Summertime Page 4

  However, do not wish my own body to be scrutinised, so mutter, ‘Gosh Bronwyn, great minds think alike,’ before scuttling away behind my feather boa which I have positioned as if it is a fig leaf and I am Eve.

  Find Vivienne talking to the Master of the Hunt, who has assumed the glassy, blissed-out look that all men, particularly those in positions of authority, get when they talk to Vivienne. She is suitably sympathetic, and dismisses the Master with smooth good manners before following me towards the door where I am skulking.

  ‘Poor you, I’m sure Bronwyn feels awful too, and particularly as you look so great in it.’

  ‘Not as great as her,’ I wail, dragging Vivienne out into the dark and across to the ladies’ Portaloo. ‘Come on, we’ll have to adapt it.’

  I arrange myself expectantly, standing on the loo seat, looking down at Vivienne. She turns me round in a full circle, frowning, then dips into her handbag to pull out a tiny pair of scissors. So brilliant, just like a Georgette Heyer character. I am charmed.

  ‘Wow, a reticule full of useful things.’

  Vivienne snaps the air with the scissors, giving an impression of utter competence at dress redesign in public lavatories.

  ‘Let’s cut it off above your knees, and tie your boa around your neck like a choker,’ she suggests sadistically. Have no choice but to comply, but for me the evening never recovers, and my knees, which I was not expecting to have on show, become a preoccupation. The purple velvet boots from the charity shop which seemed beyond chic when peeping from beneath a long dress, now contribute to my Euro-vision Song Contest look and make me feel like a New Seeker.

  As the dances slow, and the red coats lasso their now intoxicated prey into cheek-to-cheek shufflings on the dance floor, my eyelids begin to droop and I could weep if I had drunk more, so great is my longing for David to be there to take me home. I am deeply relieved when Vivienne and Simon at last approach, holding hands in a touching manner which only contributes to my big-kneed ugly-sister feeling. I should have brought a date. I shouldn’t have come here alone. David should have been here.

  Teeter out behind Simon and Vivienne, nursing self-pity as we thread through the long grass and cow pats. I am tired, sober and relieved to be leaving without having injured myself. The only glimmer on the horizon is that Bronwyn Butterstone has been removed in an ambulance, having fallen off the dance floor and into a pothole. I did not see this, being too mesmerised by the sight of the blacksmith, who is the size of three usual human beings, on the Bucking Bronco and then upside down with his legs wiggling like a vast beetle, on the giant mattress on the floor. Vivienne fills me in.

  ‘She’s sprained her ankle quite badly, and Brian, her husband, is furious because he’ll have to look after the children on his own.’ She pauses to negotiate a deep rut in the ground, then continues: ‘He was even crosser when he realised she was so drunk she couldn’t even feel any pain.’

  ‘But she will after they’ve operated,’ I point out, forcing my face out of its spreading smile with some difficulty.

  ‘She is going to feel so foolish in the morning,’ remarks Vivienne, and both of us shake our heads, revelling in our own sobriety. Wish I had a crocheted shawl around my shoulders to complete the effect of ascetic old harridan, or else a vast bottle of whisky to glug, to anaesthetise myself from the gruelling effects of rural debauchery.

  Thumping music and the shrieks of those unwise enough to have a go on the electric Bucking Bronco accompany us out through crisp darkness to the car park, where orange licks the windscreens in small tongues of reflected light from guttering wax flares.

  Simon is ahead of us, shouting back, ‘There’ll be a bit of a frost tonight, but not enough to worry the blossom. Now where’s our damned car?’ He suddenly stops, and exclaims to the ground ‘Goodness. Who’s there? Do you need a light?’ Peering past him, I dimly detect a black hump moving about on the grass. Vivienne and I sweep up our skirts, or what is left of them, tilt our noses skywards and prepare to walk past this drunkard without a second glance. Simon can never resist a chance to boss someone around, and squats next to this hapless soul, intent on helping him find his feet. Much heavy sighing from me and Vivienne, shivering in our feather boas. I am particularly cold owing to the lack of knee coverage, and wish I had kept the extra length of stretchy fabric to wrap round my legs like a muff in the car, instead of throwing it into the bushes behind the Portaloo. We lean on the car bonnet, clucking and becoming more crabby and old ladyish by the minute.

