The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife Read online

  Dora, Ripley and I are going to bake cakes together, and pick apples together, and speak to each other in French. We’re going to build bonfires and learn the names of wild flowers, and plant a Christmas tree so we can use the same one every year. We’re going to learn to ride, and I might get some geese and a little Jersey cow, and every day after school we’re going to climb up into the fields and the woods behind the house, and—yes—go kite flying. And we’ll have picnics together, and read old-fashioned novels out loud to one another: Swallows and Amazons, for example. Black Beauty. Treasure Island. Little Women. Maybe, when they’re older, even a bit of Dickens…

  I’ve not been a perfect mother up until now. I’ve been chaotic and impatient and always in a hurry and usually hung-over and constantly preoccupied, if not by my work then by chatting to my friends on the blower. I hate cooking. I hate making angel get-ups out of cardboard. I never remember whose friend is coming to tea on what day, or when the term starts. I love it when the children watch DVDs. And I always forget to go to parents’ evenings. Mea culpa. That’s enough of that. They know I love them, I suppose.

  In any case all that’s going to change from now on. It is.

  For example, I’ve ordered the sew-on nametags. There’s something special about sew-on nametags, of course. They’re a sort of ‘From a good home’ branding mark; possibly a ‘My mother doesn’t work’ branding mark, too (but I mustn’t be bitter). Either way, they shout of stable upbringings, balanced diets, selfless parenting and time management at its best. So I’ve ordered the nametags and if it kills me, I am going to sew them on. It will be the first step in what I fully intend to be a long and glorious transition from hassled, incompetent and very slightly selfish urban working mother to laid-back earth-mother-style Domestic Goddess. That’s right.

  I will still work, of course. But I’ll do it when the children are asleep or at school. Or something. And after school the children will be free to play in the fields, and I won’t sit on the sidelines muttering to myself over the newspapers. In fact I may even give up reading newspapers altogether. And the time that I save not reading them I shall now spend playing with the children because from now on—and this is a promise—

  I am going to be a completely different human being.

  September 1st

  On the ferry home at last. Lots of fat, bored, hideous teenagers wandering around eating crisps and shouting. Is it possible that Ripley and Dora might one day turn into flabby, oral-fixated morons just like these? And if so, do I really want to be stranded with them, day after day, deep in the English countryside, while my husband travels up and down to Soho? Possibly not.

  Ripley and Dora have gone to explore, by which they mean find the sweet shop. Fin’s reading a film script. He has another one resting beneath it, ready for him to read after that. And it occurs to me I’m feeling more than a little bit irritable. Not surprisingly, perhaps. We’re due to exchange and complete on the new house the day after tomorrow, and we’ve neither of us set eyes on it since May.

  Thousands of people do what we’re doing. Families move out of London every day, and they all claim to be very happy about it. They can’t all be lying. Can they? It’s going to be wonderful. It’s going to be better than wonderful.

  I wonder if Johnny Depp plays tennis?

  Monday September 3rd

  Filthy weather. Bloody England.

  The estate agent made it clear he didn’t want us to visit the house this morning. He tried hard to sound too busy to fit us in, but it was obvious he had nothing else to do. I got the distinct impression he was suppressing a yawn for the entire conversation.

  So we left the children with Finley’s parents and drove over. Looking at the map, we thought it would take only about forty-five minutes but—fresh to this bucolic existence as we are—we hadn’t fully taken into our calculations the tractor factor.

  In any case the journey took over two hours, just as Finley’s father had always warned us it would. He says the journey could never really take less than two hours because if there aren’t tractors blocking the way there’ll be a couple of oldies, killing a little of their excess time by driving somewhere unnecessary as slowly as mechanically possible, specifically to annoy the younger people who are running late in the long line of cars behind them. Well, no, he didn’t say that exactly. In fact he didn’t say it at all. He just said people drove slower in the country, and to be careful of speed cameras.

