Summertime Page 20

  ‘I’m looking down the drain,’ I reply, madly irritated by his appearance, for no particular reason.

  He slaps my bottom, irritating me further, and laughs, ‘So you are. I thought I’d walk over and see if you would like to have lunch with me,’ he continues, wiping his face with a handkerchief, somewhat out of breath and pink with heat in his thick checked shirt. ‘There’s something I want to ask you.’

  I find that curiosity overrides most other emotions, and so agree straight away. ‘Oh yes please, that would be lovely.’

  ‘Good. I’ll pick you up at twelve.’ He stares at my feet, apparently lost in rapt contemplation of them. In turn, I stare at his neck, at the point where the black hairs sprout from beneath his shirt collar to meet drops of perspiration below the scalp’s hairline. Am about to suggest that he gets a hat before lunch, when he looks up, monobrow concertinaed in a frown, and barks an embarrassed cough.

  ‘I think you should find some shoes by then,’ he says hastily, before turning on his heel and marching out of the gate again. Finish looking at the drains, and begin rodding them, all the time musing as to why he wants me to wear shoes, and why I mind.

  August 16th

  Curiosity killed the cat. Have not slept for a single second. Am trying out ways of making the following words palatable or believable:

  I have agreed to marry Hedley.

  Hedley asked me to marry him.

  Hedley and I are getting married.

  I am engaged to Hedley.

  Still haven’t collected the dogs. This sentence does have the ring of truth.

  August 17th

  Have not adjusted to my new status as fiancée yet, and have told no one. Have also refused to see Hedley, but have telephoned him six times today to check that he has not told anyone either.

  ‘I must tell the children first,’ I insist, voice wavering pathetically because I am missing them so badly. In fact, am in no rush to tell them, and keep hoping that whole proposal thing was just a nightmare. How did it happen? I must have been drunk. I should have known when he said the word ‘shoes’ that the outing was a mistake. We went to lunch in a restaurant which was part of a country club, and the look with which the receptionist greeted my flip-flops confirmed my worst fears.

  ‘Would madam like to select more appropriate footwear, or does she have something in the car?’ asked the manager, opening a cupboard to reveal three pairs of Queen Mother shoes for midgets. None of them would go on, despite vigorous pushing on the part of the manager. I did not have anything in the car, and feeling very like an Ugly Sister, I followed Hedley and the manager to the table selected for us. We were placed, with much ceremony, in the corner of the room behind a partition with a swing door opening into the men’s loo next to us. Shrank in horror from the dainty table display, with swan-sculpted butter and napkins folded like waterfalls, or perhaps water lilies, the heavy crystal glass and the cloth carnation in a narrow vase.

  ‘Urgh, Hedley, I think we should go. This sort of place gives me the creeps.’ Assumed he would feel the same and that we would giggle and depart, but he was sitting down, unfolding his napkin with a satisfied smirk.

  ‘What was that, Venetia?’ he said. I shook my head, realising it was useless, and sat down. Our small talk lasted for about three minutes, and then, in the silence which followed the waiter taking our order, Hedley suddenly leant towards me and seized my hand.

  Thinking he was about to chastise me for shredding the petals of the carnation, I tried to snatch my hand back, muttering, ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  He didn’t let go. Surprised, I tugged more, and met his gaze. It was ardent. And with a terrible sense of inevitability, I knew what he was about to say, and I understood why we were here. The moment before he spoke hung, suffocating, between us, broken by the waiter’s return with two fizzing glasses which I would rather contained Alka Seltzer than celebratory champagne.

  What is so odd is that I didn’t say no. I thought about rodding the drains, I thought about Lucinda at the fête and I thought about being married instead of being single with my children. I saw my computer empty of emails to me from David, and I said, ‘Yes.’

  August 19 th

  The children return today. I have discovered a new virtuous me since the engagement, and the house is spotless. Am convinced that if my surroundings are in order, my life will become calm, and the merry-go-round confusion in my mind will cease. This morning, though, I realise I have gone too far. Am still in the bath, having soaked for hours and washed my hair, and have just let the water out. In order to save time and effort later, I decide to clean the bath from within, so reach for the scourer and green scrubby thing and address the porcelain. Finally get out, having had to have a second mini-bath to remove spattered scouring cream, wrinkled but triumphant. There is no dirt anywhere to be seen, and no clutter. Have done a DIY feng shui, and am now a convert to the minimal lifestyle. Subsequently attack piles of paper, bowls of odds and ends and the kitchen cupboards.

