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A Place in the Country

St. Martin's Press

Caroline Evans was having a day out from her rented London flat, driving through rainy Oxfordshire with her fifteen-year-old daughter slumped in a silent sulk next to her.

They had taken in Oxford, "city of dreaming spires," which seemed to have more traffic than a motorway in rush hour, plus a couple of thousand young people smoking and drinking coffee and hanging about outside pubs. Issy ignored it all but Caroline had fallen for the rain-slicked courtyards and the ancient colleges half-hidden behind tall gates that had been there long before Henry's time. That would be Henry VIII, who, Caroline now figured couldn't have been all bad, despite the six wives. After all, her own husband had had two, and that was before her.

"A serial husband," she had said doubtfully when James told her he was going to marry her, though she was longing to say yes because she was so besotted by him she couldn't see straight, even with her glasses on.

Forget charming the birds; James Evans could, and did, charm everyone. Caroline remembered thinking it was okay about the other two wives, she would be the last wife. That's what James told her. And she'd believed him. She was twenty-two.

Now she was thirty-eight and an ex-wife, with a teenage daughter whose name was Isabel, always known as Issy, who some days talked to her and some days did not; who looked mostly like her father; and who, Caroline suspected, was smoking. However she did not yet have a tattoo, or at least not one in any place visible to her mother.

"Oxford's a lot different from when I was a girl," she said, maneuvering the old Land Rover bumpily out of the city and onto the A40, toward Cheltenham, though she had no specific destination in mind.

"Of course it is. That was a long time ago." Her daughter turned to look at her. "You should wear lipstick," she said. "And mascara."

Caroline sighed, remembering not so long ago when her child had thought she was perfect. She fiddled in her handbag for the lipstick and Issy told her she shouldn't do that while driving. It seemed she could do nothing right.

"Bloody rain," Issy said, looking at the wipers sloshing water sideways across the windscreen.

Caroline glanced sharply at her, then caught the sign for Burford and swung right into one of the prettiest high streets in the Cotswolds. Picture perfect, lined with small shops selling the usual souvenirs and postcards, but also art galleries and antique stores, bakeries and tea shops, as well as trees dripping onto the umbrellas of the few hardy citizens who waded through the puddles, heading for shelter.

Caroline slammed on the brakes as a car pulled out in front of her. "Look, we've got a parking spot. We were meant to stop here. Let's have tea."

Issy's sigh matched the stoop of her shoulders as she clambered unwillingly out of the car and stood in the rain, looking, her mother thought with a twinge of pity, utterly helpless and defeated in her new Marks & Spencer parka. Rain slicked her brown hair and there was a look of sadness in her brown eyes. It had been there ever since they'd left Singapore a year and a half ago, and Caroline did not know what to do about it.

Now, though, she grabbed her hand firmly and hurried her across the road into the nearest tearoom. As they climbed the stairs and took the last available table, she wasn't thinking about the strawberry cream tea she would order for them both, she was thinking of James, wondering, as she had so often, if she had done the right thing, leaving him.

"Mom." They had just sat down and Issy got up again. "I'm going downstairs to look at the shop."

The tearoom was over a junky jewelry-souvenir shop. "Okay." Caroline watched her go.

The tea came, carried on a plastic tray decorated with birds of the region, by a young woman not much more than her daughter's age, but who at least smiled at her and said it was the Earl Grey you wanted, Madam.

Caroline said it was and the girl put the tray down, arranged the small flowery cups in front of her and indicated the two-tier china cake stand with its nicely browned scones and a choice of small cakes; éclairs, fruit tarts, and iced buns. There was a dish of strawberry jam and a deep bowl with cream so thick you could stand your spoon in it.

"Perfect, thank you." Caroline found herself smiling as she poured pale tea into the flowery little cup. She had been brought up in London, an English girl who'd married and gone to live in Singapore with a husband she loved, a daughter she adored, a beautiful penthouse home with a view of the river and the city and its twinkling nighttime lights.

"Best of both worlds," James said, when they first looked at it. They were young marrieds; he American in his early thirties, successful in hedge funds and investments, and so attractive and charming he didn't need a penthouse to feel on top of the world. And she was so hazy with love and sex she couldn't think of anything else.

That was then. Now, was this rainy English day, a steamy little tea shop, and an almost silent daughter who finally came back, taking the wooden stairs two at a time. She sat down, took a scone, sliced it neatly, slathered it with jam and a dollop of thick cream, took a too-large bite, then picked up her phone and began texting.

Who she was texting Caroline didn't know. Still, she took a scone, and smiled. "This is the best," she said hopefully.