  Goodness, though, there do seem to be an awful lot of elderly persons in this corner of the countryside. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course. Of course, of course. Oldies have to live somewhere, don’t they? And so on.

  The last time we saw the Dream House was on a beautiful sunny day back in May. The grass had been freshly cut and there was honeysuckle growing in vast, sweet-smelling clumps all over the terrace balustrade. It was breathtakingly pretty. It was beautiful.

  This morning the honeysuckle was long gone. The sky was low and black, and it was raining. Not only that, the garden clearly hadn’t been touched since the day we last came to see it, nearly four months ago.

  We found Richard the estate agent waiting for us, yawning and stretching, managing to look simultaneously self-righteous and half asleep. We trampled up the path towards him, apologising for the tractors and the old people and the resulting need to reschedule (we had called to postpone the meeting). It all seemed to be going down OK—in fact he almost cracked a smile—but then, just as Fin and I climbed the final step to the front porch, I accidentally trod on a slug.

  It was the size of a small serving spoon, I think; possibly even larger. And I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I was only wearing thin canvas trainers, and so my foot had clearly experienced each stage of the slug’s final moment: the pathetic, rubbery resistance, the deathly squelch…It was not good. So I screamed. And the other thing I did, unfortunately, was I shouted ‘Fuck!’ Once again, I couldn’t help it. Sometimes these words have to come out.

  Richard the estate agent looked at me as if I’d just brought out a machete and threatened to cut off his cock. Wish I had, actually. Might have livened him up a bit. In any case I apologised profusely, of course. But some people just won’t accept apologies, will they? He could hardly bring himself to look at me after that. Sulkily, he turned back to the front door, slid the key into the lock—and then paused.

  ‘The office just called, by the way,’ he said. He had to shout over the sound of rain gushing from the broken gutter above our heads. ‘You’ll be delighted to hear we’re ahead of schedule. You and the vendors exchanged and completed contracts about half an hour ago.’

  ‘Ooh sugar!’ I chortled (trying to suck up, obviously, after the swearing débâcle. Richard the estate agent would be getting no more fucks from me). ‘Don’t suppose we can sidle out of it now, then, can we?’

  ‘Not easily, no,’ he said drearily, looking only at Fin.

  Fin said ‘Fantastic!’ or something similarly delightful. I could see Richard’s sullen shoulders slowly relaxing. Once again he very nearly smiled.

  Fantastic Fin—always says the right thing in the right way to the right person, and wherever he goes he always leaves a trail of slowly relaxing shoulders behind him. But sometimes (I happen to know) he’s being Fantastic on autopilot. He’s actually not paying the slightest bit of attention to all the Fantastic words which are bubbling so agreeably out of his cakehole. Sometimes, for example, he’s exchanging text messages with a film financier in Canary Wharf at the same time.

  It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s too late now. And the fact is I wasn’t texting financiers at the time, and it didn’t occur to me either—or not until just now (back at Fin’s parents and after a long bath)—but I now think Richard the estate agent was probably lying when he said the house was already ours. We’d not been due to exchange and complete until the day’s end, or so I had understood. And frankly, what with the rain and the broken gutter and the outrageously neglected garden, the house w
asn’t exactly looking…

  Well it’s still beautiful and everything, and big—and it’s going to be lovely. I’m sure it’s going to be lovely. But this morning it wasn’t really looking its best. It was looking pretty awful. In fact there was a moment, as we stood on that leaking porch, and I still had bits of giant slug attached to my foot, when all I really wanted to do was run.

  The feeling didn’t last. Of course. Of course not. In any case the house is ours now, for certain. Gordon Brown has taken his monumental Stamp Tax. He has already tossed it into his big, black hole, never to be seen again.

  And the house is ours. There can be no turning back.