  The dustbins are groaning and looking very un-feng shui’ed, but Rose says dustbins don’t count. They do to the dogs, who returned yesterday from the kennels at a price far exceeding the total value of the three of them, and are sniffing about in the bin shed hoping to find food. They cannot know that I have not cooked anything since the children left, but have been on a self-cleansing programme as rigorous as the housework campaign. Anyway, only have two saucepans left as I took a Zen view on the others and relegated them for having blackened bottoms and dented sides post-camping trip. Never mind. Getting married will improve my saucepan stock. Not content with cleaning the house, I also pick lettuce and fry bread to make Caesar salad for lunch. I am openly sucking up by doing this, as it is the boys’ favourite – appropriate and pleasing considering the enormous lettuce reserves in my vegetable garden at present.

  Have got everything ready and am sitting in the shade of the lime tree sewing a heap of Barbie’s plastic shoes around the armholes of a pink T-shirt, when a car purrs up to the house. In it is a furious-looking family I have never seen before. Jump back and assume crouched position behind the flower bed, peering between borage and feathery fennel leaves at them. They are thumping around, moving things and beginning to climb out of the car. With a start, I realise that some of them are my children, but they all have white panels down their noses and look as if they belong to a bizarre sect. Helena has brought them, and she is first out of the car, hopping on to the gravel and stretching like an ill-tempered gull. Holly and Ivy, her dear little toddlers, are also wearing beaks; they open their door and hurl items of The Beauty’s luggage on to the ground. I wait for a moment until Helena’s back is turned so she doesn’t see that I have been hiding in the bushes, and jump up and scuttle round to greet them.

  ‘Darlings. What has happened to your noses?’ The Beauty reaches me first, and I see that the marks are not so pronounced on her, but are still visible and are the residue of a week of being forced to wear sun-protection beaks. Giles and Felix have even less of a mark, but from the poisoned glowering expressions focused on Helena, it is clear that the holiday was not a success.

  ‘Must go, I don’t think they’ve forgotten anything, but do ring and let me know if they have – actually, don’t ring, a postcard will do fine,’ she trills, scrabbling to get away before I come too close. However, I am keen to see her odd markings properly, and make a grandmother’s-footstep-sized leap across the driveway and am instantly at her side. Hah! She has a sunscreening plastic beak still attached to her nose. This accounts for the precise edges of her luminous white scowl.

  She forces a smile, and hisses, ‘I can’t get it off. That child—’ she breaks off to hurl a vile glance at The Beauty, who is sweetly hugging Lowly on the sun-warmed doorstep, ‘that child mixed Super Glue with my very expensive organic suncream. I have been stuck with this … this … this beak on my face all week, and I am going to the private hospital in Cambridge this afternoon to have it removed.’ A sob chokes her, and in sym
pathy, dear little Holly and Ivy begin to whimper in the back. Not wishing to delay her a moment from her operation, I wave her away, affecting contrition for The Beauty’s behaviour by keeping my head humbly bowed.

  Turn to embrace my children, and find they have vanished, so follow a trail of sweet wrappers and shoes into the house and through into the playroom, where all three are in a row on the sofa, and looking oddly unlike themselves, as they often do when returning from Charles. They also seem to have grown; The Beauty’s skirt, which when she left was knee-length, is now a micro-mini, and Felix’s shorts are similarly diminished on his long legs.

  ‘Oh my loves, I’ve missed you,’ I warble, sinking down in front of them, arms outstretched, knowing that I must keep going and not allow myself to wind down to silence. ‘And I’ve got some very important news to tell you.’ My heart is bumping in my chest, and I have to grab The Beauty to prevent myself from running out of the room.

  ‘Mind out, Mum, I’m trying to do this brilliant cheat.’ Felix pushes me out of the way of the television screen and settles his control gun on his knee.

  ‘We’ve got a magazine that tells you loads of brilliant ways to get up a level on the Dinosaur Death game,’ says Giles kindly, as if I am a child clamouring to join in.

