by Jilly Cooper
‘Oh look, there’s Blue Teddy,’ cried Daisy, in her slightly breathless voice which squeaked when she got excited. She propped Perdita’s ancient teddy bear up between Kevin the yucca and the record player. ‘Now he can see out of the window, it’s such a ravishing drive home. Oh, there’s Miss Osbourne,’ went on Daisy, scrabbling in the back as she saw Perdita’s house mistress bearing down on them. ‘I bought her a bottle of Bristol Cream.’
‘No, Mum, she’s an old bitch,’ hissed Perdita. ‘For Christ’s sake, get in, we’re holding up the traffic.’
‘Hi, Perdita! Have a good Christmas.’ A group of classmates, to whom Perdita, with her beauty, outward insouciance and murderous wit, was a source of constant fascination, peered in through the window.
‘Are you Perdita’s friends?’ asked Daisy, who’d never been allowed to meet any of them. ‘How lovely! We’ve just moved to Rutshire. Perhaps you’d like to come and stay in the holidays.’
The tooting was getting deafening.
‘Mum, for God’s sake,’ shrieked Perdita.
‘By-ee,’ shouted Daisy, windmilling to Miss Osbourne and the group of girls as she set off in a succession of jerks down the drive, narrowly avoiding ramming the car in front as she stopped to admire the trailing yellow twigs of a willow tree against an angry navy-blue sky.
‘Can’t think what’s wrong with the car,’ said Daisy as it ground to a halt and died just inside the school gates. The tooting became even more acrimonious as she frantically tried the ignition.
‘Need any help?’ The father of Lucinda Montague, Perdita’s sworn enemy, reeking of brandy from his office party, popped his head inside the car.
‘It won’t budge,’ said Daisy helplessly.
‘’Fraid you’ve run out of petrol.’
Daisy, who always found the wrong things funny, went off into peals of laughter. Perdita put her head in her hands. It was not until four fathers, all roaring with laughter, who’d also obviously been to office parties, lifted the Mini out of the way and Miss Osbourne had provided a can of petrol, and they’d reached the slow lane of the motorway, and Daisy’d apologized a hundred times, that Perdita thawed enough to light a cigarette and ask what the house was like.
‘Oh, gorgeous,’ said Daisy, thrilled to be forgiven. ‘You cannot believe the views. This morning the whole valley was palest cobalt green with frost, and the shadows of the bare trees were . . .’
‘Do Eddie and Violet like it?’ interrupted Perdita who was bored rigid by ‘Nature’.
‘Adore it! There’s so much space after London.’
‘I bet they’ve bagged the best rooms.’
‘Every room is best. We’re going to be so happy. You’ve already been asked to a Pony Club Barn Dance.’
‘I wouldn’t be seen dead,’ said Perdita scornfully. No-one who’d bopped the night away with Jesus and the Carlisle twins would lower herself to a Pony Club hop. ‘When can we get my pony?’
‘Well, I rang the twins as you suggested. They’re in Argentina, but their groom put me on to a man outside Rutminster, who’s got a bay mare. If you like her, subject to a vet’s certificate, you should be able to have her right away, although Daddy may think you should wait till Christmas Day.’
‘That’s stupid. Christmas isn’t for ten days. I could be schooling or even hunting her by then. How much are you prepared to pay?’
‘I can’t see Daddy going much above £500.’
‘You won’t get a three-legged donkey for that,’ snapped Perdita, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another one.
‘The move’s been dreadfully expensive,’ began Daisy hopefully. ‘Perhaps if your report’s good . . .’
‘Don’t be fatuous. Daddy doesn’t give a shit about my reports! Now if it were Violet or Eddie . . .’
‘That’s not true,’ protested Daisy, knowing it was.
‘When’s Granny Macleod arriving?’
‘Twenty-third,’ said Daisy gloomily.
‘That’s all we need. Now she’s a widow, she’ll be more ghastly and self-obsessed than ever.’
Daisy knew she ought to reprove Perdita, but she had never got on with her mother-in-law herself and was dreading having her for Christmas. Bridget Macleod, in her turn, had never forgiven her daughter-in-law for having what she referred to as ‘a past’.
