Hens Dancing Read online

  ‘Thank you to our precious little Princess’ reads the card, and I am split between delight at the flowers and nausea at the message until Giles puts the card in the bin. Moments later, while I am arranging The Beauty’s gift in numerous pink plastic buckets as none of my vases do them justice, another van ticks up the drive. More signing for exciting parcels, and am delighted that this one is for me. Less delighted when parcel is ripped wide open to reveal a pair of high-heeled wellingtons the colour of aubergines, and a handbag designed to look like a watering can, or a watering can designed to look like a handbag. Cannot initially decide which, but dare not put water in to test. Have been speculating with Vivienne as to the nature of my thank-you present from the hand-baggers, and had rather set my heart on a delicious icing-pink jewelled item with silk ribbons and much fragile glamour. Telephone Vivienne to deliver the bad news.

  ‘God, how awful to think that that’s how they see you.’ She can hardly keep the glee out of her voice. Decide on the spot to donate the stupid bag to her, but will keep the wellies to add to my now considerable collection. Wrap the bag with some difficulty and post it to Vivienne forthwith, thus experiencing a rush of achievement for the day before returning to the mould battle in the scullery.

  August 5th

  A fine drizzle sets the tone for the village show today. Feeding the hens, pigeons and assorted wild birds now as tame as any of ours, my hair becomes cloudy with tiny raindrops and then properly wet as I scuttle around the garden pointlessly dragging already sodden prams and toys under cover. Bring The Beauty’s pram mattress in and put it on the Aga where it creates a comforting Chinese laundry fug.

  Felix has been up for hours completing his entries for the show. He has made a Christmas card of a jolly old Santa carrying two longed-for Warhammers called Deathmaster Snikch and Nagash, and a Nintendo. The attention to detail is magnificent, but I fear that the message, which reads: ‘Here you are, is this what you wanted? Ho ho ho,’ will not please the fuddy-duddy judges. Having made two posters for the ‘Teddy Jumps Off the Tower’ contest, he is feeling very competitive about this class, and has dressed his bear as Deathmaster Snikch and is busy attaching yards of elastic to make him a bungee bear.

  Giles has become unspeakable and refuses to do anything. In despair I put him in charge of fancy dress.

  ‘You can go as anything you like as long as you aren’t a Warhammer, and as long as you include Felix and The Beauty.’ Have little hope of this ruse being successful, but he shuffles off, kicking the door as he goes, and is not seen again for hours.

  Lila arrives, laden with produce she plans to show.

  ‘I’ve grown this fantastic sea kale. Look, it’s still got the bloom of ozone on it. I picked it up this morning, it was terrifying. Three huge chunks of cliff collapsed when I pulled the roots out of the ground, and I haven’t even planted my sea kale close to the edge.’

  Lila’s tiny seaside holiday hut is inching its way towards the sea as the cliff below it crumbles. Lila is very calm about sleeping there herself, but insists that her children and their au pair stay at the guest house down the road. Am convinced that she does this to avoid cooking for them, but she is adamant that it is for their safety. This lavish way of life is paid for by what she calls the ‘Poor Orphan Fund’, a seemingly bottomless well of money she extracted from the Italian government when Roberto, her husband, was crushed by a ceiling he was renovating in a twelfth-century chapel outside Naples. The accident was six years ago, but Lila still wears black or grey almost every day and adopts a tragic, wizened pose when husbands are mentioned. Her ruthless quest to get the better of all lawyers is exhausting, but today litigation is far from her mind, and instead she overflows with competitive spirit.

  ‘What have the boys done for the show? Gosh, is that all? Diptych has grown all these tomatoes. His grandmother sent the seeds from Italy. Look.’

  I look. Irritatingly, the tomatoes are perfect, gleaming like a cluster of cabochon topaz and rubies in their festive harvest colours. Calypso has made a fairy garden out of an old vanity case of Lila’s.

  ‘I will win the prize,’ she lisps unbecomingly when I admire it. Find myself hoping not and am ashamed.