  ‘Mummy look. Mouldy Baby’s burnt her nose,’ The Beauty pipes from the table where she has felt-penned a red line down the middle of her doll’s face. She waves the doll to show me, shaking her head and turning down her mouth in mock misery. There is never going to be a good time, and at least if they really freak, I can change my mind, I think weakly to myself, before closing my eyes and launching into the cold, deep water of confession.

  ‘Anyway, I think you should know – no, anyway – it’s really exciting, I’ve decided – no, anyway – the thing I want to tell you is that – no—’

  Giles suddenly switches off the Nintendo and there is a horrible whine ending in silence. ‘Come on Mum, spit it out,’ he says, grinning encouragingly.

  I shut my eyes and do as he tells me. ‘Hedley has asked me to marry him and I have said yes. But if you don’t want me to—’

  ‘Yesss. Look at that Giles, I’ve done it!’

  Open my eyes, and find that none of them is looking at me. Felix has turned the Nintendo back on and is rapt, doubled over the controls, Giles is helping him, and The Beauty wasn’t listening in the first place, and is now in the depths of the dressing-up box, her bottom high in the air as she delves. She turns back to catch my eye, dabbing now at Mouldy Baby’s nose with a hanky. ‘God’s sake Mummy,’ she says briskly, ‘Mouldy Baby’s got really horruble nose trubble.’

  Tempted to tiptoe from the room and attack the brandy bottle, but Giles is paying more attention than it would appear.

  ‘Why did you say yes?’

  ‘Mum, I don’t think you want to marry him. He’s quite old and I like his house, but we prefer to be here, don’t we?’ Felix glances up for a moment to make his point, then turns back to the screen for another assault on the next level.

  Giles pushes back his fringe to stare uninterrupted into my eyes, and his level gaze has me squirming.

  ‘Why did you say yes, Mum? I thought you would marry David. Don’t you think you should see if he wants to before you go off with someone we hardly know?’

  What a sensible boy Giles is. Wish I had asked him what he thought earlier. Sensation of shattered porcelain, glass, hearts, trust and television screens interrupted by wailing from the depths of the dressing-up box.

  ‘Mummyyy, ooohh nooo!! I done a pooo!! Mummmyyy. Right now, I said.’

  Oh, God. Unbearable. Perhaps I should email David and crawl to him, begging him to come home forthwith.

  August 21st

  Wilt, wilt, wilt. I am so sick of the summer and of being hot. The days are much too long, and there is too much evening in which to brood. Hedley has brought Tamsin to tea and he is wearing a bow tie. Giles is scarcely speaking to me and has taken to locking himself in my study doing the internet and probably visiting dreadful unsuitable dysfunctional-family web sites. He claims to be checking out the stock market, and wants me to give him my credit-card number so that he can invest. ‘I’ll give you the cash and you give me the number,’ he urges. ‘I promise it will only be thirty pounds. That’s all I’ve got.’

  He does not congratulate Hedley, but walks straight past him, and Tamsin, who has had her hair woven into hundreds of tiny plaits and looks about seventeen suddenly. Giles pulls his bike from the tangle of punctured tyres and lawnmowers in the barn and begins to glide away. Hedley looks forlornly after him, the monobrow furrowed and wiggling like a black caterpillar.

  ‘I’m going to see Granny,’ say Giles, and I nod and cower, cravenly accepting any words he deigns to throw my way. Try to pretend this is standard behaviour and call after him, ‘All right darling, splendid. See you later.’

  Must now try to convince Hedley that all the children are delighted, despite the contrary evidence of Giles’s departure. Felix’s remarks do not back me up, and he delivers them with pithy regularity.

  ‘Hedley’s too old to get married. He’s had his day,’ is the ice-breaker, followed by: ‘I think weddings are for saddos,’ uttered darkly with a nasty look. Sudden animation takes over, and Felix leaps up from the grass where he has been lying with various war lords and warriors. ‘And you needn’t think I’m going to be a soppy pageboy, because I’m not. I’d rather swim in shark-infested waters.’

  The telephone rings, and I gratefully rush to answer it, leaving Felix to turn his remarks into interrogation of the wretched Hedley.

