Hens Dancing

  For Esmé

  with love and squalor

  Contents

  Hens Dancing

  Spring

  Summer

  Autumn

  Winter

  A Note on the Author

  Also by Raffaella Barker

  Also Available by Raffaella Barker

  Hens

  Dancing

  February 14th

  Seven Valentine cards have been delivered to the house this morning by the postman and not one of them is for me. Three are for Giles, who is eight and therefore at an age where the bolstering effect of a Valentine card goes un-noticed, two are for Felix, six, who is in a big rage that anyone has dared to be so sissy as to send him any; and two are for Charles, forty-one, who had not planned to be at home, but an airport strike prevented his business trip to Paris.

  ‘How did they know I’d be here?’ he murmurs, a smirk of smug spreading over his face. He drops the one his secretary always sends him without opening it, and looks at the other. It is not from me.

  ‘The postmark is smudged. Can you read it, darling?’ he says to me, and hating to miss an opportunity for one-upmanship, adds, ‘Did you really not get any cards? How odd.’

  Scrutinising his envelope, I drop it in the washing-up water.

  ‘Oops, sorry, Charles, it’s a bit soggy now.’

  He looks at me with loathing. I smile sweetly.

  Breakfast is an orgy of martyrdom on my part, as usual unnoticed by spouse and offspring, who according to age and inclination are reading their valentine cards/the Beano/the cereal packet. I clear away, deliberately not asking for help, and return to bed. The telephone clicks a couple of times and I know better than to pick it up. Charles has a sixth sense for an overheard conversation and will insist he’s simply checking in with the office. I think he’s having an affair, and am shocked to find that I don’t care. Even being five months pregnant doesn’t make me care; in fact it cushions me from any feeling towards Charles stronger than mild dislike. So glad the hysteria and throwing things phase has passed.

  After an hour or so of luxuriating with Regency Buck (my second-favourite Georgette Heyer; I have just finished my namesake and favourite, Venetia, for the seventeenth time), I am renewed and can face the day, so rise again with a view to gardening. Downstairs the boys hover in an aimless fashion, kicking things and playing ‘Greensleeves’ repeatedly on the piano. Their father is still on the telephone. They need fresh air.

  ‘Come on, I need help, you two,’ I urge. ‘Please will you come and clip the yew hedge with me?’ Giles continues to play ‘Greensleeves’ in various keys. Felix shoots at me with a bow and arrow but misses and loses his arrow behind a painting which is propped against the wall, still waiting to be hung.

  ‘Do we have to?’ he whines, hurling himself backwards onto the sofa. ‘I hate outside, it’s really cold. I want to play cowboys in here with Dad.’

  ‘Dad is going outside too,’ I say firmly, as Charles sidles towards the serenity of the drawing room with his newspaper. He glares, but complies. Felix is won over by the discovery of a magnificent pair of secateurs in the conservatory. Thus armed, he takes a stepladder to my token topiary, a gloriously sculpted ten-foot-tall chicken, and prepares to strike. Charles is passing at this moment, and although he fails to register the chicken crisis, he wants to use the stepladder, so Felix and his flashing blades are diverted to ground level and a less precious bush. Giles, having condemned me as ‘really sad’ for asking him to help, is forty feet up a tree, shouting instructions to the rest of us about where to find the wheelbarrow, the rake and all the other garden implements he can see scattered in the long grass, relics of last weekend’s attempt to get the children to help outside.

  ‘Mummy, you’ve completely missed that spade; go back ten paces and then a little to the right and you’ll see the trowel as well.’

  It is pointless to ask him to come down – he won’t, and an unseemly shouting match will ensue from which he will emerge victorious and possessor of the high ground – literally. Can’t help wishing that instead of encouraging him to think of himself as one of life’s commanders his school would exercise a few more Victorian dictums. ‘Seen and not heard’, ‘polite to elders and betters’, ‘helpful and courteous at all times’ could all be drummed in to great effect. Sour-lemon thoughts are interrupted by his appearance from the tree with a spray of cherry blossom, a joyful hint of pink in its tiny buds.

  ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Mummy,’ he says.

  February 14th – one year later

  Woken by the doorbell instead of The Beauty, and dash down to find the postman, grinning, with a handful of cards.

  ‘Happy Valentine’s, love,’ he says. ‘You’re a bit popular, aren’t you?’

  Leafing through them in the kitchen, am relieved that he did not notice the names on them: four are for Giles, which seems excessive to me, two for Felix and one for The Beauty. None for me. Can’t help remembering last Valentine’s Day. Improvements since then include having become mother of The Beauty (now eight months old), and having shed faithless husband (divorce now three weeks old), but still no Valentine cards. So much for the glamorous life of the divorcée.

  Spluttering and growling noises similar to those made by a small lawnmower announce over the intercom that The Beauty has woken and will require breakfast. So will the boys, now clumping downstairs uttering the usual litany of, ‘Mum, where are my shoes? Is there any tuck? Can we get a Nintendo 64?’

  Felix freaks out when presented with his cards, ‘I hate them, I don’t want anyone to send me Valentine cards. They’re for girls. You have them, Mum.’ He hurls his spoon into the porridge saucepan and porridge rises like a tidal wave and slops onto the Aga hotplate.

  ‘But one is from Dad,’ says Giles. ‘Look, it’s definitely his writing.’

  Felix is placated by this, but I am irritated. The school run mother of the day arrives and the boys depart like a mini tornado, hairbrushes, biscuits and pencil cases whirling around them, closer and closer until they vanish into rucksacks. The Beauty waves regally, bouncing on my hip as we let the hens out and throw them a few scraps. The air is steel-cold and heavy on the lungs; the hens, plump in ruffled feathers, groan and cluck a bit then troop back into the henhouse. They are protesting against the weather, and none of them has laid an egg since October.

  February 17th

  Odd communication from Charles asking me if I want to sell my shares in Heavenly Petting. He will give me a mark-up on their value. Instantly suspicious as Charles is the ultimate nipcheese, so send his letter straight to Maurice Salmon, my lawyer.

  Heavenly Petting began life in an old electrician’s workshop on the Bedford Road in Cambridge, and came into being because Charles was keen on shooting and wanted to employ a taxidermist to stuff various bird corpses. While investigating taxidermy, Charles became morbidly obsessed with dead animals, and quickly recognised a business opportunity. As he had never liked live animals at all, I couldn’t take the idea seriously, but he persevered, working day and night to build his first crematorium, before moving out into the local streets to chat up the old ladies who lived in the terraced houses which fanned out from Cambridge into the fens. His first client was a blue budgerigar called Billy. Charles charged Mrs Day seven pounds for Billy’s funeral service and a cardboard box containing his ashes. The funeral service comprised handing Mrs Day a piece of paper with Billy’s name, type and age on it, then standing with her in the whitewashed workshop for three minutes listening to a tape of Albinoni’s Adagio.

  ‘We will bring you the ashes a little later. We like to check up on the bereaved to make sure we have done all we can to help,’ Charles gravely told her, patting her hand as she dabbed her nose with a m
ournful mauve handkerchief. Mrs Day tottered home to an empty cage, immaculate, as she had scrubbed it to keep herself busy before the cremation. Charles scooped a spoonful of ash out of the incinerator into which he had chucked Billy’s little body some time earlier, filled a household matchbox he’d painted blue that morning and arrived on Mrs Day’s doorstep before she had had time to make herself a cup of tea. She couldn’t bear the empty cage, she said, so Charles offered to take it away. He sold it for ten pounds the next day and hey presto, Heavenly Petting was launched and running at a profit on its first transaction.

  That was ten years ago. Charles had just left the army, I was pregnant with Giles and we wanted to live in the countryside. My grandmother had left me some money, and with it and some of his own, Charles bought his first incinerator and the inaugural premises of Heavenly Petting. I found the house and Heavenly Petting paid for us to live in it. And still does.

