Hens Dancing Read online

  Put phone down and dance about, singing with joy. Must ask David to build some more things immediately. We will become like Shepperton Studios. Hooray. Rich, rich, rich. Must give David a cut, in fact, or go into business with him. Where is David? He is supposed to be here.

  February 10th

  Sudden landscaping interest has arisen today, because marvellous Marion has sent a lorry load of box-hedging plants to say thank you for Soppy Dog. Having no artistic flair myself, am flummoxed by all this evergreen twiggery. Telephone Rose.

  ‘You must have a knot garden,’ she says. ‘I’ll get Tristan to draw a plan and I’ll fax it to you.’

  Awful Zen fax arrives with absurd garden nothing like mine, having very straight lines, lots of tiny white chip gravel and smooth concrete paths. Look out of the study window at weed-strewn wilderness and become despondent. Take fax to David, who is in overdrive and is now creating a grotto in The Beauty’s room. He is hammering and singing ‘Sorrow’ by David Bowie. It is one of my favourites. Stand behind him, listening, mesmerised by the rhythmic hammering and murmured song.

  ‘The only thing I ever got from you was sorrow.’

  He knows all the words, and carries on through the verses until Digger, curled on The Beauty’s bed, notices me and thumps his tail. David turns his head and smiles a greeting. Have astonishing sensation of being quite naked with him looking at me. So powerful is this feeling that I find myself glancing down to make sure my jeans are still there. Start blabbering to hide my confusion.

  ‘I wonder – I don’t suppose – would you be interested? No. What I mean is, can you make a knot garden?’

  He looks utterly blank. I pass the fax. He stares at it and then at me again. Fear I have offended him somehow.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll just go and plant the trees any old how. It can’t be hard.’

  Rush outside in a chaos of irritation that David is not making the knot garden for me. Why am I so neurotic that I can’t even have a conversation now without thinking I’m naked? Must change my life and get out more. Or not. Perhaps I am one of nature’s hermits. David shouts out of the window at me.

  ‘Sorry, I got the wrong end of the stick. Of course I’ll make you a knot garden. Don’t do any digging now. I’ll draw a plan and do it for you. But I can’t for a few days. So just leave it or you’ll do your back in.’

  ‘All right. I’ll just do this row of plants before it’s time to collect the boys,’ I yell back, relieved that I no longer feel naked, and enjoying the hot physical exertion of the task. Once again have become a peasant from Anna Karenina. Dig a satisfactory square for my seventh tiny box plant, and am heaving taupe-coloured clay wodge into the wheelbarrow, when shooting pain cleaves my spine at the waist. Ping, just like a trouser button, except that instead of the midriff sagging, my vertebra has turned red hot and spiked. Stagger inside shrieking for help and collapse in agony on the kitchen floor.

  February 12th

  In bed officially now, with two Florence Nightingale attendants, one with purple hair, the other about two feet tall. Drug haze clears enough for me to identify them as my mother and The Beauty. Both have acquired starched aprons, red crosses and little hats like napkins. They flit and glide about my room, plumping cushions, tweaking the bowl of snowdrops and black hellebores and generally ministering. Have been given elephant tranquillisers or equivalent, so am in mad pink-edged, soft-focus world, and have no cares or responsibilities at all.

  February 13th

  Telephone interrupts fluffy thoughts. It is a minion from the Mo Loam Temple to Beauty.

  ‘Mrs Denny, you have missed your appointment and must pay the full fee of a hundred and twenty pounds immediately. There is a waiting list here, you know.’

  ‘But I’ve already paid a deposit,’ I protest, still on cloud nine, but coming back to earth with a bump.

  ‘This is immaterial,’ drones the minion. ‘Shall I book you another appointment to redeem your deposit, or shall we call it a day?’

  ‘Do what you like.’ Slam telephone down and weep for several minutes. The Beauty brings her kangaroo over to comfort me.

  February 14th

  Valentine’s Day again. Am allowed to get up today, but can’t be bothered. Self-pity has overtaken backache, thanks to wonder drugs, and I lie in bed with no prospect of being sent any cards and the future as a crippled old mother of three before me. Not even a beauty treatment glistens on the horizon. My mother is still installed, looking after the children. She will probably have to stay for ever. Through my bedroom door I hear muffled voices and pattering feet. The gravel crunches beneath car tyres, heralding the postman. Must get up. Pattering feet get louder and louder.

  ‘Mum, Mum, even Rags has got a card. Felix hates his again this year. The Beauty’s got two. Look, look.’