  ‘What is the point of you marrying Mum anyway? She’s got us. Why don’t you find someone more your own age who hasn’t got anyone? Miss Snape at school would be good. I’ll introduce you, if you take me to school when term starts. It doesn’t matter that she’s got a few hairs like a moustache and looks like a witch, because she’s very nice and she could shave. And anyway, Mum says looks are not everything—’

  It is my mother on the telephone.

  ‘Giles is here, in a very odd mood. He says I must ask you what the matter with him is.’ She sighs an expulsion of cigarette smoke. ‘I do wish these boys weren’t so moody,’ she complains. ‘What can be wrong with him?’

  Am thus forced to tell her the news in a defensive and furtive manner rather than arriving with Hedley and a lubricating bottle at her house to tell her triumphantly. ‘I think he wants me to tell you I’m getting married.’

  Her surprise is palpable. ‘Goodness. Are you sure you are? Don’t you mean that you have been married? And now you aren’t? You must be confused, Venetia, it’s the sun, you know.’

  Grit my teeth. ‘No, I don’t mean that. I am getting married again. To Hedley Sale. All right?’ The earpiece and my head fill with one of her irritating roller-coaster noises.

  ‘Mmmm, well I never. Quick work, Venetia, I must say. I do think the boys need a man around, but Hedley …’ she sighs, then repeats incredulously, ‘You … You and Hedley… Oh, well. Poor Giles.’ She puts the phone down, leaving me seething and embarrassed.

  August 24th

  Giles has not returned from visiting my mother since he cycled over there three days ago, and Felix and The Beauty respond to the unsettled air in the house by mounting a campaign of exploitation and racketeering that could be taken as a blueprint by international mafia bosses.

  They have set up a stall on the road by the gate and are doing a brisk trade in Giles’s CDs and other stolen goods. I remain blissfully unaware, humming in my study and attempting to create a filing system that will mean something to me for more than twenty-four hours. Filing actually means ‘piling’, as I do not have anywhere to put papers except in unresolved heaps on the floor. Should I put the Rare Poultry Society leaflet in my garden pile, my vet and inoculations pile, or should I start a new mound called simply ‘places’? Have similar trouble with the guarantee and instructions leaflet for the computer, and with the rota, already sent,
for parental nursery-school duties next term. In the end, move these and several other items like them from the desk to the floor without sorting them at all. Am beginning to realise that it is not filing I need to do, but wallpapering. If I could stick every bit of paper I need on to the wall in my study, I would be able to look at them while on the telephone, and would thus be constantly ahead of paperwork. Have a rush of enthusiasm for this plan until I realise that what I am thinking of is just a larger noticeboard, and I have three of these already, layered with much flapping and unlooked-at paper, and I should now spend half an hour sorting them. Somewhat defeated, I clear a space on a chair by the window and immerse myself in an old newspaper in the log basket. Am interrupted, after a while, by the arrival of the postman, chuckling. He tells me that I should be proud of my little entrepreneurs.

  ‘What little entrepreneurs?’ I ask suspiciously, cursing inwardly because I knew I should have been attending to the children instead of fiddling about in here.

  ‘Well two of your kids are down on the corner selling CDs, very reasonably. I bought this one from them; I gave them a quid, I thought seventy pence was robbing them.’ He splutters with laughter and waves my favourite and rarest Waylon Jennings album triumphantly.

  I lean into his red van and snatch the CD.

  ‘I’m afraid that wasn’t theirs to sell. You’ll have to ask for your money back.’

  Disconsolate, the postman reverses away down the drive, muttering, ‘You should keep an eye on those children, they’re dangerous.’

  I follow, moments later, allowing an interval to elapse for the return of his money as I know there will be an ugly scene about it. Can tell that this was the case when I arrive at the marketeers’ stall. This consists of a small hexagonal silver paper table from the playroom and an upturned bucket upon which are displayed various pieces of my jewellery and other miscellaneous possessions of mine and Giles’s, as well as David’s cordless drill and a selection of other tools. The hectic flush on The Beauty’s cheeks indicates that her brush with the postman was furious, and Felix, appropriately dodgy-looking in a greasy old pork pie from the dressing-up box confirms this: ‘She bit the postman’s finger when he asked for his money back. You shouldn’t have interfered, Mum.’