  September

  Paradise

  We’ve been in Paradise ten full days already and the sun has shone for every one of them. The sun is shining now. It’s beaming down on us, and there are no slugs anywhere to be seen. Dora and Ripley are outside, and I can hear their squeals of laughter. Both seem to be very happy at their new school. Their new classmates are sweet and welcoming, and noticeably more innocent and less bratty than the little Londoners we left behind.

  Ditto the mothers, actually.

  Not one of whom, incidentally, seems to work. Their husbands, like Finley, commute back and forth to the capital, and they stay at home, just being mothers, and being really nice. Oh dear.

  I’ve noticed they don’t like it when I swear.

  Fin is in London again, and plans to be all week. But I’ve just ordered the box set for Series 5 of The West Wing, and I still have three episodes of Series 4 to go, so I won’t miss him…In my next life I plan to be a press secretary at the White House, with no children, sadly, but lots of clever colleagues and lots of Armani suits. In the meantime, all is good in Paradise. Tomorrow, after school, Ripley, Dora and I are going to pick blackberries in the fields behind the house. For the first time ever, I think, I begin to feel almost smug about my mothering abilities, and the children’s upbringing. It’s all so wonderfully wholesome it makes my eyes water.

  I just wonder why we didn’t move down here years ago.

  September 20th

  The children’s nametags arrived! Unfortunately I’ve got to do a book plug/radio interview all the way over in Plymouth this evening—assuming, that is, that Fin arrives back from London in time to babysit. Desperately need to get hold of a regular babysitter from somewhere—but where? I’ve asked numerous mothers, but they all seem to use the same person. Or there’s one other girl somebody suggested, but she lives twenty-five miles away.

  Any case, I will sew on the nametags tomorrow. Failing that will definitely do them over the weekend.

  September 23rd

  Fin’s train was delayed, so I had to cancel the radio interview. Shame, as I said to Fin. Among numerous other things. But it made me stir my stumps on the babysitting front, and I think I’ve found someone at last. She’s only slightly younger than I am and she has a couple of children, though she was a bit vague as to their whereabouts. I think maybe they live part time with the father. She has a disconcertingly soft voice so I can never hear a word she says. Also, she is strangely lifeless. Almost slug-like, in fact. Without being rude. Doesn’t seem to react at ordinary speeds—or at all, really, to anything anyone says.

  But I’m sure she’s fine. Got her name off a card in the launderette and she showed me a couple of references. Funnily enough she looks incredibly familiar. I’m convinced I’ve met her before somewhere, but she denies it.

  Not that we have much call for a babysitter at the moment. Or, to be honest, any call at all. But the Plymouth thing was annoying. I’d been looking forward to a few bright lights and so on. A bit of flattery. In any case, it’s reassuring to know that we could now call on someone if, by some happy chance, Finley and I had the extraordinary good fortune ever to be invited anywhere again.

  Every time I turn the corner and look up at the house I feel my heart lift. Because it’s beautiful. And because the children are happy here. And because we have finally, at long last, escaped from London.

  We had planned to wait and get all the refurbishment work done before we invited friends down to stay with us, but now that we’re more or less settled I can’t really see the point. Apart from the fact that we seem incapable of finding any builders, the house is perfectly comfortable as it is. It may be a bit short on furniture, but who cares? We’ve got a big sofa. And a telly. I’m going to buy a couple of extra beds and some sleeping bags and persuade Hatty (and family) to come and stay as soon as possible. I miss her. I miss all my friends. It’s the only serious blot on an otherwise blemishless landscape.

  October 10th

  Bit of a culture shock at the weekend. Maybe it doesn’t signify anything, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The Mothers had told me about a stables which they all swore was the single riding school in the area worth using. So. The children have been desperate to take up riding. I rang the place up. And a woman at the other end advised me, with a certain amount of relish, that beginners’ lessons were 100 per cent booked up, now and for the entire foreseeable future. She said that, for £10 per name, children could be put on to a waiting list. I complained, but it didn’t move her much.