Nearly sixteen years ago, when she was only seventeen, Daisy had become pregnant while she was at art college. Her parents were so appalled when they learned the circumstances in which the baby was conceived that they threw Daisy out. Eventually Daisy gave birth to a daughter, and called her Perdita – ‘the lost one’ – because she knew she couldn’t afford to keep her. In utter despair, while going through the legal process of adoption, Daisy had met a trainee barrister, Hamish Macleod. Hamish was one of those stolid young men who grew a beard and had a flickering of social conscience during the sixties, which was firmly doused by the economic gloom of the seventies.
Moved by Daisy’s plight, rendered sleepless by her beauty, Hamish asked her to marry him so that she could keep the baby. Daisy had accepted with passionate gratitude. Hamish was good-looking and seemed kind; she was sure she could grow to love him – anything to keep Perdita. Hamish’s family – particularly his mother, Bridget – were appalled. Scottish, lower-middle class, rigidly respectable, they branded Daisy a whore who had blighted their only son’s dazzling career at the Bar. They had threatened to black the wedding unless Daisy put on a wedding ring and pretended that she was a young widow whose husband had been killed in a car crash.
Daisy, after fifteen years of marriage, still looked absurdly young. Kind, sympathetic, dreamy, hopelessly disorganized, she had become increasingly insecure, because Hamish, who had now left the Bar and become a successful television producer, never stopped putting her down and complaining about her ineptitude as a mother, her lack of domesticity and her lousy dress sense. Subconsciously, he’d never forgiven her for having Perdita illegitimately and hit the roof if she looked at other men at parties. He also ruthlessly discouraged her considerable gifts as a painter, because they reminded him of her rackety art-student past and because he considered there was no money in it.
Nor could he ever forgive Perdita for her strange beauty, her bolshiness and her dazzling athletic ability. Throughout the marriage he had pointedly lavished affection on the two children, Violet and Eddie, now aged thirteen and eight, whom he and Daisy had had subsequently. Less glamorous than Perdita, they were sweeter-tempered and better-adjusted.
Daisy’s fatal weakness was a reluctance to hurt anyone. She had tried and tried to screw up the courage to tell Perdita the truth about her birth, but, terrified of the tantrums this would trigger off, she had funked it, feeding her the official line that her father had been killed in a car crash. ‘We were so in love, darling, but he never knew I was pregnant.’
Daisy dreaded the day when Perdita might want to know the name of her real father. At least her blinkered obsession with polo and ponies had some advantages. Aware, however, that Hamish didn’t love her, Perdita tried to trigger off a response by behaving atrociously. Matters weren’t helped by Bridget Macleod’s ability to beam simultaneously at Hamish, Violet and Eddie, and freeze out Daisy and Perdita. This reduced Daisy to gibbering sycophancy and Perdita to utter outrageousness.
Dark thoughts about her mother-in-law’s impending visit occupied Daisy until darkness fell, by which time they had reached the village of Appleford where several cottages in the High Street already sported holly rings and the village shop window was bright with crackers and Christmas puddings. Brock House lay a quarter of a mile on, its gates flanked by pillars topped by stone badgers. Bumping down the pitted drive Daisy reached a fork. To the left, past vast unkept rose bushes and a dovecote, lay farm buildings which had been converted into garages, stables and a tackroom with paddocks behind. To the right, flowerbeds edged with box and a paved terrace led down stone steps to the back of Brock House. Shaggy with creepers, long and low, with i
ts little lit-up windows, the house had a secretive air. On the far side, beyond a large lawn edged with herbaceous borders, the land dropped sharply into the Appleford Valley, thickly wooded with oaks and larches, and famous for its badger sets.
Inside was chaos. Daisy had made heroic attempts to get straight after moving, but now the children had come home bringing their own brand of mess. Violet and Eddie were in the kitchen, and greeted their elder sister guardedly.
‘What’s for supper?’ asked Eddie, who was circling advertisements in Exchange and Mart.
‘Chicken casserole and chocolate mousse to celebrate Perdita’s first night home,’ said Daisy.
‘There was,’ said Violet. ‘You left the larder door open and Gainsborough got at the chicken. Then he was sick. I cleared it up, and I got some sausages from the village shop.’