  ‘Why can’t Simon just mind his own business,’ sighs Vivienne. Sighing turns to catlike hissing when Simon approaches us with the man.

  ‘This is Hedley Sale. Hedley, my wife Vivienne and our friend Venetia Summers.’

  Can’t see the point of shaking hands with someone so drunk they have been crawling about at my feet, so ignore the stranger and address Simon crossly. ‘Come on Simon, we’re freezing …’ Tail off as Vivienne nudges me and nods her head towards the stranger, who is trying to shake hands with us. He starts to speak in tongues.

  ‘Cum redeunt, titubant et sunt spectacula vulgi, et fortunato obvia turba vocat.’

  The whites of his eyes gleam blue in the moonlight and I struggle to remember whether this is a sign of health or lunacy.

  ‘What’s going on, Venetia? Who is this man?’ Vivienne whispers, interrupting Simon, who overrides her with his loud translation of the tongues.

  ‘Ovid.’ He scratches his head, presumably to stimulate his brain cells. ‘Something about staggering home and a sight to behold,’ he says reflectively. ‘Funny, I haven’t heard that for years, but recognised it instantly—’ He is interrupted by the drunkard, who is doing English now.

  ‘And the crowds that meet them call them privileged.’ He turns to Simon. ‘Yes, Ovid. It’s the springtime orgy, which was held in mid-March. The point of it was to get very drunk, as the theory was that each drink prolonged your life.’

  Simon has unlocked the car now, and I am halfway in, but can’t resist muttering: ‘Well, not much has changed, but I’d like to go home before I die of cold rather than lack of alcohol.’ I sound about as glamorous and well read as the chief jam-maker of the Women’s Institute, but am long past caring. Simon pushes me on to the back seat, then directs the sozzled loony to sit next to me. He settles down, and leaning back he closes his eyes and prepares for slumber.

  Simon, avuncular to the last, pats my knee and whispers, ‘He’s lost his car keys in the grass, so I said we’d give him a lift home as he’s practically your next-door neighbour, Venetia. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t met before.’

  I am not surprised. I am not in the habit of hanging around speaking Latin on street corners, or rather in fields. Feel nervously out of my depth and wiggle as far from him as possible while trying to pull the shreds of dress down to knee level.

  ‘Nice legs,’ he says, in English, and I realise that his eyes are not shut at all, but that he has been watching me trying to organise myself, and that I have met him before. He is the car-crash man.

  April

  April 3rd

  Sensation of utter uselessness has enveloped me. Have noticed that I have started hanging around in doorways a lot, but never seem to make my way into any room to do any particular thing. The kitchen means cooking and clearing up, but any inspiration for cooking has long since departed, along with creative supermarket shopping. And anyway, Giles has entered a phase of fussiness and autocracy last demonstrated by him in toddlerhood, and will only eat steak, pasta or Grape Nuts. He is not offered steak, so his diet has been whittled down to Grape Nuts at either end of the day with pasta and Parmesan in between. With nothing green passing his lips, he will soon resemble a maggot or worse. Or perhaps he will become a millionaire and write a book called The White Diet. In fact, it could be quite balanced to eat only white food – after all, there’s sliced bread, milk, pasta, cream cheese, fish, chicken, the occasional anaemic Chinese leaf, onions, white chocolate … It doesn’t sound a
t all bad. I shall observe Giles closely for a month to see if it makes a difference. Can’t help wishing Charles was the kind of ex-husband I could telephone to talk to about such matters. But my only attempt to do so, when Giles’s start-of-holiday door-slamming became unbearable at Christmas, was met with a response so inadequate I cannot be bothered to try again. Charles may have been in a meeting on this occasion, but he is always in meetings, and half of them are with the sports channel on the radio. Anyway, he came on the line crackling with irritation that Minna, Desmond’s then girlfriend, now fiancée, who works for him, had put me through to him.

  ‘Make it brief, Venetia,’ he said testily. I deliberately didn’t.

  ‘Hello Charles, how are you? Yes, I’m very well, thank you for asking. I just wanted to have a conversation with you about—’

  He interrupted me, fuming. ‘I simply haven’t got time. I’ll send the cheque,’ and that was it. I know now that I am on my own in parenting, but at least I used to have David to support me.

