t even unload. She’s become a complete prima donna and a prima donna who ain’t mobile, which means my story of her life is at a standstill.
Meanwhile everything else is horrible. All livestock movements are stopped, auctions and market places empty of animals.
What’s really unnerving Willowwood is that Lester Bolton has bunged the District and Parish Councils so much, he’s been allowed to install a vast moat round Primrose Mansions, not only diverting two streams into it but also topping it up with endless tankers of water. If the predicted floods occur, we’re all going to be submerged. We’d better get Joey to build an ark.
As a result, all the locals blacked Lester and Cindy’s arse-warming party, except H-H and Jude, Martin and Romy, and our own wank manager, the Major, who all live on high ground anyway. I went along too, reluctantly – writers have to experience everything – but it was terribly funny. The party was roaring away in Lester’s underground leopardskin bar when Jude rolled up so hot and sweaty from jogging with Martin that Cindy persuaded her to strip off and go fatty-dipping in Lester’s glass-bottomed swimming pool.
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Suddenly the room went dark and the guests, who included lots of Lester’s porn clients, choked on their cheap champagne as this vast whale, far bigger than the one in the Natural History Museum, started splashing around above us. She is enormous. Martin claims she’s lost eight kilos, but I can’t see where. Harvey-Holden was laughing his head off, he’s such a shit. Evidently Lester is in line for a gong. Pity Orwell isn’t alive today to write The Road to Becoming a Peer.
Anyway, darling, I’ve rabbited along for long enough, I hope you and Paris are having fun, everyone sends love. I know Trixie would adore to see you, she hasn’t got a boyfriend at the moment and seems awfully low.
The syndicate’s getting very fed up with no Wilkie to watch. In fact we’re so starved of jaunts, we’re off in July to see Family Dog run at Worcester. He’s 200–1. Loads of love, Alan.
PS. Amber’s wrist is recovered and she’s back fighting with Rafiq over who’s going to ride Mrs Wilkinson – so perhaps it’s best the dear pony refuses to race.
104
July brought a heatwave – infuriating because it was the going Mrs Wilkinson loved. Etta’s stream dried to a trickle, paths cracked, and Ione policed the village for illicit sprinklers, chiding those who had not created compost that would have provided moisture for their flower beds.
Valent, who’d been far too embarrassed to contact Etta after breaking down in front of her, felt compelled to ring her when a second ship decanter, duly engraved, arrived from his friends at Goldstein Phillipson.
‘You shouldn’t have paid for it, Etta.’
‘I didn’t, I didn’t, they were such fans of yours they had another one made for free. They wrote me such a lovely letter.’ Etta didn’t add that they’d begged her to look after Valent.