  She softened a little, though, once I’d given my credit card details, and suggested it might be worthwhile just turning up one weekend and waiting around, on the off chance of a late cancellation. So—Finley was away. That’s what we did on Saturday.

  Horrible! It felt like we were walking into a Barbie Doll theme park. The yard was so tidy it ought to have had a pink plastic logo swinging over the front gate. Also it was teeming with lady-clones, all of them sporting the same tasteful blonde highlights and clean, green, calf-flattering Wellington boots. There must have been fifteen fourwheel drives in the car park and fifteen super-mummies milling around, fixating on the buckles of their children’s safety hats. I recognised a handful of the women from school, of course. The question is, though, Where did all the others come from? I had no idea there were so many in the area. And I’m not sure whether to be depressed or very depressed by the discovery. What the hell’s going on?

  In any case, the children and I hung around for about an hour, patting ponies and being pretty much ignored, until finally a lovely, rosy-cheeked teenager came over to talk to us. There had been no last-minute cancellations, she said, but she offered, out of kindness, to put the children on top of an old donkey and lead them round the yard a couple of times.

  Ripley and Dora were having the time of their lives, squeezed together on top of the old donkey, giggling blissfully as it slowly plodded along. They’ve never ridden before. They were thrilled. Rosy Cheeks was giving them a little impromptu lesson, and the love was flowing between all of us, Rosy Cheeks, Ripley and Dora, the donkey, even me.

  But then suddenly, careering out of nowhere, there came a very thin, very angry woman. She was screaming at us because Ripley and Dora, approximately 3 feet off the ground, travelling at significantly less than 1 mile per hour, and with an adult ready to catch them on either side, had not been strapped into safety helmets.

  Rosy Cheeks turned purple and looked like she was about to cry. I tried to point out how entirely undangerous the situation was for all concerned, and that I was positively grateful that my children had been allowed to go bare-headed. ‘It’s nice to feel some wind in the hair occasionally,’ I said. Which was perhaps a little provocative. Or maybe not. In any case, at that point the Pipecleaner turned her great ire solely onto me. This wasn’t about danger, she sneered. Danger had nothing to do with anything. It was about liability. ‘And you…people…always sue.’

  Do we? Do I?

  Anyway Ripley and Dora were forced to dismount, which they did with great stoicism and dignity, I thought. Ripley gave the old bag his most baleful glare, but she didn’t appear to notice. And we left the stable yard under a great cloud of disgrace. We headed back to our car, past all the super-mummies standing white-knuckled with fear while their precious offspring, in full body armour
, plodded clockwise round the schooling ring.

  They stared at us as we scuttled by—at my hatless children in pity, I think, and at Rosy Cheeks and me as if we were murderers.

  Dora giggled. ‘I don’t think she liked us at all,’ she said.

  I opened up the sun roof as we drove away. I think I must have been doing it to bait, because I knew the children would immediately poke their heads out of the top. I ordered them to sit down. But I didn’t really mean it, and the children could tell. They rolled back their hatless heads and roared with laughter.

  Ripley and Dora now say they want to go riding again, which is good in a way, I suppose, but also slightly depressing. Unless, of course, I can ferret out an alternative riding school, where the super-mummies and their fun-sucking safety obsessions haven’t yet cast a pall.

  Sunday night, October 21st

  Hatty, Damian and the Psycho Kids just left. Thought I’d feel a bit wistful, seeing them head off back to the Old Smoke. But no. Far from it. Truth be told I was quite relieved to see the back of them. It’s been a long weekend.

  Poor Hatt. She and Damian aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye at the moment. In fact, now I think of it, I’m not sure they even glanced at one another for the entire weekend. And Damian’s a pretentious little git. (Even Fin agrees, and I can’t usually get Fin to be horrible about anyone.) But there’s no denying he’s handsome. Now that Hatty can’t even bring herself to look at him, I don’t see how she can draw any pleasure from their partnership at all.