  Quite absurd at my age to mind so much about Valentine’s Day. I shall rise above it. But I want a card. Why has everyone except me got one?

  The children swarm into the room, a bundle of envelopes coloured blue and pink and green like sugared almonds in their hands. Felix waves a duck-egg blue one. It has tiny gold stars dusted across it, and it encapsulates everything that I love about stationery.

  ‘Look, Mum. This one is for you,’ he says. Giles has opened Rags’s card and is reading it to her.

  ‘Mummy, it says “Two out of three ain’t bad.” What does it mean?’ Have no interest in cryptic canine messages.

  ‘Oh, I expect it’s from Digger. It must mean the puppies,’ I suggest. Dress at top speed, staring at my card without opening it. Savouring the fact of having it. It is here. It is mine. It is, undoubtedly, a Valentine’s Day card. How I have longed for this moment.

  The boys depart, leaving twists of torn pastel paper, and charge downstairs to show my mother Rags’s card and to see what The Beauty got. Hear them all clattering and shouting in the kitchen. Heart thuds madly as I approach the card. Feel exactly as I did when opening my A-level results, tight in the throat, my skin electric, my teeth clenched. Pick it up, turn it over, but am too overexcited to read the envelope, even though I know I should be poring over the postmark. Tear the envelope wide open. No card. This is terrible. No blooming effusions or lines of poetry. I wanted it to be Byron. I wanted someone to have chosen:

  She walks in Beauty like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

  And all that’s best of dark and light

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes

  But no one has. A slip of paper falls out and onto the floor. Tears well and swim in my eyes as I pick it up.

  Admired Venetia, look out of your window.

  Thrilling, just thrilling. Rush to the window, fling open the curtains and look. There below, where I was digging in deepest mud a few days ago, is heaven. A tiny, intricate knot garden, gravel gleaming between the curves and swells of the hedging, and seats with backs like scallop shells at either end. Four slender trees stand among the box, their branches naked save for a thread of silver stars. The whole garden is not much bigger than my kitchen. It sparkles, still damp with morning dew; precious and perfect as a jewel.

  The back door opens, and Giles and Felix, in wellingtons, charge into the yard, The Beauty riding piggyback on Giles’s shoulders. They run through the orchard, scattering a trio of hens who are making a meal out of some worms in a molehill. The boys pause beneath my window and survey the knot garden critically.

  The Beauty, sensing a celebration, claps, and shouts, ‘Hooray.’

  ‘Cool,’ says Giles. ‘He managed to get it finished in time after all.’ Felix sits down on a bench.

  ‘Mum will probably cry when she sees it,’ he remarks. ‘I would if I were her.’

  ‘What do you mean? I think she’ll really like it,’ Giles is indignant.

  ‘I mean that kind of crying she does when she’s happy. You know, like at the school play.’

  ‘Oh, yes. She will.’ Both fall silent for a moment. ‘Come on. Let’s go inside. It’s freezing.�
��

  The first sun for days struggles through and dances on the leaves and stars and branches in my new garden. I lean in from the window and turn to go downstairs. David is on the threshold of my room.

  A Note on the Author

  Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels, Come and Tell Me Some Lies, The Hook, Hens Dancing, Summertime, Green Grass, Poppyland, A Perfect Life and most recently, From a Distance. She has also written a novel for young adults, Phosphorescence. She is a regular contributor to Country Life and the Sunday Telegraph and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the Guardian UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives in Cley next the Sea, Norfolk.

  Also by Raffaella Barker

  Come and Tell Me Some Lies

  The Hook

  Phosphorescence

  Summertime

  Green Grass

  A Perfect Life

  Poppyland

  From a Distance

  Also Available by Raffaella Barker

  COME AND TELL ME SOME LIES

  Gabriella lives in a damp, ramshackle, book-strewn manor in Norfolk with her tempestuous poet father and unconventional mother. Alongside her ever-expanding set of siblings and half-siblings, numerous pets and her father’s rag-tag admirers, Gabriella navigates a chaotic childhood of wild bohemian parties and fluctuating levels of poverty. Longing to be normal, Gabriella enrols in a strict day school, only to find herself balancing two very different lives. Struggling to keep the eccentricities of her family contained, her failure to achieve conformity amongst her peers is endearing, and absolute.

  Come and Tell Me Some Lies is Raffaella Barker’s enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can’t help be anything but.

