Hens Dancing Read online

  Disaster lurks in the car park. I bid farewell-until-the-concert to the other mothers and move towards the car. Rags is leaping up and down in the front seat, whining and scratching as if she has been left for about three hundred years instead of fifteen minutes. I am about to open the door when a wild, flailing paw lands on the lock. There is a whooshing, electrical-sounding multiple click and the car is locked with Rags inside it. And the keys.

  An hour with Reggie from the garage ensues. Reggie has an unravelled coat-hanger and wiggles it about through the car window with the same expression of blissed-out concentration that he might wear for cleaning his ears with a Q-Tip. The morning is overcast and still, a pair of squirrels swarm and tumble around us, then vanish up the trunk of a vast horse chestnut tree, its branches still laden with pyramids of blossom. The Beauty and I purchase a packet of Rolos from the newsagent and loll on the grass watching Reggie. He has taken off the top half of his boilersuit, and its dangling arms fascinate The Beauty, who shuffles over for a closer inspection. It is clear to me that Reggie will never get into the car this way, and we will have to break the window. I am about to say this when he steps back in triumph, foiling The Beauty who is poised to grab a sleeve and tug the whole boiler suit down. ‘We’re in,’ he says, and opens the door to remove the keys so that Rags the hysterical hell-hound cannot repeat her performance. There is now no obstacle to cake-making.

  June 18th

  The Beauty and I munch peanut butter sandwiches and join in with rippled applause as Giles and the rest of the Colts A cricket team zap their way to victory against Swinburn House. We find this a most civilised and pleasant way to spend the afternoon, and are cordially curious as to what is happening on the pitch. Giles is bowling now, but affects deafness when I wolf-whistle at him.

  ‘Concentration is all-important to the bowler.’ A pot-bellied father has sidled up to me, murmuring and sighing, his shirt straining warped blue checks over his paunch, his eyes narrowing to slits as he observes Giles. ‘That boy is not bad for his age; not a bad little player at all.’ Sudden spatter of clapping from the parents indicates that Giles has just made a successful move. ‘Well played indeed,’ says Papa Pot Belly, and I nod, affecting intelligence.

  ‘Mm, yes, what exactly did he do, though?’

  I am interrupted by a cheer from the parents. Something even better has happened, and Giles is part of it. Suddenly boys surround us, wolfing the sandwiches. Giles hovers over a silver ashet of cakes, and while he is hovering, The Beauty crawls over to him and wraps fat arms round his cricket whites. He picks her up to kiss her, and is suddenly, for an instant, the image of Charles, but the Charles I married, rather than the one I divorced. Am invaded by a million emotions and tears rush into my eyes. Furious blinking follows, while Giles stands in front of me holding The Beauty at arm’s length.

  ‘Mum, she’s done a poo, I can smell it,’ he hisses, frowning and dumping her in my arms before walking off with a friend towards the pavilion. More reminders of his father.

  June 20th

  Rose arrives at lunchtime with Theo, but without Tristan who has gone to Barcelona to an architects’ conference. She has come for a midsummer night party, and is entirely in charge of it. We take the babies out to frolic in the garden and are mobbed by hens and chicks. The Beauty bats her eyelashes at them and pats the grass invitingly, hoping one will come and nestle next to her, while Theo ignores them utterly in his pursuit of a punctured football he has found. Rose has resuscitated her garden in London after eighteen months of its being a building site. Idle garden chat and glancing at my borders with dissatisfaction leads to the inevitable. Suddenly we are whizzing across Norfolk on our way to a rare-plants nursery, our car filled with music from the motion picture Reservoir Dogs to keep the babies quiet.

  The outing is a big mistake. Rose and I are thwarted in our attempts to bankrupt ourselves by the pig-headedness of The Beauty and Theo. Both behave as if the rare-plants nursery is a nuclear testing ground, and will not be put down for a second, but clutch at us and assume terrified expressions if either of us tries to extract ourselves from their grip. Even when placed in a charming metal trolley together and wheeled round the walled garden, they sob unrestrainedly, reminding me of small eighteenth-century French aristocrats in a tumbril. The nursery owners are very kind, even when Theo pulls a peony flower the size of a hat off a plant and tears it to bits in front of them. Its crimson petals drip in gory echo of his cochineal experience.