  Off they go to the village, a picture of organic whole-someness and in extreme contrast with my own family. We are all in filthy moods, and apart from the Christmas card, have nothing to show. Suddenly I remember my jam, and rush to the larder, where I stand for some minutes debating which jar is most fetching. Plump for one with a gingham lid and return to the kitchen to find Giles coaxing Felix into my old spotty fake fur coat. He has turned The Beauty into a fat Dalmatian puppy by drawing black spots with an indelible pen on her vest and nappy. She has a black and white spotty ribbon in her hair and is dragging her own toy Dalmatian by the collar. Giles has borrowed a pair of white jeans from me and stuck blobs of black felt on with Sellotape. They all look wonderful. Am suddenly awash with love and admiration for my children. Noticing this weak moment, Giles hoists terrible silver mop and waves it at me.

  ‘Mummy, please will you put this wig on and be Cruella? And can you wear this red dress and your velvet cloak?’

  Love and admiration suffer a setback. I am to wear skintight, flame-red disco dress with slits up both sides. Clamber into ghastly nylon pod with much protest and regret at the impulse which stopped me chucking it after its heyday in the late seventies. Lashings of red lipstick and pallid foundation are applied, and Felix and Giles look on approvingly. The Beauty, though, is horrified, and refuses to let me pick her up, shaking her head and hiding behind Giles.

  Fortunately, the fancy dress contest opens the show, so we are still unsmudged as we parade around the ring with our team leader Rags gagging on her leash and trying to look like a Dalmatian by wearing cotton wool pads glued to her sandy coat. The other entries comprise an enchanting bird of paradise – a little girl covered in glittery plastic feathers – and a bedraggled Humpty Dumpty on a pony. We look as if we have tried too hard, and as the only adult in the ring I am horribly conscious of my diminutive dress and vulgar fishnet tights.

  Mortification is enhanced a thousandfold by the discovery that David is the judge. He winks when he catches my eye and I become scarlet in the face to match my dress. We win first prize of four magenta rosettes and David ties one onto each of our outfits. Shaking hands with me and presenting the cup, he is purity and loveliness meeting tarted-up depravity. Try to cringe away and am thus caught by local paper’s photographer in hunched, wizened position for tomorrow’s newspaper. The Beauty, in contrast, is very pleased to see David, and throws herself out of my arms and into his. This causes much clucking and clapping among the spectators. Hope the paper uses this picture if they have to use any.

  Only just effect a change of outfit in time to shimmy up the church tower for Felix’s teddy to make its jump. On the roof, we peer down at the churchyard below, an emerald handkerchief embroidered with scattered blobs of hurled bear. Giles is measuring the distance between each bear and the church door. The winner will be the one furthest away.

  ‘Geronimo,’ yells Felix, having paid his twenty pence to the lady in charge, who is our Christian neighbour. He lobs the teddy with mighty force. It lands on the Spar shop’s telephone wires. Felix starts to sob, and wails: ‘Get him down, he’s going to be electrocuted.’

  I long to run away to a desert island where there are no village shows, no Spar shops and no children. Just apricot face cream, Pimms and Georgette Heyer.

  August 6th

  Weather still morose and Lila and her children are in residence, having stayed the night in order to celebrate their multiple victories at the show. Diptych’s tomatoes won a huge cup, now towering on the kitchen window sill with our eggcup-sized fancy-dress trophy next to it. This is bad enough, but worse is Lila’s small shield for the sea kale, to which she has attached my consolation certificate for failed jam.

  Felix and Giles are malevolent this morning. They were forced by me not to watch The Simpsons
video last night, but to cook sausages on a fire in the garden, in the rain. Much rudeness ensued, and just as they were becoming malleable, if morose, Diptych announced that he has become vegan and can only eat tofu. A sausage was slung and slid hotly down Diptych’s shirt, after which there was a vile food fight. Hostilities have opened again this morning with Giles torturing Diptych by beating him hollow at croquet, despite having patronising self-inflicted handicap of one hand tied. Felix and Calypso, friends since yesterday due to them both having won a class, Felix for his Christmas card, Calypso for her garden, are operating on Action Man with a penknife and it is best not to notice. My mother telephones and temporarily diverts Lila from throwing away everything in my larder with preservatives in it.

  ‘Desmond has chopped his finger off.’ My mother’s voice is shaky and I can hear the inhalation of a comfort cigarette.