  It is late morning now, and I am still loitering in the hall, reluctant to go into my study or upstairs to make beds. From here, my view of the knot garden ripples in the old, stretched glass of the front door, then comes crisply into line through the abutting new pane, replaced when Giles was over-vigorous with a cricket ball. The ducks waddle past, leaving a trail of darker green through the grey sparkle of dew on the grass, and remind me that I have not fed them. It’s too late now, though; they are off to the water meadows for the day, and will only return at dusk, following the same trajectory that they have just described. Leaning my forehead on the window pane to glimpse the last waggling tail as they stay in strict formation to scramble through the hedge, I am still rooted when the last of them has vanished between a cluster of primroses and sharp new iris leaves.

  The Beauty started at nursery school today, and this rite of passage must have something to do with the cotton-wool-and-rag-doll version of life I am experiencing. I lingered when delivering her at nine o’clock, unused to the notion of a morning without her gnomic assistance with my daily tasks. Through hanging around, I was able to meet her classmates, including the redoubtable Timmy, a toddling cross-dresser. The Beauty was enchanted when Timmy arrived in her new classroom, executed a delightful curtsy and announced to the assembled children and the small mousy teacher, ‘It’s time for Timmy to dress up.’

  He then applied himself to the dressing-up box, and was swiftly transformed into a middle-aged matron, complete with black patent shoes with bows and a floral nylon dress, perma-pleated and sporting a bigger pussy-cat bow at the neck. Thus clad, Timmy set about the nursery’s toy kitchen, announcing gladly, ‘I’ll be Hannibal the Cannibal when I grow up, and eat everyone’s gizzards.’ Gruesome, but effective. The Beauty could hardly tear herself away to say goodbye to me, so keen was she to be crammed into the oven by darling Timmy. I crossed the road to the car, longing to have the potato-sack weight of The Beauty lagging behind, dragging me back by the hand when I try to leave school each morning after dropping off Giles and Felix.

  It is difficult to keep up with the changing heart of motherhood, which yesterday morning had me bellowing, ‘God, I wish you could go to boarding school,’ at my precious tiny girl, who in a high-spirited moment had dabbed a few blobs of nail polish on the dog’s paws and surrounding carpet.

  Reach home full of good intentions as far as both work and domestic efficiency are concerned, and find the answerphone flashing with a message from Rose.

  ‘Hello, Venetia, I’m sorry not to have rung before to thank you for the lovely Easter break, but life has been crazy. I just wanted to say that Theo’s got hand, foot and mouth disease. I’m really sorry. It’s extremely contagious, and there’s nothing you can do except administer Calpol. I do hope none of yours gets it. Bye.’

  Mental inventory of all the children’s many physical blemishes yields the conviction that all of them are riddled with this vile-sounding plague. Am rather impressed by Rose’s sang-froid, and long to emulate it, but a glance at the medical dictionary which David bought at a car boot sale is discouraging.

  The child will develop blisters in the mouth, on the hands and the soles of the feet. These are likely to cause considerable pain. There is no cure.

  Decide to go and see my mother, who will know what to do and may have some sort of witchy prescription for the poor little infectees.

  The kitchen table at my mother’s house has vanished beneath a landslide of envelopes and cardboard purple hearts. My mother and Desmond, both wearing spectacles and expressions of demented determination, are sitting side by side, confronting this mountain.

  ‘I’m sure we’ve done Minna’s aunt,’ says my mother, smoothing her hand over a foothill of purple hearts with the effect of transforming it into a torrent which rushes on to the floor. My mother pays no attention to the cascade of invitations but muses, ‘I did her envelope as well, I can remember her address.’

  Desmond has a small address book on his knee and is referring to it, muttering under his breath, ‘Bastard, bastard. Why do we have to have invitations? Can’t we just put up a few flyers and have a guest list on the door?’

  Leaning over his shoulder, I pick up a clutch of hearts. ‘These are lovely invitations. What a brilliant idea to have purple hearts.’

  ‘Yes, but I think people will get the wrong idea,’ frowns my mother, pushing back her chair and lighting a cigarette which she retrieves from behind her ear. ‘Purple hearts are downers, after all, and we don’t want anyone thinking this is a depressing occasion.’