Thank God for Violet, thought Daisy. Violet Macleod had inherited Daisy’s sweet nature and round face and Hamish’s solid figure, freckles and curly, dark-red hair, which clashed with her high colour when she blushed. She also had beautifully turned-down amethyst eyes, which, she pointed out ruefully, matched her plump purple legs. Less bright than Perdita, she did much better at school because she was hard-working and methodical and because she knew you needed straight ‘A’s to become a vet. Violet spent much of her time sticking up for her father and grandmother and protecting her mother from Perdita’s tantrums. She was now combing the recently sick, long-haired ginger tomcat, Gainsborough, who was mewing horribly.
‘Stop it,’ said Violet firmly. ‘You know fur balls make you sick.’
Eddie, at eight, looked not unlike a bouncer in a night-club. Slightly dyslexic, hugely entertaining, he was interested in making a fast buck and enjoying himself. He had already found another prep schoolboy across the valley with whom to spend his time. His current ambition was to have a gun for Christmas. Daisy was dragging her feet because she felt Eddie might easily murder his elder sister.
‘Give us a fag, Perdita,’ said Eddie as Perdita got out a packet of Silk Cut.
‘Eddie!’ said Violet, shocked. ‘You are much too young.’
‘Want us to show you round?’ asked Eddie.
Unloading the car, listening to the thundering feet and yells of excitement as the children raced along the passages, Daisy prayed that in this house they would at last be a really happy family.
‘The stables are fantastic,’ said Perdita with rare enthusiasm when she returned twenty minutes later with the others.
When the telephone rang, Daisy answered. From the way their mother stiffened and her voice became nervous and conciliatory, the children knew it was their father. Now she was apologizing for forgetting to get his suit back from the cleaners.
‘I’ll pick it up first thing in the morning. Perdita’s home. Would you like a word?’ For a second Perdita’s normally dead-pan face was vulnerable and hopeful.
‘Well, you’ll see her later. Oh, I see, you must be frantic. See you tomorrow night then. He’s not coming home,’ explained Daisy, putting down the receiver.
‘Because he knows I’m back,’ said Perdita flatly.
‘Nonsense,’ blustered Daisy. ‘He sent tons of love.’
All three children knew she was lying.
‘He’s only got love for Eddie,’ sneered Perdita, ‘and not-so-shrinking Violet. Can I have a vodka and tonic? I am fifteen now.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Daisy. Anything to keep the peace.
9
‘Dark, dark, dark,’ wailed Daisy a week later. ‘The Hoover’s gone phut, the washing machine’s broken down, Hamish says the place is a tip, and the kitchen brush has alopecia.’
‘I’m off.’ Perdita, dressed for hunting in boots, skin-tight breeches and a dark blue coat, went straight to the housekeeping jar.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Daisy.
‘I need money for the cap.’
‘You took a tenner yesterday.’
‘I’ll pay you back out of my Christmas present money,’ said Perdita, rushing off towards the stables.
‘Where’s my dark green sweater?’ bellowed Hamish from upstairs. ‘There are two buttons missing off my blazer and why the hell isn’t there any loo paper?’
Daisy sighed. Hamish had come back exhausted after a week’s filming last night to watch one of his programmes – a documentary on road haulage. Daisy hadn’t helped matters by falling asleep because it was so boring. The moment the final credits went up, Hamish’s mother was on the telephone telling him how wonderful it had been. When no-one else rang, Hamish, who was pathological about his beauty sleep, retired to bed. The telephone then started up again, but instead of being congratulations from Jeremy Isaacs and Alasdair Milne, it was friends of the children, catching up on gossip and wondering what life in the country was like, until Hamish was screaming with irritation.
Now he was downstairs bellyaching because Perdita had whipped the last of the housekeeping money. ‘I told you to always keep a float. I don’t know them well enough in the village shop to ask them to cash a cheque. What time’s Peter Pan?’
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Daisy hysterically. ‘I’d forgotten all about Peter Pan. I can’t go. I’ve got to get everything ready for your mother tomorrow, and do all the cooking, and shopping, and buy the stocking presents, and I haven’t wrapped any of the other presents, and I’ve got to stay in for the washing-machine man. We haven’t got any clean sheets.’
Hamish looked at her pityingly. ‘I can’t understand why you can’t treat Christmas like any other weekend. I suppose you’ve got your period coming.’
‘I’ve got your bloody mother coming,’ muttered Daisy into the sink.
‘Wendy can do the shopping,’ said Hamish loftily, ‘and the stocking presents. Give me the list.’