  ‘How did he do that? Was he drunk?’ I am sickened and shocked by this news. Mind’s eye dwells unhappily on finger lying useless on the kitchen floor like Felix’s joke one with the nail through it.

  My mother explains: ‘The stupid fool slammed the door on it in a fit of rage. Luckily we had some frozen peas, so I put it in the bag with them and took it, and him, to the cottage hospital. They have sewn it back on now, and all I do is thank God for Captain Birds Eye.’ Mind’s eye positively reels at the thought of finger stump among the peas: will never be able to eat another frozen petit pois again. Add three packets to Lila’s throwing-out pile, then return two to the freezer in case we need them for similar emergency.

  My mother arrives half an hour later and saves me a lot of money by putting all my baked beans and tinned rice pudding back in the larder, stating firmly, ‘This is expensive food. To waste it is criminal.’

  Lila is furious, and huffs and puffs for about ten minutes before announcing, ‘I shall go and see Desmond in hospital. He will need holistic help after the trauma of the National Health Service.’ She chugs off in her Beetle, forgetting her children and her trophies.

  August 7th

  Desmond arrives in a taxi, having discharged himself from hospital. I am rather touched by his coming to me, and welcome him warmly.

  ‘You poor thing, how is your finger? Get your things and come in.’

  Desmond hesitates and looks sheepish.

  ‘I can’t, I’m on my way to Lila’s. Do you know her address?’

  Broad grin sweeps my face, and I cannot remove it. Am relishing the Desmond/Lila meeting about to take place on sea-sprayed cliff top. Desmond’s leather jacket dangles from his shoulders, emitting a pungent aroma of old beer, McDonald’s and cigarettes whenever he moves in it. His shirt is clean, but is a nylon Arsenal football one, and his biker boots are unashamedly leather and were therefore formerly alive. The bandage on his finger is ragged and stained. Relish the thought of Lila rushing out to greet the taxi in perfect harmony with nature, wearing flax and other earthy fabrics. She will be barefoot. Maybe he will tread on her toe.

  Desmond still has one foot in the taxi, and has not asked the driver to turn the engine off. I give the address and ask casually, ‘Does Lila know you are coming?’

  ‘Oh, yes, she’s going to cure my finger. She says all I have to do is lie flat with my hand resting on a marble slab for three weeks and it will heal. So I’ve had the stitches taken out and I’m going round to hers to use her marble slab.’

  Cannot wait to tell my mother.

  August 10th

  Desmond is installed on the marble slab. My mother and I are fascinated by this notion and wish to see. Wonder if he looks like Frankenstein’s monster and Lila has become a modern Mary Shelley. Do hope so. Set off on a surprise visit with The Beauty. Would very much like to harness The Beauty’s energies into something useful such as making electricity or being a Girl Guide. Could she work on a wind farm? Or a treadmill? My morning bath was enlivened by her face rising over the side, radiant as the sun, blowing fat kisses at me. She diverted me with this sweetness, and while engaged in praising her, I failed to prevent her slinging into the bath a wet nappy, two toothbrushes and a pair of pants. Her lager-lout progress around the house is evident in the paths of debris linking all the cupboards, and ending up in the kitchen at the food cupboard. This is her favourite place. She climbs, like a limber little monkey, up the shelves to the tea bag zone, where she snatches a handful and tears them apart with her teeth. When tea is liberally scattered, she uses the papery remains of the bags to wipe a clean patch on the shelf surface and also to blow her nose. Such genius is naturally rewarded with laughter rather than discipline, with the result that she feels approved of as she tornadoes around the house. This may be good for her psyche, but her housekeeping methods are tipping the balance towards deepest squalor. It is becoming irreversible, and I can no longer face tidying up. A day at Lila’s, or even just an hour, will be bliss. Lila has no cupboards and even if she had, there would be nothing in them. She stores her food in a humming fifties refrigerator with a vast handle and superb anti-baby suction keeping it shut. Everything edible is in there, even her beloved pulses, and Lila has never used a tea bag in her life.

  The Beauty whisks into the house with her lips pursed expectantly. Her cunning is remarkable. By the time I have greeted Lila and turned around to find her, she has spotted Lila’s Achilles heel – a plethora of face creams and lotions, neatly stashed on a shelf beneath the huge sink-cum-hip bath.