  ‘Funny … Clever and touching’ Guardian

  THE HOOK

  Christy Naylor was forced to grow up quickly. Still reeling with anger after the death of her mother, she abandons college in order to help her father uproot from suburbia and start a new life on a swampy fish farm out in the sticks, a prize that he won in a shady game of poker.

  Amid this turmoil, looms the mysterious Mick Fleet, tall, powerful and charismatic. Unsettled and unsure of herself, Christy is hooked on his intense charm. She knows nothing about him yet she feels like she is being swallowed up in his embrace and she plunges into a love affair blind to the catastrophe he will bring…

  ‘Stylish and insightful … With the pace and verve of a thriller’ Independent

  SUMMERTIME

  After one year of being ‘buffered from single-motherhood’ by her boyfriend, David, Venetia Summers suddenly finds her life unravelling as he is sent to the Brazilian jungle and she is left alone in Norfolk. As chaos reigns in her home and her three children run wilder than ever she finds her life further complicated by a bad-mouthed green parrot, a burgeoning fashion career designing demented cardigans and her brother’s outrageous wedding. As emails languish unanswered, phone lines cut out and long-distance relationships prove both vexing and bewildering, life and love take some very unexpected turns.

  ‘My advice is not to read Summertime in public. You’ll giggle, you’ll snort, you’ll make an exhibition of yourself … I loved Hens Dancing, and this is better yet’ Country Life

  GREEN GRASS

  Laura Sale has grown tired of her life. Her daily routine of dividing her time between pandering to the demands of her challenging conceptual artist husband, Inigo and those of their thirteen-year-old twins Dolly and Fred, has taken its toll. She longs to remember what makes her happy. A chance encounter with Guy, her first love, is the catalyst she needs, and she swaps North London for the rural idyll she grew up in. In her new Norfolk home Laura finds herself confronting old ghosts, ferrets, an ungracious goat and a collapsing relationship. As she starts to savour the space she has craved, and she takes control of her destiny, Laura finds it lit with possibility.

  ‘I love Raffaella Barker’s books – so funny and acerbic’ Maggie O’Farrell

  A PERFECT LIFE

  The Stone family live a seemingly fairy-tale existence, complete with fire pit barbeques and seaside picnics in their idyllic home in rural Norfolk. Nick, Angel and their four children appear to lead a charmed life.

  But if everything is so perfect why is Nick away all of the time? Why is every conversation between husband and wife filled with growing silence? And why does their eldest child seem so disillusioned?

  We all want a perfect life, but at what price?

  Come and Tell Me Some Lies is Raffaella Barker’s enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can’t help be anything but.

  ‘To write well and with such open-hearted affection is an achievement’ Observer

  POPPYLAND

  On a freezing cold night in an unfamiliar city, a man meets a woman. The encounter lasts just moments, they part barely knowing one another’s names, they make no plans to meet again. But both are left breathless.

  Five years on they live thousands of miles apart and live totally separate lives, except that they both still think about that night. So when they meet again it seems clear that they will do all they can to try and stay together, but can it be that easy? Will they be able to escape their past? Will they be able to take the risk they know they should?

  ‘A modern day Brief Encounter’ Daily Express

  FROM A DISTANCE

  In April, 1946, Michael returns on a troopship from the war. In shock, he is caught in a moment at a station, and on impulse, takes the train heading west to Cornwall. In doing so he changes his destiny.

  May, 2012, and Kit, a charming stranger, arrives in a coastal Norfolk village to take up his inheritance – a de-commissioned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past, but now sweeping it’s beam forward through time. Married Luisa falters in the flow of her life – suspended, invisible – as her children begin to fly the nest. When Kit and Luisa meet, neither can escape the consequences of the split-second decision made by Michael all those years ago.

  ‘I love Raffaella Barker’s books – so funny and acerbic’ Maggie O’Farrell

  www.bloomsbury.com/RaffaellaBarker

  First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Headline

  This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © 1999 Raffaella Barker

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  The right of Raffaella Barker to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, words and music by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster © 1969, Combine Music Co, USA. Reproduced by permission of EMI Songs Ltd, London WC2 0EA.

  ‘Sorrow’, words and music by Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gotte © 1965 Grand Canyon Music Inc/EMI Partnership Ltd. Worldwide print rights controlled by Warner Bros Inc, USA/IMP Ltd, reproduced by permission of IMP Ltd.

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square,

  London WC1B 3DP

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for
this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978-1-4088-5161-6

  To find out more about our authors and their books please visit www.bloomsbury.com where you will find extracts, author interviews and details of forthcoming events, and to be the first to hear about latest releases and special offers, sign up for our newsletters here.