Nearest Thing to Crazy Read Free Page B

well-read as a way of diverting the more direct, personal questions. She chatted about exhibitions she had seen, books she had enjoyed and countries she had visited. I admired the way she seemed so relaxed and unselfconscious in the company of relative strangers.
    I also wondered what she would be making of us, how she would be viewing us, through her writer’s eye. Amelia’s housekeeper was busy, bustling away in the background, making sure everything appeared at the right time, making sure that the kitchen remained immaculate, making sure that our hostess only had to worry about keeping up a constant patter of lively conversation. It was a theatre of sorts, and the uninitiated audience would presume that Amelia was playing the spoilt one: the rich-man’s over-indulged wife, the latest in an uninterrupted line of rich men’s wives captured in oil paint and pinned to the wall, required to be decorative not only in life, but after death too. On the face of it, I don’t suppose the casual observer would feel too sorry for Amelia, but I did. For instance, I knew that she never really felt the house was hers, or a home exactly. William’s mother was there, undead, but with her spirit already haunting everything Amelia did, along with the spectres of all the other Mrs Armitages. Newly widowed, she had been packed off to the dower house, from where she attempted to rule the latest incumbents of the big house. She managed to convey her censure in subtle little ways that we all pretended not to notice, such as asking you if you’d like another drink or hunting down the ashtray for a hapless smoker. She made us feel like naughty teenagers, which only served to make us want to behave badly.
    William’s parents had lingered far too long in the big house, while Amelia and William and their fast-growing brood, escaping from London at weekends, had occupied the old servants’ quarters over what was now the pool house. It had been ridiculous, really, the way they’d crammed themselves into what was effectively an attic while the ageing parents rattled around the vast rooms. I suppose one could admire the way Mrs Armitage senior had perfected her demeanour of haughty disapproval, but she was quite scary. When I’d taken the saw to some horrid old shrubs in the border she’d crept up behind me, and then yelled in my ear, ‘I planted those twenty-five years ago and I thought they were looking rather fine,’ I nearly chopped my finger off.
    ‘I’m sure they’ll look even better once they’ve got space to stretch out a bit. And they were starving everything around them.’
    ‘Well I suppose you know what you’re doing. Of course I used to do all the gardening myself . . .’
    When I told Amelia about it later, she just laughed. ‘My diplomatic skills have been both tested and honed, darling. The trouble is, she still thinks of this as her house. And who can blame the old trout, she was here for thirty-five years. She’s just a bit lost, really. All those years running everything, making all the decisions, feeling important and necessary, and now there’s nothing for her to do. I do feel sorry for her and sometimes I find myself thinking I’ll probably be just like her. I just wish she didn’t make me feel like an incompetent child – a houseguest who’s outstayed her welcome.’
    It seemed to me, sometimes, that the house owned William and Amelia, rather than the other way around, and while it was indeed a beautiful place to live, it came at a high price.
    At coffee the conversation turned to schools, as it invariably did, and Amelia said that they were hoping Lucy, their youngest, would get a place at Wycombe Abbey.
    ‘My old school,’ Ellie said.
    ‘Really? Mine too,’ said Amelia. ‘Though I don’t suppose we would have been there at the same time.’
‘No, probably not,’ she said.
    In reality it was hard to tell how old Ellie was, but I imagined she was probably at least ten years younger than me, so early