"Yeah." Issy's thumbs were busy but Caroline noticed she was also watching her as she struggled to arrange cream on top of the crumbling scone without it collapsing entirely in her hand.

"You should cut it into two pieces," Issy informed her.

"You sound just like my mother," Caroline said, making Issy smile. It was the first smile Caroline had seen all day.

"Here, this is for you." Issy pushed over a small package, wrapped in pink tissue paper.

"Really? For me?"

"I said so, didn't I?"

She looked away and Caroline knew she was embarrassed and thought she was being loud, and that everyone was looking.

"A present," she said, unraveling the pink tissue. "Ohh, Issy, how lovely."

It was a tiny brooch, junky, cheap but somehow sweet. She ran a finger over the fake silver. Fake or not, she would always treasure it. "A little bird, on the wing," she said.

"Sort of like us. Birds on the wing, never alighting anywhere."

"You mean us not having a real home anymore?" Caroline felt that clench in her heart again. "We'll get one, soon. I promise you."

Her voice sounded more confident than she felt. Money was tight, to say the least. When she'd married James, she had been young, she hadn't known any better and had signed that prenup, which of course meant that all she'd gotten from the divorce and sixteen years of marriage was a very small lump sum, and child support until her daughter became eighteen.

She glanced round the small tearoom at the other people; ordinary people, mackintoshes and parkas steaming over the backs of their chairs in the heat wafting from a long white radiator under the already steamed-up windows. People, Caroline thought, whose lives were all set; who had a pattern, a routine, and probably not a care in the world as they ate their scones and jam and cream and talked about the rain, as the English always did because it always rained anyway.

"Come on, have that last chocolate éclair, why don't you," she said briskly, pulling herself together. "Then we'll get out into the countryside, see a bit more of the Cotswolds."

Issy gave her that world-weary fifteen-year-old shrug. "Whatever," she said, which Caroline guessed meant she agreed.

Back in the car, she turned on the heater and the wipers and drove down the high street, over the narrow stone bridge that crossed what she guessed was the River Windrush, smaller here and brown, though running quite fast on this stormy day.

Issy did not even look. She seemed not interested in any part of their weekend. She'd hated the small inexpensive hotel where they'd booked in because Caroline had seen their ad with a black-and-white drawing of a pretty timbered house. It turned out to be faux-Tudor with an air of gloom about it that made her want to check out before they'd even checked in. The only thing in its favor was that it was cheap.

She had been given a key by a tired-looking and completely disinterested woman. Ignoring the small gas fire sputtering fitfully in the "lounge," she had carried her bag up the spindly staircase, Issy clomping behind, lugging her own.

"It'll be lovely," Caroline had said, hopefully, unlocking the door to their room and taking a look. There were two narrow beds with green silky coverlets and thin blankets that promised no warmth. The single pillow on each bed had a washed-out green polyester case. A table with a brown plastic top and a single drawer stood between the beds, with the smallest bedside lamp Caroline had ever seen. Reading in bed would be impossible unless you held the lamp up over your head, plus the ceiling light had the kind of round shade that exposed the bulb, blinding you. The room had the damp chill of a place long unused.

"Bloody hell," Issy said, not even putting down her bag.

"Oh, it's not so bad," Caroline replied, but she knew it was terrible.

"Mom!" Issy pleaded. "Let's just go back to London."

Caroline noticed she had not said "let's go home."

They stood there for a minute while Caroline thought. She had paid in advance and couldn't really afford to go anywhere else. Besides, this was Oxford on a weekend, places were bound to be full. Last time she had stayed here, what seemed decades ago, they had been at the Randolph, comfily old- fashioned and warm, with a bar and a suitably proper air of "belonging" about it. The thought of her past life trailed through her mind, as she knew it must her daughter's. This place was the end of the line. They absolutely could not stop here.

She grabbed her bag, nodded and said, "You're right. Let's go. But we can't just turn around and go back to London. We'll take a look at the countryside. We can drive back later, after the traffic eases up."

Issy hefted her bag over her shoulder and led the way back down the stairs. There was no one at the counter in the tiny hall so Caroline simply left the key and they walked out.

And that's how later, they'd ended up having a cream tea in pretty Burford, and were now driving through wet countryside while Issy texted the friends she had left behind in Singapore when her mother had uprooted her, and made her what Issy now called "a displaced person."

Guilt wrapped Caroline with a chill deeper than that of the hotel room. It was all her fault.

She swung the car into a narrow lane, past an enormous house glimpsed behind iron gates with rampant lions on the stone gateposts; past a couple of fields where the long grass bent sideways under the buffeting wind, with the most miserable-looking wet sheep Caroline had ever seen. But then she had never really looked at sheep before, maybe sheep always looked miserable, wet or dry. Chestnut-colored cows turned their heads surprised when Caroline suddenly stomped on the brakes so hard they squealed, and Issy shot forward and dropped the iPhone her father had bought her when she was still considered his daughter.