  Desmond sees this as a signal for a break, and stands up to put the kettle on, his quiff of hair brushing the low ceiling of the cottage kitchen.

  ‘I keep telling you,’ he shouts, goaded by exasperation into making coffee for all of us instead of just himself, ‘None of my generation was around in the sixties. We were innocent children playing with Action Man, while you were acting out your crazy fantasies. None of us took purple hearts. They just weren’t for us. Neither was acid. It’s just your gang of tripped-out old hippies we’ll have to look out for. Or what’s left of them, rather.’ He turns to me, slopping milk into a mug with two spoonfuls of instant coffee, his raised eyebrow a command to listen, as he cranks himself further into righteous mode.

  ‘You know, I reckon at least half of Mum’s friends from the sixties have fried their brains with some substance or other. Look at The Gnome – what planet must he be on to want to go and live on a rock off the coast of Scotland? Apparently he’s got a teepee instead of his caravan now.’

  Mention of The Gnome brings mistiness to my mother’s eyes, and she absently ignites another cigarette, forgetful of the one she already has smouldering in her bull-terrier-shaped ashtray.

  ‘I like teepees,’ she muses. ‘They’re better than Peta’s yurt, at any rate. At least they’re small.’ She gazes into the middle distance, then jumps up. ‘Oh, how I wish I still had The Gnome here. That woman Peta is driving me insane. She’s put a healing arch up by the stream and she’s decorating it with cottonwool blobs and red felt. She says it’s going to be the centrepiece for a festival to celebrate the cat.’ She pauses and drags on her cigarette with feeling. ‘The cat, for heaven’s sake. It would be different if it were the bull terrier, or even The Beauty, but cats – who cares? I wish she’d just stick to basket-weaving.’

  ‘And I wish you’d stick to your job of sending invitations,’ snaps Desmond. ‘You know we’ve got to get the whole lot in the post tonight, before Minna gets here, and we’re seeing the vicar in a minute.’

  Anxious not to get back home to do any work, I offer to help and am given my own small pile of purple hearts. I do three in a quick burst of efficiency, then, exhausted, slow down to read the wording.

  Yelp and drop my pile.

  ‘Mum, Desmond, there’s a mistake. Why has it got my address on it? I thought you were having the wedding here. What’s going on? It must be a typing error.’

  My mother sidl
es towards the dresser to find glasses and ashtrays for the vicar, should he require them. She smirks at me unapologetically, and directs a look of faux reproach at Desmond.

  ‘Oh, Desmond, I thought you’d told Venetia.’ Her pretence at anger is transparent. I drum my fingers on the table and wait to hear what she has to say. She blinks, piously, several times and says, ‘We’ve decided it’s best to have the party at your house because the garden is flatter than this one for the tent. We told Giles, when we came over to look and you were out somewhere. He must have forgotten to pass it on. It’ll be such fun for you, darling, and it’ll look so pretty.’

  Desmond rushes over, hurling himself down on one knee, his eyes drooping meekly, hands clasping mine.

  ‘Oh please, most wonderful sister, don’t say no. I meant to ask you, I kept meaning to ask you, and suddenly it mattered too much, and I couldn’t risk asking you in case you said no.’

  I swat him away impatiently. ‘Oh God, please don’t touch me. I need to think. I can’t believe you did this, you two, it’s so unscrupulous.’ My mother simpers, attempting a look of innocence and extreme scrupulousness and managing only to look cross-eyed. I am utterly pole-axed by the nerve of them, but also obscurely flattered. My own wedding, without the bother of being the bride. Cannot make out whether this is a good thing or not, but the bite and the fight have been knocked out of me.

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose it’s too late to do anything, so I haven’t any choice. The invitations are all printed, and you’ve even sent some already, haven’t you?’ My mother nods, head on one side, doing her meek look. I shall get some form of reprisal. I must. I have achieved all the H surnames on the list, and am looking forward to I, which only contains one person, a mysterious-sounding ‘Incie Wincie I-Boy’, who lives ‘c/o White City Greyhound Stadium’, when there is a knock on the door and the Reverend Trevor Heel slithers in past a cacophony of barking, licking dogs. He, unlike any of the canines, is wearing a collar, and it peeps crisply above his grey flannel shirt.