‘But she must be frantic,’ protested Daisy. Wendy was Hamish’s PA, who seemed to work for him twenty-four hours a day.
‘It’s always the busiest people who find the time,’ said Hamish sanctimoniously. ‘Wendy can take the children to Peter Pan. I’ll bring them and the shopping home afterwards. I hope,’ he added ominously, ‘you’re going to get things shipshape for Mother. She’s had a very stressful year and needs a rest.’
In the past, on hearing Hamish’s car draw up outside, Daisy had been known to take mugs out of the dish washer and frantically start washing them up in the sink, so much did Hamish hate to see her inactive. He was a successful film producer because he was good at keeping costs down, finicky about detail, and had brilliant empathy with his leading ladies who found him attractive because, to use one of his favourite phrases, he ‘targeted’ on them. Hamish, in fact, looked rather like an Old Testament prophet who regretted shaving off his beard for a bet. Copper-beech red hair rippling to his collar, a wide noble forehead, smouldering hazel eyes beneath jutting black brows, and a fine, hooked nose with flaring nostrils lapsed into a petulant mouth and a receding chin. Hamish also loved the sound of his own voice, which reminded him of brown burns tumbling over mossy rocks in the Highlands. Having muscular hips and good legs, he also wore a kilt on every possible occasion.
He was now, however, soberly dressed in grey flannels, and applying a clothes brush to the small of his blazered back, as he grumbled about cat hair. The moment he’d borne Eddie, Violet and the shopping list off to work, Daisy felt guilty about making such a scene. With the pressure off, she started reading the Daily Mail.
‘I believe it is possible,’ a young American girl was quoted as saying, ‘to have a caring, supportive husband, cherishing children, and a high octane career.’
I have none of these things, thought Daisy, I only want to paint.
Later that evening she and Violet decorated the house. Violet organized a bucket of earth and red crêpe paper for the tree, and Daisy was comforted by the rituals of hanging up the same plastic angel with both legs firmly stuck together and the tinsel with split ends and the coloured balls which had lost their hooks, and had to be tucked into the branches until they
fell prey to Gainsborough.
In the alcove by the front door they set up the crib, which had been in the Macleod family for generations. There had nearly been a divorce the year Daisy painted the plain wooden figures, putting Mary in powder blue and Joseph in a rather ritzy orange.
‘Did you enjoy Peter Pan?’ asked Daisy, as she arranged straw from the stables in Baby Jesus’s manger.
‘It was fun,’ said Violet. ‘I’d forgotten Captain Hook went to Eton. Daddy loved it too.’
‘Daddy came with you?’ said Daisy in amazement.
‘Wendy got an extra ticket,’ explained Violet, standing on a chair to tie mistletoe to the hall light. ‘He gets on awfully well with Wendy. They’re always laughing.’
That’s nice, thought Daisy wistfully. Hamish seldom laughed at home.
‘The lost boys reminded me of Perdita,’ said Violet.
Life would be so peaceful, thought Daisy, if it were just her and Violet. Now they were alone, she could tell Violet how wonderful her report was.
Daisy also felt guilty that Perdita’s new pony had cost £1,500. A beautiful bay mare called Fresco, she had arrived with a saddle and a pound note tucked into her bridle for luck, which Perdita had nailed to the tackroom wall. But that was only the beginning. Fresco’s trousseau of rugs, so new they practically stood up by themselves, and headcollars and body brushes and curry combs, not to mention feed, had cost a fortune. At least Perdita was blissful. Having established an instant rapport with the pony, she was totally organized and reliable about looking after her. It was such a relief having her in a good mood and out of the house, hunting and exploring the countryside, particularly near Ricky France-Lynch’s land, but Daisy still felt she ought to buy better presents for the other two children.
Hamish had violently discouraged Daisy against taking any interest in money, on the grounds that she was too stupid to understand it. But she had felt mildly alarmed when he told her they were only going to rent Brock House, because he had invested almost the entire proceeds from the London house in a co-production with the Americans. The resulting movie, he assured her, would be such a sure-fire hit he’d recoup his original stake five times over and be able to buy Brock House or something far grander in a year or two. The spare cash left over gave Daisy the illusion that for once they were flush. She must find something more exciting for Violet than that Laura Ashley dress. Suddenly she had a brainwave.