"Sorry," Caroline said, getting out of the car. But she was looking at the FOR SALE sign and an old stone barn, set right next to the river.

It was not "love at first sight."

"Oh, Mom," Issy said, in what Caroline recognized as her "what the hell are we doing here" tone of voice. Why were they here? In the wind and the rain in England when they could have stayed in Singapore with James and had a nice life.

She pulled her woolly scarf tighter over her hair, took off the red pointy glasses she always wore because she couldn't see much farther than her nose, and wiped the rain off them. Truth to tell, she had no answer. A soggy English field with wet sheep and cold-looking cows was a long way from the Disney version of English country life. Hadn't the sun always shone in their past in Singapore? And when it did rain, didn't it come down with monsoonlike force for a few hours, then blue skies and warm breezes returned, transforming streets back from rivers, returning the market stalls to their usual glory of golden fruits, and the "hawker" food stands to their fragrant, tempting, mouthwatering goodness, with their handmade noodles and barbecued meats, their Chinese-style shrimp and Malaysian curries. You could eat at any hawker stall in Singapore and feel you'd had the best meal of your life. The rainy English high street cream tea suddenly seemed a bad exchange.

"Well," she said, as cheerfully as she could manage. "I think it looks charming." Was she crazy? It looked like a stone barn that had seen better days stuck next to a muddy-looking river, with only a single and currently brown-leafed tree to soften its rectangular, workmanlike outline. "It's for sale," she added. "Maybe we should take a look."

"Why?"

Her daughter was asking the question Caroline knew she should have been asking herself. Sometimes Issy was so like her father it took her breath away. Those deep-set eyes, the frown between her brows, the straight, almost aggressive nose. She had her mouth though. Not that that was too good a feature: a touch too wide, a touch too full, and a whole lot too vulnerable. Her daughter wasn't really "pretty," not yet anyway; she was all scowls and skinny legs and long brown hair. One day, though, she might be, when she got rid of the attitude and that haunted look in her big brown eyes. Looking at her, Caroline suddenly had a brain wave.

Brain wave? Crazy was more like it. But that's the way she had always been; acting on impulse, jumping in with both feet, and almost always in over her head. Her life was one cliché after another. That's how she'd gotten married in the first place.

She grabbed Issy's hand, and said, "Come on, let's take a look at it," and marched her daughter, feet dragging in her new green wellies, along the rutted once-graveled path that led between the fields to the gray stone house.

Caroline knew houses were not normally gray in Oxfordshire; they were built from the beautiful, honey-colored, Cotswold stone. She guessed this one was so wet it had simply given up and turned gray with defeat and age. It stood on a slight rise almost directly on the narrow muddy bit of river that snaked in a curve around it before doubling back again. It was rectangular with a small outbuilding, and close-up somehow looked more solid than it had from a distance. The rain had stopped but Caroline could hear the sound of rushing water.

Leaving Issy standing in front of the barn, forlorn and wet as the sheep, she walked round the corner of the house to a terrace where a low stone wall separated land from water. To her right the river picked up speed and tumbled over a small weir. She didn't know whether it was the pretty, frothy weir, the rushing river, or the stone terrace, but suddenly she could imagine herself, on a calm summer evening sitting on that low stone wall with a glass of wine in her hand, watching the tiny tributary flowing peacefully past. Why, she wondered wistfully, when people dreamed their dreams, was the weather always blissful and there was always a glass of wine.

She told herself sternly to stop. She had a daughter she was bringing up alone; she did not have money; she did not have a job; she did not have a husband. Responsibility sagged her shoulders when she realized, as she had only too often recently, that she was no longer that fun, free girl who'd met the man of her dreams. She was no longer the wife with a lovely home in Singapore and time on her hands.

She had given up cursing in front of her daughter (though she had heard Issy use a few choice words on the phone when she thought her mother wasn't listening. Didn't she know mothers always listened; how else were they to know anything, since they were never told?). So she merely said, "You're right, honey. This place isn't meant for us. Maybe we'll go to France, be near Grandpa and Grandma."

Caroline's parents had recently sold up their London home, right before she could have used it. A free London base would have been perfect. Or would it? Issy running around London the way she was now? A city school? Good kids? Bad kids? Sighing, Caroline thought life was so much easier when you lived it young and alone and made decisions based only on what you wanted.

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Excerpted from A Place in the Country by Elizabeth Adler. Copyright © 2012 Elizabeth Adler. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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