  ‘Do you think he’ll make horror films when he grows up?’ wonders Rose as we depart, the car pretty well laden under the circumstances. In fact, the inclusion of Theo’s semi-double peony Arabian Prince, even without one of its flowers, gives our booty a much-needed glamour boost.

  June 21st

  The summer solstice is upon us with all its attendant pressures: why am I not staying up all night being at one with nature? Why have I yet again failed to take the children to an open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? How can the days, and indeed the year, be diminishing again? How soon can I get to Norwich to buy fake tan for lovely summer-look limbs?

  Such is the litany of soul-searching questions I am occupied with as I stroll into the village to attend the Village Show committee meeting. At home, Rose and Lila are creating a solstice feast. Rose, with her usual flamboyance, has provided whole lobsters, tiger prawns and pink champagne. Lila, ever the reformer, has soya milk, organic tofu and some sesame paste. As I depart to the meeting she is attempting to spread her weird pastes onto tiny crisps of fat-free wafer, and Rose is rolling her eyes. She mutters to me under her breath, ‘There’s more sustenance in bloody Communion bread than in that cardboard of Lila’s.’

  We have invited Simon and Vivienne to our feast, and also David, whom Rose bumped into on the village green this afternoon. Dazzled by the glamour of him in cricket whites and by being able to say hello to one of the team, once he was pointed out to her by Felix, she has become obsessed with him.

  ‘He’s so good-looking. Why aren’t you having an affair with him?’ she demands, ignoring Felix and Giles lying in the kitchen armchair, reading the Beano with their ears flapping.

  The committee meeting is a shambles. Nothing is arranged, even though the show is in about six weeks. My only contribution, apart from agreeing to judge the Pet Most Like Its Owner class, is a suggestion that we have a teddy-bear parachute contest from the church tower. To my amazement, the committee is keen as mustard, and I am sent home to make posters forthwith.

  As I approach the house it becomes clear that the feast is in full swing. Out on the grass, framed by a bank of thistles (sadly not the fashionable sort), is a bivouac with three tents, a high table and fairy lights twinkling from the trees. Simon, having provided a hog to roast, has built a spit, and clad in shorts and long thick socks like a game park warden, is busy doing his primitive man bit with the meat. Giles and Felix and Lila’s children, Diptych and Calypso, have made the most of the dressing-up box and also my make-up bag, and are paid-up members of some Indian tribe. They have adorned the tents with my zebra skins and Felix is wearing the fur coat I bought in a charity shop for a fiver. They are splendidly non-PC: I am amazed Lila hasn’t noticed and tried to ban them. All very elemental, and I look forward to Druid work and chanting taking place soon.

  The rugged outdoor life stops there, however. In the kitchen, Rose, Lila, David and Vivienne offer a contrasting existence of hedonism. All the girls have plainly raided Rose’s wardrobe, and are semi-clad in slivers of skirt and skimpy T-shirts in colours as vibrant as poppies. David is still wearing his cricket whites and is making tequila slammers. The table is awash with crushed ice and on the ice, little lemon-wedge boats are marooned here and there. My favourite musical medleys of the moment are movie soundtrack CDs, and one is blasting from the drawing room. Everyone is already flushed and half drunk, even Lila, who is so relaxed that she forgets to ask if the lemons are organic. I gulp my first tequila slammer and enter the fray.


  June 22nd

  Never. Ever. Again.

  June 25th

  The Beauty is one today. To make the most of the occasion, she rises at five-thirty a.m. beaming and beady of eye, and immensely pleased to have become the kind of person who can stand up in her cot when I go in to get her up. She has her bottle in my bed and I drink tea and stare half-wittedly out at the milky, misted morning. Sunrays which began palest lemon are now radiating jolly and vigorous beams at the mist, and by the time we go downstairs, the diaphanous veil has vanished and the garden sparkles with dewdrops, and is truly a paradise for The Beauty to enjoy. This she does with aplomb. It is still too early to wake her brothers, so I take her out and she stamps around holding my hands because it is too wet for her to crawl. She loves this new feely sensation, and lifts each small, fat foot high, pointing her toe before plunging forward with her next unsteady step. We pick a very gratifying bunch of pink and amber roses with which to adorn the birthday tea table this afternoon.

