Mrs Fytton's Country Life by Mavis Cheek Read Free Book Online Page A

marched out again, until she was worn out with it all and suggested he could find a most useful route away from her by travelling very fast, and in circuitous mode, up his own bum.
    She telephoned Ian one night after this, pushed beyond endurance with the loneliness, and he came over. For about an hour he sat with her in the kitchen, sipping whisky, talking about the children, even laughing. All very ordinary, all very gentle, the anger dispelled in the comforting of her need. She loved him all over again. She hoped he would stay, and almost believed that he would suddenly realize what a mistake he had made in leaving her. Then he said, quite easily, that he had to go. Casual. It had become casual between them. He even squeezed her arm and gave her a hug. She smiled and nodded at him and let him out of their house, and watched him scurry over to his car and drive away. It was, she felt, like watching your own shadow depart from you. Shortly after this he asked for a divorce. Pragmatism said to her there was little point in refusing.
    And then - quite suddenly - Ian remarried. So swiftly after the divorce that it was as if a bereaved had married the mortician. He took his bride-to-be (little, blonde, helpless Miss Fang the Dentist from 's-Gravenhage), and Andrew and Claire, out to Sydney for the wedding. Clever. Very clever. The children were thrilled. New dad, new wife, new presents.'
    Thrilled.
    His wife, now ex-wife, Angela, lay in bed sipping port and lemon (she had - she'd convinced herself - a sore throat) and rang everyone she could think of. Some of her old political fire surfaced, but it was hazy. She told them all that it was just a pose of a wedding and organized so they could dance on the bones of Aborigines.
    'That's my girl', said Clancy, if a little vaguely. And she changed the subject.
    Rosa congratulated her on getting such a generous settlement. Why? She had earned the money too. She remained in a huff for three weeks until she realized that the only person it hurt was herself.
    She told her parents about the divorce, defiantly, but her parents, now retired, were very disappointed. Their golden girl had lost the golden boy and the golden life. After all they did for her too. She must have brought it on herself with all those dungarees and what not. Thanks, she muttered as she left. After that she scarcely went to see them. And they never came up to see her. Old people became very selfish. How she longed to be old.
    She needed lost Victor so badly during that annus dreadfulus in her life that she used to wander along his road in case he might pop out and see her and say, 'Hi - let's get married as well.' All she saw was a dog turd or two, and she was driven mad enough to stare at them on the pavement near his house and wonder if she could possibly identify them as coming from Tipper and Tansy ... If not, maybe he would still come out at midnight with them slavering on their leashes for the coyly named canine bowel activity 'Walkies ...'
     

    The sheep and the hawthorns had now given way to fields of free-range pigs, or whatever you called them - organic porkers? She must get her terminology right if she was going to be part of the agricultural scene. She looked down at her map. Not far now. She would be quick in the dispatch of her chilling memoir.
     
    Angela, all legal links with Ian severed, gritted her teeth, behaved with dignity and found a new job doing much the same as she had done as partner to her husband - but now she did it for their friends Joe and Gracie, who also installed systems. Dignity went out of the window when Ian actually wrote her a stiff letter saying he felt it was a bit much for her to go and work for a rival outfit. She immediately wrote back to Ian, saying, 'Au contraire, my duck, but you are the rival now ...'
    Then Joe and Gracie gave a party. And she met Leaky. 'Call me Leaky,' he said, with that devastating crooked smile. She'd often wondered since if she would have felt