Fool for Love by Deborah Moggach

Author:Deborah Moggach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

How I Learnt to be a Real Countrywoman

We were sitting in the kitchen, opening Christmas cards. There was one from Sheila and Paul, whoever they were, and one from our bank manager, and one from my Aunt Aurora which had been recycled from the year before. The last one was a brown envelope. Edwin opened it.

‘My God!’ he said. ‘These bureaucrats have a charming sense of timing.’ He tugged at his beard—a newly acquired mannerism. Since we had moved to the country he had grown a beard; it made him look like Thomas Carlyle. I hadn’t told him this because he would think I was making some sort of point.

The letter was from our local council, and it said they were going to build a ring road right through our local wood.

Now Bockham Wood wasn’t up to much, but it was all we had. It was more a copse, really, across the field from our cottage. Like everything in the country it was surrounded by barbed wire, but I could worm my way through with the children, and amid acres of ploughed fields it was at least somewhere to go, and from which we could then proceed home again. Such places are necessary with small children (eight, six and three).

It was mostly brambles, and trees I couldn’t name because I had always lived in London. There was a small, black pond; it smelt like damp laundry one has forgotten about in the back of a cupboard. Not a lot grew in the wood, except Diet Pepsi cans and objects which my children thought were balloons until I distracted their attention. But I loved it, and now I knew it was condemned I appreciated its tangled rustlings, just as one listens most intently to a person who is going to die.

‘A two-lane dual carriageway!’ said Edwin. ‘Right past our front door. Thundering pantechnicons!’ This exploded from him like an oath. It was an oath. He went off to work, and every time the kids broke something that morning, which was frequently, we cried ‘Thundering pantechnicons!’ But that wasn’t going to keep them away.

We live in a pretty, but not pretty enough to be protected, part of Somerset. People were going to campaign against this ring road, but the only alternative was through our MP’s daughter’s riding school, so there wasn’t much hope.

That afternoon I drove off to look for holly. When you live in the country you spend your whole life in the car. In London, of course, you simply buy holly at your local shops, which is much better for the environment. I spent two hours burning up valuable fossil fuels, the children squabbling over their crisps in the back seat, and returned with only six sprigs, most of whose berries had fallen off by the time we had hung them up.

This was our first Christmas in the country, the first of our new pure life, and I was trying to work up a festive spirit unaided by the crass high-street commercialism that Edwin was so relieved to escape.

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