  Present-giving is a huge success. The Beauty gets the hang of unwrapping straight away, and has no truck with the ‘babies like the wrapping paper best’ theory. Felix gives her a Teletubbies ball and Giles a drum. The Beauty is enchanted, and crows and slaps her thighs in a new swashbuckling way of indicating pleasure. Rose has triumphed and has sent, by courier, a doll-sized version of The Beauty’s very old-fashioned pram. She straightaway sees the point of it and insists on being wedged in, becoming very Mabel Lucie Atwell with seraphic face appearing vast due to miniaturisation of her chariot. Charles arrives as Felix and Giles stage a pram race on the lawn with The Beauty in the toy pram against Rags in the real pram. The Beauty finds this huge fun and laughs like a squeaky toy as she is hurtled towards the pond by Felix. Rags, however, is terrified, and ruins Giles’s chances of victory by leaping out of the pram and scuttling back to the house.

  Charles parks and leans against his sleek bullet-like car wearing his usual smirk. He is dressed as an alien as far as we are concerned, in grey flannel trousers, polished slip-on shoes and a beige polo-neck sweater. No dog hairs or fluff balls have clung to him, and everything he is wearing is either brand-new or ironed so that it looks as though it has just been unfolded from its purchase pack. The boys abandon The Beauty and run towards their father. I am guilt-ridden and shocked by how much I mind that they are thrilled to see him. Giles reaches him first.

  ‘Dad, come and have a race. Will you push me in the pram?’ Charles sucks in his ribs and arches away backwards like a crab, raising his arms so that they at least are not caught in the chocolate- and grass-stained embrace of his sons. He pats their heads gingerly.

  ‘I’d have thought you were rather old for that sort of nonsense now, Giles.’

  Giles grins and retorts, ‘Well I’m not,’ and I turn away fast to hide my smile. Can’t help being glad that Charles is a total bastard, as anyone less vile would cause me so much more misery every time the tireless, ‘Did I do the right thing?’ thought surfaces.

  A rattling camper van creeps up the drive as the second pram race begins. This one is between Charles pushing Giles and Felix pushing Rags, as The Beauty has retired after her victory and is excavating the large box Charles has brought for her. Out of the camper van step my brother, Desmond, and a half-naked youth.

  ‘I thought she’d like some entertainment for her party,’ says Desmond, and I stare at the stripagram as I assume he is, and wonder how old Desmond thinks The Beauty is.

  ‘This is Oak, he’s a mate of mine and he’s going to do a bit of juggling.’ Desmond squats next to The Beauty and hands her a red plastic rose. She bites the head off. Charles escapes from the pram race and moves in to help open the box he has brought. To complete the happy family scene, my mother arrives with The Gnome who has written a poem for The Beauty and wishes to recite it. He squats beside her and clears his throat. The Beauty is now surrounded by crouched men, none of whom she has any recollection of having met before. It is too much. She tries very hard to look pleased for a moment and then the bottom lip protrudes, wobbles and collapses and weeping commences. Her party is a disaster. She sobs and buries her face in my shoulder and I am attacked by the usual hysterical laughter, and so is my mother.

  Charles has unwrapped his gift and is standing looking foolish next to a very done-up and bijou doll’s house.

  ‘Oh, Charles, how kind,’ I say, ‘you shouldn’t have.’ Am mentally computing price, and becoming red with fury that he can have forgotten the presence of my own doll’s house, and so squandered a fortune on this soulless Bovis-style residence when he could have given her a musical box. The Beauty is becoming frenzied with misery and everyone else is standing about talking in groups as if at a garden party. Am saved from spiralling lunacy by Oak, who blows giant bubbles the size of footballs, and with them casts a spell of happiness over The Beauty and even her bored and cynical friends and relations.

  Everything is looking up now: Charles says he has to go, and even the discovery of Sidney scooping cream off the top of the cake with his paw cannot diminish the new party spirit.