  February 20th

  Felix is off school with a horrible rattling squeeze-box chest infection, and is lying on the floor in the drawing room watching something unsuitable and eating marshmallows. I have a deadline and the tight-eyeball feeling that comes after a night of trailing in and out of children’s bedrooms administering cough mixture in increasingly large doses. Just wondering whether to ring my mother and persuade her to come over, when her car creeps up the drive, engine at full throttle and windscreen wipers wagging furiously. Felix rushes to the kitchen window in time to see her execute a series of bounces across the yard before parking.

  ‘Why does Granny always drive like that?’

  ‘I don’t know, you’ll have to ask her. Actually, don’t. I think she’s concentrating so hard that she forgets to change out of first gear.’

  Granny is my salvation and I am in no mood to carp at her motoring skills. She enters the kitchen, her arms full of books and a half-drunk bottle of red wine corked with a twist of silver foil.

  ‘It’s so cold at home, the gas bombs have run out and I forgot to order any wood, so I thought I’d come here. Egor is in the car.’ She pauses expectantly. I don’t like Egor, he is a halfwit, and, being a bull terrier, is also a potentially lethal weapon.

  ‘Good, he can stay there,’ pops out before I can stop it, but luckily is eclipsed by Felix, dancing up and down and begging, ‘Let’s get him in, please Mum. I want to see him chase his tail.’

  I relent and escape to my study, leaving my mother and Felix exclaiming with delight as Egor spins in tiny circles like the melting tigers in Little Black Sambo.

  February 21st

  A savage wind is rattling the windows in my study and sending little gusts through the gap beneath the door into the hall, so that the papers, which are supposed to be in orderly piles on the floor, are rising and floating about at knee level. I have been working in this room for most of the ten years we have lived here, and I still don’t have any drawers or bookshelves.

  The Beauty, splendid today in pink tights and lime-green pinafore, is loving the swirly paper display and whisks about in her Popemobile trying to grab tax returns and their attendant threatening letters. The Popemobile is a mixed blessing. It was lent by a friend and it is loathsome to adults, being plastic with raucous bells and squeakers. The Beauty especially adores the telephone bit and is practising opening her mouth wide enough to fit the whole receiver in. All this is fine: the worrying bit is her mobility. She vrooms backwards through the house at several knots per hour without having any route planned, and becomes strident if marooned. I’m not sure why she can’t go forwards, but she can’t. She can’t crawl either. Apparently babies with these walkers don’t bother with crawling. I am pleased about this, as it means she can’t fill her mouth with dog food, paperclips, used chewing gum and all the other things I haven’t swept off the floor. Instead she drives around the house and appears just where you weren’t expecting her, breathing heavily and cackling with triumph as she espies you. It gives her an air of independence beyond her years, or rather months, and makes her very cocky. She needs a helmet.

  February 24th

  Pancake Day starts badly. I have forgotten to purchase extra milk, lemons and so forth. Much smoke and slopped batter on the Aga results in truly inadequate trio of splodgy pancakes.

  ‘You’re meant to have lemon and sugar with them, Mummy.’ Felix glares at his plate as I trickle golden syrup over it.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ll go shopping today and you can have proper pancakes when you get back from school.’

  The Beauty is still in her pyjamas for the school run, and a new tooth is causing much misery. She moans sadly as we head towards the supermarket after dropping the boys, and falls asleep within a hundred yards of its car park. Asleep, she is transformed to cherub, the rosy cheeks caused by teeth giving her a Renoir complexion and her lashes a dark sweep beneath porcelain-blue eyelids. Cannot face waking her, so drive once round the car park to give myself the sense of having been there, then swoop on towards home. Will have to purchase everything from the village shop and any roadside stalls I pass. Remember this as the way of life when The Beauty was brand-new. Could never be bothered to get out of my car; it was too much effort to wake the sleeping Beauty. Shops became impossible unless I could leave her in the car outside and still see her from inside. This ruled out all supermarkets, and most high street shops. Bought everything on account and had it sent, even Giles and Felix’s uniforms. Food was either literally home-grown or from side of the road home-grown stalls. Very good way of life, with no boring twilight time in supermarkets. Much cheaper too.