  ‘Get that child. Quickly!’ Lila lunges, but is not quick enough. The Beauty grabs a wholemeal-looking tube and has the lid off in a split second. Orange gunge hits the floor in a jet. The Beauty licks a drip from her fingertip.

  ‘Mmm, yummy,’ she says. Desperate not to have to go home straight away, I grab her and bundle her outside, begging Lila to let me purchase her another dose of the cream, which appears to be puréed carrot.

  ‘You can’t. It comes from a Mexican apothecary and it has to be mixed in the presence of the user,’ snarls Lila, adding unnecessarily: ‘It was very expensive.’

  A nasty silence ensues, cut at last by a male voice.

  ‘Well it hasn’t made you look any different. Venetia looks just as good as you and she’s never been near a Mexican apothecary.’ Oh, how I sometimes love my brother. Desmond is standing in the doorway, his usually slick black hair wild from the beach. The Beauty is in his arms, and they make a surreal pair, framed by the blue view of sea frilled with white waves.

  ‘How come you aren’t on your slab?’ demands my mother, from outside the window where she has gone to smoke, but with the window open, so she can join in with the fun in the kitchen. ‘I don’t even believe there is a slab of marble here. There isn’t room.’ Cut off from the waist, and peeping between the red and white striped curtains, she is straight out of a Punch and Judy show. Lila gives her a dirty look, and I have to look at the ceiling not to snigger.

  ‘Maybe it’s under Lila’s mattress,’ I suggest. ‘A kind of hard Lilo.’

  ‘Aha,’ says my mother, her expression becoming thoughtful. Desmond hands me The Beauty. She is tinted orange, as if with Man Tan, by the sandy damp of Lila’s garden path. He confounds my love interest theory by pulling back a curtain and revealing a dank, larderish room, more like a cell as there is no food in it, just a marble shelf along one wall.

  ‘Look what I have to endure,’ he says. ‘I’ve been on the goddam slab for an hour this morning. But then Lila needed some wood chopped, and she says that a bit of exertion is good for the circulation, so she let me get up for a few chores.’

  Lila the canny slave-driver is innocently scraping her precious cream off the floor and into a glass. She wipes her hands on a dainty little towel.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk, or rather a scramble – the cliff is like brown sugar,’ she says, keen to get us out of the house.

  We tramp in single file down the cliff path, Desmond nobly carrying Ten Ton Tessie, as my mother has christened The Beauty. Lila skips ahead, nimble as a goat, and turns to take a photograph.

  ‘Go
d, you look as though you are on day release from some institution,’ she yells up to us, and I do see what she means. Desmond’s arm is still in a sling, but he does not let this cramp his style, so is wearing bluebottle sunglasses and has perched The Beauty like a parrot on his good shoulder. She beams and points her fingers at his eyebrows, but doesn’t dare touch the springy mass of them. My mother is wearing her usual uniform of thick black jacket, long wool skirt, black tights and large hat. I never got round to taking off my old-maid white cotton nightie this morning, but managed to add a pair of harlequin leggings for relaxed seaside wear. Thus clad, I look like a faded bag lady, with strange swirls and mini roundabouts on my ankles where I have failed to apply my fake tan properly. Fortunately, Lila is much cheered by this, and scrambles back to join us, amiably suggesting lunch in the café a mile along the beach.

  Wish profoundly that Giles and Felix were with us, instead of in some shopping mall in Cambridge with their father, as we stroll along the shore. Sand scrunches and gives beneath my feet, dirty, streaky blond where the tide lapped it this morning. The sea is teal blue, heavy and still like oil, and inviting. I cannot resist. The first moments are hell, numb toes bump pebbles beneath the water and I stumble, holding my stomach in so that there is less of me to feel the frozen ring of water encircling my flesh. Shut my eyes, and, emboldened by piercing squawk commanding my presence from The Beauty, I launch into silken blue sea, so clear that the sand and stones at the bottom and my pale marble limbs are visible. Twenty strokes towards the glittering horizon and the water becomes a little colder, a little deeper. The others tire of watching me and walk on, leaving silence, the sea and me. Lovely. Nature’s beauty treatments triumph once more. This must be better for me than a day with Mo Loam, and so much cheaper.