  June 26th

  The Beauty is still hung-over from her party and sleeps most of the day, enabling me to have two arguments with David over the bathroom and to plant a tray of Verbena officinalis.

  Argument One: David wants to put gauzy fabric across the ceiling like a tent, and I think this will make the bathroom look like a Turkish Delight advertisement. We agree to try it and then decide.

  Argument Two: The tent effect is in place, it looks wonderful and seductive and sensuous. I am enraged. Make a special trip to the village shop for a bar of Turkish Delight. I place it on the lavatory seat and stand back.

  ‘Look, David, I told you so.’ He removes the Turkish Delight without a smile.

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he says crisply. ‘Let’s leave it and see what you think tomorrow.’

  Go into garden to avoid thinking about being defeated on this, and create a doughnut-shaped weed-free zone in which to plant the verbena. Move a few pink foxgloves to the centre of the doughnut, and a pot of slender agapanthus spears, and retire from the garden convinced that I have achieved a beautiful effect. The feathering green leaves and palest pink of the tiny-flowered verbena will look a treat surrounding raspberry Mivvi foxglove spikes, and then blue pompons of agapanthus. The design will be borrowed by many, just as if I were Vita, or Beth Chatto. Hooray.

  June 29th

  It is the last week of Giles’s term, and parents are expected to attend school as often as their offspring and for almost as long each day. This is maddening: the summer holidays always catch me unawares, and I can see life and work careering off into the gloaming like a runaway train. I had hoped to spend today and every other day this week filing, telephoning and writing, in a last-ditch attempt to save myself from hopeless inefficiency and brain death in the days to come. But Gawain, an old school friend of Charles’s, indeed, the only friend of Charles’s I ever liked, arrived yesterday. ‘I’ve come for a week or so,’ he announced gladly. He is a painter, nearly successful, and always neurotic. He plans to finish a series of canvases entitled ‘Normal for Norfolk’ while he is here. So far he has not even opened a tube of paint, but instead has spent the morning mowing the lawn. Or trying to.

  ‘I think I’m more of a window-boxer than a gardener,’ he explains the third time I am called out to help him push the mower out of the border into which he has driven it at high speed. I have noticed that the ride-on mower excites men when they first see it, but disappointment at the poor acceleration usually leads to boredom halfway through the grass cutting and it is left, like flotsam at low tide, marooned in the middle of the lawn. Gawain is no exception, and leaves the mower curtseying into the beech hedge.

  Over lunch he shows me photographs of Normal for Norfolk I to IV, and I love III so passionately that I buy it there and then without really being able to imagine how big it is. Or how I am going to pay for it. I give a very small down payment and arrange to pay a mont
hly pittance for ever. Gawain is ecstatic. ‘Man, this is groovy,’ he yells, and rushes off to the larder to find the case of Red Stripe beers he brought as a house gift.

  Halfway down the first can he is garrulous, and we cover such topics as the breasts of the girls on Baywatch, upon which subject he is lucid, the inspiration behind the Normal for Norfolk series, about which he is less clear, and whether it is worth driving five miles to Cromer to place a bet on the one-forty at Kempton Park. ‘Yes, but will you take me, Venetia? I’m over the limit.’

  By the end of the second Red Stripe he is dancing to The Archers theme tune on the radio and I am longing for him to become unconscious. Hours pass, and I make pea and mint soup because I can do nothing else; Gawain needs company. He unburdens his soul, gazing mistily at me, shaking his head sadly and murmuring, ‘You’re so understanding, Venetia, I love you, I love you.’

  This is infuriating. He doesn’t love me, he’s getting me muddled with his manic depressive girlfriend. And I don’t want to be understanding, I want to be in my study. When The Beauty goes for her rest, I try to leave the room but am foiled. Gawain follows me into the study and settles into the large armchair, pulling one side of the shutters to so as to protect his head from the sun, and continues a seamless narrative about a trip to Barcelona with the manic depressive girlfriend, whom he says has a good figure but is not as beautiful as me. I am underwhelmed by the compliment and am ticked off for gracelessness. In desperation I return to the kitchen and start to make bread, and Gawain is silenced at last. But still very present. He has decided to incor-porate me into Normal for Norfolk, and begins sketches for my portrait.