  Leeks, marmalade and a pot of crocuses are the stall haul today, no good for pancakes, so I leave The Beauty in the car outside the village shop and purchase the rest. Hope these pancakes are more successful than the last.

  Spring

  March 1st

  The wind of the past week is unabated; a pink plastic bucket has just bowled past the window and two cockerels have hopped onto the sill for shelter and are staring in at me. Their wives huddle in the flowerbed below, having scratched out a couple of really nice little hen-sized hollows with scant regard for my plants and bulbs. Hens spell death to a garden, and my bantams were carefully selected for their prettiness and also for their small talons. They are all called Mustard, Custard and Flustered for ease of identification. They make a big effort to keep things trim with beak and claw in the borders, and have clipped back the wallflowers to stumps, so I don’t think they will manage to flower this year. It doesn’t matter; the wallflower display was pretty paltry anyway. I am planning something more splendid for next year, and have ordered six packets of wine-dark Cheiranthus Ruby Gem accordingly.

  I used to buy ready-grown wallflower plants in late autumn from an old man who sold them from a trestle-table on the roadside in front of his cottage. He always wore a collar and tie for gardening, and even in high summer he kept his jacket buttoned up and belted with binder twine for double security. Last year he gave me three ornamental cabbages to go with the wallflowers, and we were on excellent terms. His garden was a delight all year round, and he was like a benign Mr McGregor in it. He painted his terracotta flowerpots pale blue and had a compost heap as brown and square as an Oxo cube.

  But when I drove by after Christmas there was a ‘For sale’ sign on his cottage. It went a few weeks later, and now the shaggy hedge has been clipped, the rose bushes shorn and a smart red estate car is parked where once there was a stamp-sized lawn. A silver climbing frame gleams on the vegetable patch, and the cottage has been repointed and tidied like any other. All traces of the old man have been hurled into a skip and driven away to a dump. I hope he died quietly in his sleep, or keeled over into oblivion in the garden during a double-digging session. It is unbearable to think of him now in some grim old folks’ home in Cromer, tethered to a chair and staring into the sea.

  March 5th

  The Hallidays, wonderful glamorous Rose, godmother to The Beauty, and her husband, Tristan, are coming to stay and I want everything to be perfect
. In preparation I sally into the garden in the manner of Vita S-W to pluck some appropriate offerings for their bedroom. The air is dry and bitter, the friendly barn owl swoops past, his feathers ivory and cream against a white sky. He flits over the hedge and continues to search for afternoon tea in the water-meadows, flying low and following the contours of the ground like a miniature warhead. The garden is a disgrace. Everything small and delicate in front of the house is mud-splattered, and otherwise there are only daffodils, but none of the wild, ragged double ones, just those that remind me of children’s plastic windmills in their chrome-yellow neatness of trumpet and petal. I toss one or two of these into my basket and march on, sighing and squelching in new ankle-length red wellingtons. Felix ambushes me to discuss his pocket money.

  ‘I need to buy some Warhammers on Saturday, how much money will I have when you give me all the pocket money you owe me? I’ve got seventeen so far.’

  ‘Seventeen what?’ I am wondering whether the red wellingtons were a mistake, but have no concrete evidence against them. Felix digs into his pocket and shows me a few pennies.

  ‘Seventeen of these,’ he says. Not enough for so much as a Warhammer arm. Weakly, wrongly, considering that I have just rejected them for lack of beauty, I agree to pay him fifty pence if he picks a vast quantity of daffodils. He hurtles off to oblige, and I am tempted to give up my search for a decent bunch for the Hallidays’ bedroom. A few anemones are gasping and lying flat on the ground in the manner of fish out of water, but mainly the garden is twiggy in anticipation of buds. I drag a lot of sticks into the house and plonk them in vases. They almost look Japanese. Felix’s daffodils do not.

  March 7th